The next day had him wrestling with himself. Severus gave serious consideration to not returning to the museum even though it was spring and the garden was barely starting to bring forth buds and blooms. Granger had seen him, known it was him, and while he had made an escape the first time, he knew that she would be insistent the second time.
The idea of being chased from a haunt that he considered his own rose a wealth of ire within his chest. For two years, no one from his former life had crossed his path, except for a handful of students that gave him a wide berth. None of those involved in the war, no one who had witnessed first hand what had been done. Severus had been able to separate himself, sometimes even blissfully forget he'd had any other life than this.
What on earth could she want from him?
Sitting at his drafting table in his studio, he mulled over what would happen if he returned. Surely she would be there, waiting. Waiting for what, he didn't know, and he'd not know unless he engaged with her. He ground his teeth, his fingers rolling a pencil between his fingers. Severus shook his head. No, he would not be chased from someplace of comfort by the woman's presence.
Gathering his jacket and supplies, he determined he would get the bottom of the mystery by the end of the day, and then he could go back to living the life he had grown accustomed to. With haste in his pace, Severus made his way to St Walter's.
As expected, Granger was there again, this time in casual clothing. Severus paused at the threshold, watching and listening again for the Boy Wonder and his Ginger Blunder, and observed no trace of them.
She turned her head, her long curly hair bound up today in a braid that seemed to barely hold it at bay. Granger glanced at him, her brown eyes not as surprised as the day before. But she did not turn around to approach him, she did not call out to him. She nodded her head at him with a polite smile, before turning back to gaze at the art.
The choice to interact with her was now in his hands. Severus fixed his jacket and took several long steps to stand next to her. He gazed over the work that had her so engaged, not glancing down at the woman nearly a head shorter than himself.
"Granger," he drawled out, his arms crossing over his chest.
A sigh escaped her, and Severus saw her glance up at him. "Professor."
"I am no longer anyone's teacher." He scoffed. "Why are you here?"
Severus felt the weight of her gaze leave him and crossed her own arms, once again taking in the marble relief. He stood there waiting with impatience growing within him as each second passed that she did not answer him.
"Do you ever wonder how the play would have gone if Ophelia never died?" Her words came out softly and distracted, almost as if they were not even for him.
It disoriented him from his own musings, and he turned his head with an arched brow. "Shakespeare?"
"No, Chaucer, obviously."
The implied sarcasm was palpable, and his lip curled in response. "No, I have never wondered. You did not answer my question, Miss Granger."
"Did you know she was murdered?" She still didn't look at him as she poised her statement.
Her erroneous and misinformed statement, he might add.
While Hamlet was not one of his favourites, and there were far better examples of playwrights than William Shakespeare, he'd read them all and could recall this one in question. "No, Granger, she was not. I have read the play, she drowned herself in the river."
Something her eyes changed, Severus watched sorrow and humour flicker in equal measure across them. Brown curls threatened to escape her braid as she shook her head at him.
"Women do not drown face up unless they are being held underwater, Sir." The corner of her lip turned up as she exhaled softly. "It is good to see you are in good health."
The implication that he might not have been in good health made him rankle, and he narrowed his eyes at her. "Is that what this is, a wellness check?"
Her eyes rolled at him in a way that made him want to strip fifty points from her house on pure principle. "Strangely enough, not everything is about you, Sir. Precisely like everything wasn't about Hamlet or Harry." Her tone of voice was heavy, almost as if there was some heavy burden hidden in those words. "It was lovely seeing you, I will try to stay out of your hair, but I will be around for a while."
Severus found himself unbalanced by her words, they were not what he expected at all. Without further explanation or discourse, the woman pulled her leather satchel tighter against her arm and turned from him, striding toward the exit. He had no reason to stop her, and so he stood there, watching her turn the corner, before looking back at Ophelia. Granger's departure had left behind a lingering scent of petrichor, coffee, and what he considered were possibly daffodils. It was a unique combination that was not unpleasant at all to his senses.
But their conversation had left him with even more questions and few of his own answered. His forehead wrinkled as he considered her words once more.
Could you drown face up?
Had she truly told him it was none of his business? Why was she there without actually saying it?
With a heavy sigh, he shook his head and walked out of the museum into the gardens. Severus did not have the time or the patience to play what silly little game the Golden Girl was attempting to drag him into.
Settling on a stone bench, the peacefulness of his surroundings soaked through the layer of irritation as he crossed one leg over the other. His sketchbook was placed against his knee, and he let his focus fall away from Hermione Granger and onto his subject at hand.
But the lines of the leaves were harsh and rigid, the unopened buds tame and predictable. Everything that he drew across the page wasn't right, it wasn't what he wanted to draw.
He moved to another spot, focused on another subject, a garden statue with ivy climbing along it. It delivered the same unsatisfactory results. He closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose between them as he searched for the source of his frustration.
The shape and shade of brown curls made its way across his mind, and Severus sighed.
Blast it all, he thought squeezing his eyes tight. I want to draw that insufferable woman again.
Feeling as if he would not accomplish anything with his concentration trickling away(even if he tried) Severus packed himself up and made his way home. He was exceedingly uncomfortable with his new inclination to want to capture Granger, or at least her wild hair, on paper.
He would need more than wine tonight, he told himself, pouring some gin. Maybe tomorrow, Granger will be there, and I can get this out of my system.
Granger was not there the next day, and Severus was uncertain how he actually felt about it. Part of him was elated in that his routine would be uninterrupted, but the other side of that was that he could not sketch her again. He made his usual normal pass through the collection, stopping to sketch what caught his eye among the works of art, but he didn't feel into it as he normally did.
Going home far earlier once again, he tended to some of his work for the apothecary. Then, he went into his studio, making several frustrating attempts to draw her from memory.
Finally, he took himself to bed, struggling with the shift and contrast his life was experiencing.
Rain tapped against the glass window front of The Cauldron and Cork. It had been torrential for most of the day, but it seemed to be tapering off. As his workday went on, the rain lessened even more, stopping completely before it was time to close the shop. Severus turned the sign to show that he was closed for the day, and tucked his brolly over his arm as he left the shoppe. He made his way to St Walter's, wanting to practice the water droplets that were sure to be left behind on the newly opened flowers.
It might be just the thing to get him out of his drawing rut. He'd not completed anything that he thought was acceptable, and even some of his older works he'd once looked upon with a sense of pride made him frown and get irritated. All he observed were flaws and imperfections.
St Walters was cooler inside than the warm humid air outside. The marble building welcomed him with its familiar scent and charm, and he was thankful that that was not ruined for him.
He glanced at the Ophelia relief again, and there was no know-it-all to be seen.
Severus exhaled deeply from his nose and moved out of the back of the building into the gardens. St Walters was bigger than one could tell from the street. The gardens took up nearly half an acre, with a greenhouse, and an arboretum that featured many permanent sculptures and replicas of famous statues. The air still tasted of the rain, and it smelt of petrichor and warm wet earth.
Just as Severus pulled out his sketchbook, a moment caught his eye. A familiar head of brown curls came into view as Granger stepped into the greenhouse. A thrill of excitement went through him, surprising him and making him frown instantly. That was not how he should react in recognizing Granger. Moving along the cobbled paths, Severus spied her through the green glass windows.
Her hair was down around her face, which he could see clearly from this vantage point. Granger had paused at the newly opened tulips, her lips curved in a smile as she delicately touched them.
She looks lovely, Severus contemplated spontaneously, his eyebrows rising at himself. Shaking his head, he forced that way for further contemplation and began to sketch. The pencil glided against the paper as he transcribed her details. He'd never drawn her face before, she was always turned to the side, and so he took this opportunity to do so. He started with her lips, trying to capture the joy that curved along them as she marvelled at the blooms. He followed upward, outlining her nose as he worked toward her eyes. They were very expressive, something he would have never noticed if he were not looking at her as he was now.
Brown eyes moved and met his, and Severus felt himself pale ever so slightly. Granger arched an eyebrow at him, and then turned toward the doors of the greenhouse. Drawing himself up, he closed the sketchbook, tucking his pencil into its loop as she approached him.
"Good afternoon, do you come here often, sir?" Her words were rife with curiosity.
"It is Severus," he corrected. He had no desire to be addressed as sir or professor by any of his former students. Usually, he informed them to call him Snape, but for a reason unbeknownst to him, he'd decided to give her the privilege of his given name.
Brown eyes exposed her shock before she could recover. Granger nodded. "Call me Hermione then. I insist."
"I answer your previous question, yes, I do come here often," Severus told her plainly. "What brings you here again?"
"I suppose no point in concealing it, Severus, since we are likely neighbours. I moved nearby recently and found this place purely by accident." She looked away from him, her eyes scanning their surroundings in wonder. "It is beautiful, and not all that busy."
"Yes, it is a hidden treasure," he muttered as he absorbed the fact that she lived nearby. That this was not something that would come and go, that she was likely to be someone he ran into as he conducted his daily life and routine. His gut twisted in unexplained anxiety. "So, I suppose these run-ins shall be a frequent occurrence?"
"I suppose they shall." Granger returned his eye contact with a shrug and a smile. Her eyes moved down to his sketchbook, which he held tightly to himself. "What is it you are doing here? I've noticed you taking a lot of notes in that book."
"What am I—?" Severus started. The awkwardness of explaining to her that he'd been drawing her was overwhelming, and his eyes darted to the side. A species of clover stuck out to him as he cultivated his reasoning quickly. "I am conducting research here, the gardens have many interesting specimens."
She turned her head slightly, an expression of suspicions crossing her features.
Severus sensed that she knew his words were not true.
He wondered for a moment if it was that he was so unaccustomed to having to lie on the fly, or if she'd gotten better at discerning them that had exposed him.
Granger shook her head, as if she were shaking some musing away, and her soft smile returned. "I was hoping to ask you, do you own the apothecary down a bit, The Cauldron and something." Her hand came up to tap her chin as her eyes darted up in thought. "I cannot remember. I have only seen it once."
"The Cauldron and Cork," Severus informed her. "I do indeed own it."
"I had thought so, but I was not going to invade it to come and see for myself."
"Well, now you know. If you've need of something brewed, you know where to find me." His words hit him after he said it. Severus felt his eyebrows pinch together. He'd basically invited trouble to his home, telling her that she could come to his shoppe. Yes, it had been if she needed something brewed, but give a Gryffindor an inch, and they take the whole damn pitch.
"Thank you." Hermione Granger smiled at him.
Her smile made him experience something odd, a tingle in the back of his neck and in his hands. Severus could feel that his palms were sweating, but that had to be from the humidity.
And she kept on smiling as she spoke, gesturing back toward the greenhouse. "I suppose I shouldn't keep you from your research. I'll just get on my way."
"It was strangely tolerable to see you, Miss—Hermione," he fumbled over her name, inclining his head toward her.
"You as well, Severus," Hermione replied, turning and walking back to where she'd been. Even in the gloom, her hair appeared bright and lively.
Discouraging himself from making an already awkward interaction even more awkward by attempting to sketch her again, he turned toward the arboretum. Severus stayed there long enough to make it seem he was indeed doing research before tucking his sketchbook away and making a hasty beeline for the exit. He walked right past Granger, who was once again staring at Ophelia's Relief, without acknowledgement. He had too much on his mind, too many concerning reactions to the woman that he was almost afraid to speak to her again until he sorted himself out.
And that was exactly what he planned to do when he got home.