Hermione let herself into her flat and dropped her bag of potions and cloak on to the couch as she headed for the kitchen to make some tea. There was one dried up pathetic-looking bag left in the corner of her tin, but that was good enough. She wasn't feeling up to much magic, so she ran the tap until it was as hot as she could stand it, filled a mug, and let it steep while she got herself settled. Her cloak and robes had been muddied and shredded, but a hospital elf had done her the favor of cleaning and mending them for her before she left. She chucked them in the general direction of the hamper anyway as they smelled of that bitter medicinal wash they used at St. Mungo's.
A letter to her parents would be prudent, but then again she didn't want to worry them. She never lied to them, exactly. But it was a tradition, after all, since she had first taken up with Harry Potter and all the bullshit that came with the boy who lived. She'd only ever told her parents just enough to ensure they didn't feel she was hiding anything. It wasn't a good feeling, being sneaky hiding things from people she loved. It didn't make her feel clever. It was just a part of her life.
She glanced at her desk and the well-used pheasant quill that lay there, dusty. Tomorrow. She was off tomorrow anyway. Tomorrow would be fine. Tea and sleep today.
Severus Snape was irritated and he didn't exactly know why, exactly, but as usual it centered around Hermione Granger. He rounded the corner of the row of flats down the back alley which Hermione had walked down only moments earlier. It was where the residents of the converted warehouse of flats kept their bins. It was quiet and out of sight and a safe place to apparate in and out of once he was clear of the street. He didn't even bother to glance at Granger's door as he passed.
Two owls were waiting for him when he arrived at his own door. One was half asleep with it's head sunken down in its breast, and the other looked like it would be checking its wristwatch if it had one. He dealt with that one first since it fluttered down from the gutter to his shoulder and stuck its leg out. Snape removed the scroll and the owl took off before the leather string was completely removed from its talon. He tucked the note in his robes. If it required an immediate response then the owl would have remained.
The second owl needed a small rock thrown at it before it woke, which Snape was, at best, indifferent about. Eventually it drunkenly stumbled down from the eave and crashed into Snape, who resisted the urge to fling it to the ground. He removed it's pouch and was annoyed to see the bird did not immediately take off as its counterpart had. Whatever it had delivered required acknowledgement.
Snape reluctantly carried the bird into the house, then deposited it unceremoniously onto a dusty entry table as he continued into his office. Technically the whole house was his office. There was a bed up there somewhere, and something resembling a kitchen. But there were never any guests. None invited, anyway. What used to be a sitting room many years ago now held three small scrubbed tables full of neatly stacked but otherwise grimy-looking case files. Severus still worked with the proficiency of a Potions Master, though, and abhorred the carelessly arranged offices of his coworkers. Even Granger's flat was not above reproach. So despite all the quills and pots of ink, the numerous pieces of evidence he kept to ponder, and the cups of tea he'd let get cold around him, the room was actually very tidy. But then, he'd been used to living in such small rooms since he was a child, and being tidy always made a small space bigger.
The bedrooms were crammed with books along the walls and trunks of potions-related items he'd requested from Hogwarts as they were especially his and not to be misused by mere students and whoever was teaching in his dungeons these days. Let them keep the henbane and the lacewing flies. The Veritaserum was his, thank you very much.
After leaving St. Mungo's four years ago, upon his recovery from his final encounter with Voldemort, he'd returned to Spinner's End only to realize everything he owned of any practical use was back at Hogwarts. Or at least that was where he last left his few personal things like his clothing. He had reasoned that, between the time it took for him to have been marked as a dead traitor and his pronouncement of innocence by the newly appointed Wizengamot, all his personal effects had probably been bonfired by students…. And perhaps some of the staff. It was not much of a loss, but it was an inconvenience.
So he'd gone down to the basement and broke the wards on the room, then set to work freeing the small trunk he'd sealed up several years prior to Voldemort's return which lay magically encased in earth several meters beneath him. Inside was the key to a Gringotts vault under another man's name, 300 galleons, and papers leaving his house to Remus Lupin, which Snape had never signed. Four of the five new, but very plain and still very black robes he'd sent out to have made now hung upstairs; he wore the fifth presently. Old habits died hard.
Presently he sat himself down at one of the relatively more comfortable chairs and started a fire before reading the more pressing note.
Severus,
No success locating Quippenstaff, please advise.
Maxwell
Snape sighed as he reached for the closest quill.
Impress upon his mistress the importance of his continued cooperation with the Aurory.
He did not bother to sign it. His handwriting was known internationally at this point.
Honestly, if you wanted something done right, appeal to the mistress. The wife would most likely be set up in case of dissolution. But the mistress needed pin money. Leads on dark wizards were becoming few and far between and every set of eyes or scrap of information was important.
He returned to the bird in the hall and tied his reply to its foot, then set it alight out the front door. Now for the second message. He pulled it out of his robes and settled back in his chair.
It would be my great honor to receive you at my next soiree, November third, seven o'clock, formal dinner dress requested. Please RSVP by Thursday at the latest.
Yours very sincerely,
Horace P. Slughorn
He'd lost Snape at "soiree," and if he hadn't then, he certainly would have by "formal dress." Snape tore up the invitation, threw it into the fireplace, then pulled out his wand to blast the grate into flames.
As if he didn't have enough on his mind, what with the growing stack of cases on his desk and Granger out of commission for a week. If she stayed that way, of course. He ought to have a word with Kingsley, and Potter and Weasley while he was at it. They wouldn't listen to him, but he would be lying if he said he didn't miss that moment of fear in their eyes when he addressed them in his professor's voice, as she had called him out on earlier. Even at twenty-three, and aurors at that, they still startled so easily.
