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Chapter 2: Retrograde
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She is never quite sure it is him the first few times they see each other again. Sometimes he appears the way he did that first day in the bookshop, tall and sandy brown; sometimes he looks completely different.
The first time is at the deli.
Her hand hesitates over the digestives as she feels a prickling sensation at the back of her neck. She looks up to find the blonde man down the counter staring at her, blue eyes intense and piercing. Her eyes snap back to the digestives; she tries to avoid attention from strangers as a rule. Even with her multitude of disguises, one can never be too careful.
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The trouble had begun shortly after the war ended. Even with Aurors darting about trying to tie up any loose ends they could through Obliviates or explanations, a critical mass of Muggles had experienced things they couldn't brush off as coincidence or bad luck.
At first it was only the Muggle-borns or half-bloods who really had anything to worry about; most pure-blood wizards and witches had minimal contact with the Muggle world.
Hermione still remembers the day that Dean Thomas wound up with three broken ribs after some of his less tolerant cousins discovered his wand. It was early days, and most Muggles weren't very adept at identifying magic, but a wand was evidence where before there had only been suspicion.
After what happened to Dean, Hermione became more careful, never performing even the most basic of spells unless she was in the safety of her own home, windows shut and curtains drawn, the words whispered in secret.
Then Diagon Alley was discovered, and the world tilted on its axis.
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He's still staring. Hermione carefully avoids looking his way as she pays the shopkeeper.
It is only after she wraps her scarf around her neck and steps into the cold wind outside the deli that she realizes it could be him.
Snape.
The name echoes around her brain, ringing into the dark corners where she no longer ventures.
Until now, she hasn't allowed herself to hope that their encounter by the cathedral had been real. It seems almost preposterous, a waking dream. A delusion created by her subconscious, craving connection to the magical world.
She chances a look back through the glass. Their eyes connect. He gives her a barely perceptible nod of silent knowingness.
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Once she sees him at the bakery, once crossing the same bridge over the River Tay where they first met; another time at the Hermitage she is sure it is him disappearing around the corner on the path ahead. Sometimes a Disillusionment Charm gives her a hint that it's him, sometimes it's only a tug of awareness deep in her gut.
Their encounters are rare and brief; two asynchronous orbits, close enough to touch but never quite collide.
She tries not to seek him out. It's far too dangerous, she could easily be discovered. Or she could frighten him away.
Instead she lets him come to her.
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For work, Hermione takes the appearance of an unwitting young woman who donated her hair to charity five years ago. She works as a receptionist at a law firm in the next town. She makes certain that she doesn't excel, doesn't stand out.
Work is thoroughly ordinary, until one Wednesday it isn't.
She is filing papers when he comes into the firm. She looks up from her work to find him waiting in front of her desk, tall and sandy brown, his bookshop self.
"I'd like to apply for a job." He is holding out a black folder.
She takes the proffered documents dazedly, eyes fixed on his face. He isn't wearing a Disillusionment Charm today.
"We haven't put an advert out..." She trails off as he turns around, walking out the door without another word.
She opens the folder. Tucked away between the pages of the fabricated CV is a scrap of paper, two lines in an instantly familiar hand.
I require Boomslang skin. The Hermitage, Sunday at sunrise.
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