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Chapter 3: Pursuit
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Hermione waits on the hill, feet growing cold. The grass is still damp from morning dew, the mist rising from the valley below tinged pink in the early morning light.
She compulsively touches the leather satchel at her side once more. The additional Boomslang skin was not easy to acquire; her habitual supplier has gone silent in the last few months.
She maintains a web of contacts that she uses to procure potions ingredients; of course, she doesn't know any of their real names. Nor do they know who she truly is. She leaves Muggle money in a specified location, and the next day Lacewing flies or Knotgrass or Fluxweed appear, tucked carefully inside a box or an envelope.
The neighbors must think she is buying drugs. Better that than the truth: she is the other that many of them so fear.
The ritual of brewing Polyjuice Potion is one of the few things that still tethers her to magic. It is the one potion that she will risk brewing, hidden away in the darkest corner of her cottage.
She lives an otherwise fully Muggle existence. It's safer that way. Simpler.
Hermione starts as he emerges from the pines, wreathed in the light from the rising sun, reaching to draw down the hood of his heavy overcoat.
She is surprised to see that he wears no disguise.
"Good morning, Professor."
"I am no longer anyone's professor, Granger," Snape replies, more weary than biting.
It is a situation with no script. She feels like a small child or a recluse, so unaccustomed to meaningful social interactions she hardly knows how to behave. It's been so long since she has spoken with someone who knows who she is, so long since she has engaged in any sort of conversation beyond everyday prattle.
It seems like an eternity later when he prompts, "The Boomslang skin, if you please."
"Yes, of course." She realizes she has been staring at him.
Hermione hands him the neatly packaged Boomslang skin, he holds something out in his other hand as he takes it: Muggle money, fastidiously folded.
"Oh no, sir. Please, just take it. I don't need the money."
His lips press together tightly, and she realizes that she's said precisely the wrong thing. She forges on, "It's only, I haven't met anyone from our world in so long. Nearly five years."
Silence meets her pronouncement.
Snape lowers his hand in surprise; black, flat eyes scanning her face. Although she has altered her appearance for the journey to the Hermitage, no spell can disguise her bone-deep exhaustion.
"I thought you were dead," she says, voice raw, "After the first time, at the cathedral, I thought I was going mad."
Snape opens his mouth as if to say something, and then shuts it abruptly, eyes hardening as he scans the clearing. Then his eyes snap to hers and she knows, suddenly. They are being watched.
He pulls up his hood and takes her hand, starting down the forest path so quickly that she barely has time to react.
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Hermione follows, still pulled along by his hand, struggling to keep up with his long, purposeful strides; she resists the impulse to glance behind her.
They make their way through the silent forest, bright morning light filtering through the pines, moss soft underfoot, her heart hammers out an erratic rhythm in her chest. When they reach the road, Snape stops long enough for her to catch her breath.
"My home isn't far," he speaks softly without looking at her, lips barely moving, his gaze still fixed across the road.
Without waiting for her response, Snape leads them over the road, through a copse of trees, and into a small, tidy neighborhood. Only when they reach the second house on the left does he let go of her hand, deftly pulling out the key to unlock the front door.
Out of the corner of her eye she can see the man who is following them, stopped and contemplating them from his position in the middle of the road, 100 metres away. She stares resolutely at Snape's long, pale fingers as they fit the key in the door, refusing to turn her head and meet their pursuer's gaze.
Then the door shudders open and they are inside.
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She is unsurprised to find that Snape's house is sparsely furnished and oddly empty; all of her temporary homes in the last five years have been the same.
"It doesn't seem that he overheard anything damning," Snape says as he turns to her after carefully locking the front door, "Otherwise he would have been undoubtedly more aggressive in his pursuit."
His mouth is set in a grim line.
Hermione can see the man through the window. He is still standing in the same place, now watching the house with wary eyes.
"He knows," she whispers with sudden surety, panic flaring in her chest.
"Come away from the window," Snape says tersely.
She forces herself to walk calmly, normally as she follows Snape into the kitchen, fighting the rising fear; a wholly different type of fear than the constant fear she has experienced over the last five years. That was a slow, gnawing, ache; this is a hot fire that is threatening to burst through her bones and take control of her completely.
She takes a seat at the table as he begins opening cupboards, the fear vibrating and pulsing under her skin, ready to snap.
"Drink this," Snape says shortly as he puts a pewter mug down on the table.
When Hermione eyes it suspiciously, he clarifies, "It's only tea, Granger."
The utter banality of Snape offering her tea in a situation like this is so jarring that she almost laughs.
"I've never been found out before," she remarks to herself with something close to surprise, "I've always moved on before they could become too suspicious."
He lowers himself into the seat across from her, the hard planes of his face lit by the mid-morning light that filters through the foggy kitchen window.
"I have," he says plainly, bringing the cup of tea to his thin lips, "Twice."
"What did you do?"
He considers her for a moment, dark eyes unreadable, then he answers, "I left, obviously."
Hermione contemplates this information as she sips her tea in silence and he rises from his seat to pace the room. She has lived in Dunkeld for almost a year; it has almost started to feel safe.
"Our unwelcome friend has retreated," Snape observes from the window, "Doubtless to gather reinforcements."
He turns to her, his profile backlit, his face shrouded and inscrutable, "Do you have anything you need to fetch from your home or shall we leave directly?"
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