Severus stormed into his rooms late Sunday afternoon to see Hermione reading, her legs folded up underneath her in his overstuffed chair near the window in their sitting room. He slapped a tray with a bacon sandwich and a goblet of pumpkin juice on it on a table near her. The pumpkin juice sloshed over the sides of the goblet and puddled on the tray.
Hermione squeaked in shock, but recovered enough to ask: "What's this?"
"You didn't have lunch," Severus said stonily. "Your loss was commented on. Mr. Potter and Weasley kept murmuring to each other, and several young women in Gryffindor gave me nasty looks."
"I wasn't hungry," Hermione said sheepishly. She was torn between intimidation and laughter. She placed her bookmark in her book and closed it.
"How would you know?" Severus asked with a sneer.
She placed the heavy tome on the little table. "I didn't notice the time."
Severus frowned. "The Order needs its members in top form, not running on empty."
Hermione's eyebrows furrowed. " If that was true, Mundungus Fletcher would never have been recruited!"
Severus tightened his jaw. "Fletcher will not be doing research and you will."
Hermione sighed. It was an excuse, but if it was after lunch, she had been reading for hours without pause. He stood stiffly before her: back straight and arms wrapped across his chest. His black eyes drilled into her.
"Thank you," said Hermione as a chill ran up her spine. " I'll set people straight after I eat."
0
"There she is!" shouted Ron to Harry as they rose high above the Quidditch pitch.
Harry called to Hermione, and she waved back from her seat in the stands.
Harry and Ron soared to her and clattered to a stop as their heavy boots landed on the old wooden stands.
"Where have you been?" Ron demanded as he pulled his headgear off.
"Where have I been?" Hermione asked, laughing. "In my rooms with a book. I went to the bookstore yesterday. Where else would I be?"
"Of course, you were," Harry replied, nudging Ron in the side. "It's Sunday. Where else would she be?"
"So, when do we get to see this place?" asked Ron, embarrassed.
"Whenever you want," replied Hermione with a wide grin. "You should know where the entrance is, in any case."
"We'll change. We can go now," Harry suggested.
"Perfect." Hermione said with a sigh of relief.
After the boys were set to rights, they set out for the dungeon.
Hermione pointed out the stone fish and opened the portal to the rooms she shared with Severus.
Severus was sitting on the black sofa in front of the fireplace pouring over scrolls, reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. He gave them an obligatory sneer.
Harry and Ron took in the large picture window behind Severus, the soft chair and table beside the window, the picture with a purring, dozing cat on it. The single door leading out of the room.
"Err… hello, Professor," said Harry, obviously wondering if this was a good idea.
Ron stayed quiet for a change. He was staring at the only door visible in the room.
Severus took his spectacles off and placed them in a wooden black box on the coffee table. "Come to check on her?"
"Something like that," answered Harry sheepishly before Ron could open his mouth.
"I expect you'll find everything in order," Severus sniffed as he started marking a scroll in crimson ink.
Hermione shook her head at them. She stepped over to the purring cat and whispered the password that revealed the door to her bedroom.
"Extraordinary," Ron looked both impressed and relieved.
Severus looked over at the backs of the trio and allowed himself smirk. They'd be occupied all afternoon and wouldn't be able to get up to very much trouble. Babysitting them would no longer be such a laborious task. At least he wouldn't have to follow them around and loom out of shadowy corners at appropriate moments anymore. Excellent.
"Blimey, Hermione! I'm coming over just to use the loo!" Harry's voice came out of the bathroom.
Hermione shook her head as Ron shuffled over to investigate. He wasn't going to make this easy.
"Wow," said Ron, fascinated despite himself. "So am I!"
He tickled the frog faucet under the chin and a white liquid trickled from it.
"What's that?" asked Harry with a startled expression on his face.
"What's what?" Hermione asked as she stepped into the bathroom.
"Ron tickled the frog, and the water changed to… whatever this is," Harry said pointing at the sink.
Hermione frowned and looked at the trickle of white fluid. She reached out to stick her hand in it, but Ron stopped her.
"You don't know what it is!" Ron exclaimed.
Hermione sighed, annoyed, and walked back into her bedroom. She came back with a glass. She collected the substance and spoke the phrase carved on top of the faucet to stop it.
"We have access to a Potions Master," she replied before turning away to walk into the sitting room.
"Severus?"
He turned and saw Hermione holding a container of white fluid. Ron and Harry were astonished and horrified she had dared call him by his first name.
"We were in the bathroom, and when Ron tickled the frog, this came out instead of water," Hermione explained. "Can you tell us what it is?"
"What made you tickle the frog?" Severus asked as he took the glass from Hermione and swirled the liquid around in it.
Before they could answer him, he sniffed it, and then gave them a look of disappointment. He took a sip from the glass.
Ron, Hermione and Harry gasped as Severus swished the liquid around his mouth before swallowing.
"Are you insane?" Ron bellowed before he thought better of it.
"Did your mother tell you to say that?" Severus asked sharply.
"What?" Ron asked, confused.
"Nothing," said Severus, waving a hand at him. "It's milk." He sat the glass on the table with the scrolls.
"Milk?" asked Harry in a puzzled tone. "For if you fancy a drink in the middle of the night?"
Hermione snorted, and the men looked at her. To her dismay, Severus included.
"Milk is good for your skin," Hermione explained. "I wager it's pumped in from the kitchens. I doubt Helga Hufflepuff could pop over to a Wizarding shop for face cream."
"Girl stuff," Ron responded, shaking his head.
Harry and Severus nodded in agreement.
"Oh, really!" Hermione spluttered before she strode back to her bathroom to figure out how to turn the milk off and the water back on.
Severus looked at Ron.
Ron looked at Severus.
Harry looked at Ron pleadingly.
"I know this must be difficult for you," said Severus before Ron could say or do anything.
"What?" Ron asked, his face bewildered.
Harry put a hand on Ron's shoulder.
"It would have been less troublesome if you were of age, or if any of your brothers were available to petition for her," Severus continued carefully.
"What?" asked Ron again.
Severus gave him a trying look. "Your brother, Percy, could have appealed for her. However, it meant losing his own intended and seemed suspicious."
"This didn't seem odd?" Harry asked, interrupting what would have no doubt been a sarcastic remark from Ron.
"Unconventional, yes, but not so remarkable," Severus intoned. "Adequate enough to keep her safe, at least."
"What do you mean 'not remarkable?'" Ron asked, easing off.
"Powerful wizards can lead much longer lives than the general Wizarding population," explained Severus patiently.
"What does that have to do with professors pairing off with students?" Ron interrupted with fire in his eyes.
"Picture you're a hundred and thirty years old, Weasley," Severus snapped. "You come across a charming witch forty years your junior with a familiar last name. In fact, all the ladies have familiar last names because you taught each one that passed through Hogwarts. For the last century."
Ron's jaw dropped. "Are the Hogwarts professors married?"
"A few," Severus said stiffly. "It's difficult to see people as adults when you got to know them as children. Binns has a widow."
"Binns?" Ron asked incredulously. "Are you still a widow if your husband's a ghost?"
"You live in misery if your husbands a ghost," Severus snapped at him.
Ron stood up straighter, surprised. He bumped into Harry as Severus loomed over him.
"Lucinda loved that daft dry dishrag, for some strange reason, and she wilted when he passed away," Severus hissed.
No one saw Hermione standing in the doorway of her bedroom, listening to everything.
"He wasn't gone," Severus said in a deep tone. "He was still here. Bound to the school. Correspondence was dictated to house-elves and delivered by owl. She was given a report of her husbands' condition in the very envelope as his death certificate."
Ron paled.
"That's horrible," said Harry, a stricken expression on his face.
"That's not very terrible, Potter," said Severus silkily. "She spends her summers here, never again able to touch him. He gets to watch her age before him, knowing full well she will not meet with him when she moves on."
"How do you know she won't become a ghost?" Hermione interrupted from the doorway, breaking the spell.
"What?" Severus asked, annoyed he'd been interrupted.
"A ghost is someone who feels strong emotional bonds to something that keeps them here," replied Hermione, sounding like a textbook. "Everybody knows that Binns became a ghost because it was his last term before the O.W.L.s and he was zealous about the peculiarities of the Centurion Tribunal that year."
"What's your point?" asked Severus loudly, his spooky demeanor vanished and annoyance in its stead.
Hermione folded her arms. He would not torment her friends for recreation.
Harry and Ron both turned and sat on the sofa as if this was something they'd been waiting for, for their entire lives.
Severus looked flustered.
"My point is he's a ghost, and she has obvious links to him," replied Hermione testily. "If offered the opportunity, she would spend eternity with him. He's not connected to the school. Moaning Myrtle used to carry on all over the place before the Ministry got her to stop making trouble and Dumbledore offered her a home."
"Fine then," Severus snapped. "Binns can go for a country holiday. Nevertheless, his widow still has to have to have the opportunity to convert and you can't anticipate that." He stood up straighter and folded his arms.
"Yes, you can, and she would be an obvious choice for a ghost," Hermione said insistently.
As Hermione and Severus bickered, Harry's and Ron's heads looked back and forth, as if they were following an especially enjoyable tennis match.
"No, you can't, and there are no plausible arguments to being converted into a ghost. Also, being a ghost is not an enjoyable situation," said Severus, knitting his eyebrows at her. "It would be absurd for her to choose it, even if given the opportunity."
"Lucinda would prefer to remain," Hermione insisted. "And there is logic to it. We're still finding out about the process."
"We? " barked Severus.
"Binns began the project my sixth year," Hermione said smugly, crossing her arms. "We examine the new ghosts that converted in the last year over Easter weekend. The suggestion originated from Sir Nicholas."
"You should have expected something like that," Ron interjected to Severus from the sofa.
Severus sharply turned his head to glare at Ron.
"She doesn't start anything if she doesn't have a hidden play." Ron shrugged.
Harry nodded his head in agreement.
Severus looked at her flabbergasted. "Where's your data?"
"Binns has it in his office," Hermione answered smoothly. "You can see it if you like."
Severus looked at Hermione and saw defiance flashing in her eyes.
She knew she was right, and she wanted him to admit, as her professor, that she was more experienced than him about something.
Her chin was even tilted up, set determinedly.
Infuriating know-it-all.
"I would."
Shame Minerva said I can't take points from her anymore. It would be amusing to see smoke come out her ears, and she might even strike me. I've heard stories from Parkinson—
His body reacted unexpectedly.
Hermione watched as Severus swirled his robes around himself like a giant overblown bat. He glared at her.
'Annoying git,' thought Hermione as he retreated to his own rooms. She grinned at his bedchamber door as it shut.
"That was amazing, Hermione," Harry whispered so Snape didn't hear him.
Ron just cocked an eyebrow.
Hermione shrugged. "He can't dock me points now. It's a conflict of interest. Come on; let's see what else we can find in my room."
0
Severus closed the door to his room and looked down at his trousers.
"Oh, bloody hell!" he muttered as he unfastened his buttons.
At least he could get this over with quickly.
0
"If you smack it on the head, you might get pumpkin juice," Harry suggested, laughing as Hermione and Ron looked at the stone frog crouched by the sink in Hermione's bathroom.
"Don't be stupid, Harry," Ron muttered as he poked the stone frog with his wand.
It burped bubbles at him.
"Well, that was interesting," Hermione remarked as she popped a bubble floating by with her wand. "So, there's a way to integrate soap in the tap water? I wonder how to trigger it?"
"No idea," answered Ron, shrugging. His expression suddenly lit up. "I have a great idea!"
"What?" asked Harry, who was studying the ivy growing around Hermione's bathing pool.
"Let's get Colin!" Ron said as if everyone else in the room was simple.
"Creevey?" Hermione asked, confused.
"We need his camera!" Ron replied, doing a dance in his excitement.
Hermione wished she knew what he was so excited about.
"His pictures move," Ron began patiently.
"So, things will expose themselves," Hermione finished. "Excellent, Ron."
"Thank you," he preened.
0
Severus left his rooms in a much more relaxed state to find Ron, Harry, Hermione, and Colin Creevey entering his quarters.
Colin was carrying the camera bag the Gryffindors finally talked him into, rather than carrying his camera around his neck everywhere. Severus said nothing but gave Hermione a strange look.
As the boys entered Hermione's rooms, she stayed back to explain to Severus what they were doing.
"If the Ministry asks anyone, we have a valid marriage," Severus said flatly. "What other Slytherin Head of House would let a pack of Gryffindors trot through his private apartments?"
"I'm sorry," she replied, turning pale. "This is a terrible violation of your privacy—"
"I knew full well I couldn't escape your friends."
"I can't believe you never explored in there," said Hermione, desperately changing the subject.
"I believe it was immediately evident how useless I am when dissolving charms. I never thought of a camera. It was an ingenious solution, I will admit," he grumbled.
"It was Ron's idea," confessed Hermione.
"I want to see your conclusions," Severus said, interested instead of just patronizing.
"Of course. We'll let you know," replied Hermione. "I'll never tell them. They're bad enough at the best of times."
0
Colin ran down the rows of wooden benches in the Great Hall to where Hermione, Ron, and Harry were eating their lunch a few days after the photographs were taken. A large brown envelope was waving in his hands.
"Did you get the film developed?" asked Hermione, making room for him beside her.
"Just finished," said Colin, grinning and cracking the seal on the envelope.
"Are those the photos you've been waiting for?" Seamus asked, nodding at the envelope.
"Yea," answered Ron, reaching out for a picture.
"Wow," said Harry looking over Ron's shoulder.
The picture was a close-up of the frog faucet. Bubbles rose out of its mouth. Occasionally, one of its feet came up to scratch the side of its head.
"What do you think that means?" Harry asked.
"Don't know," answered Ron, shrugging.
Hermione was staring at a photograph of her bed when she started.
"What?" Ginny Weasley asked.
The boys were still looking fixedly at the frog, wondering how it worked. Hermione quietly slipped the picture to Ginny, who choked.
"I wouldn't let Ron see that," Ginny replied, giggling.
The ivy on Hermione's bed unwound and trailed over the bed from four corners. She could only assume they were restraints.
"Not certain I'd let Snape see it either," she added as she handed it back to Hermione.
Hermione laughed and reached out for the other pictures in case there was anything else sensitive showing.
"Hey!" Ron protested as Hermione took a photograph from him.
"We have Charms next," Hermione said primly. "Lunch is over. We can go over these later."
0
Severus walked down the stone hallway to his rooms.
Hermione had classes for the rest of the afternoon, and he had scrolls from the fourth years to grade. His life was a dreary, never-ending cycle of homework, grading, and experiments.
He let out a sigh he didn't know he was holding when he got in his quarters. He breathed the fresh air entering from the open windows. The house-elves must have aired the dungeons today.
Fresh yellow flowers grew out of a black ceramic bowl on the coffee table.
That house-elf was fond of the girl.
There were new flower boxes with red flowers outside the windows in the sitting room. Long tendrils of silver and green ivy snaked out of mounted vessels on either side.
The place looked comfortable. Besides, the plants could be harvested for potions ingredients. He would have to remember to thank the elf later. Hermione would appreciate the gesture.
Not that it mattered to him, of course.
Severus walked over to the open window and took in a great inhalation of air. He could smell the vapor rising from the lake in the sunny weather.
The scrolls could wait. Today was a perfect day to take in recreation.
0
Hermione walked to her quarters to read before dinner. The library was her usual choice, but her new books were waiting for her in the little bookshelf Dobby had constructed near her bed.
"Should we bring you anything to eat later?" Ron had teased, knowing she'd never get to the Great Hall if she stuck her nose in a book.
"I'm near the kitchens now," Hermione reminded him. "I'll grab a snack later."
The boys had reluctantly said their farewells to her, and she started her descent to the quarters she shared.
Hermione opened the entrance to their quarters to observe light pouring in through the windows, including through the entrance to her bedroom, which should have not been open, and the door to Severus' bedroom, which she had never seen open before.
Hermione drew her wand and went to Severus' door first.
She peered into his room to look at a large bed with a black bedspread and a mahogany headboard. There was a short table near the bed with an oil lamp on it. A small wooden chest with a lock lay at the foot of the bed.
A window was in the stone wall to her left. It was hanging open, deep black curtains pulled back and thin, white under curtains moving with the wind.
The wall to the right had a door for the restroom.
Hermione approached her own rooms carefully. As she stepped into them, she met Crookshanks, who meowed loudly.
"Hello?" she heard Severus call out.
"Oh, hello," called out Hermione, feeling silly.
Hermione entered her quarters to find Severus perched on the oversized ledge outside her window.
"What are you doing?" Hermione asked tentatively. Her best guess was that moss growing on the castle was a useful potions ingredient. Her worst was that he'd been Imperiused and was about to drop to his death.
"Fishing," said Severus, snapping his line out over the water without turning to look at her.
Hermione peered out the window and saw a generous ledge.
"There's room for another." He smirked.
"I'll pass," replied Hermione, turning green as she peered down several hundred feet to the lake. The line and reel were obviously enchanted.
Severus sniffed. There was a tug on his line and centered his concentration on it.
Hermione turned to see Dobby entering her quarters.
"Will Madam want her supper with the professor?" Dobby asked politely.
"Yes." Hermione sighed. She had planned to spend her evening reading, but if dinner had been prepared, there was no reason to not take advantage of the situation. "The table is fine, Dobby. Thank you."
Hermione watched as Dobby summoned rice, seaweed, sesame seeds and numerous small trays. He raised the cover off a bowl of crab and chopped.
"You know, Dobby," Hermione said as she watched him prepare ingredients, "you don't need to wait on us. We're capable of going to the Hall for meals."
"It is Dobby's pleasure, Madam!" Dobby beamed. "And it is no trouble since Madam and Professor sleep so near to the kitchens!"
Hermione wanted to point out that the kitchens were at least two levels apart, but instead she inquired: "What are you making for us?"
"Sushi, if I can get a decent sized tuna," Severus said from the window, struggling with his line.
"There's no tuna in this lake," Hermione said automatically.
"There is if Dumbledore decides there will be," said Severus with a smirk as she watched him snap his wand toward the lake.
She'd been naïve to think he'd reel it in by hand when he could use magic.
Dobby chanted under his breath as the fish glided through the air.
The fish was cleaned, cut, prepared, and chilled before it reached its destination. The scraps were whisked into a metal pot as the delicate strips of fish fell onto the rice dobby had packed into small rectangles.
They waited as Dobby chopped vegetables, seafood and different wraps. The outcome was a spectrum of food, placed precisely on colorful trays across the table. Small black lacquer trays of pickled ginger, wasabi, and soy sauce divided the table, and chopsticks lay near the black six-sided plates Dobby had set out.
Dobby cleared away his containers and bowed before he left the room.
"I picked up the prints from Colin," Hermione said as fished out the big brown envelope from her book bag.
"Very good," said Snape as he sat and placed his napkin in his lap.
Hermione sat across from him and handed over the envelope. He opened it and peered at the photographs as he stretched out his chopsticks and filled up his plate.
Hermione watched as he flipped through the photographs. He froze and his eyes grew larger.
"What?" Hermione asked, praying he wasn't looking at the photo of the bed.
"Has your bathroom mirror ever talked to you?" Severus asked sharply.
"No! Why?" Hermione frowned at him.
Severus went to his feet and pulled his wand out.
Hermione reached up and grabbed the picture from him. It was a close-up of her towel rack. In the background, an elderly, white-haired witch peered out from the mirror.
She winked.