Disclaimer: All rights belong to Rowling and Gato Azul.
21. The Voices in the Air
"… Bellatrix."
The man raised his brows, apparently impressed.
"Bad luck, Miss Granger, that it was precisely her."
The girl nodded in silence; her face paled. The living room's clock, like a time's vein, throbbed its tempo, lending a voice to the seconds passing by. In the dim light, the girl folded his sweater's sleeve; cold, rough hands took her arm and stared, with a doctor's scrutiny, like a violin maker looking for marks in the skin of softwood.
Mudblood.
The man's mouth was tightened; she didn't meet his eyes, his hands holding her arm.
"Luckily Dobby came to help us; who knows what'd have happened if it wasn't for him, but he died that same day."
Her face seemed to turn grey, her lips were white, the big eyes having a wet, dull glow.
"It can be erased. I haven't done it because I'm not very skilled with my left hand and a lot of precision is needed, just like with your forehead's scar."
"Give me your wand," the voice flowed heavily, too grave.
She extended her wand to the wizard's hands; the tip was on her arm, in the M, where the name many people had called her started. The name that turned her into an unworthy person, no matter what she did. She always told herself she didn't believe in those things, but when she saw the word tattooed on his arm she felt that, deep down, she had always believed it just a bit, that she didn't deserve to be there, in Hogwarts, that somehow it was all too beautiful.
"I wonder why I always interrupted your classes."
Snape raised his head; he could sense in the broken voice that tears were close.
"Because if I wasn't the best at everything I didn't have any right to be with wizards, I… I had to prove I wasn't trash."
The man said nothing, gazing back at the scar.
"I don't think you have to prove anything to anyone; deep down, the ones that insulted you were cowards. I know the Malfoys ran away, you think they were better than you?" Snape spoke harshly, almost as if he was scolding her for some ruined potion.
"No."
"Then stop crying. Tell me the spell and I'll erase your mark."
The girl mumbled the spell; soon the man was whispering it, the wand was pulling skin until it was left in its place. It was painful, but very effective.
Snape's eyes wandered to the wall, deep, charged with something she couldn't name. They arrived at Granger's face.
The mark was gone, the girl's arm was still held by one of the man's hands.
"How long did she torture you?"
"I don't know. It felt like a long time, maybe some hours."
He slowly let her go. Hermione looked at her arm, now clean, as it had always been. She raised her eyes, thankful; the man was deep in thought, with his face deadly serious. Sometimes his face appeared to be made of stone, or a very strong, very cold wax.
"Professor Snape."
The disintegrating gaze hovered over hers.
"Thank you very much."
His expression didn't change at all, until the girl, following some impulse, took his hand and kissed him shyly on his sunken cheek. Rough skin, a sudden drowning. Suddenly she was afraid of what she had done and, mumbling a shaky "goodnight", went to her room, without looking back at the man who had been her teacher once.
The man touched, like a raw wound, the place where the kiss was born.
He was horrified by the flare of euphoria that swirled in his chest. Everything smelt like vanilla, he smelt like vanilla, a mawkish, tasteless smell.
He went to peek through the window. The fleeting brush of Granger's lips gave him goosebumps. He had to quash down the pleasant feeling the act had caused in him. He was Severus Snape, a man like him couldn't be vulnerable to such things. But the occasions where someone had dared to touch him were so rare, he might as well list the times they'd happened; for example, once, when he was young, McGonagall had put her hand on his shoulder lovingly, an uncommon gesture for such a severe woman like her. He had never forgotten it.
Despite the man he was, despite the bad opinion he had on almost everyone that surrounded him, he couldn't forget those details.
She sat on the edge of her bed and reconstructed the scene piece by piece. She wanted to see it from outside, like a photograph. The clock kept throbbing, the man's face always seemed solemn by his colours: the visible, gloomy difference between the languid white and heavy black. He always looked as if he was going to a funeral, always looking almost transparent. Sometimes she could see his veins, green and purple in his arms, as if they were barely covered by a thin layer of skin. She had never imagined she'd kiss the cheek of that particular man; she could've kissed Remus, who seemed to need such care, or Sirius, who might have smiled at her and winked. Sirius, the decadent beauty. But Snape, it was almost absurd.
She hadn't even looked his face after the transgression, of the infamy of a kiss on the rough cheek. She'd been too embarrassed to dare to do so. She had to start to hold herself back and to finally understand that not everyone wanted her hugs or fraternal caresses; Kreacher had already proved her so, disgusted by her compassion, but her urge to relieve or express herself was bigger than her in many occasions. She just hoped Snape didn't take it as badly as the elf.
They lived inside some kind of circle and schedules that casually always overlapped. One would sit on the couch and it was a matter of minutes for the other to arrive, be it to lay on the carpet if it was Granger, or to stand next to the bookcase if it was Snape. The one waiting knew the other would appear on the threshold soon. Then they pretended they were going to get a book, that they weren't looking for each other, hunting in some way.
Granger was worried for the former professor's reaction of the imprudent kiss she had left on his cheek, but the next day, when she found him waiting for her in the kitchen with a clear, bright gaze, she knew that expression was the closest thing to sympathy Snape's face could show.
It was time she lost her fear for the professor. What could he do to her, after all? Dwarf her with one of his crushing, disapproving looks, insult her, yell at her… He had already done all of that. Who cared if he did it again?
The man seemed satisfied with her company, he didn't growl at her, he wasn't rude, at least not intending to be so. He greeted her, made her some casual questions, even in some strange occasions she had seen him show his weird smile, both ironic and mocking, as if he was remembering something.
And all of it for a simple, fleeting kiss. She was starting to seriously wonder who'd truly started the cold war between Snape and Harry. Who had done it? Who had unknowingly lightened up the fuse? Maybe neither of them, maybe something in between them for a long time.
"James Potter," Hermione said in the middle of her room.
Granger smiled openly, without malice, face to face. The man's face didn't change, but his eyes softened; they suddenly seemed to get filled with something, boiling energy hidden in the blackness.
She arched over the table, hiding her mouth with a hand, trying to avoid a laugh, but she couldn't do it and her laughter freed in the middle of the kitchen; she was surprised by her voice, so loud and lively. The man looked at her surprised; his mouth stretched lightly, his eyes seemed small like gaps, and was vibrating. Hermione stopped slowly, until she was left with her first smile stuck on her face, and looked at the man with deep attention. And she thought that she had never seen him smile at anyone before.
She extended her hand to the man's, still halfway on the table.
"Laugh, Professor Snape."
The black eyes wandered stunned around her countenance, still softened.
"Your laughter is enough for both of us."
Hermione knew that wasn't an insult by the light tone he used. Then she squeezed the hand fisted inside hers.
I like to see you walk around the house, you remind me of many things. You remind me of Hogwarts that seemed to be built around the floor where you stood, as if you were carrying it on your feet's sole. You smell like Hogwarts, like the dungeons, you exhale cold, exhale that stalled, green light that is there.
When I see you climbing the stairs I think about the Astronomy tower, about the grey sky and loud with lightning, about the floating candles in the Great Hall. You go around the world like a soldier, walking as if inside you some trumps announced war.
And I like to smile at you because it seemed like somewhere, somebody lightened a firefly for you. A bight, blue button.
You're so pale, you and your elegance that somehow doesn't fit with your face of an enemy. You're the unknown, you're a question I don't know how to start to answer. You're the prince's mystery, the serpent's secret.
Now that I know you… no, that I'm starting to know you, I feel amazed and sad and I wonder.
When are you going to tell me? Will you ever do so? What was it? What dark spot stained your life? What grave mistake did you make?
Are you happy here?
You smile many times a day, you go out to buy things to eat and come back, with your vanilla smell that doesn't leave the house entirely. Even those bloody paintings are starting to be enough for me, the round table, the window, the stars. They are enough. I don't have to go anywhere, I don't care if I'm in a house arrest; this is not a prison for me. I don't want to get out.
Do you want to leave? You've never said so. Why does the world have to start over again?
For me, it's enough what I have here, you're enough. This transitory wait is the last of my possessions. There's nothing beyond it.
Hermione,
Write to me, dammit! What's wrong with you? Enough, write! What do you want me to do? To go there? I have to be with George and I told you so! You can't be mad for that, you're with Snape. Or did you forgot you preferred to be with that greasy git instead of me? I didn't tell you, that's true, but I'm saying it now: I want you to be with me, I want to see you every day, you don't understand the light sphere, haven't you got it? You went through me that day. You are that light sphere. I can't stop hearing your voice, of wishing to truly hear it.
Hermione, please, just write.
Ron W.
One more day without a letter from you and I don't understand why.
I don't know what other way I can ask you to write, even just a few lines. I want to think something is not letting you do it, but I can't find what.
Ronald, I love you, don't you love me anymore?
Yours, Hermione J. Granger.
The girl turned on a muggle recorder that she'd found in an old closet. The man waits, sitting on the couch, pretending to read. He looks at her, scrutinising the changing shade of her curly hair. The music expands, quieting down the clock; a hard women voice, dense, slow, moves around, shift sensually, takes the room, absorb the silence. The bushy girl moves around clumsily; suddenly the man finds her too young, her imprecise feet and bird nestle on her head amuses him. She turns to look at him, complicit; a choir intervene and raises, imposes itself. Hermione is prettier tangled in a song, he likes it; music seems to flow from her. If he wasn't who he was, maybe he wouldn't be sitting on the sofa anymore, just looking at her. She smiled and follows the rhythm, watching him; she feels as if she's in the threshold of two worlds just by looking at him, surrounded by saxophone noises and black women's voices. She can't avoid smiling. She pictures him everywhere and thinks that every time she sees him outside Hogwarts, she'll have the same feeling that she's in an alternative universe.
They sat on the afternoons to listen to the muggle music Hermione had found; it sounded like stained eyes, of alleys with pink bricks, of tapestries, of a distant city's movement. It sounded like a woman in front of a mirror, of days and memories they didn't have.
Granger put a cassette and sat to listen on the couch's arm, where Snape was sitting too. He watched her back and twisted hair, thinking that soon the trial's day would arrive and the silent house and records and Granger wouldn't be there anymore.
Music danced over their eyes like a ribbon, and a changing teasing. Even he liked it; he, who hadn't liked almost anything in his life.
He closed his eyes; everything was black behind his lids.
Black and soft. A reddish gleam and colourful lines moved in his hidden vision; music kept on going, dancing on their own, filling the bookcase's corners and the books' gaps. Granger was just a few centimetres away; he didn't see her, but her vague smell helped him detect her presence.
Every day he smelled more like vanilla, an almost physical smell, a perfume that suddenly wasn't just that. There was warmth, a soft weight and threads that stuck in his nose when he breathed.
He opened his eyes very slowly, as if he could disturb a pond's water if he moved, if he breathed. The saxophone kept blaring like light buttons, throwing sparks. The weight on his shoulder was a weave of random brown hair, a juvenile head with a small smile in-between.
He was forked between the loving girl and normality and coherence and all those things that have to do with order and common sense. And when had he cared about that? In reality, while he liked to presume his good use of logic, he had never quite been a very rational person. Then he barely exhaled, debating on his inside to whether to support his head too or pulling away or pretend he was asleep and didn't know anything. None of the options sounded like him; yelling and send her to her room might be the most prudent and right.
"Who might have lived here before us?"
Her big eyes held him with her gaze. He only shook his head, why was she so calm?
"I'm sorry, I'm used to supporting myself on Ron and Harry, I didn't think you would mind," she started to retreat.
"Leave it, you can stay where you are. Do you think a child will intimidate me?"
Hermione shrugged and went back with rigid discomfort to her former position.
"I thought you just didn't like to be touched."
The man said nothing. Granger felt, as the songs and the rain outside continued, that her shoulder first rigid started to relax. Snape had to care for her a bit, if not, he wouldn't allow such closeness. She smiled, thinking about all that had to happen so that this simple moment could occur. She had to wash dirty bandages, heal wounds, withstand neurotic convalescents and Death Eater's attacks, sleep under a bed and get soaked in the yard. Snape wasn't an easy friend, and yet Harry hadn't been either. She laughed slightly; the man looked at her from the corner of his eye.
"I was thinking about the day you left me in the yard with a sheet. Why did you do that?"
The girl didn't seem moved by resentful curiosity.
"I liked to bother you; I wanted you to get angry and lose your temper."
"Why?" Jean asked, turning to look at him; the huge nose inhaled a thread of hair and then the man pushed it away with a hand; the girl seemed close to laughter.
"Your apparent maturity annoyed me; I wanted you to throw a temper tantrum so I could laugh at your face and mock your pride."
"That's a bit sick, don't you think?"
"I don't like people who think they're the good guys of the story, the canon of perfection."
Hermione shrugged, she actually didn't like them either.
"I talked in class not because I felt I was perfect, the opposite, and I felt this frenzy to make everyone see that I wasn't useless."
"I know that."
The girl inhaled strongly; her crown brushed Snape's pointy chin.
The cassette went around in the recorder; the rough whisper called one woman over and over. Hermione thought about Ron and, letting herself go, she asked the worst question she could've made to the grieving man.
"Have you ever fallen in love?"
The hospitable man went rigid again. Hermione didn't have to do anything but feel to know she'd made a mistake.
"You don't have to answer."
"Once," he said with a rough voice, strangled and even a bit aggressive.
Granger breathed again, setting free the air with some relief. At least she had come unscathed from her slip.
"Where is she?"
"She's gone."
The bushy hair penetrated with more insistence the concavity between the man's shoulder and chin. She didn't have any word to give him and so she started touching him, to penetrate the moment after that answer, to make it pass quickly. The voice in the cassette expanded like a clot.
I came here kneeling
Next to your hand
She wished that telling him how sorry she was were useful, but no. She put her hand under his arm and squeezed; Snape was completely still, silent and hard. That was the thing that left, that was the distant thing he waited for every time he peeked through the window. In her eyes, a warm liquid formed, which she tried to stop.
Ashes of kisses I give you
Hear my prayers of love
She didn't want to look at him; it was as if she had slapped him again. She wanted to speak but nothing left her mouth, usually eager to let out excited words everywhere. She just rubbed the black-clothed arm, to rub it with her hand as if she was cleaning a plate or wanted to give some heat back to the body. It was a clumsy gesture, hurried, an odd scratch more than a caress, but she still did it several times. Snape moved an arm as if telling her it wasn't necessary, to stop.
"I'm sorry," she said, just to sink strongly her head in the free space that was in the half-blood's neck.
Midnight's Virgin
Virgin, that's what you are
"Turn that off. It's cold and it's already night. Stop crying about everything."
Granger pulled away while the man stood up and pushed the recorder's buttons with violent frustration because he couldn't find the right one and he wanted to be left alone in that exact moment. The girl tightened her coat, her nose runny.
"I'm very sentimental, it was not my intention," she stood up from the couch's arm, pulling a stubborn hair back to her ear, but it went back to her forehead a second later. "It's the blue button."
The man muttered curses.
I'll pull down the stairs to light up your feet.
Then silence, the reverential tic tac and a shivered gaze between the girl and the half-blood.
"Go to sleep, Hermione," a final sentence, dull, kind but almost impatient. She wanted to hug him, even walked a few steps, but he was looking at her and his harsh, steely gaze deflated her courage. She pulled away, covering her initial intentions.
"Have a good night."
She left the pale widower behind, the deprived half-blood. She wanted to sleep and think about nothing.