Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me here, all rights to Rowling and Gato Azul.
30: Belle Époque
The sound repeats, sliding on the big, polished surface of the Ministry's floor; clicking of heels, deep murmurs, perfume odour, wood and flowers mixed with mint. She hears herself breathing quickly and sees her reflection on the smooth stone's wall. Always shaggy, noticeable between so many prim faces and big ponytails. She wonders if he has his hair in a ponytail, she had never seen him with his hair like that, and she hopes to never see it; the black strands distract you a bit from his ugliness, they make it fade away between the darkness. And she chides herself for thinking about such trivialities and for thinking he's ugly.
Too many people, she doesn't think she'll be able to find him, no matter how tall he is, how much he stands out as a black lamp, she doesn't think she'll find him. And she needs to, she needs to find him now because then her courage will shrink; the more faces she sees, the more she tells herself that it's stupid, that she doesn't have anything to do there.
She keeps colliding into people, pushing and shoving, and her hair drifts behind her like a lively bush. She follows the signs and enters a crowded lift, staying in a corner; everyone seems taller than her and they look at her as if she had just ran away from a mental hospital, or as if she's a lost girl. She gets out of there, it smells too much like perfume. A redhead man appears from one of the entrances and his steps echo. Hermione dares to ask him. The man tells her with a slow, drowsy voice that the Head of the Aurors had just left, but that she can go down to the lobby and maybe find him there. The lobby, that space overcrowded with perfumed people and sophisticated bags and impeccable suits. Hermione is afraid to search for him right there, but she goes down resigned, walking on the tips of her feet, trying to distinguish a figure, tall like a dark stick and a free, dirty hair between so many with gel. At least Snape never tried to look better than he was, never wanted to hide his disgraced features or mask the rancid smell that the cauldron's smokes imbued in him.
She peeks through the heads, runs to the left against the crowd, like swimming against the current of a shoal of fish that pushes and drags her. She stands on her tiptoes. Many unknown faces, not the one she's looking for. Close to the centre she finds a dark figure; she runs to him clumsily, everyone hinders her, she elbows and moves between that mob, but he's going too fast. He always gave her the impression of walking too fast. She got close to the man, following his back, without talking, walking between people. She looks at his black, long cloak, his unkempt hair, those military shoulder pats he didn't have before. What could she say to him, the little insufferable shaggy nutcase, who followed him through the big Ministry's hallways? She stops for a moment, and the man starts to get lost between the mass of people.
"Professor Snape!"
Her voice sounds helpless and childish.
The mourner stops and turns, hesitant and surprised.
Her again; every time he finds her, an anguished doubt overtakes him for a few seconds; he always has the disconcerting impression that he's dreaming or seeing an illusion. Why is Granger starting to create the habit of appearing in the most unexpected places and moments?
Snape looks at her, half-lidded eyes like two sullen gaps. He isn't transparent like that time at Hogwarts; he's rigid, his grimace isn't friendly, his attitude is dense and unfathomable.
"What are you doing here, Granger? I hope it doesn't have anything to do with Weasley."
Hermione has the urge to retreat, but she contains herself and watches him. It seems like the crowd surrounding them is starting to fade away in a slow walk.
He's looking at Granger through the crowd's foggy glass, with dozens of people interrupting her fearful, shaggy frame. There's something like a thorn in his intuition; he's angry at Hermione and scared at something he doesn't completely understand.
"I didn't come here to talk about Ron."
The man doesn't add anything to their unilateral talk, except his raised brow.
"There are too many people."
The lack of answers starts to discourage her from moving on. She gets distracted watching Snape's prominent Adam's apple. She feels like it can rip his throat just by its size, and she shifts slightly.
"Would you come with me outside?"
The Potioneer straightens to his full height, looking like a genuine lamp for a few moments; he walks in front of her with his chin raised and dangerous eyes glinting with rage. Hermione regrets having looked for him.
It's raining. The street is a grey area, hard and wet. Hermione's hair has fluffed up to hilarious levels. Snape looked at her, no trace of amusement.
"Happy? Why are you here?"
"I didn't think you'd be so curt, professor Snape," she says angrily, trying to ignore her reflection on a window to avoid feeling even more humiliated.
"Curt would describe perfectly your behaviour during your last visit."
The girl glowers reproachfully and regretfully at the same time.
"Is there some special reason you're here, Granger?"
It's still raining and drips smash against the pavement, falling from Snape's nose as if they clung to it, travelling on his hair and pale cheeks. Hermione doesn't know what to say, and just looks at him in the middle of the downpour. She shivers; she's forgotten her coat and her pink sweater is already soaked. Snape is capable of seeing beyond his intrinsic rage and takes off his soldier cloak, long, thick and heavy. He gives it to Hermione with a rigid expression, still stony, still impenetrable. The girl looks at the cloth she is offered and hesitates.
"Did you leave your common sense with your raincoat at home, Granger? Use it and don't say some Gryffindor bullshit. Now, if you excuse me, I have things to do."
She hasn't finished putting the robe on when he starts walking away between suspended tears, between the drips hanging from the sky. And she follows him by instinct; the warmth of his robe sheltered her, the remains of his tepidity, the traces still alive of his smell of fermented potions.
SSHGSSHG
You hear her step making plas against the pavement, you hear the water's thrum at being stepped on, when defragmenting on the floor and her shoes' soles. You're surprised and intrigued by her need to follow you despite the cold water clouds threw, like transparent whips, quick, wet threads against the trees.
"Professor Snape," she whispers with a gasp as her breath fogs lazily. Her hair is stuck against her face, her hostile, shaggy hair. "Are you really busy?"
"Where is your question going?"
You stop on a corner, looking left and right. In front of you, blocks and blocks of rain and light wait for you.
"I once promised you I'd take you to the movies."
LA BELLE ÉPOQUE
Green and pink words interlinked, a slight smell of vanilla and chocolate, a warm noise of coffee machines, her and her profile and her curly hair like an old, French painting.
You went to the movies once; Eileen took you and you crammed inside her brown coat; that half gloomy, half melancholic place doesn't look anything like this one, that has a lot of melancholy, but nothing of gloom.
Paintings of bright, curvy women surrounded by flowers, by hints of flowers. It's warm inside; Granger doesn't take off your cloak, she covers herself with it, appropriates it, and that shakes you in such a visceral way, you're alarmed. As if she's covering herself with your shadow.
It's almost empty and the path to the room is surrounded by built-in lamps of kind lights. You wonder why you have cast your duty aside to assist such a pointless meeting. You look over your shoulder to Granger, who is touching one hair strand, and you don't need to wonder anymore. And yet you seem to be going to a bureaucratic office instead of a film screening. She's evasive and nervous, you're just yourself and frown when you see banners of romantic movies.
You push the big door and she enters before you; you follow her on the black carpeted stairs, you follow her until it melts in a high point with the room's wallpaper, and it seems she's getting inside a picture and inside you too, as you watch her for a while. For a moment you try not to sit next to her, but the way she raises her eyes to look at you persuades you and you go with her. There's just you and, in a corner, a couple kissing thorough and slowly. The screen's light illuminates them, they're black, loving silhouettes.
"The nerve."
She shrugs, probably afraid of you leaving her there alone. But you won't.
Everything turns dark and you hear her breath in the dark, you hear her and you sense her beyond your blindness, with her eyes wide open and too brown, like hazel. It smells like her and you know something bad it's happening with you, something that will only bring you problems.
"Professor," she whispers, looking for you in the middle of nothing.
You don't answer. The images start and her face is surrounded by shadows, her face painted white. She's looking at you.
"It's an old movie, they only show them here, it's not a crowded cinema."
"I already noticed," you quiet her down, without understanding your own sullen tone.
The movie begins. A tower lightens up next to the stairs; the image is beautiful, you have to admit it. You don't remember too much about movies. An old-fashioned woman shows a childish, clear smile. Granger never smiles like that, not to you. What are you doing there, sitting on that seat, pretending you still have hope? The plaited woman smiles again, with a lace veil on her head.
Where are you letting her drag you?
The plaited woman and a man with a pointy hat are kissing under a door frame, under a stain of the tape that advances slowly and fills her with noises and moving paintings, that tattoos in their eyes its heavy whites and blacks.
Hermione looks at him, because she wants to look at him as he watches a kiss. Nothing in him moves, nothing shivers. She wonders if someone had ever kissed him, and she's saddened. Snape is alone and she can't accompany him, she doesn't know how, and it scares her and it's too heavy for her.
"Why did you bring me here, Granger?"
It's hard to believe that undaunted profile is where the voice comes from.
"I thought you'd tell me; I know there was a reason and I thought you'd tell me today. I don't know why."
They don't speak anymore and, in the screen, sceneries succeed each other; dresses and the plaited woman with her collage of kisses and smiles that taste of something old.
Hermione doesn't like uncertainty. Hermione doesn't like staying with only silence in her mouth.
"Did you want to take me away from Ron?"
"Yes."
Granger vibrates and fixes her eyes on the screen. She doesn't need to ask anything anymore. Granger is a miniature scream and a storm too. Granger breaks and burns on the inside. She wants to run away, but just watches him, watches him so carefully, so deeply, she can almost touch him with her eyes. In her mind, the memory of his greedy, black eyes following from under the stairs appears. She looks at herself supporting her head against a half-blood's shoulder and she remembers.
She didn't see because she was afraid of exposing her gaze, of opening her eyes to the meteor shower. Snape doesn't move; it's like he has turned into stone. So neatly, so rarely pale. So far away from her, suddenly too intimate.
There are things Hermione hadn't thought possible, hadn't thought probable in a logical world. But when has the world been logical?
There she is, confirming the unimaginable.
There she is, discovering the hidden side of the moon, the concealed piece of the man she thought she knew. She is surprised by her own limitations; she is surprised by the speed with which reality is twisted in its hinges.
And she finds herself without any words in her mouth. She wonders for how long has she known, if she's really just figuring it out at this exact moment.
She doesn't leave, she's too upset. A stone breaking the quietness. And because leaving won't drive her away from him; him, who is expanding in her brain like a cloud of soot, like an invasion of burning oil and fire.
The big-nosed, pale man of hateful eyes whom she saw on her first day of classes is suspended in a mutism that consumes him, because of her. The man that used to humiliate her followed her hair's trail. And her? What does she feel? Horror, vertigo, a nauseating revolution in her stomach, thousands of bugs walking in her guts.
In the screen, a big, clumsy man walks like a clay beast, graceless. The bushy-haired girl twists her hands and changes positions consecutively, the man is stiff on his seat. The couple on the corner is still snogging.
Note of the Translator: the Snamione part, after 30 chapters, starts now!