Disclaimer: Everything here belongs to either Rowling or Gato Azul. I'm just the girl that speaks English and Spanish.
33. White Lanterns
What did Granger pretend to get from him? Not even by being a Slytherin could he understand the force that moved her through the world, or the reason for her actions. He assumed that she hated his presence, that his kisses disgusted her, he had thought so, until that night when Hermione had kissed him willingly, without hesitating, without exuding fear.
Snape didn't have good intentions, not even with her; if Granger pretended to mock him in some way, then she'd have to pay for it. That was why he kissed her harshly, rudely, with his lips swollen of rage, avid to release their poison.
But Granger always seemed to be above him, always capable of leaving him without weapons in hand, without belligerent sprits.
Professor Snape may be a mystery even to himself.
His love-hate for me, or whatever he's feeling, isn't doing us any good; he seems lonely even with me and I just feel more lost and more miserable every day that passes.
That kiss I gave him only got me close to him for a few moments; deep down it was like kissing a ghost, or a heap of air dressed in black.
Why did he pick me, of all people? Why wasn't some Slytherin girl he'd never insulted before? Why me? Is this some kind of punishment?
Sometimes I think it is.
They met each other in the middle of London's streets with too much accuracy to blame it just on coincidence. Again they walked without saying anything; they always walked in silence, without looking at each other, without reaching with hands or words. They walked like strangers; Hermione thought that, in some ways, they were in fact that, total strangers.
"Do you want to go to your house, Severus?"
He hated when she called him by his given name, that pretence of intimacy was too hypocritical for him.
As soon as they crossed the house's threshold, Granger went from her stupefaction to a trance of feminine diligence that took her around the house, dusting and rising clouds of dirt everywhere. She tucked the few paintings, polished the scarce cutleries, prepared something to eat and the house ended up saturated with a white, cosy vapour that revived the appetite.
Snape was determined to ignore her. She sat next to him and looking at him from the corner of her eye several times. The only noise was the cutlery crashing against the plates.
"Why do you kiss me, professor… Severus?" she amended half-way through.
The man took another spoonful to his mouth and chewed thoroughly before he deigned to answer.
"Does it disgust you?"
"No."
They kept on eating; Granger couldn't have a question twisting in her mind for too long, her mouth always ended up betraying her, letting the words out like unruly caterpillars.
"Why do you kiss me?"
"Because you deserve it."
The man was gritting his teeth; his voice had completely sounded like a reproach, as if Hermione's question had been a completely different one.
Granger looked at him for a long time, making him feel sick and furious. Granger and her eyes of soft hazel, like a bird's.
"The hell you're looking at?"
"You think you disgust me so much that your presence is a punishment for me."
"Don't you dare talk with that arrogance to me."
"What arrogance, Professor Snape? I'm not being arrogant, I'm just…"
She extended her hand, searching through a non-existent mist; her fingers reached Snape's sunken cheek. Why did he think that to kiss her was to hurt her? Did he think he was that bad, that disgusting? He, who had at the end saved their lives.
"It's just I've never seen you clearly."
The Occlumens frowned. His lips, once half-opened, now closed with stubborn tightness.
"You think you're perfect, right, Granger? You think you can fix everything. Saint Granger, owner of justice and sage of virtue."
"You don't disgust me, and it's not right for you to say so." Her gaze was determined, lightened by the hallway's blue light; her hair was a golden bonfire. She dispelled the shadows with her face born in darkness.
A pair of immobile, dry lips greeted her. Hermione probed into the darkness of black hairs; her hand went on discovering and squeezing a nape. Snape didn't close his eyes; his pupils, almost next to Hermione's, were wide open and watching her in such way, it took her breath away and she ended up sucking the man's lips as she tried to breath; instead of a freeing gasp, she had a wet mouth stuck to her teeth and the half-blood's warm exhalation in her throat, like a suffocating wave of summer.
Prince moved his eyes quickly through Hermione's face with a piercing, acerbic gaze, but he didn't say anything.
Granger was almost always incomprehensible to him. At some point she seemed to have decided to stick by his side; as weeks passed, she got inside his daily life and filled every space and every second with her smell of vanilla and her clear expression.
The reason why Granger always arrived early to his house, prepared him food, cleaned his bookshelves and stayed next to him reading some big book, Snape would always wonder about it. Why didn't Granger leave him? Why did she seem to resign herself and self-impose the duty of accompanying him? Maybe it was simply her Gryffindor nature, the same one that the man despised on the outside but was fascinated with on the intimacy of his deep thoughts.
With time, with Hermione's unprecedented endurance to his ill-temper and his neurotic complications, his anger died, his desires for retaliation; his urges to hurt her calmed down, melting into one single remnant of guilt. Granger saved him from Nagini's bite, locked herself with him in a house arrest, protected him against Death Eaters, and finally stayed. He could still remember her, entering the small cupboard with her bushy hair, hair in a sling and feet bared. When was Granger going to give up? What other women would've done what she did?
And yet it was not enough, it wasn't bearable to let her cross the door with her distant aura, with his hair like a wavy veil and hear her say goodbye with that respectful but distant kindness that defeated him and left a small, daily failure at his feet. He didn't think himself capable of going on like this; someday he'd end up destroying his relationship with Granger as he had done with Lily and he'd be alone again.
Sometimes he almost preferred that.
Most of the time, Hermione watched the same Snape that yelled in classes when she was a child; sometimes she found him peeking through a window or standing in the middle of the dark in a hallway, then she thought about all the things she still didn't know about Severus Snape, which made her feel somewhat uneasy, but never like that one afternoon.
She went upstairs to look for a book she had given the Potioneer, and in one of the drawers, she found the picture.
Lots of love,
Lily.
Her green eyes smiled and blinked in the tangible piece of the past; it almost smelled like her, she could almost feel her in the air, like a dance of leaves in space. Then Hermione pictured that half-blood, sitting in the dark, watching, yearning, melting with that piece of paper that was the last thing he had of that dead woman. Jean felt suddenly empty. She thought about Harry and the exact resemblance of his green eyes and Lily's, almost the same stare, almost the same slowness to blink and that swirl of moss and deep waters in their pupils. She thought about Snape, who looked for her kisses in silence, lips cracked, with a weary face that couldn't resign itself to loneliness and then she thought about him, sitting in front of the bureau, watching those same eyes she had in her hands. She was distressed about what might be of Snape's life.
A shadow slipped through the floor; Jean felt a presence in the door's threshold, a bittersweet smell of ferment. He was there; an eclipse covered half of his face, a disturbing, dissolved echo of anima, of bad omen.
"I rightly guessed you'd be snooping around my stuff."
The girl showed him the picture; his limp hair was falling on his shoulders, the white face, his aura of defeat.
"How many years have you been watching this picture, Severus?"
His hostile expression shifted into a grimace of surprise. Snape seemed to want to memorize the details of Hermione's face, to reveal her thoughts, strip her muted gazes. But he didn't do anything like that.
"I found the picture recently. On the other hand, I've had Lily with me for more than twenty years."
It was Granger's turn to be surprised too, standing in front of the silhouette under the door frame that spoke to her like a sprit from a parallel, misty world. If Snape was feeling inspired for surrealism, then so was she. She walked to the tall, grieving man; the hallway's light was yellow and watery. In that surreal atmosphere, she stepped on her tiptoes and hugged him around the neck. The Potioneer retreated a few steps; the girl was clinging to him, everything smelled like vanilla; shaggy, bushy hair brushed his chin.
There she moistened his dry lips. Snape tasted like a rancid era, like bitter secrets, and he was stiff like a pole; the tip of his nose was between them, as always. The Gryffindor put her soles back to the floor and separated her face from his.
"Saint Granger comes to sate me again?" his voice sounded annoyed, but his eyes were lethargic, almost cold. She didn't say anything, hiding her head between his black clothes.
"I'm not a saint, stop mocking me. I'm just afraid for you."
The man was torn between shock and fury long after Granger left. Lily was still smiling through the paper; that worn smile stung him. Snape hated to see her smiles except that, the one that seemed to betray him for the first time.
The annoying sensation that he was a bug in Hermione's hand hadn't completely disappeared.
Harry cleaned the sweat from his forehead with a dirty shirt he carried in his bag. They sat on a bench in the park; it was cold and wet. Sporadic water dips dampened the paper bag where they carried their dinner and coffee. Hermione pulled out the buns and put in Potter's hand the warm container of liquid.
"You seem tired, Harry."
"I am tired. Snape forces us to train in the camp even if it's raining or hailing. I actually think he's getting worse lately."
Hermione chose silence as her answer.
"Despite how hard I've worked, despite the fact that I didn't complain once, Herms, and held my tongue so I didn't disrespect him, he sent me to the fifth rank," he said the last thing followed by a bitter spit.
"The fifth rank?"
"Just paperwork or stand and guard, nothing of high-risk cases, much less something related to the Death Eater's lodges there are still around."
Hermione watched him with something like condescension as they linked their hands. So many years together, so many events, and she didn't feel capable of confessing her problems.
"You know, Harry? Professor Snape, the same one that doesn't let you level up, he…"
The boy pierced her eyes with his green, stony pupils, his deep emeralds. She blushed a shy pink.
"He what?" Potter insisted. A cricket sang between the grass; the almost empty streets seemed like the scenery of a blue dream.
"Sometimes he… he seems understandable. I don't think it's wise for you to start with the hardest missions, you've been barely a few months with the Aurors."
Potter nodded grudgingly. Hermione always behaved like a grandma; normally he appreciated her prudence, but sometimes it was exasperating.
"Hermione, you and Snape get along, right?"
She let out a long, noisy sigh that seemed to leave her without air. "That's one way of seeing it. I've been on the brink of leaving him several times, but there's something that just stops me."
Harry nodded, understanding a small part of what she was trying to say.
The youngsters stayed there for a long time, between the darkness and the lanterns' white circle.
Hermione put her ear close to the half-opened door; she listened to Snape's usual deep tone and another's man slow, rough voice.
"I know it's urgent, but to use the spell, contact with a Death Eater is necessary."
"As you wish, sir, but I remind you, you and Potter are surely the first ones on their list. I doubt they forgot your role in the war."
"I'm perfectly aware of that, Niepce. Just worry about bringing me useful information that I preferably don't already know about. Now, if you excuse me, I have things to do."
Steps resounded through the room. Granger moved away from the door as far as time allowed her and tried to pretend she was looking at the interesting decorations on the roof. A thin, young man crossed the threshold; his arms were almost stuck to his body and his bizarre red hair gave him a look of walking bonfire. He looked at Jean darkly and went downstairs, making a lot of noise as he climbed the stairs.
Snape appeared through the same hole from where the skinny redhead had emerged. He was massaging his nose's bridge with barely controlled exasperation; when he noticed Hermione's presence his mood seemed to plummet even more.
They went out to the street. It was raining for the fourth time that week, the streets were full of rivers and devoid of people. The girl opened her big, red brolly; she had to stand on her tiptoes to cover Snape from the cold water's currents. For several blocks she followed him with difficulty, fighting to cover the Auror's tall, moving frame under her brolly's shield, but Snape's steps were too long and too quick, and he didn't seem to have the smallest intention of walking slower or helping the girl with the bother that was shielding him from the rain. Jean ended up with her socks soaked after jumping so many times on puddles, while Snape walked around them with the elegance of a cat. The bastard didn't even look back to see the sulky, wet mess that his companion had turned into; he even quickened his strides, making it even harder for her to reach him.
"Could you stop for a moment, or hold the brolly?" she yelled at him, unsuccessfully trying to reach him; what the man did next left her stunned. He grabbed her by her sweater and with wild fist, threw her against a wall, causing her to crash violently and drop the brolly. Hurt and irate, she turned to face him; a warm thread slid from her forehead and dissolved with the rain that dripped all over her face.
"Why did you do that!"
A man dressed as a muggle was waving his wand a few meters in front of her eyes; a piece of the wall exploded close to her, right in the place where she'd been before Prince had pushed her. Snape took her by the arm and hauled her unkindly, forcing her to run faster than what her legs were capable of. The one with the dangerous wand was following them closely; she could hear the noises his feet made when they smashed against the pavement.
"First Johnson and then Snape!" the pursuer yelled like a hyena, water exploding under his feet. Hermione threw him a hex that managed to slow him down for a few seconds.
"He's an idiot, there might be muggles close!" the Head of Aurors yelled, fed by adrenaline. They reached an alley. The man pushed her onto a sliding fire escape that was connected to a balcony; maybe they could hide up there. Hermione grabbed him by his cloak or anywhere she could put her hands on to help him climb up. Once there, they crouched, twisted in on themselves, looking around and barely breathing, in a sphere of tense arms and legs. They opened their lurking eyes and squeezed a bit more against the railing, waiting.
Translator's Note: As the author stated in this chapter's comment, Snape is described in the books as ugly, as in skinny, big-nosed, shallow-faced, yellowish and crooked teeth, greasy-haired UGLY. Not all of us can be Victoria Secret models, after all.