Disclaimer: Everything here belongs to Rowling or Gato Azul.
40. Circle of Witchcraft
She's at the door; the rain's greyness bath every surface, blurs silhouettes, she's like a wet bird on the pavement. He seems to have been talking with wandering souls, his eyes like ash.
"You finally deign yourself to come."
She lowers her head and waits in the rain, watching the grass bent by the weight of the drips. Snape always have something to reproach, his entire life seems dedicated to make everyone feel guilty.
"Can I come in?"
The inside of the house is colder than the outside, it smells wet; there's a stain on the wall that seems like a mouldy map. Storms in March caused it.
"How are you?"
The man doesn't answer and crosses his arms close to the table, like a judge ready to take a seat in a court.
"You're mad."
Again, he doesn't answer, a spark shines distantly in his eyes. Snape barely blinks.
"Say something. Or do you want me to leave?"
"I saw you crying when you were talking with Weasley."
Hermione averts her eyes; she doesn't want to talk about that, she doesn't want to start that cold fight of grimaces and snorts.
"Ron is a close friend of mine and he was more than that for a long time. I'm not asking you to forget about Lily Evans."
"The difference is that Weasley is still alive."
The girl is afraid of what the man may say next.
"I'd have never let you replace me with him, once."
Hermione shivered; on the floor, a drip of dirty water forms and falls on the carpet.
"I'm not replacing you with anyone."
"Given your face, you seem to want to be anywhere but here, you wish you hadn't come here. The door is open and I'm not stopping you, you can turn around—"
The woman's hands close around his cloak, shaking him; she seems to want to punch him.
"It has always been like this, you're always mistrusting me!"
Snape set the feminine fingers aside, detaching them from him, giving them back to Granger.
Hermione follows his eyes' movement.
"Mistrust…" he mumbles. "You want me to stop mistrusting you. Then tell them or I will do it, and you won't like how. I don't want Weasley swarming around you! Unless, of course, you like that and that's why you prefer to hide what's happening between us."
The girl starts to shake her head disapprovingly.
"Don't play the indignant girl with me!"
"You know me enough to know I wouldn't do that, Severus."
Snape's nostrils open and close quickly, lively. His jaw is tense, and his head follows the woman's direction, clearly belligerent.
"Then tell them!"
Brown eyes slide on the mirror, guilty, evasive.
"You won't do it?"
Granger dampens her dry mouth, thinking for a second; she doesn't raise her eyes. She knows how the man's face looks like right now and she doesn't want to see it.
"Severus, we have to be prudent and patient—"
"I don't remember you being prudent or patient when it was about helping Potter or Weasley," he drags the words when he says the redhead's surname.
"That's different and doesn't have anything to do with this." Somehow, Jean feels that argument has a different, deeper reason than just Ronald's appearance.
Snape drags his feet to a corner, where he left last night a half-empty bottle of elf wine. He drinks the murky alcohol left non-stop. Hermione watches him, frowning with distress.
"Don't drink like that."
"I drink however I want."
She covers her eyes with a hand in a gesture of desperation, wondering who made this more difficult, him or her.
The man watches as the woman that had been his pupil covers her face with a hand, as if wanting to erase her surroundings, maybe erase him. She finally uncovers the wall that was her hands and watches him; Snape can't tell if it's a gaze of worry or supreme unhappiness.
"Do you know why you don't want to tell them, Hermione?"
She raises her head, attentive, widening her eyes. She doesn't expect that quiet, civilized tone.
"Because you can't believe it, you can't believe you slept with me and you regret it."
She doesn't say anything, just exhales as if someone has punched the air out of her. She starts to shake her head, slowly, still watching him like a stranger.
"It's fine if we're hiding, it's fine if no one knows! I'm not afraid of saying it, I want to rub it in their faces, but you…"
She half flinches, like a rebuked child, but doesn't move. Her eyes are swollen, turning wet and red.
"You are ashamed of me."
This time the woman covers her mouth and cries shamelessly, loudly, like complaining. The man turns around, goes to the threshold that faces the hallway. Hermione sees her black cloak like so many times in the past and quickly takes it and pulls. She knows that she can't let him cross the door, that if he does, she'd have failed. Her hands wander around the air, reach him, grab the cloak's rough fabric. Again she's in front of his white face.
"Don't you dare play with me!"
"I'm not playing with you," the small figure whispers.
Snape kisses her, his lips smash against Jean's, his dry, desperate lips. He sips, his noise sticks in the feminine cheek, he retreats, attacks again, as if he wants to take her out of herself to kiss her better, to reach her and break their bodies limits. His mouth turns impatient on Hermione repeatedly, like a caged bird looking for an exit, then he retreats as if he has been seized by an unknown force outside his will. When she feels him pull away, she raises her head and looks at him in the dim light, always in the dim light. He's pale, in silence, looking like an old painting or photo.
He raises his finger against the girl, points at her, opens his mouth and wrinkles his nose; he seems like he wants to talk, but he takes his time. He stares at her fixedly, his eyes are black, despondent puddles. "You decide, I'm not hiding anymore. If you don't tell them, then…"
She raises her hazel eyes, stays still, corners of her mouth dragging. Snape still has that air of judge or patriarch; maybe all his years as a teacher gave him the ability to make her feel like that, so insecure. He hesitates, his finger trembles slightly.
"You decide, Hermione, if you tell them or not…"
He lowers his hands and turns around. This time she doesn't stop him; her eyes are still dripping, her arms immobile at her sides, and she's breathing deeply. Her cries are heard where he is, but Snape doesn't stop and doesn't look back.
"You never even told me if you love me," Jean reproaches him quietly, voice like a half-extinguished candle. He goes away and leaves her alone next to the couch where they once heard old cassettes together.
Back on her bed and facing the ceiling, she could still hear the thin rain against the window. She thought about how the drips stayed on Snape's crooked nose when he stood under the rain. It was peculiar; of all the things they had gone through together, she could only remember one in particular: she remembered him asleep just a few centimetres next to her. She remembered the yellow street light, Severus' black hair covering one eye, his drowsy, warm hand extended on her waist. She remembered hearing him breathe and feeling his weight shift on the mattress.
Shame, he had said; he hadn't hesitated to use that resounding word. In the beginning, Hermione had thought the man was completely wrong, that he had no reasons to say what he said, but with time and night, she started to discover guiltily and fearfully that maybe there was something of that word in her actions.
She turned on her bed and buried her face against her pillow, in its cold softness.
She couldn't deny she had sometimes thought about it, even if it was just for some minutes. She had thought about Severus' age, his unfortunate aspect, his bad luck… The mere fact of having thought about that made her feel deserving of his reproaches. Maybe he was right and it was her absurd conceitedness that stopped her from talking. She closed her eyes and remembered the warm remnants that were waiting for her under Snape's cloak. She tried to explain to herself, as so many times before, which had been the path that had taken her to the half-blood's threshold, to the door of his arms. She couldn't truly say she had chosen it; one situation after the other had pushed her, she'd been going forward, stumbling in the dark, without ever knowing with certainty what was happening. Maybe that was why Severus was so mistrustful, maybe he needed to see her choose at least once, maybe he needed to be a witness of her will to stay with him.
She closed her eyes and perceived the slight rain and the smell of wet soil coming from the garden. She breathed the wet flowers' vagabond, perfumed air. She extended her lungs when oxygen came.
She had to decide.
The last man entered and put his long coat on the back of a chair. None of the others were talking; some watched him as he took his place in the circle of wizards. The room was dark; one could barely distinguish the figures of the wallpaper. The big table didn't have anything on it; the Aurors' faces were white, barely illuminated by a clear candle in the centre of the circle.
"We're all here," one of the colourless faces murmured.
"We'll wait for another minute; if there's someone who's still doubting, this is the last chance you have to decide."
The rigid, black figures stood immobile. The candle, just like the men, stood immutable in its shape.
"Someone wants to leave?"
No one answered; their eyes were on the floor and they were holding their wands tightly.
"Then get prepared."
The meeting dissolved around the table; some men took off their scarves, hats, some even their wristwatches. The Head of Aurors looked at the group he had chosen and told himself he was right. Almost all of them were Aurors with decades of service, they were over thirty and their hands and minds were hardened for the job.
When they removed everything that was unnecessary, they met again next to their leader, in the limits of the candle's weak light. The man with the prominent nose showed the others a dark cloak.
"Potter agreed to lend it to us; the one that uses it will have the duty to come back here with the injured ones and let the other Aurors know if we die."
The men nodded.
"I propose Niepce to stay with the cloak."
"Wouldn't have been better for Potter himself to use it?" a white-haired gentleman murmured.
"I know that for many of you that'd have been preferable, but I've known Potter since he was a child and I know he won't stay hidden as he should; he'll try to capture every Death Eater himself, and a guard with those urges is not useful for us."
"Niepce it is," the oldest of them all said.
The circle dissolved and the Head of Auror put Potter's cloth in Niepce's hands.
"Don't intervene; if you do, take care no one notices your presence. Your most important duty is to come back with the survivors; if there aren't any, give Potter any information we collect."
Both men turned to the rest.
Many Aurors gave the chosen redhead letters so he could save them and give it to their families if they didn't make it. They stood in the middle of the room and took each other's hands or shoulders of the men around them. Snape and Niepce joined the group of wizards and cloaks. Every hand touched the redhead, who was standing in the centre, and there he conjured the detecting spell they had created with so much effort, the spell that would take them to the Death Eaters' cave and that would maybe bring them back.
How many times, out of fear, had she stood with her mouth mute and hands trembling? How many times had she feared several things, people, words? Gryffindor, yes, but humane, vulnerable to cowardice.
And yet, to stay mute at that moment was something she couldn't forgive herself, nor excuse.
Hermione, the prim Gryffindor hero. Hermione, the sane, sensible and reasonable child, who one could always count on to make prudent decisions. Was it so important to maintain those definitions of her? So what if she was being crazy and absurd? So what if everything ended up in a disaster? At least it would be a disaster that she had chosen and that she was willing to bear. So what if Snape hurt her? If someone was to hurt her, she preferred it'd be him; she actually didn't care anymore. It was enough of locking herself in the bars of her mind, it was enough of thinking everything three times, enough of lists of pros and against. Enough of reason. She wanted to stay stuck in her love, she wanted to open it to the world, she wanted to be crazy for once and throw all her books through the window and open that bloody third eye that Trelawney told her she didn't have, to burn that old lady's heart.
So what if the others didn't like it? What damage could they do, worse than leaving her without Severus?
Hermione breathed again, and she felt as if she was doing it for the first time. She decided to leave security, she decided to throw caution through the window.
Hermione decided to not save herself.