They say that 'time assuages,'-
Time never did assuage;
An actual suffering strengthens,
As sinews do, with age.
Time is a test of trouble,
But not a remedy.
If such it prove, it prove to
There was no malady.
-Emily Dickinson
Chapter Two
He manages to stay away for a month before Portkeying back to Whitville. It's expensive, but the image of Herm…Jenny's exhausted features haunts him. He worries at it like a sore tooth, wondering if she is sleeping well and eating properly. He wonders too about Perdita. Jenny had raised her in ignorance of her ignoble beginnings. Could a child created from such an act of hate, the child of a psychopath and his victim, be a normal, happy girl?
Snape goes to Sparky's, understanding instinctively that if he showed up at her house again, she would see it as an aggressive action. The diner is grimy. Even after being wiped down, the table maintains a thin, sticky film of grease that causes Snape's lip to curl in distaste. He carefully rubs the tips of his fingers on the black wool of his jacket and places his hands in his lap. He does not touch his menu. There is old blackberry jam on the spine, and it reminds Snape of dried, clotted blood.
"I knew you'd be back. Of icourse/i you'd be unable to mind your own business, right?"
He looks up to see her standing at the head of the table, hair pulled back into a severe bun. One tendril has escaped and corkscrews down her temple.
"No. It's not every day that one discovers that a loved one has been raised from the dead. Forgive me my curiosity."
"I don't have room for you in my life, Snape." She presses her lips together, and the pen she holds in her hand trembles delicately, a fine blur like hummingbird wings. She is very careful to avoid looking directly in his eyes.
Silence stretches between them, before she finally asks, "Well? Are you going to order something? I have other tables." She sounds dead tired.
After a long pause, he finally says, "Two eggs, coddled. Wheat toast, dry. Coffee, black."
She takes the menu from the table and walks away without another word. He watches her go and thinks of ways to be close to her.
When it comes, the food tastes like ash, and Jenny remains elusive. She places his dishes on the table, rolls her eyes, and leaves.
Snape sees her tend other tables with considerably more warmth than she'd lavished on him. His gut churns as he watches for signs that she's thinking of running from him.
She relaxes when he pulls a book from the leather satchel at his side, and even more once he finishes choking down the execrable excuse for breakfast and motions for his check.
When she drops it off, he says, "Are you free later?"
Jenny's laugh is brittle. "You're loony."
He considers this. "I don't think so. I wanted to talk to you about Perdita and her education. I also brought something you might find… palliative."
"I don't need anything from you, and Perdita's none of your business. She's mine." Her eyes narrow, but her voice is quiet and even.
Snape holds his hands up, palms out. "I'm aware." He turns and looks at the table's ugly floral centerpiece—carnations dyed a regrettable blue. His dark eyes can make people feel uncomfortable, pinned. "I know you don't want her to go to Hogwarts. She'd have," he shifts in the squeaky vinyl booth, "an uncomfortable time of it there, with her Malfoy heritage clear as day. Nonetheless, she's on the books. I've brought transfer paperwork so she can attend Spindleford Academy if that is what you desire." He shifts to watch her from the corner of his eye.
Her mouth opens and closes; she appears to be at a loss for words. "You are right. She'd never survive the teasing." She gives a shuddering sigh. "I remember how nasty it could get, and it'd be even worse for her."
Snape nods. "And if you do not fill out the transfer paperwork now, I'm afraid you'll be getting a visit from Minerva McGonagall. She is still in charge of all of our Muggle home visits."
Jenny chews her lip, and then says, "Fine. I'm done after the breakfast rush at eleven."
He smiles because he can't help it. He smiles because she could have demanded he leave the paperwork and go. He smiles because maybe she's not as averse to seeing him as she pretends. Not really.
"Shall I pick you up here, then?" Snape says.
"No, I'll meet you in the park across the way. It's just there," and she leans over, placing her hand on the table and pointing out the window with the other. Her dress gapes open, and he can see past her small breasts clad in white cotton down to her navel. He immediately looks away, but it's too late. He's inflamed by her smell and her skin and the memory of her beneath him, moving, arching, panting.
He clears his throat and crosses his legs. "Yes, I see."
She gives him a sharp glance, and then he has to catch his breath because she blushes, and he knows they are both remembering.
"S-so, I'll see you at 11:15," she says, although it's very nearly a question her voice is so tentative.
"Yes."
#
He has nothing else to do in a town as small and dismal as Whitville, and really, she's the only reason he's here. So after breakfast, he goes and sits in the park. He stretches his black-clad legs out and slumps on a bench, arms crossed over his chest.
Even though he is in the shade, it's as hot as Hades, so he casts a Cooling Charm. Snape is still wearing black wool, after all. As if he'd wear anything else. He casts an extra Cooling Charm on his dragonhide boots, and then allows himself to relax into the background noise of chirring locusts and chirping birds.
He drowses long enough for the light to change, and when he wakes up, he feels the sun dappling his legs and arms. Hermione has woken him, calling his name, drawing him up through layers of cottony sleep, but when he finally opens his eyes, it is not Hermione he sees, but Jenny, with her hard mouth and red hair.
But Snape notices something that wasn't present before. Her eyes are soft and brown like Hermione's were. She is Jenny, but he recognizes the girl she used to be is still present, still lurking under armor that peels off like sunburned skin.
"Napping? Out in the open?" she asks, humor in her voice. "That doesn't fit very well with the image I have of Severus Snape, spy extraordinaire."
"Of course," he says, his voice gruff with sleep. "I retired years ago. I'm old now, you see." He points to his black hair which sports very little gray. He doesn't mention how he could have disarmed or killed her with a few, well-placed maneuvers. That's not the sort of thing one says.
"I feel old myself," she sighs, running her fingers through her hair. She's loosed it, and it spills down her back. "Shall we get this done then?"
Jenny had changed her clothes to a soft ribbed vest and denims with a wide brown belt. If possible, she looks even more undernourished than when she was prancing around in her Sparky's uniform.
"Can I treat you to lunch?" he asks. When he sees her hesitate, he adds, "It'd be easier to have a table on which to spread the paperwork." He doesn't mention his concern over her weight. His expression remains carefully neutral.
At last, she nods, and they walk next to each other.
With an apologetic look at Snape, she chooses a chain restaurant with a moose mascot. The interior is a bilious-looking green, and the air smells of stale grease. "There's really nothing else in town. We'd have to drive to Wilkes-Barre for anything better."
"I ate at Sparky's today. I'm not that picky."
"Are you insulting my place of business?" Jenny smirks. "Maybe I did something to your eggs."
"You think I didn't check first? I'm an old spy, not a dead one."
They are shown to a table, and Snape raises an eyebrow at the paper placemats with a connect-the-dots game on them. "Very fancy."
"I'll have you know that once the puzzle is completed, it depicts a very nice pickup truck." When he snorts, she adds, "I'm not actually joking. This is one of Perdita's favorite restaurants. She's done that puzzle a million times. She doesn't even have to look at the numbers any more."
Snape leans forward and rests his elbows on the table. "Tell me about her. Tell me about what your life has been like since you… left."
Jenny looks at him, her head cocked. "Okay, but first, I have questions, things I have to know before I share anything about Perdy. You," she exhales, "You have to tell me what you're doing here."
"Specifically?"
"I want to know why you kept my secret. You must have, because if you'd told Harry or Ron that you'd found me, they'd have been sitting right next to you on my Salvation Army couch when I came home that day." She leans back and crosses her arms. "Why did you do that?"
Snape pauses and thinks. It's too important not to be precise with his response. "Many reasons. Primarily, I suppose that I… didn't want to make any choices for you. If I had told anyone I'd found you, you'd have been dragged back into the Wizarding World whether you wanted to be or not." He leans his head against the back of the booth and sighs. "In the past, I have often felt like a man whose choices have been taken from him. I didn't wish to visit that upon you."
She smiles; it's just a crinkling of her eyes, but it's warm. "Thanks for that."
He's not sure why he continues, but he does. He's always been a glutton for punishment. "And secondly, I had issues of my own to lie to rest where you are concerned."
She watches him with shuttered eyes and doesn't say a word.
"Nothing? You have nothing to say? Not even a crumb to spare for me?"
She sighs and shifts. Her back cracks. "Is there a point? We're not the same people any longer. Do you want to retread ancient history? Did you come here for a quick fumble for old time's sake? Is that what this is?"
"Ah," he says, mourning the loss of the young woman he'd loved. "Maybe it iwas/i foolish." He turns back to the place mat, tracing it with a finger. "You know, I'd rather fancied we'd find each other after the war and fall into each others' lives as easily as we'd fallen into bed." He takes a sip of water. "Do you remember that first time? We were at Grimmauld Place. We'd never even looked at each other before, but then all of a sudden, you were trying to patch me up over the sink, your hands all over my chest, and it was the most natural thing in the world to take you to bed." Snape thinks for a moment, trying to put his finger on what he wants to say. "Right. It was right between us." He looks up into her face, but he doesn't see Jenny. He sees Hermione. "And then you died, and I…"
"So you were a romantic, then?"
He's surprised. "Knowing what you know of me, did you doubt it?"
"I was never sure of you. Not really." Her eyes flicker.
Snape leans forward. His elbows rest on the table, and his fingers twine together, pale and scarred. "Then that was my failing, not being more transparent," he says. "At the end, it was easy to forget that you were still so young." He feels his lips twist. "That was also my failing, although not a habitual one. I'd never before fallen in love with a student. Just you. Just Hermione."
Her face is suddenly soft, and she opens her mouth, and every sense he possesses strains, as if he were struggling to hear her from far away. He's waiting, dying, for her.
But then she sits back and clears her throat, and there's a waiter pouring water into their glasses which are spotty from the dishwasher. The moment becomes lost in mundanity, and his words sit on them like weights. They order lunch.
"So," he says as the waiter walks away. "Perdita. Tell me about her."
Everything about Jenny lights up, and he can see she's in love with her child. "Perdita, she's... well, she's fantastic. She's so smart and inquisitive. The other day we were taking a walk in the park, and I pointed to a bird in a tree. I said, 'Look at the swallow. I just love songbirds.' And she looked over at me kind of pityingly and said, 'Yes, of course. But it would be more accurate to call it a passerine or perching bird, rather than a songbird.'"
"Oh, so she's a little know-it-all like you were?"
"Definitely! But she's so much more than me, too. She's got such a... sense of dignity. At her age, I was always rushing around with pens stuck in my hair and behind my ears, inks smudged all over my face and hands. She's quiet and polite, and so very earnest about everything."
Snape's heart begins to ache from the weight of Jenny's love for her daughter. "She sounds wonderful. Rare." His jealousy burns him.
"She is. I never thought I could love anyone the way I love her."
That hurts in a way that is familiar. Hadn't he always been loved second best? Snape understands he wants unreasonable things. He wants her. He wants her to love him the way she did ten years ago. He wants his Hermione, not Jenny, and he wants her to belong to him. He knows he'll never get that now, and that's okay. At least, he tells himself it's okay.
Jenny bites her lip. "I was worried that I wouldn't love her, you know. After everything. When she was born, I looked into her face, and I was so afraid I would see Malfoy."
"I've never met anyone with as much capacity for love as you." He despairs, but he forces a small smile. "Even if you had seen Lucius staring back at you, I know you'd have found a way to love your little girl."
"Luckily, I wasn't put to the test. She looked like a half-squashed tomato, but she was mine. The moment they laid her in my arms, I knew it."
"When can I meet her?" It was hard to speak through the stranglehold on his throat.
Jenny takes a sip of her water. "Soon. Today. Tonight." She doesn't meet his eyes. "But only if you don't bring up the war. That's something I never want her to know about."
If Perdita is anything like Hermione was as a child, Snape doubts that she is ignorant of the war and her mother's part in it. He doesn't say that, though. Instead, he offers, "People who have been through the hell of war often do not wish to revisit it. It will be no trial for me to keep silent on the subject."
She nods, and then looks over his shoulder and smiles. The waiter approaches with their lunch. He sets a salad in front of Jenny and a plate of fish in front of Snape. And it's truly a plate full of fish. "Good lord. This plate has three full filets! Who could eat this much?"
"Welcome to Whitville, PA. Americans are obsessed with getting value for their money." she says and takes a bite of salad.
"Here, there's no way I'll be able to consume this much." He slides a serving on top of her salad. "Eat at least a bit, or I'll feel terrible for wasting food."
Greedily, he watches her take a bite. She chews, swallows, and then smiles. "You always used to do this, you know. When we were together before."
"What's that?"
"Shove food in my face. I used to think that you wanted to plump me up. That you didn't find me attractive because I was too slender."
That stings him. "I wanted to take care of you. You were mine, or I thought you were, and I wanted you to be healthy."
She ducks her head, but she doesn't respond. Instead, she takes another bite of fish which is as much apology as he's going to receive from her. Not that he supposes he needs or wants her to be sorry. He rolls his eyes and pulls a glass phial with a silver stopper out of his pocket and slides it over to her. In for a penny, in for a pound, as it were.
Jenny holds it up to the light. "Nutritional Potion? This is the something 'palliative' you had for me, I take it."
"You're clearly fatigued and undernourished. I prepared this for you, but I understand if you have reservations about taking something from my hand. It's been many years."
She meets his eyes and laughs. Flicking the cap off with her thumb, she holds it up to her nose and sniffs. "Looks like Nutritional Potion. Smells like Nutritional Potion..."
"I'll have you know that I could have slipped any number of colorless and odorless poisons into that potion," he huffs. "I am an expert."
Jenny swigs it down, and Snape feels ridiculously gratified.
She sighs. "I am not a trusting woman, Severus. Not any longer. But I do trust that you would not hurt me intentionally."
"That's something then," he says and stretches out his fingers until they just brush hers on the table.
She allows it.