December 18th
Etchings.
Etchings.
The damn fool had invited her up to see his etchings and hadn't even had the bloody courtesy to understand what it was that he was saying. Obviously Queroz hadn't paid much attention to any form of Muggle Studies, although he did appear to be trying to study one particular Muggleborn rather more closely.
Snape was in the lab early again, and it was colder still this morning; he had transfigured his mug from stoneware to insulated steel in an effort to stop the liquid from going cold within seconds - a trick he had noticed amongst Muggles, although they had to purchase such mugs rather than simply modifying an existing one. No matter how it was achieved, the theory was sound and the coffee was kept hot.
Rather like his temper this morning. He had torn several doors from the ridiculous advent calendar that Dumbledore had given him, having forgotten entirely about it over the last few days. Ripping thin cardboard was not, however, very satisfying.
Pounding tears of frankincense, however, was much more satisfying - not least because it was also rather productive. The dried resin shattered into long shards at the first blow.
Etchings. Bloody etchings. She was probably going to see his etchings this evening - he hadn't felt inclined to hang around and watch Hermione make a date with that bloody fool of a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. To add insult to injury, the man probably knew next to nothing about the Dark Arts in practice. Where the hell had he been during the war?
The shards in the bowl were lessening now, settling and reducing as he continued the rhythm of pound-scrape-crush of pestle and mortar.
What did she see in the man? A pretty face and a pretty personality? And why did he care? She would be gone by Christmas anyway, back to family and friends and back to lecturing and they would do no more than exchange cards and the very occasional letter for a few years until even that contact dwindled to nothing.
The resin was a powder now, fine dust sparkling slightly in the early morning light.
Everything was cyclical - what had been was what would be, and he had been fine with what had been. So he would be fine with what would be.
The scent released by the resin dust probably did as much to calm him down as did the physical effort involved in reducing the resin to dust and, by the time the resin was ready to be steam distilled, Snape was rather less tense than he had been when he had woken.
As the resin needed to settle before distillation, Snape headed up to the Hall for breakfast. He wasn't entirely certain he was in the mood for company but, equally, he was surprisingly hungry.
Few enough people had made it into breakfast that Snape found a comfortable corner of the table away from conversation at which to settle and begin to sip at his second cup of coffee of the morning; a bowl of porridge cooled in front of him. The soft white of the cereal, studded with apples and raisins, was warmly scented with cinnamon and rather soothing.
He was staring absently into the bowl, stirring the mass with a spoon to cool it a little before eating, when he was aware of movement by his side and someone settling into a chair next to him. He frowned at the bowl, his head down, and tried to settle back into the vaguely warm and tired comfort of the moment before. His hair had settled in front of his face as he looked down, a curtain to shut the rest of the world away.
Only this time he was not particularly successful at shutting out the world - or the world, and this particular representative, was not sufficiently aware to realise it was being shut out.
"Morning, Severus. It's beautiful outside, the snow's frozen over. Sparkling wonderfully. Do you recommend the porridge this morning? It looks good, I was trying to decide between porridge and the bacon and eggs on my way up to the Hall."
The idiot with the etchings. The calm mood induced by crushing defenceless resin abruptly dissolved.
Apparently Queroz didn't actually require a response - or wasn't inclined to wait for one.
"What have you been doing with your hair? Been experimenting with some of your concoctions? Noticed last night that you'd been doing something - Minerva mentioned it, so I looked and do you know, she's quite right. You are looking a lot better, Severus."
Snape contemplated silence. Contemplated a monastery. Never mind the minor detail of a lack of any belief in a deity, monasticism was starting to look like a very attractive option.
"Can't believe Hermione agreed to go out with me - she's a gorgeous girl."
"Woman."
"I beg your pardon?"
"She's a woman, not a girl."
"Oh, right. Of course. I thought I'd take her into Hogsmeade, Albus mentioned a restaurant there a couple of evenings ago, I'll have to ask him what the name was again-"
"Excuse me."
Snape left the Hall abruptly for the second time in twenty-four hours, his earlier temper back in full force. The hunger that had driven him up to the Hall was edged out by a knot of annoyance and jaw-clenched irritation. Fury was mixed in there as well, but he chose not to acknowledge it.
The man was a moron.
The door to the lab thumped open and banged against the wall as he stalked down the steps to the benches, his robes swirling behind him. Hermione was already in the room, had obviously elected not to eat breakfast with the staff this morning. The upset vial and spreading liquid on the bench in front of her suggested that she had been startled by his appearance in the lab.
Her words confirmed it.
"What the hell are you doing? Do you have any idea how much work you've just messed up?
Why are you stalking into here as though you have a class of first years to terrify?"
A note of terrified anger threaded through her words. He really had scared her; an apology was in order, although he wasn't particularly inclined to voice it. He settled for an apology by action instead, moving over to her bench and cleaning up the mess he had created remotely and efficiently re-starting the process of making the shampoo sample.
Hermione stood back and stared at him as he worked silently, eventually joining in where she could. They worked together for an hour before she spoke again, when the sample was almost complete and ready again.
"Are you going to tell me what the problem is?"
A minute passed, then two. Snape stoppered the last vial of the sample and set it carefully in a stand on the side.
"Your boyfriend is more of a morning person than I am inclined to deal with. I made the mistake of going to the Hall for breakfast, not something I think I will repeat these holidays."
"My boyfriend?" Hermione's voice was genuinely puzzled.
"The Quidditch playing Romeo who invited you up to see his etchings." The words were punctuated with sarcasm. "Or do you have more than one?"
Hermione blinked at him.
"What are you talking about? Peregrine's a friend, certainly, but he's hardly a boyfriend. I barely know him."
"Something which he's determined to redress, clearly. Why else do you think he invited you to peruse his etchings?" Snape was across the lab now, beginning to assemble the apparatus for distilling the frankincense.
"He doesn't know what that phrase implies for Muggles - he's just being thoughtful, he knows I'm interested in the history of alchemy. Just because you clearly don't have any inclination to indulge someone's interest, don't automatically assume that doing so indicates ulterior motives!"
"Oh, grow up. The man's only interested in indulging one thing - why else the dinner for two in Hogsmeade? Come to that, he could easily show you the etchings somewhere other than his rooms. It doesn't matter whether the man understands Muggle idioms, he's clearly capable of coming up with the same idea independently."
Hermione stared at him and Snape looked back down at the flame firing the distillation. He suspected he might just have said a little too much.
December 19th
Supper with McGonagall turned out to involve more liquid than Hermione had been really anticipating. After the usual hasty lunch in the dungeons, she had worked all afternoon and then cried off early - earning a baleful glare from Snape in the process, that left her in no doubt that Gryffindor would have been several tens of house points lighter had he only been able to work out how to make it so - in order to freshen up and arrive promptly for an evening catching up with her old head of house. it would make a pleasant change from nearly two days of sulking Snape.
Minerva McGonagall's rooms were comfortably appointed and somewhat less Scottish than Hermione had expected. No to mention tidy. She had never had occasion to visit the private rooms of any of the teachers whilst she was a student - except Snape's, her treacherous mind whispered. All private conversations and most detentions had taken place in the Professors' offices or classrooms. So she was surprised to find a room that owed more to the Albus Dumbledore School of Interior Design than the offices of Scotland the Gryffindor. Mismatched armchairs jostled with small tables, the pattern on the rug was worn to indecipherability, and the whole was ringed with overflowing bookshelves.
As she made herself at home, Minerva hastily threw a thick cover over a deep glass tank in the corner.
"The aftermath of sixth-year Transfiguration this afternoon," she confessed. "I would have dealt with them immediately after class, but I wanted to get back here and tidy up a little before you came."
Looking at the general chaos of the room, Hermione was glad that she hadn't seen it when it was untidy. It was a revelation to find that Minerva, fastidious and exacting in the classroom was quiet this disorganised in her personal life. Not that it should have been, of course. After all, think of Snape's rooms ...
To distract from this very activity, Hermione began to examine the paintings. One stood out, mostly for the fact that it was completely two-dimensional and almost aggressively stationary. She looked a little closer. It was a picture of a large bridge set against a mournful Scottish backdrop of bleak mountains and lowering skies.
"Ah," said Minerva. "I see you've noticed the Tay Bridge." Hermione jumped and took a step back."
"I'm sorry," she began, "I was just - um."
Minerva waved a hand.
"Don't worry about it," she said. "It was a present from my cousin William." She sighed. "A dear sweet boy, but a dreadful poet. I blame his mother for encouraging him."
Hermione blinked and made no comment.
"Now," continued Minerva, "how about a drink before the house elves fetch supper."
She was brandishing what was clearly a large bottle of whisky, something that Hermione had developed a taste for over the years. It seemed to go with the coffee habit. She accepted happily.
"Excellent," said Minerva, retrieving two large glasses from beneath a pile of what Hermione could have sworn were third-year essays. Looking round and finding a nearly clear table, she put the glasses down, filled them two-thirds full and handed one to Hermione.
"Slainte." she said taking a generous sip. "Homeopathy has no place in a distillery."
Hermione supposed not, and took a large swig of her drink.
XXXXXXXXXX
Sometime later it occurred to Hermione that the bottle contained significantly less liquid than it had when Minerva had first opened it. However, she wasn't particularly troubled by this, as Minerva had clearly given her a self-filling glass which was working very nicely, thank you. She thought that the house-elves had brought supper - at least, she thought she remembered eating something - but she didn't think that she would have been prepared to swear to it under Veritaserum.
Not that any of that mattered. She was curled up in a chair, lulled by the warmth of the fire and feeling absolutely no pain. It took her a while to register that Minerva had asked her a question.
"I'm sorry," she said vaguely, "I was miles away."
Minerva smirked.
"I could see that. The question is, who were you miles away with?"
Hermione tried to work that one out.
"What do you mean, who?" she said eventually.
"I mean who is it that has you staring into the fire like you want to toss in a pinch of Floo and call his name?"
Hermione suddenly understood, and, to her horror, felt herself redden.
"No, no, it was nothing like that. I'm just a little tired and the fire is warm and this is very good whisky."
"Nonsense," said Minerva briskly. "When a young woman drifts off like that it's either a man or scotch. And as you haven't had nearly enough to drink, it must be a man." She gave Hermione a conspiratorial smile. "And I think I can guess who it is."
Hermione felt a lurch of horror that nearly sobered her up. Oh, please God, no.
Minerva sat back smugly.
"It's Peregrine Queroz isn't it?"
As Hermione's brain was still thinking in terms of sibilants, she didn't immediately react.
"Uh," she said concisely.
"Peregrine Queroz? The Defence teacher." Hermione struggled for words as Minerva continued, "Come on now dear, we've all seen the way he looks at you, how he looks after you at dinner. And he has invited you up to see his etchings."
The last words finally registered properly. Good grief, not her as well. That was all she needed after yesterday's lecture from Snape.
"No. Oh no, it's nothing like that. He's just, well, he has some etchings and, well, he's asked me up to see them."
"Precisely," said Minerva triumphantly.
"No, not those sort of etchings, Real etchings. From the Alchimal of Alderney." She frowned. "No that's not right. Anyway, they are real etchings."
She stared at Minerva, willing her to believe, willing Snape to be wrong.
Minerva gave her a strange look.
"Hermione, the man is besotted with you. It's obvious to everyone. I'm surprised you haven't been getting hate mail from every girl with a crush above the second year."
"Oh." There wasn't a lot else she could have said. If both Snape and Minerva thought so then it was probably true.
Minerva made a clicking sound of exasperation.
"For an intelligent girl, you really can be extremely dense at times." She even sounded like a fond version of Snape, thought Hermione. "Queroz has been virtually falling over his tongue whenever you're in the room. What does he have to do? Hit you over the head with a broomstick and drag you off by your hair?"
Oh God, I've messed up again, thought Hermione, in a dizzying spirits-induced downwards mood swing.
"Probably," she said miserably. "I'm not very good at this sort of thing. You know, relationships. Dating. Subtext." She tried to make a gesture with the hand still holding her glass and stopped just before she threw whisky in Minerva's face.
Damn, how come she was having this conversation for the second time in as many days.
Although Minerva didn't appear to be handling it with a fit of petulance. On the contrary, she had become almost maternal.
"Is there someone else?" said Minerva gently.
"No, not really."
Minerva raised an eyebrow.
"'Not really' sounds like 'yes' to me. Is it someone from university?"
"No, not at all." The conversation was underway, now and the alcohol had not so much loosened her tongue, and loosened some of the strict controls over her mind. "There were a couple of blokes. Nice guys, really. I'm not quite certain what really went wrong. One day we were going out, and the next day we weren't and I never really worked out what happened in the meantime."
"Someone from school, then?"
Oh dear, was her brain that loose?
"I - um -"
"Mr Weasley? Or perhaps Mr Potter?"
If Hermione had been able to coordinate the reflexes she would have laughed. She knew entirely too much about both her childhood friends to ever consider them as partners of any description.
"No," she said eventually, "not Harry or Ron." She took a deep breath. "Look, if you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it."
Minerva nodded, and took another drink.
"Ah, I see." She paused, and then added, "The lure of the forbidden can be very strong and very difficult to shake off, you know. But unless you do it will never leave you in peace."
Hermione hoped that her alcohol dulled muscles would fail to respond to her brain's slightly incoherent desire to freeze in horror.
Minerva had no idea. She really didn't.
Hermione took another sip of her whisky for want of something better to do and told herself again that her old Head of House had no clue. Snape was - well, he wasn't - and even if he was, he wouldn't be -and she certainly wasn't about to - and anyway it was all old history and Minerva really just didn't know.
It just wasn't.
December 20th
Snape was, against all the odds, relaxed. Winter had drawn close again this evening, chill and cold in the icy air. He had toyed with the idea of heading for Hogsmeade and the dubious pleasures of the Three Broomsticks; it was an evening for whisky, straight or in coffee, and he was - once again - avoiding Hermione.
For once, they seemed in fact to be avoiding each other. Work had progressed swiftly in silence as they both worked in the lab this morning. She had been late and, he suspected, rather hungover. She had left yesterday with some comment about meeting with McGonagall that evening; given Minerva's taste for - and volume of - whisky, he was reasonably certain that Hermione had been feeling somewhat delicate and, had they not been developing quite such innocuous substances, would not have been inclined to go anywhere near the laboratory today.
But she had left early tonight, with no comment. Snape had tried to convince himself that she was simply tired and suffering the after effects of the whisky the night before. He hadn't convinced himself and had spent a fruitless hour furious with the universe in general, certain that she was meeting Queroz tonight. She had, after all, agreed to see the man's etchings. That she hadn't told him when she was going to see said works of art was irrelevant - it could be this evening as well as any other.
At the end of an hour he had exhausted the fit of temper, a sign that the term had been long and difficult - at the end of a holiday he could sustain that temper for days, if not weeks. A lack of subjects to exercise that temper on also made it pass faster; without the satisfaction of deducting points, there was less fuel. He still hadn't quite worked out a method of deducting points from Gryffindor for this date of Hermione's but he was working on it. Childish, admittedly, but weren't Muggles always encouraging people to embrace their 'inner child'?
In the end, winter itself had put paid to the idea of going to Hogsmeade. Snow had fallen steadily for most of the day, turning the Highlands from the faded purple and golds of autumn to a resolute white once more; Snape took a small measure of satisfaction in the knowledge that if he couldn't go to Hogsmeade then neither could Hermione and Queroz. That satisfaction was short-lived once his imagination supplied alternatives to a trip to a public eating place.
In the end, tired of feeling angry, tired of feeling somehow less than a person simply because
Hermione was viewing Queroz's etchings, and tired of the endless self-examination that she seemed to bring out in him, Snape took refuge in the medicinal effects of whisky.
A bottle of Old Ogden's that was so old it was probably Ancient Ogden's was unearthed from the back of a cupboard. Snape sniffed it cautiously on opening, as the alcohol was notorious for producing the odd unstable bottle. The mildly amusing explosions of the occasional quart of recent vintage were one thing; this had the potential to produce something rather more spectacular and considerably more dangerous.
Two glasses later, Snape was settled in front of the fire in an armchair, watching snowflakes drifting lazily past the window of his room, picked out by the soft light from the stove and a hundred or so candles scattered throughout the study. It wasn't an evening for bright, direct, light. The whisky had done what it was supposed to and Snape was as near to meditation as he had ever been, watching the patterns in the flakes, his mind finally, gloriously, empty.
He wasn't quite sure how long he had been like that - long enough, he supposed - when a knock came at the door. Albus Dumbledore. The man appeared to be magnetically attracted to Snape's whisky - or perhaps it was simply that damned all-knowing twinkle that prompted him to visit whenever Snape felt the urge to self-medicate in this way.
Snape wasn't quite sure whether he had said something to open the door - probably he had but maybe he hadn't. Either way, the result was the same. The door swung gently open and the bearded wonder entered. Hmm. Perhaps the whisky was a bit stronger than he had thought it to be.
"Severus, I thought perhaps it was time that I came down to see you. The end of term is always such a mess, isn't it? I simply haven't had the chance to get around to the staff until now. How is the Ogden's tonight?"
The man asked far too many questions - and there was something slightly odd about him tonight; it seemed as if his mouth and his words were out of sync. Snape frowned slightly, then gestured to the chair on the other side of the fireplace. The one where Hermione had sat for lunch the other day ... damn. The blank mind had been so nice whilst it lasted.
"Albus," he said, nodding as the headmaster sat down and re-arranged his beard to his satisfaction. "Some whisky?"
"Oh, I think that would be rather nice on a night like this, Severus. Shall I help myself?"
Definitely out of sync - and the twinkle seemed rather more pronounced than usual. He nodded once and watched the headmaster locate a glass with a murmured Accio, then pour himself a rather generous measure of the whisky. He sipped at it thoughtfully, holding the glass up to the light after the sip.
"Good heavens, Severus, where did you get this? I can't remember the last time I saw a whisky of this vintage."
"Back there, somewhere." Snape gestured in the direction of his cupboard. "Not sure where it came from. Does it matter?"
"No, not at all. I suspect it of belonging to your predecessor - or perhaps her predecessor, given its age. Amazing what you can find lurking in the depths of this school, waiting to be discovered, isn't it? All sorts of things, and not all of them what they seem at times."
Dumbledore was looking at him meaningfully. Snape wasn't inclined to rise to the bait, but it seemed that his subconscious had other ideas, and rather more control at the moment.
"I'm not sure she wants to be discovered, Albus." Oh good grief, had he actually said that? Snape put the whisky down carefully, although the table did seem to have moved slightly further from his reach than he recalled. He caught the glass before it fell, though, and positioned it more carefully on the low chestnut table. Perhaps the next sip should wait - until next year. Or next century.
"Sometimes things are found, whether they want to be or not."
"In this instance, I think someone else has found her. Or perhaps his etchings have." Now he sounded petulant, and he really didn't like that.
"Perhaps he has nothing more than a general sense of location; I think he may be looking at the wrong thing - smoke and mirrors, if you will."
Snape picked up the whisky again - to hell with it. He needed more alcohol if he was going to deal with Dumbledore when he was in this sort of frame of mind. Unsubtly cryptic.
"It really doesn't matter what he's looking at, Albus, or whether he's found anything. It's not about him; the choice is hers. It's always been hers. Since you've started this remarkably maudlin conversation, you may as well hear the rest of it. It doesn't matter what I think - it only matters what she thinks; and I can tell you that she doesn't think of me. Oh, don't shake your head, you know she doesn't. I'm the Potions Professor, the one she had an ... unfortunate incident with some years back. The one she's having to work with, even though she doesn't really want to. I know, I know, she doesn't hate me - I'm spared that at least. Perhaps she even respects me, who knows? But that's all there is. And I have had far, far, too much to drink."
Snape stared at the whisky, amber gold and fractured firelight in his glass, and waited for the words of wisdom - the platitudes, the comments, the advice. The lemon drops.
In the silence the fire chattered in the stove, bark and sap swelling and cracking in the heat, embers shifting and settling with harsh sighs and leaping flames.
Finally, just before Snape looked up from his glass to check that Dumbledore hadn't left in the middle of his soliloquy, he heard a soft chuckle.
"Then there's really nothing more for me to say, is there?" There was an odd emphasis on the word 'me', but Snape dismissed it. The fire seemed oddly out of focus now, the flames blurred. His hearing was probably equally blurred, but he looked up now to check.
Dumbledore had left, after all.
