Becoming

Chapter Four
by snarkypants

"The rest of the staff will arrive tomorrow, is that correct?" Hermione asked before taking a drink from her lager.

Snape nodded, seemingly intent on mixing his curry and rice to just the right shade of saffron.

"Morning or evening?"

"Afternoon."

"Ah," she said, taking a bite of Saag Paneer.

He pushed his fork through his curry, tracing a circle, before abruptly setting it down. He cleared his throat. "Your… your new robes. They are quite suitable."

"Yes, Madam Arachne was a great help." She took another piece of Naan. "My Egyptian robes were intended to be worn with a drape; I forgot all about it, thinking that since I wasn't in Egypt any longer I didn't need to be swathed in layers of fabric. I've mostly worn Muggle clothes since I came back to England."

"Well, then. This is suitable." He took up his fork again, and ate a bite.

"Would you like some of the Saag Paneer?" she asked.

"I don't eat spinach."

At this admission he sounded so much like Fabian at his intractable best that she looked down to hide a smile. Unsuccessfully as it turned out.

"Why is that amusing?" he asked sharply.

She chuckled. "You sounded like my son just then. I'm sorry to laugh, but you're the last man I ever expected to sound like a boy."

"Not too surprising, I hope. I was a boy, once."

"Well before my time," she said with another grin.

He looked narrowly at her. "Surely you're not trying to bait me about my age, Professor Weasley," he said.

He had a strong brow and heavy eyebrows which he used to great effect; with the slightest dip of his head, his eyes were in shadow. She had to lean forward slightly so she could maintain eye contact.

"Perhaps I'm just trying to 'get a rise out of the deputy headmaster,'" she said cheekily.

Something flared behind his eyes. She couldn't quite identify it, but the answering flicker in her belly felt something like fear and something like—

"That particular genie would be difficult to put back into its bottle," he said almost languidly. His expression was stern, but there was still that… intensity in his gaze that unsettled her. It wasn't an entirely angry sort of intensity, either; she had seen enough in six years as his student to know that expression.

Did the man never blink? Her own eyes were watering, but he held her gaze without difficulty. Like a rabbit held in thrall by a cobra, she couldn't look away.

"Are you quite certain that you want to get a rise out of me?" he continued. "It's a dangerous game to play, and I play at games only if there's a very good chance of winning." He paused, taking a pull from his bottle of lager. "Unless the victor wants a prize that I am prepared to forfeit."

Her mouth went dry, and all the hairs stood up on her arms; they prickled against the wool of her robes. Was he flirting with her? It had been so long, she was admittedly out of practice. Would she feel like this, all flustered and jittery, if he weren't flirting? And Professor Snape flirting? She couldn't wrap her brain around the equation; there weren't enough variables in Arithmancy to parse this one.

A shred of Naan bounced off her nose and she blinked in surprise. When she glanced up at him, he was inspecting the fireplace, a look of studied innocence on his face.

"What?" he asked.

"You lobbed a piece of bread at me," she said in disbelief.

"I? I beg your pardon, Professor Weasley; I recall doing no such thing." He looked amused as he bent to take another bite of his curry.

A bit of bread hit him square on the forehead.

Soon, the air was thick with flying bread.

"Oh, sod it!" Hermione said, looking about her. "I'm all out of ammunition."

"Do you surrender?" he asked, from behind the sofa.

"Never!" she cried.

"You're trapped; you must surrender," he said.

"Y'know, it's a shame that we've wasted so much good Naan."

"Don't change the subject, Weasley. Give in now and the terms will be much more favourable for you."

"How favourable?" she asked, as a giddy frisson of excitement raced through her belly.

"Let's just say that if you do surrender this is the only room you'll be required to clean."

Silence.

Cleaning? That was his prize? She didn't know whether to feel relieved or insulted, disappointed or ill-used. Really, was that all she was good for, cleaning? Wiping bums and noses? The bastard!

"You started it!" she said indignantly, painfully aware that her tone was childish. Better than sounding mumsy, she thought.

"The victor, the spoils, Professor," he said with a smirk in his voice.

She was staring at the ceiling trying to figure a way out of the Battle for the Staff Room when he appeared.

He couldn't have been more welcome than Patton and his Third Army. His eyes lit with an unholy gleam as he aimed a bottle of ink at Professor Snape.

"Peeves!" Snape roared.

Hermione leapt over the chair and out into the corridor with a nimbleness that belied her age, laughing all the while. "The victor, the spoils, Professor," she cried as she sprinted to her quarters.

She slammed her door behind her, doubling, tripling the wards. When she was satisfied with her immediate security she sank against the door, giggling helplessly.

An hour later she was alerted by the sound of an owl's insistent tapping against her window. She immediately suspected a secondary attack, and so performed a few protection charms.

If she was expecting an invisibility cloaked Snape hovering outside her window, however, she was to be disappointed. The owl, an ordinary-looking old grey with a harried expression, sat on the window ledge with a roll of parchment tied to his leg.

She gave him a biscuit and opened the message.

Hermione:

Bill's coming up to Hogwarts on the Express tomorrow.

He really wants to talk to you about Ron. Please hear him out, dear. He's utterly distraught.

Fabian and Blithe are well and send you their best, as do I. They've missed you and look forward to seeing you Monday.

Molly

Hermione's light-hearted mood evaporated rather abruptly. "Thank you," she told the owl. "No reply."

She awoke in a sour temper that was probably all out of proportion to actual events, but she didn't particularly care. She took breakfast in her rooms and hastened herself to her classroom to immerse herself in work before her brother-in-law's imminent arrival.

Just after lunch she heard his oh-so-considerate tapping at the door. "Enter," she said, mentally sighing.

"Hermione," he said, an obsequious note to his voice. He crossed the room to take both her hands between his own, patting them much as he had ever since Ron's death. "How are you?"

"Quite well, actually," she said, only barely resisting the urge to yank her hands away.

"You're very brave," he said, his face creasing sympathetically. She loathed this expression of his; she had only seen it since Ron died, and it made his scars at the hands of Fenrir Greyback all the more grotesque. He spoke very slowly, as if widowhood had somehow addled her mind.

She sighed. "What can I do for you, Bill? I'm rather busy, getting ready for students."

"Oh, Hermione, I'm so sorry… when I think that you wouldn't have to be here if I…" he said, faltering.

"I don't have to be anywhere, Bill. Ron left me rather comfortably off as you know."

"It was my job to look out for him, Hermione. He wouldn't have died… he had too much responsibility for one man…"

She put her hands up. "Stop right there, Bill. I'm sure you mean well, but you're being horribly insulting to Ron. You helped him get a junior position fifteen years ago. You didn't make Ron the senior cursebreaker for the African and Asian districts and you didn't make Ron a partner after only nine years with the company; Ron did that all on his own."

"I hired the junior who—," Bill began, but Hermione cut him off.

"Who deviated from Ron's procedures, I know. He was young and inexperienced; that's why he was with Ron."

"I should have been there—," he said.

"Bill, you've been out of the field since '95. What would you have done?" He clenched his teeth and looked down. "Ron loved what he did and he was very good at it. He was sodding brilliant at it. He saved seven people from the effects of that curse."

"I could have helped," Bill said.

"No, you couldn't. He was a grown man and very skilled at his work." Her voice thickened with tears. "He didn't need your protection, Bill." She heard the echo of her voice and cleared her throat. "I don't mean to yell at you."

She saw a flicker of movement from the doorway; Severus stood there, eyebrows raised.

"Professor Snape, may I help you?"

"I was looking for the source of all the noise, Professor Weasley."

Bill's mouth tightened in anger at being told off in front of Snape.

"You've found it, then," she said evenly, then turned her attention back to her brother-in-law. "If it's your fault that you hired him, that you hired the junior, then it's my fault that I didn't insist we live in England like a proper family should. But we're ignoring the fact that he died doing exactly what he loved, that he wasn't suited to desk work, that none of us ever saw him happier or more alive than when he was cursebreaking. He didn't have to take second place to you or your brothers, he didn't come in behind Harry or me. He was the very best in his field and you know it. So do me a favour and drop the 'condescending big brother' stuff. It's annoying and it's offensive."

He sighed deeply. "I'm sorry, Hermione. I was so sure that you blamed me for Ron." For the first time since Ron's death he looked her in the eye.

"I don't. Perhaps I might have wished he had a safer job, but I never blamed you for it."

He hung his head, his long, thinning hair drooping. She was surprised to see a werewolf-scarred, middle-aged man with a thickened waist instead of the glamorous young cursebreaker she had met as a fourth year. She wondered suddenly if Fleur still saw him as that thrilling young man or if she secretly despaired of his dragon-tooth earring and hide boots. Bill had given up his dangerous profession for the war effort, but he had kept his desk job in London to placate his young wife.

"You envied Ron just a bit, didn't you?" she asked softly.

He snorted derisively. "Just a bit? Christ. I never thought he'd… I never wanted him to fail, Hermione, I swear it. I just didn't want him to do better than me. And with you two married I thought it was just a matter of time before you dragged him back to England, but you never did."

He plopped down into a chair, as if his legs would no longer hold him. "And then the twins came and I just knew you'd insist on living close to home and that'd clip his wings for good. But you didn't and he just kept on going." A tear ran into the crease of his nose. "I was so proud of him, but I dearly wanted to see him taken down a peg or two."

"Well," Hermione said. "Well, he was."

Bill's face crumpled at this and he spent a few moments trying to control himself. "Not like that, Hermione. Never like that."

"I know."

"You made it all possible for him, Sis," he said, reverting to the nickname he had used with her before Ron died. "You gave up a lot for him."

"I've never seen it that way. I lived in a beautiful, exotic country, travelled all over the world, studied under a world-renowned Arithmancer, and had two wonderful children. Perhaps I didn't have a traditional career, but you mustn't think that I spent fifteen years denying my own talents and ambitions. It all boiled down to the fact that I could do my work anywhere and he couldn't."

He laughed shortly. "Fleur's ambitions have always been more social than professional."

That was indisputable and she didn't bother denying it.

He stood up and gave her a brother's hug. "My little brother was very fortunate in many things, including his wife." He smiled, and pecked a quick, avuncular kiss on her forehead. "Thanks for talking with me, Sis."

"Anytime, Bill," she said, pleasantly surprised that, for the first time since Ron's death, she meant it.

"Mum's counting on us all during the Christmas hols; you're not going to Surrey, are you?"

"And miss ickle George's wedding? I wouldn't dream of it," she said.

She hadn't seen Severus slip away during her talk with Bill, but he wasn't anywhere to be found when she left her classroom.

The castle was filled with activity; magical energy fairly hummed through the corridors. Poppy Pomfrey was unloading cases of common medicinal potions in the infirmary; her face lit up when Hermione entered.

"How are you, my dear girl? I was so pleased when Minerva said you'd be here."

"I'm well, thank you; can I help you with that?"

"No, I'm almost finished." With a flick of her wand the bottles flew into their compartments.

"Have you seen Professor Snape?"

"Not since he met the train this afternoon. How was your visitor?" Poppy asked slyly.

"Fine. Why?"

"I could hear you yelling at the poor boy; he seems to have deserved it, though."

"I was that loud?"

"No; Peeves is at it early this term. He likes to amplify staff arguments whenever he gets the opportunity."

"Oh, lovely," she said caustically, turning toward the door.

Poppy chuckled. "I'll tell Severus you're looking for him."

"No need," Hermione said.

She found him in the Defence classroom. "Sorry about the noise earlier."

He acknowledged this with a nod of his head. "Mr Weasley has left, I take it?"

"He has; sadder but wiser," she said wryly.

Severus snorted. "He'd have to be."

"I enjoyed our dinner last night," she said.

He raised one eyebrow. "I was going to insist on a rematch in a neutral location without poltergeist interference." He cut a glance in her direction. "You pressed an unfair advantage."

"Why not?" she asked breezily. "All's fair in l—all's fair in war, isn't it?" She blushed, realizing that her hesitation over the word 'love' was more suggestive than the phrase itself. She had an unfortunate habit of embarrassing herself in his presence.

"Only if you win," he said. "If you lose you make reparation."

"Oh, I'll win," she said with a smile. "I won't make the mistake of running out of ammo again."

"We'll see," he said. "If you'll excuse me now I'll see you in the staff room for dinner.

At dinner that night, Professor Flitwick nearly gave the game away.

He, with his unique perspective, found a piece of bread that Severus, being much taller, had missed. He held it up, squinting though his spectacles. "The house-elves didn't do so well in here."

Severus and Hermione immediately bent their heads to their meals with overly innocent expressions. Minerva smiled. "Must have been Peeves," she said.

"Peeves?" Professor Sinistra asked, knitting her brow. "Doesn't he usually wait until the students get here?"

Hermione risked a look at Severus. A muscle was working in his jaw as if he, too, was chewing on the inside of his cheek.

"Typically, yes," Minerva said. "Something's set him off early this term, but I can't imagine what that could be." She and Madam Pomfrey exchanged looks. "Any ideas, Severus?" she asked.

Severus choked on his pumpkin juice, but recovered admirably. "He was remarkably restrained last term. Perhaps he has excess energy to disburse."

Minerva peered at him over the top of her glasses. "You know, your grey hair has taken on a decidedly blue tint. Joined the 'Blue Rinse Brigade,' have we?"

He looked coldly at the headmistress. "No, Minerva."

She just looked at him, eyebrows raised with interest.

"It would appear that Peeves isn't the only one with an excess of energy, Headmistress," Severus said in a jaded tone.

"I'm merely curious, Severus," Minerva said. By the sound of her voice, Hermione would have thought that her feelings were hurt by Snape's retort, but the expression in McGonagall's eyes was merry.

Hermione felt a sudden wrench of embarrassment; he hadn't been flirting with her last night at all. That was simply the way he spoke to all of his colleagues, even Minerva. A flush started at her cheek and radiated out until she was pink from forehead to sternum.

"You should check your curiosity, Minerva. Wouldn't want it to be the death of you," he said evenly, eyes narrowed.

A/N:Thanks to the flist at lj for early reading and feedback.

And an especially big thanks for selened. A good beta doesn't just watch out for punctuation and misuse of British terms. This chapter especially has benefited from selened's suggestions of places where I might amp up the UST, resulting in a much richer chapter than it was before. Her assistance, as always, is invaluable.