Becoming
Chapter Six
by snarkypants
Some time later, Professors Weasley and Snape left the Headmistress' office together.
"Thank you for your time, Professor Snape," Hermione said, smiling at Severus. "I just might be able to finish out the term now."
"I have ulterior motives, you know; we have a common enemy." Hermione looked at him with confusion; he loomed over her and said in a stage whisper, "The students."
"Ooh, looky," a maliciously gleeful voice said above them and they sprang apart. "Snivellus Snape and the Bucky, Bushy Beaver!"
Hermione gasped in horror and Severus glared at the poltergeist. "I'm sending the Baron after you, Peeves."
Peeves stuck out his tongue at Severus and sang in a voice like a rusty gate:
"Snivelly Snape and the Bushy Beaver
Snogged all night, but he had to leave 'er
She thinks he's dreamy; her eyes deceive 'er
Snivelly's face looks like a cleaver!"
He rolled over and over in midair, cackling at his song and slapping himself on the arse before he melted through the wall, still singing, "Snivelly Snape and the Bushy Beaver."
Michael Davies hid himself when he saw Peeves coming; the poltergeist had been on a tear lately and he had no desire to dodge cat shit or whatever Peeves was using to bombard the unsuspecting tonight. He was right outside the Headmistress' office, hiding behind a convenient tapestry, when Professor Snape and Professor Weasley emerged from the hidden staircase.
He tried to press himself as close to the wall as he could manage and thus avoid detection. Peeves or no Peeves, hiding behind a tapestry would probably raise Snape's ire and Michael could do without a deduction of points tonight.
The professors talked in a friendly enough way and then Snape leaned in close to whisper something in Weasley's ear… and Peeves struck, singing about Snape and a bushy beaver. Professor Weasley went so red that Michael thought the 'beaver' must mean, well, her beaver.
Oh, he was going to spew.
But still…
Several of the third year boys liked to gather by the lake on Saturday mornings when the weather was fine. Jim-James usually held court there, as he tended to be their natural leader. He was easygoing and funny, a bit of a show-off, but generally a benevolent despot.
"How'd you get your name, then?" the younger brother of a Gryffindor third year asked. "Your mum and dad didn't name you 'Jim-James.'"
The third years smiled. They'd heard this one before.
Jim-James leaned back casually and laced his fingers together behind his head. "Now that's a story, young – what's your name?" Someone supplied the correct name and he continued. "Well, young Roddy, I got my nickname the year my dad was with the Sweetwater All-Stars. He was doing this Quidditch ambassador thing, going to countries – mainly America – where professional Quidditch wasn't very popular and playing for their teams to raise interest in the sport.
"Now, I was in primary school at the time and I'd hang out at the pitch in the evenings; my mum had just had my little brother, and it was dull as shit at home. I'd go with my dad, and I'd watch them practise. It was so hot in Texas, hotter even than Egypt, or at least I thought so. I'd go to the locker room to get a drink and cool off. And the team would come in—" he said.
"And you'd check out their tackle, eh?" another boy said loudly, and the rest of them laughed raucously (and perhaps a little nervously).
"Piss off, you bastards," Jim-James said genially. "The first time I was in there, one player, this huge Beater, said, 'So what's yer name, kid?' His accent was so thick I couldn't understand him at first, so he said, 'Whadda they cawl ya?'" Jim-James mimicked the beater's drawl perfectly.
"I wanted to be so cool in front of the players even though I was just this little kid. So I shrugged and said, 'They call me Jim, James, whatever.' The beater just laughed. 'Nice ta meetcha, Jim-James,' he said. And it stuck."
He raised his eyebrows and lowered his voice for the punch line. Even though most of the boys had heard the story before, they leaned closer. "And do you know who the beater was?" The older boys grinned. "Tex Deerinwater." The younger boys made a low, respectful noise. "'Course, his real name is Tony, he only got called 'Tex' after he crossed the pond to play for the Cannons."
The group buzzed with tales of famous Quidditch players they had seen or met. Of course, it simply wasn't cool to mention Jim-James' father, although many of them nursed the fervent hope that Jim-James might invite them home over the hols and they'd get to meet Harry Potter in person. He'd see what great fliers they were and put them on a list of players to watch for when they made the house team and they'd end up playing for England…
"Hey, anyone seen Fabian?" Jim-James asked.
"Oi, Weasley," Michael Davies called after Fabian as he walked toward Jim-James' court; Fabian tensed, but slowed to wait for him. "I may be spending the winter hols at your cousin's place."
"Oh," Fabian said, unimpressed. "Which cousin? I have loads."
"Jim-James, of course."
"Really? You'll be lonely. Last I heard, Jim-James was spending the hols at my grandmother's place."
Davies' mouth tightened before he smiled poisonously. "From what I hear, you could have a new stepfather by the hols, eh?"
"Fuck off, Davies, what're you on about?"
"Your mum's a hot little piece; I heard Snape's giving her after-hours instruction. Your dad's only been dead a few months, yeah? She sure didn't wait—" He didn't get the rest of the statement out. Fabian punched him in the mouth.
Two fifth year Gryffindors were on Fabian before he could grab Davies by the front of his robes and hit him again; they grabbed him and twisted his arms behind his back. A few Ravenclaws shouted at this treatment, and ran over.
"Oh, shit, Fabian," Jim-James said, jumping up from the grass, running to join his cousin. "Let him go," he ordered authoritatively, and the older boys complied.
"He hit me, for no bloody reason!" Davies shouted thickly, through a cut and swollen mouth. He dabbed blood from his chin with his sleeve.
Fabian charged again. "Take it back, you bastard!" He knocked Davies to the ground.
Jim-James grabbed Fabian from behind, looping his arms under Fabian's arms and locking his hands together behind Fabian's neck. Fabian kicked and writhed, maddened. "Gerroff me!"
"Fabe!" Blithe came running. "Are you crazy?"
Fabian struggled against his cousin's grip. "He—he said—Mum and Snape—I'll kick his arse!"
"What did you say, Davies?" Blithe asked, a dangerous glint in her eye.
"Nothing. Nothing! It was Peeves, he said it."
"Said what, Mike?" Jim-James asked, deceptively calm.
"He said 'Snivelly Snape was snogging the bushy beaver.' It was when they were coming out of McGonagall's office last night."
Blithe landed on Davies' belly with one knee. The boy blanched and gasped as his diaphragm went into temporary paralysis. He flopped on the grass, his mouth working mutely, looking for all the world like an outsize trout.
Jim-James released Fabian and dove for Blithe. He pushed the twins away from Davies, who was clutching his throat and thrashing. "Settle down, Davies. Just got the wind knocked out of you." He knelt next to the boy. "This was just a taster, old son. Repeat any of that bullshit and you'll be wearing your arse as a fetching little hat." He looked up at the gathering swarm of onlookers. "And that goes double for you lot. You got it?"
"I think we got it, Mr Potter," Snape said mordantly.
"What reason would four students have for brawling on the grounds? You do realize that you all face expulsion for this gross misconduct." Severus looked down his nose at them.
"Sir? I didn't do any brawling, I was attacked," Davies said, having recovered the use of his lungs.
"Shut your stupid face or I'll shut it—" Fabian growled.
"Silence, Mr Weasley, and you, too, Mr Davies. You're not helping your case here." He paced behind the four as they stood in his office. "I can't believe I'm about to say this, but as the apparent cool head of reason, Mr Potter, perhaps you would care to explain?"
"Yes, sir," Jim-James said. "Davies made a rude comment about Fabian's mum, sir."
Snape's eyebrows rose, nearly meeting his hairline. "That's all?" he asked, now standing in front of Fabian. "You're a third year and this is the first rude comment someone's made about your mother?"
"It wasn't just… it was about…" Jim-James looked down as he stammered.
"Out with it, Potter," Snape bellowed.
"He said that you and Professor Weasley were k-kissing, sir."
Snape recoiled, and rounded on Davies. "What?" Davies had the grace to squirm uncomfortably. "You say you saw me and Professor Weasley… where exactly did you see this, Davies?"
"I didn't… Peeves… I told Weasley and he—"
"So you saw… nothing, Mr Davies?"
"I just saw you talking, Professor."
"From where did you get the mistaken idea that I was having some sort of tryst with Professor Weasley?"
"Peeves sang a song about you and Professor Weasley snogging, sir."
"Ah. Peeves, the Oracle of Hogwarts, known to all and sundry as a source of unimpeachable information." He glared at Davies. "Fifty points from Gryffindor. In addition, I think that Mr Filch has some paperwork that requires maintenance. Starting tonight after dinner, you have detention every Saturday night until the winter holidays." Davies opened his mouth indignantly and closed it again. "Your Hogsmeade privileges are revoked for the term and tomorrow you will join Mr Potter, Mr Weasley and Miss Weasley in harvesting armadillo bile for the fifth year potions classes. You are dismissed, Davies."
Davies left promptly, before Snape could give him another punishment.
"Mr and Miss Weasley, you have amply defended your mother's reputation, not that she needed it. Twenty points from Ravenclaw; you will lose Hogsmeade privileges for the term and tomorrow you will harvest armadillo bile with Mr Davies. Mr Potter, you appear to have tried to get the situation somewhat under control so your only assignment will be the bile harvesting."
He raised his eyebrows. "Do you have anything to add?" The teenagers shook their heads. "Then leave. Now."
They did.
Someone knocked tentatively at her door. "Mum," a voice said softly in the corridor.
She lifted the needle from her gramophone. Am I hearing things? she wondered. The twins hadn't been to visit her since she showed them where she was housed.
"Enter," she said, and the door swung open.
Her children didn't resemble each other greatly, other than in the shapes of their eyes and the length of their noses. Blithe's colouring was Weasleyesque, albeit in somewhat darker tones, while Fabian was dark-haired, grey-eyed and olive-skinned, much like Hermione's father. Blithe's features tended to be sharper and finer, and Fabian had the beginnings of a strong chin with a definite cleft.
Since they weren't identical, those instances when they looked like twins came as rather a surprise. It usually happened when they were grieving or ill or angry. Or guilty.
Blithe and Fabian wore identical expressions, and the first thought that sprang to Hermione's mind was Who died? The words died on her lips as she remembered asking the same question to the Gringotts' director on the day Ron died. Her eyes filled with tears, and she turned her head, faking a brief coughing fit to cover both her aborted question and her expression.
"Sorry about that," she said, smiling brightly at them. "What's wrong?"
"Mum," Fabian said, "we've got something to tell you."
"Oh, God, you're not expelled, are you? We've barely started the term."
Blithe snorted, and Fabian swiftly elbowed her in the side. "Ow!" She rubbed her ribs, glaring at her brother. "Fabian got in a fight this afternoon."
"Oh, sure; you only lost Hogsmeade privileges because you were an innocent bystander."
"What on earth… You were both in a fight?" Hermione asked.
"It wasn't much of a fight, actually," Fabian said, preening a bit.
Blithe snickered. "It really wasn't," she said.
"Explain. Now." Hermione folded her arms across her chest.
Fabian heaved a noisy sigh. "Well. You know Michael Davies?" He looked to his mother for confirmation; Hermione nodded impatiently. "He said some rude things, and I punched him in the mouth." He shrugged and was silent.
"… And?"
"Dad would've been so proud, Mum. I followed through and everything, just like he taught me."
Hermione's eyebrows nearly reached her hairline. "The fight, Fabian."
"Yeah. Well. So Michael was on the ground, and Jim-James was holding me back, and Blithe—"
"—I came to see what was going on, and Michael told us what he said to Fabian, and I jumped on him and knocked the wind out of him," Blithe said. At Hermione's alarmed expression, she continued, "He's all right, Mum. More startled than anything; no broken bones."
"More's the pity," Fabian muttered.
"Too right," his sister agreed sotto voce.
"So, based on Michael Davies making one rude comment, the two of you attacked him?"
The twins exchanged those guilty looks again. "We haven't told you what he said yet," Fabian said, averting his eyes.
"We wanted to tell you, because the whole school will know—" Blithe began.
"—And we wanted you to hear it from us first," Fabian said.
"Does that mean that his comments were about me? Oh, dear, what was it?" Hermione smiled with amusement; she had expected this as a teacher at her children's school. "That I'm fat, I'm ugly, I wear Army boots, I ride a vacuum cleaner, what?"
Blithe closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "PeevestoldhimyouandSnapewerekissing."
"Peeves… what, exactly?"
"He said you and Snape were kissing," Fabian said, his mouth pinched with anger.
Hermione's jaw worked soundlessly for a moment. "Michael said that, did he?" She laughed shortly. "How interesting."
"I just wanted to shut him up, Mum, honest. He said that Snape was giving you 'after hours instruction,'" Fabian said. "He said you were a 'hot little piece,' what with Dad not even dead a year."
"He said what?" Blithe shrieked. "I didn't hear that part. Ooh, I should have landed on his bollocks. What a wanker!" Her gaze cut reflexively toward her mother, who didn't even blink at the epithet. "Mum, you okay?"
"I'm fine, sweetheart," Hermione answered automatically. "Are you… worried about what he said?"
"Not really; Snape said it—"
"Snape was there?" Hermione asked.
"He stopped the fight," Fabian said. "Blithe and I can't go to Hogsmeade for the entire term, and we have a detention with Professor Cherrington in Potions tomorrow."
"But Michael has detention with Filch every Saturday until end of term, plus no Hogsmeade, plus Potions detention." Blithe smiled a little smugly. "Snape was angrier about the gossiping than the fighting."
"Professor Snape, Blithe."
That was more like the mother Blithe knew. She sighed in relief, but tried to make it sound huffy.
"Let me tell you what Peeves saw," Hermione said. "We were having a conference in Headmistress McGonagall's office, and Professor Snape and I left together. Peeves saw us talking in the corridor and decided to amuse himself at our expense. That's all there was to it."
The twins nodded at one another, satisfied with her answer. "I thought it must be something like that," Fabian said. "I mean, you're old, but Snape's—" Hermione raised her eyebrow. "—Professor Snape's Jurassic."
Blithe laughed. "And surly. I'll bet if you didn't kiss him right, he'd take House Points." She affected a shrill soprano. "'But Snapey-darling,' you'd say, 'I left school forty years ago!'"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Professor Snape to you, brat, and I left school twenty years ago."
Blithe shrugged, weighing the air with her hands in a 'six of one, half-dozen of another' gesture.
"Although I bet they'd have a lot in common," Fabian said, snickering. "Remember how tough she was when she taught us our primary school lessons?"
"My hand still cramps up when I think about it. Day after day of nothing but pot hooks and latches, pot hooks and latches—"
"Enough, both of you," Hermione said sternly, chuckling despite herself. "Perhaps you'd both like to live with your Aunt Fleur for the summer, while I take myself off to Greece to loll about in the surf with a handsome young waiter."
Fabian flushed; ever since his pre-teen years, being around his Aunt Fleur was a painful and embarrassing experience. He didn't have his uncles' years of experience at dealing with the part-Veela; furthermore he was plagued by a painful sense of guilt at ogling his aunt, for heaven's sake.
Blithe narrowed her eyes; she, on the other hand, considered her Aunt Fleur a royal pain in the arse. Blithe had spent a weekend with her older cousins at Bill and Fleur's a few years ago, and came home seething. She ruthlessly mimicked her aunt: "'Ze young ladies, zey do not leave ze bedroom before ze hair, ze makeup, ze clothes, is parfait, parfait, parfait.' I thought she was talking about pudding." At the time, Blithe had been carrying a few extra kilos of puppy fat, and her aunt told her that she should perhaps concentrate on 'looking parfait, not eating it, non?'
"Oh, no, Mum, not Aunt Fleur. We'll behave," Blithe said, groaning. Fabian nodded emphatically. "I'm so glad Mum and Dad didn't send us to Beauxbatons; imagine an entire country full of Fleur," Blithe added, making her aunt's name sound like gagging.
It was on the tip of Hermione's tongue to call her sister-in-law "Phlegm." She stopped herself, knowing that if Blithe caught wind of the epithet Christmas could be awkward indeed.
"Most people in France are decent sorts, just like most people in Egypt," she said. "Your Aunt Fleur is… special," she said.
"Especially gitty, you mean," Blithe said.
Hermione shrugged.
Fabian cleared his throat. "Well, Mum, that's all we wanted to tell you. I've got to wash up before dinner." He'd got grass stains on his trousers and had lost a button during the struggle with the Gryffindors and with Jim-James.
"Um, yeah, you go ahead, Fabe. I'll see you in the Hall."
Fabian raised his eyebrows at his sister, but kissed their mother good-bye and left the room. When the door was closed, Blithe looked up at her mother.
"Mum, I'm sorry about yesterday. I didn't mean it."
Hermione nodded. "Which part didn't you mean, the hex, or calling a professor a bitch?"
"Neither, really, but mostly you." She chewed on her lip. "I'm really sorry."
"Blithe, would you call Professor McGonagall a bitch, or Professor Cherrington a prick?"
"No," the girl said miserably.
"You presumed on our relationship, Blithe, and if you do it again, I'll fight back in the same way." Blithe looked up at her, brow creased with confusion. "I'll embarrass you horribly in front of your friends and your enemies, because I know exactly how to do it."
Blithe's face was bright red, and she bit her lip. "I guess I'd deserve that."
"You can call me a bitch all you want, but you'd better not do it where I can hear you, understood?"
"Yes, Mum," Blithe said meekly.
"And about the hex… it's interesting that Ivy escaped as soon as I showed up, isn't it?"
Blithe scowled; she hadn't thought about it like that.
"By your report, she put you up to it, but she didn't stick around to share the blame with you."
"So you're going to give her detention, too?" Blithe asked, hope and dread warring for supremacy on her face.
Hermione shook her head slowly. "No," she said.
Blithe's mouth contorted with outrage. "That is so unfair."
"It probably is. But I won't punish her for taking advantage of you. This was a relatively harmless incident, although poor Serena was mortified; her blouse was rather transparent when drenched with bat bogeys." Hermione sighed. "Blithe, if you're satisfied to be Ivy's hatchet man and take the blame for it, that's your affair." She brushed Blithe's bangs away from her eyes. "I think you're better than that, though. If you're not satisfied with it, then it's up for you to change it."
Blithe nodded unhappily.
Hermione hugged her and kissed the top of her head. "Off you go, then. It's almost time for dinner."
Blithe paused near the door, before she ran back to hug her mother tightly. "I'm sorry, Mummy," she whispered brokenly.
"It's all right, sweetheart," Hermione said, holding her daughter and stroking her thick russet hair.
Hermione sat with her back against the rooftop greenhouse, watching the sunset; even in mid-September, the weather was fine enough for her to sit outside and drink a few glasses of wine for her birthday with no more outerwear than a crocheted shawl.
Her second and third weeks of classes had proceeded much more smoothly than the first, and she was much more at ease than she had been two weeks previously. The scandal the twins feared never materialised; most of the students thought that the 'old man' couldn't pull a pretty young widow, no matter how lonely and isolated she might be.
The young widow in question was sipping from her glass and enjoying the show of lights flickering to life in the castle and in Hogsmeade when she heard the door open.
"Who's out there?" a baritone voice barked.
"Hello, Professor Snape. It's I, Hermione."
He looked around the side of the greenhouse. "What on earth are you doing out here? I heard something; thought I'd be catching some students at necking."
"Sorry to disappoint," she said, saluting him with her glass.
"I'll leave you to it, then," he said, turning to leave.
"Oh, for goodness' sake, join me. This lovely bottle of Rioja will go to waste." She transfigured a stone into another glass, and he shrugged, sitting next to her on the flagstones.
"What's the occasion?" he asked.
"It's my birthday," she said.
"Explaining the plague of owls in the Hall," he said, raising his glass to her in silent tribute. "Made a good haul, did you?"
"Molly made this for me," she said, holding up one corner of her shawl.
"The colour choice is rather restrained for Molly."
She chuckled. "Isn't it? I gushed endlessly over some black cashmere yarn when we were out shopping and told her I'd just love to have a shawl made of it. She probably thinks it's dull as dishwater, but it suits me better than her favourite colours."
"Is the wine a gift, too?"
Hermione nodded. "Harry and Ginny. It arrived on the Express, though, not by owl. They like to pick up a case of the local vintage wherever they are and send it on to me. This season they're in Spain if you hadn't guessed." She took another drink. "The twins gave me some books from my wish list at Flourish and Blotts."
"Sensible of them."
"That was probably Molly's influence; I've dragged them through so many booksellers over the years they'd never willingly darken Flourish and Blotts' door."
He drank deeply; he'd had a long week. "I understand naming your son Fabian; I knew of the Prewetts. But where did you get 'Blithe?'"
Hermione laughed. "Wishful thinking. She was a dreadfully cranky baby and we hoped that the name might influence her. It didn't work; Molly still says that she's 'Blithe by name, but not by nature.'" She took a sip of her wine. "Blithe doesn't experience anything by half measures."
"I can attest to that," he said and didn't say anything more, which was probably for the best.
"Fabian, on the other hand, is the one I worry about. There's always a lot going on in his head and all of it complicated." Her expression was distant. "He's a really good kid, too good, sometimes. Ron was much better with him than I am; perhaps we're too much alike."
She laughed shortly and took another sip of wine. "What a busman's holiday for you, hmm? You get away from your students for one evening and spend the whole time talking about students."
He shrugged carelessly. "Either here or in the staff room. You'll find that we gossip about our students almost as much as the students gossip about us."
"Oh, surely you don't have to worry about that much; you're safe…" she began, but her voice faded away as his expression grew thunderous.
"Safe. You think I'm safe?" His lip curled and he looked away from her.
"Not in that… I… I just—" she said, stammering; he cut her off.
"Let me be clear on this, Professor Weasley. Even if I were unfortunate enough to be your friend, I would not be your personal eunuch. Whatever else, I am first and foremost a man."
She trembled beside him, blushing and casting her eyes down demurely and he felt the fierce thrill of his sexual power. Perhaps it was disused and a bit rusty about the edges, but it was still there.
She swallowed. "I didn't mean to insult you. I trust you, but I don't think that you're remotely harmless or powerless."
He leaned in closely, so closely that he could feel her exhaled breaths against his jaw. "What did you mean, then?" She looked up at him in alarm and he smirked. "I don't like the answers I'm coming up with, Professor." His mouth grazed the lobe of her ear. "I'm safe because… I'm a 'greasy git' and no woman will look twice at me?" He over-pronounced the 't' in 'git', and the sharply aspirated sound popped in her ear, making her jump.
"Severus…"
"I'm safe because… I'm an asexual overgrown bat?" He stroked the fabric over her hip in small, ticklish circles; she twitched as if she didn't know whether to lean into his caress or scoot away from it.
She closed her eyes and shuddered. "No," she murmured.
"Let me guess… you're going to create a charitable society to promote my welfare…" He spoke with his lips brushing the tender underside of her jaw.
"You're such a prat," she whispered.
"I know," he said.
God, she missed kissing. The sweetly foreign taste of a man's mouth, the melting feeling of warm, moist lips pressed to hers, the rasp of beard or stubble against smooth skin. Kissing a man in a sexual way as opposed to that puckered-lipped, funereal cheek-kissing way that shouldn't be called 'kissing.'
This wasn't like her first kiss as a tremulous fifteen year old when she didn't know to angle her face just so to free her nose from Viktor's smothering cheek, didn't know what to do with his tongue in her mouth. It wasn't even like her first kiss with Ron. Ron's first kiss had made her want more and more and more even though she hadn't known what that more would be like.
With this first, she had behind her many pleasurable and varied years of experience at kissing, at lovemaking, at fucking. She had thought that wonder and delight at a mere kiss were behind her, too. She could be surprisingly content if this were the sum total of it, she thought, even as her nipples hardened and her quim throbbed with desire and foreknowledge of more.
Her arms hung limply around his neck, forgotten, as he moulded her mouth with his own, one arm tightly around her waist, his other hand twined in her hair. He sucked and supped at her lips, nibbling the underside of her upper lip, pressing her lower lip between his lips and drawing it out slowly with the faintest scrape of teeth.
He released her and she wobbled a little, dazed. She couldn't breathe. She was going to die of suffocation right there with that vapid, star-struck look on her face. He was so close that she could feel warmth radiating from him, could smell the honey-scented Rioja on his breath.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she said, her voice flat. "I'm sorry, Pr—Severus. I'm… I'm…" She shook her hands out so they dangled from her wrists. "I'm mangling this, is what."
She saw the exact moment her words penetrated. He pulled away from her and rose to his feet. His expression was shuttered, his posture rigid. She stood, putting her hand on his forearm. "No, not like you think."
"How do you know what I think?" he asked repressively.
"I don't know! I don't know. I know what I'd think, if you just said that to me."
"What would you think?"
"I'd think you weren't interested, that I'd read it wrong." She pushed her hair back from her face with an impatient gesture. "I haven't kissed anyone other than Ron Weasley since I was seventeen; I haven't wanted to. And I don't…" He drew back, and tried to pull his arm free, but she wrapped her other arm around him, like an especially stubborn Devil's Snare. "I don't know if I'm brave enough. To start something else that's new. Right now. That's all."
His expression softened somehow, and he nodded. "That's… understandable."
"I'm not—I miss—it's so—oh!" she cried in frustration. "I want to do the right thing for everyone. I can't bear to think of getting this wrong."
"Perhaps you think too much," he said.
"I know I do, but—" she began, but her voice died in her throat as he moved closer to her. She looked up at him, moistening her lips, swallowing nervously.
He took her hand between his own and easily peeled open her clenched fist. His black gaze burned into hers as he raised her hand to his mouth and kissed her moist palm. He curled her fingers back over his kiss, as if giving it to her for safekeeping.
Releasing her hand, he took his wineglass and raised it. "To bravery," he said, and bolted the last half-inch of wine.
"Bravery," she echoed, although her glass was empty.
"Please excuse me; I need to check on my students before retiring," he said formally.
"Yes, of course," she replied, an automaton of herself, and he left her standing there watching him retreat.
A/N: Why is this chapter much longer than the others? Thank my beta, selened, who prompted me with some places where I could amp up the drama.
The bit about professional Quidditch in the US: this came from a year-old discussion on the Sycophant Hex Forum, where a few of us tried to visualize an American Magical World. I theorized that, like soccer, Quidditch would be very popular as a children's sport, but not very popular as a professional sport (the Salem Academy's presence at the Quidditch World Cup notwithstanding).
The name 'Deerinwater' is a not-uncommon Texas and Oklahoma name; it very likely has its roots in Native American culture, although I must plead ignorance as to the specifics. I chose it because it sounds exotically Texan and very possibly magical. Go Sweetwater All-Stars! Boo, Harry, for luring away their greatest-ever Beater!
'Pot hooks and latches' is an old-fashioned British method of teaching small children how to write the alphabet. I expect that Hermione researched traditional Wizard home-schooling techniques, rather than relying solely upon Muggle primary school education techniques.
Thanks for reading and reviewing!