Disclaimer: I do not own any characters or ideas which you recognise as being from JK Rowling's Harry Potter series or any other trademarked or copyrighted work. The plot of this story is my own, but I have no intention of making any money from it.
Chapter 10
It was only three days later that, as Hermione sat watching Newsnight, she heard a tapping at her window. Hurriedly, she raced across the room to let the huge brown barn owl in, praying to any deities which might be listening that none of her neighbours had noticed it. The note attached was brief, but to the point:
Dear Helena,
I believe I have found the solution to your most interesting charms dilemma, which we discussed last time. Meet me on Sunday to discuss? Hyde Park, 6pm. You bring the fish and chips.
SS
She laughed aloud at his audacity. Hurriedly, she grabbed a piece of notepaper off her desk. Hardly parchment, but it would do.
Dear Severus,
What if I were unavoidably busy on Sunday evening? Besides, how would a poor foolish girl like me know what you want from the fish and chip shop?
Helena
The response was surprisingly fast. Hermione had always expected that post owls travelled through some kind of wormhole – how on earth had it got to Scotland and back in the space of ten minutes? Maybe they apparated or something. Hmm... something to ask Severus at some point.
Helena,
You're not. Otherwise you would have said so by now. I note that you used the subjunctive "if I were" as opposed to simply declining. So, 6 pm then.
SS
PS. Roe and chips, don't hold the mushy peas.
She laughed even louder this time. Well, he did have a point.
Severus,
Mushy peas are an abomination. Buy them yourself. Besides, my promise definitely extended only to fish and chips.
H.
Helena,
You wound me with your semantics. Very well, I will do the gentlemanly thing and acquiesce to your request. I'll meet you at the horrendously named Joy of Life Fountain.
SS
Hermione sniggered, then sighed. Why, oh why, was he so perfect for her, but also an evil murderer? Trust her luck. She had thought about this a lot over the past few days, especially as being an MP was hardly a riveting job, when all she had to do was smile and nod. Of course, that was the only reason her ex-professor occupied so many of her thoughts. Hermione had decided that, since it looked like she'd be having at least a few more dates with Snape, enough with the Occuling against him specifically, because she couldn't stand the migraines. She would just have to amalgamate the memories of evil-Snape with Severus. This seemed to be working – now, she couldn't think of the astronomy tower without seeing his black eyes gazing into hers. Funnily enough, however, the dinner where he had acted as the man of her dreams remained unencumbered by anger, but she was sure that her intellectual knowledge that he was evil would pop up eventually and sort her brain out soon.
Oh shit. Had she just thought the phrase 'man of her dreams' in relation to Severus? They'd only been on two dates, for heavens' sake!
Severus,
See you there.
Helena.
When Severus' owl, Anubis, returned with this last missive, he smiled weakly to himself before incinerating it as he had the others. He drained the little remaining in the glass of firewhiskey at his elbow, before bringing it crashing down onto the desk. Was it a bad thing that the only way he could write to the woman was after four glasses of firewhiskey had lowered his inhibitions enough for him to say what he was actually thinking? Probably. Still, he seemed to have struck the right note, because she'd agreed to meet him again. Severus shook his head. This was entirely ridiculous. He'd spent the past three days obsessed by that little problem of hers, purely because it was intellectually interesting of course. Then, he'd written four drafts of the note, each of which sounded more dumb and lovesick than the last, before giving up completely and getting smashed on firewhiskey and sending off what was perhaps the least emotional note ever. Which had worked.
Dear God, had he just thought the word lovesick in relation to her? Bugger. He'd only met the woman twice, for heavens' sake!
Hermione was sitting on the edge of the fountain, reading one of her favourite novels when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to smile at Severus, and stowed the book in her beaded handbag as she stood up to greet him.
He gave her a peck on the cheek, which made her blush, and his skin flushed a little too. "Em.. hello, Helena," he muttered.
"Hello, Severus."
She picked up the white plastic bag containing the fish and chips and put her arm through his.
"Terry Pratchett?" he asked her, gesturing the handbag where she had stowed the novel as they began to walk. "I'd have thought you were more the type to be reading the original Shakespeare instead of parodies."
She smiled. "I do love the original play, but Shakespeare's tragedies never really appealed in the same way as the comedies, so this version of Macbeth is by far my favourite. Discworld is rather amusing overall of course, though his ideas of how magic works are obviously fatally flawed."
He replied, "I'm not so sure. I mean, obviously, the idea that using magic should be avoided at all costs is wrong, for example, you've obviously got warming charms on the food in that bag. That's not hurting anyone, nor draining you in particular. But the fact that there is always a price to be paid, like in Witches Abroad – sometimes, people forget that. They forget that every spell drains you of energy, and that everyone, I mean everyone, has their limitations."
Severus paused, seeming to notice that he'd rather made a speech there. Hermione was fascinated – why on earth was the Death Eater arguing the point of view of a Muggle author?
"You seem to be rather up to date on Muggle fantasy novels, for a wizard," she commented.
He shrugged. "I like to be well read. And I have to admit, Muggle Literature far outstrips our own. The trouble with having a society which hasn't progressed since the 1800s is just that – no progress since the 1800s!"
Fortunately for Hermione, it was at this point that they reached their destination. She really didn't want to have to enter into a deep sociological debate on wizarding society because she'd have no way of not revealing her extensive knowledge of the British version, and absolute ignorance of the American.
Severus had stopped at what looked to her like the middle of a green area of parkland. She noticed him surreptitiously wave his arm at the empty air and mutter something, then he stepped forward and vanished into thin air. She was about to gasp in shock, but then realised that she really ought to be used to it by now, she was a witch after all! She stepped forward after him.
Hermione found herself under a huge oak tree, whose branches stretched up to the sky as though they were reaching for heaven. Since it was 6 pm in mid-December, there were no leaves on them, or sun to shine through, but she could see the twinkling of the stars above, despite the lights and smog of London. She felt suddenly much warmer, despite the chilly air, and shrugged off her long blue coat, dumping it in a pile on the suddenly bone dry earth, followed by her gloves and scarf. She was left in her purple smock, black woolen tights, and knee-high black boots.
The tree was truly enormous. The trunk alone must have been ten metres in diameter. The gnarled roots stretched outwards, encircling a large hollow in the base of the tree. There was a small light bobbing in the air just above the hollow, which illuminated the scene below. A blue picnic blanket covered the ground, and on it sat a bottle of white wine and two glasses, and a small styrofoam container.
Severus had shed his own coat and was standing next to her in an open necked shirt and black jeans. She paused to admire the view – he looked fabulous in them. Though why a pure-blood supremacist was wearing jeans... She noticed suddenly that he was looking at her nervously. "Is it OK?"
"It's perfect, Severus." She smiled at him, feeling her heart lift a little seeing him mirror the expression.
She sat down on the rug and motioned to him to join her, which he did, folding up against the base of the tree like a cat.
"Now," she said in a businesslike tone as she began to unpack her offering of fish and chips. "You said you'd managed to find a solution to my charms problem?"
"Yes. It's quite simple really."
She glared at him. He smirked, raising an eyebrow. She felt a shiver go through her, and nearly lost her train of thought. That eyebrow...
"Ahem. Anyway. If it's so simple, care to demonstrate?"
Seeming to sense the reason for her sudden discomfort, he smirked a little more and then picked up a handful of dirt from the earth. He levitated it to about a foot in the air, then pointed at the ground below it and said, "Orbis terrarum citatus vos, congruens ut pondus."
The clod of earth dropped immediately to the floor. With a grin, he flicked his wand and transformed it into a minute version of the woman next to him, boots and all, before enlarging it to full size. He bowed, and gestured to the real Hermione. She stood, and tried to lift herself up (which was a very surreal thing to do!). Her hand went straight through the illusion's stomach. With a grin, she took out her own wand and cast "illuisire repellus".
Severus looked on with interest. "Interesting," he muttered. "Literally making the illusion repel anyone who comes near it. I presume you're using the interactions between the electrons in the clod of dirt itself and the atoms in your own body?"
"Right in one," she said, turning to him. "It took a while, but once you get the particles behaving as the illusion of the figurine to believe that they're actually one entity, you can charm them together."
Turning back to the image of herself, she gave it a shove. Instead of simply collapsing as the lighter people in Harry's basement tended to do, it moved slightly before bouncing back. She shoved it harder, and it fell backwards onto the floor. Bending over, she tried to lift it, but it was too heavy. She estimated, in fact, that it weighed about the same as her. Shrinking the image down to the size of her handbag, she tried again to lift it. This time, it was lighter, and she could lift it with one hand.
Ecstatic, Hermione unceremoniously dropped the mini-Hermione back to earth and threw herself on Severus. Literally. He responded with an "oof!" of pain, which soon turned into a moan of pleasure as she started kissing him victoriously.
"You're," kiss. "A," kiss. "Bloody," kiss. "Genius!" kiss.
"I endeavour to please," he muttered breathlessly, disentangling himself somewhat.
Recalling herself, Hermione sat back. Murderer, murderer, must remember... Somehow, she couldn't reconcile the image of the broken body with the man sitting beside her. "That's brilliant. You somehow did a variation of the summoning charm on the floor, I presume, which increased proportional to the size of the figurine. That's genius!"
He grinned at her smugly, delirious in triumph. "I know. I just got the ground to have a general summoning charm on the dirt, just enough to oppose the levitation I'd done, increasing it proportional to the cube of the enlargement factor of the engorgio, which of course corresponds to volume and hence mass."
"That's fantastic! And of course, I could charm as much floor as I wanted, all at once! So it would work for multiple characters!" Hermione was thinking out loud now.
He frowned a little. "I suppose it would. Please tell me you're not creating an army or something!" Severus laughed a little, to show he was joking.
She hurriedly shook her head. "Of course not!" She decided to change the subject again, before he started wondering exactly what she did plan to do.
"Shall we eat? I'm starving!" She cast one last warming charm on the fish and chips, before covering hers in salt and vinegar and starting to munch. She thought ruefully that any of the calories she had managed to burn when training at Harry's were definitely being replaced by the second, but the smell was just too good.
Severus reached across her and poured them both some wine, before grabbing the styrofoam container she'd noticed earlier. He opened it, then waved it under her nose with a mischievous grin.
She mock-glared. "I told you that mushy peas are evil!"
Their laughter echoed under the trees. Or would have done, except that Severus' strong wards included excellent silencing charms.
Author's Note:
Right then. Hope you enjoyed date number two. Now that we've got the beginnings of a relationship sorted, it's on with the plot! :) There's another outside reference to be caught in this chapter - this one's really simple though, so only five points available for whoever catches it. :)