AN: Thanks to everyone who reviewed (and those who asked for story alerts) you've all really made my day :) . Now, without further delay, onwards fanfic fans!
Disclaimer: I wish I was, but I'm not, and I never will be...you know what I mean...
Chapter Two
The sun had barely risen over the misty city as one black clad figure stalked through the London streets. He could, of course, have apparated into the alleyway containing the phone booth that was the visitors entrance to the ministry, but he felt that a brisk walk through the cool morning air would clear his head of the last remnants of his headache- a parting gift from the entire large bottle of firewhiskey he had sunk the previous evening). A final turn and the ministry, or at least the wall pretending not to be the ministry, stood before him. taking a deep breath and summoning his most intimidating expression, Severus slammed open the door to the phone box as if it had personally wronged him on some level, satisfied with the sound it made as it rebounded back to close behind him. he then proceeded to punch the relevant numbers and growl at the infuriatingly cool female voice that questioned him.
Surely there had to be a way to make this infernal thing sink faster, one simply could not look suitable frightening when trapped in a gracefully descending box. Stomping across the newly remodelled atrium towards the plump wizard (he was pleased to note an ex-student of his, a Hufflepuff is he wasn't mistaken) sitting behind the security desk, Severus did not so much as glance at the fountain with it's 5 figures all smiling serenely.
"P-professor Snape, sir!" the wizard behind the desk squeaked, ah it was like being back in his labs at Hogwarts, there were certainly days when he missed all those terrified faces all both staring at him and trying not to look lest he deduct points or give them detention. From somewhere, the wizard before him seemed to pull enough courage to cease his stammering. "I am afraid I am required to weigh your wand." He said in a would be confident voice, "if you wouldn't mind just...handing... it..." he trailed off, once more faltering under the imperious stare of the bat of the dungeons. Severus raised an eyebrow. He had to admit that he did find his ex-students reaction to him amusing, but now he had more pressing things to attend to, like securing his freedom.
With only the slightest flick of his wrist, he produced his wand, his faithful friend, and handed it over to the wizard. Who took it almost reverently and placed it on the gold scales before him. "so that's-"
"The world need not know, Mr Benjamin. Thank you." he cut across the wizard in his usual curt manner. Looking shocked but not altogether surprised, Mr Benjamin simple nodded, speared the thin strip of parchment and handed back the wand. Severus returned it to his sleeve and marched off towards the lifts.
Exiting at the relevant floor, Severus found himself facing a wide reception desk, the blond witch behind it had what appeared to be a muggle telephone jammed between her ear and her shoulder and was saying things like "he never!" and "no!" or else, "oh my god, that's like so funny!" whenever the squeaking voice coming out of the receiver drew breath. She glanced up as the elevator doors parted and raised a finger to the newcomer as if to imply that she was very busy and would be with him in a moment, before resuming filing her nails, never missing a beat in her conversation.
Severus folded his arms across his chest. He didn't recognise this girl from Hogwarts, which was strange as she was easily young enough to have been at the school during the time of Harry Potter, no, repress the shudder, Severus, that's it, don't think of him... or her. After what was easily 10 minutes, and after Severus' look of mild impatience had transmuted into a full on scowl, the witch before him finally hung up the phone and turned a beaming smile one him, not so much as blinking when he failed to return it.
"Welcome to the Department of Magical Union" she bubbled, "my name is Tilley, and I am in charge of wedding dates. So, who's the lucky bride and which date would you like? I must say getting here early was a smart move, I expect there'll be a scrum any second." As she spoke she pulled a large shocking pink diary from her desk drawer.
"I wish to speak to your head of department." He stated in as calm a voice as he could manage.
"Have you already got a date set then? Lets have it and I'll look you up on the system, book you an appointment with B, Mr...er?" Why was she still smiling at him like that? And how was it she didn't know who he was? Everyone in the wizarding world knew who he was.
"Snape," he growled, "Severus Snape. Don't even bother opening that book." This time she did look a little surprised at least, and she did cease with the book half open. "Listen very carefully, as I do not enjoy repeating myself, I wish to speak to your head of department."
Tilley raised her eyebrows, smile now back in place, "well, Mr Severus Snape, to see our head of department, you need to make an appointment, and to make an appointment you need to be on the system. To get you on the system, I need a brides name and a wedding date. You got that, sweetie?" she told him in a firm but still bright voice. It took all of Severus' control not to explode at being called sweetie, let alone being addressed much in the manner someone might tell a three year old that it would have to wait until it got home to have some chocolate.
What pushed his restraint even further, if possible, was a small laugh from behind him. He spun around and came face to face with the one person he distinctly remembered declaring that he never wanted to lay eyes on again. His would be wife, Miss Hermione Granger. "Good morning, Severus." She said politely, a smile still pulling at her lips as she tried not to laugh.
"I do not believe I gave you leave to use my first name." He breathed in a deadly whisper. Hermione ignored him and passed him towards the desk.
""Welcome to the Department of Magical Union" The receptionist was off again, "my name is Tilley, and I am in charge of wedding dates. Can I take your name and your preferred date?"
Hermione smiled again, it was like they were feeding off each other, Severus looked on in disbelief. "Hermione Jean Granger, what's the last possible date you've got? It would seem my bridegroom is a little reluctant." Both girls giggled as if sharing some inside joke.
"Sure, honey, I can put you in at 3pm? Got yourself a commitment-phobe have you? Never mind, I'm sure he'll come round, beautiful thing like you. Who's the lucky fella?" the book was open and Tilley was running her wand down the page without even looking in that direction, still grinning at Hermione.
"He is." Hermione said nodding her head in Severus' direction. Tilley openly gasped and then burst out laughing. Severus' already raised eyebrows threatened to vanish into his hairline altogether.
"For real?" Tilley gasped as she finally brought herself back under control, "well, best of luck to you, I say. I mean, talk about rude. Still, I guess he just needs a strong woman like you to put him in his place." Severus refused to let his jaw drop. At no point did he need anyone to put him anywhere.
"Thank you." Hermione was clearly still fighting her own laughter. She opened her mouth as if to make further comment. But Severus, regaining the use of his stunned tongue, cut in.
"Now that my...fiancée" he seemed to have trouble forcing the word out from between his lips, "has set the relevant date, may I please see your department head?" exasperated politeness dripping from every word as he placed both hands on the desk, making an effort to be even more menacing
"We." Hermione corrected him; she even had the audacity to turn her smile on him.
"What?" he glowered, not looking her except from the very corner of his eye.
"We. May we please see your department head?" She said patiently. Once again, Severus Snape found himself being talked to like a toddler. Where was the fear? Maybe he truly had made a mistake in leaving off his billowing black teaching robes this morning.
"Fine. May we please, see your department head? Now." Patience barely hanging on by a thread, Severus spoke every word through gritted teeth.
"Certainly." Tilley responded cheerfully. She pulled yet another bright pink diary from her desk and flicked to the relevant page. "I can squeeze you I to see B in just under an hour, is that okay?" she addressed Hermione, who returned another bright smile and nodded, deeming it to be perfect. "Great, if you'd both like to just step through that door to your right, you can wait together, in private." She said with what Severus was sure was a wink. Hermione giggled again and thanked the bubbly secretary.
"Come on then, Fiancé." Hermione said brightly, pulling an outright stunned Severus along by the hand through the door.
As soon as the door shut behind them Severus wrenched his hand away. "What in the name of Merlin do you think you are doing?" he spat. Hermione made her way over to one of the chairs that littered the room in groups of four around small tables covered in outdated copies of Witch Weekly, and the Daily Prophet.
"Oh, get over it." Hermione told him sternly, "You're not my teacher anymore, in fact your not even a teacher anymore. You think you can just march in here and scare everyone into doing what you want them to, but I've got news for you, you can't. It won't work. I've seen the other side to you, as have so many others when the war finished, so we know you're not that big nasty monster you pretend to be. Maybe you need a new tactic, like being nice to people." Severus was glad that her words came from behind a copy of Witch Weekly from about 5 years ago, because his jaw actually had dropped that time. Hermione was glad she could deliver her speech from behind the relative safety of the pages, because she wasn't as sure as she sounded that he wasn't every bit as scary as he had been when he had been her teacher. She just thought maybe if she had to marry the guy, she'd better get over her fear and force him to at least pretend to respect her.
"I see no evidence that being nice to anyone will get me anywhere." he finally ground out.
"Yuhuh, because ranting and raving got you into his room, and me asking nicely and going along with their protocol caused us to still be out there." In her mind, Hermione did a small victory dance into the stunned silence. She heard a chair at the same table as her own creak as someone sank into it and then the familiar sound of a newspaper being opened. She chanced a glance from behind her own magazine, his eyes weren't moving across the page and his jaw was clenched so tight she thought he might do himself an injury.
About five minutes later, Hermione could stand the frigid silence no more. She decided that it was time for drastic measures; she would offer him an olive branch. "It says here that there is much evidence to suggest that lacewig flies can be replaced with wax worms when making polyjuice potion to almost double the potions effective life. Is that true?" she asked in an innocent tone of pure interest. It said no such thing, she just guessed that in his standing as the youngest ever potions master and the holder of the record for Hogwarts highest NEWT potions score, he would feel outraged enough to shatter the theory into smithereens. She guessed right.
"What utter rot. Adding wax worms to a potion as volatile as polyjuice would at best cause it to explode and thus eradicate which ever misguided dunderhead was idiot enough to try it and at worst cause it to transmute into a powerful poison." He had answered on autopilot, slamming down his paper in the process. Oh well, he had said it now, he couldn't very well just take it back, could he.
"Then perhaps this hypothetical dunderhead would have thought to add a bezoar derivative as well as a little essence of arnica to counteract the more poisonous properties."
In his head Severus worked the calculations, "no." He said finally, "a bezoar derivative would have no effect. The hypothetical dunderhead, as you put it, would have to compound a proper antidote to the poison he had unwittingly made, and also find a more apt replacement for the lacewig flies as wax worms alone would not be enough to substitute their magical value." He paused in thought for a moment, "perhaps it would be possible if you were to soak winter thyme in essence of bergamot, then add it gradually to the mixture, but no, that would then counteract the boomslang skin, so you'd have to..." he trailed off, suddenly suspicious, "Miss Granger, why would there be an article on a potion that is not only wholly useless in day to day life, as well as being extremely difficult to brew, in Witch Weekly magazine?"
"Do you think it's all that difficult to brew, then?" She asked, skirting around the question.
"I would not expect anyone below Sixth year to be able to brew it to an even mediocre standard. Why are you avoiding my question?" he was staring at her now, looking straight into her eyes, she felt her response catch in her throat, and then before she could stop herself:
"I brewed it in my second year." She saw a glimmer of triumph in his eyes dark depths before all was locked away again. Her hands flew over her mouth as if she could force the words somehow to go back in.
"I know," he said with a slightly malicious sneer, but there was something else in his voice too, almost, dare she think it, pride? That one of his students could pull of such a feat, surely not. "Who do you think had to brew the antidote for your little cross species sojourn?" Hermione blushed just slightly, she hadn't thought of that. It should have been obvious, who else at Hogwarts would have had the knowledge but their much feared potions professor.
After a short pause, just long enough for the silence to slip back into he uncomfortable, but not long enough for Severus to have returned to his paper, Hermione once again found herself speaking. "What made you stop teaching? I mean, Luna says that the guy who's there now doesn't have a patch on you. She says he teaches stuff you taught us in our third year as OWL." It came out in a bit of a rush, and she found herself blushing again as he surveyed her, almost as if summing up whether to answer, or how much to tell her.
"I had no great desire to return to Hogwarts, Miss Granger." He confessed slowly, as if he weighed each word before he spoke it. "No great want to be confronted and reminded everyday of all the wounds I have caused. As it happens, it scarcely mattered where I go, I should have learnt long ago that you cannot escape the past by simply walking away." His voice seemed almost sad to Hermione, who was completely caught off guard by his admonition, she had thought he was going to refuse to answer her.
"You're right. You can't just walk away from the past. No one can. But with the help of a few good friends, it can become an easier burden to bear." She said softly, thinking of her parents, whom she had never been able to find in Australia. She had mourned them as they had died, and deep in her heart she thought herself their killer, because it had been she who had taken them out of themselves, who had played god with their consciousness.
"Bloody Gryffindor sentimentality." Severus hissed, making Hermione jump in his sudden anger. "Be friends with the world and it's wife if you could, wouldn't you. Oh, share the load, help each other" he mocked, "lay down your life at the alter of friendship. Pah, your morals wouldn't last a second in the real world. You're but a child, you can never understand."
"of course, "she rejoined, "it's better to go through everything alone, isn't it, better to hurt those around you, even those who offer you friendship, than to let even the possibility of them hurting you through your steely defences. Friendship won the war. Friendship, loyalty and courage."
"Friendship? Loyalty! Courage?" his voice rising with every word, "no, my poor misguided Gryffindor, secrets won the war. Lies won the war. Ultimately betrayal won the war. Oh I speak not of my betrayal of the dark lord, I am not yet that egotistical to presume that I won the war singlehanded, no. I talk of Dumbledore and his foolish plots, and yet here he stands, a hero, they call him; him and all the idiots who followed him, willingly blind to his greater good."
"And yet you stood amongst those idiots. You worked with them, and you too followed blindly Dumbledore's plan. And why, because you trusted him, we all trusted him, and we were rewarded for our trust with victory." Her own voice matched his, surprising herself with the force of her words. "You can't deny that. We all worked together, though we may not have known it, we all pushed through as friends."
"Oh I see, of course, you imagined yourself to be my friend did you, after I killed Dumbledore? And Minerva, when I was letting the Carrows torture students, Minerva was being my friend was she by disrupting my pans at every turn? When she and the other interfering order members tried at every turn to kill me off, that was friendship was it? And on the other hand, when the Malfoy's offered me shelter when no one else would, that I suppose was not friendship, because they were no on our side, and so how could they show anything akin to what the right and noble Gryffindors feel? No, obviously, when Dolohov healed my wounds, because Poppy turned me away, he was doing it out of spite, that could not be friendship." His rant left him breathing heavily and on his feet, he didn't remember rising to tower over her, nor did he remember beginning to pace.
"I didn't say that the other side had no Gryffindor qualities. Quite the contrary, I believe that everyone has some of each houses qualities, no one can be 100% brave, or 100% cunning. Do you know, I think I might quite enjoy being married to you, obviously someone needs to show you that not everything in life is black and white, or more, red and green." She told him calmly.
"Miss Granger, I have no intention of marrying you." he told her abruptly. "In fact, It can safely be said that I would rather snap my wand right now, sign over my account to the goblins and live out the rest of my days as a one of the muggle homeless than marry you."
With that he stormed out of the waiting area, ignoring Tilley on reception who gave him a cheerful "Thank you for visiting, see you again soon." In less than five minutes he had flung his visitors badge back at the wizard on the security desk and marched out into the murky morning light of muggle London. Needing to somehow release some of his rage he promptly kicked the dustbin next to the phone booth and was rewarded with a cracking sound and a stab of pain as one of his toes snapped.
Meanwhile, up in the waiting room, Hermione sat in stunned silence, staring at the door Severus had just exited through.
"Did I hear Mr Snape leaving?" A kindly voice asked from the door on the far wall. In the doorway stood a short witch with tightly curled black hair and light grey eyes. "My name is Bianca, I am head of this department," she offered her hand out to Hermione, who shook it, still slightly dazed. "Tilley tells me that your future husband would like an urgent work with me, and that you are going to accompany him?"
"Apparently, he's not my future husband." Hermione told her in a far away voice more commonly associated with Luna Lovegood. "Apparently, he's going to become a muggle instead."
"I see." Bianca commented slowly, "well, in that case, perhaps you'd like to come into my office for a cup of tea and we can talk over your options." Hermione nodded a little numbly and soon found herself being guided into another comfortable chair and a hot cup of tea being pushed gently into her hands. "Now, lets see what we've got." Bianca rummaged for a moment in a filing cabinet behind her desk before pulling out a rather thick file. She opened it and began flicking through. "Oh yes, I remember. Yours was a special case. You see when we first started the matching process; we looked at NEWT scores to determine which subjects people had been most interested in and indeed, which they had done best in. Potions gave us a very small selection, about 12 people of either gender. We then used the IT - that's Interest Tracker – don't worry, everyone has one, it's just a way the ministry keeps an eye on who has an interest in things like magical animals that might be under strict bans and other more serious dark arts. It's not 100% accurate of course, like anything it can be hoodwinked. Anyway, that narrowed our list even further. Everyone was given a compatibility percentage and yourself and Severus Snape were the closest match we were given. You were also the only two people to be given only one match each. "
Hermione sipped her tea. "But if we only have one match each, what happens now?" It didn't really matter, she was determined; she would marry Severus Snape, even if only to prove that Gryffindors and Slytherins could get along.
"Well, dear, that all depends on how serious Mr Snape was with his threat to leave the wizarding world. I know that he's a half-blood so must have some degree of knowledge of the workings of the muggle world, but it also says here that he has spent next to no time in the muggle world since his 11th birthday, so I'd say it's not a place he wants to go now. If, however, he does choose to become a muggle, his wand will be snapped, his gold for the majority, confiscated, as is wizarding custom for those who have been banished. Then, you, I'm afraid will be faced with either joining him there or else being repeatedly retested until another match is found for you. I should warn you, Hermione, may I call you by your first name? That those you are tested against will include anyone unmarried at the time, including those currently serving in Azkaban, but who are to be released, or are at least allowed conjugal visits."
"Thank you for that information." Hermione said politely, "I'm sure that Severus won't make good on his threat. He's an intelligent man, after all, and besides, I'm certain I can persuade him." her mind already planning out her attack, she once again thanked Bianca, for the tea this time, and was off. She needed to find someone to help her with her plan, and there was only one woman for that job – Ginny Potter.
AN: Well that concludes chapter two. Hope your still enjoying it. As always, any pointers gratefully received (I'm working on my grammar and spelling – which was commented on in the previous chapter - so hopefully there shouldn't be any huge glaring errors). The one that'll probably get me is apparating, aparrating, or apparrating – I haven't got my books at the moment so I can't check... anyhow. More updates coming (hopefully) soon, as I seem to have been gifted with some free time (watch as that jinxed it!) Hugs and cookies, ForeverPandora