A Room of One's Own – Chapter 8

The weekend seemed an interminable stretch of boredom.  It was spent in her mother-in-laws kitchen baking masses of treacle tarts and mince pies for the upcoming holiday.  It was the done thing every year.  

Ginny was there too, and Harry, and the children.  Ginny and Harry made Hermione wince they were so happy.  And, when she thought about it, she supposed that no one deserved happiness as much as Harry.  She was pleased for them both, but it hurt her, it twisted at something deep down inside of her to see how much Harry and Ginny had in common, how they shared a family, and one another's joy and passion for Quidditch; how they were able to sooth one another's fears, having shared a common past filled with fear and possession by a darkness so much larger and more powerful than they.  They were both a balm and a delight to one another in ways that she and Ron had never been, and she didn't really need the reminder.

Slipping out of the kitchen unnoticed, Hermione made her way behind the tool shed, fished around in her pocket for a fag, and lit it, inhaling deeply, and holding it for a moment, before exhaling and leaning back against the small structure, to stare off across the yard to the woods beyond.  It was getting colder in the daytime now.  She wondered if there would be snow for Christmas.  There often was at the Burrow, but almost never in London.  Sometimes she missed Hogwarts.  The snow there had been frequent, and had stayed on the ground longer than a day.  It had been beautiful, and pristine.

She thought of waking, snuggled deep beneath the blankets in Gryffindor tower, and of sticking her nose out and breathing the bracing air in the dormitories, eager for a new day of learning.  She shook her head and smiled wryly.  She needed to stop living in the past.  She wasn't a child anymore.  In fact, she hadn't been a child for a very long time.  Sometimes she wondered if she ever had.  

She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't been trying to look after someone.  First, before Hogwarts, it was her sickly grandmother who had lived with them until the year before Hermione went to Hogwarts.  Then, when she got to school, it was Harry and Ron, and whomever else would allow her to take them under her wing, and now it was just Ron, but 'just Ron' sometimes felt like a full time job in and of itself.

There was a shuffle of footsteps just the other side of the shed, and Hermione tossed the fag on the ground, crushing it under the sole of her boot, just as Harry appeared around the corner.  "There you are," he said with a smile.  She smiled back, but it was forced, and she was sure that the fact must be noticeable.

Obviously it was, because Harry's brow furrowed a little.  He sniffed.  "Have you been smoking?"

"Maybe…"  She smiled in earnest then, and he smiled back.

"Since when do you smoke?"

"Since-since forever, it seems.  I don't remember when I started; a while ago."

Harry just shrugged and leaned back against the shed beside her, following her gaze toward the trees.  "So you're working for Snape, I hear…"

She nodded.  "Uh-huh."

"And how's that?"  He was trying to sound casual, but there was an all too obvious hunger in his voice.  She let her eyes slid shut.  Why, oh why, had Ron told Harry…?  "That bad, eh?"  Harry said.  She could hear a smile in his voice.

"No…"  She opened her eyes again and looked over at him.  "Not bad, just…just different.  He's different…"

"Different?  Different, how?"

"Just more settled I guess.  He seems happy…  But, Harry…"  She reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder.  "I think he would want to be left alone.  I know you owe him a lot and you would like to see him properly and publically acknowledged for his services to you, and to the Order, but he is intensely private, and…"

Harry nodded.  "I know.  I do.  It's just that-well, he's the only real connection to my Mum that I have left, and it would be nice to-I don't know-to just be able to talk to him, I guess-about her, you know."

"Maybe he doesn't want to talk about her."  Her tone was short and curt, and she couldn't help but wonder why.  Harry must have wondered the same thing because he looked at her a little oddly out of the corner of his eye before replying.

"Maybe not, but it would at least be nice to have the chance to see."

Hermione shrugged.  "Yes, I suppose it would."

Harry was still staring at her as though he didn't know whether to be offended or worried, but he seemed to shake it off fairly easily.  "Well, listen, Ron is looking for you.  He said something about needing your help with something upstairs.  I think he's trying to figure out what to get Ginny and Mum for Christmas.  He had catalogues."

Hermione smiled and nodded.  "Okay, tell him I'll be up in a minute."

                                                       XxxX

On Monday the apothecary was suddenly and demonstrably festive.  It was as though a Christmas bomb had exploded there over the weekend, and the havoc it left in its wake was almost nauseating in its cheeriness.  Charity had to be behind it.  

Sure enough, when Hermione literally ran into her on her way to the back room, the girl was kitted out in a seasonal skirt and jumper that could have rivaled some of the things that Luna Lovegood-Scamander had been known to wear.  "Oh, Hermione.  I'm sorry.  I heard the bell when you came in and thought you were a customer.  Mr. Snape's in the flat.  He told me to tell you to go up.  I think he needs help decorating," she added conspiratorially.  

"Decorating?"

"Uh-huh."  The girl nodded cheerily and pushed past into the shop.

Decorating?  Did Snape decorate for Christmas?  This she had to see!

She fairly bounded up the steps to the flat, and knocked firmly twice before entering.  

Sure enough, he was standing on a ladder in the sitting room, attempting to affix a star to the top of a pine that was obviously too large for the room, whilst muttering vague epithets under his breath.  He glanced over his shoulder as she entered.  "Oh, good.  Granger, hold this damn ladder, I've nearly plunged to my doom twice now.  As if to underscore his point, the rickety thing swayed, causing him to grip onto the top, white knuckled.

She raced over and grabbed the base, and stared up at him as he made another attempt with the ornament.  It was a nice view.  The bottom of his jumper hung loose and she was afforded a glimpse of a lean, pale torso, accentuated by a trail of dark hair that led from his chest and disappeared into the waistband of his trousers.  

He was incredibly thin, she realized.  He certainly looked as though he had filled out since their days at Hogwarts, but there was still an almost concave look to his stomach as he reached up, and his hipbones were clearly visible as they jutted out above his belt.  She shouldn't be looking, but she couldn't tear her eyes away, either.  There were scars, too, some small, and feather light, and others that seemed much larger, but still obviously quite old.  

She thought of Ron's strong, muscled body, freckled, but otherwise flawless, the nearly hairless chest.  She'd seen women turn and look appreciatively when he peeled off his shirt at the beach in the summer.  His body was so different from the one above her, so young, and infused with health and vigor.

Snape looked down at her and she flushed scarlet.  "Here, what's wrong with you?" he asked.  "Are you feeling ill?"

"It-it was cold outside," she hurriedly lied.

"Oh," was his only response.  "I'm coming down.  Plug that cord into the wall, Granger, and let's see how it looks."

She let go of the ladder when he was halfway down, and crawled behind the tree on her hands and knees to find the cord in question.  She had to stretch to reach it, and she was pretty sure she was getting sap on her jumper, but after some struggle, and swearing of her own the lights finally blinked on.  They were clear, which seemed to be the newest thing in Christmas décor from what she could tell, and there were a great many of them.  It looked lovely, even from her perspective.

She shimmied out from behind the tree and got to her feet, taking a step or two back to get a good look.  "It's beautiful," she whispered almost reverently-because, really, it was.  

"It's a giant pain in the arse, is what it is," he muttered, sounding slightly distracted.

She looked up at him.  He looked warm and flushed himself.  "Been battling those lights for awhile?" she asked with a smile.

He cleared his throat and looked back up at the tree.  "Insufferable things.  I wrapped and stored them properly last year, and somehow, magically, when I took them out this year they were nothing but a mass of tangles."  His face was getting redder.

"Well, really, Severus, I don't think there's any need to let them get you that worked up."

"Hmph…" was the only response she got.  After a moment of silence he spoke again.  "The ornaments are there," he nodded toward three large boxes sitting on the sofa.  "Hopefully they've fared better than the lights.  Start unpacking them, will you."  And with that he disappeared down the hall into his bedroom, and shut the door.

There were an interesting assortment of ornaments.  Some were obviously new.  The sort of basic bauble one could buy at any department store, but some looked very old-blown glass, antique.   The kind of thing she could remember hanging on her grandparent's tree when she was a child.  She wondered if they had been on his tree as a boy.  

Did he have a tree as a boy?  

She remembered the picture of the pinched, slightly sickly looking girl she had found when researching the Prince name back at Hogwarts.  She hadn't really looked like the kind of person who would be at all interested in being festive.  But his father had been Muggle, and she knew nothing about him, so perhaps they had had at least a meager tree.

She began to sort the ornaments into groups, simple baubles in one pile, more unique, or antique ornaments in another.  There were two or three boxes of small silver bells.  She placed them in a pile of their own.  It would be a lovely tree if they actually managed to fit every single one of the ornaments on it.  She wondered, as she continued to pull out box after box of ornaments, if there was ever going to be an end to them.  Goodness, it seemed he did Christmas to excess.  She never would have thought it of him.

She was unpacking the last of the ornaments, and just beginning to wonder if he had died in there, when he finally emerged from the bedroom.  He had changed, and was wearing a T-shirt, something she had never seen him in before.  His face looked considerably less flushed.  It was the first time she had seen him with his neck, uncovered, she suddenly realized, and there were scars, jagged, puckered, and angry looking, glaring back at her, reminding her of things that had haunted her for years, things she had fought very long and hard to forget.  She looked quickly away.

"Squeamish, Granger?"

She felt her face go warm.  "What?"

"You know what.  Don't worry.  There's no possible way it could make me any uglier than I already was."

"Hermione," she blurted, unable to think of anything else.  "You're supposed to be calling me Hermione."  And she forced herself to look at him.

The corner of his mouth twitched.  "Yes, so I am."

"You have too many ornaments," she added.  "There's no way that you will ever be able to fit them all on this tree, no matter how ludicrously large it is."

"You don't like my tree, Hermione?"  

And damn it all if the way he had said her name didn't send odd little shivers of pleasure up her spine.  "You know," she said, leaning down and cracking open a box of the silver bells.  "I don't think I want you calling me that after all.  Granger will be fine."

"Not Weasley?"  There was amusement in his voice.

"Sod off, Snape," she muttered.

He chuckled, and took up a box of ornaments himself.

She was angry at herself.  She shouldn't be noticing things like Snape's hip bones.  She shouldn't be warmed at the sound of him saying her name, or chuckling at her determinedly sour attitude.  She shouldn't be noticing Snape at all.  He was Snape.  He was, what, twenty years older than her?  She quickly did the math in her head.  Well, nineteen years, eight months, and fourteen days, but still, it was unseemly.  It was-it was-well, she didn't know what it was, but she shouldn't be acting like a teenager.  Besides, she was still angry at him.

They decorated in silence for some time.

"Would you be bothered by music," he suddenly asked.

"Music?  No…"

He set down the glass ornament in his hand and moved across the room to what looked like a Muggle turntable.  He had a great many Muggle things, she had noticed, and in fact, she could not recall him once using magic in her presence, not even when they were alone together.  It was a touch odd.  She didn't know whether he avoided it out of choice, or whether it indicated something more unfortunate.  She didn't suppose it was her place to ask.

She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye.  He was on his knees sorting through a box containing what appeared to be a rather large collection of LPs.  Did they even sell those anymore?  She didn't think so, but leave it to Snape to be inexplicably Muggle, and hopelessly old-fashioned all at once.

The first notes of some mellow and non-descript jazz floated through the small flat and she turned away before he caught her looking.  It was warm in the flat-too warm.  She should take off her jumper, but she stupidly felt self conscious about it, so she would just have to sweat it out.

Stepping back, she took a good look at the tree.  They would be finished with it soon, and she couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.  She hadn't enjoyed anything Christmassy this much for nearly four years.  The last time had been when they had spent Christmas Eve at Harry and Ginny's in 2001.  Everyone had been there, Seamus, Neville, Luna, all the old crew from their school days.  How could something as simple as decorating Snape's ridiculously oversized tree make her feel so good.

"Wine, Granger?"

"What?"

He had moved passed her to the kitchen when she wasn't looking, and now he was standing in the doorway, a bottle of merlot in his hands.

"It's ten-thirty in the morning!"

"Are you a child?" he asked pointedly.

"No," she scowled.

"Well, then?"

"Yes," she finally said.  "But only half a glass," she added hastily as he turned and disappeared back into the kitchen.

She took the opportunity to shrug out of her jumper.  She didn't care how uncomfortable she felt about it, or how much Snape stared at her tits, she was going to pass out if she didn't get out of the thing soon.  She was only wearing a red singlet beneath, and the slightly cool air hitting her arms provided instant relief.  She sighed, and took up the last box of decorations, assessing the already crammed tree to see if she could find any available space.

A simple glass tumbler half filled with wine was pressed into her hand, and his arm brushed against hers as he turned to assess the tree with her.  Her skin burned where he had inadvertently touched it, and she took a large gulp of the wine, wincing a little.

She felt his eyes on her, and looked up.  "Granger, when I chose those glasses I did so because they were the most easily accessible, and I didn't feel there was any need to stand on ceremony.  I did not intend it to be an indication that one should knock back mouthfuls of a £75.00 bottle of merlot like it was Irn-Bru."

"Sorry," she managed, before setting the glass down on the coffee table, and taking up an ornament, in an excuse to get some distance from him.  She was completely mad.  She should be committed.  She definitely should not still be standing in his sitting room in a singlet and jeans, tingling at his touch, and indulging in expensive wine at ten-thirty in the morning.

"Well," he said behind her?

She glanced over her shoulder.  "Well, what?"

"How is it?"  He nodded toward the glass of wine she had deposited on the table.

"Oh, good-really good.  Do you always drink £75.00 wine in the mornings?"

"No."

"Well, what was the occasion?"  She went back to looking for a space for the ornament in her hand.

"I was feeling festive."  But he sounded decidedly grumpy for someone feeling in so good a humor.

"Really?"

"No," he replied plainly.

"Well, then…?"

She heard him sigh, and she turned, looking at him curiously.  He was staring into his tumbler of wine, distractedly, and rubbing at the rim with his thumb.  "Truthfully," he finally said, looking somewhat guilty as his eyes met hers, "I was hoping to get you a little drunk."

She blinked, and felt her face flush much redder than it already was.

He looked momentarily confused at her disconcerted demeanor, and then color rose to his own cheeks and he scowled darkly.  "Not like that, Granger.  Good god, if I'd known you were such a little degenerate back at school I would have deducted more house points.  God knows what was perversities were racing through that mind of yours when you were supposed to be taking notes, or reading up on the proper dissection method for Flobber Worms."

She flushed even deeper, if that was possible.  She felt dizzy.  She needed to sit down, and so she did.  She made her way over to the sofa, and flopped gratefully onto the cushions.  "Well-well why, then?"  She asked defiantly.

He walked toward her and then sat down, mercifully on the far side of the sofa.  She didn't think she could handle any closer proximity at the moment.  He looked troubled.  "To apologize-properly," he forced through a tightly clenched jaw.

"For what?"

"You know, for what?"  His eyes flitted away from hers, nervously.

"So why get me drunk?  You'd go to all that trouble, and I wouldn't even remember it," she muttered peevishly.

"I said, a little drunk," he snapped, and then catching himself, softened his tone again as he continued.  "Just to-well, I thought it might soften you to the idea of hearing me out."

"And why do you care, if I forgive you, or not," she asked snappishly.  Being angry at him was much easier than being turned on by him.

"I have my reasons…"  He looked uncomfortable, and she didn't care.  It felt good to be back on familiar ground with him.

"Such as…?"

"Such as, not wanting to feel as though I am indebted to anyone," he snapped, eyes suddenly dark.  "Ever-never again.  Such as realizing I was wrong, and wanting to make it right.  Such as, not wanting to…"  He stopped suddenly, and stared down at the wine glass in his hands, swearing under his breath before looking back up to meet her eyes.  "Such as," he continued tightly, "not wanting to lose your company."

Her heart was hammering hard in her ears.  She reached out, and grabbed the glass of wine on the table, draining it in one swift motion before setting it back down with an overly loud thunk.  "What?" she demanded.

"You may not set much stock in this, Granger," he replied, taking a fairly good sip from his own glass before continuing.  "But if someone from my old life had to stumble upon me, and learn of my existence…"  He looked uncomfortable, and she had the sudden, almost uncontrollable urge to touch him.

"Yes?" she forced out tersely, in an attempt to dampen down the urge.

He took a deep breath, and when he looked up at her again, there was something almost desperate in his eyes.  "I'm glad it was you."  He looked like he couldn't breathe, or like he wanted to cry, or vomit, or perhaps both at once.  Dear Merlin, she never would have imagined him to have been so shy, but he was doing fairly well considering.  She decided that perhaps she should go a little easier on him.

"Well, thank-you," she said politely.  But then her curiosity got the better of her.  "But, why?"

"Why?"  He looked ill.

"Yes, why me?  I mean it's sort of obvious why you wouldn't want it to be Harry, or Neville, or-or even Minerva McGonagall, but why me, particularly."

"Because you're not a complete dunderhead," he stammered.  "Because you can put two thoughts together, and you can hold your own in front of a cauldron, and because-because…"  But he seemed to have run out of things to say.  He looked angry at himself for it, too.  "Just because…" he finished lamely.

"Just because?" she said, amused.

"Yes, damn it all, Granger-just because!"  He was more flushed than he had been earlier when battling the tangled lights.  In fact he looked like he had just run a marathon.

"Alright," she finally said, with the slightest hint of a smile she could not, for the life of her repress.

"Alright, what?" he snapped.

"I'll listen to your apology.  Go ahead."

He looked surprised at this, and then flustered, as though he were completely unprepared now that she had just dumped the opportunity in his lap.  He took another sip of wine and then leaned forward, and carefully set the glass down on the table.  

There was an earnestness in his eyes when he looked up at her.  "I'm sorry for giving you potions without telling you what they were," he began.  "And I'm sorry for meddling where I had no business meddling.  You were quite right when you said that it was your choice to make.  If it makes any difference, I was only trying to act in what I thought would be your best interest, but quite clearly, I did not have that right.  Forgive me."

She watched his adam's apple bob as he swallowed hard, and waited for her reply.

She wanted to forgive him.  She had been furious at first, but now that the shock had worn off, she had once or twice actually caught herself feeling a strange sense of relief.  This was always followed immediate by an equal measure of guilt, but still, it was there.  And if it was there, somewhere deep inside she knew that it must mean that she hadn't really wanted it, and that she had simply been a coward where he had not.  He was sitting there now, waiting, and she wanted so much to release him from the discomfort of this not knowing.  But then what would there be left to buffer her from the strange things he made her feel.  Her anger was all she had left…

He looked small and vulnerable, somehow.  She wondered at it, and then it struck her: there had never been anyone in his life from whom he had had the opportunity to hear these words.  They had all died, leaving him without the closure those three words could provide.  Three simple words.

"I forgive you, Severus."

He blinked once, as though not sure he had actually heard her right.

"I forgive you," she repeated for good measure.

He stared at her.  She stared back.  And then he nodded.  "Thank-you," he said simply.

She nodded in return.

After a moment, he nodded once more, as though putting mental closure to the matter and then got to his feet.  "More wine?"

She smiled.  "Yes, more wine would be brilliant."