Fic: Performance Anxiety (SS/HG)
Title: Performance Anxiety.
Genre: Romance / humour.
Rating: PG (minor coarse language)
Word count: ~2400
Summary: Tomorrow morning, Hermione is going to speak at a conference for the first time.
Warnings: silliness, first person POV, unbetaed: strange English ahead.
*
Okay okay okay, so why are you looking at me that way? And why is the hem of your robe partly covering my left foot and suddenly it is very hot down here, despite the circumstance that it’s February and there are maybe 18° C inside?
I was already nervous enough without you choosing to sit beside me, you know. I have a paper to present tomorrow morning, in case you failed to see. Actually you are perfectly aware of that, also because is it the reason why you came here, and with ‘here’ I mean here in my room, not at the congress. It will be maybe the fifteenth time that you speak at a conference, but for me it is going to be the first time and I a m t o t a l l y p a n i c k e d. You aren’t helping by placing your hand there, just one inch point three away from my hand, Severus. My stomach was squirming and now is squirming also for causes unrelated to tomorrow’s morning session. Why do you always have to complicate things?
*
“For Gandalf’s sake, Granger, will you please settle down, please?”
“You don’t understand. Tomorrow will be the first time I’ll read a paper at a conference. And in front of Professor Burdačev! Of Professor Santader! I can’t! I’ll start to stammer!”
"I can’t believe I’ve lived to see the day in which Hermione Granger is afraid of speaking.”
“Not afraid, terrified. What if they ask me something I don’t know how to answer, during the discussion? What if they’ll catalogue me as an incompetent scholar?”
“I call you one all the time.”
Oh, but you don’t count. Would you like to check my paper, Severus?”
“Why should I read it, Granger? To my misfortune, I am already doomed to listen to it tomorrow.”
"Please.”
“What gives you the impression that I would care for your rambling statistics?”
“What gives me the impression that you are, in fact, a very caring man?”
“Give me this damn paper.”
“It’s up is my room; I’ll fetch it.”
The fact that, instead of simply Accioing it, I headed toward the lift to take my paper by hand was a sufficient proof of the level of my nervousness, wasn’t it? The fact that Severus followed me, instead of Accioing it himself or berating me, was a proof for... what?
Boredom, yes. That’s it. We arrived here yesterday by Portkey and have done nothing but listening to other speakers’ papers, today. There are seventy-two participants to Teaching Magic. New Perspectives for the XXI century and we are the only two representatives for Hogwarts. I know other professors’ names only because I’ve read their works. Severus probably knows more people, but surprisingly, apart from a few handshakes, hasn’t almost left my side since we left England.
Or should I dare say, unsurprisingly?
“New perspectives? Send the two youngest members of the staff, of course!” he commented, almost without bite, at the end the organising meeting with Minerva and the others. So here we are, together, at the thirty-seventh congress of the International Association for Didactics. Here we are, going upstairs on the same lift. Breathe, Hermione. Breathe. It’s only boredom, isn’t it?
"Granger, you who know everything: pray tell me, why are these conferences always held in places forgotten by God?”
“Reggio Calabria is hardly a place forgotten by God. It was founded by Chalcidians in VIII century BC and has, these days, some one 180.000 inhabitants. It is the birthplace of Greek poet Ibycus, while Julia the Elder, the only daughter of Emperor Augustus, died here after sixteen years of exile.”
“Your propensity to believe that notions are important merely because they are notions, Granger, is so unwavering that it begins to sound comforting. Julia was exiled here exactly because it’s a city forgotten by God, as today as it was two thousand years ago.”
We arrived at my floor, and I walked up to my room, with the intention of pick my paper, hand it to Severus and wait for the sentence there on the threshold. Instead, he stepped into my room and looked around, turning up his nose at my disorder. There is a single chair in my single room and I offered it to Severus, while I sat on the bed.
Instead, he sat beside me on the bed and a flap of his robe landed on my shoe. Unconcerned, he started flipping through the pages. Breathe, Hermione, breathe. It won’t be the first time he tells you that your essays are shite.
Okay, Hermione, release the bedspread from your fist, one finger at a time. Yes, it is the first time you are sitting with Professor Snape on a bed. Yes, tomorrow will be the first time you speak at a conference. A night trip to the hospital for a respiratory disease would be most inconvenient. Now. Calm. Down. Now.
Iiiiiin - oooout.
Hhhhiiiiiin - oooooouuut.
Hhhhhh - hhhhhhh.
*
So this is how we got into my room, but then how is it that we have been looking at each other for what is probably exceeding fifteen minutes? How is it that you are so prepossessing to me?
Your eyes are very black indeed, Severus, with a speck of white reflecting from an unidentifiable source of light. Fifteen minutes ago (or twenty; or one hour) we were talking, and you were criticising my paper, and what you were saying was very questionable and very interesting.
“I’d like to say that Learning and De-Learning: Patterns of Forgetfulness After Summer Holidays Among Hogwarts Students is the most boring clump of analysis I’ve ever read, Granger, but unfortunately I have already partecipated to too many conferences, and I’ve listened to today speeches as well. You have used ‘epistemological’ and ‘hermeneutically’, which by all means qualifies you as a scholar, whatever value you may give to that appellation. Everybody will congratulate with you, of course, also because they fear what might happen to them if they don’t. You don’t need to worry.”
You put down the sheets on the blanket, then, and your hand came to rest next to mine. I stared at it and then at you.
“How many conferences have you taken part in, Severus?”
“Just listening? I don’t remember. Talking? Tomorrow will the the fifteenth time I read a paper. I managed to write a paper a year, more or less, before things... got too much in the way.”
That was your last reply, I believe, before we stopped talking and started playing at who blinks the less.
That speck of white is my face, I realise. Curious, I’d swear it was crimson.
I can see myself reflected in your eyes and the white comma disappears. I’ve managed to go purple, after all.
A small rustle of fabric, and your thumb is on my knuckle, stroking it quietly.
Oh.
Oh-oh.
You know, Severus, your nose is very big indeed, isn’t it, and the closer you get the bigger it looks, inch by inch, and is it true what they say about men with big noses? When I went out with Cormac McLaggen, back in sixth year, he explained to me the L theory, according to which the lenght of, er, is in inverse ratio with a man’s height. If you rotate the L on its longer side, you will see that the proportion... Clearly, this is a theory invented to reassure short men about their virility, just as that saying which states that good things come in small packages (the Italians would say that the small barrel preserves the best wine), and I’m pretty sure that anthropologically-
Mmmphhh.
Mmh.
Mmmmmmh.
Ah - mhmhhhhhhhhhh.
“Hermione,” you whisper when your lips separate from mine, and it’s so sweet that my shoulders relax, just a little. Oh, Zeus, maybe you exist after all, and why are you letting this happen now? Now, I mean? Today? When I don-
You kiss my cheek, my cheekbone, and the corner of my eye, and while the knot in my stomach loosens and tightens again, I allow my hand to touch your jawline and feel the pores of your beard for the first time. I find your nape, then, just when you have decided to kiss my neck, and I close my eyes and let my hand run down your shoulders. The black velvet of your robe is very appealing, Severus, has always been so, but despite everything is the flesh underneath which calls me the most, and you are slowly reducing the exiguous space between us. Your thigh comes to touch mine, and I-
FUCK, my legs are not shaven. I wear plain, white knickers and a white bra, very old and very comfortable. I am at a conference, for Ged’s sake.
Okay, now I am going to perform a very simple shaving charm and a very elementary transfiguration. Where is my wand?
It’s there on the console table. Next to yours. God, Severus, if we became unguarded after the war. Wasn’t the rule ‘Always keep your wand in your pocket’?
Mmmmhmhahhahhhmmmh.
Okay, Severus. Now just keep kissing my neck, which is an always pleasurable experience, while I try to collect my wand. Concentrate, Hermione. Accio wand. Accio wand. Accio wand.
A wand flies into my hand and it’s not mine. It’s yours. Immediately you freeze and a frown forms on your face.
“What does this mean, Hermione?”
Surely I must look like the paragon of guilt, and my eyes are two round disks of discomfort. He snatches his wand from my hand while his scowl deepens.
“What was your plan? To attract me here and steal my wand? Why is everybody so interested in my wand? I’ve already been almost killed because of a long rant about wands’ ownership! I am sick and tired of that! My wand doesn’t hide any particular secret! Can’t the world be at peace with that?”
“I didn’t want to take your wand, okay?” I’ve found my voice again and my tone matches his. “I wanted to Accio my own wand, and I ended up with your wand instead, that’s it! Stop playing Woody Allen all the time! You don’t have the whole world against you!”
He narrows his eyes. “And why ever did you want to Accio your wand, if you don’t mind? What did you want to do to me?”
Go figure, idiot, I think. “I didn’t want to do anything against you, Severus. In fact, I was trying to do something for you, git!” I stand up and grab, finally, my wand. “Do you see these?” I lift the brim of my robe and point my hairy calves to him. “I have a forest on my legs! Do you believe I had time to get waxed before coming here? I finished revising my paper yesterday morning, just before leaving! Do you think I always go around properly groomed?”
Now you are going to leave me and this room forever and I start to sniff. My face is probably blotched with red and the knot in my stomach is tighter than ever. Just go away and let me cry in peace.
“You are worried of not being properly groomed in my presence,” you say.
“Of course,” I gurgle. “Besides, my underwear is as old as my grandmother, and I intended to transfigure it into something less repulsive,” I add.
Get out, Severus, please, before I start to sob my heart out. I feel like I was five.
“Repulsive,” you echo. Then you infer, “You like me, Granger.”
I just glare at you harder.
In one move, you slip your robe off your head and you stand before me, pale and bony, in a woollen vest half frayed, greying pants, and accordion-folded socks. Your collarbones stick out of the straps of your vest, your knees are knobbly, and tufts of black hair cover your skinny legs. A few moles are visible above your neckline and I think that in this moment I love you.
“You like this,” you say, gesturing toward your ribs and then at your face, “and you fear that I would find you repulsive. You, Hermione.”
“I love you,” I say impulsively, and my wand falls from my hand to the floor. Ti-tlick.
You reach for it and turn it in your hand. “This wasn’t your wand at school,” you observe.
“My wand was taken away from me in the war, and I had to use Bellatrix Lestrange’s for a while. I have finally purchased a new one, just for me, a few months ago.”
“Beech-wood,” you remark.
“Beech-wood,” I confirm. “With one hair of a-”
“-A Thestral in its core,” you finish for me. You press the tips of our wands together, and a jolt of magic discharges through me, even at a distance.
You place our wands, different only in the way they are carved, back on the console table, and you take my hand. You lace your fingers with mine and bring my hand to your lips, kiss it.
“You were not in opposition to showing me your underwear,” you say.
“I wasn’t,” I say.
“Are you still nervous?” you ask.
“I am always prone to nervousness,” I reply.
“Certainly you did notice that I’m quite a nervous person myself,” you say.
“Really?” I smile. “I almost missed that detail.”
You hug me, your bare arms around me, and again I conclude that Southern Italy is unbearably hot even in winters. Your palm cups my cheek and once more I find myself looking closely at your dear beak.
“I’d completely overlook your hair, hadn’t you underlined their existence. Now I have to say that I’m quite interested in your... forest.”
“It is quite like the Forbidden Forest, in truth.”
“Forbidden?”
“You can only go there accompanied by a professor,” I suggest.
“Ah, really? Well, we can accommodate that.”
Uhmmmm mmmh hhhmh. Okay, let’s mmmmhhhm again, no matter what.
“I still have white underwear,” I pant.
“I’m profoundly upset,” you grumble. “You’ll have to take off those offending garments. If you wish, obviously.”
I unzip my robe and let it fall on the floor. Urganda, there’s even a little hole under the elastic band of my knickers. I’m a mess. And I haven’t even started to enumerate my physical faults.
“I’m completely repelled,” you croak.
“Quite right.”
“You are demented, Hermione.”
Mh.
Mmhh.
Mmmhhh.
Mmmmhhhh.
Mmmmmhhhhh.
Mmmmmmhhhhhh.
Mmmmmmmhhhhhhh.
Mmmmmmhhhhhh.
Mmmmmhhhhh.
Mmmmhhhh.
Mmmhhh.
Mmhh.
Mh.
Oh. And, Oh.
Oh.
I’m not quite as nervous as before.
~FINE~