Real Magic Part III
Sorry for the long time between updates. I've been in one of my not so good phases, so writing has been a matter of a couple of hundred words here and there rather than any real progress. Unfortunately, alwaysjbj hasn't been feeling too great lately so the beta process has also taken longer than normal. The up side is that I'm now over 3,300 words into Part IV.
Real Magic
Credits as for Part I
For the wonderful, patient and long-suffering Geyer.
Severus reclined on his room's king sized bed. Though he held Jean duBois' book in his hands and though he looked in the direction of the room's patio doors and the ocean view that they afforded, neither book nor view could hold his attention. Discovering the identity of the book's author had robbed him of his ability to concentrate. Even a cold shower hadn't helped to clear his thoughts.
He was startled when the phone in the room began to ring, and it took him several seconds to pick it up correctly and respond to the voice on the end of the line. He was just old enough that, even in semi-Muggle homes like the one where he had spent his early years, telephones had been regarded as a luxury, rather than an intrinsic part of everyday existence. He had used them, on the occasions when it had been necessary to summon a Muggle doctor to the house, or when his father had been too ill to go to work and his mother had sent him to the telephone box on the main road quarter of a mile away to call his employer. He'd never really got used to the idea of receiving phone calls, though.
"Hello?" he asked cautiously.
"Good evening, sir. This is reception," the polite and cheerful voice said. "One of our other residents, Hermione Krum, would like to speak to you. Shall I put her through?"
Severus sighed. "If you must," he replied.
"If you prefer, I could tell her that you're not answering."
"No," Severus answered, pinching the bridge of his nose. "That would only delay the inevitable. Put her through."
"Severus?"
Severus stiffened at the uninvited familiarity, but caught himself as he opened his mouth to make a biting retort. After all, it had been his choice to return his letter to her, thereby prolonging their acquaintance. That did not mean that he was comfortable with her familiarity.
"I've booked a taxi to go to the club later. I thought you might want to share, this time."
Severus swallowed. "That would be acceptable. When and where should we meet?"
"I was hoping that you might join me for drinks in my room?" The invitation came out in a rush of words and the woman hurried on before he could get a word in. "I thought you could tell me a little about Watchers and I might be able to give you some background on Mrs Giles, so that we're both better prepared."
"Now?" Severus asked imperiously. "I'm afraid that's impossible. I've just got out the shower."
"Then I'll have the drinks sent to your room instead," the impertinent woman replied. "You've got five minutes to make yourself decent. Oh, and if you've brought such a thing as a pair of jeans, then it might be an idea to wear those. You're the only person I've seen in this whole town with a suit and tie, and this is a party."
"I haven't told you my room number," Severus protested. "And I came here as a representative of Durmstrang, not as a refugee from some fashion parade. You may have brought a trunk full of outfits. Some of us are not so vain that we need to change our clothing every five minutes."
The chuckle that carried down the phone line caused butterflies in Severus's stomach. "I'll bring you a pair of jeans, then," the impertinent witch announced. "You look about the same size as Viktor. Your shirt will do, if you get rid of the tie. See you soon," she added, and before Severus could gainsay her suggestion, the line went dead.
"Infernal Gryffindors!" he cursed, getting up and adjusting the towel he had wrapped around his waist after his shower. He lifted his wand from the bedside cabinet and fetched one of the spare towels from the bathroom. He had just finished transfiguring the towel into a robe when there was a knock at the door.
"Room service," the polite, cheerful and, thankfully, male voice announced.
"A moment." Severus rummaged in the pocket of his suit jacket on its hanger in the wardrobe, and removed the wallet which held his supply of American dollars. He checked the numbers on the corners of the bills, looking for a ten and failed to find one. Leaving the robe spread out on his bed, he opened the door. "I'm afraid that I'm almost out of smaller notes," he explained. "Would you have change of a fifty? Otherwise, I've only got one five."
The waiter's smile wavered. "I'll need to check, sir."
Severus tried to convince himself that he was relatively safe. This was a long corridor, and he could dart back in and put on the robe should he spot the interfering little witch approaching. It wasn't like you could miss her with that mess she called hair taking up half the corridor. Nevertheless, his bare foot unconsciously tapped out an impatient tattoo as the waiter rummaged through each and every one of his pockets, pulling out a selection of rumpled notes and flattening them out. By the time he reached a total of thirty-seven dollars and appeared to be about to start adding loose change, Severus snatched the unkempt bundle of notes from his hand, gave him the fifty and yanked the trolley into the room.
He had one arm in the sleeve of the robe when the door was opened without so much as a knock and Granger was standing there shaking her head at him. She tossed a pair of black denims onto the bed, lifted the wine cooler in one hand and the pair of crystal glasses in the other and then nudged the trolley back toward the door with one foot until the young man was able to reach the handle and pull it back into the corridor.
"I'm sorry about that," she said as she set the glasses down on the nearest horizontal surface, Jean duBois' book, which now rested on Severus's bedside cabinet. She drew a folded note from the pocket of her too-tight jeans and pushed it into the youth's hand without even checking its denomination.
As she pushed the door closed, Severus grabbed the jeans off the bed. "Don't you even knock?" he demanded sarcastically, as he strode toward the bathroom.
"Not often," Hermione replied. "You can't be shy, Severus. Surely? Or maybe you think after years of sharing a bathroom with the Weasleys, a year in a tent with Harry and Ron, seven years of marriage to Viktor and living with two young boys, I'm going to be overcome at the sight of a man in a towel?"
"I like my privacy," Severus answered as he used his heel to kick the door closed behind him. "And, if you insist on using my Christian name, could you at least call me Saturnin?"
"A Prince by any other name..." Hermione replied, noting with some satisfaction that Severus's bookmark was already a third of the way through her book. She lifted the wine glasses and carried them and the bucket out onto the balcony. A flick of her wand was as efficient as any corkscrew. She rested her fingers against the side of the bottle, testing its coolness before she poured a glass for each of them.
Severus pulled on his shirt as he made his way back through the bedroom, doing up the buttons as he took a seat at the patio table. "Happy now?" he asked.
Hermione gave a mischievous grin as her eyes raked her former professor from head to bare toes. "Moderately. It appears I was right about you and Viktor having the same build."
"Still not ready to relinquish the title of know-it-all?" Severus asked, though his tone lacked bite. He returned her frank appraisal.
She wore her hair up, an intricate braid running around each side of her head from an off-centre parting before they were coiled and pinned at the nape of her neck. Her eye shadow, if she wore any, was negligible though her lashes were longer and darker than he ever remembered them being, drawing attention to the eyes which sparkled with intelligence. Her lips were painted in a cupid's bow of dark glossy crimson.
A beaded silk camisole of silvery grey skimmed the curves of her upper torso while leaving her neck and shoulders bare, providing a tantalising glimpse of her back when she stretched to return the wine bottle to the ice bucket. Blue denim, faded almost as pale as her top, encased her lower body like a second skin, and the slender straps of her silver sandals snaked around her feet and ankles like delicate exotic vines.
Severus carefully crossed the ankle of his right leg over his left thigh and tugged his shirt tail down. He lifted the slender wine flute to his nose, savouring the liquid's bouquet before he took a delicate sip, letting it flow over his whole palate before he swallowed.
"I know you generally prefer red," those Jezebel lips explained, "but I thought in these temperatures a nicely chilled white might be preferable."
"It is palatable," he conceded. "The mother?" he asked, deciding it was time to remind the perplexing chit of her purported purpose.
"I'm not so much of a brash Gryffindor as to give you all my information before you disclose at least some of yours. No doubt I would discover that time ran short just as you were about to reciprocate."
Severus smirked. "It is not my habit to leave those I choose as companions unsatisfied. Desirous of more, perhaps, but never less than sated." And that, he decided, would surely send the so-called lioness scurrying away like the pampered kitten she truly was.
"But you didn't choose me," Hermione replied, casting him a look from beneath her lashes as she took a sip of her wine. "I foisted my company onto you." Severus couldn't help but notice that her cheeks were delightfully flushed.
"How astute of you to notice," Severus drawled, hiding his disconcertion at the fact she appeared to be flirting back instead of running for metaphorical cover.
"So? Watchers?"
Severus cocked an amused eyebrow.
"Sev- Saturnin, I'm sure we can both agree that convincing Audrey to attend a wizarding school is more important than which of our schools she ultimately chooses. We don't need to be rivals."
"And what better way to demonstrate your point than to confide exactly how a woman twice the age of Nicholas Flamel manages to look about thirty."
"You are impossible!"
"Surely you did not think that just because the war has ended, I would roll over and let you tickle my stomach like that disreputable ginger fur-ball that used to follow you around?"
Hermione's sophisticated façade was shattered as she sprayed wine halfway across the table. Her laughter was consumed by a fit of coughing until her whole face went red. It was definitely the laughter that made her choke, she reassured herself, nothing to do with imagining this new, more relaxed, shower-fresh and neatly bearded Snape writhing ticklishly beneath her caresses, or the thrill of anticipation she experienced as she pictured the scene.
Severus produced a wand from who knew where and silenced his companion's distress with a non-verbal 'Anapneo' before he banished the spill.
"I do hope you meant Crookshanks," she finally managed with a weak smile.
"Actually, I did," Severus answered, "though I take it from your reaction that rumours of an orangutan featuring somewhere in Weasley's lineage are not entirely unfounded."
"You are a wicked man," she accused teasingly.
"I have never denied it," Snape replied, but Hermione felt as if he drew away from her with those few words.
"You should," she said in a solemn whisper. Daringly, she reached out to where his free hand rested on the table and gave it a reassuring squeeze, withdrawing quickly to her previous position. "You may talk a wicked game, but your actions and your choices are those of a fine man. Now, what would you like to know?"
His eyes, when they met hers, glittered with some unidentifiable emotion. "If alcohol has such a disastrous effect on your memory, perhaps you should have ordered pumpkin juice," he suggested slyly.
Hermione's eyes narrowed slightly, though her smile refused to leave. "Just for that, you can tell me about Watchers."
And Severus found that he was no longer averse to letting her have her way.
"But doesn't that constitute a breach of Pisarro's Third Law of Elemental Magic?" Hermione asked, as Severus - or Saturnin as Hermione reminded herself to call him - held open the taxi's door for her to get out.
"Not when we modify the equation to account for ambient magical energy," Saturnin clarified, his voice dropping to a silky whisper as they neared the bouncer who guarded the club's doors.
The towering, brawny young man held up a hand to indicate the pair should come no further. "We're not opening to the public until eleven tonight. You can try the Sandbar." He gestured somewhere off to the right.
"We're here for the private party. Mrs Giles invited us," Saturnin countered. "She said they would be here by now."
"Do you have your invitations?" the doorman asked.
"We just ran into her this afternoon and she told us to come," Hermione added.
The doorman opened the door behind him a few inches and shouted through the gap. "Boss, there are a couple of oldies here. They say Anya invited them but they haven't got any invitations."
To Hermione and Saturnin's surprise the shouted reply was made in a North London accent. "And you think they've got nothing better to do than be tortured by boy-bands at an eleven-year-old's birthday party? Let 'em in, you pillock!"
The doorman let them through to the foyer, where they were greeted by a young man with short-cropped hair, bleached to nearly white. His black shirt and jeans matched Saturnin's, though Hermione hadn't thought to provide a pair of Doc Marten's to go with his. His eyes were the most intense shade of blue that Hermione had ever seen, his cheekbones and full lips were those of an angel, but when he grinned, there was no trace of innocence. The man extended a hand to Hermione. "Spike," he introduced himself.
Hermione took the proffered hand, amused as the subtle pressure of Saturnin's guiding hand at the small of her back deepened and Saturnin moved forward with her, making his greater height more obvious. "I'm Hermione, and this is Saturnin. Are there going to be any other vampires here tonight?"
The sapphire eyes gleamed with amusement. "Very quick, Hermione."
"She always has been," Saturnin purred, "if occasionally naïve."
The two men met eyes and seemed to be frozen in place for seconds before the vampire gave a nod, and lifted a scarred eyebrow in a gesture so like Saturnin's own that Hermione almost laughed out loud.
"To answer your question, there's another vamp working bar and the missus asked grandpa 'cause he was comin' up from LA-LA Land anyway. Wouldn't worry, though. We all shop at the butcher's. You're not in any danger unless Angel tries to bore you to death. Now, let's get you a drink on the Watcher's dime."
The vampire held open the door into the brightly lit main club, allowing the two teachers to enter ahead of him.
Saturnin's fingertips burned through the silk of Hermione's top like five tiny discrete brands. Precious moments passed as she allowed herself to imagine that he was as aware of the touch as she. With him just behind her, she could fantasize that it was his way of staking a claim before the white-haired predator... even though she knew deep down that it was no more than the same protective instinct that had made him shield her when she was a fourteen-year-old pupil faced with a moonstruck werewolf.
The blond gestured to the bar which took up most of the right hand wall. "Elise will take your orders." Then he pointed to the back of the room where several tables lined that side of the room. "Anya's sorting out the buffet, Rupert will have found a dark corner somewhere so he can watch the little 'un and glare at every boy she dances with." His voice took on a sudden urgency, and he began to stride toward the DJ booth which occupied the bottom left corner of the room. "And I'm going to sort out the lighting and rescue my decks before that wanker starts playing 'Mandy'. 'Scuse me!"
"After you." The pressure at Hermione's back pointed her toward the bar, but she turned to face her former teacher instead.
"I think I should see if Mrs Giles needs any help," she suggested.
Music that was most definitely not 'Mandy' and almost certainly not appropriate for children began to blare from the club's speaker system and the light level fell dramatically from near daylight level to no more than a few strip lights set into both floor and ceiling and a small spotlight over the DJ booth.
She tried to read the dark eyes that locked on her own, but even if she had adjusted instantly to the gloom she suspected it would have been impossible. Her feet shifted nervously as she waited for his reaction. A hug was too much to expect, a handshake was surely too formal after their conversation but...
Finally, Saturnin gave the briefest of nods and turned away, leaving her with a palpable feeling of anticlimax.
"Can I help?" Hermione shouted to make herself heard over the raucous tones of 'The Dead Kennedys'.
Anya paused in her task of unwrapping the covering from dozens of trays of delicacies. "You can fill up the punch bowl and find somewhere to plug it in," she suggested with a nod to where several dozen bottles of sparkling grape juice had been stacked at the end of the table next to a three tier punch bowl.
Hermione obligingly lifted the edge of the tablecloth and ended up crawling under the table until she found the nearest electrical outlet and made sure the cable from the punch bowl would reach.
"Mom!" Running feet interrupted as Hermione backed out from under the table. "You have to get Dad to calm down. Aunt Buffy did it again."
Anya looked at her daughter and then at all the food that was still to be set out.
"Go," Hermione suggested.
"We'll get the food," Audrey cut in, "but Dad'll either break something or get hammered if you don't distract him."
Anya rolled her eyes as she strode off. "I suppose it was too much to expect Buffy to work out that her friends aren't our friends."
"What's the story?" Hermione asked.
Audrey gave a sly smile. "I'll tell you about Angel, if you tell me what the deal is with you and tall, dark and," she tilted her head from side to side, "dangerous."
Hermione picked up her handbag from where she'd set it on the floor. She rummaged in it until she pulled out a large leather-bound book several times larger than the bag itself, 'Hogwarts: An Updated History'. "Chapters twenty-seven through thirty. Happy Birthday."
Audrey grinned. "So you and him, you're both in this book? So you're both sort of famous?"
Hermione gave a rueful smile. "I was just the trusty sidekick. Saturnin was a real hero. It's all in there, but don't let anyone other than your parents or other wizards and witches see it. Anyway, the book will give you some background to the school and the wizarding world. If you have any more questions after that you can always write."
"Mom says that you have a son my age..." the girl began hesitantly.
"I do. His name's Dimitar."
"Do you think...?" Audrey began but then faltered. "What I mean is, talking to grown-ups is one thing-"
"But it would be nice to talk to someone your own age who's grown up in the wizarding world?" Hermione finished for her. "I'll ask him."
Audrey, book still clasped in her hand, threw her arms around Hermione. "Thanks!" She stepped back and pointed to a petite bleach-blonde about the same age as her mother, who was currently restocking the cooler behind the bar, hefting a crate of beer with apparent ease. "Aunt Buffy and Uncle Spike own the club. Aunt Buffy-"
"Vamp?" Hermione interjected.
Audrey snorted. "Slayer. Dad's slayer, back in the day. Anyway, Aunt Buffy invited Angel, which is awkward enough anyway because he's her ex. They had this big melodramatic first love thing, and Spike's never overly happy to have him around, even though they're family so sometimes it can't be helped. The two of them just about manage to just about play nice. And Angel's mostly okay, a bit up his own arse, but mostly okay... so long as his soul stays put.
"See, Angel used to be this superbad vamp, but then he killed this gypsy and her family cursed him to have a soul so that he would feel remorse for all the things he did, but there was a catch. If he ever experienced true happiness he'd revert to how he was originally. So, on her sixteenth birthday or something, Angel shagged Buffy and turned evil. This was back before Dad knew Mum and the woman he was dating then was from the same family of gypsies, and according to all accounts he was pretty gone on her. Anyway, evil soulless Angel didn't want Dad's girlfriend to put the soul back in, so he murdered her and left her in Dad's bed, romantic opera music playing, candles on the stairs, trail of red roses leading to the bedroom, rose petals all around her on the bed. He even took the time to draw her."
Hermione's mouth dropped open in horror. "That's..." For once words failed her.
"Yeah, well, even though he killed this Jenny, she left instructions behind on how to renew the curse, and Aunt Willow put Angel's soul back. The problem is that Aunt Buffy buys into the idea that Angel is a different person from Angelus, the soulless version. She acts like it's a Sybil sort of thing and Angel has nothing to do with it because his wasn't the personality in charge at the time. Dad doesn't see it that way. As far as he's concerned Angel is just Angelus with a muzzle. He hates having him anywhere near him."
"I can imagine," Hermione replied, sounding both exasperated and more than a little annoyed on Giles' behalf. "Well, no I can't, not with someone I really loved, but there was a point when we all thought someone I admired and respected was murdered. You'll see what I mean when you read the book."
"Yeah, well, if Angel ever admitted that Dad has a real reason not to like him, then that would be like him admitting it was him who killed her, and that's never going to happen. Not that he won't bring up the Illyria thing if you give him half a chance." She shrugged as if to say, 'What can you do?' "And sometimes Aunt Buffy forgets the world doesn't always revolve around her just because she's 'The Chosen One'. She doesn't mean to do it. She just doesn't think."
Hermione gave a chuckle of amusement. "Did I say that I was the sidekick? Put your book somewhere safe, let's get this food sorted out, and then we can go and check on your dad."
By the time the buffet was arranged, the music had taken a change for the more melodic and the club was filling up with pre-teens. Knowing that she was unlikely to get another chance to talk to Audrey before the girl had fulfilled the 'meet and greet' part of her duties as hostess and not wanting to intrude while Anya pacified her husband, Hermione filled a plastic tumbler with sparkling grape juice and ambled over toward Saturnin and his companions.
"Soddin' awful place!" the blond vampire was complaining. "Give me Belgrade. Give me Bucharest. Give me Warsaw or Moscow. Anywhere but that hell hole."
A taller figure with brown hair gelled into spikes and an eye-catching brow ridge gave a derisive snort. "Anyone would think Prague was the only place where you were chased out of town by an angry mob. The way I remember it, that used to happen on a weekly basis."
"Like you hung around long enough to know what the hell I did!" the blond retaliated.
"Can't you two be in the same room for ten minutes without arguing?" asked the petite blonde who had been restocking the bar earlier.
"Only if we have someone else to argue with," Spike answered.
"Perhaps Hermione can settle the matter. I believe she also spent some time in Eastern Europe. Which is your favourite city?"
Hermione crinkled her nose as she joined the group and took the vacant bar stool next to the one where Saturnin sat. "I still do, but we were never really the city type," she answered, trying to hedge around the fact that Viktor's fame had made it awkward to go anywhere there was a large wizarding population. "We have a house on the Black Sea coast outside Obzor, and my in-laws live in the mountains near Vratsa. We go to Sofia or Istanbul, if we really need something we can't get locally, but, when he wasn't working, my husband preferred peace and quiet rather than sightseeing or clubbing and I suppose I've become set in my ways. Why do you ask?"
"I mentioned that I have an apartment in Prague. It seems that Spike isn't fond of the city."
Hermione gave the vampire an enquiring look. "I've heard it's a lovely city... if you can avoid the tourists."
Spike snorted. "Bugger the tourists! It's the locals with pitchforks and torches."
Buffy snickered. "You're exaggerating. I don't know many people who live in cities who keep pitchforks."
"You can laugh!" the vamp protested. "If it wasn't for that mob-"
"You wouldn't have strung me up in a deconsecrated church and tried to kill me with some creepy magic ritual to make your insane girlfriend better?" the tall brunette suggested.
Mischief glinted in the blond vamps eyes. "Well, I'd have skipped the ritual part, an' it was you as drove Dru bonkers in the first place, wanker."
"Hey, Testosterone Boys! You're not auditioning for Jerry Springer," the slayer reproved before she turned to Hermione. "Spike is too busy arguing to introduce everybody, but I'm Buffy and this is Angel." She held out a hand.
"It's a pleasure," Hermione responded, damping down her impolitic desire to plunge in and ask questions about what it was like to be resurrected and how it had been done. Instead she noted the tiny signs of the woman's age in the crows' feet at the corners of her eyes and in the looseness of the skin at her neck. Just small signs, but to the critical eye she already looked nearly a decade older than her perennially youthful husband.
"Saturnin's been very cagey about why you're both here," the blonde remarked conversationally.
"It's a business thing," Hermione answered blithely. "You could say that we're both competing for the same contract."
"You seem pretty damn friendly for people who're in competition," Spike added, seeming to assess the pair anew.
"There was a time when we both worked for the same organisation," Saturnin drawled.
"Saturnin was responsible for a great deal of my training when I was starting out," Hermione added.
It was at that point that the Backstreet Boys faded out, and even before they had heard enough of the next track to recognise it, Saturnin slid gracefully from his bar stool and held out a hand to Hermione. "Would you care to dance?"
"Ehm, yeah, okay," she answered. "I mean yes, thank you."
Their new acquaintances watched them as they wound their way to the dance-floor and Saturnin took a tense Hermione into his arms.
"Don't know what they're trying to pull, but I'd keep an eye on them," Spike said, watching as Saturnin appeared to almost berate the woman under cover of the music.
"They aren't demons in disguise or anything are they?" Buffy asked.
"No," Angel answered, "or, if they are, they smell human. But they're hiding something."
"And all that stuff about barely knowing each other... He made it pretty plain when they came in that she was taken," Spike added. "And if the body language wasn't enough, the pheromones never lie. Those two are gaggin' for it. If they don't end up in the same bed tonight, I'll..."
"Host a fourth of July barbecue for everyone we know and lead them all in singing the American national anthem?" Buffy suggested.
"Yeah, like that's ever gonna-" Spike stopped dead at his wife's challenging glare. "Right! Yer on! An' if they do, you have to throw a party for Last Night of the Proms an' sing 'Land of Hope and Glory'."
Angel's eyebrows practically met in the middle as he frowned at his grandchilde. "You've heard Buffy sing, right?"
"That's why I'm not makin' her murder Jerusalem," answered Spike.