FIC: The French Connection, Part I (SS/HG, PG-13)
Title: The French Connection, Part 1
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~11,000
Summary: Hermione and Severus have each come to Paris in search of themselves. They find each other instead.
Disclaimer: Severus Snape and Hermione Granger do not belong to me. Neither does the city of Paris. I wish they did, but in the meantime, I’m just having some fun and mean no harm.
Notes: Written for the Winter Round of the SS/HG Exchange. Set post-DH but EWE, so that our hero and heroine can be together and free of Weasleys. Many of the places described in this story are very real, but certain details have been changed. Unfortunately, Carte Blanche exists only in the imagination of a few select people.
Acknowledgments: A thousand thanks to melusin_79, who Brit-picked, beta-read and kept me from making some embarrassing mistakes. duniazade and textualsphinx also deserve my gratitude for their inspiration, their brainstorming, their expertise and their encouragement. Any mistakes belong to me; anything you like is a result of their hard work.
EDIT: I'm shocked, pleased and proud to announce that this story was rec'd on crack_broom in July 2008.
Hermione leans over the railing of the Pont d’Arcole and stares out at the evening panorama of the city around her. The paper clutched in her hand flutters in the mild breeze like a symbol of surrender, a white flag latticed over with a network of red lines.
To her left looms the Hôtel de Ville, a wedding cake of a building overwritten with elaborate swoops and swirls of pale stone like so much fancy icing, painted with all the colours of the sunset. To her right, the spectacle of Notre Dame rises, rigid and Gothic, while its fabled flying buttresses gleam in the dying light, glittering like some fantastic insect. Hermione stands in the middle of the bridge, neither left nor right, floating over the Seine in a perfect state of limbo.
She is young and healthy, unencumbered by unwelcome company. She has money in her bag and a decent place to sleep. The weather is gorgeous, ripe with the last golden glow of summer, although the air carries a foreshadowing of impending autumn, something crisp and clean. In her hand is a map of the City of Light, the totality of Paris laid bare and clear and stark upon a sheet of paper, reduced to comprehensible lines and grids and names upon names. The whole of this famous city is at her disposal: an inexhaustible well filled with more opportunities than any one person could explore in a lifetime.
The problem is only this: she has no idea where to go. She has known for some time that she needs to go somewhere-it is this impulse that has brought her as far as Paris-but beyond that, things remain blank. For a clever witch used to having the proper answers at her instant disposal, accustomed to directing others with perfect certitude, this is an exercise in frustration.
She feels like a lone boulder in a river, sunk down in the mire while life flows on around her.
A voice cuts into her musings. “Pardonnez-moi, mais est-ce que vous êtes perdue?”
Hermione flinches at the unexpected interruption, her heart suddenly pounding. Beside her stands a slender, fair-haired man, middle-aged and slightly balding. His pale eyes look kind and polite rather than predatory, and his clothing gives him the nervous, tweedy air of an academic.
For a moment, Hermione thinks of Remus Lupin, who was tweedy and kind and polite, and who did not live to see his son celebrate his first birthday.
Even in Paris, the ghosts are always lurking.
“Mademoiselle, est-ce que vous êtes perdue?” the man repeats, gesturing to the map in her hand. Are you lost? Hermione considers the question.
“Oui,” she says and walks away with no particular destination in mind.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The Hôtel Fourcy has a dungeon in its depths.
It’s not really a dungeon so much as it is an old stone-lined cellar, a grimly elegant relic of the 18th century that has been repurposed as the hotel’s restaurant. Judging by the opinions of Hermione’s fellow lodgers, most of them find the restaurant’s medieval look to be wonderfully atmospheric, like some fairy-tale castle. Hermione, however, has actually lived in a castle, and to her it looks like the dungeons of Hogwarts. She always half expects to hear the crack of a door being flung open, heralding the arrival of a man who has been dead for years and hasn’t been her teacher for even longer.
She always eats her complimentary tartines very quickly and takes the rest of her meals elsewhere. She has little appetite these days.
Still, the Fourcy has its compensations: the restored townhouse is clean and well kept, quiet and discreet. Tucked on a relatively quiet street in the heart of the increasingly trendy Marais, it houses nothing more troublesome than overeager German tourists who sometimes talk too much, too loud.
The Fourcy bears the stamp of aristocratic origins, and even if it had nothing else to recommend it, Hermione would love it for the cobblestone courtyard that fills its centre, a light-filled oasis that invites long contemplation. Hermione does most of her work in this space, drinking in the sight of the genteelly crumbling masonry and the vivid green vines that embrace it, curling around ledges and caressing against windowpanes. There is a sense of history here, such that she can almost imagine herself in the times when a carriage would have entered through those massive blue doors, passing under the porte-cochère and into the courtyard beyond it.
Still, the Fourcy has one major flaw: none of the staff can brew a satisfactory cup of tea.
They offer it as a matter of course, yet they always seem surprised when Hermione takes them up on the offer. The request inevitably results in them presenting her with a pot of rapidly cooling water, a stale, ancient teabag and a look of apology.
The tea that results tastes like nothing so much as cardboard-or, when sugar is added, sweetened cardboard. It only leaves Hermione even thirstier for real tea; this pale imitation is worse than nothing at all, for it brings no satisfaction and intensifies her longing. The Fourcy’s poor substitute for tea is the one thing that always pushes Hermione out to explore the streets of the Marais, in search of the real thing.
She has yet to find it, but at least it gives her an excuse to get out in the city.
It is on one of these excursions that Hermione first sees the ghost of Severus Snape.
She’s become accustomed to seeing the echoes of the dead in the faces of random strangers: a man with eyes as blue as Dumbledore’s, a lanky boy whose infectious laugh makes her thinks of Fred. Hermione can’t help but remember Tonks each time she looks at the beggar girl who sits in front of the Crédit Lyonnais on the Rue Saint-Antoine; she’s by no means a double, but her multicoloured hair stands out in wild spikes, and despite her circumstances, she has the same relentlessly cheerful manner as Tonks. Hermione always drops some coins in the girl’s waiting hat.
She wonders what it means, to be haunted by memories of the departed and yet to rarely miss the living friends she’s chosen to leave behind.
Today, as she straightens from depositing her change with Not-Tonks, she sees something much stronger than any echo: she sees what can only be an actual ghost, in the form of the late Headmaster of Hogwarts.
He is dressed in dark Muggle clothing and seated at a table in front of the café called ‘Les Chimères,’ his slender legs outstretched and brow furrowed in thought. One long, white hand raises his espresso to his lips while the other toys with a biro as he contemplates the crossword puzzle. His profile is unmistakable, given the distinctive silhouette of that oversized nose, and he moves with an eerily familiar grace. He looks as solid and real as any other man, yet she knows that he must be a ghost because she has seen him die.
Hermione gasps out loud, feeling suddenly light-headed. She has never been the type to swoon, but at the moment she feels the impulse.
“Tiens! Elle est malade!”
Hermione turns in the direction of the shouting, the strange spell broken. Several passers-by are eyeing her with either concern or suspicion. Not-Tonks is staring up at her with huge hazel eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asks in French. Her voice sounds nothing like Tonks’.
“I’m fine,” Hermione assures her, although her heart is thundering, and she feels more than a little shaky. It’s not every day one sees the dead, after all.
When she looks back up at the little café with its flimsy green awning and flimsier chairs, Snape’s spectre is gone. Hermione is both crushed and comforted by this fact.
It’s only a figment of her imagination, she’s certain. She’s read about this phenomenon in a hundred books and articles on psychology and post-traumatic stress and is certain that all can be easily explained. She’s only imagining Snape’s presence because of the guilt she feels for his death-a guilt that stems from failing to act while he died before her eyes, a guilt that is compounded by every sad detail she has learned of his life since then. Her brain is only showing her this illusion because she needs to get over this and get on with life.
Yes. There is a rational explanation for everything, even irrational things.
Hermione feels very smug in this theory until she walks further down the street and passes by the empty café table. Upon its surface sit a few coins, an empty demitasse in a saucer, and a folded newspaper with a half-completed crossword puzzle sitting right on top.
The handwriting on the puzzle looks like Snape’s.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
After a week filled with Snape sightings, Hermione is convinced that she’s much worse off than she’d ever have guessed. Clearly, she’s gone insane.
She has spotted him on the quais along the river, or in the shadows under bridges. She’s seen him once more at Les Chimères, and she’s almost certain that she saw him walking out of a boulangerie, stalking away with a baguette under his arm and his long coat streaming behind him like an inky storm cloud. Every time she thinks she might get close enough to look, to really examine her delusion, he turns the corner or melts into the shadows, or for all she knows, Disapparates.
Once, she thinks she sees him in the Métro. As she waits in the white-tiled station for her train to arrive, she catches a glimpse of a dark-haired man on the opposite platform, a thin, sharp figure with a beaky nose and the prowling gait of a jungle cat. She very nearly calls his name across the distance of the tracks-Professor? Headmaster? Snape? Severus?-but the opposite train arrives while the words are still stuck somewhere inside her, and by the time she unstoppers her throat, the train has gone, leaving no trace of the man in the black coat.
This is, she thinks, going beyond a mere fixation. To see Snape-Snape, of all people-in every place she goes must surely be some sort of psychosis. She knows that she hasn’t coped with everything as well as the people all around her had expected, but until this point, she’s never actually questioned her sanity.
Even worse than the prospect of being haunted by the ex-Headmaster’s ghost is the foolish, foolish hope that wells inside of her each time she thinks she spots him. In those brief instants, she reminds herself that they never did find his body, only an ocean of his blood. Snape had once claimed that he could stopper death, and if she’s ever known a wizard who could perform such a feat, it would be him. A clever spy and skilled brewer might have Blood Replenishing Potion in his pockets, might have a bezoar or antivenin at his disposal, might have known a way to escape such a monstrously unfair fate. Perhaps, Hermione allows herself to think, his death is not on her conscience, after all.
And then she remembers the gore they found in the Shrieking Shack, the floorboards thick with blood and the air reeking like a slaughterhouse. She remembers the dullness of Snape’s normally glittering eyes and the way his tortured, gasping breathing ceased. She knows that she had only a small window in which to act; she missed it, and the man who worked to save them all is dead as a result. This time, there is no convenient Time-Turner to help her erase the mistake.
In an effort to drive the Snape problem from her mind, Hermione resorts to her favourite method of escapism: books, and lots of them. A woman with a bottomless beaded bag can afford to expand her library significantly, even whilst on holiday, and for that reason, Hermione decides that some book shopping is in order.
From the street, Shakespeare and Company looks small and exceedingly quirky, a tiny place painted in brilliant shades of Gryffindor scarlet and gold with a healthy dose of the deep, dignified green that Hermione is coming to associate with Paris. The doors are open, allowing the wares to spill out onto the pavement, crammed into cardboard boxes and one rickety bookcase, arranged under what appears to be an icon of Walt Whitman.
Hermione loves it at once.
Shakespeare and Company is unquestionably the most magical Muggle place she’s ever seen-in fact, she’s not entirely convinced that it isn’t magical. How else to explain a place so much larger than the outside would indicate, a place so lined with books on every conceivable subject that it appears to be entirely composed of them? The colourful volumes cover the walls from floor to ceiling, forming an organic structure with no rhyme or reason to it, only bulging shelves and all manner of unexpected nooks and crannies. Hermione looks down, just to reassure herself that the floor hasn’t been paved with books as well.
Looking at this embarrassment of riches, she feels a glimmer of real excitement. The possibilities are so endless that she hardly knows where to begin. It’s no wonder that the shop is crowded; Hermione would rather have this attraction over the Eiffel Tower any day.
Two hours and many volumes later, Hermione knows she hasn’t even scratched the surface of what the shop has to offer her. However, she has blissfully wallowed in the dusty, musty smell of pages and has an armful of new acquisitions to purchase. She’s just about to reach for another when she’s jostled from the side, nearly falling over a display-table buried under a mound of trade paperbacks.
“Ah, excuse me,” apologizes a familiar voice. “It’s quite crowded here.” Slender but strong hands reach out to grab her shoulders, steadying her and preventing an embarrassing tumble. Whoever the man is, she likes the way he smells… although this, too, is familiar.
Hermione turns to thank her rescuer but freezes at the realisation that she has seen him before-many times, in fact, and several of them less than pleasant.
She is standing before the almost-Snape, the man in the long black coat-her phantom-and he is no less surprised to see her than she is to see him.
Now that she can examine him up close, there’s not a question in her mind as to his identity. He’s a mix of the strange and the strangely familiar: slender and pale, with spiky dark hair and equally dark eyes. His clothes are so Muggle and ordinary that no average wizard would ever recognise him as one of their own, and a pair of dark-framed rectangular glasses perches atop the lumpy bridge of his nose, giving the impression that he’s a clever bloke and knows it. He’s rather smaller than the looming menace Hermione thinks she remembers from her school days-he’s really not much taller than Harry, in fact-yet there’s no mistaking that furrowed brow, sharp chin or beaky nose, and when Hermione glances at the side of his neck, she can see silvery scars rising above the edge of his collar.
The last time she saw him, he was on his back in a brilliant pool of blood, his eyes very blank and very dead. Yet dead men don’t walk around and browse in Parisian bookshops. Dead men don’t frown at her-not outside of her nightmares, not in broad daylight.
Clearly, Severus Snape is alive and well.
Hermione tries to breathe and finds she can’t. The shop suddenly seems too narrow, too crowded, filled with the sick, humid warmth of too many bodies in too close a space. Her legs feel like rubber beneath her, but she has just enough presence of mind to move to her right, effectively trapping the man in the nook between the stairs and the groaning bookshelves. He’s been driving her insane for a week, appearing and disappearing at random; this time, she won’t let him get away so easily.
One way or another, she must have an answer.
“It’s you,” she whispers.
He scowls at her, and that’s when she is certain that this man is truly Severus Snape.
She hasn’t been seeing visions, she’s been seeing a Snape-a living, breathing, scowling Snape, who is currently standing before her and looking as though he’d like nothing better than to hex her into non-existence, if only the shop weren’t stuffed with inconvenient Muggle witnesses.
“You’re alive!” Hermione squeaks.
“Demonstrably,” Snape replies, his tone dry as day-old bread. His voice is exactly as she remembers: low and silky, equal parts beauty and menace. “If you have no further statements of the obvious to offer, Miss Granger, would you mind removing yourself from-?”
“And you’re dressed like a Muggle!”
Snape’s hand clenches around the volume he’s holding, his knuckles going briefly white.
“Surely you appreciate that this is a highly inappropriate venue for this conversation.”
“But I saw you die! There was nothing-if I could have done something, I would have done-how did you manage-”
“Miss. Granger. Cease your babbling this instant.” Snape bares his teeth, which are whiter, but no closer to straight than they ever have been. “You are making a scene,” he adds pointedly.
Hermione glances around and sees that he is right: several of the patrons are staring, and at least one older man is glaring at the two of them for daring to block access to the books he wanted to see, not to mention the staircase. The shop is stuffed full with both books and people, leaving them with no place to stand out of the way.
On an impulse, Hermione reaches out to grab Snape’s arm, seized by the certainty that if she allows him to walk away, he will disappear into the air. Through the rough green wool of his jumper, she can feel that he is bony and lean, warm and solid. Though the situation seems fantastic, he is not a phantom; she can feel him, so therefore he exists.
“Miss Granger,” he says, looking at her with distaste, “unhand me imme-”
“Come to lunch with me,” Hermione blurts.
“I beg your pardon?” He is staring daggers at her, his voice a dangerous warning. She ignores it, more frightened by the prospect of his leaving than she is by the thought of what he could do to her. He can’t still have his wand; they’ve buried it in Hogsmeade, the only trace of him that the survivors could find.
“Please come to lunch with me. My treat,” she adds, remembering too late that words such as please have never moved the stony heart of Severus Snape.
“Your treat,” he repeats slowly. “I fail to see how such a situation could in any way constitute a treat. I have neither the need nor the desire to have you provide me with a meal. I have no desire to see you, whatsoever. For all I know, this is some ill-advised trap, and any minute your dunderheaded partners-in-crime will show up-”
“Harry and Ron aren’t here,” Hermione explains before Snape can work himself up to a full head of fury. “Really, I swear it. It’s only me, and I just… I just want to talk to you.” As she says it, she realizes that this is easily the longest conversation she’s had in nearly a month. She hadn’t realized how much she misses speaking in English.
He looms forward as much as he can, radiating danger. It’s somewhat less intimidating without the billowing robes of a schoolmaster, but for an instant of doubt, Hermione fears that he will hurt her, shove her over in his determination to escape. How could she have forgotten that, whatever else he has been, Severus Snape has never been a man to underestimate?
He might look like any normal, rather bookish fellow at the moment, but it does not do to forget that he has cheated both Voldemort and death and come out victorious.
“So much for the supposedly Brightest Witch of her Age,” he sneers, “coming after a wanted man all by her lonesome, armed only with an invitation to lunch. Tell me, Miss Granger, have you forgotten who I am and what I’ve done?”
It is then that Hermione notices that his hands are trembling. She thinks of all the things she’s learned from the memories Harry has shared with her, and then she thinks that perhaps Snape is not so very different from Crookshanks, puffing himself up to look impressive when he really only wants to be left alone.
“No,” she murmurs. “I haven’t forgotten. That’s why I trust you: I understand who you are and what you’ve done. I’m just not certain that you do.”
Snape rears back at that, eyeing her with suspicion and something that in another man might be called fear.
“Professor Snape…”
“Hush! I am nobody’s professor, and that is not my name,” he whispers in a vicious undertone, his gaze darting about to make sure that they haven’t been overheard.
Of course: he’s living under an assumed identity. She should have guessed.
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to offend you, Mister… ?”
“Prince,” Snape grudgingly admits. “Patrick Prince.”
Hermione almost laughs at the irony of him naming himself after the legendary vanquisher of snakes. “It won’t happen again, Mr. Prince.”
“You’re damned right it won’t because I have no intention of ever meeting you again.”
“Sir, please.” Hermione grips his arm harder, willing him to understand. “I only want to talk. Just lunch, and then you’ll never have to see me again. I won’t tell anybody about you, I promise. I… I understand. About not wanting to be found, I mean.”
Snape stares at her for a very long moment, and she shivers at the intensity of that searing dark gaze, focused only on her. Though she does not feel the intrusion of Legilimency, he nonetheless seems to see enough in her face to convince him of her sincerity. He yanks his arm away from her and self-consciously neatens his coat.
“You’re a perfect fool… but very well, Miss Granger,” he says in a long-suffering tone. “If I agree to this request of yours, you will never again pester me with your infernal presence. Is that clear?”
For the first time in several months, Hermione’s smile is genuine. “Crystal, sir.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Snape knows the Latin Quarter considerably better than Hermione does, and he directs her around the corner, past the unique architectural collage that makes up Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, and into a cosy little place called ‘The Tea Caddy.’ Its front is panelled in warm-coloured woods, and there are two tiny, perfect little topiaries that flank the entryway. Inside, the light is dim but not too dark for comfort, and the chairs are comfortable. Snape orders them a proper tea. He speaks French with perfect grammar and a terrible accent.
All of this pales, however, in consideration of the wonder that is a hot cup of perfectly brewed Earl Grey. The waitress brings it to her in a china cup, steaming and fragrant, and Hermione closes her eyes and takes a moment to simply savour the familiar aroma of bergamot and citrus.
It feels like sheer bliss.
“Mmm,” she hums, relishing the first sip. She wants to imprint every moment of this experience in her mind, a shining memory to cheer herself when she is stuck in a place where the tea tastes like cardboard.
Snape quirks an eyebrow at her and looks almost amused. In the short walk from the bookshop, he’s cooled down considerably. He’s changed from the time when she knew him, she thinks-he has mellowed without the constant stress and strain of espionage. He looks younger than she remembers, restored to his natural age by good living and the absence of mortal peril.
“That good, Miss Granger?”
“Better,” she confirms. “Do you mind not calling me that? It makes me feel like we’re still at school.”
“Perish the thought,” he says, shuddering. “Very well, then: Hermione.”
It sounds rather lovely when he says it like that, and she’s surprised to feel a little shiver of excitement at the sound. “Yes, Patrick?”
Snape snorts and sips at his own tea-black, of course-before tucking into a fat scone studded with currants. “Twenty points from Gryffindor for your cheek.”
There is something pleasant about this bantering-an ease that Hermione has not felt in some time. In her chest, something loosens, though she hadn’t realized that it was so tight. They were never close when back in Scotland, but here on foreign soil, they form a secret society of their own: a kinship of shared language and shared experiences.
He answers most of her questions, telling her a tale of treacherous masters and assumed identities, of shrewd investments and one narrow escape. It seems almost too fantastic to be true, but Hermione finds herself inclined to believe him; the proof, after all, is sitting right in front of her, dressed in green and black and grey. In exchange, she offers some news of herself: of Crookshanks, who prefers the Burrow to her flat in London, and of parents who’d preferred to cultivate their new lives in Australia, rather than return to their old ones in England.
Snape frowns at that, but Hermione shrugs it off. Her parents have always urged her to be an independent soul; it shouldn’t have been so surprising that although she’d cared enough to send them away, they hadn’t cared enough to return.
“So…Fawkes?” she offers, changing the subject.
“Fawkes,” he confirms.
“I thought he’d left, after…”
“Quite. I thought so as well, but it would seem that there were many things going on of which I was unaware.” Snape’s expression is tight. “I can’t imagine why he returned, but I am… grateful for the favour. It wasn’t a perfect solution,” he admits, gesturing to the scars that peek out from his collar, “but it was enough to get me to where I needed to be.”
“I can see that. You must have been very ill.” Hermione envisions the beautiful phoenix bent over Snape’s bleeding body, weeping pearly tears over his sacrifice. The thought brings another stab of guilt; if Snape is alive and whole, it’s certainly no thanks to her. “I’m just so sorry. It all happened so fast, and I couldn’t think… and, oh God, we just left you there, all alone…”
“You believed that I was dead. I believed that I was dead. You had no moral obligation to help a man you believed to be your enemy, and I understand that you were all rather preoccupied with more pressing matters at the time.” Snape frowns at the tabletop, as if this generosity of spirit is painful to him. “Perhaps I owe you thanks; if you hadn’t left when you did, I might never have managed to escape. Without your negligence, I might be rotting away in Azkaban.”
“Never!” Hermione protests. “You’re a hero, you know, with an Order of Merlin and everything. Harry told everybody…”
“Yes,” Snape says grimly, “I suspected he might. Yet another reason not to return: I doubt I have the stomach to be glad-handed by people who previously despised me, simply because the Great Harry Potter says they should.”
Hermione thinks that although he has a point, there is something to be said for collecting rewards that are long overdue. She does not share this insight with Snape; she doubts he would agree.
“You don’t miss it, do you?” she asks. “The magic, I mean.”
He gives her a sharp, narrow-eyed look, piercing as any dagger.
“What do you think? Do you miss it?”
Ah, so he’s noticed.
“Sometimes,” she answers honestly. “It can be reassuring, knowing that your wand is up your sleeve and you’re prepared for any trouble. It certainly makes some things a lot easier-not to mention packing,” she adds, brandishing her trusty beaded bag. “But on the whole… I don’t miss it as much as I thought I might.”
In truth, the time without it has been nearly a relief. Having seen some of the very darkest sides of magic, it has occurred to her that it’s unwise to be so dependent on it. She doesn’t think she’s left magic behind for good, but it’s therapeutic to take a holiday from it.
Snape nods. He’s staring out the window at Saint-Julien, a place that’s been broken and destroyed countless times, only to constantly rise again, scarred and yet stronger than before.
“Before I came to Hogwarts, I could not imagine wanting to live a life without magic,” he says. “During that last year, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to live a life with it. That world did me no favours: it took everything I had and gave me nothing in return. I owe it nothing. It wasn’t a hard decision to leave it behind.”
It’s an honour, Hermione knows, to be allowed to hear this. Snape is famously opaque, and even the memories he gifted to Harry have done remarkably little to illuminate a man that none of them ever really knew. She’s flattered by the gift of his confidence.
“Still, I confess I’m curious,” Snape continues, turning back to look at her. “Why have you left it behind, Hermione? What brings such an ambitious and well-regarded witch to hide in a foreign city and the Muggle world? Why are you here?”
It is, she knows, the question that everybody would like to ask. Even she is curious to know the real answer, though she’s no closer to understanding it than any of the disappointed souls she’s left behind.
She shrugs and sips her tea. “I had to go. I just don’t know where to go next.”
Snape stares at her over the tops of his glasses. It’s quite amazing how a look that used to reduce students to tears can have a very different effect on her in this context. It’s a shock to realise that he’s actually rather attractive, even if he is nothing like handsome.
Hermione isn’t the only one to think so. She can see that the waitress is flirting with him, and she can also see that he’s utterly oblivious to it. This secretly pleases Hermione, for reasons best left unexamined.
“Do you live here?” she asks.
“For now. I’ve moved around quite a bit. I thought it was about time I did some travelling. When I lose interest, I move on. I’ve been here for a few months; I was last in Seattle.” His long fingers play with the few coins left on the table. His hands are really very beautiful, and his touch is deft. “And you?”
She shrugs. The only thing she’s sure of is her uncertainty.
He pretends to be harassed when she asks if they might arrange to meet again, but there’s a spark in his eyes that belies all his grumbling.
Hermione thinks that secretly, he is looking forward to it. She can’t blame him; she feels the same way.
Part II
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~11,000
Summary: Hermione and Severus have each come to Paris in search of themselves. They find each other instead.
Disclaimer: Severus Snape and Hermione Granger do not belong to me. Neither does the city of Paris. I wish they did, but in the meantime, I’m just having some fun and mean no harm.
Notes: Written for the Winter Round of the SS/HG Exchange. Set post-DH but EWE, so that our hero and heroine can be together and free of Weasleys. Many of the places described in this story are very real, but certain details have been changed. Unfortunately, Carte Blanche exists only in the imagination of a few select people.
Acknowledgments: A thousand thanks to melusin_79, who Brit-picked, beta-read and kept me from making some embarrassing mistakes. duniazade and textualsphinx also deserve my gratitude for their inspiration, their brainstorming, their expertise and their encouragement. Any mistakes belong to me; anything you like is a result of their hard work.
EDIT: I'm shocked, pleased and proud to announce that this story was rec'd on crack_broom in July 2008.
Hermione leans over the railing of the Pont d’Arcole and stares out at the evening panorama of the city around her. The paper clutched in her hand flutters in the mild breeze like a symbol of surrender, a white flag latticed over with a network of red lines.
To her left looms the Hôtel de Ville, a wedding cake of a building overwritten with elaborate swoops and swirls of pale stone like so much fancy icing, painted with all the colours of the sunset. To her right, the spectacle of Notre Dame rises, rigid and Gothic, while its fabled flying buttresses gleam in the dying light, glittering like some fantastic insect. Hermione stands in the middle of the bridge, neither left nor right, floating over the Seine in a perfect state of limbo.
She is young and healthy, unencumbered by unwelcome company. She has money in her bag and a decent place to sleep. The weather is gorgeous, ripe with the last golden glow of summer, although the air carries a foreshadowing of impending autumn, something crisp and clean. In her hand is a map of the City of Light, the totality of Paris laid bare and clear and stark upon a sheet of paper, reduced to comprehensible lines and grids and names upon names. The whole of this famous city is at her disposal: an inexhaustible well filled with more opportunities than any one person could explore in a lifetime.
The problem is only this: she has no idea where to go. She has known for some time that she needs to go somewhere-it is this impulse that has brought her as far as Paris-but beyond that, things remain blank. For a clever witch used to having the proper answers at her instant disposal, accustomed to directing others with perfect certitude, this is an exercise in frustration.
She feels like a lone boulder in a river, sunk down in the mire while life flows on around her.
A voice cuts into her musings. “Pardonnez-moi, mais est-ce que vous êtes perdue?”
Hermione flinches at the unexpected interruption, her heart suddenly pounding. Beside her stands a slender, fair-haired man, middle-aged and slightly balding. His pale eyes look kind and polite rather than predatory, and his clothing gives him the nervous, tweedy air of an academic.
For a moment, Hermione thinks of Remus Lupin, who was tweedy and kind and polite, and who did not live to see his son celebrate his first birthday.
Even in Paris, the ghosts are always lurking.
“Mademoiselle, est-ce que vous êtes perdue?” the man repeats, gesturing to the map in her hand. Are you lost? Hermione considers the question.
“Oui,” she says and walks away with no particular destination in mind.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The Hôtel Fourcy has a dungeon in its depths.
It’s not really a dungeon so much as it is an old stone-lined cellar, a grimly elegant relic of the 18th century that has been repurposed as the hotel’s restaurant. Judging by the opinions of Hermione’s fellow lodgers, most of them find the restaurant’s medieval look to be wonderfully atmospheric, like some fairy-tale castle. Hermione, however, has actually lived in a castle, and to her it looks like the dungeons of Hogwarts. She always half expects to hear the crack of a door being flung open, heralding the arrival of a man who has been dead for years and hasn’t been her teacher for even longer.
She always eats her complimentary tartines very quickly and takes the rest of her meals elsewhere. She has little appetite these days.
Still, the Fourcy has its compensations: the restored townhouse is clean and well kept, quiet and discreet. Tucked on a relatively quiet street in the heart of the increasingly trendy Marais, it houses nothing more troublesome than overeager German tourists who sometimes talk too much, too loud.
The Fourcy bears the stamp of aristocratic origins, and even if it had nothing else to recommend it, Hermione would love it for the cobblestone courtyard that fills its centre, a light-filled oasis that invites long contemplation. Hermione does most of her work in this space, drinking in the sight of the genteelly crumbling masonry and the vivid green vines that embrace it, curling around ledges and caressing against windowpanes. There is a sense of history here, such that she can almost imagine herself in the times when a carriage would have entered through those massive blue doors, passing under the porte-cochère and into the courtyard beyond it.
Still, the Fourcy has one major flaw: none of the staff can brew a satisfactory cup of tea.
They offer it as a matter of course, yet they always seem surprised when Hermione takes them up on the offer. The request inevitably results in them presenting her with a pot of rapidly cooling water, a stale, ancient teabag and a look of apology.
The tea that results tastes like nothing so much as cardboard-or, when sugar is added, sweetened cardboard. It only leaves Hermione even thirstier for real tea; this pale imitation is worse than nothing at all, for it brings no satisfaction and intensifies her longing. The Fourcy’s poor substitute for tea is the one thing that always pushes Hermione out to explore the streets of the Marais, in search of the real thing.
She has yet to find it, but at least it gives her an excuse to get out in the city.
It is on one of these excursions that Hermione first sees the ghost of Severus Snape.
She’s become accustomed to seeing the echoes of the dead in the faces of random strangers: a man with eyes as blue as Dumbledore’s, a lanky boy whose infectious laugh makes her thinks of Fred. Hermione can’t help but remember Tonks each time she looks at the beggar girl who sits in front of the Crédit Lyonnais on the Rue Saint-Antoine; she’s by no means a double, but her multicoloured hair stands out in wild spikes, and despite her circumstances, she has the same relentlessly cheerful manner as Tonks. Hermione always drops some coins in the girl’s waiting hat.
She wonders what it means, to be haunted by memories of the departed and yet to rarely miss the living friends she’s chosen to leave behind.
Today, as she straightens from depositing her change with Not-Tonks, she sees something much stronger than any echo: she sees what can only be an actual ghost, in the form of the late Headmaster of Hogwarts.
He is dressed in dark Muggle clothing and seated at a table in front of the café called ‘Les Chimères,’ his slender legs outstretched and brow furrowed in thought. One long, white hand raises his espresso to his lips while the other toys with a biro as he contemplates the crossword puzzle. His profile is unmistakable, given the distinctive silhouette of that oversized nose, and he moves with an eerily familiar grace. He looks as solid and real as any other man, yet she knows that he must be a ghost because she has seen him die.
Hermione gasps out loud, feeling suddenly light-headed. She has never been the type to swoon, but at the moment she feels the impulse.
“Tiens! Elle est malade!”
Hermione turns in the direction of the shouting, the strange spell broken. Several passers-by are eyeing her with either concern or suspicion. Not-Tonks is staring up at her with huge hazel eyes.
“Are you okay?” she asks in French. Her voice sounds nothing like Tonks’.
“I’m fine,” Hermione assures her, although her heart is thundering, and she feels more than a little shaky. It’s not every day one sees the dead, after all.
When she looks back up at the little café with its flimsy green awning and flimsier chairs, Snape’s spectre is gone. Hermione is both crushed and comforted by this fact.
It’s only a figment of her imagination, she’s certain. She’s read about this phenomenon in a hundred books and articles on psychology and post-traumatic stress and is certain that all can be easily explained. She’s only imagining Snape’s presence because of the guilt she feels for his death-a guilt that stems from failing to act while he died before her eyes, a guilt that is compounded by every sad detail she has learned of his life since then. Her brain is only showing her this illusion because she needs to get over this and get on with life.
Yes. There is a rational explanation for everything, even irrational things.
Hermione feels very smug in this theory until she walks further down the street and passes by the empty café table. Upon its surface sit a few coins, an empty demitasse in a saucer, and a folded newspaper with a half-completed crossword puzzle sitting right on top.
The handwriting on the puzzle looks like Snape’s.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
After a week filled with Snape sightings, Hermione is convinced that she’s much worse off than she’d ever have guessed. Clearly, she’s gone insane.
She has spotted him on the quais along the river, or in the shadows under bridges. She’s seen him once more at Les Chimères, and she’s almost certain that she saw him walking out of a boulangerie, stalking away with a baguette under his arm and his long coat streaming behind him like an inky storm cloud. Every time she thinks she might get close enough to look, to really examine her delusion, he turns the corner or melts into the shadows, or for all she knows, Disapparates.
Once, she thinks she sees him in the Métro. As she waits in the white-tiled station for her train to arrive, she catches a glimpse of a dark-haired man on the opposite platform, a thin, sharp figure with a beaky nose and the prowling gait of a jungle cat. She very nearly calls his name across the distance of the tracks-Professor? Headmaster? Snape? Severus?-but the opposite train arrives while the words are still stuck somewhere inside her, and by the time she unstoppers her throat, the train has gone, leaving no trace of the man in the black coat.
This is, she thinks, going beyond a mere fixation. To see Snape-Snape, of all people-in every place she goes must surely be some sort of psychosis. She knows that she hasn’t coped with everything as well as the people all around her had expected, but until this point, she’s never actually questioned her sanity.
Even worse than the prospect of being haunted by the ex-Headmaster’s ghost is the foolish, foolish hope that wells inside of her each time she thinks she spots him. In those brief instants, she reminds herself that they never did find his body, only an ocean of his blood. Snape had once claimed that he could stopper death, and if she’s ever known a wizard who could perform such a feat, it would be him. A clever spy and skilled brewer might have Blood Replenishing Potion in his pockets, might have a bezoar or antivenin at his disposal, might have known a way to escape such a monstrously unfair fate. Perhaps, Hermione allows herself to think, his death is not on her conscience, after all.
And then she remembers the gore they found in the Shrieking Shack, the floorboards thick with blood and the air reeking like a slaughterhouse. She remembers the dullness of Snape’s normally glittering eyes and the way his tortured, gasping breathing ceased. She knows that she had only a small window in which to act; she missed it, and the man who worked to save them all is dead as a result. This time, there is no convenient Time-Turner to help her erase the mistake.
In an effort to drive the Snape problem from her mind, Hermione resorts to her favourite method of escapism: books, and lots of them. A woman with a bottomless beaded bag can afford to expand her library significantly, even whilst on holiday, and for that reason, Hermione decides that some book shopping is in order.
From the street, Shakespeare and Company looks small and exceedingly quirky, a tiny place painted in brilliant shades of Gryffindor scarlet and gold with a healthy dose of the deep, dignified green that Hermione is coming to associate with Paris. The doors are open, allowing the wares to spill out onto the pavement, crammed into cardboard boxes and one rickety bookcase, arranged under what appears to be an icon of Walt Whitman.
Hermione loves it at once.
Shakespeare and Company is unquestionably the most magical Muggle place she’s ever seen-in fact, she’s not entirely convinced that it isn’t magical. How else to explain a place so much larger than the outside would indicate, a place so lined with books on every conceivable subject that it appears to be entirely composed of them? The colourful volumes cover the walls from floor to ceiling, forming an organic structure with no rhyme or reason to it, only bulging shelves and all manner of unexpected nooks and crannies. Hermione looks down, just to reassure herself that the floor hasn’t been paved with books as well.
Looking at this embarrassment of riches, she feels a glimmer of real excitement. The possibilities are so endless that she hardly knows where to begin. It’s no wonder that the shop is crowded; Hermione would rather have this attraction over the Eiffel Tower any day.
Two hours and many volumes later, Hermione knows she hasn’t even scratched the surface of what the shop has to offer her. However, she has blissfully wallowed in the dusty, musty smell of pages and has an armful of new acquisitions to purchase. She’s just about to reach for another when she’s jostled from the side, nearly falling over a display-table buried under a mound of trade paperbacks.
“Ah, excuse me,” apologizes a familiar voice. “It’s quite crowded here.” Slender but strong hands reach out to grab her shoulders, steadying her and preventing an embarrassing tumble. Whoever the man is, she likes the way he smells… although this, too, is familiar.
Hermione turns to thank her rescuer but freezes at the realisation that she has seen him before-many times, in fact, and several of them less than pleasant.
She is standing before the almost-Snape, the man in the long black coat-her phantom-and he is no less surprised to see her than she is to see him.
Now that she can examine him up close, there’s not a question in her mind as to his identity. He’s a mix of the strange and the strangely familiar: slender and pale, with spiky dark hair and equally dark eyes. His clothes are so Muggle and ordinary that no average wizard would ever recognise him as one of their own, and a pair of dark-framed rectangular glasses perches atop the lumpy bridge of his nose, giving the impression that he’s a clever bloke and knows it. He’s rather smaller than the looming menace Hermione thinks she remembers from her school days-he’s really not much taller than Harry, in fact-yet there’s no mistaking that furrowed brow, sharp chin or beaky nose, and when Hermione glances at the side of his neck, she can see silvery scars rising above the edge of his collar.
The last time she saw him, he was on his back in a brilliant pool of blood, his eyes very blank and very dead. Yet dead men don’t walk around and browse in Parisian bookshops. Dead men don’t frown at her-not outside of her nightmares, not in broad daylight.
Clearly, Severus Snape is alive and well.
Hermione tries to breathe and finds she can’t. The shop suddenly seems too narrow, too crowded, filled with the sick, humid warmth of too many bodies in too close a space. Her legs feel like rubber beneath her, but she has just enough presence of mind to move to her right, effectively trapping the man in the nook between the stairs and the groaning bookshelves. He’s been driving her insane for a week, appearing and disappearing at random; this time, she won’t let him get away so easily.
One way or another, she must have an answer.
“It’s you,” she whispers.
He scowls at her, and that’s when she is certain that this man is truly Severus Snape.
She hasn’t been seeing visions, she’s been seeing a Snape-a living, breathing, scowling Snape, who is currently standing before her and looking as though he’d like nothing better than to hex her into non-existence, if only the shop weren’t stuffed with inconvenient Muggle witnesses.
“You’re alive!” Hermione squeaks.
“Demonstrably,” Snape replies, his tone dry as day-old bread. His voice is exactly as she remembers: low and silky, equal parts beauty and menace. “If you have no further statements of the obvious to offer, Miss Granger, would you mind removing yourself from-?”
“And you’re dressed like a Muggle!”
Snape’s hand clenches around the volume he’s holding, his knuckles going briefly white.
“Surely you appreciate that this is a highly inappropriate venue for this conversation.”
“But I saw you die! There was nothing-if I could have done something, I would have done-how did you manage-”
“Miss. Granger. Cease your babbling this instant.” Snape bares his teeth, which are whiter, but no closer to straight than they ever have been. “You are making a scene,” he adds pointedly.
Hermione glances around and sees that he is right: several of the patrons are staring, and at least one older man is glaring at the two of them for daring to block access to the books he wanted to see, not to mention the staircase. The shop is stuffed full with both books and people, leaving them with no place to stand out of the way.
On an impulse, Hermione reaches out to grab Snape’s arm, seized by the certainty that if she allows him to walk away, he will disappear into the air. Through the rough green wool of his jumper, she can feel that he is bony and lean, warm and solid. Though the situation seems fantastic, he is not a phantom; she can feel him, so therefore he exists.
“Miss Granger,” he says, looking at her with distaste, “unhand me imme-”
“Come to lunch with me,” Hermione blurts.
“I beg your pardon?” He is staring daggers at her, his voice a dangerous warning. She ignores it, more frightened by the prospect of his leaving than she is by the thought of what he could do to her. He can’t still have his wand; they’ve buried it in Hogsmeade, the only trace of him that the survivors could find.
“Please come to lunch with me. My treat,” she adds, remembering too late that words such as please have never moved the stony heart of Severus Snape.
“Your treat,” he repeats slowly. “I fail to see how such a situation could in any way constitute a treat. I have neither the need nor the desire to have you provide me with a meal. I have no desire to see you, whatsoever. For all I know, this is some ill-advised trap, and any minute your dunderheaded partners-in-crime will show up-”
“Harry and Ron aren’t here,” Hermione explains before Snape can work himself up to a full head of fury. “Really, I swear it. It’s only me, and I just… I just want to talk to you.” As she says it, she realizes that this is easily the longest conversation she’s had in nearly a month. She hadn’t realized how much she misses speaking in English.
He looms forward as much as he can, radiating danger. It’s somewhat less intimidating without the billowing robes of a schoolmaster, but for an instant of doubt, Hermione fears that he will hurt her, shove her over in his determination to escape. How could she have forgotten that, whatever else he has been, Severus Snape has never been a man to underestimate?
He might look like any normal, rather bookish fellow at the moment, but it does not do to forget that he has cheated both Voldemort and death and come out victorious.
“So much for the supposedly Brightest Witch of her Age,” he sneers, “coming after a wanted man all by her lonesome, armed only with an invitation to lunch. Tell me, Miss Granger, have you forgotten who I am and what I’ve done?”
It is then that Hermione notices that his hands are trembling. She thinks of all the things she’s learned from the memories Harry has shared with her, and then she thinks that perhaps Snape is not so very different from Crookshanks, puffing himself up to look impressive when he really only wants to be left alone.
“No,” she murmurs. “I haven’t forgotten. That’s why I trust you: I understand who you are and what you’ve done. I’m just not certain that you do.”
Snape rears back at that, eyeing her with suspicion and something that in another man might be called fear.
“Professor Snape…”
“Hush! I am nobody’s professor, and that is not my name,” he whispers in a vicious undertone, his gaze darting about to make sure that they haven’t been overheard.
Of course: he’s living under an assumed identity. She should have guessed.
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to offend you, Mister… ?”
“Prince,” Snape grudgingly admits. “Patrick Prince.”
Hermione almost laughs at the irony of him naming himself after the legendary vanquisher of snakes. “It won’t happen again, Mr. Prince.”
“You’re damned right it won’t because I have no intention of ever meeting you again.”
“Sir, please.” Hermione grips his arm harder, willing him to understand. “I only want to talk. Just lunch, and then you’ll never have to see me again. I won’t tell anybody about you, I promise. I… I understand. About not wanting to be found, I mean.”
Snape stares at her for a very long moment, and she shivers at the intensity of that searing dark gaze, focused only on her. Though she does not feel the intrusion of Legilimency, he nonetheless seems to see enough in her face to convince him of her sincerity. He yanks his arm away from her and self-consciously neatens his coat.
“You’re a perfect fool… but very well, Miss Granger,” he says in a long-suffering tone. “If I agree to this request of yours, you will never again pester me with your infernal presence. Is that clear?”
For the first time in several months, Hermione’s smile is genuine. “Crystal, sir.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Snape knows the Latin Quarter considerably better than Hermione does, and he directs her around the corner, past the unique architectural collage that makes up Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, and into a cosy little place called ‘The Tea Caddy.’ Its front is panelled in warm-coloured woods, and there are two tiny, perfect little topiaries that flank the entryway. Inside, the light is dim but not too dark for comfort, and the chairs are comfortable. Snape orders them a proper tea. He speaks French with perfect grammar and a terrible accent.
All of this pales, however, in consideration of the wonder that is a hot cup of perfectly brewed Earl Grey. The waitress brings it to her in a china cup, steaming and fragrant, and Hermione closes her eyes and takes a moment to simply savour the familiar aroma of bergamot and citrus.
It feels like sheer bliss.
“Mmm,” she hums, relishing the first sip. She wants to imprint every moment of this experience in her mind, a shining memory to cheer herself when she is stuck in a place where the tea tastes like cardboard.
Snape quirks an eyebrow at her and looks almost amused. In the short walk from the bookshop, he’s cooled down considerably. He’s changed from the time when she knew him, she thinks-he has mellowed without the constant stress and strain of espionage. He looks younger than she remembers, restored to his natural age by good living and the absence of mortal peril.
“That good, Miss Granger?”
“Better,” she confirms. “Do you mind not calling me that? It makes me feel like we’re still at school.”
“Perish the thought,” he says, shuddering. “Very well, then: Hermione.”
It sounds rather lovely when he says it like that, and she’s surprised to feel a little shiver of excitement at the sound. “Yes, Patrick?”
Snape snorts and sips at his own tea-black, of course-before tucking into a fat scone studded with currants. “Twenty points from Gryffindor for your cheek.”
There is something pleasant about this bantering-an ease that Hermione has not felt in some time. In her chest, something loosens, though she hadn’t realized that it was so tight. They were never close when back in Scotland, but here on foreign soil, they form a secret society of their own: a kinship of shared language and shared experiences.
He answers most of her questions, telling her a tale of treacherous masters and assumed identities, of shrewd investments and one narrow escape. It seems almost too fantastic to be true, but Hermione finds herself inclined to believe him; the proof, after all, is sitting right in front of her, dressed in green and black and grey. In exchange, she offers some news of herself: of Crookshanks, who prefers the Burrow to her flat in London, and of parents who’d preferred to cultivate their new lives in Australia, rather than return to their old ones in England.
Snape frowns at that, but Hermione shrugs it off. Her parents have always urged her to be an independent soul; it shouldn’t have been so surprising that although she’d cared enough to send them away, they hadn’t cared enough to return.
“So…Fawkes?” she offers, changing the subject.
“Fawkes,” he confirms.
“I thought he’d left, after…”
“Quite. I thought so as well, but it would seem that there were many things going on of which I was unaware.” Snape’s expression is tight. “I can’t imagine why he returned, but I am… grateful for the favour. It wasn’t a perfect solution,” he admits, gesturing to the scars that peek out from his collar, “but it was enough to get me to where I needed to be.”
“I can see that. You must have been very ill.” Hermione envisions the beautiful phoenix bent over Snape’s bleeding body, weeping pearly tears over his sacrifice. The thought brings another stab of guilt; if Snape is alive and whole, it’s certainly no thanks to her. “I’m just so sorry. It all happened so fast, and I couldn’t think… and, oh God, we just left you there, all alone…”
“You believed that I was dead. I believed that I was dead. You had no moral obligation to help a man you believed to be your enemy, and I understand that you were all rather preoccupied with more pressing matters at the time.” Snape frowns at the tabletop, as if this generosity of spirit is painful to him. “Perhaps I owe you thanks; if you hadn’t left when you did, I might never have managed to escape. Without your negligence, I might be rotting away in Azkaban.”
“Never!” Hermione protests. “You’re a hero, you know, with an Order of Merlin and everything. Harry told everybody…”
“Yes,” Snape says grimly, “I suspected he might. Yet another reason not to return: I doubt I have the stomach to be glad-handed by people who previously despised me, simply because the Great Harry Potter says they should.”
Hermione thinks that although he has a point, there is something to be said for collecting rewards that are long overdue. She does not share this insight with Snape; she doubts he would agree.
“You don’t miss it, do you?” she asks. “The magic, I mean.”
He gives her a sharp, narrow-eyed look, piercing as any dagger.
“What do you think? Do you miss it?”
Ah, so he’s noticed.
“Sometimes,” she answers honestly. “It can be reassuring, knowing that your wand is up your sleeve and you’re prepared for any trouble. It certainly makes some things a lot easier-not to mention packing,” she adds, brandishing her trusty beaded bag. “But on the whole… I don’t miss it as much as I thought I might.”
In truth, the time without it has been nearly a relief. Having seen some of the very darkest sides of magic, it has occurred to her that it’s unwise to be so dependent on it. She doesn’t think she’s left magic behind for good, but it’s therapeutic to take a holiday from it.
Snape nods. He’s staring out the window at Saint-Julien, a place that’s been broken and destroyed countless times, only to constantly rise again, scarred and yet stronger than before.
“Before I came to Hogwarts, I could not imagine wanting to live a life without magic,” he says. “During that last year, I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to live a life with it. That world did me no favours: it took everything I had and gave me nothing in return. I owe it nothing. It wasn’t a hard decision to leave it behind.”
It’s an honour, Hermione knows, to be allowed to hear this. Snape is famously opaque, and even the memories he gifted to Harry have done remarkably little to illuminate a man that none of them ever really knew. She’s flattered by the gift of his confidence.
“Still, I confess I’m curious,” Snape continues, turning back to look at her. “Why have you left it behind, Hermione? What brings such an ambitious and well-regarded witch to hide in a foreign city and the Muggle world? Why are you here?”
It is, she knows, the question that everybody would like to ask. Even she is curious to know the real answer, though she’s no closer to understanding it than any of the disappointed souls she’s left behind.
She shrugs and sips her tea. “I had to go. I just don’t know where to go next.”
Snape stares at her over the tops of his glasses. It’s quite amazing how a look that used to reduce students to tears can have a very different effect on her in this context. It’s a shock to realise that he’s actually rather attractive, even if he is nothing like handsome.
Hermione isn’t the only one to think so. She can see that the waitress is flirting with him, and she can also see that he’s utterly oblivious to it. This secretly pleases Hermione, for reasons best left unexamined.
“Do you live here?” she asks.
“For now. I’ve moved around quite a bit. I thought it was about time I did some travelling. When I lose interest, I move on. I’ve been here for a few months; I was last in Seattle.” His long fingers play with the few coins left on the table. His hands are really very beautiful, and his touch is deft. “And you?”
She shrugs. The only thing she’s sure of is her uncertainty.
He pretends to be harassed when she asks if they might arrange to meet again, but there’s a spark in his eyes that belies all his grumbling.
Hermione thinks that secretly, he is looking forward to it. She can’t blame him; she feels the same way.
Part II