FIC: When In Roma . . . (PG-13)

[iulia_linnea]

Title: When In Roma . . .
Type: Fic
Age-Range Category: Four
Pairing: Severus Snape/Canon Female
Author: subversa
Beta(s): teddyradiator
Rating: PG-13
Summary: From death to life at thirty-nine, Severus Snape spends the summer of his recuperation in a secluded holiday resort. He has the property all to himself-until he doesn't.



The lengthening shadows of afternoon stretch across the grass and creep toward the expanse of the lake. The summer days are long, and the man in Caravan Number Three abides in the unbroken quiet and takes a sip from the cup of cool shandygaff.

He sits in loose-limbed comfort beneath the extensive shade of a hearty oak tree. The somewhat ridiculous chair he lounges in now sat untenanted for the first two weeks of his visit. In its stead, he brought out the straight-backed wooden chair meant for use at the dining table, and sat in his customary rigid, upright posture while he sipped at his cool drinks and surveyed his small holiday kingdom.

He is not the sort of man who relaxes, unless he is behind the locked door of his private space. So a chair that permits only slouched posture-and has ridiculously fanciful rattan embellishments to its fundamental structure-is not the sort of furniture he permits in his life.

In his old life.

It feels like a bit of a miracle that the Battle of the Garden Chair, as he came to view it, highlights the difference between his life Before and his life After.

It is his choice to make, after all.

He has to remind himself of this-and make the choice over and over again-several times every day.

So it is good that he has this time, where the only witnesses to his daily dilemma are the birds and other denizens of the woods nearby.

His simple evening meal prepared, eaten, and tidied away, he ventures out of doors and stands with one shoulder propped against the outer surface of Caravan Number Three.

The moon, approaching the full, is translucent against the evening sky, where dusk quickly encroaches upon the close of another day. Tonight he sips burgundy, hearing the insects setting up their nightly chorus, like an orchestra tuning up before a performance. This ritual of mentally cataloging the natural details of the passing summer is oddly engrossing-perhaps even soothing.

He vaguely remembers being a boy, fascinated with the dependability of the passing of the days. The orderliness of it all was a balm, a way to mark the time passing outside the windows of a home that honored no such balance, offered no such security.

Coming back to this observance of his world provides him with the ability to draw a line under what came before.

Allows him to see, for the first time in his adult life, a way forward.

He sprawls into the absurd chair beneath his tree and bears witness to the coming of a night in which he need have no fear of danger for himself or for others he cares about.

He remains until the sky, a remarkable tapestry dotted with points of light, offers for his delectation a symphony of shooting stars.

When he finishes his burgundy, he goes inside to sleep, a man experiencing peace of mind and heart and soul.

2
She arrives just at daybreak, dropping her bag into the grass. For a moment she stares at her trainers before taking a quick survey of her surroundings. As promised, there is not another soul or habitation in sight, and she closes her eyes for the merest instant of relief. One hears of secluded holiday spots, but she has little faith anymore in such fantasies. The world is filled with a pack of feckless tossers, and truly, fecklessness is the very least of their faults.

But the person who directed her here has never let her down. She expels the breath she has been holding, and in so doing, allows herself to relax infinitesimally.

She stands on a gentle rise, looking on the morning sky reflecting the gentle pinks, purples and peaches of the sunrise. She turns in a slow circle until she spies the edge of a curved wooden roof. She climbs the hill, into the trees.

In a clearing, she finds a gaily painted Romany caravan.

It is a bow top wagon with four wooden wheels set outside the body. The caravan is painted a bright teal, with intricate scrollwork sheathed in lines of gold-leaf framing the arched doorway. The lower part of the door is painted bright yellow gold, and the upper part is a window framed in bright pink curtains. Beneath the doorway are wooden steps painted a darker teal green.

Entranced, she opens the door and steps out of her trainers and into a beautifully restored wagon. There is a cast iron stove to her left, with a mantle above and a mirror above that. Across from the stove is a built-in seat with drawers nestled beneath it. The thick seat cushion is upholstered in dark teal velvet and piled with brightly-coloured cushions.

But the place that draws her like a moth to flame is the bed built into the rear of the wagon. It encompasses more than one-third of the interior. The bed is curtained off by dark wine-coloured lace that is delicate enough to adorn a negligee. She hooks the lace to the grapnel just above the bed pillows and lowers herself onto the luxuriant coverlet.

The bed is easily wide enough for two, and her girlhood imagination peoples the caravan with two young lovers, setting off on romantic adventures. She gazes through the curved window that makes up the end of the caravan, and she can see through the trees to the meadow beyond.

She suddenly feels the exhaustion of the last few days-weeks-months-years of her life, and she allows herself to curl up and unwind into sleep.

3
He awakens the next day to a lowering sky that is an all-day grey, with no break in the cloud cover.

He lights the stove and takes his customary three-minute shower. It is much easier to towel dry quickly without long hair to slow him down. He eats standing at the open door, enjoying the breeze and watching the rain fall. It seems remarkable to relax into inactivity without fretting about tasks incomplete and machinations unplanned.

He smirks. He does have a plan, though. He will read Heart of Darkness, a gift from an ironical friend. If he does not find it interesting enough, he will nap to the music of rain on the roof.

By midafternoon the next day, she is somewhat bored, but even having the luxury of boredom is novel. Since childhood, she has been on constant alert against danger and disaster. If she wasn't at personal risk with her friends, she was extrapolating possible future scenarios and likely outcomes.

Arithmancy is a valuable tool, and she is good at it, but when she supplements it with a good algorithm, her success rate at predictive planning is nothing short of phenomenal.

This is not conceit on her part. It is a simple statement of truth.

She had a part in defeating a grave danger to all of humankind, but once the enemy was vanquished, her part was not finished. There was rebuilding to be done, and she was asked to help create a logistical plan of how to get from point A, where the ruins of the battlefield lay, to point Z, where government was once again functioning, and people were able to resume their lives-including their work and education.

Now, she is a young woman who has had zero opportunity to do the things her contemporaries spent their teens enjoying. She doesn't consider herself to be very girly, but even she has basic needs and wants.

She has a birthday in less than two months. She'll be twenty years old.

She hasn't the first clue of how to commence being an adult woman. Her parents are lost to her, so she has no mother to show her the way, and her best friends are boys.

But if she can plan a war and the reconstruction of society, she can damn well figure out how to shop and wear makeup and find a man.

She has a month in this enchanted Romany wagon to reorder her priorities. All she needs is a plan of action.

She decides to make a list of things to do.

4
He moves through the stand of trees just beyond the far side of a pond. There are still patches of muck from the rain, but he has committed the path to memory and easily avoids the mud. His destination is a rock formation at the far edge of the water. At ground level, it forms a small patch of rocky beach, a good spot for skipping stones across the still surface of the water.

He has vague memories of his father teaching him how to toss a stone into a pond so that it seems to hop across the surface before it sinks. How often was he the stone in the hand of a maestro, expected to stay above water long enough to accomplish the impossible task du jour? It was his job to mind his objective, keep his feet beneath him, and when his goal was achieved, he could sink or swim. The instigators did not care. It was his job to find his own way from the bottom of the pond before rejoining the other pebbles on the beach, awaiting the next careless flick of a madman's wrist.

And yes, both his masters were deranged, in their own sociopathic ways.

But skipping stones is a boy's entertainment, not a fit occupation for a serious-minded adult. He is loath to risk disturbing the tranquil plane of the water.

He still shies away from what calamity he could cause with ripples, ever undulating towards the shore.

With a mental shrug, he rids himself of the two frequent interlopers who invade his thoughts when he is not vigilant.

He turns his attention to the tumble of large rocks beyond the beach. One could climb to the flat stone on top and look up into the sky.

Before coming to this place, he endured months of immobility, followed by weeks of inactivity. He was weak and slow and embarrassingly stringy. Now he is moving through the world, walking farther each day, and challenging himself with small physical feats, like pulling himself up onto tree branches.

He will continue to become stronger, put on weight, and regain muscle tone.

Perhaps he will have a relationship-create a family-live as any man in his thirties would, with a wife and a child and a home.

But first, he will climb up the rocks and down again repeatedly as his new exercise for the day.

After more than a year of institutionalization, hovering on the edge of death, he is clawing his way back into life again, one task at a time.

On day three, she runs out of prepackaged food. That means popping over to the resort office to organize the food-but not until after her shower.

She makes her daily trip to the building that houses the showers. She calls out to make sure she is the only one in the enclosure before stripping down and luxuriating in a warm shower. The scent of her body wash soothes her, and for the umpteenth time, when she washes her hair, she is glad she cut it to chin length.

A word with the proprietor is all it takes to arrange food delivery. Fresh supplies and prepared food will be delivered daily-and unobtrusively, which surely means there are house elves involved. She is to leave her dirty dishes and detritus on the provided tray, which will be collected (again unobtrusively) while she sleeps.

She is saying her farewells from the door when the proprietor assures her that there is only one other guest. "And the gentleman is on the other side of the property, with bathing facilities of his own. You will never know he is here."

As she hikes back to her wagon, she is vigilant for signs of another presence. She has seen and heard no one thus far, and she sees no sign now. She is very pleased-the entire purpose of this holiday is to give her a rest from other people.

She is leaving her past behind; she has only the future before her now.

5
He wakes briefly from a pleasant dream and turns to his side. Through the window slats he sees an intriguing brightness. Curiosity draws him to his feet, and he pulls on a shirt and trainers before he opens the door.

The rising moon is huge on the horizon, at its full and casting bright moonlight over his fiefdom. He stands in his doorway for a time, listening for the night sounds.

He learnt the hard way to be vigilant at the full moon.

Soon he is drawn into the night, intrigued to discover what stirs in his little world under the Sturgeon Moon.

It is almost mystical, the way the moonlight wakes her and beckons.

She steps out of the wagon and stands in the dew-damp grass. Standing beneath the breath-taking moon, she feels truly young again. She is overcome with a roiling need to become part of the night. Kismet wells up in her like a burbling brook. The emotion is so compelling, it brings tears to her eyes. Then she is laughing softly, despite her tears, and she is twirling beneath the moon, cry-laughing and feeling lit-up from within.

He moves around the lake and strikes out across the meadow, stealthy as any predator in the night. The moonlight limns distant views in a silvery glow and draws him onward.

After a time, she realizes she is in her meadow, twirling like a girl and giggling like a loon, while wearing only an oversized tee shirt and underpants. Still feeling giddy, she twirl-dances back the way she came, to her fanciful wagon.

Inside, she wipes away the bit of twig and grass on her feet before lighting a fire in her little stove, and she rests until she feels warm again.

She takes up her list of how to reclaim her life, and pencils in dancing in the moonlight. With her gas lanterns burning bright, she digs out her Muggle disc player and plays the music she borrowed in anticipation of this holiday.

First he hears music. The faint strains of a dulcimer stop him in his tracks. The tempo increases, other instruments join the first, and the Romany band is in full swing. He turns in a circle, but sees no one else.

Only the music shares the night with him.

He moves toward the sound, one step, two, until he sees the outline of a wagon. But this is not like Caravan Number Three, a modern, utilitarian vehicle. No, this caravan matches the music.

He remains where he is for a time, listening to the music from the wagon and idly wondering about the inhabitant. This property is enchanted; Muggles cannot accidentally or intentionally cross its borders. So the Romany wagon and its music belong to a witch or wizard. Perhaps the music is coming from the Wizarding Wireless Network.

The moon has risen higher into the sky, becoming smaller in its ascension. When a bank of clouds drifts over Sturgeon Moon's bright face, he circles the edge of the clearing to approach the wagon from the far end, where light from within splashes the trees.

What he sees halts him in place.

The Romany music begins to fill her space, and she is on her feet again, twirling and dipping low before springing high. Joy fills her, and for a time, she and the giddiness of youth are One, frolicking to the music within and the music without, until the songs and she are spent.

This end of the wagon has a bow window, covered by a curtain made translucent by the light from within.

A figure, indisputably female, dances to the music. He is no judge of dancing style or competence of form, but these things are of no matter. Desire (which he has been unable to summon by any means since leaving hospital) flames to an inferno within him.

He is a morass of emotion, the longing to feel what the dancer feels-what lightness of heart and joie de vivre!-but also to be next to her, to take her in his arms and partake of the spirit she embodies with his hands and his lips and . . .

He forces himself to take a step back, to take a deep, steadying breath, and retreating by one more step, he wraps both hands around a sapling. He is panting, as if he has run a far distance-or performed the act he is imagining with the deliciously feminine Dancer-but clinging to the tree with both hands, he feels anchored in place.

Safe to continue watching without going to the door and knocking to entreat entry.

Mostly safe.

So he remains until the dancing stops and the light inside is doused.

Then he retraces his steps, silent and watchful. But the new light within him is far from extinguished.

6
She opens her eyes to a new reality.

Sunlight filters into the caravan through every available gap and crevice.

A similar brightness is also within her mind and her spirit.

She hasn't felt possibility glimmering inside herself in this way since she was an awkward, preteen firstie.

She throws the covers back and heads to the showers.

He has been awake since first light, the experience of the full moon Dancer still saturating his thoughts.

He feels as if his ability to reason has been blurred-smeared, even-by the careless thumb of an Otherworldly hand.

His peace of mind has been peeled from him. What he has in its place is restlessness. The urge to move about in his space, to revisit the haunts he has come to think of as peculiarly his, is gone. In its place, he has preoccupation.

Who is she? Where is she from? What does she look like? Is she clever or dull? Is she flighty or contemplative?

Is she married or otherwise involved-or single?

He prowls from within his caravan to his chair beneath the tree. He picks up and puts down his book, making no progress in his reading. He walks to the edge of the lake and back, only to repeat the cycle again. Go in. Come out. Pick up book. Set it down. Prowl his immediate vicinity.

See, in his mind's eye, the route he took the night before that led to her Romany wagon.

He cannot return there.

It is beyond folly even to consider it.

She sings in the shower, unable to prevent the giddy release of joy into the universe.

It is, after all, the least she can do to give back a small measure of what she has been gifted.

Dry, her clean hair toweled and spiky before she combs it, she cleans her teeth and considers how she will spend the day.

She hefts her pack to her shoulder and retraces her steps to her wagon, her mind on the food delivered that morning whilst she slept. She looking forward to tea and toast.

She is more clear-headed now, so as she approaches her caravan, she notices bent branches and a small clod of dirt in the cluster of trees just outside her bedside window. She is more curious than disturbed as she squats down to survey the ground and consider the disturbance of the underbrush. Other than the occasional wren or swallow in the trees, she has seen no wildlife approaching her wagon, and no songbird would leave such disturbances behind.

She is not worried, but even the recent lightening of her spirits does not prevent her from warding the space around her wagon before she sits down to enjoy her breakfast.

The next day, his fever of anticipation and indecision seems laughable.

He is still learning how to exist in this new world, and he decides he will permit himself to exhibit the humanity he so scorned in others for all his life. Being reborn at the age of thirty-nine is a bit troublesome, but he tells himself he will soon feel as comfortable amongst his fellows as he does within himself.

He will not intrude on the vicinity of the woman's territory, but he will also not restrict himself to the immediate environs of his caravan. He can roam again, to tromp through the meadow and visit the boulder near the skippable stones. He is much stronger than he was when he arrived at this holiday spot, but he has not achieved the physical goals he set for himself when he imagined his planned rejuvenation.

When the idea that having a vigorous shag now and again could only improve his overall health crosses his mind, he is able to smirk and shake his head in amusement.

He's lived without it this long, hasn't he?

She spies a hill in the distance and decides it will be pleasant to hike to the top of it and survey the world from its superior elevation. Her List includes increased physical activity to improve her health (not to mention her physical attractiveness to males in general by becoming more fit), so this outing will allow her to put a ticky mark in that column.

She loads her pack with food, spare clothing in case of unforeseen circumstances, and a water bottle with a Refilling Charm.

She sets off just after dawn, her spirits light and her Omnioculars near to hand.

He sits atop the boulder and feels the peace within himself, reflected by the peace of this place. It occurs to him that the chaos and disturbance he felt in every shared space in his life was perhaps a product of what he brought to the scene, within the turmoil of his mind. Others made their contributions, to be sure-his students being the most egregious offenders-but in all his existence, he has only ever felt safe within his own, private spaces. Behind locked and warded doors.

Alone.

Alone.

Alone.

She stands on the hilltop, hands braced on her thighs, her tee-shirt damp with sweat. She remains in that position until her labored breathing calms down, then she stands and takes a long drink of cool water from her bottle.

She drops to the ground, too weary to take another step. Reaching the hill required a longer trek than she had imagined it would, but being the stubborn person she is, going back without achieving her goal was not an option. She pulls her floppy hat from her pack and settles it on her head before she eats the food she brought.

There is a small town in the distance, and she can see the cars moving on paved roads. Nearer to hand she can see a good deal of farmland. The fields in view are sown with wheat or barley-she isn't conversant enough to differentiate by sight-and the livestock are a mix of sheep and cattle. She is also able to see her holiday resort. The office, with its modest sign, is visible, and she sees there are four or five modern caravans with generous distances between them-but the caravans with mod cons do not have the charm of her Romany wagon, and she is pleased again with her choice.

She puts strawberries into her mouth one at a time, enjoying the fresh pop of sweetness each time she bites down. She is a bit drowsy in the sun, now that she is recovered from the exertions of her climb, and she gazes into space, her mind floating along in happy contemplation.

She notices a lone figure hiking past a pond. She supposes it is a male. He disappears into a growth of mature trees, and she is almost sure she can see him climbing amongst the branches, as if he were a child. Then he goes to a rock formation and scales it, moving with assurance from handhold to handhold.

She finally bestirs herself to take up her Omnioculars just as the figure settles on the top of the rocks. The man is facing away from her. He wears a grey tee-shirt with a wet spot from perspiration between the shoulder blades. He is slender, but the arms braced against the rocks as he leans back show some muscle definition. His hair is very dark and cut short, the top of it spiky from sweat.

It occurs to her that it might be nice to meet and converse with a wizard, after these many days of solitude. Perhaps she will seek him out sometime soon.

She puts away the Omnioculars, rinses her hands with a bit of water from her bottle, then begins her descent.

7
Just after sunset, replete from her dinner and with muscles sore from more physical activity than usual, she swallows a pain relief potion. After extinguishing her lamps, she relocates to her enchanting bed in the bow window. She loves the colors and the fabrics of the furnishings of her Romany wagon, and she makes a list of the things she will need to brighten up the room that will be hers at her next destination.

She feels accomplished, and she smiles to herself as she casts just enough light to write in her journal.

In the last nine years of her life, she has journaled faithfully; first because she wanted a record of her sojourn at Hogwarts and later because she found the habit to be useful in the frantic pace of the post-war repairs and restoration.

A point of shame for her-an intensely personal habit-is the last entry she makes each night in her journal: the things she has to feel bad about.

When she was a little girl, the bad things were about being made fun of for being a swot, for her impossibly bushy hair and her overly-large front teeth.

In the years of conflict with Voldemort, her personal life was subsumed by her position as Harry Potter's chief researcher, counsel, and friend. In those years, the bad things were true concerns of life or death.

After the war, when she found herself quite literally drafted to be part of the Minister for Magic's planning, her journaling was centered on her projects-how they were going
wrong and the monstrous lists of the people who got in the way of her progress.

Now, cocooned in her lace-curtained bed, she reaches the point of writing down the things to feel bad about-the things that prevent her from having a good sleep, a good day, a good life-and she has nothing to write. She waits, open for the bad things to intrude, but nothing occurs to her.

She realizes, with a heart full of light, that this is the way life is supposed to be.

And full of this knowledge of how she will go forward in life, she falls into deep, restful sleep.

Night comes, the moon rises, and restlessness rises within him.

He considers the possibility of undressing and lying down on his bed, but he tells himself he will walk a while beneath the waning gibbous moon, while there is still enough light to enjoy a nighttime stroll.

He moderates his pace, not wanting to exert himself by walking vigorously enough to break a sweat on this warm summer night. He does not wish to come upon another witch or wizard and be too disheveled and sweaty to be seen.

Not that he expects to find anyone. It is, after all, after ten o'clock at night.

He has been walking for no more than fifteen minutes when he allows his consciousness to acknowledge what his lizard brain has known all along. He is retracing his way to the Dancer's caravan, and this near to it, he is unable to prevent the quickening of his steps.

He feels the spell well before he reaches its perimeter. This is not a simple, pedestrian, Second Year Charms spell to prevent dorm mates from rifling through one's trunk-nor the more advanced Sixth Year Charms spell to protect the boundaries of one's dwelling.

This is an amplified spell that includes boundary protection with defense against unfriendly spells.

The Dancer detected his presence, then, and she is no hormone-addled child.

She is clearly a mature witch of uncommon capabilities.

The possibilities flitter into his consciousness and he tilts his head to one side, considering.

When he moves again, it is to pace a wide circle about the spell perimeter, alert for chinks in the armor of her spell. He finds none, and he is pleased on her behalf.

Then he heads back to his caravan-hopefully, to sleep.

8
She begins to wonder about the other visitor to her holiday resort. The "gentleman" the proprietor mentioned to her must be the man she saw from the hilltop. He is fit enough to move through the tree branches and scale the boulder-strewn elevation to rest at the top, leaning back on muscled arms to raise his face to the sun.

He is the only man to stir even the tiniest spark of interest she has felt in what seems like years.

Cleaning her teeth at the sink in the shower facility, she decides not to question her curiosity. It is a failing of hers, this tendency to analyze every impulse to death. It is one of the goals she has written of in her journal-to allow herself to relax enough to experience spontaneity. She has seen other young women give themselves over to an experience with permission to enjoy it.

Other women do not play about creating arithmantic algorithms to extrapolate the outcome of accepting a bloke's invitation to dance. They do not plot each move as if life were a chess game. They go with the moment and live.

She returns to her wagon and sits on the teal green steps to drink a second cup of coffee. She has no plan. She simply chooses a direction, and after she puts the empty cup on its tray, she grabs her pack and heads out.

He wonders if the Dancer is still in her Romany wagon. He thinks about it several times a day. On his outings, he pushes himself to explore farther, to spend more time working his body to become stronger. His time at this place will come to an end, and before that happens, he wants to be as far along as possible in his recovery.

If he is to resume his place in the world, he wants to do it on his own terms.

As summer wears on, he thinks more often about being seen again by the people he has known all his adult life. Where he will go is not a foregone conclusion. He can choose to live elsewhere amongst strangers or to return to his boyhood home.

At least one physical ability has returned to him, and only now does he acknowledge to himself how he had feared it would not.

The Dancer is with him in those moments, his desire quickening until he finds release.

He goes one day to the small wooden dock on the lake just down this hill from Caravan Number Three. There, he leaves his tee shirt, shoes, and towel on the dock and dives into the water. The shock of the cold makes him laugh out loud. The sound offends the goldeneye ducks swimming on the other side of the lake, and they fly off in high dudgeon.

He treads water and watches them take flight with palpable envy. In his time, he has had occasion to glide through the air, sometimes on a broom.

Sometimes, not.

For now, he swims laps until he is too tired to think.

Then he climbs out of the water and collapses bonelessly on wooden planks.

On her third day of exploration, she finds the outcropping of rock at the edge of a pond. The trees are mere steps away. This is where the man climbed trees and scaled the rocks to sit at the top like the king of the hill.

She shoulders her pack and puts her foot in a cleft of rock, finding a handhold and pulling herself up. Her foot easily finds the next step, but she cannot find a place to put her hand. She reaches higher, finds a grip and moves up. She is perhaps one third of the way to the top when again she cannot find a handhold. She looks carefully at the rock face, hoping her eye can see what her hand cannot find.

"Move one step to your right and reach up. You will find a place for your hand there."

At the unexpected voice, she squawks like a bird and loses her balance. She is falling, and she has time to cast only one spell. She has to choose between cushioning herself from the ground or protecting herself from the man whose voice startled her so.

She chooses a protective spell, cast non-verbally in the seconds she is falling; it will block unfriendly spells and give the intruder a firm push away from her.

In the next second, she is caught, and she is too startled to immediately react.

He comes upon her when she begins to climb the rock face.

This must be the Dancer. She is shapely, and he has a very fine view of her bottom in her jeans. Her hair is brown, short and curly.

He cannot take his eyes away from her.

His old self would have withdrawn into the trees and spied on her, unseen. But it is his choice now not to live in the shadows any longer. He speaks to her; she startles and begins to fall. His protective spell is instinctive-old habits die hard-and she lands in his arms, a fragrant, curvaceous young woman.

Black eyes meet brown.

9
"Professor Snape!" she says.

"You cut your hair," he replies.

"So did you."

He is no longer dungeon-pale. His skin is lightly tanned, and although the horrific scar from his injury is visible at his throat, he is otherwise looking well. The pinched, sour mien that was his default expression for all the years she has known him is gone.

"I'm glad you're well," she says.

"I understand I have you to thank for the books awaiting me when I awoke. Reading helps the time pass." He tilts his head and the corner of his mouth quivers, the closest to a smile she has ever seen from him. "I brought one with me-Heart of Darkness. What are you trying to tell me, Miss Granger?"

She is startled into a laugh, and she feels her face go warm. She knows she is blushing, and she cannot abide it.

"You can put me down now," she says.

So, Hermione Granger is the Dancer.

He has not seen her in years. Her face has lost all trace of the chubby cheeks of childhood. The new contours are alluring-slight hollows in her cheeks, definition in her chin and jawline. Her upper lip is a perfect Cupid's bow.

"Sir," she says, wanting a response to her suggestion that he put her down.

"Call me Severus," he says.

He shifts his grip and lowers her to stand on her feet. He keeps a gentle hold on her arms until he is sure she is steady, and then he releases her, with regret.

Her face is flushed with color, a blush. He is utterly charmed.

She says, "Only if you call me Hermione."

He gives her sidelong smirk. "No, I call you the Dancer."

She takes a step away from him, consternation flooding her with adrenaline.

She hates that her voice is wobbly when she says, "What are you talking about?"

"The night of the full moon. I went out for a walk and was drawn to your wagon by the music."

"You watched me?"

"I saw your silhouette."

"That was you!"

"Your perimeter spell is excellent. Well done."

"You've been observing me?"

"I walked past your wagon again and noticed the magic. I walk a great deal."

She is indignant enough to take another step away from him. She strikes back with her own revelation.

"I saw you. You were in the trees and then you climbed up on the rock."

The corner of his mouth quivers. "You've been observing me?"

She huffs out a breath. The back and forth of the conversation is not what upsets her. She became a master of the snippy comments during her tenure at the Ministry for Magic. It is the completely unexpected nature of her physical reaction to him that confuses her.

She rolls her eyes and shrugs, descending into the language of her generation. "Whatever."

His laugh is spontaneous and uninhibited. She has known him for years, yet she has seen more animation in him during this encounter than she ever saw in him during the six years she was his student. He is changed, and the transformation makes him a stranger to her.

A disturbingly enthralling stranger.

He bends to pick up her pack, which slipped from her shoulder when she fell, and he tosses it up to the top of the rocks.

He says, "Let's climb up. I'll show you how to get to the top. Then you can tell me about the chaotic experience of working with the Minister for Magic."

Thus begins their idyllic, shared holiday.

They see one another every day.

She offers to take him up to the hill from which she first spied him. He brings food for them to eat when they reach the pinnacle.

"Cheese and pickle," he says, passing a sandwich her way.

She takes it, pointing out to him the distant village, the livestock grazing in pastures, the fields of grain.

He opens a bottle of shandy, pours half into a tin cup, and passes the bottle to her. He holds his tin cup up and offers a toast. "To caravan holidays," he says.

She touches the bottle to the cup and echoes his words. They drink thirstily. Conversation over their picnic lunch is desultory.

Clouds roll in, dimming the bright day. Hermione pulls her Omnioculars from her pack and offers them to him.

"This is how I saw you for the first time," she says.

He trains the glasses in every direction. She is taken by his intense concentration, by the sharp angle of his jaw and the column of his throat. It is an odd but wondrous thing to be living in a time bubble with an increasingly disturbing Severus Snape.

He returns the Omnioculars to her. "My place is the one up the rise from the lake."

She looks in the direction he points and spots his caravan. "You have outdoor furniture. What an . . . interesting rattan chair."

He snorts. "Don't judge me by that chair. It's not as if I helped decorate the place."

She laughs and puts the Omniocular in her pack again. She is a bit disconcerted by his tone of voice, which borders on playfulness. Is he even aware of how he sounds?

"You have gazed into the distance and scoped out your territory, but have you truly looked at your surroundings?"

She tilts her head to one side. "What do you mean?"

"Do you realize we're sitting in the midst of wildflowers?"

She glances down and sees he is correct. The hilltop is covered by flowers and herbs and interesting weeds.

"What do you see?" he murmurs quietly, and she hears the question as curiosity rather than challenge.

"I see heather," she begins.

"Well that was a safe bet," he mutters under his breath.

She gives him a playful glare. "That velvety purple one is skullcap," she retorts.

"And an herbologist might collect skullcap for what reason?" he murmurs.

"To have on hand in case one wishes to poison one's guests."

The corner of his mouth curls in a smirk. She has seen him with mocking facial expressions before, but this time there is no hint that he mocks with the intention to hurt.

And as quickly as that, he has entered her small list of trusted contacts. There is no need to constantly examine their interactions searching for times when he has slipped his knife beneath her skin.

He is a friend. But she won't burden him with that information just yet.

"And this little blossom?" he queries, indicating a tiny white wildflower with a heart of yellow.

She studies the specimen, but nothing comes to mind. "I cannot remember."

"It's called fairy flax," he says. "One would keep this one on hand just in case of the need to . . . purge."

"To kill?" she asks.

He begins to laugh, stretching out to his full length, arms folded beneath his head. "Not to kill," he says. "Merely to cause intestinal purging, as it were. I suppose one's enemies would have a difficult time attacking if they were laid up with diarrhea."

"That's disgusting," she informs him.

"Noted," he replies.

They are quiet for a while, beneath the overcast sky, with no words necessary. Then he begins to speak.

"I never spent much time with my parents when I was a boy, but my mother taught me about useful herbs and flowers. I was a bit ahead of my classmates in the area when we began Herbology."

She picks one of the skullcap blooms and begins to systematically take it apart. She says, "Legend about you says you came to school already competent in Dark Magic."

His sharp black eyes meet hers. "I suppose that kernel of knowledge came from Sirius Black."

She nods. "I believe so."

"It was a lie. My mother was a witch, my father a Muggle. He hated her magic and broke her wand more than once. I had no more knowledge of spellcasting than any other First Year. Of course, every manner of magic went on in Slytherin House. I was an apt pupil in learning defensive magic."

She drops the mangled flower. "You were a victim of bullying. I'm glad you learned how to protect yourself."

What follows is a breathless moment in which he studies her expression fully, first her eyes, then her lips, then her eyes again. It occurs to her that he is a Legilimens, but he makes no attempt to enter her mind.

She says, "I was an impossible child. I was supercilious and bossy. Other children I met wouldn't play with me because I constantly corrected them."

"But you realize these are the exact attributes that made Shacklebolt want you on his staff, yes?"

These words, spoken with no trace of his signature contempt, please her immensely. She beams at him, a spontaneous show of pleasure.

His eyes on her lips feel like fingertips.

He does not stop or look away from her. She is the one to glance away when her cheeks flush with embarrassment. To cover, she hurries into speech.

"I could use those things in my favor while working at the Ministry, but as a child, I couldn't understand why no one wanted to be my friend. I spent hours of time alone in our garden, on a swing frame my father set up for me."

"I saw such things in Muggle parks near my boyhood home, but I couldn't understand the attraction."

"The physical draw is the motion, being able to propel myself by my own body away from the ground. It was always a challenge to see how high I could swing, but it seemed I could never get as high on my own effort. I always went higher when my father gave me some pushes to get me started. I would daydream about taking flight from the height of my arc and being able to continue flying on my own momentum."

There is warmth in his tone when he says, "You must have loved your broom, then."

"No, I was never very good at flying lessons. In my mind, I thought it was a waste of my time to play when I was a witch, and I had come to school to learn magic. I dropped it from my schedule as soon as it was permitted."

She stands and brushes her palms down her jeans. "Shall we head back?"

One day, she shows him her CD player and the discs she checked out from the library for her trip. He is fascinated with the technology, and they spend hours under the stars listening.

"So this is where your Romany music came from," he murmurs.

"I thought I might want some mood music in my Romany caravan," she replies.

His dark chuckle gives her goosebumps all over.

She strikes back.

"It's creepy to watch someone when they don't know they're being watched."

"Noted." Then, almost too softly for her to hear him, "I'm not sorry I saw you dance."

He teaches her to play poker and they play Knut-ante five card draw. Much too soon she wins all his pocket change, so they begin to keep a ledger of wins and losses with an agreement to "settle up" when they return to the world.

He expresses endless curiosity on the world happenings since the end of the war. She shares tales of her personal skirmishes with others in the newly formed government, and nothing pleases him so much as to hear how she defeated this or that person in her crusade to untangle the Minister's department.

She observes, "I think you've said 'I never liked that tosser' about every person I've mentioned!"

He meets her eyes. "It's been true every time. There are perhaps ten people in the world I can abide conversation with, and I only like about half of those. Eleven, now."

She laughs. "But am I one of those you like?"

"Ask me again tomorrow."

He invites her to his caravan for dinner and an evening swim, if she's interested. She arrives with a bottle of red wine, dressed in her swimsuit, with a sarong knotted at her hip.

He takes the bottle of wine and asks, "Swim first or eat?"

She gives him a radiant smile. "Swim! I am never so hungry as I am after swimming."

He directs her down the rise to the lake, taking note of how the westering sun glints off the bronze and golden threads in her brown hair. She seems oblivious of her own allure.

And if he wants to retain her company, he must be sure that she remains ignorant of his attraction to her.

He guides her around the water's edge to a cluster of trees that tower over a mossy bank. The largest of these is a magnificent old oak. She stops walking and stares at the trees.

He stops with her, enjoying himself far too much to distract her in any way.

After a moment, she murmurs, "I think there's a swing in that big tree."

He maintains his silence, struggling to keep his poker face intact.

She hurries on to investigate her discovery. He follows her slowly, momentarily admiring the back view, before he forces himself to focus.

When he reaches her side, she stands quietly, a thick rope clasped in her hand.

"You didn't tell me you have a swing."

He murmurs, "I beg your pardon. It must have slipped my mind."

He expects her to challenge him, but she is entranced.

"I wonder how long it's been here. Who put it up."

It has been there for less than forty-eight hours. He put it up. Finding the materials and accomplishing the installation required more magic than he's expended since he left hospital.

The effort was worth it, to witness the wonder on her face in this moment.

It is a very basic swing-a wooden slat for the seat, large holes on each side, through which the thick ropes pass, the ropes secured to a substantial branch above-but it is sufficient for his purpose.

He murmurs, "I think the purpose of the placement is to swing out over the lake and drop into the water. Perhaps you'd like to try it out."

She does not question his suggestion. She lets her sarong fall to the ground and settles her bum on the wooden slat he painstakingly smoothed to prevent any stray splinter of wood from scratching her bare skin or snagging her clothing. He is transfixed by her body, fully revealed to him in her one-piece swimsuit, but when she smiles over her shoulder at him, he is poleaxed.

"Could you give me a push? Get me started?"

As he approaches, her legs, smooth and slim and perfectly shaped, tense beneath her and she pushes off.

She is giddy with joy, the feeling far too big to fit inside her body and far too strong for her to bear it silently. With his every push against her lower back, she is filled with more elation than she can contain. She hears her laughter trilling out of her mouth, to be carried by the wind to wherever pure happiness goes when released into the world.

He shouts at her to jump three times before she is brave enough to throw herself forward and drop unceremoniously into the cold water. The temperature is a shock, and she surfaces squealing.

He is standing where she left him, arms now crossed over his chest, laughing his arse off. She swims back to him, and he gives her a hand up onto the bank. His black hair has fallen into his eyes, and he periodically jerks his head to one side to throw his hair back. Idly, she wonders if he will let it grow out again to his former look.

It has been a couple of days since he shaved, and the stubbled look is interesting on him. His eyes are crinkled at the side, and she understands what is meant by laugh lines. They are attractive on him.

He is dressed for swimming, in a tee shirt and swim trunks, his long legs bare, his feet thrust into trainers. His shoulders are broader than she had ever noticed when she knew him before, a nice contrast to his narrow hips. And days in the sun have eradicated the fish-belly white of his skin.

He isn't handsome, but he's striking, and laughing as he is now, he is alarmingly attractive.

He is still emitting laugh after-shocks and shaking his head, muttering things about her being faint of heart. She grabs her towel to dry her face and tosses her hair at him, splattering him with cold water.

"Who's faint of heart now?" she asks before settling again on the swing and looking over her shoulder at him. "Give me a push?"

She hurls herself from the swing into the water three more times before she tires of the game. At her behest, he swims out to join her, where she floats lazily on her back whilst the sun sets spectacularly in the west. As the dusk deepens, he suggests they eat, and she is readily agreeable.

He prepares spag bol on his cooktop, and they eat it at the tiny dining table inside his caravan. She is cold, and he offers her one of his shirts, which she readily accepts. It pleases him beyond reason to see her sitting across from him, wearing his Arsenal tee shirt.

She has been inside with him before, most often to soundly trounce him at poker. Tonight, after the swinging and swimming, she is clearly exhausted, and with her second glass of wine, she has a hard time keeping her eyes open.

"I'm crap company tonight," she says around a jaw-cracking yawn.

"Not at all," he murmurs, and he means it.

"I should go."

He smothers the impulse to invite her to stay. Instead, he walks with her in the dark to her Romany wagon and watches her go inside, alone.

He tells himself it is a lucky circumstance she did not invite him inside.

He lies.

One day, as they loll on the flat stone atop the climbing rocks, she brings up a painful subject. She does not wish to speak of it, but she must.

"I can't believe almost a full month has passed since I came here," she says, watching him with side-eye stealth.

"More than two months for me, and I have no difficulty believing it."

He lies on his back in the sun, his forearm shielding his eyes. She studies him openly. He is no super hero or romance novel love interest. He is a thirty-nine year old wizard with battle scars both outside and within. He is acerbic and judgmental and brilliant and powerful.

She wants him.

He says, "How did you come to find this place?"

"A friend recommended it to me. Said it was a new place that was not yet open to the public-"

He interrupts, "-but the proprietor was a friend, and he could get you a place. All the owner would ask of you is a fair review in Witch Weekly in the World Wizard Travel section."

She blinks. "How did you know-"

"Because the same friend gave me the same pitch."

He raises himself on one elbow, exasperation plain on his face.

"Harry?" she asked.

"The annoying git," he mutters, and lies down again.

Hermione begins to laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"That's what he usually calls you!"

A snarky grin twists across his face. "Damn straight."

She pokes his arm with bruising force, and he sits up. "Now what?" he demands.

"I'm leaving on Monday, and I'm trying to make plans with you!" she snaps.

It feels as if a knife twists in his heart, but no sign of the emotion appears on his face. "All right. Make plans with me."

She huffs. "What do you want to do on our last day?"

"Swing-swimming at mine with a picnic supper, followed by music under the stars at yours."

A smile slowly spreads across her pretty face, which has acquired freckles across her cheeks from all the time in the sun. He has never seen a more beautiful thing.

He is so thoroughly screwed.

The sad last day arrives, and it is clear to him, once she arrives in her swimsuit, that her spirits are low. It is gratifying in its way, for her to be so sad for their time together to come to an end. The difficult part is that he feels the way she looks, and he cannot let those feelings show. He must not let the side down.

As he had on their first shared picnic, he produces a bottle of shandy and pours some into his tin cup, before passing the bottle to her.

He extends his cup for the toast and says, "To caravan holidays."

She raises her chin, as if in challenge, and says, "To keeping in touch."

He blanches inwardly, but he will not show fear. He touches his cup to her bottle.

Conversation over their cheese and pickle sandwiches is stilted, as if their easy camaraderie through the days has disappeared. He wants her happy, but does not know how to make that happen.

At last it is time for the swing-swimming, and she takes his hand as they walk down to the oak tree. He is a bit startled; they have never held hands before-he is unsure if he has ever held hands with anyone before-but he carries it off with as much aplomb as he has at this disposal.

As he settles her in the swing, he leans down to murmur in her ear.

"This is your last chance to fly, my Dancer. Leap on my command."

His dancer? Her heart swells with the elation his possessiveness engenders.

He puts his hands in the small of her back and begins to push her firmly, seeming to put all his strength behind the thrusts. It feels as if her arms are trembling with anticipation, her hands gripping the ropes until they feel like a part of her.

Another firm push, and she is rising in the air, into the darkening sky, where the very first stars of night are twinkling above the horizon.

She hears him cry, "Fly!" and she hurls herself into the night, with the sky above and the water below, and only she exists in between.

In that perfect moment, when she hangs in space and time, strong arms close around her, and she is, indeed, flying.

He holds her in flight as he would not dare to hold her on earth, cradled against his body, both their hair streaming behind them as they soar. She belongs to him in the moment, truly his-without his strength, his will, she would never attain these heights. He can feel her petal soft cheek against his skin, and the smell of her hair fills his nostrils and goes to his head-and his groin.

But all good things must come to an end, and his magic is no more than half his usual strength at this point in his recovery. He must bring them down to earth, loath though he is to do it.

When her wagon is within sight, he lands and holds her firm against his heart until he is certain her feet are solidly beneath her.

"Severus!" she gasps, and he looks down into her exalted face. "I . . . " She struggles for one breath, and then she is pulling his face down to hers. "Thank you-thank you!"

Then she tilts her head to one side and presses her lips to his.

His muscles seem to freeze, and all his brain reports to him is that her lips are much softer, much sweeter than he could have imagined.

Then he is moving, deepening their kiss, burying a hand in her hair, pulling her closer with the other arm. Knowing this is his one chance, he cannot waste a precious millisecond. Her mouth opens when he touches her lips with his tongue, and their tongues dance and duel, parry and thrust for an eternity.

Some grain of sense remains to him, though, and he knows he must pull back, withdraw with his control unbroken, their friendship intact.

He shifts his lips to one side, their foreheads pressed together, their breathing ragged and desperate.

She is the first to recover some control. She says, "How can I ever repay you?"

He presses his face into her throat and whispers a tortured, "Sweet Dancer . . ."

And she murmurs, "Of course."

She takes him by the hand and leads him up the steps of her wagon, past the threshold he has never before been invited to cross.

A wave of her wand lights the oil lamps, and she seats him on a cushioned bench before the cast iron stove.

Then she produces her music player and presses a button. The faint strains of a dulcimer begin to play a tune he remembers well.

Then she stands before him in her swimsuit, the sarong held in her hands like a filmy scarf.

And she begins to Dance.

Finite Incantatum