Innocence
Chapter 9 of 34
Ariadne AWSHermione returns to Grimmauld Place, looking for answers. She does not expect to find Severus Snape. Best Fanon Het (Quill-to-Parchment, Round 2). Runner-up ~ Best HG/SS, 2006 OWL Awards.
Summary: A book, an apology, and - hm - buttons.
A/N: Thanks as always to Luna305 for beta and narrative logic assistance, and Anastasia for logistical advice. ;)
A corner of Lily's book pressed into her face. It rubbed her cheek consolingly, exactly as if it were saying "I understand."
-------------------------
Severus dropped his wand arm and breathed heavily, as wisps of smoke rose from the bits of stuffing that were still drifting on the floor.
Still clutching the book protectively, Hermione rolled over, and, keeping the couch between her and Severus, drew out her wand. She stood, pointing it at him.
"I'm-" he started.
"No."
"But-"
In a glacial voice, she announced, "Enough. Get out." With a furious flick of her wand, she reassembled the loveseat. It looked slightly lumpier than before. She heard Severus stalk away.
She turned to the book. "What happened?" she demanded, then sighed. "No, I don't suppose you can tell me."
The book rubbed against her hand, but its cover stayed shut, and no pages rippled open to answer her.
She snorted. "Something else I get to drag out of Tall, Dark, and Brooding." Holding the book rather more gently than her tone would seem to indicate, she ran her free hand through her hair, muttering, "Lovely."
She heard a crash from the kitchen.
"Just lovely." She had been strangled, had her mind invaded, found - or at least been given - the next Horcrux, and performed a feat of Arithmancy complex enough to earn her a master's position at any wizarding school in the world, and nearly had the daylights hexed out of her. Twice.
And she still had questions.
From the sounds of things, the answer to them was violently rearranging the kitchen.
She snorted, and then lay down on the couch, the book on her chest. She was not going in there.
He'd destroyed the sideboard first ceramic, pottery and silverware flew clanging into the walls, against the ceiling, smashing, clattering, clanging to the floor. The stove caught his eye next, and he drew himself to full height and held a slow-release curse on it, building the pressure on its metal seams, refusing to let them fail completely until he allowed it. Beads of sweat appeared on his brow as the metal groaned and started to buckle. Now. The stove exploded with shriek like a banshee's.
In the library, Hermione looked up and frowned.
Then he spotted the flour barrel. A moment later, a cloud hung in the air, fine powder settling onto everything.
He stood alone in the kitchen, panting.
There were several forks impaled on the ceiling. One gave way and hit his shoulder before falling to the floor. In one fluid motion he had wheeled, pinpointed its location, and released a finely-honed, perfectly proportioned hex at it. It melted.
Eventually, his breathing slowed.
In the library, Hermione was wrestling with a new problem. She had kissed Severus Snape, and he had clearly loved Harry's mother.
Lily, her mind insisted. Think of her as Lily. The other way lies madness.
Fine. Severus had probably kissed Lily too.
She didn't know how she felt about that.
She suspected that was all that had happened.
The book nudged against her hand.
"Cut that out," she snapped at it. Then, "Oh. I'm sorry." Not its fault. She peered at it for a moment, then shook her head. Not really its fault at all.
The potion in the drawing Amortentia, obviously. Too dangerous for inclusion in the general curriculum. Brewed in secret, then she well knew how possible that was possibly with Professor Slughorn's tacit knowledge; he was like that probably just to see if they could. They were playing with fire...
In the kitchen, Severus slowly gathered his wits.
Hermione's musing continued. What had they learned, standing by that cauldron, younger than she was now? That what they truly desired most in the world was each other?
Surely not. Then, Get real, Granger. It's not impossible. Lily was a woman, not a saint, and you know how you respond to him.
Shared attraction, certainly. On his side, given his history, probably more. On hers?
The book nestled into her hands. She petted it absentmindedly. It seemed to feel that it was in good hands.
Severus, meanwhile, was repairing the kitchen with the ease of long years spent teaching students who were forever careless with volatile ingredients. A few efficient sweeps of his wand, and he was done. He crossed his arms, nostrils still flaring. He had warned her, at the last second. A rationalization, Snape! His lip curled in self-derision. Fool.
Something glinted by the hearth. The fork had melted into a perfect circle. He picked it up and turned it over, slowly, in his hands. Simplicity, elegance, perfection. Transformed by violence his violence, his guilt, his anger and an immaturity he had not realized he still possessed. Dangerous. Too dangerous. An image of her holding his book, unharmed, even as she held him at wand-point. She protected it. It must have been instinctive; he'd given her no time to think. He gave himself over briefly to the memory of her touch, their fleeting kiss... over so quickly. So little time. He turned the disc over and over, smoothing his hands over it, and the key of his tension changed. Or, perhaps, just enough...
If she didn't kill him.
Odd that she hadn't sought him out. Or not. His eyes tightened at all he'd done to her with and without reason. The first time is the hardest, yes, but it's almost over. Then his stomach growled. Hm. He pocketed the metal disc.
Hermione was still thinking. She didn't want to know how the details the Severus-Lily-James triangle had played out. Having endured years of Lavender and Parvati's melodramatic accounts of whatever constituted the latest chapter in Hogwarts: The Hormones, she imagined that the earlier triangle had probably appeared rather unremarkable, especially with the war against Voldemort at its height. Certainly, at least from the outside, not the stuff of which tragedies are made.
So what had happened? A secret tenderness, a stolen moment on that long ago Saturday. Something "shameless."
She didn't want to know. She really didn't want to know.
Then she realized she didn't need to. If the specifics of what Lily and Severus had done mattered in the grand scheme of things, it would have been among the memories she'd received.
Oh... Oh, good. She swallowed. Good.
Whatever it had been between them, for the young Severus, what had mattered was her smile, and her gift.
Still... "Shameless"?
He had kept the book for...
He had kept it even after...
She sat up suddenly. She loved him too. His first kiss. His only kiss? Oh, dear gods. Her thoughts flew to what she'd done to him in the hallway. How she had manipulated him, used him... He enjoyed it, Granger, her logic insisted, but her conscience asked, How could you?
For a young Severus Snape, who'd been denied kindness, denied compassion, denied touch unless it brought physical pain, a single kiss could easily have made an impression that had lasted a lifetime. And she, she had replaced that kiss with...
Still holding the book, she flew toward the kitchen.
But in the hallway, she paused. Bound by blood and by something at once complex and very, very simple, to an inscrutable, unpredictable man, some new part of her checked the impulse to burst into the kitchen with a girlish apology.
No, that would not do at all. She took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. Better.
As Hermione reached for the door, she heard Mrs. Black's portrait mutter, "Do try to keep him from destroying anything else."
Startled, Hermione turned and looked at the portrait. "Wish me luck."
"Good luck," the portrait said, then added, as an obligatory afterthought, "Mudblood filth."
Not even Mrs. Black's portrait would survive Hermione Granger's fury once and risk it again.
The only one in the who seemed willing to do so looked up at her as she entered the kitchen, and said, "You're late."
Startled, she stepped back automatically, instinctively hiding the book behind her back. Then, feeling foolish, she laughed. "You sound like you're going to deduct House points."
A raised eyebrow. "If it will make you happy, I am willing to indulge you." His tone was light, but she could hear a hesitancy behind it.
She smirked at him, but something in her eyes changed. Really... Hm...
"Five points from Gryffindor for... disconcerting facial expressions. 15 for lateness, and a detention. And... yes?"
She was biting the inside of her cheeks, trying not to laugh. If she looked at him, she knew that all of her tension would result in a terribly undignified fit of giggles. Gods, no. She looked up.
"... and another 20 for not looking at me when I am speaking to you."
"Oh, forgive me, Professor. I was just wondering if those holes in the ceiling were, by any chance, made by forks?" Her eyes sparkled.
They looked at each other.
He continued, softly, "I'm not finished, Hermione."
She nodded.
"For the greatest Arithmantic feat the wizarding world has known since the days of Nicholas Flamel..." he paused.
She wondered if he would give her one point or one hundred. Her brain automatically started figuring the odds.
He reached out and smoothed a strand of hair off of her forehead, his hand coming to rest lightly on her cheek. "... my gratitude."
Her world tilted on its axis. Without taking her eyes from his, she set the book down on the table. With a hint of triumph, she smiled.
Then his eyes did something she'd never seen before. She was dumbfounded. Severus Snape's eyes do not twinkle. They don't. That's just impossible.
The corner of his mouth twitched.
"Given appropriate circumstances and ample motivation, Hermione, who can deny that more may be possible than not?"
"You sound almost like..."
A shadow crossed his face, but he did not move his hand. "He was my professor, too."
She brought her hand up to his a swift caress.
The stood unmoving for a moment. As they held each other's eyes, what had passed between them that night shifted from the edge of uncertainty to the stability of knowledge.
Understanding would come later, but in this moment, knowledge was enough.
He leaned closer, and murmured, "There is more... much more. Are you ready, Hermione?"
Scarcely daring to breathe, much less speak, she nodded. She laced her hand in his hair Smooth... and pressed her palm to his neck, feeling his skin, warm underneath.
He trailed his hand to his chest, where it lingered at the next button. He watched her, and waited.
Slowly, she reached up and released the button.
And watched, fascinated, as he undid the third on his own.
Lily's book scuttled quietly out of sight.
At that moment, his stomach rumbled. He sighed. Inconvenient. But necessary... So little time... "Are you hungry?"
"I - What?" She swallowed hard, giving her head a small shake. He cooks? Of course he cooks. "If I sit, do you promise not to hex my chair out from under me?"
He nodded again and held a chair out for her, the lines around his mouth deepening.
She stared at him. Is that a smile? No... it can't be...
It was.
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Latest 25 Reviews for A Walking Shadow
230 Reviews | 5.53/10 Average
Such an amazing, complex story. Hate to see it unfinished, but maybe it will be someday. Faith, right? Thank you, for writing such beautiful tales..
Any chance you'll be able to finish this ? It's such a suspense story, just working up to the climax! I've enjoyed Tayet very much - you have a way with animals.
Response from Ariadne AWS (Author of A Walking Shadow)
...It was finished in '06; I've just not finished uploading it to this site; RL has utterly intervened in my time on fic archives. I think you might be able to find it if you poke around the internet. :)Thanks for reading!
Response from Ariadne AWS (Author of A Walking Shadow)
Hi,
oh this thin line between light and shadow, between earnesty and laughing about the irony, about the funny side of everything.
I am glad he still has his sense of humour.
yes, that woman is the road to hell, but she plasters it with lots of genious and wits and love and passion and fun and perfection.
one really feels how they deserver and need each other.
I like your Snape, may he be non-canon or not. He is adorable.
He was curious to learn about what the Mirror hat revealed her.
Interesting, how Molly took her death sencence.
Always worrying about her family, and now it is her she has to worry about. But it seems she doesn't, or does she?
She couldn’t deny the truth. “I still hate it,” she muttered.
“Good. Use that hatred, when the time comes,” he said. “It will keep you whole.”
I find his advice here very very good and not for nothing I am sure. He is really concerned about her staying whole. He is adorable. also to be seen when he explains about making unforgivables... It is always " am already bruised, so I will do it for you, he did it for Draco, he does it for Hermione, he is a good person indeed.
it's not done because it cannot be done."
Minerva looked at Dumbledore's portrait. "So naturally you had to try."
I love your sense of humour. makes the dark story lighter, more human more alive.
What a brilliant plan!! You are grand.
Let Pettigrew get imperioused, do the job, and 2 Horocruxes are done. great!!
I bet this works out! it sounds just soo clever.
"She seemed to scowl back"... that made me laugh!! Oh sodding Severus makes a big deal out of her trunk entering his bedroom or not. Her entering his real life or not.I can not quite follwo him here. he lives under the same roof with her. he spent a night in the hiding room with her. he shars his mind or her mind when entering there, he shares the knowledge ot her and his death and how and almost when. Where is the problem in sharing a room or a bed, porperly?I have no idea.he expains it with wait...his rigid sense of honour, his saftey net. all right o,k,. but, still, not so understanable. and then he let her choose. Why? she had already, hadn't she.Her responce : "I'd only hit you with it anyway " was rather taking the tenseness away. good idea. and much more natural than anyhting.And thank you thank you thank you for letting us peek at the soo necessary conversation between McGonagall and Dumbledore.tehe.He solved the problem of how to make her trust in Hermiones source without giving it away or giving to much information brilliantly. Trust her Arithmancy? well, if so, then you must only know, that it can only work with the correct information.Good idea of yours!!As so many others are and were.keep up the good job!!
Response from salvamea (Reviewer)
oh, and I agree with the other reviewer!! not being able to finish reading this WOULD be tragic!or anything like that.
What did he offer to put lower?
His hair?
What had happened? I must have missed quite a bit here.
But The Poenix Tears were healing or fixing someting, this much I know.
And Tayet is fully grown, this I also know.
You descirbe it all so marvellously. it is a real pleasure to read it.
Never blunt, or plump. always a little transcendent, like a little behind a veil, weaving your words in a poetical, philosophical way. very interesting.
thank you for sharing!
he let Voldy bind Wormtail to him. Sounds clever. he is glad about it, so it must be of use for him.
Hermione wanted Wormtail, now she has him.
Still am in the dark about how that would help. But it MUST! please...
Their interrupted lovescene got even more intense after the new developements, it seems to me.. phew. quite a scene.
i wonder why she wanted him in these robes. Everyone would have expected her to be absolutely turned off, but no.
Maybe a chance to dis-charm the brutal character of the deatheater uniform.
What will he do about his new task? find her and bring her to me? he will do that? and when and how? and what will happen there and then?
awful.
I am glad I still can click on to the next chapter. But soon enough I will up to date, and then I will have to wait as patiently as ... Tayet for her feathers to grow?
You mentionted it would be some 30 more?
Happy as I am to hear that, I am also eager to hear that the next 30 will not last for 2 years? got a plan? anything?
the whole chapter was soo funny.
especially McGonnagalls reaction on finding out that Dumbledore was well aware of the going ons and awake for quite a while!! her being furious. I would love to hear THAT conversation!!
hope she gives him her piece of mind!! ha!
and seeing Severus so playfull, and right in the middel of a wonderful seduction HE the bloddy VOLDY comes to summon him. Bad timing.! But what would one expect of the person who has no heart, seven souls and none of them good.
bah.
And he is soo close ..shiver...
Your Tayet is just soo adorable.
How she reads the one persons thoughts and acts in their behalf. I love these scenes. touching.
Is she really just one day old? cant belive how much had happened in this very short time.
So many revellations.
Horrible, to know that you have to die, from the hands of someone you love, and that this willl be a gift too, and that all has to be in a certain timetable or connected to some progresses. awful. unbelievable.
They found the Trapping Spell. and he has to cast it. and either he kills her then, or he will die. also horrible.
She says they bloddy well are the main charactes in this story. well, I think they are both right.
Voldy and Harry on the front line, Hermione and Severus doing the mind-work in the back. both lethal.
I also like your Mrs Black, she is quite tamed now, and her Rommy - I want to know what is going on in the library - game... just sweet.
how sweet, Arthur wants to join his Molly in death. He is soo sweet.
I do so hope that he will not have to. and that she will not have to do this.
Hermione saying farewelll to her parents. what a bitter jounrey, a what she will call her last visit. bruta. so sad.
he has no one to say goodbye to.
Minverva is writing letters.
Hagrid? well, he will say good bye to G....
Molly has her family around.
Very touching scenes.
and Severus asking her to come home, oh so sweet.
Now please be quick, and show us what happens at 2 o'clock!!
please!!
What does he mean with his appearance.
have faith!
She worked that out already!!
And how dare he say anything about their "relationship" whatever it may be.
He is so mixed in it, the planner and plotter and everything.
grr.
At least he gave Severus his blessings. sort of.
And he made away with the awful thing hanging between them about his death and guilt or not guilt.
I liked that. Him thanking Severus.
That was the best about his visit, Ifeel.
ah, so they have to take the Horocrux itemst with them through the veil. But how does she mean that they don't have to die then? er?
coming back isn't possible, I thought?
Hagrid will have to kill Nagingi, did I get this right?
Hermione has to give Severus time to run, and when all is done, and Nagini dead, and Harry seperated form his Scar then
HE will KILL HERMIONE??
WHAT IS THAT!???
Why? what for?
Did he make an unbrakable Vow?
About her in person? or about the person he would find fit for the job. And with whom did he make the vow?
urgh, that is soo ugly.
This man!!!
poor Minerva, she took it like a really powerful strong Lady.
wow.
I don't understand. The deatheaters are trying to kill all those who could free or undo the horocruxes? But if they do,then the Horocuxes will be destroyd, I thought?
So it must be the way the people die, that destroys the Horocruxes?
Still in the dark about that.
And poor Hermione had to be veeery strong here. "In what position is he?" well, very often inside her .. mind...
nice chapter again.
It’s not actually impossible to lie about love to someone who has the evidence of your broken soul emblazoned over her heart, but it really is the height of bad taste.
I can't belive it!
He took her on the floor, then, when she cried these black tears? I didn't realise. oops.
and now he wants her love to be safed, but can not provide any love of his own. Tragic.
good hit, Hermione.
I am all caught up now, having somehow lost track of this story. The complications just suck the reader in, don't they? You have to work at understanding, but only because it's richly complicated and savoury. I do hope you come back and finish it.
I love your words are like slow drops of rain....wonderful!! Your Snaape already makes me cry....Alan Rickmans face as he is portraying Severus killing Dumbledore is one of the saddest scenes ever. you have beautifully captured the afetr effects...
I love it I already LOVE it!!
Now things really begin to heat up.
I know Tayet will play a crucial role (hopefully in keeping Hermione alive and/or healing Severus' torn soul that he be able to love again) before all this is done.
Brilliant idea to drop the Horcruxes through the veil. I hope Wormtail's prosthetic hand will be able to pierce it since it is not living flesh, only animated by Voldemort's magic and Wormtail's intent. I suppose intent is the key word here.
Wonderful update, I was beginning to wonder if I would get the chance to finish reading this beautifully written story, because not to would have been a tragedy.
I am completely in love with this story. Thanks for the wonderful update, I can't wait for more.
Phoenix magic is very powerful. :)
Very good, Love the new Phoenix. Looking forward to more.
I think this chapter is key to everything that follows. It's taken a while, but I think I get it. The inclusion of Hermanubis as a healer made the formula so perfect there could not be one name as a solution...it had to be both, but not either/or...it had to be you in the plural. But, because the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts, the prediction of death went up in flames and the phoenix was born. This inverted the passion, desperation, and sacrifice of the formula and its conclusion on the parchment into the faith, hope, and love represented in the phoenix. It is so perfect the way Tayet reflects both the light and the dark of Herminone and Severus combined. Severus' despair, but at the same time rejecting it by tearing off his many-buttoned frockcoat. The spontaneous appearance of both Hermione's and Severus' patronuses. Awe, playfulness, healing, and nurturing. Hermione going back to planning and researching, taking charge, and sending Severus to collect fireflys (nurturing). This is story telling at its best.
Funny, poignant, and a phoenix.
"I'm to stay here while I research. Um...uninterrupted....orders....I have orders."
"It's an acquired taste"...."Dark, bitter, enervating." Sounds a lot like "tall, dark, and brooding."
The agony of getting the formula to work and the wait.....almost unbearable.
The wonder of the birth of a new phoenix....beautiful
Funny, poignant, and a phoenix.
"I'm to stay here while I research. Um...uninterrupted....orders....I have orders."
"It's an acquired taste"...."Dark, bitter, enervating." Sounds a lot like "tall, dark, and brooding."
The agony of getting the formula to work and the wait.....almost unbearable.
The wonder of the birth of a new phoenix....beautiful