Fool

II: Fool

"For me."

He couldn't look at her. He nodded.

She closed her hand around the blue queen. "Me?" She gazed, amazed, at the back of his head. His hair brushed his collar. His back an uninterrupted field of black wool. Shoulders rigid, neck taut.

Oh, Hermione.

They both thought it.

He heard her unfold from the couch. The clink as the bottle returned to the board. Her bare feet on the carpet.

"Why, Severus?"

He flinched at her closeness.

The hand she had raised to touch him hung, interrupted, between them.

His jaw clenched.

"You don't want to know."

---

She couldn't possibly want to know why – why, in the silent, secret night of the castle he had made his furtive way to his lab to brew a contraceptive for the girl who was then his student.

She couldn't want to know that he had extended its brewing over the course of nine full moons – extraordinary care to take for such a simple potion.

Once a month, for one night, he had allowed himself to imagine he could get it to her in time.

For one night, once a month, he'd allowed himself to think in the future tense.

---

He couldn't tell her that he'd swept to her chair after every class, hoping to find a few stray hairs that would key the potion to her – only to her.

That he'd curled them around his fingers in his pocket while teaching. While talking to Albus. That afterwards, when Albus would never speak again, he had saved one to twist hard around his finger until its indentation would remain for long minutes after he released it, coiling it carefully, returning it to his pocket. One extra hair he'd never intended to use in the potion.

That was for him.

---

He could never tell her –

"Why, Severus?"

He had to tell her.

His throat was dry.

"I was foolish."

Her voice stretched thin, delicate. "Surely not."

He couldn't bear her confidence. "Did you never give a moment's thought to what they might have done?"

"Of course," she said quietly. Then, "Oh."

"I was merely –"

Her touch on his elbow broke his words.

"Why me, Severus?"

"You were a student."

"We've established that," she said gently. There was no sting in her words.

"It's not immaterial," he barked, rounding on her. "Surely you see …"

But he saw her face.

---

Her small, cool hand pressed his cheek and she brushed her lips softly, fleeting, against the roughness of his skin.

"Thank you."

He gripped her shoe harder, his eyes flat. "Miss Granger, not even you can possibly be so foolish as to find anything honourable in my behaviour."

Her eyes flashed, but her hand stayed gentle. "All of us – most, at least – would have been hard-pressed to define honour by the end. You intended to protect me; I can honour that desire now."

Desire? Oh, Hermione. What he had desired had had nothing to do with honour.

He'd used her.

---

"The Contraceptus potion is, by definition, protection." His lip curled. "Who was to have done it? I intended, Hermione, that if…"

Her finger rested on his lips. "You intended that, if it had to be, it be you."

His eyes roared with black fire. "You were a student. My student."

"If they'd won, I'd've been chattel, Severus. I know that – knew it even then. I was young, not naïve."

An angry arm brushed hers away.

His lips cooled where her touch had been, but this did little more than register in his mind.

"I didn't merely 'intend.' I hoped."

---

He waited for her to leave, forgetting entirely that it was her flat he was standing in, clutching her ridiculous shoe.

He waited for the sharp sound of her hand striking his face where it had rested, so gently, moments before.

But she only smiled sadly at him.

"Nine months it takes, I believe, to achieve full potency?"

He nodded, his eyes raking her face for his dismissal.

"Made with my hair?"

He hesitated for a long moment before nodding again.

"Ah," she said simply.

She couldn't know that those nine forbidden, full-moon nights were the only solace he'd known.

---

He waited.

"For me," she said, finally.

The weight of long, taut years without sleep rushed into his throat. "Yes."

"You hoped."

"Only if they'd…" He swallowed. "Yes."

Her eyes shadowed.

He awaited her judgment.

She shook her head, and, deep within him, something inarticulate died.

"There was little chance you could have got it to me in time, if they'd – but of course you know that."

His eyes glittered, his face impassive.

She closed her hand over his, which was still holding her shoe. "May I have this back now?"

He released his hold abruptly.

"You foolish man."

---

“I’ll leave you, then.”

“No – Severus, I…” Sixth year. Her sixth year. Nine nights, long, isolated nights, of which she, asleep in Gryffindor Tower, had known nothing. “Severus, I’m sorry, I…”

His eyes hardened but a fraction of a second after his heart.

“I – I need to think. It would be best if –”

“Very well.” He turned to go.

“Wait –”

His head turned slightly, and she searched his eyes for something. Anything.

There was no hope in them, and she winced.

He recoiled.

“Your potions.”

His voice an echo out of emptiness: “I can always make more.”

---

“No, please – I… I’ve given you a headache the size of Hogwarts.”

His glance was naked. Raw.

“I only meant with my shoe, Severus,” she said softly. “Please. They’re yours.”

“I would far rather you kept them,” he said coldly. His breath was threatening to choke him, hide it as he would. “They are no recompense for my offense.” Pathetic. “Just… please.”

He turned away again. Only then did he raise his eyes to the ceiling and try to inhale.

“I’m not offended – really. Astonished – obliged.” She gestured helplessly. “I don’t know the right word.”

He did. Disgusted.

---

She collapsed on the arm of a chair, head in her hands. “Please take them.”

His palm flat on the door, he bowed his head. “The Contraceptus is keyed only to you.”

She nodded, her hair curtaining her face. The thin strap of her dress robes slipped off of her shoulder, and his fingers flexed instinctively. Whether he wanted to fix it for her or slide it the rest of the way down –

Either. Both. He couldn’t say. It didn’t matter.

“Keep it. Use it. Smash the bottle. It makes no difference now.”

“It makes all the difference, Severus.”

---

He cleared his throat. An imperious gesture with his wand, and one blue bottle remained on Hermione’s table.

A moment later, he was gone.

She stared at the curve of smooth blue glass against the black and white squares.

Moved it back and forth with her wand.

Back and forth.

Ahead. Then back to its starting point.

No pawns, kings, or bishops to impede its movements.

Nothing opposing it.

Nowhere it could not go.

No purpose to its going there.

Back and forth.

Nine times.

All she could see was a black cloak in the darkness far beneath Hogwarts castle.