Victory Park

Snape rolls over against the thin, hard mattress. Images of the evening will not stop playing through his mind: the color in her face after she'd cast her Aguamenti, the way she'd clung to his arm when she'd arrived. She had never answered his question. What was she doing here? What had driven her from their world, from the magic she had fought for and always seemed to revel in?

Before she left, she had looked at him searchingly, her eyes impossibly dark and shadowed.

"Can I come back... tomorrow? If it's bad?" she'd asked, and he had agreed. Agreed and reminded her where to find him.

She'd called for the tab and merely blinked in his direction when it had come back with the cost of a single whiskey, a single gin and tonic. And then she'd left him sitting there, feeling more uncomfortably alone than he had in years.

It is because she brings back so many memories, he tells himself. And because there are still questions he has yet to ask her. Those are the only reasons that he wishes night would end and birth him out again into tomorrow.

It is, of course, possible that he will never see her again, and if that is the case, then he will go on as he always has until he can forget that she was ever here. It was like that at the beginning, when he had first arrived, and time had taken the sharp edges off the homesickness and the longing for things that were never really his to begin with. He can trust that to be the case again.

Still, he wishes that tomorrow would come.

***

She turns up again in the midst of his evening meal, taken late at the sandwich shop next door. It is beach food, hot dogs and chips that coat his fingers in grease and bleed through their paper wrappings. But if he is truthful with himself, he had wanted to be out, wanted to be visible in the window, and when the bell at the door jingles, signaling the arrival of a slight, bushy haired girl in a pastel sundress, he stands up suddenly and then feels awkward and angular.

"Miss Granger," he says formally.

"I thought we agreed on Hermione," she says easily, sliding into the chair across from his. She looks better than she had the day before...healthier, more engaged...but he is still shocked to see how much older she appears in the light. The war was hard on her. And yet, he supposes he looks no better. They were soldiers, he thinks, and it is obvious. Still, there is dignity in how they turned out.

"Are you having difficulty?" he asks quietly.

"It's strange," she replies, her voice dropped in answer to his. "Sometimes I feel better than I have in years, and other times nearly incapacitated. And I cannot stop thinking of magic. I've grown used to doing things the Muggle way. But today everything felt like a burden."

He knows what she means. Simply ordering dinner in a restaurant, rather than summoning it up the stairs, sometimes seems a study in inefficiency.

"Have you eaten?"

"Will you duplicate your food for me?" she says, the hint of a smile around her mouth, "Or shall I order as the Muggles do?"

"It is too early, and the patrons far too sober, for last night's tricks," he says, and he watches her as she approaches the counter. Her gait is wandering, and he thinks that once she has eaten, he'd like to get her someplace secluded and give her another go round with his wand.

"So, Santiago," she says, returning with her food. "How long have you been in the fortune telling business?"

There is a moment when Snape wonders if she is flirting with him; her manner is so easy and light compared to yesterday, but he chalks it up to how crisp and clear the world must seem to her today.

"Just over two years. Longer if you count several false starts. It took some time to figure out the exact parameters."

"And what are the exact parameters?"

"Foolish hairdo, secluded location, otherworldly manner."

"All of which you could have learned from Professor Trelawney."

He smiles at her a bit ruefully. "Quite."

"Tell me about these false starts."

"When I first arrived, I thought my business would be primarily tourist driven. For a time, I worked at the carnival. You have seen it, I assume?"

"Victory Park?"

"A rather ironic name, is it not? But yes, Victory Park. I had a booth beside the hot dog stand." He gestures at his abandoned food. "Gave me a taste for the vile things, I'm afraid."

She smiles and him and nods encouragingly as she eats.

"In any case, I was not a match for Victory Park. I got on well with the management, but I had not yet perfected the look or the manner. Apparently, I frightened people."

She laughs, covering her mouth with a napkin, her eyes squeezing shut, her shoulders heaving slightly. "Oh, God, not while I'm eating," she says.

He tries to give her a look of consternation, but it is funny, and her laugh makes him want to join her.

"Yes, well. It would not have worked out anyway. The visitors of Victory Park are not my clientele."

She nods, seeming to understand that the people she saw in line yesterday would not frequent the amusement park. Her cheeks are still flushed from her laugher, and her eyes are moist.

"Would you like to go?" he asks, startling even himself.

"Go?" she asks, and he could take it back now, or change it into something else, but as baffled as he is by her sudden appearance in his life, he very much does not want her to go. When she is near him, he feels as if he had been the one with the magical deficiency.

He had thought that he would be content never to see a witch or wizard again. For a time, he had played a game with himself, imagining who would discover his secret and track him down in order to haul him in front of the Wizengamot. He'd had it down to Minerva and Miss Granger. At the time he'd thought he would prefer Minerva. Now he has to admit to himself that this is not unpleasant, being known. Being recognized. It has been longer than he would care to think about since he has made anyone laugh. She has a nice laugh.

"To the park," he says stiffly.

"Oh! Yes, very much."

And it is as easy as that, which is strange and somehow gratifying. She doesn't ask why he would want to go to a Muggle tourist trap, nor why he would want her to accompany him. He simply asks, and she says yes.

***

Behind The Sandbar, Hermione nearly trembles as he removes his wand from beneath his shirt. He can see the discipline it must have taken to suppress her magic in the way she reaches out slowly for the wand, not allowing herself to snatch it from him as she must want to do. He admires her control, and for a moment, it allows him to admire his own mother, for what she attempted and achieved for so long. It is not easy to deny yourself what you need most, he knows.

Snape expects her to cast the Aguamenti Charm again, but after holding his wand rather reverently for a few seconds, she whispers, "Avis!"

Birds soar from his wand tip, one after the next, winging off into the dusky August sky. Gulls, he registers, before he hisses, "Miss Granger!"

She is able to bring the charm to a stop herself this time, and she stands there for a moment, breathing hard and looking flushed and shaken.

"Does my life seem so appealing to you that you would try to become an outlaw yourself?"

"An outlaw?" she says.

"The International Statute of Secrecy, Miss Granger. We're in an area surrounded by Muggles. Many of whom probably noticed an enormous flock of birds that seemed to originate from this alley."

"They were gulls," she says stiffly. "They're indigenous. And I imagine they often congregate near trashcans."

He makes to retort, although he has nothing particularly scathing planned, as she is correct, of course, and he should have realized that Hermione Granger would want to try something a bit more complicated...she had probably spent all night determining what to do when she had managed to get his wand away from him...but then he looks hard at her in the gloom and sees that she is crying.

She does not hitch or sob or throw herself into his arms, all the things he hates in histrionic females. She just stands there, weeping silently. Suddenly he feels quite awkward and useless.

"There is no need to feel badly," he says. "Your reasoning was sound."

She shakes her head and turns away from him, wiping her eyes on the sleeves of her thin sweater. He knows it is not his admonishment that made her cry, but the beauty of those birds, shimmering into existence at her call.

"Why did you do this?" he asks her. "If it pains you so much?"

She turns away from him. "Let's walk," she says, and he follows her from the alleyway.

She says nothing for nearly a block, and he listens to the dual sounds of their feet smacking the boardwalk. He thinks that if she does not answer, he will not be able to ask again. He has pressed far beyond what a casual acquaintance and a chance meeting should have allowed.

Finally, her voice pierces the silence between them. Her tone is light and conversational, and he wonders for a moment whether she is trying to make him believe that this is easy for her, but then he realizes that she is busy appearing normal to the Muggles, just a girl strolling along, chatting with her friend. The Muggle equivalent of a Notice-Me-Not.

"I had my wand when I left England," she says. "I flew to Perth...by aeroplane...because I knew I'd have to fly back out with them, and I wanted there to be some official record of my entering the country."

He nods. He would have done the same. It is half-breed thinking, the awareness of the system operating all around your own, of the deferences that must be made to it.

"The Ministry found them," she goes on, "several weeks after the war. My father had become something of an online trader. I don't know if you're familiar..."

"Familiar enough," he says. He wants her to go on, not to get caught up in these tangents.

"In any case, he'd made a fair bit of money. I'm lucky that I got there in time." She makes a small, bitter sound. "If I'd been much later, they probably would have taken off on their world tour without me, none the wiser."

He says nothing. That would have been better for all of them. And yet, if she had missed them, she wouldn't be here, an idea that now seems unthinkable.

"I did something wrong when I reversed the charm," she whispers, not looking at him. "It's not something that you notice right away. It's more insidious than that. They seem the same on the outside, but once you get them talking... They get confused easily. There are things they remember that don't seem to exist. And then other times, I think they encounter... holes in their memories. And you can see how much it bothers them, how it nearly offends them when it happens. They blame me, of course. As they should."

Her face is calm and impassive, and her gait does not falter, but Snape can hear the shame, the anguish, beneath her carefree tone.

"Hermione, you did not perform the charm incorrectly," he says.

She turns to look at him, and her eyes flash darkly. "I damaged them," she says.

"When I was in your mother's mind," he says quietly, "I saw the holes you speak of, the confusion."

"Then you see what I did."

"No. Listen to me. No one could have undone that charm. An Auror would have done no better. I could have done no better. A Memory Charm with the strength of the one you performed...it will leave its mark. The mind is a myriad of paths and connections; it is not possible to anticipate all the ways that a memory will loop and connect, and when the connections are severed, there is always..."

"I should never have attempted it," she says flatly.

Snape is torn for a moment. He does not want to remind her or himself of the things he has done, of the person that he was when they knew each other last. But he has knowledge that she requires, comfort that she requires, and it seems unkind to withhold it.

"That depends on whether you believe that they would have been better off dead," he says.

"It's possible nothing would have happened to them at all," she says. "I might have done this to them for nothing."

"But you did not."

Her eyes are wary when they meet his.

"Do you understand what I am saying?" he says, and she nods. Her eyes are filled with tears again, but she blinks them back.

"Are you certain? Are you absolutely certain?"

"They were third on the list, Hermione. I saw it myself."

A huge breath rushes out of her, and she stumbles. He catches her arm and holds on tightly while she regains her footing. He can feel the strength of her will as she forces herself back toward normalcy.

"Thank you for telling me," she says after a time. He lets go of her arm.

They have reached the entrance of Victory Park, a wrought iron archway lit with blinking carnival lights. Beyond the entrance is the ticket booth and then the squat brick buildings that house the bumper cars. In the distance, he can see the Ferris wheel, turning endlessly against the sky.

When they cross under the arch, the man at the ticket booth nods to him, and they walk along without stopping.

"Frank," he says to her, by way of explanation. "He manages the park."

"And you don't pay here," she says.

"No."

***

Hermione laughs just at the absurdity of it all, because who would have thought there could be a world in which Snape was granted free admittance to Muggle amusement parks? And even if there were, who would have ever thought she'd be visiting an amusement park with Snape?

Still, beneath her amusement, she is awed and grateful at the gift he's given her. She knows it must have cost him something to tell her, to have to go beyond the Mark and admit that he would have been privy to such things. Once again, she is pierced by gladness that it is Snape she's met after all these years.

"I stopped using magic as a courtesy to them," she says, returning to her story, for she feels now that he deserves to hear the ending, and it has felt... freeing somehow... to tell it at last. "It was clear that it made them deeply uncomfortable. They had no interest in returning to England, and I didn't see how I could land in the middle of their world, destroy it, and then dash off. So I agreed to accompany them on their trip to Paris. I left my wand in Australia. I laid it down on the kitchen table where my mother could see. She just looked and looked at it. When she locked the door, she kept glancing back, as if she expected it to follow us."

Snape says nothing, but he watches her attentively.

"We never went back," she says.

"And so what is your plan?" he asks.

What is her plan? She cannot even remember a time when she had considered making a plan. She has simply gone wherever the wind has taken her for so long that plans seem to have become obsolete.

"My plan?"

"You are living like an overgrown child, traipsing around after your parents. Surely you cannot intend to do that forever."

She is stung by his words, and she looks away. "Rich from someone who is hiding in America, pretending to be a psychic," she retorts.

"I am not hiding."

"No? The glamour is a fashion statement?"

"I am not wearing the glamour now, am I?" he says. "And if I had intended to hide, you would not have found me."

He stops in front of an ice cream shop and after exchanging pleasantries with the young girl at the counter, she hands him a cone. Snape holds it out to Hermione, and she is sure that he is making a point about her childishness and is at the point of refusing it when a second cone is produced, clearly intended for him.

The ice cream is soft and sweet, running down the paper covered cone to her hands faster than she can eat it, and they are both silent for a while, attending to the duties of consuming their dessert.

When there is time to speak again, she says, "Now it is your turn."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I've told you my story," she says. "Now you tell me yours."

"I have told you a great deal already. What is it that you wish to know?"

"You haven't told me why you're here. If you aren't hiding, and you haven't given up magic, why do you live here? Why not join a wizarding community?"

They stop in front of the Ferris wheel, an ancient-looking contraption of painted steel. Snape throws away the remains of his cone, and Hermione follows suit. She looks at the hulking wheel beyond the gate.

People stroll past them. The park is not crowded; there are mostly teenagers here, locals, Hermione would guess by the look of them, playing the arcade games. There are a few couples that may be on vacation, but the entire park has the feel of something very close to extinction. The gates are rusted, and rubbish blows by on the ground.

Snape takes a few steps toward the wheel, but Hermione touches him lightly on the arm.

"Yes?" he says.

"I...I'm afraid of heights."

He looks at her condescendingly for a moment and then his expression clears. "If you want to know the answer to your question, you will have to ride," he says.

She looks at him measuringly. He is serious, she sees. She will have to do this.

But then he leans toward her and whispers, "I have a wand, Hermione. If something were to happen, I could Apparate us out in seconds."

She follows him wordlessly through the gate, past the bearded ticket taker, who points at a carriage with a large blue star on it.

Snape holds the carriage steady while she steps in and situates herself. There is rust on the door, but the joints...most importantly the joint holding their box to the wheel...seem in good shape. Snape slides in next to her, and she doesn't know where to look now that they are seated beside each together. There is something odd about the whole thing that makes her heart beat erratically, and not just from fear of the machine. He is so close to her. Has she ever sat so near to him before?

She knows it is illogical. They've touched several times this evening already, and he isn't even touching her now, just sitting beside her on a plastic covered bench. She looks out the window, feigning interest in the scenery.

There are only two other couples...couples...on the ride, but the wheel begins to turn without waiting for the seats to fill. As their box rises through the air, Hermione feels her stomach clench, and she stops looking out the window, settling for a point just above Snape's left shoulder. Slowly, he begins to speak, however, and his eyes draw her in.

"I am a wizard. I cannot deny it any more than you can, than my mother could. I have never had any desire to be a Muggle." He pauses, and she waits, watching him struggle to tell this to her.

"Look," he says, and she turns to see the park falling away beneath her. She shudders, and he takes her hand in his cool one. "It is perfectly safe. Perfectly safe, and perfectly ridiculous. How hard they work for just a fraction of what we can achieve with a flick of our wands."

Hermione feels as if her brain is misfiring. Her heart stutters, and her cheeks are burning. Snape is holding her hand. But still, it seems less important than what he is telling her, and she commands herself to pay attention.

"When I Apparated out of Hogsmeade, I had no destination in mind. I simply turned and left."

She is stricken by his words, by the notion of spinning wildly off into the future.

"When I arrived here, I had no idea how to proceed. I had to find a way to survive, yet I had no wish to learn a Muggle trade at this late date, nor spend the rest of my life in hiding. So I took up fortune telling because I could do it easily, because it was available, and because it grants me the kind of in-between life I am most suited to. Here, I can be no one."

The cart stops, and they are at the pinnacle of the wheel. Belatedly, Hermione realizes that they were put into the best carriage.

"Up here," he says, releasing her hand and pointing to their view of Ocean Isle, tiny and insignificant below, "I can look out and feel as if all the choices are still yet to be made. Up here, I am still on vacation."

Hermione thinks she can almost sense what he means, though it dances slightly out of her reach. But there is a way in which this height makes the world seem like an illusion. It is harder to hate it from up here.

"And you don't ever want to go back?" she asks. Her hand feels cold without his, though that makes no sense in the August heat.

"No, I will never go back to England," he says. "Sometimes I think I might like to find other wizards, to live in a magical community elsewhere. But I cannot imagine going back home. There is no place for me there now."

It pains her for some reason, the idea that he will never return. What is happening to her? Two days ago she believed him dead, and now she is mourning the idea that he will never go back to a place she no longer lives.

She looks out of the cart to the world below, the dingy storefronts lit with neon. It is an in-between place for an in-between man. A forgotten place. She can see the sea from here, crashing against the beach in all its inexorable power, and suddenly, the choice between a magical life and a Muggle one seems much clearer. The cart begins to move again.

"And you, Hermione?" he says. "Will you go home again?"

"I don't know how to undo what I've done," she says honestly.

"You cannot," he says, looking past her, out of the cart. "You can never undo what you have done. You can only go forward."

When the cart stops at the bottom again, Snape climbs out and holds out his hand to help her back to the ground. They stand there, frozen in the bright lights for a moment. Then he begins to lead her back out of the park to the boardwalk.

The air is hot and humid, but there is a breeze coming off the ocean, and the darkness makes it bearable. Snape's hand is cool and firm around hers, and she wishes that she never had to leave here, that she could buy that peasant blouse, set up beside him in his trailer, and join him in this small, magical pocket he has set up for himself, for the displaced. But that is impossible.

"Everyone at home has gone on without me," she says. "Or maybe it is that they have failed to go on, but in a different way than I have. Everything there has the mark of the war on it. I don't want to live in that forever."

He nods thoughtfully, still looking straight ahead as they walk, and yet she knows he is waiting for something more.

"I think I could go back for my wand. And then ask Professor McGonagall if she will allow me to take my NEWTs without completing my seventh year. After that, I don't know."

"I have some money," Snape says after several blocks of quiet. Then he chuckles slightly. "Actually, I have quite a bit of money. Muggle money, of course, but it could be converted to Galleons."

Hermione cannot imagine where he is going with this. "Yes, I imagine fortune telling is fairly lucrative," she says.

"They pay in cash," Snape says. "And having hardly announced myself to the local government, I pay no taxes. It adds up."

"Yes," says Hermione vaguely.

He releases her hand, and his steps quicken until she is nearly trotting to keep up with him. He is staring into the distance purposefully, as if he has become fascinated by something out there in the dark.

"Severus," Hermione says, feeling slightly alarmed and embarrassed by having to say his name. "What's wrong?"

"If you needed, if you wanted... I could be your benefactor. Once you have decided what you would like to do. There would be no strings attached, of course. You would not have to remain in touch with me beyond the practicalities of finances."

"Severus." She grabs his arm and pulls him to a stop. They are in front of The Sandbar.

"Forgive me if I have offended you," Snape says formally. "I only thought... It is difficult to start again."

"Thank you," she says. "It is an incredibly generous offer. I'll think about it."

They stand beneath the light of the bar sign, and Hermione looks at Snape's face. He is lovely in his discomfort.

"I have kept you out too late," he says.

"You aren't going to invite me up?"

"Invite you up? Whatever for?"

His words sting, but she is firm in her resolve. It seems to her that fate has tossed her here, much as it had him three years ago.

"Isn't this the way it works?" she asks. "A man has dinner with a woman, takes her to the fair and buys her an ice cream. They ride the Ferris wheel. And then he asks her up." There is a terrible pause.

"For a... nightcap," she finishes a bit lamely.

He laughs suddenly, and Hermione wonders if she has ever heard Snape laugh before. It is a deep, resonant sound. "Hermione," he says, "I realize that wizards are generally a bit behind the times, but given that, I don't think even we have used the word nightcap since the 1960s."

His face turns deadly serious. "I meant it when I said there were no strings attached. I would never dream of..."

"Severus," she says firmly. "As you said, I am a modern witch, living in modern times. I do what I want to do."

He blushes furiously and looks away from her, but she thinks she can see that he wants this, though he doesn't know how to ask for it.

"Ask me up," she says again.

"Hermione," he begins, as if he is going to launch an argument, but then something changes in his face. She can watch his yielding happen. "Will you come up?"