Stormy Weather

Disclaimer: Hers, all hers.

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May 1997

Gusting wind and torrential rain fretted the lake into choppy waves. Swirls of foam, feebly lit by the few rays that leaked through the storm clouds as the day died, showed greyish pale against the dark water.

Below the churning surface the lake water moved more slowly. Weeds...great ropy ones and delicate feathery ones, growing vigorously now that longer springtime days were here...swayed over a dozen or so illuminated underwater windows.

Fire glow and lamplight filled a cluttered chamber twenty feet down, where two people sat on opposite sides of a great desk littered with parchments and tea things.

Severus Snape lounged in his chair, perusing a longish piece of parchment filled with Hermione Granger's neat, even handwriting.

The girl leant forward, eager to make her point. 'I don't agree, sir. I feel his work has shown considerable improvement in the past few months.

'This...' Hermione brandished a piece of parchment...'isn't very original, but it's well researched and written. His December exam on level three hexes was nothing like this. It was as though he'd read half the assigned pages, digested them only partway, then vomited bits of them willy-nilly over the parchment. It was horrible.' She shuddered.

In the next room, the kettle whistled. Severus flicked his wand and the kettle floated in from the laboratory, settling in front of Hermione.

Hermione scooped tea into a big brown teapot and filled it with boiling water. Since February, she'd been in charge of tea at their Tuesday meetings.

'Miss Granger, you perceive a variation in Mr Giles's performance, not an improvement. I have been teaching him for nearly five years, and I can assure you that his work is better or worse depending upon what young witch he is able to prevail upon to "help" him in his studies,' Severus said acidly.

'When he was eleven and twelve he was at the bottom of his class in every subject except flying. His third year, however, he was chosen for the Hufflepuff Quidditch team. Aphra Vesey and Sarah Michaelson have been, shall we say, taking turns to tutor him since then. During examinations he is on his own, and he performs accordingly.

'Compare that...' he gestured at James Giles's essay...'with Miss Vesey's paper and you'll see it. These sorts of... arrangements... are always glaringly evident.'

He regarded her shrewdly, his lips curved in a smirk.

'Oh.' Hermione lifted the lid on the teapot and poked a spoon into it, just to have something to do with her hands. The tea still wanted at least three minutes' brewing time.

A month or so ago, she would probably have let the subject lie. Tonight, however, she felt brave, comfortable, or curious enough...she wasn't sure which...to address the obvious parallel.

She flashed a wry half-smile.

'You know, in the very beginning, I was simply eager for Harry and Ron to like me. They didn't at first...no one did when I got here; I was so, um...'

'Shrill,' he supplied, despite himself.

She coloured. 'I was going to say "nervous," but I suppose the effect was shrill, yes.' She was silent for a moment, then she shrugged. 'In any event, I've made a habit of helping them academically ever since, as I'm sure you and all our other teachers know quite well. They're annoyingly helpless sometimes, but they're so dear to me, the best friends I could hope to find...' She trailed off at the sight of his expression.

Snape's smirk had turned into a nasty sneer.

'Miss Granger, I've seen these sorts of arrangements play out more times than I can count...usually it is a brighter girl helping a boy, though sometimes it's the reverse. You won't get what you seek from either of them. They'll take what you have to give and turn on you in the end.'

'What I seek?' Her cheeks and neck were on fire now. She was utterly incredulous. 'I don't want or need anything more from Harry or Ron than I already have. And they'll never turn on me, nor I on them. We've been through too much together. I've seen the best and the worst of them both. They're good, brave people. They're my dearest friends.'

Snape glared at her balefully.

'A touching speech, Miss Granger,' he said coldly. 'I'd be more moved if you were not pledging your loyalty to two such hardened delinquents. Let's drop this subject, which has no relevance to our work here. We've finished discussing the parasitic Mr Giles, I believe. Who is next on your list?'

After a moment, she said, shortly, 'Consuelo Guthrie.'

She was angry with him. Why did he have to be so horrid when it came to Harry and Ron? She'd seen enough of his ways...especially in the last few months...to know how low his opinion of students was in general. But surely he had a particular animus towards Harry. Why?

More to the point, why had she pursued this topic with him, knowing he hated her friends?

It was because she'd felt that some warmth and a sense of mutual respect had grown between them over the last months.

It seemed now she'd been mistaken.

'Well, Miss Granger? I'm waiting. What have you to say on the subject of Miss Guthrie's progress or lack thereof?' His lips were pressed tight together as he helped himself to tea, leaving her to pour her own.

* * *

Since February, Hermione Granger had habitually stayed after their meetings to mark papers in his sitting room while he worked at his desk or in his laboratory.

Not tonight.

The moment they'd finished their business, Granger gathered her things and left with a mumbled, 'Good night, sir.'

Severus stood up, grabbed the tea tray from his desk, and slammed it down on a side table. The house-elves could deal with it later. He dropped into an armchair and stared furiously at the fire.

He'd not expected to end the evening in a horrible mood, his skull the crèche of a howling headache, his mouth tasting of ashes.

Usually, Tuesday evening was the high point of his week. After nearly five months of spending two or more hours each week in the company of Hermione Granger, he could not deny certain truths.

She was a brilliant girl...a voracious and curious reader with a surprisingly agile mind. More than once she had drawn him out on a topic that interested her and they'd ended the evening with a great pile of open books between them on his desk. Twice their conversations had driven him to all-night research binges.

She was helpful. By the beginning of March, he'd begun to marvel that he had ever done without a teaching assistant, and that he'd resisted the idea so bitterly.

She was pleasant company. When he had taken her on, he'd been resigned to the idea that she would babble and he'd have to repress her. But her speech was usually rational and to the point. He rarely had to shoot her a quelling glare.

When she left his rooms at quarter to ten on Tuesday nights, he was nearly always clear-headed and calm. He knew what this meant: his mind and his magic were in harmony. He recollected feeling this way once last year when she'd returned to his classroom to finish a batch of Blood-Replenishing Potion. He'd been... comfortable... that night, a feeling he'd rejected at the time as idiotic. Now he'd grown accustomed to experiencing it on a weekly basis.

He didn't want to examine the situation too much. Surely...surely it was harmless, his having this little oasis once a week.

No one need know...certainly she need never know...that he thought of her as a friend. That he... liked her. That she was a good in his life, a good in which he was half-guiltily indulging...

Tonight, though, he'd lost his temper and she'd left feeling angry and hurt.

He was still angry himself, still bruised, though nothing he felt at the moment could touch the hot rage that had swamped him when she'd started talking about her dear friends Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.

Two of the most mediocre, heedless, glory-seeking, entitled Gryffindor brats he'd encountered since his own school days.

Now that he knew Hermione Granger better, he could well imagine the role she must have played in keeping Potter alive for nearly six years as Voldemort's power slowly grew. Surely she'd thrown herself...brain, body, heart, and soul...into harm's way for him...and for Weasley.

To Severus's knowledge, she'd nearly been killed twice. She was brilliant and gallant...and they used her to write their fucking Charms papers for them.

He knew it was no concern of his if she played the fool for love or friendship.

But tonight, when she'd spoken so glowingly of them...'so dear to me, the best friends I could hope to find'...it was as though a sudden storm blew through him. For a few moments, he'd wanted nothing so much as to rip their images from her heart. He'd wanted to shake her, smack her, whatever it took to make her see that they were not worthy. But instead of his hands, of course, he'd used hurtful words.

And now she was gone, he was out of harmony, and he had no idea how to mend matters. Apologise? He rebelled against the idea. He'd advised her, on the basis of his own experience, that trusting the wrong people was a certain route to irremediable pain. What was there to apologise for in that?

Severus raked his fingers back through his hair and dug them hard into his scalp. He felt as though there were an axe lodged in each hemisphere of his brain. It was a familiar feeling.

He surveyed his sitting room, full of a decade and a half's accumulation of objects. It felt empty. Dismal. Displeasing. The last of his anger had leached away, leaving behind something much grimmer.

Though he was in some ways the ultimate inside man...ensconced deep in the interior of Hogwarts Castle, deep within a life he had chosen, deep inside the counsels of two mortal enemies...he felt another familiar feeling...an old, hungry, desolate feeling...of being outside a lighted window, looking in.

Always.

A hole somewhere in the centre of his being had had its lid torn off this evening.

When this happened, he knew what to do. Sleep dulled the despair. Music sweetened it. Work pushed it aside. Soul-searching simply made it worse.

So he did not question himself too closely about why he cared at all that Hermione Granger's bright-eyed loyalty and fierce love belonged to people who were not him.

Instead he reached into his desk drawer and took out a tiny metal box. Within two minutes he was in his laboratory pulling ingredients from the supply cupboard while the precise, intricate, melancholy strains of John Dowland's Lachrimae dropped jewel-like into his ears.

* * *

Silencing spells had many uses in a Hogwarts dormitory. For example, they were good for masking the sound of a person crying herself to sleep. Or trying to.

Sleep: the antidote to heartache.

If only she could get there.

Hermione gazed up into the darkness of her bed canopy. Her eyes were dry now, though red and puffy, and her tears were just salty stripes on her skin and a lingering dampness on her pillow.

Tuesday evenings were usually a high point of her week...a kind of oasis, almost.

By the end of January, she and Severus had fallen into such an easy, comfortable mode of being together. She loved seeing how his mind worked as he explained the lesson plans for the coming week, and she loved watching how the curriculum for each class unfolded as the term progressed, building logically on what came before. (So unlike her own uneven formal education in Defence Against the Dark Arts.)

When he was absorbed in explaining his plans or...especially...when some aspect of the week's lessons set them off on a conversational tangent, he seemed to forget to be prickly and forbidding. Sometimes they talked for hours, until they ran out of time. Three times they had lost track of time and overshot the curfew hour; he'd sent her back up to Gryffindor Tower under a concealing glamour.

But tonight had been a nightmare. She'd ventured on more personal subjects, and he had slapped her down. Hard. She was painfully reminded that he could be spiteful and unpleasant and that he hated her friends and essentially thought she herself was a foolish girl.

Why did she have to be so devoted to this person? Why couldn't she want someone even a little bit suitable? Someone who might love her back?

In the beginning, wanting him had felt exhilarating...like a liberation from the silly, little-girl crushes of her past.

Now here she was, apparently stuck in the biggest, worst, most ill-conceived and ill-omened little-girl crush of all time.

Because what else was this? She still knew precious little about Severus. She did like him now, very much...or at least she liked the way his mind worked, and the way it sometimes meshed so well with her own. She adored his flashes of humour, mordant and bone-dry, and as quick to come and go as a bright bird flitting through dark foliage.

But she wasn't even sure he liked her in return, at all.

No. Not true. She knew he did, at least sometimes. She could not be mistaken about the feeling of comfort and ease that often filled a room when the two of them were alone in it together, whether speaking or silent. She felt like a cat in a sunbeam then, and she was sure...sure...that he took pleasure in her company, too.

Oh, she was so tired of running over this in her mind. She must sleep. Reaching through a gap in her bed curtains, she took a little metal box off her bedside table.

I'll get up early and tackle the stairs at the Quidditch pitch, she promised herself. Letting the stately and sad passages of Dowland's Lachrimae unfold in the darkness behind her eyes, she finally drifted into sleep.

And then into a dream.

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A/N: John Dowland was an English Renaissance composer who wrote exquisitely melancholy songs with names like 'Flow My Tears,' 'In Darkness Let Me Dwell,' and 'Can She Forgive My Wrongs.' Nuff said. I'm giving you two links: the first for a recording using the instruments of the period, lute and viol; the other a lovely modern guitar rendering (my fave).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCfhqh0u20c (lute & viol)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oTfzpb01Sk (guitar)

Thanks and love to greenstuff, hechicera, itsybitsybossy, and lifeasanamazon for all their good help and encouragement. And also? To you, dear reader. *glomps readers*