Windows

A/N: I'm nudging canon around by a few months regarding the birth of Harry and Ginny's second son. So shoot me. :)

Gratitude to Mr. Melenka, Somigliana, Droxy, and Melenka, a.k.a. Team "Torture Hermione," and endless blessings on my alpha readers, Anastasia, Indigofeathers, and Lady Karelia. ~ Ari

Summary: Operation "Torment the Granger Chit" begins.

2: Windows

Hermione, long asleep, had her feet tucked under the soft throw on the ottoman and didn't notice when a distinctly cat-like shape appeared in her window.

To the kitten, the woman asleep in the chair looked like a perfect place to curl up and nap, and, as its paws were chilled from padding over cobblestones after the strangely swirling cloak, it wanted nothing more than to knead the throw at the woman's feet.

Stretching up on its hind legs, the kitten pawed the glass and gave a hopeful "Meee?"

Hermione shifted in the chair but did not awaken.

"Meee?"

When there was no response from the woman inside, it turned to look at the shadowy wizard who had lifted it to the windowbox, blinking a rebuke.

Severus's unblinking response was to tug the kitten's tail.

Not hard, but hard enough.

The kitten squeaked, turning twice around to sit glaring at him, tail twitching.

At the sound, Hermione mumbled, "Crooks?" and found herself half out of the chair before she remembered that her familiar had gone to live with the Potters after laying eyes, once, on the newborn Albus Severus. Her familiar looked at her wistfully whenever she visited, but stayed firmly by the baby's side.

She stretched her legs before her, shaking her head. It couldn't be Crooks; she must have been dreaming.

She stared sleepily at nothing, half-bemused by the play of light from the streetlamps. She was lamenting the distance between the chair and her bed when some corner of her mind awakened fully enough to realize that she was staring at the shadow of a twitching tail.

She jumped to the window.

The kitten looked up at her, its plaintive "Meee?" silenced by the glass between them.

"You poor thing!" she exclaimed, wrapping the throw around herself as she reached for the door. "However did you get all the way up there?"

The wizard below smirked his satisfaction as the front door opened.

A swift, silent flight of stairs, and all three were inside Hermione's flat.

"You must be starving," Hermione murmured to the kitten, who clambered up her arm to cling to her shoulder, half on and half in her tangled curls. "No, kitty; not the hair..."

Severus stood in the front room, listening as Hermione's kitten-centered monologue faded into the kitchen.

His eyes assessed the room. He was in.

Excellent.

An hour later, kitten and witch were asleep in the flat's back bedroom, and Severus knew all he deemed necessary. Operation "Torment the Granger Chit" could begin.

A few gestures toward the hot water supply, and her morning shower would alternate between "icy" and "scalding." A few moments in the kitchen, a few more gestures toward her tea things, and her morning cuppa would be nicely salty. He eyed the bedroom, but decided that initiating the old Slytherin standby of charming her knickers to shrink randomly over the course of her day could wait until morning.

Settling himself in the chaise Hermione had but recently vacated, his eyes raked her immaculately ordered bookshelves. Yes. That one will do nicely.

He removed a slim volume entitled Subtle Slytherins and How to Stymie Them, by Serpentius Sissel. Three more works followed: Sublime Species: Speaking to Salamanders, by Scylla Scorch; Harvesting Herbs: A How-To, by Haethia Happenstance; and, after due consideration and a decidedly nasty chuckle, an impossibly fat, leather-bound scroll entitled, Speak, Memory: An Apology, by Gilderoy Lockhart.

The books he returned to the shelf out of order; he spent a long forty minutes unrolling the scroll and re-rolling it, backwards.

And then he sat back down and waited.

---

"Good morning, kitty." Hermione's voice lilted from the bedroom.

"Meee?" came the distant response.

"Yes, you, silly thing. Come along." Creaking bedsprings. "Let's get you some breakfast."

Sounds from the kitchen. The kettle on to boil.

So. The witch retained the early morning habits of her Muggle upbringing. Severus filed that information away and continued listening.

Cabinet doors. The sound of cat food hitting a bowl. Soft paws padding across the floor.

"Oh, don't trip me, kitty... it wouldn't do to have to chase your food, would it? Not like outside, you poor thing, living on mice and..."

Severus stopped listening and yawned. Best nick into the bedroom while it was empty.

Keeping half an ear on Hermione's nattering, he slipped into the bedroom. The low bed was already made – this made him frown – and she seemed to have no other furniture than an impossibly small jewelry box. Knees creaking, he leaned over it to determine whether it were magically altered. He had ascertained that, in fact, it was, and was consequently pondering tabling the "shrinking knickers" plan for later when Hermione's footsteps sounded in the hall.

"... just take a shower, and then we'll have time for a good snuggle before I Floo to the Library."

Hermione entered the bedroom, followed by the kitten, who spotted Severus immediately and trotted happily over to him.

"Scat," he breathed almost inaudibly, while Hermione started to unbutton her pyjamas.

The kitten ignored him, twining around his ankles in a festival of ecstasy.

He nudged the kitten with his toe, but the kitten continued, undaunted.

Hermione, however, didn't notice. "I'm awfully sorry to leave you alone, poor thing," she began, pausing in her unbuttoning to untangle her necklace from her hair, "... but Demetrios insists we complete the reshelving by week-end. That group from California left the reading room in frightful disarray – oh, they're brilliant theorists, Mimi..." She resumed her unbuttoning.

The kitten looked up at Hermione and blinked.

Mimi? Severus scowled. Mimi?!

"... but there's not a practical one among them. Bitched the whole time about inadequate closet space in their lodgings and how you couldn't get a decent cup of coffee anywhere and 'What a disorganized country!' and yet they managed to undo six months' of cross-referencing in ten minutes' time. Mixing Archimedes with Freud; can you imagine?" Hermione slipped out of her pyjama top and spread her arms wide for emphasis.

Severus stood very, very still. Close your eyes, Snape. Close them. Eyes. Closed. Now.

It didn't seem to be working.

Blink, dammit.

That either.

He swallowed. Quietly.

Hermione hooked a finger in the waistband of her pyjama bottoms and began to wriggle out of them. "As if that weren't enough..."

Quite enough. Quite. Stop. Do.

"... they've completely disordered the Hawking papers – we'll have to call in a specialist from Paris to sort that mess out; it's quite beyond either of us – and one corner of the room has a distinct odor of tequila. No idea what that's about; it's quite forbidden. We suspect them of throwing an after-hours party after receiving special permission to 'continue their important discussion on-site.'" Hermione snorted, bending over to step out of the pyjama bottoms. "We should have called security on the lot of them, but Demetrios insisted that their work was very, very important indeed, and – well, the San Francisco Center for Wizarding Theory has given us some tremendous advances, but really, I ask you, how many theories can you base on a single anomalous text?"

Her hair escaped its messy morning knot and cascaded to the floor.

The kitten scampered over and pounced on it.

Laughing, Hermione scooped the kitten and stood, holding it, paws dangling, over her head. "Aren't you a love?" She curled the kitten against her bare breasts and nuzzled its head. "Such a softie, you are."

The kitten closed its eyes in rapture.

Traitor, came Severus's unbidden thought.

She stood that way for a moment, lost in the kitten's affection, then, before Severus could remember to remind himself again to blink, she was out of the bedroom and heading for the bath.

---

A note on sources and other things:

Speak, Memory is the title of a lesser-known work by Vladimir Nabokov, who is far more famous for writing some other book which may or may not be tangentially pertinent.

~ A.