Entrees and Exits

A/N: *twirls quill* My thanks as always to my inestimably perfect writing partner, Anastasia, who summoned her laughter out of a difficult day. Thanks also to my divine beta, Lady Karelia, who rescues my prose from those pesky little stumbles to which Americans seem prone. And, finally, thank you to Droxy for rippling around in that damned cloak, which amuses Mimi no end.

Summary: In which Severus encounters a bit of a snag.

3: Entrees and Exits

… before Severus could remember to remind himself again to blink, she was out of the bedroom and heading for the bath.

-----

Severus didn’t have long to wait before he heard a yelp from the bathroom, and a slow, satisfied rumble started low in his throat, resonating quietly in her sparsely furnished bedroom.

He was leaning once again over the jewelry box, pondering how long the witch would tolerate the temperature fluctuations in her shower, when the kitten trotted in to join him.

Spotting the jewelry box, it paused to sniff at it curiously.

“You nearly gave me away with your foolish display,” Severus chided it, mentally evaluating which of several charms Hermione might have used on the jewelry box.

“Meee?”

“To whom else might I be speaking? See to it that doesn’t happen again.” He decided that the box should wait until Hermione left.

A rather high-pitched squeal from the bathroom ended with a nasty thump, followed almost immediately by a spate of barely-intelligible profanity.

Severus smirked.

“Meee,” the kitten noted sadly, jumping onto the low bed and curling into a ball on Hermione’s pillow.

---

A quarter of an hour later, Hermione hunched at her table, clenching a mug in her shivering hands.

From where he stood leaning against the counter edge, ankles and arms crossed, Severus could hear her teeth chattering.

With shaking hands, she raised the mug carefully, nonetheless sloshing a bit of tea onto her plush white robe. Swearing, she thunked the mug to the table-top and went in search of her wand.

Severus smirked in wicked anticipation.

Evanesco, Hermione grumbled, returning to the kitchen rubbing her hair with a towel.

Mildew, Severus thought, and was almost instantly rewarded by Hermione’s nose wrinkling.

She tossed the towel through the hall in disgust and set about getting her breakfast, waving a bowl, spoon, and a box of cereal to the table.

Severus maneuvered closer to read the box. Typo-Bits?

Hermione poured cream over the cereal and stared vaguely into space.

Tea, he thought intently. Drink your tea.

Hermione shuddered out of her stupor as though brushed by a cold hand. “All right, you interloping bundle of black. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Severus froze. Not even the Dark Lord had had the ability to sense his thoughts undetected…

Then he realized she was speaking to her cereal bowl.

His eyebrows arched, then narrowed to a V of displeasure over the bridge of his nose. It would be far less satisfying to drive someone mental who was already halfway there.

---

Hermione stared into her cereal bowl as if it contained the central mystery of the universe – which, in a way, it did.

In their initial efforts to understand Crookshanks’ defection to the Potter house – a defection unprecedented in the history of familiars, she’d learned – she and Ginny had bargained a box of prototype cereal from George.

“Alpha-Bits. Old Muggle formula,” he’d said. “Bought the rights to it off a bloke from Las Vegas. Just hit it with a spruced-up version of the ‘Icebox Poetry’ Charm, and the letters queue up into limericks.”

He’d demonstrated, and Hermione had blanched – once she’d finally worked out what she’d read.

“‘Knokkrz?’” Ginny had sniffed. “Did you never learn to spell?”

George had merely grinned. “Haven’t worked that bit out yet. Trade you a box for some help with that, Hermione?”

Hermione hadn’t bothered yet – her first priority had been to stop the blasted stuff from rhyming. She'd devised a particularly tricky charm, of which she was quite justifiably proud, and Typo-Bits cereal now provided a fairly good estimation of what her cat was thinking.

But for three weeks now – she’d requisitioned a few more boxes – her breakfast had informed her only that “Baybe needz kitteh.”

This morning, however, the cereal read differently.

Idly fingering her mug, Hermione stared as a long string of Zs floated on the surface of the cream. She glanced toward the bedroom. Was it picking up Mimi? Or Crooks, still?

A soft thud from the bedroom answered her question immediately, and she smiled into her bowl as she read, “Awayk naow! Wher everwon? Left kitteh!” As the letters spun and reformed into, “Wher teh cloke?!” Hermione heard urgent padding in the hall.

“Cloak?” Hermione laughed, setting down her tea to scoop the kitten onto her lap. “It’s called a ‘bathrobe,’ silly.”

---

Severus scowled – he couldn’t follow this at all.

His mood did not improve when, after much nonsensical prattling to the cat, Hermione whisked through the rest of her preparations and into the Floo without touching her tea.

Which she left on the table along with the rest of her unfinished breakfast.

Unsanitary.

He sniffed, glancing into the cereal bowl, ignoring the kitten who was rubbing insistently at his ankles.

“Why u no lyke Hermny?”

Severus blinked and glanced behind him.

“Meee?”

He frowned, looking down.

The kitten arched into his shin, reaching its paws up toward his knee. “Meee!”

He ignored it, looking back into the bowl.

“Kitteh lyke Hermny.”

He took a step back in shock. She couldn’t have – it had never been done. Flitwick had prattled on interminably about the League of International Charms Masters’ eternal failures when it came to cats.

Eternal failures, and yet…

And yet… she had succeeded.

He snorted.

Useless. How utterly useless an application for her – his mind balked at the word, but he was, if nothing else, a realist – talents.

When she hadn’t been able to follow the simplest instructions. His. He snarled.

“Meee,” the kitten grumbled back, tail twitching as his agitation sent his cloak fluttering around his boots. It crouched, twitched twice, and pounced, but Severus was already stepping forward to stare into the bowl, one eyebrow rising in involuntary admiration at the subtlety of Hermione's charm work.

He growled his indignation at the kitten’s questionable taste to the cereal and was rewarded with, “Hermny snugglz kitteh. Skyn sofft. Handz gentl.”

“Her hands are not my concern,” Severus retorted with a brusque gesture which set his cloak to rippling again.

“Cloke!” said the cereal.

The kitten’s front paws landed firmly on the fabric, only to slide out from under her as silk and momentum met the polished floor.

The words in the bowl changed instantly to: Die, cloke, die!

And Severus’ eyes darkened as he finally realized the inevitable security breach implicit in Hermione’s breakfast cereal.

A moment later, he was striding determinedly down the hall. He would find her knickers or die trying.