Pathways

A/N: My thanks as always to my writing partner, Anastasia, and to Annie Talbot and Lady Karelia for alpha- and beta-reading. Special thanks to Dicky (richardgloucester) for her valiant effort to teach this American to speak English - would that I could claim credit for the "bargepole" line, but that one's hers. :) ~ Ari

Summary: Steam rises, powder falls, a book disappears, and the especially charitable might spare a passing thought for Ron. Or, you know, not.

5: Pathways

Hermione Granger landed at his feet with angry eyes – echoing in his own with the force of silent thunder.

-----

"OH," she huffed, leaping to her feet with a nimbleness Severus couldn't help but envy and gesturing abruptly with her wand.

The door to her flat slammed back into its frame.

A skittering noise from the hallway as Mimi darted under the nearest bit of furniture.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mimi..." Hermione moaned, waving her cloak and bag to a slightly crooked cloak-rack and disappearing into the hallway.

Severus followed, only to be greeted by the sight of her rump as she reached under an antique settee and groped for the kitten.

"Do come out, little thing."

A small noise from the kitten – Severus caught himself mentally supplying the "Meee," and his lips thinned into a severe line – and Hermione leaned her head on the floorboards.

"Please, Mimi? I'm so sorry I scared you."

But Mimi was not to be coaxed, and Hermione eventually gave up, standing up and twisting her hair back into a knot. "Tea," she said firmly. "I could do with a cuppa."

His lips twisting into a teeth-baring smile, Severus stepped neatly out of the way as Hermione wheeled around and started for the kitchen archway. "Stay," he hissed almost silently at Mimi.

Hermione stopped short as she saw the Typo-Bits scattered on the floor. "Oh, Mimi," she sighed, setting about clearing the breakfast things and putting the kettle on as the cereal gathered into a small pile and leapt one piece at a time into the dustbin.

Severus's eyes followed the letters. Their order appeared to be random.

Neither he nor Hermione noticed some several of them lying on the table under the tea tray, their progress toward the dustbin blocked by the sugar – now salt – bowl.

They spelled nothing of any importance as she sat down a few minutes later with tea.

In the shadow of the icebox, Severus found himself holding his breath with anticipation as she took a long, eager sip.

As she spat it across the kitchen with a horrified choking noise, he crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall, relaxed for the first time all day.

---

Hermione picked up the sugar bowl and examined its contents. She knew she'd been preoccupied, what with Crooks and the visiting Americans and evading Ron's annual proposal, but this? This was too unlike her. "Perhaps I'm having a senior moment?" she wondered aloud. "A soak, then. What do you think, Mimi?" Pushing back her chair, she wandered into the hallway.

Severus quickly returned the hot water pipes to normal.

Both of them completely missed the soft scraping sound that resulted in the word "Skyn!" lying completely exposed at the edge of the table.

---

Having learned his lesson from that morning's eyeful, Severus lurked in the hallway whilst Hermione disappeared briefly into her bedroom, passing within a hair's breadth of him moments later wearing a loosely tied and entirely too silky bathrobe.

Severus's eye caught a small black shadow stretching its way out from under the settee and gathering itself for a leap as the bathrobe's tie trailed past.

Severus shut his eyes quickly, nodding sharply in self-congratulation as he heard the unmistakable sound of silk rippling to the floor.

"Such a delightful thing," a now –

Don't look. Don't.

– naked Hermione paused to lean over –

Severus gritted his teeth.

– to scritch the kitten, whose purr filled the narrow hallway.

"What say you to a book, Mimi?"

Bloody hell, Severus thought, standing with his eyes clamped firmly shut, torn between wanting to watch her discover that her books were out of order and trying not to imagine her bending over her bookshelves in the altogether.

He had no wish to see that.

At all.

...

None.

He heard her head for the living room and opened one eye to a slit.

His lashes blurred everything into rounded shadows. Deeming the distortion acceptable, he slipped through the kitchen to watch from its other door.

Mimi looked up from a pile of silk and trotted after him.

As Severus squinted, Hermione trailed a musing finger along a shelf and then stopped. "Lockhart?!"

From her tone he deduced his impulsive decision to include the scroll amongst his chosen few had been correct. Still harboring a schoolgirl crush, Miss Granger? He smirked, but his smirk changed to confusion when he heard something hard hit the floor and the Floo roared to life.

"Ronald Weasley, have you been in my flat?"

"Oi, Hermione – say, you're not wearing any –"

"I've told you a thousand times not to come over when I'm at work."

"I haven't, Hermione, I swear. And –" Severus heard his strangled swallow from the kitchen. " – you're... you look..."

"Yes, yes, beautiful when I'm starkers, I know. Such an original compliment. Eyes. Up here, Weasley," Hermione flared. "A locking prank – salt for sugar – completely childish –"

Severus's eyes widened involuntarily.

She was kneeling at the hearth, in a mass of spilled powder, her hair tumbling from its knot.

He shut them firmly.

" – and that ridiculous Lockhart scroll you and Harry found such an amusing birthday present –under 'S' – really, Ron – rearranging my books? When are you ever going to grow up?!"

"Hermione, I –"

Severus heard her stand, and, carefully calibrating the exact length of his eyelashes, peeked.

She stood silhouetted against the flames in a blurry aura of dignified outrage. "Don't say anything. Just. Don't!"

A sweep of her arm, and the connection closed. "Bugger me backwards with a bargepole," she growled, stomping to the bathroom and slamming the door.

Mimi glanced up at Severus, and they exchanged nearly identical looks.

The letters on the table scraped almost silently into "Wtf?"

To Mimi, of course, that meant "Whut that forr?" – but Severus didn't see it, and Mimi couldn't have explained it to him if he had.

It amounted to much the same thing, regardless.

---

After a long five minutes during which the Floo flashed with several incoming connection attempts, Severus decided that Hermione was done yowling at Weasley and, even better, unlikely to emerge from her bath for a while.

He slipped into the bedroom, where the jewelry case stood a full eight feet tall.

More to the point, it stood open.

At last.

It was time to shrink her knickers.

He felt almost cheerful.

---

One rapid assessment of the interior later, Severus realized three things: that the box contained her entire wardrobe, that she never threw anything away, and that she was as careless with her clothes as she was fastidious with her books.

He took in a jumble of professional robes, Muggle clothing of several sizes, and, half off its hanger in a corner, a set of dress robes he seemed dimly to recall. Several hand-knitted sweaters peeked from underneath a jumble of towels and that morning's plush white bathrobe.

He also noted that the witch also owned far more shoes than reasonable circumstances could actually warrant.

Opening a set of drawers methodically, he discovered a row marked "Hogwarts" which contained her crisply folded school uniforms from each progressive year. These he closed as soon as he opened them, frowning.

Odd.

When no eventual combination of means magical or mundane revealed where the witch kept her knickers, he reluctantly admitted defeat. He couldn't very well shrink what he couldn't find.

Filing this new frustration away with the rest of his grievances, he emerged from the wardrobe and went to lurk in the hall.

The steam from Hermione's bath billowed through the open door to swirl around him, and he froze mid-stride lest its motion reveal his presence.

For a full three quarters of an hour, he stood motionless in the steam. At regular intervals he heard her murmur a heating spell, and he stood there, waiting.

A waiting in which he couldn't help but hear the sound of falling water as she waved a page to turn.

A rustle of paper, followed by yet more silence.

Severus watched the steam float and fall.

Finally, she finished her bath, and he slipped away.

---

Still rosy from her bath, a pajama-clad Hermione headed into the living room, parked herself on the floor and began a systematic examination of her bookshelves.

Mimi trotted over to where Severus stood sentry by the window and leapt up to the window ledge, golden eyes turned up to him with a look that any other wizard would have recognized as happiness.

It didn't take Hermione long to find the other titles he'd rearranged.

"Subtle Slytherins... Speaking to ... Merlin, how random... Happenstance's Herbal?" She sniffed. "No thematic contiguity whatsoever. Oh," she continued, reaching for the Lockhart scroll, "and that awful thing. Such wit." She tucked the books back into their proper respective slots and shook her head. "Time to put this day to bed."

Glancing toward the window, she smiled. "Coming?"

Severus nearly snarled.

Right. The cat.

He settled for sneering.

When Mimi didn't move, Hermione scratched her fingers on the floorboard. "Come along, Mimi. Bed time."

Mimi stood staring hopefully at Severus.

"What are you looking at, my love?" Hermione rose, heading for the window.

Severus barely escaped detection, slipping away from her outstretched arm as she reached for the kitten.

His boot bumped the box of Floo powder.

At the noise, Hermione glanced at the box and frowned.

Severus drew himself absolutely still, poised on the edge of discovery.

"Let's put you back where you belong, shall we?"

He narrowly dodged her hand as she retrieved the box and placed it on the mantel.

"Talking to inanimate objects – going like Demetrios, I am..." Her short laugh was quiet and strangely empty.

A subtle scent permeated her hair, and he fled to the other side of the room.

Mimi followed, adoring eyes turned upward toward him.

"What's gotten into you this evening?" Hermione shrugged, laughed helplessly, and said, "Fine. If you'd prefer to stay in this drafty big room all alone instead of coming to bed for a proper snuggle, suit yourself."

As she disappeared down the hall, Severus scooted the kitten toward her. Go, he thought.

Mimi promptly sat down.

Go! He glared.

The kitten just looked at him, unperturbed.

The lights went out, and Severus sank into Hermione's armchair for a good think.

"Childish," she'd said. He assessed her appraisal dispassionately and found it accurate. The tactics of his early years in Slytherin house would be childish. But he'd gone from that nearly straight to the Dark Lord's side, doubtless missing the vast middle of the spectrum between pranks and – well, murder.

So intent was his inward focus as he searched intently for a middle ground, he was only half-aware of Mimi climbing into his lap, of her claws snagging his wool trousers as she kneaded his legs, of her tail tickling his hand into stroking her.

She turned herself inside-over under his ministrations and purred herself to contented sleep.

She was long asleep, whiskers twitching in a dream-hunt for a silken cloak, when a middle path finally occurred to the wizard whose invisible finger nuzzled softly behind her ear.

His reasoning was flawless:

Given: that it is a far, far easier matter to torment someone if they actually know it's happening, and

Given: that he was more or less a ghost

If: he made a bit of noise, so to speak,

Then: she could have no doubt that he was imminent – he, Severus Snape, and not that terminally boorish Ron Weasley (Given especially, he amended, that Weasley was demonstrably not in her flat).

Therefore: He must wrest her from complacence - strip her mind of even the illusion of comfort she derived from blaming Weasley.

By ignoring his hidden directive, she'd broken his rules. The fact that she hadn't known either existed bothered him not in the slightest.

He would deny her even the possibility of denial.

---

His plan of action clear, he stood, tumbling a startled and suddenly very pointy-clawed kitten scraping down his trouser leg.

Ignoring the cat, he gestured imperiously toward Hermione's bookcases. A slash of his arm and her Hogwarts texts lay in rigid order, by year, on her floor; a twist of his hand and the rest of her collection burst forth from their shelves to hang in haphazard, slowly spinning suspension before her window.

A still-blinking Mimi shook her paw, eyes tracking the lower-hanging books. A ribbon bookmark dangled from one, and she batted at it, sending it toward Severus's hand.

He caught it reflexively and examined it – an old, leather-bound volume of undoubtedly Muggle origins, its spine bearing the faded-gilt title "Selected Tales of E. A. Poe."

"Well done, kitten," he murmured, with a slight nod.

The cat's selection had been purely a matter of chance – the cereal on the table still read "Wtf?" – but better wizards than Severus Snape had entertained worse metaphors unawares, and, alive or dead, he would observe the proper forms. Merlin knew they'd been discarded too often where he was concerned.

Tucking Poe's stories into his robes, where they, too, became invisible, he turned his attention toward Hermione's bedroom, his eyes glittering with wicked anticipation.

A ghostly chortle disturbed the night, and Severus's precisely measured steps sounded in the hall, echoing their way into her dreams.