Chapter Three
Chapter 3 of 12
bluewillowSeverus and Hermione bump into each other in NYC after the war and an unlikely friendship slowly develops.
ReviewedAuthor Note: the characters belong to JKR, these specific words are mine – but no profit comes to me. Thanks to my delightful betas: thequeenofspades and servantofall36!
Chapter Three
The passage of several weeks found Snape browsing at a bookstore near Astor Place called Shakespeare and Co. He turned around abruptly when someone bumped into him (wishing [and not for the first time] for something more intimidating to swish than a Burberry) .
I should have known . . . Nobody but a witch or wizard would be likely to get close enough to touch him. His personal wards were set to repel Muggles with a small electric shock, like a strong static discharge.
"Miss Granger, we meet again," he said, rather repressively so as to combat the excitement that rose in his chest at the sight of her. He told himself that the feeling was merely annoyance at having his plans for the afternoon upset. She started giggling and tried to muffle it in her hand. "Something amuses you, perhaps?" he said, frowning at her.
"You just sound so much like a villain from James Bond. Minus the monocle." She dissolved into laughter again. He raised his eyebrow in query, so she clarified for him, "It's a Muggle movie reference."
He was determined to discover her purpose and send her on her way. To that end, he decided to ignore her amusement at his expense. "What brings you to this store today?"
"Well, they sell books you know . . . I can't afford them, but I like to visit them. I like the smell of books; new books with the acrid smell of fresh paper, old books with leather and dust."
"I have heard the expression 'It's a free country'. I assume that means I can't prevent you from popping up around me like a toad stool, Miss Granger."
"Call me Hermione."
"I'd rather not."
"Well, I'm not going to call you 'Mr. Snape', and saying 'Sir' all the time is rather David Copperfield, don't you think? Look, why don't you call me 'Granger'," she suggested. "You can even use that same sneery tone of voice that you use to say 'Potter' if it makes you feel any better. And I'll call you 'Snape'."
"I fear that you will call me what you will, regardless of my preference . . . " He sighed and felt not unpleasantly resigned.
"Are you looking for a particular book? Could I help you find something?" She was irrepressibly eager and happy looking, like a dog inviting its master to join in the dig for the bone it has just buried.
He felt a nearly overwhelming urge to crush that enthusiasm and nip her solicitousness in the bud.
"Whereby comes the idea that I require your assistance, when I have already declined a similar offer from the store help?" A tilt of his head indicated the errant hipster at the register who studiously avoided his glare with a skill particular to those who are bullied, when they sense they are the subject of scrutiny.
Gads, she's so dreadfully cheerful – one of those optimists who orders the world to her convenience and chivvies along any dissenters. I bet she's crossed ten things off her "to do" list by mid-morning tea. Do I look particularly helpless this afternoon?
She ignored his petulant outburst and declined to acknowledge his successful bullying of the store staff. "Are you looking for a book for your research, or a book for leisure reading? Something in fiction or non-fiction?" Hermione found that once she dismissed his surface level of nastiness, she actually enjoyed his company and was excited at the prospect of helping him find some books he would enjoy.
He sighed again, by now quite convinced that it would be the easier option to acquiesce to her relentless desire to save him from his morning pleasures of tyranny and suffering. As she stalked through the store like a hunter in search of strangely rectangular prey, he trailed behind her – amused and somewhat unsettled to find himself content to let her expend all this energy on his behalf. It was not unbearable, he admitted to himself. Her company was not as annoying as he had anticipated; her conversation not half as insipid as that of many of his colleagues.
She ended up settling him with an Iain Banks book, and a solid doorstop of a book called Middlemarch. They both cautiously agreed that, since Manhattan appeared to be chock-full of interesting bookstores and both of them bibliophilically inclined, perhaps it would be in both of their interests to investigate them.
They made a plan to meet the following weekend at a bookstore called The Strand.
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Latest 25 Reviews for The Thing With Wings
89 Reviews | 4.43/10 Average
I literally just finished reading this on Ash and in my desperate search for more of your stories, I was lead to your account here. You are amazingly talented and I hope your will grant us with more of your writing in the future. Btw, I LOVE THIS STORY!!!
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
I'm sorry to say that I think this story is a one-off - I just woke up one morning with the idea of it very detailed and I knew exactly what the major twists and turns would be. I wrote like a fiend, had it beta-ed and brit-picked like crazy and then let it loose on a friendly audience. I have other friends who are real writers - they were very encouraging of me and of this effort, but I can't imagine how hard it must be to write something when you don't have that kind of clear vision of how it all must go.I promise that if I ever get another bolt out of the blue like this one, I'll write again.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
I'm sorry to say that I think this story is a one-off - I just woke up one morning with the idea of it very detailed and I knew exactly what the major twists and turns would be. I wrote like a fiend, had it beta-ed and brit-picked like crazy and then let it loose on a friendly audience. I have other friends who are real writers - they were very encouraging of me and of this effort, but I can't imagine how hard it must be to write something when you don't have that kind of clear vision of how it all must go.I promise that if I ever get another bolt out of the blue like this one, I'll write again.
It was a lovely story. Thank you.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Glad you enjoyed it - thank you for the feedback!
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Glad you enjoyed it - thank you for the feedback!
*sigh* oh, that was perfect. loved sev's to git or not to git soliliquy. thanks and mucho smoochies
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
You get halfway through your life and then suddenly something forces you to re-examine your presuppositions. It can be vertigo-inducing :)
Loved this ending! Great story! Thank you for sharing it! After finishing I read your profile and cracked up -- we could be the same person, though I'm 36. 
Hopefully I'll have some stuff up here soon. Thanks again!
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
I look forward to seeing your stories :)
This chapter had me laughing out loud. Bwahaha
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Thank you! I thought it was rather clever, myself. I was snickering as I wrote it. I asked my spouse to read it and his reaction was very noncommital, so I thought perhaps it wasn't as funny as I had hoped.
Response from cmwinters (Reviewer)
Oh no! It was funny! Maybe if your spouse doesn't read HP, and doesn't know what a stick in the mud Snape is, he wouldn't understand, but Snape's comment of "I find this entire conversation offensive in the extreme" had me CRYING laughing.BWAHAHAHA
What was his objection again? ;)
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
I think he just thought the conversation was getting away from him and he was feeling huffy and unsettled.
Obviously they are at cross purposes, neither one secure enough to think the other would want a relationship. I'm glad they will continue to get to know each other, though.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Which one of them, do you think, is brave enough to venture forth? Don't give up hope.
Very nice, I'm looking forward to how you bring them together.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Glad that you're coming along for the ride :)
Looking forward to more :)
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
More is in the pipeline - Chapter 9.5 has been submitted to the queue.
Some progress at least he opened his mouth and told her she meant something to him, I'm looking forward to more of the "ice" melting.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
It took a lot of courage for Severus to get to this point.
LOL annoying when you hear their thoughts and they care for eachother but don;t open their mouths.. Excellent descriptions of Hermiones reactions.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
One of my friends was reading my earlier drafts and noted that there wasn't any dramatic tension. Thus - the conflict between what they mean and what they say, and what they say and what the other person hears.
These are such nice chapters of conversation and thought. I very much like the way this is developing.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Thank you!
Very much enjoyed their day and the Beach and their comfortable companionship
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Discovering Rockaway Beach was one of my favorite surprises about living in NYC.
What better place to find eachother again than a book store. Thats a nice encounter.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
I like spending my Saturdays at a bookstore, too.
:) only he would part with that remark...LOL I enjoyed their conversation and hearing his thoughts.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Good!
I'm really not sure if I started this already but am reading it now. Very much enjoyed the first encounter.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
I hope you stick with it!
I like the reasons you've given them for being at Columbia. She's matured quite a lot, to be able to understand that his venomous comments are routine protection, not personal. And I love the descriptions of texture in his clothing - wonderfully evocative. In fact, I love your descriptions generally.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
I think Hermione is a pretty reflective and perceptive person. I can see her connecting the dots. And I see Snape as having a wholely undeveloped sensual side. Long repressed.
Ooh, cerebral sexual speculation - love it! And now I wonder what Hermione was wearing. Audrey Hepburn's dress is a stroke of genius.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Well, if *I* had the power to make my clothes look like anything I wanted, I'd do that.
I look forward to seeing how it will play out.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Thanks!
He should owl her, it would be quite interesting. Or whatever you decide, actually. I am so enjoying this.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
He's telling himself that he wants to let her figure out her path without influence from him - but really, I think, he's afraid he's imagined the whole thing, and if he approaches her she'll reject him. Such a conflicted fellow, our Severus!
stalking the wild snape with book and sandwich. sounds like a plan! great update. thanks and mucho smoochies
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
Observe the lone Snape in his natural habitat...
I can't wait for the next chapter! Very well done. The best stories are the ones in which the writing becomes pictures in my head. This is only possible with reasonably well-written stories. Awkward grammar, repetition of the same words all the time, spelling and punctuation errors tend to drive me nuts. Of course there is none of that here. So I read and I don't notice that I'm reading words because it's all in pictures in my head. Excellent!
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
*blush*Thank you! I try to write in an impressionistic manner - capturing moments in terms of how they feel, the real meat of the matter. My punctuation is not the best (commas, in particular, bedevil me), but has been ruthlessly pruned and pared by my excellent betas, and the admins of this site. I use the online thesaurus religiously in an attempt to avoid repetition, for the same reasons that you mentioned. I'm glad that it's all coming together for you!
OH Noo, poor Snape. He'll think she had a bad time, now. Silly people, so confusing. Excellent story.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
People ARE silly. And romance is so treacherous. The whole idea of trying to communicate with our hearts in the balance, when it's clear that everyone is speaking his or her own private language with its whole lexicon of specific meaning - well, it boggles the mind.
Response from mimmom (Reviewer)
It certainly boggles my mind. I tend to be a bit of an open book, like a Gryffindor. I have to work at not blurting out whatever is in my head. I live in a house full of people who are either unable or unwilling to communicate what is in their heads. My son has asperger syndrome so isn't a great communicator. My husband has asperger tendencies so a lot of times it's a communication skills thing. But he also has Slytherin tendencies and knows how to leave out information. My daughter is very able to communicate but can choose not to divulge information if she feels it is in her own best interest. My husband and son will speak in metaphor or will finish a sentence without having started one. They forget I don't know what the beginning of the sentence was. It's pretty typical asperger stuff.
yay! That's weasley out of the way. Silly Snape slipping and calling her Hermione. LOL. Oh but things are going in a nice direction.
Response from bluewillow (Author of The Thing With Wings)
The situation with Ron seemed like something that could happen, if two people weren't well matched. Not that he's a terrible person - just that neither of their affections were particularly engaged.