Some Things Never Change

Disclaimer: Everything you recognize belongs to JK Rowling.

Chapter 2 Some Things Never Change

"Miss Granger?"

Christ, it was him. She scrambled to her feet and dusted off her knees, then wiped her hands on the seat of her shorts and stood awkwardly, wondering whether she should offer to shake his hand.

He seemed smaller, somehow, than she remembered. But then of course she remembered him as being impossibly tall and looming, when in fact he stood six feet at the most, and quite possibly only five-eleven.

She remembered him as darker, too, more olive-skinned than the thin, chalk-complexioned man standing before her. The voice, though, she would have recognized anywhere: rich and dark as bitter chocolate. A voice that had slid insidiously into the nightmares of hundreds of Hogwarts students over the years.

"Would you care to join me?" the voice said, and he inclined his head towards his table.

"I...yes, of course, that would be nice," she said, but as he turned to make his way back she grabbed his arm. "No, wait, don't walk anywhere! Just, just sit here for a minute." She gestured towards the empty table, her gaze darting frantically about the plaza.

"Miss Granger, what are you on about?"

"I've lost my guinea pig. I'm afraid you'll step on her."

He was looking at her oddly, with something that on any face but Snape's would have looked like pity. "I'm not blind, you know. I'm perfectly capable of avoiding errant rodents."

"She's invisible," she hissed. "I gave her a potion. But" ...she looked at her watch... "it should be starting to wear off any minute now."

"Really? An invisibility potion?"

"Shhh!" She looked around anxiously at the other patrons of the café, several of whom were staring quite openly at them.

"We're in Spain, Miss Granger, in case it had escaped your notice."

"Ots-lay of-ay eople-pay ere-hay eak-spay English-ay," she said.

"Are you experiencing some sort of religious glossolalia?"

"No, you great nit," she said in exasperation. Oh, fuck ME, I just called Professor Snape a nit. "They may speak English, but they can never understand Pig Latin."

"What in Merlin's name is Pig Latin?"

"For Christ's sake, never mind. Oh, look, there she is, over by the fountain!"

Tuppenny had finally begun to reappear and was in an intermediate stage of translucence that made her easier to spot if you didn't look directly at her. Hermione picked up the basket and a cloth napkin from the table, strolled with elaborate casualness across the plaza, and sat down on a stone bench. She dropped the napkin and then scooped up its tented form into the basket.

Snape had returned to his own table, so she made her way there. Now that her agitation over the loss of the guinea pig had passed, she was feeling slightly self-conscious about the abrupt way she had been speaking to him. Although really, we've been quite . . . intimate, if you think about it. Shit, I wonder if he IS thinking about it?

"So, Miss Granger," he was saying, "what brings you to Salamanca?"

"The library."

One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. "Some things never change, I suppose. And by the way, my apologies for not recognizing you sooner...you look quite different, really. Perhaps if you had been waving your hand wildly in the air I would have been a bit quicker off the mark."

"You look different, too, Professor." She paused. How to say this? "Have you been ill?"

"Not ill, no. But it would certainly be an exaggeration to say I've been well. And, Miss Granger, I haven't been 'Professor' for over a decade now."

"Oh, shit," she blurted out. "I forgot, you've been, you've been in..."

"Prison, yes." The black eyes regarded her levelly. Despite the warmth of the day, he was wearing a long-sleeved black turtleneck; she wondered if he still had the Mark on his arm.

"But it's only been ten years, hasn't it? I thought you were sentenced to twenty." Nice going, Hermione. Just say anything that pops into your mind. Anything at all.

He seemed unperturbed. "They paroled me."

"Really? I would have thought..." Just shut UP, for god's sake. What is WRONG with you?

"Quite." He gave a tight little smile. "Imagine my astonishment."

The waiter arrived with her glass of wine and slice of tortilla, and she seized upon the interruption with relief. "Y la cuenta, enseguida, por favor," she said, looking up, and he nodded. "You have to really rag them about the bill," she said to Snape. "Otherwise they'll let you sit here forever."

"I had noticed that," he said. And then, after a pause, "Anything in particular you've been researching in the library here?"

"Languages, of course," she said, taking a bite of tortilla and beginning to talk round it in what she realized was actually quite a rude manner. I really have been living on my own for too long. "They have the best philology collection in the Western hemisphere, especially the writings on Proto-Indo-European."

"And when did you develop an interest in prehistoric tongues?"

"When I realized that there hadn't been any new sp..." She looked around. "Really, you never learned Pig Latin when you were a child?"

"When I was a child, Miss Granger, I read De vita Caesarum in the original. But I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

"Tutnese, then?"

He shook his head.

"Obenglobish? Gibberish?"

"I wasn't aware one could actually learn to speak gibberish, but perhaps I am mistaken."

She sighed. "Well, we can't talk here, then. Not about my research, anyway." She turned and looked for the waiter. "Where is the effing bill? Don't they understand that some of us have better things to do than sit in the sun and gossip all day?"

"I was quite enjoying the gossiping, actually."

He was looking at her with amusement . . . and something else. She remembered how he could look like this: the outward expression somehow careless and offhand, but underneath . . . underneath there was a watchfulness, a calculation, and you knew he was missing nothing.

Hard to believe they had paroled him, after the uproar that had accompanied his trial and imprisonment. She wondered if Harry had had anything to do with Snape's release.

Snape had finished his beer, and she realized suddenly that she didn't want the encounter to end just yet.

"Professor," she said, "would you like to see my lab?"

"You have a laboratory? I thought you were researching ancient languages."

"I am. But there's not much money in that. Well, I take it back, yes, there is; quite large amounts, actually, but it tends to come at infrequent and completely unpredictable intervals. The work that pays my rent is in, er,"...she looked around again..."chemistry. I'd be interested to know what you think of it."

"Ever the overachiever, Miss Granger."

"Coming from you, I think I'll take that as a compliment."

"Oh, I wouldn't, if I were you. You know, if you expect to be taken seriously in the Academy, you'll need to settle on a single area of concentration sooner or later. You can't continue to dabble in every field that takes your fancy; you'll get a reputation as a dilettante."

She snorted. "What makes you think I give a monkey's about my reputation with the Academy?"

"Out of all my students, you are one of the few I would have expected to continue your studies."

She shook her head. "It just seemed so . . . self-indulgent, after the war. After what we'd all been through, I couldn't work up any enthusiasm for publishing articles in obscure journals that no one ever reads."

He nodded. "Understandable, if a bit short-sighted. So you have a private . . . chemistry business here in Salamanca?"

"No, I live up north, on the coast. I just come down a couple of times a week to visit the library." She looked around again for the waiter, then rummaged in her handbag, pulled out some euro notes, and shoved them under her wineglass. "No tip for you, Julio. Shall we go, Professor?"

"Miss Granger, for the last time, I am no longer anyone's professor."

"I'm sorry, I just...well, I don't really know what to call you, then. You've always been Professor Snape to me."

"Just 'Snape' will do."

"Only if you call me 'Granger.' Sauce for the goose."

"I suppose it should not surprise me at all that you've turned out to be tiresomely feminist."

"Oh, you don't know the half of it," she said cheerfully. "Now, I really would like to show you my lab, if you're willing to side-along with me."

"Lead the way."

They walked several blocks, until they came upon a freestanding structure about the size of two side-by-side call boxes, with a sign that read Aseo. Hermione put a coin into a slot in the door and motioned for him to follow her inside.

"Miss Granger," he said as he entered, "please tell me this is not a public toilet."

"All right, this is not a public toilet."

"It clearly is. The reek is unmistakable."

"The sooner you stop complaining and take my hand, the sooner we'll be out of here."

A/N: Hermione's guinea pig Tuppenny is my little hommage to Beatrix Potter's wonderful book The Fairy Caravan.

Thanks to my beta Dream Team: exartemarte, corianderpie, and Angie.