Two

A/N: Thank you very much to OpalJade for her betaing and hand holding, ScatteredLogic for the prompt, and RedOrchid for reading and encouraging.

Weeks passed, and Snape saw neither hide nor hair of Granger--face to face, at least. This was partly by his own design and partly because she rarely spent her daylight hours in the house. She woke each morning two minutes before five o'clock, though he never heard an alarm of any kind, only the sound of her feet as they hit the wooden floor. He heard her speak softly--the same words, day after day, although he could not determine exactly what she'd said. At first he'd thought it was "Cooks got the teacher;" however, that made no sense at all.

He'd listened carefully each day to this strange statement, trying on various combinations of words (Took ago creature? Look at the feature?) but none ever seemed to fit. Finally, after several days of creeping out of bed and casting a subtle Sonorus Charm, he determined that she said, "Crooks, go to Kreacher," which was nearly as nonsensical as anything else he'd landed on. It frustrated him that he could not determine the meaning of her morning pronouncement, and he was certain that it was the reason he remained interested in Granger's habits and routines.

This strange ritual complete, there would be a slightly muffled thump and scuffling, and she would proceed to the toilet. Her showers were, in his opinion, unnaturally long. He often wished to point out to her that if she spent less than twenty-five minutes in the shower, she might rise at a less godforsaken hour, but then, of course, he would have had to explain his habit of timing her showers, or perhaps his own habit of rising before the sun.

The loo would remain occupied for an additional thirty minutes while she completed Merlin alone knew what task. Often the bathroom would suddenly become spell-silent, the kind of quiet that made his ears feel hollow with nothingness, and he assumed she was using the toilet and casting a Silencing Charm out of modesty. It made him blush each time it happened, and then he would feel unreasonably angry with her. Did she expect him to do the same? To creep about and pretend that he did not live and breathe here beside her in this room? It was a childish and unreasonable expectation, he felt, and he often stood up and walked about his room at this point to remind her of his presence.

Once her toilet was complete, he would hear the soft, muffled sounds of her dressing, and then the clack and fall of her footsteps as she locked her door and descended the stairs. Snape would sit at the desk by the door and wait for the sound of her to pass into the kitchen. Then he would read or use the loo himself, anticipating the sound of the front door closing. Often he went to the window to catch a glimpse of her as she departed. He never saw her for more than a split second before she disappeared into the swirl of Apparition, but he was always struck by the way she looked.

Her robes were the thing that jarred his mind and brought him to the window most mornings. He felt as if he were looking at two images somehow superimposed upon one another--one of the girl he'd taught for six years, and one of a strange and powerful young witch that he did not recognize. It was a trick of the mind that he knew intimately. When he had joined the staff of Hogwarts at nineteen, Dumbledore had taken him to Twilfit and Tattings for a lengthy consultation, and it was there that they had designed the teaching robes that he had worn from then on. His robes had been tailored to give him the appearance of height and bulk that he had not yet earned and had been created with intimidation in their very seams. Snape had never given much thought to the clothes he'd worn before that day, but it had seemed to him that his teaching robes had provided him a kind of armor of adulthood, and they had infused him with the necessary presence to take on the task he'd been assigned. It did not hurt that the image of stern, almost malevolent, authority they had given him had later allowed him to walk a somewhat finer line, to perform a rather different assignment. He thought now that Dumbledore must have known it on that August day as they'd stood in the back room of the shop in Knockturn Alley, Snape virtually melting with the heat as they had buried him under mounds of black wool.

Whoever had designed Granger's robes had done so with similar care. They held her ramrod straight, whether by magical or structural means he did not know. But they gave her height and refashioned her sturdiness as strength. The robes were cleanly tailored in the front, but were pleated ingeniously in the back so that they gave an impressive billow when she turned to Apparate. He was surprised that Granger had known who to see for such robes, surprised even that she would know that she needed such robes, and that fact alone added to his sensation that he was seeing a stranger through the window.

When she was safely gone from the house, he would attend to the library. Library was, perhaps, a generous term for the room he'd finally found on the second floor. It was not as abysmal as he had feared; though it did, in fact, house both Potter and Granger's schoolbooks, it also held a great number of books from the Black family collection, as well as those brought by Malfoy and Sprout. There were spellbooks worthy of the Restricted Section, extended treatises on wizarding history, a vast array of both Muggle and wizarding law books that he could only assume belonged to Granger, and a rather healthy selection of guides to magical plants. What the library lacked was any sort of organizing framework. Books were piled about the room haphazardly, as if they'd been dumped there when clearing the bedrooms for their new residents.

For the first few weeks he had only sorted, which did not feel much like work at all, as he accomplished nothing except moving the stacks from place to place. He had deliberated for quite some time whether to organize the library by subject or by title. On the one hand, there simply weren't enough books to justify using the Bonefolder and Quire Method. There would be gaping holes in the system, as he had at least thirty- four books that would go into the Spellbook section, and nearly twenty for Magical Law and Government, but only five for Theory of Magic, three for Wizarding Literature and none at all for Magical Devices. It would look, he felt, ridiculous when it was shelved. On the other hand, this was a project of Granger's, and he felt certain that books would be added along the way. Organizing them alphabetically would only mean that he would spend the next... however long... reshelving in order to accommodate the newcomers. Provided, of course, that Potter kept him on library duty indefinitely, as he seemed wont to do.

Snape was in the middle of sorting through several biographies of the Black family when there came two sharp raps upon the door. No one had ever approached him when he was working in the library before. In his heart, he knew immediately that it was Granger. No one else was ever moving about at this hour, and she'd taken so long in the kitchen that he'd decided to chance a trip to the library before he was certain that she'd left the house. Well, this was what came of being hasty. Probably she'd come to chastise him for moving her copy of Centaurs of Note the day before. She likely thought it was her God-given right to leave books open on the sofa for days.

He opened the door. "Miss Granger," he said icily. "Perhaps you've come for a lesson in the finer points of the Bonefolder and--"

He stopped. Granger was wearing dungarees. And a large yellow hardhat.

"Yes, hello, Professor," she said. "I was wondering if you might cast a Shield Charm on me."

Snape was momentarily dumbstruck. "A Shield Charm?" he managed at last.

"Yes, I find them more effective when someone else casts them," she said. "Harry usually does it, but he's still asleep."

"And you found me to be a suitable replacement?"

She gave him a long look that made him feel profoundly ill at ease. She seemed to be asking him with her face not to be so bloody dense. And since when did Granger approach him with such composure, as if their meeting were no less out of the ordinary than taking tea with breakfast?

"I knew you'd be awake."

"And why is that?"

"Because I live next door to you, and the walls are so thin that I can practically hear you breathing," she replied. "Are you going to cast the charm, or shall I go and wake Harry?"

"I'm afraid I still don't understand why you would require--"

"All right, I'll spell it out for you, because I'm in a hurry and I can't go back and forth like this forever. I'm going to Hogwarts today. You might recall that it sustained pretty serious structural damage during the Final Battle. I'd like to wear a Shield Charm to protect me in case the ceiling decides to come down on my head while I'm there." She paused. He made no move to interrupt her, and so she continued.

"Harry's Shield Charms seem to work better than my own. I'm sure that you will believe that is because my skill at Shield Charms leaves something to be desired. That may very well be the case, however, at this point, I'm more concerned about not being hit by falling rocks than about whether my charmwork is up to snuff. I believe that you would do good job of it, and if I were to trust my safety to someone else's work, I'd prefer it be yours or Harry's. Clear enough?"

Snape swallowed. He raised his wand. "Protego," he said.

"Professor, I don't mean to be pushy, but you're as familiar with the building material of Hogwarts as I am, and I--"

"Protego Totalum!" he said, slicing his wand through the air before her.

She smiled. "I think I felt that one in my toes. Thank you, Professor." She retreated through the doorway and started down the hallway.

"Miss Granger," he said, and she stopped.

"Yes?"

"What business do you have at Hogwarts? And why are you wearing that ridiculous hat if you have my Shield Charm on?"

She glanced over her shoulder at him. "Come round my room when I get home, and I'll answer whatever questions you have about Hogwarts," she said. "As for the hat," and now she tipped him an almost saucy smile, "you can never be too careful. Goodbye, Professor. Have a good day."

***

It was impossible for him to return to his tasks at the library after such an encounter, and yet there was really nothing else for him to do at present. The rest of the house did not rise until seven, and even then, very few of the other residents emerged to take breakfast. Snape did, however, each morning, not in the hopes of seeing other faces, but because he did not intend to spend time or money on food if food were being provided.

Kreacher was in the kitchen when Snape entered, and he handed him a mug of tea without a word.

"Thank you," Snape said, and Kreacher gave him one of his odd little bows. Snape took a seat at the table.

"Kreacher is not serving breakfast until seven," the house-elf said somewhat reproachfully.

"Yes, I know. However, unless my presence somehow prevents you from preparing it, I would like to sit here and wait," Snape said acidly.

"Mr Malfoy comes in at seven," Kreacher replied, and Snape was not sure if this was meant as encouragement to emulate Draco, or as a warning to him that there would be others about. They lapsed into silence.

"What is a crooks?" Snape said at last. If he had to endure the company of an admonitory house-elf, he might as well get something out of it.

"Kreacher does not understand your question, sir."

"Each morning, Miss Granger says, 'Crooks, go to Kreacher.' What is a crooks?"

"Ah. Crooks is not being a what, sir. Crooks is being a who. He is Miss Granger's kneazle. When she rises, he comes to nest with Kreacher, sir."

Snape digested this for a moment, and let the thud and scuffling he heard each day take on meaning in his mind. Finally, he looked at the small, gray-skinned old elf who was busily preparing eggs and paying him no attention whatsoever. It was not possible, was it, that Kreacher made his nest in Granger's room? Pomona had said that Granger had strict rules about Kreacher's duties, but Kreacher would belong to Potter, to the House of Black in which he lived, not to a bushy-haired Muggleborn with delusions of grandeur. Snape felt as if his very being were rejecting this idea. Was there nothing left in the world not subject to the whims of Hermione Granger?

"Do you belong to Miss Granger?" Snape asked.

Kreacher's ears twitched slightly, and his skin took on an odd pallor. "Harry Potter is my master, sir, if that's what you is asking." The room began to fill with the smell of scorching eggs.

At that moment, Pomona Sprout--not Draco Malfoy, after all--bustled in. "Kreacher, don't listen to a word that cantankerous young man says. Severus, are you trying to ruin breakfast for everyone?" she asked breezily. She took a mug from the countertop and poured herself some tea, waving Kreacher's fingers away.

"I can do it myself, Kreacher, dear. But thank you for offering."

Kreacher returned to the eggs, looking both mollified and more uncomfortable than ever. Snape did take note, however, when breakfast was served, that Pomona's portion was much larger than his own.

"Where have you been hiding yourself?" Pomona asked him. "I asked Draco, and he claims he hasn't seen you either."

"Perhaps if any of you chose to pick up a book, you might find me," Snape said. "I believe I told you that I have library duty."

"Yes, well, you're perfectly at liberty to do other things, you know. No one is demanding slave labor," Pomona replied.

"No? I think your beloved Granger would say differently," Snape said, glancing in Kreacher's direction, but Pomona ignored him.

"Listen, Severus, there's something that you can help me with, if you can stand to get out of that library of yours for a moment," she said. "I have some dirt that needs moving and some bulbs to get in, and I'd like to get it done before the first frost."

Snape wondered what Pomona was playing at. She had plenty of help. He'd watched her from the window in the library most evenings as the afternoon sun turned to dusk and he'd declared himself finished for the day. Longbottom was always two steps behind her, like a small male shadow, carting earth and hauling water, clipping things back and moving them from place to place as she gestured.

Snape enjoyed watching the earth turn from brown to burnished red in the waning sun, but more than that, he liked knowing what to expect, liked knowing where the other members of the house spent their days. This was not solely for the purpose of avoiding them, although it helped, but because he had found in his weeks under the Foundation's roof that he missed the regiment and routine of castle life, and watching the others marked the hours of the day in a way that felt useful to him.

Being asked to replace Longbottom as an errand boy was not something he had expected.

"And where is your lapdog?"

"I beg your pardon?" Pomona asked politely. From the set of her face, Snape could tell that she was forcing him to rephrase.

"Longbottom," he growled. "Your shadow. Surely he would be eager to help you."

"It's Sunday, Severus," Pomona said. "Neville visits his family on Sundays."

Sunday! It was so strange without lessons to mark the passing of the days. Here each day seemed to bleed into the next without seam or marker. And what was Granger doing at Hogwarts on a Sunday?

Pomona was staring at him expectantly, and he was forced to abandon this line of thinking.

"Yes, fine," he said--and then more pointedly, "Though I've been meaning to ask you--why do you only plant Muggle flowers?"

"I knew you'd been watching," she said with a slight smile. "Because I don't want to risk cross-pollinating Magical specimens with Muggle ones in the neighboring gardens. They may not know we're here, but the wind does not stop at the borders of the garden."

"But surely you could erect some kind of shield--" he began.

"And who would maintain it when we are gone? I'd rather not risk it. Besides, I think it is good for Neville to grow things only for their beauty, for the joy of watching them flourish, rather than for their usefulness. He got to do so little of that at Hogwarts."

***

Like the house, the gardens seemed to expand once he entered them, to defy what he could see from the outside. There were two main plots with a path in between them, but back behind these, there was a small pond that Pomona must have added, and in it, a water garden brimming with four-leaf water clover, like a strange pool of luck. It was on the other side of the pond that she wanted to put the bulb garden.

"How far back will they go?" Snape asked.

"I think I'm pushing the boundaries of the Fidelius Charm as it is," Pomona replied. "But I figure, in for a Knut, in for a Galleon. I'll go back as far as it will let me."

She worked him all day long, as he had known she would. First it was, "Severus, move this pile of earth from here to there." Then it was, "Severus, sort these bulbs into piles."

Severus, plant the entire bloody garden by yourself.

He marked the ground and used a trowel to dig the bulb holes. Because Pomona had chosen an entirely non-magical garden, no spell could contaminate the soil or water that the plants used. While it was interesting to work without a wand, to imagine for a moment what sort of person he might have been without the pulse and throb of magic in his veins, it was not something that he would want to do day after day in the hot sun. He did not envy Longbottom digging out that pond, nor lining it, as he must have done.

Though it was late October, it was hot enough that he was sweating freely, and he took off the outer layer of his robes and left them in a wheelbarrow beside the earth he'd set aside. He rolled his sleeves to the elbow and undid his collar fastenings.

"Well, now, look at you," Pomona said. "And here I always thought your head might fall off if you loosened your collar."

"Shut it, woman, or I'll leave you here, and you'll have to do all your chores yourself," Snape said with mock severity, but he let himself smile down at the dirt as he worked. It was pleasant out here, pleasant to feel the layered skin of the bulbs beneath his fingers and the sun on his back.

He planted crocuses and daffodils until his back ached and his fingers felt tight and dry with dirt. Then he sat at a small table and separated the roots of a flat of pansies, but finally there was not enough sun to work by, and he rose to bid Pomona farewell.

"You've got a nice touch with the flowers, Severus," she said. "I knew you'd have some skill, given how meticulous you are about your plants for brewing, but I admit, I was pleasantly surprised. You should come back."

Snape retrieved his outer robe from the wheelbarrow. "Don't go getting ideas," he said. "You've got plenty of help, and I have the library to attend to."

She smiled at him in the fading light. "Well, perhaps next Sunday," she said.

***

It was possible that he had overdone it, he thought. He'd barely been able to touch Kreacher's vegetable soup and had managed little more than a bit of bread and butter. No one had yet appeared for dinner by the time he had abandoned the table and begun dragging himself up the stairs to his room. Four flights. Merlin, but Potter was a sadist.

He stripped off his robes and left them on the desk. Kreacher could attend to them when he picked up the linens. He lurched into the loo, hoping that a hot shower might strip away the dirt that his Cleansing Charm had missed and soothe some of the muscle aches that had already left him stiff and graceless.

He stood beneath the stinging spray, as sharp and hot as he liked it. His head fell forward, and he let the pressure tingle against his scalp. Sometimes he understood why Granger would want to stay in here for so long. He remembered the showers of his childhood, how eventually the water would go lukewarm and finally icy, and he was grateful to be a wizard in a wizard's shower after a long day of work.

He'd brought no shampoo of his own--and when, exactly, had he been supposed to run out for supplies between the demands of the library and now the garden?--so he always used Granger's. It was pink, and it smelled of grapefruits and always made him feel aggressively clean.

It was while he was working the lather through his hair that he heard her door shut. At first he told himself that it was impossible to hear anything of the kind when surrounded by the pounding of water against tile, but then he heard the scrape of drawers opening and footsteps.

She had never been home while he had showered before. Suddenly, he knew why she cast those Silencing Charms. It was...well, it was mortifying to stand here naked with Granger only on the other side of a flimsy wall. She could hear him! She knew what he was doing. She might even picture him naked. That idea made him flush painfully. He had certainly never pictured her naked--she had no right! And yet now that he'd thought of it, he knew he would not be able to unthink it, and the next time he heard the thunder of the water starting up, there she'd be in his mind, taking off her... He shut off the water. It was ridiculous that she was home so soon anyway. He'd never known her to return before he'd retired for the evening. And now she had destroyed his shower.

Snape stomped back into his room and put on the underlayer of one of his other teaching robes without even drying his hair. That was the problem with communal living, he told himself. If other people were not willing to be respectfull, then there was no hope of anything even so simple as a decent shower. Now, he could hear her infernal music starting up next door. It was one of the type that he thought of as "Granger's traveling songs."

Her music came in two types. One sounded as if it had been recorded by wandlight in the heart of the Forbidden Forest by a choir of the peaceful dead. It was ethereal and strange and crept beneath the door in haunting tendrils. The other type reminded him of motion, of high speed travel, of open plains rushing past train windows and galloping horses, urgency and foreign lands. Snape could not understand these as musical choices--flight or death--for although they were not depressing, they were certainly not relaxing, and listening to them always made his chest feel swollen with the conviction that there was something that remained unfulfilled, some great journey yet to be undertaken, and he feared the way the sounds made his blood rush and his fingers itch for his wand.

He moved toward the door, where their rooms were not separated by the bathroom, but by a hollow part of the wall. He rapped his fist against it, one, twice, three times.

Back came his knocking in Granger's hand, as if she thought it had been some kind of greeting.

Seven strides took him through the loo and her unlocked door.

She lay face down on her bed, propped up on her elbows, a book spread open on the pillow in front of her. Across from the bed, a fire crackled in the grate, and above it, on the mantelpiece, was the blasted wireless.

"Granger!" he bellowed.

She'd looked up in surprise when he entered, but quickly rearranged her face into a look of polite interest.

"Well, that's one way to make an entrance," she said. "I came home early so that we could talk, though I admit I wasn't expecting you for another half an hour or so." She glanced at him pointedly, and for the briefest moment, he was ashamed of his dripping hair and furious expression.

"Talk?" he said.

"About Hogwarts," she replied. "You asked me earlier--"

"I was at Hogwarts before you were born, Miss Granger. I feel certain that you have no new information to provide me on the subject."

She paused for a moment, not uncomfortably, but as though she were waiting for him to regain his senses. "In that case, may I ask, Professor, what you are doing in my room?"

Snape scowled at her. Why did it always seem that she was gaining the upper hand? Was this how she had subjugated all the others?

"I am here to tell you to turn off the bloody wireless," he spat.

"No," she said and turned back to her book.

"No?" he asked imperiously.

"No. You know how to cast a Silencing Charm. Silence your room. This is my room, and I like the wireless."

"Clearly, as you begin polluting the air with it the moment you return home in the evenings--or should I say mornings, as you often return after midnight. Other people prefer to sleep after midnight."

"Other people, as I've said, know how to use a wand. Goodnight, Professor."

Apparently dismissed, he turned and marched back into the loo, slamming the door behind him. Bloody Granger and her bloody stubborn-mindedness--couldn't honor a single request in the name of peaceful living. Just because she had everyone else in the house responding to her every whim did not mean that he would be too cowed to tell her to turn down the wireless.

He cast a violent Silencing Charm at the back wall of his room and felt it pass through him as it rebounded toward the front wall, taking every whisper in its path. He lay down on the bed and extinguished the light, though it was only eight o'clock.

He hated to use Silencing Charms in this way, if truth be told. It felt unnatural to touch things without their accompanying sounds, no matter how small. His chair did not scrape, his bed did not creak, even his breath made no noise, as if he'd died or vanished from the room entirely.

And for a man who had never had much in the way of companionship, it was strange, he thought, how lonely the silence made him feel. How cut off from everything and everyone, entombed in his own mind. His thoughts chased each other like angry mice, and in the background, on an endless loop, played Granger's traveling music. Stuck there indelibly, it seemed.

She could think again if she thought he would spend his days casting spells to accommodate her behavior. He did not come to live here in order to be subject to the lifestyle of one Hermione Granger--whose Foundation would not be doing so well, he imagined, when her tenants began complaining about her. She had no right to make him feel this way, as if he were relegated to living in a sterile box, away from the rest of society.

He closed his eyes and shifted in the bed, hating the lack of rustle to mark his search for comfort. The pillow felt heavy and flat without anything for it to muffle--and what was the point of Silencing everything if he was going to hear those fucking songs in his head anyway? He groped blindly on the bedside table for a moment until he located his wand. Then he lifted the charm and felt, with relief, all the texture flooding back into the world.

Hermione Granger would not deprive him of sounds. Not even the sound of her goddamn traveling music.