Three

A/N: Always, my thanks to OpalJade.

Snape took to fleeing his room before Granger woke in the morning. This served the dual purpose of avoiding any unwanted imaginings and allowing him to check his Traces on the library before anyone had the opportunity to corrupt them.

For although he had no interest at all in the woman with whom he shared the loo, he remained interested in whatever this Foundation was that everyone was so overawed about. By leaving a mild Tracing Charm on the books, he was able to determine--sometimes down to the pages, if she'd been up late enough--which books she had been perusing.

Occasionally the Trace yielded nothing of interest; he hardly needed a charm to tell him that Hermione Granger had been poring over Hogwarts: A History again. He'd rarely seen her without a copy during her schooldays. Nor was House Proud: the History of House-elves in Modern European Culture a particular surprise. But he was interested to note that she'd been browsing the Pureblood genealogical texts, and that she seemed to have particular fascination with the biography of Nagnok included in Great Marble Halls: Gringotts Bank Through the Ages.

It was during one of these fact-finding excursions that he finally came across Draco Malfoy early one Saturday morning.

He opened the door to his library to find Draco browsing at the shelves.

"You realize that there is nothing at all here worth reading except what I brought myself," Draco said in lieu of a greeting. "And what in Merlin's name are you wearing?"

Snape swallowed his surprise and slid easily behind the desk he had created for himself at the head of the room. It was wonderful to be spoken to this way, with no deference or caution, as if he had stepped back to a time in which everything made sense.

"I hadn't realized there was a dress code," he said smoothly.

Draco glanced down at himself, seeming to indicate his own simple robes and raised a pale eyebrow. Then he said, "Let's go to my room and have tea like civilized people."

"Indeed," Snape said and followed him out.

***

Draco's room was nothing like he had anticipated, although why he should have expected it to look like the Slytherin boys' dormitory, he had no idea. He supposed he had simply thought that Draco would want things to be as he had known them.

Instead, it was rather modern looking, with a dark, unadorned armoire against the far wall and a small table with two chairs beside the kitchenette. The table was covered in a pale linen cloth that perfectly matched the covering on the bed. The walls remained standard-issue cream, but over the window, Draco had hung a curtain of heavy brown velvet. Apart from having far more pillows than any young man should find appropriate, the room was warm and inviting, and Snape had the brief thought that it would be pleasant to return to such a place at the end of the day. He wondered how one went about creating such a thing.

"I must know," Draco said over his shoulder as he prepared the tea. "What is it like living beside Granger?"

Snape reveled in his tone and in the company of someone who still said 'Granger.'

"She has appalling taste in music," Snape said. "But she is rarely home, so I suppose I should consider myself lucky."

"She has become something of a big deal," Draco said nonchalantly.

"So I've gathered. From the way everyone goes on, I've been expecting her coronation any day now."

Draco huffed with amusement and arranged their tea things on a tray. They fell silent.

"I thought perhaps you didn't want to see me," Draco said at last as he approached the table. "You've been here over two months, you know."

"I'm well aware of how long it's been," Snape said. "But you haven't exactly been beating down my door, have you? I've assumed that you've been working outside the house."

"I have," Draco said, taking his seat, and that seemed to be all he was willing to volunteer.

Snape decided to bide his time. Draco had an impressive ability to keep silent when he wanted to, Merlin knew, but Snape had an idea that Draco was only feeling him out, waiting to know how receptive he would be to whatever it was the boy was doing.

"Severus--may I call you Severus? It seems a bit passé to call you Professor--I hate to beleaguer the point, but why are you wearing your teaching robes?"

"Minerva sent what remained of my possessions from the castle," Snape said archly. "I assume that you heard of the burning of my family home." Impertinent little bugger. He refused to either give or deny Draco permission to use his given name. Technically, he supposed, he was no longer Malfoy's Professor, and what was the alternative? Uncle Severus? Good God.

Draco looked at him unflinchingly, appearing to size him up as he had done in the library.

"Do you know what I remember best from Slytherin house?" he said in a seeming non-sequitur.

"Hmm," Snape said.

"Your speech to us on my first day at Hogwarts. You said, 'Behave as if you deserve only the best, and nine times out of ten, people will believe that you do.'"

"Wise of me."

"It was. These days I find myself repeating it before I leave the house. Except that I say, 'Behave as if you have every right to be here, and nine times out of ten, people will believe that you do.'"

"I hope you do so within the confines of your room," Snape said. "You wouldn't want word to get around that Draco Malfoy goes about muttering to himself."

"Surely not," Draco said and smiled slightly. After a pause, he went on, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to be terribly rude now."

"It will be quite difficult for you, I'm sure."

"Is it a question of money? Because if it is--"

"I assure you, Mr Malfoy, no charity is required. I live here because I saw no reason to line Tom Leaky's pockets with my life savings while waiting for Hogwarts to reopen."

Draco laughed. "I'm sure he wouldn't know what to do with it if you did. Honestly, you'd think that the 'doorway to Diagon Alley' might invest in a bit of a clean up."

Snape shrugged. The décor of the Leaky Cauldron interested him not at all, and he had the uncomfortable suspicion that Malfoy felt the same and was simply humoring him.

"Anyway," Draco went on, "It's just as well that we finally ran into each other this morning. I have to pick up a pair of spare robes today. Perhaps you would accompany me?"

Inwardly, Snape blanched. First off, shopping with Draco Malfoy was not on his list of things to do, now or ever, and he was appalled by the way that Draco seemed to be implying that he would need help with such matters. The fact that he had chosen not to do so was no indication that he could not, if he so desired, and being goaded into it by a pushy young man with too many pillows was beyond the pale. Secondly, he had no inclination to turn up in the middle of Diagon Alley and leave himself open to the opinions of all and sundry.

"Come on, then," Draco said. "I'm not going parade you about the streets of Diagon Alley. We can Apparate directly into the back room of Tine and Sheetings."

Instead of soothing him, this left Snape with the impression that Malfoy had either become a rather accomplished Legilimens, or worse, that he, Snape, had become alarmingly transparent.

"It seems you've lost none of the Malfoy habit of acquisition," Snape said. "I'm afraid I never had a taste for it."

Draco's eyes lost their look of friendly cajoling. "Do you think I find it easy, leaving the house each morning? That it wouldn't be simpler to hole up here among the few who feel bound and determined to accept me, despite the fact that they don't particularly like me?"

"While I appreciate that rather charming assessment of my life, Mr. Malfoy, in the future, I'll thank you to save your opinions until I ask for them. I am not holing up anywhere. It may have passed beneath your notice, but there was a rather minor incident involving a snakebite. I have limited energy, and I would prefer to spend it working on the task that has been assigned me, rather than flitting about from store to store in pursuit of sundries."

Draco smiled a terrible, triumphant smile. "Then it could not be luckier that my appointment is at Tine and Sheetings. They have absolutely everything--no flitting required. I'll have you back in your library by tea time."

***

They landed in a large room filled with boxes. The walls were dingy grey, and there was a film of wood shavings on the floor, as if from years of unpacking crates. Beside them, Snape could hear the crack of Apparition and concluded that, for all Draco had implied that he had special privileges, this was a fairly common way to enter.

Snape knew where he was, though he had never set foot in the place before (and despite Draco's insistence that he had business there, Snape suspected that he had never darkened its doorway either). Tine and Sheetings sat across from Ollivander's on the far end of Diagon Alley. He had passed its storefront countless times throughout the last thirty years, but had never had any reason to enter. It seemed to him now that, over time, he had begun to believe that no one should need to enter. Most of the wizards that he knew required only the specialty shops in the main part of the village to meet their needs--books, paper, robes, wands, brewing supplies--academic items that seemed (he thought somewhat ruefully now) to bespeak a higher level of society.

It was only through his tenancy in the Potter household that he had come to realize that this shop was likely as necessary to the wizarding public as Ollivander's itself. For he supposed that unless one had the money or inclination to purchase bed linens embroidered with one's family crest at Madam Malkin's, or silverware inherited from one's great aunt Bathsheba, everyday items would have to be purchased somewhere. He could hardly imagine the likes of Molly Weasley attempting to negotiate a Muggle department store. Indeed, from the number of witches and wizards milling about and popping in and out of existence in the back room, Snape had been in the minority all these years.

He glanced warily through the door to the main showroom. The shop was divided into departments: clothing and linens on one side, furniture and housewares on the other, and toward the back of the shop, specialty toiletries, cleaning products and other notions. Snape thought briefly of the look on Narcissa Malfoy's face if she were to discover that her son was shopping in an establishment that sold both items of clothing and cooking pans. He smirked and turned to whisper something cutting to Draco.

But Malfoy had not lingered beside him, to Snape's relief, and had already disappeared into the bowels of the shop in pursuit of God knew what. Snape doubted it was spare robes, though he supposed anything was possible. But this left him free to take in the selection of wares at his own pace and without Draco's judging glances, and for that he was profoundly grateful.

It was astounding the number of items he seemed to need, and the more he chose, the more he felt he wanted to choose. It was all well and good to have his own tea things and a modest set of dishes and silverware. Likewise, he was not overly dismayed at having to purchase shampoo, though he did wish it did not have to smell quite so aggressively of bergamot. At Hogwarts, he'd have brewed his own, but as Potter's home was obviously not equipped with a Potions laboratory in the basement, this would have to do.

But in the linen department, Snape began to doubt himself. He did not need towels nor sheets. The plain things that were provided (by whom? Snape suddenly wondered. By Potter himself? By the Foundation?) were perfectly adequate. And yet, a small part of him longed for something like the familiarity of Draco's room--or, if he were perfectly honest, of Granger's--something chosen and warm and purposeful. He felt the thick terrycloth on offer, the soft cotton. Why should he be denied these things? They were not extravagant; he had not even ventured toward the more high end items. There was no reason that he should not have linens that suited him. It was not, after all, Azkaban, was it? It was a boarding house, and if Snape wanted to feel at home, he bloody well would.

A salesperson in long blue robes approached him. Snape stiffened. It was not that he had not been noticed, heretofore. He could feel the eyes on him from the moment he'd stepped foot into the showroom. But he had done as Draco had suggested, squared his shoulders and shopped as if he had been stopping in for decades. And it seemed that the boy had been right, though he would certainly never tell Draco so, because after a time, he'd felt the staring abate as people returned to their own browsing. He had no idea whether to be offended or pleased that he was ultimately less interesting than self-cleaning stoneware.

Now, however, he braced himself for a confrontation. Should the salesman ask him to leave, would he do so quietly, or would he protest? And where in Merlin's name was Draco, who had seemed, back in his rooms, to have offered his presence as a kind of safeguard against just this sort of situation?

"Sir," the clerk said.

Snape turned very slowly and acknowledged him with a lifted eyebrow.

"Sir, you have a number of purchases there."

"All the better for you, it would seem," Snape said.

"Ah, yes." The clerk laughed nervously. "I only wondered--would you like me to put those behind the counter so that you can--er--browse more easily?"

It took a moment for Snape to absorb the meaning of the man's words. "Indeed," he said after a moment, handing over his parcels to the anxious looking young man.

"And the name?" the clerk persisted.

He paused. Considered. Reached inside himself for the words that had been his shield. Act as if you have every right to be here... "Snape," he said.

The salesman let out a quick breath. "I thought it was you, sir. And I just wanted to say--well, I just wanted you to know--"

"I can assure you that you have nothing to say that has not been said by countless others before you," Snape said acidly, turning back to the rack of hand towels before him in which he had absolutely no interest.

"Tine and Sheetings thanks you for your business," the clerk said all in a rush. "If there is anything you need--anything at all--do not hesitate to call on me." This having been said, the man took Snape's purchases and fled, leaving him dumbfounded and absurdly grateful in the midst of the toweling.

Gradually, he made his way to the clothing section. He easily located several plain black robes in his size and folded them over his arm. He chose himself a cloak, as winter was coming, after all, and moved toward the back wall. He could use a pair of boots--dragonhide seemed a bit much for everyday use--but then he saw the thing he had been looking for, though he had not quite got around to admitting it to himself. Beside the cobbler's bench, there was a small doorway with a sign above it reading "Muggle Attire."

"Denims, Severus?" Draco said with amusement, appearing from behind him and nearly making him leap out of his skin.

"I garden on the weekends, not that it's any of your business, you insufferable boy," Snape hissed.

"Be that as it may, you won't be wearing those anywhere. They'd fall right off you," Draco said. "I'd peg you at about a thirty. Here." He handed Snape two pairs of trousers. Then he turned, riffled through a pile of Muggle tee-shirts, and pulled out two white ones. "No sense in having denims if you have nothing to wear them with," he said, and though he was not smiling, Snape did not like the light in his eyes.

For a moment, he toyed with the idea of putting everything back. He needed none of this; he'd been getting along perfectly well without it for over two months. It was a ridiculous waste of money and time, and he had no idea how Malfoy had ever convinced him to come on this fool's errand.

"Now, are you quite finished?" Draco said. "Perhaps you'd like a nice potted plant? A pair of tongs? Some Muggle sleepwear?"

Snape glared at him. He would not give Malfoy the satisfaction of abandoning his selections now. The boy probably had sixteen sets of robes and twenty pairs of shoes. He had no right to ridicule him for his meager purchases. And besides, Draco would likely be mocking him over this trip for months to come whether he came home with anything or not. Better to have something to show for it.

"I believe I have finished," Snape said with dignity.

"Excellent," Draco replied with equal solemnity. "Tea?"

"Perhaps something stronger," Snape replied, and Draco laughed, a high, haughty sound that transported Snape back in time and carried him to the counter with the last of his items.

***

They adjourned to the Leaky Cauldron, Snape having been buoyed by his successful negotiation of Tine and Sheetings. Draco found them a table in the back corner of the room without being asked, and Snape, feeling rather magnanimous at that point, offered to buy the drinks.

He was shocked when Draco requested only warm Butterbeer, but he said nothing until he had returned to the table with their drinks.

"Have you become a teetotaler in your old age?" he asked, leaning back in his chair and surveying Malfoy with something that looked like boredom.

"Of course not. But I have no desire to see the headline Draco Malfoy Drowns his Sorrows on the front page of tomorrow's Prophet."

Snape sat up abruptly. All day, Draco had given no indication that he had thought they were being watched.

"And you don't think my company would prove more damaging than a glass of Ogdens?" Snape asked.

"Come now, you're a Ministry favorite. Surely you know that. You've received the invitation to their little party, haven't you? Frankly, I expected to find you picking out dress robes, not denims. Not that I wasn't terribly amused, you know."

Snape glared at him. He had, in fact, received an invitation to the Ministry's awards banquet. Just the sight of it on its heavy cream parchment made him feel ill. He'd stuffed it under The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, Volumes One – Thirteen, where it wouldn't be looking at him all the time.

"I have no idea to what you are referring."

"I think you do," Draco said, looking fondly amused, which annoyed Snape even more. "But to return to the point, I work for the Ministry. It could hardly be damaging for me to be seen in the company of their hero du jour."

Snape decided that he would abandon all other lines of questioning, if Draco were prepared to reveal his mystery job. Perhaps it was his reward for enduring today's journey through tedium.

"You work for the Ministry?" he said as if it were not at all unusual.

"I do, indeed."

"What branch?"

"The Aurory. I've been in training since August."

Auror Training? Snape struggled to keep his face expressionless. "Do tell," he said.

Draco shrugged. "What is there to tell? Mother and Father are in Azkaban, as you know. I only narrowly escaped it myself. I have to do something, and I would prefer to have it be something that helps restore the name of Malfoy to--" He paused.

"You do not have to toe the party line with me," Snape said quietly. Although he had enjoyed falling back into the old manners and mannerisms of the Slytherin House with Draco--the quiet battles of wit--those same customs had little use when it came to saying what one meant. "I've known you since you were a child, Draco. And I'm hardly in any position to judge you."

"I'm not like you," Draco said after a moment's pause. "I don't have some secret history of goodness and sacrifice to reveal. All my life, I've had my name to fall back on. Now that name is gone. Whatever will become of my reputation, I will have to earn it. If my mother and father were ever released, I would want them to have... something to come back to."

"Whatever you have convinced yourself that my situation entails, you are mistaken," Snape said, hating Draco for forcing him to reveal this, but also moved by a kind of awful sympathy for the boy. "Six other residences refused me before Potter offered me a space at Grimmauld Place. I have hardly become, as you seem to think, some kind of public darling overnight. People are... notoriously hard to win over. However, you are a free man, are you not? Nothing that you have ever done has been so very--"

"No?" Draco said, and he twitched his left arm slightly. Snape flinched.

"So you think I am being foolish," Draco said.

"No, not foolish. It simply sounds to me as if this were an attempt at reparations of some sort."

Draco's eyes were direct and challenging. Snape thought that had Draco been a Gryffindor, their glasses would have already lain smashed upon the floor.

"And if it is?"

"I would only tell you that I think it is a difficult task to set yourself, to make amends to the whole world. In my experience, all you can do is choose one person to whom you've... one person. And try to pay them back."

Draco smiled a twisted little smile and took a sip of his Butterbeer. "Wasn't it lucky for you that the person you chose to repay involved the saving of the entire world."

"I was not repaying Potter, if that is what you think. I--"

But Draco spared him the end of that sentence. "I fight with Potter on the weekends; did you know that?"

Snape could not contain the look of horror that passed over his face.

"Not physically; keep your hair on," Draco said. "He comes to my room and insults me until I take the bait and insult him back. Then we shout at one another until we're tired, and we have a drink and say goodnight."

"What possible purpose--" Snape sputtered. "Why?"

Draco laughed. "I wonder what he would say if you asked him. For my own part, I think it is because it is a last thread of familiarity in an unfamiliar world. It's as if we grew up overnight, you know. School and the war ended at nearly the same time. Now we find ourselves in the world of adults, and everyone is so bloody polite and careful to one another all the time. So we tell each other all the most horrible things that are true, but that no one else would say."

"Like what?" Snape asked faintly. The entire notion of this game disturbed him, though Draco seemed to find it quite charming. Enjoyable even.

"Oh, he tells me what a stuck up prick I am, and how I needn't act as if I'm better than everyone else when all I've got to my name are two parents in Azkaban and a condemned old mansion. And then I tell him how pathetic it is that I'm the one in Auror Training, that the savior of the Wizarding World is little more than a landlord, and I ask him when he's going to get it together and do something real--and then we throw things at one another. Poorly, you understand. No one's trying to relive the incident from sixth year. Actually, I bought some things for us to throw today," Draco said, smiling and patting the pocket that contained his shrunken purchases. "Reparo only works so many times on pottery, it seems, before it stops giving such a satisfying crash."

"You're mad," Snape said. "You worry about a glass of Ogdens? Potter could go to the press--"

"Oh, he never would," Draco said with blitheness that astounded Snape. "It's perfectly safe."

"How could you possibly know that?"

"Because there's no hate behind it. I don't say those things to him because I want to hurt him. I say them because I can. And the same goes for him. We're just blowing off steam."

"I doubt you have any idea what Potter truly thinks of you. Do not assume that just because you do not hate him--"

Draco laughed. "We're on the same floor. I bump into him in the hallway after he's brushed his teeth. He leaves on the hall light on Wednesdays, because he knows that I work late on Wednesday, and otherwise I always run into that damnable troll leg."

"Your point?"

"My point is that we can't hate each other. We know each other too well now."

"I think your logic is faulty. I certainly do not like all those whom I've had the misfortune of getting to know."

"I never said I liked him. I only said I wouldn't want to hurt him. You can't live with someone and want to destroy them. It's the same principle that Granger keeps harping on about to the Board of Governors."

"Beg pardon?"

"Granger. In the great quest for equality and understanding." Draco snorted. "You know, it's not even that I object to what she's attempting; it's just that I wonder if she realizes that all these people that are paying her so much attention now will not give her the slightest consideration when it comes time to actually make a decision."

"Perhaps you'd care to explain to me what she is attempting? Everyone else has mumbled a few words and begged off."

"I can't believe that you don't know this," Draco said. "I assumed McGonagall at the very least.... Granger wants to eradicate the house system."

Snape nearly spit out the sip of firewhisky he had taken. "She wants to what?"

"And she wants to do it now, while the rebuilding is still on. Rearrange the dormitories, et cetera."

"She's mad. Hogwarts has always operated under the house system. Always. And I fail to see why an eighteen year old girl should have any say in the matter."

"Do you think it's a bad idea, then, or is your objection that it is Granger making the request?"

Snape sputtered momentarily. "I--I simply think--to change the castle, the entire system by which Hogwarts operates, and this from a girl who did not even complete her education there... She has no sense of the history involved, of the kind of upheaval for the students and the professors. She has only lived in this culture for seven years! What gives her the right to assume that she knows best?"

"A little of both, then," Draco said. "Well, I won't deny that that was my first reaction, too. But Granger approached me very early on and asked for permission to use my name in her presentation to the board."

"Whatever for?" Snape asked, feeling the now familiar sensation that he understood a grand total of nothing about the world.

"She believes that the house system is divisive and unfair, culturally prejudiced, and biased in the favor of the presiding Headmaster."

"I would not argue with the last," Snape muttered.

"Nor would I, but I was surprised to hear Granger admit it. Anyway, she said that she felt that because of the longstanding rivalries between certain houses, people were inclined to hate and mistrust each other based on very little interaction. She said she believed that by having the students live in dormitories based on their year alone, there would be less enmity between individual students."

"I'm afraid I am not seeing the connection to you."

"Don't play at being dense, Severus; it doesn't suit you. She told the Board of Governors that had we lived in dormitories by year, it would have been much less likely that Potter and I would have worked against each other."

"And this was supposed to convince them? That you and Potter might not have been enemies?"

Draco glared at him. "She suggested to the board that I might have, under pressure from fellow friends and students and a Headmaster that was not actively thwarting my house, joined the side of the Light. She pointed out how much more easily the Order of the Phoenix could have defeated the Dark Lord with my help or the help of others like me."

Snape fell silent. It was interesting, what Draco was saying, and Snape had to remind himself that he was listening to Granger's opinions. Granger's opinion that the Headmaster had favored the Gryffindors unfairly; Granger's opinion that Draco Malfoy, a Slytherin, had worth, would have been an asset. Granger's opinion that by changing the way the students slept and ate and took their classes, lives might be changed, if not saved. Which all made not one jot of difference, of course. No one in his right mind would listen to her.

"And you think that Granger is the best person to be making this... request?"

"No," Draco said quietly. "But she gave up her family for this world, and I can't help but--"

Snape shook his head. He did not need Draco to explain why that would move him.

"--and I admit that I am somewhat more at ease that she is, at least, all witch now."

"Has Granger been disowned? Is that why everyone refers to her as an orphan?"

Draco raised an eyebrow. "You really have been holing up in that library of yours. It was in all the papers--I recognize that you were ill, but I thought you'd at least be curious about what happened. Granger tried to send her family away before she and Potter and Weasley went on the run. She modified their memories, erased all evidence of herself from their minds. She tried to send them to Australia. But she was too late. They were taken in the airport."

"Good God," Snape said. He was glad he had not known that, wished he did not know it now. Strangely, some of his first thoughts were of her musical choices, which seemed far less inexplicable than they had. And then, of course, the guilt that he might have stopped such a thing if he had known, or at least not been so adamant about the wireless.

He set down his drink abruptly. "I should like to make one more stop before we return," he said.

***

Snape unloaded his purchases quickly; he had been anxious all day to see them in his room, to look about and be surrounded by his own things, things that he'd chosen for himself. Well, except for the rug. Draco had slipped that to him just before they parted in the front hall of Grimmauld Place, telling him that he'd bought it to spare Granger the sound of his pacing.

"I do not pace," Snape had said. "I have no idea what would have given you that idea."

"No? Because there was a ring around your desk in your office at Hogwarts three shades lighter than the rest of the rug. If we hadn't already been in the dungeons, I'd have worried that you would fall right through the floor."

"I am flattered that you would trouble yourself," Snape had said archly.

"Yes, well, see that you don't trouble Granger," Draco had replied, and then smiled, nodding his head slightly, and disappeared down the hallway.

But once he'd laid the rug and set out the dishes and changed the sheets, there was, disappointingly, very little difference in the room. In fact, it looked nearly exactly as it had been, except for the navy and butter-colored rug on the floor.

He sat down on the bed. What made Malfoy and Granger's rooms their own? Who had taught them how to create such things? Something in his surroundings still felt bare, unfinished. He had hoped for comfort, but the room was as sterile as before.

He pointed his wand at the wall. But what color would he choose? Brown would seem to emulate Malfoy, which he did not wish to do. Green was much too Slytherin--he'd lived with that color for years and did not want to replicate it here. Reds were most certainly out. Granger had stolen the yellows; her walls were the pale, warm yellow of the rising sun. Blue seemed to be what was left to him, and he felt perversely angry about it, that he should have come so late that even the colors he chose would be leftovers.

He was anxious and out of sorts and decided to venture to the library. He had purchases to place there as well.

Snape removed the last shrunken bag from his pocket and returned it to its normal size. He withdrew a hardbound copy of the International Statute of Secrecy and placed it on the shelf in the Magical Law and Government section. Beside it, he placed Purebloods: A History of Traditional Wizarding Thought; United Without, Divided Within: Magical Bloodlines in Wizarding Society and a small university press copy of Sorting by Blood: The Hogwarts House System. On an empty shelf, he placed Vargot the Renegade and labeled the shelf 'Magical Creatures.' This having been done, he felt peaceful enough to attend dinner in the kitchen.

That night as he lay in bed, waiting for Granger to return, he thought of Malfoy. For all the boy had spoken of reparations, Snape thought that what he was truly saying was that the world had changed and that he, Draco, intended to have a place in it. Why was it so easy for him, Snape thought, to imagine himself forward into this foreign world? How had he so easily infiltrated the Ministry, this house, Granger's confidence? Snape supposed that once Hogwarts reopened, he would feel on more even ground again, that he might slip back into his former command of things as he would into his teaching robes.

He drifted to sleep remembering his quarters in the dungeons and imagining his new possessions fitting into them. Mentally, he moved the rug from the bedroom to the sitting room, but it was not quite right in either place. Perhaps his office?

He woke briefly after two to the sound of Granger's knock upon the hollow part of the wall, which he took to mean that she had accepted his ersatz apology.

Good.