Six: Going courting

Seven Brides for Seven Snapes 6: Going courting

There was silence. A heavy sort of silence. The sort of silence that defined the word "ominous".

The Snapes were regarding the three young women with interest. These latter persons seemed to be competing for how round they could make their eyes and mouths go.

A young man and his friends rushed forward.

"Are you insulting my sisters?" he said, entirely too pugnaciously for Hermione's liking.

"No he wasn't," said Seneca, pushing to the front. "He was just offering her a look at his nuts. And last time I saw them I thought they were mighty fine nuts, too!"

Oh, Circe preserve me from boys' humour, prayed Hermione.

And from testosterone, she added a moment later, when the first hex flew.

Within thirty seconds, that part of the shop floor looked as though the Visigoths had been through and stopped to party. Seneca stood easily parrying a barrage of hexes and jinxes from the three young men, and returning a well-aimed stinger now and again, while his grinning brothers egged him on. Septimius turned around to see what was happening.

"Hey, it's us!" he said, pleased, to Hermione – but her stool was already empty.

She skirted the magical maelstrom and shouted at her brothers, "Do something!"

"What for?" queried Scribonius. "There's only three little ones!"

Hermione growled and cast a protection charm on herself before diving in. Despite the strength of her magic, she was severely buffeted by the curses bouncing off her shield. She grabbed Seneca's wand arm.

"Stop it! Stop it at once!" she yelled.

He ducked a hex that sneaked through his distraction and smashed a display of crystal balls, spraying shards that ripped into the walls around them.

"Stop it!" she shrieked again.

"Really, Hermione?" he said mildly. "Very well." And with three well-placed Stunning Spells, his opponents collapsed to the floor.

Hermione was breathing hard, her hair crackling with barely-controlled magic and her wand sparking.

"You ... You .... Just get out. Get. Out. All of you. Go home at once."

She turned her back on them and did not look up from her clenched fists until she had heard their footsteps crunching across the floor to the shop's Apparition point, followed by six loud cracks.

When she did raise her head, her heart sank even further. The level of destruction was beyond words. The walls were gouged, curtains shredded – even the near side of the coffee shop had not been spared, and stuffing oozed from rips in the upholstered seats – stands overturned, goods ruined, potions sets, charms kits, and a display of miniature magical pets were jumbled together apparently producing new forms of life (George was already taking notes) ... And so it went on.

Her shoulders rigid with the effort of keeping some measure of control, she turned her mortified and enraged gaze to her friend.

"Ginny, I am so, so, sorry. I'll – listen, just send me the bill for the damage and I'll take it out of their sorry hides. And tell me what I can do to help you with the immediate repairs."

Ginny stepped gingerly across and gave Hermione a tentative hug.

"Hey – it's not your fault. I won't pretend we can't use a bit of help with this, and tidying messes always calms you down, but I can see you have your hands full. Don't take it too hard, Hermione."

Luna drifted over and patted the top of Hermione's head.

"Anyway, it wasn't your brothers who did most of this," she said. She nudged one of the three prone young men with her toe. "These are the ones who were throwing the dangerous spells around."

"Yes," said Ginny grimly. She scowled at them. "Goyle's little brother, an Avery cousin and ... Don't know this one, but he has a look of the Notts about him. I should get the Aurors out."

"Oh, please don't!" Hermione wailed. "I don't want Severus and his brothers involved in anything official!"

"Calm down," said Luna. "They're well protected – they'll sail through any trouble. Oh, yes," she added earnestly, seeing Hermione's sardonic look, "they're absolutely swarming with Vrugoi. Protective spirits – a bit like fairies, but not nearly as pretty. Which is appropriate, I suppose, because your brothers are really quite ugly. Impressive, of course, but mostly rather ugly, and I doubt very much that they would like the thought of being covered in pretty things."

Ginny rolled her eyes; Hermione giggled. Then she laughed. Then she laughed until tears ran down her face.

"'Only three little ones'," she gasped. "Wait until I tell Severus! But I'm going to let them stew for a bit. Let's get this lot cleared up, shall we?"

*

It was a chastened bunch of brothers who greeted Hermione when she returned that afternoon. Of course, they were all doing their utmost to act as though nothing untoward had occurred, but the act was just that little bit too nonchalant to fool her. Or, for that matter, to fool their brother.

"So, are you going to tell me what happened, or am I going to have to hex it out of somebody?" Severus asked her when he came into the kitchen just as she was unloading her shopping onto the table.

"Hello, dear. Nice to see you. Have you had a good day?" She gave him a peck on the cheek and turned to give a new pack of sticky-notes and some fine-tipped coloured pens to an ecstatic Optio.

"Hermione," he warned.

"What?" she said innocently. It was quite enjoyable seeing even Sejanus squirming with ill-concealed anxiety behind his brother's shoulder.

"There's always Veritaserum," he said.

"Oh, Severus," she pouted. She looked up at him through her eyelashes and fiddled with one of his jacket buttons. "Don't you have better methods of persuasion available – down in your lair ...?"

It was just as much fun seeing Severus unable to decide whether to strut or cringe at being publicly flirted with.

"Come on, husband. I've got a whole load of supplies for your lab here. We can unpack them while you interrogate me." She thrust a wooden box into his arms, picked up another, and headed towards the cellar stairs, hips swinging.

The crates forgotten, Hermione reflected that such 'interrogation' could very well be the stuff of a Weasley Patented Daydream – not that she was about to let them anywhere near her private life. It was a very good thing that she and Severus had thought to ward his lab against both intrusion and eavesdropping. He still kept a little distance in many respects, but their love life was, she suspected, proving something of a revelation to them both.

And there was, of course, the added benefit of sparing his brothers the outburst of braying laughter when she described to him what had happened.

"What I don't understand," she said when he had mastered himself, "is why they should be awkward like that. I mean – it was almost as if they'd never seen a girl, the way they were behaving."

"How much do you know about the Molotov Institute?" Severus asked.

"Nothing, aside from its being in Russia. I couldn't find anything at all in the usual sources. Not one mention." She turned over in his arms from where they had been spooned together and looked into his dark eyes, thinking that she would never tire of the opportunity she had of being this close to him.

His arms tightened a little.

"I'm not surprised. The Institute protects its identity even more closely than Durmstrang. And while it offers the highest level of education and practical training in all the magical arts, it is also run on strict monastic lines, as in ..."

"As in, no girls. Ye gods." She stared at him, appalled. "Oh, no – please don't tell me I've got six barely-controlled, fully-grown, magically powerful virgins on my hands?"

He snorted.

"I doubt very much that they're virgins, Hermione, except where girls are concerned – so I suppose you're right."

"How old is Seneca?"

"Thirty-six."

"Oh, Merlin."

She arranged for vast quantities of chocolate ice cream to be served for dessert that evening.

*

"I've been thinking," announced Hermione a couple of days later.

"What – you?" said Sidney, but without bite. All of the boys had been going out of their way to be nice to Hermione since she had, as they evidently believed, not told Severus the whole truth.

"Yes, me," she replied. She tapped the envelope she was holding. It was a nice envelope, made of creamy vellum, with a sinuous silvery-green decoration embossed around its edges and on the flap at the back. It was an envelope that announced, "I contain something very impressive." It was an envelope that screamed money. It was addressed to "Mrs Hermione Snape" in perfect copperplate handwriting, and the dark green seal glinted with real gold dust that was mixed in with the wax. It looked affronted by the butter stain that marred the perfection of its surface.

Hermione took another bite of toast and Marmite and chased it down with some tea.

"Do you know what this is?" she asked everyone in general.

Severus raised his eyes briefly from the book he had propped against the orange juice – Hermione's heavily annotated and sticky-noted copy of Hogwarts: A History, her hobby and lifetime's ambition: the unexpurgated edition.

"It looks like something from the Malfoys," he said. "I trust you've checked it for jinxes?"

"Of course I have. Nothing major."

"So what is it?" Septimius said eagerly.

"It's an invitation – to the annual charity garden party at Malfoy Manor," said Hermione. She found she was having difficulty suppressing a grin.

Severus grimaced.

"You're not seriously considering going, are you?" He stirred four sugars into his black coffee. "It'll be ghastly – Narcissa has taken to inviting the whole bloody world to this thing in an effort to make the Malfoys look respectable again. Cucumber sandwiches and anodyne cocktails full of fruit salad, simpering debutantes flirting with spotty boys, and the hosts' gruesome attempts to schmooze all the people they tried to kill a mere few years ago."

"But you go every year – you said so."

"Of course I do. I know where Lucius keeps the good whisky."

"I don't see what this has to do with us," put in Sejanus. "We're not invited."

Hermione slipped the invitation out of the envelope, which she dropped unceremoniously into a blob of marmalade that remained on her plate. She leaned back in her chair and smiled round.

"Oh, but you are," she said.

Severus frowned.

"What are you up to, Hermione? You don't play around with the Malfoys, you know."

"Then Narcissa should be more careful how she phrases her invitations. She's done this the old-fashioned way, woman to woman, you know. 'Mrs Hermione Snape and escort are cordially invited blah blah blah' ..." Hermione grinned. "She doesn't define whom I may take as my 'escort', nor how many my escort may comprise."

They looked at her a little blankly.

"Ta-daaaaaah!" she added.

"You can't be serious," said Severus.

"Oh, yes I am," she retorted. "But before we go ..." She looked critically at her brothers again. "... I'm going to teach you how to talk to girls."

"Good luck."

"Shut up, Severus. If you can talk to girls – well, to your wife at least – so can they. I won't permit another disaster like last time."

There was a little shuffling of feet on the quarry tiles under the table and an exchange of glances.

"Hermione," said Salvius, for once the brother to speak up, "what did we do wrong?"

"Do we have a mirror in the house?" she asked. "A really big one – one we can see all of you in at the same time?"

"Seneca might have one," replied Sejanus slyly.

The others snorted.

"Do you have a mirror, Seneca?"

"Come on, Hermione," Sejanus answered before Seneca could. "Let's show you what ugly-puss here might be able to offer us in the way of a looking glass."

She cast a puzzled look at her largest brother but shrugged and allowed them to herd her out of the kitchen.

They trooped up the fine wooden staircase to the first floor, making a terrible pounding noise that had Hermione adding carpeting to her mental list of home improvements, then down a portrait-lined corridor characterised chiefly by sleeping and sneering, and up a further flight of stairs to a long gallery that was new to Hermione. It seemed to run the length of one wing of the house and was illuminated by large windows all along one side. She recognised it as the sort of room that would originally have been used for taking exercise when the weather was foul. Their footsteps were dampened by a simple canvas covering over the floorboards, but their voices echoed loudly in the otherwise nearly empty space.

Nearly empty, for ranged here and there along the wall facing the windows, against the wall in between the windows, taking up the entire wall at the far end of the long room, and even free-standing here and there, were ... mirrors.

Large, small, massive, minuscule, there were mirrors everywhere. Hermione fought not to flinch too openly. She wasn't a fan of her own reflection at the best of times, but at eight in the morning with her hair screwed haphazardly on the top of her head, she wasn't enjoying seeing about a hundred Hermiones cringing back at her. The effect wasn't helped by the Hermiones being lost in a forest of enormous, large-nosed men.

"Whu ...?" she said articulately.

"Oh, you've only seen his office workspace, Hermione. This is Seneca's special project." Severus pushed through the throng to put his arm round her shoulders and ushered her to a mirror that didn't actually reflect anything more definite than cloudy suggestions of forms. "Did you ever see Moody's foe-glass?" he asked.

She shook her head, peering closely. Something else was moving there, beneath the surface.

"I understand the idea behind it, though. Is this a foe-glass? I can't make it out very well."

"It's something like that – it's ..."

"I've made some improvements, Severus," said his brother. "Look at this one."

He tugged at a piece of cloth that was draped over another mirror. It slid off the glass to reveal a blurred bird's-eye view of the interior of Weasleys Wizard Wheezes.

"It helps when I've actually seen what I'm trying to connect to. Or perhaps it's contact with the people – I haven't quite worked that one out yet. Could be both."

"Good work," said Severus laconically. "As you know, Hermione, Seneca is our Charms expert, and he is, as you see, using his talents to ..."

"Spy on the opposition," she finished. "Clever!"

Seneca preened a little.

"And of course," added Scribonius, "while I'm planning our strategy based partially on what he gleans here, he can strut up and down in front of the real mirrors admiring his ugly mug and speechifying."

"Shut your face, planet-boy."

"Seneca's also our PR man," Severus supplied as he settled himself into a shabby armchair with his book. "The voice, you know ..."

"Perfect," smiled Hermione, placing herself bodily between Public Relations and Strategy. "Now ... Okay, let's go and look in the big mirror over there. Come on, all of you."

She chivvied them down the long room to stand in front of the huge, gilt-framed looking-glass.

"So – what do you see, gentlemen? Salvius, put the book back in your pocket and concentrate."

Sidney shrugged idly.

"I see us," he shrugged idly. "I see us all the time – it's not a particularly arresting sight."

"That's where you are wrong," Hermione contradicted him. "Just look at yourselves – at you as a group. You're tall, you're striking-looking ..." Further down the room, Severus snorted. "... you're all powerful and show it in the way you hold yourselves – you are, in fact, a very impressive, even intimidating, sight."

She took a breath.

"Now try to imagine how people are going to react when you burst onto the scene."

She turned to their reflection and took another objective look. She was more or less used to them by now, but – well, they were quite breathtaking. Individually, each one was attractive in a dangerous way (Septimius excepted), arrogant in that Mr Rochester fashion (Septimius excepted), obviously intelligent (Septimius usually kept his brains hidden under a simpleton's smile) ... Septimius was just drop-dead gorgeous. As a group, they were as irresistible as a phalanx of Soviet tanks. So the girls they met would swoon and flirt, and the local boys would get out their testosterone, polish and sharpen it, and wave it around.

Now all she had to do plaster some manners over the top.

"Now, listen – when you go out in society here and start talking to young women, one thing you have to remember is that, like those girls in the shop, they have men and boys who are with them and are interested in them, too."

"Oh, we'll deal with them quickly enough," said Seneca. His brothers made noises of agreement.

"NO! You can't do that! Those men are their friends, family, maybe boyfriends – people they know! You can't just waltz in, hex the opposition and grab a girl like a piece of cake! You've got to behave like gentlemen – show them that you're more the gentleman than the men they're with. Oh .... um ... Look, pretend I'm a girl – stop leering, Sejanus – and say good morning to me, holding out your hands to shake."

They all made a very creditable show of it, except Sidney, who looked suddenly uncomfortable, and stuck his hands in his jeans pockets.

"What's the matter, Sidney?"

"My hands are muddy."

Severus snorted again, loudly.

"Well, never mind that. Then you have to think of something nice to say. Septimius – why don't you try?"

Septimius looked momentarily blank, then, "Nice night for trapping stink-adders," he blurted.

Severus guffawed loudly and closed the book, abandoning all pretence of reading.

"Give it up, Hermione! You're never going to make gentlemen of this bunch of louts."

"You're no help at all, Severus! Now go away – go on!" She hauled him out of the chair and pushed him bodily out of the room, waiting until they were out of range of the mirrors to grin and give him a kiss. "Vamoose! Just wait and see what I can do!"

"Foolhardy Gryffindor."

She returned to her task.

"Right. Sidney – and the rest of you – I don't think you can assume from the outset that a woman is going to want to plunge into a conversation about your enthusiasms. You need to say something to her about her. Salvius, why don't you try?"

Salvius, who was usually quiet to the point of being withdrawn, looked put-upon, but nothing was to stand in the way of Hermione's will.

"Er – I'm delighted to meet you?" he tried.

"Excellent. Now, given that our wizarding world is a bit socially prehistoric, you could try offering me your arm as we walk."

And so it continued, for the next two hours, until,

"And now for the dancing."

Their appalled reaction took her right back to her fourth year and McGonagall's desperate efforts to get the boys to move at all, never mind moving with the music.

"Oh, come on! The Malfoys always have dancing at these events – it's as much cattle-market as charity do, and a prime opportunity to size up the livestock ..."

"I'm surprised to hear you referring to other members of your sex that way," remarked Sidney. "I thought you were some sort of feminist revolutionary."

"I wasn't referring to the women, Sidney," she replied smoothly. "Come on, then – let's put you through your paces. I assume they do dance in Novgorod?"

Seneca called the elf Secunda to bring the radio and they found a station playing dance music. Much to Hermione's relief, they did show some skill, though clasping each other round the waist proved a bit of an obstacle at first. She watched from the sidelines as they performed a reluctant waltz, a grim foxtrot, and refused to attempt anything latin, but then when the band struck up a lively polka, she felt they really needed to practice with a live girl.

"Come on, Septimius," she called, and showed him the first steps. It was true – he moved much more lightly with her in his arms. She was passed swiftly to Scribonius, then to Sejanus, and after that it became a chaotic whirl as the brothers showed her what a man educated in Russia calls a dance.

Whoops! I'm in the boys' half of the playground now, she thought as she was physically thrown from one man to the next, while the others whirled and kicked around them. Eventually, they collapsed and calmed.

"Well," said Sejanus, spinning to sit elegantly on the floor, "I think we're ready."