Eight: Sobbin' Women

Seven Brides For Seven Snapes 8: Sobbin' Women

In the couple of seconds Severus was out of it, he'd dropped thirty feet and was listing badly, but he came to snarling and shaking his head like an angry bear. He barely heard Hermione's cry of "Oh, thank God!" as he shot back upwards, teeth bared. The new broomsticks had a satisfying turn of speed and, coupled with reflexes undimmed by armistice, facilitated the gratifying crunch as Severus drove his shoulder solidly into Dean Thomas at the very moment that Finnigan, the other beater, felt the heel of Seneca's size eleven dragonhide boot flatten his nose. After that, the fight was pretty much a given, as was the result – seven down, Snapes victorious, and the Snitch nowhere in sight.

Severus, nursing a goose-egg and sore ribs as well as a bruised hand (wands, providentially, were not allowed in even informal Quidditch games), watched Hermione tend to his brothers' injuries, Octavus carrying her tray of medical supplies, while Secunda and Nona followed her around the kitchen table, doling out mugs of tea and analgesic potions. Nobody was speaking, and she had barely said a word since they had left Malfoy Manor. Her face was still white and her eyes shadowed. He wasn't used to seeing her soft lips pursed in a line that even McGonagall couldn't have achieved. She came to him last, bending forward and probing his head with gentle fingers. He winced and hissed. She put her hand, so very cold, under his chin and searched his eyes.

"Good, no concussion," she said. Her chin wobbled and she clamped her mouth shut again, reaching for the bruise paste. More went on his hand, and then she turned her back to take the tray from Octavus and put it on the counter.

Severus took his cup of tea and saw Hermione surreptitiously brush her hand across her eyes before she returned to the table. He thought uncomfortably that he'd never seen her cry like this before. When she was upset, she raged. These silent, suppressed tears were more difficult to shrug off.

Septimius gingerly patted her arm.

"We're sorry, Hermione. We really tried not to, but when those two sent both Bludgers straight at Severus from behind like that, when he wasn't even involved in all the other stuff..."

She sighed.

"I know, Timmy. You did your best. You all did your best. I suppose the provocation was just too much. I think you should all go and get a good night's sleep now."

Severus watched her wrap her fingers round the mug that Secunda pushed into her hands. That wonky mug he'd made when he was ten and that she'd claimed as her own. She never drank tea or coffee from anything else. She bowed her head to inhale the steam and her hair fell forward to hide her face.

He stood up gingerly as they trooped out.

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?" She didn't raise her head.

"I'm stepping outside for a few minutes to get some air. Are you coming?"

A slight shrug.

He went outside feeling disquieted. It had been an unsettling day, and now Hermione was unreachable. She was never unreachable. He tipped his head back and looked at the stars, admiring their cold light in the boundless sky. He moved a few steps into the stable yard to be further from the yellow glow of the kitchen windows. There were a few hay bales stacked against the tack-room wall, so he sat down again and rested his aching head against the brickwork.

Septimius came out of one of the nearby loose-boxes, where he was keeping an orphaned litter of silver leverets. He rubbed at his stomach and flopped down heavily next to his oldest brother.

"I feel bad, Severus."

"Hermione'll get over it."

"No, not about that, not really, it's..."

Severus thought Septimius was blushing, though it was impossible to tell in the darkness.

"Well, spit it out!"

"It's Luna! She's just so..."

"Borderline certifiable?"

"Don't be mean, Severus. She's extraordinary. She knows so much about all sorts of animals." Septimius laughed a little. "She took me to the Malfoys' lily pond to show me the Rambastuous Blintoads."

"There's no such thing, little brother," Severus snorted.

"That's just what I told her. And you know what she said?"

"I can hardly wait to hear."

"She said, 'Yes, they're just common frogs of course, but the Malfoys would be heartbroken to think they had anything common in their home!'"

Severus laughed.

"I can't stop thinking about her."

"As long as you're capable of working at the same time, I don't see that as a problem."

"But Severus! What if I never see her again? After today, nobody's going to talk to us ever again." He sank his head into his hands.

Severus, impatient of dramatics and wanting to take Hermione to their snug for some quiet time together, huffed.

"Then you'll just have to find another girl elsewhere. You've only seen her once, after all –"

"Twice."

"– and you'll find one girl is much the same as another. Go to bed, Tim. It'll seem different tomorrow."

Hermione was waiting for him in the kitchen doorway. She gave him a look he couldn't interpret, but didn't resist being tucked against his side and settled in their favourite sofa with a good book, though she refused the wine he offered. She remained monosyllabic, but then, she was tired and disappointed. He would make love to her as never before, to show her that she was appreciated, and in the morning they would resume life as if the whole asinine garden party debacle had never occurred.

*

Severus put it behind him with no difficulty. He was working on a new Wit-Sharpening Elixir that had all sorts of potential commercial and medical applications, and was little short of obsessive about it. He supposed he was fortunate that Hermione dragged him out of his lab at seven-thirty every evening, forced him to eat, and then practically barricaded him into their living room so that he was obliged to wind down. It annoyed him, but he had to admit that returning to work each morning at six-thirty, feeling fresh, was better than his former pattern of emerging every five or six days looking like a starving scarecrow and stinking like the hind end of a warthog. He actually made more progress this way.

Hermione had become the mainstay of the family, he realised. She helped all of them with their work, spent long periods with Salvius and Tertius putting the library to rights, and was developing her own niche within the structure. More than that, she somehow managed to draw them all together, make them less of an accidental agglomeration of awkward personalities and more of a family. Severus was discovering that the other members of the household were more than just brothers – they were people. Scribonius, he found out, was a talented joiner. Their father had been a carpenter and had taught them all the basics – a boy needed a craft, even if he was a bloody freak – and Scrib had simply taken it further, grounding himself in working with those clever hands when he needed a respite from Divination. The bookcase he presented to Hermione for her birthday was a work of art. Sejanus read Victorian poetry, though it was risking a nasty jinx to mention it. Seneca liked horses. And so it went on. Hermione was responsible for turning the old house into a home, and though it occurred to Severus once or twice that she said little about herself, even when they were alone, he found he was grateful for her influence.

Yet something, since the garden party, was not right. His brothers were restless.

They all had time away from Prince Hall, though he was careful to take only one of them with him on visits to London, or to clients, and they were all making progress with their work, but still there was an air of discontent. And then, one day in November:

"Severus!"

Hermione burst into his laboratory. Fortunately, his potions were at a waiting stage and he was catching up with documentation. She looked a little distraught.

"What is it?"

"It's Seneca! He says he's going to leave, that he's never going to be able to integrate here in England while he's tied up with the family and stuck in Yorkshire! Severus, he's serious!"

Severus frowned and laid his quill aside.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure. Severus, I think he's ..." She hesitated and then rushed on. "I think it's because of Ginny."

"How can it be because of her? He's only spent a few hours with her, once! That's ridiculous."

"It may be ridiculous to you, and he's not really saying anything, but I'm fairly sure that's what it is. Once is all it takes, with the right person," she added quietly, not quite meeting his eyes. "Listen, Severus, whether or not you think it's ridiculous, over-romanticised twaddle, you have to take it seriously, and you have to go and talk him out of leaving. Because once he goes, they'll all go. They're all missing their girls."

"All?" Severus felt himself boggling, and with an effort managed to stop. He never boggled. All his brothers mooning around like lovesick adolescents? This bypassed ridiculous, skirted preposterous, and went straight to farce. His lion-shaped timer went off, blasting out the exciting part of the 1812 overture. It was his wife's idea of humour – she'd got annoyed with his jibes about Gryffindor subtlety. He waited for the last cannon to fire and then took her hands in his.

"I have to finish this," he said, looking down into her worried brown eyes, "but then I'll go and talk some sense into them."

"Be gentle with them," she admonished as she left.

He harrumphed and picked up a glass stirring rod,

*

Dinner was a subdued affair. Severus brought Hermione's Hogwarts: A History to the table so he could catch up with any new discoveries she'd made while at the same time observing his brothers surreptitiously. She was right. Sighing and moping were definitely elevated to levels he'd only witnessed just post-Valentine's Day at school. It made him shudder. Thank heavens for The Book, as he'd taken to calling it (Armando Dippet kept what in his hat?) - it was endlessly entertaining. Hermione excused herself before dessert, pleading fatigue, which left the field clear for Severus to find out exactly what was going on. He closed The Book and picked up his spoon.

"So, Seneca, Hermione tells me you're thinking of leaving."

Seneca's poked at his apple crumble unenthusiastically.

"Yes."

"Because of a girl."

"Yes."

"Have you thought through what your leaving will do to the structure we're in the process of building here? What the loss of your Charms expertise and your persuasive skills will mean?"

"Yes."

"And you're willing to ditch your – and our – success for the sake of a girl with whom you have spent one afternoon?"

Seneca glared.

"Yes!"

Severus regarded the rest of his brothers, who were following the conversation with bated breath.

"Am I to understand that something of this sort has been occurring to each and every one of you during the past few weeks?"

With expressions ranging from apologetic to evasive to defiant, they gave him to understand that this was indeed the case.

"Circe and all the piglets," muttered Severus, rolling his eyes. He knew as well as he knew himself that it would be no good trying to talk them out of it. He took a spoonful of crumble and sat back, chewing thoughtfully. The Book, with its gaudy multitude of sticky notes and ribbons poking out here and there, caught his eye. "Well, in that case, we shall just have to do something about it, shan't we?"

*

If Hermione was surprised that Severus decided to take his brothers out for a 'team-building' exercise the next day, she didn't show it. Rather, she looked quite relieved at the prospect of a day by herself.

"I'll read a bad book or two and catch up on a little sleep, I think," she said, kissing him on the cheek. "You seem to have hit on a good idea – the boys look more cheerful already."

And indeed they did, despite the grim uniform of black jumpers, trousers, boots and cloaks. Severus too felt the buzz of anticipation. Today was all about precision and decisiveness, and actions of at best dubious legality. He had almost forgotten the pleasure of operating on the cusp of the law.

They spent the morning in a meeting room at the Leaky Cauldron organising, sending owls and putting together contingency plans. A lunch of Tom's excellent beef stew fortified them, and as they emerged onto Diagon Alley Severus handed each one a Portkey with the words, "Remember – disarm and be discreet. These activate in an hour. I shall wait in the courtyard behind Flourish and Blotts. Make sure you do not have any difficulties." With that, they split up.

Sidney was the first to return, a wildly struggling Lavender Brown slung over his shoulder. He set her down on an upturned crate and reinforced the Silencing and Binding Charms on her. She twitched furiously and glared. Sejanus Apparated mid-snog into the yard, Padma Patil realising too late that she'd been kidnapped and her pocket had been picked. Miss Chang and the other Patil were carried in asleep, a result, no doubt, of Morpheus Potion in their tea. Salvius and Scribonius looked very smug about the ease of their capture, especially in light of the scratches evident on Seneca's face when he appeared in their midst with Ginny Weasley, who was doing her utmost to chew her way through a gag. Septimius was nowhere to be seen. Severus started to feel very jumpy. Any minute now, someone would be bound to want something from the yard, and they had a mere five minutes before the Portkeys ...

Ah.

Timmy strolled in, hand-in-hand with Miss Lovegood, discussing magical amphibians. The next few seconds astonished even Severus. The Lovegood child took one look at the scene before her and without changing her abstracted expression whipped out her wand like lightning, wrenching free of her swain and backing towards the alley entrance in a fighting stance. Six Snape brothers immediately responded in kind, and Severus was forming the first hex in his mind when Luna's wand flipped out of her grasp and landed in Septimius' fingers. The girl was seemingly immobilised. Severus let out his breath and raised an eyebrow at his brother.

"Wandless magic," shrugged Septimius. "With all these older brothers around, it was a necessary skill. I'm quite good at it, really."

"Severus! The time!" shouted Seneca.

"Grab them!"

Pigeons flew up, startled, as air rushed in to where thirteen people abruptly disappeared.

*

Whoever had thought it a good idea to let the girls speak once they were safely inside the wards had been way beyond wrong, thought Severus. He winced at some of the curses these supposedly gently-raised young women were uttering. Though cursing was better than messy weeping, which was the current vocation of the Misses Patil and Chang. It had been a short-acting potion.

He cast a withering look at the lot of them and led the way up the drive to the house, followed by his laughing brothers, high on success, and six resentful, raucous, and mercifully disarmed females.

It was cold and almost dark at the end of the dank November afternoon, so the light spilling out as the front door opened was a welcome sight, as was the shape of his wife, silhouetted against the warm glow. Severus was about to greet her when he found himself rudely shoved aside by the pack of women, all of whom had now taken to wailing and crying. They clustered round Hermione, sobbing out their woes.

"What have you done?" she exclaimed. "What have you all done?"

But the din was too great for sensible answers to be heard, so she called for the Optio and shooed the girls away to the kitchen with a promise of sweet tea and her presence in a couple of minutes. She was breathing hard when she finally looked at Severus and the others again.

"Well?"

"We, er," began Septimius. He fell silent, quailing at Hermione's obvious fury.

"How could you do this? You've all been telling me how much you love these girls and you show it by using force against them? By disarming them? By frightening them?"

Severus watched his brothers shuffle. He supposed Hermione had a point, from one perspective, but as not one of the girls had a bruise on them ...

"Give me their wands. Now!" She held out her hand. "And then you'll go and sleep over the stables, because I am NOT having such a pack of animals in the house. I thought you were at least beginning to be gentlemen, but it seems I've been a fool. You disgust me. All of you. Go away!"

She batted impatiently at the tears of rage that were spilling down her cheeks. Severus shooed his shocked siblings away into the darkness then returned to take Hermione in his arms and calm her.

"You, too, Severus," she said quietly, holding up a hand to keep him away.

"Why me? I didn't grab any of them!" He took a step forward and came up against the tip of her wand against his throat.

"You think I don't know who orchestrated all this? You think that just because you got a wife so easily, because I fell in love with you the first time we worked together, that it would be the same for everyone?"

"What do you mean? We worked together for two years before I even thought of asking you to marry ..."

"Do you honestly think I'd have put up with your stroppy, opinionated, arrogant, sarcastic bad temper for that long if I hadn't been completely infatuated?" Her voice was shaking as much as her hand, but Severus was careless of his danger as he bit back.

"You could say it's as much your fault ..."

"My fault?"

"If you weren't so obsessive about digging up old tales and laws that have never been repealed ..."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Your book! Your little history project! That episode in 1329 when Hogwarts School and Hogsmeade village were running out of females, so the male staff and students stole the young witches of Strathclyde."

Hermione was gaping.

"You didn't seriously think ..."

"Remember that judgement of the Wizengamot you tracked down?" Severus put on his most superior tone, in full knowledge that he was heaping coals on his own head. "'In direst tymes, when there be dearth of one sexe to perpetuate the people, it is meet to make remedee of coercion, so long as there be none crueltie'," he quoted.

Hermione withdrew her wand. "You arrogant bastard," she spat. "You disgust me. You will take the girls back right now and apologise to them and to their families. They must be frantic with worry."

"Impossible," Severus snarled. "In times of danger, the wards on this place become impenetrable from within and without, to all but the head of the family. And I am not about to undo an action which was taken with the sole aim of making you happy. Now let me in!"

"No."

The look Hermione gave him as she shut the door in his face was hard to decipher, but Severus stood for a long moment in the dark, excluded from his own home, feeling something that reminded him too closely of bone-racking shame. He smothered it with rage. At least he still had Spinner's End.