Chapter 4

Disclaimer: Not mine, never will be.

* * * *

'What does it say?'

Hermione crumples the parchment in her fist.

'Septima's not coming.'

'Oh. That's... Why not?'

'She doesn't say. But you can bet he's behind it. This is... this is just great. Help me think, Neville. Who can we get at,' she looks at her watch, 'two hours' notice?'

He thinks. 'Sybill's never much use after nine or so, and the play goes on until when?'

'Past eleven.'

'Filius, Rolanda, Horace, and Alfrid are on the patrol rota tonight. Aurora can't; I think she has a celestial conjunction she's tracking this week. Firenze is out. Cuthbert is out. Poppy can't leave, and Irma won't. Draco's already coming.' Neville blushes. 'So that leaves...'

'Rubeus. Argus. And him. Brilliant. Two near-squibs and an evil bastard who wouldn't throw water on me if I were on fire.' She's quiet for a minute, considering her options. She will be damned if Snape will torpedo the seventh-years' school trip by depriving her of the requisite number of chaperones.

'Okay, Neville. You go and talk to Septima, and if she won't budge, work on Irma. I'll get on the Floo and see if I can get some help from the Ministry. He won't get away with this. We'll find someone.'

An hour later, they've found someone. 'Harry will meet us at the Barbican,' Hermione reports happily as she, Neville, and Draco take their seats in the Great Hall for dinner. 'And Ginny's going to see if she can drop James with Molly and come too. Why didn't I think of them in the first place? This will be wonderful!'

'Old school reunion,' says Draco glumly. 'Huzzah.'

She sees Neville reach out and graze Draco's hand with his own, under the table. 'It'll be fine,' he murmurs. 'We'll be fine.'

Draco smiles. He does that often these days. Sometimes she thinks she might even grow to like him rather a lot. After he's been sweet to Neville for a few more years.

And Neville. She started the school year feeling half guilty and half smug that she had something he didn't. Now she wonders, unwillingly but with increasing frequency, if she will ever have what he does.

Things with David have been strained ever since their aborted Hogsmeade weekend. David had insisted on being Apparated back to London after dinner on Saturday rather than spend the night alone in the inn. He'd said some hurtful, even outrageous things. And they haven't really had a chance to sort it out since, and won't until school finishes for Christmas.

Damn Snape. If he's mucked things up permanently between her and David, she'll...Well, she'll think of something very, very bad to do to him.

And here he comes, sweeping along the dais towards the Headmaster's podium. Hateful man.

He glares around the room until the students quiet down. 'One reminder. Seventh-years who are going on this evening's outing, please eat quickly. You need to be in the entrance hall in your Muggle clothing by twenty minutes to seven. We will walk to the school gates and Portkey in groups...Quiet, please!...we will Portkey in groups starting at seven o'clock sharp, with the last group leaving at seven-ten. Miss that, and you miss the outing. That is all.'

She grabs his elbow as he passes her chair and hisses, 'We? What do you mean we?'

He stares down at her. '"We," Professor Granger. An English pronoun, denoting the speaker with one or more others. In this case, myself, you, Malfoy, Longbottom, and the seventh-years. Did you not get Septima's note telling you I would be going in her place?'

'I, um, but... Oh, we'll talk later.'

'Indeed. More's the pity.' And he moves on to his seat at the centre of the staff table.

* * *

'Justin!' Hermione steps forward and kisses his cheek. 'I'm so glad to see you; thank you again for arranging this.' She looks around. 'Is this your office?'

He laughs. 'Hardly! My office is the size of a broom cupboard. A Muggle broom cupboard, at that. No, this is a conference room. I needed a room big enough for all of you to Portkey in to, in a nonpublic part of the building.'

'Brilliant! Seventh-years, please move to those chairs over there. Your classmates will start arriving in one minute and I don't want them landing on your heads.'

As the first ten students take their seats, she murmurs to Justin, 'Did you get my message about Harry and Ginny?'

'I did, and I was able to find another seat, but it's a few rows behind the group. Here are your tickets.'

'Well, as it turns out, we will be six chaperones rather than five, if Ginny can make it. Snape, of all people, decided to tag along. Can you accommodate him?'

Justin's eyebrows disappear beneath his fringe. 'Snape? Fancy that. Well, let me see what I can do.' He walks over to a phone sitting on a side table.

In come Draco with his group and Snape with his, and, at seven-ten exactly, Neville with his.

Justin whispers in Hermione's ear as the last students are herded into their chairs, 'Taken care of. Two seats together, three rows behind the main group.'

'You are my hero,' she murmurs.

She looks at the seventh-years. Some of the purebloods are...despite two weeks of preparation, despite being paired with Muggle-born and half-blood partners...looking around them like alien visitors from another world. Which they are. She sighs.

If the inoffensive banality of a Muggle conference room is bewildering to them, what will they make of the rest of the Barbican, with its variously wide open and closed-in spaces, its Muggle-modern poured concrete and gleaming wood? And many have never encountered any Shakespeare. What will they make of the play?

She's betting they will love it all.

She takes a deep breath and steps forward to address them.

* * *

How did this happen? she wonders, as she follows Snape along the aisle to their seats. She'd imagined Harry and Ginny would take these two isolated seats; instead, she sees Ginny, Harry, Neville, and Draco's heads scattered among those of the thirty-eight students in aisles H, I, and J. And here she is in aisle M. With him.

They sit. He hands her a program. She's forgotten to get one for herself. 'Thank you.'

'You're welcome.' He starts to page through his program.

She's suspicious of his quiet civility. She decides to test it.

'Have you seen it before? Much Ado?'

'Years ago, yes. In New York. In a park. A good enough production, but... it was hard to hear everything.'

Snape? Watching Shakespeare in a PARK? In America? 'Oh.'

They fall silent. The seats around them fill. She steals a glance at him, intent on his program. He's wearing his usual black trousers, dragonhide boots, and white shirt, but no waistcoat or frock coat. He's come in a black Muggle jacket, now folded in his lap, and an overcoat, which he's left in the Portkey room. It's a little disorientating to see him with so few clothes on.

She swallows. I'm lightheaded. I should have actually eaten some dinner at dinnertime.

'You?' he asks.

She jumps. 'What? I mean, I beg your pardon?'

'The play.' He's looking at her with some amusement. 'Have you seen it?'

'Oh! Oh, yes. Well, as you probably know I am directing scenes from it for the talent show...that's one of the reasons we're here. And, in fact, I, um, I acted in a production at Oxford.' She pauses. 'That's where I met David.'

He contracts his brows as if trying to recall just who this David might be. Then: 'Ah, yes. The boyfriend. Let me guess. Claudio and Hero?'

'Not even close. David was the production manager. Finances, logistics, things like that. I was, um, I played Beatrice.'

His amusement spreads across his face. He is... actually smiling. Most would mistake it for a sinister grimace, but she knows. It's a smile.

'Of course,' he says. 'The unmarriageable harridan.'

She's half amused herself. 'Well. She's the best character in the play. And she does find a suitable gentleman, in the end.'

'Beatrice is interesting enough,' he allows, as the house lights dim. 'I'm a Benedick partisan, myself.'

'Not Don John?' And she is sorry, sorry, sorry the instant she says it. Because his eyes flare with hurt before they ice over with disdain.

'No,' he says. 'Not Don John.' And he turns his attention to the stage and ignores her for the next three hours.

* * *

Past midnight. The students are all back in their dormitories. He is done. He wants air, then sleep.

The night is mostly clear, and very cold. He turns his back to the castle and walks down to the jetty and stands there looking out over the water.

'Professor Snape.'

'Professor Granger.'

'I saw you walking down here and I...I followed. As you see. I hope you don't mind.'

He just looks straight ahead.

She stands next to him at the jetty's edge, gazing down at the dark lake.

He can see, without looking at her, what she's wearing. A dark green dress of rough, heavy silk. Black shoes that show her toes. A black wool coat. A silver necklace. He can conjure her scent, too, from three hours of being so close. He takes one step away from her.

'I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings tonight. With that Don John remark. Sometimes I say the most ill-judged things. And you and I...we're certainly in the habit of taking the mickey out of each other.'

She shakes her head. 'This is coming out wrong. I don't want to excuse it away. It was rude. And just when we were having a civil conversation for the first time in... ever.'

She turns towards him and takes a step nearer, her words flowing now. 'I liked that moment we had. I sat there the whole rest of the play wishing for more, kicking myself that I'd blown it.'

She's gazing up at him. 'I...please. Can't we start again? Can't we let the past go...whatever it held...and be friends? I want to be your friend, Severus.' Her hand is on his arm.

'I don't.'

'I...you...what?'

He looks down at her hand on his sleeve. 'I don't want to be your friend.'

I don't want to be your Longbottom. Or your Finch-Fletchley or your Potter or your Hagrid.

The hand he had commissioned to remove hers from his sleeve turns traitor, and holds on to her hand, and uses it to pull her closer.

And closer. And she's in his arms, and his mouth is on hers. Her lips are cool from the cold night air, and soft. He brushes them with his, once, and again, and they part. Ah, yes. He moves his hands up to her face, slides them into her hair, and kisses her properly.

First she receives him, then she meets him, her hands sliding around the back of his neck, pulling his head down as she stretches up into his kiss.

She breaks the kiss, gasping into the hot air between them, and pulls back to stare into his eyes for two heartbeats and then she is kissing him again, smashing her lips and teeth into his. He staggers under the onslaught, grabs her waist for balance, pulls her against him and lets her kiss him, then begins to kiss her jaw, her neck. Her hands are full of his hair.

'Ohhhhh,' she says. 'Oh.' She stiffens. 'Oh!' And it's over. She's pushing him away. Her hand is over her mouth and her eyes are filled with horror. 'Oh, David! Oh, god. Oh, no!

'I...this...' She flutters her hands in distress.

He takes one step closer to her, and another, not bothering to veil his expression or hide what he's about. He wants another kiss. David's not his concern.

With a strangled little scream, she turns and starts running towards the castle, stumbling in her ridiculous shoes. She's too distraught to take a second to Transfigure them. He does it for her, eliciting another scream.

He watches her go and, when she's disappeared around the front of the castle, he turns back towards the lake.

* * *

'Well, it's not going to happen again.'

'Why not?'

'Wha...why not? Because it was a ridiculous mistake! I have a boyfriend I am very much in love with! And you hate me!'

'How do you deduce that?'

'You mean, apart from your entire demeanour towards me for the last fourteen years? Your contempt, your sabotage, your insults, your sneering? And also, you said so.'

'When did I say I hated you?'

'Last night! You said you didn't want to be my friend.'

'I'm having trouble detecting the phrase "I hate you" in that declaration. Surely you can come up with other ways of construing my words.'

'Oh, fine. You didn't say it with words. But you still do. Hate me.'

'What an interesting reality you inhabit, Professor Granger, where you are more familiar with other people's emotions than they are themselves. Is it comforting to know so much, or is it a burden? A little of both, perhaps?'

'You know, if you're trying to convince me to kiss you again, you're going about it all wrong.'

'Ah, now, do tell me. What would be the right way to go about it? In all earnestness, I want to know.'

'Simple,' she sniffs. 'You'd just have to be someone else entirely. And the person you would have to be is David, because he is my boyfriend and is therefore the person I kiss.'

He rolls his eyes. 'Any turn this conversation takes in the direction of your "boyfriend"...horrible word, by the way...isn't constructive. He is entirely irrelevant.'

She gapes at him. 'Now who's living in a unique reality? In what way is it irrelevant that I have a lover already, that is, a man I love and who loves me and with whom I have sex in the context of a monogamous relationship?'

'In that you are entirely wrong for each other, a fact you'd do well to admit before you waste too much more time with him.'

'And you and I are not wrong for each other?' Why am I phrasing it as a question? It's a self-evident fact!

'We're certainly not wrong when it comes to kissing. Or, do you want more experimentation to be sure of it?' He pushes away from the doorway where he's been leaning, as though to approach her.

'You stay away from me! What I want is someone who is my friend as well as my lover, not someone whose pleasures in life include abusing me personally and undercutting me professionally and then every once in a while, um, kissing me.' Kissing me so that my brain stops working and I can't sleep all night.

'It wouldn't have to be every once in a while. The kissing could take over from those other things to a fairly substantial degree.'

It's among the most unromantic propositions she's ever received, a fact her body doesn't seem to grasp. More kissing...lots of kissing; hot, wanton kissing, starting right now!...is just a really, really great idea, according to her racing heart and her buzzing skin and her somersaulting stomach and her... No, it's not! This is horrifying.

'Get out,' she says. 'Get out of my office.'

'Why?'

Outraged, she snaps, 'Well, first of all, because I said so and it's my room. And second, because this conversation is over. It's going nowhere good.'

'I disagree.'

'Shock! Surprise! You disagree with me! You want to prolong a quarrel! Well, how about this for a conversation clincher: I would not voluntarily kiss you again if you were the last man on earth. I don't trust you at all, and I have begun to actively dislike you.

'That's right.' She nods emphatically. 'Before this year, I had only ever admired you, honoured you, worked and hoped for your well-being. But I've now endured nearly three months of your obstinate and completely unwarranted hostility towards my work...my legitimate, authorised work. I've wasted so much energy anticipating your tricks and stratagems and shrugging off your disdain. I like a good fight as much as the next person, but this...I'm tired of it!

'I have no idea why you're being this way. If you have some principled objection to these programs aside from the fact that you think they're stupid and a waste of time, I have yet to hear it. I am left with the conclusion that you are acting out of pure spite, and that your motivations are personal, and petty, and nihilistic, and UNWORTHY!'

Her volume is quite high now; god, it feels so good to let this out... 'Either you hate Muggle culture, or you hate the Ministry, or you just hate me. Any way I look at it, you disappoint me. Your character is not what I thought it was. And all that? DOES NOT MAKE ME WANT TO KISS YOU!'

For a moment, they just look at each other.

'I see,' he says. 'Thank you.' And he leaves.