Chapter 10

A/N: Beta reading thanks and hugs to Lariope, Sshg316, and Machshefa, with Brit-picking thanks to Magically. Thanks and kisses to Mischievous T and Lady Rhian for alpha reading!

'Thank you,' she said, accepting the stems, which had been carefully wrapped for freshness. Tears were threatening, and she could only be grateful when she felt a strong, if gentle, hand upon her shoulder.

And Snape turned her to the door, shepherding her out into the chill January dusk.

Owned

Chapter 10

Severus quickly Transfigured his cloak into a Muggle mac and guided Hermione through the deepening dusk, hoping the destination he had chosen was not too far for her to walk in her debilitated state. She had done well at the conservatory, well enough that he felt an almost proprietary pride in her accomplishment. For three hours or so, she had been almost entirely outside of herself. For a young woman who spent nearly all of her waking time locked inside her own head, this was progress indeed.

Additionally, she had performed the task...assignment...he had set for her flawlessly. Never mind that he had brought with him everything he would need to treat her wounds had she run afoul of the Passiflora variation...he had thought she could do it, and she had proved him right. Even old Twiggy Sodd had been impressed.

All for the better, that.

Now he guided her along the all but deserted streets of the Muggle town, navigating toward a pub he had frequented in his youth, when he and his friends had spent the summer days roaming free as only teenagers could do. He had not returned there in years, but he wanted to get food into her one more time before he sent her home to sleep, and a tired and happy Hermione should be easier to feed than a wary, cranky one had been.

They rounded the corner onto the High Street, and he murmured, 'Almost there, now,' receiving from his companion a mumbled assent. But when they halted at the bright storefront, he was appalled to see that the family local of his memory was now a trendy coffee shop.

'We're eating at Starbucks?' Hermione asked curiously.

Frustrated and a bit wrong-footed, Severus spun on the pavement and spotted a quiet pub across the street. He remembered, with a wry, inward smile, that he and his confederates had considered it to be a dull establishment catering to the older generation, and they had avoided it like the plague.

'Certainly not,' he replied, and with renewed purpose, he escorted her across the way.

When they were safely ensconced across from one another in a booth away from the bar, where the noisy patrons were watching a football match on the telly, he studied her rather tired face. Yet in spite of the lines of weariness beside her mouth, her colour was quite good, and her brown eyes were alight...perhaps even a shade manic.

'The outing seems to have agreed with you,' he commented neutrally.

She bent her head to sniff the lavender roses she had placed into a water glass for safekeeping. 'One stem of a rose of this quality would sell for £5 in a London shop,' she mused.

'£7, actually,' he corrected, 'but what's your point?'

She blinked. 'Why do you know exactly how much this flower costs?'

Oh, bugger.

'Sodd must have mentioned it in passing,' he said mildly.

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, as if doubting his veracity. 'I only meant that this was a very costly gift for Master Sodd to have given me,' she said.

'Focussing on the monetary value attached to a gift is rather vulgar, wouldn't you say?' Severus said, letting his gaze slide to the telly for a moment to rob the comment of some of its sting. Why was the girl so bloody difficult?

'All right,' she said, straightening up in her seat. 'We'll change the subject, then. Tell me what potion you're brewing that requires all the ingredients we harvested today.'

Severus allowed her to reclaim his attention from the televised advert proclaiming something or other he dare not live without. The Passiflora variation globules were safely tucked away in an interior pocket of his coat, but the remainder of his haul had been magically sent to his home.

'Come now,' he said with a smirk, 'surely even with your rusty potions knowledge you realise that the ingredients we collected can't all be for the same formula!'

She leant forward. 'And you didn't even pay for them!'

His eyes rolled up to the smoke-stained ceiling. Had he truly forgotten how annoying she could be?

'Believe me, Hermione, I will pay for them,' he said curtly. 'It will all go on my account with the conservatory.'

'Will they add the cost of my roses to your bill?' she asked, veering from accusation to concern.

He scowled at her, thoroughly irritated. You can't tell her off, he reminded himself. She was far too fragile to receive the treatment she deserved for her nosey comments.

He drew in a deep breath and said, 'Sodd is not going to charge me for a gift he gave to you.' He was pleased at his calm tone.

She seemed satisfied with this, bending her head once again to inhale deeply of the roses. She closed her eyes, dark lashes sweeping down like ash upon her cheek, and her mouth curved, lips parting as if to take in all the scent on offer.

'Who had the cottage pie?'

The waiter placed the plate before Hermione, and she took up her fork and sampled a green pea.

'And grilled steak for the gentleman,' the waiter said, placing Severus' food before him.

Severus took up his knife, slicing a piece of meat whilst watching Hermione from behind his hair. She plunged her fork into the cheesy mash atop her pie, then abandoned it to take up her ciabatta and twist off a tiny piece, which she placed between her lips. She picked up her water glass and drank, then retrieved her fork and ate another pea.

If she was going to consume her dinner one pea at a time, they would be there all night.

'But what potions are you brewing...and why?' she blurted suddenly, her brown eyes fixed on his face with hectic intensity.

He swallowed his food, took up his napkin, and wiped his lips as he traded stares with her. The old temptation to slip into her mind was strong, but he withstood it, choosing another method to achieve his ends.

'I will make a bargain with you,' he said.

'What?' She pushed her plate aside and leant forward eagerly, the feverish energy burning through the patina of exhaustion that showed in her quiet moments.

'If you will consume your food, I will tell you about what I'm brewing.' He dropped his gaze then to his plate, spearing a grilled tomato and bringing it to his lips, letting her work it out minus his input.

The rattle of silverware as she pulled her plate before her again was the answer he had sought. Still, he did not look at her, but cut a bite of meat as if he had no thought but to satiate his hunger. He ate steadily, reasoning to himself that he would not care to eat the food cold, and he would gladly talk to her for as long as she would eat.

Her thin, frail figure haunted his dreams. Her body needed nourishment, and feeding her was a concrete object he could achieve ... by hook or crook.

Crook! He reached into his pocket and produced a fine mesh bag filled with a dried herb.

'No reason why you should be the sole recipient of something fragrant from today's outing,' he said, sliding the bag across the table to her. 'Crookshanks deserves a treat as well.'

Hermione lifted the bag to her nose. 'Catnip!' she crowed, smiling at him radiantly. 'He adores it!' She tucked the bag into the pocket of her jacket.

'I wanted to give it to you while I was thinking of it,' he said, 'but that doesn't mean you may stop eating.'

Hermione rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, much as he had done earlier, but she picked up her fork nevertheless and took another bite of her cottage pie.

'I brew potions for two reasons,' he informed her, his eyes tracking the movement of her hand from her plate to her mouth. 'One reason is for research. Through the years, I have had many ideas for new potions, variations on old potions, and improvement of brewing techniques for potions I can find no other fault with.'

She uttered a snort, whether of amusement or disdain he could not be sure, but he let it pass. A talking Hermione who was defending herself was not an eating one.

'Precisely,' he murmured, earning a crinkling at the corner of her eyes...a smile, in fact. 'So I have a long list of brilliant ideas that I've had little time to investigate, for one reason and another...herding school children, pandering to megalomaniacs, tidying up war-torn countries...you know the sort of thing I mean.'

Fork half-way to her mouth, she uttered a gurgle of laughter, and he found that he had to abandon the fork-watch for the pleasure of seeing her respond to him with genuine amusement.

How long had it been since he had made a woman laugh?

'How is it that I've never known how witty you are?' she demanded, her food forgotten. Again.

'You'll pardon me for pointing out that giggling is not eating,' he murmured, allowing himself to feel the flash of satisfaction engendered by her spontaneous mirth.

She sighed dramatically, picked up her fork, and with a theatrical flourish, placed a bite in her mouth.

He nodded his approbation.

'So now that I have the leisure to do so, I am working my way through my list of notions...and before you ask, yes, I prioritised them before I began. A few of my earlier ideas seemed ... less than brilliant upon review, some twenty years or so later.'

She nodded encouragingly, swallowed water, and promptly took another bite.

'The second reason I brew is for profit...by contract. Either someone else has a formula they need refined in one way or another, or they have an idea for which they hire me to produce a working potion.'

Hermione paused, her fork dangling from her fingers as she chewed and gazed over his head. 'Do you produce commercial products?' she asked.

He arched an eyebrow, looking from her fork to her plate, and she made a disgruntled sound before taking a bite of cheesy mash.

'I do not,' he said when she began to chew again. 'I have no interest in such work; it would require assembly line brewing, and there are plenty of those providers in the market.' He caught the waiter's eye and asked for two cups of tea, sticky toffee pudding, and something called a chocolate cup explosion.

Hermione stared at him. 'You have a sweet tooth!' she accused.

'Nonsense,' he responded. 'As I recall, you do.'

He enjoyed watching her playful indignation, wondering where the emotionally fragile Hermione of just the day before had gone. She was stretched too far, he realised; it was time to finish things up and get her home before she unravelled in public.

He had the puddings placed on the table between them, two spoons on each plate, and dutifully took a bite of each as Hermione enjoyed small portions. He allowed her to see him exhibiting signs of weariness and kept the conversation general as she drank her tea, allowing a slow winding down of the busy day.

When they were on the pavement again, he led her down a well-remembered side street, pleased to note that the windowless alley he remembered was still in place, two blank brick walls with space between, as if the Muggles had wished to provide the wizards with a safe place from which to Disapparate.

Hermione stifled a yawn as they paused in the darkness, then she startled him by placing a hand upon his chest. The familiarity surprised him, and he was aware of his heart rate increasing, his breath coming faster, and a bittersweet melancholy riding the long-unused synapses like a surfer on a wave.

'When will I see you again?' she asked, ignorant of the thunderclap of emotion consuming him.

He stepped back, suddenly confused, plunged into a past that was well behind him, which needed to remain docilely in the iron-clad chest wherein he stored it and all the cloying, drowning memories which comprised it.

'Severus?'

He forced himself to see Hermione, to hear Hermione's voice, and with a titanic force of will, he stepped closer to her, back into the present...with Hermione.

'Go now,' he said, infusing his voice with calming warmth, projecting the stability he wished to provide, showing her what he wanted her to see. 'I'll be in touch.'

She nodded, soothed by his manner, and popped out of sight.

Sagging for a moment against the brick wall, Severus ruthlessly banished the momentary insanity that had assailed him, and marshalling his determination, he Disapparated.

Hermione arrived in the middle of her dark flat with a curious feeling of let-down. She put on the lights, puttering about dividing the roses into two water glasses Transfigured to vases, filling up the cat bowl with Go-Cat, then carrying one vase into the bedroom, to place flowers on her bedside table.

Crookshanks was curled up in the middle of her bed, and when she pulled the catnip from her pocket and put it a few feet away from him, he leapt upon it and began to rub his face against it and roll about on it with wild enthusiasm.

'You're just like a kitten!' she informed him, but he was far too engrossed to pay her any mind.

Smiling fondly, she went into the bathroom to tend to her teeth and wash her face, and then she went to the kitchen for a drink of water. She breathed deeply of her roses and moved them from the dining table to the coffee table and back again, experimenting to see where they looked best. When she padded into the bedroom again, Crookshanks was cleaning himself, looking as if he had never done anything so undignified as wallowing in catnip.

'You're such an old fraud,' Hermione told him, sitting down and stroking his fur.

She yawned. It had been a lovely, productive afternoon, complete with impressing Master Sodd, harvesting ingredients from a very dangerous plant, hearing uncharacteristically high praise from Snape...how could she have forgotten to quiz him about that?...and dining out for the first time in recent memory. She was so exhausted, it would be easy to sleep tonight. She wouldn't even need ...

She frowned and searched through the clutter on her bedside table. She had thought there was a nearly full phial of the sleep potion remaining. Perhaps she had left it in the bathroom cabinet. She didn't remember putting it there, but sometimes she could be forgetful.

She rose from the bed, marching across the floor to the bathroom, unaware of Crookshanks, who sprang down from the bed and skittered beneath it, as if seeking cover from an air raid.

The bathroom cupboard was bare of Dreamless Sleep, and a quick tour of the rest of the flat bore out her working hypothesis: Snape had possessed the unmitigated nerve...the gall...to come into her home and remove her sleeping potion, as if it were his right to do so.

'You can't do that to me!' she cried furiously, and beneath her bed, Crookshanks laid his ears flat, as if to make himself a smaller target. 'Snape, you bastard!'

And with mayhem on her mind and rage in her heart, she turned on the spot and was gone.