Chapter Six

Disclaimer: What you recognize is JKR's.

A/N: Your patience knows no bounds, dear readers, for which I am exceedingly grateful. This last year has proved to be rather brutal, work-wise, and I do not foresee that letting up in the spring. I will endeavor to update as often as possible, and know that in spite of the lag between updates, I have never failed to finish a story and have no intention of starting now. My goal (dare I call it a resolution?) is to finish The Tenant of Lyonesse Hall by August of this year.

Many thanks to Subversa for alpha reading and to richardgloucester and sshg316 for beta reading, even in the midst of the holidays.

He rode hard, worked himself and Perdita up into a heavy sweat by the time they reached Land's End. Usually they didn't go out this far on a morning ride, especially on a Monday, but he needed some distance. So they trotted along the crag, getting too close to the edge for safety but feeling confident in their abilities all the same. The water was so calm this early in the morning, gently lapping over rocks, the barest hint of whitecaps coming only when the water climbed the rocky crags and then fell back to the ocean below. He dismounted and sat on a particularly grassy patch of land, and Perdita stood next to him, the sun's rays pounding down on them as clouds shifted. He stroked her leg; she whinnied.

"Oh, Perdy," he murmured, stripping off his sweat-soaked undershirt and charming it dry, "what am I doing?"

**

He arrived at work late. Caroline greeted him politely; Jack arched an eyebrow but remained silent, for once. Severus went to his office and closed the door, perusing yesterday's figures, making sales goals for the day, and performing a discreet magical inventory (it was so much quicker). Caroline had already stocked the floor, and they were a few minutes away from opening.

Severus tried to concentrate on his paperwork, but his mind kept drifting back to Hermione...to their conversation, to her impertinence. He'd hoped to avoid the issue of Hyacinth Grey. His dear Aunt Charlotte wasn't playing nice...but then, neither was he. The portraits had been bored out of their minds for the last twenty years; it shouldn't surprise him that they were trying to weasel their way out of his rules. And Charlotte was particularly clever. If he recalled correctly, she'd given his grandfather hell in his day.

Best to make sure all his facts were straight about Li...Hyacinth before continuing.

He set his papers down and put his head in his hands. He was tired, so tired. When he had first read Edmund and Hyacinth's story as a young man, his hands had shook and he'd broke out in a cold sweat. A spy executed for his betrayal, in love with a Muggle woman who convinces herself he's a traitor?

Not quite the story, but still. It was close. Too close. Which perhaps accounted for his lashing out at Hermione, after her question. He heard Hyacinth, but he thought Lily. It had been unfair of him to put Hermione in such a corner, but the girl had pluck.

He reminded himself that it wasn't necessarily his company she sought, but rather expertise about magical renovations, about Lyonesse itself...it would have been immature of her to alienate him by requesting that he remove himself from her presence after asking her if she'd ever loved.

It might behoove him to not give her chances to make such requests...

He shook his head, realising that he'd still accomplished some work while lost in thought.

Frightening, how mundane, how simple these tasks had become. If only he had potions to brew instead of paperwork to fill out.

That was the problem: the business had initially done so well that he'd needed the help. He'd hired one or two incompetent souls before finding Caroline; she'd just finished secondary school and was pregnant. She had a quick mind and soaked up information like a sponge; now, four years later, she ran the shop like clockwork.

Then, several years ago, a demand had risen for medicinal remedies. Severus had initially been stumped; his healing knowledge was limited to potions, and he wasn't about to flout the statute of secrecy in such a flagrant fashion. Around the same time, Jack had returned to town. Severus had caught snippets of gossip in line at the grocer (Oxford graduate, sick mother) and he'd heard murmurs at the pub about a no-good father, a carpenter over in Land's End who had no qualms about laying hands on his ex-wife, illness or no.

When Jack showed up for a job interview perfectly suited and groomed save the black eye, Severus knew. He'd inquired, and Jack had shot him a charming smile, said he'd got in the way of a door.

Indeed. A bright young man come home to care for his sick mother and also to defend her from an abusive father? Severus could put up with the lad's infuriating Albus-like twinkling, and if the carpenter got a broken leg every time Jack came into work with bruises, well, so be it. It wasn't as if Severus was a saint, though; Jack wanted to go to medical school and study homeopathic medicine. The remedies he fixed up were the best in the county, and Severus knew it.

But two competent assistants meant that there was little grunt work left for him, just the banality of running a small business in a small village.

It was all so bloody boring. Which is why even though Hermione and her nicely curved arse bothered him, he had no intention of leaving well enough alone.

He snorted. No. No intention at all.

In fact, seeing as how there was hardly enough paperwork to justify him spending another hour here, let alone the whole day, he should go visit Hermione, maybe help her with renovations.

Be neighbourly, and all that.

Right.

He gathered his things, locked his office, and strode through the backroom.

"What's got a bee in your bonnet? A lady friend?" Jack asked with a wry smile.

"Keep those questions coming and you'll be off to see the grocer about a job," Severus said, shrugging on his jacket.

Jack gulped. "Duly noted, sir."

"That's more like it," Severus muttered. "Good day, Miss Caroline."

"You as well, sir," Caroline called.

He left the shop in haste; some would call it excitement. He had a project to attend to.

**

He laced his boots, tied the cravat, fixed his hair, downed the draught, and crossed the boundary.

He found her in the Great Hall. She sat bathed in sunlight, the light forming a mocking halo around the fuzz of her curls. She was sitting in front of the multi-story window, but her eyes were not focused on that magnificence.

She was staring at the grand piano. His heart skipped a beat.

"Good morning, Hermione," he said as he approached her.

"Is it still morning?" She looked up at him, and he saw that there were dried tears on her cheeks. What could be bothering her at this hour?

"Forgive me the indelicacy, but are you well?" he asked, grasping for period-appropriate language as his mind reeled. She was crying. In front of his piano.

"The piano," she said, her voice barely audible. "It's still in tune."

It went unspoken: in comparison with everything else in the house. So she wasn't a total loss at deduction; she realised what that meant. How fitting, after her scathing criticism of him yesterday.

"Did he play?" she asked, running her fingers across the ivory keys.

Severus walked to the window and stared out at the front lawn, careful to avoid casting an obvious shadow. He'd come here this morning for amusement and had stumbled into something else entirely.

His mind traveled back to the last time he'd played in this room ... the morning after Dumbledore's death. Chopin's Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor. The third movement...the Marche Funébre. Whether he'd played for Dumbledore or himself, he hadn't known.

Then there was Moonlight Sonata, the morning after Cedric Diggory died.

Mornings. Always mornings, never nights. Mornings filled with grief and death and inevitability. It was one thing to know the dark of the night and quite another to still know it at sunrise.

The piano was the one thing in this house he cared for, so of course, Dumbledore had insisted he leave it. Others knew of his affection for it...anyone who had attended one of his grandfather's parties and found him in the Great Hall, tucked away in a corner playing some classical piece no one cared about. Even Voldemort knew of his ability.

"Yes," he said at last. "He played."

"I can't find sheet music," she said. "Did he play from memory?"

"He wasn't a prodigy," Severus said, his tone a bit sharp. No need for her to romanticise his meager ability. "And he could have been better. He practiced, but he only wanted to learn his favourites, was never too keen on a broad classical education."

"Which pieces?" she asked, and he told her. Of course she knew Moonlight Sonata; her mother had probably been one of those women who held headphones to her belly when pregnant, playing Mozart and Beethoven in the hopes that her child would be a genius.

"I'm not familiar with the rest. Can you...can you play, Edmund?" she asked, and he saw the flash of disappointment when she remembered that he was a ghost.

Well. What good was an illusion if he couldn't improvise a little pureblood lore for his own benefit?

"If you can find the sheet music, I could try. I can access some physicality in the manor; we'll see if it is up to letting me play." Not that the manor could influence a ghost's access to the physical realm, but she didn't need to know that.

She started searching the room, manic in her determination, and he discreetly waved his hand, tipping over a box of his grandfather's old sheet music in the corner she was searching.

"It seems the manor wants to help us!" she said, excited, and he smirked. She found a few pieces of music and brought it to the piano. She read the selections aloud for him. "Chopin's Marche Funébre?"

He opened his mouth to say yes but immediately clamped it shut, hoping she hadn't noticed his error. Edmund might know the pieces Severus played, but he would only be able to play those written before 1790...think, man, what pieces did he know that were Baroque or early Classical? His grandfather had force-fed him Mozart, Bach, Haydn, trying educate him "properly," but he'd preferred to focus his energies on a few sufficiently dark selections from Beethoven and Chopin. Emphasis on few.

"Do you play?" he asked, stalling for time, racking his brain to come up with something that would be in that box.

"Just Chopsticks." She grinned. "I fooled around on my gran's piano every once in a while."

He'd like to fool around on the piano, hear the thunk of high and low keys as her feet twitched and kicked...

Inspiration struck. "Is Bach's French Suite No. 1 in D minor in that pile?" he asked.

She flipped through a few pages, and then she smiled. "Yes."

Thank Merlin.

He sat down at the bench and did his best to not exhale in relief. He'd never learned all five movements, let alone mastered them, but he could play the Sarabande passingly, and Hermione wasn't exactly an expert judge.

"Do I need to turn the sheets?" she asked as she placed them in front of him.

"There's a charm that will do that." He told it to her, and she performed it. It was best if she stood, lest he risk touching her during his performance.

He did his best to impersonate an inability to touch the keys. "Damn it, manor, a little help, please," he growled, and he must have been convincing because when he finally played a few notes, Hermione clapped her hands in delight. He stifled an urge to laugh.

Within a few bars, the tenor of the room sobered. His fingers were stiff and so the tempo was a bit off, but she didn't seem to mind. Soon, he almost forgot she was there.

Towards the end of the piece, he heard her sniffling, and he stopped and turned to face her.

"Hermione," he said softly. "What's wrong?" What was this emotion, this concern?

She moved away from the shadows that shrouded the piano and stepped into the great window's light. "You play with feeling," she said slowly. "It ... moves me deeply."

He recalled his words to her yesterday, about whether she'd loved deeply, and he felt a sting. No, she may not have loved deeply, but she had mourned deeply. A tragedy, for a young woman to know so little of eros yet to carry a lifetime's worth of grief.

He cleared his throat. "I'm glad you enjoyed it."

She cleared her throat. "If you'll excuse me, Edmund, I'm just going to go up to my room to freshen up a bit. You can join me in a bit, if you like...I was hoping to begin renovations on it this afternoon and would appreciate your help."

He nodded once, and she fled the room. As nerve-wracking as it was to see her upset, her flight spared him the problem of having to play another piece.

Merlin only knew what he would have done if she'd asked for Mozart.

Sure that she was gone, he ran his fingers over every key, slowly, lingering, stroking, like a lover. He closed his eyes. Surely, he could play a few notes of the Marche Funébre unheard?

She'd unwittingly hit upon his favourite, and he hadn't played in years. His fingers ached to press the keys, to see if they could fly as deftly as they once had; he'd devoted much time to perfecting that piece.

Perhaps such a perfect performance was best left to the imagination.

"Master?"

Severus almost jumped. "Pip," he said, looking down at the house-elf, who looked positively miniscule compared to the piano. "What is it?"

Pip looked at him crossly. "Miss Hermione is being in her room crying. You should not be upsetting her."

Severus sighed. "No, I shouldn't be," he muttered. He raked his hands through his hair. "I'll go and see her."

"Hmph." Pip crossed his arms and Disapparated, presumably to the kitchen.

Severus rose from the piano bench and walked across the room, staring at the floor, purposefully ignoring the boxes that tipped over as he walked past them.

Apparently, the manor wanted to annoy him today.

He walked down the hall and up the stairs, eyes ever on the door to the Master Bedroom to ensure that Hermione wasn't peering out, seeing him walk rather than float. It was one thing for a ghost to walk in the library and quite another for him to walk up stairs.

The door was half-open, and he peered inside. How to announce himself? He couldn't open the door, and he couldn't go through it ... just then, he saw Hermione walk from the bedroom into the bathroom, directly in his line of sight...

Only in denims and a red bra.

He gulped. He moved so that he could only see a sliver, but oh, what he could see in that sliver: her at the bathroom mirror, fussing with her hair. Her back was smooth, her waist tapered, and there was a softness in her reflection...he could see her breasts gently pushing at the bra's edge, the curve of her belly ...

She turned, and he practically flew out of the doorway, his back to the wall, breathing slowly.

She was beautiful. She cared for him.

And he wanted her.

Merlin help him.

A/N: You can find the piano piece Severus plays for Hermione here.