Chapter Nine

Disclaimer: Not mine, alas.

A/N: Many thanks to Subversa for alpha reading and to richardgloucester and sshg316 for beta reading.

Severus froze, the draughts board still in his hand. "Pardon?"

Andromeda walked into the kitchen and set her handbag on the counter, ignoring his state of shock. "I ran into Hermione outside your shop, literally. The girl moves like she's fleeing Dementors. And she looked at me like I was one." She opened the fridge, pulled out a pitcher of lemonade, and poured herself a glass.

Severus came to his senses and finished clearing away the draughts board, sliding it into its particular place in the cabinet. "You know Bellatrix tortured her...at length," he said.

Andromeda raised her eyebrows. "That would explain it."

He turned around, clasping his hands together in front of him. "What do you want to say, Meda? Out with it."

She sat down at his kitchen table, crossed her legs, and looked him straight in the eye.

"What in the name of Merlin are you doing?"

"I need something stronger than lemonade for this conversation," he muttered, silently Summoning his Ogden's and two glasses.

"What on earth makes you think I'd drink Ogden's in front of my grandson?" she asked, arching an eyebrow.

"Teddy." He flicked his hand, and the Ogden's and glasses turned around in mid-air and went back to their place. He'd nearly forgotten that Teddy was outside playing. How could he forget about a child left in his care?

"We'll have this conversation after dinner," Andromeda said, getting up from the table.

"Then why did you ask that question?" he asked, still staring at the table as her heard her open and close cabinets, no doubt intending to cook for him. In spite of his aptitude in the kitchen, she never seemed to think he cooked well enough for himself.

"Because I don't think it's a question you've carefully considered. Think on it," she said.

As if on cue, Teddy bounded in, shirt streaked with dirt, looking entirely too pleased with himself. "Why is Gran cooking, Lionel?" he asked, walking over to stand next to Severus at the table.

"Because your gran is a stubborn woman," Severus said, pulling out a chair for the boy.

"Gran says you don't take care of yourself," Teddy said, reaching for the lemonade Andromeda had left on the table.

"Well, your gran isn't a psychologist or a Legilimens, so we'll just have to thank her for her opinion and leave it at that," Severus said, carefully avoiding Andromeda's gaze.

"Gran says you need more friends."

"Your gran says a lot of things about me, Teddy. Best not to talk about it," Severus said, Summoning a deck of cards. "Have you ever played knock-out whist?"

**

They watched a film after dinner, and Teddy was asleep by the end of it. Severus moved him to a bedroom upstairs and stopped by the kitchen, picking up the bottle of Ogden's and two glasses before going into the sitting-room where Andromeda was no doubt preparing a line of questioning. She was ridiculously patient; her interrogative skills were highly underrated, in Severus' opinion. He'd always thought Dumbledore's mistrust of her was a mistake, but then, Andromeda would never have worked for him anyway. She was a Black, so she was a born skeptic, and she had a habit of knowing things others didn't want her to know.

Like this, for example. Severus walked into his sitting-room, cursing his suggestion that Hermione visit the village. He'd suggested it in the heat of the moment because he had to get home and de-ghosted for Teddy's visit, but he'd forgotten about the part where seeing Teddy meant that Andromeda was in Coleworth.

Bugger.

He poured their glasses and sat down on the other side of the sofa, staring at the coffee table.

"Well?" she asked, curling her knees up on the sofa. "Anything you'd like to get off your chest?"

"You're the one with the sixth sense, Meda, you tell me," he muttered into his glass before taking a big gulp from it.

"Cornelius bloody Fudge could walk into this room and tell that something was wrong with you."

"That's insulting."

"Severus," Andromeda put her hand to her temple, clearly exasperated. Well, good, he thought. If he couldn't avoid her question, well, neither could she. "What are you thinking?" she asked, the intensity radiating off her. "I don't know the particulars of whatever costume or charade you've constructed, but what I do know is that you can't keep it up forever. One day, she'll wise up and see straight through it. I mean, do you realise how condescending this whole act is, relying on the fact that she wasn't raised in a wizarding family to pull off the illusion? You could never pull this over a Greengrass girl, or even a Weasley."

"The point is I am pulling it off," Severus said.

"But for how long? You're too eager and too vulnerable. You're going to get caught."

"Are you honestly calling me vulnerable, Meda?"

"Are you honestly putting me in a position where I have to point it out, Severus?" she asked, hands raised in disbelief. "You spend years planning a cover for yourself, you survive the war, you go into hiding, you build a business and a life for yourself. We accidentally run into each other, and you do everything but make me swear an Unbreakable Vow to not reveal you. My grandson doesn't know your name because you're so bloody paranoid. And you decide to risk it all in an attempt to sport with Hermione Granger, of all people. Are you mad?" Andromeda asked.

Severus took a few moments to think. "I think I was bored."

"Sweet Merlin, that's worse." Andromeda sipped her whiskey. "How do you do it? Explain it to me."

So he did. By the time he was done, he thought Andromeda was half-pissed, she'd had so much to drink.

"So let me get this straight," Andromeda started, "You're a forty-four-year-old wizard playing an ancestor in his mid-twenties." She paused. "Is this a mid-life crisis?"

"Forty-four is hardly mid-life for wizards."

She arched an eyebrow.

"People aged more quickly back then, even wizards. Crazed ideas about what constituted good nutrition and so on. Besides, I look to be in my mid-thirties. Everyone thinks so," he said with a smirk. "If you didn't know how old I was, where would you place me?"

She sighed. "Mid thirties to late forties."

He nodded. "So it's not so unreasonable that a twenty-eight-year-old male in the late eighteenth century could look to be in his mid-thirties in contemporary times?"

"You're playing with fire," Andromeda said, pouring herself another glass, and he admired the way the firelight reflected in her glossy black hair.

"It's a good thing I'm a wizard, then. I won't get burned," Severus said.

"This seems rather like a Fiendfyre, and I doubt that even you could control that for very long."

"I have enough distance," he said, running a hand through his hair.

"Do you?" she asked. "I think that you rather enjoy playing the chivalric ghost to her damsel in distress. And you know about tangled webs..."

"Watch your words, witch," he said, and she looked him straight in the eye.

"I think you got more than you bargained for."

He snorted and looked at the coffee table.

"Didn't you?" she asked, leaning forward on her forearms. "It was a game, a trick, a bit of Slytherin sport, as well as a challenge to see how well you could role play after all these years. A bit bored, were you?" she asked. "And you do realise that you've created a useful disguise for yourself, just in case?"

He nodded.

"The game has no end, which is problematic, but I'd imagine you could have stopped, satisfied and amused, weeks ago. And yet you make yourself into a ghost every day so you can what? Talk to her? Continue a game you've so thoroughly won?"

He didn't answer.

Andromeda leaned back into the couch, holding her glass on her knee. "She's falling in love with Edmund, you know."

Severus looked at her, his gaze serious now. "She didn't tell you that."

Andromeda examined her fingernails. "She admitted enough for me to get a good read on her. If you can take advantage of her Muggle-born ignorance, so can I."

"She doesn't know you're an empath," Severus muttered, staring into his fireplace.

"But you do. So you can trust me when I say that she's falling hard," Andromeda said.

Severus gritted his teeth. "He's not me."

"He is you."

"I have his journals..."

"Unless that is all you quote at her every day, then Severus is Edmund and Edmund is Severus. Who is also Lionel, whom she is also curious about."

"Don't go encouraging her," Severus said.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

He looked her straight in the eye. "Vow you won't tell her."

"You'd better not be serious," Andromeda said, eyes narrow.

"You know I'm not."

"Actually, I don't. You know that Occlumency blocks my ability to sense anything. It's part of why you let me come around so often," she said casually, as if this were just a conversation about the weather.

"Of course I'm not asking you to take a Vow. Damn it, what do you take me for?" he asked, running both hands through his hair.

"What do you take me for? I am your friend, Severus," she said, suddenly impassioned. "Why on earth would I ever tell her something you don't want me to, no matter how misguided your motives?"

His shoulders slumped. "I'm sorry."

"You're a good man. But this has ceased to be mere sport for you, and Severus..." she looked him in the eye "...it was never sport for her." She paused. "I'm going to get Teddy and head home. Are the wards open?"

"Always for you," he said, staring at the fireplace.

Andromeda put a hand on his shoulder. "You know what you need to do." And she left him on the couch, alone with his thoughts.

**

After their departure, he took the bottle of Ogden's in one hand and his glass in the other and marched up the stairs. Their conversation...interrogation...had kindled the embers of his self-doubt back into a flame, and his anger was quickly becoming fury. He hadn't figured out with whom he was furious, precisely, but he intended to get drunk. Thoroughly, terribly, short-term memory-loss inducing drunk.

On glass one, he cursed himself for being so careless as to suggest Hermione's trip into town, then he cursed Meda for being so intrusive, and then he cursed Clara and Gerard for "introducing" them in the first place.

On glass three, he cursed the boredom that had led him to adopt such a ridiculous disguise, and he cursed that he'd chosen Coleworth as his hideaway, and then, just for good measure, he cursed Perdita and Fawkes for saving him, because he hadn't deserved to be saved, damn it.

After the fourth glass, he cursed his loneliness.

After the fifth glass, he cursed his desire.

**

It dawned on Severus while eating breakfast that having to take a hangover potion two mornings in a row at the age of forty-four with no major crises pending probably indicated that something was wrong or, at the very least, that something was not entirely right.

Sadly, the Ogden's had not wiped away his conversation with Andromeda, and he wasn't desperate enough to attempt a self-Obliviate, though the thought had crossed his mind. He put his head in his hands. What was he doing? Meda was right, so right, and that conversation had been like alcohol on an open wound, cleaning away all the muck but stinging with pain all the same.

He didn't know if he believed what she'd said about Hermione's emotions...he couldn't afford to think about that. He had built a life for himself here. It was a small life, but it was his, and he'd be damned if he'd endanger it over a witch who would no doubt insist on dragging him back into the public, exposing him, laying waste to what he'd worked so hard for: anonymity. Solitude. Besides, he wasn't Edmund; it was one thing to feel for a gentleman ghost and quite another to handle him and all his... history.

It wasn't fair to her. She'd feel like a fool if she ever found out he was real...he knew she'd be angry. So angry.

It'd been fun. He had yet another useful disguise, as Meda pointed out. Hermione could go on believing that Edmund was really a ghost.

He'd visit her today. One last visit, to say goodbye. Not that she would know it was goodbye.

**

It was like getting dressed for a funeral. He tried not to think about what he would say. Another day, like any day, only not. What would she think, with him leaving her life so abruptly? Or was it self-aggrandising to assume that he had become central to it? He didn't know.

Severus stepped across the boundary once more, raising a hand to attempt to get the library fires to quiet down. He took it all in; this would probably be the last time he ever stepped foot in Lyonesse Hall. Hermione would be the owner in a few months...she was too stubborn to let the Ministry bully her...and she'd be able to enact her own wards, and he had no doubt that they would be strong. He'd be able to break them, of course, but it would take minutes to do so, and hopefully that would be enough time to remind himself that entering her life again would be deeply, deeply wrong.

He walked down the hall, appreciating the work she had done: the improved lighting, the refurbished rugs, the paintings. It was funny, really. The manor hadn't appealed to him since he was a boy, but in the last few weeks, it had once again took on that enchanting quality, where it seemed as though something new was around every corner. She made it new again.

He stopped suddenly...there were voices coming from the Great Hall. One was Hermione, but he didn't recognize the man's. It sounded like an argument. Surely it wasn't Blaise? He Disillusioned himself and ensured that he was out of sight, though he could see them through the wide entrance. His eyes narrowed at the sight of the man. Not Blaise. A tall man with slicked back hair, an obviously Transfigured suit, and an enormous briefcase stuffed to the brim with papers. Clearly a Ministry official.

Hermione's arms were crossed. "I have found nothing of value, Mr. Goetz. It has only been three weeks. Furthermore, I don't recall consenting to 'check-in's.'"

Mr. Goetz smiled. "You have made progress, Ms. Granger. The renovations you've done are... impressive."

"I will be buying it in two months, and I see no reason not to invest now."

"That may be, but you owe us..."

"I know, I know...any items of value. I've told you: there are none. Not unless you want to remove the marble sinks, or the books, or the portraits or artwork," Hermione said, gesturing around the room.

"Are you telling me you've found nothing else?" Mr. Goetz asked, leaning in closer.

Hermione took a step back. "You get any closer to me and I will send my Patronus for the Minister faster than you can hex me."

"Is that a threat?" Mr. Goetz seemed gleeful about that, and it looked like Hermione was stifling the urge to hex him.

"A threat would be telling you I'd have you on your arse before you could raise your wand," she said, her hair starting to stand on end with the energy radiating off her.

Mr. Goetz snorted. "I will be by to check in next week."

"And I'll be sure the Minister is here," Hermione said.

"Very well. Good day, Ms. Granger," Mr. Goetz said, and he Disapparated.

Severus watched as Hermione sat down on the piano bench and lightly fingered the keys, clearly in her own world. Hoping she wouldn't sense his presence, he made his way back to the library as quickly as he could, heart racing. He couldn't reveal himself, nor could he stay away. Not after what he'd just heard.

The Ministry was after the ledgers.