Chapter 8

Author’s note: Thank you for following this little story; I am thrilled with your reviews. I am very happy to announce that Dreamy_Dragon has agreed to beta. Thank you, Dreamy! Besides spotting numerous mistakes and missing commas, Dreamy has found a plotting mistake: at the end of chapter seven, I let Hermione read “Jane Eyre” in the café. For reasons that become clear in chapter eight, she now reads “Pride and Prejudice”. The quote is from Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice”, obviously. Furthermore, I do like the name of Sean; it's just Hermione that doesn’t.

Deciding to be honest with himself, Severus resisted the urge to quell the pleasant surprise he experienced when he laid eyes on Hermione Granger, engrossed in a well-thumbed book, a slice of chocolate cake in front of her.

He made his way over to her table and, when he'd read the book’s title, remarked in his haughtiest voice, “The cake is tolerable, I suppose, but not dark enough to tempt me.”

“Severus! How wonderful to see you! And I seem to remember that you liked that particular cake well enough last time.”

“Well, yes. But the Malfoys’ pastry elf has outdone herself over Christmas. I don't think I want to see any more sweet concoctions before Easter.”

Hermione had cleared away her jacket and bag from the second chair at her table, so it was only polite to sit down. She proceeded to ask after his sojourn at Malfoy Manor, but offered only a short statement about her own holiday.

Severus' spy instincts kicked in as he noticed her somehow dispirited manner despite her apparent delight in meeting him. The self-deprecating part of him observed that any person in wizarding Britain would have to be really desperate if they were ecstatic to see him. Plus, the cake and Pride and Prejudice were quite obvious pointers.

“What's wrong, Hermione?”

Looking anywhere but him, she started to fidget with her pastry fork. With a small shrug, she finally said, “I keep telling myself that it is really stupid of me to let myself be affected by the behaviour of mean-spirited relatives I see only once a year. It will pass soon enough. The reason why I'm so maudlin is probably that my parents and I were very close before I altered their memories. Now they're trying, but they aren’t able to fully trust me anymore. And to prevent that rift from becoming obvious over Christmas, they invite more and more people every year.”

“Hermione, you know that they were targets. Not just in the general sense, but they'd already been singled out. I was heartily glad of their vanishing act because the task of killing them would most likely have gone to me.”

“Intellectually I know all this. It is just that great-aunt Vivian and her offspring, Samantha and Kimberley, were particularly nasty this year: make-up tips, invitations to go shopping for more feminine clothes, repetitions of ‘Oh, so you’re thirty already!’ accompanied by ticking noises—”

“I take it you haven't told them about me and Emma, Elisabeth and Sean?”

This drew a smile form her. “Sean? Really, Severus, I can understand the need for alliteration, but Sean? Simon and Samuel are perfectly good names as well.”

“So you're all right with Emma and Elizabeth?”

“Of course.” She waved her book.

“And no, I didn't tell them about us. You're free finally, neither subjected to Death-Eater gatherings nor staff meetings. I just couldn't condemn you to a Granger Christmas bash. If I hadn't kept mum, they would have organized an Easter meeting on the spot just to meet you.”

“You're too kind. For a moment I thought you were ashamed of me.”

“Never, Severus. Never.”

He did eat half of the cake despite his earlier protestations, and they parted amicably after a relaxed afternoon spent reading and drinking coffee.