Chapter Five: Il Vaut Mieux Suer que Trembler

The instants that made up the Inner World spun away from the last of their corresponding numbers in the Outer, and the moment ended.

"I don't suppose Merlin would fault us for helping him remember," Tobias said doubtfully.

Eileen glowed with enough delight for them both. "Probably not," she agreed. "And once he's seen our success – and we will succeed in this – he might recommend us for an increase in All."

Not at all assured of their success with Severus (he already knew rule-breaking wouldn't get them more All), Tobias was nonetheless happy for his wife. He delved inside himself to find knowledge of when they could discover the results of their efforts. Time ran differently here in the Outer World than it did in the Inner – neither faster nor more slowly – and while they didn't divide it into days and nights, there were close approximations.

"We've a week before we can touch his next moment," he mused. "Perhaps we could..."

"Explain exactly why – and how – you managed to nudge that girl whilst you were 'helping' your son? Without permission, I might add."

~*.*~

After repeated denials and a lengthy discussion of the girl's most recently lived moments, they were no closer to solving the mystery, but Merlin was certain that Tobias and Eileen were telling the truth. Not that he was ready to let them know that. Not yet, anyway.

"I don't understand what went wrong," Eileen insisted for the seventh time. "We knew nothing about the girl!"

In a resolute show of solidarity, Tobias half flowed into her. The display would have made a lesser being than Merlin pulse with approval and happiness.

Instead, the ancient materialised a manifestation of his most familiar fleshsuit and pointedly stroked the long white beard hanging from his chin to his navel.

"Mmm, no. You're right," he murmured after several of their moments – during which Eileen and Tobias both also took refuge in the difficult to read fleshsuits – had passed. Untwining his fingers from his beard, he looked up at them. "This can't have been your doing."

Eileen merely nodded, her peripheral vision showing that Tobias was doing the same. But Merlin didn't seem to be paying attention. He stared at his palm in apparent fascination, appearing to be even further lost in his thoughts.

"Someone with more All than the three of us combined have accumulated might be, erm, experimenting," the old man murmured, almost as if he were speaking to himself. He wasn't of course; they wouldn't have heard the words otherwise, fleshsuits or no fleshsuits. No, he had wanted them to hear his words.

"Not...You don't think it's the Timeless...?" Eileen felt herself tremble, and she wondered if she wouldn't feel more comfortable in her natural form. Probably not.

In any case, Merlin scoffed at that idea. "None of us here are so important as to have caught their attention." He turned wise, ancient eyes on them. "At least, you should hope we are not."

Eileen was wise enough herself to hope exactly that.

~HG~

Hermione chased after the last tendrils of the dream, but opened her eyes to find it all too faded and hazy to make sense of. She was left only with an impression of having been very young and very determined. And of a companion who had tried to cover a deep sorrow with a bravado she'd seen through but had treated like hubris.

"I'll do it, then," she whispered in her darkened bedroom. "It's the least I can do to make up for it."

She wasn't sure what she was swearing to do – or if the promise had really been her own decision rather than that of someone whose youth had left her too resolute and impetuous for her own good.

~SS~

For the third time in five days, Severus woke to find a cloud of bushy brown fur perched on his chest. A cloud that crackled when he ordered it off him. He reached up to touch the spot Knowi Tall had just vacated, and his fingers closed on a sheet of A4-sized parchment.

It was a menu of the day's nicer luncheon choices at the Ministry canteen.

"What do you expect me to do with this?" he asked the cat (also for the third time in five days). "You know I make my own meals."

She didn't answer this time, either. And this time, at least, she didn't hiss in protest when he tossed the offending page aside. Instead, she dropped her Mr Spock soft toy at the foot of his bed and stared at him till he gave up and agreed it was time for his meditation.

~*.*~

"You'll need that, of course, but it's not going to do what she hopes it would."

Severus brought first his right arm, and then the left, up and over his head in unhurried, deep stretches.

Unfolding his legs, he rose into a squat – feet set shoulder-width apart, inhaling and exhaling as he held the position. He flowed out of malasana, moving from pose to pose, opening various parts of his body as he gently eased himself from the world of only mind and body to one that included the reality of the main room of his quarters.

At last, with his hands flat in front of his feet, he pushed against the floor until his arse pointed in the air and pressed his face against his knees. Folding in on himself, he sent several breaths in balasana, relaxed and content.

Moments later, he was standing straight, his eyes still closed. The familiar sense of calm and... near-peace gave him the patience to ask, "What the hell are you on about, Weasley?" in genuinely mild tones.

"Meditation and saluting the sun...Don't say it! You don't do Surya Namaskara." Fred corrected himself before Severus had the chance. "But while whatever it is you just did and all the meditation in the universe might be good for you, but it's never going to solve your Granger problem."

Severus frowned but only because he was feeling perturbed. "Granger? A problem how? I haven't seen the girl in nearly a week."

A slow smile spread across Fred's translucent face. "Lie to anyone else, but don't lie to me and don't lie yourself: you saw her last night when she dreamed the same memory you as you."

~SS~HG~

"How nice of you to grace this laboratory with your presence again, Granger." Severus watched with no small measure of satisfaction as the girl – the woman – flushed guiltily and hurried into the teaching lab. "Couldn't come up with more excuses to avoid me, hmm? Theatre blues today."

"I haven't been avoiding you!" But she dutifully went over to the large wardrobe that held the hospital-inspired gear he required all of his students to wear when working on more sensitive potions.

"Liar." He liked how his accusation turned her pink cheeks ruddy.

"I sent an aeroplane." Her voice was muffled, her head deep in the wardrobe.

"Full of excuses."

"I've been... very busy," she said as she emerged with a pile of blue clothing and a lightweight folding screen. Without meeting his eyes, she hastily set up the screen, appearing moments later having donned scrubs and the theatre gown that did for her brewing robe. "As I told you in the aeroplane, things at the shop have been... busy, and there's Mum and Dad and... and Crooks. My cat. He scarcely sees me these days, what with me having two jobs and... things. And I can hardly expect Lara to..."

"Well, there are plenty of things that need doing here if you mean to catch up your training." To prove his point, he flicked his wand, and several recipes appeared on the blackboard. "As you so helpfully pointed out, the Ministry are eager to be rid of me. Our time is limited."

"But those aren't MLE potions." Her nose wrinkled in confusion. She wound a long strip of blue fabric round her head. While it was far from the frizzed mess of her youth, her awful hair was too voluminous for any normal scrub cap to contain. "Why do I need to learn them?"

Severus didn't have an answer. Not one he was willing to give, anyway.

"No more excuses, Granger. Today, you will begin to learn the improved Wound-binding Solution I developed last year, and you will return every evening until you have mastered every potion I have taught or created these past four years. Do I make myself clear?

"I..."

He filled a cauldron with distilled water and lit a fire beneath it.

"But what about my...?"

"I don't include weekends, of course. And you may bring the cat," he told her rather than admit he hadn't the least clue what he was supposed to do with her.

"I meant my job. My other job, I mean. I am supposed be at the Ministry only part time, but I've already been putting in loads of extra hours here for your lessons. Hours I'm meant to be at the shop. Lara needs me."

"Right. She couldn't possibly find anyone else to run the till with as much skill as the great Hermione Granger does." He pointed at a tank of Lolabugs swimming among murky green seaweeds. "Express the venom sacs of three of those. Medium. Try to do it without killing them. Return any survivors to the tank."

"What?" But she was already back at the wardrobe, pulling out dragon-hide gloves small enough to fit her hands.

"Don't kill the Lolabugs. They are difficult enough for a fully trained potioneer to acquire. You will find it nearly impossible once I am gone."

"Oh, er, right." She stuffed the gloves in a pocket and grabbed a small net and a glass bowl on her way to the tank. "I'm not a shop assistant, you know. Well, that's not my main job, anyway. I help Lara develop new products. At night, after the shop's closed. But anyway, I know better than to bring my cat into the lab; Crooks sheds."

As if on cue, Knowi Tall appeared, twining herself about Granger's ankles. Snape smiled thinly at the witch's look of consternation. He smiled wider as she netted three mid-sized Lolabugs in quick succession.

"It's a good thing, then, that I've also developed a no-mess exfoliation charm. Good for felines and for the lab. Hairs and dander disappear as they are released."

"But..."

"And if you are as overworked as you claim, I am sure Ms Obiye will see the sense in having you brew – or whatever it is that you call whatever it is that you do for her – only at the weekend. You can hardly be an effective employee if you're too tired to follow proper procedure."

Granger stalked across the lab, Knowi trotting behind her. She banged the bowl down on the worktop and threw her gloves next to it before whirling to face him.

"You're not being fair! Just because you are content to spend every moment you aren't working with nothing but a colourful ghost" ...Severus only just stopped himself laughing as Fred's head suddenly materialised behind Granger and poked a tongue at her before disappearing just as quickly... "and a cat..."

Knowi's affronted yowl cut her off, and Granger stooped to pat the cat, saying, "Not that you aren't a lovely specimen of your species."

"You would think so," he muttered. Not that she seemed to hear.

Knowi squirmed away and blinked out of sight, and the infuriating girl wasted a moment looking dismayed; then she stood, giving slight shake which undoubtedly echoed the mental one. "Just because you're content with having only a dead person and Knowi for company," she repeated, "doesn't mean the rest if us don't need more. Other people – and... and cats – get lonely! They like to be with their families, their friends."

Severus snorted. "Funny, I could have sworn you said that Ms Obiye needs you at her shop."

"Lara is my friend and my flatmate." She pulled her gloves on with more force than the task needed. "I don't just work for her."

"Friends, yes. You did mention how important it is to spend time with them. You're right, of course. I know because I see your two best mates far more often than they see you, and I have to listen to them complain that you never make time for them lately." He scowled as the colour leached from her cheeks. Guilt was a dagger he knew well, and he had no sympathy for any who left themselves open to it. "Too busy helping your other friend at her shop, I suppose. Or perhaps you're too broken up over your erstwhile lover's recent betrothal to face him. Much like you were too embarrassed to do your job after practically propositioning me. Yet another of your friends, I believe you called me." She started to protest, but he interrupted her again. "Fine! Mornings, then. Show up at the canteen soon as it opens – that's ninety minutes before Magical Creatures expect to their prize employee's arse in a chair – and I'll give you an hour's instruction every morning."

She stared, struck dumb and probably as dunderheaded as her two friends has once been.

"I expect you to show some gratitude. I like my life and my routine as it is, Granger. But as distasteful a prospect as it might be, if it means getting rid of you, I'm willing to briefly change my life to suit your current disposition."

She laughed. The reaction was startling enough to break the tension and sense of... shame he'd so carefully been building in her, and he stared at her, no doubt looking as foolish as he was feeling.

"What?" He snapped at her to more to relieve his own discomfort than because of any animosity he felt towards her.

"Sorry," she said through gasping giggles. "It's just... There's a song, and... Oh, god. Never mind. I'm sorry."

He gave her a hard look, but went on. "Don't imagine for a moment that this means I'm open to your advances. The sooner I am done with you, the better. Now, as I am generously giving up pub night with your mates for your benefit, I expect diligence on your part in exchange. You're still stuck seeing me, of course, but you seem to have got over your temporary insanity there."

"Whether you think I'm any good or not, Lara really does need me."

Silence hovered between them for a moment he knew she must find long and painful. Severus watched her spirit wither under his stare. He ignored the voice at the back of his mind suggesting this mightn't be the best way to help the girl. Honesty. It was the best he could give her.

"Does she?" he said at last. "Or do you need her?"

She didn't answer, instead turning her attention to quickly and expertly expressing venom from the three Lolabugs.

He drove the last nail into her coffin of mortification. "Sundays shouldn't be a problem for you, as you've already abandoned Molly Weasley again."

There wasn't much she could say against his arguments after that, though he wouldn't have been surprised if she'd tried. But she didn't, and they got on with it. That night. And the next. And the next. Until, by the end of the week, they had settled back into some semblance of their previous... if not exactly camaraderie, then at least not enmity.

"I'll be at the Burrow this Sunday, actually," she told him Friday, pausing at the doorway to the lab, her hideously ugly cat tucked under one arm. "I suppose I'll see you there."

"I don't suppose you will," he told her, feeling unexpectedly pleased to see a flash of disappointment cross her face. "I've other plans that may carry over till Sunday." He wasn't sure why he was telling her so much of his business, but the increasing guilt blooming on her face made him add, "Molly doesn't mind because, unlike some people, I thought to inform her well in advance."

~BG~GG~

Lying, as a rule, went against Gray's nature. Not because he had any moral aversion to telling an occasional untruth. Rather, he tended not to lie because wasn't very good at it, and he reckoned it was usually pointless to try.

He didn't lie to his patients – even a five-year-old knew that a "this won't hurt" coming from a man about to stick a needle in her mouth was a liar – and over the years had (without much success, mind) exhorted his colleagues to do the same.

Before he'd met the woman he would one day marry, his penchant for telling the truth hadn't always stood him in good stead. Teachers learned very quickly that they could get the real story of what happened when their backs were turned if they asked Graham Granger. He wasn't very far into his adolescence before girls knew better than to seek out his opinion about how they looked in this skirt or with that hair style.

He was in his third year of university before Betty Bellamy befriended him and taught him how not to get told off by women who were initially attracted by his thick dark hair and brilliant smile. He'd known of her in a vague sort of way, but they had never actually spoken until the day she'd witnessed his honesty at its worst.

"Next time, you might not want to compare her make-up to a clown's."

Graham spun around, cheek still smarting from the ringing slap he'd just got from Charlotte Perkins, a girl he knew only a little better than the one criticising him from her perch on a low stone wall. She was two years below him, he recalled, but also doing a degree in dentistry. Mouse brown curls framed a face rendered no less sweet by its sardonic expression.

"She asked if it made her lips look sexy because she wanted you to ask her out," the girl on the wall – Betty something – told him. "She probably bought it with you in mind. It's new, you know. Most of the girls on our course are trying it because Roydon recommended it. Claims it's guaranteed to make men salivate after a single glance."

"It doesn't." Graham shook his head in wonder that any of the dentistry students he knew were willing to take advice make-up advice from fifty-year-old tutor who'd only returned because she'd divorced her American husband. "She looked like she'd escaped from a circus!"

"True, but you didn't have to say that. And you'd best think about what you should say instead, because Charlotte's not the only one who hasn't yet given up on you." Betty slung her bag over one shoulder and jumped off the wall. When she started walking down the path, opposite the direction he needed to go, Graham nevertheless fell in step with her. "I happen to like it when a bloke says, 'You're too pretty to need cosmetic enhancement' or some other nonsense."

"How can you say you like it if you think it's nonsense?" He didn't know why he was walking with this girl – he didn't even know why he was talking to her – but he was eager to hear her answer.

"Because the right sort of nonsense can leave you feeling good." She grinned at him in a way that showed just how little cosmetic enhancement she required. "And sometimes it's even true."

Not long after that they'd become best mates despite the age disparity. Under her tutelage, his brusque frankness had mellowed into a sort of genial honesty that the women of Birmingham had found intriguing and even endearing. But in the end, he hadn't cared about what other women saw in him; a year and a half later, he admitted he wasn't immune to his friend's ability to charm almost anyone.

Since Australia, that quality had only got stronger, and the same trait that had often left him dateless in his youth now made him that most oxymoronic of medical practitioners: a popular dentist.

So when Bette had suggested he call their daughter and tell her they were having a romantic break, so she needn't bother coming home, he'd done it. Not without a sense of remorse – this being the second weekend they'd tried to be rid of her, and all – but he'd accepted it as necessary. Even if it also meant giving up his Saturday morning surfing to search northern Cornwall for an abandoned estate which, for all that he could tell, didn't exist outside his wife's dreams. He believed in Bette more than he believed in the blue or the sky or the ocean's slate grey.

He glanced at his wife one last time before turning back to the unbroken wall of green.

"If you're sure," he muttered, more to himself than to Bette, and gripped the steering wheel more firmly.

"Of course we're sure. You trust me, and I know I'm right," his wife assured him. "Go on. I'm dying to know if I was dreaming of Lactarius delisiosus or Lactarius deterrimus."

~SS~

Reuel Prince hadn't hated Muggles, it turned out. Not exactly. The were faulty, deficient, flawed, defective. But they couldn't help themselves, and he felt they were deserving of a wizard's pity. That consideration hadn't been extended to Squibs.

Reading the man's journals had showed Severus just how much his mother's father had chafed under the restrictions imposed by International Statute of Secrecy. The Prince patriarch didn't think the answer lay in genocide or enslavement. No, he had devised a solution that was nearly as horrifying because of his simplistic understanding of its complications.

"Assimilation." Severus spat the word, then shook his head. Knowi kneaded his knee with her paws.

"So he thought." Filch's voice lacked venom, but that didn't fool Severus into believing the older man approved, either. "But only with new stock, or far away enough to be like new. Like your father."

His grandfather had sought to rid the world of Muggles – thereby rendering the Statute unnecessary – by breeding out the lack of magic. The notion would have seemed almost noble if it hadn't been the cause of his parents' misery.

Still, it was better than what he'd always assumed to be Reuel Prince's ideology. He'd been wrong to think his grandfather had valued Squibs over Muggles, yes, but Aunt Ermengarde could have ignored the old man's wishes once she no longer lived under his roof. It was a justification – a rationalisation – and Severus knew it. But it was the only way he could contemplate the future Ermengarde wanted for him without being drowned in guilt. Knowing that the man had been an idealistic, though plainly stubborn and somewhat unethical, idiotic genius made accepting his inheritance somehow less repugnant. Not that he intended to keep it.

"Of course you can sell it," she had assured him soon after his arrival the night before. "But you'll have to fix it up first, else who would want it? All that work..."

Just how much work it would take was the question Severus was bent on answering as soon as he could extricate himself from his aunt and her wedding plans. By the time she and Filch got round to asking his opinion of possible ceremonies for the fifth time, Severus decided he'd had enough.

"You didn't need my permission before, and you don't need my advice now," he told them. "Just tell me what I need to do, if I need to do anything, and I'll do it. Or not. Now, I'd like to take another look at the estate if you don't mind."

Concern spread across Aunt Ermengarde's stern face, but surprisingly, before she could protest, Filch came to Severus's rescue.

"You'll want an expert opinion and an expert to do the work," the grizzled old keeper said. "Like I told you, Jack Filch is the best in those parts. You'd never know he was a Squib, the way he sings the stone. Most claim he isn't, but he's got no more magic than me. Did a run in the family, our generation, the curse did. But his boys are wizards, even if they're only half the stonemasons their father is."

"I see." And Severus did see. The Filch "curse" was likely part of the reason this wedding hadn't taken place when he was still a boy. Confirmation of his suspicions was written in the regret on Ermengarde's thin lips. "I would like to meet your..."

"Cousin," Filch reminded him.

Severus gave a sharp nod and stood, dumping Knowi from his lap. "But not today."

"He don't come cheap, but he won't bleed you dry, either." Filch gave a nod of his own. "And the work'll be worth every Knut."

"I trust it will." Severus moved towards his aunt as if he might embrace her, but thought better of it. Like the Snapes, the Princes weren't much for physical affection. He settled for giving her hand a reassuring squeeze.

Brow raised, he looked at Knowi, but she leapt into Ermengarde's arm instead of his.

"She'll come after you if you need her, I suppose. 'Pudlians always do, don't they?"

He gave both his aunt and the cat a small smile and said, "I'll return before evening," then turned on his heel, leaving the woodland cottage in a swirl of time and space.

~*.*~

It was both worse and better than Severus remembered. The house was small by, say, Malfoy standards, but it would have done nicely for the Weasleys when all of the children were in residence and had a bit of room to spare for a grandchild or four. Or five, he amended, recalling that Ginevra had recently announced she meant to quit the Harpies.

A walk around the entire structure, taking closer looks than he'd bothered with before, revealed that he wasn't about to inherit an actual pile of rubble. The oatmeal-coloured stone was weathered and working itself loose in places, but he was inexplicably confident that Jack Filch could do everything his cousin claimed.

On his third circuit, he let his eyes find the foundation-stone. He scowled at the claw-like handprint at the bottom left corner and at the words etched dead centre.

This stone was laid by Reuel Prince on the 9th Day of May, 1927.

The man hadn't yet had a wife, but he'd meant to start filling the house with his get as soon as he found a suitable witch. And when said "suitable witch" had failed to produce more than two daughters, Reuel Prince had been left with a great empty museum of a house and a fortune diminished by a world-wide crisis.

Swallowing a lump of unease, he stared at the handprint. Once he did this – once he accepted this gift from the monster who had destroyed his parents – its weight would wear on him until he rid himself of it. It was a burden Ermengarde Prince had spent her life avoiding, yet he feared she would take it on if only to spare him.

The man he was still trying to become couldn't allow that to happen.

He pricked the tip of his thumb and each finger, in turn, before drawing the needle across his palm just below his knuckles and again just above his wrist. As he spoke the words Aunt Ermengarde had made him repeat over and over again until she was satisfied he knew what he was about, he pressed the seven crimson points into the stone handprint.

The house... changed. It was still neglected and in need of repair, but as it accepted him as its new... family, it seemed to square its shoulders and brush off the dust. It wasn't beautiful, but it was less unwanted inheritance and more – disturbingly, considering his plans – something akin to home.

Its power and its... presence washed over him. Immediately, he knew something wasn't as it should be.

~*.*~

"How did you get here? Access to the drive should have been... limited."

"I suppose you mean your Muggle-repelling whatsits," the bearded man said cheerfully. Severus's wand hand twitched, but he forced himself not to hex the grinning reprobate. "They can't stop my Bette, here," the man explained, slinging an arm around the familiar-looking woman. He winked, grinned even more foolishly and gave the woman a decidedly inappropriate squeeze. "And since, erm, things happened to us, I've learnt to trust my wife's instincts. Unreservedly. Even when that means driving straight at a hedgerow."

The woman was barely paying attention. "We came to see your mushrooms, actually." She waved her arm in a lazy half circle. "I can't work out what they are. I know what this" ...she raised a book filled with page after page of colourful photographs... "says they should be, but they shouldn't be growing all together."

Severus let his lips creep into a nasty little smile. "Your daughter didn't happen to inherit her irritating capacity to assume she's always right from you, did she?"

He wasn't quite surprised when the woman had a less than dramatic reaction to his implication.

"Hermione wouldn't thank you for that." Her grin was remarkably unlike anything he'd ever seen on Granger's face. She used her chin to point over his shoulder as she said, "And we're willing to admit when we don't know something. Sometimes. For instance, I still haven't a clue what those are. I was hoping to find Lactarius delisiosus here."

"The blue ones are Lactarius indigo – usually confined to Central America. But stranger things are possible given enough magic and know-how. Edible, but... I suppose you might call it an acquired taste that some won't ever acquire. The disgusting-looking monstrosities are Lactarius sanguifluus." Pulling a folding knife from his jeans pocket, Severus plucked one and sliced into it, releasing the blood-red discharge for Granger's mother to see. "They aren't exactly rare here, and frankly, most mushroom lovers think them superior to your beloved saffron milkcaps."

"The latex is certainly gorgeous," she allowed, peering more closely. "It looks like wine. But I'm visually partial to the bright orange milk, actually."

"If there's any truth to his journals, my grandfather never attempted to eradicate the delisiosus already growing here."

Wrinkling her nose in a way that reminded Severus far too much of Granger, she swung her head from side to side and took several steps back. "Where?"

He pointed behind her. "You're nearly standing in it. Take a step back and about six of them will lactate all over your boot."

"All this talk of lactating and latex sounds a bit like confessing sexual fetishes." Granger's father winked at his wife. "I'm not sure that's appropriate conversation for the future father of our grandchildren."

She swatted her husband, grinning at him madly even as Severus glared at both of them.

"Gray! You know we're doing no such thing."

"And I don't intend to father your daughter's brats."

"Try not to sound so sure about that, mate," said Gray Granger. "Could leave you looking like an arse when you do. Bette's rarely wrong about the future."

~HG~

Returning to the Burrow was easier than she'd imagined it would be. There were no recriminations over her absence – at least not from the any of the adults present. Teddy repeatedly asked had she and "Uncle Rus" had a row, and what was she going to do to make it up to him so they could play with him next week?

"You're not as fun as Uncle Rus, but there's no one else to play with us."

Having delivered his lecture and conscripted her to act as Severus's replacement, Teddy spent the next two hours demanding she entertain him and baby Fred and little Molly while everyone one else relaxed or helped the original Molly in the kitchen.

The lecture was the worst of it. The playing was the best of it: not only because she hadn't done nearly enough of that when she'd been a child herself, but also because she was fairly certain being with the kids shielded her from adult curiosity for the duration.

All too soon, it was time to send the littles off for a wash and to set the table. While Andromeda took over, she was left to face the music, so to speak.

Luckily, Fleur and Bill had taken their children to France, and Harry and Ginny were mercifully silent on the matter as they laid out linens and cutlery. Between Fred and Ron, Hermione surmised, George and Angelina had at some point had more or less the whole story, and George pulled faces at her whenever one of his parents tried to reassure her that everything would work itself out in the end.

Ron and Demelza were too busy considering and rejecting possible wedding dates to pay her much attention, although at one point, the latter had whispered conspiratorially, "Maybe we can have a double ceremony if you could get the git to come round soon, but I won't hold my breath, as I know what you're dealing with. It took Ron long enough. Wizards!"

The idea was so ridiculous, both women laughed long and loud and refused to tell anyone why. Hermione felt herself relaxing again.

But a seat at far end of the table and three little ones to watch wasn't enough to stop her catching the knowing glances Molly continued to throw at her. And since Arthur was sitting next to her at the foot of the long table, she had to endure his occasional (but discreet) consoling pats of her hand, never mind that Freddie was sitting on her knee and Percy's Molly was perched on his.

Still, dinner was as delicious as always, even without Severus Snape's interesting contributions, and the three children provided just enough distraction so that, after a bit, Hermione forgot to worry.

The littles' plates hadn't been cleared and most of the grown-ups were still eating, but Little Fred was ready for a parent's arms. That's when it happened.

"Give him to George or Ange, Hermione," Molly told her, "then you can help get pudding for the babies."

~*.*~

As ordered, Hermione followed Molly into the kitchen. Without thinking, she walked straight to the Welsh dresser catty-corner to the ancient range and picked up an ice cream bowl. Only when she joined Molly at the table did she realise her mistake.

There wasn't any triple-chocolate ice cream waiting for her to dish out. No Chocolate Digestives to crumble over it and no chocolate syrup to pour on with too heavy a hand. No chocolate tadpoles to drown in the syrup.

Because this Sunday, at least, Severus was absent.

"Gets to be a habit," Molly observed, nodding at the dish in Hermione's hand, "taking care of the ones we care for."

"I guess I did get used to his awful taste in desserts." She smiled ruefully until she wasn't smiling at all. And she didn't carry the bowl back to the dresser.

"It hard, I know, loving someone when they don't even know you're breathing the same air as they are." Molly giggled and cut into second pie. Dark berry juice bubbled out. "What has he had to say about it?"

"He doesn't know anything about it," she admitted, feeling her cheeks heat without understanding why she should be embarrassed – or why she didn't want to correct Molly's interpretation. "I haven't told him."

Molly set the knife down and turned to Hermione. Her motherly face was so full of wisdom and understanding, Hermione was hard put not to stare at the bowl in her hands. But just when she thought she might dissolve under that compassionate gaze, Hermione was swept into Molly's arms and held close.

"Tell him, love," the older woman whispered into her ear. "Tell him, or neither one of you will find the happiness I know is waiting for you."

Still clutching the small dish, Hermione wrapped her arms round Molly's plump shoulders and clung as if letting go was an Unforgiveable. Even as she took comfort in the embrace, she wondered why she still didn't feel the least bit guilty about going along with Ron's version of the story.

~SS~HG~

"I haven't been completely honest with you." She spoke out of the blue Monday evening, and when she looked up at him, he was too surprised at how grave her expression had become to let loose the sharp retort clinging to the tip of his tongue.

"Haven't you?"

~*.*~

At first it was funny to see people scurrying by and catching snatches of conversation. After the fifth time they overheard someone complaining about the cold, Hermione and Ron exchanged glances and burst into laughter. Winter had never been so warm in Scotland, and the July temperatures they'd left behind in Devon hadn't been so different to this.

But she found her parents waiting for her – her mum proudly wearing a tee shirt with Hermione's face, painted in garish colours, on the front – at a pretty little shop in Kingscote, Hermione forgot about it for nearly a year.

~*.*~

Seemingly still lost in her memories, Granger traced circles on the workbench with an index finger.

"She always used to say she could see the colours of music or hear the music of colours," she mused, almost as if she were talking to herself. Perhaps she was. "Something like that, anyway.

"Dad and I used to smile about it. Even after we learned that it was a real thing and there's even a name for it, we teased her, and she didn't mind at all. But this – the paintings... The colours might match, but it's not the same. I think even Dad's frightened of it sometimes. Or at least he was when I first found them again. Now..."

Her self-absorption was irritating. Fearing they'd never get on with the lesson if he allowed her to indulge herself, Severus resorted to sarcasm to drag her out of it.

"Did I understand you correctly? You are considering me as a potential sperm donor because your mother is a synaesthete, but that has absolutely nothing to do with your reasons for wanting to pretend to be my girlfriend. Have I got that right?"

"No you haven't," she snapped. "Mum's... synaesthesia" ...she said the word as if she were testing its flavour – or perhaps its weight – on her tongue... "hasn't got anything to do with what's wrong with her now. The colours are a coincidence." Her voice rose and her words came more quickly as she became visibly and audibly agitated. It was nearly as annoying as the soft, dreamy cadence had been.

"Or perhaps your Auror..."

"Lighter."

"...friend had tipped her off."

"He hadn't – it wasn't allowed. Maybe she remembered about it from before or it didn't go away when I..."

"But you don't believe your mother sees the future and paints it, then?"

"I don't believe anyone who says they see the future."

"And the prophecy?" He almost hated her for reminding him of it. "The one that foretold the triumph of a boy with more power than sense over an insane but brilliant Dark wizard? I suppose you don't believe in that, either?"

She glared at him for a moment before looking away, her cheeks reddening.

"That was different," she muttered. "That was magic."

"I see. And what is magic, Ms Granger?"

"I don't know what you want me to say," she said.

"Come, I'm sure someone as... inquisitive as you has given it some thought."

"Magic is... It just is. Like breathing."

Unable to help himself, he laughed.

"Yes," he agreed when he could speak again, which wasn't very long after. "Magic is like breathing. For you and for me. But that says nothing about what it is. Why we have it. Why your parents or your flatmate supposedly can't.

"Tell me, why can't they have magic?"

That the know-it-all didn't know at all was written clearly across her face.

"And if they can't have magic, however small it might be, why would you need me at all?"