Chapter 2

Chapter 2

If I'm helpless, help me glean some meaning

If I'm screening you out, let me in

Waiting - by Gunhill Road

Hermione crossed her arms over her chest, hiding the slight trembling of her hands. 'Why do you say things like that?' she asked quietly. 'You know it just ... bothers them.'

His eyes, now guarded, slid from hers to his valise, and he bent to open it, as if unpacking were imperative. 'Are you suggesting that I should pander to their preferences and ignore my own?' he responded, his tone carefully neutral.

Hermione felt the trapped, panicky sensation she had recently begun to experience when shut up in a room with ... her husband. It had been six months since the Ministry's new policy to exclude Muggle-born students from Hogwarts had been thwarted by Hermione's hastily arranged marriage. Ancient Hogwarts by-laws declared that the spouse of a fully-qualified wizard could not be denied an education at Hogwarts, even if that spouse were Muggle-born. In the middle of a tense, undeclared war, Dumbledore had been hard-put to find a fully qualified wizard who was both available (unmarried) and capable of countering anything the Death Eater-influenced Ministry might send her way (magically powerful). Professor Snape had been the best choice for her, if she wanted to remain at Hogwarts and continue to work with Harry and Ron...and the Order...towards Voldemort's demise. That did not, of course, mean that the professor was particularly graceful about it. And neither had she been, countering his snide nastiness with her shrill defensiveness.

She was better at managing herself around him now. Or had been, before this unaccountable nervousness when she was alone with him had begun to crop up.

She began to back away from him towards the door through which Harry and Ron had departed. His head swivelled, and he watched her go, an incalculable expression upon his sharp features.

'A rendezvous with your little friends?' he inquired silkily.

'No,' she answered. 'M-Molly needs someone to help with dinner.'

His eyes narrowed. 'I must insist that you honour our agreement.'

Hermione fumbled with the doorknob, unable to prevent her flash of defiance. 'You don't have to remind me every time I walk out the door!'

He crossed the room in two strides, reaching past her to push the door closed, the aroma of his aftershave...sandalwood and musk, indelibly him...enveloping her. He glared down at her, his thin lips pressed into a straight, angry line. She wanted to push him away...he was standing much too close...but she didn't dare to touch him. Desperately, she turned her face away, trying not to breathe in his confusing, emotion-roiling scent.

'Do you think I like this any better than you do?' he demanded. 'I have far more pleasant ways to spend my time than to be cooped up in this place with these people...and you.'

Hermione felt as if she'd been slapped. Sliding sideways along the wall, she didn't stop until she was in the corner of the room beside the antique writing desk, breathing deeply of the untainted air. Forcing herself to speak past the painful lump in her throat, she whispered bitterly, 'I know you do.'

His eyes tracked her skittering progress, but he did not pursue her. 'Will you abide by our agreement, then?'

'Yes.'

He opened the door. 'Then please, don't permit me to foil your escape.'

Hermione recognised the tone of acerbic irony, but it gave her no pause. She rushed past him and down the stairs, mentally berating herself for her failure to stand up to the bully she had married.

The ground floor of the house was deserted...everyone was getting settled in their rooms, no doubt...so Hermione fled the building altogether, crossing the clearing that passed for the front garden to the stream. Scrambling up onto a boulder that looked as if it had been designed for sitting, she wrapped her arms about her bent knees and stared at the water, working to calm herself.

Remus Lupin had been Hermione's other choice of husband, to keep her safely at Hogwarts. Hermione knew Lupin well. They were both part of Harry's inner circle, so they were quite familiar with and fond of one another. But Lupin had been on assignment, working for the Order amongst the werewolves, seeking to form an alliance. While marriage to him would have given her the protection of his fully-qualified status, going to live with him amongst the werewolves was impossible. Some days she thought that marrying Lupin would have been much easier to bear than dealing with Severus Snape's prickly personality.

It might even have been more like a real marriage.

Warm hands closed over her shoulders, and she glanced back to see Lupin smiling at her. Seated upon her perch, her eyes were on level with his.

'How are you, Hermione?' he asked kindly in his rather hoarse voice.

Hermione smiled at him. 'I'm very well,' she answered. 'I wish we didn't have to be here, though.'

He nodded gravely. 'I know it isn't what you had planned for. Have you discussed your ... decision with Severus?'

Hermione glanced about nervously for her irritable husband. 'No, not yet. I was waiting until the NEWTs results are done. I'll know more about my options, then.'

Lupin chuckled. 'I have no doubt you'll receive a page full of O's.'

Hermione privately thought he was correct, but she had no desire to boast about it to him.

'Did you have any trouble getting off work to come here?' she asked. Lupin's position as Special Assistant to the Minister for Werewolf Affairs was something he was very proud of, she knew.

Lupin lifted himself up to sit beside her on the boulder. 'Not at all. The Minister and Dumbledore are in contact. He insisted that Arthur, Percy and I come along, and Tonks will join us when she returns from her assignment in Ireland.'

Hermione sighed and allowed her forehead to rest upon her upraised knees. 'I hope we're not stuck here for very long,' she muttered miserably.

Lupin patted her gently between the shoulder blades, leaning close to murmur reassuringly in her ear.

But neither of them was aware of the figure that watched them from the window at the top of the house with tight-lipped fury.

Gathering for dinner at the long wooden table with its many mismatched chairs was a noisy affair. Hermione, whose job it had been to prepare the cucumber salad and the gooseberry fool for pudding, took a place beside Luna Lovegood, wondering if her husband would deign to appear for the meal. She would have liked to believe that six months of marriage to Severus Snape had given her insight into his character...or, at a minimum, the ability to predict what he would do in a given situation. This, however, had not proved to be the case. There were times when he became inexplicably prickly about mere nothings and other times when she expected explosions from him that never materialised.

Molly went to the door and screeched for the laggards, and Harry, Ron, Percy, Ginny, and the twins crowded noisily about the table. The Patil sisters and Cho Chang already occupied the spaces on Luna's other side, so Ron fell into the empty chair beside Hermione and snatched a warm roll from the basket in front of him.

'I'm starving,' he moaned, taking a bite.

Then Professor Snape appeared in the doorway, and silence fell around the table. His cold black eyes swept the room, lingering for an uncomfortable moment on Hermione's face, and she felt her cheeks flush.

'Ron, go sit by Remus,' Arthur Weasley instructed. 'Let Severus sit with his bride.'

At the horrible...and entirely innocent, for Arthur had no knowledge of the true state of affairs existing between Hermione and her husband...irony of being stigmatised as a bride, Hermione's flush flamed to a full-fledged, burning blush. Ron looked for a moment as if he would argue the point, but Snape's assumption that Ron would obey his father brought him forward; with less than good grace, Ron vacated the chair, and the professor seated himself.

'Thank you,' Snape murmured, seeming to speak to Arthur rather than to Ron.

No, Arthur and Molly were unaware of the nature of Hermione's marriage. They had not been involved in the tense discussion of how to counter the abrupt Ministry decision not to allow Muggle-born students to return to Hogwarts after the Christmas break.

Food was passed, plates were filled, and it seemed to Hermione that the table conversation picked right up where it had left off before the end of the war. Arthur, Lupin, Percy, and Bill gravely discussed the 'creditable threat' and its likely genesis, Molly and Fleur discussed the housekeeping arrangements, and Harry, Ron, and the twins squabbled over the chances of the Chudley Cannons to finish the season in some position other than solid rock bottom. The young witches debated possible group activities for their evening entertainment. Hermione sat, pushing mash about on her plate, keenly aware of the solid bulk of the professor beside her; he ate dispassionately...methodically...as if nothing of import were on the agenda for that evening.

No one, save for Hermione and Severus, knew that they had never before been forced to share a bed...well, not since the consummation of their marriage, and that been a one-off. Their mutual agreement to preserve the appearance of a marriage whilst they each maintained their own bed chambers and relative independence was now to be put to the test. In this house crammed with excess humanity, their charade could easily be revealed for what it was...and that would be in strict contravention of their agreement...the one of which he reminded her, it seemed, every time she walked out the door.

The prospect of putting up a believable front as a married couple in this small house, amongst these people who knew her rather well...and maintaining the fiction for an undetermined length of time...filled Hermione with a combination of dread and some other caroming emotion for which she had no name.

Luna and Ginny collected the dinner plates, and Molly served up the pudding. Hermione, who'd had no interest in bangers and mash, devoured her gooseberry fool with single-minded purpose.

'I see you discovered your appetite,' the professor observed quietly, breaking his silence for the first time since he had sat down beside her.

Hermione darted a glance to the cup of unsweetened tea before him, his pudding untouched. With one long digit, he pushed the dish towards her.

'Perhaps you could assist me with this,' he murmured, and Hermione risked a look into his eyes. He looked neither angry nor scornful...nor even as if he had judged her and found her wanting. And in spite of their putative relationship, she had no Snape-standard by which to gauge his expression. What did he mean by it? The uncertainty kept her off balance, made her feel awkward and wrong-footed.

But it was the sudden realisation that their interplay was being watched indulgently by Molly Weasley that goaded Hermione into responding.

'Thanks,' she muttered, digging her spoon into the sweet treat without looking at him again.

Clearly, she was already failing to sustain her side of their bargain, and her performance did not improve as the evening wore on.

They adjourned en masse to the sitting room after dinner, where Remus and Bill embarked on a game of wizard chess and the twins began to plan the details of a new advertising campaign for Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. Padma, Parvati, and Cho shared a stack of magazines, avidly perusing them and discussing new fashions. Percy sat at one end of the long sofa, scribbling in an official-looking leather portfolio; at the other end, Fleur sat happily with Molly, continuing an apparently on-going series of knitting lessons. Harry and Ginny, with Ron and Luna, began a game of Gobstones. When Hermione returned from doing the washing up...a chore for which she had cravenly volunteered rather than accompany her husband into the sitting room...she slipped into an empty seat at the Gobstones table, making a conspicuous fifth wheel in that game.

Professor Snape sat in solitary splendour near the staircase, his considerable nose buried in a scholarly periodical. His brow furrowed briefly when Hermione came into the room...just at about the time she sat down between Harry and Ron...but he didn't raise his eyes from his magazine, so she supposed the frown was a response to something he was reading.

At half-past nine, Arthur, who had been dozing in his chair, startled awake and said, 'I'm shattered, Molly, dear. Shall we make an early night of it?'

'Of course, love,' Molly responded, tucking away the soft white blanket she was knitting.

At ten, Bill stood and shook hands with Remus, then turned to his wife. 'Ready, love?' he asked, moving to stand before her.

'Oh, yes,' Fleur replied tranquilly. She placed her knitting project...a tiny, pale yellow oblong-shaped item...into Molly's sewing bag and rose to link her arm with his.

'Finally,' George exclaimed, standing and stretching. 'Come along, Remus...you promised us a game of Exploding Snap!'

Percy responded to this with a disgusted sigh. 'I can see I'll get no peace for work in this place!' he exclaimed. 'Good night!'

Percy departed as Remus and the young people converged on the games table, and Luna began scooping up the Gobstones, replacing them in their velvet bag. Harry and Ron moved around the large oval table to make room for the newcomers, and Remus slipped into the chair at Hermione's side.

For the first time since she'd entered the room, Professor Snape looked up, his eyes flicking over the table's inhabitants once before dropping again to his magazine.

'I hope I'll do better at cards than I did at chess,' Remus said with a wry smile. 'Perhaps Hermione will bring me luck.'

There was the sound of Professor Snape's magazine slapping onto the end table, and all eyes turned to him as he stood, a forbidding expression on his face.

'It's time for bed,' he said, his eyes on Hermione's face.

Hermione felt the blaze of colour in her cheeks again. Now all of her friends were looking at her, as if they were waiting to see if she would jump up and follow her husband to bed, like a good little wife. But she couldn't do it...couldn't pretend she wanted to do it...dreaded the very thought of being trapped alone with him and her ungovernable thoughts in a tiny room with one double bed.

'I ... I'll be up when the game is over,' she said nervously. She knew she was turning in an abysmal performance as the wife of Professor Snape, but she could not seem to help herself.

His black eyes glittered in the light of the ceiling-mounted oil lamp, and his lips thinned into a straight, irate line.

'So be it,' he responded, and without another word or glance about the room, the professor turned on his heel and marched up the staircase.