Please Don't Stop the Rain

"Accio wand!" Granger didn't know whether to scream in frustration or to cry. "It's stuck," she said.

"Perhaps if I try...?" suggested Snape's best self. "Accio wand!"

An ebony wand flew from the living Snape's sleeve and into the painting. The startled portrait figure ducked, still clutching his brush and palette. The wand continued past him, past his easel, and embedded itself in one of the windows of the painted studio.

"Well, that was unexpected," the portrait observed.

"Damn you, you idiot!" Snape shouted. "I just painted that three days ago! It won't be dry for days."

The portrait shouted back, "Well, if you'd painted me with a wand of my own, the spell probably wouldn't have got confused when I Summoned one! And if you'd deigned to use linseed oil, they'd be dry already. But no, you have to use your special concoction – as the binder and the medium – even on the windows!"

~@~

It was a lot to take in. Under normal circumstances CDW Granger would have thought the detailed discussion about curing rates, iodine numbers, the properties of linolenic acid versus those of linoleic acid and spells to increase paint film durability fairly interesting. Ineffable Granger should have been taking notes. But no one was telling either one of her what she really wanted to know, and the little she'd had learnt about oil painting hadn't prepared her to fully understand what they were saying.

"...and everyone struggles with hands. I think I can claim without conceit that I do better than all but the great masters, but the fingers weren't perfect, so I decided do a quick touch-up," Severus – something about the portrait's more open demeanour invited greater familiarity – was explaining. "It doesn't hurt, of course, and it wouldn't have hindered her interaction with anything in her own painting, but your wand is real, and poppy oil takes so much longer to dry."

"Not that using poppy oil is 'mad' or anything," Snape put in. "It's not as if takes 'nearly for ever' to dry and carries a greater risk of cracking!"

"It won't yellow over time the way linseed oil will. And thanks to spells you developed, I don't need to worry about cracking, do I?"

"Oh, of course, not cracking is more important than quick curing when you're the one doing the painting, that..."

"It's not the same thing!" Severus cried. "She's not meant for a client, is she? Why should it matter if a portrait painted for my own pleasure dries in..."

"Wait! Why would he paint me?" Granger addressed the portrait within a portrait as if the two wizards weren't still bickering with each other. "That doesn't make sense."

The oils-on-canvas Hermione took a breath to answer, but her creator was already painting a black gag over her mouth. She used her fingerless hand to wipe it away, glaring as she reminded him, "Wet on dry, Severus." Turning back to CDW Granger, she explained, "It gets lonely here – with no one but himself to talk to. The other portraits are usually grandmotherly types without much to talk about besides kids and cookery."

"But that doesn't explain why he'd want my company." Granger chewed her lower lip. "There must be any number of people he'd rather be stuck with."

"No one intelligent enough to keep up decent conversation."

"Oh," said Granger. "I suppose I can see that."

Snape choked on some sarky remark or other, and Severus offered him a smug grin.

~@~

After another hour filled with more arguing and more failed attempts at retrieving both wands, everyone involved was exhausted.

Although Severus had managed to repaint Hermione's fingers to his satisfaction, their flesh and blood counterparts didn't seem inclined to doing anything more than glare at each other.

Severus stared in dismay at the windows still shivering under an onslaught of rain. It didn't look like the weather would be clearing any time soon, and he knew from experience and borrowed memories that forced inactivity left Severus Snape bad-tempered. "Why don't you show Ineffable Granger the kitchen? It's past suppertime, and I'm sure you both could use the nourishment."

Snape scowled fiercely, but pushed away from the window he'd been leaning against.

"Granger?" he growled.

After only a moment's hesitation, she nodded, then followed him through the small door leading to one of the covered gardens.

Severus turned back to Hermione's canvas just in time to see the towel pool at her feet.

"I thought they'd never leave," she whispered mischievously.

~@~

Dinner, while surprisingly good, had not surprisingly started out a very subdued affair.

Granger had offered compliments on the delicious seafood "cawl" Snape served with a crusty bread he'd baked himself, and his acceptance had sounded grudging. (She realised only belatedly that telling him true cawl was made with lamb mightn't have been the best way to preface her appreciation.) But by the time she was eating the last of her third helping – and he had already moved on to nibbling at what he would only call "a exceptionally fragrant local cheese" – the first bottle of wine lay empty, and the conversation had expanded to include his work and hers.

"Perhaps you'd like to phone Bagnold before it gets too late," he suggested as he topped up her third glass of "a local vintage" he particularly recommended.

"Phone?"

"Yes." He grinned at her. (Surely that was the wine?) "A telephone. You'd be amazed at the wonders of modern technology your Ineffables have at hand."

Minutes later, she was lying to her boss. "He's invited me to remain so that I can observe his work, and I think it a good idea to study his methods, though I'm certain there is nothing for us to be concerned about."

It wasn't till she was installed in his guest bedroom and slipping into the nightshirt he'd wandlessy resized to fit her that she realised Bagnold hadn't asked why she had communicated via Muggle means.

~@~@~

"I don't know why you're sitting in here moping when you could be with her. And it's not as if you've painted anything in days."

Snape glared at his painted reflection before he remembered that he still wasn't paying him any attention.

"And I'll bet you still haven't told her you have a spare wand. I'm amazed she fell for 'wandless re-sizing!' Perhaps you aren't the only one fooling yourself."

Snape listened with half an ear to more unsolicited advice until the painted wizard's painted witch demanded a cease fire.

Her well reasoned argument – with its heavy reliance on the existence of turpentine and white spirit – made Snape hide a smile.

Three days of doing little beyond cooking for himself and his guest, eating and sleeping, and attempting to ignore all of his portraits made conversing with Hermione Granger a more attractive prospect.

All right. Conversing with Hermione Granger makes conversing with Hermione Granger a more attractive prospect.

The woman she was today was an improvement over the girl she had been at school. Although Hermione Granger had proved herself to still be intelligent and inquisitive and eager to learn, that she'd got over that annoying tendency to believe that whatever she'd learnt from books had more value than anything another person might share was... appealing. Snape didn't mind (much) admitting as much to himself. Admitting it to anyone else – like to his busybody portrait, or to Granger – was out of the question. But that needn't keep him from continuing to enjoy her company.

With that in mind, he set off to retrieve her from his library.

~@~

"Is it time for lunch already?" Granger looked up from a book on grinding one's own pigments. "Did you know some manufacturers of oil paints insist that the toxic substances give the best colours?" She turned back to the page she'd been poring over. "Of course you know; this is your book, after all. Have I told you your book is absolutely fascinating?"

It wasn't as fascinating as talking to Snape about his work was, but he was a busy man, and she couldn't expect him to devote all his time to an uninvited guest. Still...

"Lunch will not be ready to eat for some time," he told her. "I thought you might like to see the rest of the house."

That made her look up again. "Oh!" she said. "Oh, yes! I'd like that very much, actually. I've been trying to work out how it all fits together, but it hasn't been easy when I've seen so little." She forced herself to stop talking before Snape rescinded the offer. "Is now a good time?"

"That was the idea, yes."

His smile was tight, but it was a smile nonetheless, and she was willing to take what she could get.

Once again, he led her through to the kitchen and out into the covered garden that connected it to the art studio. Upon entering his work space, he turned to the wall directly adjacent and reached behind one of the racks. Half the wall swung forward on hidden and silent hinges.

He waved Granger ahead of him, and her breath caught as she stepped into a bathroom fantastic enough to rival the Prefects' bath at Hogwarts. The whole place had been tiled in huge squares of dark grey marble with accents the colour of new leaves.

"Not quite Slytherin colours," she observed and was pleased to see him smile at the inane comment when he could just as easily have brought the tour to an abrupt end.

"No," he agreed.

The bath itself took pride of place in the centre of the room. She recognised it from the portrait Snape's portrait had painted. It wasn't quite large enough to swim in, but it had seemingly been carved from a single block of translucent green stone.

"Quartz," he explained without her having to ask. "It was here when the house came into my possession. I'd never have been able to afford it. The previous owner hadn't really been able to, either. This room held the bath and nothing else. Even the floor hadn't been finished."

He pointed out a complicated shower system suspended from the ceiling, explaining that he'd designed it himself and had used the money he'd got selling the drawings to a Muggle bath outfitter to finish the rest of the room

"I didn't ask for nearly enough," he told her. "Even with their 'gift' of the prototype and free installation, they took advantage of my ignorance."

Granger marvelled at how forthcoming he was being about what he had to see as a weakness, but he was already moving over to one of the eight walls.

The loo was hidden behind a cubicle constructed of thin slats of black wood, much like the one near the room he'd given her to use. A double sink – more black wood and green quartz and grey marble – stood at its side.

She wondered why a single man, living alone, would need a double sink, but decided against asking.

Snape hesitated at the black wood and grey marble wall standing directly across from the door to his atelier.

Granger stood a little away from him, afraid to ask the questions tumbling about her mind, lest the snarling professor return. She was really starting to like this more convivial Severus Snape and hated to do anything that might make him disappear.

"This is the door to my personal room," he said without turning around, and he spoke so quietly she could barely hear him. "This is the only way to reach it from inside the house. If you ever have need of me and cannot find me anywhere else, place your hand here..." he demonstrated by fitting his palm to a space between two tiles "...and the door will open."

They didn't go inside, though Snape had her practise opening the door three times before he led her back through his studio and into another garden.

~@~

The tour took far longer than it should have done because, once she'd got over the fit of reticence that had claimed her in his bathroom, Granger asked a lot of questions. She also wanted to stop and look at this or that as he guided her through the ten rooms and four gardens.

In each room, he noticed, her eyes found copies of a watercolour he'd painted soon after moving in. By the time they returned to the kitchen, he could see she was brimming with curiosity, and sure enough, she went directly to the copy hanging on the wall that separated the hub of his home from the laboratory.

"They're everywhere!" she exclaimed. When she turned to face him with a smug smile on her lips, he felt an urge to wipe it off using his own. "It's the house, isn't it."

Now don't you start! he admonished himself. Bad enough she saw him painting her in the nude.

"Very good, Ineffable Granger," he said for lack of anything better coming to mind. "Fifty points to Gryffindor."

He joined her at the wall and lifted the painting down. After passing his hand over the surface, he handed it to her.

~@~

The morning of the sixth day, Granger sat at the kitchen table while Snape prepared their dinner and explained how Aberforth Dumbledore had saved his life after Nagini's attack. As soon as Snape had been well enough to travel, Aberforth had sent him into hiding at Honeycomb House. Building the house on tiny Ynys Ysbryd had been his one attempt at getting out from his famous brother's shadow.

Aberforth had suspected his older brother had misused the wizard who had supposedly murdered him, and after the whole truth had come out ("Thanks to Harry Bloody Potter!"), the older wizard had made Snape an offer he'd found he didn't want to refuse.

"No good for the goats," he'd claimed. "But no use letting it sit empty."

"It was a gift, really, though he saved my pride by accepting the deed to the house at Spinner's End in exchange. The only thing further he asked of me was that I learn to be my 'best self' during my isolation." He tossed a rueful smile over his shoulder. "The process is on-going, as you have no doubt noticed."

"That's why you do it, isn't it? That's why you paint the portraits?"

"In part," he acknowledged. "The Minister saw to the paperwork for the exchange himself, and he acts as Secret Keeper to the whole island. All in all, it's not been bad being 'dead', but I do need to eat, so I paint others for profit while my own portrait tries to teach me to live up to Aberforth's directive."

She rose from the table and walked across the room. Passing her hand over the watercolour, she traced a finger over Snape's map, admiring the clever ways in which he had made use of the rooms' unusual shapes.

"There is one thing I still don't understand: if it's meant to resemble a honeycomb, why didn't he build it in hexagons?"

"This is Aberforth we're talking about," Snape reminded her. "The man might have a good and generous heart, but few would mistake him for intelligent."

~@~@~

"How much longer is this going to take?" Granger knew she sounded peevish and regretted the loss of control, but honestly, how could this have happened? Not losing her wand. She knew how that had come about. But why on earth was she enjoying her old Potion professor's company?

"In a hurry to be somewhere else, Ineffable Granger?" Snape asked easily. As if she hadn't been horribly rude after he'd been so damned pleasant all morning and had even cooked all of her favourite things for breakfast. The bastard! "Nothing is stopping you leaving any time you like. Now the rain's stopped, I can take you across to the village, then drive to town from there. The train stops at the station regularly."

Her jaw dropped. "You drive? You have a car? You have your own boat?"

"I do, I have, and of course I have. I wouldn't have offered otherwise. I would have offered sooner, only it's been years since I could get the top to go back up." His disarming smile made the butterflies in her tummy flutter disturbingly. "As soon as the paint has dried, I'll send your wand along directly. Shall it go to the Ministry, or would you prefer to have it sent to your home?"

Why should she have to choose either? The truth was... Well, she didn't want to think too much about the truth.

"Granger? The Ministry or your home?"

"I'd rather wait for my wand, if you don't mind." She bit her. "Only, her fingers will be dry soon, won't they?"

"So, you are in a hurry to leave." Odd. He sounded almost disappointed.

"Not really! But Rose Weasley's... That's Ron's new daughter, and her christening is next week." She gave him a weak smile. "I've got sort of the second most important role to play."

Snape gave her such a dark look, she thought he would toss her out right then.

Instead, he piled another helping of cheesy eggs on her plate and sat back to stare at her.

His voice was deliberate and low when he finally spoke. It made the butterflies flutter even more furiously.

"That imbecilic toad gave you up because he was too stupid to see your value beyond catering to his ego. Now he expects you to be his spawn's godmother? You'll have your wand back before the ceremony, but I'll drive you down to Devon myself if you'd rather not wait."

A slow smile spread across his thin lips as he spread butter on a piece of toast.

"In fact, I'd be happy to take you to there. I don't need a wand to hex him for you."

For the first time since waking, Granger felt unequivocally happy. But she suspected he might think her bright smile meant she was laughing at him, so she did the only thing she could think of to allay any such fears: she laid down her fork and reached across the table to take his hand, toast and all.

"As much as I appreciate the offer, I'd prefer to stay and learn more about your painting process," she told him, hoping fervently that he'd understand what she was really trying to say. "Bagnold would want me to give the fullest report possible."

He dropped the toast. Twisting his hand round to link his fingers with hers, he smiled back. "I'm sure she would."

fin

A/N: Huge thanks are due to my lovely alpha and beta readers: karelia, bleddyn (who also Welsh-picked) and linlawless.