Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Hermione spent hours in the Room of Requirement. She discovered it was easy and comfortable to stay there rather than to go to the Great Hall for dinner, or even to go to bed at a reasonable hour. When she was hungry, the Room provided food. When she was tired, a cosy divan appeared, complete with blanket and pillow.

Best of all, she needn’t worry about reminders. There was no one here to give her pitying looks and no risk of running across a discarded copy of the Daily Prophet. She wouldn’t hear anyone gossiping about her aborted wedding. She wouldn’t even have to worry about overhearing discussion of something more tenuously connected in her mind to her former fiancée or his new wife—like Quidditch or plans for another TriWizard tournament or Beauxbatons.

So she stayed in the Room of Requirement, poring over manuscripts and books and scrolls to her swotty heart’s content.

And as she read, she thought back to that first discussion: what was it she had asked Luna and Ginny? “Male Veelas are dark-haired, ugly, and awkward?” If these books and manuscripts were to be believed, her sarcastic question had actually hit on the truth. So far, these ancient sources were all in agreement: male Veelas really were the opposite of female Veelas. They always had dark hair. The kindest descriptions used words like “ill-favoured” and “unattractive”; the rest described them with adjectives such as “ugly”, “hideous”, “unsightly”, and even—in one particularly critical tome—as “repulsive”. And, as one book put it, “If the female Veela is the epitome of alluring grace, the male Veela repels most who come into contact with him with his awkward cruelty.”

The last scroll—which looked to be the oldest item in the lot—had drawings in coloured ink. The female Veelas bred remarkably true, Hermione discovered, as she found one picture of a woman who could easily have been Fleur’s twin. Carefully unrolling the scroll further, Hermione caught her breath and barely managed to keep from dropping the delicate antique.

Professor Snape’s dark, angry visage stared back at her.

The next morning, Hermione skipped breakfast in favour of returning to the library. Assuming the glower Madam Pince sent her way was due to the stack of books Hermione had left on the table, she smiled and waved in response and went on with her research—but with a new focus and a new goal.

She was going to find out everything she could about Snape’s ancestry. His overreaction to her research topic would make sense if he had Veela ancestry, but she needed proof. When the question of why she felt she needed proof popped into her mind, she dismissed it. Knowledge was never a bad thing, in her opinion, and if she wanted to know more about Snape, there was nothing wrong with that.

But where to start...? Perhaps a wedding announcement had been published when Eileen Prince had married Tobias Snape…

Some time later, she was startled when a low voice over her shoulder said, “Ms Granger, I sincerely hope you’ve changed to a more relevant topic of research than Veelas.”

Feeling her face grow hot, Hermione said, “Oh, hello, Professor. I thought you were avoiding me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“It’s hardly flattering myself considering how angry you were the last time we met.”

“If I avoided everyone who irritated me, I would never leave my chambers.”

“You’re claiming you were merely irritated? You were shouting at me.”

“Things got a bit heated,” he allowed.

“You shouted at me in the library.” When he merely raised an eyebrow, Hermione added, “With Madam Pince glaring at us both.”

She thought he almost smiled. His eyes gleamed a little, at least. “I got over my fear of Madam Pince twenty-five years ago.”

“She’s glowering at you right now.”

He started slightly and began to turn around before stopping himself. “No, she’s not. And you won’t trick me into revealing fear I don’t have.”

“Riiiiiiiight.” Changing the subject, Hermione said briskly, “In any event, what brings you to the library today?”

“Our esteemed headmistress was concerned when you weren’t at breakfast this morning after missing dinner last night. She ordered me to see if you had died of a broken heart. I imagine she wouldn’t want a dead body cluttering the castle.”

Until that moment, Hermione had been so caught up in the puzzle of Snape’s ancestry that it hadn’t occurred to her that today was meant to be her wedding day. “Oh,” she said in a voice she wished hadn’t sounded so small, so sad.

“Come now, Ms Granger, that wasn’t even one of my better efforts. Buck up.”

“It’s not that. It’s… It’s my wedding day.”

“No,” Snape said bluntly. “It’s not. And instead of moping about, you should be thanking every deity you can think of, including the minor ones, for granting you a narrow escape from a life in ginger hell.”

“I’m not allowed to be sad I’m not getting married to the man I love?”

“I refuse to believe you have such bad taste as to love someone so far beneath you in every way imaginable.” Shaking his head, he said, “Everyone expected you to pair up with him, so you did. And once you did, you were stuck. The best thing that boy ever did for you was to get you out of marrying him when you couldn’t manage to extricate yourself.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“Do not presume to tell me what I do or do not believe.”

“If you believed that… That would mean your opinion of me is much higher than I thought. I’ve never seen any evidence that you thought I was any better than Ron or Harry—and you hate both of them.” Even as she realised that she had said the unnameable name without the stab of pain that usually accompanied it, she added, “Don’t bother denying it.”

“Why should I deny it? Though ‘hate’ is perhaps too strong a word. Hate takes a lot of energy to sustain, you know. But I acknowledge that I dislike them both. You, on the other hand, merely irritate me. Particularly when you waste time and energy worrying about or pining over either one of them. Or when you research something ridiculous.”

“Like Veelas,” she guessed aloud.

“Like Veelas,” he confirmed.

As she considered his comments, Hermione suddenly felt rather good. Smiling, she said, “So, if I merely irritate you, I suppose I must be one of your favourite people.”

He frowned. “I wouldn’t go that far.”

“Of course I am. Even Minerva, who I know you like, irritates you. In fact, most people downright anger you. So if I merely irritate you like Minerva does, you must like me, too.”

“Well, if I do—and I’m not conceding that—I shall clearly have to re-think it now that I realise you’re insane.”

Hermione grinned. “You like me. You know you do. Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

“I believe I’ll just tell Minerva that rumours of your broken-hearted demise have been greatly exaggerated. And that she ought to be more concerned about whether you’ve lost your mind.” Turning with a dramatic billowing of robes, he started toward the door.

“I’ll see you at lunch, Severus. We can sit together and share secrets.”

Other than a slight hitch in his step, he didn’t respond, so she decided she would henceforth address him as ‘Severus’. After all, a hitch in his step hardly qualified as a protest.

A/N: The beta and Britpick Team from heaven is hereby showered with gratitude and love.

(Any remaining errors are, of course, mine alone.)