The Test, Part I

Chapter 18: The Test, Part I

Hermione stepped up to the front door of the attractive Georgian home and knocked briskly. She could virtually feel the waves of tension coming from her dinner companion, yet there was no way around this. It was a necessary next step, something that could not be avoided or delayed any longer.

It was time.

Her own palms were sweaty, she realized as she waited. One glance at Severus told her that he would rather be just about anywhere but here right now. Given the deeds of his own past, it was remarkable that he should find this so intimidating.

Remarkable, but not surprising.

There was the sound of a lock being turned, and the front door of the Granger home swung inward. Julia stood there, smiling graciously, extending her hand.

"Severus, I'm so pleased to finally meet you. Come in, won't you?"

Snape hesitated for a fraction of a second, but disguised it as chivalry by allowing Hermione to precede him. "Thank you, Mrs. Granger."

"Please call me Julia. I still think of 'Mrs. Granger' as my mother-in-law."

"Very well... Julia."

Severus' face was impassive, his voice cool. If Hermione didn't know better, she would have thought him distant and disinterested, and she mentally congratulated herself on forewarning her parents. Julia waved in the direction of the kitchen.

"Lawrence is just finishing up. That's one reason we remodeled; we wanted to have plenty of space for entertaining while we cook, so go right on back."

"While 'we' cook?" Hermione echoed, looking amused.

Julia grimaced. "What my daughter means, Severus, is that my job has more to do with laying the table and less to do with the actual meal preparation. Lawrence is a wonderful cook, and I mainly try to stay out of his way. May I take your... coats?"

Her mother had paused to determine if the couple was wearing wizarding cloaks or their Muggle equivalent, Hermione noted as she handed over her coat. Severus shrugged out of the black leather jacket and allowed Julia to hang it in a hall closet.

"This way," Hermione said, leading Snape down the hallway to the kitchen.

Lawrence Granger glanced up from the stove, where he was transferring some cutlets from a skillet to a baking dish.

"Hello there," he said. "I'm afraid Julia was a bit optimistic on the timeframe. I'm running behind, but not by much. This dish cooks rather quickly."

"And we're probably a few minutes early," Hermione admitted with a wry grin. "Dad, this is Severus Snape. Severus – my father, Lawrence Granger."

Lawrence hastily put down the platter he held and extended a hand to Snape. "How do you do, Severus?"

"I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Granger."

Severus maintained his usual cool demeanor, the same stilted reserve. Hermione glanced from one man to the other, trying to read expressions and nuances in a split second.

"Please, make it Lawrence."

Snape nodded. "Lawrence."

"What are we having, Dad?" Hermione climbed onto one of the counter stools and motioned for Severus to do the same.

"Pork tenderloin with Dijon-Marsala sauce and Japanese spinach with sweet Sesame seeds." Lawrence took a final cutlet from the skillet and placed it on a baking sheet, then popped the baking sheet into the cooker.

"It sounds... quite interesting," Severus ventured.

Lawrence Granger chuckled. "Thank you for phrasing it politely. That's not how my wife referred to it when I told her what tonight's menu would be."

"I believe I said it sounded rather bizarre." Julia came through the kitchen doorway. "I didn't actually mean it as an insult."

"I'm simply never appreciated around here," Lawrence chuckled. He shifted the skillet back and forth while a dab of butter melted over the heat before commenting, "I understand that you own your own business, Severus."

"Yes. I manufacture various products, primarily explosives."

"Is there really that large a market for explosives?" Julia inquired.

"A lot of them are rather mild, to be used in gag gifts and toys."

"You remember Fred and George's shop, Mum," Hermione reminded her.

"Of course." Julia began to put silverware around the places at the dining table, looking wistful. "I love those boys. They're adorable, aren't they?"

Severus looked as though he wanted to differ, but said nothing. Hermione turned pink. Not only were Fred and George no longer boys, they were also on tonight's list of Topics to Be Avoided. That list included all Weasleys, Potters and Albus Dumbledore, along with a smattering of other issues that Hermione had put forth. Right now, her mother was dancing perilously close to the edge.

Lawrence had paid closer attention to his daughter's instructions. "Hermione said that you do all the manufacturing yourself. How in the world do you manage? Isn't that rather tricky with something like explosives?"

"The potions themselves are rather simple, but I use a patented Stasis Charm to prevent any problems with shipping. And I have one assistant, as well," Snape added.

"What makes your charm different?"

"It's self-limiting. I place it on the products as soon as they're packed; once the boxes are opened at the receiving end, the charm dissipates."

Frowning, Lawrence measured out a cup of wine and added it to the sauce he was preparing. "Forgive me for asking this – I'm sure it's ridiculously obvious to your fellow witches and wizards – but what makes that spell of yours different?"

Snape smiled tolerantly. "It's actually not ridiculously obvious. Other stasis charms halt a chemical reaction in progress, and once the charm is lifted, the reaction resumes where it left off. Needless to say, that could result in a bit of a nasty surprise for the buyer of an explosive. My charm renders the product inert until used for its intended purpose."

"Very impressive. I --" Lawrence broke off as his mobile phone began chirping beneath the apron he wore. "Oh, damn. Now what?"

Hermione sat up straighter in apprehension. The one thing about the evening that she couldn't control was an emergency related to her parents' dental practice. While true emergencies were generally rare, it was the mere possibility of something cropping up that had worried her. She watched her father take the call and tried to piece together some idea of events from the one-sided conversation. Her mother, she noted, was doing the same.

After a few moments, Lawrence said, "I'll meet you there in ten minutes, Jack. Really, it's no problem. Just make sure she keeps the tooth submerged in some milk, all right?"

Oh, no... Hermione's heart sank. She exchanged a dark look with Julia, who was regarding her with sympathy.

"Dad, do you have to go in?" she demanded as soon as her father ended the call.

"Jack Tucker's daughter Jenny fell off her bike and knocked out a front tooth. I'm sorry, honey, but I have to go in." Lawrence began to remove his apron.

"Why don't I go?" Julia stepped forward at once. "You're right in the midst of cooking dinner."

Lawrence grimaced and spread his hands in a gesture of defeat. "Jack's my golfing mate, Julia. It wouldn't be right. Look, I'll just let turn off the stove and let things simmer here. Nothing's ruined. I'll be back in less than an hour."

Severus placed a quieting hand on Hermione's arm.

"Perhaps I could get things ready," Julia volunteered.

There was a brief look of alarm in Lawrence's eyes as he tossed his apron on the counter. "Just leave it, Julia. It'll be fine. Hermione," he said, leaning over to kiss his daughter on the cheek as he passed by, "I'm sorry, love. I'll be back as soon as I can. Severus, forgive me for running off like this."

"I understand," Snape said.

There was the jangle of keys in the hallway and the sound of the front door opening and closing. Julia sighed and walked over to the stove, surveying the assortment of bowls, pots, and pans that her husband had spread all over. "I'm so sorry, Hermione."

"It's all right, Mum." Hermione managed a smile.

"I wish we'd thought to make some appetizers. You'll both be starving by the time your father returns."

"It's no problem," Severus assured her.

"Perhaps I could find some biscuits or something." Julia leaned over to open a lower cabinet, and as she did so, knocked a cleaver off the counter. Out of pure reaction she grabbed for it and – unfortunately – caught it by the blade. Julia shrieked and the knife clattered to the floor; blood began to drip from her hand immediately.

"Mum!" In an instant, Hermione had slid off her stool and raced to her mother's side.

"How stupid can I be?" Julia muttered, leaning against the kitchen cabinets as she cradled her bleeding hand. "Why didn't I just let the thing fall?"

Hermione grabbed a tea towel from the counter and pressed it against her mother's hand. "Here, Mum. Hold your arm over the sink," she murmured, steering the older woman in that direction.

"Tergeo." Severus was behind her, using his wand to clean up the blood droplets that had puddled on the floor. "How bad is it?" he asked.

"I don't know," Hermione began, just as Julia pulled the tea towel away. Blood continued to pour steadily from a cut that ran almost the width of her mother's palm.

"Here." Snape turned on the tap, grasped Julia's arm and held it under the stream of cold water.

Julia winced in pain. The blood mingled with the water swirling down the drain, but before it began to well up again, it became obvious that the cut was deeper than anyone had imagined.

"I'll need to visit the Emergency Clinic," Julia groaned. "There may have been damage to the tendons. Of all the stupid things to do!"

Hermione flashed a brief, questioning glance at Severus. While she knew that her mother would not object to the use of magic to heal her hand, Hermione suspected that her own magical first aid skills weren't up to the task if the damage was as deep as Julia suspected. Snape hesitated, speculating, then shook his head.

"We could staunch the bleeding a bit, but it would be best if she went to the Muggle clinic," he agreed.

"I'll drive you, Mum," Hermione announced while Severus pulled out his wand.

"And when was the last time you drove a Muggle car?" Julia looked up suspiciously.

"A long time ago, but I'm sure it's like riding a bicycle." Hermione could see a puzzled expression pass over Snape's face as he bent over Julia's hand, and she made a mental note to explain the phrase to him later. "Where are your car keys, Mum?"

"On the table in the front hall."

Hermione started off in search of the keys, then called back over her shoulder, "Do you want to stay here or go with us?" she asked Severus.

"I'll stay here. Perhaps I can salvage dinner or something."

Hermione nodded. Minutes later, her mother was ensconced in the passenger seat with her hand wrapped in a tea towel, and the Grangers' second car lurched out of the driveway and down the street. Snape watched them go, certain that Muggle vehicles didn't usually travel in such a jerky, irregular manner, and hoped that Hermione would make it to hospital and back without crashing the thing.

He'd not been in a purely Muggle house since forced to go on a handful of Death Eater raids years earlier, and he felt no fascination with the Grangers' house now. Still, this had been Hermione's childhood home. Snape found himself wandering through the lounge, studying the family pictures that dotted the bookshelves and mantel. There were a number of Muggle photographs of Hermione, many of them taken before she'd ever darkened the doors of Hogwarts. In quite a few of them, Hermione was posed with a book in her arms or her lap, and Severus had to smile at that. The wizarding photographs showed Hermione as a familiar teenager: in one, she wore her Hogwarts robe, adorned with a shiny prefect's badge; in another, she was clustered with Potter and Weasley, laughing and waving like the troublesome trio they'd been back then. Then there was the wedding photograph – Hermione looking radiant in a white robe, Ron Weasley clutching her to his side.

The wave of jealousy that washed over him caught Snape completely by surprise. For a marriage that was merely awaiting the official document to declare it legally dead, why should he feel so threatened by that photograph? And the truth occurred to him then: he wanted Hermione to look so radiant, so happy, because she was with him, Severus Snape, former Death Eater, murderer and friend to no one.

* * *

"I'm back!" Lawrence Granger's voice sounded from the front hall. "See, I told you it wouldn't take long."

As footsteps neared and the man appeared in the kitchen doorway, Snape looked up from the Sesame seeds that he was grinding with a mortar and pestle. "Welcome home," he said calmly. "Dinner's nearly ready."

Lawrence stopped short at the sight of Severus performing the cooking chores. "What happened? Where are the women?"

"Your wife accidentally cut her hand just after you left, and Hermione had to drive her to the Emergency Hospital."

"Hermione? Drive a car? Did she even remember how?"

"From the way the car was veering about as they left, I'd say no."

Lawrence stared at Snape for a moment, then burst out laughing. "Poor Hermione. She wanted this evening to go smoothly, and this is how it turns out."

It crossed Severus' mind to ask why Hermione wanted the evening to go smoothly, but he decided that it was a question best posed to her instead of her father. "It's certainly been my experience that life doesn't usually work that way."

"You've got that right," Lawrence said, still chuckling. "How did it happen?"

Snape nodded toward the butcher knife lying on the counter. "As I said, it was purely accidental. She knocked the knife off and instinctively tried to grab for it."

"Poor Jules. For someone who's so skilled at working in other people's mouths, she's an absolute disaster at home sometimes." Lawrence rolled up his sleeves. "Okay, what do we have here? I see you peeked at the recipe for the Japanese spinach."

"I saw the mortar and pestle, and I was curious..."

"The Japanese don't call them mortars and pestles. They're 'suribachi' and 'surikogi'. You see, the sweet flavor of the roasted Sesame seeds is more intense when they're ground."

Snape regarded him sideways. "You quite enjoy cooking, don't you?"

"I do indeed." Lawrence smiled broadly. "It's very therapeutic. Tell you what... It looks as if you have a handle on the spinach, so why don't you finish that, and I'll go back to the pork tenderloin?"

The two men worked in companionable silence for several minutes. Finally, Lawrence spoke up.

"Tell me about you and Hermione, Severus. Are you merely friends, or are you romantically involved?"

Snape, who had been concentrating on the instructions in the cookery book, felt his nerves snap to attention. He carefully hunted down the right words before speaking. "We've only just realized that we... harbor feelings for each other. At present we're tiptoeing rather cautiously around the subject."

"I see. It must seem strange to you to think that she was once your student."

Severus shook his head, his eyes still on the cookery book. "If you know anything about my past, then you know that was another lifetime ago. I don't think of it at all."

"Of course. But then, Hermione has always been very mature for her age."

"Does the difference between our ages bother you?"

"Not really. I'm rather surprised that she didn't marry an older man to begin with. Oops..." Lawrence grinned. "I'm getting close to disallowed topics for this evening. Julia and I were absolutely forbidden to discuss the Weasley family, among other things."

Snape looked up at that. "Hermione gave you instructions on what not to talk about?"

"She's rather headstrong and determined on a number of counts, as I'm sure you're finding out."

"Were you and your wife disappointed by Hermione's decision to divorce Weasley?" Severus asked out of curiosity.

"We didn't raise a squawk, if that's what you mean," Lawrence told him. "We loved Ron, of course, but you could see where the two of them had grown apart over the years. They were merely going through the motions for a good while, I believe. If I recall correctly, she expects the divorce papers to arrive any day now."

There was a brief silence while Snape digested this. "Your daughter is... uncommon," he ventured. "I've suspected that the two were something of a mismatch."

"I'm assuming... you have no children, correct, Severus?"

Snape shook his head. Granger continued.

"When you have a child, you believe anything is possible. Your child could be Prime Minister, or the next Stephen Hawking, or Bill Gates. And then, when your child's abilities begin to point one way or another, you begin to narrow your hopes a bit. You just want her to land a good job in a field she loves and find a wonderful man to share the rest of her life. Then comes the worst part, though: a phase where you're positive that she's made the worst possible choices, and that all your hopes are gone. But if you're smart, you realize that you were hoping she'd take your path instead of her own. And that's the good part, if you're blessed with a child like Hermione. Your little girl turns into a wonderful woman who's blessed with brains and talent and common sense and outright decency, and you wouldn't trade her for the Prime Minister or anybody else."

Severus didn't quite know what to say. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was sixteen years old, waiting for a girl to descend the stairs for an evening out while her father issued thinly veiled threats regarding appropriate behavior.

"Hermione has those traits you mentioned in abundance," he said finally.

"You've got that right," Lawrence chuckled. "Take that book business. Once she got it in her head that the people who fought in your war weren't getting all the credit they were due, she went at it like a ball of fire."

"She is not lacking for determination."

"I know she was disappointed when those magazine guys turned the tables on her, but she stuck to her guns. When it comes down to questions of integrity, Hermione digs her heels in and simply won't budge."

The phrasing struck Severus as odd, given what Hermione had told him about the collapse of the magazine offer. "I didn't think that the money would be so pivotal an issue for her," he said.

Lawrence looked blank. "Money?"

It was Snape's turn to appear at a loss. "She told me that the editor had reneged on their offer. Is that not the case?"

Granger sighed heavily and shook his head. "Nuts. I think I'm back in restricted conversational territory again."

"You might as well explain," Snape said dryly. "I'll be asking Hermione about it if you don't."

"Damn. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, I suppose. Here's the thing, Severus: they wanted information about you. All the dirt, all the gossipy stuff, from what Hermione told me. And she wouldn't give it to them."

Severus stared at Lawrence Granger as the realization sank in. Hermione had given up her final shot at being published in order to protect him.