Chapter Six

Thanks to RenitaLeandra for the beta!

Disclaimer: If it was mine, Snape would be on a beach somewhere, drinking margaritas. Draw your own conclusions.

Chapter Six

Hermione has barely set her briefcase on her desk when Harry comes barging into her office on Monday morning, the coat she wore to the Weasleys' party in his hand.

"You left without even saying goodbye," he says, throwing it over the back of her chair as if it offends him in some deeply personal way.

Hermione sighs. She should have expected that there would be a temper tantrum from Harry. He has become very protective of the Weasleys since the war, has become a positive bully about it since Ron died, and though she understands the psychology behind it, the personal umbrage he's been taking on their behalf is starting to wear her patience thin.

"I know. I'm sorry." She pauses, decides she's too tired to make up an excuse to placate Harry's excessive indignation, and says, "You know, Harry, I'm too tired to justify my actions. I felt like leaving so I left."

Harry stares at her in outrage for a few seconds then shouts, "What is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" she snaps, suddenly frustrated with how unreasonably dense he can be. "What's wrong with me is that my husband died, and I don't want to talk to Arthur in the hallways or go to Weasley parties or reminisce about Ron with people I don't know. I don't want to be bullied into doing and saying things I don't mean. I don't want..." Hermione's breath catches, and her eyes begin to water, and she presses her hand to her mouth before anything else can come out. She feels brittle, like she might break apart at any minute, and she very much wants Harry to go away.

"Hermione-" Harry begins in a tone of voice that indicates that he has just remembered he isn't the only one mourning Ron.

Hermione holds up a hand. "No, don't. Just... leave."

"What?"

"I said leave. Get out."

"Hermione..."

Hermione opens her briefcase and begins to unpack her paperwork. "Leave, Harry."

He stands there, blinking stupidly at her, then swallows audibly. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Okay." He turns to go, but pauses in the doorway. "I'm sorry, Hermione."

Hermione doesn't reply, can't reply, not right now when she is so upset with him. She just calmly goes about unpacking her paperwork and organizing it until he finally takes the hint and slips out into the corridor without another word.

*****

Eleven o'clock rolls around, and she still hasn't made any headway on the corrections she is attempting to make to the World Cup proposal. In fact, she finds that she couldn't care less about the proposal, the corrections, or anything affiliated with them, so she decides to go to lunch early to regroup and perhaps try again later.

She puts on the coat Harry left lying over the back of her chair and steps out into the busy corridor. The hallways of the Ministry are always busy at midday as people hurry to finish their tasks before they go to lunch, or loiter in the corridors during their lunch hours, chatting. She drifts towards the lifts, side stepping frenetic co-works and the occasional paper airplane memo, only to find Viktor Krum standing there, speaking with Arthur Weasley. It's a double dose of exactly what she is trying to avoid, so Hermione ducks out of sight, her heart pounding, hoping she hasn't been spotted. She hurries back the way she came, takes the stairs up to the atrium, and escapes into the Muggle world by way of the phone booth lift.

She walks through the lunchtime crowds, inconspicuous in her Muggle suit, finds a small, dark restaurant with a well stocked bar on the Strand. Muggle men and women with their sharp suits and mobile phone ear pieces are packed tightly into the restaurant, but Hermione manages to find a seat between them at the bar with a bit of sly wand work. She is ignored by everyone except the bartender as she orders a vodka and tonic and nothing else. She drinks the first, then a second and third, feeling numb and ignored and invisible.

She's a bit buzzed walking back to the Ministry over an hour later, and is, in fact, pleasantly inebriated. The Ministry has settled down a bit; people have either gone to lunch or returned to their desks, and the corridors are sparsely occupied. Best of all, though, is that she sees neither hide nor hair of Viktor or Arthur, and as she walks along the corridor towards the ladies restroom, and maybe it's the lunch of three vodka and tonics, but she feels, if not happy, content. Calm. Better, in fact, than she has in a long while.

But then, as she's washing her hands, she looks up into the mirror to see a stranger looking back at her. She's someone Hermione has never met before, someone who drinks at lunch time, skips out of work for no good reason, and is inexplicably terrified of sorting out old boyfriends who don't appear to understand the word no. The other woman looks tired and broken. The other woman looks as if her world has ended and there is nothing left to live for.

That other woman in the mirror is her.

Hermione's stomach twists with sick surprise; she has a hard time believing this, that she has fallen so far away from herself that her own reflection is unrecognizable, but it must be true. They have the same hair and are wearing the same Muggle suit and the same knitted scarf around their throats. They have the same dark circles under their eyes and the same wedding band they have yet to remove and the same dead husband rotting in a grave near Ottery St. Catchpole.

Slowly, deliberately, she cuts off the water, and turns away from the mirror as if it is an irate Hippogriff around which she must use caution. Absently she dries her hands on a paper towel, then drifts out of the loo and down the corridor to her office, where she pauses in the doorway to stare blankly at the partially completed proposal revisions open on her desk.

The inner peace she achieved during her long lunch is shattered, and suddenly nothing seems important, nothing matters, not really, so she turns around and walks out on completing an assignment for the first time in her life.

And if that isn't the action of a stranger, she doesn't know what is.

*****

When Severus sees Granger striding towards the shops early in the afternoon, still in her work attire, he finds himself involuntary changing direction to follow her.

He doesn't want to follow her, wants nothing to do with her, but his feet turn anyway, regardless of what he wants, and he falls into step not far behind. His eyes are drawn to the sway of her hips under that long winter coat, exacerbated by the Muggle heels she is wearing, and he remembers that glimpse of her thigh on the stairway on Saturday night. A sharp pang of decidedly unwanted desire rushes over him; he recalls the dream involving that coat and his potions bench, and now he adds a pair of Muggle heels to that fantasy ... not the drab brown business appropriate heels she is wearing, but high, patent-leather stilettos unearthed and dragged out of his Muggle-influenced adolescent fantasies.

She turns the corner, and he follows, all but salivating and helpless to resist his desire. It's a compulsion, almost as if he is under an Imperius Curse, except that there is no euphoria, just a grinding, relentless craving that seems to have welled up out of nowhere. She is hardly his type, with that frazzled mess of hair, that shrill voice, and the sensible shoes, but she has nice legs, long slender legs that would look so lovely adorned in stockings and garters...

Granger slows and steps into the off-license; Severus stops just short of the shop and clenches his eyes shut. This is positively puerile. Stilettos and garters haven't interested him since he found Toby's stash of pornography when he was thirteen and he spent the whole of third year wanking to the memory of those images, yet here he is adorning Hermione Bloody Granger with the remnants of his adolescent fantasies.

It's like a sickness, a disease, his inability to control this sudden desire for Granger. He has been to this place of mindless, compulsive want before with Lily Evans; he has fought this fight and lost. He won't lose again. He won't. But even as he promises himself he won't become enslaved to a woman who wants nothing to do with him, he is stepping into the off-license and slipping in line behind her.

She has a bottle of cheap red wine in her hand and is staring up at the cigarettes above the register with a pinched, anxious look.

"Taking up smoking, Granger?" he murmurs in her ear.

She starts and jumps away from him, her hand going automatically for her wand, though she manages to abort the motion just in time. At her defensive motion, he has to abort his own reflex to reach for his wand, his insipid, adolescent fantasies forgotten in the rush of war-honed reflexes.

They stand there staring at each like two tom cats on the verge of fighting, the overwhelming craving for Granger having receded for the moment, and then her indignant and suspicious expression crumples into something much more... fragile. She turns, sets the wine bottle on the nearest shelf, and stalks out of the shop without saying a thing.

"Your young lady is looking a mite stressed these days," someone behind him says. "You should do something to cheer her up."

Severus whirls to find the old man who owns the three hounds standing behind him, adorned in a bright blue sweater vest as garish as the orange; Snape gives him a look that could melt metal. "She isn't my young lady."

"No? You two certainly fight like she is, and the way you look at her..." The old man leers and waggles his eyebrows.

It's these sorts of situations that make Severus wish that the Cruciatus Curse wasn't an Unforgivable. "Mind your own business, old man."

"Oh, can't do that. Nosey old busy body, me. And it's Rex, by the way, lad."

"What is Rex, by the way?"

"My name."

Severus sneers. "How appropriate."

The man grins. "You have no idea." He nods toward the exit. "See to the lass. She's falling apart, that one."

"If you are so concerned about her, you see to her," Severus snarls.

"Who says I'm not? Now, lad, are you on line or not? You have the young lady to chase after, and I have a nicotine addition to feed."

He wants to curse the old man, almost desperately as he wants Granger, but he forces himself to keep his hand away from his wand as he pivots and storms out of the shop, exasperated in a way he hasn't been since Albus was alive.

Meddling old men - he can't escape them, it seems. Go after Granger, indeed. That is exactly what he wants to avoid, and why, exactly, was the old man so bloody interested in her anyway? Still, he finds himself slowing to a stop in the street and glancing first to the left, then to the right, looking for her. He does not see her; part of him wants to follow the route towards their apartment building in hopes of seeing her again, but the rest of him manages to turn his feet in the direction he was going before he caught sight of her, and even to push her out of his head, for the time being at least.

And of course, that night he dreams of Granger in nothing but stockings and stiletto heels.

*****

Going to work the next day is agony.

Hermione spends a restless night dreaming of being propped on Snape's potions worktable and shagging him in nothing but stockings and garters, or of aiming her wand at Lucius Malfoy's poisonous black heart and demanding to know where Harry was, or of dogs barking endlessly in the distance while she sprints across an empty field, pursued by something she cannot see, only to open her eyes at the sound of her blaring alarm, achy, exhausted, and tense.

She all but drags herself out of bed, dresses in the same suit she wore the day before, and with a flick of her wand, pulls her hair back into a tight twist that even Minerva McGonagall would have considered severe. She feels like she is moving through treacle as she carefully applies make-up to hide the bags under her eyes, and the world seems distant and unfamiliar as she walks towards the Apparition point. The Ministry Atrium is busy when she arrives, but thankfully no one notices her or tries to start a conversation, and when the lift comes, she miraculously has it to herself.

She even lets herself imagine that she might make it to her office without having to speak to anyone, but no sooner does she step out of the lift onto her floor when Percy Weasley is upon her, wielding his appointment diary and wearing the piercing, vulture-like look that indicates he is in Head Boy mode.

"We had a meeting yesterday, Hermione," he says, waving the diary with the same fanaticism as a Muggle fanatic waving a holy book. "Where were you?"

"I was feeling poorly, so I went home early." She tries to step around him, but he leaps back into her path again.

"You didn't even have the courtesy to send a note or an owl..."

Hermione sighs. "Percy, it was one meeting. I'm sure you have another dozen scheduled for this week alone." She tries to step around him again, and this time it works, but it takes her mere seconds to realize that he's on her heels and not going away.

"That's not the point, Hermione." He so insufferably patronizing sometimes that she wonders how he has escaped being hexed by his co-workers for so long.

"What is the point, then?" She is at the end of her tether; she wishes he would just shut up and leave her be, and really, she's starting to wonder exactly how she has escaped hexing him for so long.

"The point is courtesy for your co-workers, Hermione," Percy replies, and his supercilious tone of voice is like a finely honed blade, slicing right through whatever had helped her out of bed and into work this morning. Her hand drifts towards her wand like a detached thing, acting of its own accord, and oblivious, Percy just drones on and on, lecturing. "All of our meetings are important, and your recent indifference towards our project..."

His voice chokes to a stop as Hermione whirls on him, her wand strategically aimed. "So help me, Percy," she snarls, "if you do not shut up about the bloody meeting and the bloody project, I will hex your bollocks off and shove them down your throat to make you shut up."

It's not her usual sort of threat, more of something Ron might have said to Draco Malfoy back in their school days, but she's a stranger to herself these days, and maybe this is how the stranger reacts to Percy Weasley's unyielding condescension.

Percy himself recoils from her, blinking in surprise. "Really, Hermione, there's no need to resort to physical threats." His voice has the faintest nervous tremor in it, and his eyes dart sideways. "Especially in front of the Muggles."

Awareness of her environment suddenly crashes in on her: she is still in the corridor, with several of her co-workers looking on, a couple of whom seem to be from the Minister's office, and sure enough, there are two Muggles watching them, looking very official in their tailored suits. One is gaping openly, and the other has raised an eyebrow with interest, and she blushes brightly, all the way to her toes.

"Sorry, Percy," she mutters, making her wand disappear as quickly as possible. "I'll owl you about rescheduling."

She retreats as quickly as possible, dropping her eyes and hurrying to her office, where she huddles behind her desk and sucks in long, deep breaths in an attempt to calm herself, to regain her equilibrium. She is so embarrassed that she lost her temper so spectacularly, but even more so because she did it in front of witnesses, including two important-looking Muggles. She can already hear the rumor mill grinding, reports traveling along the grapevine, dispersing into the rest of the Ministry, to Harry, to Arthur, to the Minister...

The thought doesn't bear thinking about, so she pushes the rumor mill out of her mind as best she can, though the thought of it lingers as tightness across her shoulders. She will cross that bridge when she comes to it, but right now, there is another bridge to cross, one involving the World Cup proposal and corrections. It's still open on her desk, right where she left it the day before, waiting for her to pick up a quill and continue.

Hermione sighs. All things considered, she probably should have just taken the day off.

*****

An hour later, there is a knock at her door, and Kingsley Shacklebolt steps in, resplendent in his dress robes.

"Minister," Hermione says and stands, a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Kingsley smiles amicably. "Hermione. Do you have a minute?"

"Of course." She gestures at one of the guest chairs. "Um, have a seat."

"Thank you," he replies and makes himself comfortable. He folds his hands over his stomach. and his amicable smile eases into one of amusement. "So, you're going to hex off Percy's bollocks and use them to shut him up?"

Hermione groans and drops her head into her hands. "I knew you were here about that."

"Yes, well, you put on quite a show for the Muggle Prime Minister."

"That was the Muggle Prime Minster?" She groans. How is it that her luck is this bad? "I'm so sorry, sir, I really am."

"Don't fret about it, Hermione. It was dealt with easily enough, but in light of what happened this morning, I think it's time you took a leave of absence."

Kingsley's words are like a kick to her chest. The thought of being pulled away from the security of a regular routine, of being without something to focus on, of having all that time at her disposal sends her into a spiral of panic.

She stares at him in disbelief. "What? But, I can't take any time off. The World Cup proposal has an early January due date..."

"Sod the proposal, Hermione." He waves a hand dismissively. "The entire Ministry is watching you fall apart, and your mental state is more important than the World Cup, as far as I'm concerned. Just don't tell anyone in the Department of Magical Games and Sports that I said that."

"But sir..."

Kingsley holds up one hand, and she falls silent. "No, I've made my decision. You're taking a leave of absence until after Christmas. And when you come back, you'll go back to your old position in the MLE. Muggle Relations is a waste of your talent."

"I don't want..."

"Hermione, I don't care what you want. What you want isn't working for you. You need time to get yourself together. So pack up the things you need and go home. I don't want to see you again until January second."

"But Kingsley..."

"No arguments, Hermione. My decision is final."

In a daze, Hermione nods.

Kingsley stands, smooths his robes. "And just so you understand how serious I am, I'm sending Percy by here in an hour, and if you're still here, I'm going to let you explain to him that you're off the World Cup project for its duration."

Hermione shuts her eyes and nods, biting her lip to keep back her tears.

The Minister turns to leave, then stops in the doorway, one hand on the door knob. "Oh, and Hermione?"

"What?" she says, refusing to look at him.

"You moved to Glastonbury, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"Pretty town," he says, sounding thoughtful. "But watch out for the Tor. Sometimes it glows."

Hermione snaps her head up so fast that the muscles in her neck twinge in protest, but Kingsley is already gone, the door swinging closed behind him.

*****

This time, when Hermione stops at the off-license on her way home, she buys the bottle of cheap wine she intended to buy the day before. Two, in fact, since she won't be going to work tomorrow. Or the next day, or next week, or next month even. She is considering taking up drinking to fill in the empty hours even though she'd never much pictured herself an alcoholic.

Of course, she'd never pictured herself a widow, either.

She walks the block and a half from the off-license to her building against a sharp wind that leaves her cheeks and nose and fingers numb. She shivers in the cold as she unlocks the door, then stands in the foyer, eyes closed, still shivering and willing herself to thaw.

When she opens her eyes, she finds Snape standing in the foyer with her.

He's at the mailboxes, sorting through his mail, his coat unbuttoned and his scarf draped unevenly around his neck. His eyes are on her, almost piercing right through her, and his cheeks are flushed though there is no wind to raise the color.

The most recent dream-image of being propped on his potions bench flashes through her mind unbidden, and with it the remembered sensation of his sharp hips sliding against her sweaty legs and his lips against hers...

Hermione looks away abruptly, refusing to acknowledge the dream-memory, and strides past, ignoring him to the best of her ability.

The sounds of envelopes and junk mail hitting the floor follow her.

"Granger," he says.

"Sod off, Snape," she snarls. She wants silence. She wants solitude. She wants several glasses of wine and a bath and about twelve hours of dreamless sleep. But mostly, she wants to get away from him.

"Granger," Snape says again and grabs her by the arm just as she starts up the stairs, causing her to stumble towards him.

She glares at him savagely, angry that he would dare touch her. "What do you think you are..." she begins, but then suddenly there is a mouth crushing against hers, teeth scraping her bottom lip, a tongue nudging open her mouth.

Snape is kissing her, and the shock of it extinguishes her anger; she's passive for half a minute, allowing his hand to wind into her hair and loosen the bun, allowing him to pull her closer, to tighten his grip on her arm. He tastes like coffee and chocolate and bitterness and it's as if he is stealing her breath, sucking it right out of her, making her helpless.

Hermione shoves him away.

Panting, they stare at each other. Snape is flushed, his eyes heavy lidded and dark, and Hermione has the sudden and nearly irrepressible desire to let him do what he wants with her.

Ridiculous. Ridiculous and risky and mad.

Hermione turns and continues up the stairs.

Snape follows, his heavy tread too close behind her. On the first floor landing she turns, wants to shout at him, to demand to know what he thinks he's doing, to hex him until he runs off, his tail between his legs. Instead she can only stare at him, her eyes darting to his long fingers, to the unwrapped scarf, to the spots of color on his cheeks.

Snape raises one eyebrow.

No. Why is she even considering this?

Hermione starts up the stairs again. Snape grabs her by the wrist; she snatches her hand away, makes it only a few more steps before he has her by the arm again. She whirls, wand out, but Snape doesn't let her go or back off or even flinch. He just stares at her. Focused. Intent. Hungry.

Her stomach twists, her heart speeds up, her skin flushes with heat, and then she moves, lets the handles of the plastic bag carrying the wine slip from her fingers as she takes the two steps down to close the distance between them. She all but throws herself at him, crushing her mouth to his, and it is all hands and teeth and lips between them. His bitter chocolate and coffee taste is on her tongue, and his long fingers are everywhere, plucking at her buttons, pushing open the lapels of her coat, sliding up under her skirt. She's tugs his scarf out of the way, scrabbling at the button and zip of his trousers, tugging out his shirttails.

They lose their balance, tumbling against the stairs. A strip of agony lashes across her lower back where she falls against the edge of the steps; Hermione grits her teeth and refuses to cry out in pain, forcing herself to focus on loosening his clothing, of speeding up this process as quickly as possible.

Snape lets her go long enough to shrug off his coat, but his hands quickly find her again, skimming along the slippery skin of her stockings as he pushes up her skirt, mirroring the slide of his mouth down her jaw, the rasp of his tongue against her pulse. She pants, trying to keep herself focused, trying to remember that there's a Death Eater between her legs, one who has casually killed before her very eyes with the merest flick of his wand. But it's difficult to maintain that focus while most of her mind is preoccupied with getting him inside of her as quickly as possible, and she's obsessing over how she is going to get these restrictive Muggle stockings off with Snape's weight pinning her to the stairs.

The best answer is probably to banish her under things, and she raises her wand to do so, but somehow the wand ends up under Snape's chin, digging into the soft spot under his jaw. He stiffens. She pushes his head up and licks her lips, not sure anymore of what she is going to say or do next, but then, that has been the theme of this miserable day.

"Apologize."

His eyes have gone cold, but he's still right there with her, wanting her. "For what?"

"For making that comment about Ron three weeks ago. For tormenting Harry for most of our time in school. For trying to get me thrown out of my flat. For not stopping me from casting a Cruciatus on Lucius Malfoy." Hermione pauses, breathing heavily, surprised by the last, but she's got Snape between her legs at wand point, and this is not the time to analyze Freudian slips. She digs the tip of her wand deeper. "All of those. Some of those. Pick one. Apologize."

His black eyes are glittering dangerously, like maybe he'd like to kill her instead of shag her, but then to her surprise he snarls, "I apologize."

He doesn't mean it, but she's just made Severus Snape apologize, and there's power there, power that rushes through her and pools between her legs. She removes her wand from his throat and flicks it with a silent spell; Snape flinches, actually flinches, but it is the banishment spell for her under things, and the only thing that happens is that her knickers and stockings disappear.

"Fuck me," she pants, and he does, lifting her hips and sliding into her with one fluid motion. She gasps; her fingers open and her wand rolls out of her hand and down the stairs to join the wine bottles on the landing below. The steps dig into her back, and she will be bruised and sore tomorrow, but the pain is meaningless, mere background noise as Snape thrusts into her again and again with long, methodical strokes, his breath hot on her neck.

She clenches at him, wraps her legs around him to drive him deeper, pants and mews in the back of her throat. She arches against him as he manages to find the right spot again and again. Briefly she wonders if this is another dream; in her experience sex has never been so accurate, and surely her position on the stairs defies all laws of physics, but she loses the thread of the thought as he shifts, changes angle slightly, their contact becoming even more precise. She moans, clenches around him, and he gasps in response.

"Dammit, Granger, come," he hisses in her ear, and though she doesn't intend to let him order her about, the climax breaks and rolls over her anyway, drowning her, snatching her down in its riptide. Snape follows her close behind, his fingers digging painfully into her hips as he shudders and bucks against her, sucking in a sharp breath, and for one perfect moment they meld to one another, drifting in bliss...

Then it is gone. Hermione falls, crashing back into reality, the background noise of her physical discomfort flaring into the foreground. She is sweaty and hot and damp; the pain of the steps pressing into her back is blaring agony, and her legs shake with exertion as she lowers them to the floor to support her and the burden of Snape's weight as he rests on top of her. That awful feeling of embarrassment is spreading lazily through her and maybe even a bit of shame, but maybe not, and lying here under Snape just won't do, not one second longer.

She shoves at him, pushes him off. "Go. Get away."

He heaves himself off of her with a grunt and kneels back, his eyes boring into her, even though he is disheveled and partly undressed. She pulls herself backwards, manages to get to her feet, shimmies her skirt down. She can't look at him as she steps around him, fetches her wand and the bottles of wine, thankfully unbroken, and hurries past him again. He is still watching her though, and she wishes he would stop, would show some sign that he feels like what just happened is a mistake, because if he doesn't, she can't and that makes no sense, but she's now working on a theory that she has possibly and officially lost her mind, so there is no reason to think anything is going to make sense anyway.

"Granger," he says again.

She doesn't answer, just continues towards her flat as if she hasn't just shagged him breathless on the stairs, as if she isn't still wet and perhaps even interested in more.

"Granger," he says yet again as she's slipping her key into her lock, and she still ignores him. She refuses to so much as look in his direction because if she looks back, she might turn to salt or disappear into the underworld or whatever mythological metaphor works best for looking into the abyss and finding it looking back into you.

And after the day she's had, that thought isn't bothering her as much as it should.

*****

That night she dreams of climbing the Tor.

The town is dark and silent as if it is dead, the buildings like empty husks as she threads through the streets. The silhouettes of trees and fence posts stalk her as she walks along the road up to the Tor; constellations and galaxies wheel across the sky, lighting her path with their starlight, casting her thin shadow in all directions. The Tor itself looms over her, pulling her onwards, guiding her up to its summit, beckoning her with its abyss.

She climbs ever upwards, following its terraces to the top, her eyes always on the summit. Her breath puffs out in front of her, twinkling like diamonds in the starlight, and her legs tremble as they did that day under Snape's weight, weak from the climb.

At the summit, she finds that she is not alone.

There is the red glow of a cigarette and the silhouette of man. She knows with senses only available in dreams that he is waiting for her, has been waiting for her for a long while. She is unsurprised by this and is even less surprised to realize that she's been waiting for him, too.

She takes a step towards him. "Who are you?"

He does not answer, only draws on the cigarette, and his face remains dark in the glow, an empty shadow against the revolving night sky.

"Why does the Tor glow?" Her voice is strong, demanding. She needs answers. "What does it want of me?"

"In time, witch, in time." The silhouette points to the ground at her feet. "Until then, you'll be needing that."

She looks down, sees the object lying coiled at her feet, bends to pick it up. It is made of leather and unfurls in her hand, dangles from her fingers.

She studies it in the starlight and frowns.

The long leather strap in her hands is a dog leash.