Chapter Forty-Four—Undue Haste

“I won’t bite you.”

Snape looked up from his notebook and noticed the quirked eyebrow. He rolled the quill between his fingers slowly and didn’t respond.

She actually smiled at him which made him blink a few times in mild confusion before he went back to his notes.

The pale winter light that filtered in through the frosted infirmary windows threw his shadow across the three metres of distance between the two of them: he hunched over in the wooden chair with his notebook resting on his knee, and she perched cross-legged on the cot. He felt it prudent to maintain his distance even though Pomfrey was nearby. Yesterday’s exchange had left him more than a little rattled, and he wasn’t about to blunder over some other obscure seevy boundary if he could help it.

Parr had been waiting for him, watching his approach with a deceptive calmness from her position on the cot, this time swathed in her usual grey Striker’s uniform. Her knee-high boots sat at the foot of the cot, the polished leather reflecting the morning sunlight, the laces snaking across the floor like tiny black eels. She’d also drawn her hair back into a French plait. It gave her a rather odd appearance with her silver hair pulled in so close to her head as opposed to the usual messy mane she kept it in. She seemed smaller, less threatening. Yesterday’s altercation had obviously induced a rare prudence in her to keep her hair away from his hands lest any further misunderstandings occur.

He’d dragged the wooden chair to its current position and sat down without a word to either her or Pomfrey, so the three of them remained in silence while he scribbled away, ignoring the two women. That was until Parr’s statement lifted his head. Snape honestly couldn’t tell if she was joking or not, so he decided not to reply.

Pomfrey folded and unfolded her hands in front of her waist repeatedly, sighing rather emphatically at his continued reticence. He hitched his shoulders and sniffed, the tip of the quill making the loudest noise in the room. A frustrated wind rattled briefly at the window panes and then died out.

“Do you have a family history of illnesses or conditions I should know of?” he asked eventually, eyes still trained on his notes and the quill sliding across the page in its uninterrupted formation of his spiky handwriting. “Besides the obvious,” he added with a twist to his mouth.

“No.” There was a pause. “Although my grandmother had a fat arse. Does that count?”

Snape refused to take the bait but Pomfrey tutted. He turned a page and kept writing. “Does your seevyism leave you prone to certain illnesses or conditions?”

“Some seevy lines have trouble with osteoporosis and spinal alignment, but Parrs have never had those issues. There once was a history of diabetes but was bred out three generations ago, to my knowledge. Sometimes I get stomach ulcers and hypoglycaemia, but I was told that was idiosyncratic and not a general Parr trait. My aunt claims it came from my father, and though I only have her word on that, I have no reason to doubt it.”

Snape’s quill paused momentarily. “Seevy are matriarchal?”

“Yes.”

He nodded faintly and wrote a few lines. “Do you take any medication other than what Madam Pomfrey gives you?”

“No.”

He dotted the end of his sentence and blew on the page to dry the ink as he stood up. “Poppy, Miss Parr is to be on a restricted diet as of now. There is far too much uric acid in her blood which undoubtedly comes from the excessive amount of food she consumes and possible damage to her kidneys from the morphine. Please can you give a list of permissible foods to her and to the house-elves in the kitchens? She appears to have a pre-arrangement with them to allow her to eat to excess.”

“Oh, what?” Parr squawked. “Is this because I mentioned my grandmother’s fat arse?”

Snape closed his notebook and pocketed it. “Stand up.”

Parr uncrossed her legs and slid off the cot, bare feet on the wood of the infirmary floor.

“I need to look in your eyes very closely which will involve touching you,” Snape told her, staring at least a foot over her head. “Will that breach any etiquette I am unaware of?” he asked rather tersely.

“Only if you have morning breath,” Parr replied, straightening her jacket.

Snape thinned his lips and stayed where he was.

“Are you going to do it from all the way over there?” Parr asked him curiously after a few torturous seconds. “I could come to you if that’ll make things easier.” Her tone was steeped in reasonableness, but Snape got the distinct impression she was trying to wind him up.

He huffed. “That won’t be necessary.” He traversed the gap between them smoothly, careful not to betray the hesitation he felt. If Parr got the idea he was afraid of her, she’d use it to her advantage. He placed his index finger under her chin to tip her head back so he could look in her eyes more easily. He squinted at the scarring across the left iris.

“How did you get the cut across your face?” he asked quietly

“Someone thought it amusing to risk my eyesight as a display of superiority over me.” She stared fixedly back at him the same way he was at her which he found rather unsettling. Most people tended to look slightly away from the person examining their eyes, but then, Parr wasn’t most people. Probably doing it deliberately to make him uneasy. He frowned as a curious sensation crept across his awareness, like a trickle of warm water.

“Stop that,” he told her firmly.

“Stop what?” She actually sounded genuinely confused, but Snape wouldn’t put it past her to feign innocence. The tickling sensation across his mind stopped rather coincidentally.

“Turn your head to the side,” he told her and pushed her chin to the right to encourage her. He peered in her ear for a few seconds until he realised she was making a rude gesture behind her back at him.

“What’s that for?”

“Just checking if you can see straight through to the other side, doc.”

Snape thought he heard a noise behind him coming from Pomfrey that sounded suspiciously like a smothered laugh.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Okay, doc.”

Snape ground his teeth and turned her head over to the left to check her other ear. He resisted the urge to run the tip of his finger over the notch cut into the outer rim of her ear, but couldn’t help the memory of that disturbingly lucid dream he’d had of her from dancing across his mind. The one where he’d nuzzled that same ear and promised he was going to avail himself of the opportunity to feel every inch of her, outside and in. Repeatedly. He sighed slightly at the cruelty that he’d not been able to fulfil that promise. Fucking her would have been spectacular, even if it would only have been a dream; of that he had no doubt.

Parr gasped and he saw her eyes go wide. He snatched his hand away from her chin where his fingers had clasped her jaw and took a step back in surprise. They both looked at each other with the same expression—a blend of disbelief and embarrassment—before fixing their gazes in precisely opposite directions. Merlin’s balls, surely she hadn’t seen what he was thinking?

“Is everything all right?” Pomfrey asked with a sliver of concern.

“Yes,” they both replied hastily and simultaneously. Snape looked askance at Parr and noticed her cheeks were decidedly reddened. He concluded with a sinking feeling that she must have picked up on what he had been thinking. It had been pure carelessness on his part, but he was so used to the privacy of his thoughts, especially when not engaged in direct eye contact, that it hadn’t occurred to him to be more circumspect around Parr.

“I can’t see properly in this light,” he blustered and grabbed hold of Parr’s sleeve and dragged her across the floor to the windows. He swung her around so she was facing into the sunlight. “Open your mouth!”

“Whuh?” said Parr just before Snape dug the fingers of one hand into the hollows above her jaw and clamped her nostrils closed with the fingers of his other hand. She squawked and opened her mouth so she could breathe. He yanked down on her jaw hard to get a better look.

“For heaven’s sake, Severus, do you have to be so rough?” Pomfrey shrilled at him as he tipped his head to one side to peer at her back teeth. “There’s nothing wrong with asking Chara to open her mouth instead of wrenching it open!”

Snape grunted. “You have a disgraceful number of amalgams. Don’t you ever brush your teeth?” He let go of her jaw.

“Of course I do!” She rubbed where his fingers had pressed harshly into her skin.

“You’ve got more silver in there than there is in Gringott’s coffers.”

She smiled widely at him. “All the better to eat you with, my dear.”

He stared at her blankly.

Parr sighed. “Classic literature’s wasted on you.”

He sneered. “I’m well aware of the type of literature you peruse, Miss Parr, so forgive me if I fail to be even in the least bit concerned about my reading choices not living up to your impeccable standards.” He took his notebook out of his pocket and scribbled something in it. “Not everyone needs animated genitalia to enjoy a story,” he muttered under his breath so only she could hear.

“I’m not interested in story when I’m looking at porn!” she guffawed at him.

His head shot up, eyes wide. “Is it perhaps even remotely possible that you could lower your voice? You might not care what others think about you, but I would prefer not to have people believe that I find your perverted tendencies of any interest whatsoever!” He darted a glance back in Pomfrey’s direction.

Parr closed her mouth and put a prissy expression on her face.

Snape resumed scribbling his notes. “Don’t you ever think about anything else other than food or sex?”

“Is that a medical question or are you interested in my perverted tendencies?”

“Jejune, pestiferous shit!” he barked at her, snapping his notebook closed and stalking over to the wooden chair. He dragged it noisily across the floor towards the cot, leaving arcing gouged scrapes in the varnished floorboards that made Pomfrey’s eyes pop in indignation. He pointed at the mattress. “Sit down and…” He paused and pressed his hand briefly to his forehead. “… give me your foot,” he finished weakly and sat down in the chair.

Parr plonked herself down enthusiastically on the cot, making the springs squeak in protest. “Careful, doc,” she told him with rather more gaiety than the situation demanded. “I’m exceedingly ticklish!” She propped her foot up onto his knee and wriggled her toes.

Snape glared at her but it didn’t make a dent in the rather vacuous smile she had plastered across her face. Her cheeks were still rather red, and he wondered if perhaps she was trying to hide her former embarrassment at his lewd thoughts under this over-exaggeration of excitement.

He sighed heavily and tried not to pause too noticeably before wrapping both hands around her foot and bowing his head forward. The wound under the dressing was not too serious, but the edges of it were quite swollen. He fished his hand into his pocket and drew out a glass vial of rather putrescent yellow liquid. Snape trapped Parr’s foot between his knees tightly and poured a few drops from the vial right into the wound. The effect was instantaneous.

“Fucking hell, that stings like a bastard!” Parr shrieked, trying to wrench out of his grasp.

“Really? That’s interesting,” he responded flatly and kept his knees clamped tightly against her foot.

“You could have given me some warning!” The look on her face was thunderous, eliciting a perverse thrill in him. He decided to push his luck and scraped his fingernails lightly along the sole of her foot. He was exceedingly fortunate not to get her heel driven into his groin as she thrashed to free herself. “What was that for?” she bellowed.

Snape raised his eyebrows haughtily and pocketed the vial of anti-inflammatory. “Just testing your reflexes.” He sniffed disdainfully as he replaced the dressing. “Adequate.”

Parr glared at him.

“Other foot.”

She continued to bore holes through his skull with her grey eyes, all trace of humour gone from her face. He knew she was restraining herself from ramming her fist into his guts, and that just spurred him on.

“You give or I take, Miss Parr. It’s your choice,” he pointed out softly and relaxed the muscles in his legs.

“Remus was right. You are vindictive,” she mentioned acidly, clasping her foot protectively now that it was liberated from between his knees.

“Lupin is particularly biased,” Snape shot back. “Though I doubt he’s told you the reason why.”

Parr narrowed her eyes shrewdly and scowled.

He sneered back at her. “I thought not.”

It was just as Snape slid his fingers around Parr’s right foot that Lupin walked through the door to the infirmary. The timing was near impeccable, as if the man had heard his name spoken and come running. The werewolf stopped dead at the sight of Parr’s foot cradled in Snape’s hands.

“What the hell are you doing?” he ground out tonelessly, a decidedly disapproving expression tainting his features; at least, the features that weren’t already distorted by a resoundingly swollen and black eye.

“Remus, what happened to your face?” Pomfrey cried and launched herself in his direction.

“It’s nothing, Poppy,” Lupin dismissed, trying to wave aside the approaching mediwitch and failing dismally. He found his head clasped between her hands and pulled downwards so she could get a better look at the bruised tissue. “Just a clumsy accident.”

Pomfrey tutted. “Did this accident happen to come in the shape of someone’s fist? I can see the knuckle marks, Remus.” She pulled him towards where Parr and Snape were. “Let me fix it for you,” she demanded, completely ignoring his feeble protestations.

“Did you make another pass at someone, Remus?” Parr asked him brightly as he sat next to her on the cot.

Snape snorted. “Haven’t you learned that sailors are out of your league, Lupin?”

“Well, you know I can’t resist the challenge, Severus,” Lupin replied snippily from around Pomfrey’s shoulder. “Why should I let a cantankerous, graceless refusal stop me?”

This time it was Parr that snorted. Snape just rolled his eyes and went back to scrutinising the foot in his hands.

“Something that I should know about?” Lupin asked pointedly, wincing as Pomfrey fussed at his eye with her fingers.

“No,” said Snape in a surly tone, squinting at Parr’s toenails.

“I’m having a pedicure,” said Parr happily. She made a peculiar yelping sound and dragged her foot out of Snape’s hands.

“Adequate,” Snape concluded, rubbing his palms together. “Stand up.”

Lupin had a pinched look on his face that had nothing to do with the struggle against the tears that welled up in his right eye from the fumes of the anti-contusion ointment Pomfrey was smearing on his face.

“Turn around.”

Parr smiled brightly at Lupin as Snape probed his thumbs along her lower back. “I like the bruise. It matches your eyes.”

Lupin ignored her and glowered at the way Snape was running his hands over her back, dangerously close to her backside.

“Bend over. Slowly,” Snape told her with a faint smirk on his face.

“Poppy, could I have a word with Severus and Chara alone, please?” Lupin asked abruptly in a strained voice as Parr’s palms pressed flat against the floor.

“Well, I don’t—”

“It’s rather urgent,” Lupin persisted as he saw Snape’s hands splay over Parr’s hips in what he felt was an altogether inappropriate manner.

“Would you mind telling me what, precisely, is going on?” Lupin requested firmly once Pomfrey had stalked off, muttering under her breath.

“Yes,” Snape replied, moving his right hand into the small of Parr’s back.

“He’s an almost-doctor,” Parr whispered at a ridiculously loud volume, peering up at Lupin from her doubled-over position. “I think he’s checking out my gluteus maximus.”

“Oh, well, that would account for the groping,” said Lupin sarcastically, failing to miss the insulting curve to Snape’s mouth as he twisted the palm of his hand back and forth over Parr’s sacrum slowly and told Lupin in a rather protracted and confusing medical description what he could do with himself.

“I’d like to hear you suggest that to Dumbledore,” Lupin retorted just as a small crowd of people spilled into the infirmary.

“Severus,” the Headmaster greeted him after a blatantly obvious study of the scene before him. The faces of the people behind him were less ambiguously set, ranging from Tonks’ scandalised and rather disgusted look to Shacklebolt’s disturbingly canny frown. “Are we interrupting something?”

“Not at all,” Snape replied calmly, removing his hands from Parr’s back. “Stand up,” he told her quietly.

“I had no idea you were involved in Chara’s treatment,” Dumbledore continued mildly, but the glint in his eye asked the question he didn’t voice.

“A recent development, Headmaster, and only at Madam Pomfrey’s request,” Snape assured him, wiping his hands briefly as if the contact with Parr had been faintly nauseating.

The old wizard nodded slightly, though the glint remained. “I’m hoping this won’t take long.”

“As long as you need,” said Snape and turned to leave, his large nose lifted slightly in hauteur at the disapproving expressions aimed in his direction.

Dumbledore held up his hand to forestall his exit. “No, it’s appropriate that you remain.”

“Albus,” Jones whispered behind him in subtle warning.

“It’s all right, Hestia. Severus is involved in this and I trust him to be discreet.”

Tonks had the impetuousness and underdeveloped lack of prudence of youth not to mask her disagreement with the Headmaster’s statement, earning her an acidic stare from Snape that eventually forced her eyes to the floor.

“What is it?” Parr asked with a crinkle of lines across her forehead, looking from one face to the next.

“I went to the warehouse where… Greyback was holding the lyc-females,” Lupin told her, still squinting awkwardly against the ointment fumes.

Parr’s face went flatter and colder than a slab of marble. “What?”

“Severus told me where it was,” Lupin added hastily in an effort to deflect the repressed fury in the woman opposite him. Parr’s head swivelled slowly to impale Snape with the brunt of emotion she kept hidden behind the impervious mask of detachment that had become all too familiar to him, but her eyes spoke volumes. It was like standing still whilst your clothing was on fire, but Snape managed to return her look with a cool dispassion of his own.

“You were so ill,” Lupin continued, bringing her head back around. “I couldn’t wait. I thought…” His eyes flicked to Snape briefly. “… she might be there.”

“That was not what we agreed to,” said Parr in a deadly evenness of tone. The Order members behind Dumbledore fidgeted in agitation.

“I know, but—”

“That was not what we agreed to,” Parr repeated harshly.

Tonks stepped forward. “Chara, Remus thought he was only—”

“They weren’t there,” Lupin spoke over her. “Someone knew we’d found them. There was… blood everywhere.” The distress on the man’s face was almost painful in its intensity. “The place was empty, except for all the blood.” He drew his shoulders in and hunched over in mournful anguish. “We were too late!”

“Who else knew the location?” Dumbledore asked Snape.

“No one. Except Karkaroff, and he wasn’t even certain.”

“How did he find them in the first place?” Shacklebolt inquired.

“He’s been sniffing about after Macnair,” Snape replied rather reluctantly.

“And you never thought to tell us that?” Tonks accused, her hair shifting into a vibrant red of warning. “What else are you neglecting to tell us that might get innocent people killed?”

“Nymphadora,” said Dumbledore quietly, preventing any further unwise condemnation in an already potentially explosive situation.

“If there was no one there, who hit you?” Parr asked Lupin in that same flat tone she had hammered her voice into.

Lupin looked up at her, the puffiness of his eye now markedly less than before. “I don’t know,” he admitted reluctantly. “I turned around, and the next thing I knew, I was on the floor.” He paused. “I think it was a woman.”

“You think?”

Lupin deliberately ignored Snape’s incredulity. “There was more than one of them, but I heard a woman’s voice.”

“What did she say?” Parr’s hands had balled into fists at her side.

Lupin scrubbed a shaky hand through his greying hair. “‘Leave him. He’s not one of them.’”

There was a protracted silence.

“Show me.”

“Chara, it’s too—”

“Show me!” she barked and reached for her boots. Lupin scrambled after her as she strode out of the infirmary, still barefoot. The others were sucked up in her slipstream and hurried to catch up. Dumbledore turned to Snape before he left.

“Find out who did it.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t wait for a reply.