Wanted, Unwanted

Like the Muggles Do

Chapter 12

Wanted, Unwanted

Summary Who was at the door? Who was on the phone? What does Severus really think? And do dreams ever truly come true?

Disclaimer

Hermione closed the door and leaned against it, rubbing her temples. She had a migraine now.

"I never should have answered the door," she mumbled. Once that thought was out of her mouth, another entered the forefront of her mind; "Where is Severus?" was a question she'd been asking herself for the second ten minutes she had stood in the doorway. For the third and final ten minutes that she had been standing there, the question had been replaced by a statement: "I'm going to kill Severus."

He had probably gotten off the phone after about thirty seconds and gone back to the office and his dissection. At this moment, the bastard was most likely studying the entrails of poor Hermie, like many children's fairy tale versions of witches.

She took a moment to mentally curse the Muggle Mass Media's gross misrepresentation of witches and wizards (It was libelous and slanderous – she wished she could sue.) She quickly returned her anger to that nasty, greasy, surly, sorry excuse for a man hiding in the back room.

Her migraine hadn't abated, but she was now harnessing the intensity and redirecting it to wrath. She stormed towards the back of the flat, a white rage boiling inside of her, the sides of her vision turning black – whether that was the fury or the headache's work she wasn't sure nor did she care – and entered the study, cursing and telling Severus that she was going to plunge that scalpel into his chest, where his heart should be, if he had one.

But Severus wasn't there.

She thought for a moment that perhaps he had heard her threats and curses and dove for cover. But the man that had battled Voldemort and Lucius Malfoy, and even herself on many occasions, was unlikely to be scared into hiding by a wandless witch on the warpath.

Had he gone into his bedroom to lay down for a nap?

But Severus never napped during the day. He said... well, Hermione wasn't about to go down that road of thinking. She wasn't quite ready to replace her anger with a kinder sentiment resembling any kind of affection for him, nor did she want to admit to herself that she remembered something he had said, in passing, almost two months ago.

So if he wasn't sleeping, where was he? Maybe he was cooking.

She humored that idea for a moment, in part because she loved almost everything he made for her – she might forgive him if it was especially delicious – and in part because the knife drawer in the kitchen would provide ample weaponry for her threats; with a butcher knife, she could carve him open and search his ribcage for what was left of his shriveled up old heart.

But he wouldn't be cooking. It was Thursday, which meant date night – a term that even under Crucio, Imperio, and Veritaserum she would never admit to using. She had done her best, for the past month, to convince herself that despite the fact that they were a man and a woman, going out to dinner, the theater, the movies, or whatever else they felt like doing, at night, together, they were not dating. They were friends, coworkers, partners... not lovers. He went out with her every Thursday because it was a nice substitute to staying in, not because of any silly romantic notion. They had a good time, eating, drinking, and entertaining themselves, but he had never suggested it was anything more than that. Despite what she might like to believe their Thursday nights were, they were not date nights.

So if he wasn't dissecting in the office, sleeping in his bedroom, or cooking in the kitchen... what could he possibly be doing?

He couldn't possibly be having a long conversation on the telephone. They had only received a handful of calls that hadn't been wrong numbers since moving in, and those had been from her mother and telemarketers.

A thought struck her, and her confusion – which had replaced her rage, for the most part – turned quickly to panic. For a half an hour, he had been on the phone with either her mother (the horror of which was almost too much to bear) or with a telemarketer (with which he had no experience).

She left the office at a mad dash, but the doorbell rang before she reached the end of the hallway.

==

Hermione stood, flanked by bedroom doors to either side, racked by indecision – should she go check on Severus or answer the door? Although she was worried about his well being – a thirty minute phone conversation could leave even someone as good natured and laid back as Neville Longbottom ready to pull out their wand and cast Crucio on either themselves or the other speaker – she couldn't convince herself that Severus was in much trouble. And what would she have done, barreling into the living room? Tear the phone from his hand and slam down the receiver? She didn't think Severus would take kindly to that.

The doorbell rang again.

Despite the protests that might arise if she pestered Severus about his – she checked her watch – 34 minute phone conversation, she didn't particularly want to answer the door.

What if it was those Jehovah's Witnesses again? She didn't think she could handle another half-hour long conversation about religion. Severus would have slammed the door in their faces, but Hermione knew she could never do that. After all, though she had absorbed bits of Severus' personality, she still wasn't a total bastard. And besides, she had been raised to have tolerance for other people's beliefs and religions, whether they conflicted with her own or not. She had nothing against people that felt so strongly in their beliefs that they wanted to share them, in fact she applauded it. However, the three people – two men and one woman – that she had spoken to for half an hour were just a little too pushy for her taste. She now realized that no matter how good your cause or how much passion you put behind it, some people simply didn't want to hear about it and at a certain point you had to accept that and let them close the door. If she believed in karma, she would guess that the thirty minutes she had spent standing in the doorframe were payback for trying to force others – both fellow humans and house-elves alike – to join and support S.P.E.W. against their will. Perhaps a good sentiment and kind intentions weren't enough.

She wanted to consider the implications of this new thought-process, but Severus was possibly dead of a brain aneurism after over 30 minutes of conversation with a long-winded caller, and whoever was at the door was now knocking, loudly.

"Hermione, will you answer the damned door? I'm on the telephone here!"

Well, apparently Severus was still alive and well, and snarky, so her worry of him having gone into a coma from too much conversation with her mother was apparently unfounded.

She broke her self-imposed paralysis and moved quickly toward the front door.

==

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Severus, and Molly –

==

"You know, I knew an orphan once. Two, actually," Severus was saying as Hermione walked into the living room and sat on the sofa next to him. "I didn't much like either of them. One was a total maniac. And that isn't hyperbole; he was completely insane and rather evil. Although, I must admit, he could be rather charming and quite persuasive when he wanted to be." Severus thought for a moment, and glanced at Hermione with a look that she knew conveyed about a dozen messages or more, not the least of which being 'Where have you been?'.

She was still trying to decipher all of them, while also making an effort to keep a mental tally of how many there were – he might have reached a new record – when she heard the disembodied voice through the telephone begin, "As I was saying, sir..."

The dozen or so messages that Severus had apparently been attempting to convey to her through magic-less Legilimency were replaced by a smile that she had seen before, one that told her 'this is going to be painful for him, fun for me, and entertaining for you.'

"Mind you, I hated the other orphan as well," Severus continued, talking over the other man in a manner very similar to the Headmaster. "He wasn't evil. In fact, he was widely lauded as the Hero of the Light. The Boy Who Lived, the Golden Boy, the leader of the Golden Trio. He was actually orphaned by Vol-ahem, by the other orphan I knew. About twenty years later, he killed the evil orphan. I had to teach the little bastard. Saved his life a couple times, too. I never did get so much as a thank you, the little brat. Never could convince him I wasn't working for the evil orphan either. I could understand his not trusting me completely after the first time – who knows, maybe it had been an accident to save the little ingrate's life. Maybe even the second time, and even then it's not likely. But you'd think that the little shit could've caught on after the third or fourth time I kept him from dying an extremely painful death. Then again, he never was all that bright. Got by on a little bit of talent and a lot of luck, whereas better students, ones with huge amounts of both talent and intelligence, and a great work ethic..." He paused and looked at Hermione, and she knew she must look extremely eager to hear what he had to say next. "Actually, I've only come across one student like that, in my entire career, and she... well, I suppose I never treated her too well as a student, but surely she knows now how much I respect her, admire her, enjoy her company..." he trailed off, leaning towards Hermione with a distinctly gentle look on his face, the kind that made her think he was no longer babbling just to punish the man on the other end of the telephone wire.

Severus was, in fact, leaning closer and closer to her, his face less than a foot from her own now. A thought struck her – "He's going to kiss me!" – and not only did the realization not disgust her, it thrilled her. He was six inches away, now closer, she closed her eyes... and then the damned voice, belonging to some stupid telephone-using git, jumped in and broke the spell.

"Yes, sir, I'm sure she does. But, as I was saying, your donation would go through our organization to several orphanages throughout the UK. And I know you expressed interest in learning more about the tax deduction, and I can assure you–"

Hermione broke from her trance, yanked the telephone from Severus, and said testily into the receiver, "We're not interested. Don't call here again." She hung up the phone and turned to Severus, who looked like he was coming out of a daze, and starting to lean back, away from her.

Well, she wasn't a Gryffindor for nothing. Time to be brave and, if need be, a bit bossy.

She grabbed his face in both hands and kissed him.

==

Author's Notes