Three

Disclaimer: They're not mine.

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Mr. Snape,

Emilie de Costa

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Miss de Costa,

Severus Snape

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Hermione stared at Snape's letter, her mouth hanging open rather unattractively. It was Sunday evening, a mere two days after she'd received the first communication from him. She was supposed to be correcting the essays that the third-years had turned in on Friday, but she suspected that her brain had just given up altogether and shut down in defense.

Snape was asking her out to dinner?

Ginny, curled up beside her on the sofa, started giggling abruptly, and Hermione felt herself flushing in mortification. "Oh, shit," she muttered, crumpling up the letter in embarrassment. "Did I say that out loud?"

"He's not asking you out to dinner," Ginny reminded her, as though the observation was supposed to be heartening. "He's asking Emilie out to dinner. Where'd you come up with her name, by the way? And on the spot like that!" she marveled.

"It was my mum's best friend's name," Hermione mumbled, sinking back into the welcoming cushions with a groan. "She was killed in a traffic collision when they were in their second year of university."

Ginny's eyes softened and she clucked in sympathy.

"What am I going to do?" Hermione resumed, despairing. "I can't go out to dinner with him. I can't even believe that he asked her on a date."

"You know," Ginny posited thoughtfully, "maybe we're reading too far into this...being girls and over-analyzing and whatnot. He could just mean that you two will meet, maybe have a butterbeer or a few shots of firewhiskey, and exchange the book. Then you'll go your separate ways."

Hermione's eyes narrowed as she digested this viewpoint. "But then why go to the Three Broomsticks and reserve a table? He was very explicit about that. We could just sit at the bar if all he wanted to do was have a drink out of courtesy."

"Okay, fine," Ginny replied testily. "Pardon me for trying to take some of the pressure off you. I guess he does want to have dinner."

"A date?" Hermione mouthed dubiously.

"A date," Ginny confirmed. "But it's more of an academic date, so maybe that doesn't count as a date in the strictest sense."

"Semantics," Hermione said dismissively. "I still have to have dinner with him. What am I going to do?"

Ginny chuckled again, downing more of her hot chocolate and staring into the fireplace with an amused look in her eyes. She seemed more wan than usual, and Hermione surmised that she'd spent the afternoon practicing hexes and had worn herself out. "I guess you're going to have dinner with him," Ginny concluded, polishing off the last of the plate of biscuits Hermione had acquired from the kitchens. She looked as though she needed the sustenance.

Rising unsteadily to her feet, Hermione carried the girls' empty mugs to her little kitchen area. "What am I supposed to say?" she demanded aloud. "I'm going to thank him for getting it for me, obviously, but what about after that?"

"I don't know." Ginny was beginning to sound bored. "Speaking of Snape, are you still going to be my dueling partner during the week? Snape wants us to practice at least an hour and a half before I go up against him again on Friday."

"You make it sound like you're planning a battle offensive," Hermione said dryly. "Yes, of course I'll still be your partner. What evenings are good for you?"

Ginny shrugged. "I can work around your schedule. I know you have a lot more grading than me, and you seem to like to go for walks in the evenings. How about Tuesday and Thursday at eight? We can do forty-five minutes each time."

"That sounds fine." Hermione found that she'd been absently wiping out the two mugs for the past few minutes without realizing that her hands were moving. "Gin, do you think I should call it off? The thing with Snape, I mean."

"Why?" Ginny's coppery head swiveled to regard her, her expression understandably thunderstruck. "You want that book. You don't have to tell me that. Your eyes glaze over every time you even talk about it, for Merlin's sake." She was beginning to assume a no-nonsense tone startlingly reminiscent of Mrs. Weasley.

"I know, but this is wrong." Hermione sighed and headed for her bedroom, Ginny trailing behind her. Accepting that she wasn't going to be able to concentrate adequately to get the third-year essays out of the way that evening, she began rooting around in her pajama drawer, finally extricating a flannel nightgown. "It's deceptive," she elaborated. "I'll take care of it, of course...the book, I mean...but Snape's gone through all the work of getting it for me. He thinks I'm someone completely different."

"So?"

"So how can I possibly repay him?" Hermione wailed from the bathroom, where she changed into her nightgown and commenced her nightly ritual of facial cleansing and brushing through her horrible hair. "I'm ridiculously indebted to him for this. I can't offer him money...he would probably be insulted. I could offer to pay for dinner, but would that insult him as well?"

"I don't know," Ginny admitted, sounding genuinely troubled. "I guess I hadn't thought of that. You could offer to pay for your half, but maybe it is a date to him."

"But perhaps we're wrong. If it were a date, would he have said something to the effect of, 'Would you like to have dinner with me?' Something more conclusive?"

"My mum says my dad asked her out on their first date by offering to reverse a Transfigured mouse she botched and fetching it food from the kitchens," Ginny replied, leaning against the bedroom door. "They ended up nicking milk and cookies and sneaking out to the lake. I don't think men of Snape's generation are quite as obvious as the fellows our age. Harry was about as subtle as a brick to the head," she added in an amused afterthought.

Hermione snorted. "Harry hasn't got a subtle bone in his body," she agreed. "Nor has Ron, really, but I never expected anything subtle from him."

"As I heard it, you were the not-so-subtle one," Ginny pointed out.

Cringing, Hermione recalled throwing herself into Ron's arms at the most idiotically inopportune moment during the final battle against Voldemort. "That was my fault," she agreed. "But my point is, if he's asking me...her...Emilie...out on a date, shouldn't he be a bit more open about it?"

"Perhaps he's shy. Look at what he was like with Harry's mum. He's been in love with her for how many years after she died? He probably still is."

"Very true," Hermione conceded, braiding her hair into a more manageable state and facing the mirror resolutely. Her usual plain appearance, mousy brown hair and dull brown eyes stared back at her. Her skin was growing paler with the autumn cold, her summer freckles fading into the nondescript beige canvas of her face. She couldn't imagine a starker contrast to Emilie's sultry beauty. "So why ask Emilie out to dinner?" she wondered softly.

Ginny gave a shrug. "It's been twenty years. You can't blame the man for wanting to move on."

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Mr. Snape,

Emilie de Costa

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Miss de Costa,

Severus Snape