With a Cherry On Top

Disclaimer: Don't own it.

Chapter 8 – With a Cherry On Top

Hermione collapsed across her bed and stared blankly at the ceiling, her limbs splayed where they fell. That had been one of the most disquieting encounters with Severus that she could ever remember, and not only because of the tightly reined emotions that had still somehow managed to crawl across his face – had his eyes gotten teary? This young Severus did not have the control that his older self so masterfully employed; his struggle to project indifference against the shock, guilt, hope and (here was the kicker) tenderness that twisted at his features was staggering in its aberrancy. It had never occurred to her that he could feel all of that at once, much less display it for an observer. No wonder he had been such a schoolyard target: not only was he odd-looking and awkward, he was unusually sensitive. However, it wasn't Severus' reaction to her appearance that had her bullying her way through kitten gifting and lunch dates. It was her own.

She had almost hugged him.

Yes, she hugged her friends, but those friends weren't Professor Snape. Just the same, the urge to wrap him in her arms and hold him to her was instinctual and in her opinion, wholly inappropriate. The very thought filled her with a vague sense of guilt. She didn't know why hugging Severus would be different than hugging Harry, but she felt in her bones and the tingling under her skin that it definitely was. The more she tried to analyze it, the more uncomfortable she felt, so she chose to abandon that line of thinking for later and instead concentrate on her many victories of the day.

She was now positive that she could fulfill the mandate set forth by the newspaper photo, and she had introduced Severus to Mewlip. And, he didn't hate her. The joy suffusing her heart at that thought was enough to make her feel guilty all over again.

She shouldn't be looking forward to their errand to Diagon Alley as much as she was. It was supposed to be a chore. It certainly should not leave her twitching with excitement and wishing she had brought nicer shoes.

Sighing in exasperation, Hermione peeled herself off the comforter and sulked to the bathroom, internally debating whether she should cast the depilatory charm on just her lower legs or do the full Monty.

Half past noon the next afternoon found Hermione (hairless from the knees down) and Severus (wearing freshly cleaned robes and his hair styled as close as he could manage to the day they'd gone to Hogwarts) strolling down Diagon Alley, trying to share a cone of chips without actually touching each other. It was trickier than she had expected when she'd made the suggestion (neither of them were terribly hungry), because they both seemed to reach for a chip at the same time.

Severus was manfully ignoring the third such brushing of fingertips by asking the same question twice. Just as nervous and wishing that they would arrive at Fortescue's already, Hermione chose to answer the question as if it were the first time she'd heard it.

"Yes, I am quite sure that it is the Starglass. I did some experimentation while I was... recovering."

"Which experiment could you possibly perform on your own?" he asked in a supercilious tone that was uniquely his. Hermione sent him a quelling glance, and his eyes skittered away.

"On the Bearer's Intent," she replied unhelpfully.

"And?"

"You have to mean it, feel it."

"How dreadfully impractical." He cleared his throat and snagged another chip after checking that Hermione's hand was not already in the cone. "So, what did you... intend?"

Hermione blinked and almost tripped over an uneven cobblestone in the road. "That's rather personal, don't you think?" Severus shrugged, a gracefully casual gesture that accentuated the breadth of his shoulders. She disguised the fact that she had been watching by grabbing the last chip from the cone in his hand. Vanishing the empty paper non-verbally, he quickly clasped his hands behind his back. "What do you need it for, anyway?"

"It's a little late to be asking that, don't you think?" he asked slyly, studying her carefully from the corners of his eyes. "You've already agreed to help."

"Yes, but I can't help unless I know what it is we are to accomplish," Hermione said earnestly with a punctuating bob of her head. At his silence, she glanced up at him, noting his tiny smirk with dismay. "It isn't anything bad, is it?"

Severus stopped walking, his expression suddenly thunderous. "Just what are you implying?"

"Nothing, that came out wrong! Honestly, you are so prickly." She spotted the sign for Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor just up the street and nearly wilted in relief. "Come on, let's get some ice cream."

It wouldn't be until much later that she realized she had dropped the subject of his project without a further word.

Grabbing his arm, she all but dragged him toward the cheerful storefront, its outside tables crowded with Hogwarts students in crested robes taking a breather from shopping with sundaes, malts, and dripping ice cream cones. A group of younger students blanched and put their heads together, hissing, then vacated their table with ice cream cones in tow. An older boy, who was trying to grow a mustache, and his date, both in Gryffindor cloaks, glanced at them scornfully and shook their heads. The boy leaned over to whisper something in the girl's ear, and she giggled, her eyes dancing across both Severus and Hermione. Shooting her a lofty glare, Hermione tucked her arm into the crook of his elbow and steered him into the shop, belatedly noticing that he was in glowering contest with a handsome, solid looking, vaguely familiar man in burgundy robes.

After glancing around the shop checking for burglars, Hermione perused the menu and tried to ignore the looks that were prickling the hair on the back of her neck. Jostling Severus with her elbow, she tried to direct his attention forward. "Hm. I don't suppose they have any sugar-free soy-cream..."

Severus glanced at her askance and said, "I don't usually eat this stuff."

"Why not?"

"It doesn't agree with me."

"Then why didn't you say something?"

"I just did," he pointed out petulantly, and Hermione rolled her eyes.

She ended up ordering a strawberry sorbet garnished with fresh berries and two spoons. They secreted themselves at a corner table that had a good view of the entire shop, the doorway and the wide picture windows. She spent the next half-hour casing the store, wondering if she had the timing of the robbery all wrong and bullying Severus to "Try it. It hasn't got any milk and is made with natural fruit juices!"

Making a show of resistance, Severus finally helped her polish off the sorbet in between bouts of glaring at the man in burgundy robes, who had followed them into the shop and taken a seat at the counter. Hermione was about to inquire after him when the man rose from his seat and walked purposefully to their table. Without sparing a glance for her tablemate, he leaned onto one elbow and smiled winningly at Hermione.

"Hey, doll, is this guy boring you? Why don't you talk to me instead? I'm from a different planet."

Caught off guard, Hermione choked. "What?"

"Piss off, Diggory," Severus snarled from the other side of the table.

The man simply smiled wider and winked at Hermione. "Andrew Diggory, at your service. So, what do you say? Want to see my flying saucer?" He waggled his eyebrows lasciviously.

Fighting down a giggle at the ridiculousness of the man in her face, Hermione couldn't help but quip scornfully, "You've hardly got two heads."

"Come back to my place and I'll show you my second head..."

Hermione groaned and was mid eye-roll when Severus jumped to his feet and slammed his hands against the table. For all the racket that his blows made, his voice was deadly soft. "I said, piss off."

Both wizards whipped out their wands and stood stiff legged, facing each other and all but baring their teeth. Sighing heavily, she steeled herself to break up a prick-waving match and thus missed the entrance of a man, hooded and cloaked, and was taken completely by surprise when the entire shop fell under a Freezing Charm. Her robes fluttered about her body as if stirred by an invasive breeze, and she sucked in a breath of dismay through immobile nostrils as her purse and the Starglass flew up and out of her pockets. There was a slight tug on her neck as the chain on which she had strung a silver pendant that Ron had given her broke and followed her other valuables. Bright flashes of gold and silver and the jangling of coins filled the room, and Hermione strained to see their destination, raging at the fact that even her eyeballs were locked in place.

It was over in less than a minute, and the cheerful chiming of the bells over Florean's door was the last they heard from the thief. The shop remained Frozen for several more long minutes until the door banged open, and a voice shouted, "Finite Incantatem!"

Pandemonium broke out as bereft wizards and witches made a rush for the door, shouting and pushing as they clustered at the exit. Florean was hollering for order from behind the counter and was largely ignored. Severus and Hermione lingered by the table watching the chaos, once again alone since Diggory had joined the throng at the door.

"The Starglass?" Severus hissed at Hermione, barely audible over the commotion. Eyes wide and distressed, she nodded slowly, not liking the rage coiled behind his black eyes. He swore explosively, pounding the table again with his fist, and Hermione jumped. Grabbing her forearm with more force than Hermione deemed necessary, he said, "Clear your mind," and without further warning, Apparated them to just outside the front of the shop. Craning his neck to see over the rapidly increasing crowd of distraught witches and wizards, Severus scanned the street and alleys for a glimpse of culprit. Hermione clung to his arm, her eyes fixed on a knot of Aurors surrounding a plump, wailing witch with a lace handkerchief.

"This is all my fault," she whispered. "I should have known."

"Don't be ridiculous," Severus snapped as one Auror strode away from the woman, revealing the flashing of cameras. "Let's move," he added and then began dragging her through the crowd, one hand thrust forward to push through the bodies that weren't scattering before his black scowl.

Hermione let herself be carried along, numb to the disgruntled yelps of people who were pushed aside. Over and over, the feeling of the phial slipping up and out of her pocket, carrying with it her only way home, played through her mind. How could she have been so stupid to have brought the thing with her, knowing that there would be a robbery? It had simply never occurred to her that she would be among the victims. She had certainly left most of her money behind, and in the grand scheme of things, it was much less important. She spared a fleeting thought for the pendant Ron had given her, a dainty silver butterfly that had a tendency to tickle her neck when its wings fluttered, but her mind kept spiraling back to the Starglass: her ticket home.

So caught up in self-castigation, she hardly noticed when they stopped walking and only stared blankly at Severus when he called her repeatedly by her assumed name.

"Heidi!" He punctuated her name with a shake of her shoulders.

"What?" Blinking, she glanced around the empty alley, located not far from the entrance of Nocturne Alley. "Wait, shouldn't we have itemized what was stolen to the Aurors?"

Severus eyed her scornfully, dropping his hands from her shoulders. "You want to tell the Ministry that we have... had... a rare and powerful Dark object?"

"It wasn't necessarily Dark..." she trailed of lamely and pinched the bridge of her nose, squeezing her eyes shut. "No, you're right."

"Of course." She opened her eyes to glare at him over her hand, just in time to see his eyes narrow and his face close. "And what was that back there?" he asked accusingly.

"What was what?" she asked, a trifle exasperated, as she increased pressure on her sinuses. Odd, how applying pressure seemed to relieve it.

"A different planet? Two heads?" Bright spots of color blossomed on his cheeks as he leaned forward to hiss in her face.

For a long moment, she stared at him, agape, her hand dropping forgotten to her side. Finally, she strung her wits together and said, "It was a joke! From a book! It's not like anyone actually falls for that old pick-up line!"

"It didn't sound like a joke."

Hermione sighed and wondered if men the world over were just as impossible. Certainly, the ones she chose to spend time with were the pick of the litter. Perhaps she had come off as a bit flirtatious, though she hadn't meant it and was often oblivious to that kind of thing. Not that it should concern Severus, since she wasn't his girlfriend, but she supposed it could be a hit on the omnipresent male pride that another man intruded on his... well, turf wasn't really the right word. It looked like yet another apology was in order, if Severus' mutinous expression and hunched shoulders were any indication. "I'm sorry," she said quietly, meeting his eyes squarely. "I really didn't mean anything by it."

Severus searched her eyes for a long moment and then glanced away to study the brickwork of the building next to them, shoving his hands into his pockets. "It's not like I care, anyway."

Rolling her eyes, Hermione moved the subject to safer, saner ground. "So, what are we doing here?"

Severus seemed grateful to take her lead, clearing his throat and straightening his shoulders as he said, "I take it you didn't see the thief?" At Hermione's chagrined shake of the head, he continued, "I have a friend who might... hear... something about this incident, but in the meantime, I want to make sure that our item doesn't... surface... in any of the local shops."

"Oh," Hermione said, reading between the lines and not sure how she felt about it. It shouldn't have surprised her that he would have connections to nefarious characters, and it might come in handy in this instance, but the part of her that read the rules and restrictions of candy bar sweepstakes shuddered at the thought. However, it was absolutely imperative that they find the Starglass; it was the only artifact of which she knew that could transport one through time twenty years. The longest documented journey using a Time Turner had been two months, and the wizard involved had been admitted to St. Mungo's for an extended stay.

With a covert glance back the way they had come, Severus headed down Knockturn Alley, gesturing impatiently for her to follow. The Alley's denizens either hadn't heard about the robbery or didn't care, for they skulked along the narrow road as they had on Hermione's prior visits. She followed closely behind, squelching her curiosity to peer into dusty windows or gaze at the witches and wizards who passed them by, many of whom had their hoods pulled closely about their faces.

Severus led them into Borgin and Burkes without incident and strode confidently up to the counter, rapping loudly on it with his knuckles. They didn't have long to wait before a crotchety old man with rheumy eyes shuffled out of the back room to the counter, his back slightly stooped and his hair a veritable rat's nest of gray wire. He eyed them briefly and then nodded with a respectful air. Hermione had tensed herself for another display of scorn similar to that of the Potions shop and deflated a bit at the deference with which they were treated.

"Buying or selling?" the man asked as he retrieved a pair of glasses with lenses as thick and round as the bottoms of coke bottles and settled them on his nose.

"I have a message for your nephew," Severus said. The codger snorted and pulled a slip of yellowed parchment from below the counter, sliding it toward Severus along with a ragged quill. Bending low over the counter, his nose almost touching the parchment, he quickly jotted down a short message (Hermione couldn't quite read it over his shoulder, though not for lack of trying) and then folded the note, sealing it with a quick tap of this wand. "Please see that he gets this today. If these instructions are not followed, certain wizards will be quite... put out."

He slid the sealed parchment back over the counter, and the old man picked it up gingerly, stashing it in a charcoal gray waistcoat pocket with a grimace. "I'll see that he gets it."

Severus nodded curtly, and the old man grunted, shuffling into the back room and firmly closing the door. Grasping her elbow as she drifted to a display of ornately carved boxes, Severus led her back out of the shop. They strode purposefully out of Knockturn Alley, Hermione breathing a sigh of relief as they entered the welcoming streets of Diagon Alley. She didn't notice the silence between them until he broke it with a terse question.

"Which book?"

"What?" she asked, glancing up at him to see his eyebrows knit and his hard, black eyes trained straight ahead. "Oh! The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's a Muggle work of fiction."

He gave her a curious glance. "You don't spurn things of Muggle origin."

"Why should I?"

He shrugged languidly, and Hermione wrenched her eyes away to notice that he was now holding the door of the Post Office open for her. Ron didn't do things like that for her. She stuffed that thought away and shot him an inquisitive look, only to receive a raised eyebrow, and huffed, dragging her feet in irritation that he would leave her in the dark again. Pointedly ignoring her display, he gathered a blank piece of parchment from a wall of cubbies that held everything from parchment to quills to small columns of sealing wax in every color of the rainbow and many in between. At the far edge of the cubbies, near the wide archway leading to the Owlery, was a small office separated from the main room by an open window. A young clerk sat behind the window, flipping through a brightly illustrated magazine. The Post Office patrons generally ignored him, though once in a while, a witch or wizard would approach to inquire about postage rates (to which the clerk would point to a large chart of destinations and rates), delivery times (to which he would point to the same chart), or packaging materials (to which he would point to the wall of cubbies).

As Severus scribbled a short message on the parchment he'd selected, he kept a keen eye on Heidi. She was staring around the Post Office as if she'd never been there before, smiling wryly as she squinted at the rate chart. She probably didn't realize how much her expressions and careless phrases gave her away. It was almost a certainty that she wasn't whom she said she was; the Greenglasses were a purebred family, and though not as respected or well known as the Malfoys, or even the Greengrasses, they still held their purity in high regard. There was little chance that a proper Greenglass would read Muggle science fiction. Her flippant comment about "that old pick-up line" was peculiar and jangled at his suspicious nature. The book had been published only recently, and while it was popular in the Muggle world, it was relatively unknown among wizards. By no stretch of the imagination could the line be described as "old".

The style of her robes was odd, as well. If he wasn't mistaken, he had caught sight of a zipper at the back, a decidedly Muggle device, though the dress itself was clearly a witch's garment. A pureblood matriarch would have been scandalized. She was fortunate that her hair covered it most of the time.

And now she was staring pensively at a cubby of parchment, dragging the end of a quill across her lips. He was distracted for a moment, pausing just before he signed his initials to the bottom of his missive to watch the path of the feather. Her lips were slightly parted, twitching slightly as the feather tickled the sensitive skin that still bore a light stain of tinted gloss. With an abrupt movement, she stuffed the quill back into the cubby and turned in a swirl of green fabric, striding toward him with a vaguely dismayed expression. His breath rushed out of him in a hiss, and he hurriedly glanced away, signing his initials with a flourish and tapping it with his wand to dry it. Keeping his eyes down and his warming cheeks hidden, he rolled it into a tight tube and sealed it with a dot of wax.

He was more comfortable analyzing her behavior than his own. Some of the simplest things she did were disturbingly fascinating, drawing him in and distracting him. Each instance felt like a betrayal of her, flushing him with shame that he could look at another woman after what he'd done. He didn't deserve it, and neither did she. However, knowing this had not tempered his urge to hex that bastard Diggory when he'd approached the table and hit on Heidi just to spite him, nor the clenching pain in his chest when she'd responded. Her apology, though...

"What are you doing?" Heidi asked waspishly, her arms crossed tightly under her breasts. Severus snapped his eyes up to her face and frowned.

"Sending a letter. What does it look like?" Turning away from her, he stalked through the wide archway that led into the Owlery. Even over the din of hooting owls, rustling wings and a number of conversations that echoed through the lofty, dome-ceilinged room, he could hear her light footsteps behind him. He increased his pace, irritated at his hyper-awareness of her. Perhaps he should not have taken her up on her offer of help, though he had seen no way around it at the time. Now that the Starglass had been stolen, the person to steal it back would be the rightful owner...

Severus' train of thought was broken as his heel hit a slippery puddle under one of the owls' watering dishes, and his foot shot out in front of him.

"Oof!" Hermione said as she caught him gracelessly under the armpits, staggering under his weight. Her long fingers curled against his ribs, gathering handfuls of his robes, and in an oddly lucid vision, he saw her ragged, ink-stained fingernails snagging threads in the fabric. Pushing away his imaginings and her hands, he found his balance, straightening his jacket with jerky tugs. She was glowering at the puddle and muttering under her breath, something about posting signs, so he had a moment to school his expression from wistfully mortified to annoyed. It didn't take much effort.

He should send her away. She was dangerous.

"Come on," she said as she deliberately stepped around the puddle and toward the first tier of perched owls, which hooted in greeting. "Let's send that thing. Are you going to tell me to whom we are sending it?"

He sighed. The trouble was that he didn't want to send her away, and he so rarely got what he wanted. Unfortunately, she wouldn't like what he had in mind, considering what the wizard had done at their last meeting. "As I told you before, I have a friend who might have heard something. He'll be expecting us tomorrow."

Pulling a length of ribbon from the dispenser that was mounted underneath the long owl perch, Severus wound it around the scroll and then tied it firmly to the bird's outstretched leg. "Lucius Malfoy," he said to the owl and watched it launch into the air to circle the ceiling once, then fly out one of the many portal windows set high in the dome.

"I'm sorry, Severus, and correct me if I'm wrong, but am I to understand that we are calling on Lucius Malfoy?" Heidi planted her fists on her hip, her wild hair wreathing her face and her eyes crackling with anger like a vengeful Fury.

"Yes." He silently congratulated himself for his steady voice. "For afternoon tea."

A/N: Yes, that quote is right out of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I love the book and the radio show, and when I needed a cheesy pick-up line, it popped into my head. It implies that this Diggory has at least one Muggle parent, but like I said: I take liberties with canon.