Part the Sixth: Home

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Part the Sixth: Home

She uses the wrong wand in Miami.

It's vampires again. She and Severus are walking along South Beach after a late dinner at an overpriced restaurant, having an insipid argument about whether grouper or tilapia is the fishier tasting fish. The weather in Miami is lovely and mild, even though it is only March, and Hermione is walking along the shore in a skirt and her bare feet, two fingers hooked through the straps of her sandals as the damp sand squelches between her toes. Snape, however, wears his usual trousers and shirtsleeves, though the sleeves are rolled up to his elbows in deference to the weather. For him, it's dressing scandalously, which Hermione finds very appealing; it's positively Victorian that she finds the rare glimpse of his forearm so arousing.

"Really, Granger, they're both fish," Snape is saying just when she has noticed two men walking along the beach towards them. "Therefore they both taste like fish."

"I'm not saying they don't taste like fish," she replies, even as she begins to notice that there is something not quite right about the approaching men, but she isn't sure what. "I'm just saying that one has a less fishy taste than the other."

"Ah. I agree, then. Must everything end in an argument with you?"

She's about to point out that he's the one who started the argument in the first place – she doesn't remember when or how, but she's sure he is the one who started it – but then she realizes what is bothering her about the men. The hotels and restaurants facing the ocean are giving off enough light to reveal that they are wearing Bermuda shorts – matching Bermuda shorts of the bright and tacky neon variety. She frowns a little, beginning to wonder if the men are wizards, though even horrendous Bermuda shorts are a bit too normal for wizards in Muggle disguise.

"Hey, man, got a minute?" the larger one says as they come into conversation distance, his smile flashing brightly in the second-hand light.

Snape and Hermione slow, which seems to be what they were waiting for, because as soon as Snape begins to say something in reply, the two men are on him in a flash.

She doesn't quite know what's going on at first; her brain isn't quite processing the sight of Snape rolling around in the sand with two men dressed in those painfully bright shorts. She thinks they're being mugged in the Muggle way, assuming the two men are attacking Snape because he's male and therefore more likely to be a threat. She hasn't even thought to identify them as vampires; this is the beach, a place of sunshine and summertime, hardly the kind of place she would expect vampires to visit. It isn't until Snape gets one hand under the larger vampire's jaw and pushes him back that she sees the sharp teeth and realizes what is happening.

Vampires she can deal with. She pulls out her wand and fires off a handful of heat-based spells. The smaller vampire squeals in agony as his eye-scarring shorts catch fire; the other one pulls him to his feet and drags him away and up the beach, trailing the scent of singed flesh and burning polyester behind them.

Hermione rushes to Snape's side, wand still in hand, and helps him to his feet. "Are you all right?"

"Yes, no thanks to you. Don't the Americans have any dark creature restrictions?" Snape says, pushing her away as she is trying to brush the sand off of his clothes. He's covered in the stuff; it's even sticking in his hair. "And how long were you just going to stand there gawking at me?"

"Sorry, I was a little stunned." She brushes a clump of sand from the arm of his shirt. "I didn't realize they were vampires."

"Oh, then it makes sense that you were just standing there while I was nearly their first meal of the night."

"Consider it revenge for Las Vegas," she replies. "And I don't know what you're complaining about." She gestures in the direction the vampires ran with her wand. "I took care of them in the end."

Snape has a sarcastic reply, of course, but she isn't listening to him because she has noticed that the wand in her hand isn't the oak wand she bought in Poland, but the walnut wand she took from Bellatrix Lestrange.

"Uh, Severus," she says in a wavering voice, cutting him off in mid sentence.

He looks at her sharply. "Tell me you aren't hurt, Granger."

She swallows around the lump in her throat. "I'm not hurt, but, um, don't be angry."

"Don't be angry about what?"

She holds out the wand, lying across her open palm. "It's the wrong wand."

Snape looks at the wand, then at her, then the wand again, and then he's got her by the elbow, and he's dragging her up the beach, towards the hotel. He orders her to the car while he checks them out, and then they are on the interstate again, just driving south with no clear destination in mind. Hermione feels sick and scared; she's not only going to get herself caught, she's going to expose Snape, and she doesn't want that for him.

"I can't break my wand," she says, and it's not what she wants to say. She wants to say the bit about not wanting to expose him, not the bit about not breaking her wand, and now she wishes she hadn't opened her mouth at all, because words keep coming out, and they keep being the ones she doesn't want to say. "I took this from Bellatrix Lestrange, and I'm keeping it, because she wanted to torture me and then kill me, but she failed. I'm still here, and she's long dead."

"I'm not going to make you break the wand," Snape says after a moment, the lights of the dashboard casting his face into a sharp chiaroscuro of light and shadow. She thinks he might be angry with her. She's sure he's angry with her. His face is that hard, twisted mask of hate and rage she saw so often when she was still his student and in love with Ron Weasley. "I think it's time you summon Potter. We won't have enough money to leave the country, otherwise."

Hermione nods and crosses her arms over her chest, watching the buildings and trees and lights of southern Florida flash by the window, her stomach churning with guilt and anxiety.

After a few minutes, Snape adds, "Don't worry, Granger. If they come for you, I won't let them take you."

She nods again and purses her lips together, trying to hold back the tears.

It's just as good as if he actually said the words, "I love you."

And in some ways, it's better.

They drive and drive until they can not drive any more and find themselves in Key West.

They find a hotel room and wait for the Aurors or for Harry, whoever reaches them first. But after a couple of days, when no one has come, they realize that the Aurors aren't coming – the spells she cast must have fallen within the margin of error of the tracking magic. It doesn't take long for Snape to begin complaining about the heat – which, she is willing to admit, is rather excessive for early spring – and the people and the consistent lack of Potter and then the heat again. Hermione decides that she's heard enough and rents a beach house on Sugarloaf Key, which takes care of some of the complaints.

She refreshes the coordinates on the Galleon every day for a month, but Harry still does not come. She begins to worry that he won't, that he's lost his Galleon, or he's been found out for helping her leave the country or has even been killed in the line of duty or hit by a bus. When she says as much to Snape, he comments that the likeliness of the last is rather high, considering how Ernie Prang drives the Knight Bus, so she hexes him soundly and makes him sleep on the couch for two nights. After that, he does not make any more jokes about why Harry has not yet come, and his best to distract her. Usually they end up fighting, but then they end up in bed, and that's usually all right with her.

When Harry finally does show, it isn't on one of the long afternoons that Hermione spends walking along the beach, picking up sea shells and wading in the warm shallows, or in the evenings when she and Snape sit out on the porch watching the sun set over the Gulf of Mexico, or even on one of the quiet mornings when they sit on opposite sides of the kitchen table, enjoying breakfast and each other in silence.

No, it has to be right after one of their spectacular rows – this time over who is to blame for the burned toast – in the middle of a spectacular bout of sex, which is the most spectacularly bad time he could have chosen to come.

Hermione hears him pounding through the house like a gleeful puppy that's just been let out of its pen. She stops what she's doing, twisting around to look at the door, and Snape whimpers in protest.

"Granger," he pants, "what are you..."

"It's Harry," she whispers and begins trying to untangle herself from the knot of sheets and limbs they have managed to twist themselves into, horrified by the thought of poor Harry walking in on them in such compromising positions.

Underneath her, Snape begins muttering about door knockers, door bells and even knuckles, and the ridiculous dunderheads who can't seem to use any of them, but then she puts her knee somewhere sensitive and Snape barks, "Granger, careful!" and then the bedroom door bursts open, and everyone freezes right where they are: Hermione tugging at the sheet, Snape with his hand in a place it shouldn't be in polite company, and Harry in the doorway, his green eyes wide with shock.

And even more horrible, Ron is standing there, too, mouth agape in his best fly-catching pose.

Harry suddenly makes the same noise that Crookshanks makes when he's trying to bring up a hair ball and retreats back into the hallway as quickly as possible. Ron just stands there a moment more before he says in a rush, "Hermione, we're sorry it took us so long to come, but we were sorting out your exile, and you can come home now, and bloody hell, that's Snape!"

"Ron!" she screeches, her outrage at their invasion of the bedroom finally breaking through her horror and embarrassment. "Get out!"

Harry reappears long enough to grab Ron by the back of his shirt and drag him from the room. The door slams behind them, and she hears Ron say, "But she never did that to me when we were together!"

Whatever else is said is lost as they move off down the hall. With a sigh of relief and sudden exhaustion – she loves the boys madly, but they just make her so tired sometimes – Hermione collapses onto Severus and lies there for a few moments, listening contentedly to his heart beating under her ear.

It takes a bit for her to realize that he is lying stiff and still beneath her, muscles hard and taut. Frowning, she pushes herself up and leans over him, bracing herself on her hands.

"What's wrong?"

He does not reply. He just turns his head away from her to stare at the far wall, his jaw clenched, the tendons in his neck standing out in tension, the scar on his throat elongating and going white.

"Severus?"

He swallows, his Adam's apple bobbing with the motion. "Aren't you going?"

"Going where?"

"Back to England. Since the day you knocked me down in Budapest, you've done nothing but whine about wanting to go back."

Then she understands. He thinks she'll go with Harry and Ron without a second thought for him, even after she's learned so much – like how satisfying an explicative can be when a car cuts her off, and exactly how long she can hold her breath, and how to know when Snape is just being a miserable sod and when he's lashing out in anger or fear, like, for example, now. "Wait, you think I'm just going to up and leave you?"

"Well, you want to go home, don't you?"

Hermione gapes at him for a moment, then with an affection shake of her head, curls up on his chest again, her ear to his heartbeat

"Idiot," she says. "I already am."

A/N: Thanks to everyone who's come along for the ride. I hope you enjoyed it!