Chapter Three: In Which a Declaration is Made

Chapter Three: In Which a Declaration is Made

'I haven't done anything with Neville,' Severus responded, managing to utter the name in a tone dripping with disdain.

Hermione increased the pressure of the wand tip, sinking it further into his throat. 'Then why did you say for me not to count on him showing up?' she demanded suspiciously.

'Because he might be a bit hung over.'

Hermione lowered her wand and Severus rubbed his throat. He gave her a wolfish smile. 'If it bruises, I'll say you did it,' he promised.

Refusing to be distracted, Hermione persisted. 'How would you know whether or not he was hung over?'

He quirked an eyebrow at her. 'Isn't it customary to buy the lucky groom a pint to wish him well?'

Hermione gave a snort of disgust. 'You didn't go to Long Leighton.'

'If you say so,' he responded amiably.

She spun away from him again. 'You're wasting my time! I'm going to be late for my own party.'

'I only stayed with him long enough to hear about how he's only marrying you to get to his inheritance,' he said, his tone goading. 'It's not as if he loves you,' he added.

When she swung at him, her fist made glancing contact with his jaw, and he staggered back under the blow.

'You loathsome bastard!' she cried.

Severus was so surprised that he had to laugh. He hadn't been with her fifteen minutes, and she had already marked him twice. He rubbed at his jaw and watched her standing with clenched fists; he felt as if he was watching her with brand new eyes. He wanted nothing so much as to kiss her again, but he suspected that now might not be the best time.

'I may be loathsome,' he agreed sardonically, 'but I must object to the "bastard" bit...my parents were, regretfully, married.' He eased toward her again, for she drew him, like a bee to an exotic blossom. 'Longbottom told me about his Uncle Kelp's will...about the clause that states he will only inherit on his twenty-fifth birthday if he's married by then...but I never took you for a gold digger, Parker.'

'Algie!' she screeched, correcting him, almost as if she couldn't help herself. 'Uncle Algie!'

He shrugged, moving another step closer. 'Kelp, algae...what's the difference?' He inhaled deeply of her scent, marvelling that she had changed so little in the years since he had last smelled her. Her face had lost the last touches of girlish roundness, and she was more slender than he remembered her, but the alterations simply made her more alluring than before.

She took a shuddering breath, as if to calm herself, and said, 'You expect me to believe that you went all the way to Long Leighton to have a pint with someone you despise?'

'I believe it was more along the lines of four or five pints...but I wasn't really counting...just buying.' He smirked and dared to raise his hand to stroke her unbelievably soft cheek. 'I had to find out what was happening, Parker...your engagement came out of nowhere, you know.'

She batted his hand away and backed away from him. 'You're such a liar ...'

With the speed of a striking serpent, he whipped a phial from his pocket and held it before her eyes. 'Veritaserum,' he said. One side of his mouth quirked up slightly. 'I thought the issue might come up, and I like to be prepared.'

She reached for it, a speculative light in her eyes, but he closed his fingers into a fist. 'I'll keep it,' he said firmly. 'You may use it once, and you may ask anything you want...but make sure you know all the questions you want to ask, because we will not repeat the exercise.'

Shaking her head, as if to clear it, she turned away again. 'I have no interest in anything you have to say to me.'

'I'm not going away, Parker,' he said. 'And you're going to hear everything I have to say, if I have to kidnap you to make you listen.'

She seemed to hesitate a moment in the doorway as he made his rash threat, but she did not stop or turn, and then he was alone in the Bridal Suite.

Longbottom did show up for the tea, looking none the worse for wear for having been inebriated the night before. Severus sat in the corner of the Grand Salon and drank his tea whilst he watched the groom interact with his guests. The boy didn't know it, but he was also suffering a bit of a Veritaserum hangover, as well.

Severus hadn't had time to pussyfoot about. Four years of quarterly reports on the life and doings of one Hermione Granger, provided by the discreet...and expensive...services of the wizarding division of Blue Moon Investigations, Dover Street, Mayfair, London, had not prepared him for the stunning blow of picking up the Sunday edition of the Daily Prophet and finding Granger's radiant face smiling from the front page of the society section. The engagement and the wedding had been announced at the same time, almost as if the girl was in an indecent hurry to be married...yet Severus knew that Longbottom had never slept with her. Perhaps she was carrying about someone else's bastard and she was making haste to legitimise it? He shook his head. Why would Longbottom agree to this rush-job of a wedding when his twenty-fifth birthday wasn't for 10 more months?

One bit of information Severus had gleaned from a quick look inside the mess of Longbottom's mind had been that the boy was in love ... with a different female. Severus recognised the girl's face...she had been his student...but for the life of him, he could not recall her name. And according to Longbottom's sickly sentimental memories, she was called "Abby." Severus had no memory of ever meeting someone called that, much less teaching someone with such an unfortunate name.

He surveyed the group of witches and wizards included in Hermione's wedding party; there was a disproportionate number of Gryffindors present, with a smattering of Ravenclaws, but there were no Hufflepuffs...and he was the only Slytherin. He placed his empty cup on the table and stood. He was ready to mingle.

Hermione watched Snape first hovering on the fringes of the men's groups, then slowly insinuating himself into the conversations, until she wanted to slap him. Who was this debonair, socially adept man? The Snape she remembered couldn't be arsed to leave the house...she had assumed he was an antisocial git. This git was moving about as if he had years of savoir faire under his belt.

'Is that Snape?' Ginny Potter gasped, coming up to stand beside her.

'Yes,' Hermione snarled.

'What's he doing here? Did you invite him?' Ginny turned amazed eyes onto Hermione. 'I didn't even think you liked him!'

'I don't know what he's doing here,' Hermione snapped. 'I didn't invite him, and I don't like him...in fact, I hate him!'

With that proclamation, she thrust her cup and saucer into Ginny's empty hands and stalked across to interrupt the men's impassioned discussion of Quidditch. She tucked her arm possessively through Neville's, and he looked down at her with a bemused but fond smile. Ignoring him, she turned her attention to the interloper, whose dark head was bent to listen to something Remus Lupin was saying.

'So, Snape, what are you doing here?' she asked abruptly.

Neville was horrified. 'Hermione!' he whispered. 'Don't!'

Snape met the challenge in her eyes with a gleam of amusement. 'I wouldn't miss this for the world,' he assured her.

'Don't you know it's rude to gatecrash a wedding?' she countered, infuriated at his attitude.

'Oh, but I'm not gatecrashing,' he responded smoothly.

'Oh course he's not!' Neville said rather too loudly. 'I invited him...he's my guest.'

Neville stared down at Hermione then, looking surprisingly stern. She was torn...she wasn't nearly finished ripping up at Snape, but she couldn't make Neville look the fool in front of all his friends, either.

'How good of you to say so, Longbottom...but as I was going to say, I popped in at Grimmauld Place over the weekend.'

Hermione froze. Snape continued to speak...something about how he had seen the wedding invitation on the bulletin board in the Order office, and he was still a member in good standing of the Order, was he not?...but she was stuck on the fact that he had been at Grimmauld Place. She had been living there...all of her belongings were still there...what if Snape had been in her room? Seen her ... things?

Dragging her attention back to the situation at hand, she directed a dazzling smile up into her fiancé's face. 'That's that, then,' she said, giving Neville's arm a squeeze. She reached up and kissed his cheek, for good measure. Neville smiled back at her, seeming a bit nonplussed by all the affectionate attention, and Hermione turned a challenging look across to Snape...but his lips twitched! And then he turned back to the Quidditch talk, his black head floating like a shark fin in the sea of Weasley ginger provided by Ron, Bill, Fred, and George. He did not look at her again for the rest of the tea.

She didn't know whether to be pleased or miffed. Or ... alarmed. Why was he here? Why now? Damn the man!

That night, the wedding party went to a local nightclub for a night of drinking and dancing. Hermione, who had planned to wear her nicest jeans, arbitrarily changed her mind, and wore instead a short black skirt and her highest heels. She pinned the loose curls up on her head and applied her new make-up with a generous hand. She felt in a dangerous mood, as if Snape's presence was eroding at her peace, raising a tide of uncertainty in her placid plans. How dared he to show up after all this time and try to ruin things for her?

She would show him.

Severus stood another round of drinks for his ever more jolly companions and kept a weather eye on Hermione. When she had walked into the club, his mouth had gone dry. Her legs ... dear Merlin, how was he supposed to keep his eyes to himself when she exposed that much leg? What the devil was she trying to do, anyway...start a riot? He was torn between kneeling at her feet and pressing his lips to one slender ankle...or grabbing the nearest tablecloth and wrapping her in it from the waist down.

Was she still wearing the saucy red knickers?

Just now, she undulated on the dance floor in company with her female friends. On one side, Ginevra Potter threw her copper hair about with complete abandon. On the other side, the former Patil sisters, now Mrs Ronald and Mrs George Weasley, moved as if they were one being, a synchronised dance made all the more tantalising by their traditional Indian dress. In a space all to herself, Luna Lovegood danced as if no one else were present, seeming to move to her own internal composition.

They were lovely, the young witches watched over by the wizards who sat around Severus, drinking lager and doing as little dancing as possible. But Hermione stood out for him, in her too-short skirt and her tiny top which lifted to show provocative bits of midriff. She glowed as if she had swallowed a golden light which now limned her every movement with gilt. He knew with a certainty deep in his gut that she had dressed for him...that she danced for him...that she was defying him, defying his presence here...and she was magnificent.

He would have a dance with her before the end of the night. The slow dances were few and far between, but he was patient. He would bide his time. And he would prepare the way.

'Drink up, Longbottom!' he urged, pushing a new pint to the already rosy cheeked groom.

His chance came rather more than an hour later, when the number beginning was slow and sweet, a near-the-end-of-the-night song, for the drunks to pair up and clear out. Deftly manoeuvring between Harry Potter, who appeared to dance with his wife, and Fred Weasley, who asked Miss Lovegood to dance, he materialised before the slightly dishevelled Hermione Granger and took her into his arms.

'My dance, I believe,' he said.

Her right hand, clasped in his left, fluttered. 'I should dance with Neville ...' she said, her too-wide eyes darting away from his face.

'Longbottom asked me to make his apologies...Lupin escorted him back to the hotel.'

He gathered her slightly closer, resisting valiantly the urge to crush her to him, wanting nothing so much as to feel her softness against the length of his body. Holding her, yet not holding her, his memories stirred...memories which had sustained him and given him hope on many a long night...and the bittersweetness of having her so close and yet so far tore at him.

Amazingly, she relaxed...relented...and tilted her face up to look into his eyes. 'Why, Severus?' she said, her voice showing her fatigue. 'Why are you here? Why now?'

He pulled her closer still, until her cheek rested upon his shoulder, and he bent to rest his cheek upon her temple. 'I'm here to fight for you, Parker...and I mean to win.'

She did not answer him, but he could have sworn she trembled in his arms.

A/N: There is a real private detective agency in London by that name at that address. I picked it because I liked the name and the idea of it being in Mayfair (where so many of my Georgette Heyer heroes and heroines lived). No resemblance to real people or actual situations is intended.

This chapter was beta read by DeeMichelle and Brit-picked by LettyBird.