Chapter 7: Face to Face

“Doesn’t honeysuckle signify finding the truth amidst obfuscation?” she asked. Somewhere in her reading, she was sure she’d seen that.

“Like I said, distractions everywhere,” he insisted.

Yes, she thought. Especially those two figures bathed in light, neither seeming the least bit concerned about whether they were distracting at all.

The cards lay at rest again on the floor, the images imprinted on the air above them.

“Do you need a rest?” he asked. “Or are you ready to proceed?”

“What gave it away?” she asked, risking a half smile. “My drooping eyelids or the sickly pallor?”

He snorted. “The stream of questions slowing to a trickle was a hint,” he said. “And to be fair, my energy is waning as well.”

Fair. That was a surprise, but from his appearance, baldly true. He looked drawn and pale and just slightly translucent, like the images he’d all but Conjured. They both could use a break. Even accustomed as she was to her stamina flagging easily, the magical endurance required to augment his Ogham reading was daunting. She could only imagine what it took out of him.

“Can we stop in the midst of the reading, or do we have to see it through to the end?”

He paused, examining the cards on the floor and the images imprinted on thin air.

“We’ve completed the first circle. We could not have interrupted that process, but—” He hesitated again. “—I believe that we can break here and resume when we’re rested.”

“Good,” she said. “I’d prefer to be fully alert for when we continue.”

“Indeed,” he agreed.

She looked around the room. The morning sun had gone, and afternoon light flooded the room. Her stomach growled, and she blushed.

“Time to eat,” Severus said.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, uncomfortable with his solicitousness.

“I am,” he said.

But the thought of staying inside felt suddenly suffocating, and Hermione had a thought, a terrible, frightening thought.

“Let’s go out,” she said.

“Out?” he echoed. “Where, precisely, do you suggest we go?”

“Anywhere,” she said, just as she realised that she meant it. Anywhere. Out. Just out there. Not hiding, not running. Despite the danger she’d been living with, was still facing—she glanced at the Rowan and the menacing swirl of mist around it—she felt safer than she had in years. She was tired of ducking between shadows. She wanted to get a drink, she wanted to walk outside and see the sun. She wanted, she realised, to be somewhere magical.

“Somewhere magical,” she said, just as it popped into her head. “Hogsmeade.”

“Hogsmeade,” he said as if it were a bad taste in his mouth. “Hogsmeade?”

She laughed. “Yes, Hogsmeade.”

“Whatever for?” He looked vaguely horrified.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just thirsty, I guess.”

She didn’t know why she felt light, but it had been so long since her limbs and heart had felt anything but leaden. Besides, intellect had clearly failed her. She ought to try following her impulses and see where they took her.

He was, of course, invited to come along.

Hogsmeade village looked nearly the same on first glance as it had during Snape’s year as headmaster. Quiet streets were lined with well-kept storefronts, showing the singes of war only around the edges. There wasn’t much activity there on a Tuesday afternoon, and it was just as well, he thought. He’d nearly persuaded Granger that strolling into The Three Broomsticks in his company was tantamount to throwing a Blast-Ended Skrewt into the Great Hall. Nearly.

“What do you plan to do about the fact that I’m dead?” he’d said when she kept on about still having good memories of The Three Broomsticks and their Butterbeer despite the handful of sour evenings she’d spent there with Ron after the war.

“It may have escaped your notice,” she replied, “that you’re not actually dead.”

“For all intents and purposes I am. And have every intention to keep it that way.”

“Forever?”

“Indefinitely.”

“So you don’t want anything to get better, then? You’re just doing this—” She’d gestured to the cards. “—What? For entertainment?”

He bristled. “I never said I didn’t want things to improve. I simply pointed out that as a wizard presumed dead for eleven years, it would be the ultimate hubris to simply stroll into the Three Broomsticks and order a Firewhisky.”

“Butterbeer.

“You can order whatever disgusting beverage you like, Granger. I’m getting myself Firewhisky. I need it.”

As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Neither of them had considered that the most likely place to encounter other witches and wizards was on the street outside. So when they literally ploughed into Ginny Potter on the sidewalk in front of Scrivenshaft’s Quill shop, it would have been impossible to say which of them was more shocked.

The Hog's Head had not, in the years since the war, ceased to provide nooks and crannies and shadows into which a witch or wizard could slip when the bright light of day burned the soul.

The corner booth was a particularly good spot, and Hermione was grateful that Snape hadn’t said a word when she’d turned her back, eyes blind with tears, on Ginny and the section of Hogsmeade that catered to cheerful witches. Not that Ginny was cheerful, she thought resentfully. Just... acceptable.

“What are you doing here?” Ginny had asked, as if the sidewalk belonged only to members of the magical community who passed muster. Not to her.

“Getting something to drink,” she’d muttered, just as the auburn haired witch did a double-take and gasped at the sight of Snape at her side, his hand resting at the nape of Hermione's neck, steadying her after their Apparition and just—steadying her.

“With… with that… him? Who is that?” she screeched. “Looks like Snape, but Snape is dead, so who is that?

“The tales of my death have been wildly exaggerated,” he drawled, and Hermione was grateful for his composure. She supposed that twenty years of spying must count for something when confronting the unexpected. Before she realised it, he’d shifted position so that his body was between hers and Ginny’s.

If body language were magic, his would be a Protego.

“It just figures that if anybody were to be keeping company with a wizard better off dead, it would be you.” She ran her eyes up and down slowly, lingering on the long-fingered hand resting on the nape of her neck.

“You disgusting—” Her heart was pounding, and she could hardly think for the rushing noise in her head. “This wizard saved all of us—even your precious Harry, and we left him for dead. And I found him completely by chance—alive, and all you can do is—”

“Let it go, Granger,” he said in a tone she’d never heard him use, even with Harry. Words directed at her; warning aimed squarely at Ginny.

She didn’t remember walking away, only that she was sure she could feel Ginny’s eyes at her back, recrimination and disgust crawling over her like rot that nothing could ever eradicate.

It had been months since she’d seen any of them, any of the others who were suffering the effects of the Horcruxes. Not since that night when hurt and rage had flung Ron through the plate glass front window at the Burrow, impaling him on shards that would have shredded him had Harry not interceded with a spell that wrapped Ron in a blanket of air and cushioned him from the glass. Interceded with a spell that kept Ron safe from the poison that had rooted itself in so deeply that she couldn’t distinguish it from her self anymore.

Hell. How can I trust my instincts when my instincts did that?

She shivered, and he slipped his hand under her tunic, stroking the skin at the curve of her back. Nobody else was in the pub, but she still scooted closer to him, his body still shielding her from whatever hostility might find her. He was lost in thought, their lunch eaten and his Firewhisky—the second one—sitting untouched on the table in front of him. Without a word, she slipped her arm beneath his cloak and laid her head on his chest.

He tightened his arms around her and, with a final glance at the Galleons he’d left on the table, squeezed them through the magical tunnels of space that were safe for the walking wounded, back home.

Home.

It hadn’t ever felt like much of a home. Not when he lived there as a child and never during the years when vermin and sycophants could come and go as they pleased. Years alone hadn’t made it feel more welcoming, but it was like anything well-worn and familiar—without a compelling reason to turn it in, it would do.

The outing had been a bad idea, he thought. As soon as she’d suggested it, he knew there was no good to come from it, but there was no swaying her. He’d grown used to hiding. Hell, in all honesty, he’d been hiding for the majority of his adult life. But for her, for a woman whose identity was rooted in showing others what she knew, what she could do, who she was, hiding chafed at her, and he wished that the outside didn’t hurt her so much.

He was accustomed to hostile glares and the death wishes aimed at him by passersby. Being putatively dead had, he realised, given him a buffer against such things. Barely, but more than the ragged defences she wore.

“That wasn’t the Ginevra Weasley that I remember,” he said, interrupting the silence. Her body shuddered with what might have been a sob, and he just held her closer.

The couch, for all its scratchiness, had shown itself a satisfactory location for the sort of contact that kept them both away from the ragged edge of the ever-present ache. She was curled into his body, arms wrapped around him, and a long leg clad only in the loose skirt he’d pulled from his mother’s closet draped over his.

He’d had to forcibly stop himself from looking back at the translucent couple reclining on their bed of heather and was grateful that the cards did not come accompanied by sound effects. It had been hard enough not to slip his hand beneath the thin skirt and run his hand along the skin behind her knee, tracing it up, up, up to the delicate skin between her thighs. Her sighs from the movement of his hand along the line of her back, and a noise that sounded suspiciously like a purr when he slipped his hands under her shirt to touch the hot skin there, had his heart racing enough already.

“Are you tired?” he asked. The weight of the day was wearing on him, and the sun had long gone, leaving pale moonlight streaming through the window.

“I am.” Her voice was tentative, and she lifted her head to glance at the couch that had been their bed the night before.

“I don’t know if I can handle another night on the couch,” he said and, before she could slip out of his arms, continued. “There is a bed upstairs – a bed that might comfortably accommodate both of us.” He paused only briefly. “Of course, if you prefer, I can put a mattress on the floor for myself, and when one of us needs to, we can—”

“No, please,” she interrupted. “The bed sounds wonderful.” She brought her lips to his cheek. “Thank you.”

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He could do this; he could lay in bed with her, and it would be fine. It would. The hunger rising in him was just that – hunger from deprivation and the erosion of the barrier that he’d habitually worn since adolescence. He could do this. He owed it to her, would provide a good night’s sleep for her if for no other reason than her heated defence of him on the street in front of Scrivenshaft’s.

The hunger would have to wait.

Hermione didn’t stop to wonder how it was that Snape still had his mother’s old clothing, but she was grateful that he had simply directed her to the cabinet where she could find a thin nightdress and left her to change. Even the moments apart that were necessary to attend to basic bodily functions left her sweaty and tired, and it was only the knowledge that he also benefited from her touch that kept her from feeling completely humiliated each time she slipped back into his embrace.

But this would be different.

This would be lying next to him, no bulky cloaks to hide the heat rising inside her at his every touch. This would be letting go, falling into sleep, and hoping that she didn’t ravish him in her dreams.

He was already under the covers when she came back from the loo, her nightshirt a thin slip of cotton surprisingly soft against her skin. She climbed into bed, pulling the quilt over her and clutching the pillow closest to him. He was lying on his back and looked, for all she could see, extremely uncomfortable.

“If you’d rather I slept on the floor, I will,” she stammered. “This is your bed, and I don’t want to deprive you of your sleep.” He didn’t turn to look at her. “If me being here, sharing the bed, means that you won’t sleep, I don’t want—”

But he wasn’t lying on his back anymore; he was over her and his mouth was hot and—

Oh, Merlin. Thank you.

She was struggling with his nightshirt, wanted it off, had to get rid of the fabric that lay between her and his skin. Ah, off. He groaned as her lips followed the path of her hands down his chest, to his flat belly, but then strong hands grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her back up.

Her face was flushed, she knew, and not just with embarrassment at trying to ravish him even while awake. But he was flushed, too, and he just looked at her for the longest time before lowering his mouth to taste hers again.

Slowly, so slowly. He drew her nightgown up over her head and cried out as he traced a pattern down her chest.

Three strokes across and a long stroke down.

Three strokes across and a long, sensuous stroke down.

And what sounded like an incantation.

“OoRah.” he whispered. Three long strokes across and, “OoRah,” before he drew his tongue from her sternum to her navel.

She didn’t know what it meant, but it didn’t matter because it was true. “OoRah,” she echoed.

And in the dark, book-lined room downstairs, the translucent image of two figures reclining against the heather grew solid for a moment as the reed broom took one final circuit and came to rest alongside the beech tree that sheltered it.

A/N: Beta thanks, as always, to the divine Annie Talbot.