Pretty Good Year

8.

"Do not waste my time, Lupin. The wards were compromised from within. I am not asking you to confirm; it is clear enough. I am merely asking which members of staff you were looking at before the attack came."

Snape's hands are trembling though he has concealed them far enough beneath his robes to hide the fact from Lupin. He is not concealing his emotions with equal success. Strange, that with everything he has seen, his defenses are so undone by the breaching of the castle. Merely a building, a construction of wood and stone, he tells himself, knowing it for a lie.

"We monitored everyone, Severus. Even you and I were watched. Even Dumbledore was asked to account for himself." Lupin stops, and sighs heavily.

"Lupin." His voice is not quite a growl. "Remember to whom you are speaking."

"Aurelia Vector did not make contact with her liaison last night. I feared her taken, but she was present at the meeting this morning. She intentionally avoided me, and as I was leaving the castle I saw her standing over Filius Flitwick. He was dead, and when she saw me, she ran."

Snape stops pacing and positions himself again before the window, watching Lupin's reflection in the glass. When Lupin turns his back, Snape grants himself the momentary indulgence of resting his head in both hands, and closing his eyes. He has recovered by the time Lupin has turned his direction again.

"Naturally, there be may be any number of explanations for her behavior...."

"However many plausible explanations you could devise, there are double that number of reasons to believe the worst." A child from a neighboring brownstone comes running into view, in pursuit of a small black and white ball. Snape steps away from the window and takes a heavy seat in the armchair.

"She was your pupil. Would you give up on her so willingly?"

"She had....pressures to contend with that nothing, even the threat of my displeasure, could effectively counterbalance." He studies his hands. "The weight of her blood was a considerable burden to her."

"No less than yours was to you," Lupin observes, his voice mild.

"Comparisons are odious. Aurelia remained in contact with her brother long after becoming estranged from the rest of her family. Dolohov has been courting her intensely." Snape stands up, and begins to pace. "She hasn't left the castle for months."

"Whereas you cut off all connection with your family when you were sixteen."

"And still made regrettable choices. So you see, there are no reliable predictors of behavior."

"Agreed. I am still not prepared to call her a traitor until we know more. Did you observe anything of note on your way out?"

"The safeguards over Longbottom held. He was gone before we were. Malfoy's band had taken the ground floor; Rosier, Rodolphus Lestrange, that lot were all with him." He pauses, because it seems necessary. "Honoria Sprout is dead."

A movement at the top of the stair catches his eye; Hermione Granger, hobbling past in her dressing gown, her arm around a disheveled, luminous figure in white. He realizes with a start that this is Luna, seeming suddenly ten years older than she did half an hour ago.

He feels a sudden pang of guilt, a feeling he is coming to associate with the girl. He finds this troubling, but Lupin's voice calls his attention back to the parlor before he can begin to dwell on it.

"I believe that most of the Order Apparated away directly after the meeting. Dumbledore, I know, left to check on Harry. Hermione and I only remained behind because Hermione was concerned for Luna."

Snape turns his back on the stair. "Then we must assume that the attack on the school is unknown save to those of us who escaped. We should alert the Burrow, the safehouses. Dumbledore as well, though chances are excellent he already knows."

"Hermione and Luna need time to rest."

Snape arches an eyebrow, and welcomes the first uncomplicated emotion he has felt for days. "I fail to see how that bears on the situation."

"Do you intend to leave Luna here alone?"

"She is hardly my responsibility."

"No more would I describe Hermione as my responsibility, but I have no intention of leaving her here injured and unguarded."

"Your relationship with Miss Granger is not one that bears speculation."

For only the second time in the thirty odd years of their acquaintance, there is a flash of something dangerous in Lupin's gaze. He opens his mouth, but the next voice to speak is not his.

"Indeed, Professor Snape, I think we can all agree that speculations into affairs that don't concern us inevitably prove tiresome to everyone involved." Hermione emerges from the staircase, one hand cinching her dressing gown, the other gripping the bannister.

"Should you be up, Hermione?" Lupin moves toward her, but she waves him off and sits in the armchair Snape vacated a few minutes ago.

"I couldn't help but overhear your gallant defense of me, Remus, and though I do appreciate it, I agree with Professor Snape. I'm not fit to move yet, and poor Luna is so tired that she's hysterical. We'll be perfectly safe here while you warn the others. Once we're useful again we can make our way to the Burrow."

Snape offers her a smile, and a small, ironic bow. "An excellent notion, Miss Granger. If you will excuse me."

He leaves the room without waiting for Lupin to offer further protest. He heads, not for the Apparition parlor, but for the kitchens, where less than twelve hours ago, and in another world, he made tea for a bewildering girl and tried to come to terms with the radical new shape of his destiny.

It is no wonder if he lacks something in self-awareness, he muses, when the events that provoke self-examination so rarely afford the opportunity to conduct it at leisure.

He rifles the herboire and, conjuring a pen and parchment, scrawls several lines of writing he knows full well is legible only to him. Leaving the cupboard doors open and vials strewn over the counter, he turns back for the parlor, parchment in hand.

Halfway down the hall, he stops. Through the parlor door, which stands wide open, he can see Lupin and Granger, embracing. He halts, unable to look away, despite the roil of disgust in his gut.

His earlier comment to Lupin notwithstanding, he had not actually supposed the two of them were....intimate. A blushing, half-secret schoolboy's infatuation seems more Lupin's style, especially when the subject of his infatuation is someone as brazen as Granger.

An interminable period of time seems to pass until Lupin steps back, kisses her cheek, and Apparates. Snape shuts his eyes and tries to rid his mind of the image, uttering a silent prayer of thanks to whatever semi-merciful deity allowed him to witness the scene but spared him the agony of walking in on it blindly.

Hermione turns in the next moment and sees him standing outside the door. She smiles, her lips thin. "And here we were just discussing the infelicity of prying into other people's affairs."

"Whatever knowledge I have of your private affairs, or of Lupin's, I owe entirely to a series of unhappy accidents." He steps from the hallway, into the parlor, shutting it behind him pointedly. "Luckily, there are potions one can take for the nausea."

"May I ask you something?" She plows ahead without waiting for the requested permission. "What is it about us, precisely, that so often causes the petulant third year in you to surface?"

Snape arches an eyebrow, hoping that the flush he can feel gathering around his collar hasn't crept into any of the visible areas of his head and neck, "Us, Miss Granger?"

"Harry's friends. Ron and I, Ginny, Lupin, Sirius, when he was alive--not to mention Harry himself. Now that you can't humiliate us during Potions anymore, you make a point of inserting nasty and useless remarks into perfectly civil conversations. Why must you make things so difficult?"

Snape lifts his chin. It's an easy way to avoid looking directly into her eyes. "I hold nothing against any of your little school friends, Potter included, that I do not hold against all selfish, undisciplined, disrespectful children--"

"Oh, would you just stop it!" Hermione shouts at him. She seems to take herself by as much surprise as she has taken Snape; she runs a hand over her face, and when she speaks again her voice is much calmer. "Really, Professor, isn't it about time you came up with a new story? That one ceased to be remotely convincing when we were in sixth year. We aren't children anymore. And this still doesn't begin to explain your hostility toward Remus."

Snape studies her a moment before answering, despite the fact that, with this question, he is on much firmer ground than before. "In the normal course of events, I am perfectly ambivalent toward Remus Lupin. He lacks distinctive flaws as well as distinctive virtues, and so he is of no interest to me.

"When I observe, however, that he has chosen to abandon his normal measure of relative good sense and conduct an--affair, with his own student...." Snape's nostrils flare delicately. "My feelings shift rather dramatically to the left of ambivalence."

"Actually, I'm sure you haven't forgotten that Remus is no longer a teacher, or that he has you to thank for that fact. More to the point, I left Hogwarts two years ago. If that is the basis for your disapproval, I'd say you're reaching."

There are bright spots of color over her cheekbones, hectic against the pallor her skin, and she is breathing somewhat more heavily than normal. Because, he tells himself, he does not have time to attend her in a swooning fit, he takes a careful seat on the edge of a silk armchair and leans forward. After a moment of watching him suspiciously, Hermione also sits, and waits.

"All I know is this, Miss Granger. We are at war. Precision is demanded of each of us who fight the enemy, and high emotion is a deadly threat to precision. And when there is a significant age difference....between lovers....there are inevitably complications which....increase that threat."

Now he is certain that the blush has crept above his collar, but Hermione has begun looking at him with less anger and something more like interest.

"You sound as though you're speaking from experience."

For the second time in the space of an hour he pushes thoughts of Aurelia Vector from his mind. "It is a common scenario."

He stands up, unfolds the piece of parchment he has held crumpled in his hand throughout the conversation, and offers it to her. She takes it, and looking at him with a furrowed brow, begins to study it.

"If you follow those instructions precisely, the mixture will, I believe, go far to restoring you and Miss Lovegood to a state of relative health. All the ingredients can be found in the kitchens." He smiles tightly. "I understand it may be some time before you feel up to it, but I would strongly encourage that you see to it yourself. Miss Lovegood lacks your careful hand with potions."

"I see." She looks up at him, and nods. "That is very kind of you."

"Not at all. Now if you will excuse me, it is past time I was gone."

He walks to the Apparition parlor, because he does not like to Apparate in front of other people unless it is necessary. A moment later he is hundreds of miles away.