Owls and Musings

Chapter 5

Esme,

I accept your offer for a vacation this summer. Shall we meet for lunch at the LC and then go on to your place? Would July 1 be a problem?

SS

Severus sent the owl with a sense of growing anticipation. When was the last time he had taken an actual holiday; during his school days as a boy? He couldn't remember. Staying at Esme's place? He normally would not take such a risk; her Gryffindorness must be rubbing off on him.

He returned to his desk to start grading the essays he had collected that week from his third years. What a bunch of dunderheads! He picked up his red marking quill and started slashing away. After an hour of this satisfying activity he heard a soft knock on his office door. He sighed; he was just getting on a roll.

"Enter," he said without looking up.

"Professor?" An older witch opened the door, entered, carrying a large sheaf of scrolls.

"Madame Pomfrey?" What could she be doing down here in the dungeons?

"You asked me to make observations of the effectiveness of those three healing draughts?" she reminded him.

He pricked up at this. "Yes! You have results?" He sat his quill down and indicated that she take a seat across from him. She took it with a repressed sigh.

"Most definitely. I've written up my findings for you here." She handed him the thickly rolled scroll.

"Which version worked the best?" he inquired, taking a quick perusal of the contents.

"Version C was the best, Professor. May I ask what made the difference?"

"I'm not at liberty to say yet, but when I am, I'll let you know. Thank you, Madame Pomfrey; this is a great boon to the research project. I'll make sure that your name is included in the monograph when it gets written up and I'll make up more of the third variety for you before the summer holidays," he offered.

"I appreciate that, Professor." She visibly preened at the veiled compliment. "I need to get back to the infirmary, Charlie Weasley got bludgered badly at the match today." She shook her head as she rose from the chair, tsking under her breath.

Severus let a small sneer cross his features as he walked her to his office door. The holidays were not going to come soon enough.

+++

July first found Esme seated at a table at the Leaky Cauldron reading that days Daily Prophet. The headlines today included: "New Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge takes office", "Half price sale at Gladrags", "Celebrate with the colonists - July 4^th whiz-bang sales at Zonkos".

"Excuse me, Miss, is this seat taken?" A smooth silky voice said in front of her.

"I'm saving it..." she looked up and a smile lit her face, "for you, Severus!" she said folding up her paper and signaling to the waitress.

Severus laid his travel bag and violin case on the floor and placed his lunch order to the hovering girl.

"Glad to get out of the castle?" Esme asked.

"You have no idea." he sighed. "Anything of interest in the Prophet today?"

"Just Fudge taking office."

His old sneer came back in full force.

"What? Don't you like him?"

"An ineffectual ministry official. He'll end up bumbling it, mark my word."

"I thought I was the one who got premonitions," she scoffed.

"Do you? Well, that wasn't a premonition. It was a calculated observance," he said as he started in on his sandwich and tea after it had appeared on the table. "Do you really get premonitions?" he asked curiously.

"On occasion, normally in dreams. I started keeping track of them in school. They aren't very earth shattering and come very far and few between. Usually they are about people I personally know," she said as she picked out what she considered inedible items in her salad before pouring some dressing over the remaining greens. The cook always insisted on putting peppers in his salads and she couldn't stand them.

"What does your Aunt think about it?" he asked, knowing Minerva's abhorrence of divination in general.

"About the same as I do. I think it is a very inexact science and most divinators are big frauds. I've heard her go on about that divination teacher you have now, Trelawney. She sounds like she falls in the fraud category; constantly predicting students deaths." Severus only made a non-committal noise as he ate a chip. "But I don't go into a seeing trance at all. I'll just get a very detailed dream that I remember quite clearly when I awake. When I started noticing that things I had recently dreamed were coming true, I decided I'd better keep track of them." She shrugged and continued making inroads through her salad.

He finished his sandwich and reached for his case bringing out the scroll Pomfrey had given him. "I have the results of the experiment I conducted at Easter."

She eagerly unrolled the scroll and glanced over the results.

"It worked! This is fantastic! Thank her for me when you see her again."

He nodded. "I will," he said placing the scroll back in his case for safekeeping; they would go over the results in more detail at the cottage. "Are you ready?"

"Yes!" After leaving a few galleons on the table, they grabbed their packages and bags and headed to the apparition point. Severus took her proffered arm letting her guide the apparition to her cottage.

They Apparated on the edge of a dense woods and he saw a small field in front of him full of waving moor grasses and shrubs and across from there a medium cottage set amid a bright, colorful garden behind a stone fence. He could see a village in the distant valley below.

He followed her across the meadow to the stile gate and through the garden to the mudroom of the house and further into the kitchen.

"Here, I'll show you where the guest room is," she said as she led him up a narrow but airy flight of stairs to the second story set under the eaves. "The loo is over here, towels are in that basket. My magical study is through that door and here is the guest room."

She opened the door to a surprisingly comfortable room. A large bed dominated one corner with a clothes press across from it. In the window niche was a squashy chair and ottoman and a small table with a hurricane lamp on it, filled with oil, the wick neatly trimmed.

"I'll let you get settled. You might want to change into something lighter - your blacks are going to get very hot, this isn't the dungeons!" she jested.

He set his cases down on the bed, a bit out of his element.

"Severus?"

"Hmmm?" He felt her come beside him, and looked down at her. She placed a hand on his forearm. "I'm glad you decided to come."

She reached up, gave him a quick kiss on his cheek, and hurried out of the room. He looked at her retreating form with a bemused expression on his face before he began to unpack and change to lighter clothes.

Soon he was downstairs dressed in a light linen button down tucked into muggle trousers. She gave him a tour of the rest of the house.

Off of the huge country kitchen, which doubled as her dining area, he discovered her parlor. This contained nearly wall-to-wall bookcases stuffed with muggle texts ranging from history to fiction with many reference volumes interspersed. He had already snuck a look at her workroom upstairs, which almost mirrored this one in the sheer number of volumes. Those, however, were all magical in subject matter.

The parlor was dominated by a large bay window, complete with window seats, at the opposite end that looked out over the moor and valley beyond. A door on one of the walls led to her bedroom with an attached bath.

"That's it. I need to let you know the village children come up here for lessons in piano and voice during the week and my quartet meets on Saturday afternoons. You are more than welcome to sit and listen in, or hole up in the upstairs study or go for a walk. I won't feel slighted." Smiling, she led him back into the kitchen and conjured up a cup of tea for herself.

"Do you want anything?" she asked.

"I'm fine. Are the students and quartet mage born?"

"No, all muggles. Problems?"

"Not at all, I just wondered." While in school he had to pretend to be of the pureblood or no blood mindset; privately his views had drastically changed over the years. Seeing the depravity of Voldemort, and the other Death Eaters in general could do that to a fellow.

"While my fathers family has been here for centuries, we are pretty much the only wizards in the area," she said setting her mug down on the table and pulling up a chair near him. "The lessons don't take a lot of time, so the rest of my time is yours. Was there anything you wanted to do in particular while here?"

"Just relax," he said with a small smile in her direction.

"Good. We have some daylight left, shall I show you outside?"

They made their way out to the garden to enjoy the sunset.