Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Seventeen

Severus had seldom been able to sleep through the night. Even as a child, he’d been frequently wakeful, had recurring nightmares. During his student years at Hogwarts, he’d sometimes never gone to sleep at all.

Life as a Death-Eater, and, subsequently, as an ex-Death-Eater, had done little to remedy this. At this point, he’d pretty much given up any idea of getting over it.

Insomnia – friend to academics, gritty-eyed night companion. He’d learned, over time, to endure, if not quite to embrace it; now, however, it didn’t seem like such a big deal, after all.

Here, in this room, in this soft familiar late-September darkness, he could look at the sleeping figure in the bed, and almost believe that his good fortune was for real.

Almost believe that she was his.

Moonlight dreams, Severus. Give into them, and you might as well put your head on the block and wait for the knife to fall.

But anyone – even a dyed-in-the-wool cynic like himself – had to agree on this, at least: Hermione Granger was lovely by moonlight, particularly while sleeping. And then there was that other maliciously pleasant thought … the ever-so-faintly-smug assurance that after tonight, Bill Weasley had a very hard act to follow.

You don’t have to send her back to him, you know, suggested that small sly voice, his cautiously emerging Inner Optimist. You could always ask her to stay with you.

Right.

Ask her to stay. Ask her to stay here, when she’d jumped at the first chance out, and give up the candy-store attractions of her new life: big city, foreign culture, research, employment, friends.

Lover.

Well, that last bit, at least, might not be such a bad idea.

You needn’t think about it in such drastic terms, protested the Optimist. There’s the Floo network – you both can Apparate – it wouldn’t be the first time, after all, that a wizarding couple courted at a distance and made it work.

Right.

Carry on a long-term, long-distance love affair, with a former student, under the noses of Dumbledore and the Ministry – a girl young enough to be his daughter, with the finest mind Hogwarts had turned out in more than a generation. Make a selfish wish on that bright young rising star. Corral that gleefully independent, frighteningly resourceful woman-in-waiting into clandestine dalliance, into a love she wouldn’t find welcome, or supported, in the light of day.

No.

It was bad enough that he’d dipped into the Pronouncements of Eros tonight – that particular charm he’d borrowed for the occasion was powerful, arcane magic … and, in its own way, as seductive and undeniable as the Imperius Curse. He shouldn’t have used it, and yet he couldn’t resist – if he couldn’t keep his Cinderella at the ball outright, he could at least spin her these silken tethers, wrap her in pleasure one guilty, greedy thread at a time, and hope it was enough to keep drawing her back to him.

"Are you going to sit there staring at me for the rest of the night, or are you coming back to bed?"

Startled, but too self-disciplined to show it, he steeled himself against the creamy curves, the tumbled hair, the sultry sleep-heavy voice, and quirked one eyebrow at her.

"Saucy as ever," he said, without rancor. "I mustn’t have tired you out as thoroughly as I’d thought, after all."

Hermione purred in her throat.

"Want to try again?" she inquired, and all the blood in his body went straight to his crotch.

Well, actually, yes. "Hm … well, as my alternative is insomnia …" he said, feigning indifference, and heard her chuckle come floating appreciatively toward him out of the darkness.

"There you go again – you always know how to make a girl feel special, don’t you?" She flipped back the covers and swung her legs out from underneath them. "Well, no matter. You said I could have my turn, later, and it’s later now – wouldn’t you say?"

Oh, he would, he would. He watched her stand – the only purely-white thing in his rooms, she drew moonlight to her like a small, shapely tidal wave – and cross to his chair, and flow to her knees in front of him, as sure and matter-of-fact of manner as if he’d conjured her out of fantasies and night air.

Who knows … maybe he had. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all, that he’d woken up with her name on his lips.

But no, this Hermione was real.

"I don’t have that wicked little charm that you used on me tonight in my arsenal," she said, deftly dealing with the front tie of his dressing gown. Her breath was warm and soft on the inside of his thigh. "Until I get to the library, I guess I’m just going to have to … improvise."

Fine by him, Severus thought – and sat back to enjoy the ride.

**

It was much, much later.

In the aftermath of Round Two, they’d somehow managed to stumble from the armchair to the bed, though Severus doubted that his last bit of contortionism, while highly satisfactory at the time, had been entirely suitable for a wizard of nearly thirty-nine, who had recently become uncomfortably aware of his similarly nearly-thirty-nine-year-old joints.

His whole body would be complaining about this tomorrow. Too bad he’d run out of that muscle rub of Poppy’s – especially when he had at his disposal a most-alluring potential masseuse, presently draped over him like a sleepy, purring kitten.

On the other hand, she hadn’t escaped unscathed herself … that buttercream teenage skin was surprisingly receptive to loverlike nibbling, but showed a distressing tendency to bruise. Severus trailed his fingertips along a particularly livid-looking patch of skin below her right ear, and murmured a few quiet words of Restoration.

There. Good as new.

Hermione stirred sleepily. "What are you doing?"

"Damage control." He turned his attention to banishing the matching set of fingerprints on her upper arms. Hermione, watching the marks fade into nothingness, scowled.

"Leave them be. I like them."

Severus ignored her. "Yes," he said absently. "But Mr. Weasley certainly won’t, now, will he?"

From her sudden stillness, he realised his misstep and swore inwardly. Goddamnit, you’re a bastard even when you don’t mean to be, aren’t you?

The line of her jaw – determinedly clenched, but beginning to wobble – was pure hurt. He fisted his hands in his lap. "Hermione –" he began, but she waved him abruptly into silence.

"No – don’t."

"Hermione, listen." He seized her shoulders, less gently than he’d meant to, and turned her to face him. "What did you think was going to happen next?" he asked, tasting ashes in his mouth with every urgent word. "Happily-ever-after? Tea for Two? Can’t you see that that’s not possible for us right now?"

She kept her eyes downcast. Her voice was sulky and thick with the beginning of tears. "I don’t see how you can be so sure of that."

He sighed heavily. "Do you think I’d put the both of us through this, if I wasn’t?"

"What I think," Hermione said, bringing her gaze up to face him head-on, "is that you’ve lived with the Blue Meanies so long that you don’t know a Yellow Submarine when you see one."

Severus blinked. "Pardon?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Muggle reference. Never mind."

Whatever it was, it seemed to have steadied her; she’d successfully banished the threatening tears and now looked merely determined. "Don’t you think for one second," she said grimly, "that I don’t know exactly why you said that – exactly why you’re doing this. You want me to get my maidenly knickers in a bunch and run back to Bill, because then you don’t have to deal with me. Well, I’ve got you figured, Severus Snape – you’re not nearly as impenetrable as you fancy yourself."

"Of course I’m not," Severus said sharply, then softened his tone – his touch – in a moment of unconscious longing. "Haven’t you battered down my doors already, just to prove it to me?"

The look she gave him was wary and assessing. "Some of them. Perhaps."

More than you know, he thought, and tightened his grip on her arm when she would have moved to rise. "Stay," he said gently – then, at her look of impatience, slipped into his more customary tones of sardonic irony with a distinct feeling of relief. "If I know you, you’re going to run straight to Dumbledore after breakfast, to lobby your way back to Cairo – and he’s a wily negotiator; the least you can do is get another few hours’ sleep."

"Stop trying to change the subject," she snapped. "This argument isn’t over yet. I’m not tired anymore. And I wasn’t leaving – I want a drink of water."

Eyebrows elevated, he plucked his wand off the nightstand and waved it impatiently in her direction. Nonplussed, she sipped, then grimaced.

"This is fizzy water. I wanted plain."

Oh, Merlin’s grandmother. "Brat."

"Like begets like," she retorted. "You want to shag me senseless, then send me back to Cairo with a slap on my ass? Under those circumstances, I think I’m entitled to a little caprice."

"It’s Perrier, Hermione."

"Your point?"

The corners of his mouth curved in a sad little smile. "Whatever I want for you, you impossible little troublemaker, it’s the best."

She digested this in silence, then sent him a look so direct and wistful that it broke his heart. "But what if that’s you?"

What if the best is you?

He looked away, unable to answer.

**

Breakfast. The Great Hall.

"Where were you last night?" Harry hissed into Hermione’s ear. Hermione looked as innocent as possible.

"Uh – in Ginny’s room, of course; you heard McGonagall tell me I could sleep there."

He snorted. "Liar."

"How do you know?"

He reddened, but couldn’t hold back a triumphant little smirk. "Because I was in Ginny’s room last night, that’s how I know. And you never showed. So – spill it, already."

Hermione, stuck, decided to try Socratic questioning as a last resort. "Where do you think I was?"

Harry folded a triangular piece of buttered toast in half, stuck the entire thing in his mouth, and chewed pontifically. "Well, you’ve got a massive hickey on your neck, just at the collar line," he observed finally, and Hermione’s fingers flew instinctively to the spot she’d thought Snape had erased. Did he miss one?

"Ha! Got you."

Oh, damn. Of course there wasn’t anything there. Not that that mattered now … Harry had found out what he wanted to know.

"So. With a lover, then."

Hermione sipped her pumpkin juice. "Maybe."

"Common knowledge would suggest Malfoy," Harry said thoughtfully. "But I don’t think so, somehow … if you two had gotten back together, you’d be sitting with him. And he wouldn’t be over at the Ravenclaw table, sharing his sausages with Gabrielle."

Hermione lifted one eyebrow. "Maybe we quarreled afterwards."

"Maybe." Harry gave her a long, searching look. "Hermione, do you know what you’re doing? That’s all I want to know."

She bit her lip. "What do you mean?"

"You know very well what I mean. And don’t play dumb – you can’t get away with it."

Hermione sighed and tucked her hand into his. "Harry, you don’t need to worry," she said. "Beyond that, I have no idea what to say about it. It’s complicated."

Harry shot a quick sideways glance at the Head Table, where Snape was morosely sipping black coffee. "It," he said wonderingly, "certainly is."

They finished their breakfast in silence.

**

Going into Dumbledore’s office to argue a point without having a plan was, as Hermione well knew, Absolute Folly. On the other hand, she didn’t want to look too premeditated.

Spontaneity, that was the key. Albus Dumbledore, of all people, ought to be able to appreciate spontaneity.

At the moment, things seemed to be going well. She returned his twinkle with a slightly cautious smile, twisted her hands together in her lap, and waited.

"A chaperone," Dumbledore repeated. Hermione nodded.

"The apartment building already has extra wards on it," she pointed out. "Professor McGonagall told me that the landlord had that done yesterday. So I thought – if there was one more pair of eyes in the apartment with me, to sort of keep a lookout – maybe I could go back to class on Monday? It’s really, really important that I take this examination," she added, and fixed him with her most impressive, imploring Bambi Look.

Dumbledore’s face didn’t alter from its expression of general cheer. "Indeed," he said. "A laudable notion, Hermione … one assumes, since you’ve thought it out this far, that you might possibly have someone in mind?"

Uh-oh, trick question. Proceed with caution.

Of course she had someone in mind – not that he knew he was in mind, mind you. "It would have to be someone rather powerful," she said carefully. "Someone who knew how Malfoy’s mind worked … who could predict what he’d do, or at least think the same way. You know, get inside the criminal mind and all that."

"Yes, yes." Dumbledore looked secretly amused at something, a fact which had Hermione rather worried. "Well," he suggested, "how about our resident Slytherin? If he’s amenable, of course."

Oh, it worked, it worked. Hermione schooled the jubilation out of her features. "I think that’s an excellent idea," she said. "But will Professor Snape consent to missing so many classes, do you think?"

The amusement deepened. "Professor Snape? I’m afraid you’ve misunderstood me, Hermione – I was thinking of Salazar. Ghosts make excellent roommates, for the most part – there are exceptions, of course – and after all, he’s quite a powerful wizard, even now. Most fortuitous, that he managed to retain the use of his wand after his death. Wouldn’t you say?"

Sal? Well, cool – but still, damn. "Hm? Oh – ah – yes, of course," Hermione agreed, thinking fast. "But don’t you think it might be better if the person was a bit more … um, tangible? Meaning no offense to Sal, of course," she added hastily (in case he was in the room). "I’m just thinking that .. well …"

"Of course," Dumbledore agreed smoothly. He was now beaming outright. "I see exactly what you’re getting at, Hermione, and I think it’s a wonderful suggestion. Good for both of you, really. Superb. We’ll just call her now, see if she’s available, shall we?"

She? Hermione thought, baffled. Surely not McGonagall – I mean, she’s so nice, and smart, and everything, but as a roommate? …

Dumbledore withdrew a pinch of Floo powder from the tin on his desk and tossed it into the hearth. "Now, let’s just see," he said, with a wink at Hermione, and peered intently into the flames. "Sybil? Might I have a word, please?"

Sybil? Hermione thought with an icy jolt of panic, and jackknifed up in her chair.

Trelawney?

Oh, God. What have I done?

**