Roman Holiday

Chapter Sixteen

How many House points could you lose for sending a professor to Bangkok?

Hermione, frantically estimating figures in her head, would have walked straight into the door of Snape’s office if a well-timed mutter from him hadn’t sent it flying open. He pushed her into a chair and stalked around to glare at her from behind his desk. She gulped.

When he finally opened his mouth to speak, the words that came out were the last she would have expected.

“Tea, Miss Granger?”

“Um …”

Tea, from the Potions Master? Tea, from the man who’d once told Harry he was the wizarding world’s leading expert on undetectable poisons?

Those cappucinos HAD been a while back. Still …

She chanced a surreptitious glance at the contents of his office, her gaze coming to rest on a jar containing what looked to be a fist-sized mass of swarming maggots. Quickly, she looked away and swallowed hard. “I don’t think …”

His lip curled. “Judging from the arrival time of your disciplinary owl, you and Mr. Malfoy boarded the Knight Bus at eleven-ten this morning. Twelve hours ago.” He steepled his fingers on the desk, and Hermione found herself noticing them: long, slender, capable.

Capable of many things, that is. She ought to know.

Damn it, Hermione, don’t think about that right now. Don’t think about it, period.

Ever. Again.

She dragged her eyes back up to his face, stopping at the level of the sneering mouth. Eye contact was a step beyond her particular reserves of Gryffindor courage at the moment.

He shoved himself up to his feet and over to a corner of the office, where a cauldron of herbal-scented water was bubbling over a bright green fire, on a table she hadn’t noticed before. He’d dropped the smooth-but-dangerous shtick, Hermione noticed, and had upgraded to Just Plain Annoyed. “Unless the Knight Bus has expanded their line of services to include a cafeteria on the upper level,” - and here that thin-lipped, well-shaped mouth curled in consummate disdain - “I’m assuming that your luncheon consisted of one cup of tepid hot chocolate, and that you’ve not had tea, or dinner, today.” He muttered something she couldn’t hear over the fragrant liquid, ladled it into a cup, and passed it to her. A moment later, he’d produced a plate of sandwiches and had returned to his perch behind the desk to moodily watch her eat.

The tea was pretty good. Peppermint, and rosemary, and chamomile, and something spicy she wasn’t sure of - ginger, maybe? Valerian?

The silence, on the other hand, was unbearable.

She’d braced herself to be screamed at, physically menaced, and threatened with expulsion. Had pushed the fear and exhaustion down, down, down, to somewhere inaccessible, to be dealt with when he wasn’t around anymore.

Now, in his surprisingly warm, quiet office, being heated inside and out by the food and what was a really excellent cup of tea, she could feel her guard slipping away from her. Damn him. Why was he being decent?

She chanced a quick peek at him. He looked pretty tired himself. Possibly that trip to Bangkok hadn’t been a piece of cake. Possibly Apparation was more tiring than it looked.

Possibly he was catching hell from Dumbledore - Hermione didn’t kid herself, not after the end of her fourth year; Dumbledore might play Santa Claus for the world to see, but he wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination toothless - for not keeping better track of her. For bringing Lucius Malfoy into the whole mess.

A pang of regret shot through her before she could help herself. Apologize, the little voice in her head said. Quick, before you lose your chance. Besides, he deserves to hear that from you.

Hermione hesitated, closed her eyes briefly, put her half-eaten sandwich back on the plate, and decided to go for it. Probably saying ANYTHING at this point made her a couple of tacos short of a combo platter … her fate was sealed, and she might just make him more angry than he was already.

But she had to say it anyway.

“I’m sorry, Professor,” she blurted, and saw his eyes widen in surprise, a mere fraction of an inch, before he narrowed them again. Cheered slightly by what she considered to be a positive sign, she plowed ahead.

“It’s my fault,” she said, “all of it. I made Draco lie to Signora Malione, knowing that you’d come looking for me and that she’d give you the wrong information.” She dropped her eyes, then lifted them to his again. “After what happened, I … “ She flushed. “I was afraid to talk to you.”

His eyebrows lifted at this, but he still didn’t say anything. Hermione ran one hand nervously through her hair.

“I know I should have gone home,” she muttered to her lap. “You were right about that. About everything. I didn’t want to listen to you.” She bit her lip. “Being there, by myself, made me feel … liberated. And powerful. And then you … scared me.”

“Scared you?” he murmured. She set her chin at a mutinous angle, but didn’t bring her eyes up. An uneven breath shuddered out of her. It never occurred to her to lie.

“Scared, yes, I was scared,” she whispered, sounding disgusted with herself. “And angry. And … excited, though I’d rather not think about that.” She slanted him an anxious glance. “And guilty, now, too, most of all. Because Draco’s in trouble with his father because of it, and I don’t think he can go home, ever again. And it’s my fault, but I never, NEVER meant for that to happen. I swear it.”

She lapsed into silence, watching him worriedly from under her eyelashes. Something was brewing behind those cold dark eyes, but she didn’t know what. Shut up while you’re ahead, Granger, she told herself, and took a nervous sip of her tea.

**

An apology.

He’d just gotten an apology from Hermione Granger. Snape’s mouth curved in appreciation for the irony of that statement.

All previous, current, or future annoyance aside, it was a pretty safe bet that he had more to apologize for than she did. And had pulled her into his office to do just that.

He studied her with renewed interest. Curled into his big green armchair, pretending to be fascinated by her tea while she watched him from under her eyelashes.

Scared. Angry. Excited.

Who’d have thought that she’d have the stones to admit that? To his face, no less?

It just went to show you that Dumbledore’s mangy old Sorting Hat really DID know its stuff. Behind her sidekick persona, her veneer of book-smarts, Miss Granger was the embodiment of pure, steely-eyed Gryffindor determination.

Tempered, he thought, by a healthy dollop of Ravenclaw brains and Slytherin ambition. Really, she could have gone either way. Even to Hufflepuff, because there was loyalty there too, in truckloads.

It appeared that she had now extended that Mother-Earth concern of hers beyond the charmed Gryffindor circle. Draco Malfoy was a luckier young man than he knew, Severus mused. “Miss Granger, do I look like your father confessor?”

She considered him warily over her mug of tea. “No, Professor.”

His lips twitched in self-deprecation. “Just checking,” he said. “Spend enough time in Rome, and you begin to imagine confessionals everywhere. I thought perhaps I’d been hexed into a liturgical collar.”

A joke? Was that a joke? She smiled politely, just in case, and wished he’d hurry up and arrive at his point. Now that she’d eaten, all she really wanted to do was sleep.

The momentary expression of wry humor that had come over him vanished, and he was deadly serious again. Though not, she thought, visibly angry. Odd.

“I fear that I must amend your apology with one of my own,” he said, and Hermione nearly dropped her tea in shock. If he noticed her reaction, he didn’t let on. “What transpired between us back in Rome … should not have, holiday or no holiday, and I accept the majority of the blame for it. I daresay that your little adventure with Mr. Malfoy would have taken a safer course, were it not for our,” - he hesitated, then sighed heavily - “encounter. I regret deeply that it ever happened.”

She studied him closely for a moment. Funny how one turn in a conversation can make you forget that you were ever tired, she thought. “Do you? Regret it?” When he sent her a shocked glare, she braved a one-shouldered shrug. “Because I’m not sure that I do.”

Oooh. That had been ballsy. Not to mention, pure sub-conscious-speak. She hadn’t even known she felt that way until the words were out of her mouth. Snape looked suitably horrified.

“Miss Granger -“

Hermione shook her head to ward him off. “No, I have to say this.” She took a deep breath. “I was telling you the truth,” she said. “It WAS scary. And it DID make me angry. But I’m also a bit confused by it, because I can’t figure out, in retrospect, whether it was all about sex, or all about power.” She bit her lip nervously, wondered whether any of this was a good conversational idea, and decided that since she was in this far, she’d might as well say it. “Whichever it was, it was a learning experience,” she said baldly. “But I’m not sure what to think about it. If it was about sex, I can dismiss it as something deeply arousing, if disturbing, and put it away. But if it’s about power …” She gazed at him shrewdly. “I can’t help thinking that it’s a good one to have. And I have to ask you: why did you think you needed more power over me? What did I do to tip the balance?”

They stared at each other for a long minute, and then Snape laughed. It was a laugh of genuine amusement, the rich, baritone laugh of a young man, and Hermione narrowed her eyes curiously at him.

Odd. When he’d done that, he’d been almost handsome.

“You’ve come into your own this summer, haven’t you?” he asked, and she couldn’t look away from him, this still-smiling Snape with high color in his cheeks from the fire and the laughter, this ten-years-younger Snape whose eyes snapped madly with intelligence and mirth. “What have you done with your Inner Bookworm, Miss Granger? And who’s the Machiavellian princess sitting in my chair, drinking my tea?” He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “What did you do to tip the balance, you ask? You grew up, that’s all.”

“The hair,” she said slowly. “The clothes. This is a body thing, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” He laughed again. “Put the robes back on tomorrow, Miss Granger, wrap yourself up from head to toe, and you’ll find out. All the black sackcloth in the world won’t change you back to the Hermione you were last spring.”

He leaned forward. “To answer your question,” he said, sobering. “It started out as power, that night. And it turned into sex. For me, anyway.” He met her eyes with what looked like challenge in his own. “You have to decide what it was for you. And whether you want to add that particular weapon to your arsenal - well, that’s your choice too.”

They were playing with words now, and Hermione knew it. It had always been her favorite game, but she was in the big leagues now - and this sexy, amused, hot-eyed Snape was a million times more dangerous than the great malevolent bat she was accustomed to.

She thought, fleetingly, about Draco and the night they’d had together.

Was this cheating?

If it was a betrayal, what was it a betrayal of? Did three days in Rome, a night of mind-blowing sex, and a frantic getaway add up to a relationship?

And when exactly had she stopped being the Good Girl and turned into a thrill-seeker? The mere fact that she and the Potions Master were having this conversation had her weak in the knees - and not, exactly, from fear.

If she didn’t pursue it, just a little bit, she didn’t deserve the title of ‘witch’.

Don’t give too much away, Granger, her brain warned her, and she looked up at Snape with a cool little smile.

“These are dangerous times,” she said. “One should cultivate all the weapons at one’s disposal, don’t you think, Professor?”

A muscle jumped in his jaw. “You’re a busy girl already, Miss Granger. I’d think carefully before I committed to more … lessons.”

She inclined her head in acknowledgement. “I’ll do that.”

**