Roman Holiday

Chapter Twenty-Seven

When Hermione entered the Potions classroom with Harry and Ron later that afternoon, she was immediately hit with the unmistakable fragrance of the simmering Illuminata. The cauldron itself wasn’t anywhere in sight - she guessed that Snape had removed it to a more secure location in the little antechamber, off the main classroom, that he used for storage - and whatever else it might be doing, it wasn’t belching yellow smoke any longer. But the sweetness of lemons hung in the air, rather as if someone were baking pies - or as if Filch had traded in his Madam Malkin’s Magical Mess Remover for a can of Pledge.

Ever the researcher, she surveyed her classmates surreptitiously.

No random, unexpected embraces. No snogging in the corners.

But the Gryffindors did look considerably more cheerful than usual, given that this was the much-despised Double Potions period. And the Slytherins, for their parts, seemed oddly … well, what was the word she’d use?

Tranquil, that was it.

Harmonious, even.

Hermione watched Seamus Finnegan and Blaise Zabini exchanging idle pleasantries, and felt herself tingle all over with scholarly satisfaction.

For a few unpleasant hours last night, she’d been worried that the potion was ruined - that she’d miscalculated or made a mistake in translation, or, worse, that Palestrina himself had been deluded about his creation’s true effects. Far more troubling than having had sex with Snape was the thought that she might not have had a choice in the matter; that her beloved Illuminata, her brain child, was after all nothing more than a tawdry love potion.

Not so, apparently; even now, her worry and exhaustion were drifting subtly away on a citrus-scented cloud of well-being. Snape himself looked rested, if not exactly cheerful. Of course, he’d been breathing in the fumes all day, Hermione thought, and tried not to dwell upon how much younger he looked when he wasn’t tensed with hostility.

Oh, it worked, it really worked. She had the sudden urge to grab Snape and waltz him around the classroom.

She settled instead for letting out a long relieved breath, and shot her widest, brightest Daughter-Of-Tooth-Professionals smile at a startled-but-dreamy-looking Draco.

Just because she could.

**

“Well, that was relatively painless,” Harry muttered as they gathered up their books, and even Ron nodded in agreement.

No squabbles. No practical jokes. No snide, cutting remarks aimed from one side of the room to the other in voices just loud enough to carry, just low enough to escape professorial notice.

And Snape!

“What was wrong with him today?” Ron asked as they clattered up the dungeon steps toward the Great Hall. “He was almost … almost …” He shook his head in mute wonder, and Hermione filled in for him, a bit more tartly than she’d meant to.

“Happy?”

Ron missed the edge in her voice entirely. “Yeah,” he said. “What was up with that? He didn’t take off a single point from us. Not even from Neville.” He looked around to make sure they weren’t being overheard. “And did you see the way he looked at the end of class? Just staring off into thin air like that, with that little smile on his face?” His eyebrows went up. “Creepy.”

Hermione had noticed, as a matter of fact, though she’d tried not to look in Snape’s direction as class ended and they packed away their things. After she’d skipped out on their conversation last night, she was braced for a mandatory after-class postmortem, and kept expecting to hear her name called even after Ron and Harry had followed her out the door. But Snape had been sitting at his desk, looking uncharacteristically pensive and faraway, and hadn’t even looked up when the bell rang.

She remembered the look on his face last night - disbelieving, exultant - and shivered despite the warmth of the Great Hall.

She couldn’t imagine how he’d felt last night, once it had worn off - but judging from her own foray into Deep Melancholy, it had probably been pretty bad. And she had no idea how he’d managed to sit in that room for seven hours today, invaded by an artificial sense of calm that he had to know he’d pay for later.

Her lips tightened. One more thing for me to feel guilty about.

“Maybe he’s been bewitched,” Harry suggested, reaching the Gryffindor table and setting down his bag. Ron snorted.

“Maybe he’s finally gotten shagged,” he said slyly, and the two boys laughed. “Seriously - I wonder how long it’s been? Ten years? Fifteen?”

“Ever?” More laughter.

“He’s only thirty-eight,” Hermione snapped. “You shouldn’t talk about him like he’s sixty.”

Ron’s eyebrows shot even farther into his hairline. “Ooooh,” he said teasingly. “The good Professor has an admirer! Maybe he’s the one who’s been sending you all those sappy notes, Hermione.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Hermione retorted, stung. “And I’m not his admirer, I just … well, he’s very good at what he does, that’s all.”

Not his admirer, you say.

Shut up.

Very good at what he does, eh?

Shut UP, I said.

Because you would know, wouldn’t you?

Shut up, shut up, shut UP!

She swallowed hard, desperately channeling her Inner Percy, and glared at Ron. “I’m sure he has his reasons for acting the way he does,” she said, as officiously as she could manage. “And if he seemed a little … distracted … today, perhaps he just has things on his mind. Some people do, you know.”

Ron stared at her, perplexed and a bit hurt. “What’s with you?”

She didn’t answer him.

**

He didn’t know what to think.

Draco pushed his peas around on his plate with his fork and frowned thoughtfully to himself.

If you had asked him this morning about Hermione’s reaction to her second Secret Admirer note, he would have used the extremely unpleasant word ‘ambivalent’ … the look on her face at breakfast had been deliberately unreadable. And whatever Potter had said to her, after that, had panicked her enough so that she’d bolted from the table without touching her food.

He wondered if Potter had guessed yet. You had to hand it to the Wonder Boy; unlike his carrot-topped sidekick, who remained as predictably one-note and simple-minded as he’d been five years ago, he was showing occasional flashes of insight.

Worrisome, that. But beside the point.

He’d hoped that Hermione’s reply to his note in “The Wizard’s Guide to Dark Prophecies” would prove to be illuminating, but it hadn’t given him any further clues into what she was thinking. Just a simple affirmative, and a time.

Well and good, as far as it went, but not exactly what he’d hoped for.

And what was that, exactly, Malfoy? he asked himself derisively. ‘I want you, I need you, I can’t live without you, run away with me and let me bear your children’?

Stupid of him to expect that from Hermione, who was just about as fulsome and starry-eyed as Bartemious Crouch. If he’d wanted hearts and flowers, he should have set his sights on Lavender Brown.

Still.

He was very, very glad that he’d erased that last sentence.

Under the circumstances, he’d been rather dreading Potions, and was subsequently blindsided by the lift in his spirits, once he got there. Odd, that such a generally gloomy room could seem so full of light, on a dark afternoon like this one.

He hadn’t been the only one to feel it, either. Dean Thomas, whose table he’d shared, had struck up a very friendly conversation about pro Quidditch. And Parvati, rather than glaring at him when his stretched-out feet accidentally bumped the legs of her chair, had given him a most flirtatious look over her shoulder.

But that wasn’t nearly as puzzling as the smile Hermione had thrown his way, just as class was about to begin. Not a subtle twist of the lips, not a sidelong glance through the eyelashes, but a full-on, high-voltage, merry-eyed, blinding beam of light.

Where had that come from?

He supposed he’d find out tonight.

**

Ten p.m.

Ron and Seamus were talking Quidditch strategy in the Common Room. Across the room, Neville was working on a Transfiguration essay for Professor McGonagall, and a small group of third-years were starting on their fourth game of Exploding Snap.

Harry was sitting by the fire, hidden from the others’ view by the tall back of his armchair. His Charms text was open on his lap, and his quill was dripping ink on his robes.

He didn’t notice. He had other things on his mind.

Hermione was meeting her Secret Admirer tonight, he was pretty sure of it. And he was torn between scruples and curiosity.

Not that it was any of his business - he knew that. But the secrecy had him wondering. Why shouldn’t she date, in public, anyone she wanted to?

He’d tried to discuss the topic with his dorm-mates, but none of them seemed to know anything, and the subject made Ron so impotently furious that Harry thought it best just to drop it. Ginny had just given him a wide-eyed shrug, the one time he’d brought it up to her. And he knew better than to ask Parvati and Lavender anything serious; he and Hermione had only just lived down the Rita Skeeter articles, almost two years later, and one ill-placed word would start the rumour mill churning again.

He didn’t fancy Hermione, not in that way at least, but he was a little concerned about her. For one thing, she wasn’t getting enough sleep. Still taking more classes than the rest of them, of course, and he’d seen her schedule - it left precious little time for romantic assignations. From the looks of the circles under her eyes at breakfast, Harry was pretty sure her trysts were taking place after curfew.

And that was another thing. When had studious, law-abiding Hermione ever broken school rules voluntarily? The thought of her sneaking out at night to meet some Mystery Lover was so out of character, it was comical.

Then there was the question of what exactly had happened in Rome; he and Ron were both wild for the details, if for different reasons, but Hermione wasn’t talking. If changing the subject didn’t work, she simply invented a pretext to be elsewhere.

Mysteries, mysteries. Harry frowned. Hermione had kept secrets from them before, but somehow this situation seemed different. As did she.

And he wasn’t sure he liked it.

Feeling momentarily guilty, he pulled a carefully folded but somewhat ragged piece of parchment out of his Charms text and looked around to make sure no one was watching him.

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” he muttered, and tapped it with his wand.

**