Roman Holiday

Chapter Forty

Severus supposed he should be happy.

The Dark Mark, that grim phantasm that had ruled his days and stalked his nights for so long that he’d forgotten what life was like without it, was gone. Not just hibernating, not just on hiatus, but gone - really gone - for good. The second weekend of the month, when Voldemort usually summoned his circle of Death-Eaters, had approached and passed with not so much as a twinge where the Mark had been.

He was free.

Perhaps, he thought sourly, that was part of the problem - he wasn’t yet accustomed to having his body to himself. He taught his classes with only half a mind on the lessons, too distracted to bother with his usual unpleasantness (to his extreme chagrin, the normally timid Hannah Abbott had actually approached him warily after last week’s Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw sixth-year lesson and asked him, very worriedly, if he felt alright ... and he’d sent her away with a curt nod, too surprised to snap at her.) He ate without tasting his food. He paced his nights away on the worn flagstones of the corridors, his brain awhirl with possibility, with prospect, with the visualization of a world suddenly open to him.

It was terrifying, this freedom. It made him think he could go, and have, and do, and be anything.

And of course that wasn’t really the case.

For example, he’d never be free to pay court to Hermione Granger.

He heartily wished that he didn’t want to. The awkward, studious little girl, the seductive Roman nymphet, had coalesced and matured into a lovely promise of the woman she was becoming - beautiful and brilliant and heartbreakingly sure of herself. Severus sometimes watched Draco’s eyes fix on her during class with a wistful mix of bewilderment and worship in their grey depths- precocious as young Malfoy was, Hermione was clearly still a mystery to him.

At such times, Severus found himself torn between sympathy, for the young man swimming out of his depth, and pure green envy that he wasn’t the one in the water.

He shouldn’t begrudge them the sweetness of first romance. He shouldn’t want to deny Draco any comfort Hermione could give him - God knew that the boy had enough betrayal and darkness on his plate right now, and precious few allies to balance out the bad hand his snake of a father had dealt him.

But oh God, he wanted her for himself.

She intrigued him, she challenged him, she’d single-handedly pulled him out of his twenty-year depression and given him the means to wipe out all physical evidence of the biggest mistake he’d ever made. And when their eyes met, even now, the air crackled with electricity - a chemical certainty that no number of nights in Draco Malfoy’s bed could change or diminish.

Maybe, whispered the newly-awakened-but-already-presumptuous voice of hope in his head, if you just bide your time … wait until she’s out of school …? Puppy love is bound to run its course, right?

No, he told himself brutally, tamping down that traitorous thought and resolutely ignoring the Bambi-eyed troop of fantasies gamboling along behind it. Just because you love a beautiful thing doesn’t mean you have the right to touch it. And Hermione’s no different. She’s not for you.

She’ll never be for you.

Still, getting a new lease on life changed your outlook, made you see yourself and the world with new eyes. For the first time in he-didn’t-know-how-long, Severus took a good hard appraising look in the mirror … and immediately wished that he hadn’t.

In the two decades that he’d been sleepwalking through his life, he’d somehow gotten old.

He’d been a skinny, gawky youngster who had grown into a slender, dangerous-looking young man. He remembered that young man’s face - all abrupt planes and angles, perhaps not handsome but certainly interesting - his skin, pale but taut and youthful - his fall of soft black hair, shining to his shoulders like a new moon at midnight.

He’d been a bit vain about his hair, actually.

So when had it gone greasy and lank? When had his skin taken on that pasty yellow tinge? At what point, during the last twenty years, had he stopped looking like Dorian Grey and started looking like his infamous portrait instead? He gazed in fascinated revulsion at the lines around his eyes, at the deeply grooved, permanently pinched downturn of what Lily Evans had once called a sensual mouth.

Lily.

The other girl he hadn’t deserved to touch, who had touched him anyway. Time was, if he’d looked in that mirror of Dumbledore’s, he’d have seen nothing but her.

Don’t think about her, he snapped at himself, annoyed all over again at his recent propensity for self-scrutiny. Don’t you have enough problems as it is?

Besides, Lily had been dead for a long time. And he was still alive. Severus yanked himself out of his chair and stalked toward the door with bleak determination in his eyes.

It was time for him to reclaim himself.

**

Halloween fell on a Saturday this year, a fact which met with near-universal approval from faculty and students alike. One of the sixth-years - Dean? Seamus? Ernie? Hermione couldn’t remember - had overheard Professors Sprout and Flitwick murmuring about Dumbledore’s supposed engagement of a band called Fly By Night, in honour of the occasion. For the time being anyway, this rumour threatened to eclipse the supposed Malfoy-Weasley romance in the Hogwarts echelon of Discussable Unprovables.

Where there was music, there would be dancing.

Where there was dancing, there would be Romance and Intrigue.

And those twin specters of adolescent angst automatically upgraded the Halloween feast from what would have been an unusually good dining experience, to a Clothing Event of Epic Proportions.

In other words, Gladrags was doing quadruple business.

Harry and Ron had dug out their old dress robes - Harry’s green ones from fourth year, and Ron’s rather smart navy-blue set that Fred and George had sneaked into his trunk at the beginning of last term. For her part, Hermione decided to go Muggle in a vintage-cut A-line gown that Giulia’s designer friend Rafael had pressed into her hands during that first week in Rome, despite Hermione’s protestations.

“It was an assignment for class,” he’d shrugged. “Doesn’t go with the new show I’m designing. And it’s perfect for you.”

She hadn’t protested too hard after that. She’d never seen a more beautiful dress.

It was long-sleeved and high-necked and covered every inch of her except her hands, face and feet, but the cut was a miracle - even on the hanger, it was shaped like Marilyn Monroe. Made of some space-age fabric that looked like velvet and sucked her in like Lycra, it was fitted to the waist, then flared out gently over her hips and gathered fullness as it went, until it fell in heavy graceful folds just above her ankles. The result gave her a stylized ultra-feminine figure that was pure Old Hollywood. And the colour was an amazing, glowing warm gold that made her skin look like someone had turned the lights on behind it.

She shimmied into it, turned to admire herself from all angles in the mirror she’d charmed to full-length, and grinned.

Malfoy was going to soil himself when he saw her.

**

Of course, they wouldn’t be staying long at the dance (assuming it actually was a dance; no one really knew for sure and Dumbledore was doing more twinkling than talking on the subject) - now that Draco wasn’t living in Slytherin House anymore they could probably technically reveal their relationship, but both of them liked the ease of movement that anonymity provided. So chances were good that they wouldn’t actually be dancing with each other - it was more likely that Hermione would end up partnering Neville or two-stepping with Harry, while Draco and Ginny shoveled some more grist into the Hogwarts rumour mill. Fun, but not a whole night’s worth.

Besides, they had a ghost to interrogate.

Hermione decided that going prowling through the subdungeons in haute couture and Ginger Rogers dancing sandals wasn’t exactly prudent - even if that old lecher Salazar would appreciate her outfit. She dug out a rucksack, folded a set of standard student robes and some sensible walking shoes into it, then carefully slid the Discman and the Horowitz CD in on top and tucked her wand safely into the folds of the robe. As an afterthought, she took her copy of the Keyhole out of her book bag and added it as well … no sense making that climb up to the main level, and risking an encounter with Filch, if they had the wherewithal to simply beam themselves directly into Elysium.

Five o’ clock. Hanging up the gold dress and slipping into plain black robes, she picked up the rucksack and hurried out through the Gryffindor common room toward the trophy room, to stow her bag behind the tapestry door.

She hadn’t even gotten to the Fat Lady when Parvati and Lavender pounced.

“Hermione!”

Warily, Hermione turned around and immediately tried not to laugh. Parvati had spread some kind of green muck all over her face - she looked like she’d fallen head-first into the squishy stuff at the bottom of the lake - and Lavender’s entire head was covered in folded squares of foil. They wore identical expressions of unrepentant, prurient interest.

“Did he ask you?” Parvati whispered excitedly. Hermione frowned, bewildered.

“Did who ask me?” she asked. “And to what?” Lavender sighed heavily.

“Your secret admirer,” she said, quivering with barely-suppressed curiosity so that her hair rattled loudly in its metallic prison. “To the Halloween dance.”

She should have known this was coming when Malfoy sent her another pink card last week, Hermione thought. While she was all for Keeping the Romance Alive, his timing left much to be desired.

And if she didn’t come up with something good, she was headed for Well-Meaning-But-Slightly-Condescending Patil-and-Brown Makeover Land in a hurry, with a possible Matchmaking Bonus thrown in. Normally she’d play along, but tonight she needed to be able to come and go without undue remark.

Think fast, Granger, she told herself, and was immediately rewarded with a deliciously evil idea.

“Oh, is it really going to be a dance?” she asked innocently. “I heard Professor McGonagall tell someone that was just a rumour - after all, Fly By Night has an engagement in Gloucester tonight, don’t they?”

Inwardly chuckling at their looks of horror, she gave them a friendly little wave - “Sorry, need to go to the library!” - and escaped through the portrait hole.

Draco had a point. She would have done very well in Slytherin.

**

But Fly By Night was there, of course - Dumbledore was cagy, but he wasn’t a sadist. Compared to the Weird Sisters - the only other wizarding band Hermione had experienced firsthand - this group was a definite surprise: four grinning, clean-shaven young wizards in lurid robes who appeared to have lifted all of their highly-synchronized moves (not to mention most of their tunes and possibly their name, though that was debatable) from American Muggle music videos.

Only the lyrics were completely original. And those were pretty damn bad - not that most of the Hogwarts student body appeared to care or even notice, though a few of the Muggle-borns looked distinctly amused. Hermione, standing at the back of the hall to avoid the worst of the thumping over-amplified bass, sipped some punch and entertained herself by studying the pained expressions and gritted teeth at the Head Table.

Dumbledore, of course, looked as beatific as ever, and little Professor Flitwick was snapping merrily along to the beat, but the rest of the faculty - even easy-to-please Hagrid - looked positively nauseated. Hermione wondered how Snape was taking the cacophony, and then realized that his chair was empty.

Odd.

She scanned the room for Draco - there was at least an hour to go before their scheduled meeting time behind Morgan LeFay’s tapestry, but she didn’t want him to get worried if he saw her leave. As she’d predicted, he was dancing with Ginny, a wild hip-shaking, partner-twirling pelvic impossibility that reminded her simultaneously of John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and Ballroom Night at her grandmother’s retirement home. Hermione shook her head.

If she lived to be a hundred and five, she would never, EVER understand wizarding pop culture.

She studied the white-blond head thrown back in temporary abandon for another moment, then slipped out of the Great Hall with gently curving lips and a definite flutter in the pit of her stomach.

If she were Severus Snape, she would presently be in the mood for a little fresh air.

She hoped he didn’t mind sharing it.

**