Getting the Hang of Thursdays

Chapter 14 - Pete Fell In...

By Hayseed

Day Two Hundred Ninety-One

Severus would be damned if he was going to go looking for Hermione again. He’d already made the concession and sought her out twice now, and it bloody well wasn’t his responsibility this time. It was her fault even more so than usual.

In fact, he wasn’t even going to give her so much as a second’s thought from this point onward. As she’d already said, she had a wand -- if she were going to burn down Hogwarts, she probably would have already. And if she’d suffered a true psychotic break, well, that probably just meant that he wouldn’t have to watch her die in his class any more, which could only improve his day. And if she was in the Great Hall this morning, eating breakfast with her Quidditch-mad, idiotic Gryffindor friends, he hadn’t even noticed. It was not his concern.

She was not his concern.

But there she was, still. No matter how often he put her out of his mind, no matter how much he pushed her out of his thoughts, every mental corner he rounded in his head, she was there. Somehow, she seemed to have a way of burrowing beneath his skin, and, by all appearances, she’d lodged herself there -- like a tick.

When Severus had been very young, his father had kept hunting dogs. As he’d fallen into unemployment (and subsequent alcoholism), his father had been forced to sell the dogs, one by one, so that he could feed himself and his son. But there had been one that his father had appeared to love -- a medium-sized bitch that Severus had given the unlikely (and, in retrospect, thoroughly uninspired) name of ‘Puppy’ when both he and the dog were in their respective infancies -- and had thus retained, in spite of poverty and cramped living quarters. Puppy had not seemed discontent with her life, such as it was, and gave all appearances of loving both her master and her master’s pup with a fierce sort of love that Severus was certain neither of them had deserved. But she was the one thing in the world that Severus’ father would not raise a hand toward, even in the most intoxicated of states. Puppy had appeared to know this, oddly enough, and had intervened in some of Severus’ worse beatings by placing herself in between father and son, causing the blows to immediately stop.

But Puppy had always been infested with fleas and ticks, as long as Severus could remember. And his father, not trusting magic to handle such a sensitive issue, went over her weekly with a fine-toothed comb. Any ticks that were discovered were carefully removed -- it was one of his earliest memories. His father would take his forefinger and thumb, held like a set of pincers, and worry the tick out from under Puppy’s thick skin. He would then fling the wriggling thing into a pan at his side, point his wand at it, and mutter, “Incendio,” watching the tick smoke with relish.

“Ticks are tricky little buggers, Severus,” his father told him one day -- he could not have been older than five years old. “They’re about the hardest thing to kill that I know about. You can’t step on them, you can’t drown them. About the only thing that works is to burn them.”

Severus had been a possibly obnoxiously precocious little child -- he was unwilling to concede anything beyond that -- and had responded with a question that spoke to the fact that, even at that young age, he’d spent a fair number of hours in Flourish and Blotts, devouring books he could not afford under the shopkeeper’s disapproving eye. “What about the Killing Curse, Father? Would that do it?”

“The Killing Curse?” he’d echoed. “Well, for one thing, it seems a bit like a waste of energy to use an Unforgivable on such a little creature, don’t you think?”

It had been a rare enough occurrence through Severus’ childhood that his father would actually hold a casual conversation with him that, even all these years later, he found himself able to recite this particular one nearly word for word. At this point, the young Severus had wrinkled his forehead, considering his father’s point. “Maybe...”

“And besides,” his father continued, sounding as close to congenial as he ever had before or would in the future, “the Killing Curse is just about as tricky as a tick. And much, much nastier. Taking a life is something that should never, ever be done casually, Severus, and the Killing Curse does just that. You see me with these ticks -- it takes time, and I’ve got to think about each one I kill. I’ve got to consider that it’s just as alive as Puppy is, as I am. The Killing Curse doesn’t let me do that, and it’s important that, even though I’m sitting here killing living things, I know exactly what I’m doing. Sometimes, Severus, it’s necessary that things die, but we should never forget that whatever -- whomever -- we’re forced to kill is just as much a part of the world as we are.”

Severus never knew whether or not his father was, or had been, a Death Eater. It was not a question he trusted himself to ask, and certainly not a question he trusted his father to answer truthfully.

And knowing once and for all would neither detract nor add to that picture in Severus’ mind -- his father, hands gently combing through his dog’s fur, searching for ticks, and plucking them out with his fingernails.

It also would do nothing to relieve the dull mental itch of Hermione Granger, clinging to his consciousness like a blood-sucking parasite. He appeared to be no better at ridding himself of her than Puppy had been at removing her own ticks.

Which left him with no better alternative than simple avoidance.

It pained him, really -- Severus should have been above such tactics. The realization that he was not was very nearly physically painful for him.

All of this, of course, begged the question -- what was he doing here in the Great Hall in the first place? What had possessed him to attend breakfast as opposed to ordering a tray? Some misguided sense of denial, perhaps. Maybe Severus was trying to convince himself that he wasn’t hiding from Hermione. It did not seem to matter, though, as she was apparently hiding from him as well.

With a noise of self-disgust, he pushed himself away from the table and threw his crumpled napkin on his empty plate. “I’m leaving now,” he told the table at large, standing up.

“But, Severus,” Minerva protested in a clearly half-hearted tone. “You--“

“I’m leaving, Minerva,” he repeated firmly. “Good day to you all.”

For the most part, no one seemed particularly ruffled as he strode off -- Minerva looked rather perplexed, but that was possibly due to the fact that Severus rarely announced his departure in such Shakespearian fashion. Such an act wasn’t nearly... subtle enough to suit his tastes, as a rule.

He’d changed, apparently. And more than he’d originally thought, at that.

Severus wondered if Hermione believed he was just as insane as he knew she was, realized that he was thinking about her again, and slammed a mental door shut on the image of her face. And had to pause in his stride as a warm body briefly collided with his. Glancing down, he nearly jumped in surprised irritation -- Hermione.

She skittered back a couple of steps, eyes focused steadfastly on the ground. “I’m sorry, erm, Professor,” she mumbled.

Here he was, doing his level best to avoid the stupid girl, and she had to go and ruin it by attending breakfast just as he was leaving. Couldn’t she have waited thirty damned seconds? “Get out of my way, girl,” Severus snarled, lip curling over his teeth in a sneer as he pushed by Hermione, shoving an obviously freshly showered Potter out of his path.

“Merlin’s arse, what crawled up his bum and died?” he heard Potter ask softly as he made his way toward the door. Severus almost turned around and deducted points but decided it wasn’t worth the hassle -- he’d have plenty of opportunity in class this afternoon.

“Harry, don’t,” Hermione hissed. Severus could not see her expression, but, judging by the tone of her voice, she probably suspected that he could hear them. He deliberately hesitated for a moment but did not turn around, out of some perhaps perverse desire to neither confirm nor deny the truth.

“What?” the boy protested in a sullen voice. “Let him take points away -- I don’t -- good Lord, Hermione! Are you all right? You’ve gone all green.”

Severus forced himself to take a step away from them.

“I’m fine,” she muttered -- Severus knew a lie when he heard one.

“But you’re... and you...” Potter stammered. “You keep looking over at--“

“Harry!” Hermione said sharply.

With a great effort of will, Severus walked out of the Great Hall and back down to the dungeons. After a long moment’s thought, he went to the potions classroom and scribbled a note on the blackboard canceling the day’s classes. Even if Hermione did not attend lecture, Potter almost certainly would, and he found himself strangely unwilling to set eyes on the boy after their earlier encounter.

Swiftly, moving jerkily, Severus made his way to his office, back into his quarters, and began rummaging around in his wardrobe. He emerged with a moleskin cloak clutched in one hand -- it had been an absent-minded gift from his mother many, many years ago. Charmed to repel water and keep its wearer as warm and dry as if he were sitting in front of a roaring fire, the coat had puddled at Severus’ feet when he’d initially received it as a child. And even as an adult, it still fit quite loosely. Severus let the door of the wardrobe fall shut with a loud slam.

He could not bear to be in the castle -- with her -- for a second longer. He had to get out.

As he made his way to one of the many castle doors that led outside, he wrapped himself up in the moleskin and drew the hood over his head. Once he was standing out in the rain, Severus surveyed the horizon, considering his next move. There simply weren’t that many places to go.

He decided on the lake, mostly because the Forbidden Forest was slightly more ominous in this rain than usual. Moreover, it was a good ways from the castle and the walk would do him good.

While the moleskin kept the rain out, it could not prevent the mud from coating his shoes and soaking the hem of his robes. His feet quickly became waterlogged as he walked down to the lake, but he managed to ignore them with fairly good cheer.

The lake was not pleasant to look at. Its surface was wrinkled by the rainfall, and tiny waves lapped against each other, creating small foam-topped caps. And every now and again, a fork of lightning would arc dangerously across the sky, reflected in the choppy lake water. Severus, after a moment’s consideration, seated himself under a tree near the shore, pulling his cloak tightly around his shoulders and propping his elbows on his knees. Let the lightning strike him if it dared.

Maybe there actually was something to the idea of gloomy contemplation that poets always moaned about. As Severus watched the water swirl about, many of the thoughts that had been troubling him were pushed to the back of his mind, as if of their own accord. A hand crept out from under the moleskin, sought out a muddy stone, and tossed it into the water. The waves were almost immediately lost in the tumult of the storm, but Severus found himself perversely pleased with his small contribution to the overall chaos.

To entropy, perhaps.

He wondered how warm the water would be. Maybe, before the time-loop caused them to break down completely, the lake would actually boil. Now that would be a sight.

Severus threw another stone into the lake, further this time, grunting slightly with the effort. He tipped backward a bit as he did so, and one of his moleskin-covered elbows squelched in the mud beneath him. Resisting the impulse to lie down completely, he was stricken with horrible memory -- Hermione had dragged him down here some todays ago, hadn’t she?

She had. She’d grabbed him by the hand and taken him to the lake to watch the storm. And she’d laid down on the ground, her hands under her head, and she’d said--

Forcibly, Severus pushed her out of his head.

Damn it, but the girl was everywhere. There wasn’t a place in the whole of Hogwarts in which he could forget her.

With a growl of exasperation, he stood up. There was no point in being out here, sitting in the rain like a thrice-cursed fool, if it was only going to bring to mind the exact person he was trying so desperately to forget.

Severus began trudging back to Hogwarts, the water in his shoes washing over his toes with each step. After about half a dozen such steps, he bent down and yanked them off, an inarticulate noise caught in his throat. As he pulled off his socks, he regarded the muddy, drippy things for a moment before throwing them over his shoulder.

It wasn’t as if it mattered where his socks wound up, really. Another second’s hesitation and his shoes followed his socks.

He continued his walk bare-footed, the mud now squishing between his toes in an oddly comforting fashion. He fully planned on tracking muddy footprints the entire way to his quarters -- Filch would be furious and that had the potential to be slightly amusing.

The corridor he emerged into was empty and Severus took the opportunity to shed his cloak, draping it over one arm. He toyed with the idea of simply leaving it, but something in him rebelled at that idea -- curious how whatever it was hadn’t objected to his treatment of his footwear.

Severus briefly wondered what time it was and, as if on cue, his stomach growled. Of course, that wasn’t a particularly good indicator -- he hadn’t eaten anything resembling a full breakfast. And what was more, the continuing empty hallways as he walked to the dungeons suggested that classes were still in session. Not nearly dinnertime, then.

He heard them long before he ran into them. Specifically, he heard a loud male voice say, “Hermione,” in a nearly agonized sort of voice.

Turning first to his right and then to his left, Severus realized that he was effectively caught. There were no doors in this corridor to escape through -- he was going to have to encounter Hermione and whoever it was calling her name if they chose to walk down this hall. Hopefully, they were going the other way.

Of course they weren’t. Hermione came skidding around the corner, pale and looking rather angry. She stopped short upon seeing him, paling impossibly further and eyes rounding. A twitchy Potter all but slammed into her back.

“Hermione, you can’t just walk out of--“ the boy was saying. Upon catching sight of Severus, undoubtedly damp and liberally splattered with mud, not to mention the bare feet, Potter went just as still as Hermione.

Severus wished he had something to say to her. Something cutting. Something witty. But his mouth went unexpectedly dry upon the sight of her more-unkempt-than-usual hair and her lightly trembling hands. He was certain that his mouth was open, just as he was certain that nothing was coming out of it.

Hermione blinked and something hardened in her face. She had something to say, apparently. Her lips drew back, revealing her teeth in a sort of snarl. “Stop following me,” she said in a quiet yet unexpectedly tense voice.

Looking absolutely dumbfounded as he glanced back and forth between the only other people in the corridor, Potter shook his head slowly. “Hermione, what’s going--?”

He was on the verge of saying something. He really was. He’d taken in a breath and everything. But Hermione beat him to it. “Stop following me,” she repeated, an edge of unpleasantly familiar hysteria in her tone now. “Stop it, now!”

For a moment, Severus was fairly certain that she was going to throw some sort of fit -- eyes still wide, hands curled into fists at her sides, Hermione looked ready to tackle him out of sheer rage. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t happened before. The corners of his mouth tightened suddenly as he fought the urge to chuckle.

“I--“ he began, perhaps in an effort to defend his motives.

It did not matter. Potter’s eyes had become increasingly narrow as he took in the scene, leaping back and forth between his clearly distressed friend and the seemingly unaffected source of her distress. He reached the obvious conclusion and Severus saw his hand reach unobtrusively into his robes. “What have you done to her?” Potter asked accusingly.

A tiny voice in the back of his mind shouted that perhaps Severus ought to try reason before anything else, and, for once, he found himself listening to it. “Clearly, Potter,” he said, holding his hands out in a placating gesture, open palms pointing to the ceiling, “I’ve done nothing to--“

“Rubbish,” Potter snapped, cutting him off. “Look at her, sir.”

Severus resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Ten points from Gryffindor for cheek, Potter. And yes, I believe I’m looking right at her.” He focused on Hermione, eyes boring into her own. “Tell him, Hermione,” he said, offering her a thin-lipped smile that had absolutely no humor in it whatsoever. “Tell him what I’ve done to you.”

And that was it -- Hermione emitted a single hiccupping moan and turned away, dashing down the corridor as quickly as her feet would carry her.

Stifling a sigh, he turned his gaze back to Potter, who now looked enraged beyond all limits of reason. “You... you bastard,” the boy spat.

“Fifty points for language,” he said languidly.

Potter’s face reddened as it contorted furiously. “I... you... what did you do to her?” he shouted. It echoed through the hallway, ringing in Severus’ ears like some sort of call to war.

“I have done nothing,” Severus hissed, beginning to feel more than a hint of anger himself. Turning dismissively, he took a few steps away from the boy. “Now, quit wasting my time, you foolish little--“

He could not hear the exact words, only that they had been spoken and that they had the clear inflection of a curse. Unhesitatingly, Severus spun, pulling out his wand and giving it a lazy wave. “Protego,” he said, smiling grimly as Potter’s spell was neatly blocked. “Now... how many points shall it be, Potter? Attacking a professor...”

The stupid little prat flourished his wand again -- Severus felt his mouth fall open in shock. “Expelliarmus!” Potter cried.

Recovering quickly, Severus sidestepped the hex. “Potter...” he drawled warningly.

And the idiot’s wand swished a third time.

Unable to fight it any longer, Severus lunged forward -- ducking another hex as he did so -- and grabbed the collar of Potter’s robes, jerking them upward. The boy’s wand clattered to the ground and Severus carefully covered it with his left foot. “Two things, Potter,” he said in a near-whisper.

Thrashing, Potter’s eyes bulged as he cut off his own air supply, effectively garroting himself with his robes. “Go to hell,” he wheezed.

“All in good time,” Severus retorted dryly. “Firstly, Potter, never attack out of anger -- it may make you stronger at times, but it also makes you blind. And stupid.” With a smile, he eased his grip minutely on the boy’s robes. “Not, of course, that you need any particular assistance in that area.”

The boy resumed his struggling with a vengeance, eyes burning murderously. “You just--“

“I said there were two things, Potter,” he chided. “Patience, patience.”

Smile widening into what Severus hoped was a sinister grin, he released Potter’s robes and gave him a rough shove -- the boy’s balance was thrown off just enough that he stumbled into the wall, coughing and rubbing at his probably bruised throat.

“The second thing is this. If this were any other day, Potter, you would be safe. I would have simply marched you to the Headmaster, and that would have been that.” Severus’ robes swirled beautifully as he took a step forward and pointed his wand squarely between the boy’s eyes. “Not today, however.”

His eyes widened in realization. “What’re you--?”

“Stupefy,” Severus said softly, watching Harry Potter crumple to the ground, unconscious. “Petrificus Totalus.” And, partially because he sometimes had the urge to demonstrate the fact that he actually possessed a sense of humor, but mostly because he was succumbing to poor impulse control as of late, he gave his wand one last flick and spoke a couple of incantations in quick succession with an almost mischievous air.

Potter’s abruptly naked body turned a bright shade of Slytherin green and arranged itself in a properly sexually provocative position against a nearby suit of armor. As Severus strode past the tableau, unable to decide whether he wanted Hermione or Albus to stumble across Potter first, he resisted the urge to start whistling.

Day Two Hundred Ninety-Five

“You weren’t following me yesterday, were you?” Hermione’s voice was only slightly doubtful.

“No,” Severus replied steadily, marking a grade on an essay. “No, I was not.”

“Only I’ve thought about it,” she continued in a rush -- Severus looked up briefly and saw a blush spreading ever so slowly across her cheeks. “And it doesn’t make any sense, really.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed, glancing back down at his work.

She huffed a bit, sounding clearly exasperated. “You could make this easier, you know,” she said.

Laying his quill down, Severus met her eyes unwaveringly; he noticed that she flinched. “I could,” he conceded noncommittally.

After a long pause, Hermione threw her hands up in the air. “I’m sorry, all right?” she cried, leaning forward, her hair hanging in her eyes. “I don’t have any excuse for my actions, and the only thing I can do is apologize.”

He regarded her with narrowed eyes, not speaking.

“Well?” she asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Well, what?” he echoed.

“In general, sir, when one proffers an apology, one expects a response of some sort,” Hermione said slowly, speaking as if she were addressing a child.

Severus decided to let it pass and gave her a smirk. “A response? Hermione, I can hardly give such a general apology a response.”

“Please...” she said, nearly begging.

“I mean,” he said, twisting his hand through the air and pretending to be thoughtful, “the question here appears to be, exactly what are you apologizing for? For setting Potter on me yesterday? For interrupting my work this morning unannounced? Or perhaps for something more significant -- atmospheric pollution, maybe?”

Looking away, her fingernails dug into his desktop. “You know...”

“Maybe I’d just like to hear it spoken aloud, Hermione,” he drawled. “Purely for clarification purposes, of course.”

“For...” Hermione hesitated and her knuckles whitened. “For... attacking you two weeks ago. Both times,” she said as his mouth opened. “For hitting you and... for the other.”

Briefly, Severus toyed with the idea of dragging it on further -- pulling the words out of Hermione like so much blood out of a stone. But one of her fingernails actually cracked as he gazed at her, split down to the quick underneath the immense pressure of her stress. Cursing his weakness, he tilted back in his chair and tucked one hand behind his head. “I see no reason that I cannot accept your apology, Hermione.”

Her shoulders slumped as her body relaxed, her fingertips pinking as they eased their death grip on his desk. “Thank God,” she murmured. Immediately, she blushed deeply. “That is, erm, I mean...”

Severus carefully schooled his expression to be blank. “You have no reason to be afraid,” he said. “And besides... I’m sure Potter would be happy to dash to your rescue in any case.”

Something tensed in her face again. “I’m not certain I understand your meaning, sir,” she said in a measured voice, suggesting to Severus that she was perhaps hiding something.

“Do not think for a moment, Hermione, that I don’t know that you set Potter on me like a bulldog,” he said mildly, scratching the back of his head as he spoke. “I trust you found him to your satisfaction... afterward?”

With an expression beginning to resemble a thundercloud, she sat down in a nearby chair. “You did that to him?” she asked, sounding almost incredulous. “All of it?”

“Did you ever find his robes?” Severus asked her with a wicked grin. “I thought I Banished them to a fairly helpful location.”

“The headmaster was most concerned when he found Harry’s robes on his desk,” she admitted, looking down at her lap -- he rather suspected she was hiding a smile of her own. She glanced back up at him and the thundercloud was back. “Fortunately, though, I was able to Enervate Harry and help him move before anyone happened by. And incidentally, I did not ‘set him on you,’ as you keep putting it.”

Snorting with disbelief, he rolled his eyes. “You mean you didn’t tell him exactly what was wrong with you, complete with weeping and earnest looks?”

“Give me more credit than that,” she said. “And if I recall, Harry asked you on one occasion at least what was wrong with me, which I would think might suggest to you that I hadn’t told him any such thing.”

“It is largely irrelevant to my point, Hermione,” he replied. “Given that you know as well as I do that the sight of you running off because of something I said is more than enough to incite Potter to do just what he did.”

“Well...” she began haltingly.

“If you were not a Gryffindor, I might even accuse you of behaving in such a fashion deliberately,” Severus said. “Since I am nearly certain that you were hoping Potter would react as he did.”

They regarded each other for a tense, quiet moment.

“I’m not apologizing, mind,” Hermione said, scowling.

He frowned in kind. “Of course you’re not,” he said. “I imagine that by this point, you’ve managed to convince yourself that you’ve done nothing wrong.”

The look on her face suggested an edge of desperation that had become uncomfortably familiar to him through the days. “Can we both just agree that I’m going insane and move one?”

“I might choose to argue that your sanity is a side issue,” he replied slyly. “But,” he said in response to her rapidly opening mouth, “I am prepared to forego that particular discussion -- I do not wish to fight with you any more, Hermione.”

“It does feel as if we’re wasting an awful lot of effort, doesn’t it?” she asked, wrinkling her nose at him.

“Moreover,” Severus said, clearing his throat, “I do have work to do.”

Hermione gave him a faint smile. “I’ll leave if you want me to.”

Shrugging, he picked up his quill once more. “Do what you will.”

As Severus bent over the next essay and became absorbed in scribbling corrections in the margins, he very nearly forgot about Hermione entirely. It occurred to him after some minutes passed that she’d probably gone, but a slight rustle of cloth across the room suggested that she might not have.

“Professor?” a quiet voice asked.

He grunted, not taking his eyes off the parchment.

“Do... do you really think I’ve gone mad?” Hermione asked timidly.

Lifting his head, he studied her thoughtfully. “What do you think?”

After a long pause, she offered him another faint little smile wryly. “Well... if I’m worried about it, that’s probably a good sign, isn’t it?”