Needfire

Chapter 11 – Interfacing


\"I\'d be lying if I said I was completely unscathed
I might be proving you right with my silence or my retaliation
would I be letting you win in my non reaction?\"

-- Can\'t Not. Alanis Morissette.


Knowing Snape, Hermione was not sure what to expect, only that she should expect something. Probably to be toyed with, as she had no doubt that no matter what she would say and how much she might protest, she would remain the fly caught in the Potions Master\'s web. Not because she doubted him: she had long ago learned to respect the bitter, sarcastic Professor and knew she could trust him with her life. Nevertheless, Snape was a predator owl, silent and calculating in his pursuit, before swooping to pounce on his prey. It was his nature.

And if she was destined to be pierced by his claws, Hermione decided she\'d better be prepared.

He had been glaring at her during meals from the staff table for the last couple of days, cold, furious or indifferent at her discreet attempts to reach him. While this behaviour was discouraging, Hermione discovered it only made her more curious about the man. Fascinated with the bad-boy image, now are you? She rebuked herself. Extremely unhealthy, to say the least. And yet Snape seemed to hold more than an image: this specific puzzle had enopiecpieces to be assembled into a picture of a breathing, hurting, broken man. One her inner Category Romance reader wanted to stitch together. That is, if she could not be healed by him. Next thing I\'ll be planning our wedding and picking out names for our children, Hermione concluded. Then I can peacefully change my surname to \"Brown\".

At last, almost five days after their conversation, her initiation finally began. With knots. Luckily, she wasn\'t a good Potions student for nothing. She had good eye-hand coordination, and soon enough, she mastered the complicated ties meant to attach the Druid attire to the body. It didn\'t mean she was going to wear one any time soon. At the moment, they were mainly taking long walks where they could not be seen, discussing a large variety of subjects- some of them related to Druidism; some of them not. Getting to know each other- Hermione thought cynically.

She was not surprised to find out Snape was good company. He was knowledgeable, witty, an intriguing conversationalist: his dark humour was always something she secretly enjoyed in the classroom – on those unfortunately rare occasions when it wasn\'t aimed toward one of her friends if not herself. He was usually undemanding when it came to personal information she wished to keep private, and rarely spoke about himself. Detached, cool- unburdening. Shaggable, she mused idly. More like daydreaming.

Even in our flaws, we are alike. I wonder if too much alike; whether I\'m likely to close my eyes someday and find the side of my palm melted into the blue-white, slightly humid skin of his hand… That instead of being two bodies God reversed the experiment, and made us one flesh…

Hermione was so lost in her thoughts that she didn\'t notice what Snape was doing until one tattered leather boot was lying on the dewy grass.

\"What exactly do you think you\'re doing?\" she shrieked. \"It\'s freezing!\"

Snape, who was on the process of removing his boots, turned to glare at her. Nevertheless, a spark of amusement glinted in the lucid depths of his dark, hawkish eyes. \"What does it looks like I\'m doing?\" he snarled.

\"Freezing yourself to death!\" she cried. \"At least that what it looks like to me.\" And shivering a little at the sight, Hermione snuggled deeper into the soaking heat of her winter cloak.

The Potions Master, to her surprise, only thres hes head backward, the harsh wind disheveling his lanky hair, and laughed with the kind of sweet abundance she would have never expected to see in a man of Snape\'s stature. Sunrays, filtered through a colander of grey clouds, illuminated his face – as if scissoring it from the foggy morning – and the same wind that played with the locks of his hair was thrusting the grass stems against the worn-out leather of his boots. Boots, she noted, which were now resting together with his socks in the high, fresh grass. \"That\'s why,\" Snape began, pulling his wand out of his sleeve, \"we use a warming spell.\" He cast the spell, lifting his gaze to scrutinize her. \"You may remove your footwear, too.\"

She shook her head, a little shocked at the prospect. \"No thank you, Sir.\"

\"Don\'t you ever walk barefoot, Miss Granger?\"

\"My mother would kill me.\"

Snape cocked an eyebrow. \"And do you always listen to what your mother tells you?\" he taunted her.

\"That doesn\'t merit a response.\"

For some reason, her answer seemed to entertain him. \"I spent most of my childhood barefooted. Wearing shoes, you\'re much more likely to make noise and be noticed.\" He frowned. \"At least that\'s what I thought at the time. Then I was forced to wear shoes, once I was accepted into Hogwarts: to have something separating me from the earth.\" Snape looked at his boots with more than a little suspicion. \"It happens, then, that I still do not completely trust anything but my own foot. Your body, Miss Granger, is the best instrument you\'re ever going to get. Use it, and use it wisely.\"

She pursed her lips. Being corrected made her forget all about her former curiosity as to the child\'s reasons to go about unnoticed, replacing it with indignation. \"You want me to take off my shoes, then?\"

\"We attempt to work with nature,\" Snape answered coolly. \"You should experience the ground you\'re walking on not through false layers of plastic and leather, but with your own soles.\"

\"You can just tell me to take off my shoes,\" Hermione insisted.

He scowled. \"Come here.\"

\"What is it now?\"

\"Would you just shut up and do as I tell you?\"

She obeyed him, seating herself on the ground next to Snape.

Beside her, the Professor reached to dig between the grass stems, shoving them aside until his long, pale fingers stuck into the muddy earth, plunging into the wet dirt and pulling out a handful of soil.

Hermione flinched, withdrawing at once.

He wouldn\'t let her. Reaching to seize Hermione\'s elbow, he anchored her to the spot, and ignoring her struggle, brought his dirtied hand close to her face.

She cried. \"What are you doing?\"

\"This is the earth you\'re walking on. The earth that gives life to everything around you. Can you smell how fragrant it is, Miss Granger? Can you taste it?\"

The place where his fingers cut into her flesh bulikelike frost bite. Her own fingers dug into the ground, cold sweat perspiring from her pores: Snape\'s low, beautiful voice hammering in her ears like a psychotic pendulum. \"No, no and no,\" she forced herself to say, her voice small and shaky. \"Now release me before I dismember you.\"

Snape released her at once. Hermione was painfully aware of his gaze as she sank to the grass beside him, breathing deeply. \"Don’t ever, ever, hold me like that,\" she told him. \"Do you understand??\"

\"No.\"

His answer rang crystal-cold in her ears. Dizzy, she made herself sit, gathering her winter cloak around her body as if the warmth would grant her the power and orientation to rise to her feet and walk away.

\"You\'re misunderstanding me,\" Snape said.

She blinked. \"So what did you mean?\"

\"I understand that I should release you- I do not understand the reason. I\'d like to know why you reacted so forcefully.\"

\"When you show me a girl who enjoys being seized like that, I\'ll gladly exchange my bra for a corset.\"

\"In fact, I could show you several women who\'d love to be seized harshly,\" the Potions Professor retorted. \"That is not my point, though. Your reaction is what I find… disturbing.\"

She glared at him. \"There\'s nothing disturbing in my reaction, only in your violent approach.\"

Snape nodded. \"You are right. I was fierce when I shouldn\'t have been. It won\'t happen again.\"

\"Good.\"

\"And still- I would learn the reason for your behaviour.\"

\"Have a good time digging yourself into a hole.\"

\"You can be sure I would, Miss Granger.\"

She watched him move into a sitting position; the calmer, shallower parts of her cognition, the ones she freed to drift when danger was near, were occupied by the sheer gracefulness of his movement. More deeply, however, she was disturbed; annoyed and helpless to realize there was so little she could do to force Snape to relate to her as his equal. And yet she knew they were not equals. Experience has aged me beyond what is normal, she insisted. doesdoesn\'t every teenager think they know best? Move, get out of your parents\' house, read the humourous little placard on her bedroom door: get a job and live your own life while you still think you know everything.

She might not be his equal – yes: Snape was her superior in knowledge and experience. And Hermione was slowly beginning to realize, from the h he he was unintentionally letting slip, her superior in pain as well. But then, what was equality after all? No, it was not equality she wanted: once again, it was his recognition she wished for, and the ability to stand her ground, which grew harder every day when he turned the soil she was walking on to water, by merely challenging her intellect in a way had never been challenged before. No, she was not his equal – not yet, though she knew she would be. She did not want to be his equal at the moment. She wanted to enjoy the luxury of a companion who could match her intellectually: a male companion at that. She wanted to crucify him and lick the blood oozing from his wounds. She wanted to sleep with him as an act of ownership.

\"We should be on our way back to the castle,\" Snape\'s low, rich baritone cut into her line of thoughts.

\"Oh… right.\" Fumbling, she stumbled to her feet, hurriedly moving her hands through her hair in a pathetic attempt to put it in some order.

\"Shall we?\"

\"Sure.\"


* * *

She was miserably late for their next meeting: her calendar was full as it was, with a long, exhausting training session the other night and a suspicious Harry, who took notice of her wish to go to bed early, and probably kept the knowledge for later use. Snape, Hermione observed a binomonomously, seemed to be fond of the oddest hours, like an exotic plant whose blooms open only with the first light of dawn.

\"You\'re late,\" he greeted her, already roaming barefooted between his Stones. A tall, magnificently phallic figure amongst the feminine, stony avatars.

\"I\'m sorry,\" Hermione mumbled. \"I didn\'t have much sleep yesterday. I failed to wake up in time.\"

\"See that this mistake doesn\'t repeat itself.\"

\"It won\'t.\"

Dew was a thin, glittering film of moisture covering the skin of his feet, which were sunken in the high grass. She was fascinated by the way the stems bent to embrace each foot, protruding from between his long, pale toes; the hem of his robe shadowing the grass.

\"Care to elaborate?\"

Hermione shrugged her shoulders.

Snape nodded. She thought she might have detected a hint of approval in his stare. \"To the day\'s work, then. Learn your French, learn your History. There are three cycles in the Irish mythology- the Mythological cycle, comprised of successive settlements of early Celtic people on Ireland, particularly the Tuatha Dé Danann and the Milesians. The Ulaid Cycle deal with the reigns of Conchobor of Ulaid and Medb of Connacht, particularly the warriors of the Red Branch and its greatest hero, Cú Chulainn. And The Fenian Cycle – or the Ossianic Cycle – supposed to have set in a more peaceful time of the reign of Cormac the Airt, particularly the warriors of Fianna and its greatest hero, Finn Mac Cumhaill…\"

Wrapped in her well-padded winter cloak, she sank into the grass, satisfied to be listening to Snape\'s voice pouring over her with the same punctiliousness and care of the sunrays smoothed by the greyish clouds. She once heard some Slytherin girls describing their Head of House\'s voice as velvety: listening to Snape\'s clear, illuminating baritone she couldn\'t agree less. Velvet was dark and thick and murky: like blood that had been left to congeal. Oh no. Snape\'s voice was like snow melt, flowing cool, clear and pure from up in the mountains come spring.

He kept talking, first counting the few original Druid texts left unharmed, then telling her about the Bards\' system of cataloguing and remembering all the information they had to know.

\"Do you remember a Bard\'s repertoire by heart?\" she inquired.

\"I am no Bard,\" Snape retorted, stopping for a moment to look at her.

\"Yet you remember all this.\"

\"I do.\"

\"Isn\'t it a bit useless?\"

\"Tell me, Miss Granger-\" Snape glowered at her. \"If you were to hold a lump of butter to a candle flame: what would happen?\"

She scowled, but answered his question. \"It would melt, of course.\"

\"So now it\'s a sticky, oily liquid, right?\"

\"Right.\"

Snape nodded. \"Quite different from the relatively solid lump of butter you had.\"

\"Yes, so?\"

\"Would you still call it butter?\"

\"Of course!\"

\"Why? It is not the same. The oily liquid does not have the same qualities of the solid lump. Surely, it is no longer butter.\"

She moistened her lips. \"All right, you can stop now, I get you.\"

\"Tell me, then. What do I mean?\"

\"I would know it is butter because I watched the historical occurrence, or have evidence of the melting process, or otherwise know it had occurred in the past, and so, know what result to expect. This is butter because I know it is butter: because a past event recognizes and defines it as butter.\"

Snape nodded. \"It is our past that determines who we are: not the form in which we appear,\" he lectured. \"This-\" and Snape indicated his body, \"is only an empty shell. A storage room for memories.\"

\"Yes, yes,\" she yawned, tired of his endless brandishing of knowledge. \"The superior, brilliant Snape strikes again.\"

He stopped dead on his course. \"Do you mock me?\"

\"What?\" Hermione asked humourously, failing to detect danger. \"The way you mock me eighty percent of the time?\"

\"I said- do you mock me?\"

She frowned; uncomfortable with the monochrom edg edge Snape\'s voice took; slowly moving herself to a kneeling position. Carefully, she crawled toward him in the whispering, moistened grass. Dew soaked the fabric of her winter cloak, staining her jeans and wetting her palms- on which she supported herself as she made her way toward her mentor\'s towering figure.

She was then kneeling in front of him, her face on a level with his groin: wonder if the original prayer position was born out of the image of a woman giving head to a god; mouth open to embrace his protruding, divine phallus, arms raised to fondle the sack of his deific balls- wasn\'t there a religious exultation in the pleasure of orgasm, and wasn\'t she, crouching on her knees in front of him, the Goddess who – with the touch of her lips – killed and once again gave birth to the God. Small wonder, then, small wonder that hundreds of years later, mentally-castrated male monks kneeled in front of their mentally womb-less virgin, incapable of licking her into orgasm.

\"Am I mocking you?\" Hermione asked quietly, lifting her eyes to meet Sna fro frosty gaze as she stopped at his feet. Once again, she sat on the grass, knees folded under her body as if in prayer. Frowning, she twisted her fingers in the dew-soaked hem of Snape\'s robe, uncovering a long, graceful foot. Angling an eyebrow, she outstretched her hand, index finger brushing the edge of a pale, cold toe. \"Now am I mocking you, Professor?\" she asked rhetorically, her heart swelling when he didn\'t flinch or retreat. \"No, I do not mock you,\" she continued, \"even though you do annoy me at times. Truth is you humble me. Annoying as you are… you humble me.\"

* * *

\"Are you mad?\" she found herself asking, one evening not long after Advanced Potions was over. \"There is no way I\'m going to fast for a whole week. Samhain or not.\"

\"One point from Gryffindor for disrespect,\" Snape growled. \"Now, Miss Granger. The ancient rite says you should fast, and therefore, if you wish to take part in the rite, you shall fast.\"

Hermione\'s jaws clenched. Breathing deeply, she took out her anger on the next cauldron, scrubbing the metal until her knuckles ached. The seventh years\' Advanced Potions class was working on some complex Potions where even the smallest trace of magic worked into the metal of the cauldron by a simple Scourgify could ruin the potion. To Snape, she assumed, it occurred as a brilliant opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: having some time to spend with his apprentice, as well as someone to help him scrub the damn cauldrons. It was a good idea- she had to grant him that, as at least Harry, who was the sharper of her two best friends, noted the sudden addition to her timetable. Although he didn\'t say a thing, Hermione knew that the Boy Who Lived was perfectly capable of using the information in order to manipulate her. Two lions with a snake\'s weltanschauung, she mused, and I\'m apprenticing with the Alpha Snake. How appropriate.

The Head of Slytherin house was momentarily bent over a large, iron cauldron, sleeves rolled up to expose a pair of delicate, sinewy arms. His brow furrowed in concentration, he had been diligently scrubbing the leftovers of a thick brew from a heavy metal side.

Angry at herself for being distracted by the man, Hermione forced herself to concentrate on the persona: infuriating, arrogant, brilliant. And yet, easier to deal with. Hermione took a calming breath. \"I\'m on training program,\" she told him. \"I\'m practicing rather tasking sports. There is no way I can fast for such a long time.\"

Snape merely shrugged. \"Then determine your list of priorities.\"

She gritted her teeth. \"Do you have any idea why I\'m training? Any idea at all? Or do you simply think I\'m a sports freak?\" Angered, she scraped away an extremely nasty root which somehow had stuck to the cauldron\'s side. \"We have an enemy to beat. We better be in shape when it\'s time to beat it. You don\'t just win a war starving yourself into a state of weakness.\"

Snape answer was cold and moderated as ever. \"It is not your duty to fight the Dark Lord.\"

\"Bollocks.\"

\"Two points from Gryffindor for language.\"

\"You know damn well it\'s Harry\'s duty to defeat You-Know-Who. And I\'m Harry\'s friend. We Gryffindors don\'t abandon a friend in battle. Not to mention that I hardly think Professor Dumbledore is expecting Harry to beat He Who Must Not Be Named all by himself. The Headmaster surely knows we will have a part in it.\"

She was surprised to see Snape\'s movements slow considerably- his brow knotting. \"You are right to assume,\" he said, \"that the Headmaster has certain expectations of you. Even so, it doesn\'t make beating the Dark Lord your duty to shoulder.\" The Potions Professor appeared uncharacteristically grave as he looked at her. \"Hypothetically, if you and Potter wanted to, there are ways for you to… disappear. Do you understand, Miss Granger?\"

Swallowing hard, she looked at him. \"Are there?\"

Snape\'s eyes merely flickered. \"Indeed, there are. So if Potter ever tires of being the Wizarding World\'s boy wonder….\"

\"And what would Professor Dumbledore say to this?\"

\"I daresay we\'ll find out in due time.\" Snape cleared his throat. \"But- we are straying from the subject. We were talking about-\"

\"-Fasting,\" Hermione completed. All too soon, the severe expression was gone; replaced with its softer, lighter version which still held a tint of amusement if one knew where to look for it. She didn\'t want it to be gone, though- she had not yet finished her search of his features. Had not yet managed to determine whether he actually cared; was it only her imagination, or did she really see sorrow in his eyes? This is not good, she thought angrily. He is too much like taunting, too much like bantering. Giving in a little and then pulling away. It was impossible to be sure, under such attention, whether it was Snape she was actually interested in, or the enigma of him: the mere form of presentation that tempted her keen mind to solve him.

\"Fasting,\" Snape agreed, disconnecting her flowing ribbon of thoughts with the sharp clink of his voice. He was doing that a lot lately.

\"A seven days\' fast,\" she corrected. \"An extremely unhealthy practice. Come on, just look at you. If a seven days’ fast is a habit of yours, no wonder your general state of health is so poor.\"

\"Excuse me?\" Snape asked in a deadly tone.

\"No, you excuse me,\" she said, heatedly. \"You expect me to sleep with you, and yet you force yourself into some kind of bizarre diet seven days before the ritual: a diet that is only likely to make you oily, thin, weak and unstable. That is, instead of eating properly and fasting a day or several hours before the ritual, like normal people do.\"

\"Miss Granger!\" Snape roared. \"Do you wish to teach me, or learn from me?\"

She threw up her hands in exasperation. \"I have the utmost respect for Druid tradition, but I also have some knowledge about diet. You told me yourself that your ritual is a mixture of old and new- that what you practice is what works best for you. Why is this sudden narrow-mindedness?\" Hermione asked angrily.

\"You are correct,\" Snape replied frostily. \"My rites are what work best for me and that\'s why I adhere to them. You, however, pretend to know the method that I use is unhealthy, and so, disqualify it without ever having tried fasting my way.\" His lips thinned into a sharp line of bitterness. \"You claim my general state repulses you: feel free to leave. There is the door.\"

Her eyes narrowed; she was suspicious, although – when contemplating the matter retrospectively – Hermione didn\'t know why she should have felt suspicious, having hurt her Professor. Perhaps because being hurt wasn\'t at all like him. It made her feel powerful- a sense of power that faded at once, when she realized Snape had indeed expected her to leave. It angered her; that he would be hurt so easily – give her such power over him without even the smallest effort on her side. He was supposed to be her demigod: to master and order her around and so enable her to fight him off. It was her role to be hurt and angry. And then, she just didn\'t want him hurt. Period.

Hermione blinked, annoyed; unsure how she should handle the man. \"Idiot.\"

\"Five points for language.\"

She ignored the sting. \"I didn\'t say your general state repulses me.\"

\"Really? Shall I repeat what you-\"

\"No need to,\" she cut him off sharply. \"You\'d only put words in my mouth and I\'m no match to you when it comes to demagoguery. If I thought you were repulsive, there would be no way you could get me into the sack, ritual or no ritual, and that\'s the end of it.\"

\"Are you suggesting I\'m trying to bed you?\" Good, he is amused again.

\"I\'m not suggesting anything,\" she told him. \"And this bloody cauldron is clean.\"

A moment later he was at her side, inspecting her work.

\"It\'s clean,\" Hermione insisted.

\"There\'s a spot over there.\"

Snorting, she lifted the scrub brush and rubbed off the latest fruit of Snape\'s imagination. \"Happy?\"

\"Yes.\" And with that, he placed another filthy cauldron in front of her.

Hermione watched the tacky, gooey residues of the potion one of her classmates brewool ool at the bottom of the cauldron; then looked at her hands, already dirtied by the work she was doing. She shuddered.

Snape, who noticed her reaction, was instantly gone. Irritated, Hermione watched him watching her from where he now stood at the end of the classroom – all the while scrubbing a filthy cauldron. Twenty minutes later, the damn thing was clean, and Hermione wanted to throw up. Snape, who had been standing beside the washbasin, was currently tuning the water\'s temperature. Slightly cranky as ever, he called her over.

\"What now?\" she barked, irritated.

\"Give me your hands.\"

She stretched out her hands, her lips parting in a silent cry – Hermione wasn\'t sure whether it was a cry of surprise or indignation – when he enveloped them in his larger, strong hands. Warm, soft water poured over her abused skin – gently: the way the sun slowly evaporates the dew encrusting the grass stems – while Snape\'s skilled, clever fingers caressed the filth from her hands. She let her eyes close, to better absorb the sensation that was all touch and skin and the light trickle of water.

\"Now, about that fast…\" Snape\'s voice echoed in her ears.

Using Slytherin tactics… distracting her, then moving directly for the jugular. \"Bastard,\" she swore. \"Not a chance I\'m going to starve myself for a whole bloody week.\"

\"Three points from Gryffindor.\"

\"I\'ll fast the day before the rite. I suggest you do so, too. I can work out a diet for you, if you\'d like.\"

\"And what do you know about diets?\" Snape drawled.

\"I have made it a study,\" she said. \"I am seeing a dietitian and a personal trainer over the holidays. I am very careful with my nutrition and training- just in case you were wondering.\"

He nodded. \"Thorough.\"

\"Yes. Would you consider my method, then?\"

\"Perhaps.\"

\"You\'d be surprised to learn what the right diet can do for you,\" she said enthusiastically, pretty much the way she once told Harry and Ron.

\"And then…\" Snape seemed to reconsider, \"maybe not.\"

\"Prick.\"

\"Three points from Gryffindor.\"

~@~@~
A/N:
* \"Learn your French, learn your History\" – Bertold Brecht, \"1940\".