Jehane Desrosiers

Chapter 10 -- Doubting


The summer fell into an easy rhythm. Several times a week we rambled over the moors, and all the practice I had taken with Severus over the fall and winter served me well. I knew when it was wise to leave him alone; I waited, and when he felt comfortable he spoke more freely. Sometimes I got three questions, and, starting with the most innocuous material, I began to put together the more concrete parts of his history. The story of his heart I seemed to know complete, by intuition or blessing. Once or twice we made love in the pine grove as the day cooled. Minerva gave me a sly look as she picked a needle out of my hair at dinner.

It was a hot day, but Severus had cast a cooling spell that hung over us, exhaling a soft, moist breeze that smelled of the sea. Every now and then he would adjust it deftly with his wand as we walked.

“Three questions?”

“And we were having such a nice time,” he answered sarcastically.

“Your mother. What was she like?”

“I hope this is not going to turn into that psychoanalysis thing that muggles do.”

“No, Darling, this is more like what friends do, Find out about each other.” Lobbing some sarcasm back over the net.

“I really think you know all you need to know,” he said, giving me a charged look.

“I want to know you all the way back. I want to know you as a boy and as a young man.” I squeezed his arm. “I’m greedy for you.”

He sighed, but softened a bit.

“She did the best she could with me.” I waited, but there was no more.

“It was hard to do well by you?”

“I was not an appealing child, and she had her own difficulties.”

“What were her difficulties?”

“My father.”

“How was he difficult?”

Another sigh. “He did not feel it necessary to adhere to his marriage vows. He did not feel it necessary to respect my mother or to seek treatment for her.”

“Treatment?”

“She spent a great deal of time in bed with the shades drawn.”

“She was depressed.”

“Yes, I suppose that is the clinical word. It ensued from my birth.”

I took his arm again and stroked his wrist. “And where were you?”

He turned his face away. “I was following the maid about or sitting in the kitchen with the cook, reading a book.”

“Poor little boy, trying to get some attention from the maid.”

“I was not appealing to the maid, either,” he said bitterly. “And I wasn’t a ‘poor little boy.’ I was a superior, sarcastic, mean little boy, and she didn’t care for me.”

This was so sad that I didn’t know what to say.

“Nor did the next maid,” he continued. “And the cook only put up with me because I never spoke to her.

“Jehane.” There was a strain in his voice that made me glance up. He looked exhausted and distressed. “I have to stop now.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

“I have to stop.”

“Yes.” We were near the pine grove. The cooling spell was not working well and the grove looked shady. “Come up and we’ll sit.”

Like the first time we came here, I sat against a tree. I held out my arms and he sat with his back against me. He spoke to me in a low, urgent voice.

“Jehane, you need to understand this. It does not help me to unburden myself. “Three questions”costs me a day’s worth of disquiet. I do it for you because you seem to require it. But please don’t think you are helping me. It does not help.”

I held him and wondered at this. I liked to talk about myself when I was comfortable with someone. How could it not be true for him? And yet, how unthinking to assume that he would be the same.

“What helps you, Darling?”

“Nothing helps me.”

“No. That’s not true.”

“Being left alone. Work. Staying away from certain lines of thought.”

“Sometimes I help you,” I said in a little voice.

“Yes.” He breathed out. “You do. Not your questions or anything you say. Just you. Being there.”

“Good.”

“And thank you.” He laid his head against my arm.

“Does it help that I want to help?”

“No, it hurts. When you try, it hurts.”

“All right then. No more questions. No questions anymore.”

I tipped my head back and tears of shame and sorrow ran silently down the sides of my face. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t help. Severus must have felt it; he reached back and rubbed my cheek with the side of his hand.

“It’s not your fault. You didn’t make me.”

Suddenly I had intimations of struggle and pain to come, a world of pain now that I had joined my life to his. I wanted out. I could still move on; I could return to France, maybe find someone else .

No. Of course not. That moment in which I first knew still held; I was meant for him and it was with him I belonged. But after the first rush of love-returned, something else had come, something Guy hadn’t prepared me for, and I wondered if I could bear up under it.

We walked home sadly and silently, both lost in thought. Severus seemed to know that I felt chastened and self-doubting; he treated me gently but left me to my ruminations.

Summer drew to a close. The students returned with their trunks and owls, pockets stuffed with sweets wrappers, jabbering about their holidays. I had lost the comfortable feeling of sureness I had had with Severus, although on the outside everything was the same with us. I had thought I knew exactly what to do with and for him, to keep him and to heal him; now my certainty had been punctured and I fumbled.

One day as I knelt in a stall, working on a claw that Cadbury had half torn off, Thomas and Miriam entered, fresh from Potions class. In a moment I realized that they couldn’t see me.

“He’s a right bastard, he is,” said Thomas, almost tearfully.

“It wasn’t even your fault. The cauldron was defective or something,” said Miriam.

“And he reams me out while I’m half burnt to death. Look at my arms.”

“It shouldn’t be right for professors to call names if we can’t call back,” Miriam said. “Anyone could see you were hurt and then for him to say you were a moron and a discredit to your House -- if you’d lost your temper and called him a greasy hideous git no one would’ve blamed you.”

“Oh, well that’s Snape’s trick,” Thomas said bitterly. “He harasses you till you blow up, then it’s detention, detention, detention.”

“Last week he told Pierce he should hunt around for his adoption papers ‘cause he couldn’t have been sired by two genuine wizards like his parents. He was in the boy’s loo throwing up after class,” said Miriam.

“Look, Jehane’s not around here, is she?” Thomas seemed to be scanning the stable. Now I was in the awkward position of having heard too much.

“Madame Desrosiers,” Miriam corrected. “No, she must be out.”

“I can’t figure out what she sees in him,” said Thomas. “She must like being abused.”

“Maybe he’s fantastic in bed,” Miriam giggled.

“Oh please,” said Thomas. “You’d have to wear a blindfold. The idea makes me sick.”

“Love is blind and all that. Maybe deaf, too, in this case.”

“Do you think she actually loves him? Repulsive greasy bastard.” Thomas said. I shrank lower, half underneath Cadbury, my face burning.

“Yeah,” said Miriam meditatively. “You can see she does sometimes. At dinner.”

“Ugh. I’d rather it was just shagging. She’s all right.”

“Thomas! Anyway, I’m taking Serrebrune for exercise. Are you coming?”

“Is Filleambre in the paddock? I’m supposed to work with her. Or she’s supposed to work with me.”

“Yes. Come on, then.”

I had forgot, or put out of my mind, the nasty piece of business I had seen that night outside the Great Hall. Too happy to wonder what went on outside our bubble. Pierce, of all people, too – a tiny boy so pale you could see the blue veins beneath his skin, eager to please, sweet-natured, and well liked among the Grifffindors. He was in my younger class.

Once again, that thought -- I could still get out. They hated him, really hated him. It shamed me to be ashamed of him.

Then he did it in front of me. This time it was Pen Wateringcan, a silly girl and not too bright, but harmless. And it was on my turf. He had walked me back to the stables after lunch. Pen was in the paddock, flirting with Thomas, giggling and acting wild. Our young male, Salazar, was in the paddock too, and I didn’t like the look in his eye. She acted over- familiar with him, and he had a fine sense of personal dignity.

“Miss Wateringcan, you are not a riding student and should not be in the paddock,” I called out. At that moment she gesticulated broadly at Salazar, waving her hand in front of his face. His head darted forward and he bit her on the wrist.

She screamed. Thomas pushed her out of the way and bowed to Salazar, who ruffled the feathers on his neck then sank into a return bow, his eyes hooded with satisfied pride.

Pen was still screaming when she got to the fence. I grabbed her bloody wrist -- a flesh wound only, and not too deep -- then hauled her over the rail. Severus was right behind me, pulling a silk handkerchief out of his pocket.

“Give it here, you idiot,” he said, and scrubbed the wound roughly. “This is better than you deserve. You behaved like an empty headed fool, and have proved that you are no more talented with animals than you are in Potions.

“I hope you can parlay that pretty face into an advantageous marriage,” Severus snarled. “You are hardly intelligent enough to support yourself.”

Pen had pulled her hand back and was sobbing over the red-splotched handkerchief around her wrist.

“Oh, stop blubbering. You’re not badly hurt. You enjoy making a show of yourself.”

“Stop,” I said. “That’s enough.”

He drew himself up and stared down his nose at me, Miss Wateringcan forgotten. His eyes glittered coldly.

“I’ll thank you to stay out of my relations with students, Madame Desrosiers.”

“I’ll thank you not to bully children in my paddock, Professor Snape.”

“Miss Wateringcan, for your carelessness report to me for detention at seven o’clock,” he snapped, eyes on me.

“I’m so sorry, Professor Snape,” I said. “But Miss Wateringcan has detention with me at that time.”

“Then she may serve her detention with me on Saturday night, scrubbing out flasks in the laboratory.” His face was a mask of fury, eyes slitted, mouth set in a thin line. He whirled on his heel and stalked away.

I followed, and when we were out of hearing began on him again. “Why do you have to be so nasty to the children? You’re just venting your spleen.”

“To begin with, Jehane, when they are with me they are students, not children. I am responsible for educating them, not raising them, and if they – or you – expect me to coddle them and build up their undeserved self-esteem in the face of incompetence or laziness, then you are mistaken. I would not consider it responsible of me to accept poor performance.”

“You don’t have to accept it. But you don’t have to terrorize them, either.”

“This is what I am, Jehane. Surely you must have noticed before you took me on that I am a nasty, greasy, cruel, hideous son of a bitch. I am well known here and my personality works for me, if it doesn’t work for you.

“And what is more, in case you did not notice, I have turned myself inside out to love you as you seem to feel you deserve, and if it is not enough for you, let us put an end to it before you find yourself further offended.”

“Oh, stop. It’s not about that. I hate that you are so mean to them. It doesn’t help them, Severus. It doesn’t help them to learn, or be better wizards or better people.”

“Perhaps they can learn to be ‘better people’ from you or from Lupin or maybe even from Professor Trelawny. I hope that from me they might learn competency in Potions. I myself have not learned to be a ‘better person,’” he sneered. “So I am afraid that I cannot offer them that lesson.”

I was furious and stung by his nasty tone. I said nothing and he said nothing. We turned away from each other and I went back to the paddock. Pen was still goggling after us.

“Argh. Sorry, Pen,” I said.

“It’s -- okay,” she said, stupefied by the unexpected turn of events. If she had any sense she’d be dining out on this for a week. I sent her off to Madame Pomfrey and went back to the stable where I burned off self-righteous anger by mucking out stalls.

The longer I stayed with myself, the worse I felt. I knew perfectly well that I had picked the fight by transgressing against a basic understanding between Severus and me. I wanted to be angry at him because it was pleasanter than facing that I was having doubts.

The next day we didn’t speak at all. I peeked at him during meals -- scowling, grim -- and I heard his silky, lethal voice, excoriating wrongdoers in the hallways as I passed. In staff meeting, I glanced up to see him staring coldly at me before he turned his face away.

The day after, it was still easier not to speak, but I dragged myself around in a cloud of self-hate and misery. And then another day when we didn’t look at each other or speak. Then it was somehow a week, and the chasm was too great -- nor did I know how to cross it with myself.

Again teaching was a great comfort and distraction. While I was riding or working with children I thought of nothing else. Hagrid sensed my distress in the interstices and squeezed my arm every chance he got, offering me tea or ale several times a day.

“Come on now, Lass, don’t yeh go runnin’ off at the end of class now. Won’t yeh come keep me company? I want teh talk about Salazar. He’s off his feed, I think.”

I knew that once we had settled in at Hagrid’s great table I’d tell him all my woes. My reluctance stemmed partly from protectiveness of Severus’ privacy, partly from embarrassment at my own failings. But I was terribly lonely, and hoped Hagrid would offer me supper and a chance to avoid the Great Hall.

He bustled about making tea, then checked my expression and poured a good dollop of whiskey into each cup.

“Now, Lass, yeh know I’m no good at advice, nor at love fer that matter, but if yeh’d just like to talk -- I can see somethin’s not right with you and yer man.”

My man. I burst into tears.

“I’m so ashamed, Hagrid. I’m not sure I want him.”

“Whass this? Anyone cud see it’s a love match.”

“They could?”

“Sure. He don’ like it to show, but yeh can see it in him. When yer walkin’ together, leanin’ in.”

“I hate that everyone else hates him. And I hate the way he treats the children. I’m not strong enough to face it .”

“You? Not strong? Yer as strong a woman as comes. An’ not everyone hates Perfessor Snape. Me, I respect him. He’s right brilliant, yeh can tell. An’ he worked fer Perfessor Dumbledore. B’sides, he never stings me but a little.”

“Maybe it’s my love that isn’t strong. I just ignored it, Hagrid. The nastiness. It was easy because the kids weren’t here over the summer. It’s not the way he is with me; it’s with them, but I can’t overlook it.”

“He’s right harsh with em it’s true. I don’t know as how I cud be around it much. But I’m not in love with ‘im.”

“I do love him. I love him with all my heart. But I’m not sure I like him.”

“Yeh worked real hard teh have him come to yeh, Lass. No one cud a done it but yerself. It was like all the work yeh done savin griffs that woulda been put down by makin ‘em tame and friendly-like. But ‘ee’s not a griff, yeh know. Animals don’t know when yer workin on em, but people do, an they don’ feel respected. I don’ know much ‘bout love -- bein’ a bachelor and all -- but I know yeh got to take people as yeh find em.”

“I don’t know if I can.” Another dollop of whiskey was poured before more tea was administered, and I took a big gulp. “Oh --” I put my head down on the table and wept.

I was lifted gently up by enormous hands and folded against Hagrid’s chest, my sobs muffled against his rough shirt. He smelt of wood smoke, whiskey and, faintly, the acidic tang of animal pens. In his sturdy arms I was a little girl, and my wail of grief held more than just adult confusion and distress. He rocked me, patting my hair, wonderfully at ease with my weeping. I didn’t need to speak.

After some time my sobs abated, turning into hiccups and snerks and I laughed at my own noises. Hagrid pulled a crumpled bandanna the size of a pillowcase from his pocket and wiped my face with surprising delicacy. Then, matter-of-factly, he wiped some of my snot off his shirt. He set me down gently in my chair and poured me a cup of tea, sans whiskey.

I felt empty and good. Something lovely had happened between us and I sat quietly, treasuring it. My trouble seemed far away, and tomorrow soon enough to mend it. I saw that Hagrid had his own rare form of genius, and wondered who else at Hogwarts knew it.

Severus was missing at breakfast the next day and at lunch and dinner. I asked around discreetly; he was teaching his classes, but otherwise absent. I worried that he might not be eating. He had a nervous stomach, despite being hungry all the time. What did he make of our breach? All he knew was that we’d had a spat and stopped speaking. Did he think that was it -- injured pride? I had no pride as far as he went, and would be on him in a moment if I could be sure I meant it.

At the end of the second week, Minerva found me sitting despondently on the paddock fence one afternoon. She rarely strolled around the grounds so she must have come looking for me.

“Jehane. May I talk to you about Severus.” She was always to-the-point.

“I know. You think it’s a lost cause.”

“On the contrary,” she said with asperity. “I’ve known Severus since he was a First Year. You have no idea how far he’s come for you. I never thought he’d allow himself to -- find anyone.

“I don’t know what’s gone wrong between you,” she said. “But please try. He has tried harder for you than you realize.”

“I don’t know if I can, Minerva. I thought I knew what he was and accepted it I thought that I could take in all that -- that meanness, the way he is with the children -- but I can’t. I can’t stand it.”

“So your love is not so grand as you thought?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s not just a feeling. Love is what you do, Jehane. There’s a matter of will.” I wondered how she knew this. “You can make it a matter of decision, and if I am correct about you --” Here she looked at me sharply. “-- you will know when you have.” We sat for a bit while she let that sink in. The late afternoon shadows stretched across the pasture.

“What was he like, in school?”I asked.

She crooked a funny little smile at me. “You already know. Proud, brilliant, terribly unhappy. Not well adjusted. But a joy to teach, so serious and quick.”

Suddenly, fiercely, “He was lovely.” Then I knew that he was special to her; she had come to plead his case. I almost blurted it out -- You love him too! -- but smiled instead. I wasn’t the only one. It was comforting; Minerva McGonegall was on our side.

“Will he always be so awful to them?”

“I don’t know. You mustn’t make too much of it. They’re tougher than you think, and they have plenty of other adults to care for them. Just love him, Jehane. I think you can. Now good night, my Dear.”

“Good night, Minerva. Thank you.”

When the change came, it was quiet. I thank whatever gods may be that I have the gift of knowing when I know. I was at the desk in my rooms, trying to write a letter to Thalia but stymied by the amount of detail needed to make the situation clear. Blah blah blah. Suddenly it was clear; I didn’t like everything about the man I loved, but I loved him to the core. His character was golden, if his personality was not. We were separate beings, and I needn’t lay claim to his entire life and reputation. We might work out whatever suited us without anyone’s approval of him, or us, to do so. In that inexplicable way of revelation, I saw clear to it instantly.

I sat for a while more, thinking over all that had happened in the last two weeks -- how Hagrid had been so sympathetic and seemed to want us to work it out, how Minerva had come to plead for him. Some people did care for and respect him. It seemed possible again. I would go and see him tomorrow.

A few minutes later, as I contemplatively brushed my teeth, there was a knock on the door. My stomach dropped; at 10:00 it must be Severus and I wasn’t ready.

He was all spiffed up, as on the first time. Shaved, scented, exquisitely tailored jacket and silk shirt. He held a bottle of whiskey. The cold expression of the staff meeting was gone; he looked miserable and haggard. We stood for a long intimate moment, eyes speaking. I couldn’t believe I’d ever felt he was closed to me. My hands came up, longing to touch him.

“Jehane, I am not a nice man, but I will try.”

“No. I’m going to let you be, and I’m going to love you.”

“I might only improve a little,” he said.

“Do what seems right to you,” I said. “It’s not for me to say.”

“No. You were right. Out of mere gratitude for surviving long enough to know you I should stop acting like life is a scourge.” He looked down, face clouded. “I’m afraid I’m unprepared to be less than completely miserable.”

“Maybe you’ll figure it out,” I said. “I’ll stay with you while you do.”

He closed his eyes with a deep breath. “You’ll stay with me.”

“I’ll stay with you forever if you want me.”

“Yes. Forever.”

Tentatively we stepped forward, touching each other’s sleeves. He bent and set the whiskey down. My hands were trembling and I steadied them by grasping his elbows. We embraced, drawing comfort from each other. Little mewls of tenderness formed in the back of my throat.

He covered my mouth with his. First chastely pressing, then opening my mouth with his, softly running his tongue along the line where dry turns to wet and into the ticklish corners. He kissed me harder, then drew back. He took my top lip between his two and gently worried it, then held it in his teeth. We rubbed our noses together, eyes closed.

“Will you come to bed.”

“Yes, please.” He maneuvered me backward through my bedroom door with one hipbone, hand on the small of my back, and laid me gently down on my unmade bed, climbing up beside me. It was dark in the bedroom, with just the desk lantern in the other room casting a square of yellow light through the door. I clasped my hands tightly, extending the moment of choosing where to lay them on his long body. He came up on one elbow to look at me, his hair swinging forward to curtain our faces, its tips tickling my jaw. I looked into his deep, deep eyes. My own opened wide, as if I could draw him in through my pupils.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” he whispered, throwing his leg over mine. His hardness pressed against my hip.

We lay for a long time, kissing and whispering. Silly things -- I missed you; I love you; I’ll stay with you forever; I’m yours. Holding ourselves in that place where we knew we were together. Every touch carrying the thought, I almost lost this. The heat built slowly.

I opened my eyes to take him in, that startling contrast of milky skin and black hair, not just the shiny thick softness of the hair I held in my fist at the nape of his neck, but the crucifix of short hairs that spangled his chest and converged in the dark bush around his cock. I pulled his head back by the hair and licked his throat with long strokes. With my other hand I lightly caressed his shaft, rewarded by a sharp gasp and a few drops of slick pre-come on my fingers.

He loosened my hand from his hair and gathered my wrists in one hand, holding them over my head against the bed. Hovering over me on his knees he drew lines on my belly with his cock, leaving a cool trail. My hips came up, helplessly trying to meet him, and I felt my engorged labia slide against each other. He held my legs under one of his, nuzzling my breasts, then slowly ran his tongue over my right breast, slowly, slowly coming in toward the center, all the while stretching my arms overhead and pinning my legs down until I strained, whimpering, to bring my nipple to his mouth. When he closed his mouth over it with a moan and began to suck it was as if a red hot wire were running between my nipple and my clit, and I gave a little scream as my hips jerked up again.

He was breathing hard. He leaned over to bury his face in my underarm and nip at the sensitive skin there, then licked my left breast too, slowly circling in on the nipple. His tongue was long and hot and by now the electric shocks and the screams that followed were coming regularly. As he leaned across me, one of my legs got free. I threw it over his and brought my wet, hot pussy against the tender spot above his knee. I clenched my thighs and ground against him. He gasped, then dropped my arms to hold my hips. Moving down, he kissed my mound, opening my labia with his tongue and lapping at my clit. He groaned as I strained to meet him, legs trembling, but held my hips still. Waves of pleasure washed over me and my hands fluttered in his hair. The broken phrase in my mind did me.

He crawled up my body with a fierce growl, covering me with his warm, tender musky skin, resting his cock where his tongue had just been. Something held him back. Suddenly I had never been this aroused, panting and writhing, nothing but aching hungry skin and swollen pussy. My arms and legs shook as if with chills. “I’m afraid,” I said, and the tremor in my voice made me shake harder. “I’ll come apart.” Yet my pussy struggled to capture his prick, straining upward and lapping at his shaft with its hungry lips.

“Shhhh, no,” I could feel the trembling in his arms, his restraint. “You won’t come apart. I’ll keep you together.” His obsidian eyes that held me and invited me. This unfamiliar kindness that opened me up wide.

Now something in the room began to change. The air was thickening. It was as if we were no longer in my bedroom but in an ancient forest, and on the outer edges of awareness I felt the numinous presence of the enormous trees, older than human life, watching over us. Yet it was Severus who filled the sky, holding himself shivering above me, his rigid cock resting lightly in the groove of my desire while he slowly, slowly teased and loved and kissed my lips, slipping his tongue oh so gently and firmly into my mouth with sighs of pleasure and reassurance as if I were drinking my mother’s milk. I stopped shaking. My skin was alive with the feeling of him, my nipples rubbing against his chest, my arms around his wiry back, my nose rubbing the sweat on his neck and breathing in the smell of his hair.

“Please,” I whispered . “Please. Please.”

“Okay now?” Softly.

“Come in. Come inside me. Please, Severus.”

“Yes.”

It took only a small movement. I rolled my hips upward as he dipped down and caught me with the tip of his cock, curved and wand-hard with lust. Then he slowly pressed inward, every plump, wet quarter-inch giving way with another thrill like lightening through my body. My eyes closed.

There was only my body and Severus. His smell, his hair, his cock, his ass in my hands, his ragged breathing, his slow then fast then slow rhythm. Never anything like this before. I couldn’t get him in far enough. I ground up against him, feeling him way way inside me and still wanting more, sobbing please please please and then fuck me, please please. Severus SEVERUS.

And now it was fast, fast and I had no more words, just hoarse shrieks coming from somewhere and I was filling up, filling up, and up and then I yanked him to me and came and came hearing far away a long screaming intake of breath, arching my back so hard I nearly threw him off. A second later he paused – Oh! -- and stiffened – Oh! OH! – his hips jerked spasmodically – OH GOD. OH GOD! And on, and on, and I opened my eyes to see his blissful contorted face as he pumped and instantly came again, right in the middle of his, and now, it was his turn to scream.

+++++


The next day after classes, he met me by the gates. I hadn’t been thinking of much except my eagerness to see him, but as he came into view I was flooded with memories of our lovemaking. Heat crept up my neck until I had to cool my cheeks with my hands. He checked for observers as he strode up to me, then took my hands down, replacing them with his own, and kissed me long and hard. That, and my memories, made me shiver.

He was glad, and I was glad. He put his arm around me. We walked in silence for a while. Something was different, and I was trying to put it in words to myself. I felt as if there were a new door open between us.

We had been apart and we had chosen to come together again, that was part of it, but not all. We had come through a trial together, and that was part of it also. But there was more. It had to do with our lovemaking, the way he took charge and protected me and knew what to do, had held me and led me through it.

“Sex can change things,” I said, hiding my face.

“Hm. It seems so.”

“It never did for me before. It was just -- good for you. Fun, like cooking and eating and sports.”

“And now?”

“Something happened. We -- accomplished something, or settled something, but -- without words.”

“Did we?”

“Yes. I think you know we did.”

“Yes.

“I’ve never – “We said at the same time.

“Okay, you,” I said.

Silence.

“I’ve never had a fight with anyone.”

Oh. That was unexpected. “Oh, come on, Severus, you’ve had a fight with everyone.”

“No,” he said impatiently. “A fight that ended with being together.”

+++++

Hagrid and I were constructing troughs one morning the following week – or rather, I was talking with him and pretending to be helpful as he constructed troughs, since his massive strength made carpentry something more like origami for him – when Severus stopped by. He rarely sought me out when I had company of any kind, and I wondered at it.

“Hello – Rubeus,” he said stiffly.

Hagrid was all over him like a boarhound. “How d’you do, Perfessor? We was just about ter take a break. How ‘bout a cup a tea?”

“Thank you, no. It’s kind of you, but I mustn’t stay. I just needed to make some arrangements with Madame Desrosiers.”

“A drink, then,” Hagrid coaxed.

“Another time, perhaps.”

He seemed to be struggling and I felt I ought to rescue him. “Hagrid, let’s get him to the Broomsticks this weekend, okay? Then we can stay out late.”

“Sure, sure that’d be great.” Hagrid beamed at Severus, the trough and me.

The matter Severus wanted to discuss could certainly have waited, and I remained perplexed until he took his leave.

“All right, then,” he said. “I’ll see you tonight, Jehane. Hagrid –“ he paused. “Thank you for keeping her company. It’s – nice to know she’s down here.”

“Well, of course, Perfessor, of course,” Hagrid boomed. “I’ll watch over her fer yeh. She’s a real gem, thass fer sure.”

“Not that I need looking after,” I said softly, but I had turned a little and neither heard me. I was pleased as could be; he had come down here to claim me in front of Hagrid, and to make Hagrid part of us. He could not have given me a better present.

As he walked away, Hagrid searched my face and broke into a wide grin. “Well, thass a’righ,’ innit?”

“It’s coming right, Hagrid.”

“Aaah, I knew it.”

“Oh no, you didn’t,” I said. “But thanks.”











Notes

For ideas about the mutually healing possibilities of intimate relationships, I have drawn on the work of Harville Hendrix , Ph.D., and Helen Hunt, Ph.D., specifically in Finding the Love You Want, their popular book on Imago Relationship Therapy.

The concepts of framing and discipline as aids to growth in intimate relationships are from Rick Rappoport, Ph.D. To learn more about his work, go to Comprehensivetherapy.org. or read Motivating Clients in Therapy, by Dr. Rick Rappaport.