A Dish Served Cold

Chapter 13 – Feast

Severus was amazed that he was hungry. Between the company and the occasion, he should have been entirely unable to eat. However, the house Elves had done wonders and he had been tempted first by the seafood salad and appetizers and then by the lovely roast beef with golden potatoes and perfectly cooked green beans. He suspected that his sudden interest in the culinary delicacies set before him was an attempt by his unruly mind to avoid thinking about the girl at his side.

He looked at out of the corner of his eye, using the fall of his hair to hide the direction of his gaze. He had removed the silly ribbon as quickly as he could once the ceremony was over. Minerva had frowned but he had been unwilling to remain so exposed before the students.

Beside him, Hermione looked good – far better than he had ever seen her look before. She had shown the promise of real attractiveness at that Yule Ball in her fourth year. He remembered the consternation her appearance had provoked with some amusement but it was nothing compared to how she looked today. He could feel some pride there, he realized. He had never been married before nor really had a long-term relationship of any kind. He was unsure of himself in this but he did know one thing: his wife was pretty.

“Could you pass the potatoes, Professor?” she asked quietly from beside him and he obeyed with a spurt of dismay. How on earth was he to ‘perform’ this evening if she continued to call him ‘Professor’?

“Perhaps we could dispense with the formalities, Hermione.” He had no doubt that he sounded rather prim as he said it; he was equally uncomfortable with calling her by her first name.

“I’ll try but it will take some time to get used to it.” Her voice contained the first hint of true uncertainty that he had ever heard from her. It startled him, as he had become convinced that he had been wrong about her insecurity and that she was never unsure of anything. Of course she must be sometimes; she was only seventeen, after all. He kicked himself for his blindness and tried to gentle his voice, though he doubted that he was being particularly successful.

“The attempt alone shall be sufficient.” He was trying to reassure her but he just wasn’t good at it. He wished he had Minerva’s compassion or Albus’ geniality, but he was the sarcastic, snarky anti-social one. He just didn’t have the skills for this.

“Good, because if I slip up sometimes I hope you won’t flay me with your wit.” He was about to issue a sharp rebuke when he realized that she was trying to be humorous. There was a sharp pain somewhere around the vicinity of his heart. She was joking with him. This poor girl who had been married off into a nightmare for the sake of duty and the war effort was trying to lighten the mood. A Gryffindor indeed, he thought grimly.

“I will try to keep my wit sheathed, Madam.” He inclined his head to her, in honor as much for her request as an acknowledgement of her courage in making it.

They fell silent at that, Severus returning to his dinner with more concentration than was necessary for the meal, trying to mask his extreme discomfort.

Hermione felt as though she had had a narrow escape. She had managed to exchange some witty banter with her new husband without getting the rough side of his tongue. She shivered at the turn her mind took there. Why did she have to think about tongues?

The Snapes’ wedding feast had to be the most morose and silent meal ever eaten at Hogwarts since Salazar Slytherin left in a huff. There was to be another wedding tomorrow though the couple had elected to wed from the Ministry in a civil service. Hermione envied them and wished that she had had the same option.

A sideways glance at Sarit Yidoni’s scowling countenance reminded her that a man of Severus Snape’s breeding was due more than a civil service in a government office. Or at least that was what her new grandmother-in-law had insisted. The fact that Sabine Snape had been for a quiet civil ceremony to downplay the shame of having a Muggle-born in the family had been all that Mrs. Yidoni had needed to throw a royal fuss. Hermione was already tired of the two women and wished they would go back to wherever they had come from and leave her alone. Between Mrs. Snape’s cold primness and Mrs. Yidoni’s violent temper and arrogance, Hermione had had enough of her in-laws.

At least she would have Neville in the family. She allowed her lips to curve upward at the thought. Professor Snape – no Severus, she had to remember to call him Severus now – had looked rather green as he had explained the circumstances. It had taken all of her willpower to nod gravely at the news rather than bursting into giggles.

She was proud of her restraint. He had looked so…miserable at the thought of having Neville Longbottom as a brother-in-law. Still, she had pointed out it was ever so much better than Draco Malfoy in that role. He had managed to look both thoughtful and dubious at the same time. A neat trick, that.

Mrs. Snape jerked upright in her chair and shot a darkling look at Mrs. Yidoni. Hermione kept herself from either snorting or rolling her eyes by sheer force of will.

“How childish,” she muttered.

“Indeed; I gave up hexing people under the table when I was a first year,” Snape replied with a soft drawl that teased a small chuckle from her.

Harry gave her a brave smile as he heard her laugh. No doubt he thought the strain was driving her to hysteria, which made her really want to roll her eyes. Keeping her face turned towards her dinner plate, she tried to ignore the occasional yelps from the Mmes. Snape and Yidoni, the small, pathetic, encouraging looks from Harry and Ron and the sniffles and weeping from Lavender and Parvati. The morose and miserable students, the silently disapproving adults or her shell-shocked and regretful parents did not enhance the atmosphere of the Great Hall one bit.
She had had worse evenings in her life but she couldn’t think of when.

Severus would have been relieved by the break-up of the feast except that as soon as everyone began to creep away like whipped dogs from the table, Hermione had gone still and pale. He thought of and then discarded several approaches and finally decided on dignity. He rose and extended a hand to her with no expression whatsoever.

There was a moment when he thought she might either flee or burst into tears but she stiffened her spine with admirable composure and stood. He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm with great formality and glared at the few students who dared to whisper or chuckle. He would not be a figure of fun for a pack of spotty brats nor would he suffer his wife to be tormented by them either.

Silence fell as they left the room. Mrs. Granger started to rise as if in protest and Mr. Granger gently pulled her back into his arms. The mother’s stricken face, the father’s desperate unhappiness – those were the things he carried with him from the feast.

Hermione felt cold as ice, as though she was freezing from the inside out. Terror filled her mind; she felt like some small woodland creature frozen in fear before a predator. Snape walked with calm even steps, keeping his stride short to accommodate her – she noted the courtesy in some part of her mind that was still able to reason.

She felt the age difference between them with brutal clarity. He was cold and distant beside her as he escorted her to the dungeons, seeming older than his thirty-eight years. Her terror and uncertainty made her feel even younger than she was, as though she was barely five and the boogey man was under her bed.

The House Elves would have transported all of her belongings to the dungeons, including Crookshanks, no doubt. Snape had seemed unfazed by the prospect of her familiar but she wondered how he would deal with him. He didn’t seem an animal person. She wanted to laugh at her own thoughts. She was about to submit to her own rape and she was worried about her cat.

Snape stopped before a blank section of wall and knocked three times. The Bloody Baron stuck his head through the wall, startling a small squeak from her.

“Everything prepared?” Snape asked the ghost, with a rather sour expression. The Baron eyed Hermione with interest and nodded. The door swung open; presumably the Baron had unlatched it for them and Snape ushered her into a room that took her breath away.

Had she ever really thought about it, she would have assumed that Snape’s rooms would be dark and gloomy – probably all stone with iron fixtures, maybe with some thumbscrews placed artfully in a corner. This place was the antithesis of that image.

A huge window that looked out underwater took up one wall. It must be the lake, she realized. The rooms were actually underground on the lakeside and the windows had fish and kelp and strange creatures floating by them. A grindylow paddled past, huge eyes palely gleaming in the murky depths. Green light filtered into the room from the window but the true illumination came from silver sconces lit with emerald tapers.
One thing that she would have guessed was that there would be a snake motif but she doubted that the sheer variety of snakes would have occurred to her. From the cobra-patterned settee to the carved wooden python side tables, every imaginable type of serpent was portrayed. It was both more and less obvious than she would have expected as well. The rug pattern seemed to be Celtic knot work at first glance; only when she bent closer did she see the serpents twining through the pattern.

“Salazar Slytherin designed the room; can you tell?” Snape’s voice dripped irony and she found herself chuckling at his tone. “I have occasionally thought of redecorating but the Baron gets touchy about it.” The ghost raised a supercilious eyebrow at the Potions Master but said nothing in return. With a moment of shock, it occurred to Hermione that the Baron … liked Snape. He had done nothing to frighten or intimidate her when he had never passed up an opportunity before.

“I rather like it,” Hermione replied, finding that she was telling the truth – as big a surprise to her as it no doubt was to both the Baron and Snape. “Despite the snake obsession, it’s really quite lovely.” She ventured a smile at the Baron who bowed gravely in return.

It was not bad at all, really. Silver and green, of course, but the greens ranged from a soft sage to a lovely emerald and the silver had gained a comforting warmth from the patina that age had granted it. Mounds of cushions on the couch, settee and chairs, rich carpets tossed over the green stone floors, which was some sort of jade-toned marble that had been carved to look like stones in a riverbed, tapestries and wall hangings of rather sumptuous materials – it was all quite elegant. She could grow used to this place very easily.

“Then I shan’t burn it all,” Snape murmured with a glance at the Baron who gave him a glare in return. Another moment of frozen immobility as she tried to process the concept that Snape was teasing. She hadn’t known that he was capable of it.

She had stopped being afraid of him but she realized, looking around the room at a pile of books here, a few rolls of parchment there, and the slippers by the fire, that she still hadn’t starting thinking of him as a person. He was, in her mind, still Professor Snape, snarky teacher. That he might have carpet slippers in dark green with worn toes and scuffed heels had never occurred to her.

“How many rooms are there?” she asked suddenly to break herself out of her thoughts. There were four doors leading out of the room and she was curious about this place that she would be living in for quite possibly the rest of her life.

She was nervous, he knew, and uncomfortable in unfamiliar surroundings. He also had no desire to march her into a bedroom and strip her without ceremony, so he gestured to the Baron who obligingly departed. The Baron always looked grim but tonight he seemed a trifle sad as well. Severus wondered what the old ghost must be thinking as Severus headed towards the library with Miss … Mrs. Snape in tow.

“There are quite a number of rooms, actually. I spent the first few months as Head of House exploring and I am still not certain that I have found all the secret rooms and hidden doors in this place,” he explained, as he pulled open the silver inlaid rosewood door and revealed the library to her gasp of amazement. He had known she would like this room; he only hoped that she would like the others. He would keep her out of Salazar’s “play room” until he had had an opportunity to explain some things to her, perhaps in twenty or so years.

She was turning in place, craning her neck to look at every book spine, her eyes wide and her mouth parted, a look of intense intellectual hunger on her face. Somewhere inside of him the very male part of him responded with a surge of matching hunger that was anything but intellectual. It shocked him speechless that he should have even a modicum of desire for this child. What kind of sick pervert was he?
She moved forward into the room and it occurred to him that she no longer walked like a child. Her hips swayed and her breasts, barely concealed by the dress and a few silk roses, moved in a decidedly adult fashion.

It was a spell, he realized with abrupt understanding. His hands itched a little where the ribbons had sunk into the flesh. The Ministry knew that many of the couples would be unwilling. Good God, such magic was proscribed, though; surely they wouldn’t have… Portions of his anatomy assured him of their readiness. They must have. Oh Merlin, he just hoped that whatever they had done, it wouldn’t react to the maiden’s ease potion he had brewed.

Hermione felt warmth in her belly that had nothing to do with the books around her. She could smell something enticing that made her hungry for something she could not name. She turned trying to find the source of that smell and followed it to … Snape.

She felt maidenly confusion warring with something deeper and more primal. She could not imagine that she was actually feeling a sudden attraction to the lean aquiline man who stood quivering before her. Wait, quivering?

“I believe the Ministry has spiked our ribbons,” he drawled and it was as though someone had poured icy cold water on her. She was under a spell. Fury broke over her.

“How dare they!” she stamped her foot in anger, hating the gesture because she knew how childish it was, but too angry to stop herself. “Did they think I wasn’t brave enough?”

“It was probably meant as a kindness.” The sneer and the way he drew out the word “kindness” made his opinion of the spell quite plain. Snape whipped out his wand and ran it over his hand with the clinical detachment of a true Potions Master. Hermione admired his aplomb even as she raged against the Ministry, pacing the room and swearing vociferously.

“Stupid arse wipe Fudge, couldn’t think his way off of a mattress, thinks he can bloody well muck about in my effing life, son of a two-headed whore! Bastard, whore-mongering, cheese paring, doxy fucking goat herder!” she stormed, gesticulating wildly and trying to fight the burning between her legs.

“You used whore twice,” Snape commented absently as he watched his hand changing colors as he waved his wand over it.

“I’m still learning to swear,” she admitted shyly. She was suddenly very much aware of his maleness and the disconnect in her brain between “Snape” and “Shag-able” was discomfiting in the extreme.

“From your word choice, I would assume that you are being tutored by Potter’s girlfriend. Dating her, if I may say so, is probably his sole act of clear-headed thought.” He frowned as the colors ran to a dark blue then flared into red.

“You approve of Moira?” Hermione gaped at him, trying to imagine the fiery, temperamental red-head, with her rather impressive vocabulary, in the same room with the rather prim and repressed Snape. It boggled the mind.

“Approve is rather too strong a word; let’s just say she has enough common sense to be more help than hindrance, something sorely lacking in Miss Chang.” Hermione was staring at her husband in utter surprise. Since when had Snape cared about whom Harry was dating? Looking up from his spell to meet her wide-eyed gaze he snorted. “For Merlin’s sake, Hermione, I am forced to report his every action to Voldemort. Do you think I would be unaware of such important bits of trivia?” She closed her mouth slowly and nodded. Whole worlds of understanding opened up to her as she looked at him.

That moment of understanding was enough; she found herself moving towards him with only one thought in her mind. The look of panic on his face was almost ludicrous but he managed to avoid her clumsy lunge. He put a chair between them and the motion made her clench up inside.

“Do something, Snape!” she cried out and hung her head, clenching her fists together in sheer frustration.

“I’m trying, Madam,” he replied and his voice was soothing and gentle. “I cannot give you a potion until I have determined what spell we are under and if it has issues of compatibility with any of the ingredients it might contain.” He used his voice like a horse whisperer would, gentling her with it, and she sank into the chair and wanted to weep. How she hated Fudge. She had at least had her dignity before this. Now she was stripped of even that.

It was some moments of quiet muttering on his part and an inner struggle, that she had no experience fighting, on her part before he clucked his tongue and strode from the room. She found his absence acutely painful and guessed from his strained expression upon his return that he felt much the same. He held a small tray with an assortment of small bottles on it.

She moved nearer and her eyes focused on a clear glass phial with a shimmering quality to it. Her mind ran through the complete directory of Moste Potente Potions and her eyebrows climbed her furrowed brow to hide in her hairline.

“Maiden’s Ease? You brewed that for me? Thank you.” She was nearly speechless. It was an act of thoughtfulness that she hadn’t expected.

“Minerva suggested it,” he muttered, clearly ill at ease with her expression of gratitude. Still, that he had brewed something for the “insufferable know-it-all” said volumes.

“Thank you anyway,” she returned and drank the proffered phial. Soothing calm descended on her and he handed her a second small bottle, this one with swirling greens in it. She took a quick swig in answer to his impatient gesture.

“This one should counteract the Ministry’s meddling,” he grumbled as he took it himself and she could only exhale in relief as her artificial passion passed.

They were left standing there in the library in uncomfortable silence. It occurred to her that maybe she shouldn’t have been so quick to take the second potion.