The Taking of Tea

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE LOVESONG OF ALFRED J. PRUFROCK

Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is set out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets
Through muttering retreats
Of one-night stands in one-night cheap hotels
Of sawdust restaurants with oyster shells
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
That lead you to an overwhelming question
Oh, do not ask ‘what is it?’
Let us go, and make our visit.


It seemed that her admonition had made some effect on Snape, and despite the temptation to berate him further, she slid silently from the bed and followed her host through a narrow wooden door and into the bathroom. It was Spartan and bright, made of seamless marble but for a stucco ceiling, a pedestal sink and a claw-foot tub, every inch bone white.

Dark and conspicuous as a stain on the bridal bed, Snape stood at the tub, pointing his wand at its charmed taps and bringing them to steaming life with an incantation. From a small cupboard in the northern corner of the room he took two large white towels, setting them on top before moving to lean against the wall, his arms crossed and his face sour. Hermione noted that thick bubbles were pouring from one of the taps, and noted further that shampoo would be lovely. She opened the cupboard herself, finding a washcloth and two unmarked bottles. Testing their texture revealed them to be shampoo and conditioner, though Merlin knew how old they were.

When the tub was filled Snape turned off the taps with another wand-made order, and then commenced with a silent staring match.

“Well?” Hermione said, after she’d estimated the passing of at least five minutes. “I don’t like an audience and you wouldn’t like the show, I’m sure.”

“Are you now,” Snape replied, no change in his posture or expression. “A pity your skills at legilimens are not so advanced as my own.”

Something passed over Hermione’s face at that, come and gone quicker than a rippling wave and too brief for Snape to interpret, though it certainly set him wondering. “And you think I should leave you alone in this bathroom, where you might break the mirror for a sharp object,”

“Which you’d immediately hear, and I have no wand to keep you out,” she interrupted.

“Or drown yourself, rather than face the killing curse,”

“In a bubble bath? I’m not sure that’s possible.”

“Then perhaps I simply wish to wash you bathe, Ms. Granger. Perhaps I relish the thought of affronting your dignity in such a way, and wish to strip from you the agency of being able to bathe yourself in privacy,” Snape said, the snapping diction of his basso profundo setting Hermione’s teeth on edge.

“Just spare me a bloody half-hour from your oratory dramatics, will you? That’s all I ask, a half-hour. You can listen at the door for all I care.”

“I will,” Snape said, though he did nothing of the sort, instead calling an elf to bring the month’s Ars Alchemica and reading it in the high-backed chair.

He left the door ajar nearly a foot, and after a bit of splashing and a few minutes of quiet he began to hear an unusual sound. Rather, a sound that was at first unusual, and then as awfully familiar as a bad memory put aside. Low notes echoed through the marble bathroom and out the space in the doorway—a steady pitch below the scale, thrown by an occasional high-noted hitch of breath. She was crying. Snape returned his attention to Ars Alchemica, reading a rather long article and noting, at its finish, that the sound of crying still came from the bathroom. As he put the periodical aside and walked the short distance to the bathroom, he noted that her crying was still low and soft, in an obvious attempt to preserve her privacy—and dignity, most likely.

Fully opening the door, silent on its hinges, he found her with her head against the rim of the tub, hair half dry and half submerged, tears falling heavy down her lips and chin. Her eyes and nose were red and her cheeks were a puffy mess. Her arms were wrapped tight around her chest and she rocked occasionally to her left, muting the violence of her distress. When he stepped toward the tub Hermione heard his shoes clack on the marble floor, and spoke with her eyes still closed.

“Don’t you dare belittle me. Just get out.”

“Ms. Granger,”

“Does that make it easier for you?” She asked, her voice watery but arctic cold, “calling me ‘Ms. Granger?’ Does that formality create a distance that makes it easier for you to kill me? Will it be more comfortable to watch the former acquaintance of Ms. Granger die? Don’t worry, Snape, you don’t have to look me in the eye. I can be wizard enough for the both of us when that time comes.”

The condemned, Snape reflected, tended either to beg, curse, or wax philosophical, though he had at least the courtesy not to smirk at the observation. Hermione’s death was not noble—she would be a martyr to her failing cause, perhaps, but in reality she was a casualty without much consequence to either side. Which, he thought suddenly, must have struck her quick brain as a terrible thought.

“I am sorry that you mistake my orders for my wishes; I’ve no desire to kill you,” he said. Hermione’s responding laughter was the brittle sound of dead leaves underfoot.

“But you will,” she said. Then, “do you know Shakespeare, Snape? They teach him in muggle studies, but I don’t imagine you took that class.”

“Of course I know Shakespeare,” Snape said, his deep voice affected with pretension and offense, “although I certainly never bothered with muggle studies.”

“All the world’s a stage,” she said in response, “and all the men and women merely players,”

“They have their exits and their entrances,” Snape added, “yes. What of it?”

“I’d imagined a grander exit for myself, I suppose. Something valiant in the heat of battle,” she laughed again. “Surely you can understand that, given your penchant for swirling robes and dramatic oratory.”

“So wise so young, they say do never live long,” he answered, ignoring her slight. “Now, come out of the bath, Miss Granger. I won’t have you drown, metaphorically or otherwise.”

In reply, Hermione rose from the tub, apparently unconcerned with being nude in Snape’s presence.

“Is this a dare, Miss Granger?” He drawled, an ugly smirk nestling in the corner of his mouth, “or do you think to stun me senseless with your Grecian beauty?” Despite his mocking, Snape watched her carefully, noting the way the bathwater dripped from the tips of her hair and breasts, and from the dark curls at her sex. He considered the freckles littered across her shoulders and her hips, wondering if she spent her summers at the shore, bared to the sun. He examined the scar that drew down from her navel in a thick line of grey-pink flesh. “What is that?” He demanded. She drew a hand to the scar, and he noticed that her hands were a shade darker than the pale white of her belly.

“A present from Lucius Malfoy,” she said, embarrassed by the trembling in her voice.

“Impossible. It looks surgical.”

“It is,” she said, stepping out of the bath and retrieving a towel, with which she began drying her hair. She was no less comfortable with him while nude, she found, but the excuse to cover her face was a relief.

“Then how is it ‘a present from Lucius Malfoy?’” He asked when she didn’t elaborate.

“He did quite a bit of damage when he raped me last year,” she said, turning away from him under the pretense of retrieving another towel for her body. “The consensus at St. Mungo’s was that he’s either extraordinarily well-endowed, or he fucked me with something else. Something rather long and sharp, to be precise, and as a result I needed a hysterectomy.” She tucked the towel in at her chest and put a hand to her belly again, sure she could feel it cramp in remembered outrage. Snape remained silent while she wrapped her hair in the other towel, while she retrieved the pajamas and put them back on. He remained silent, still standing where he was, while she went into the bedroom, picked up his copy of Ars Alchemica, and crawled back into the bed. She had read two paragraphs about magical hydroponics before he emerged from the bathroom, standing at the foot of the bed to regard her with a pinched frown.

“I was not aware,” he began, his voice soft and toneless.

“I don’t give a bloody goddamn whether or not you were aware,” she said, not looking up from the magazine. “I’m sure you used up any residual kindness tending to me the first time. I do wonder what about me attracts such malice from the opposite sex,” she said, her rhetorical air failing to conceal the anger in her voice.
Snape considered the woman before him, her wan, tired face and the smallness of her body in the bed. When she’d stood from the bath he’d noticed several bruises, not doubt from her most recent encounter with Lucius. He hoped that the outrage in her voice meant she knew the difference—that she’d had at least one tender lover in her lifetime. Aside from himself, of course.

“I suspect you are simply unlucky,” he finally said, “for which I am sincerely sorry. I’ll take my leave of you, now.” She didn’t respond, and he left quickly.

a/n: excerpt of poem taken from T.S. Eliot.