A Dish Served Cold

Chapter 17 – Tremors

Hermione sighed and tried to get back to reading her Charms textbook. She was irritable today, feeling cooped up in Severus’ – no, they were hers now too – chambers. She missed the library rather more than she had expected. Not for the books, there were plenty of them here, but for the company. She missed her friends.

Beside her on the couch, reclining in sartorial splendor on the snakeskin upholstery was Bunny Wuffles. While Severus had said nothing when she pulled him from her trunk, his expression had been priceless. She suspected that he had been sorely tempted to ban the pink rabbit from his sight, but the slight wobble of her lower lip had stilled the words, if not the impulse. She was pretty sure that it wasn’t affection for herself, but an abhorrence of ‘female hysteria’ that had stopped him. Not that it mattered, she got to keep Bunny Wuffles by her and that was an achievement.

But she missed Harry and Ron a lot. Ginny and Moira would have been welcome right then as well, heck even Parvati and Lavender would have been an improvement over Severus’s company.

He was in a sulk over a failed experiment and all the warnings he had given her father and all her own past experience with him combined to make her avoid him like the plague. She had decided, after he threw the pewter cauldron at her head, that he had joined the Death Eaters for the pure fun of it. All her previous good will towards him was up in smoke – much like his experiment.

“Madam.” The clearing of the throat that accompanied his entrance drew her face up from her textbook.

“Sir,” she returned coldly. He winced. He knew then that he had done something wrong, that was a good start.

“I wish to apologize for my earlier actions.” The way his teeth were tightly clenched and his hands were fisted at his sides told her that he wasn’t very sorry at all. She suspected that a visit from Dumbledore had driven Severus to apologize more than any feeling of remorse. Still, any apology was more than she had expected at all.

“Apology accepted.” She had known that he would not be easy to live with. She had known before the wedding that he was a snarky bastard. She had no right to moan about it now. She had been warned.

“Dinner is on in the parlor,” he continued and she sighed. No tearful make-up sessions for this couple. No frantic apologies followed by passionate kisses for her and her saturnine mate. She rose with a feeling of weary resignation. Was this how it would always be? She reminded herself firmly that the alternative was so very much worse. She shuddered at the thought of what Malfoy, Crabbe or Goyle would be doing to her at that moment and felt a welling of gratitude towards the puritanically clad man who stood watching her.

“Thank you, Severus.” She paused and put a hand on his sleeve. “I know that I am a huge burden and annoyance to you and I will try harder to give you your space.” It was an apology as well. It wasn’t fair, after all, to expect him to be the lover of her dreams, he was what he was.
He startled under her touch and his face lost the frozen look it had worn.

“Hermione, I am sorry to be so snappish.” There was genuine regret in his tone now and she shook her head in negation.

“No, don’t be.” She took a deep breath. “You told me what you were and I said I could deal with it. I just need to get a thicker hide.” He winced and she looked at him with a strange affection in her heart. He was a hero, really, doing all he did for both the Order and herself. It was just that he wasn’t a pleasant person. He had no graceful lies to smooth the road with. “I’d rather an honest bastard than a lying worm, Severus.” She finally was able to articulate what she had been trying to convey and he barked a surprised little laugh.

“Indeed?” He gave her a sly sideways look. “And here I thought I was a lying bastard and an honest worm.” She snorted and shook her head at him.

“You can’t fool me Severus Snape, I know the truth about you,” she informed him and he gave her a dubious look.

“What precisely is this truth you know about me?” he asked her, with arms crossed and head cocked.

“That underneath it all, you really do want to be good.” He stood stock still for a long minute staring at her with a hooded gaze, then shook himself and shrugged.

“Perhaps, but wanting and being are two different things, Hermione and you would do well to remember that.” It was a warning and she found herself nodding slowly. After all that he had done in his life, it was quite unlikely that he would ever truly match her definition of ‘good’. “I will always follow my own code, Hermione, and if that plows over your moral compunctions, it won’t keep me up nights, do you understand?” She shivered a little at his tone and nodded again. He was no Gryffindor and she would do well to remember that.

“I do understand, Severus,” she told him and he frowned.

“I very much doubt that, Madam,” he replied rather grimly and she had to shut her mouth on an angry retort. She suspected, after some reflection, that he was probably right. If faced with him doing something she found repugnant, how would she react? She honestly didn’t know.

Remus got up the next morning and padded downstairs. His late night session with Percy Weasley had left him drained and weary. He was used to being the shoulder everyone leaned on, he didn’t mind it normally, but Percy was so very… earnest. It was often hard to keep a straight face when dealing with him. Tonks didn’t even try. She had burst into laughter several times during the course of the evening and it had taken Remus long minutes to soothe Percy’s lacerated sensibilities each time.

Remus had been relieved when she had finally left. Those two were oil and water and he was bloody well tired of trying to keep them from killing each other.

He stepped into the kitchen and sighed. He missed Sirius. For all the other man’s stupid prejudices and erratic temper he had been a good, true and loyal friend. No one understood Remus as Sirius had and no one had been a better listener, except maybe Lilly. He closed his mind to that thought, to the memory of that other redhead, whose marriage and then death had left him with no shoulders to lean upon and no dreams for the future.

Breakfast gave him ample time to contemplate the new redhead who had entered his life. Ginny was still the little second year girl with her huge eyes and freckled face in his mind and reconciling the new reality was hard for him.

A bloodcurdling shriek sent him crashing from the room and he raced towards the library. Another shriek and then he banged open the door to find a terrified Tonks staring in utter horror at… a letter.

“Tonks?” He skidded to a halt and stared at her. Percy came running into the room behind him and then frowned.

“For Merlin’s sake, Tonks, whatever did you scream for? My head is killing me,” Percy moaned and glared at her.

Tonks looked up at the letter, pale faced and stricken and Remus approached her with a tentative air.

“Tonks? All right there?” he asked again.

“It’s a bid, Remus.” Ice chilled his veins and even Percy looked surprised.

“From whom, Tonks?” Best to know the worst of it. It was quite obvious that whomever had bid for her wasn’t someone who made Tonks scream for joy.

“Lucius Malfoy, on behalf of Draco Malfoy,” she whispered and the two men fell into horrified silence.

“Good God,” Remus muttered. It was even worse than he had thought.

“So you and your brother never even knew about Professor Snape?” Harry looked taken aback by the thought.

“Must have been a bit of a nasty shock, that.” Ron gave her a sympathetic glance.

“He’s a right bastard, Snape is,” Moira announced and Neville winced beside her. Helena merely nodded. She had expected nothing else from the little that Neville had been willing to say to her.

“Like Father like son,” she muttered and they all looked at her in surprise.

“My father is a nasty, spiteful vindictive man without even a streak of kindness in him,” she elucidated.

“Well, Snape’s awful, but he’s not all bad, he’s saved our necks more than once, to be honest.” Ron admitted.

“He’s ruddy awful and you can bet he had an ulterior motive for all of it,” Harry stuck in and his antipathy was clear on his face and in his voice. For all that he was the Boy-Who-Lived, Helena found him to be far less likeable than Neville. He was good-looking enough, but his petulant tone did little to endear him to her.

“Behave Harry,” Moira snapped and the savior of the Wizarding world subsided. “Don’t mind him, he blames your brother for his god-father’s death.” Harry blushed, but Moira waved a decisive hand to forestall any further outbursts.

“Besides, he’s bloody brilliant at Potions and we need him to cure Professor Lupin.” Ron Weasley had the ability to string sentences together in a manner that left Helena totally baffled.

“Beg pardon?”

“Snape is a Potions Master and we need a cure for lycanthropy because Ginny is soul mated to a werewolf.” Ron obviously thought he was explaining but since Helena had no idea who Ginny was she was still baffled.

“Ginny is Ron’s little sister.” Moira cleared that up, obviously catching the perplexed look in Helena’s eyes.

“That’s right and we need to cure her soul mate.” Ron nodded as though it were the easiest thing in the world.

“But there is only one cure for Lycanthropy,” Helena informed him with a grimace. A silence fell upon the room. She looked around at them all with a surprised expression. “I thought everyone knew that.”

“Apparently not,” Moira retorted with a sharp gesture of negation.

“What is the cure?” Ron asked curiously. Helena frowned and felt a strange reluctance to speak of it.

“Its very Dark,” she whispered. Harry Potter frowned at her and she knew that she had been right to feel reluctant.

“Then how do you know?” His suspicious tone made her blush.

“My father taught me a lot of things that Beauxbatons didn’t like much,” she confessed.

“Sounds dodgy to me.” Ron glared at her with a look of mistrust.

“My fiancée is not a dark wizard, so don’t you start, Weasley!” Neville rose gloriously to her defense and Helena felt a wash of warm affection rush through her.

“I’m not, though my father might be. I never actually came out and asked him. He scares me.” She found herself being far more open than she ever had before and knew that her newfound sense of safety came from the protective young man who sat beside her.

“I imagine so,” Moira nodded. “You’re all right Helena, but your dad sounds like an utter bastard.”

“Oh he is,” Helena agreed with vehemence. “I’m glad to not be under his roof any longer.”

“I imagine that’s how Professor Snape must feel too, especially considering what your father did to him,” Ron added cryptically.

“What did he do?” Helena raised an eyebrow in curious enquiry.

“Married him off to our friend Hermione,” Harry Potter replied with a black look. Helena was shocked.

“That must have been the letter to the Ministry I saw him owl off!” she burst out and the others all turned to stare at her. “Beauxbatons starts later than Hogwarts does, so I was still at home,” she found herself explaining.

“Couldn’t you have stopped him?” Harry asked with a mounting fury.

“I didn’t even know what he was doing! He hardly confides in me, you know,” she snapped back and Harry looked surprised at her response.

“Sorry,” he really did look apologetic and Helena had never been one to hold a grudge.

“Its all right. If it were my friend I would be pretty upset as well.” A thought occurred to her suddenly. “I have a sister in law!” She grinned at the others. “I always wanted a sister.”

“Is your brother like your father?” It took Helena a moment to figure out which brother he was referring to.

“Trajan? Oh no, he’s supposed to be like our Grandmother. He’s very big on Honor and the Family Name.” She frowned. “Honor is good, of course, but the Family Name is pretty useless.” A roll of the eyes told her listeners what she thought of the Snapes in general.

“Well, I thought the Snapes were well respected once.” Moira glanced thoughtfully at her and Helena nodded to her.

“Oh yes, about a hundred years ago, before the whole Yidoni thing started up.” She looked at Neville. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when you said my father’s first wife was Yidoni, because he hates the whole family with a passion.”

“Why?” Ron asked with his guileless blue eyes.

“Because of an argument between my great-grandfather and Ruth Yidoni.” She settled back to tell the story, it was long and it had been a while since she had had a fresh audience for it. “The Yidoni are really powerful, they are supposed to be descended from Abraham and the inheritors of the scrolls he wrote on astrology and cabbala.”

“Are they?” Moira asked with a frown.

“No one knows for sure, but it is known that anyone who crosses them ends up cursed or dead.”

“They sound awful,” Ron grimaced.

“Not really, they were defenders of the weak, protectors of the faith, they supposedly taught Solomon to bind demons and all sorts of good things. It was only after the argument that things went wrong.” Helena shook her head in negation of Ron’s comment.

“So what was this argument about?” Harry asked impatiently.

“About the visions of the Yidoni. My great-grandfather wanted Ruth Yidoni to tell her visions to the Council of Merlin, but she refused. She said that meddling in the future was dangerous, trying to change things often just made them come true.”

“She was right, you know.” Moira was frowning into the distance. “Even that old fraud Trelawney knows better than to meddle in too much real predicting.”

“Why was your great-grandfather so adamant?”

“Because she had foreseen the rise of Grindelwald and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and how they both might be defeated.” The audible gasps from the others made her nod sagely.

“I can see why your great-grandfather was so keen on her telling them that bit of news,” Ron breathed out in awe.

“Yes, but she wasn’t revealing that to him and in the end, he tried to force it out of her and she left the country. It was from that point on that the Snapes lost prestige and power.” The story was winding down to its dark, sad ending.

“So why did your father marry a Yidoni?” Harry asked with a frown.

“Perhaps he was trying to negate the curse? Maybe he wanted to blend the two families into one to escape it?” Helena guessed with a shrug.

“Or perhaps he wanted the secrets of the future,” Moira suggested.

“Either way, it must have gone all wrong,” Ron pointed out. “’Cause the family still has problems and no one has defeated You-know-who yet.”

“It’s a mystery,” Harry commented, with a thoughtful look.

“You still haven’t told us the cure for lycanthropy,” Moira reminded her.

“That’s because you have to pull the wolf out of the man and the ritual for that is rather dodgy.” Helena shrugged. “It’s almost always fatal for the werewolf so its not such a good cure.”

“Almost always?” Harry asked with a grimace.

“There are some books about it, but I don’t know too much more than that myself,” Helena shrugged.

“We need to find those books,” Harry insisted.

“They are considered Dark Tomes, they may be hard to find,” she warned.

“Professor Lupin is a friend,” Harry replied and Helena could finally see why Neville liked him. Harry was loyal to a fault and willing to risk anything for his friends. Maybe he wasn’t a prat after all.