Seven Preposterous Things

Shake, Rattle and Roll



Well, you won\'t do right to save your doggone soul

-Charles Calhoun 1954





Hermione couldn’t help herself; she shut the car door with a slam and turned to her husband. Somehow, at some impossible to pinpoint juncture, Severus had gone from being ersatz to being as much of husband as those acquired by more traditional means, and his recent stupidity and Hermione’s chasing after him had somehow cemented it.



“What the fuck were you thinking?”



Severus cringed, likely from both the question and the sheer unmodulated shriek of her voice.



She watched as his cringe worked its way into a sneer. “What are you talking about?”



”Elvis?” was all Hermione said, not entirely trusting what she would say if she left her tongue unrestrained.



“I had initially considered the possibility of raising Albus Dumbledore to speak on my behalf but there was a certain matter of geography to consider,” Severus said rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.



“Speak to whom?” Hermione asked, utterly befuddled. “Why?”



“Longbottom.” Severus, face still hidden behind his own hands, pronounced the name with a venom she had rarely heard before.



“Neville Longbottom?” Hermione asked, supposing this was what she got for attempting to have a row with Severus when he was pissed.



“It seems our pressumption of the Dark Lord’s inevitable victory was not only presumptuous but premature as well,” Severus said with what Hermione could only describe as a grand sarcasm. “Consider it something of a theme.”



Still her gut went cold and didn’t know whether it was going to sink or rise.



“What is more that tubby little nothing was the one who did him in,” Severus said with a sort of drunken wonder.



“Neville?”



“The very same.”



Hermione was about to ask how he knew when he held out his hand for her to be quiet. Behind them Millie started the white whale. She could see Suzette in the front seat beside Millie and pair of feet reaching from the back seat to rest between their shoulders in the front. Toby.



“Wait, there’s more. There’s no end to the laughs in this bleeding cunt of a comedy. Longbottom is being lionized in The Prophet as the saviour of the wizarding world and he has named, as his new raison d’être, my capture.”



“He’s just one person, Severus, and it’s not as though…” Hermione was about to explain that Neville Longbottom was essentially a reasonable, tractable person when Severus broke in.



“No, he’s not, not anymore,” he said, looking both smug and nauseated.



“Neville is more than one person? Would you mind explaining exactly how that works?”



“That incompetent cunt, one of the most inept fucking students it was ever my torment to attempt to pound knowledge into, is now Minister for Magic. When he says he won’t rest until I’m tucked away for life in Azkaban, it is not solely himself he’s referring to; it is the entire sodding weight of the government of Magical Britain. International Aurors are likely involved as well. Were I to seek refuge in Indochina there would probably be an auror hiding in a bowl of rice, wand ready to cast stupefy.”



Hermione thought Severus looked inappropriately proud of himself. “Where did you get this information?”



“The Daily Prophet,” he said folding his arms across his chest and nodding his bobbling head for emphasis.



“And how did you get hold of a copy of the Daily Prophet?”



“It was in the bottom of my Christmas stocking. It seems the fat man is of some use after all.”



Hermione attempted to follow the sequence of events in her brain but there was little discernable logic to it.



“Let’s see if I’ve understood you correctly. You wished for a current copy of the Daily Prophet, saw that the Order had triumphed and Neville is now head of the ministry so you decided the only thing for it was to raise Elvis Presley from the dead?”



“It sounds irrational when you put it that way.” Severus was petulant “Initially my intended subject was Albus.”



“Oh, yes, I quite forgot about that. How did you think you were going to get to the body without being noticed somewhere along the way?”



Chagrin crept slowly across Severus’ face.



“That was something of a conundrum,”



“And raising dead rock stars was the obvious answer?” she asked with earnest curiosity. She had been intimate with him since October yet the inner workings of his mind were as opaque to her as ever. “Honestly, Elvis?”



“I thought he might have helped,” he said waspishly.



And then she looked at him, a bit more closely this time.



Something peculiar happened in that moment. He looked perfectly horrid and smelled even worse. If there a name could be laid to the odor, she would have said he reeked of desperation. His hair fell across his face in greasy tacky looking strands. His complexion had taken on an ever so slightly greenish cast. There was a film over his teeth. He had three days of beard stubble.



“How long have you been drinking?” she asked.



He muttered something sheepishly.



Hermione stared.



“Since Arkansas,” he repeated enunciating a bit.



And that answered all Hermione’s questions. Really. Three solid days of drunkenness as far as she could surmise from the number of bottles she dumped out of the car and it was only reasonable that Severus might be making poor decisions. It was likely only thanks to years of a building up a tolerance that he hadn’t keeled over from alcohol poisoning.



Still Hermione looked at him. It was foolish of any student to think they knew much of anything about their teachers’ private lives but that went double for Severus. Never in her school days had she, or anyone else for that matter, even toyed with the notion that he was ….well as he was.



During her school days there was a persistent rumor that the potions master was a member of the magical peerage. She half bought into that one at the time. It seemed more plausible than some of the other tales floating about, that he was a vampire, that he traded grades for sexual favors from either gender, but his tastes were so sadistic that the student often didn’t survive, or alternately that he was a sexual maestro capable of ensnaring a young witch as surely as Imperio.



No one had ever once suggested that he’d grown up with a Muggle father. Not only a Muggle but a chav, not even a chav really but something poorer, greasier, and altogether less respectable.



No one said anything to suggest he had ever been afraid a day in his life. That he might have a sense of humor. That he might be excited or interested in anything besides taking house points away from Gryffindor.



Yet she knew now he delighted in learning, she had many times seen him as he pored over her text books. He would quite nearly begin to purr in that moment when his new information merged with the old foundation and some wholly new and slightly startling theory came to him. It was much the same as his response when a song he loved came on the radio. His entire body would react and his amazing voice would unfurl and begin to repaint the world in colours of his own choosing.



As a girl she never imagined he was capable of any such thing. She’d sooner have believed McGonagall was a Prima Ballerina in her spare time than Severus Snape was a …a… well what was he? If pressed he would simply say he enjoyed music, but she knew this was less than the truth.



A talented amateur? Was that what he was? That seemed a pale and inaccurate description.

A wizard? Was that it? Was he simply the single most magical individual she’d ever known? And the most pigheaded, she thought looking him over again.



Still he could perform magic in silence and magic with his voice alone. There was magic in his sex and magic in his celibacy.



As testament to all this was the fact that she had raced after him without stopping to wonder once if he was worth it. Severus Snape was many things but his value was indisputable.



He squinted back at her.



“What did you do for music, Severus, when you were in the magical world?” she asked.



“I didn’t,” he said. “Music in our world is unmitigated shit. Still, one takes the good with the bad. The ability to perform magic must be weighed against some unqualified evils and thus Stubby Boardman is explained. What sort of depraved wanker would refer to themselves as Stubby?”



“And what you did earlier, with your voice, did you choose that particular song for a reason? Was it a question of harmonics? Or..”



“How typically Granger, adding needless complication when the answer is directly in front of you,” he interrupted her with a grimace. “All magic, outside Potion Making and the other Magical Sciences, is a question of will. The song is like a wand, merely a conduit the desire of the caster. Some songs make better conduits than others just as some wands better suit the indi…individual wizard.”



“How did you learn to do that?” she asked “When did you learn to do that?”



Severus pulled his hair over his eyes and shifted in his seat “An hour ago, more or less. It was something of an experiment. So?”



“What?” she asked.



“What are we going to do? You know Longbottom …aurors in the Christmas pudding?” he said.



“First we go home.” And sober you up, all her self restraint was required to keep from voicing the second bit.



“And second?” Severus asked.



“We come up with a plan,” she said.



“Oh goody, a plan,” Severus said fatuously. “Albus used to come up with three or four plans a week and we know how well that went. Are you going to share the plan with me or will I just have to content myself with guessing? Albus almost never told me his plans. I suppose I’m not exactly trustworthy. Still I did kill the old pouf so he may have had a point…”



“I do wish you would shut up, Severus!” Hermione said, finally losing her temper.

Shockingly he did shut up. Silence reigned for rather longer than Hermione was comfortable with.



“Severus Snape, you really are the most amazing wizard,” she said, then paused. “Is your given name really Sonny Liston Snape?”



“That is what it says on my Muggle birth certificate.” He frowned and the lines went from his nostrils to his chin. “Bloody wretched, isn’t it.”



“Yes,” she said honestly, “yes, it is.”



“Worse than Stubby?”



There was a scratching and a high pitched whine at her car door and it suddenly occurred to her that they’d both forgot Miss. It was a good thing they didn’t have children.



One opened door and a bound across her lap later the three of them were situated and the two vehicles set off down the road.



As she followed Millie away from the scene of Severus’ crime, as it were, a befuddled voice surprised her.



“When did you learn to operate a motor vehicle?”



“Two days ago,”



“Granger?”



“Yes?”



“Thank you.”



“You’re welcome.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Later, at the motel, a room of her own safely fascinated up for Millie, Hermione laid back on the hotel bed, complete bloody knackered to the core of her being. All she desired in all the world was sleep.

~~~~~~~~

Millicent Malfoy was jealous. It was pointedly anti-climactic to catch a missing husband when it wasn’t one’s own. Certainly there was the satisfaction of having got him but it hardly stood up beside having to chase him in the first place. Besides, she was jealous. There was not much likelihood that given an infinite number of Millies in an infinite number of universes one would eventually admit, even to herself, that she was in the grip of any bloody such thing, but there had to be some order to any existence, even one as stupid as theirs.



The particular order Millie had chosen to bring shape to her life was reason. It was an odd choice for a witch, really, since the tyranny of two plus two equaling four wasn’t enforced nearly so stringently on the Magical side of the fence. Still Millie was, by nature, perverse, so perhaps it made a sort of sense after all.



In any event, she was jealous, even if she would rather have been torn limb from limb by wild Manticores than admit it. It was awkward and embarrassing, and she had a husband of her own, thank you. A better husband, really.



You could count on Draco to mind his manners, care for the house, look after the baby, and give you a foot massage at the end of the day. And while Snape was a powerful wizard, she’d grant him that, as a husband he was never going to be better than fair to middling. More to the point he was Granger’s fair to middling husband. She’d never had a female friend before and she wasn’t about to queer it by wanting a go at her husband. Millie refused.



She didn’t want Snape. Not anymore. Not to keep at any rate.



Still.



Still.



In the back, the very back mind you, of Millie’s brain, a small voice groused to itself she should liked to have fucked Snape once before she was married. Because her mum was right, he wasn’t the sort one made a proper husband of, but he certainly had the marks of a lusty roll in the grass. She would have liked to see for herself, to touch the spark of his magic. Not to mention his cock.



And then she felt guilty about Draco, which she also categorically refused to admit. Even if she adored the prissy little sod.



There was nothing for it but to lie there clenching and unclenching her jaw, in that strange room on that strange bed with cold crisp sheets. Drowsiness came up on her unawares and she was quite nearly asleep, despite her churning thoughts turning rapidly to some sort of brain butter, as her fat little fingers found their way between her plump little labia to her clitoris.



At the foot of her bed Snape’s dog snored.

____________________

Sleep was the furthest thing from Severus’ mind.



Granger loved him. He felt quite convinced of it now. Between a thorough scrub, a shave, and a somewhat sloppy self-directed ennervate that stopped at the right knee, he felt like a new man. More or less. Which was fortunate because the old man one hadn’t been having a very good time.



He felt even better when he found a very nearly full bottle stashed away with the complimentary what-have-yous when he was cleaning his teeth . A drink was exactly what he needed to still the anxiety that always seemed to be rolling towards him no matter which way he ran trying to evade it.



On his third swallow, the bottle now diminished by half, he had a brilliant idea.



Granger had been worried. Concerned for his sake. Which meant she had anxiety, too. Undoubtedly her worries were not as serious as his own but surely after coming all this way she could use a drink as well.



She loved him, so it was on him to do her as much good as he was able. He resolved at that moment to share the bottle.

_________________

Hermione awoke to the decision of whether to choke or swallow. Having opted for swallowing she was rewarded with a burning in her throat and the distinct smoky flavor of Scotch whisky.



She would have flailed about blindly but found she was being held fast by Severus, who had mercifully bathed and was now cradling her firmly but gently in his arms. Looking up into his bemused face he seemed himself again.



“That’s a girl,” Severus said wiping the corner of her mouth with his thumb.



“Severus?” she said, unsure if she was awake or not.



“Shhhhh,” he said and gave her an indulgent smile that curled the corners of his mouth as he gingerly placed the bottle to her lips and poured more whisky down her throat.



She looked up at him, felt his arm wrapped round her, heard his heart pounding against her ear. It seemed this was Severus’ idea of taking care of her. She wasn’t going to discourage him. Despite the fact that she tired and more than a bit hungry again she swallowed. She could indeed use a drink. Rest was sure to follow and there was always room service.



After the fourth swallow, it was really very dear of him. He leant down and kissed her before placing the bottle to her lips once more. There was also something very dear about the way his nose was off-centre.



And then another kiss which was followed by another drink.



And then a kiss wasn’t quite enough. He slid his free hand inside the unevenly buttoned front of her shirt, under the wire of her brassiere, to cup her breast in the palm of his hand.



He broke his kiss just long enough to tip the bottle into her mouth once more.



She wasn’t sure his kisses had ever been so sweet. He suckled at her lower lip as though it dripped honey.



“Finish up like a good girl,” he said breaking away and practically upending the bottle into her gullet.



It took a bit of doing for her to get it all down without spluttering. She would have thought he was trying to soften her up but for the fact that it was completely unnecessary and besides, he had begun the night far more drunk than she had any hope of becoming on a half a bottle of scotch.



He dropped the near empty bottle on the heavily carpeted floor and buried his darling face between her breasts.



She pulled him up to kiss his lips. He wrapped his arms so tight round her that she nearly had trouble breathing so she squeezed him just as hard, which he seemed to like quite a bit as he sighed and came close to melting into her mouth.



He seemed intent on touching her, everywhere, every inch of her skin and it seemed right for her to respond in kind.



Snaky was perhaps the best description of the coupling.



His long arms slid along her arms, tracing a path from her shoulders to the outside edge of her smallest finger. He panted in her ear as he withdrew just enough to leave a gap between her disheveled, half dressed body and his naked self. Then, like a crack of lightning he pulled her close again, his same tongue that was capable of every spell known to wizarding kind did its work on her ear, wet and divine and nearly as intoxicating as the whisky.





Kissing his way across her face, her lips, her throat, her ears as if every part of her were delectable he, who rarely smiled, smiled as his covered her with kisses. His powerful hands meanwhile gripped her bum through her trousers.



He was rather glorious himself. Gone was the cursing cowering drunk who’d ridden to the hotel with her. In his place was a confident wizard who sent thrills up her spine. She kissed her way down his magnificent nose, across his cheeks like sheer cliffs, his thick eyelashes fluttered against her face, his long white muscled throat swanlike to her drunken eyes.



Again he relaxed and withdrew just long enough to catch his breath and pull them, crashing together again.



How was it possible to drown in him and yet continue to crave him so? His breath in her ear. His nipples hard against her chest.



She felt a sort of a pang in her gut and writhed, yes, writhed against him. Her jaw clenched as she moved with the heart beat as loud as thunder in her ears. Those hands, bigger than she ever realized until they held hers, those hands that in her girlhood memory were stained with ink and moved endlessly grading parchment after parchment, those hands of his slithered over her belly and unbuttoned her trousers with horrible tantalizing slowness. Those subtle soft hands of his teased their way down the front of her knickers seemingly content to play in her pubic hair all night.



She didn’t intend to but she groaned out loud as she placed her hand over his and throwing subtlety to the wind moved his fingers to her clitoris. It would have hurt his feelings if she ever told him but this was Severus’ sexual forte. He was undeniably, unarguably, brilliant with his hands. She’d never imagined any man could masturbate her better than she could masturbate herself, after all she had the benefit of years of practice as well as an instant access to feedback, and yet Severus’ hand in her knickers made the back of her head threaten to fly off in a way she could never quite duplicate on her own.



She knew, because she was philosophizing, that she would come to orgasm soon. Her body and brain had the habit of detaching in the minute or so before the rush of her body beat her brain into submission. The first time she’d truly grasped the Kreb’s cycle in toto she’d been having an intimate moment with herself in the shower.



Fucking Severus was divine in every sense. Tonight it felt as if some previously closed part of her fell open, like an unlocked door. She was suddenly cold and naked even though she wasn’t; gooseflesh prickled the exposed skin of her chest. In the merest flicker pressure slowly came over her brain and body as though she was being crushed by huge stones. She pressed her eyes closed tight. For an unreasoning, unreasonable moment she thought she was going to die until the stone rolled away and she had the feeling of rising almost as if she’d sprouted wings. It had never been quite like that before.



She was shocked back into her senses by Severus roughly pulling off her trousers throwing them over his shoulder with more force than she’d credited him.



“My turn,” he muttered and he no longer looked surprisingly good. He was closer to a well washed version of the wreck she’d seen earlier, but even less coherent.



His jaw was slack and there was no sense in his black eyes as he crawled atop her.

A strange feeling came over her, not fear and not lust but something nearer to what she felt when sitting down to a well written examination.



Severus, drunk as he was, jabbed his cock frustratedly against the inside of her thigh.

Whatever it was that had been whetted in Hermione would not be so easily denied. She reached up and guided him into her. Severus’ head rested against her shoulder as he settled into her. Really, some people shouldn’t ought to go about getting other people all worked up if they were only going to pass out in the middle of the act.



With a grunt of frustration Hermione rolled Severus onto his back. He gazed up at her through dumbfounded black eyes, his penis apparently the only part of him that functioned according to specifications at the moment.



She thought for a moment he was going to say something but instead a hum rose from Severus’ closed lips. It sounded like a Beatles song.



Hermione ground herself against him sending a jolt through her body. Some part of her brain chattered away about the physical reality of their coupling. His hard penis, erectile tissues engorged with blood, prostate, seminal vesicles, his entire body working together to complete this act, it was wonder his alcohol impaired system had managed as much as it had. Another part of her, the most primitive portion of her lizard brain, no doubt, concerned itself only with sensation; the slick slide singeing every nerve in her body, the seemingly endless tremors that shook her as she rode his oversized cock.



And then he went soft. She suppressed the rather shocking and fleeting desire to slap his face and tell him to tend to his duty.



With little or no adieu she slipped off of him and pulled his slack cock into her mouth. She supposed it was slightly perverse but the tart flavour of her own sex had always been delicious to her. Gratifying too was the sensation of Severus’ penis hardening in her mouth.



It seemed even bigger than usual, which had to be a matter of perception. Still, his body fairly vibrated with the effort of holding in the power that thrummed just under the skin.

His humming continued. Became clearer. More tuneful.



Severus didn’t seem much more coherent when he rolled her over onto her back and delivered a few ragged strokes. In no time she felt the hot spray against her cervix.



She fully expected him to collapse on her then. Instead she was taken aback when he fell, face first, between her legs. Not that she was complaining, mind you.



And then.



And then.



Hermione who thought she was over stimulated and couldn’t possible have another orgasm felt Severus Snape insinuate that silver tongue of his between her labia and admitted she had been very much mistaken. The very thought of him licking his own semen out of her sensitive cunt delighted her, and seemed filthy in the most wonderful sort of way. But the reality was …more. Waves of pressure, mindless perfect wave after wave crash across her brain and body, waves so intense she lost consciousness and for the next several hours knew no more.



_____________________________

At first Severus thought it was just that he was pissed. By the time he realized that Granger had been unknowingly sapping his magic at a heretofore unexperienced rate it was too late and he lost consciousness along with her.



Black Alice Eye was going to have competition if he didn’t keep his head.

__________

Millie woke up to the sight of dawn and the smell of smoke. So it happened that as the sun was sending its first pink streams across the Eastern skies she was holding her dressing gown closed over her big belly and following her nose to the source of the burning, her wand tucked neatly in her sleeve. Miss followed close behind, wagging her tail violently.



She should have sodding known.



Of course it would be Severus and Granger’s room.



“Alohamora,” she cast in a whisper, the door falling open with a soft snick.



And there, coming from Granger’s trousers draped carelessly over the top of a table lamp, was more of a middle sized smoulder than a proper fire.



Both Granger and Snape were snoring to wake the dead.



She stood for she wasn’t sure how long, staring at the two of them, well more at Snape really. Thinking Mrs. Malfoy would say his bits were quite a bit bigger than was warranted for a penniless school teacher. She didn’t really want to step closer to naked Snape but she was going to have to if she was going to move the trousers off the lamp.



The next thing she knew the most awful ringing came close to splitting her head in two. She couldn’t think let alone act with the sound like a hatchet in her brain. She was dimly aware of Snape rolling over, perhaps in response to the sound, and knocking the lamp to the floor where it hit a bottle and the smoulder was transformed into a small flame.



It wasn’t really that surprising when a crowd of Muggles showed up, though honestly, had Millie been down the corridor when that noise started she would have run in the opposite direction.



“Sir, Sir,” said a frightened-looking Muggle in a polyester waistcoat and a bad mustache, gently shaking naked Severus by the shoulder. “Your room is on fire.”



“I’m not surprised,” said Severus his eyes closed.



“Your room is on fire, Sir,” the Waistcoat-wearer repeated.



“Tell Granger to put it out,” he groaned still not bothering to open his eyes.



“What the hell?” shouted a second mustache and waistcoat-ed male from behind the crowd of sleepy-looking Muggles. He looked remarkably like the first, or perhaps it was only that they were dressed to match.



“The room’s on fire,” said Waistcoat number one.



“Pour something on it,” shouted Waistcoat number two. “Find something to pour on it.”



Only the innocent looking glass of water Waistcoat Number One found and subsequently hurled toward the flames was something closer to petrol, spreading the fire halfway cross the room.



“You couldn’t pour piss out of a boot with instructions printed on the heel, could ya ,Larry? “ bellowed Waistcoat Number Two finally pushing his way into the room.



In one smooth motion Waistcoat Two ripped the bedclothes off of Granger and Severus

and began smothering the fire.



Granger slept on blissfully.



“It’s cold,” Severus muttered.



“The room’s on fire,” someone, Millie wasn’t sure who, said.



“I don’t see why that means I should freeze my bollocks off…” Snape said opening one eye. “Are you truly so short on brains that it requires such an excessive number of hands or are these …gawkers?”



“Are dogs allowed in this hotel?” some pain in the arse asked loudly.



It was not exactly surprising they were asked to vacate the hotel in no uncertain terms.



Millie knew one thing, she was hungry and irritated and she had a good shot at home cooked food if she demanded they go to Snape Sr.’s house. If that Suzette wasn’t a Pureblood she’d eat her car keys.

______________



Severus Snape supposed he would rather visit Toby’s house than Azkaban, but only just.



His father’s house also rated higher than a pit full of incontinent trolls or a lamia’s nest. It ranked slightly below an open sewer, however. Shit washed off easier than the stench that harkened back to childhood.



Apparently an angry girl child ranked somewhere near a manticore because he did indeed find himself in Toby’s home with no one to blame but Millicent Bulstrode. While it was not his miserable childhood home his stomach heaved at the familiarity.



The smell of grease saturated the air. A lumpy sofa, its thread bare arms patched with silver tape, was draped with lurid orange, pink, and green striped blanket, the dayglow bastard brother of a Mexican serape. In lieu of wallpaper the lounge was plastered with the covers of ancient LPs thumb tacked at the corners. The Old Man’s weight set lay on a scarred and dented portion of the floor. An electric guitar occupied a ditch in the seat directly across from the telly.



Severus clasped his hands behind his back unwilling to allow himself to be touched by any of it. He wondered if there was some way to avoid his father altogether when a hand laid across the back of his neck sent that hope plummeting.



Suddenly Severus was ten years old and Toby was steering him into a “private” corner where he leaned against the wall reaching out one arm to box Severus in.



“Boy,” the Old Man said, though truth be known there was less than 16 years between them.



Severus’ frown deepened and he consciously worked at meeting his father’s gaze, managing instead to give his father’s navel the hardest glare in his repertoire.



Coward. Coward, the voice in his head called. Sodding coward. They were right when they called you Snivellus. He could only attribute standing up to him at Graceland to the shock of the moment. But as he fought the natural desire to shrink under his father’s gaze it seemed to him he could either do as he had always done with Toby or he could kill him where he stood. And Granger probably didn’t approve of patricide before tea.



“Boy,” Toby said. “Sonny! Look at me when I talk to you, boy.”



Severus flicked his eyes toward Toby’s face.



“I didn’t know what I had in your mum,” he said, leaning in closer as his voice became quieter, till it was conspiratorial in tone. “ I think them potions of hers half addled me brains and I couldn’t make use of what I had. Took more’n twenty five year to get me hands on another witch. I’m under no spell this time round. Don’t queer it for me, Boy.”



Severus didn’t know what sort of speech he was expecting but this was not it. He raised his head in surprise and looked his father in the eye. His eyebrow went up unbidden.



“Interfere and you’ll live to regret it, Sonny.”



“I am not afraid of you, Old Man,” he said nearly convinced that he meant it.



Toby cocked his head and something veiled itself behind his eyes. Severus had the strange feeling he was watching a man-sized snake deciding when to strike.



Granger chose that precise moment to stick her head through the doorway like a puffy headed ray of sunshine.



“Tea’s on,” she smiled and it was a beautiful smile for all it was forced. “Do you think you’re able to eat, Severus?”



Toby threw his arm over Severus’ shoulder and saw to it they squeezed through the doorway side by side. “The princess here’ll eat it and like it,” he said, before turning to whisper in his ear, ”And don’t hold it against your new mum, she might be black as sin but she’s pink where it counts.”



How charming.



Severus was a bit taken aback by the table laid full to groaning in the painfully yellow kitchen with blood red trim.



Toby’s child bride looked up at him timidly and said in a voice barely above a whisper “we’ve got ackee, callaloo, hardough bread, fried plantains, soft-boiled egg, beef liver and boiled green bananas, coffee, tea, butter, roast & fried breadfruit, fried dumplings, fried bammy, bacon or ham, water and hot chocolate.”



Meanwhile Bulstrode, who never stood on ceremony when she could avoid it, loaded her plate until food threatened to spill off all the edges.



Miss stood at the ready, catching each spill before it hit the floor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



For her part, Hermione was torn between disgust and fascination. The disgust was easy to explain: Toby Snape was a rude, obnoxious, perfectly horrid, person who seemed to belittle Severus without conscious effort. Hermione felt a bit guilty at her fascination because the whole uncomfortable situation cast the clear light of illumination on Severus as never before.



Toby treated Severus in a way that was very similar to the way Severus had treated Neville Longbottom.



Even more intriguing was the way Severus simply folded up in his father’s presence. He seemed to hold himself smaller, stoop his shoulders, bow his head. It was quite nearly the polar opposite of the way he strode like an unchallenged despot through the halls of Hogwarts.



She and Severus predictably sported matching his and hers hang-overs of similar magnitudes, despite the differences in their amount of consumption. Among the most likely causal factors was the fact that she was a rank amateur drinker while Severus was a well-seasoned drunk. Suzette - Hermione could not force herself to think of her as Severus’ step-mother, the very notion was too ridiculous for words - Suzette had plied them with the same surprisingly effective hang-over cure.



Severus had balked, of course. He didn’t care to ingest any potion not of his own hand.

But one stern look from his father and he had complied.



And after breakfast, Millie volunteered to lend a hand with the washing up, to pump Suzette for information, most likely.



“C’mere, Sonny,” Toby called from the living room and Hermione followed out of both curiosity and the desire to protect Severus.



She was greeted by a low hum followed by a strange electronic crackle and hiss that made Severus wince.



Apparently her father-in-law had pulled out an electric guitar she hadn’t noticed on her first pass through the room. Two actually. A silver sparkle covered model was balanced on his own knee. He gestured with his chin to another, more weather-beaten instrument, black and smaller bodied at the far end of the divan.



Toby twiddled knobs and made a few noises with the guitar that reminded her of Draco turning on his lawn mower.



“I hope you been practicin’, Sonny.”



Severus blinked then frowned. “I have not.”



“Try to raise a boy right and see how he repays you?” Toby said with disgust.



“Right being all too subjective,” Severus muttered.



Toby sneered.



Severus glowered.



Hermione wondered if Toby knew about the unfortunate and unpredictable effects of mixing electricity and high volumes of magic.



Severus stood over the guitar with his arms folded.



“Feelin’ a might yellow?” Toby said with a look of amusement. “Don’t want to embarrass yerself in front of the Missus.”



Severus’ back straightened and he took up the guitar reflexively.



Toby’s playing went from chaotic to tuneful in a single roar of sound.

“Get outta that bed, wash your face and hands

Get outta that bed, wash your face and hands

Well, you get in that kitchen, make some noise with the pots and pans,” he sang.



His singing and playing were fine, she supposed, tuneful and competent but a far cry from Severus. He aped an American sort of an accent which also unsettled her.



Severus clearly hadn’t spent much time playing music since he had been in the magical world, Hermione surprised herself by easily picking out Toby’s confident playing from Severus’ wooden attempt. Severus’ was clearly rubbing off on her.



“Well, you wear low dresses, the sun comes shining through

Well, you wear low dresses, the sun comes shining through

I can\'t believe my eyes all that mess belongs to you,” Toby went on, motioning for Severus to do something as he entered the chorus again. “Shake, rattle, and roll. Shake, rattle, and roll. Shake, rattle, and roll.”







And then Severus opened his mouth cutting his eyes at her as he leapt in with the next verse and it hardly mattered about his playing. “I believe to my soul you\'re a devil in nylon hose. I believe to my soul you\'re a devil in nylon hose. Well, the harder I work, the faster my money goes.”



A shiver went down Hermione’s arms. Severus responded to her shudder with gleam in his eyes and the faintest shadow of a smile.



It was a strangely heady moment when they launched into the chorus together. She had to struggle hard to keep her hips from swaying with the music. Before her eyes Severus moved from stiffly holding the instrument close to his chest to balancing the body of it across his thighs, leaning forward, his playing noticeably smoothing out.



Had it been less infectious she would have laughed at the idea of the scourge of the Hogwarts dungeon tapping time with his foot. Instead she suppressed the urge to shake her arse.



Severus and his father didn’t look any more alike sitting side by side but it was clear that somehow that Severus shared that horrible man’s expressions, his movements, his sheer physical grace somehow strung tighter when it was powered by Severus’ boundless anxiety. She really did not want to admit, even in her most private inner thoughts, that she understood what a witch who was thinking with nothing but her loins might see in Severus’ father. Neither did she like the idea that there was any similarity between them.



When she gathered her wits she realized they were both leering. At her.



She looked away only to catch sight of Millie and Suzette dancing. Shaking their bums without the slightest hint of embarrassment, in the kitchen. She had never seen a dog dance but she couldn’t offer a better description of what Miss was doing in the kitchen than an elaborate folk dance of the Labrador Retriever.



She stared.



Behind her Toby sang, “I’m like a one-eyed cat peeping in a sea-food store. I’m like a one-eyed cat peeping in a sea-food store. Well I can look at you, child, till you ain\'t no child no more.”



When the chorus came it gripped her physically.

Hermione’s stomach flipped. Her nipples were hard.



“I’m over the hill and way down underneath. I’m over the hill and way down underneath.

You make me roll my eyes. Girl, you make me grit my teeth,” Severus sang in that voice of his.



She nearly laughed at that, a wizard Severus’ age was no more “over the hill” than she was.



When the chorus came this time it was different. “ Shake, baby, shake” he sang out. She most certainly was no man’s “baby”, no matter how proficient he was at magic. No matter how fond she was of him Severus could certainly be an arse when the mood was on him.



She turned back round to face him with her arms folded across chest.



And still he sang his raucous entreaty. Hermione had always thought those ancient videos of the girls weeping and screaming their heads off to the Beatles were histrionics combined with crowd psychology but she felt it, whatever “it” was. When Severus put his mind to performing he was able to strum, with surgical precision, a Dionysian impulse she never even knew she had. He’d better watch himself, the followers of Dionysus used to rip men to shreds with their bare hands.



“Hurry up, Baby, before I get too old,” Toby finished the song.



It felt flat and sad and completely unmagical and Hermione was deeply grateful.



She strode across the room and stopped to stand directly in front of Severus.



“I think Millie and Suzette need my help,” she said.



Severus looked dubious but nodded all the same.



The guitar rang out loud like a wind at her back and the voice she heard belonged to Severus: “I got a woman as mean as she can be, sometimes I think she’s almost mean as me.”



Stepping into the kitchen was like stepping behind a buffer. Millie took her by the hand and spun her in a circle.



Tiny rivulets of sweat trickled down Suzette’s forehead as she looked Hermione in the eye for the first time.



“Toby never told me… Sonny was so …good,” she said out of breath from her dancing.



“He is good, isn’t he?” Hermione said, unsure what else to say. He could have been a singer if he’d wanted to. Hermione supposed Severus had the potential to excel at a good many things despite himself. Not that she held musicians in any great esteem but she wondered at the inanity of Severus winding up a school master. It seemed such a waste. Perhaps the life of a performer seemed inane to Severus compared to that of a spy, but then what was a spy but another sort of performer?



Still it was a puzzle, wasn’t it? Severus fairly craved recognition and she couldn’t imagine him being averse to having aroused witches clamouring for him. But then she could see him wanting to dissociate himself from anything that hearkened back to Toby Snape no matter how much pleasure it gave him.



She peered through the doorway to see a rare sight, Severus focused as surely on his song as he would on a complex potion, and with the same result, the music fairly shone with magic.



She stood there, glancing intermittently round the door frame at him. He seemed to become more proficient with the momentum of a boulder rolling downhill. A few hours later his right hand zoomed down the neck of his guitar and as he began to growl the narrow Muggle house shook in response.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Millie had always maintained that silence was the best policy; still she had to give up something for all Suzette told her. It was a basic law of magic that no deed no matter how small is without consequence.



Suzette had finished at Laveau’s Academie two years ago. Born to the unfashionable Jamaican branch of an old Ethiopian Pureblood family she was supposed to be on a post graduation grand tour when she met Toby Snape. She reckoned her family hadn’t tracked her down because her chaperone was too afraid to admit she’d lost her charge.



Suzette had the same misgivings about the insular little world of Purebloods Millie did, but unlike Millie Suzette had enough of whatever it took to walk away from her place in the family.



Still, Millie couldn’t make herself quite comfortable with the idea of marrying a Muggle like Snape’s father. Sure, she could see throwing a fuck his way but marriage didn’t seem quite …seemly with a Muggle.



She’d known witches like Suzette before; they seemed as docile as rabbits until someone backed them into a corner. And then when push came to push back they tended to demolish all threats with the mercy and sense of proportion of Dementors.

“I married a Death Eater,” Millie said over the kitchen table, feeling more than a bit embarrassed.



“Truly?” Suzette asked, leaning forward “You must tell me all about it.”



“He’s a big whinging baby,” she said “but he’s not half bad-looking.”



“Go on,” Suzette said, so she did.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was late in the day when Severus took the opportunity afforded by Toby stepping into the loo and followed his step-mother into the kitchen. She had skillfully avoided him all day. It was no good. He was well acquainted with people not wanting to hear what he needed to tell them.



She crossed to the sink when she saw him coming and feigned a half-hearted wipe at the counter.



She would have to try harder than that. He crossed to the sink as well.



She darted for the cooker and he turned round sharply, boxing her in with an arm on either side, her full belly nearly touching him.



“I do not intend to cause you harm,” he said, careful to keep his voice as quiet as he was able. A pregnant witch was a dangerous thing indeed and he saw no need to antagonize her.



“Then leave me be,” she said softly.



“I merely wish to offer a piece of advice,” he said.



“Advice?” she repeated.



“As one who had seventeen years to observe Toby Snape at close range I would offer this one warning. Do not allow him to strike you a second time. If you do you will suffer. Both of you.” Severus wasn’t sure if she fully grasped his meaning. He looked down at her high hard belly. “All of you.”



The girl cocked her head and gaped at him. “He hasn’t struck me a first time.”



“Yet,” was all Severus could manage to bite out before he turned and walked out of the room.



He, Granger, Miss, and Millicent left soon after in the Bavarian Motor Works Vehicle, leaving the Grand Marquis parked in Toby’s front garden. Severus told him to consider it a wedding gift.





Author’s Note: Special Thanks to Shiv and Lora