Strange Bedfellows

3. Out of the rat-trap

***

All too soon, they reached the outskirts of Paris. Hermione was loath to say goodbye to the older witch. She had so much she wanted to talk to her about, and Snape seemed quite taken with her. He’d been more pleasant in the last two hours than she’d ever known him to be.

She turned to Snape when Willow went to the loo. They had only a few minutes before pulling in to Gare du Nord.

”Professor, don’t you think we should see if Willow might join us for dinner? If she’s staying in Paris, that is…” she enquired hesitantly. “It’s just… I’m extremely curious about her. She can do wandless magic!”

Snape stayed quiet at this, as though weighing his words carefully. “Miss Granger, wandless magic is not all that it seems. There are dangerous side effects. In fact…” but his voice trailed off when he spotted the redhead coming back towards them.

“Willow, would you like to join us for dinner?” Hermione asked boldly, ignoring Snape’s warning glare.

“That would be great!” Willow smiled brightly at them. “I’m staying with an old friend in the Latin Quarter. Do you guys want to eat there?”

“Very well,” Snape said rather formally.

“Great! My friend Gabrielle lives right next to a nifty Roman museum, the Thermes de Cluny. How about I meet you there at seven? We can look for a restaurant near there.”

“Perfect!” Hermione exclaimed enthusiastically. They parted company at the station.

Snape walked sombrely with Hermione towards the metro entrance.

“Oh cheer up, Professor! It will be great. Besides, she doesn’t seem like the type to turn us into a toad on a whim. Honestly! The way you’re talking, you’d think she had the power to destroy the world or something…”

***

By the time they arrived at the little hotel on Avenue Carnot, they were bickering intensely.

“I told you we had to change at Château de Vincennes, but you wouldn’t listen to me!” Hermione was pleading. “It’s not my fault we went the wrong way around!”

Snape just scowled. “R.A.T.P. indeed! A more apt acronym would be hard to find. I shall never set foot in that Rat-trap metro again!” he huffed.

“Honestly, Professor! It’s quite simple to navigate if you’d only read the map once in a while.”

Despite knowing that her place was now firmly in the magical world, Hermione felt the inexplicable need to validate Muggle ways whenever she was around Snape. He had such an irritating, superior attitude towards Muggles. He’s Slytherin through and through, she thought.

They snapped at each other until they reached street level. It was the sight before them that finally broke up their argument. A block ahead, looming tall and majestic in the afternoon sun, stood the Arc de Triomphe. They were viewing it at an angle, Hermione knew, because Carnot was one of the little streets running off the Étoile. She hoped Snape would agree to walk to the Champs Elysées to get the full effect.

Even Snape was struck by the looming archway. It made Marble Arch seem like a child’s toy in comparison.

“Napoleon could certainly think big, wouldn’t you say Professor?” came Hermione’s awed voice behind him.”

“Hmm,” was his only reply.

They checked in, having arranged adjoining rooms with a connecting door for safety. Without the ability to Apparate, it was crucial to maintain close proximity at all times.

***

At five o’clock, Hermione knocked gently on the door connecting to Snape’s room.

”Professor? Can I ask you a question?”

He opened the door suddenly, and Hermione was struck dumb momentarily. He had dispensed with his tweed travelling cloak, much to her relief (in her opinion, it made him look like a Sherlock Holmes wannabe). He now wore a crisp new green shirt, made of what looked like a rich blend of cotton and silk, with black trousers that fit him to a tee. His hair hast ist its greasy, stringy appearance and fell in waves around his face.

“Your… your hair, it’s...” she stuttered.

“I had no choice but to use the Muggle shampoo in there. Horrible stuff…” he muttered.

“No! It looks… It looks nice, Professor,” she said, adding “for once” under her breath.

He frowned at her, and she cursed herself for not keeping her thoughts to herself.

“What did you want, Miss Grr? Ir? I was rather hoping to catch up on the Muggle news for a while before dinner, so you’d better make it quick.”

Again, Hermione was surprised. “I thought you didn’t speak French, Sir? How will you understand the Muggle news?”

“Miss Granger, just because I don’t know about the latest technology and ‘trains de vitesse’ or whatever the damnable things are called, does not mean I have no knowledge of French!”

“Oh,” was all she could come up with. Wow! She thought to herself, imagining his deep voice wrapping itself around the Fr lan language. Wow…

“Well?” he said with growing irritation.

“Sir, I was wondering if you could tell me more about wandless magic…”

He sighed and motioned her through the door. They sat together at a little table. The room was decked out in Louis XVI style furniture, and had a tall window which opened onto a small wrought iron balcony.

“Ooooh! You’ve got a balcony!” she noticed, rushing over to open the windows. She leaned out, and her breath caught as she gasped out loud “Wh “What is it?” he rushed over as well, worried. He leaned over too, pressing up against her, his eyes immediately scanning the streets and sky for danger. But she was leaning out, oblivious to everything save the view.

“Isn’t it gorgeous? What a view!” she sighed.

Snape looked left and saw that they had a rather spectacular view of the Arc de Triomphe. At the same time, he realised he was pressed up against Hermione and, as she leaned over more to get a better view, she pressed her backside right against…

He leaped away from her, as if scalded. “Miss Granger! Kindly step away from the window before you fall to your death!”

They resumed their seats.

“Now, wandless magic. As you know, many wizards perform wandless magic when they are young, before starting at Hogwarts. It is generally unfocused, and difficult to control. It can produce… unexpected results. It is very much tied to the witch or wizard’s emotional state at the time. Tell me, Miss Granger, why do we use wands?” he challenged, crossing his arms as he waited for her answer.

“Well, it’s a channelling point, it brings our thoughts to a focus, and the incantation resonates with the wand’s magical core, amplifying the magic,” she recited.

“Correct. Five points to Gryffindor,” he added with a smirk. She raised her eyebrows in surprise.

“I was joking, Miss Granger! We’re outside the grounds of Hogwarts. I could no more add points to your house than I could conjure Mrs. Norris to bite your slippers off,” he said, amused at her irritation. “Besides, you’ve graduated. So you can’t lose your house any points ever again, which is just as well, seeing as you seem to have maintaiyouryour predilection for mischief.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said, indignant.

“Inviting that red headed American to dinner when I warned you not to!”

“Well… She seems very nice, and from what she’s said, she has been fighting evil for a very long time.”

“Yes, she does seem nice, I agree…”

”Why are you so suspicious of her, Sir?”

He sighed at this. “I don’t doubt that her motives are good. It’s just… Life is not all black and white, Miss Granger. I am living proof of that,” he paused, and Hermione had the uncomfortable feeling that he was remembering things he’d done as a Death Eater. “I sense… something… about her, that is all. Nothing more than a feeling.” He looked off for a moment, then turned his steely glare to her. “I absolutely forbid you to tell her anything about our mission. You are not to share any details of our past battles, or breathe a word about the Order. Am I making myself clear?”

Hermione was so indignant that she could hardly formulate a coherent sentence. “I’m not a child, Professor,” she bit out. “I knowfectfectly well that our mission is secret. Gods! What do you take me for?” she jumped up and stormed out of the room.

Snape smirked to himself. “Peace at last. Now, let’s see if I can’t get the news on this annoying Muggle contraption,” he muttered as he approached the television.

***

He knocked on her door around six o’clock. When she didn’t appear right away, he assumed she was still angry, and was about to leave when her door swung open. There was a brief moment when he wondered who was at the door. The woman before him was a vision in red. For this definitely was a woman, not a girl. Her hair was swept up, with just a few silken tendrils framing her face. The soft chiffon fabric of her dress draped elegantly around her shoulders, baring a modest amount of neck, but hugging her shapely curves in a fetching way. The dress’s skirt flared slightly, dancing around her calves. Incongruously, her feet seemed to be encased in very sensible, flat suede sandals which managed to still look elegant, in a modern way.

“I thought I’d wear flats since you said you didn’t want to take the metro. Here,” she thrust a map at him, which jolted him out of his stupor. “We can walk all the way there if we take the Champs Elysées and then cross the Seine after the Louvre.”

He looked down at the map, doing some quick mental arithmetic. “I think, Miss Granger, that we may not arrive in time if we walk all this way. I shall do my best to tolerate the metro. Perhaps we could walk on the way back, instead. If I recall, Paris is rather attractive at night,” he said enigmatically.

They left the hotel, not noticing the approving glances of the staff, who thought they made an attractive couple.

Hermione was dying to ask him more questions. ‘Oh, for Merlin’s sake!’ she thought to herself. ‘He’s not my professor anymore. I refuse to be intimidated by him!’

“Sir,” she started “when were you in Paris last?”

“That, Miss Granger, is private,” he said. But he wasn’t sneering as she thought he would. The memory seemed to leave him with a faint trace of a smile.

They took the metro, getting out near the Sorbonne and walking to the Cluny museum. They were half an hour early, and were debating whether to look around the university, when Hermione spotted another museum, right next to the Roman baths.

“Look, Professor! It’s the medieval Cluny museum! It says in my guide book that it houses the tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn. We must go in!”

Snape rolled his eyes. ‘Girls and their unicorns’, he thought to elf.elf. He wondered if Hermione Granger could still get close to one. This train of thought led him to stare at her in that red dress again. ‘Probably not,’ he concluded. When he realised that he’d just been pondering the sexual experience of a student – former student, but still! – he was thoroughly disgusted with himself. Paying his admission fee, he followed her into the museum, cursing Albus Dumbledore for the tenth time.

***

Even Snape had to admit that the tapestries were gorgeous. They easily outstripped any of the Hogwarts wall hangings, and that was saying something. He examined with amusement the various theories historians had come up with for what the tapestries represented. It seems the Muggles had finally concluded that each of the hangings represented one of the five senses.

“Fools!” he muttered.

“Who are?” Hermione asked him.

“Muggles! They think these tapestries represent the five senses.”

“Well, it’s not a bad hypothesis,” she defended. “Look there! There’s a harp in that one. That must be sound…”

“Silly girl! These tapestries were clearly made by a Master Weaver, a powerful wizard. The harp symbolises the power of the Bards – the descendents of Merlin. The unicorn is, of course, the central character, tied to the woman’s purity. The lion… well, I suppose the Weaver might have been a Gryffindor. Pity…” he said grudgingly.

Hermione ignored him, but as she examined each tapestry in turn, she realised that Snape might be right.

‘Insufferable, know-it-all git!’ she thought to herself. She glanced at him in annoyance and was struck by something. With the glow of the museum spotlights framing his new hairstyle, and the casual green shirt he wore, he reminded her of a Shakespearean actor. The top two buttons of his shirt were undone. She hadn’t noticed that before. She suddenly felt very aware that he was a man. Not a wizard in sweeping black robes, but a strong, attractive man. Attractive? Yuck! Where had that thought come from?

She glanced nervously at her watch. “Time to go, Professor!”

‘And time for me to Obliviate those thoughts,’ she grumbled to herself.

***