Evening Schnapps

A/N: I’m moving the rest of my comments to the bottom of the chapter. Too cluttered!

J.K. Rowling is the owner of all except specific characters, situations, and plot bunnies that are unique to this story. I make no money, but lots of satisfaction from taking out her characters and playing with them for a while before putting them back.

So, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle at all times, and here we go!


Chapter 3-The Sound of Snow Falling

The soft, rhythmic rasping sound drifted up from the snow. In the dark, if one was there, one could almost make out a figure gliding through the trees.

‘But,’ thought Hermione, ‘no one is here to see it, and that’s just fine with me.’

She had been traveling for hours, moving swiftly up through the snow and trees. The steady rhythm of skiing uphill was something that she relished. She took a few more steps and felt her ski slip back a little.

“Hell,” she muttered into the night. Stopping she bent down and snapped open the bindings holding the extended toe of her right boot tight against the ski. She stepped out and lifted the ski up. As she tightened up the rough climbing skin on the bottom of the troublesome ski, she once again found herself thankful for the Muggle headlamp strapped to her forehead. It kept her hands free.

After she clipped back into the binding, she stood up and started to continue up the hill. On a whim, she stopped again and reached up to her headlamp. Twisting the lamp, she shut the light off. The sudden absence of light reflecting off of the huge clots of snow falling through the air was startling.

Sucking in her breath, Hermione waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark, and for her ears to adjust to the silence.

‘Any minute now,’ she thought. Conscious of the snow landing on her head and back, she waited.

‘And there it is…’ she smiled to herself as the snow falling became audible to her sensitive ears. The low steady rushing sound of snow falling was one of her most cherished moments. She looked up into the dark and was just able to make out the silhouetted trees, their edges blurred from all the snow in the air. She waited longer and looked straight up. She could just make out the falling snow as black bits, floating down through a dark gray sky. Hermione smiled as the snow landed on her face.

‘Life can be so peaceful,’ she thought, ‘I wonder if I will ever find a peaceful life away from here?’ Sighing, she turned the headlamp back on, squinting against suddenly bright light and started off again. The storm that had rolled in was a big one. She was yet to reach the halfway point to home and already the fresh snow was up to her knees. Breaking trail took so much time and energy, that one could readily be considered an idiot for doing it at night. But she had already faced Voldemort at Harry’s side and lived to see that evil die. After that, everything else seemed easy.

‘Except the media,’ she scowled. Luna was great but the others hounded her. Some of the reporters made Rita Skeeter seem tame by comparison. Harry had the money to renovate Grimmauld Place, and had kept it Unplottable. Ron had the support of his large family and the decided advantage of being a Weasley; the press just didn’t seem very interested in him because he was poor. But, the Wizarding press couldn’t get it through their heads that she and Harry were not going to fall in love, get married and live happily ever after. ‘Yuck,’ she thought again for the thousandth time, ‘he’s like my brother.’ Deciding to take a few years and attend a Muggle university here in the States had been a very good idea. She had still received owls asking for interviews at her dorm, which made her move out to a small flat in town. She couldn’t keep trying to laugh off the owls hanging around her dorm window to the curious students. ‘Besides,’ she giggled, ‘the biology department was getting ready to start up a study on the phenomenon.’ Once in the flat, it didn’t stop. She started getting a weird feeling, like she was being watched. Minerva had sent her an owl that told her of unknown numbers of Death Eaters who would never see justice. One day taking a day off from classes she went skiing, she had stopped at the top of the run and looked out over the wide expanse of wilderness behind the ski resort and smiled, it would be fun to ski back there where there were no people. She looked around and there was no one there, so she closed her eyes and Disapparated, aiming for the clearing she spotted nestled in between the trees off in the distance. A few moments later she Apparated, right back where she had started. Having read about trying to Apparate into non-magical areas during her sixth year at Hogwarts, in Two Places At Once- A Treatise on Apparating, she hadn’t been upset. In fact, she became very excited.

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Hermione continued to fight her way up through the snow. It was getting late; in fact, it had to be the early hours of the morning by now. She had been delayed in town at the Muggle post office, trying to send her Christmas packages to her parents. They would keep theirs and forward on the little gifts for Harry, Ron, Minerva and other friends from Hogwarts and the Order. Thinking she’d beat the rush, she didn’t realize that the rush had been in full swing for a week and hadn’t been able to leave town until almost 9 o’clock that night. The storm had already arrived.

As she took each step, feeling the ski sink down through the snow until she got purchase, she thought back to the summer.

She had spent the previous winter hanging out in the little town, getting to know the kids who had reputations for being very skilled at backcountry skiing. After they got to know her, they took her on short trips into the backcountry. She learned more about avalanche safety then she had ever dreamed. She learned to ski the very deep snow and how to ski in the telemark style, in boots that didn’t force her knees to bend and bindings that only bound the toes, making hiking in them easier. She learned how to make deep, knee bending telemark turns without falling, and found it to be more graceful than her finest moments of alpine skiing on the resorts. She also spent that time studying and learning the area.

After the snow had melted, she began hiking up in the mountains every weekend, until she found the perfect, tree lined spot. The slope was steep, but the hill above it didn’t carry enough of a pitch for significant avalanche danger. Below the pitch was a small pond; deer and the occasional moose were her companions every morning, as she built her new home. She hiked down to the little town and bought rope and spikes that were longer than her hand, and a small saw. She spent all her spare time building her yurt. She gleaned beams for the floor and ceiling from heavy branches of trees taken out in an avalanche the previous winter. She used the same to build an elevated bed. Finally she had rented a truck from the city, and bought heavy plywood panels for the roof and floor, along with a few wide planks for shelves, a small stove, and stovepipe. That night she had parked the truck in the woods along the nearest road and waited until it was very late. Then, in the dark she walked to the tree line where magic ceased to flow, and called ‘Accio’ to bring the supplies as far as she could.

The next week was spent in the backbreaking task of getting those heavy items moved up the last few miles to the yurt. When she finished, she was so sore that she could hardly move. She had realized that there was just no way to maneuver the heavy wood panels up to the roof on her own. She had gone down to the town and was having lunch in Muriel’s brewpub, when Mike had come in. He was one of the backcountry skiers who had befriended her the prior winter, and had decided to stay in town that summer.

She told him her plans, and he was shocked. He didn’t believe that she would do it. So, after lunch, they hiked up to her place and she showed him all she had done. Mike had been so impressed that he spent several days helping her finish it. They had managed to get the roof on, the floors secured, the stove installed and lined with stones, and the walls hung before the first of the fall rains. Classes at the university were starting and the rest was done on weekends. By the time the first snows had fallen, she had the entire structure completed and fully stocked for the winter. She had scheduled her classes to just three days a week and spent the rest of her time up in the quiet woods, receiving a few friends here and there as the ski season got into full swing. Mike and Raf were common sights, as they loved the ski in her area, she would join them sometimes, but often preferred to ski in solitude. She admitted she liked their popping in for a quick coffee warm up, before they’d duck out again to ski another chute.

The thought of hot coffee brought Hermione out of her reverie. She was near home finally, but she realized that this trip back had been one of her hardest yet. Her body was quivering with the effort it took to keep slogging up through the deep snow, and she was so tired. Realizing that she had been making her way by blind habit, she reached up and snapped off her light. She needed to let her eyes adjust for a few minutes to make sure she was in the right ravine to get home. As she stood there waiting and listening to the snow hit her shoulders and hood, she ran through her mental checklist for arriving home on a storm night. She wouldn’t start a fire, as she needed to get into bed as soon as possible. She would have to strip down and dry off before climbing into bed. As cold and wet as she was, if she fell asleep wet, her body would continue to drain heat and she would never wake up.

Finally, her eyes had adjusted to the dark. She was able to see beyond the sphere limited by her headlamp and make out the trees. Looking around she recognized the pattern that the treetops made on the skyline. She was just at the bottom of the pitch, standing on the frozen pond. As she looked up at the yurt, she spotted the slightest glow near the doorway. If her eyes hadn’t been accustomed to the dark, she never would have spotted it.

‘Oh good! Maybe Mike or Raf got caught out in the storm and my bed will be warm!’ she thought as she made her way up the last steep pitch of the night.

When she finally made it to the doorway, she was trembling from exhaustion and cold. She stood for a moment, just trying to gather the strength to bend over and undo her bindings. Finally, she took a hitched breath and bent to the task. Standing up, she brought the skis upright and leaned them in the snowy alcove with the others, and stepped inside.

Hermione looked up and saw Snape sitting on her little stool, looking cold and none to pleased to be there.

She sighed; the last thing she needed was such an unpleasant person to keep her from getting warm under all the thick down she had piled on her bed.

‘Ah,’ she thought, an idea coming through her increasingly fuzzy brain, ‘I know what’ll shut him up!’

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Severus was starting to eye the bed, it was nearly 2 o’clock in the morning and there was still no sign of Miss Granger. He didn’t wish to be caught in the embarrassing position of sleeping in her bed, but he was tired and there seemed little chance of her arrival. He was cold and frustrated at the lack of fire and at the inability to use magic.

Just then, he heard a rustling outside the door. Severus turned on the stool to face the entrance. It seemed an unusually long time before the door finally opened and he came face to face with Miss Granger.

She gave him a wary look, and then her face just seemed weary. She stood up and looked at him for a moment.

“Strip,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

He arched an eyebrow at her, and she stepped back against one of the large tree trunks. ‘Good,’ he thought, ‘she retains enough sense to be afraid of me.’

But she once she had reached the tree, she leaned forward slightly and then, surprising him, slammed her back against the tree. He watched as thick ice that had been caked on her head and shoulders cracked and began to fall off the jacket.

“D... d-didn’t you hear me? Strip!” The witch snapped, her speech interrupted by her chattering of her teeth, a she pointed at the bed.

Severus followed her trembling finger to the bed and started to protest when he realized what she meant for him to do.

“NOW!” she snarled at him.

He thought about denying her, and letting her freeze, but she really did look in bad shape. Accepting in his mind that all she needed was his body heat, he stood and stepped over to the bed, and began unbuttoning his robes.

He climbed into the bed, and slipped under a surprising amount of coverings. He hadn’t realized that the bed had so many down comforters on it. The sheets were cold against his skin, but warmed quickly. He looked over at Miss Granger.

She was undressing, pulling off each wet layer of sturdy Muggle clothes that looked like the items from Gabriel’s shop, but they were more worn. They had obviously seen hard use. He grudgingly found himself impressed by her clarity of thought under the obvious stress her body was experiencing. She took the time to hang each article so that it would dry. Finally, when she removed the last of her soaked clothes, he saw her naked body.

‘Too thin,’ he thought to himself. Miss Granger had grown up, her body had reached maturity, but the demands of travel had thinned and hardened her body. She showed ample breasts, proving that her body wasn’t ill or starved. But her ribs were plainly evident. ‘Much too thin.’

Expecting her to climb into bed to warm next to him, he was surprised to find her standing in the middle of the small space, shivering. She stood with her eyes closed, and it was evident that she was trying to master her trembling as the freezing air tore at her pale skin. Her face was tan, much tanner than the rest of her, except for the pale trace over her eyes; he could plainly see the silhouette of dark spectacles like he had seen in Gabriel’s shop.

Finally, she opened her eyes and climbed into the bed next to him. He drew in a sharp breath as her body moved against his, her skin was frozen through. Seeing the need, he moved up against her, making sure that his legs and torso touched the length of her and draped his arm over her middle. He found that her skin was dry and realized that was why she had stood in the cold air for so long. After some time, her trembling and shivering slowed and finally stopped. As her hair dried, he could smell a warm hint of campfire, mixed with pine pitch. Her breathing settled out into a slow regular rhythm, and Severus knew that she had fallen asleep.

‘Stupid girl,’ he thought as he drifted off to sleep, ‘it seems our little Know-it-all isn’t smart enough to keep herself out of danger.’
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A/N: Hi all! I decided that since I’m already working on chapter 8, that I would go ahead and update a little more often than once a week.

Love the reviews, by all means, keep them coming!

Now that I have several more chapters in the can, I feel obligated to warn y’all that Severus is taking his sweet time in warming to our Miss Granger. Of course, that fits in neatly with the challenge rules, so… Yipee!