Silhouette

For your reading comprehension:
Feldgrau is a black-gray-green color patroned by the German Army. It is utilitarian, but still fashionable. Feldgrau means “field gray,” an interesting mix between nature and industry. J

Also, many of you just finished the last chapter still wondering what “gnomic” meant. Gnomic is a particularly cryptic phrase or the philosophy of never saying plainly what one truly means.

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Spinner’s End turned out to be a muggle neighborhood, though none too fashionable or even well-kept. Coke cans and fast-food wrappers littered the sidewalk, and every tree seemed depressed and lonely. Snape’s home was exactly like those around it, square and bare-faced, with dull brick walls and a small, leaf-strewn terrace. People were calling out of their windows to kids on their shabby bikes and passers-by, but no one greeted Snape or his visitors. Indeed, no one even seemed to notice them as they walked hurriedly through his gate and up his stairs. A man sat lazily on a splintering, unpainted rocking chair on his porch next door. He was drinking something dark brown from a plastic kiddy-cup and smoking a cigarette. Hermione could see its long strand of ash from the front door of Snape’s house. Needless to say, privacy was out of the question outside, and Hermione was thankful for the heavy drapes hanging in Snape’s windows to keeping prying neighbors’ eyes from what she was sure would be a most shocking interior.
Snape’s front door was locked by more than just a key, obviously. A moment later, however, the four of them, Draco, Snape, Tonks, and Hermione, had entered into a disheveled, rather oppressive sitting room. Once they were all inside, Snape reactivated his safety measures and locked his bolts. All Hermione could see now were four walls of leather-bound books and the front door. This was not very promising. Where would they all sleep? It was a silly question, she knew, but she couldn’t see any other doors.
“Patience, Ms. Ciucur,” Snape said with a snide sneer, “the doors are there if one knows how to get to them.” More gnomic nonsense from the Death Eater wannabes, thought Hermione. “Not nonsense, intellectualism.” She practiced the other thing that she had been taught over the past week: Occlumency. Snape had, of course, been testing her mind for weakness, and he had found it. She would have to try harder to fortify her thoughts against legilimency; a dozen people or more would try to read her mind at the ball, try to learn her secrets. She had read about it, and caught on quickly, but was it fast enough? “Aparecium,” Snape murmured, pointing his wand at the wall adjacent them. Hermione’s eyes widened as a door swung inward to reveal a spindly, narrow staircase. “See there, Ms. Ciucur, fiction becomes fact.”
“If it was always there, then it was always fact, Mr. Snape,” Hermione shot back. She understood the need for she and Tonks to get used to their names, but she couldn’t abide his sarcastic use of them in private. Apart from that, the Order had decided that Tonks and Snape would be on a first-name basis, but that Hermione should remain respectful to her former professor despite her supposed American ethnocentricity. It all made sense, but that Slytherin subtlety mutated efficiency into exasperating little barbs.
“So up there, then?” cut in Tonks, not wanting Hermione and Snape to argue.
“Those stairs lead to the bedrooms. This door,” as he said this, he waved his wand toward the wall to their right, and another door opened, “leads to the kitchen and dining room. Draco, you’ll be taking your usual room, I assume?”
“If possible.”
“Fine. Show Bianca and Nicoleta their rooms. I’ll be gone for a while. Be ready for the ball when I return.”
“When are you coming back?” asked Hermione, wondering how they could be ready by his arrival if they didn’t know when exactly that would be, but Snape had already disaparated. “Great.”
“Come on, I'll take you up,” said Draco. Tonks and Hermione followed Draco up the constricting staircase, which had no pictures on its walls. The bare and musty hallway wasn’t much better. He gestured at the first door on the right. “This is Snape’s room,” he pointed out, and kept walking. Hermione wondered what sort of room it was. Probably dark and full of rot and dust, she thought. The next door came quickly and on the left. “This is your room,” he said to Tonks. “I think Bianca would be better off in my room. This one’s kind of cramped.” Tonks opened the door and sputtered a cough as dust billowed up from the ground. Her trunk and a duffle bag were placed at the foot of the bed, the grime around them undisturbed. They must have been apparated there, but Hermione noticed one other thing: her suitcases were nowhere to be found. Draco had intended for her to stay in his room all along. She refused to let that thought concern her, for now.
“Scourgify,” shouted Tonks, and the floor scrubbed itself clean. She aimed her wand at the bed and it remade itself, mothball-free and without the acrid smell of mildew. The drawers opened and closed, the dirt in them lifting itself up and vanishing in little puffs. The tiny window above the bed soaped up and shined, allowing sunlight where there had been none before. Tonks gave out a tiny, final cough as she pointed her wand at her trunk and said “Unpack.” It popped open, clothing soaring around the room, shoes clicking and bucking in the air. A fine forest green dress draped itself over the bedspread. Feldgrau-colored shoes, made of a slightly glistening, translucent fabric propped themselves up on the floor beside the bedpost. Long, slender ivory gloves that matched the pale, lucent lace of the gown’s sleeves folded neatly on the delicately patterned green satin. The dress’ thin collar matched the decorative sleeves. It was a confection, and Hermione envied its simplicity.
“Well, shall we?” Draco moved from the doorway of Tonks’ room and walked a little further down the hall. The last door on the right opened for him and he went inside without her.
“Give me five minutes. I’ll be right back, ok?” Hermione said, waving to Tonks, who was smoothing out non-existent wrinkles in the fabric of her gown. Backing out of the room, Hermione walked down the hall, her heels making echoing, punctuated clicks on the uncarpeted hardwood floors. The room she entered was monkish, but clean. There were two beds of the same size and plain bedding, and two dressers. Hermione’s bed had been covered with what looked like icing-made-fabric. She had never seen the dress before, Mrs. Weasley hadn’t gotten it from Madame Malkin’s before they left, so it must have only just arrived. Hermione’s things, she noticed, were put away, all except for the gown and accessories.
“I’ll leave you to it,” Draco said, emerging from the bathroom. He was in dress robes similar to the ones he had worn to the Yule Ball years before. Draco straightened his tie, watching Hermione watch him. “It would be best to get ready is quickly as possible. Guests will begin arriving to my father’s house in about an hour. We intend on being, of course, fashionably late, but that still doesn’t give us much time.” He left, shutting the door behind him.
Hermione went to her bed and picked up the dress to have a better look. It was the finest thing she’d ever laid hands on; silky and light and brilliantly white, the fabric seemed to grace her fingers with their touch. She put it on, using magic to fasten the length of buttons down the back. The bodice was gathered from two strips of deep red on either side of her bust and drew scarlet lines down to the top of her hips. The two sections of garnered fabric connected along a thin line that began at her cleavage with a gold pendant and ended just below her belly button. The dress was gathered a little so it rippled when she moved, and the layer of matching crimson fabric just under the opaque white silk showed when she walked. Her gloves were gathered along the seams to match her gown, and her shoes were ruby-red satin. Soft tulle beneath the red layer of cloth allowed the dress to swish and sway beautifully.
Hermione looked for a mirror and found one in the bathroom. She admired herself, how her hair fell softly over her bare shoulders, how shapely and slender she looked. A knock on the door made her jump. “Come in.” It was Tonks in her dress, as well, and looking just as lovely.
“Wotcher, ‘Mione,” she said, and did a little twirl. Her dress picked up a little around her, but on the whole, she looked as stately and snobbish as any of the Order could have hoped. This was, until she changed her nose into a pig’s. Hermione giggled and spun around for Tonks, too. When she looked back at her “mother,” her nose was its normal dignified self. “You look just… beautiful, ‘Mione.”
Hermione smiled. “Thanks. So do you.”
They spent the next hour or so with make-up and hair, with Tonks magiking Hermione’s long black ebony locks into a wispy, elegant up-do. Tonks tied her hair back into a simple French braid and was done. When they were finished, they looked their parts: snooty, high-class, and stunning.
Hermione and Tonks found Draco reading in the sitting room. Snape was with him, wearing simple black dress robes. “Fine,” said Snape without so much as a glance their way, “Let’s go. We’ll do side-along aparation to get there. Draco, you take Ms. Bianca.”
Hermione felt Draco’s arm slide under hers. She gripped his hand, and they were gone.