Evening Schnapps

A/N: Howdy all! Hope you are having as much fun reading this, as I am having fun writing it.

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.

Helpful vocabulary for this chapter:

Cirque; n. 1) A steep bowl-shaped hollow occurring at the upper end of a mountain valley, especially one forming the head of a glacier or stream. 2) A ring, or circle.

Many thanks to my ubber-beta SignoraAligheri, and my sweetie Evan! They just prove that you really can’t do anything in this world without people looking out for you.

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


Chapter 7

Hot water pounded down on his scalp, flooding across his face, neck and back. Severus felt the water run down across his ribs and belly, before running down his legs. Standing there, in the stream of water, he leaned against the wall with his head hanging down, just trying to soak up the heat and let his muscles relax. He had not been able to get much sleep during the night. Miss Granger had kept him up for hours.

Reluctantly shutting off the water, he stepped out into the cold bathroom, reaching up and snapping the little window shut as he reached for a towel. He rubbed himself down and wrapped the towel around his hips before stepping out into the bedroom.

He stood in the room for a moment, looking down at the sleeping witch on his bed. Her hair spread out on the pillow and obscured her face. She slept on her stomach, with her arms tucked in under her pillow. One leg was draped over the edge of the mattress, knee bent. Her foot was hooked under her other leg, stretched out along the bed. Severus smirked at her oblivious and relaxed comfort.

Finding that his robes were in sore need of laundering, he dressed in the Muggle jeans that he had picked up for the trip. After pulling on the turtleneck, he pulled his damp hair free and pulled the black sweater over his head. As he walked for the door, he glanced in the mirror. Scowling, he stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him quietly.

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Severus stepped out into the brilliant morning, squinting up at the sky, he was blinded by the bright light that was bouncing off of every snow-covered surface. Painful tears stung his eyes as he whipped around and stumbled back into the hotel. He went back to his room and quietly entered. Retrieving the dark spectacles from the desk, he glanced at the sleeping Miss Granger. She had rolled over and was now sleeping on her side, one leg was tucked up to her chest, and the other stretched out below. One arm had reached over and her hand was resting, palm down, on his pillow. Severus arched his eyebrow at the scene and left the room again.

Once again, he stepped out into the morning, he found that the snow was still brilliant behind the dark lenses, but did not cause the painful reaction with his eyes. He moved out among the people walking up and down the sidewalk, and began strolling down the block.

Severus found the little window and leaned down, spotting the same young lady from two mornings ago. She grinned as she came up to the window.

“We baked pumpkin scones again,” looking up at him through the opening. “They haven’t been glazed yet, care for one?”

He smiled at her. “Yes, two actually, and two coffees with cream.”

As he waited, he thought about the sleeping witch back at his room. She had drifted off so swiftly, that she didn’t stir as he had removed her clothes. Finding himself thankful for all the injuries he had sustained over the years, he examined her injuries with the eye of experience. He was not surprised at the ugly bruising he found extending down the left side of her face. It continued almost uninterrupted down her neck, chest and across her hip. Her left breast was deeply discolored, there were tiny blood blisters extending from the under edge of her breast and back along her ribs. He checked her ribs and was startled to find that two for them were broken. Continuing his exam, he ran his fingers lightly down her leg and found no other significant injuries there. Her left arm, however, showed harsh black marks where his fingers had dug into her arm the previous morning.

‘Damn,’ he thought, he had not intended to injure her. ‘I really have lost the ability to be polite. I may have been angry, but I shouldn’t have hurt her.’ He was surprised that she hadn’t complained about his rough handling of her.

Moving over to her other side, he found swelling along her right collarbone and shoulder, but no bruising. Frowning at the indication of torn ligaments, he moved down her side. He found no further damage until he came to her right thigh. He hissed as he found the mass of dried blood. It looked like her thigh had been smashed by a large and sharp rock. He moved off the bed and walked over to where her heavy outer pants had dropped to the floor. Picking them up, he examined the right thigh. Sure enough, at the same place on the pants was a roughed up patch. It appeared that whatever had hit her leg, had hit hard enough to rupture the skin over half of her thigh, but had not been dragged along her leg, which would have caused the pants to rip.

“Here you go,” said the girl at the bakery window. He paid the bill and took up the box she had packed the coffee and scones in. He was not about to wait for Miss Granger to wake up before he got any food in his system. The previous two days had consisted of nothing but coffee and a small bit of food for breakfast. His stomach growled as he began walking back to the hotel. Once she was up, he would insist on a good meal.

As he walked along, he thought about something Miss Granger had said to him the night before. He had asked how she had managed to make it out and she had said simply that it was amazing what one was capable of, when one had no other choice. She was right. Severus himself had proved that when he struck down Dumbledore. He had been given no other choice. So, he had killed the man that had been like a father to him.

‘Still,’ he thought, ‘dragging herself through the deep snow, with as many injuries as she had, was nothing short of pure mental strength.’

Severus had gone back to the desk and selected from the healing potions he had available. He had managed to get her partially sitting up, propped back against his chest and shoulder. Getting her to swallow the potions was fairly easy as she drifted in and out of consciousness, aware enough to swallow as he slowly poured the potions between her lips. The only fight she gave him was when Skele-Gro passed her lips and hit her tongue. She stiffened and pushed weakly at his arms as he held her mouth shut, forcing her to swallow the vile liquid. The effort had been enough to knock her back out.

Arriving back at the inn, Severus stopped at the front desk, pausing while the old man finished a sip of tea.

“When does the brewpub near the top of the street open?” Severus wanted to get done and return home as soon as possible. There were only a few days of the holiday left and he still hadn’t gotten any rest, and had not been able to make any progress in his personal lab.

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Hermione smelled coffee. She opened one eye and spotted a cup floating in the air a little ways in front of her face.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, “how wonderful.” As she sat up and took the coffee, she looked over and saw Professor Snape sitting at the small table, sipping coffee and smiling at her. She frowned, because he wasn’t exactly smirking, but neither was the smile entirely benevolent. She took a sip of the rather excellent coffee and looked at his face, trying to grasp the glint in his dark half-closed eyes. He simply raised an eyebrow and she looked down. Dumbfounded to discover that she was stark naked, she sprinted for the bathroom, coffee in hand. It was one thing to push Snape into mutual nakedness to get him to shut up, but it was quite another thing to wake up in his room, naked, with no memory of having achieved that state, with him obviously enjoying himself at her expense.

“At least he had the decency to bring coffee,” she grumbled as the set the cup down on the little windowsill next to the shower. She turned on the water and waited for it to warm.

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Severus snickered at the backside of Miss Granger as she made her way into the bathroom. It had been worth his efforts last night, just to see the look of shock on her face as she realized he was able to enjoy a full view of her, at his leisure, while he sipped his coffee. A frown came across his brow as he remembered her young Muggle lying unconscious at the hospital. Making up his mind to help him, Severus began rummaging through his trunk, looking for the last of his potions, to see what good he could do.

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Hermione groaned as the hot water from the shower mixed with the cold air from the little window that she had opened. She reveled in the feeling of contrasts playing across her skin. Picking up the soap, she began washing, running her soapy hands over her arms and stomach. When she bent to wash her legs, she was shocked when her hands reached her right thigh. The skin was closed over, not healed exactly, but the damage was greatly reduced.

‘Oh,’ she blushed, ‘that’s why I was naked.’ She began to remember brief flashes of the night before. Hermione had felt his fingers brushing lightly down her pained body. He delicately probed the damaged areas, locating every injury that she had. He was firm, and yet gentle as he had propped her up and gave her various potions. She shuddered at the memory of the Skele-Gro, and reached out to the windowsill and took a gulp of coffee.

There were still bruises, but they were beginning to fade. She reached up and felt along her right clavicle. Her fingers slid along the bone and sank into her shoulder. As she probed, she realized that the torn ligaments had fused. She reached around and gently felt her ribs, they felt solid; the foul liquid had done its job. Laughing, she was glad that they only needed mending, not re-growing as Harry’s arm had back in school. Tentatively, she took a deep breath, and found that there was only an ache, not the sharp pain she had been trying to shut out after the avalanche.

‘Well, he may not be Poppy,’ she thought. ‘But he is awfully handy at healing.’ Sighing, she shut off the shower and dried off. Finally, she shut the little window and wrapped herself in the towel, wishing that hotel towels were at least a little bigger.

She grabbed her cooling coffee and headed back out into the bedroom. Professor Snape was still sitting in the chair. She was aware of him watching her as she set the coffee on the end table and started looking for her clothes. She found them lying across the chair on the other side of the table. She picked them up, but wrinkled her nose at the smell of the turtleneck; the efforts from yesterdays ‘adventure’ were very much in evidence. She tossed it aside and picked up the stretchy running pants. The right thigh was hanging funny. She reached up and as her hand closed around the fabric, she felt the crunchy dried blood.

‘Well, that won’t do,’ she thought.

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Severus watched her as she discovered the state of her clothes. He was about to offer her his own, he supposed that he could justify wearing his dirty robes. They would be too long for her, but she could make do with his Muggle clothes.

Apparently, she had other plans. He watched her as she pulled on her heavy black pants, and tried not to stare as she dropped the towel and pulled the suspenders over her bare breasts. She walked over and picked up her coat, he felt a little disappointment as the coat fell around her and covered her skin.

Reaching out, he pulled the scones from the box, placed them on the accompanying paper napkins and slid one over to the seat across from him. He watched as Miss Granger picked up her coffee and moved to sit at the table with him.

Her nose wrinkled as she took a sip of cold coffee. He reached over with his wand and uttered a little spell to heat remaining drink.

“Thanks,” she said.

He nodded and watched as she devoured the scone. ‘Good,’ he thought. ‘At least I won’t have to do much convincing to find a decent meal soon.’

Finally, when she finished her coffee and scone, he stood up.

“Miss Granger, I know you must be worried about Michael.” He watched as her eyes darkened and the look of fear flitted across her features momentarily. “I would like to help. I believe that I have the right potions to heal him, if you could provide a distraction to the hospital staff?”

He found his heart gave a hollow thump at the look of joy on her features. He watched as she jumped up and headed for the door.

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Hermione waited impatiently as the tall man picked up various bottles and stuck them in the box that the scones had been in. She held the door for him as he moved past her carrying the box.

When they reached the lobby, he stopped and placed the dark glasses she had given him on his face. She asked him why he was wearing them since they were just going a few doors down, and listened as he explained his eyes reaction to the sun earlier that morning.

“You’ve damaged your retinas,” she told him. “There must have been enough UV coming through the clouds when you hiked up to the yurt. Well, keep wearing the glasses, even after we get back to London. Your eyes may just be more sensitive because of all the time you spend in the dungeons.”

She watched as he nodded silently, and she remembered that when he had substituted in her third year, and then taught Defense Against the Dark Arts in her sixth year, he had closed the shutters in every class, blocking out the light. She started walking to the right, and stopped when he called out to her.

“Why are you going that way? The hospital is the other way.”

“Well,” she smiled at him, “I really don’t want to spend the rest of the day in these. They chafe.” She almost laughed as his eyebrows shot up; the habitual frown was erased for a moment.

She walked along the block with Professor Snape moving along beside her. She felt herself aware of him, as if his body heat was reaching out and caressing her. ‘Stupid,’ she scolded herself, ‘I only wanted to shock him, and distract him from being mean.’ As she walked, she tried to stifle the attraction her body insisted it was feeling, nothing overtly sexual, just a kind of magnetism and awareness.

When they reached Gabe’s shop, she pushed the door open for Snape so that he could walk in.

“’Mione!” She looked up as Gabriel came over and gave her a hug. “I heard you rode a ripper off the Cirque!”

She blushed and listened as he told her about his visit with Raf earlier that morning. He said that they had removed the breathing tube from Mike, but that he was still unconscious. She glanced at Professor Snape.

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“Hey!” Gabriel said as he walked over to Severus and reached up to pat him on the shoulder. “I see you made it. My gear work out alright for you?” He just nodded, feeling uncomfortable with the close quarters. It seemed to him that Gabriel understood this, because he backed off and turned his attention back to Miss Granger. Severus noted absently that his hair was blue today.

“So, what brings you in?”

Severus watched as she unzipped the top part of her coat, showing Gabriel her bare skin.

“My clothes were just too disgusting to put on this morning, and my pack was lost in the slide. I need something to wear.”

Gabe laughed and waved her off to the clothing section. He turned and eyed Severus.

“So,” he asked conversationally, “where’s my stuff?” Severus explained that they had come in late the night before and because they were headed to the hospital, he had left the snowshoes and poles at Muriel’s bar, and that he had planned on going back for them after she opened.

“Aw, don’t worry about it. I go up there for lunch anyhow. I’ll just grab them when I’m there. Ah,” he said as Miss Granger came into view and walked towards them. “Now that’s lovely.”

Severus turned and saw her walk out of the back of the shop; she was wearing black pants that hugged her legs. On her top was a soft, pale violet colored tunic. It had long sleeves and hung down to her hips, but a cord hidden within the fabric drew up the waist. Under the violet top was a pale chartreuse turtleneck. Her golden brown hair was pulled back into a utilitarian braid that fell flat between her shoulder blades.

“Gabe?” She looked briefly at Severus while she addressed the other man, “do you happen to have a smaller pack we could get, too?

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As they made their way up the street, Hermione was pleased with the morning. She had dry, clean clothes to wear, and a light pack slung over her shoulder, carrying the very potions that could help Michael.

She still had a few things to do before she would be willing to Apparate back to London. But, before she would do anything else, she was going to see that Michael got those potions. Gabe had told the Professor that he would pick up the snowshoes himself, so that was one less worry. He had also allowed as how he trusted her to send money for the clothes once she got to England. All told, she was as blessed with friends here as she was back home. Gabriel, Rafael, Muriel and Michael were as close and constant a group of friends as Neville, Harry, Ginny and Ron were, and she would miss them.

As she stepped into the hospital, with her quiet black shadow behind her, she suddenly got an idea of how to distract the nurses to give Snape a chance to get a few moments alone with Michael.

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“GET OFF!” The loud shout echoed through the halls, “I WANNA GO! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME STAY!”

Hermione struggled to hold Raf down against the bed. She had hollered for help moments earlier, she was pleased when four nurses and a doctor swiftly joined her. Raf continued to struggle and was proving to be quite the challenge to the staff.

“Lemme go!” Raf was quieting, but still adamant about leaving the hospital. “I can take care of myself.”

Hermione let go of him and stood up, looking at the doctor.

“Well,” she said, “it’s entirely up to you.”

She watched as the doctor frowned and walked over to pick up the chart. Everyone in the room braced themselves, waiting for his response.

“I’d rather have you wait until after lunch, but then I see no reason for you to stay. You are obviously regaining your strength.” He looked over his glasses at Raf as he watched his nurses pull back from holding his patient down to the bed. “I’ll go write the discharge orders.”

Hermione watched quietly as the hospital staff filed out of the room, leaving her alone with the previously violent patient. She looked down at Raf and said, “Thanks!” Before she broke out with giggles. Raf looked up at her.

“Sure, but some day you are going to have to explain to my why exactly you wanted me to pitch a big old fit in the middle of a hospital.”

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Severus walked along with Miss Granger. He had explained that Michael had been able to swallow the potions that he had poured into his mouth, but that he was unlikely to wake up for a few hours. She had suggested that they Apparate to her University, so that she could let them know she was leaving.

Once they arrived at the University, she took him to an obviously administrative area. Rows of windows lined a long hall, stepping up to one, she told the lady behind it that she needed to apply for graduation. Severus was startled as she began the process to receive diplomas is both Muggle Chemistry and Muggle Physics.

“Miss Granger, there has hardly been enough time passed since your graduation, to have earned two degrees.” Severus was not entirely ignorant in the Muggle educational system. It was not unheard of for young witches and wizards to seek Muggle degrees.

He watched as she blushed. “Actually Professor, I finished these up a while ago. I petitioned the Dean to allow be to take 26 unit semesters during my first few years. I’ve just been trying to finish a Biology degree before I left, but I suppose that can wait.”

Severus smirked at her; he recalled her obsessive, driven book-lust. She was unique among the students he taught, in that she actually expected him to teach, just as he had expected her to learn.

After she finished all her paperwork, and made arrangements for her diplomas to be mailed to her parents home, she suggested that they return to the hospital.

“No.”

She looked up at him, obviously confused.

“We need to eat,” he said simply. “In the past three days, I have had three cups of coffee, two scones and a small plate of eggs. It is past noon and while I can plainly see why you are so thin, I have no wish to become any thinner than I already am. We, Miss Granger, are going to find a restaurant.”

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A/N: Mmmm… food. I need to go cook dinner.

Domine- *blushes* Yeah, that was the Mt Everest of cliffies, wasn’t it? Hope you enjoyed your latest fix!

Moyra- You are most welcome! *beaming* As for the rest… all will be revealed in time.

Heartlight- thanks hon! Have fun getting ready to teach hordes of rugrats! Ideas for posters for your classroom- “Geology Rocks!” “Chemists are just mathematicians who can cook!” “Physicists response to ‘what is 2+2?’… it depends!” “Computer geeks know that 10 plus 10 equals 100!” I know, I know… bad puns.

Ruby wolf- now, that’s what I like to hear!