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rillaliciousHaha! I have chapter 2! In which there is more plot, and a couple more characters, and Hermione is making a list.
(Also,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
scatteredlogic, I have not forgotten about your birthday fic! It's still coming!)
Fandom: HP
Title: The Librarian's Debt, Chapter 2
Pairing: Snape/Hermione (side pairing of established Lee Jordan/Lavender Brown)
Rating: This chapter is PG
Word Count: ~2100
Summary: Hermione's research has taken her to an infamous underground library. She wants to find out exactly how Severus Snape came to work there, while he has questions of his own.
A/N: Special thanks toellensmithee for the beta read!
Follow this link for Chapter 1
If those long ago days in the Forest of Dean dragged on like years, Snape's three day waiting period is an eternity. She has so many questions to ask him upon their next meeting that by mid-afternoon of the first day, her handwritten list covers over a foot of parchment. She stares at it, frowns, casts a charm to banish the ink from the page.
She has to be more concise. He won't give her time to inquire until her curiosity is sated. She tries linear organization of her questions: How did he survive the snake bite? Or the burial, for that matter? The casket was closed, but Harry had made certain there was a body in there. Has he spent all these years with the vampires? She wipes a hand across her forehead. It's too much, still too much.
A pounding on the study door rattles her, and she drops her quill to the page in frustration.
"What is it?" Her voice is cold and impatient; it resonates with the terrible anticipation that has been haunting her day and night since she arrived at this house.
"Are you progressing at all?" The words tumble into the study as the door swings open. Lavender Jordan-Brown squints into the dimness as she steps inside.
"The only progress we seem to be making here is that you're now interrupting me every ten minutes instead of every five," Hermione says, the words regrettable as soon as they are spoken.
"I'm so sorry to inconvenience you with my dying son," Lavender says, and she inhales deeply. The shrill, predictable outburst is bubbling just below the surface.
"Your son is not the inconvenience here, Lavender. I have been working day and night to help you figure out what is going on. I've told you at least a thousand times that I need to concentrate if I'm going to get anything out of these books." Hermione waves her hand at the array of open tomes spread before her, the lie coming easily. She has each one nearly committed to memory by now; there is no cure to be found amongst them.
"He's my son. And I'm terrified for him. The least you can offer me is a little sympathy now and again."
"Did you hire me for sympathy, Lavender? Or did you hire me to find a cure? Because I can assure you that if it's the former, you've got the wrong woman."
"You know something?" says Lavender, the words punctuated by breathy tears. "I think there was a reason Ron walked out on you. A very good one." Her hair fans out in a flurry of long, loose curls as she turns away, storms from the room.
Hermione slumps into her chair; no matter how brief, every conversation with the woman is exhausting. She arrived here with thin-worn patience, and Lavender seems to want nothing more than to erode them further.
"She doesn't mean it," Lee says, standing in the doorway now. Long dreadlocks cover half his face, but she can see enough to know that he's trying to smile. "She hasn't slept in days."
"It's not her fault," Hermione says. She lifts her quill, drops it again when she sees the way it amplifies the trembling of her hand. "I shouldn't have spoken to her like that, given the situation."
"She honestly thinks he's not going to pull through," says Lee, and he's looking down now, his face disappearing entirely into the shadows. He wants her to contradict him, to give him some hope in this hopeless place. Hermione will do this for him, because he has never shown her anything but kindness.
"She's wrong," she says. "You know that, don't you?"
"Of course," says Lee, with just a hint of his old cockiness. "You know Lav. She'll be over it in an hour."
Hermione nods, glances at her list of questions, the ones she deemed more important than another fruitless search through all these books. She wonders if she's lost the capacity to feel guilt at all. Guilt won't help the child when he goes feverish and catatonic on the next full moon. Only Snape's book will help.
"I'll have the house-elf bring you a plate when dinner's ready," says Lee. "If you haven't changed your mind about joining us at the table."
She smiles just slightly then. "Somehow, I don't think Lavender would appreciate my presence."
Lee snorts. "Right, then. Smollett will bring it to you." He turns to leave, but hangs back, holding the door jamb as he looks over his shoulder at her. "And Hermione, thanks, mate. From me and Lav. For everything. After all you've been through--"
"Lee--"
"Just... thanks."
And he is gone before she can protest further. Hermione raises her quill, presses the tip of it to her parchment and watches the ink spread tiny, spidery fingers outward from its point.
Two more days to wait.
~*~*~
By the morning of the third day, she can hardly contain anticipation. She is up at dawn, sipping coffee at the large kitchen island in Brown Manor, feeling dwarfed by the massive expanse of space here. She knows this mansion once housed Lavender's parents, but Lavender is an only child, and she wonders how necessary any of this could be for three humans and a handful of house-elves.
"This place is too big," Lee says, as he strolls inside. "Isn't it?"
Hermione inhales the warm, richly scented curls of steam, looks up at him with a small smile. "Am I that transparent in my thoughts?"
Lee chuckles without smiling. "Nah. It's what I think every damn time I walk into this kitchen. Jesus. I told Lav we don't need all this, but she's attached to the place and, well, I have a hard time telling her no."
"It all seems a bit... unnecessary, but if she loves it here, it's good of you to let her stay."
Lee takes the kitchen stool beside her. "I've never known what to do with any of this," he says. "How to say no to anybody. After the war, anyway. I mean, it started with George losing Fred; who's going to say no to George after something like that? He wanted to date Angelina and I.." Lee's staring off into the distance, and Hermione feels like she's listening to a story not meant for her at all. "I didn't have the heart to get in the way of that. Not that I'm complaining, mind, because then I met Lav, and... Me and Angie weren't meant to be, but Lavender." He nods, smiling now. Still looking far off, but smiling. "She's my girl."
"That's good, Lee," she says, even though she has no context for this reply; she doesn't know what it's like to feel that way about anyone. "That's good." She sips her coffee. "Tonight I'm going back to that library I told you about. They should have a new book for me by now. One that I think will finally help."
"Really?" says Lee, and suddenly he's back in the room with her, no longer drifting on those memories haunting the outskirts of the war.
"Yes." She reaches out and squeezes his wrist. "I'm counting on it."
~*~*~
Night falls, finally, finally. Snape is waiting for her when she steps into the alleyway; complete darkness has only just cast its full cloak over them. It was silly, she thinks, to assume he wouldn't surface early. He's not bound to the absence of sun like the vampires. Not to her knowledge, at least.
"Eager, are we?" he says, and she thinks he looks faintly amused.
"This information is important to me. I'm sure you're aware of that," she says.
"Mmm, yes," he says, and it is in what he does not say that her curiosity is piqued. His voice is as full of questions as her own.
She wonders, if only for a moment, if he has spent as much of the last three days trying to puzzle her out as she has spent wondering about him. The heat of embarrassment warms her cheeks. He's looking at her, standing so still that she isn't certain a passerby would even notice him there. A vampire trick, perhaps, or something he once learned as a Death Eater? No, they were never particularly stealthy. He might have learned it under Dumbledore's tutelage.
He takes a step back, holds out an arm, his robes snapping like firecrackers as he turns sharply to escort her inside.
The scent of the library hits her again and she closes her eyes. She feels at home here by scent alone. She could live in this place without want of anything, surrounded by endless shelves of books. She wonders if he feels the same. In all those years at Hogwarts, she'd never imagined him a librarian.
She supposes they were too busy imagining him to be a monster.
"I believe this is what you seek." His voice is low and thoughtful, the book in his outstretched hand bound in deep blue leather.
She draws herself back to full consciousness. Their moment is almost over and she has yet to ask a single question.
Thank you, she wants to say, but there's such finality in that small courtesy. It says "Our time here is over" or "I'll be going now" or "This was the important piece of our interaction." And somehow, even though a child's life may be saved by what she finds in those pages, she's not ready for this conversation to end.
"How long have you been here?" she asks. This is the question she'd decided upon at the end of the second day. Its answer will give her context, and history, and even if it is the only answer he provides, it is a starting point for stringing together the mystery.
His lips twitch, just as they did last time, the book still suspended between them, his long fingers supporting it as her own hand flattens across its cover, a dance of tentative touch and release.
"Since the day they brought me back," he says. He's watching her now, unwaveringly.
"Brought you back... from the Shrieking Shack?"
"From the dead."
She swallows, tries to swallow, and nearly chokes.
"You were dead," she says.
"Quite."
"Of course you were dead. Harry saw you die."
"And I daresay Mr Potter recognizes death when it stares him in the face. Which I did."
She chews her lower lip, watches his gaze stray to her teeth, and stops immediately, soothing the skin with her tongue. He must think her ridiculously squeamish.
"But they didn't turn you into a vampire," she says.
"No." He chuckles now and the sound is dark and humorless, clinging to her skin like a chill. "Contrary to my previous convictions, there are worse things than becoming a dark creature."
"I'm sorry." Her words are so inadequate, so trite and regrettable.
"I suppose you would be."
She takes the book, clutches it in her hands, opens to the table of contents.
"Is it Lupin's?" he asks, and the previous conversation dissolves into the air around them. Too soon, too soon.
"I'm sorry?"
"The child you're trying to save."
"How did you--"
He gestures to the book. The Effects of Aggressive Lycanthropic Exposure on Offspring.
"No," she says. "Remus Lupin's boy is hardly a child anymore. This child's parent was exposed through an attack. Fenrir Greyback."
"Ah. Weasley, then."
She allows herself a smirk now. "Wrong again."
His gaze turns suddenly intense and she can feel the weight of it on her shoulders, palpable and uncomfortable.
"Am I?" he says, the lightness in his tone contradicting his expression.
She decides the man is even more infuriating in his current state than he ever was as a professor. He is unreadable.
"Yes," she says. "The little boy belongs to Lavender Brown and Lee Jordan. They both attended Hogwarts whilst you taught there."
"I'm not an amnesiac, Miss Granger. I do remember those students. Jordan, in particular, had some rather colorful things to say about me on that dissident radio show of his."
"Dissident radio show," she says. "So you didn't approve."
Snape raises one eyebrow and does not answer.
"Well," she says finally, when she cannot discern a way to halt the silent construction of this intangible wall between them, "I thank you for your assistance." She turns to leave, somewhat defeated.
He doesn't move, doesn't answer, and she forces her steps quick and even, watches the door come into view along the edge of the last tall stack. She expects, in all her logical calculations, for the next sound to be the clicking of the latch as she turns the door handle. Instead, it is a single word. The last word she ever imagined would come from his lips.
"Stay."
***
(Also,
scatteredlogic, I have not forgotten about your birthday fic! It's still coming!)Fandom: HP
Title: The Librarian's Debt, Chapter 2
Pairing: Snape/Hermione (side pairing of established Lee Jordan/Lavender Brown)
Rating: This chapter is PG
Word Count: ~2100
Summary: Hermione's research has taken her to an infamous underground library. She wants to find out exactly how Severus Snape came to work there, while he has questions of his own.
A/N: Special thanks to
ellensmithee for the beta read! Follow this link for Chapter 1
If those long ago days in the Forest of Dean dragged on like years, Snape's three day waiting period is an eternity. She has so many questions to ask him upon their next meeting that by mid-afternoon of the first day, her handwritten list covers over a foot of parchment. She stares at it, frowns, casts a charm to banish the ink from the page.
She has to be more concise. He won't give her time to inquire until her curiosity is sated. She tries linear organization of her questions: How did he survive the snake bite? Or the burial, for that matter? The casket was closed, but Harry had made certain there was a body in there. Has he spent all these years with the vampires? She wipes a hand across her forehead. It's too much, still too much.
A pounding on the study door rattles her, and she drops her quill to the page in frustration.
"What is it?" Her voice is cold and impatient; it resonates with the terrible anticipation that has been haunting her day and night since she arrived at this house.
"Are you progressing at all?" The words tumble into the study as the door swings open. Lavender Jordan-Brown squints into the dimness as she steps inside.
"The only progress we seem to be making here is that you're now interrupting me every ten minutes instead of every five," Hermione says, the words regrettable as soon as they are spoken.
"I'm so sorry to inconvenience you with my dying son," Lavender says, and she inhales deeply. The shrill, predictable outburst is bubbling just below the surface.
"Your son is not the inconvenience here, Lavender. I have been working day and night to help you figure out what is going on. I've told you at least a thousand times that I need to concentrate if I'm going to get anything out of these books." Hermione waves her hand at the array of open tomes spread before her, the lie coming easily. She has each one nearly committed to memory by now; there is no cure to be found amongst them.
"He's my son. And I'm terrified for him. The least you can offer me is a little sympathy now and again."
"Did you hire me for sympathy, Lavender? Or did you hire me to find a cure? Because I can assure you that if it's the former, you've got the wrong woman."
"You know something?" says Lavender, the words punctuated by breathy tears. "I think there was a reason Ron walked out on you. A very good one." Her hair fans out in a flurry of long, loose curls as she turns away, storms from the room.
Hermione slumps into her chair; no matter how brief, every conversation with the woman is exhausting. She arrived here with thin-worn patience, and Lavender seems to want nothing more than to erode them further.
"She doesn't mean it," Lee says, standing in the doorway now. Long dreadlocks cover half his face, but she can see enough to know that he's trying to smile. "She hasn't slept in days."
"It's not her fault," Hermione says. She lifts her quill, drops it again when she sees the way it amplifies the trembling of her hand. "I shouldn't have spoken to her like that, given the situation."
"She honestly thinks he's not going to pull through," says Lee, and he's looking down now, his face disappearing entirely into the shadows. He wants her to contradict him, to give him some hope in this hopeless place. Hermione will do this for him, because he has never shown her anything but kindness.
"She's wrong," she says. "You know that, don't you?"
"Of course," says Lee, with just a hint of his old cockiness. "You know Lav. She'll be over it in an hour."
Hermione nods, glances at her list of questions, the ones she deemed more important than another fruitless search through all these books. She wonders if she's lost the capacity to feel guilt at all. Guilt won't help the child when he goes feverish and catatonic on the next full moon. Only Snape's book will help.
"I'll have the house-elf bring you a plate when dinner's ready," says Lee. "If you haven't changed your mind about joining us at the table."
She smiles just slightly then. "Somehow, I don't think Lavender would appreciate my presence."
Lee snorts. "Right, then. Smollett will bring it to you." He turns to leave, but hangs back, holding the door jamb as he looks over his shoulder at her. "And Hermione, thanks, mate. From me and Lav. For everything. After all you've been through--"
"Lee--"
"Just... thanks."
And he is gone before she can protest further. Hermione raises her quill, presses the tip of it to her parchment and watches the ink spread tiny, spidery fingers outward from its point.
Two more days to wait.
~*~*~
By the morning of the third day, she can hardly contain anticipation. She is up at dawn, sipping coffee at the large kitchen island in Brown Manor, feeling dwarfed by the massive expanse of space here. She knows this mansion once housed Lavender's parents, but Lavender is an only child, and she wonders how necessary any of this could be for three humans and a handful of house-elves.
"This place is too big," Lee says, as he strolls inside. "Isn't it?"
Hermione inhales the warm, richly scented curls of steam, looks up at him with a small smile. "Am I that transparent in my thoughts?"
Lee chuckles without smiling. "Nah. It's what I think every damn time I walk into this kitchen. Jesus. I told Lav we don't need all this, but she's attached to the place and, well, I have a hard time telling her no."
"It all seems a bit... unnecessary, but if she loves it here, it's good of you to let her stay."
Lee takes the kitchen stool beside her. "I've never known what to do with any of this," he says. "How to say no to anybody. After the war, anyway. I mean, it started with George losing Fred; who's going to say no to George after something like that? He wanted to date Angelina and I.." Lee's staring off into the distance, and Hermione feels like she's listening to a story not meant for her at all. "I didn't have the heart to get in the way of that. Not that I'm complaining, mind, because then I met Lav, and... Me and Angie weren't meant to be, but Lavender." He nods, smiling now. Still looking far off, but smiling. "She's my girl."
"That's good, Lee," she says, even though she has no context for this reply; she doesn't know what it's like to feel that way about anyone. "That's good." She sips her coffee. "Tonight I'm going back to that library I told you about. They should have a new book for me by now. One that I think will finally help."
"Really?" says Lee, and suddenly he's back in the room with her, no longer drifting on those memories haunting the outskirts of the war.
"Yes." She reaches out and squeezes his wrist. "I'm counting on it."
~*~*~
Night falls, finally, finally. Snape is waiting for her when she steps into the alleyway; complete darkness has only just cast its full cloak over them. It was silly, she thinks, to assume he wouldn't surface early. He's not bound to the absence of sun like the vampires. Not to her knowledge, at least.
"Eager, are we?" he says, and she thinks he looks faintly amused.
"This information is important to me. I'm sure you're aware of that," she says.
"Mmm, yes," he says, and it is in what he does not say that her curiosity is piqued. His voice is as full of questions as her own.
She wonders, if only for a moment, if he has spent as much of the last three days trying to puzzle her out as she has spent wondering about him. The heat of embarrassment warms her cheeks. He's looking at her, standing so still that she isn't certain a passerby would even notice him there. A vampire trick, perhaps, or something he once learned as a Death Eater? No, they were never particularly stealthy. He might have learned it under Dumbledore's tutelage.
He takes a step back, holds out an arm, his robes snapping like firecrackers as he turns sharply to escort her inside.
The scent of the library hits her again and she closes her eyes. She feels at home here by scent alone. She could live in this place without want of anything, surrounded by endless shelves of books. She wonders if he feels the same. In all those years at Hogwarts, she'd never imagined him a librarian.
She supposes they were too busy imagining him to be a monster.
"I believe this is what you seek." His voice is low and thoughtful, the book in his outstretched hand bound in deep blue leather.
She draws herself back to full consciousness. Their moment is almost over and she has yet to ask a single question.
Thank you, she wants to say, but there's such finality in that small courtesy. It says "Our time here is over" or "I'll be going now" or "This was the important piece of our interaction." And somehow, even though a child's life may be saved by what she finds in those pages, she's not ready for this conversation to end.
"How long have you been here?" she asks. This is the question she'd decided upon at the end of the second day. Its answer will give her context, and history, and even if it is the only answer he provides, it is a starting point for stringing together the mystery.
His lips twitch, just as they did last time, the book still suspended between them, his long fingers supporting it as her own hand flattens across its cover, a dance of tentative touch and release.
"Since the day they brought me back," he says. He's watching her now, unwaveringly.
"Brought you back... from the Shrieking Shack?"
"From the dead."
She swallows, tries to swallow, and nearly chokes.
"You were dead," she says.
"Quite."
"Of course you were dead. Harry saw you die."
"And I daresay Mr Potter recognizes death when it stares him in the face. Which I did."
She chews her lower lip, watches his gaze stray to her teeth, and stops immediately, soothing the skin with her tongue. He must think her ridiculously squeamish.
"But they didn't turn you into a vampire," she says.
"No." He chuckles now and the sound is dark and humorless, clinging to her skin like a chill. "Contrary to my previous convictions, there are worse things than becoming a dark creature."
"I'm sorry." Her words are so inadequate, so trite and regrettable.
"I suppose you would be."
She takes the book, clutches it in her hands, opens to the table of contents.
"Is it Lupin's?" he asks, and the previous conversation dissolves into the air around them. Too soon, too soon.
"I'm sorry?"
"The child you're trying to save."
"How did you--"
He gestures to the book. The Effects of Aggressive Lycanthropic Exposure on Offspring.
"No," she says. "Remus Lupin's boy is hardly a child anymore. This child's parent was exposed through an attack. Fenrir Greyback."
"Ah. Weasley, then."
She allows herself a smirk now. "Wrong again."
His gaze turns suddenly intense and she can feel the weight of it on her shoulders, palpable and uncomfortable.
"Am I?" he says, the lightness in his tone contradicting his expression.
She decides the man is even more infuriating in his current state than he ever was as a professor. He is unreadable.
"Yes," she says. "The little boy belongs to Lavender Brown and Lee Jordan. They both attended Hogwarts whilst you taught there."
"I'm not an amnesiac, Miss Granger. I do remember those students. Jordan, in particular, had some rather colorful things to say about me on that dissident radio show of his."
"Dissident radio show," she says. "So you didn't approve."
Snape raises one eyebrow and does not answer.
"Well," she says finally, when she cannot discern a way to halt the silent construction of this intangible wall between them, "I thank you for your assistance." She turns to leave, somewhat defeated.
He doesn't move, doesn't answer, and she forces her steps quick and even, watches the door come into view along the edge of the last tall stack. She expects, in all her logical calculations, for the next sound to be the clicking of the latch as she turns the door handle. Instead, it is a single word. The last word she ever imagined would come from his lips.
"Stay."
***
