A Dish Served Cold

Chapter 20 – Shock

“Preposterous!” Severus snorted at the very thought of him as some foolish teacup reader. Wouldn’t he have known if he were a Seer? He could think of several occasions when knowing the future would have been bloody handy. “I think I would have noticed somewhere along the way,” he added for good measure.

“Yes, well, I am certain you would have, had your talents not been suppressed.” His grandmother mumbled that bit rather quickly and he narrowed his eyes in sudden suspicion. She looked rather ashamed and he began to have a bad feeling about this.

“Suppressed?” He jumped on the word and watched her wriggle uncomfortably in her chair.

“Yes, well, Albus and I…” He cut her off with an abrupt gesture. He had a great deal of familiarity with Albus’ meddling ways.

“No doubt,” he drawled. “Pray tell me why you have decided to reveal all this now?”

“Sarit is here in the castle. I have looked at all her children and grandchildren and I very much doubt any of them are Seers. From the very sour attitude she has displayed, I have my suspicions that she is up to something.” He watched his grandmother chew on her lip in a manner that reminded him rather forcibly of Hermione. It was a pity the old bat was such a snob, the two of them might have gotten along otherwise.

“Such as…?” he enquired.

“Well, she tried to kill your mother several times before the wedding, certain that moving to England and marrying your father would bring about her vision.” The old woman’s voice was so matter of fact that it made his blood run cold. He had always known that Grandmother Sarit was cruel, but he hadn’t known she was quite so far gone as to try to murder her own daughter.

“She is that certain of her vision?” Severus felt a cold horror creeping over him. As if worrying about Voldemort wasn’t enough, now he had a homicidal Seer on his hands.

“Yes. I tried years ago to convince her that a Seer only sees one possible future, that the future is always remaking itself as we make different choices, but she would never listen to me. She was too enamored of the power she wielded. She refused to see its limitations.” Severus was only listening with half his mind, the rest of him was rapidly calculating the best way to get Sarit out of England with all possible speed.

“What would she do if she knew what I was?” he wondered aloud.

“She would either kill you or take you back to Nazareth with her where she could control you.” The old woman sounded perfectly sincere and in her tweed robes and sensible shoes it was hard to think her merely eccentric. There was something very serious and stable about her, humorless, yes, but stolid and sure. Some small part of him wondered what his childhood would have been like if she had been in it.

“As many have found out to their detriment, Grandmother, I am not an easy man to control.” His voice could have frozen oxygen and even his formidable grandmother looked taken aback. He had much to plan for.

Lucius was making a list. On it were all the half-blood and Mudblood girls still single after the latest flurry of weddings and engagements. His list was growing smaller, but even so it contained some pawns worth playing with.

He hadn’t heard back yet from his last bid for Draco’s hand in marriage and he was amusing himself by imagining that awkward creature pacing frantically – no doubt tripping over furniture as she did so – while she tried to find a way out a trap that was closing around her.

He lounged on his bed, feeling fairly happy and content. He missed Narcissa the most at these moments; she would have enjoyed the situation as much as he did. Still, she was better off at their French estates, far away from the loathsome wretches that snubbed her in the streets these days. Just wait until Voldemort takes over, he thought with some amusement. The same folk who snubbed them today would toady up just as quickly tomorrow. Most people were spineless sheep who did what they were told without thought. He pictured a future where the person giving the orders was himself and chuckled.

There were so many ways to amuse yourself when you ran the world.

Tonks flung herself in a chair and considered suicide. Draco or Percy; either way her life would be ruined. At least Draco would just rape her and probably poison her. Percy would bore her to death. She really wasn’t sure which one was worse.

“Dora?” Her father’s voice came drifting up the staircase and she sighed. She had never been able to get him to call her Tonks like everyone else.

“Up here, Dad,” she called. Her father came wandering up the stairs and through the open trap door that led into the attic. He was, in Tonks’ opinion anyway, still the handsomest man in the world. Bent over from the low ceiling he made his way around trunks and boxes until he reached the old parlor set Tonks had appropriated as a child. He settled into an aged velvet loveseat with hand-crocheted doilies on it and leaned back with a sigh.

“So how’s the thinking going?” he asked her with a sad expression on his face. Tonks felt a terrible wrenching in her heart as she looked at him. Her father was in his fifties, which was young and vigorous for a Wizard, but her father wasn’t a wizard. Lines ran from his nose to the corners of his mouth, they were incised deeply around his eyes and gray hairs were starting to outnumber the honey-gold ones. He was growing old. As a Muggle, he would be lucky to make it to eighty or ninety and Tonks felt a pang of impending loss, looking at him.

“The thinking is going very hard,” she answered him from her curled-up position in an old armchair. This attic, with its clutter and dust, had always been where she had gone to think things through. It was as though these old things, permeated with years of living, could grant her some of the wisdom they had gained.

“This Weasley boy, he’s not a bad sort you say?” Her father was watching her and she sighed at the look in his eyes.

“He’s pompous, boring and self-righteous, but no, he’s not a bad sort.” Her reply was heavy with irony, but her father merely nodded.

“Then you’d best have him, Dora.” He was utterly serious and she opened her mouth to protest, and then shut it again. After all, what were her other options? “Our efforts at repealing this law have been useless. All our protests and marches have been met with indifference. They’ll marry you off to Lucius’ brat with no compunctions and you’ll end up dead in a week.” The rather bleak picture he presented her with was pretty close to her own analysis of the situation and she sighed.

“I know, Dad.” She dropped her eyes to the patterns her booted toe had traced in the dust and nodded slowly. “I’ll sign Percy’s petition after dinner.”

Tonks wondered if she had ever felt as miserable in her life as she did at that moment.

Georgian gazed out the window and thought of Therese. Helena Snape was the spitting image of her dead mother and it had come as a bit of a shock to him when she had walked into his classroom for the first time. It was like seeing a ghost.

He had been overjoyed to get the Defense Against the Dark Arts position and to teach at Hogwarts. Despite what was happening in the Wizarding World, or perhaps because of it, he wanted nothing more than to pass on everything he had learned. He wanted these children to avoid the mistakes of the past and build a future without the ingrained prejudices that were dooming their parents.

Helena was the perfect example of what he wanted to avoid. If Therese hadn’t married Taliesin Snape she would be alive today. If she hadn’t been marked out as impure by the forces of narrow-minded bigotry and if she hadn’t married into an old pureblood family, she could be, right now, standing beside one Georgian Tamarind, laughing and full of light.

If only… He snorted at his own despondent thoughts. Therese would not be amused to know that twenty years later he was still standing there, waiting for her to turn around and come back to him. She had loved Taliesin, despite the age difference, despite the man’s arrogance and ill temper, she had seen things in him that stirred her heart and she had married him.

Georgian still couldn’t understand it, but he had come to accept it. Helena though, sitting there in his classroom, looked so like her mother at that age. It hurt to see that sweet smile and those huge luminous green eyes turned to Neville Longbottom. At least Neville was a good lad and would treat her well.

She wasn’t her mother and Georgian wasn’t the boy he had once been. He turned from the window and looked around the comfortable quarters he had here at Hogwarts and shrugged.

The past was past and it was time to get over the losses he had suffered. It was time to finally bury that old dream and get on with his life. He felt a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. Therese would have been pleased with her daughter.

Severus pinched the bridge of his nose and tried to ignore the speculative looks of the other staff. It was bad enough that the dunderheaded students were full of idle gossip, but that the teachers, who were all old enough to know better, were such a bunch of old hens was irritating beyond belief.

“So, Severus, how is your wife?” Hooch came out with the question the whole room was obviously dying to ask.

“Ask her yourself,” he growled, his temper frayed by the bluff good humor in Hooch’s eyes. She no doubt thought herself quite witty, but he was in no mood for her jibes. Hooch merely burst into her usual horsy laugh, amused no end by his rudeness. You just couldn’t insult some people, he thought bitterly.

Poppy pursed her lips and folded her hands neatly, frowning at Hooch. She was still not reconciled to married students at Hogwarts and her new assistant, a sprightly and over-eager young thing in green robes with a pocketful of sweets, was an offence to her dignity and position.

The girl, with her plain dun brown hair and washed-out blue eyes wasn’t much to look at, but she was as friendly as a puppy and twice as annoying. Severus strained to remember her name and finally dredged it up with an effort. Margaret Goody, that was it, or something like it anyway. She insisted on the diminutive Maggie, which is why he called her Mistress Goody. He hated nicknames.

All the teachers were looking as bored with the usual proceedings as Severus himself was, and even Albus was fiddling with his teacup. In his usual corner, Georgian brooded over a scone with an abstracted gaze. Severus would have rather been playing cards with the other man than sitting here listening to the same old things.

“I can’t understand why you persist, sir, in saying as how we can’t abide by the rules.” Filch was still droning on and Snape tuned it all out again. After all the years that Albus had been running Hogwarts, hadn’t the daft idiot figured out that thumbscrews and whips would not be returned to service here? He decided that he had had enough.

“Be done with it, Filch. You know I’d like to horsewhip the lot of them, but we can’t change what is. Leave off already,” Severus snapped. Filch gave him a hurt look, but Severus was unmoved. While the idea of clapping a few members of the student body in irons wasn’t unappealing, even Severus knew it was impractical at best. “If you think their parents wouldn’t pitch a fit over their precious darlings being dipped in hot oil, you haven’t been paying attention.” Filch nodded glumly in response.

“Modern parenting! All a lot of nonsense, I say,” Filch muttered darkly and Severus couldn’t help but nod in agreement. It occurred to him that Hermione would be unlikely to allow him to flog their children and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

He found that part of him was strangely relieved to know that Hermione would curb his excesses where any offspring were concerned, but part of him was also resentful of the fact that he was married only four days and already felt henpecked.

Throughout most of his life the only people whose opinion of him mattered were either people he was afraid of, such as Voldemort and Lucius, or the people he actually liked, such as Albus, Minerva and Lilly. Everyone else could go hang. Hermione was now in a category of one. She could make his life acutely miserable, but he wasn’t at all certain that he liked her and he certainly wasn’t afraid of her.

What was at the core of it was that she trusted him. Bugger. Except for Albus, Lilly and Minerva, no one in his whole life had ever trusted him for anything. Albus and Minerva trusted because he had proved himself to them time and time again. Hermione simply had faith in him, rather like the now deceased Lilly.

It was a daunting thought.

Hermione watched her husband as he fiddled idly with the chess pieces, but made no move to set them up. His brow was furrowed and he appeared to be deep in thought.

“Knut for your thoughts.” She kept her voice gentle, not sure whether it was dangerous to disturb him or not.

“I have yet to be summoned and it concerns me. However, I think it best if you comply with Miss Snape’s request and participate in the wedding. Longbottom is your friend and it might seem odd if you are already broken to my will after only four days.” Hermione wasn’t sure how to respond to that statement.

“Are you planning on breaking me to your will?” she asked, rather nonplussed at the totally bland regard he had turned on her as he spoke and the colorless tone of his voice.

“You do not think enough on how things appear to others,” he chided her with a frown. “To the outside world, I am a monster of a husband, cold and cruel. I am kept from outright abuse only by the watchful gaze of the Headmaster and you are terribly unhappy in this sham of a marriage.” He was quite serious and she sighed.

“I know that, though it seems terribly unfair when you’ve been so nice to me.”

“God save me from Gryffindors,” he muttered fervently, rolling his eyes to heaven in exasperation. “Try to remember that half of Slytherin house is in the enemy camp, will you? Just pretend sufficiently so that you don’t get me killed out of your sense of fairness.” He nearly snarled the last word and she winced.

“I will try, Severus.” She was feeling rather subdued and wished that she hadn’t said a thing to him. He leaned back in his chair, a pawn dangling from his fingers.

“Hermione. I am glad that you are so deluded as to think that I have been nice to you. I am sorry that you have to act in way that is contrary to your Gryffindor nature. I do truly wish that Voldemort would have a convenient accident and blow himself into the next world with some alacrity,” he intoned with a great deal of amused irony. “However, the world is as it is. We must bow to necessity and right now necessity demands subterfuge.” He finished off the last bit rather fiercely and she nodded vigorously.

“I will try harder,” she assured him.

“Which reminds me. I have some papers for you to sign.” His mercurial switches of mood kept her perpetually off-balance and she merely blinked at him in surprise as he whipped out a scroll. He unrolled it on the desk and gestured her forwards. She peered down and realized that is was a Wizarding Life Insurance policy for Severus with her as the beneficiary. He handed her a quill and she hesitated. “What is wrong?”

“I don’t want to profit from your death,” she told him with a touch of embarrassment, expecting him to ridicule her for her sentiment. Instead he simply gave her a thin-lipped smile and nodded.

“I thank you for the thought, Madame, but I would feel much better knowing that you are adequately provided for, just in case.” Hermione looked at him for a long while, weighing the sincerity of his gaze before she signed the parchment. It was a warm pleasant thought knowing that he worried about her, that he had planned for the future.

“I’ll just toddle off and tell Neville that I will act for Helena in the wedding.” She changed the subject abruptly, suddenly feeling as though she wasn’t really sure who he was anymore. He constantly surprised her, but never so much as when he was kind to her.

“Very well, but take the Baron with you. I have no doubt that either the Malfoy twit or one of his dimwitted cronies will be lurking about waiting to accost you.” Hermione wanted to protest that she could handle Malfoy with her wand arm tied behind her back, but his gaze was stern. She nodded and went off to find the ghost.

She wondered whether she would ever grow used to this new life.