A Dish Served Cold

Chapter 22 – Surprises

Neville stood bravely beside the Headmaster and tried not to grin openly. Last night had been a surprise. He had known that Helena was pretty, smart and interested in many of the same things that he was, but he had been concerned that they wouldn’t be … compatible in other areas. The intense snogging session in the tool shed had put that fear to rest and he was now really looking forward to the wedding night. He was seventeen, not as inexperienced as his friends all thought, and about to marry a girl who made his toes curl, all in all, not so bad a thing.

The door to the Great Hall creaked open as more people arrived for the ceremony and he bounced a little on his toes beside Hermione, who would be calling Air for the ceremony. Harry was calling Water, Ron had taken on Fire and Dean, looking uncomfortable in his robes, had agreed to call Earth. With his four best friends and supporters around him he awaited the last guests and his bride -to- be.

“I know where the Hall is, young man.” The loud and very familiar voice sent a shiver through Neville. Great Merlin, his Grandmother had arrived. She came through the door on Professor Tamarind’s arm, her face pinched and her hair scraped back in the usual tight bun. She had forgone the vulture hat for her formal wedding attire: the same burgundy robes and pointed hat she had worn to every wedding for the last eighty years.

“Psst, Neville, - is THAT your grandmother?” Dean hissed under his breath, obviously horrified.

“Yes,” Harry replied with a sympathetic look at Neville.

Grandmother was escorted to her seat where she sat proudly, staring down anyone who dared even glance at her. Neville winced at her poor manners, but he was determined to enjoy his wedding and she wasn’t going to ruin it for him.

“I will not have such a shoddy affair for my daughter!” Came a shout from the hallway and a tall, saturnine man in black robes that flapped behind him in an eerily familiar manner burst through the doors.

Beside Neville, Dumbledore drew in a surprised breath and then moved quickly to intercept this stranger, who could really only be one person – the infamous Taliesin Snape.

Neville studied him, seeing Professor Snape’s genetics quite clearly, but also noting the strong differences.

Taliesin was brown as a nut, – brown hair, brown eyes, and tanned skin. He had a strangely fey quality about him, as though he had been born in the woods and raised by pixies. There was something utterly wild about him, an unpredictability that was quite disturbing. His gestures, as he talked animatedly to the Headmaster, were agitated and somewhat feral, as though he might attack at any moment.

Neville was both fascinated and repelled by the man, but his study turned to alarm as he saw his grandmother sailing majestically to engage in battle with the interloper.

“See here, young man!” She was using the aristocratic voice that could turn debutantes to jelly, but the elder Snape turned a deadly eyebrow on her and Neville saw something he had never seen in all his life. His Grandmother faltered and then took a step away from him. Taliesin Snape had, with a single glare, backed Mrs. Longbottom down.

It was a sight Neville would always treasure.

The tiny cottage that Percy Weasley had purchased to escape from his family was cramped and a little rundown, but it was far better than she had been expecting.

Downstairs was a small kitchen with a breakfast nook, a sitting room with papers, scrolls and books neatly tucked away on shelves and in pigeonholes, a secondhand settee and a battered receiver for the Wizarding Radio. Upstairs was a bedroom that scarcely could fit a double bed and wardrobe, and a washroom just big enough for one person at a time.

Yet, it was warm and cozy, the style masculine, but not overpoweringly so and meticulously clean. For all her clumsiness, Tonks wasn’t a slob; she hated a dirty house, even though she doubted that she could have folded her laundry as precisely as Percy did. One look in his sock drawer had been enough to make her want to flee the house in terror. The neat little rows of folded fabric had been a definite sign of a disordered mind.

It was home now, though, and she needed to adapt to it. She needed to adapt to him. She needed to stop thinking of her wedding night.
Tonks looked up from her paper as Percy came down to breakfast. She then ducked her head back behind the brightly colored, shifting images to hide her face.

Last night had been surprising. Relieved of his glasses and tightly tailored robes Percy was… energetic. She hid a blush behind an advertisement for cauldron cleaner as he settled at the table. It hadn’t been the best sex of her life, but it certainly hadn’t been the worst. But most of all, it was entirely contrary to what she had expected of prim, proper Percy Weasley, Bill, maybe, but not Percy.

“What is that?” The supercilious tone broke into her thoughts like a bucket of icy water being dashed on her and she dropped the paper. She had been hoping he wouldn’t say anything.

“Toast and kippers,” she enunciated carefully, keeping her tone even.

“It’s black and soggy,” he pointed out with a frown. Those ginger eyebrows drawn together were nowhere near as intimidating as, say, Snape’s, but they were quite annoying.

“I had some problems with the cooking charms,” she mumbled, embarrassed by her failure and also a trifle miffed at his tone.

He stared at her for a long time and then without saying a word he rose and dumped the entire breakfast tray into the rubbish bin. Her jaw dropped open in shock, but he merely raised an eyebrow at her.

“If you would allow me,” he said in repressive tones. She sighed and nodded, since truth to tell, she hadn’t wanted to eat the horrid mess herself.

With a few quick wand waves and incantations, he quickly had a rasher of bacon, a plate of eggs and hot coffee made and served. The ease with which he had conjured breakfast made her squirm in her chair. She had always been terrible with household charms and he was making her feel like a complete incompetent.

“Thank you,” she forced out, struggling to maintain her composure. She had known that she didn’t want to be married to him. Last night might have been nice, but it didn’t change the essential incompatibility of their personalities.

Percy frowned again and opened his mouth to say something, then seemed to think better of it. He was quiet for a while as they served themselves and ate. He would pause occasionally and look at her, but still he said nothing, until finally by the end of the meal Tonks was ready to beat the words out of him.

“What?” she finally asked him, with a sharp edge in her voice. He flushed and dropped his eyes to his plate and then looked back up at her, those startlingly blue eyes masked by his glasses.

“I don’t expect you to keep house for me. I have a House Elf to do all that; the Ministry assigned her to me. She’s off right now for our Honeymoon, but she’ll be back in a few days. You aren’t my mother, you have a career and I never expected you to cook and clean for me.” He trailed off and she found herself staring at him with her mouth gone round and her eyes wide. “You don’t have to be Molly Weasley, you know,” he added rather softly. The words had tumbled out of his mouth in a rush and he looked as though he wasn’t sure whether she was going to yell or merely hex him.

Relief flooded through her. He didn’t expect her to be a domestic goddess. She grinned at him, suddenly feeling a burst of affection for her new husband.

“You’re all right, Percy Weasley,” she replied and he let out the breath he had been holding.

“You’re not bad either.” There were layers to that comment and she found herself blushing again, much to his amusement.

“Do you mind one thing, though?” Now he looked definitely apprehensive and she braced herself.

“What?”

“Can I stop calling you Tonks now?” It was a plaintive request and she found herself sighing in acquiescence.

“My father calls me Dora,” she muttered and his face brightened.

“Dora, that’s quite pretty.” She found that it didn’t sound quite as bad as she had feared, but it still wasn’t her favorite appellation. Still, if he could stand being called ‘Percy’, she supposed that ‘Dora’ wasn’t all that much worse.

“Just try not to use in front of any of the other Aurors,” she warned gravely. “I’d never hear the end of it.”

Ginny snuggled back down into the blankets and closer to Remus. He radiated a lot of heat and Ginny, who was perpetually cold, was luxuriating in the unaccustomed warmth. It was strange to be in a room that wasn’t her dorm. This little house was the Headmaster’s solution to a strange dilemma.

The regents had refused to allow a werewolf to live on Hogwarts grounds, yet they had insisted that Ginny reside close enough to attend classes easily. Professor Dumbledore had compromised by buying this cottage on the outskirts of Hogsmeade and installing a floo connection to the school that would only admit Ginny.

It was ingenious and it also allowed her privacy in which to come to terms with the sleeping man beside her. He was quite an enigma and not at all what she’d been expecting.

For a quiet, sweet and rather shy man, Remus was quite passionate in bed. Not as kinky as the Slytherin boy she’d been seeing in fifth year, but far more intense than she had been expecting.

If he’d been surprised that she wasn’t a virgin, he had made no comment and shown no reluctance, though she suspected that a conversation was coming sometime in the future. She wondered if he minded, or if her experience had come as a relief to him. He was very hard to read.
She propped her head up on her elbow and studied his face while it was relaxed and peaceful. It was harder to be afraid of him after she had seen him naked. He was covered in scars and not as young as her previous lovers had been, but there was something about him that transcended all that. Maybe it was the scent of him, or the gentleness of his hands, or the way he had looked at her with infinite tenderness – she wasn’t sure.

She did know that it would be frighteningly easy to fall in love with him. He knew just when to be kind and when to be rough and it had been a revelation to her after the selfishness and immaturity of her previous boyfriends. He had seen to her needs diligently and read her responses with gratifying speed. She could get used to that quite easily.

She ran a hand down his cheek, tracing the line of an old scar and felt a welling of sorrow in her heart. He really was her soulmate; they fit together so very well that it was becoming glaringly obvious. Yet, she would be lucky to enjoy ten years with him; she certainly couldn’t look forward to the long happy marriage that her parents could.

Lines around his eyes and mouth, gray hairs scattered through the muddy blonde, the drawn and tired look of his face – it was all there before her. She could see the toll his disease was taking on him. She was going to spend the next decade watching him be torn apart by the wolf inside him, watching him die.

She turned her face into the pillow and tried to cry as quietly as she could.

Neville leaned back against the closed door and let out a long sigh. Helena was watching him with a grin on her face and obviously trying not to laugh.

“You thought that was funny?” he accused and she shrugged.

“Laugh or cry, those were the only options,” she shot back and he snorted, seeing her point.

The wedding dress she still wore was a lovely confection of rose shades with silk flowers bobbing as she moved. The soft pink of the bodice was tinged with deeper shades as it fell to the skirt’s hemline and the flowers bloomed in a diagonal line up and across her chest, as though a climbing rose had attached itself to her. More flowers, real ones this time, adorned her hair, the rich auburn hanging loose around her shoulders and her green eyes were filled with mischief and merriment. She looked delicious.

“Your father and my grandmother are the two most appalling people on the planet.” He was beginning to see the humor of the situation himself.

“Oh nonsense, Neville, I am sure that there are one or two Death Eaters that could teach them a lesson in rudeness.” She was grinning now and he found that his mind just wasn’t on the conversation. There was far too much of his blood being drawn away from his brain to maintain as much coherency as he would have liked.

“I am sure you must be right,” he conceded and put the image of the glaring match between his granny and her father that nearly ignited the air between them out of his mind. He tried to forget his ruined wedding banquet or the minor war that raged through the castle afterwards. One image though, he treasured.

Even as he approached his charming young bride, he kept the image of Hermione dumping the punch bowl on Taliesin Snape in his mind’s eye. That wonderful moment would be preserved in his heart forever.

It had been priceless.

Hermione propped her feet up on the coffee table and watched her husband with bemusement. She had never seen a man torn between sputtering outrage and hilarity before.

“For Merlin’s sake, Madam, what were you thinking?” His outrage would have been more frightening if he didn’t keep having this spastic twitch affecting his lips every second or so. He was fighting tooth and nail not to laugh. She wasn’t sure he would survive the effort.

“I was thinking that the punch would extinguish the flames. I didn’t know that it had been spiked.” She pointed this out with perfect calm. Just meeting Taliesin Snape had told her more about her husband than more than six years in his classes had. In comparison to his father, Voldemort must have seemed a calm and reasonable sort, with only a slight fetish or two.

Severus paused and pinched the bridge of his nose as he tried to figure out what he was feeling. She watched in fascination as he struggled to remain severe with her when she knew that what he really wanted to do was dance a jig on his father’s grave.

“Malfoy, no, doubt.” It seemed a non sequitur and took her aback for a moment before she realized what he was referring to.

“The ferret spiked the punch?” she snorted. “Figures, it’s exactly the sort of juvenile prank he would play.”

“We are diverting from the subject.” Severus had gotten himself back under control and Hermione decided it was time to point a few things out to him.

“What do you care, you hate him, besides he was trying to hex Neville. Plus, he had been horribly rude to everyone the entire evening and deserved a great deal more than a quick trip to St. Mungo’s.” She folded her hands in her lap and gave him a cool stare.

“I have no doubt that he was a total prat to everyone, that is not the issue.”

“Then what, precisely, is the issue?” Hermione was getting rather irritated at this point.

“The issue is pureblood politics. He is your father- in- law and that makes him the head of the family. The reason I never allow myself to be in his presence is that as long as he is the head of this family, it is impossible for me to be anything other than respectful to him.” Severus spat out this sentence with a great deal of venom and Hermione could see how much it irked him that the stringent rules of pureblood society would not allow HIM to dump a bowl of punch on his father’s head.

“Well, this works to our advantage then,” Hermione pointed out and Severus blinked at her in surprise.

“How so?”

“Well, you wanted them all to think I was too unmannered to bring to any parties and such and this proves it.” Severus’s mouth worked for long moments as he tried to digest this piece of information. Hermione was silently overjoyed.

She had finally gotten the last word in an argument with Severus Snape.