It was too late to remind him to set the package on the floor. Hermione grabbed for it with both hands as the small, ring-sized box suddenly expanded into a coffee-table sized painting,
unTransfiguring itself. Their hands met, his left and her right, clutching at the base of the painting where the box had once been, while her left hand and his right hand each stretched out quickly to catch an edge. That position left them both staring into the color-daubed canvas as it wobbled, then righted in their grip.
[A goddess…] The thought escaped Severus before he could censure it. And in truth, he was a little too stunned to censure it, or the thoughts that followed. [Is that…you? That goddess
reclining in the garden?]
{It was a fortuitous find, actually,} Hermione confessed, relieved at his stunned appreciation. {I
saw an advert for a wizard-photographer and portraitist, and thought I’d get moving photographs for my family and friends. When Professor Mistral and I examined his works in the room he’d rented, I saw this painting. It was incomplete,} she told him, nodding her head at the portion
where her figure reclined. {The landscape was done, but not the central figure, just the blocking
for it. Gerry Jesso—the painter—told me he’d had a client commission it, then drop the commission almost at the last minute. I asked him how much it would cost to complete it with another figure, and the price was just barely within my budget. So I got it.
{He actually wanted to have me painted facing forward, but I remembered what you’d said about
disliking having portraits staring at you all the time. So I specified I had to be facing away— reading a book, as you can see—but that my image could be allowed to face forward if someone ever conversed with it. So then he had me Transfigure my outfit into whatever I wanted to match the flowers and everything, and I chose that,} she nodded at the gossamer, Grecian-style drape of
soft white and pale green silk. Her image lifted its fingers from the volume, just visible beyond one winter-pale arm. Those fingers fluttered briefly in greeting, then returned to the book and turned the page. The garden surrounding her was rampant with wildflowers and rich, green lawn, and she lay propped on her side, her hair fixed up in a topknot cascading with chestnut curls that glowed reddish and golden and dark brown in the sunlight illuminating the scene. [I positioned
myself, and he snapped a color wizard-picture, so he could work from it after I had left. It’s sort of Impressionistic but then I told him I didn’t mind a rush-job. I was gratified at how quickly he got it done, actually.]
[Impressionistic or not, you look like a young Aphrodite, taking time out of your duties as the
Goddess of Love to have a quiet moment to yourself,] Severus observed.
She turned and smiled at him. {Now, that’s a compliment that makes up for the other one! You
like it, then?}
[I’m glad your face isn’t visible, and that very few people would know it’s you. I wouldn’t be able
to hang it on my wall, otherwise.]
{That was the other reason why I chose the positioning I did.} She wrinkled her nose at her quietly reading image. {It doesn’t really look like me, does it?}
[Not as you usually are, but as you could be.]
{Flatterer.} She blushed as she said it. {Will you really hang it on your wall?}
[In my bedchamber, over the mantel, I think. It’s a very relaxing, peaceful image. I might want to
stare at it while I’m trying to fall asleep. Or to masturb…damn.]
His cheeks weren’t the only ones that flushed red at that Veritamoria-induced comment. Still, it was amusing. Hermione couldn’t help twitting him a little. {So much for dignity, right?} That changed his embarrassment to humor. Severus eased the painting to the floor with a mental chuckle. His lips twisted as he tried to hide his smile, but even when their hands parted, she could tell he was still laughing inside. Gesturing her up, he had her take one end of the painting while he took the other. Together, they carried it into the room at the end of the hall. It didn’t take long for him to take down the painting that had been hung above the mantel, with its clock and a few other odds and ends. Setting the forest-cloaked pond aside, he motioned Hermione back and lifted her portrait into place with his hands..
“Tell me when it’s level,” he directed her, balancing it one-handed against the wall while he pulled out his wand.
“A little more to the left—no, no; I meant shift it horizontally—yes, there. Stop. Um, now up a little on the lefthand corner…good. No, wait, up a tiny smidgen on the right.”
“This thing is heavy, Hermione,” he warned her. “Is it level yet?” “Just a hair more on the right—there. Perfect!”
“It had better be. Zugeteil!” A wash of silvery-blue sparks crackled over the painting, skittering around its edges and onto the back like electric spiders. The young woman in the painting clapped her hand over her posterior, where Severus had tapped his wand. He was still smiling when he turned around.
Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. “You deliberately rapped me on the arse!”
“But it’s such a tempting target,” he drawled. The humor in his voice, his eyes, prevented her from staying mad at him. “That was only a painting. Imagine what I could with to the real thing.” “You’re a very naughty man, Severus Snape,” she retorted. His mock-threat did remind her of something else, though. Sighing, she held out her hand. “Come, we need to practice constant touching, and maybe rehearse what we’ll do when we’re summoned by the Snakey Slime. I want to ensure our survival, and that means we’ll need to practice. Lots.”
“You’re right. We should have worked on this earlier. The Great Dread Lord,” he drawled sardonically, “wants an ‘entertainment’ for his Death Eaters. A bloody floor-show.” His lip curled up in disgust. A sigh escaped him as he shook it off. “Let’s just treat it as such, and choreograph in advance what we plan to do. That should make it easier for both of us.”
“I think I can do that,” Hermione agreed, though her voice was hesitant. She focused her mind on the challenge of it, rather than the impending humilition. “We need to start first with the initial presentation. Outfits. Costumes.”
“The very first thing to start with is a dose of Aqua Vigo for both of us,” he corrected her. “I can guarantee I won’t be able to perform without it, and I don’t want you to be traumatized by having to perform without some liquid courage of your own.”
“Right. I’ll appreciate that. Okay. We get the summons, we go visit Dumbledore to warn him, we take some Aqua Vigo, and change, and…erm, this is going to take us a bit of time. How mad is he going to get, if we delay that much?” Hermione asked.
Severus didn’t have to ask who ‘he’ was. “He knows my situation in the school is precarious. First, I’ll have to maneuver things so that I’ll be able to have an hour or two away from the grounds, then I’ll have to ensure that you’ll be able to go missing for the same length of time. Normally he allows me an hour or so to arrange things before he grows impatient, and two hours before he is truly angry with me. When he summons me by name, that is. Because I’m constantly under Dumbledore’s watchful eye, I don’t have to attend the general assemblies.”
“How does he summon you?” Hermione asked, curious. “I know it has something to do with the Mark.”
“A touch of his wand to the Mark, and everyone feels a general burst of pain. That’s the general assembly,” Severus told her. “You’re supposed to disengage from whatever you’re doing at the time, find a moment of privacy, and Apparate by concentrating on the Mark. It’s like the release of a rubber band; the Mark snaps you to an empty spot near wherever Voldemort happens to be standing. For an individual summoning, he’ll touch someone’s Mark with his wand, and state their name. Then, the agony is increased four-fold,” he murmured, “and usually remains until you obey. With the general call, it will fade after a few minutes, but not when you’re specifically summoned.”
Severus had lifted his arm, wrist turned up as if he could see the magical tattoo through the black wool of his sleeve.
“Once you’re a Death Eater…you’re always a Death Eater. I would never have been able to turn, if I hadn’t already mastered Occlumency before joining their ranks. The biggest bloody mistake of my life…”
Crossing the distance between them, Hermione placed her hand over his sleeve. Covering the hidden Mark. “Not an irreverisible one, as you’ve proven. We’ll find a way to defeat him. And a way to eradicate the Marks,” she added. A slight squeeze and she stepped back, eyeing his clothes. “Will you be wearing that? I mean, under your cloak and that mask?”
He frowned in thought, then shook his head. “Not if we’re to make it easy to maintain physical contact between us. I…being covered from throat to wrist would limit our options for constant contact.”
“Why do you wear such old-fashioned clothes, anyway?” she inquired, studying him thoughtfully from head to toe. “Not that it’s a bad look on you, or anything.”
His brows lifted as if he had never considered the matter before, then he shrugged. “Because I like the style. It suits me. And it’s not that old-fashioned, in the wizarding world. When I have an assignation with a Muggle woman, I’ll wear Muggle clothes, but otherwise I wear this.” “An…assignation?” she inquired carefully.
His sallow cheeks flushed with discomfort. “I have needs, Hermione, just like any other man. I suppress them ruthlessly during the school year, and attend to them when I have a spare hour or two in the summer.”
“I wasn’t complaining, or anything,” she quickly clarified. “Honest-to-Veritamoria, what you’ve done in your spare time in the past is your own business. I was just wondering when you’d find the time, being so busy throughout the school year, stalking the halls and terrorizing misbehaving—and non-Slytherin—students,” she dared to confess, smiling slightly.
“Shall I take that as a compliment?” he returned dryly.
“Well, it does make you look rather stern and intimidating,” Hermione confessed. “So I suppose yes.”
He looked down at his frock coat, smoothed the edges of one of the lapels with his hand, then stilled his fingers over the tiny buttons. “That may have been partially the point, but there is another reason. Every time I touch or fasten the buttons, I recite little warding charms in my mind. The more buttons I have, the more charms I can recite. They’re not much, nor very powerful, but every little bit helps.”
“Ah. That explains the buttons up past your elbows, on the sleeves. And the ones around your ankles…”
“And the ones at my trouser-fly, yes. That, and I just don’t like Muggle zippers,” he added dryly. “…It’s a male thing.”
Her mouth twitched into a smile. She tried to smother it, but he caught it and arched a brow at her. Hermione grinned. “Sorry—I just never thought I’d hear you say ‘it’s a male thing’.” “When you Polyjuice yourself into a replicate of me, I will take great delight in loaning you a pair of dungarees, sans boxers, and enjoy the wincing as your pubic hair gets caught in the teeth,” he drawled. He flicked his fingers at her, changing the subject. “Strip. We’ll start with a blank canvas, and see what we can come up with for a costume.”
“You, too,” she reminded him, pulling her newest, royal-blue sweater over her head. The jumper was a little large, but Hermione didn’t mind; that meant on cold winter days she could wear a couple more layers underneath. Like the turtleneck she wore underneath. Though the chamber was warm from the fire crackling on the hearth, it did make her think about the setting of their upcoming ‘floor-show’, as he’d styled it. “Severus, what kind of an environment, or venue, does he usually pick for your assemblies?”
“Usually outdoor ones… Yes, I see your point,” he agreed without her having to explain anything further. “It will be cold, wherever we emerge. We should add warming-charms to the list. Sometimes he does use indoor venues,” Severus admitted as he worked on unfastening the long row of buttons fronting his coat, “but it’s not predictable. Houses are more dangerous than meadows and graveyard to be caught in, as there are fewer ways to see any Aurors coming, and too many ways for those Aurors to cast anti-Apparation charms successfully, by using the building itself to contain everyone. Voldemort is like any rat; he prefers to leave as many paths to escape open as possible.”
“What can we expect him to try to do to us, while we’re there?” Hermione asked. “I know he’ll want to try and read my mind for anything relating to Harry—like his ‘fear of rats’. And he’ll expect a, erm, floor-show, as you put it so euphemistically. Anything else?”
“He may want to try a little Crucio, but I’ll do my best to explain that, linked as we are, it’s not a good idea to try. I am, after all, a ‘loyal’ Death Eater,” he remarked with a tight little smile. A self-mocking smile, as he slid his coat off his shoulders. “Disciplining a follower is one thing, but even someone as insane as the Basilisk Boy knows better than to inflict gratuitous amounts of harm on those he wants to continue serving him.”
“What sort of a ‘show’ do you think he’d want to see?” she wondered, as she removed her shoes and started on her pants. If she focused on the subject like it was a class assignment, she could handle it. In theory, at least.
“Not too much, I think. Certainly not the full Master/servant routine the first time around,” he mused. “It really hasn’t been that long. He’ll know you’ll need to be ‘broken’, bent to my will. Warped to the sexual tastes of a Death Eater.”
“…He’ll expect you to bugger me, at some point,” Hermione translated.
Severus gazed at her, his dark eyes almost stygian. His hands stilled for a moment on the buttons of his dark waistcoat. “And worse.”
She stared back. Swallowed. “…Worse?”
Rather than answering, he strode to the door, dropping his waistcoat on a chair as he passed. Hermione debated, then followed him, wincing as she padded down the chilly hallway to the sitting room in her underthings. He hadn’t gone far into the room, but had crouched at the base of the nearest bookcase. His slender fingers trailed along the spines, then selected a thick, medium- large paperback with a paper cover decorated in red and robin’s-egg blue, and a second, matching tome. Straightening, he displayed both book covers. One said Justine and Other Essays, the other simply read Juliette.
The author of each book was boldly listed in red as, Marquis de Sade.
She blinked. Severus lifted the books slightly, indicating them. “Your assignment is to skim through these two volumes in the next five days. Starting as soon as you leave here. If you want to know what to expect, I strongly recommend the Juliette…though you may be tempted to use a Memory-Cleansing Charm to scrub the filth out of your brain, afterwards. I will be kind; you need not read them word-for-word,” he added, padding over to the small stable set near the door. “de Sade had the unfortunate habit of writing long-winded discourses on the supposed nature of man, founded in false-logic, fallacious arguments of good versus evil. Do not forget to take them with you when you leave, later tonight. I suggest you keep them hidden from all others, ‘lest your friends consider you a sudden candidate for St. Mungo’s.”
Leaving them there, he gestured for her to return to his bedchamber. Hermione started toward the doorway, then swerved over to the tea-table by the windows. Snagging a plate, she piled a few biscuits on it, then complied with his silent request. He arched a brow at her, and snagged one of the remaining white chocolate and lime flavored biscuits as she passed, before following her down the hall.
Chapter XIX.
She was shivering by the time she got back into the bedroom. Entering the room behind her, Severus murmured the tropical-air spell. Wind rushed through the chamber, freshening and turning earthy, verdant, replacing the sooty, peaty smell of the hearthfire. She shivered a little more as she set the plate on the bureau to remove her bra and knickers, then slowly relaxed as the heat in the air seeped into her muscles. Removing his trousers, Severus started unbuttoning his plain black shirt. Padding over to him, Hermione took his shirt, folding it and placing it on his waistcoat on the chair while he slid his matching black boxers off his hips.
“When you dress in black,” she sighed, shaking her head at the sight of his all-black ensemble, piled neatly on the chair, “you really go all out, don’t you?”
“I find everything matches more readily if you buy only black, grey, or white. Unlike certain persons, I could grab garments out of my bureau drawers and wardrobe closet in the dark, and still be assured of a matching outfit,” he drawled.
“I sincerely hope you’re referring to Dobby,” she muttered back. “I, at least, try not to clash horridly whenever I dress in casuals.”
“May I remind you that you are the one who imagined him in a tartan kilt made out of his own socks?” he retorted dryly. Hermione winced at the memory, and he smirked. Holding out his hand, he gestured her closer with a flick of his fingers. “Come here, woman. While the warmth in the air lasts, we should practice moving about while touching each other. Last time, we were lucky to get away as quickly as we did. This time, we may not be so fortunate.”