And to think that he had sat in front of the bloody thing until his eyes had hurt, until he had no longer been able to keep them open. And that that morning, nothing, absolutely nothing had changed. It still showed the same screen with the same background when he switched it on, and then, nothing.
Oh, he wasn't absolutely stupid, he had read the manual so far that he had been able to install (that was the word he had learned) a few programmes that he had to — according to the manual — have to absolutely have on that thing. But so far, it didn't help him any. There were some card games on there which were silly, and a programme, he had figured that out, which he could use to write things up. Something Office or Word or something. And there, he had, incidentally, figured out, what Times New Roman and Arial meant. And font size twelve. The double-spaced still was a mystery but he would figure that out in due time.
It was the email bit that bothered him now. Email. Yes, email required internet. Internet required that modem-thing to make weird noises and to actually not fall silent in the middle of making weird noises. That required him to put the other cord from the modem-thing to be plugged into the phone line. So far, yes, all clear. He could read a manual. But why it then failed, he had absolutely no idea. Absolutely none.
He glared a little more and suddenly, the screen went black. Just black.
He growled low in his throat. It was a mistake having bought that thing. This would have been a sure way to vanquish the Dark Lord. Letting him deal with a laptop.
He pressed the button to switch it on again and nothing happened.
"Idiotic dunderheaded, stupid technology!" he cursed loudly.
.
"Hi," Hermione smiled as brightly as she could and raised her hand towards the older woman. A woman who could have easily been her grandmother. "I'm Hermione Granger. I'm a, erm, I went to school with Draco. Is he here?"
"You're the girl who came with that other boy who came to bother Severus," she looked at her suspiciously.
"Erm, yes. Just after he came, er, back here," she still smiled but she knew it was a little forced.
"Well," the old woman (and she wasn't sure what she was called) sighed. "Come in. Draco is in the kitchen."
She nodded her thanks and stepped in. "Do you want me to, erm, take off my shoes?"
"Don't be ridiculous," the old woman snapped. "Through there."
Hermione nodded again. And Draco lived with that woman? Her face was pinched, she clutched her back, she couldn't even, the way Hermione saw it, walk straight. No wonder she had that pinched expression on her face if she was in pain. At least she looked like she was in pain. And Draco was still a wizard, still able to whip up a potion for that. And even if Snape wasn't able to use his magic, she was sure he would still have those recipes stuck in his head somewhere.
But maybe, she wasn't in pain at all and this was just, well, her. And Malfoy lived with a sour-faced, moody old woman. She didn't dare to ask but followed that woman, silently, into the kitchen.
"Granger," Malfoy said, sounding very surprised.
"Hi," she tried to smile a little. "I erm...came to, your father is in hospital."
"I know," he said, frowning. And really, what more could she say with the old woman looming over them? Well, not looming actually but rather making tea. "Is this why you came here?"
"I, erm...I wanted to ask you about that thing...you" target="_blank">thing...you know, where you went on Christmas. The thing...you told Harry and me about," she had not anticipated a Muggle being there. How could she talk to him about the Ministry and the Minister and the Veritaserum if there was a Muggle? She wasn't breaking that Statute of Secrecy. Not even close. She didn't want to. She couldn't.
"What do you want to know?" Malfoy smirked and Hermione, well, she felt completely out of her depths. Why was he smirking? That was no smirking matter. None at all. She actually felt a little better when she felt that old woman taking her coat and pushing her down on a chair, setting a cup of tea in front of her.
"Thank you, er, Mrs..."
"Callaghan, dear," she replied and smiled — tiredly? Painfully? Hermione couldn't tell.
"I'll leave you two to it. I'll be upstairs and...see about that job, will you?" she said, definitely tiredly and in pain and smiled gently at Malfoy who nodded, almost immediately.
Hermione watched her walk away, watched the way she held her back and pulled the left leg slightly behind her and as soon as she could hear the woman, Mrs Callaghan, on the steps, she bent over the table.
"Can't you make a potion for her?" she hissed.
"What potion?"
"She's in pain, for Merlin's sake, didn't you see? A blind person could have seen it. Her back and her left leg."
Draco frowned. "What?"
"Seriously," she huffed. "Her left leg. The way she pulled it sort of, you know, behind her other leg. And the way she held her back, pressing against it."
"Oh," he said, sounding quite un-Malfoyesque. "I hadn't...listen, what did you come here for anyway?"
"Your father is in St Mungo's. I thought you'd like to know. And we wa...well, I want to know what's going on at the Ministry. And with the Minister."
"Grasping power, Granger."
"Do you know what happened to your father?" she ignored his answer.
He shook his head. "No. I went to St Mungo's last night but he was sleeping and they only let me in for about two minutes."
"Really? Why?"
"Why should I tell you this?" he asked, the expression on his face growing cold.
"Because I want to help. Because I want to know what's going on and why things have turned upside down. Why this happened to your father and why that happened to Professor Snape," she hissed, and was, obviously, rather unhappy about the way this conversation was going.
Malfoy said — nothing. He just took a sip of his tea, and then another, seemed to ponder something. "You're a Mu..."
She arched her eyebrows dangerously but said nothing.
"I wasn't going to say Mudblood. I was going to say Muggleborn," he huffed. "Can you get that expression off your face?"
"Sorry," she shrugged one shoulder, feeling very hot in her coat but wasn't sure whether it was appropriate, or right, to take it off. Even though she had taken care with her appearance. "You were going to say?"
"How much money...I mean..." he was interrupted, suddenly, by a loud bang that seemed to come from right behind her and even though she whipped her head around quickly and had her wand in hand immediately, she still caught the widening of eyes from Draco. There was another loud bang. Like someone was throwing something. Against a wall.
"What's..."
"Shit. I...well, you would know. You're a Muggleborn," he said, almost sounding desperate. "Come along," he added and even though she had no idea where they were going when they left the kitchen, even though she had no idea what he was pulling her into, she followed him, her wand, inside the pocket of her mother's vintage coat in her hands. He led her outside the back door, and on a stepladder. In a skirt. She had to follow him on a stepladder over a wall (even though it was only, well, not very high) and jump down on the other side. In a skirt. And tights. And in her good shoes.
"Where are we going?" she asked, knowing full well that they now stood on Severus Snape's patio. Oh, it hadn't been her intention to see him. Well, somewhere in the back of her mind she had, maybe, possibly dreamed of meeting her head-Severus, which was, in no way, shape or form the Snape that resided in that house, but in her mind, she had worn different clothing to that occasion would have looked less like a Catholic school girl and more like a well, woman. And now she was to meet the real Snape? That couldn't be good. And with things banging loudly against a wall? That couldn't be good either.
And yes, she did feel kind of stupid for asking and he knew that from the way he was looking at her.
"See that you fix this thing. You're a Muggleborn, you ought to know. And if that thing isn't fixed and if he keeps on making noises during the night and keeps me and Mrs Callaghan from sleeping, I'll make you personally responsible," he hissed as he pushed open the back door.
"What thing?" she whispered back.
"A laptop-computer-thing," he glared at her. "It won't keep me from sleeping the night through."
He slowed his steps and Hermione, well, she wanted to remain behind him. Severus Snape using a laptop? That thought made her brow wrinkle. She remembered computers, her parents had had one in their dental practice but she hadn't really used it. And she had spent the past years almost exclusively in the Wizarding World. How was she supposed...just because she was Muggleborn...what a ridiculous argument.
"Draco," she hissed as she felt him, with his fingertips only, pushing her in front of him.
"Fix it," he hissed back and she found herself shoved forward. Shoved so hard that she tripped over her feet and needed everything not to fall flat on her face. She needed a moment to catch her footing. A long moment — and when she looked up, the first thing she saw was the angry, enraged, furious face of Severus Snape.
32. Grammar
A reminder: We are currently in January 1999.
The grammar of a language can be viewed as a theory of structure of this language. Any scientific theory is based on a certain finite set of observations and, by establishing general laws stated in terms of certain hypothetical constructs, it attempts to accounts for these observations, to show how they are interrelated, and to predict an indefinite number of new phenomena. A mathematical theory has the additional property that predictions follow rigorously from the body of theory. Similarly, a grammar is based on a finite number of observed sentences (the linguist's corpus) and it 'projects' this set to an infinite set of grammatical sentences by establishing general 'laws' (grammatical rules) framed in terms of such hypothetical constructs as the particular phonemes, words, phrases, and so on, of the language under analysis. A properly formulated grammar should determine unambiguously the set of grammatical sentences.
(Chomsky, 1956)
Hermione stared up into his dark, broody eyes. Those, by the way, were the same eyes that her head-Severus had. And to be honest, well, as she pulled her eyes away from his, she noticed that he was, sort of, wearing the same clothes that her head-Severus wore. Usually. Blue jeans and a black soft knitted jumper with a v-neck. There was a bit of — t-shirt? — visible underneath. It was white. He was thin, that much she could see through the clothes but — oh — he did look like her head-Severus. Well, almost. Apart from the thunderous expression on his face. His hair was, well, he should maybe go to get it cut, but just a little. It had to be long enough to...oh. She had to stop. This was Snape. The real Snape. Not the Severus she had imagined in her head. This was the man who had been unbelievably rude to her, well...who hadn't been the nicest teacher at school. This was the man who had killed Albus Dumbledore. No matter what else, he was not — NOT — her head-Severus. Her head-Severus would have by now mocked her gently about her Catholic school girl outfit and would have then proceeded to take her into his arms and, well, kiss her. Kissed her so she had a reason to actually pull on his hair.
No, not her head-Severus.
"What. Are. You. Doing. In. My. House?" he asked, his voice as velvety and wonderful as her head-Severus. I little more clipped, maybe, and maybe, well, he...Snape. Snape. This was Snape. He had no wonderful velvety voice, he spoke as he always had in school, when he had berated her.
Teeth. Yes, No difference. She had to think about that. Not about her nightly day-dreams. Teeth. No difference. Had to remember that. Nothing more, nothing less. Snape. In jeans and a jumper that looked so soft that she was tempted to...bury her face in it. Rub her cheek against his...
Hermione groaned inwardly. This wasn't happening. She wasn't standing before Snape fantasising about head-Severus.
"She's a Muggleborn," she heard Draco faintly, "she'll know about that thing."
And then, Snape stared at her again and...it felt like, well, it felt like he was using Legilimency on her. But she knew he wasn't. He couldn't. It wasn't possible. He couldn't possibly. No magic. Muggle Snape. Not head-Severus.
"Do you know about that thing?" he asked her, silky soft.
She felt very hot in her coat and the heat was rising up to her cheeks. What if...no. Snape wasn't head-Severus. She wouldn't just sit down next to him and he'd be besotted with her, even if she could fix that laptop. Which she doubted. Had no idea about laptops. And what else did she know about computers? The needed electricity to run, they...well, the one in her parents' dental practice had only run. She had heard about problems but only ever from far away. She had lived as a witch since she had been eleven. Yes, she had, part-time, lived as a Muggle in her parents' house but they didn't have a computer at home. If they had asked her to find channels on the television, she would have probably been able to help but this...well. She wasn't a Gryffindor for nothing.
And with that — if she could fix this laptop, if she could help Snape somehow, show Draco that she was more than just a Muggleborn — she could make sure to be invited again. And that...maybe Snape was head-Severus. Or at least she could be...well, close to the real one to adjust the one in her head accordingly. Nuances, voice, the way he held his head, his posture, movements of his hands, his fingers...all the details she needed to fill out in her head. If she failed, nothing would change. She just had to take the plunge.
So, Hermione smiled brightly (albeit a bit forcedly) and nodded. "I can try," she said cheerily. Cheer that she didn't feel at all. She wasn't sure what she felt. Oh, this was ridiculous.
'Focus, Hermione,' she told herself firmly.
"What's the problem?" she asked and with confidence she didn't feel, pulled off her coat and handed it to a stunning and silent Draco. She quickly checked herself over. No, all the buttons were done, her skirt fell to her knees.
Snape (Snape, not head-Severus) eyed her suspiciously. She was sure that he didn't really trust her. That he didn't want her there. It showed. His posture for now was — forbidden. She didn't back off. She held her ground, even though his eyes bored into hers. Lovely eyes. Nice eyebrows, too. Not too bushy. She didn't like too bushy eyebrows. And she didn't like too artificially nice ones. She...no. Those were perfect eyebrows.
