Oh, she was repeating herself. Hermione closed her eyes and a moment later, with her eyelashes and her eyebrows and fully focused, she landed on Snape's doorstep and before she could change her mind — and because of the early hour (it was only seven, after all) — she knocked, banged, on his door.
.
He had just stepped out of the shower, his hair still wet and was only wearing jeans and a thin t-shirt he intended to wear underneath the thick, woollen jumper he had bought just the other day. It had got cold outside and the heating at university didn't seem to work all that well, when there was a knock on the door. An insistent knock.
He sighed. Probably Eleanor, telling him to wear an extra pair of socks or thermal underwear or whatnot.
Or — if his thinking was correct — it would be Granger, explaining to him that she had not gushed and that she didn't even know why she should gush and that Draco was a bastard when he spread lies about her. He smirked to himself. It would be fun to see her like this, and so he rather hurried down the stairs, and, after a quick peek, his smirk growing, he opened the door swiftly.
"Good morning, Snape," she said, very business-like. "May I come in?"
He still smirked but gladly stepped aside and closed the door behind her, watching how her fists were pushed into her waist and how they left little dents and how she turned around to look him in the eye.
"I did not gush," she said viciously and because she looked just like he had imagined, because she said just what he thought she would say, he burst out laughing.
67. Conversational Style
Many of the features which characterize the turn-taking system of conversation are invested with meaning by their users. Even within a broadly defined community of speakers, there is often sufficient variation to cause potential misunderstanding. For example, some individuals expect that participation in a conversation will be very active, that speaking rate will be relatively fast, with almost no pausing between turns, and with some overlap or even completion of the other' turn. This is one conversational style. It has been called a high involvement style. It differs substantially from another style in which speakers use a slower rate, expect longer pauses between turns, do not overlap, and avoid interruption or completion of the other's turn. This non-interrupting, non-imposing style has been called a high considerateness style.
When a speaker who typically uses the first style gets into a conversation with a speaker who normally uses the second style, the talk tends to become one-sided. The active participation style will tend to overwhelm the other style. Neither speaker will necessarily recognize that it is the conversational styles that are slightly different. Instead, the more rapid-fire speaker may think the slower-paced speaker doesn't have much to say, is shy, and perhaps boring or even stupid. In return, he or she is likely to be viewed as noisy, pushy, domineering, selfish, and even tiresome. Features of conversational style will often be interpreted as personality traits.
(Yule, 1996)
Hermione stood very still for a moment, turned sideways to Snape. She could only see him from the corner of her eyes but she heard very, very clearly, since her ear was basically pointed at him.
Snape laughed.
Snape. Laughed.
It was...
It was a warm sound. It was deep and throaty and just...warm.
Snape laughed.
She had never heard him laugh before. Not once during her time at school, not once after that. She had never heard him like that.
It sounded so...human. He laughed. He just laughed.
And probably laughed at her. Oh, the tingling on her spine vanished as quickly as it had come when she had heard him laugh. He still laughed, for heaven's sake and she turned around quickly, faced him, even though one lock of her hair hid her right eye and tried to glare one-eyed. He stood there, and laughed.
Snape had little crinkles around his eyes. The always present deep frown-line between his eyebrows — gone. He laughed. His hair was wet, his t-shirt clung to his upper body and his jeans fit well and...he laughed. At her.
"What?" she snapped.
He laughed — and said nothing.
"Did I leave something else hilarious behind when I was apparating just now?" she grew slowly angry. She wasn't being laughed at. Not even if that laughter made her feel like...well. It wasn't making her feel like anything. Well, apart from angry. There had been no tingling in her spine and her knees hadn't, for a moment only, felt a little weak. She was just angry. At him. For laughing at her. How dare he?
And that man didn't even have a mirror in his hall, she couldn't even check if something as ridiculous as her eyelashes were missing, but she had been extraordinarily determined and focused while apparating.
And he laughed still — even if it was a little softer now and she had to stop that strange, disgusting tingling in her spine when his eyes roved over her, stayed for a moment too long, it seemed, on her legs and her breasts and when he shook his head.
"Well, why are you laughing then?" she hissed angrily.
And his laughter stopped but there was a grin on his face. A grin.
Snape grinned.
Snape looked extraordinarily like a little boy when he grinned. He looked almost like Ted when Ted was pretending to be Snape. Snape looked like Ted when he grinned. In a more adult kind of way. He grinned at her and that stopped all the tingling.
"Well? Why are you laughing at me?"
"Why did you come here again, Granger?"
She gulped down a lungful of air, held it inside, then released it with a hiss. "I came to tell you that Draco is telling lies."
"Is he?" the grin turned into a sneer. But not an evil sneer. If there was a such a thing, Snape sneered benevolently.
"Yes, he is," she stood her ground and tried not to stomp her foot. Ridiculous. She wasn't gushing about him.
"And you came to tell me that at, ah, seven in the morning, Granger?" Sneer. Benevolent. Malevolent. Malicious. Evil. He was still laughing at her, she noticed. He may be laughing at her on the inside, but he was, after all, still laughing at her. Making fun of her. Was he? He didn't really look like he was making fun of her now. He just seemed — in a good mood. He looked like Ted when he was given an ice-pop. Or his favourite toy.
Hermione squinted at him. It had been, well, not the best idea to rush there before having to go to the Burrow. How to explain that then? She decided, quickly, on another tactic.
"It's not seven, Snape," she countered a heartbeat too slowly.
Snape, seemingly ignoring her, pushed past her in the narrow hall, his arm accidentally brushing her breast and her shoulder and even though she could feel herself blushing, she turned around with him, following him as he was striding into the kitchen.
"No, you're right," he said suddenly, "it is now seven fourteen. My mistake, Granger," he held up his hand as if he wanted to stop her from interrupting and fixed her, his eyes having lost all the warmth she imagined having seen there while he had been laughing. "Will you kindly explain to me now why you invade my house at seven fourteen in the morning? And before you repeat yourself like a broken record, you did not gush about me. If that is the only reason why you disturb my morning, you can leave again now, it has been noted that you're off the opinion that you did not, have not, and probably will never gush about me. My, but that hurts," he said sarcastically, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I honestly do not gush at all," she snapped. "Ever."
"Then the obvious question remains why you were talking about me at all, and why in such a way that my godson feels the need to explain to me, in all detail, that you did in fact gush," he sneered. Maliciously.
"I don't know why he said that," she said and felt herself, metaphorically speaking, backed into a corner. Her way, literally speaking, to the front door was clear. She could, she knew, just make a run for it, tell Draco that she didn't want to work with him, and for Snape, anymore and that this entire project, this puzzle was for someone else to figure out.
"Or why you meet Draco Malfoy at all? Hm? I never realised you were good friends who meet socially for, let's say, lunch once a week. Has that changed now? Nevermind, I don't care and it doesn't interest me. But what interests me is why you would talk about me, Granger."
She didn't know an answer to that. Well, not one that she could possibly tell him. She could, naturally, stand there and tell him that they were working on getting his magic back for him but they wanted to keep this a secret. They had agreed on that, both her and Draco — both unable to deal well with, well, anything that was not a success. And the fewer people knew, the fewer would see that they had failed. If they failed.
"Does it, by any chance, have anything to do with the curse that has been on me since last year? And a counter curse to this curse? Eh, Granger?" his face was the teacher-mask he had worn all through her school-year. It was neutral, it wasn't sneering, it was...his eyes were alive however. She could see they were and he had...figured them out. He had found out what they were doing. And he would probably throw her out any moment now. Any moment.
Hermione stood very still and didn't dare to meet his eyes for long. She looked at the floor, and felt that she was blushing profusely. How had he known? How had he found out? Draco...Draco must have said something. The little bastard...
"No, Granger, my godson didn't say a word but your reaction and the multiple emails you seem to think I want to receive from you gave you away. You are a Gryffindor, aren't you? Bit of subtlety would have helped. Don't stop abruptly to email me about the fact that there is a book which has the curse that's been lain on me in it. And don't let Draco Malfoy talk about you at all. Don't mention him yourself. And if presented with the truth, a truth you obviously do not want me to know, do not look at my lino floor and blush. Look me in the eyes but don't stare in them and just say no. Good Lord, Granger, you have the subtlety of a brick."
"I..." she had no idea how to answer that. She just didn't know what to say. She was so rarely at a loss for words but now...him, standing there...with his wet hair and the jeans and speaking to her like that, she just didn't know what to say. She just didn't know.
"You? Well?"
"I want to help you," she found herself saying, her spine straightening. "Draco and I want to help you. We want to give you your magic back. We have been working towards that and as such, I have to talk about you. And Draco talks about you but I don't say he gushes even though he mentions more than often, what a great godfather you are and have been and that he hasn't always appreciated what you did for him. I don't say he's gushing but he is, if I am."
She dared to look up at him, in his eyes and she noticed, just in her peripheral vision, how he pulled his lower lip between his teeth and seemed to chew on it for a moment while she waited for him to say something about that.
"Why should you help me, Granger? Are you not abiding by the law? Are you not respecting the Ministry's verdicts? Have you not cheered when they sentenced some of my former associates to a life in Azkaban? Have you not all screamed for my blood the moment it was clear that I had killed...did you not want to kill me? Did not everyone? Did not the majority of people shout in glee when they snapped my wand? And you want me to give me my magic back? To what purpose? For me to find myself being attacked the moment I enter the Wizarding World again? For me having my magic but being banned from buying a wand? A trace to put on me again? Being subjected to Veritaserum the moment something strange happens — some Muggle murder around here?" he stared intently at her, boring into her eyes, waiting for her to answer and to that, she had an answer.
"No. No to all of that. I think I have told you that the majority of people in the Wizarding World do think of you as a hero. Do you want me to spell it out? Hero. H-E-R-O. The Minister wants us to work towards that. He has people himself working on it but they're all incompetent bastards, erm, sorry, incompetent people. Draco and I believe to be close and..."
Snape sighed and shook his head. "I never expected you look at the consequences of your doing but Draco..."
"Draco," she said slowly, "needs you and wants you in his life. Especially now that everything's going upside down and his father is thinking about getting married and producing children with a Muggle," she paused. "And I am thinking of the consequences. But the consequences are not as dire as you make them out to be. You can still live here and you can most certainly can get a wand and neither the Minister nor the Ministry will give you any trouble. I doubt anyone will make you the victim of anything and even if you just get your magic back to spite them. Neither Draco nor me will say anything, of that I'm sure..." she shrugged. "But if you don't want it, we can stop working on it."
.
She had to stand there, so innocently, so guilelessly. And before, she had to stand there, artlessly, in his way so his upper arm had no other chance but to brush against some of her...female parts and her shoulder. At least it wasn't cold in his hall. Her blush, however, almost looked endearing and before he knew what was happening, she had pulled him, pushed him, into a conversation, had made him tell her things he hadn't even thought out loud to himself. If one could think out loud. But she had, with her blushing and her probing and the feeling on his upper arm and the way she looked at his floor and the way she stood there so artlessly, and the fact that she wanted to help him (help him!), drawn words, facts, thoughts out of him. Almost unthought thoughts. She had made him say it and he wasn't sure whether he wanted to be angry, or should be angry, or annoyed or if he shouldn't just — throw her out.
Granger, still standing there, but by now, defiantly looking in his eyes, almost a look of fierce determination on her unblushed face.
He didn't know how to answer her. He had been honest before with his utterly uncharacteristic outburst. He had never burst like that before — apart from when Eleanor had provoked him and provoked him and bribed him with tea and biscuits and cakes and shortbread and pies and buttery mashed potatoes.
Granger hadn't used any of those things. She had just stood there and had blushed and had told him the truth. How rare had it been, in his former life, to be told the truth. Students lied at him probably every time they had opened their mouths. His fellow teachers had lied, he had lied, until the very end when he had once told the truth and had said to...do it, the evil bastard had lied — only lied. All the time, only lies. He had only ever heard lies until...well, until the verdict and then until Eleanor Callaghan had met him with brutal frankness. With honesty right from the start. She didn't lie. And Granger, well, he should have known that she wouldn't lie. She had always been the perfect blend. An annoying, too perfect blend of all four houses at Hogwarts. Brave like a Gryffindor, cunning like a Slytherin, loyal like a Hufflepuff and smart like an over-developed Ravenclaw. If — and only if — the situation called for it. Of course the Gryffindor was always shining through, did shine through now, the way she stared at him and drew a deep breath to start talking again.
