"Thank the Fae" by gingerbred Chapter 02

[thankthefae]

Yule be here for Christmas... Part 2

We discover how Severus became involved with the Fae, and that they're not done with him yet. Hermione enters stage left, but isn't feeling chatty.

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Originally Published: 2016-12-31 on AO3
Chapter: 2 / 13 of ?

Pairing: Hermione Granger / Severus Snape

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Notes:

I thought it might help to address Severus' non-ending internal conversations. Picture watching a movie with someone who just will.not.stop their running commentary on everything that happens. Half of the time they're over-eager to prove they're the smartest person in the room, and the other half of the time they can't stop their scoffing and ruining everything for you. They're an incredibly acerbic, intelligent, snarky and yet vulnerable person you inexplicably like rather a lot. Ultimately you're torn between hitting, admiring, snogging or hugging them. That would be this Severus in a nutshell.

Disclaimer: I own bugger all and shan't profit in the least. All hail JKR, the source of all things Potter. And Shakespeare is the source of "Romeo and Juliet." Never fear, there are no parallels here between SS/HG and the ill-fated pair. (That can't be a spoiler several hundred years on, right?)

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Yule be here for Christmas... Part 2

He approaches the edge of the Forbidden Forest making for a clearing not too far from the border of the wood. The Forest is so forbidding in nature, not merely by name, that few venture here, especially after dark. Although it's very dark indeed ('not like Muggle population centers with their bloody light pollution'), the snow reflects the meager light of the sliver of moon overhead, magnifying it so it's brighter than the first time he ventured here, even though the crescent visible is noticeably thinner. By Christmas this would be dark as pitch.

He has left everyone else behind him at the castle, hasn't seen another soul in a while, and he likes it that way. (Since the end of the war he finds he actually likes things. 'Some things. Few things. But still...') His destination isn't distant, but isolated. The walk gives him time to reflect, to consider the metaphorical path that has carried him here. He isn't sure that mental preparation is necessary for the task at hand. To be honest, he's rather unclear about most of what he's doing here, but there are a very few things he is completely certain of, and that seems to be sufficient to dictate his behavior for this evening and three others each year.

A little less than three years ago, when things were coming to a boil with the Dark Lor... ('Voldemort') and... Potter (he doesn't like thinking of... Potter, so he abandons the thought and rephrases: 'the Death Eaters and the Order'), he found his position increasingly untenable. He had quite publicly ended Dumbledore's life, and he was working unrelentingly to put an end to the power of those who would consider that an achievement. If he were successful, the other victorious parties would be baying for his blood in minutes, assuming he even survived. If he failed to end the Dark regime, the only conceivable conclusion was death, because he would never abandon his mission for anything short of that. Essentially, he was buggered.

In the increasingly likely event that the Dark Lor... ('Voldemort') were to turn on him, the most probable causes of ('my') death were the Avada and the strike of that thrice damned snake. His assorted charms, spells, jinxes, hexes and curses would help ('or not') with the first; there was nothing but practice to be done for it, and he was getting plenty of it. But that damn serpent... He had always liked snakes, as a Slytherin it was almost de rigueur, but Nagini was likely to put him off the entire Serpentes suborder for life. ('A touch dramatic; it's hardly of consequence when your life expectancy can measured in weeks.' He has a point.)

There was no one to ask for help, no one to consult, and if the literature were to be believed, nothing to be done for her bite except after the fact, as with the antivenin he brewed for Arthur Weasley, and that would almost definitely be too late. There was no way to convince anyone from the Dark that there was a legitimate reason for a potion for Nagini's bite. That only occurred by Voldemort's leave ('none but the most stupid would have fallen for that, and they in turn would have been unable to help me'). And the Light just wanted him dead.

So he had chased down every lead on his own, hadn't he? An obscure tome from the liquidation of the Gringotts vault of a Death Eater who had met an ignominious end had suggested that some of the ingredients from the antivenin could be had in a stronger form ('if only one knew where to get them'). An oft-overlooked later work from Libatius Borage ('ignored mostly because the wizarding world thought by that time he had had a few too many Fiestas in bottles...,' he scoffs) hinted at an even obscurer tome, which he had been fortunate enough to discover at the Malfoys', of all places ('never again say Lucius was good for nothing'). That work in turn claimed that a long lost method of antivenin preparation could yield a potion that would act as an inoculation ('if only one could learn how to brew it'), and not just for Asiatic serpents, as Borage's interest might incline one to fear. ('Were one given to fear, which I am not. Regardless, Nagini's origins are still entirely unclear either way...') No stone had been left unturned.

And so it was that he found himself under a waxing crescent moon in the Forbidden Forest on Beltane roughly thirty-two months ago, desperately hoping that there was such a thing as the Fae, that the legends hadn't been over-exaggerated ('certainly gnomes, elves and pixies don't live up to the lore'), that they could provide what he needed, and ultimately could be convinced to do so.

And he got incredibly lucky.

A spell older than record ('that it was a stroke of immense fortune to have learned, thanks to Horace's penchant for collecting, of all things') led him to a clearing so close by he could walk ('although admittedly Apparation makes that detail far less crucial than the other factors,' but it was a fine coincidence and made everything feel somehow... fated). The Fae were real and ('improbably') inclined to aid him. ('That does not happen. Ever.' It was so unlikely that something like this could work out in his favor, particularly without months of final preparations, that he lacks the terms to even think on it properly.) They gifted him the ingredients and the resources to brew his potion, which he was miraculously able to do in the barely twenty-four hours before that farce of a duel with Minerva ensued ('all while surreptitiously thwarting the Carrows, shielding the intellectually challenged student body, and inconspicuously dodging the recalcitrant and climactically mutinous staff...' the overwhelming frustration is still evident years later in the venomous thought), forcing him to flee the castle. And with the potion intus, it was only a day later that damned snake struck.

Merlin.

He isn't a spiritual man. No one would call him kind or even mannered ('inaccurate assessment,' he is quite polished; he is simply not polite. 'But perhaps they aren't using the same definition of "manners." "Social behavior or habits" is suitably neutral, after all...'). But he does recognize beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had been beyond fortunate.

Lucky.

How... uncharacteristic.

Although he has an imperfect understanding at best of what is expected of him in the aftermath of such a bleeding miracle ('the relevant literature is practically non-existent,' he sneers), he is certain that paying the Fae his respects on their sacred days would not go amiss. This is fitting; this is right. He feels it. And so here he is.

He still doesn't like the clearing. The woods thin until he sees a glade, surrounded, save a small gap, by barrows that make it seem more of a dell. Entering the space through that gap, he feels simultaneously trapped and exposed within its confines, a contradictory response that leaves him ill at ease.

He has been almost completely immersed in the wizarding world since he was eleven. And thanks to his pure-blood mother, he had had some exposure to the culture before he attended Hogwarts, unlike the majority of muggle-borns and many other half-bloods. He's not easily surprised by what this world has to offer. But the scene unfolding before him is surprising nevertheless.

If Dumbledore and the Weasley twins had combined forces, pulled out all the stops, and tried to set the most absurd scene for a Bacchanalia, it would still not live up to the Fae celebration in front of him. For a veteran of Voldemort's dark revels, it was utterly innocent. Harmless. Except he could feel that it wasn't. Not in the least. What it ('thankfully') lacked in perversions, it more than made up for in raw power. He could feel it thrumming under his skin, coursing up his arms. The fine hairs at the nape of his neck and all along his arms were standing on end and the air was charged, like just before a lightning strike. The whole cozy nest felt like a physical representation of the fantastic and impossible. It almost hurt to look at it.

He lets out a sharp breath and gathers himself before approaching the female seated at the center of the long table before him. The conclave is dazzling and sparkling, vibrant and breathtaking in its beauty but can't hold a candle ('or fairy light') to her. Everything gravitates around her, and although it's hard to pinpoint, she is somehow a bit more of everything than everyone else around her. Queen Mab's hair is wilder, her manner more charismatic, more beautiful, more energetic, her eyes more fiery than all the rest, and he couldn't keep his eyes off of her if he tried. But he has no inclination to do so.

In many respects, a troublemaking voice pipes up, Mab reminds him of someone, an esteemed colleague, but he thinks neither one would appreciate the comparison and quickly pushes the notion aside. ('She comes to mind altogether too often anyway,' he considers, before the sap needles 'at least seven times in the past half an hour by my count, but I was hardly paying attention...' He is very nearly scandalized. He hates the sap.)

The air smells of pine and cedar, even though he knows there are no cedars among the surrounding trees, and underneath it is a note of cinnamon that doesn't escape his sensitive nose. The Yule incense of the Fae.

He bows low, reaches deep into his pocket, extracts a vessel and enlarges it silently and wandlessly, and proffers the spiced cider he has brewed for this occasion to the Fae seated before him. It suits their proclivities and the season. And it has turned out delectably, if he says so himself. He had considered brewing some for the staff party... He shakes it off, grumbling: his focus is pants.

"You please us, Wizard, with your gift." There's an odd smile playing on her lips, like she sees through him and finds him... droll. It's not mean or dismissive, in fact it's almost fond, with an affectionate note, as one might regard a favorite pet. Like she's been in his head and finds his thoughts... amusing. It's disconcerting.

As one of her consorts comes forward to accept the cider, she resumes, "it pleases us further that you continue to visit." Still silent, he merely nods: it's a given; he would never have considered anything else. It's an hour or two, four times a year, not even a day's work per annum. His life is worth that at least to him. "Few of your kind turn to us in need these days. And fewer still show respect after the fact. I would see your happiness increased as a token of my favor." His skin prickles in apprehension at her words, but he hasn't time to wonder.

"Love, such a tender thing." (Is he being addressed now? Calling him "Love" like their old widowed neighbor in Cokeworth? 'Surely not.') "You cannot continue to beat love down." He flinches slightly and hopes that wasn't a pun. Can Fae be inappropriate? She continues, "Here, now, let it sink in a bit," he winces now sure the answer is 'yes,' "before you turn tail and run, for surely you are no coward."

And not for the fist time, he finds himself wondering what Mab knows of him. "Coward" is surely a deep-seated clarion call to action for him. (And for that matter, would Fae even say "surely"? The overuse is strictly his own of late.) Far too little is known of the creatures he faces, and much of that is contradictory and completely unreliable. But in his desperation over two and a half years ago, he turned to them for help. That he is here to thank the Fae at all borders on a miracle and is largely their doing. And when he stops being an ass, as he is (almost) inclined to do today, he is truly thankful for that.

She's standing now, an improbable vision in front of him, beautiful, delicate, pale and long-haired, surreal, gossamer clothed despite the cold. She reaches up and caresses his nose. Smiling, she tells him, "Give it time. Give it thought. Do not fight it, and it shall be so." And with that he realizes he's been dismissed. They return to their celebration and he exits the clearing, feeling a sense of relief and loss creeping up on him all at once.

He has barely reached the line of trees when he hears it. There. Soft, to be sure, but footsteps. Someone is coming. He quickly checks his path to reassure himself ('unnecessarily') that he has left no footprints. There are none. ('Of course.') Whoever approaches does so for their own reasons; he is not being pursued. But Mab has only just confirmed that few of his kind seek out the Fae, and he can't stifle his curiosity - who else knows their secret, and what business do they have here?

He moves quickly and stands between the trees, completely unobtrusive but (still) not inclined to trust to luck. He is a wizard after all. He casts a Disillusionment Charm and waits. He doesn't have to wait long before a certain young colleague comes into view. For an incredibly brief moment, he finds himself wondering if his thinking of her has somehow lured her here. Has Mab somehow caused this to happen? He catches himself almost immediately and banishes the foolish thoughts ('magical thinking, indeed,' he jeers) and edges forward to observe more closely what transpires.

It's Professor Granger alright, and she's wearing a necklace crafted of woven ivy and bearing an unusual bouquet of evergreen boughs and wheat stalks dusted with flour, decorated with clove-spiked apples and oranges. Undoubtedly her tribute. ('It looks like Longbottom lent her a hand with that. I wonder what she told him it was for.') A fresh sprig of mistletoe is pinned to the chest of her dark green robes. With these accessories her presence here is clearly no more chance than his, and her lack of hesitation and familiarity with the terrain are sure signs that she is not here for the first time asking a boon, but like himself is paying tribute for one received.

('Interesting.')

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Concrit appreciated, feedback, too. And who doesn't like a little love?

If it gets too hard to keep the two internal voices apart, people, please nudge me and I'll try to come up with different formatting. Otoh, later it might become more clear why I haven't done that from the outset, if you can follow my thinking that long.

In the next chapter, Severus and Hermione trek back to the castle. Together. And wonder of wonders, conversation might actually take place. Out loud, even.


And lo, a small excerpt from Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" Act I, Scene IV, in which Romeo is an emo flobberworm, and Mercutio is fond of questionable wordplay and racy puns.

ROMEO

I cannot bound a pitch above dull woe.

Under love’s heavy burden do I sink.

MERCUTIO

And, to sink in it, should you burden love—

Too great oppression for a tender thing.

ROMEO

Is love a tender thing? It is too rough,

Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

MERCUTIO

If love be rough with you, be rough with love;

Prick love for pricking and you beat love down.

The play has a couple of cameos in this work, but it isn't necessary to be familiar with it.

 

Here's hoping everyone has a safe and Happy New Year's.