The Unspeakable Canteen
The Unspeakable Canteen is not nearly as unpleasant as it sounds. Of course, it sounds as though it should be dreary at best and filthy at worst. It is neither.
It is a staff canteen housed in an immense block of governmental offices, and as such will not be a wellspring of culinary delight or imaginative décor, but it is bright and cheerful, and the food is surpassing edible, even verging on tasty.
It is also one of the best-kept secrets in the Ministry of Magic.
Imagine, if you will, asking a colleague if he wanted to pop ‘round to get a bun and a cuppa'. "Where to?" he would ask. "Oh, the Unspeakable Canteen," you'd say, and he'd suddenly remember a gangrenous wart that must be attended to this second, thanks ever so much.
For years and years Hermione Weasley née Granger never paid much attention at all to the place; she didn't know anyone who had ever so much as set foot inside the canteen, much less eaten there. Oh, it niggled at her from time to time, like a song lyric she just couldn't place even though it was right at the tip of her tongue, but she was never compelled to do anything about it.
After all, she had plenty of important things that required her attention, such as her children, her career and her husband, not to mention laundry, rising damp, in-laws and wiping up Kneazle hairballs. The fact that she had never investigated the mystery of the Unspeakable Canteen didn't trouble her any more than the fact that she had never participated in group sex.
"It's all very well for some," she might have said if pressed on the issue. The issue of the Unspeakable Canteen, that is, although that statement could reasonably apply to group sex as well.
Hermione Weasley was extremely busy for very many years, until, of course, she wasn't.
Her youngest, Hugo, had just started at Hogwarts, and she and her husband would now be empty-nesters for three-fourths of the year. While she didn't cease being a mother during those school months, her immediate concerns about feeding, clothing, transporting and sheltering her offspring had dwindled to almost nothing overnight.
(She still worried about whether they were completing their schoolwork, whether Hugo remembered his gloves when he went out of doors and whether Rose was eating an adequate amount of roughage for her fussy digestive system; mothers will be mothers after all, even though they are hundreds of miles away.)
And despite dearly missing her children, in her heart she was looking forward to having something of a break, to dawdling at the booksellers', to spending entire weekends reading if that's all she wanted to do. She could stop in at one of the attractive cafés in Diagon Alley on her way home and enjoy an espresso without anyone missing her.
With the nest being empty, however, her husband seemed to expect that she should continue putting all of her efforts into mothering the only creature to hand, and since Hugo had taken the Kneazle to Hogwarts that left... him.
She had cut Ron a lot of slack over the years; being an Auror was a demanding job, requiring lots of nights and weekends, to say nothing of holidays. She was accustomed to being the steady, dependable one whose hours didn't vary often and who was always on point to escort the children hither and yon and ensure that they ate nourishing foods and went to bed at decent hours.
Suddenly, mysteriously, his schedule allowed him to be home and underfoot at all hours, asking oh-so-casually what they were having for dinner that night. He began leaving his robes, socks and underwear on the floor and worrying aloud and at some length if she wasn't home from work within a half hour or so.
The first few weeks she had chalked it up to him missing having Hugo about. As time went on, however, she became suspicious. He caught cold, and spent an entire weekend moaning under blankets on the sofa, calling for her to bring him endless cups of tea. If the children were at home, she would have been far too busy to baby him, and would have told him so.
"Dis is so dice," he sighed as she fed him his Pepper-Up Potion from a spoon. "Are you baking chicked soup for didder? Oh, by feed are code; would you warb up by hot wadder boddle?"
The final straw came a few weeks into October as Hermione was preparing her lunch for the following day.
"Mmm, that looks good," Ron said, coming up behind her and resting his chin on her shoulder.
"Yes, it will be," she said, slicing fruit into a container. "Would you excuse me? I have to get the oranges."
Ron stepped out of her way, leaning against the counter and watching her. "You wouldn't want to make another of those for me, would you? I think I'm going to start bringing a lunch from home." He patted his belly. "Too many meals from the chippie lately."
"You want me to make your lunch for you," she said, rather stupidly, she thought later.
"Aw, thanks, love, that'd be brilliant." He swooped in to kiss her cheek, and missed, noisily bussing her ear.
She wasn't planning to respond to that, but the words just came from seemingly nowhere. "Actually, you know what? I've just remembered I've got a, uh, lunch meeting tomorrow. You can take this," she said.
"Really? That's great!" He paused. "Don't want to put you out or anything."
"No, no, it's... um... they're ordering in. No problem."
"Even better," he said. "Thanks, sweetheart; you're an angel." He went back to the living room and turned on the new Picture Wireless where WWN3 was showing the Cannons match.
Hermione sighed and shook her head. Next thing he would insist she chivvy him out of bed in the mornings and prepare a full breakfast for him; it's what his mother had done, after all. Ever since Ginny had gone off to school, Molly had channelled her considerable maternal talents into cosseting Arthur; since that was what Molly so clearly loved to do Hermione had never begrudged her a moment of it, but it was not what Hermione loved to do.
Ron wasn't a bad person; he probably honestly thought that he was helping to fill an empty spot in her life.
Of course if he'd been paying any attention at all he'd know that she didn't have an empty spot in her life; her interests had been shoved to one side for years, and only now did she have the freedom-
"Oh, Hermione, love, could you bring me a lager? I forgot to get it when I was in the kitchen."
He may have said something after that, but she didn't hear it over the sound of her teeth grinding together.
So it was that a woman with time and interest and no lunch found herself standing at the entrance to the Unspeakable Canteen for the third time that day.
On her first trip to the door she had realised quite suddenly that her bladder was full to bursting, and so she left in search of a toilet. On her return trip to the door she had realised, again quite suddenly, that she had left her handbag in her office. She was halfway across the building when she felt her purse bumping against her hip: she hadn't forgotten it at all.
She stood in the middle of the vast lobby, a slow smile spreading across her face. "It's a charm," she said. "They're trying to keep people away."
On her third trip, she stood at the door for a good five minutes, trying to overcome simultaneous urges to run to the loo and tidy her hair or return to her office and make an urgent Floo call. "It's just a charm," she muttered to herself, and reached for the door handle.
Aside from the door swinging open, nothing happened. She stepped over the threshold and walked in. A handful of diners looked up at her with mild interest and just as quickly returned their attention to their meals. There were exactly enough people to ensure that the dining room felt neither ominously empty nor oppressively full. It was scattered with small tables, and all of the diners ate alone, accompanied only by the reading materials of their choice.
The canteen could not possibly be on the top floor of the Ministry given that its entrance was subbasement, but the glass conservatory-style ceiling and large windows were bright with autumn midday sunlight.
She queued and went through the line, choosing an unexceptional-looking chicken salad, and a worker with a professionally pleasant manner took her money.
"Pardon me," Hermione said to the worker, a woman in her fifties, "but who are all of these people?"
The woman-her nametag said "Marie"-looked at her with a quizzical expression. "This is the Unspeakable Canteen, isn't it? They're Unspeakables."
"But I'm not an Unspeakable."
"You don't have to be an Unspeakable to get in; the Ministry put the kibosh on that after a budget reduction years ago. But Unspeakables're secretive buggers, and if you want in you've got to work for it. Most don't; it took me three days to report to work the first time." She grimaced in dismissal, and turned her attention to a wizard who had just joined the queue.
As Hermione sat at an empty table, she felt strangely let down. There was no great mystery here, then, just an ordinary staff canteen with ordinary Wizarding patrons.
And then Severus Snape stepped through the fireplace on the far wall.
He gave a visible start as he recognised her; she just sat there, mouth unflatteringly agape. His mouth tightened; he lowered his head as if he might use it as a battering ram and he stalked by her table without another glance in her direction.
"Wait-" she said.
He kept walking.
She followed him across the dining room. "Profe-Mr Snape."
He stopped, sighed and turned. "What?"
"You're alive!"
"And you're as perceptive as ever."
"That's-that's-I don't know how that is. It's amazing, I suppose." She looked closely at his face, inspecting him to make sure her eyes weren't deceiving her. He looked older, but who didn't twenty years on? His hair still appeared greasy, although it was now threaded with silver and he wore it oddly short. In place of the flowing black robes he wore at Hogwarts, he was dressed instead in unremarkable Muggle streetwear. If she hadn't known his face beyond the shadow of a doubt she might never have recognised him.
He looked down the sizeable length of his nose at her. "Are we finished here?"
"No, of course we aren't. How is this possible?" She grinned, and moved toward him as if to give him an impulsive hug. She didn't know why, exactly; he had never been a friend to her.
He took a quick step back. "Do you try to hug all of your old teachers?"
"Only the ones I saw die twenty years ago." She laughed a little breathlessly at the sheer absurdity of it.
"I have business to attend to." He turned away from her, heading for a door with a brass nameplate reading "Department of Mysteries-Unspeakables Section" at the far side of the canteen.
She stayed until her lunch hour was over, waiting for him to return through the door, but he didn't. The door was warded against her since she didn't have any business with the Department of Mysteries at that time.
That night, she met Ron at the door to their home. "You'll never guess who I saw today," she exclaimed eagerly.
He waggled his brows at her, putting on his ‘seductive' face. "I'll say you do," he purred, and grabbed her by the waist, kissing her.
"Wait... what?" she asked, pushing at him.
"You do have a lovely bunch of coconuts," he said, grabbing at one of the ‘coconuts' in question.
"I didn't say anything about coconuts," she protested indignantly, smacking his hand away. "I was telling you about seeing Severus Snape today. Alive."
Ron's ‘seductive' face shifted to his ‘you're insane' face. "You feeling all right, Hermione?"
"I'm not crazy."
"What are you talking about? Mairzy what?"
"What? I didn't say that! What did I say?"
"You said ‘Mairzy doats and doazy doats' and something else." Ron was looking genuinely concerned now.
"It's actually ‘Mares eat oats and does eat oats.' But I didn't say that."
"Perhaps I ought to take you to St Mungo's..." Ron began.
"No, there's nothing wrong with me." Realisation dawned slowly. "Ron, I'm going to tell you... I'm going to tell you about my day. Will you repeat, word for word, what I say?"
He nodded, his brow creased with worry.
"I finished my research for the Llewellyn case."
"I finished my research for the Llewellyn case," Ron said.
"I had an afternoon meeting with my clerks," Hermione said.
"I had an afternoon meeting with my clerks," Ron repeated.
"I had lunch at the Unspeakable Canteen and saw Severus Snape, alive and in person."
Ron winced, but repeated her words back to her. "'I understand the reason why, you're sentimental and so am I, it's delightful, it's delicious, it's-‘"
"'De-lovely,'" Hermione finished for him, and sank into an armchair. She looked up at Ron. "I'm all right, really. It's just a confidentiality charm I didn't know about." She laughed, shaking her head. "I won't recite any more of my grandmother's favourite novelty and pop songs, I promise."
"You sure?" he asked; he was still looking at her as if her head was about to explode.
"Yes, I'm sure."
"Okay," he said. "Hey, how about I pop round the corner for some Chinese tonight? I think you could do with a bit of a rest."
She nodded; if he wanted to make the arrangements for a dinner she didn't have to cook she wasn't going to argue with him. He gave her the nervous sort of smile one gives kindergarteners and deranged people and put on his jacket.
"I know the secret of the Unspeakable Canteen," she said to herself, catching Ron's wide-eyed expression as she said it. "What did I just say?"
"'Ting-tang walla-walla bing-bang'." He was backing toward the door.
"Good to know."
Ron returned with Chinese food; Hermione refrained from mentioning her lunch and didn't worry him further with her bizarre non-sequiturs.
She dined at the Unspeakable Canteen every day for a month, hoping to see her erstwhile teacher, and she now had a nodding acquaintance with several of the other diners.
Occasionally the fireplace would blaze with green flames, and she would tense, waiting for Snape to step out, but it seemed always to be Unspeakables or their clients.
By questioning Marie and the other patrons, she learned that the canteen Floo was the only secure way for people to enter the Department of Mysteries unobserved: they could only enter the department itself if they had business, and none of the diners who saw them could talk about it outside of the canteen.
In the meantime, Hermione read, like the rest of the diners.
She found to her mortification that outside of the canteen she could not discuss anything she read while in the canteen; this limited her reading material somewhat, since the Wizengamot was entertained only briefly by her recitation of "Yes! We Have No Bananas" in place of case law. She took to reading novels instead, Muggle science fiction and romances, the sort of things she wouldn't have to admit to reading outside of the canteen.
A month to the day after she saw him, Severus Snape once again stepped through the fireplace.
She was quick to act. "Mr Snape," she said, standing in his path.
"What is it, Granger?"
"Actually, it's Weasley now."
"What is it?"
"I'd just-I'd like to speak to you."
"And so you have. Good-bye." He stepped around her.
"Sir, I watched you die. It was horrible and it's haunted me for years."
He stopped walking. The other diners turned their heads to watch.
"I've wished desperately that there was something I could have done, that I had, oh, I don't know, carried a healing or antivenin potion with me. Anything to help you, after all you did for us."
"You want to help me?" he asked over his shoulder.
"Of course," Hermione said.
"Leave me alone and forget you ever saw me." He went through the door to the Department of Mysteries and left her standing there.
A few weeks later, late on a Friday afternoon, Ron met Hermione in her office.
"Fancy a dinner out?" he asked, flashing the cocky grin that still, truth be told, made her belly flutter a little.
"Sounds lovely," she said. "What did you have in mind?"
"Chez Flamel, I thought," he said, naming a pricey restaurant in Diagon Alley.
Her eyebrows went up. "Dear me, what's the occasion?"
"Do I need a special occasion to take my beautiful wife out for a nice meal?"
"If memory serves," Hermione said.
"Don't be cross," he said.
"I'm not dressed for it, Ron," she said, laughing.
"We can Floo home, change and come back," he said. His expression was at once winsome and angelic and reminded Hermione of her daughter trying to wheedle some treat from her.
She wasn't proof against Ron at his most charming, and smiled. "All right. That sounds nice."
He came around her desk and planted a kiss on her in full view of everyone in the office. "See you at the house," he said, and left, for once seemingly oblivious to the admiring glances of the youngest clerks.
The meal was delightful; the chef, a true son of Marseilles, prepared the best bouillabaisse Hermione had ever tasted. The wine recommended by the sommelier complemented the soup perfectly. Her frequently scruffy husband had cleaned up to great advantage and he was carefully dressed, to say nothing of attentive and complimentary.
"What a nice evening, Ron. It's a delightful treat, thank you," she said.
"You are most welcome, lovely lady," he said, raising his glass to her.
"But really, what's the occasion?" she asked
"So suspicious," he chided, nudging her foot with his own.
"Ah, it's like that, is it?" she asked, and nudged back.
"I've been so fortunate. Gorgeous, brilliant wife. Amazing kids. Great home. The only thing is..." He frowned into his wine glass.
"Yes?" Hermione prompted.
"I missed so much when the kids were little. Work had me going ninety directions at once."
"It wasn't easy, but we got through it," she said, giving him a lopsided smile.
"Hermione, I want another baby."
She choked on a mouthful of wine. "Oh, Ron, that's not funny at all."
"I'm not trying to be funny," he said, his tone turning petulant.
"It's a good thing, because you're not. You can't seriously want that."
"I do want that," he said.
"I don't. I've already done it, and I'm glad to be where I am now."
"You wouldn't do it for me? Like I said, I missed out on so much with Rose and Hugo." He reached for her hand, but she put her hands in her lap.
"You chose that. You chose to chase your career."
"And now that I'm in a position where I can enjoy what I worked so hard for, the kids have gone off to school. I miss having them around."
"I miss them, too, just not to the point of replacing them with younger models," Hermione said. Her hands were cold, and she pressed them to her forehead.
"It's not replacing them; how can you say that? I want the chance to do it right."
"You don't get do-overs with children, Ron. You're either there or you're not." And you chose not to be, she thought, the old resentment coming back, just as acrid as it had been when she was a young mother with two children in diapers.
"You love babies," he said, taking another tack.
"I do, but not enough to go through all that again. Believe it or not, I actually like sleeping for eight hours at a stretch and not having baby sick on all my tops."
"Oh, it wasn't that bad," he scoffed
If she had lunged for him then she might have been able to make a credible case for temporary insanity. But she just sat there, the blood in her veins running to ice, and by the time she was capable of movement it would have been premeditated murder.
He must have seen something in her eyes, because he backed off. "We can talk about this later," he said, and motioned for the waiter to bring him the check.
The next month found Hermione once again waiting for Snape; she didn't know why it had become so important to her to talk to him, but it had.
She met him just as he stepped through the fireplace. In fact, as he came through she had to step back a little or they would have been nose-to-nose.
"Did you know that Harry named one of his sons for you?" she asked.
"You've had an entire month to think of something significant to say, and this is it?" he growled, brushing soot from his jacket.
"Well, did you know?"
"Oh, yes, what a lucky bastard am I." He held took hold of her forearms and moved her out of his way.
"He also said that you're the bravest man he ever met."
"Not surprising, given the depth of his acquaintance."
"Well, really," she said, crossing her arms in pique. "Where have you been all these years? How did you survive?"
He looked at her with studied indifference and said nothing.
She made an exasperated noise. "Will you at least sit with me? Allow me to buy you lunch?"
"I have an appointment," he said, and walked away from her.
"Happy Christmas," she called after him, but he didn't turn around.
Hermione couldn't bear to live at daggers drawn with Ron, even though they were now bickering frequently about having another baby. They had called a truce while the children were home, but now that school had resumed they were back at it: the cycle of snide comments followed by explosions followed by silence was in full swing.
Of course they had sex, that was a given; they always had sex, even when they were ready to throttle each other. Rather often, too, if women's magazines were to be believed. That is, the sex occurred rather often, not the desire to throttle. Mostly.
She was in the bathroom washing her face before bed. After finishing her ablutions she reached for the little case containing her diaphragm and felt rather than saw that it was positioned oddly in the drawer.
No. He wouldn't. She felt as if she had swallowed a large, square ice cube whole.
She had always been wary of Wizarding birth control methods given the fecundity of her husband's family. The diaphragm had always seemed like the ideal solution, as it didn't require frequent trips to Muggle doctors or the chemist to maintain it.
The diaphragm sat in its case innocently enough, looking like a tiny disembodied breast. She lifted it, squinting at the rubbery material, looking for holes or tears, but she saw nothing and set it back inside the case, cup side up, ready to be filled with spermicidal gel.
Perhaps she was just being suspicious, but... she ran a little tap water into the cup, careful not to let the water run down the sides and underneath it. She raised it up so the light illuminated the thin rubbery disk.
To her horror, she saw a little blister of fluid swell up on the underside of the diaphragm. And then another. And another. Before long, drops were all but raining down; she could have watered her plants with the thing.
The bastard. The monkey-buggering ginger bastard.
With a chill she wondered how long the diaphragm had been a sieve. They'd had sex at least a dozen times since her last period.
She Summoned her wand from the bedroom, not caring that she heard Ron yelp, "Hey!" when the wand flew too closely.
Under her breath she cast an incantation that she would repeat with every use of the diaphragm for a long time to come: Diaphragma reparo.
In mid-January she entered the Unspeakable Canteen to find Severus Snape sitting at a table, smoking. His back was to the entrance, allowing her to pull up a chair opposite him before he knew what she was about.
"You know if you really didn't want to see me you'd have me barred from the canteen or you'd change your appointment so it didn't coincide with my lunch," she said in a chiding tone.
He crushed out the cigarette, and exhaled smoke in her direction. "Were you under the impression that your presence troubled me, Mrs Weasley?"
"Only slightly," she said, fanning the smoke away.
"Not at all. It does my vanity good, being met by a young-well, younger-woman who chases me to my appointments. Almost like being a Beatle."
She narrowed her eyes at the jab about her age, and he smirked at her, visibly enjoying her annoyance.
"I had no idea that I was so important to you. Rather flattering, actually," he said.
"You're not that important to me," she said.
"Explaining why you're here every single month, just waiting for me."
"I just want to know about-"
"Have you heard the joke about the bear?" He paused as she looked blankly at him. "It's an old Muggle joke, but a pretty good one. A man goes hunting, and he finds a bear in the woods. As he takes aim at the bear with his rifle, the bear sees him, and he's on him in a second. But instead of killing him, the bear rolls him over and sodomises him."
"What does-" Hermione began, but Severus spoke over her again.
"After finishing, the bear retreats further into the forest, and the man follows him. Again he aims his rifle, and again the bear charges and has his way with him. And again the bear retreats. The man follows the bear yet again and aims his rifle. But rather than charging him this time, the bear just turns and says, ‘You didn't come here to hunt, did you?'" He sat back in his chair, as if this explained everything.
"I've heard better," Hermione said, and Severus shrugged. "What's that got to do with anything?" she asked, suspicion making her voice brittle.
A slow, thin smile spread across his face. "You didn't come here to hunt, did you?"
Hermione goggled at him for just a second before raising her hand and slapping him soundly across the cheek.
As she stalked out of the canteen, oblivious to the interested gazes of the other diners, his mocking voice called after her, "See you next month, darling."
She worked furiously that afternoon, not bothering to pause for tea. When Mrs Haggerty, her office manager, bustled in rather pointedly with a cup of tea her eyes widened with concern. "Are you all right, dear?"
"I'm fine, why?"
Mrs Haggerty had been with the Ministry since before Hermione was born, and was a force to be reckoned with; although Hermione was nominally her superior, there was no question as to who truly ran the office. "You look flushed, as though you're not feeling well."
"I'm all right, thanks," Hermione said, accepting the cup with shaking hands; the cup chattered briefly against the saucer before she set it on her desk.
"Oh, fine, are you?" Mrs Haggerty said, giving her a hard look. "Perhaps you should go home and rest up. You seemed well enough earlier; did your lunch disagree with you?"
Helpless to say anything coherent about it, Hermione just nodded her head.
"That seems to be going around; you drink your tea, then bundle up and head home. There's nothing here that can't be put off until tomorrow; I can reschedule the section budget meeting to Thursday."
"I'd really rather stay and get some work done," Hermione protested.
"Of course you would, but it will all be here for you tomorrow. Now drink up!"
Hermione drank her tea and allowed Mrs Haggerty to usher her to the Floo. There was something rather comforting in the older woman's take-charge manner; perhaps Ron had a point in wanting to be mothered.
It was also likely that the staff simply had wanted an afternoon with the cat away and her apparent illness was the perfect excuse to send her off, but Hermione wasn't going to worry about that just now.
She arrived in her lounge, slipped out of her shoes and padded upstairs to change into flannel pyjamas. She would curl up on the sofa with a warm blanket and a good book and see if that didn't set her to rights. Her cheeks still burned with anger and mortification, and she mentally berated herself for allowing Severus Snape to get the better of her.
Really! It was only natural that she be curious about him. She had seen him ‘die', after all, and his sacrifice had helped Harry defeat Voldemort. That didn't mean that she wanted anything else from him, least of all sex.
She shuddered at the thought, and tried to imagine Professor Snape making love. He must be bony and awkward and surely he would be inexperienced. She giggled a little at the image of Professor Snape taking instructions in bed: "Harder! Faster! You're doing it wrong! No, not there, you dolt!"
For some reason the room she pictured was red, almost the colour of the inside of a mouth. There was a large four-poster bed on a dais where two figures, a man and a woman, moved together, occasionally obscured by the fluttering of the sheer bed curtains. His narrow, pale buttocks flexed rhythmically and her legs twined around his, pulling him closer; she wasn't issuing instructions any longer. The man gazed into the woman's eyes as he rocked over her, back and forth...
Oh. Oh. She really shouldn't do that any more.
When Ron arrived home he was dismayed to find her unwell, although not for reasons she would have liked. He complained volubly that she wouldn't be using her ticket for the Cannons' match that night.
"I went home ill this afternoon, Ron; I can't possibly be seen at a Quidditch match tonight."
"Well, who'll use the ticket? Such a waste of money..."
Since he had purchased the tickets without asking if she wanted to attend the match with him, she didn't feel too guilty about backing out. "Ask Harry if he'll go."
"He's got a thing with Ginny tonight, he said."
She shrugged. "I'm sorry, Ron, but I'm simply not up to it."
He went upstairs to change into his team jersey, grumbling the entire time.
When he returned to the lounge, a vision in orange and black, he said, "Well, at least you don't have to worry about dinner. I'll grab something to eat at the match."
"You put my mind at ease," Hermione said, but he was as emotionally tone-deaf as ever, and the remark sailed over his head.
He pecked a kiss on her cheek and stepped into the fireplace, disappearing in a swirl of green flame.
Her period started that night; that must surely account for her feeling unwell earlier. And thank God for it.
How exactly does one not think about something? Hermione wondered for what might have been the millionth time that month. She had been trying without success to forget the image of Snape making love ever since she had conjured it. The mental picture kept coming back, unbidden, until Hermione didn't know whether she would laugh or faint when she saw the man himself again.
She had considered not returning to the canteen, ever, but her stubborn streak wouldn't allow it. His joke, his familiar manner, his insinuations, all had been calculated to ensure that she wouldn't return to bother him further, she was certain of it. And she couldn't bear to give him that sort of satisfaction.
Ah, but what sort of satisfaction would you like to give him? a voice jeered in her head.
With her pulse racing, she entered the canteen. He was sitting at her usual table, and instead of smoking he was actually eating something.
"Don't you have an appointment?" she asked, catching him with a mouthful.
He chewed, swallowed, looked up at her. "I've already been."
"Oh."
"Yorkshire Pud's good here."
"I haven't tried it."
"Your loss," he said, and took another bite.
She queued for a bowl of potato soup, keeping an eye on him the entire time, certain he was going to leave. He was still there when she brought her tray to the table, and he didn't get up when she sat down across from him.
"Aren't you surprised that I'm here?" she asked.
"No, not particularly." He speared a bit of pudding with his fork and pushed it around his plate, sopping up gravy. "Odds were about even," he said, taking a bite. "My money would have been on you staying away, though; the virtuous wife avoiding my base suggestions. But Gryffindor will out, won't it?"
"Your base suggestions don't bother me. I'm a married woman."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning I'm not interested."
"Then you should have said ‘I'm a happily married woman.'"
She laughed then, but it came out rather more bitterly than she intended.
His eyebrows went up. "Oh, dear. Trouble in paradise?" he said, tempering his saccharine tone with a sneer.
She spooned up some of her soup and ate it. "No more so than any other couple."
"Such are the perils of attachments formed while still in school," he said.
"You're one to talk," she muttered.
He let that pass, choosing instead to cut up the last bit of his roast beef.
"So, will you tell me?" she asked between spoonfuls of soup.
"Tell you what?"
She sputtered a little. "How you survived, where you've been all these years, what you're doing now."
"To what end? It's not as though you can tell anyone else what you've discovered."
"How about satisfying my own curiosity?"
"'You would pluck out the heart of my mystery,'" he quoted mockingly, and wiped his mouth with his napkin. "It was a pleasure dining with you." He walked to the Floo; she saw his lips move but couldn't hear the location before he whirled out of sight.
Things weren't improving between her and Ron; Harry remarked on the tension between them when they all got together for Ron's birthday. Hermione tried to laugh it off, not wanting to put Harry-or worse, Ginny-in the middle.
The answer Hermione gave was that they were still adjusting to their empty nest, and that was mostly true. Of course, it left out the fact that she didn't trust her husband any longer, that he didn't have her best interests at heart, and that she thought he was being childish and stupid.
"Adjusting" sounded so much nicer than "death throes."
"You keep coming back, month after month," Severus said.
"I have to eat lunch," she said, shrugging.
"So you do."
"I eat here every day; it's just that one day out of the month that I have company." She stabbed a leaf of romaine lettuce with her fork.
He didn't say anything to this and merely continued to eat. His taste in lunch fare ran towards the heavy and rich; today he was halfway through a dish of Steak and Kidney Pie.
"How can you eat all that stuff and stay so thin?" she asked, shuddering. "You must have a tapeworm."
"I do," he said.
"Really?" she asked, looking at him with concern.
"It's in a jar on my desk."
Hermione made a face. "No wonder you like to eat out." She felt her face flame as her inadvertent double entendre registered.
"Why, yes," he said, a sudden gleam lighting his eyes. "My existence, bleak as it is, is enlivened only by the prospect of eating out." He sucked a stray bit of sauce from his lower lip, and she squirmed a little.
"You're being puerile," she said, inspecting the remains of her salad, her colour still high.
"Ouch," he said, rubbing his chest as if stung. "Do you use such language on your husband?"
"No," she said, sounding more like a sulky child than a grown woman, she thought with disgust.
"No, what would be the point?"
"He isn't stupid," she said, but the defence sounded weak to her ears.
"Of course he is. You wouldn't be here with me if he weren't. You're angry at him, you want to get back at him, and so you're engaged in a flirtation, if you will, with me."
"It's not-" she began, and stopped, scowling at him.
"The trouble is that you can't tell him about it, which is why this won't go anywhere. It would be spectacular fight fodder, wouldn't it? Meanwhile, you get the pleasure of holding a man in thrall and toeing the line of infidelity without ever crossing it."
"'In thrall', are you?" she asked in a sceptical voice.
He shrugged. "You'll never know." He wore his most neutral expression, brows slightly elevated with no more than polite interest.
"I am angry with him, but that's not why... It's not why I'm here with you."
"You won't do anything about it; it serves no purpose. You'd never be able to lord it over him," he said.
"I don't want to lord anything over anyone. If I were to... if anything were to happen, it would be because I-"
"Because you what?" he interrupted.
"Because I wanted it," she finished in a small voice.
"And that will never happen, will it? You're in love with your safe, secure life."
"If I ever called your bluff, you would run so quickly in the opposite direction it would make my head spin."
He elbowed his empty dish out of his way and leaned forward. "Who says it's a bluff?"
She had to steel herself not to scoot back. "I do."
His gaze travelled over her face, lingering on her mouth. "There's only one way to find out."
Her breathing quickened, and she swallowed. Her pulse raced, rendering her giddy.
She didn't know how long they sat there like that, intent on each other. He wasn't any handsomer up close; he had dark circles under his eyes, his pores were huge, and the lines of his customary scowl appeared as bottomless as Loch Ness. Somehow it didn't matter.
"Severus-" she began, and paused as her pocket began to chirp insistently; she withdrew the timepiece, grimacing at what she saw. "Damn. I've run over my lunch hour and I've got a meeting in ten minutes." She stood to leave and paused. "Would you... would you join me for lunch again, perhaps next week? I know you don't have your appointment then, but... would you?"
"To what end?" His upper lip curled in a sneer.
"No end; just lunch and conversation."
"What would people say about a married woman who has a weekly assignation with another man?"
"That she has a friend to have lunch with," Hermione said, although her tone rose to a question at the end.
"We aren't friends."
"No," she said. "No, I suppose you're right. How silly of me." She turned from him and left the canteen.
The next week he was waiting for her at her table, arms crossed over his chest.
"I presume you're buying," he said, regarding her coolly.
They met weekly from that point on. Tuesday lunch became the highlight of her work week. They would eat and spar and flirt outrageously with each other; he would claim-always obliquely-that he was wildly attracted to her, and she would claim-always directly-that she didn't believe him.
"I have no reason to trust you, you know," she said. "You haven't told me anything about yourself."
"What do you want to know?" he asked.
"Are you an Unspeakable?"
"No."
"So why do you come here?"
He looked at her for a long moment, and then he looked behind himself, checking to see that no one was nearby. "I'm in the Wizard Protection Program and I meet my case supervisor next door every month."
Hermione lowered her voice to a whisper. "Who are they protecting you from?"
"I helped put a lot of Death Eaters in Azkaban after the war; their families are understandably furious. I didn't have much choice at the time, having been ‘rescued' by an Auror; it was either testify or go to prison myself. I've no regrets; I've earned every Knut that the Ministry pay me, and then some."
"Which Auror rescued you?" Hermione asked.
"I'm not at liberty to say."
Hermione's jaw dropped in horror as an idea occurred to her. "Oh, God, it wasn't Ron was it? And now you're using me to get back at him?"
He gave her a disgusted look. "Please. Was your husband an Auror when I was killed?"
"Right. Sorry."
"Suffice it to say that the highest levels of government are involved, and that is all I can tell you on that subject."
Hermione fell silent, feeling a bit chastened.
"Now, as I have answered your questions, I have a question for you: what's the sexiest food you've ever eaten?"
She laughed out loud; that wasn't what she was expecting. "I don't know, caviar, maybe?" Her voice squeaked a little with uncertainty.
"All too predictable," he said, clucking his tongue.
"Give me a break; I've been married for almost twenty years to a man who thinks a bag of crisps counts as hors d'oeuvres. What's the sexiest food you'veever eaten?"
"Snails," he said, after some thought.
"Snails?" she echoed in disbelief. "What's sexy about that?"
"You've obviously never had them prepared the right way, cooked in butter with lots of garlic. They're dripping with butter and juice, and smell like heaven. You have to coax it out of its shell, and then there it is: the plump little morsel that makes all of the fuss worthwhile."
Hermione gulped. "Oh."
"You want to try again?" The challenge in his eyes was unmistakable.
She worried her lower lip between her teeth for a moment. "Ah, I remember. It was when R-" She looked at him uncertainly. "When Ron and I were first married. We spent every free moment in bed and got out only for food. One night I'd brought a roast chicken home from the market. Hours later we were famished, and went to the kitchen and devoured the whole thing in one shot, sitting on the kitchen floor and eating cold chicken with our fingers, teasing each other, lit only by the light from the refrigerator."
"Hours?" he asked, dubious.
"Hours. We were young and inspired," she said, laughing at herself a little sadly.
"You don't have to be young to be inspired," he said.
"That's one of the first things you've said that I truly believe," Hermione said.
Spring drifted into summer. The children came home from school, and Hermione's life was filled to capacity again. Ron, despite his insistence that he wanted to get another chance at doing fatherhood correctly, was home less and less frequently.
The worst part was that the children didn't seem to notice Ron's absence after so many years of the same; the best part was that the awkwardness between Ron and Hermione was limited to a few minutes at night and a few minutes in the morning. They weren't talking much, and their sex life had dwindled to nothing.
So Hermione was a single mother, for all intents and purposes, just like when the children were small.
No matter how busy she was, though, her Tuesday lunches were sacrosanct. She had missed one lunch when Rose was ill with a fever and Hermione took her to hospital to see a Healer. He had been furious with her at their next meeting, and it took two additional meetings to convince him that she wasn't playing games with him, that only the health of her children came before seeing him.
He wrote down an address in Milton Keynes to where she could send an owl if she was detained again. "Memorise it, and then I'm going to destroy it," he said.
"Milton Keynes? Why there?"
"It's the Ministry's idea of low profile. No wizard would be caught dead there."
She rather thought the Ministry had a point.
You think you have your life figured out, and then at 40 you find yourself sitting in a car park near the Walthamstow KFC with Severus Snape.
She'd sent him an urgent message to meet her there rather than at the canteen that Tuesday, giving him careful descriptions of her car; despite the fact that she was expecting him she jumped when he rapped on the window.
The car was nondescript; a silvery-blue late model Ford sedan with a disreputable number of dings, creases and creeping rust. Her parents preferred for them to park it elsewhere when they visited, but purchasing an attractive vehicle was pointless. Ron's driving and parking skills could be likened to those of a colour-blind bomb defuser: while he got most things right, there were subtleties beyond his ken and when he got things wrong they went horribly pear-shaped.
Hermione gave him a box of chicken, and he began eating without comment or question.
"Did you know that in the States they serve biscuits with fried chicken?" she said, eating a chip and washing it down with a sip of Coke.
"Doesn't surprise me," he said sourly, licking grease from his fingers.
"Not English biscuits, though; more like savoury scones. With gravy." She was babbling.
He grunted a response, tucking in to a thigh. He liked dark meat, she liked white; together they made a complete chicken.
"I've something to tell you," she said. "Ron and I are divorcing."
"What brought this on?" he asked.
"Hugo managed to hurt himself flying, and I sent a Patronus to St Mungo's to let them know we were on our way. My Patronus had changed, and Ron saw it."
His black gaze met hers. "Changed... changed to what?"
She gave him a sour look. "A deer."
He just looked at her for a long moment before the corners of his mouth twitched. "I hope you and Potter will be very happy together."
"Oh, shut up. Not you, too."
He let it pass, dragging a chip through the smear of grease on the wrapper. "I trust that I won't be called in to testify as a co-respondent."
"No. You aren't even showing up on the radar... that's kind of like a Sneako-"
"I know radar."
"Oh."
"Don't you," he began, and popped a chip into his mouth for emphasis, "think that it's unwise to be here with me under the circumstances?"
"Wizard investigators never venture out into the Muggle world, at least not with cars. It's as safe here as anywhere."
"And with me?" he asked, carefully wiping his fingers on paper napkins.
"I'm not sure it's wise to be with you anywhere," she said, sighing.
He snorted. "You're hardly the first to say that."
"Things are going to be rather ugly for a while," she said. "You won't want to be anywhere near me."
"You could, ah, hide out in Milton Keynes," he said, elaborately casual. He didn't even look at her as he said it.
She looked at him. "I could, at that," she said. "It would have to be after the children go back to school, though."
He nodded in agreement, still looking out the window.
"I would send you an owl a few hours before I arrive," she said. "To give you plenty of time."
"Plenty of time for what?" he asked.
"Plenty of time to get a roast chicken in the refrigerator, of course."
"I know just the market," he said.
"I rather thought you might," she said.
The headlines of the Daily Prophet screamed-literally screamed-with the news:
War Heroes to Divorce
GODRIC'S HOLLOW - Auror and decorated war hero Ronald Weasley announced today that he and his wife of nearly twenty years were divorcing as a result of her alleged infidelity.
His wife, the former Hermione Granger, Ministry attorney and a decorated war hero in her own right, was unavailable for comment.
Mr Weasley said he became suspicious that his wife was having an affair when her corporeal Patronus changed forms.
"It's been an otter ever since we were in school. Now, all of a sudden, it's a deer? And who else do you know has a deer Patronus?" Mr Weasley asked.
This writer has on several occasions seen none other than Harry Potter himself produce a corporeal Patronus that looked very much like a deer, although it is unclear whether Mr Weasley means to implicate his close friend and brother-in-law in the alleged infidelity; Mr Potter is, of course, married to Mr Weasley's sister, the former Ginevra Weasley.
Mr Potter was unavailable for comment. There are reports from confidential informants close to both parties, however, stating that relations between Mr Potter and Mr Weasley have recently become strained.
For those of our esteemed readers who may not have conjured a corporeal Patronus, it is believed that the form of the Patronus may change to reflect that of a lover, although the Patronus form has also been reported to change in cases of bereavement or similar duress.
Related Articles:
Quiz: What does your lover's Patronus say about him?
Dear Antagone:I love him, but my Patronus hasn't changed. Should I dump him?
Ministry: Shacklebolt says change in Patronus insufficient evidence
A/N: Milton Keynes is a 'new town' - it was designed to mimic American cities with a logical road system and lots of parking spaces. Since almost everything there dates to the 1960s at the oldest, it is unlikely to attract wizards, as they tend to be drawn to the old and quirky. Thanks, as always, to the Brilliant Beta.
Story Notes:
Recipient: 
bloodcult
Title: The Unspeakable Canteen
Author:snarkypants
Rating: Not Mature. In fact, very, very immature.
Warnings: None
Prompt and Summary: A middle aged Hermione growing weary of Weasley finds, to her pleasant surprise, the long dead Snape is very much alive, thank you. Conversation ensues.
Author's Note: For hand-holding, inspiration, and general awesomeness.
bloodcultTitle: The Unspeakable Canteen
Author:
snarkypantsRating: Not Mature. In fact, very, very immature.
Warnings: None
Prompt and Summary: A middle aged Hermione growing weary of Weasley finds, to her pleasant surprise, the long dead Snape is very much alive, thank you. Conversation ensues.
Author's Note: For hand-holding, inspiration, and general awesomeness.