Act Two: La Belle Sorcière Avec Merci

La Championne du Chevalier[1]

Hermione’s steps echo in the empty hallway. She imagines her mother’s purple Persian rug on the gleaming white tiles and shudders.

Dudley hovers on the doorstep. Snape stares at her. She can see how Snape is trying to reconcile this posh minimalist mansion with the bookworm in robes he knows from Hogwarts.

‘I thought your parents were dentists?’

‘Sort of.’

He raises an eyebrow. ‘Miss Granger, you had better explain yourself. Now.’

She winces. She hates it when he calls her ‘Miss Granger’ like that, but she doesn’t protest. Everything’s surreal. She’s feeling so strange, as if she’s floating, or cocooned in cotton wool.

‘Come in, Dudley,’ she says.

Dudley closes the door behind him. ‘Harry asked me to get some stuff from IKEA. Just so you’d have, you know, a bed and a table and so on. I didn’t know, like, what you like, so I got just some really basic stuff …’ He trails off, looking from Hermione to Snape and back. ‘I … I’ll just go make some tea. Uh… You go ahead.’ He gestures vaguely in the direction of the living room and disappears into the kitchen, shutting the door, leaving them alone in that white echoing hallway.

Hermione feels exposed as if she’s naked on stage, and she doesn’t know her part.

Snape is waiting.

‘Well, they were. Dentists,’ Hermione explains, studying the spotless tiles at her feet. ‘Only da- my father was a specialist, an oral surgeon with international clients. And —

‘— my mother was Lady Jean Grenville, daughter of Viscount Greenmere,’ she whispers. ‘She did lots of charity work. British Dentists for Africa, that sort of thing.’

‘Miss Granger,’ Snape says very softly, his most dangerous voice, and she feels like a mouse before the cat pounces, ‘do I look like a charity case?’

The door of the kitchen opens and Dudley reappears, a tray in his hands.

‘Tea’s ready,’ he announces brightly.

Apart from a small square table, four chairs, and a Japanese paper lamp, the living room is empty. Hermione slumps down on ‘her’ chair, the one closest to the fireplace, looking toward the conservatory. She misses the splashes of colour from her father’s orchids. All of a sudden her eyes are burning. Her hands, expertly handling tea pot and cups, passing sugar, milk and scones, do not seem to belong to her.

Outside the rain has stopped. The veins of the exotic hardwood floor gleam in the sudden summer sunlight flooding the room.

It should be winter, Hermione thinks, as she stares into her cup. Somehow it seems wrong to be exiled in August. She realises that Snape is waiting for an explanation, a justification, a vindication — an answer. But she doesn’t have one.

‘It was Harry’s idea,’ Dudley says quietly. ‘So don’t blame Hermione, Mr Snape.’

Snape opens his mouth in a snarl, baring crooked yellow teeth. But Dudley holds up a hand. ‘Please, let me say something first.’

Snape frowns even more fiercely but closes his mouth, pressing thin lips into an even thinner line of disapproval. Dudley looks questioningly at Hermione. She wonders what happened to the big bad bully Harry used to tell her about. But she nods. Looking down at her cup, she thinks it strange that there should be tea in her exile. Or furniture from IKEA, for that matter. Or the comfort of the bleak-eyed, black-robed man on the other side of the table, with his familiar scowl.

‘It’s no good to throw around blame,’ Dudley announces. ‘That doesn’t help, see. I used to do that all the time. Blame Harry, that is. For like, my bad grades and everything else. Lots of kids do stuff like that. Cause it’s easy. Easier than looking at yourself. But sometimes, something comes up, and that doesn’t work anymore. When the D-’

He swallows, his double-chin wobbling pathetically. ‘When the Dementoids attacked us —’

He gulps his tea. ‘Those things, they, like, sucked all the fight out of me. T’was awful. Like, one day I woke up, and I’d no friends. Everyone was laughing at me, all the time. And when I hit them, they hit back! A nightmare. Smeltings’ principal said I had to get help. So Mum made me do therapy. And it helped. Loads.

‘Now I’m assistant counsellor at a comprehensive in Lewisham,’ he continues, ‘and my father doesn’t talk to me, ’cause counselling is such a shitload of namby-pamby. — What I’m saying is, today, that must be like Dementoids for you. A —’ He hesitates, concentrating. ‘A “traumatic” experience. So there. Admitting you need help doesn’t turn you into charity cases or anything. It just means you need help. I did.’

Expectantly, he looks at Snape and Hermione.

She can see that Snape wants to leave. He’d probably rather be in Azkaban than here. She tries to suppress her panic. She knows Dudley is right: Snape will need help. He hasn’t lived in the Muggle world since he was a boy. Even then his mother was a witch. But what’s more, Snape is everything that is left of her world. She doesn’t want to lose him, too.

The silence stretches, invisible ropes coil and tighten around them. Hermione feels strangled, short of breath. She has to concentrate so she doesn’t start hyperventilating.

When she’s close to tears, Snape leans back and inclines his head a fraction.

He’ll stay.

At least for now.

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[1] Textual allusion to the poem championing the poor knight in Alain Chartier’s LBDSM.