Chapter Text
“Come on, Hermione!” Milly tugged her hand, dragging her friend toward the door of the pub. It was only about the fifth they’d been in that night. The night air was too cold for comfort, but that was London in early November, and it had of course been raining, so not only was it too cold but it was damp and dank. And all Hermione wanted to do was go back to her flat, put the kettle on and call it a night.
Living life as a muggle hadn’t been the worst thing for her. After surviving the war, and nearly failing to survive all of the infamy that came with it, she had to break free. And break free she did. She’d snapped her wand, moved away, and kept herself just concealed enough— hidden in bloody plain sight— so that even Harry Potter, her once best friend, had given up trying to find her. It hadn’t been hard, not really. She’d spent the first two years essentially backpacking through Europe. But the war was over a decade ago and those firs two years felt like another lifetime. Which was an entire separate lifetime from her days as ‘the brightest witch of her age. Magic wasn’t wholly unavoidable, but she pretended not to notice, turned a blind eye and bought into the muggle rationalizations, and for the most part, she was happy.
Except for that exact moment where Milly, one of her dearest friends— a not-quite 30-year-old from the coffee shop across the street from the bookshop where she worked— was dragging her into yet another pub. They were meant to be out— a whole group of them— that Friday evening, painting the town red. It had been two other girls from Milly’s coffee shop that Hermione hadn’t known, Olivia, the girl who lived next door to Hermione, and Olivia’s rather reckless younger sister, Heather, and two girls that came shopping at the bookstore quite frequently— Laura and Portia, who were always on again, off again. But somewhere over the course of the evening, Laura and Portia had gotten into a row and broke off from the group, and she’d lost track of the two girls’ names that she hadn’t quite remembered two bars ago. And Olivia and Heather had torn off out of the last pub screaming about some band doing a pop-up performance at the pub that Milly was now dragging her to.
“Come on! Livi said they’re in here— band’s about to start!” Milly gave an almighty tug on Hermione’s arm and pulled her toward the door, which came flying open in their general direction, a carousing bunch of drunks spilling out into the street. Hermione sidestepped them with just enough time to avoid being collapsed upon. She sighed and drew her scarf more tightly around her neck.
“I’ve never even heard of them,” Hermione complained. “Sagebrush Warren,” she shrugged her shoulders trying to slink as inconspicuously as she could toward the corner. She could pull out her mobile and ping for an Uber. Or head straight to the tubes. Though with a quick glance around she realized it would be Uber. The neighborhood didn’t look particularly welcoming.
“Who cares? I’ve heard like one of their songs, I think. They’re super underground. They only do these pop-up style performances and you’ve got to be on their fan page to get the notification. Livi loves them!” Milly gushed and managed to tighten her hold on Hermione’s grip, hauling her across the threshold of the pub. “You can just have another drink and enjoy the atmosphere, enjoy the music!” she grinned, her kinky black curls bobbing up and down as she began to push her way into the crowded pub.
There was another protesting sigh from Hermione but it was swallowed by the din of the pub. It wasn’t as small as the outside had made it appear, and just up the stairs midway back, she could see what she thought looked like a tiny stage, probably where Sagebrush Warren would be playing. There were bars that ran on either side of the room, darts boards, and a snooker table. And the place was packed with people at tables and stools or just standing about. At least it was warm. Too warm, she noted and she undid her scarf, stuffing it into her coat pocket as she made to follow Milly through the crowd.
She could have turned a left. She should have, but she didn’t want a million texts from Milly and the others blowing up her phone for the rest of the evening. Even ten years after leaving magic behind, it felt like such a strange notion to wrap her head around. That people communicated with tiny little electronic boxes and could be in constant contact with you whenever you wanted or needed. What a useful thing to have had in the war. She immediately pushed that thought out of her head. They surfaced sometimes, the thoughts about the war— the memories of her other life. And often at the most inconvenient of times. But she always threw them out of her mind, refusing to let them live rent-free inside her brain.
Hermione wanted to leave. She may have forsaken magic but she still preferred a roaring fire, quiet room, book, and a cup of tea, over a rowdy pub with booze flowing freely, bunches of people, and way too many things happening all at once. And she was trapped in the hellscape of the latter at present. She leaned up on tiptoe and tried to catch sight of Milly’s bouncing black curls. She saw her, just up the half-set of stairs that led to the larger room in the back where the stage for the band was.
When she finally made her way to Milly, she was crushed into a big group hug by Olivia and Heather along with one of the two other girls whose name she hadn’t remembered.
“Oi! There you lot are! Mickey’s bringing drinks!” cried Heather as she lurched forward, gesturing behind her to the other girl— apparently called Mickey— who was toddling toward them on her too-short legs, arms loaded with bottles of what looked like beer.
How Heather was still standing was beyond Hermione’s comprehension, but that sassy, mouthy, redhead— with the striking green eyes and half of that lustrous mane shaved away on one side of her head— could have been a gold medalist if pub crawling were an Olympic sport. Hermione had gotten— as the girl said, “tore up from the floor up”— one night a few years back with Heather, Olivia, and a group of their friends in Olivia’s house, and Hermione had woken up half naked, without any stockings and only one shoe in her own back garden with half a shaved head and a gemstone studded through her nose.
She had never gotten blind drunk since. Her hair had grown back— though she kept it much shorter now, just a simply wavy chin-length bob, which she styled with muggle products— and she’d cheated using just a tiny bit of magic to instantly heal the hole in her nose. She never did find that other shoe, but shoes were easy enough to replace. She tried to smile at the Mickey girl as a bottle of fizzing, overflowing beer was thrust into her hand. Hermione would set that on the nearest surface as soon as she could without anyone noticing her. It wouldn’t be hard as most of them were quite pissed already.
The room was quite warm, though it was doing wonders for her frozen toes and chilled fingers. She’d misplaced her gloves about two pubs ago and Milly had refused to let her go back and look for them. She’d rather liked those gloves and the insides of her coat pockets had been a poor substitute for protection from the cold, especially when Milly kept grabbing her wrist to tug her along.
“Oh my God! LOOK!” Heather squealed, grabbing both of her cheeks in a full-on screaming pose. “Elvin!” she cried, pointing at a tall, dark-skinned man who was wearing no shirt at all and had a huge tattoo crisscrossing over his chest in deep, bright blues, whites, and oranges.
“Lead singer,” Milly nudged Hermione as they watched Heather throw herself at the man walking past.
“Easy, lass,” his accent was thick. Irish or perhaps Scottish; it was difficult to tell with all of the surrounding noise, not the least of which was Heather’s shrieking. But rather than foist her off, the Elvin fella seemed to pull her into him. “You can hold my pint while I sing,” he grinned and brushed her thick red hair aside, rubbing his palm over the shaved part of her head. “Sexy thang,” and he kissed that part of her head before moving toward the stage.
Three others were making their way through the crowd, the other musicians in Sagebrush Warren if the way other patrons of the pub were screaming and throwing themselves about was any indication. Hermione rolled her eyes. They were just men, even if they were musically inclined, and when women lost their minds fan-girl style in the way she was witnessing now, it drove her bananas. A taller, paler one with dark hair and sunglasses was moving past the one that looked like he was a walking cord of shirtless muscle when two girls, both about Hermione’s age, took flying leaps toward the corded-muscle-ball man, jostling into the taller pale one with the sunglasses.
He stumbled but stayed upright, though his glasses fell askew. As he was righting them back onto his face, a surge of waving arms and pulsing bodies pressed up behind Hermione as if they could burst through her to get to this member of the band. He reached his arm out, touching and squeezing the hands, his forearm knocking into Hermione’s face in the process. “Sorry, doll,” he said, moving on up to the stage with the others.
The room was spinning and Hermione could feel her heart exploding inside her chest. The forearm that had smacked into her face— not just any forearm—but a forearm marked with that mark— she gasped. The voice had been wrong but the room was loud. Or maybe he’d altered it. But that was impossible. She blinked. She’d drank too much; that had to be it. But she’d only been sipping water at the last pub— she’d even ordered a pasty. She hadn’t seen properly. It hadn’t been that mark. It had been a skull and a serpent, two things not entirely uncommon. Her mind was acting up. That had to be it. She’d had thoughts about the war before coming into the pub, her eyes saw a tattoo— not that tattoo— and her mind put both instances into a blender and came up with the living dead. That was all.
But she couldn’t shake the spinning nausea that accompanied the cruel trick her mind was playing on her. Hermione reached out to steady herself, finding Milly’s shoulder in the process. “Are you okay?” Milly asked, spinning round and frowning at Hermione. “You look like you’re about to be sick.”
Hermione shook her head. “I…” she couldn’t shake it. “Just need the loo,” she shouted, pointing to the far corner at the back of the room off to the left of the stage.
Milly nodded and with a shove, got her off in the right direction. The loo was freezing; someone had opened the window and little drops of icy rain were trickling inside. There was only the one stall— currently occupied— and the sink was blocked by two women wearing torn t-shirts emblazoned with Sagebrush Warren over their breasts. They were primping and preening like bloody peacocks over the sink, shoving into each other to get a better look in the mirror.
“You can take Billy— Elvin doesn’t mess around on the road anymore,” the one with the bottle-blonde crop-cut smacked her lips several times in the mirror. “Liam’s mine,” she smirked at her reflection but was promptly shoved out of the mirror’s view space by her curvy friend with the jet black hair.
“I’m not taking Billy,” she huffed and raked her fingers through her hair, which was thin and stringy. “You can’t just call dibs on Liam because you Elvin doesn’t fuck around on the road anymore.” “You can bang Crunch,” she laughed and her bottle-blonde friend shuddered.
“Ew! Nobody bangs Crush. Nobody bangs the drummer. Period.” The blonde reached into a pocket on her jeans as the toilet flushed and the lone stall door banged open.
“Fuck ‘oever you like. I’m fucking Liam,” the tall, black girl with short cropped hair that had zig-zigged streaks of silver and gold in it, pushed between the two girls and washed her hands in the sink. She turned her head just so and looked at Hermione, eying her up and down. “Unless he wants to fuck ‘er,” she snickered. “You look about his type. All gobsmacked and innocent,” she turned away from Hermione, who still felt as if the room was spinning violently around her.
“I’m not fu— I’m not— I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she whispered, her throat suddenly feeling very dry. It was the start of a panic attack. The room, spinning. Her heart, racing. Her palms, sweating, her breathing feeling tight and restricted. Her eyes had seen a tattoo; it wasn’t that tattoo because it couldn’t be. And that man, with the pale skin and long dark hair, even with a tattoo that looked an awfully lot like a certain other tattoo, could not be him because he was dead. She’d watched him die with her very own eyes. She’d failed to save him. He’d died for them. He was her own personal Jesus nightmare. But he was dead.
All three of the girls in the toilet laughed. They sounded like harpies. It was the black girl with the striking gold eyes— contacts judging by the way they shifted unnaturally in her sockets— and her sleek, cropped hair streaked with metallic zigzags that turned and looked at her. “Are you joking?” she said, eying Hermione up and down once more.
Hermione was not dressed like these women. She was not dressed like the people in the rest of her group. A top that accentuated and lifted was about as scandalous as she got, but it was long sleeved and at the moment hidden completely by her coat. She wore jeans and boats with thick woolen socks and a bit of lip gloss dabbed on her lips. She looked nothing like these women. And she found it difficult to meet the eyes of the girl talking to her, but mostly because she was trying to talk herself down from a panic attack. “No,” she said quietly, shaking her head.
The black girl laughed. She tossed her head back and let out a roaring laugh. “You’re funny, girl,” she said and nodded to the blonde and the other girl behind her. “Pip and Kim,” she said, indicating the blonde girl first. “I’m Alex. And you?”
“Hermione! Goodness! There you are! Beginning to think you’d done a bunk!” Milly cried, crashing into the too-tiny toilet. “Come on, band’s about to start!”
“I hadn’t— the loo’s only just opened up,” Hermione burst out, her voice rushed and pinched.
Milly rolled her eyes. “Well hurry up, then! Heather’s out there losing her mind about Elvin!”
Hermione slipped into the stall and forced it shut. The little slider bolt didn’t slide but the force of her shove kept the door in place. She didn’t need the loo; at least not to wee. She wasn’t certain that she wouldn’t puke. She’d had panic attacks before; few and far between these days, but in the early years of trying to leave that world behind. They had been constant and intense and unlike any terror she could remember from when she’d been on the run. Even the sting of Bellatrix’ knife hadn’t felt as bad compared to the way her lungs would squeeze together as if she were suffocating and burning all at once.
She heard the door to the toilet open, a rush of noise swooping in as the other girls left. Hermione leaned back against the wall of the stall. She closed her eyes; deep breath in. Deep breath out. Repeat. She would find Milly, tell her she wasn’t feeling well, and leave. Or she would just leave. Milly was probably wrapped up in the band by now. That would be best. She could always text her in the morning. Drawing in shaky breaths, which eventually stopped shaking after Hermione drew in several more of them, she pushed the stall door open but gave a small shriek as she was stood face to face with the golden-eyed, black woman that had called herself Alex.
“You really don’t know any of ‘em?” she said, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
Hermione shook her head, face flushed, heart racing again. “No,” she said. She assumed that the Alex woman meant the band.
Alex nodded after a few moments of scrutinizing Hermione’s face and then she reached into a tiny pouch clipped to her hip. “Here,” she said, pulling out a very small bottle of water.
Hermione took the water bottle, uncapped it, and sipped. “Thank you,” she said quietly, feeling marginally better for having sipped from the bottle. Water did not cure panic attacks but it gave her something tangible, a grounding point. There was a sensation of liquid sliding down the back of her throat, the notion of swallowing, and it helped her concentrate on her breathing.
“Do you want to?” Alex asked, turning around to look at herself in the mirror.
Hermione frowned and sipped the water again. Her heart rate was slowing, not quite normal, but not the furious racing pace it had been. “Want to?” she looked up at the reflection of the Alex girl and met her eyes through mirrored glass. “Want to what?”
“Get to know ‘em. The band,” she said tossing her head toward the toilet door. Just beyond, the sounds of a band getting underway could be heard. “Billy and Crunch can hold their own,” she shrugged. “And ‘o gives a fuck about Elvin,” she gnashed her teeth at her reflection. Her reflection gnashed back in perfect synch because it was not an enchanted, magical mirror. “But Liam…” her lips curled up a bit. “You’d be just his type. He’s very particular.”
Alex turned around and stared at Hermione, once again looking her up and down in an overly obvious way. “I’m their manager, so to speak. But I vet women for Liam and if I don’t find someone suitable, I make out that I’m fuckin’ ‘im for the night,” she said with a shrug. “Never shagged a bloke in my life,” her lips peeled apart, their shimmery gold-streaked glossiness settling into a feral grin. “But I look the part. And Liam goes on with it.”
It was a lot of information. Most of which didn’t make sense. Hermione was still hung up on trying to sort out her mind. She hadn’t seen what she’d thought she’d seen. Because it was impossible. She couldn’t have seen that mark. It couldn’t have been him. He was dead. She’d watched him die. And even if by some insanity, some impossibility, some miracle, he hadn’t died? What on earth would he be doing in a grungy little pub in muggle London and with a bunch of bizarre underground musicians? Hermione closed her eyes drawing in her breaths, slow and deep.
“You don’t like going out, do you?” Alex said flatly.
She opened her eyes, once again staring at the girl through the mirror. “Not really,” Hermione confessed. That was true. She was far fonder of staying at home, curling up on her sofa or in the recliner upstairs by the smaller fireplace, with a huge cup of steaming tea, a good book, and a blanket.
Alex chuckled. “Neither does Liam. It’s crazy 'e’s in a band but this whole groupies and pub-crawls and being everywhere with people— so not 'is scene,” she shrugged and then turned fully away from the mirror, crossing her arms over her very narrow chest. “You two would get on.” There was something dangerous sparkling in this woman’s eyes. And Hermione did not like it.
She shook her head. “No thanks,” she swallowed thickly. “I don’t even know which one Liam is,” she said. Hermione wanted to leave. It wasn’t an urgent, panic-inducing need, but she hadn’t truly wanted to be there in the first place and the more she stood in the very small toilet talking to this woman with her mind pumping overtime trying to reconcile what she thought she’d seen, the more she wanted to be anywhere else.
“Bassist,” she said. “Long dark hair, sunglasses, the one with the death mark?”
Hermione froze. Her whole body felt as if she’d been dipped in ice so cold that it was starting to burn. “W-what?”
“ 'is tattoo?” Alex pulled out her phone and started swiping her finger across the glassy screen. “The skull and cross— well not skull and crossbones— skull and snake— said it was from some gang before 'e moved ‘ere,” she paused her swiping and flipped the phone toward Hermione. Blazing in the center of it was a man— the man that had bumped his forearm against her face in the crowd. Pale skin, long dark hair, sunglasses obscuring his eyes, and clear as day, showing on his left forearm, was the unmistakable tattoo of a Death Eater’s Dark Mark.
Hermione felt the room spin again. She was braced back against the wall and took no notice of how filthy it was. All her eyes could focus on in that moment was the picture on the screen in front of her. It was impossible. It had to be impossible. She could feel little drops of sweat at the back of her neck, one sliding down the center and slithering further down her spine. The whooshing in her ears, blood thundering inside her head, it brought back the intense feeling of nausea. She tried to draw in slow, deep breaths. She did not want another panic attack.
“Are you on something?” Alex asked, both of the girl’s sleek black eyebrows pinching together in a frown. “Do I need to get Nyxoid— are you about to OD on me?” the girl’s hands were slender, her fingers bony but meticulously manicured as the reached out to steady Hermione’s shoulder.
Hermione shook her head and closed her eyes. “I’m fine…I don’t use— I’m fine,” she said and counted her breaths. A slow one in, a slower one out. In through her nose, out through her mouth. “I don’t drink much and haven’t eaten much today,” she said and then carefully opened her eyes, fixing them on Alex’s face. “And I’m not much for crowds,” she added. All of those statements were true. And none of them involved divulging that she thought she was looking at a ghost.
Alex’s lips quirked to the side; then she exhaled. “Yeah, you don’t look like you use,” she said quietly. “Come on, I can take you to the little backstage room with me. You can ‘ear the band from there, and no one goes back there but me. And the band when they’ve finished.”
Before Hermione could find the words to politely refuse, Alex had wrapped her arm around Hermione’s waist, half shouldering her body against her, and pulled them out of the toilet, into the throng. It was a quick series of steps, around the side to what looked like a broom cupboard that one might not have noticed for as oddly placed as it was. Hermione couldn’t help but wonder if it had been disillusioned. She had to remind herself she was in the throng of muggle London; disillusionments didn’t just happen at the back of muggle pubs. Magic was everywhere, hidden from plain muggle sight, of course, but in the seven years she’d spent settled in London, she’d rarely had cause to be exposed to it. And she was trying to remind her brain that this was likely to be the case here as well.
Chalk it up to coincidence. Many people had Death Eater tattoos. She supposed it was even possible that somehow that cultural icon— heinous as it was— had matriculated over into muggle culture. She tried not to think on it as she was guided into the broom cupboard, up three small stairs into a surprisingly spacious room that had piles of musical instrument cases, a few armchairs, a sofa, and what looked like a fridge in the corner, as well as a door with a glowing green sign over it marked EXIT.
“Sit down,” said Alex as she undid her arm from around Hermione’s waist. “They haven’t started anything new this tour; I see them nearly every night, I’m not missing anything,” she said with a shrug, moved to the fridge and pulled out a larger bottle of water and a bottle of beer. “Unless you want a proper drink?”
Hermione shook her head and eased herself down into a burgundy armchair that was surprisingly plush considering how grungy it looked. She took the water bottle from Alex and bit her lower lip. It was a nervous tick from her life— her life before — that she fell back into whenever her nerves got the best of her. And this was certainly a case of that. She couldn’t stop thinking about that tattoo; the voice that accompanied the arm with the tattoo and just what that would mean if her confused brain was right. But how could she be right? It simply couldn’t be.
Alex had popped the top of the beer bottle and was already swigging it back. It was only then that Hermione had been able to take in her full appearance. She’d noted the shortly cropped hair with the silver and gold zigzags back in the toilets. But the copper mini skirt that looked like it was pure leather dusted in bronze glitter, which hid almost nothing of her legs and backside, the thigh-high black leather boots with the stiletto pointed heel, and the crop-tube-top that matched the coloring of the skirt, which hugged her chest snuggly, showcasing her very flat chest, had all been missed. She’d noticed the girl’s golden eyes but not the insane white makeup just around her eyelids. And her lips were a sparkly gold as well. She had piercings all up her right ear and a tattoo that enshrined her neck like permanent ornate jewelry. She was quite a sight.
“So your friends know Sagebrush Warren,” Alex said and plopped herself onto the sofa, which faced directly opposite of where Hermione sat. “The one who burst into the toilet— she a big fan?”
Hermione shook her head. Milly had said that she had only maybe heard one of their songs. It was Heather and Olivia, probably mostly Heather, who was keen on this group. “I don’t think so. I’ve got a few other mates out there— they’re probably the ones keen on the band,” she confessed.
“Right. The redhead— firebush,” she snickered. “I’ve seen ‘er round before. She’s shagged Elvin a few times. I think.” She swallowed more of the beer. “Tried throwin’ ‘erself at Liam a couple times too. But she’s not ‘is type. She’s got a nice bush though.”
Hermione turned pink. The last thing she wanted to think about was Heather’s pubic hair. Or Heather having sex with anyone— let alone members of the band. Thoughts were creeping up into her head gain and she tried to ignore them. She hastily sipped her water. “You said— sorry,” Hermione coughed a bit on the water as it slid ever so slightly down the wrong pipe. “You said you thought I was— Liam’s type?” she could feel her throat tightening as she said his name. Not because she’d swallowed water incorrectly.
Alex nodded and let both arms fall easily on either side of her body. “You’re not a stick. You don’t have tits for miles…or if you do you’re not putting ‘em on display,” she smirked at Hermione. “You aren’t painted up like a tart. You’re not throwing yourself at ‘im. And you look— don’t take this the wrong way, doll, but you look smart,” she said. “Like too smart to be a band groupie.”
She didn’t know what to make of that. And her rather defensive side got the better of her tongue before she could help herself. “One’s looks and one’s intelligence seldom go hand in hand and I fail to see how one’s taste in music has any correlation to one’s intelligence.” Hermione sounded more like herself than she had felt all night.
Alex laughed. “Christ’s tit, you sound like Liam. All big words and defensively protecting your brains,” she was smiling, not smirking. “It’s queer— finding you like this,” she said with a shrug. “I think ‘e’d like you,” she said and there was something oddly sincere about the way the girl spoke that tugged at the pit of Hermione’s stomach in a most unsettling way.
But she tried not to dwell on it. She wanted to drink the water, let her heart rate settle just a bit more, and then slip out through the door into the cold night air, call and Uber and go home. Or apparate. Hermione bit the inside of her cheek hard. She hadn’t thought about apparating in years. She hadn’t done it in longer. Not only would she certainly splinch herself, but apparating after over a decade of not doing so, in an entirely muggle section of London would certainly set of some sort of alarm somewhere. While she knew she didn’t bare the trace— that was for underaged wizards and witches— she was fairly sure that there was some sort of detection system in place. Tiny little repairs that she made in her shop— though she did try as often as possible not to need magic to make those repairs— were one thing. And they made her worlds of nervous every time she used them, which was less than a handful of times throughout the year. Apparating might cause her to faint from sheer nerves alone. And then she’d definitely splinch herself.
“ ‘ave you got someone I can call? Boyfriend? Girlfriend? A mate that isn’t out there getting blind while jamming to the boys?” Alex asked.
Hermione shook her head. “I’ll be fine. I’m just going to grab an Uber,” she said, reaching her hands into the pocket of her coat. She pushed the bunched out scarf out of the way, fingers swiping against— nothing. She sat up straight, hands tearing through her other pocket. A few notes, some coins, the key to her house, the key to Milly's flat. Frantic fingers felt around the lining of that pocket, coming up empty, before they began patting down the lapels of the coat, reaching to the inside pocket but her phone was nowhere to be found. “Bullcoks!” she cried.
“Whatsamatter?” Alex tilted her head to the side.
She was about to curse having laid her phone down at the last pub, dreading what on earth could have happened to it between there and here, when she was struck with the sudden memory that she hadn’t actually brought her phone with her. Milly had shown up at the bookstore as Hermione was closing up the shop; she’d been early. And she’d rushed Hermione through leaving, causing her to leave her phone in the little shop office. At least it was plugged into the charger there. She sighed heavily. “I’ve left my phone at work,” she muttered. She’d made that same realization two pubs ago, when she’d went to check the time, only to discover it had not been on her person then either.
“Been there. Done that,” Alex grinned.
There was a sudden blast of noise from outside the backstage room. A door Hermione had not seen, different from the one she and Alex had come through, swooshed inward and then slammed shut, letting snippets of loud voices and cheering ring through the room for just a moment. And there he was. The man with the pale skin, long dark hair, sunglasses, and unmistakable tattoo, stalking over to Alex, throwing his sunglasses off his face.
Hermione watched in awe as Alex caught them before she all but sprang to his side, dabbing his forehead with a towel that had seemingly appeared from nowhere. “Now what’s ‘appened?” she asked, backing off as the bassist, Liam, waved her away and plopped down into the armchair just beside Hermione. There was a muffled squealing cry raging from out front on the stage.
“Elvin’s at his bullshit again,” the man muttered. “He’s got girls up on stage, giving him bits of their hair or their knickers— that redhead is humping his leg so hard it’s a wonder he still has trousers,” he huffed. “Get me some water, would you?”
Hermione could feel her throat tightening. It was impossible. But that voice, no longer scattered among the din of the crowd and the roar of the screaming fangirls, was unmistakable. She was only seeing the profile of his face, and he was turned away looking at Alex, but that nose was as unmistakable as that voice. Her heart started thundering in her chest and she was panting aloud before she could help herself. She coughed, trying to cover the labored breathing of a full blown panic attack.
“Who’s she?” he said, as he turned laying eyes on Hermione.
The look that crossed his face had every last ounce of pigment draining from Hermione’s skin. She could feel her veins freezing up as if the room had suddenly dropped to a frosty zero degrees. It was brief; the way he looked at her, and his eyes remained steady, he didn’t gape or gasp. But it had been there; that unmistakable presentation of shock and surprise.
Alex rolled her eyes. “I think she’s got some kind of panic thing,” she said and handed Liam a bottle of water. “Oi,” Alex stood in front of Hermione now, gripping and gently shaking her shoulders. “Are you going to be okay? Deep in? Deep out?” she said.
Hermione focused on the unnaturally golden eyes swimming before her until they weren’t swimming in and out of focus but rather staring at her from the deep-set sockets of that rich, black face. “Are you good?” Alex asked, easing her hands back from Hermione and taking a step back from her. “You need food. I’ll text Jerry’s ‘ave something sent round,” she said and stepped back, pulling out her phone once more. “You want anything?” she turned her head to Liam.
“Chips and sausage rolls,” he said, never taking his eyes off Hermione’s face.
At least the room had stopped spinning for the moment. Hermione assessed the situation; she was in some pub that was unbeknownst to her on the other side of London from her home. Her phone was back in the shop office, which was just as far away as her home. Her friends were out there partying like mad with some band she’d never heard of. And she had managed to experience at least two mostly full-blown panic attacks, though time had taught her how to mostly pull through them. She was sitting in a private room, reserved for the band she’d never heard of, with the band’s manager, who had been friendly enough. And now one of the members of the band was seated beside her.
“Right, so food’ll be ‘ere in about 20. But it’s Jerry’s so more like ‘alf an ‘our or more, but whatever,” Alex shrugged. “Are you going back out there or ‘ave you ‘ad enough of Elvin for the night?” she narrowed her glittery golden eyes, which looked even more surreal surrounded by the bright white shimmer makeup, and glared at Liam.
He turned his eyes away from Hermione for a moment, addressing Alex. “I think I’ve had enough of Elvin for a lifetime, if I’m honest,” he said flatly. “But he’s what they all want. So he’s what they’ll get for tonight,” he grumbled. “They don’t notice the bass half the blasted time anyway.”
The voice was right, dead on, but the words were wrong. How could those words— things about fangirls and music and instruments— be coming out of his mouth? The simple answer was that it wasn’t him. And that was the logical answer as well because he was dead. Only that voice, that nose, those eyes, and certainly that mark— it defied logic.
“Right,” said Alex, who walked over to the exit door and popped it open with her hip. “I’m standing out ‘ere for a smoke,” she fished around in the clipped pouch on her hip. “You want one?”
“No,” he snapped at her.
“Not you, idiot. ‘er,” she said and nodded at Hermione.
“I don’t smoke,” Hermione’s voice was quiet and shaky.
“Suit yourself,” Alex shrugged and stepped out into the alley, leaning the door against the wall of the building. She was still in Hermione’s sightline and probably still within earshot as the room wasn’t that big, though it had seemed big enough when they’d first entered it.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
Hermione jumped. “I— how do— I—”
“You brought me a mute, Alex,” he hollered in Alex’s general direction and then turned his eyes back to Hermione. “I meant how did you find your way back here with Alex?”
Hermione felt a wave of sensations crash over her. Maybe it wasn’t him, though she didn’t see how that could be possible. Of course she was failing to rationalize how it could be him too. Nothing made sense. The pit of her stomach was both heavy like lead and churning like a tempest at sea. And it felt like it was on fire, like she’d swallowed a hot coal. Everything was wrong. Nothing seemed right. She knew her face was pale, she knew she must have looked insane. But she couldn’t take her eyes off of him. And before she could help herself, she found her eyes darting to his forearm, which was exposed in plain sight.
Whatever he’d been wearing when he’d bumped into her on his way to the stage— he wore only a black singlet now, along with some deep black denim jeans and boots. His hair, which was thicker and far longer than she had remembered, was tied back at the base of his neck, a rather voluminous ponytail trailing halfway down his back, though some of the strands had come lose. She let her eyes linger on his forearm, on that mark for just a moment too long.
He turned his arm over, casually without haste, but kept his eyes fixed on her face. “Let’s start with something basic then,” he said, his voice slightly lower than before. Hermione noted how he shifted forward in the arm chair, bringing both of his elbows onto his knees as he leaned forward. With little effort, the chair scraped against the floor until his chair was directly facing hers, rather than siting beside it. His knees were close enough to be touching hers and she felt the molten pit of her stomach threatening to burn up through her throat. “How about your name, doll,” he said, fixing her with a glittering black gaze.
Hermione swallowed. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be happening. It defied logic, physics, and a great many other things that she couldn’t name in that exact moment. He had recognized her. Hadn’t he? Because he was— a dead man. That made no sense. She swallowed again. Her lips parted, she drew in breath, and she spoke. “Hermione Bennett,” she whispered, hardly realizing she’d spoken her name at all. It was half true. That was the name she’d given herself when she’d fled the magical world. The irony of having to use magic to create the identity for her was not lost on her, but there she was, as if she had always been that person.
He nodded. “Pleasure to meet you, Hermione Bennett,” he said, and extended a hand— she noted, his right hand— to her. “Liam Everest,” he said.
Hermione watched her hand, as if it were someone else’s hand, reach out, grip his palm and felt him squeeze her fingers, shaking her hand in introduction. Her heart thundered inside her chest. She didn’t care what he said. The man who had introduced himself as Liam Everest, bassist of Sagebrush Warren, was absolutely Severus Snape. And he was very much alive and breathing, sitting in the back room of a pub, holding her hand.