Arundel Granville and the Cursed Crown

11- Sarcasm and Witt

Amber disapperated back to Egypt from the front step after handing Arun a package and telling her not to open it until she was back at Hogwarts. "Happy birthday littlun," she whispered as she pulled her into a tight hug. "Come and see me more, I miss you."

"Little!" Arun cried as Amber broke away from their embrace. "I'm an old woman now. Twenty seven Amber!"

Amber rolled her eyes, "You'll still feel twenty seven when your thirty two," she assured her and plante a kiss on her cheek. "I'll be seeing you," she said and disappeared with a faint pop. Snape was looking up at the sky again, it was cloudy in Paris.

"What now?" she asked.

"Are you incapable of planning for yourself?" he answered, "I suppose there will be something to see if we walk."

Arun smiled and slid her hand into his, "I would have missed my birthday completely if you hadn't stopped me working," she told him as they made their way back to Rue Girardon. "I wouldn't have known what day it is. It's odd to think that it's April already."

"Time is an area of magic I do not care for. The study of it should be banned."

Arun hummed in reply and leaned into Snapes arm, they walked for a moment in comfortable silence until they paused outside of a lounge club where chilled out jazz wafted from the inside on pillows of colour and scent. The club was called Ammorentia which seemed pretty fitting. Neither of them made any move to enter the club, instead they stood in the cold night air just listening. Arun broke the spell, "The last few months have-" she picked up where she had to leave off in the restaurant. Snape didn't draw his eyes away from the front of the club, but they became unfocused as she spoke. "I was worried that we wouldn't be able to live with each other, that there would be too much left unsaid."

"Plenty has been left unsaid," Snape reminded her, somewhat flat in tone.

"And I'm glad of it," Arun insisted. "Sometimes things are best kept quiet because they only matter in the moment. I've had a nice time living with you, I enjoy the fact that our conversations are not just filling between sex."

Snape bit his lip as he looked into the window, "Do you still want to?" he asked.

"I guess," she looked up at him with a cruel smile. "Every so often."

He closed his eyes, "Since my parents- I haven't."

"That's normal, I suppose."

"After Lily died I assured the Dark Lord that she was simply a prize, my winnings for his assured supremacy. He apologised, and I told him that there were other women, better suited, who I could take instead and he laughed and said I could always count on you."

"Did he," Arun bit the words as they came out.

"You were long gone by that point."

"As soon as you asked him to spare her I knew Severus."

"I never thanked you for keeping it to yourself."

"No, you made a sacred bond with me instead and now I walk hand in hand with death should I tell." She sniffed and looked away down the street, every time they got close, every time she started to feel he had a connection with her, he brought up that ungrateful redhead. Her death, the death of his best friend, weighed so heavily on him that it had changed the course of his whole life. It had shattered his loyalty to the Dark Lord, which Arun didn't think was a bad thing. She wasn't really sure why anybody actually believed in the monster Tom Riddle had become, those closest to him were simply too terrified to run. They had made their bed so they had to lie in it. To aspire to become like their abusive daddy to reclame some of the hopelessness they felt. Nobody was more relieved than she was that the Dark Lord was gone.

"It means a lot to me," Snape told her. "I made bad choices when I was young. I should have told the sorting hat I wanted to be in Gryffindor."

Arundel barked a laugh, "Wow Sev. yeah, and history would probably have it that your son was the subject of that prophesy and James was the one to tell the Dark Lord about you."

Snape looked rather shocked at that.

"Can you picture a little Snapey Jr looking up at Ol' Voldie as he raised his wand to whisper Ad-"

"Shut up Arundel," Snape snapped. He had pictured it, she knew it for a fact. He'd pictured it over and over until it drove him so mad he couldn't see good when it was in front of him. It left her more sure than ever that some people were simply their own worst enemies.

"I could never understand how she disliked my friends so much but then was content to turn a blind eye to James Potter's dunderheaded, psychotic-"

"Looks," Arundel said very confidently. "Your friends are ugly Sev, and they laugh at inappropriate things and even back then they enjoyed seeing people get hurt. Potters friends were no different but at least they had some shame, and their faces were symmetrical and they knew how to dress. Why do you think Lucius was always so popular?"

"You think she disliked them because she found them unattractive?" Snape asked, as if the thought had never occurred to him before.

"I think she didn't like them because they saw her as a mudblood piece of shit, they tolerate being around her because you were her friend, and however much you might have told them that a powerful witch would be welcomed by the Dark Lord should she be converted to the cause they still saw her as an imposter."

Snape took a deep breath, "They welcomed me even knowing that I had a piece of shit muggle father. I was such a fool. I thought our friendship would survive it. I was so naive."

"You love people who hate you, it's normal for you to think they won't leave."

Snape shook his head, "I'll gladly spend the rest of my life making amends."

Arundel took a few steps away from him and hooked her hands on her waist, "I know you don't have anybody else to talk to about this, but this is my birthday and I don't want to spend it talking about how much you regret her death."

Snape scratched the back of his neck, "Sorry, it was insensitive."

"Oh," Arun laughed. "I'd never accuse you of being insensitive," she closed the gap and ran her hands around his body.

"Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, old woman," he told her.

They fell quiet again, but Arundel couldn't drop it. "Every time you bring her up you make me feel like a healing potion, like I'm some salve you can rub on a wound to take the sting out of it."

Severus said nothing to that. He pulled her in closer and rested his head on top of hers.

"The food was amazing, seeing my sister again was really lovely too. You put a lot of thought into this."

He kissed the top of her head in response but words were still alluding him so he simply rocked her back and forward in time with the beat of the music until time blurred into sound and her eyes grew heavy. The first drops of rain hit the end of her nose and when she looked up Severus bent down and brushed her lips with his, and without letting her go he apparated them back to the train station at Hogsmeade. Under cloudless skies again he led the way back to the boat, but the journey back to the boathouse at Hogwarts took far longer than it should.

Arun woke up the next morning in Snapes bed. He was propped up on pillows, topless with a lit cigarette burning between his fingers. Arun spent a while looking at the tattoos on his body, protection runes, counter jinx's and just decoration mingled with the sparse line of hair over his chest. He was reading the Daily Prophet, and when he noticed she was awake he quoted a section "Whilst Mr Phillpot alleges in Transfiguration Today that the Gants third law can be applied he fails to take into account the transcendental nature of the Toadstool he is studying."

"Is that the Experimental Updates?"

"It's always interesting."

She turned onto her back and let her hand play through her hair, "I might go to Gringotts today," she told him. "If the crown is Goblin made perhaps we can track it's history? I'll have a chat with Griphook."

"Be careful Arun, you don't know-"

She laughed and kissed his arm. "I'm going to take a shower she told him, and she slid from his bed and left the room, putting a little extra wiggle in her step as she went.