Fair and Foul by Lemon Curd

They left the ferry in the morning, and after a couple more hours in the car arrived at their hotel.

Harry had only ever stayed at a hotel once before, the aptly named Railview Hotel, and was stunned by how luxurious the French hotel was.

Hermione bemoaned the fact that the hotel’s so-called library was just a collection of books left behind by guests, which made for rather low quality.

“You brought tons of books”, Harry reminded her, this having been the primary reason why the car was so full. “Let’s go try the pool.”

“I can’t swim”, Hermione admitted.

“Me neither”, Harry said cheerfully, heartened by the fact he wasn’t the only one with that problem. “We can stay in the shallow area.” The Grangers had bought him swimming trunks, resistance had been futile – the argument that he had to stay with them for safety reasons and therefore needed appropriate clothes wherever they went, had convinced him.

Most of the clothes that now travelled with him were castoffs of Hermione’s nasty cousin who was a lot slimmer than Dudley and didn’t ruin his clothes half as much before growing out of them. Harry hadn’t asked why they had so many castoffs of that boy lying around, but suspected most of them had actually been worn by Hermione inbetween, or intended for her once she grew into them. He had never seen her in anything that would have looked out of place on a boy – except for her swimsuit, of course.

The pool was very nice, and it had a non-swimmer area where Hermione could demonstrate some of the movements she had learnt in her swimming lessons, with her feet firmly planted on the ground.

Harry tried them out and thought swimming might actually be pretty easy – like with flying, Hermione probably just was too cautious to actually do it, even though she knew the theory perfectly well.

In the evening, Harry was so tired he fell asleep in the nice hotel bed without even thinking about how much it must have cost the Grangers to take him on this holiday.

The next day Harry got up before Hermione, who probably had wasted half the night re-reading some of her schoolbooks.

He found the way to the breakfast buffet without problems, and saw Mr. Granger at one of the tables.

Perfect.

Since the breakfast was included in the price and didn’t cost extra, Harry didn’t feel bad about heaping a bit of everything on his plate, though he still made sure to not take more than he could actually eat.

Mr. Granger greeted him. “Is Hermione up yet?”, he asked when Harry had sat down.

“No – I think she didn’t get much sleep before midnight, she was too enchanted by her herbology book – pun not intended.”

Hermione’s father chuckled. “Typical. I must say, I am grateful that you got her to go swimming. It is very hard to get her to do anything but reading – but then, I am probably not the best role model when it comes to that.” And, as if to emphasize his point, he folded up the newspaper he had been reading.

Harry hid a grin. It was true, the Grangers were a family of book addicts, though Hermione seemed to be the ‘worst’. Perhaps she would grow out of it a bit.

“I hope today won’t be too boring for you”, Mr. Granger stated. “We are going to Paris, and will probably spend all day at the Louvre. I understand it is customary to take children to Disneyland, but Hermione tends to enjoy museums more.”

“That’s perfectly alright, sir.” After eleven years with the Dursleys, he considered his holidays well spent if Dudley wasn’t around to bully him. Add Mrs. Figg actually feeding him something else than cabbage and he was ecstatic. “I haven’t been to many museums, but I think I might like them.”

The Dursleys considered museums a waste of time, and Harry figured that something the Dursleys disliked couldn’t be half bad.

And he did like it, sort of. Hermione wasn’t so enamoured with paintings as she was with books, and so they moved through the museum at a reasonable pace.

When Hermione spent somewhat more time looking at the painting of an astronomer, Harry didn’t feel bored – he actually had an opinion on this. “Wish we had such nice celestial globes in Hogwarts”, he said.

“Or the book - Institutiones Astronomicae Geographicae”, Hermione agreed. “I heard of it, it’s - ”

“Oh – you go to Hogwarts?”

They turned around. Behind them was a blonde girl, perhaps a few years older than them. She blushed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just never met anyone from Hogwarts!”

Hermione and Harry exchanged glances. “What school do you go to, then?”, Hermione asked cautiously.

“Why, Beauxbatons, of course!”

Harry had no idea what Beauxbatons was, but Hermione nodded. “Obviously. Just had to make sure you are ... that you, too, get astronomy lessons.”

The girl beamed. “Of course. Better safe than sorry.”

“How is Beauxbatons? It must be bigger than Hogwarts. And don’t many new students have problems with the language?” Hermione asked without breathing inbetween.

“It is very large, and there are classes in different languages for first year”, their new acquaintance explained while they moved, by unspoken agreement, towards an area with fewer people in it. “I am not sure how much larger than Hogwarts it is, but I am sure we have a larger headmistress.”

“Larger?”

The blonde girl chuckled. “Madame Maxime denies it whenever the rumour comes up, but I am pretty sure she is ...” She interrupted herself. “Well, she is about as tall as the Hogwarts groundskeeper, I think.”

“That’s much taller than Dumbledore”, Harry agreed. “Our headmaster.”

“I know. I know everything about Hogwarts.”

“And your English is very good”, Hermione remarked. “So, where are you from?”

“I actually grew up in France”, the girl explained. “But I have British roots. My name is Rose Evans, by the way.”

“I’m Hermione Granger and that is Harry Potter”, Hermione introduced them.

Afterwards, Hermione got back to their previous topic of conversation: “So your parents told you a lot about Hogwarts?”

Rose shook her head. “No – I – I live with foster parents.”

“Are they nice?”, Harry asked.

“Very nice”, Rose stated, and though she smiled and didn’t seem to be lying, Harry thought it didn’t explain why she had gotten so nervous about it.

“I live with my aunt and uncle”, he explained. “They are ... well, they think I’m a burden, that’s why I asked. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosy.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry, that must be awful.” The compassion in her green eyes was genuine, but still made Harry a bit uncomfortable.

“It’s okay, I only have to spend the summers with them now that I go to Hogwarts.”

“My parents invited Harry to come to France with us”, Hermione explained. “Hogwarts has been closed for the holidays because some ... architecture problem and he didn’t want to stay with his aunt and uncle.”

Calling the chamber of secrets an architecture problem was very creative, and fortunately, Rose didn’t ask any questions about it.

“How are your teachers at Hogwarts?”, she asked instead. “Is it true Gilderoy Lockhart is the teacher for Defense?”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Yeah, but don’t get too excited about it. He’s a fraud. Can’t even deal with pix- uh ... common garden pests.”

“I know.” Rose sighed. “He used to be my favourite author, but last year I brewed an ... concoction to change my hair colour according to the instructions in his book on haircare and almost got myself killed. My guardian had to appar- I mean, take a plane all the way from Scotland.”

Hermione frowned. “And you followed the recipe to the letter? I never tried anything from the books, but I would have expected they’d at least be, well, safe.”

Rose nodded. “I’m very good at po- at chemistry. My guardian checked the recipe, too. It’s a mistake in the book.”

“That shouldn’t be legal!” The fact that a book could be wrong seemed to shock Hermione to her core. “Why did you want to change your hair colour, anyway? Lots of girls dye their hair to look like you.”

“I just wanted to see how I’d look with black hair.” Rose shrugged. “It was stupid to try and do it myself, I should just have bought dye. After that accident I was too upset to do anything about it, and now I think perhaps red would look better. What do you think?”

Harry tried to imagine her with red hair, but for some reason, that reminded him of his mum, and he had a feeling that saying that out loud wasn’t such a good idea. No girl wanted to look like someone’s mum.

“Green eyes and red hair are a nice combination”, Hermione said. “On the other hand, some people have prejudices against redheads. I don’t know how it is in France, though.”

She must be thinking of Malfoy, who would mistake anyone with red hair for a Weasley, on principle.

“I can’t imagine there’s less prejudice. It’s less common here.” Rose sighed. “Perhaps I should just leave my hair as is. But enough about me. What’s your favourite subjects in Hogwarts?”

“Everything”, Hermione replied. “Except fl- I don’t like sports. Everything else is great – well, history is a bit boring, but that’s because of the teacher.”

“The history teacher is a – ancient”, Harry added, remembering just in time that there were muggles everywhere around them. “I swear he has been teaching the same way for the past five hundred years. Everyone falls asleep in the lessons.”

“I like chemistry best”, Rose said. “Sometimes I get bored because we repeat everything again and again, but our teacher is nice and lets me do my own projects during class.”

“Wow. Our teacher would never allow that”, Harry blurted out. “He’s so nasty. I think I might like chemistry if it wasn’t taught by him.”

“That nasty? Really?”

“Pretty much.”

“What does he do?”

“He picks on Harry”, Hermione explained. “Seems to personally hate him.”

“Yeah, apparently he didn’t like my dad in school. But he’s nasty to Hermione, too. Doesn’t like that she always knows the answers to his questions and never lets her say anything. What kind of teacher does that?”

“He probably wants to see whether someone else knows the answers, too”, Rose mused.

Before Harry could explain, Mrs. and Mr. Granger walked up to them.

Introductions were made, the Grangers mentioned their intention to go for lunch nearby, and asked Rose if she had a recommendation, and if, perhaps, she and her parents wanted to join them?

“I’m here with my guardian”, Rose explained. “He just, um, wanted to ... go to the toilet. We agreed I’d wait for him here.”

“Then he’ll be back in a moment”, Hermione said.

“He did mention there was a long line.”

Harry had a nagging suspicion that Rose was lying, but why would she? If she went to a magical boarding school, she didn’t have to run away from home, and anyway, she looked old enough to go to a museum on her own.

“Oh, there he is!”

When Harry looked around, he saw Rose walk right into a large group of people, probably a guided tour.

Had she just invented an excuse to get away from them?

He looked at Hermione, who seemed focused on something – could she see Rose`s guardian?

“Oh Harry”, Hermione breathed. “That’s so awkward!”

Turning around again, he finally saw what she meant. Rose had emerged from the tourist group, happily chatting to a tall man clad in a black linen shirt and black linen trousers. His black hair was bound into a ponytail.

“Is that ... please tell me I am hallucinating.” But there was no doubt about it. This was Snape, and apparently they now knew exactly who the mysterious blonde girl he’d been seen with was.

He was fast approaching them, and Harry wanted to run away. But that would make the Grangers worry, so he stayed.

“I guess he can’t deduct points when we’re not at school”, he mumbled.

“But it’s so awkward”, Hermione wailed.

“Dr. and Dr. Granger, I presume?” Snape said in a clipped voice. “I am Severus Snape. Rose’s guardian, and also the ... chemistry teacher at your daughter’s school.”

How embarrassing! Harry had forgotten that them being dentists must mean they were both Dr. Granger! He only had called them Mrs. and Mr. Granger in his head, but still.

“Pleased to meet you”, the female Dr. Granger said without batting an eyelid and extended her hand. “No need to use the titles, we aren’t at work. What a coincidence you are here, too!”

“Yes, isn’t it?”, Snape drawled, touching her hand as briefly as he could possibly get away with. “You brought Potter along? What for?”

Rose flinched, and gestured towards Harry in what he took to be a wordless attempt at apology.

“Because he is friends with Hermione”, Hermione’s father said decisively, extending his hand towards Snape, too. “Nice to finally meet a teacher from her school, Hermione told us so much about everyone.”

“Did she, now?”

“Please, uncle”, Rose begged, looking at him pleadingly, as if she seriously hoped Snape would stop being embarrassingly rude just because she asked.

Snape sighed. “Very well. Rose told me you invited her to lunch?”

“You were included in the invitation, Mr. Snape. We do not expect you to be as trusting as Harry’s aunt and uncle.”

Trusting, ha! The Dursleys couldn’t care less if he was kidnapped.

“Fine. I know a restaurant nearby that serves reasonably edible food.”

Hermione and Harry exchanged a glance. Had Snape actually just agreed to go for lunch with them?

Some time later, they all sat around a table, and made awkward conversation.

“Hermione never told us you had a ward”, Hermione’s mother bravely said after the weather, French cuisine and the crowdedness of the Louvre had been exhaustively debated.

“I don’t go around telling everyone”, Snape replied tersely. “There is no need for students to know about my private life.”

“It would make you more approachable”, Hermione’s father pointed out. “Of course, you still need to be professional, but a good balance is best. At least when it comes to dentistry, you can’t work with a child who thinks you are some heartless machine, and I think it is even more true for teachers.”

Snape harrumphed.

“Really, one might think you were ashamed of me”, Rose muttered.

“I am not! Rose, this is ridiculous! I would never –” apparently noticing he had raised his voice, Snape interrupted himself. “We will talk about this later.”

Turning to the Grangers again, he stated, as if every word was forcibly extracted from him like a wisdom tooth: “Rose’s parents couldn’t raise her themselves, she grew up with her foster parents from the start. When the guardianship passed over to me, I didn’t have the means to raise a child, and also didn’t want to tear her away from the only family she had ever known. It is no secret, I simply do not choose to tell it to nosy students.”

After an awkward silence, their meals arrived and somewhen during eating, Hermione had a flash of inspiration and told Snape she wanted to ask some questions about her essay.

“If you must”, he conceded, making a discrete gesture. “There’s no danger of being overheard by muggles, now.”

With Rose there, Snape was actually pretty civil about answering Hermione’s questions.

“It sounds as if you just read the books”, Rose said after a while. “Don’t you experiment in your spare time? I mean, at school.”

For a brief moment Hermione looked guilty. “I don’t think that’s allowed”, she said cautiously. “It is very dangerous.”

“Not if you know what you are doing. And you do, don’t you? You know exactly what additions could explode a potion, don’t you?”

“Well, there’s other things that can go wrong.”

Rose gave Snape an impatient look.

“If you manage, in the future, to exceed the minimum length I set for your essays by no more than one foot of parchment, in normal writing, I might be persuaded to supervise some experimenting”, he stated awkwardly.

“Really?” Hermione’s eyes went wide. “Thank you sir, I – but how am I supposed to mention everything important in an essay that’s so short?”

“Considering that other students endlessly complain that the essays I assign are far too long, I am sure you can manage. Especially if you eliminate words like ‘presumably’, ‘likely’ and ‘probably” from your vocabulary. Test your hypotheses and write about facts.”

Hermione stared onto her half-finished plate, ears reddening with humiliation. “Yes sir.”

Rose shot Snape a reproachful look.

“Good. Most of the time your assumptions are entirly correct and there is no need for this sort of verbal insecurity”, Snape amended his harsh words.

“It is weird”, Harry mused much later that day, when they had retired to their hotel room. “Rose really seems to have Snape wrapped around her little finger. I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t seen it.”

“It is not like he does everything she wants”, Hermione pointed out. “Mum and dad would never be nasty to my friends, either. Well, not that they’re usually nasty to anyone, but, you know.”

“Well, yeah. Your parents are your parents. Snape isn’t Rose’s dad.” Why would he care? Who had even left him in charge of a child? That was insane!

“It sounds like he knew her when she was a baby. Even if she didn’t live with him, it sounds like they’re pretty close. She calls him uncle and all.”

“So what? Uncle Vernon is even actually my uncle and he wouldn’t care at all what I think of his behaviour towards my friends.” Hermione meeting Vernon was too horrible to even imagine!

“Yes, but ... sorry, but your relatives don’t count. They aren’t normal.”

The Dursleys not normal? Harry snorted. “If you ask them, they are the most normal family to ever have existed. They’re proud of it. I think they hate me partly because I ruin their prefect track record of being normal.”

“Maybe, but the way they treat you is not normal at all.”

Harry had suspected that for a long time, and had felt justified in doing so when he had so hurriedly been given Dudley’s second bedroom after his Hogwarts letter arrived.

Still, now he felt a need to contradict Hermione. “How would you know? How many families do you know that had to raise their nephew even though they have a son of their own?”

“None, but that doesn’t matter. It’s just not normal. You were a baby. If my parents suddenly had to raise my cousin Richard now, it would probably take some getting used to, but a baby? It’s not like you would have turned your nose at their cooking and demanded to be allowed to watch TV all day, or something.” Hermione threw her hands up in the air. “My point is, Professor Snape caring about Rose isn’t weird at all, it would be weirder if he didn’t care.”

“It’s Snape!”

“So what? He did help you with that love potion, didn’t he? Because he’s normal enough to, you know, do his job.”

Harry thought about that during the next few days.

It seemed the Dursleys really, really weren’t normal at all – at least if the Grangers were.

Hermione’s parents told Harry to order whatever he wanted at restaurants, had gifted him a cheesy tiny eiffel tower after he’d insisted he didn’t want anything from the souvenir shop, and the one time so far they’d bought ice cream, Harry had gotten one exactly the same size as everyone else.

Harry had never liked the Dursleys, but part of him had always thought it was just how people treated nephews who were being a burden, and that the Dursleys just were somewhat more unpleasant about it than the average family would.

Staying with the Weasleys he had just figured magical people were nicer, but now ...

It felt a bit like the ground was pulled away from under his feet.

Could he really go back to the Dursleys, now, knowing that they weren’t just a bit nasty but, well, not at all normal, as Hermione put it?