Do You Have a Reservation?
Do you have a reservation? Not to worry. We'll find you a seat at this week's quiz! Come join Severus and Hermione as they meet in cafes and restaurants, hit the clubs, and go down to the pub. There's fun and romance in store!
This week's quiz was chosen by itchyfoot who seems to prefer Snape in charge!
Would you like to pick the theme for next week's quiz? Play the quiz at any time over the weekend by commenting with your answers. Just comment before the answer sheet goes up on Monday morning, Eastern Standard Time. If you have the correct answers, your name will be entered in our weekly drawing. The winner gets an all expense paid tour of the SSHG Quiz vault and the right to choose next Friday's quiz!
Match the quote to the story title:
Anger Management by teshara
The Unspeakable Canteen by snarkypants
Just a Small Wizarding Cafe by Aimee_Beloved
Houdini's Tables by vanityfair00
Reflections of You by apollinav
Black Elysium, Black Elysium - the Second Glass, Black Elysium - the Third Glass by shiv5468
Breathing Love by anogete
Rondo Veneziano by Abby
A Thousand Miles by Dahlia
Judging Books by Their Covers by melisande88
The Chair by Stellar Snape aka nemesisstar
The New Man by bethbethbeth
1. Hermione was just glad to get a table, until she saw Him - Professor Severus Snape.
He looked up from his menu and saw her. A scowl immediately leapt to his lips and Hermione shuddered at the sight. It had been more years than she could count since she had last seen him, bloodied and near death in the Shrieking Shack, but he looked just as she remembered him, except for the few silver gray hairs at his temples and the wire reading glasses perched on the end of his nose as he read the menu.
"You can't sit there," he protested. Hermione looked around the crowded room. She didn't want to sit next to him either, but there was nowhere else to go. It was this or a takeaway sandwich eaten at her desk, and she wasn't doing that one more day this week.
"I saved your life, you miserable man, the least you can do is allow me to have the table next to yours without a lot of whinging," she said with narrowed eyes.
2. "So what started all this?" Mrs. Johnson looked at him pointedly.
"A rude buffoon in a pub," Severus grumbled as his arms gathered tightly to his body.
"Care to explain?" Mrs. Johnson asked.
"First he wanted to see my scar." Severus' hand went to the high collar he wore and he rubbed it. He felt a sliver of sympathy for Harry Potter, blast it. Everyone wanted to see that damn scar. "Then he said some rude things about 'fence-sitters' and 'turncoats' and followed it all up with a comment about my mother."
"Is that when you hit him with the mug?" Mrs. Johnson asked, smiling in sympathy.
This was all lost on Severus, who felt she was far too entertained by the whole incident.
"No, that's when I hit him with a Leg Locker Curse," Severus said grouchily. Then much quieter: "Then I hit him with the mug."
Mrs. Johnson pulled her lips into her mouth and bit down. Snape got the distinct impression she was fighting back laughter.
3. They sat in silence for a few moments until Hermione couldn't stand it anymore. The silence was becoming uncomfortable.
"So, at the risk of sounding cliched, do you come here often?" she asked, leaning back in her seat.
He looked up at her, folding the menu in the process. A small smile graced his lips.
"I come every Friday for the live jazz," he answered. He looked around slowly, then met her eyes once more. "It's usually filled to the brim on Fridays."
"Looks like I got lucky then, finding a seat. I didn't have a reservation."
Just then the band entered the stage. Four middle-aged men and a young girl, probably Hermione's age, with cropped black hair and wearing a figure-hugging blue dress. She couldn't help but flick her eyes over to Severus to see just what his reaction to the scantily clad girl would be. She was shocked to find his eyes resting on her own face, an unreadable expression on his face.
4. Never one to take a chance, she whispered, “Finite Incantatem.”
Yes, it was rude to cancel out someone’s spell. No, she didn’t give a damn.
With all the pretense of rummaging through her handbag, Hermione stole glances at all the diners. Her eyes narrowed, pin pointing a masculine figure at the furthest table hiding behind a newspaper. Close to the alleyway exit and with his back to the wall. Exactly where she would have chosen if she wanted to observe the bistro. Exactly where she would have chosen if she was stalking prey. Exactly where she would have chosen if she had been thinking properly.
Constant vigilance!
The wizard in dark trousers with his legs comfortably extended beneath the round table top casually thumbed a page of the Muggle newspaper, but Hermione didn’t get a glance of him.
Dropping a few coins on the table and shouldering her purse, her wand still ready but tucked up her sleeve, Hermione decided to visit the loo. She’d get a better look at Mr. Tall Dark And Unrecognizable.
She was feet away from him when the wizard abruptly folded the newspaper, and cast a disapproving sneer at her.
“I might have known,” Hermione said exasperatedly, blowing an errant curl out of her face.
5. "Are you ready?"
"Yes. Yes, I am," she said, not knowing whether to be offended that he hadn't made any remark about her appearance or to be relieved that he hadn't made a disconcerting leap out of character and turned into an attentive companion.
Without another word he headed off, away from the river and then took an abrupt right turn into a small alleyway. Once off the main thoroughfare, the noise of the city quickly stilled, to be replaced by the sounds of crashing metal and crockery, muffled bursts of Italian and the smell of garlic and herbs. Part way along the alleyway were some steps down with a door at the bottom. Snape headed down in front of Hermione and opened the door, but, to her surprise held it so that she could precede him into the restaurant.
Inside, it was very simple and very clean; scrubbed wooden tables, plain chairs and whitewashed walls. On each table were several glasses, a candle stuck in a bottle and small posy of flowers. About half the tables were already occupied, and the buzz of lively conversation filled the room.
A man approached them, smiling. It would have been hard to call him the Head Waiter; it looked more Hermione as if he was the father of the family that owned it.
"Per due?" he asked cheerfully.
Snape nodded.
They were led to a vacant table and menus placed in front of them. Hermione noted that they were only in Italian and that spaghetti alla bolognese was nowhere to be found.
6. “How have you been?”
“Fine,” Hermione answers but she is betrayed by the deep circles under her eyes and the frizzy, dry hair tied back in a rough ponytail. “Definitely ready for a peaceful read and a cup of coffee though.”
“Coming right up,” Susan says, moving to work behind the perculator. “You’ll be sitting outside? It’s such a lovely day.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Hermione says looking around at the simply decorated walls. “Through this door?” She goes outside, skin drinking in the warm sun. She is alone out there, free from her job and the stresses of her family. Artie is with Ron this week and Hermione is rather enjoying the freedom. It’s not that she doesn’t love the little bundle of brown curls and freckles, but sometimes it’s just too much and Ron is a perfect father to him.
It’s a pity he wasn’t such a perfect husband, she thinks irritably. She pushes that thought out of her mind and reaches into her case for her well-worn copy of A Handmaid’s Tale.
It’s the first time in ages that she hasn’t read something work-related and it pleases her. Susan brings out her coffee and she relishes in the warm milky taste.
She hears a snort behind her. “Miss Granger, immersed in a book as usual, I see.”
7. The café was rather empty, but not to the point of being uncomfortable. The walls were painted a soft salmon colour, and covered in gentle, impressionistic paintings. When she looked up, she saw that the ceiling was painted as well, but it was a soft blue, that of a summer day, with white clouds that actually floated around. The large fireplace on the south wall, to her right, was unlit, and carved into the white marble were rose vines, complete with gray-veined blooms. Round, white marble-topped tables filled the space of the room, giving it a loose, smoothly cluttered look, through which waiters glided. Sunlight filled the small café, invading through large, picture windows which made up most of the back wall, broken only in the middle by an open door.
Through the windows she caught a glimpse of an outside patio surrounded by a high stone wall, in front of which small trees rose and flowers bloomed out of narrow garden beds. It looked idyllic, and almost entirely deserted.
She weaved through the sea of tables and headed through the door into the sunlight.
She was dazzled, and instinctively raised a hand to shield her eyes. As her vision cleared, she blinked a few more times before she could come to terms with what she was looking at. Her mouth fell open.
He was sitting at one of the many small tables, right in front of her. His eyes closed, head tilted back, neck exposed, looking for all the world as though he were just asking her to run her fingers (tongue) over the skin there. And the ghost of a smile on his lips made her want to do Very Naughty Things to him. To him, of all people.
8. "Shall we dance, Professor?" She gestured to the door. "The club isn't far. I thought we'd walk."
Looking back over the evening from the vantage point of her quiet flat with a tiny glass of sherry, Hermione knew the exact moment things began to go wrong. The restaurant had been quiet and uncrowded, but the discotheque was exactly the opposite. For a socially awkward, intensely private man like Snape, the mix of noise and humanity was simply too much. From the moment they'd entered the foyer, he'd balked. She dragged him onto the dance floor anyway, to an empty spot near the far wall.
And wonder of wonders, when Snape took a formal ballroom stance and waited for her to step into his dance space, she hadn't laughed. She hadn't even smiled. He had not the slightest idea that they were simply to stand a number of inches apart, each of them dancing in their own space. Discotheques were where one went to be seen, after all, dancing in one's party plumage to attract a potential mate. But the stork-like Snape, dressed in his perpetual mourning, believed he was there to dance with her, in the only sort of dance he knew: ballroom. She'd looked around her at the couples and groups writhing in their mock sex-acts, and simply gone into his arms. There was no way to mend what she'd done, bringing him to this horrible place to amuse herself and somehow get her own back for the countless slights and offences of years of Potions classes and mockery.
9. Lucius did not approve of the current trend for Muggle-inspired cultural importations to the Wizarding World, even when he owned half of the swanky bar with his son, and it was making money hand over fist, but even ten years after the war he wasn't in a position to say so other than in the privacy of his own home.
So he counted the money, only crossed the threshold to conduct deals with muggleborns and halfbloods who needed reassuring that he wasn't going to hex them, and milked it for all it was worth as a sign he had turned over a new leaf. The new-leaf turning wasn't entirely inaccurate after all.
He was beginning to see the attraction though.
She was brunette, dressed in muggle clothing which was indecently short but showed off some fine legs, and very slightly tipsy.
10. Hermione tracked the mysterious man with her eyes, watching him arrange a newspaper and the cup at the same table as that first night she saw him. Turning his back to her, he slipped the still-wet coat off his head and shoulders, letting it slide down to reveal long arms clad in austere black. She mentally compared him to the picture she held in her mind of Severus Snape. His hair was tied back, but it appeared to be about the same length as Snape’s had been before his death. His frame was lanky and tall, though he did not hold himself with the same stiff composure as her former professor.
He dropped the coat on the spare chair and turned around. Hermione moved her eyes up the expanse of his chest, covered in a tatty, black button-up shirt. She gasped when she saw his face and found it to be the very same unhappy and sour face of Severus Snape.
“Oh, Merlin…” Hermione muttered under her breath. Her fingers were curled into tight fists in her lap. As impossible as it seemed, she truly believed Severus Snape was sitting just a few yards from her in a small café in a very Muggle part of the city. He was supposed to be dead; she had watched him die years before. The very thought made Hermione light-headed, and she lifted her shaky hands to clutch at the table.
He obviously had not seen her yet. She had not changed her appearance drastically in the five intervening years. He would surely recognize her if he lifted his head from that newspaper. What could she do? Should she approach him? Should she leave? Should she contact Harry? Hermione knew she had to do something. Forgetting this had ever happened was not an option.
This week's quiz was chosen by itchyfoot who seems to prefer Snape in charge!
Would you like to pick the theme for next week's quiz? Play the quiz at any time over the weekend by commenting with your answers. Just comment before the answer sheet goes up on Monday morning, Eastern Standard Time. If you have the correct answers, your name will be entered in our weekly drawing. The winner gets an all expense paid tour of the SSHG Quiz vault and the right to choose next Friday's quiz!
Match the quote to the story title:
Anger Management by teshara
The Unspeakable Canteen by snarkypants
Just a Small Wizarding Cafe by Aimee_Beloved
Houdini's Tables by vanityfair00
Reflections of You by apollinav
Black Elysium, Black Elysium - the Second Glass, Black Elysium - the Third Glass by shiv5468
Breathing Love by anogete
Rondo Veneziano by Abby
A Thousand Miles by Dahlia
Judging Books by Their Covers by melisande88
The Chair by Stellar Snape aka nemesisstar
The New Man by bethbethbeth
1. Hermione was just glad to get a table, until she saw Him - Professor Severus Snape.
He looked up from his menu and saw her. A scowl immediately leapt to his lips and Hermione shuddered at the sight. It had been more years than she could count since she had last seen him, bloodied and near death in the Shrieking Shack, but he looked just as she remembered him, except for the few silver gray hairs at his temples and the wire reading glasses perched on the end of his nose as he read the menu.
"You can't sit there," he protested. Hermione looked around the crowded room. She didn't want to sit next to him either, but there was nowhere else to go. It was this or a takeaway sandwich eaten at her desk, and she wasn't doing that one more day this week.
"I saved your life, you miserable man, the least you can do is allow me to have the table next to yours without a lot of whinging," she said with narrowed eyes.
2. "So what started all this?" Mrs. Johnson looked at him pointedly.
"A rude buffoon in a pub," Severus grumbled as his arms gathered tightly to his body.
"Care to explain?" Mrs. Johnson asked.
"First he wanted to see my scar." Severus' hand went to the high collar he wore and he rubbed it. He felt a sliver of sympathy for Harry Potter, blast it. Everyone wanted to see that damn scar. "Then he said some rude things about 'fence-sitters' and 'turncoats' and followed it all up with a comment about my mother."
"Is that when you hit him with the mug?" Mrs. Johnson asked, smiling in sympathy.
This was all lost on Severus, who felt she was far too entertained by the whole incident.
"No, that's when I hit him with a Leg Locker Curse," Severus said grouchily. Then much quieter: "Then I hit him with the mug."
Mrs. Johnson pulled her lips into her mouth and bit down. Snape got the distinct impression she was fighting back laughter.
3. They sat in silence for a few moments until Hermione couldn't stand it anymore. The silence was becoming uncomfortable.
"So, at the risk of sounding cliched, do you come here often?" she asked, leaning back in her seat.
He looked up at her, folding the menu in the process. A small smile graced his lips.
"I come every Friday for the live jazz," he answered. He looked around slowly, then met her eyes once more. "It's usually filled to the brim on Fridays."
"Looks like I got lucky then, finding a seat. I didn't have a reservation."
Just then the band entered the stage. Four middle-aged men and a young girl, probably Hermione's age, with cropped black hair and wearing a figure-hugging blue dress. She couldn't help but flick her eyes over to Severus to see just what his reaction to the scantily clad girl would be. She was shocked to find his eyes resting on her own face, an unreadable expression on his face.
4. Never one to take a chance, she whispered, “Finite Incantatem.”
Yes, it was rude to cancel out someone’s spell. No, she didn’t give a damn.
With all the pretense of rummaging through her handbag, Hermione stole glances at all the diners. Her eyes narrowed, pin pointing a masculine figure at the furthest table hiding behind a newspaper. Close to the alleyway exit and with his back to the wall. Exactly where she would have chosen if she wanted to observe the bistro. Exactly where she would have chosen if she was stalking prey. Exactly where she would have chosen if she had been thinking properly.
Constant vigilance!
The wizard in dark trousers with his legs comfortably extended beneath the round table top casually thumbed a page of the Muggle newspaper, but Hermione didn’t get a glance of him.
Dropping a few coins on the table and shouldering her purse, her wand still ready but tucked up her sleeve, Hermione decided to visit the loo. She’d get a better look at Mr. Tall Dark And Unrecognizable.
She was feet away from him when the wizard abruptly folded the newspaper, and cast a disapproving sneer at her.
“I might have known,” Hermione said exasperatedly, blowing an errant curl out of her face.
5. "Are you ready?"
"Yes. Yes, I am," she said, not knowing whether to be offended that he hadn't made any remark about her appearance or to be relieved that he hadn't made a disconcerting leap out of character and turned into an attentive companion.
Without another word he headed off, away from the river and then took an abrupt right turn into a small alleyway. Once off the main thoroughfare, the noise of the city quickly stilled, to be replaced by the sounds of crashing metal and crockery, muffled bursts of Italian and the smell of garlic and herbs. Part way along the alleyway were some steps down with a door at the bottom. Snape headed down in front of Hermione and opened the door, but, to her surprise held it so that she could precede him into the restaurant.
Inside, it was very simple and very clean; scrubbed wooden tables, plain chairs and whitewashed walls. On each table were several glasses, a candle stuck in a bottle and small posy of flowers. About half the tables were already occupied, and the buzz of lively conversation filled the room.
A man approached them, smiling. It would have been hard to call him the Head Waiter; it looked more Hermione as if he was the father of the family that owned it.
"Per due?" he asked cheerfully.
Snape nodded.
They were led to a vacant table and menus placed in front of them. Hermione noted that they were only in Italian and that spaghetti alla bolognese was nowhere to be found.
6. “How have you been?”
“Fine,” Hermione answers but she is betrayed by the deep circles under her eyes and the frizzy, dry hair tied back in a rough ponytail. “Definitely ready for a peaceful read and a cup of coffee though.”
“Coming right up,” Susan says, moving to work behind the perculator. “You’ll be sitting outside? It’s such a lovely day.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Hermione says looking around at the simply decorated walls. “Through this door?” She goes outside, skin drinking in the warm sun. She is alone out there, free from her job and the stresses of her family. Artie is with Ron this week and Hermione is rather enjoying the freedom. It’s not that she doesn’t love the little bundle of brown curls and freckles, but sometimes it’s just too much and Ron is a perfect father to him.
It’s a pity he wasn’t such a perfect husband, she thinks irritably. She pushes that thought out of her mind and reaches into her case for her well-worn copy of A Handmaid’s Tale.
It’s the first time in ages that she hasn’t read something work-related and it pleases her. Susan brings out her coffee and she relishes in the warm milky taste.
She hears a snort behind her. “Miss Granger, immersed in a book as usual, I see.”
7. The café was rather empty, but not to the point of being uncomfortable. The walls were painted a soft salmon colour, and covered in gentle, impressionistic paintings. When she looked up, she saw that the ceiling was painted as well, but it was a soft blue, that of a summer day, with white clouds that actually floated around. The large fireplace on the south wall, to her right, was unlit, and carved into the white marble were rose vines, complete with gray-veined blooms. Round, white marble-topped tables filled the space of the room, giving it a loose, smoothly cluttered look, through which waiters glided. Sunlight filled the small café, invading through large, picture windows which made up most of the back wall, broken only in the middle by an open door.
Through the windows she caught a glimpse of an outside patio surrounded by a high stone wall, in front of which small trees rose and flowers bloomed out of narrow garden beds. It looked idyllic, and almost entirely deserted.
She weaved through the sea of tables and headed through the door into the sunlight.
She was dazzled, and instinctively raised a hand to shield her eyes. As her vision cleared, she blinked a few more times before she could come to terms with what she was looking at. Her mouth fell open.
He was sitting at one of the many small tables, right in front of her. His eyes closed, head tilted back, neck exposed, looking for all the world as though he were just asking her to run her fingers (tongue) over the skin there. And the ghost of a smile on his lips made her want to do Very Naughty Things to him. To him, of all people.
8. "Shall we dance, Professor?" She gestured to the door. "The club isn't far. I thought we'd walk."
Looking back over the evening from the vantage point of her quiet flat with a tiny glass of sherry, Hermione knew the exact moment things began to go wrong. The restaurant had been quiet and uncrowded, but the discotheque was exactly the opposite. For a socially awkward, intensely private man like Snape, the mix of noise and humanity was simply too much. From the moment they'd entered the foyer, he'd balked. She dragged him onto the dance floor anyway, to an empty spot near the far wall.
And wonder of wonders, when Snape took a formal ballroom stance and waited for her to step into his dance space, she hadn't laughed. She hadn't even smiled. He had not the slightest idea that they were simply to stand a number of inches apart, each of them dancing in their own space. Discotheques were where one went to be seen, after all, dancing in one's party plumage to attract a potential mate. But the stork-like Snape, dressed in his perpetual mourning, believed he was there to dance with her, in the only sort of dance he knew: ballroom. She'd looked around her at the couples and groups writhing in their mock sex-acts, and simply gone into his arms. There was no way to mend what she'd done, bringing him to this horrible place to amuse herself and somehow get her own back for the countless slights and offences of years of Potions classes and mockery.
9. Lucius did not approve of the current trend for Muggle-inspired cultural importations to the Wizarding World, even when he owned half of the swanky bar with his son, and it was making money hand over fist, but even ten years after the war he wasn't in a position to say so other than in the privacy of his own home.
So he counted the money, only crossed the threshold to conduct deals with muggleborns and halfbloods who needed reassuring that he wasn't going to hex them, and milked it for all it was worth as a sign he had turned over a new leaf. The new-leaf turning wasn't entirely inaccurate after all.
He was beginning to see the attraction though.
She was brunette, dressed in muggle clothing which was indecently short but showed off some fine legs, and very slightly tipsy.
10. Hermione tracked the mysterious man with her eyes, watching him arrange a newspaper and the cup at the same table as that first night she saw him. Turning his back to her, he slipped the still-wet coat off his head and shoulders, letting it slide down to reveal long arms clad in austere black. She mentally compared him to the picture she held in her mind of Severus Snape. His hair was tied back, but it appeared to be about the same length as Snape’s had been before his death. His frame was lanky and tall, though he did not hold himself with the same stiff composure as her former professor.
He dropped the coat on the spare chair and turned around. Hermione moved her eyes up the expanse of his chest, covered in a tatty, black button-up shirt. She gasped when she saw his face and found it to be the very same unhappy and sour face of Severus Snape.
“Oh, Merlin…” Hermione muttered under her breath. Her fingers were curled into tight fists in her lap. As impossible as it seemed, she truly believed Severus Snape was sitting just a few yards from her in a small café in a very Muggle part of the city. He was supposed to be dead; she had watched him die years before. The very thought made Hermione light-headed, and she lifted her shaky hands to clutch at the table.
He obviously had not seen her yet. She had not changed her appearance drastically in the five intervening years. He would surely recognize her if he lifted his head from that newspaper. What could she do? Should she approach him? Should she leave? Should she contact Harry? Hermione knew she had to do something. Forgetting this had ever happened was not an option.