Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his world are solely the property of Ms. J. K. Rowling and whomever she so desires to establish a contract with. Needless to say, I'm not in possession of any such contract.
Special thanks to A-Hard-Days-Night for beta-reading this for me!
WORDS
There are three words which neither one of them has ever dared to tell the other.
It's almost ridiculous, for two such eloquent tongues to be fumbling so fearfully over one-syllable pronunciations. He, with that silk-and-steel whisper that spits lightning-edged insults on command; and she, with that mind like a water-sponge, lips rapidly reciting each piece of knowledge that she has ever learned. They war with speech as others might with swords, a jab and a parry and a blow and a leap-twirl-skip away – and carefully, oh so carefully do they dance around that single phrase, that sweet promise of condemnation.
Perhaps it can be said that they know better: that they are weathered to the world and its misconceptions, and are wary of crossing lines that cannot be erased. He, who has lived his whole life submerged in lies, where deceit is the only way to spin the web towards some obscure salvation – he, who is he to trust? And she – she, who knows too well the shadows that line that face and curl within that heart – she, who is she to try and restore the faith in him?
They have both witnessed the exploitation of those words, of that promise – they have both witnessed the shameless intertwining of false sincerity and affected candor, as fidelity becomes desertion and passion crumbles into ashes long burned down.
They have both abused those words themselves, before.
Now they are left only with the truth – boiled down to the quick of their emotion, inexpressible through words worn so threadbare that the genuine spills helplessly through the holes. They veer persistently away from the profound mockery that such overused declarations represent; and so their mouths remain pressed firmly shut, their throats locked with a will against the world's traitorous thinning of verity.
It is on a cold day when he says it – not those words, never those, for ever will he fear the diaphanous guile that those words have grown to imply – but that same protestation, that same significance, that same rapture. It is what he means to say that matters, he realizes now; it has never been the words through which that meaning might be spoken.
Yes, it is a cold day – the snow on the ground is thick and white, and the snow on the wind is swirling and white, and their breath in the air is frosty and sheer and yet almost real enough to touch. Above their heads the sky looms dark and grey, an angry roiling expanse of clouds and ice and British winter; the naked trees whip across its breadth in the black silhouettes of an emaciated forest, and the silence is brittle and splintering and harsh.
Side by side they are walking through the bluster of this cold, their cloaks now clinging, now flapping wildly about their bodies, whilst they themselves are seemingly indifferent to the flurrying gale. They both relish in the winter. He enjoys its unfeeling devastation, the way it lays his world to waste without bitterness, only numbing chill; he enjoys the smooth, uncomplicated sleekness of it all. She, in turn, likes the raw, open sensation that winter instills: the flush of rosy cheeks and cherry noses, the emotional upheaval of the earth and its frozen sea and its turbulent sky.
Her hand is clutching the crook of his elbow, fingers curved into the heat of his side. He pauses in his pace, drawing her to a halt beside him. Her face, when it looks up to his, is unguarded and content, lips turned upwards into a half-smile, eyes bright and glimmering brown, hair loose to ripple along her shoulders and fall in wavy ringlets across her skin.
Severus tugs her fiercely into the circle of his arm, crushing her against his chest in one fluid motion of preservation and ardor. His grip around her figure is hard and unyielding, and his mouth at her ear is gentle and warm.
"Hermione," he says. His voice is ragged with emotion. "Hermione...I care."
She buries her face in his shoulder then, and her arms around his waist squeeze to hold as tightly as his own. She does not need to hear anything more; she does not need to hear words which they both know can be spoken as a lie.
For Hermione Granger and Severus Snape, this is enough.