The Golden Snitch; Canopus, Aurora Academy.

Stories for Tee challenge — prompt: I heard that Tee likes Snape/Hermione fics, as well as the characters Luna and Pandora Lovegood. Themes: Rehabilitation, hurt/comfort, romance

White Day — written for Claude Amelia Song — extra prompts used: (colour) white, (object) mask

Hogwarts (Challenges and Assignments), Writing Club.

Sophie's Shelf — word set #1 — hunger, longing, crave, throb, unrelenting, frantic

Showtime — All I Care About — (object) diamond ring

Disney Challenge — The Little Mermaid — characters — Flounder — write about a supportive friend

Hermione sat by her patient's bed in her rolling chair. She had gone back to Hogwarts to finish her seventh year, trained beneath Poppy Pomfrey, and flew through the training courses at St. Mungo's. Now here she was, twenty-one years old, single, working part-time as a nurse, and full-time obsessed with trying to wake up her war patient.

Severus Snape.

She had become fixated on him when she was in her third year. She mentally scoffed. That was wrong. Most young teenage girls back then had drooled over Professor Lupin, fussing over their hair and clothes before his class and batted their overly-done eyes at him when the poor man had been trying to teach them stuff that they would later need. Hermione shook her head. Idiots.

She had saved him. She had stayed after Harry and Ron left. She had poured countless healing potions into his unresponsive mouth. She had stuffed a bezoar through his cold, blue-tinted lips and massaged his throat until he swallowed.

And he had survived.

He was in a magical coma, yes, but he was alive.

Severus's eyelids were amazingly heavy. He could hear an annoying faint beeping coming from somewhere near his head, and something was wrapped around his arm. His throat was alarmingly dry, but he did his best to speak. All that came out was a low grunt.

"Oh!" he heard a feminine voice exclaim. Then there were small, cool, delicate hands patting his arm gently. "Professor Snape? Severus?" The voice sounded familiar...then again, he'd taught most of the younger Wizarding population. He tried to open his eyes again, but they felt like they were glued together.

"Oh," came the voice again. "Professor, don't do that." He made another low noise of dissatisfaction. "You might rip your eyelashes out," she explained. "Here, let me help you."

Severus heard a chair scoot across the floor, and heard the person rustling around. She came back and sat down again. He felt warm liquid being dribbled onto his eyelids, and then a washcloth was dabbed over it, gently scrubbing the crust free. "There," she said. "Try opening your eyes now, Professor." He did so, blinking at the bright white lights shining from the ceiling. Then he spotted his nurse.

"You!" His voice was creaky and low from disuse, but the underlying tone was the same. Bitterness and sarcasm. He cleared his throat. "Miss Granger, would you be so kind as to fetch my Healer?"

Hermione smiled. "She is already here, Professor."

He tried to turn his head, but his neck was stiff from lying in the same position for two years. "Where is she, Miss Granger?"

Hermione tutted. "Really, Professor. I thought you were so smart. Has your brain become rusty during the time you have been here?"

His eyes were wide. "You are my Healer?" He somehow managed to infuse his words with disbelief and concern.

The brunette drew herself up. "I assure you, Professor, that I am fully trained in my profession."

"I-I didn't mean to say that you —" he stopped as Hermione held up a hand. Something about her had changed — she was no longer someone who would allow herself to be pushed around. He could see that, and respected her a bit more for it.

"I understand, Professor. You didn't expect to see the 'annoying, bookworm, arm-waving know-it-all' that plagued your classroom for seven years." He was secretly impressed; her voice was powerful and not at all what he had expected from the girl who had been pulled around by the two idiots she called friends for so many years.

"You did not — do not — plague me," he said quietly. Almost so quietly that she didn't hear him.

But she did.

That whispered sentence haunted her waking thoughts and sleeping dreams.

Severus was released a few days later because Granger couldn't find any more reasons to keep him, but was ordered to stay in bed and not exert himself. By Hermione, of course. He snarled and scowled, but she had apparently long since given up her fear of his temper. She just laughed, now, which infuriated him all the more.

She even wanted to hire him a nurse. A nurse! He wasn't an invalid, incapable of fixing his own tea! Despite his injuries and the fact that he'd recently awoken from a magical coma, he was able to use magic — granted, it was barely more advanced magic than that taught to a second-year, and usually came out of his bare palms instead of his wand — but he had gotten by without magic before.

She was unrelenting.

And that was how he found himself being waited on by Hermione Granger.

"No, I do not need help putting my pyjamas on!" This argument frustrated him, as it had been used multiple times in the eight days since Hermione had come to stay with him. They were at Spinner's End, and even he admitted that she had straightened the place up nicely, but he hated having her here.

He hated being here!

"But, sir..."

"NO!" He flung a hand towards the door — which happened to be directly behind the brunette a few (read: several) feet — and he watched in horror as she flew backwards into the heavy wooden door. Her head hit it hard, and the contact made a sickening thud as she crumpled to the ground. He scrambled over, kneeling above her and cradling her head. "No, no, no. Granger?" His voice was frantic. "Granger, can you hear me?"

She groaned.

That sound was all it took for him to realize he cared more deeply for her than he wanted to admit. He was grateful for her help, yes, even if it didn't show. He admired her drive and her stubbornness and the way that she paid no mind to his volatile moods. He liked the evenings every so often when they would read in peaceful silence, and often found himself missing them on those they did not. Though the way she bit her lower lip often distracted him from his own book.

She sat up slowly, wincing as her head throbbed. "Professor?" she asked. "Wh-what happened?"

"I'm sorry," he blurted. Then mentally smacked himself upside the head. What in Merlin's name had possessed him to apologize? Professor Snape, the greasy Bat of the Dungeons and cruelest professor known to Hogwarts, never apologized!

But he had.

What was happening to him?

After that, they became much more friendly. She told him stories of her childhood, and he (reluctantly) tossed in a few facts into the conversation about his own miserable childhood. Her eyes filled with pity, but Severus somehow did not feel ashamed or want to forbid her to pity him. Because her eyes were also filled with anger — not at him, he knew, but it scared him slightly nonetheless.

He learned that her hunger for knowledge rivaled his own, and they would often talk about Potion experiments. Her reservoir of facts and interesting information was astonishing, to say the least, though he was eternally grateful that she'd stopped regurgitating the entire bloody textbook every time she opened her mouth. Her habit of sitting on her hands to keep herself from waving them in the air like she had for the first five years he'd taught her actually made him jealous of the delicate appendages.

And then he was deemed well enough for her to go home.

He never knew just how much her company meant to him. He found himself craving her presence, her inability to sit still. The way she made the perfect tea — not steeped too long and not too hot and just...right.

So he decided to fire-call her.

"Hermione, I —"

He stopped abruptly when he realized she wasn't alone. Ronald Weasley sat next to her, and her head was resting on his shoulder. Severus fought down the waves of jealousy that battered his heart. Of course she wouldn't want you, his psyche whispered malevolently. Why would someone as perfect as Hermione-bloody-Granger want anything to do with him.

"I apologize," he said stiffly. "I did not realize you had company." He began to pull his head from the green flames in her fireplace, but she jumped up — which he noted with some satisfaction that Weasley didn't look at all happy about — and knelt before the fireplace.

She knew that tone. He was unhappy and feeling left out, and he was drawing his unrufflable mask over his face. But she knew him better than that: she knew he was hiding his emotions because he didn't want to appear vulnerable.

"What did you need, Severus?" she asked. Behind her, Ron made a choking noise and muttered something quite rude directed at the Potions master. "Do you require any assistance?"

He shook his head. "No. I merely wondered if you were busy, or if you should care to join me for a cup of tea and an afternoon of doing absolutely nothing productive."

"Reading's productive," she argued — but there was no heat behind her words and her eyes were smiling even if her mouth was not. Don't think of her mouth, he told himself firmly. "And I would love to come do 'absolutely nothing productive' with you. Tonight at six work?"

He had to refrain from doing a jig — as he was in his knees with his head in the flames, it would be quite uncomfortable. But he was honestly so happy she'd agreed, he even politely said "good evening," to Weasley — who was still gaping like a fish — and withdrew.

Then he did a little head bop that was very unlike him. And he knew that he was in deep.

Instead of reading, they talk.

Hermione curled up on the sofa and Severus sat down in an armchair that looked to be stuffed so much it was completely solid. They asked one another questions that they had to answer, and then tossed them back.

So Hermione was taken by surprise when Severus asked her how she felt about him. Truth be told, it had taken him nearly ten minutes to work up the nerve, and he kept falling back to other questions.

"I don't know," she confessed. "I've been obsessed with you ever since you were bitten, and now that you're awake, I don't quite know what to make of the situation."

He nodded. And she threw the question back at him: "How do you feel about me, Severus?"

Severus looked like a deer caught in headlights. "I..." he began, then stopped. "I find you...less annoying than you were during your school years."

That was the best she got out of him for several weeks. They met nearly every evening to have tea and read or talk. Ron blabbed to Ginny and Ron that Hermione and "that git Snape" were on a first-name basis with one another and how he was positive Snape had Hermione under the Imperio or something. Ginny smacked him upside the head and told him he was delusional and that if Hermione was happy, then she would accept their relationship.

Which of course led to Hermione asking Severus what exactly their relationship was. He stammered and stuttered for a minute (which Hermione found adorable) before he said slowly, "It's nothing — yet. But I would like it to be."

They dated for five months before he proposed. She'd been looking at a beautiful antique diamond ring in the window of a shop for a long time, and Severus could tell she was longing for it to be on her finger. So he bought it and proposed to her over dinner in Paris one night.

They were married three months later — a small wedding with just a choice few people. Ron had gotten over his shock a while back and found Severus to be a challenging opponent in chess. Harry didn't approve of Severus when he and Hermione first started dating, but he came around eventually (mostly due to Ginny's famed Bat-Bogey Hex and the fact that she was pregnant and he had been warned by both Arthur and Bill to not argue with a pregnant witch). Ginny was ecstatic for her friend, and she was invited to be Hermione's maid of honor before she got too big to fit in her dress. Luna was also there, and the blonde sprinkled some sort of powder over them that made Hermione sneeze, saying that it would ward off the Nargles, before skipping away barefooted.

Severus' breath caught in his throat as he watched his bride walk — nay, float — down the aisle to meet him. He couldn't believe he was, is, lucky enough to have her. He never wants to let her go.

The erudite couple wrote and recited their own vows, and several birds sang sweetly from the trees they were married beneath.

Severus grinned like a fool for the rest of their honeymoon. He couldn't remember ever being this happy before.

word count: 2,206