A/N~This is an edited and expanded version of the story that was written for 2018 round of the SSHG Prompt Fest on Live Journal. My thanks to the talented iulia_linnea for modding the fest, and stronghermione for kindly betaing the piece. I chose the following prompt sent in by blueartemis07: 'Lily's ghost isn't forgiving. But Hermione is.' It is complete in five chapters, and I'll be updating every couple of days.
Whenever I write a new story, I challenge myself to do something different- maybe write a character I can't stand more sympathetically, or use a particular element of writing for the first time. In this case, I've written in the first POV, and I'm pretty pleased with the results.
Any mistakes are mine, and as always, I eagerly welcome all comments :)
'And my arms need someone
Someone to enfold
To keep me warm when Mondays and Tuesdays grow cold
Love for all my life to have and to hold
Oh and I want a Sunday kind of love'- Etta James, 'A Sunday Kind of Love
I dreamt of a woman.
My hands were full of her; one spanned the generous, curved warmth of her arse and the other cupped the pleasing heaviness of a breast, the rosy nipple budding under my thumb. She made a happy, interrogative noise, and curled closer until we were pressed together from shoulder to knee in the wide bed. The quiet exhalation of her breath on my shoulder was like a benediction: all was right in the world.
The first golden glimmers of dawn snuck through the white lace curtains of the window, illuminating her hair—the utter antithesis of mine in every way—into a thousand brilliant variations. The silky stuff had defined her since childhood and had fascinated me for almost as long. Handling it brought such a tactile joy, from measuring the sheer tensile strength of each strand to the way it could glide tantalisingly over my stomach as she pleasured me.
As if hearing the direction of my thoughts, her eyes fluttered open, and she focused on me. Even sleepy, her smile could rival the sun; I couldn't help but respond in kind.
"I love you," she murmured, voice husky and rich. One of her clever, delicate hands skated down my side with amorous intent, and I shivered with anticipation. Slowly, I lowered my mouth until her plump lips parted. Stilling the movement at the last second, I waited.
"Severus…" she begged, the pleading tone sending a gratifying jolt through my body.
"I love you, too," I whispered with a smirk, and took her mouth in a languid, lengthy kiss.
Cock hardening, I let my hands roam over the lush hills and valleys of her body; the scent of our desire filled the air. She moaned, hands squeezing reflexively as the sensations began to tumble together. It was utterly glorious, the way her body yielded to my unspoken question. Mine, mine, mine!
Then she spread her legs and tilted her hips just so; it was an invitation and invocation all in one.
"Please…" Her gaze was impossible to resist. Reaching down to position myself, I couldn't help but groan at the slick heat that met my fingers.
"Oh, my love…"
And then I woke.
My hands were empty. The sheets were barren.
She had never been in my bed, and never would.
Desolation settled over me far more thoroughly than the thin cotton coverlet bunched at my feet ever could. For years, the dream had plagued my sleeping hours, teasing me with possibilities of a future that could never come to fruition; my reprehensible actions had long ago ensured that she would never wake in my arms to murmur words of love and comfort.
"It's all your fault that you're alone, you know," the spectral presence of Lily Evans said from the foot of the bed. Anger sharpened her green eyes into chips of hard emerald. "You always say and do the most unforgivable things, Sev-"
"And you've always been here to remind me of that fact," I growled, hating that my mental landscape had become enough of a quagmire that I had been reduced to arguing with a figment of my sub-consciousness; I was enough of a fuckup to not even warrant a proper haunting.
"You will always be alone," she returned flatly, turning her back to me.
"Enough," I choked out and squeezed my eyes shut. It took time and effort to pull my mental shields up, but I eventually managed to shove majority of the foolish sentiment away, and with that, the lingering remnants of my past dissolved into nothingness.
Being alone isn't the end of the world, I told myself, deliberately recalling the horrifying feeling of my life's blood leeching away onto the floor of the Shrieking Shack as Nagini's venom ravaged my nervous system. Being hated and so very nearly dead on the other hand…
Enough time had passed since my own Annus Horribilis as Headmaster of Hogwarts that I was no longer the most hated man in Wizarding Britain. Time did indeed heal some wounds, and as for the rest… well, I had spent the majority of my fifty-eight years sans companionship; I would undoubtedly survive another fifty-eight. Rolling, I scowled at the baleful red numbers of my alarm clock.
Five forty-one.
There was no use trying to go back to sleep; the bloody thing would be going off soon enough. With a sigh, I turned over again, staring up at the unrelieved white of the ceiling. The not-quite-eggshell colour matched the carpet and walls and leant the place a charmless industrial mien. There had been plans to paint, to put up bookshelves and make the blankness more welcoming, but in the year that I had lived in the flat, I had barely unpacked my clothes.
Wishing for the impossible, I was.
An echo of the dream returned, and the remembrance of joy and contentment was like a carving knife to the gut. The thought facing the upcoming day alone—not to mention everyone bloody one thereafter—brought on a fresh wave of nausea.
I can't do this, I realised dully, my internal pep talk collapsing in the face of reality. I can't go on like this much longer.
The day warranted, Hermione decided, at least two cups of coffee, if not three for her partner. Covertly, she peered across the desks to the black-clad man, wondering if even that ridiculous amount of caffeine would make a dent in his dour mood. Severus slouched in his creaky leather chair, appearing for the entire world like someone who belonged in the holding cells rather than minding the shop.
It frightened her, his recent despondency, and she had not a clue what the cause might be. Granted, he had never been the cheerful sort, but the man had always possessed a sardonic if dark sense of humour and an inner fortitude that seemed to weather any crisis. But lately… lately, he had been pulling away from her, flatly refusing to speak about anything not related to tasks in front of them. She knew better than to push; Severus was precisely the type to cut off his nose to spite his face. He would speak to her about what was wrong or he wouldn't, and there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it other than try to wait the stubborn git out.
For at least the hundredth time she wondered why he was here, ostensibly fighting crime and various dark magic-fuelled acts of pure stupidity. It wasn't for the Galleons or the institutional glory; he had a vault crammed full of gold, not to mention a rather vitriolic view of the Ministry of Magic on the best of days. Likewise, he wasn't staying because he loved the thrill of the hunt, or some equally trite notion.
To be fair, you hardly want to be here most days. It's not as if you blame him on that count.
Hermione had spent the last twenty years working for the Ministry of Magic, with the first part of her career spent in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. It had been frustrating, if occasionally rewarding; Harry had finally managed to lure her over to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement once Rose and Hugo matriculated to Hogwarts. She had been mulling a move to the private sector when she had been assigned to Severus as a partner.
The first year had been quite… rocky. Matters had not been helped by the fact that her marriage to Ron had started its inevitable swan dive, nor that she and Severus were both admittedly pig-headed to a fault. But almost eight years on, she couldn't fathom working with anyone else.
Frankly, he was the only reason that she had stayed on. There had been other job offers, most recently a dream position curating the dark artefacts and tomes of the Magical British Library. But resigning would leave Severus high and dry; the thought of him being assigned one of the recent Aurory graduates was both amusing and downright terrifying. Which leads you back to the question of why Severus is still here. If I've gotten offers, then so has he…
Repressing a sigh at the mire, she walked over the beige filing cabinet and gave it a good yank. With an ear-piercing squeal, it grudgingly opened, and she started flipping through the pending cases.
"We still have the Ali-Stroud interviews to finish, and we've been assigned a suspected poisoning in Gloucester. Any preference as to which we tackle first?"
He glanced up momentarily, rubbing at the deep crease between his brows. "No."
With a loud bang, the door flew open, and Auror Trainee Kevin Murphy bounded in with all the enthusiasm of a Labrador pursuing a shiny new ball. "A raid!" he excitedly blurted. "There's going to be a raid!"
"Are you completely bereft of all common sense and manners?" Severus inquired icily, rising to his feet in a ripple of black, wand in hand. "Or were you never taught to knock before entering a room?"
Murphy— who couldn't be more than twenty-two—paled visibly and swallowed. "But, sir… there's going to be a raid…"
"Joyous as you doubtless find the occasion, it does not, in fact, constitute an emergency requiring you violate the sanctity of this office. Turn around and leave this room. You will shut the door behind you—quietly, mind— and count to ten. Once you have done so, you may knock—again, quietly—and wait until you are granted entry. Then, and only then, may you try to deliver your message. Preferably with a whiff of decorum as benefits your position."
The boy's mouth opened and shut several times, reminding Hermione of a helpless guppy.
"Is there anything not clear in my instructions? Do I need to sketch a diagram, perhaps?"
Shaking his head, Murphy backed away and shut the door extremely carefully.
Turning to Severus, Hermione shot him an arch look. "'Violate the sanctity of this office'? That's a bit much, don't you think?"
He gave a disgusted snort. "Not at all. Someone needs to housetrain the daft blighter before he starts chewing on shoes or leaving puddles in the corner."
Amused at the similarities in their mental metaphors of the rookie, she smiled. "Given your performance, there very well may be a puddle at our door."
"And if there is, he doesn't belong here." He shrugged, ebony wand returning to its sheath. "There are far scarier things than I gadding about. Rita Skeeter, for example. Did you see the length of her skirt yesterday? I've seen larger bibs on babies. And that hue of pink! It's a pity I can no longer remove House points…"
The knock at the door was a welcome interruption.
"Enter!" Severus bellowed, foul mood increasing by the second.
"Inspector Snape, Inspector Granger?" Murphy said with a quiver. "The Unspeakables have requested our presence for a raid at a farm in Somerset…"
"…and if that horse-faced, daft little gobshite of a wizard gets within wand range again, I swear I'll hex him a million ways to Sunday, bloody fucking paperwork be damned!"
Naturally, the raid had swiftly gone pear-shaped, and while my bony arse had no problem fitting through the gap in the garden fence, Granger was having considerably more difficulty making it through to the lone spot of cover in our vicinity. The spells ricocheting about the roses didn't help, nor the nails that were shredding her trousers to bits. It shouldn't have been funny—it wasn't, not really—but the situation was so absurd that I could help but let out a rough bark of laughter as I leaned back against a stone wall trying to catch my breath.
She heard it of course, and for a brief second her bourbon brown eyes narrowed on mine, promising a most dire retribution once we were free of the afternoon's mad enterprise. Her perturbed expression was a deeply familiar one, and I felt a rush of entirely inappropriate affection for my partner. I had been furious when she had first been assigned to me—I mean, come on, Hermione Granger, Queen of the Know-It-Alls and Gryffindor Extraordinaire as my partner?—but she eventually wore me down, as is her custom for most things. As odd at seemed, she had become my best friend and was the one person that I absolutely trusted.
And if I want her to continue trusting me, I need to do a hell of a lot more than sit here and have a laugh!
Snapping a strong shielding charm over her exposed backside, I began to cast a series of careful Reductos towards the fence as she continued to wiggle her way free. Her lavender-coloured knickers briefly caught my attention as the hexes heading our way doubled; clearly, the people casting them knew that Granger was nearly to safety. The air turned dusty and foul with mortar as the wall that I was sheltering under was pounded. Bollocks, we need to get behind this wall, not under it!
Leaning down, I reached out as far forward as I could, fingers just barely brushing hers. "Stretch, Granger, Stretch! You supposedly do all that ruddy yoga for a reason!" I hissed and finally snagged her delicate wrist. With an almighty tug, I yanked her to my position and found myself in possession of an armful of furious woman.
There was an odd hush, and everything seemed to go utterly still for an endless moment; I became hyperaware of the soft, warm skin under my palms, and the way that Granger's eyes were locked onto mine. The remembrance of the tender, languid siren of my early morning dreams swirled into being; she was so different than the fierce warrior in my lap—a woman who had just been painting the air black with vulgar assortment of retaliatory threats—that my foolish desires were shown to be nothing more than a bitter helping of chalk and cheese.
Oh, Hermione… I thought with sorrow and watched her eyes dilate even further as if hearing my unspoken plea. But it was horror that filled her gaze, not affection, as a deafening explosion rent the air into a million shrapnel-shaped pieces.
Unadulterated agony burst over my entire body, my vision filling with a red mist.
Then there was nothing.