Hello again, everyone! This is the prize for the 500th reviewer of "Just to Be," Vis Vires. The style and characterization is a bit different from that of my other work, but I had a great deal of fun with it. It's a little more lemon-y than my other work, as well (though I stop short of actual lemons).
Prompt at the end. I deviated from it a bit, but on the whole I think it works. At least I hope it does.
I apologize in advance for any errors I make with regard to anatomy. I was a creative writing major, not a scientist.
Disclaimer: I own nothing recognizable. Still. Sigh.
Hermione muttered the complex charm under her breath as Ron's broomstick bucked wildly from side to side and flipping him upside-down. Her friend held on for dear life, screaming like a girl all the while.
If a corner of her mouth quirked up in amusement, she would deny it. She knew that she could save him, so she could see the humour in the situation.
Eventually she brought Ron safely to the ground. He was shaking and gripping the broom like a lifeline.
"You're fine, mate," Harry said, face white with fear but also aware of how amusing it could be to see one's friend look so frightened.
"What the bloody hell happened to me?" Ron spat, his voice shaking. He was in too much shock to realise how much his friends were amused at his near-death experience. Thank God.
"Someone charmed your broom," Hermione said.
"Who?"
Hermoine whirred around and pointed her wand at the edge of the Quidditch stands. A figure fell from the top of one of the stands and down to the ground in a full body-bind. A quickly-cast Arresto Momentum was all that saved him from certain death.
"Gregory Goyle," Hermione said casually.
Harry looked at her, gobsmacked. "How did you know?"
She sighed, exasperatedly. "Well, for starters, very few people knew that we were here or that the two of you would want to use the Quidditch pitch. We told nobody of our planned visit, other than Professor McGonagall, who would have alerted the rest of the staff. Ergo, it must be a faculty or staff member who would be out here, as all the students are gone for the summer hols. Then you subtract every member of staff who is gone for the holidays, which leaves only a handful. And then you narrow it down further to whoever on staff would have some sort of grudge against Harry. Goyle is the caretaker, and spends his summers here, and of course hates Harry. Ergo, Gregory Goyle."
"But how did you stop the broom—you couldn't have heard the spell," Harry said.
Hermione sighed again, as if she was explaining something very obvious to a child. "You saw the movement of the broom, it was almost as if it were being jerked around by someone nearby. It looked exactly like the kind of curse your broom was hit with back in that first Quidditch game our first year. The charm couldn't have been on the broom itself, otherwise Ron would never have got off the ground, therefore it must have been a curse coming from someone else. The movement of the broom indicates a curse that has to be ongoing, as if chanted by someone continuously, like they've wrested control away from the broom. A simple one-off curse would have split it into a million pieces, or crashed it to the ground, or something. Hence, it must be a curse controlled by another person. I remember from back in our first year what happened, and I also happened to overhear the counter-curse that Snape was chanting that saved you. It wasn't a simple Finite, which would have made more sense to use, which is why I didn't try it and why it didn't work when you did try to use it, Harry. So it must have required the same counter-curse that Snape used. I remembered what it was. Now, I was a bit afraid that it wouldn't work if used non-verbally, since Snape, the master of non-verbal spells, had to mutter it. Therefore I had to chant it out loud."
She tossed her hair over her shoulder as the two boys gaped at her like fish.
"Really, this is all quite obvious.
"Blimey," Ron stuttered. "Is there anything you don't know, Hermione?"
Hermione pursed her lips together in frustration.
Yes, there was one puzzle she had yet to solve, and it was driving her mad.
"How the hell did he survive?" Hermione shouted, slamming down the Daily Prophet as if it had offended her. Which it had. "I was there when it happened, Harry, and so were you and Ron. We watched it. Snake-bite, right to the throat. A deep bite, so deep that it cut not only through both his carotid artery and his jugular vein, but also through his windpipe and voice box. The man was coughing up blood and bleeding through his neck. The venom would have gone straight into his bloodstream, and at the same time blood was pumping out of him so fast that not even a blood-replenishing potion could have saved him, and we happen to know that he did not use one because we were there and we watched him die!"
"Please!" Harry protested, throwing up his hands. "I don't need a reminder of it all!"
"We watched the man die, Harry, how did he survive? Neither Magical nor Muggle medicine could have saved him, and now here he is, alive and well… and with the tart of the month on his arm," she added disdainfully, as Lavendar Brown clung to Snape, laughing uproariously.
"Isn't it enough that he did survive?"
"But how?"
"Healers, spells, potions, some combination thereof. Or, I don't know, magic? Give it a rest. You don't have to know the answer to everything."
She scowled at him. Of course she did.
She wasn't that bothered that Snape was alive or not, really. She didn't hold any ill will toward him, but neither did she feel any sort of affection.
It was the fact that he had somehow managed to cheat death… and she hadn't the slightest idea how he'd managed to do it.
It drove her mad. Hermione was never, ever in a position where she had to clamor for an explanation. There was always an explanation, yet when it came to this, she drew a blank.
She would get to the bottom of this. She would learn the answer.
:
"I can't subpoena his medical records," Harry said firmly. "And even if I could, I wouldn't. They're private."
"Oh, come on, you go in, flash your Auror badge, sign the autograph, and get the files. I'll look through them quickly, and it'll be like it never happened."
"No."
"But I have to know if my theory that the vein was spared is what kept the poison at bay and therefore kept him alive."
"No. Take up a hobby."
"This is a hobby."
"A healthy one."
:
She climbed out of the Pensieve, face full of fury. She had watched the memory as many times as she could physically stomach, and came away with nothing.
The wound had been exactly where she had expected—slicing through his veins and arteries, puncturing the windpipe, crushing the voice box.
And yet he had been photographed singing Wizard Karaoke in the company of Romilda Vane not three days earlier. According to the article, his voice was unchanged from his time at Hogwarts.
Hermione kicked the basin and sent it back into the cabinet that held it.
"Unhappy memories, Miss Granger?" asked Dumbledore's portrait from the wall.
She grimaced. "You have no idea."
:
"That information is confidential, Miss Granger," Poppy Pomfrey said wearily.
"But surely it can't be after all this time has passed!"
"You know that it is," she said. "I won't tell you without his consent. Now stop asking me." Pomfrey closed the floo, leaving Hermione huffing in exasperation at an empty fireplace.
:
"This is becoming an obsession, you know," Neville observed.
"But when you killed the snake, did you notice anything out of the ordinary?"
"Other than the fact that I'd just beheaded a fifteen-foot snake not ten feet away from the Dark Lord?"
"Did you make any observations?"
"Yeah, I did. 'My God, I killed the snake. You-Know-Who is going to flay me alive,' did flash through my mind. As did, 'My God, Harry Potter is dead' and 'We have to keep up the fight.' Oh, and let's not forget, "I think I'm going to die today.'"
She sighed. "Any useful observations?"
:
"Go away, Miss Granger."
She looked up, eyes narrowed. "Curfew doesn't apply to me anymore."
"Yes, but as you're no longer a student, I'm afraid I will have to consider it a trespass if you do not leave now," said Madam Pince. "The library closed thirty minutes ago, and you shouldn't be here to begin with—no. The book stays here. Get out."
:
At Slughorn's Christmas party that year, Hermione, attending as one of his alumni guests, found she was the pariah of the group. Even Trelawney avoided her.
"If you think about it, he actually stopped breathing for a full hour or more! How can a person survive such a thing?"
The vampire she had been speaking with muttered something about finding a pasty and made his escape. Hermione craned her head, looking for her friends, but found that they had all conveniently got stomach aches at the same time and left the party en masse after she'd begun her discussion of blood loss and oxygen deprivation to the brain.
:
After seeing a photo of Snape dining at the most exclusive restaurant in Diagon Alley in the company of Cho Chang, Hermione decided to bite the bullet and go straight for the horse's mouth.
Dear Professor Snape,
I was so relieved to hear of your full recovery and return to health. The Wizarding World is deeply in your debt, and I am glad that you appear to be living life to the fullest.
I find your recovery so inspiring that I would like to learn more about it. Might we meet to discuss it?
Sincerely,
Hermione Granger
The owl returned to her with the envelope in its grasp, singed from an apparent Incendio. Across the address, one word was scribbled in red ink.
No.
:
For two years after the war, Hermione grew more and more obsessed with how Snape survived, trying to solve the unsolvable puzzle. It had never taken her so long to figure something out.
She decided she'd had enough of that.
Between his miraculous recovery and the general knowledge of his love for Lily Evans Potter, Severus Snape had become something of a romantic hero among the witches in Britain.
They would coo over his lovelorn past, fawn over his near-death experience, and sit in awe of his vast knowledge. Not that he had to do much to impress the sort of women who suddenly found him sex on legs.
Severus had never been free to form relationships in his life, and he didn't believe in supporting the sex worker industry. Call it moral repugnance on his part, he supposed. So his only sexual experience had been the odd opportunities that had come his way over the years. They had been few and far between. And not very enjoyable.
Now that his status as a war hero was cemented and his love for the untouchable woman extolled far and wide, he had transformed in the eyes of many from sadistic teacher with a cinderblock on his shoulder to a misunderstood, brooding romantic hero. A modern-day Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester. A Bronte hero.
Fools.
Still, ever the consummate Slytherin, he would never turn away that which was freely offered. If women half his age wanted to throw themselves at him, pet him, and bring physical sensations to him that had long evaded him…
Well, he was not going to be one to complain.
Even if he was rapidly discovering that there existed an inverse correllation between breast size and brain size.
"Professor Snape!"
Severus groaned as the shrill voice of potions classes past pierced his ears. He gave a sideways glance in the direction it had come from. Sure enough, the voice was attached to a bushy-haired twit frantically raising her hand.
She'd sent him countless letters, even after he'd replied to her that no, he would not meet with her. She persisted. And persisted. And persisted. Now she had come to harass him here in public.
He wondered if he could make it to the floos before she could accost him. He picked up his pace, weaving through the idiots mulling around the Ministry Atrium. He pushed through groups conversing and even pushed aside a snogging couple just for the fun of it. The floos were close, so close. He was almost there…
A hand grabbed his sleeve. Damnation.
"Severus!" Harry Potter beamed at him. "Thought I saw you running through here. You all right?"
"Fine, Potter," he said, removing his arm from Potter's grasp and turning on his heel. He could hear the idiot boy calling after him, but didn't care. He could still make his escape.
He felt a hand on his wrist again. "Damn it, Potter, I—"
He stopped. It was her. Granger. Damn.
"Professor Snape! Fancy running into you here!" she said, beaming a smile that was entirely too large to be genuine. Like all Gryffindors, Granger was a terrible liar. As if he hadn't seen her standing around the Atrium near the floos, waiting for him to come by. He hadn't answered her owl. He knew that would come back to bite him.
"Indeed," he said, giving her his best disinterested expression coupled with his most sinister glare. It only made her beam at him more. Damn.
"It's been so long since we last saw each other, especially since… well, yeah… and I was so pleased to hear how well you'd recovered. May I buy you a drink tonight? I'd love to catch up."
"No."
"But it would be so wonderful to catch up! I was just reading the most interesting article in Transfiguration Today, and I wanted to know your though—"
"No." He twisted his arm out of her grasp and made his way to the floos, walking a bit faster than he would have otherwise. He was mere steps away. He stepped in, called out his destination…
…and hit the ground as the force of the witch tackling him knocked him from his feet. The floo at his home spat him out with Granger on top of him, practically astride him.
Despicable behaviour.
The fear he saw in her eyes was dwarfed by the triumphant expression on her face.
"Severus?"
Both looked up at the figure of a sexy Indian woman walking down the stairs in naught but an aubergine negligee. Granger flushed and stiffened but did not move as Severus watched the woman's eyes widen in horror.
"Oh… I see."
Severus pushed Granger off him roughly as he clambered to his feet. "Parvati…"
The woman stopped, staring daggers at him. She stomped over to him and slapped him full across the face.
"That would be Padma…" Granger whispered theatrically from the ground. He whipped his head around and gave her a look that told her to shut up now. She gave a small wave from the ground at her former classmate.
"You know, Snape, I thought you were different, but you're just as bad as Lavender warned me you'd be," Padma said icily. Severus looked at Granger and tried to stifle a laugh. Padma thought he was throwing her over for this mess of a woman on the ground—hair defying the laws of both gravity and magic, clothes rumpled, an ink stain on her cheek?
He couldn't help but chuckle at the notion, making a bad situation worse. It was bad enough he'd mistaken which twin he'd gotten into his bed. Laughing was the final nail in the coffin.. Padma flicked her wand and summoned her belongings from the bedroom. Severus noted with a pang that this included a pair of handcuffs and a peacock feather. Visions of the evening he could have had flashed through his mind, and he'd never hated Hermione Granger more in his life.
Giving him a death glare, Padma stomped to the door and Disapparated.
He growled in frustration. Talking one of the Patil twins into his bed had taken weeks. He'd aimed for both at once. Ambitious, but was he or was he not the former Head of Slytherin house?
"Well…" Granger said from the ground. "Now that you seem to be free this evening…"
Snape looked at her as if she had three heads.
"I mean, you know, your plans seem to have been canceled, and I truly am sorry about that—I didn't want to give her the wrong impression, and that's not why I came over here. God no. But since you won't be having—with her—maybe we could have a conversation. As I said, I read the most stimulating article the other day…"
Her voice trailed off as Snape stepped over her and marched through the doorway into what looked like a small kitchen. Hermione gracelessly climbed to her feet, taking in her surroundings. She was in a house—a small house. A rather old and dilapidated house. Everything was shabby and well-used. Books lined every wall and crevice and stood stacked on the ground in little towers. Not exactly the type of abode she would have expected for the Witch Weekly Most Eligible Bachelor 1999. Given the paraphernalia she had seen Padma take with her, Hermione suspected that Snape did most of his entertaining in other parts of the house.
She followed Snape into the kitchen, where he was drowning his sorrows in some kind of cheap alcohol. Maybe he saved the good stuff for his lady friends. If what she saw in the papers was any indication, he'd had quite a few of them.
Most from her class, oddly enough. Wonder if he was working his way through them. She gulped when she realised that she was the last girl from her year to have not been spotted with him.
She wondered…
Snape had seated himself at a small table, seemingly not seeing her. Perhaps he was too dejected to throw her out. She pressed her luck. Perching on the table a bit to his side, she struck a pose that might be considered provocative—though she couldn't really be sure—and tilted her head to one side, letting her hair fall in a riot of untamed curls (or so she intended).
"Couldn't we get reacquainted with one another?" she asked, trying to make her voice sound sultry. She'd be mortified to hear how far she'd missed the mark on that.
Snape snorted into his glass. "No."
She sat up, offended. "Why not?"
"Granger, you chased away a witch who happens to be a part-time Wizard Yoga instructor." His jaw clenched for a moment. "You have no idea what you cost me this evening."
"Oh, she can't be all that great."
"Have you ever seen Wizard Yoga?"
Hermione shook her head.
Snape got a wistful look in his eye. "It should be illegal."
"But that can't possibly be satisfying. Sure, Padma is a great shag—George seemed to think so, anyway—but she's also as vapid as a puff of smoke. How she ever got into Ravenclaw is beyond me."
"I assure you, Granger, her ability to wax poetic about the laws of Transfiguration or any other academic subject was not remotely my concern this evening."
Hermione gave an unladylike snort. "That hardly sounds satisfying."
Snape retreated back into his mind, no doubt thinking of Wizard Yoga, and did not respond to her.
Strange that he hadn't thrown her out yet.
"The evening doesn't have to be a total loss," she said. "We could… help each other out."
Snape gave her a sideways glance. Hermione had delivered her proposal in a way no Slytherin could refuse: Quid pro quo.
"You could answer my questions, and I could… scratch an itch."
Snape turned his head and looked her up and down, apprising her like a piece of art he was considering buying.
"What questions?"
"Your recovery… I want to know how it happened."
"Why?"
She huffed. "Because I can't figure it out."
His eyebrows quirked up in amusement. "Can't you?"
She shook her head. "No. I've thought of every possible way, and I come up empty-handed each time."
He chuckled. "You haven't changed a bit."
"How do you mean?"
"Per usual, you over-think and miss the correct and obvious answer. Try turning off that brain once in awhile and you might find that you think more clearly."
"Is that a clue?"
He took a long, slow swallow of his drink. "It might be."
Hermione toed off a shoe in response. She had every confidence in her ability to tease out the answer from him, or at least solve it, long before she'd have to go through with anything.
"What do you say, Professor—quid pro quo?"
Faced with the prospect of assuaging his lust with either his hand or Hermione Granger, Severus, after much deliberation, decided that Granger might be the preferable option.
Might.
He probably wasn't going to get another offer tonight.
Probably.
Might as well do his House proud by taking that which was being freely offered.
"You'd trade your body for knowledge?"
Granger flushed but stammered, "I wouldn't put it like that…"
Severus chuckled. "You must really want to know how I survived." She nodded.
"Well," he drawled, "Far be it for me to stymie a thirst for knowledge."
"You promise to be honest with me and tell me if I've reached the correct answer?"
He nodded.
"And you realise that if I figure it out before we… you know… I reserve the right to stop what we're doing?"
He nodded again. "I would never do anything without your consent." He meant it. He was many things, but not that. Never that.
"You won't make it easy for me, will you?"
He shook his head.
"Well, then, I won't make it easy for you." She leaned back and let her legs dangle over the edge of the table. "Did the poison enter your system?"
"No."
She toed off her other shoe.
"So Nagini missed your jugular vein?"
"No."
Furrowing her brow, she removed her sock.
"But then how did the venom not make its way into your system?"
"It couldn't."
"That's not an answer."
"Yes it is."
Sighing, she removed her other sock. She sat there thinking to herself. Her toes wiggled the harder she concentrated. Severus wondered if she realised she was doing it. He found it oddly endearing.
"Had you taken an anti-venin before entering the Shack?"
"No."
Frustrated, she pulled her jumper over her head. "What about the blood loss—did she nick your carotid artery?"
"Of course."
She removed her wristwatch. "Did you take a blood-replenishing potion before you went to the Shack."
"No. Use your head, Granger—did I look like I had anticipated what was going to happen?"
She undid the top button on her blouse. "I suppose not. So this isn't a profitable line of inquiry?"
"Preventive measures I might have taken? No."
She undid another button.
"Give me a hint, then."
"Why should I?"
"It'll be good for two buttons."
"When is a snakebite not poisonous?"
She popped two buttons, then placed her hands behind her and leaned back a bit, thinking hard. Her shirt was halfway undone. Her eyes widened. "When the snake is not poisonous."
Severus nodded. She gave him an intense look, and he gave her a quizzical one back.
"Quid pro quo," she said. "I answered a question."
He looked at her suspiciously for a moment, then nodded and shrugged off his robe, placing it on the back of the chair behind him.
"So the snake wasn't poisonous?" She stared at him incredulously. "Nagini was a non-venomous species of snake?"
"I would have thought you would have researched the species of snake as one of your first steps. Once again, you ignore the obvious in favour of the more complicated and less-plausible solution, as if somehow it makes you less clever to accept the simple answer, even if it makes you wrong. How disappointing," Severus drawled as he flicked his wrist. Another button on her shirt opened.
She narrowed her eyes at him. "I would have done." He shrugged.
"That still doesn't explain how you survived," she said, thinking intensely as if she wasn't in the midst of a very odd striptease whilst perched on her former professor's kitchen table. Socratic stripping, Severus mused. Intriguing. And stimulating in more ways than one.
Granger may not have been the sexiest witch he'd brought home and undressed, but he found himself enthralled in the game nonetheless.
"That still doesn't explain how you survived," Granger said. She was leaning back on her elbows now, staring up at the ceiling, exposing her throat and giving Severus a delightful view of her bra and the swell of her breasts. Who knew that the know-it-all actually had a figure? She hid her best assets under loose and frumpy clothing.
Not, he realised, unlike himself.
"The bite still severed your main arteries and veins, not to mention your windpipe and voice box. Plus, I watched you shudder and die. I watched it. I saw it. I know what I saw. I also know that no one came to assist you, because nobody even knew you were there until I told them. And that was not until after Harry defeated You-Know-Who two hours later. So I don't understand how a person can survive such catastrophic injuries and bounce back in near-perfect health, with the libido of a man half your age to boot. I can't wrap my mind around it. How do you explain it?"
Severus smirked.
"Occam's razor," he said smoothly.
Her head snapped up at that. "What?"
"Occam's razor," he said, wandlessly and nonverbally unzipping her skirt but otherwise leaving her untouched. "The principle that the simplest and most straightforward explanation to a problem is most often the correct one."
"There is no simple explanation here," Granger scoffed. "I've gone over all of them."
"You miss the most obvious one."
"No, I didn't."
"Yes, you do. It's staring you straight in the face, and I have a feeling you've said it out loud more than once, but you give it no credence."
She huffed a breath in frustration. "And that would be?"
He merely raised his eyebrows.
"Quid pro quo."
She undid another button. There was only one left.
"What is the simplest answer to the unanswerable question?" Severus asked, resting his hands on her bare thighs and feeling a barely-perceptible shudder underneath. Was it out of anticipation or loathing? He couldn't tell and, at the moment, didn't care.
"I don't understand," she said, her voice sounding slightly more breathless than it had before.
"You're getting warmer," Severus said, rewarding her by pulling his shirt over his head and exposing his bare chest to her. He placed his hands back on her thighs, a little higher than he had before, rubbing his thumb back and forth along her inner thigh. Her breath caught. Ah, so it had been anticipation before. Good.
He was pleased with what a quick study he had become in the art of pleasing women. He'd had a lot of practise at it lately.
"Not understanding is the first step, then?"
"Precisely," he said, dropping his head and placing a kiss to her knee.
"Well, I've been there for a long time. What's the second step?"
"Quid pro quo," he whispered against her skin.
She pulled her shirt off completely and set it down next to her.
"The second step is to realise just how much you do not know." His fingers ghosted up her sides. It was more stimulating than he thought it would be to have a proper conversation with a woman whilst seducing her.
"Well, I don't know how you survived after losing what looked like at least half your blood supply. I don't know how you survived hours without oxygen to your brain without any lasting effects. I don't know how you started breathing again despite being unconscious. I don't know how you survived a crushed windpipe with blood pooling in it. I don't know how you survived any one of those things, let alone all of them together."
Severus did not stop to wonder why such a vivid description of his injuries did not kill the mood. He found his lust for the girl increasing, despite the subject matter. He considered that frustrating and stimulating a woman's mind was just as exciting as frustrating and stimulating, well, the rest of her.
Interesting. Perhaps there was more for him to learn.
"You have to know what you do not know, and then you will have your answer," Severus said.
"Stop being so bloody cryptic with me!"
"I'm not, I'm bloody well spelling it out for you," he said, his voice lacking any real bite.
"How?"
He ran his hands up her sides and cupped her face, pulling her closer to him. "You said it yourself, just a moment ago," he whispered.
"Said what?"
He pulled her even closer, brushing his lips against hers ever so briefly before speaking. "The answer."
She pulled away ever so slightly. "I said it?"
He pulled her closer. "Yes."
When he kissed her, she kissed him back fiercely. Whether her fervor was at his ministrations or the fact that she had just been told by her teacher that she had the right answer, Severus could not tell.
"What did I say?" she asked breathlessly as his fingertips drifted down her sternum and brushing along the tops of her bra. Her eyes fluttered closed.
He dipped his had next to her ear and whispered again, "What is the simplest answer to the unanswerable question?"
"I…" The rest of her sentenced died as he latched his lips to her neck.
"Think, Granger," he whispered, before kissing his way down, down, down…
"I…" Her arms were on his shoulders now, clutching him more tightly.
"You know the answer," he purred, nuzzling her cleavage.
"I do?" She arched into him.
"Mm hm," he rumbled against her skin. "You already said it."
"But…" she pulled him in for another kiss before she spoke further. "I don't know."
"Exactly," he said, pulling her closer.
"What do you mean?"
"That's the answer."
"What's the answer?"
"You said it yourself: I don't know."
Granger pushed him away, hands on his bare chest. She narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow. "What do you mean, you don't know."
Severus sighed. "I mean, I don't know. Nobody knows how I survived. You're absolutely right: I should have died. If the blood loss didn't kill me, the oxygen deprivation should have. I should never have been able to start breathing again on my own. I lost my major veins and arteries and my windpipe and my voice box—ripped to shreds. None of that should have been reparable, and by all accounts I should have died on the floor of that shack. You missed nothing, Granger: I don't know how I survived, and neither does anybody else."
She opened her mouth, then shut it again, then pulled back from him and stood up, crossing her arms. "That's not an answer. "
"Of course it is. It's the simplest answer, and also happens to be the correct one in this case."
"So…" she grabbed her shirt and began to put it back on. "The answer is that there is no answer." She sighed. "That feels a bit anti-climactic to me."
So does this, Severus thought exasperatedly.
Granger finished doing up her shirt and pulled on her jumper. She suddenly seemed very self-conscious, as if she was ashamed to have offered herself up like this. "Well, this was, um… interesting."
"Indeed."
She offered her hand to shake and Severus took it. Reluctantly.
Was he to be left frustrated and wanting by not one but two of his former students today?
Life was so unfair.
She didn't meet his eye again, and muttered something in farewell before dashing out the front door. Severus didn't often miss women who left his home, but he felt strangely bereft by her leaving. And not just because they hadn't finished what they'd started.
He looked ruefully at his right hand. "Well, old boy, shall we?"
"Thank God!" Harry said, rubbing his forehead with his palm in relief.
"What does that mean—it's hardly a resolution at all!"
"Who cares-, it means your ridiculous obsession with Snape's survival is finally over. My God, Hermione, it's been something like two straight years you've been focusing on this. You can move on with your life now."
"I wasn't obsessed!"
He snorted. "The hell you weren't. All you'd talk about, all you'd think about, running around to the library, to the Department of Mysteries, to St. Mungo's, to Hogwarts, on and on until someone would tell you. Even for you it was a bit odd that you'd be so fixated."
Hermione huffed. "Forgive me for wanting to know how a man miraculously survived an experience that should have killed him and, based on what we witnessed, did kill him."
"I wonder…" Harry said thoughtfully.
"Wonder what?"
"Why you cared so much. Why you still care so much. We've been confronted with greater mysteries than this in our lives. Sure, we always found an answer—or rather, you did—but nothing captured you so completely like this. Did you ever stop to ask yourself that—why you cared so much? It can't just be because it was unsolved."
Hermione didn't respond. She hadn't thought about why she had been so obsessed with finding out why and how Snape had survived.
When she did think about it properly, the answer frightened her.
Damn that Hermione Granger.
She'd spoiled him for any other woman. Even though he'd left their encounter (if he could even call it that) rather frustrated, he'd felt more fulfilled than he had with any other encounter with any other woman. He may not have had sexual intercourse with her, but had engaged in intellectual intercourse, which he'd known all his life could be just as satisfying. In that context with her, however… he'd never been more aroused in his life.
Dammit, he now cared whether the woman had a thought in her head beyond what she'd like to do to him once she got him into bed. Pure physical sensations were all very well, but to stimulate and be stimulated intellectually, mentally. To solve problems or speak in riddles that the other person would actually decipher… what he'd been missing.
He wondered why he thought of her so often as the weeks passed. When he thought about it properly, the answer frightened him.
He'd teased her by withholding knowledge.
It had been damn near irresistible. Her thirst for knowledge and impulse to find the correct answer to a question had overwhelmed the power of his seduction.
But only just.
God, but she'd wanted him to shag her right there on that table. But then she'd felt ashamed, like she was no better than one of the tarts he seemed to favour bringing home. She didn't want him thinking less of her for having done it. She wanted to be praised for solving the unsolvable puzzle, and instead she felt stupid for having failed to accept that some questions did not have answers.
Finishing what they'd started would have been a mistake. Even though she'd really, really wanted to.
She was frumpy and disheveled. She was annoying and tenacious. She was everything he hated about Gryffindors: arrogant, unsubtle, and bloody klutzy.
Her thighs had felt amazing beneath his fingers and her lips had been as intoxicating as sweet wine. She was intelligent and thorough and wanted to know more, always more.
He had teased her with information, and she had positively writhed.
It had been bloody arousing.
The thought of what could have been, what they could have done, consumed him. Not just because she was the "one that got away," but because it had promised to be very, very fulfilling. More than just physically.
She was there not because he was Severus Snape, Byronic Hero, but because he was himself, and she'd cared enough about him to puzzle out the answer to how he had survived an attack that should have killed him. For who he was, not what he was.
Turns out, there was a difference.
The next time he saw her outside the Ministry floos, he did not escape. Did not run. Did not try to hide.
He stood there and watched her, his gaze like a fishing lure. All he had to do was hook her, and he would be able to draw her in. He'd perfected the skill over the last few years.
Sure enough, she suddenly stopped walking and jerked her head up at him. She looked both puzzled and afraid. Quite afraid, actually. Like he'd caught her doing something bad.
He softened his expression a bit in invitation, and she made her way over to him, weaving through the sea of employees coming and going through this main thoroughfare.
For a long time neither of them spoke, just stared at each other for a while. Granger was finally the one to break the silence between them.
"Why…?" she started, then closed her mouth, leaving the rest of the question hanging.
Understanding what had not been said, Severus merely replied, "Hermione Granger, surely by now you know that the simplest and most obvious answer to your question is going to be the correct one."
She smirked. "Is that what it is for you?"
He nodded. "It is indeed. I cannot say I was expecting it, but I am not disappointed."
She blinked, surprised, and the smiled. "Neither am I."
He offered his arm, and she took it. Few people paid them any mind; they were all used to Snape escorting his Flavour Of The Week out of the Ministry on his arm. Both were quite familiar with Snape's recent reputation. However, he had no intention of casting her aside after a couple of shags, and she had no intention of being cast aside. Beyond that, they did not know what they were walking toward.
They smiled as they each considered the answer to the unasked question of why they found that each missed the other. Why each had felt drawn to the other. Why each had been positively starving for the other. For completion, in more ways than one. To give and receive.
The answer was simple and obvious.
Oh, what fun would it be to spell it out? ;)
Prompt (see if you can spot the deviation):
#1. Severus has survived the attack by Nagini, but no one knows how. He is in hiding - fearful for retribution by rogue Death Eaters and the Order alike.
#2. Hermione discovers that he is in fact alive, and will stop at nothing to find him and figure out how he survived.
#3. I would like to see a resurgence of a character that tends to fall by the wayside... Anyone of your choosing :)
#4. Of course the shipper in me wants HG/SS to have chemistry - but don't feel beholden to that.
#5. Something amusing involving Ron and a charmed broom
Shameless Promotion: "Just to Be" has been nominated for Best Het Romance at the 2012 HP Fanfic Poll Awards! Voting information and links are available on my profile. Lots of great stories have been nominated in a variety of categories and pairings-be sure to check it out!
In other news, I have been attacked by another SSHG plot bunny. I make no promises about when it will be written or posted (as with all my stories, I won't post unless the story is already complete), but I'm enjoying the brainstorming stages of this one quite a bit :)