This is fact, not fiction
For the first time in years.
-A Lack of Color, by Death Cab for Cutie
:::
Her floor-length, loose dark grey dress with impossibly thin straps ended in a floppy flounce, and had it been made of cotton instead of heavy silk it would have been perfectly at home on a picnic in the country. The juxtaposition, combined with her loose curly hair and dark eye makeup, made her stand out immeasurably from the sea of stiff satin cocktail dresses and shellacked up-dos.
Severus stood in the corner, sipping at a tumbler of whiskey while Lucius rattled on in his ear about Narcissa's awful new decorating scheme or something. He stood less stiffly than usual, a calculated attempt to appear more nonchalant than he felt.
He and Hermione were attending Draco's engagement ball almost five years after the end of the war. Draco was, unsurprisingly, engaged to Pansy, after a long and overly dramatic courtship.
He and Hermione. Ah, there was the rub. After the war, there had been an absurdly prolific rumour about an enforced marriage law. It wouldn't have been the first (nor second, nor third) time in Wizarding history, and so people took the news rather seriously, running off to the altar in record numbers to ensure they wouldn't be stuck with someone they didn't want.
Hermione had come to his door late one summer evening, ridiculous hair tightly plaited and an ill-fitting pencil skirt on. The entire effect just made her look even younger, but he had invited her in and heard her out.
She wanted to marry him, she said. She claimed neither of them needed love, even wanted it, really, preferring to focus on their work and accomplishing something in the hellish post-war world they now occupied. He would have snapped at her for her presumption, but she was right. God forbid he have to marry someone with expectations.
So he'd agreed. They'd waited a year to make sure the law would be passed, but then they'd gone to Gretna Green one afternoon and had a private, clinical wedding ceremony, then Apparated straight back to their respective apartments in London.
The law was passed two weeks later. However, right afterward, an activist group headed, ironically, by Potter, had ensured that the law was thrown out before it could be enforced at all.
But they were already married.
Word spread, as it is wont to do, and eventually she was forced to move in with him, because Wizarding marriages are not annullable, and admitting to having lied about the reasons behind their marriage had been made illegal in the time before the marriage law was passed.
They certainly didn't love each other, or any insipid emotion similar. And living together, being married, was causing a strain on his sanity that was indisputably unnecessary. They'd begun to hate each other in this last year, arguing and ignoring one another for days on end, slamming doors and throwing things like children.
And Severus Snape was furious. Guilty too, for supposedly being the adult in the situation, and having agreed to such a stupid idea in the first place. But mostly furious.
Finally the party wound down, and Severus ceased his skulking in the shadows and went to retrieve his wife from the arms of whatever man had asked her to dance.
"Hermione," he said, grabbing her hand as the blond man spun her out. There was an awkward pause where she was caught between the two men, but she released the other's hand and stepped closer to Severus, winding an arm around his waist. No one else would have noticed the harshness in her fingertips, nor the way her grin up at him looked a little more like she was baring her teeth. But he noticed, and shot her a smirk that probably looked like a smile to anyone else, though it made the fire in her eyes strengthen. She looked like she wanted to slap him. Good.
She turned back to the other man. "George, this is my husband, Severus."
The man held out his hand to Severus to shake. Instead, Severus scowled, and tugged on Hermione's shoulder.
"Let's go, love."
She nodded, smiled at whatever his name was, and allowed herself to be pulled toward the door.
When they arrived home, she stormed upstairs, presumably to her bedroom, probably in a tizzy because he ended her night early, or something. He didn't really care. He slumped onto the couch, reaching for his reading glasses and grabbing the nearest book on the coffee table. When he put his glasses on and saw that it was one of her idiotic poetry anthologies, he threw it against the far wall where it connected with a satisfying thud. He picked up a month-old Potions journal instead, snapping it open to an article he'd already read three times, but it didn't matter. He wasn't really absorbing anything anyway.
An hour or two later, when his tea ran out and he'd torn apart the bookshelves looking for a particular article, he realised that it must be in Hermione's room. He hated how she did that. Throwing another of her books, not caring if he woke her, he walked upstairs and slammed open the door.
Or, rather, would have slammed it open, but he caught it with his hand before it hit the wall.
She lay there, her sheets tangled beneath her, the windows flung open in an attempt to catch a breeze, the night too sticky for pyjamas. She was only wearing a pair of thin knickers and was laying on her stomach with her hair wild over the pillows. The moonlight reflected silver off of her normally golden skin, the curve of her arse glorious as she lay there like some statue. She stirred, and his breath caught in his throat, hoping not to wake her. She arched slightly, and he found himself praying to every god he could think of that she would turn over and twist her body toward him just a little more.
She, of course, did not, and the ache he suddenly found himself with was too dangerous an idea to explore, so he walked quickly across the room, snatched the journal off her nightstand, and went back downstairs.
But not without running a callused hand lightly over her back along his way.
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