Oatmeal and Almond Drink
Serverus Snape and Hermione Granger Two-Shot
By
Clara
AKA
TheCows
It is sweet to have someone wait patiently for you, who never tires of your presence. A Hermione and Snape Two-shot. Just a nice piece of reflection of the relationship. SSHG.
Leaves rustled and crunched under the foot of someone who was, at the moment, jangling at the doorknobs. The 'Creek-creek', was a tell-tale sound that someone had entered the sanctuary.
Hermione swung her legs out of the bed, holding up her nightgown daintily and trying to tip-toe out the bedroom as silently as possible so she would not wake the slumbering Ginny Weasley.
The figure who entered in the dark slumped over in the olive-coloured couch.
He was utterly spent and exhausted.
All but the light shuffling of feet could be heard. It was the dead of the night and Hermione Granger made her way into the kitchen pantry. Going on her tiptoes, she reached for a canister of Ching's Almond Powder.
The man on the sofa closed his eyes as he heard the familiar sound of opening drawers and a metal spoon clinking on the kitchen counter.
Jamming the spoon into the fine ridge of the metal can, she pried it open, hearing the soft pop which allowed the contents to be extracted and dolled into two medium sized mugs. On nights like these, she always kept a kettle of hot water on the stove, ready to be re-heated when needed.
As the hoot-hooting sound of boiled water rang out softly into the night, the sofa-man cracked his eyes open, his palm rubbing the temples of his face.
'Clink-clink-clink…'
To others, the pestering stir of a metal spoon in a porcelain mug would annoy the heck out of anyone, especially if on a clear, bright morning before one has had his or her cup of human-izing coffee.
Not so to our dear Professor Snape, or rather, Serverus, to Hermione.
He felt the soft indentation of someone beside him on the hideous couch.
Hermione placed hot mugs of almond drink on the low coffee table, not bothering with coasters. The many rings of brown coffee stains, water stains and crumbs were the result of many such meetings late in the night.
If one did not know better, one might assume these meetings to be at a very unorthodox time between a forty-something Potions Master and a nineteen year old, fresh out of Hogwarts, brilliant top-scorer graduate.
It might even seem rather scandalous.
Anyhow, these two were past caring what other people thought.
"Here, Se.." she still was not accustomed to calling him by his birth name, "Professor Snape." she ended her sentence rather resolutely but with a hint of question.
"Miss Granger." The tired gentleman accepted her drink by acknowledging her.
Hermione looked down, for a brief moment, allowing her disappointment to flash through her eyes by her unanswered question.
He regarded her stance for a moment and grinned uncharacteristically into his cup.
The familiar silence between them began. Slow slurps were the only orchestra that night. Snape liked his drink piping hot and usually got it down faster than Hermione did, who, in fact, blew into the mug and drank with a spoon. This action only ever got one response from the Professor.
'For goodness sake girl, the drink is going to freeze over. Are you going to blow it to death?'
Hermione looked up to her former professor and gave a cool glance before resuming her soft wind actions into her mug and exacting a huge and rather unlady-like slurp from her cup.
A sudden laugh had emitted from the Potions professor, to which he promptly covered his mouth and looked into the cup which had long been emptied. Hermione's eyes had shown a look of amusement and surprise at Snape's first sign of being human.
Laughter.
And what a beautiful sound at that.
'I'm getting another drink.' He said abruptly and promptly left for the pink pantry.
He never teased her about her cold drinks neither did she ever mention him laughing. It was a truce made over powdered almond drinks.
That incident had occurred the second time she had started those late night traditions. Now, despite the recent rather good and civil behavior which baffled the others in the house, Hermione rather craved some sort of response from him, any response would have been welcome, even if it was the same old snarky attitude which she swam through in the 7 years of schooling.
'Granger' her old professor had sneered.
'What's that man doing here?' Hermione has half-shrieked when she saw him standing near Albus at the entrance with his small bags of luggage, which incidentally, contained many books and manuscripts. Same as when Hermione when she and the rest had moved in the sanctuary while the spying and 'war' raged on between good and evil.
It took a while to get them settled but everyone knew why Snape was there. He was an unusually important spy for the light side. This caused most people to avoid him like the plague. They just did not know how to deal with a person like him. Terrorizer by day, secret spy in the night.
Even in the small house, everyone managed to find a place to congregate and squeeze into so long as they did not need to breathe the same air as their dreaded Potions teacher. All but Albus Dumbledore and… Hermione Granger.
This truly had him in a fix. Severus found his new-found power of emptying a room rather amusing and it gave him the solitude he, not loved, but had adapted to through all his years of being an ostracized greasy-feared git of a teacher.
The second night he had come back from a mission, he was bruised and battered. The Dark Lord had been angry for some frivolous and empty reason, finding it proof enough to cast spells on Snape to vent his anger. He had been standing, unknowingly, closest to the Dark Lord in the room.
He vowed never to stand near Voldemort during meetings.
His heavy stumbling had awoken Hermione up, who, for some reasons best left undiscovered, had been staring up into the cracked odd-green ceiling, wondering when her former professor would come back.
'Is that him?'
She had taken a quick glance at the cat cuckoo clock. 12.37 a.m.
Yes, that should be about right.
Severus had expected to spend the night on the disgustingly olive-green horror of a sofa trying his best to heal his wounds when he heard one of the bedrooms door creak ajar.
He tried his best to fake-sleep his way, making it seem as though he had dozed off. However, the lack of evidence to which he had dozed of to, the bloodied shirt and bruises led smart Hermione Granger to infer there was more to it than his sleeping form.
She made the most comforting drink she could think of for a person up midnight and brought it to him, nudging him to remove his apparel so she could inspect the damage.
After several healing spells and a quick cleansing spell, Snape felt much more human.
'Go to sleep Professor.'
Uneasily, he retorted back, he felt he owed her this at least. 'You can… call me Severus.'
She mumbled something soft and drew some checked blankets over him.
Hermione left and closed the lights.
The memory had flooded her mind and brought a lovely shade of pink to her cheeks. She thought he could not see but the soft light streaming past the column in the kitchen shone just enough to illuminate her soft cheeks.
"Miss Granger, would you bring me another cup of this almond drink? I find myself rather taken to its taste."
She nodded and left again.
Moving deftly, he withdrew a little vial from his pocket and proceeded to empty its contents into her unfinished drink. For just a moment, he had faltered, thinking carefully about his next action… and their eventual consequences.
Making her fall asleep with a harmless sleeping potion was the only way she would stay in his arms without him telling her directly to her face that he, well, cared and loved her.
In a way, their love was strange and cryptic that way.
As his mind did a fast scan of past events and insults, academic conversations, many tears and worried anxious looks from her as he had been given assignment after assignment, he thought turnabout was fair play.
Smiling in a rather sly-slytherin kind of way, he swirled her mug to mix the potion in and set it down just before she returned with his second helping of powdered almond drink.
7.57 a.m., the next morning
"Harry! Something must have gone amiss, Snape didn't return from his mission last night. His bed is empty." Remus Lupin whispered while shaking the sleep deprived youngster up.
Harry furrowed his brows. Nobody said it, but everyone still hoped Snape would return safely back from his dangerous missions.
"Gits probably lying in a ditch somewhere." Ron Weasley remarked snidely.
Well, almost everyone.
"He helps us a great deal Ron." Harry tried to chastise his offensive friend. Ron shrugged.
Harry and Remus were exiting their shared commode. "Where do you think he may've gone? Perhaps…"
"Oh."
Neither dared to speak, until Ron Weasley stepped out along with them, muttering, "Greasy sod, nothing but troub…HEY!"
For there they were. Our Potions Master and Gryfinddor Girl, lying on a really ugly olive shaded sofa.
And not just any side-by-side thing. Hermione Granger had thrown her leg unceremoniously across Severus's lap. Her arms enveloping his waist in a tight hold, just like a security bolster. His actions were equally as appalling. He had his cloak thrown across her shoulders, protecting her from the cold, but it was quite evident that the embrace he had given her through the night would have sufficed.
Hermione was the first to stir from the noise of Ronald. However, all was forgotten as she had laid eyes on her beloved. Smiling at his gallant and thoughtful cloak gesture, she drew her palms lovingly across his cheeks, her eyes brimming with pre-tears as she realized he was trying to tell her he cared for her too.
Completely oblivious to the dumbstruck trio standing just meters from them, she sank back into his embrace. His eyes fluttered open and stayed locked to her gaze for a long time. Their silence was torture to the three guys as they waited with baited breath as to the scene which had transpired before them.
Severus considered giving her a quick kiss but decided that that might be too much for the audience he was aware of.
"Hermione," he started. She gasped, and smiled.
"your friends are behind yo…" he never got a chance to finish his sentence for she had enveloped his lips in a soft and tender kiss, which, to her delight, he returned with equal fervor.
At that moment, Ron blanched and Harry and Remus dragged Ron back into the room before anything violent ensued.
Lying with their head on one side, facing each other, the couple sank back into a close embrace as Minerva, Albus and Ginny filed out slowly to prepare a rather burnt breakfast. (What to do? They were still in shock.)
Severus and Hermione stayed that way on a really ugly olive-green sofa for a long time.
My first try at this pairing. I did this after I had a cuppa almond drink and oatmeal. Please do the 3 Rs! Read, Rate and Review! Like it?