Author's Note: Beware. This isn't my usual smut or fluff. Oddly enough, it started out that way, and I'm considering a sequel that will encompass both, but although I tried to add more to this short, angsty piece, my muse refused it. If there is a sequel, it will not be an additional chapter, but will be listed as a separate story, which will also be a one-shot. Review?
Hermione hadn't told them. She intended to, really, and she'd been dropping hints about her relationship for months. But she hadn't outright told them yet.
And, though he'd never yet said a world against her for it, she could see the hope that glimmered beneath the shadows in his black eyes when Severus asked about her visits with her old friends. He never blatantly asked if she'd told Harry and Ron – but Hermione knew what he desperately wanted to hear. And he had reached the edge of his patience after her last visit with them, and in the conversation that followed it. The man was proud – and to a fault; he would never voice his question aloud, for fear of proving that he truly did care about the answer.
But Hermione knew.
She knew that he thought her a girl with a fleeting fancy for her former professor. She knew that, no matter how many times they'd argued the point, he believed her incapable of loving anyone at this young stage of her life, let alone a surly, complicated man with a past that could tie even the strongest of men into knots. She knew that he was preparing for heartbreak.
The arrogant ponce had no idea what she felt.
As she approached the castle grounds, she sighed, preparing herself for an evening with the difficult man. Tonight would not be a night for cozying on the loveseat as he read to her with that magnificently seductive voice of his. They would not retire to his bedroom and make wild love to one another. Tonight he would break that ever-watched control of his. Tonight they would fight, and it would be a battle of wills and wit, of fury and flame, and of hurt.
Her shoulders straightened, her posture instinctively bettering itself the closer she got to the dungeons. It didn't matter that her small frame stood still a head and a half shorter than her lover's towering one.
She knocked on the heavy oak door, and she felt the wards lower as he recognized her from behind them. With as much confidence as she could muster, she eased the door open and slid through it, removing her scarf and jacket as she did.
When she turned to him, he sat behind his desk, one brow arched and cold, dark eyes glittering like diamonds in the romantic light of the candles, as though he'd assessed the set of her back and brow and responded accordingly. This was the Severus Snape who made himself unapproachable, Hermione knew. He would attack first, then.
"Have the boy wonder and his pet been assuaged of their loneliness?" The man sneered, his mocking tone quoting the teasing in Harry's letter that had spurred her visit with them, where the Boy-Who-Lived had cited that he and Ron were miserable without her.
"They ought to be satisfied until lunch on Saturday, when I will see them again," Hermione replied calmly, eyes flashing with irritation, and beneath that, a desperate desire to make him understand.
Severus made a small humming noise that was neither thoughtful nor content, but somehow scorning. "The brats are worthless without their better third, then? Sad, almost, how a simpering twit of a know-it-all can complete a trio instead of hindering it."
She turned away from him and moved toward his bookshelves, hiding her hurt from him as her fingers danced along the spines of the novels that rested there.
"Sad," Hermione repeated dully, realizing that despite her mental preparations, she did not wish to argue with this man – especially if he was to be this acerbic and cruel.
"Shall I inquire after your visit, then?" Severus asked, his tone expressing boredom and disdain. "Or shall I assume that the two idiots blundered their way through flirtations that you eventually succumbed to?"
Hermione whirled around to him now, shock and hurt evident in her eyes. They'd argued over many things, and Severus' words had sliced through her, chilling her heart and numbing her mind more times than she could count – but never once in the ten months that they had been together had he accused her of being unfaithful to him.
"Are you surprised that I would suspect you of such?" He smiled, but it was a thin, deceptive thing. "Or perhaps you're simply surprised that I discovered it?"
"How could you think that?" Her voice shook, barely above a whisper, but the man laughed harshly at the question.
"Yes, Miss Granger, how could I think that? When you spend your nights writhing in my bed, hoarsely crying for me and begging for more, but refuse to mention my name in the light of day? How could I possibly think you capable of such treachery when you allow me to treat you as the whore that you are and your so-called friends know none of it? How could I not think that, hm? How could I not think that you're capable of doing the same to another, expressing false confessions of love to another, just so that you may be satisfied?" He was snarling now, but Hermione's shock would not allow her tears, and her hurt would not allow her words.
It was several beats of silence later when the blackened man relented, regret and horror mounting across his dark, handsome countenance. He stood swiftly, moving to her, extending a hand to touch her shoulder, but she shuddered away from him, her confusion and fury and hurt forbidding his touch upon her skin.
"Hermione, I – "
"Is that what you think?"
"No, Hermione, of course it isn't what I – "
"Is that what you think?" She hissed at him suddenly, her eyes flaring with all of the emotions she felt, not a single one of them dulled by another, her breath coming to her in sharp heaves that threatened to become sobs.
"No," he answered quietly. "I did not mean to be so callous with you."
"But you fear that it's true, don't you?" She accused him furiously, anger dominating all as it was the easiest of her emotions to express, but the pain in her could not be hidden. "You sit here in your dungeon and ponder my extracurricular activities every time I leave this place, don't you?"
His responding silence gave her every answer that she needed.
"So when I hold you at night, and cradle your head against my breast, that means nothing to you?" She asked, her wrath coloring her words, but her bright, chocolate eyes wounded, and Severus could see that he had shattered so much more than her dignity.
He tried to argue, helplessly.
"When I make love to you, it's nothing more than fucking, is that it? When I lay with you after a disastrous day and listen to the sound of your voice, it's just for the sake of keeping up the pretense of a relationship? And when I cook your favorite meals for you, it's because I don't care? When I leave you notes to tell you where I've gone, or send you letters for the sole purpose of telling you how much I miss you, I do that to appease you? And," Hermione laughed bitterly here, tears streaming down her perfect face, "when I tell you that I'm in love with you, it's obviously because I'm about to go fuck another man, like the whore that I am, right? Is that what you think, Severus?"
Severus flinched away from her words as though he had been slapped, although he had no right to defend himself against her after how gravely he had injured her this evening. He did not answer, because he could see how much of her trust he had lost tonight with his ridiculous fears, and he could see how much he had hurt her.
But she deflated before his eyes, the anger – her only motivating force – dying with her speech. She turned away from him.
"I don't know what else to give you, Severus," she whispered brokenly. "You have everything that matters."
"I should not ask for more," he replied immediately, grasping at straws and hoping not to lose the only woman he had ever loved on this cold, horrid evening in February. "I was thoughtless, Hermione, and I treated you terribly. I have no right to explain, but it just… hurt that you would not tell them."
"They would have tainted it," she said quietly, still not looking at him, and he could still hear the tears in her voice. "You doubt my affections for you; you doubt everything that we've ever shared, I now realize, so perhaps it had already been tainted. But I foolishly lived, for this little, wonderful while, in a place where I could love and be loved; a place where I was welcome, and a place that felt warm and washed away every stress I could feel. It was tender and sweet and all that I'd dreamt of. And it was mine, Severus. At the time, I thought it was ours – and I didn't want anyone to take it from us. I was selfish," she murmured self-deprecatingly, "and clearly oblivious to the actuality of the world, but I was happy. And when I wasn't, I could return during the nights to someone who could hold me in silence and make the world brighter. And they would have tainted that place for me, Severus. Can you understand that?" She pleaded desperately, turning to him finally, and the heartbreak and devastation that showed in her eyes and fell with her tears nearly undid him.
"Yes," he rasped.
She nodded, seemingly accepting the mess that this night had become, accepting her pain and his perceived (and projected, Severus thought bitterly) low opinion of her.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly.
He wanted to sputter in his confusion. She was apologizing? After all that he had said, after the pain and grief that he had caused her tonight with his careless, biting words, she was apologizing?
"If it was your pride that I hurt, Severus, I never intended to," she whispered. "And if it was your heart that I hurt, I'm so very sorry, as I only ever intended to care for and protect it. I don't suppose it means anything," she smiled sadly, her teary eyes connecting with his only briefly before fluttering away in shame, "but I do love you, Severus, and I wish you only the greatest happiness."
She turned towards the door, forgetting her scarf and jacket on the coatrack, and like the fool that he was, Severus Snape could only stand in his stupor and watch her leave.