Hermione leaned back against her husband as the wind and fresh sea air bathed her face. "This has been the best birthday. I can't believe you went to all this trouble!" She turned to nuzzle her nose and mouth into his warm neck.
"Well, you only turn 37 once." Severus replied with a slight smile, flicking his wand to slightly adjust the boom of the small cutter to better catch and direct the wind as they sailed back toward England. The boat had been a bit of an impulse purchase two years before for their tenth anniversary - an attempt at a family hobby that had rapidly developed into a full-blown passion for the unconventional couple. Now they escaped whenever they could convince Molly, Ginny, or Luna to take the boys for a weekend.
"I still can't believe you'd never been to the Isle of Man!" Hermione exclaimed with a laugh. "You've seen so much more than me, it's always a surprise when I manage to find a sight you haven't seen."
"I'll admit, Peel Castle was a treat. I haven't seen many Viking fortifications, and the guide was certainly thorough." Not to mention overly flirtatious… but I don't thinkHermione noticed the itching hex I placed in the man's mid-back. That'll serve him right!
"Mmm. The treat was that lunch. That seafood stew was divine." She pressed a little kiss to his chin before turning her head back toward the sea, savoring the feeling of the late-afternoon sun at her back. She swallowed the chuckle when she heard her husband make a little noise at the back of his throat, proud as always to receive his wife's praise for his meals. He'd taken on the task of preparing the majority of their meals when they'd moved in together so many years ago, and it had certainly been hit and miss for the first few months. Now she called him quite the gourmand, and he was pleased of the homemade bouillabaisse - complete with a fresh baguette, good Irish butter, and treacle tart- that he'd managed to knock together in the little galley below. He'd had a lovely Beaujolais set aside for the meal, but Hermione had demurred in favor of crisp lemonade on the unseasonably warm day.
Of course, Severus was rather hoping that the unopened wine might signal the pending announcement of their hoped-for third child. He'd been tempted to peek during lunch, but she'd steadfastly been avoiding prolonged eye contact.
Which might have been an announcement in itself, come to think of it.
It had truly been a lovely weekend. Wine and good food, love-making in the berth below, games of chess and backgammon, books, his wife, and more open-air sex than he was prepared to admit outside his own thoughts.
"Look, love. Another boat." She gestured starboard toward a small and very sporty speed boat clipping the waves toward them. "Huh. They seem to be matching our direction. I wonder if they're heading back too?"
Severus' brow furrowed as he studied the rapidly approaching boat. "They're not matching our direction so much as they're on a collision course. Do me a favor love, and turn on the lamps. Perhaps they can't see us against the horizon."
Hermione moved to do so just as a stinging hex flew across the bow. "Severus, get down!" she shrieked into the wind, diving toward the deck. With some trepidation, she realized that she'd left her wand in her purse below.
"What?" He was clearly unable to hear her warning. Moments later another bolt of yellow light struck his shoulder. "What the blazes?" he shouted as he ducked, grasping his torn sleeve. He shuffled toward his wife, who was peering between the rail with fear in her eyes. The speed boat was rapidly drifting alongside their cutter.
"Severus, I think they mean to board us," she whispered. "I don't have my wand."
"Get below," he ordered. "Get your wand and lock the hatch. I'll take care of this."
She looked at him with wide eyes, but nodded her acquiescence. He didn't pause to consider her uncharacteristic acceptance of his order, turning his attention back to their would-be invaders.
Hermione slipped below just as she heard footsteps on the deck above. She heard a rough voice shouting through the hatch as she fumbled her wand from the depths of her purse. "Avast, ye scallywags! We're taking this here ship for our own and yer now are prisoners!"
Hermione's heart was in her throat as she peeked up at the still-open hatch. She couldn't close it now; it would be too obvious.
"That's right!" chimed a second voice. "Stand and deliver if ye want to live!"
She grimaced at that. Stand and deliver? Isn't that for highwaymen? Who arethese people? Did they escape from a panto? Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Severus' voice, which had dropped to a dangerous rumble.
"This is my ship and you have no right to be here, gentlemen. If you please, kindly return to your boat and make your way home unless you wish to be harmed."
"You hear that, lads? He means to take all three of us. After him, you!" chimed a third unfamiliar voice, slightly higher than the other two. There was the scuffle of feet from above followed by the distinctive sound of a groan and a body hitting the deck. Severus!
Hermione grasped her wand tightly in her right hand and poked her head through the hatch to assess the situation before dropping back down. She saw three men with wands (wands? Wizard pirates?) trained on her husband, who was snarling and bound with an incarcerous hex.
"It looks like the day be ours, lads!" the first voice - the gruff one - said. There was a short chorus of shouts before he followed with "Stinky Roy, check below and make sure there be no one else on board."
Well, shit.
Hermione stepped back from the hatch and waited for the pirate to come below. As soon as his bare (and unbelievably dirty) feet were in view, she shot a non-verbal tripping jinx at him and watched him tumbled down the slanted ladder and land on his arse. He was a beast of a man - at least six foot four and eighteen stone, and most of it muscle. His blondish hair stuck out in tufts from beneath a enigmatically traditional tricorn hat.
She quickly petrified him, pushing aside her confusion over the fact that the man was wearing a pirate hat on a speed boat before moving back toward the ladder. "All clear down there?" shouted the gruff voice again. Hermione remained silent and waited.
"Probably stuffing his gullet with whatever food was down there. I'll go knock him one, Cap'n," said the slightly higher voice.
She watched as a shadow fell across the hatch and jolted when, rather than climbing down, he jumped straight through. Startled, she forgot to cast her incarcerous non-verbally, shouting the hex at him before flicking her wand to send him over to the corner with his shipmate.
"What the - who's down there?" shouted the self-proclaimed captain from above. "Come out with yer hands in the air, ye bilge rat!"
Bilge rat? I'll show him bilge rat.
With a silent apology to her husband, she shot a stream of fog up through the hatch, obscuring the deck from view. Scrambling up the ladder, she cast a blanket-stunner - a hex of her own invention and duly copyrighted with the Ministry - on the boat as a whole. She heard the sound of a body hitting the deck and quickly dispelled the fog.
"Severus? Are you alright? Shit. Ennervate." She watched warily as her husband opened his eyes.
"Hermione? I thought I told you to stay below!"
"I would have, but our visitors refused to stay above!" She glanced behind her as she quickly removed the bindings on her husband's hands and feet. The prone body of the 'captain' lay absolutely still, his greying hair in a snarled queue down his back and - gods - some sort of bird shit on his shoulder. "What do we do with them?"
Severus sat up, and quirked an eyebrow at the pirate. "Put them back on their boat and disable the motor, I suppose. Where are the other two?"
"Galley."
Severus nodded, rising and plucking his wand from the hands of their would-be captor, then levitating the two prone bodies up through the hatch. It was only a minute's work before the three pirates were in their boat - sans pants - and their motor a smoking pile of twisted plastic and metal. He frowned at Hermione as she tossed their wands down into the boat with them. "What did you do that for?"
"We've stranded them and pantsed them. I don't want them to die or anything. They should be able to use those to apparate to the mainland, don't you think?"
Severus shrugged as if he couldn't care less. "Three idiots like that? They might not be able to apparate ten feet without splinching. Why else would they be using a Muggle speed boat to capture sailing ships?"
She giggled. "I'll admit that they're not the smartest pirates, for all that they got the drop on you." She smiled sweetly as Severus unmoored their boat from his, sneering at the dent their rope put in the otherwise pristine rail of his boat.
He snarled at her. "My wand was damp." He flicked the same wand at the boom, setting the boat into motion again.
"Mmm hmm." She wound her arms around his waist and waited until they were clear of the now-motionless speed boat before kissing his cheek. "So what have I said about using legilimency on me while I sleep, love?"
She watched as her husband flushed. "Should've known I wouldn't fool you long. I didn't use legilimency," he grumbled. "I read your diary."
She slapped his arm in mock outrage. "Severus! Rude!"
He chuckled, the deep sound reverberating through his chest as he pulled her closer. "But effective. I can feel your heartbeat through your lips, love."
Hermione laughed and tossed her hair in the wind. "I'll let you get away with it this once, but only because you've fulfilled a fantasy. Git."
"Harridan," he replied, lowering his lips to hers as he reached for the hem of her shirt.
HG/SS
...Meanwhile, somewhere in the Irish Sea.
A somewhat high-pitched voice croaked as its tone modulated and dropped back into the snide tones of one Draco Malfoy. "I thought you said Snape wanted to fulfill her rescue fantasy, Potter! You didn't say anything about Hermione attacking us too!"
The gruff captain scratched at his head as his long, scraggly hair shot back into his skull and reverted to its normal brown. "I didn't lie. It was her fantasy to rescue him. Not my fault you made assumptions, you arse."
The barefooted pirate was hunched in the corner of the boat. "Could one of you shut up and put on some pants, please? I can't deal with both you idiots in your altogether at once."
Malfoy sneered. "See something you like, Weaselby?"
"Shut it Malfoy," the red-head groaned, looking for something he could transfigure into pants. He groaned and turned away as his best friend and his husband smoldered at one another. It was bad enough that Harry had to hook up with Malfoy, but did they have to be so bloody happy about it in front of him. Instead he turned his head toward the departing cutter, his eyes widening as he caught a glimpse of a very naked Snape-arse thrusting into a very naked Hermione against the base of the mast.
"Guess Snape number three will arrive in nine months time" he muttered under his breath, turning back toward his two friends, who were now caught in an embrace of their own - thankfully with pants on.
Ron curled his lip and rolled his eyes heavenward. He supposed it wasn't their fault that some people were turned on by adventure and adrenaline, but he'd much rather be at home with Luna, listening to the wireless. The long-suffering man heaved a sigh. "The things I put up with for my friends."