It was the little things. The briefest touches, the lingering looks. The smiles that she gave him. The quick, chaste kisses slipped in the fleeting moments eyes were elsewhere. It was maddening torture, he had to admit, to have to stare at her day after day, and not do anything. The Potions Lab was a very lonely place, not many people came down to make him suffer through their presence. But he still couldn't risk doing anything. Because she was still his student.
His student. It was a wonder to him really, that the small, bushy haired girl he had meet years ago
would come to mean this much to him. She had grown past being that insufferable know it all that had annoyed him. She was still a know it all, he admitted, but know she was not at all insufferable. In fact, she was more than tolerable, she was, not that he would ever admit it to anyone but her, a true delight to have around.
He had no idea why she was with a cold, ugly and old bastard like him. She was a pretty girl, not at all a veela, but she was pretty. Her was bushy curls seemed to have calmed down after years of being untamable, as they were now silky, not at all bushy. They more than often than not were held back in a slightly messy bun. Her skin was pale, but unlike his did not have the sallow, ugly undertone. Her cheeks were rosy, and her eyes were big, doe like things that had him drowning ever single time he risked a glance at the deep brandy color that they were. But that wasn't the only reason, she was intelligent, so smart that he remembered Dumbledore even had remarked how one day the girl would surpass even his own intellect. He had no doubt she would. But that fact only made him question it further. Why did she love him?
He was currently sitting on a stiff stool, mixing the potion in front of him with quick, sure movements, and risking a glance or more to the girl that stood somewhere to the left of him, mixing at the same pace as him. She was humming under her breath, her small hands mixing the potion in tune with the soft and quick paced jig. Her foot tapped softly on the floor, it too in tune with her hummed song. It was always bewitching to watch her work. She always found new ways to memorize him with her brewing. One moment she could be humming, the next using a free hand to conduct an invisible audience.
She looked up suddenly, her brandy eyes trapping his black ones with just that glance. He drowned in her eyes for an endless moment, relishing in the love that oozed out of them, shining with such a brilliant light that it made his breath catch. She then smiled, widely, a dimple making itself known in her right cheek, as her pearly whites flashed in the dim light of the potions lab. Intoxicating, he had to admit, it was intoxicating just to look at her. To kiss her. To just have her be just his. His, and no one else's.
She then broke the conection, her eyes slipping back to her potion, and the smile on her lips still wide as she countinued the bewitching movements of her brewing. He figured it out in that moment that he didn't care why she loved him. It didn't matter to him. It couldn't matter to him, because she was his. She did love him. And he didn't have to question it, no, because he knew she really did love him. This was the one thing in his life that he didn't have to analyze, to break down to know every single little detail. No, this was the thing that he could simply let it be.
And he basked in the simple glory that was Hermione's love. Unknowingly having the smallest smile on his face at the fact. Hermione on the other hand did notice his smile, which in turn made her own smile widen almost painfully. The smile changed his face, made him look decade's younger, and made her swoon a little. She really did love that man, unconditionally.