Marriage Therapy

by

BloodyBrilliantRuthie

Summary: Hermione finds herself in a loveless marriage and pursued by another. Sequel to Sex Therapy in the Dungeons. AU.

A/N: Well, here goes Chapter Three! Many questions are answered in this chapter! But, I'd like to know who would you want Hermione to end up with? Thank you to all those readers and reviewers who let me know that you like this story. YOU all ROCK! Please read and review.

...

CHAPTER THREE

Staring into her merlot, Hermione admired its delicate glow as it reflected the fire from Harry's hearth. Its deep crimson hues danced like jewels in the moonlight, beautiful and precious. She came out of her reverie when the smooth surface of her wine was disturbed. She looked up to see Harry watching her intently as he poured more wine into her glass.

When they departed Hogwarts she didn't know where they would go, so long as it was away from Remus. Grateful for the company of her friends, she proposed they go out drinking. Harry, wiser beyond his years, knew what she needed better than she had – private time with her friends. Sitting quietly in Harry's home, with him and Ron, she found herself calm and in a better space.

"Hermione," Harry said tenderly as he sat beside her and took her hands in his. "Please tell us what's going on with you and Remus."

While she pondered her reply, she focused her attention on thier hands and admired their intertwined fingers. Both hands became as one and shone like a beacon of friendship and love – a simple symbolism created by flesh and bone that spoke volumes. It represented eighteen years of friendship, love and comfort. And yet, despite their camaraderie and Hermione's desperate need for that same comfort, she was hesitant. While she and Harry shared many things, including a passion-filled history, she rarely shared her troubles. As rambunctious and free-spirited as she was, she remained a deeply private person. One who preferred to share her joy instead of her sorrow.

"Harry, Ron," she responded timidly, intently studying her fingernails as she began her tale. "It's difficult to start. I… I almost don't know where to begin."

"Hermione," Ron said as he joined her on the couch. "Why don't you start from the beginning?"

Hermione's laugh was shrill. Sounding neither of abstract misery nor outright amusement, the hideous noise she made could only be likened to a Dementor being tickled. This, at least, made her smile and made it easy for her to open up to her friends.

"Ron, I'm not even certain where the beginning is anymore!" Hermione was exasperated and while she wanted very much to help her friends understand her situation, she wasn't even certain she understood.

"Why are you so angry at Remus?" Harry asked. "What happened?"

"Harry, nothing happened! That's precisely the problem! Nothing ever happens!"

Both men looked perplexed. They both gave her that confused and confounded look men seem to get when confronted by the verity of a woman.

"I don't understand," Harry said. Ron nodded in agreement.

"Simply; Remus and I are not in a healthy relationship. It's like he's a not on the same planet or something." She emphasized her point with the universal hand motion for loopy. "Trust me. I'm a professional and I know crazy!"

Becoming somber, she took another sip from her glass. "We've been married nearly two years and I feel as if I don't even know him anymore. He's apathetic towards me. He's a bore. He's gloomy, dull, and possibly depressed! I am unable to shake him out of his mood. He's become monstrously monotonous. He runs his life on a schedule and does nothing if not planned to the tenth degree. He treats me as if my desires and needs are an effort. And… and…." She paused to consider how much she would tell them of their sexual life, or lack thereof. "Well, let's just say that we're not compatible."

"Hermione, I'm not surprised. And I don't think Harry is either." Ron raised an eyebrow at Harry who slowly nodded in assent. "It never did seem that you and Remus were in love."

"What do you mean?" she said, piercing him with her patented idon't mess with me/iglare. "I love him… I do!"

"Hermione," Harry interjected, "I'm certain that you two love each other. It's just that we were confused when you married him. It was a surprise to us. One moment you were seeing Snape and the next you eloped with Remus! You know that we love the bloke, but we love you more. We just want you to be happy."

"Oh, Harry! I want to be happy, too! I turned thirty today, but I feel like an old lady. My life is mind-numbingly boring. In the past two years I've built a successful practice, but at the end of my workday I dread returning home. Yet, return I do, day after day. Always hoping beyond hope, or reason, that Remus will look at me, love me, even desire me…" As soon as that declaration was out of her mouth she realized she'd probably said too much. So much for being a deeply private person.

"He doesn't make love to you?" Ron asked, his astonished eyes widening in a perfect imitation of a lemur.

"The few times we do make love I'm more of a bystander," she said valiantly, despite her quivering lips and her silent tears.

Harry placed his arm around her, and when she leaned her head on his shoulder he kissed the top of her head. She sighed as she felt him breathe against her scalp, gently heating her skin.

"I'm sorry, my love."

With Harry's simple apology she felt vindicated. For too long she wondered and worried whether her feelings of isolation were unfounded and based on her idealized version of what life should be. This apology was proof to her that life should and could be better. With or without Remus, she should and could be happy. The Universe held another understanding of what marriage was and it mirrored her own. Once lost, but thankfully regained and renewed. It was as if she took a giant leap forward and stepped into another dimension, one where she was happy and life was good. And she laughed – laughed as beautifully and as heartily as she once did, in a life that felt so long ago. Her laughter no longer resembled that of a Dementor, for she was renewed, and, dare she hope, transformed back into the Hermione she once was.

Before she could even understand why, she thrilled in seeing her two best friends be joyful with her. Alongside her, they laughed too. Laughing with her and not at her. Laughing because she was finally free of her trapped life, because she was determined to live and be happy. Amazingly, all that was translated through simple laughter.

She truly loved her two best friends.

...

"I'm not certain I understand all the subtle minutia of the female mind…."

"Ron, please. You wouldn't understand 'subtle' if it was a Howler and it blew a raspberry in your face!"

Harry guffawed and tried to prevent Firewhisky spillage through his nostrils.

"The female mind is a mystery, I must admit. But you wizards must live by a single caveat – to honor your wife, to love her, and to bow down to her vastly superior intellect. If you do that, my dear mate, your life will be happy and you'll get laid well and often."

"Hermione, I still don't understand why witches are so obsessed with their age! You're only thirty! Age is just a number, you know."

"You boys wouldn't understand. I'm twenty-nine."

"No, you can't be. We're twenty-nine," Ron responded, brow furrowed in confusion.

"Yeah, Hermione, I just turned twenty-nine this summer."

"Get used to it, boys! I'm twenty-nine today, tomorrow, and for the next several years and I don't want to hear anything more about it!"

In the time-honored tradition of men everywhere, Harry and Ron remained quiet and sipped their drinks.

Hermione chuckled and was pleased they finally got it. They'd learned to shut up and accept a woman's logic.

"Hermione, far be it for me to question a woman and taking a huge risk that I may not even comprehend the answer…."

"That's for certain," Ron interjected.

"But, if I may continue without interruption." Harry smirked as he rolled his eyes toward Ron. "I don't understand why you and Snape split up and why you married Remus."

Harry's question hung in the air like thick smoke. While she clearly understood that she could no longer avoid answering, she felt as if she would suffocate. She was afraid to stumble over her words. Afraid she didn't even know the answer.

Deciding it would be better to get this over with she forged ahead. "Severus is a difficult man," she stated. Harry cleared his throat and Ron choked on his drink in response. She paused a moment, allowing them time to get whatever it was out of their systems.

"Severus and I enjoyed one another's company and in short order I fell in love with him. But we had a tumultuous relationship. He needed to be in control and…" She stopped talking under the guise of being parched and requiring a drink, but in actuality she needed the time to choose her next words carefully. "Whilst I initially reveled in his controlling nature, after a while I didn't much care for it."

"Oh yeah, Hermione, I remember you wanting to be a cave woman or something and wanting a man to claim you and have his way with you. Remember, Harry?" Ron asked, looking for corroboration. "Remember when we tried to, hum, give Hermione what she was looking for?"

"Yeah, I remember all too well, Ron. You were a bumbling fool."

"You didn't get much farther than I did, mate!"

Harry looked toward Hermione and they shared a secret smile. "No, mate, not much farther at all."

"The bottom line, gentlemen, is that Severus is who he is and that will never change." She looked away forlornly as she recalled past events. "I think I realized that soon enough, but I wasn't willing to accept it. Everyone can change. I just expected him to be like everyone else."

"Fat chance," Ron snapped.

"You're right, Ron. I thought I could make him be the one perfect man for me. He already possesses in great quantity, I might add, a biting wit and sharp tongue. Remus is the antithesis of him and I hoped to infuse some of that gentleness into him. Instead, I created a monster. He was jealous of Remus, although getting him to admit to it was like trying to squeeze Hagrid into a phone box. It just wasn't going to happen."

"Jealous of Remus?" Harry asked. "Were you dating Remus as well?"

Hermione could tell from Harry's questions and his countenance that he was more than interested in her answer. He had tried to get her to continue seeing him once she and Severus became exclusive and she had refused.

"Yes, he was jealous of Remus because he knew that Remus had feelings for me. Actually, Remus had been in love with me for quite some time and he hadn't told me. He was allowing me the freedom to live my life, or some other such nonsense."

"So, then why did Snape leave you?"

"Ronald Weasley!" she shrieked. "Even you can't be that dense! Why in Merlin's name would you think that HE left ME?

"For your information, I left HIM! One day he was overly obstinate and rude and was going above and beyond any prior cruelties in badgering Remus and I just couldn't take it anymore!"

Hermione took in a deep breath, an exercise she learned back in first year when dealing with Ronald Weasley, and it never failed to calm her down. "Remus is a good man and he didn't deserve Severus' treatment of him. He was sitting there, accepting all that Severus threw at him with grace and gentleness.

"Severus' outburst, while not directed at me, made me realize that I could never successfully change him; at least, not in the way that I wanted or needed. I could never infuse gentleness into someone so hard and brittle. He was beyond repair.

"I saw before me a choice between the calm and the storm and I'd had had enough of the storm. I left with Remus that night. I didn't intentionally run towards another relationship, but I quickly fell for him and it seemed pointless to waste any more time. He loved me and I loved him. It was easy and comfortable."

"Don't have a go at me, but I think I understand a bit of the female mind. You developed a relationship with Remus because he's the opposite of Snape," Ron exclaimed, overly proud of his deduction and insight into the female mind. "Like you said, he's easy and comfortable. But now you don't want easy and comfortable you want excitement again. So, maybe you just need to marry them both?"

"Ron, don't be daft. I can't marry two men." She was clear; it couldn't be done.

Could it?

...

"Boys, you've returned to me my happiness tonight," she said as they nestled closer and held her from either side. "I will embrace my happiness and endeavor to achieve it with Remus or without. I can be happy again and it's up to me to get there."

"Hermione, we are here for you anytime, day or night," Harry said as he squeezed her lovingly.

"I know… and thanks," she said as her tears began to fall.

"Boys, do you realize that we're snuggling?"

...

Severus Snape was tired. This had been the fifth time he'd run up to the battlements in hopes of a glimpse of his beloved. If he were a praying wizard he'd be praying to God for a Muggle escalator. Back and forth, up and down he'd traveled searching for her, but every time it had been someone or something else that had breached the sensitive wards surrounding the Hogwarts perimeter. Of the other encounters, the most entertaining was a wandering Remus drifting around aimlessly in the night fog.

Hermione had left him almost two years prior and he couldn't believe that she'd actually married that beast. She was an enigma, strange and beautiful. He could never dominate her as he wished. She was independent and passionate and it saddened him to see the meek woman she'd become. She needed him if she were to become his fiery witch again. Only he could bring that out of her. And he would.

Out of breath, and, he mused, possibly out of his mind, he looked over the ramparts, squinted, and saw his beauty walking as if waltzing through the fog toward the castle. She was his fairytale. She was untamed and unbridled, and now she was just waiting for him to release her from her misery.

Thank God the Dark Lord wasn't around anymore to see how Severus Snape, renowned Death Eater, had turned into a fawning pansy. This woman would certainly be his undoing.