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Chapter 9: Hermione's Reaction and Draco Once Again

After they had finished breakfast, Hermione and Severus began looking a bit farther a field for things to do. They left the dishes for the house-elves and decided to do some research on how to best help Harry prepare. Severus went back to his rooms to get changed, and Hermione trailed him.

At his rooms, Severus turned back to Hermione, his face mock-stern, "I don't know what exactly you're after, my dear"

Hermione put her hands on her hips and returned the look. "I need clothes for the rest of the time I'm going to be here, Severus."

Severus put his arms around her waist and pulled her close, her robe coming open against his own, which was already half-open. Her warm skin flared when it connected with his. "Do you really, now? I can think of plenty of things you can do without them. . ." he said as he ground his groin into her warmth.

Hermione laughed as she let Severus slide her robe down her arms, shivering as the cool air hit her skin. "Fine, but can I do them in a warm bed?"

Later on that day, sometime after noon, Hermione had finally managed to get Severus out of bed, into clothing and past the kitchen to get something to bring along to eat. Severus had conjured some plain robes for Hermione to wear until they could purchase some proper clothing for her. As they let themselves out of the manor, Severus grabbed a potion from a rack Hermione hadn't noticed.

"What's that?" Hermione said as Severus uncorked the vial.

"This is a disguise potion, so I can go out into the open with you. You'll see me take it, so it won't work on you. Anyone else won't recognize me," Severus said, downing the contents in one gulp.

"And what will this make you look like?" Hermione said, seeing the aura of power shimmer around Severus and settle into his skin. When she looked into his face again, he was the same person but a different light shone from his eyes, one she'd seen recently but couldn't connect to anything. "It won't make you look like anyone you're not supposed to, will it?"

"What? Would it weird you out if I looked like Ron to everyone else but my voice came from his mouth?" Severus chuckled at Hermione's look of horror. "No, Hermione, I won't look like anyone I'm not supposed to. I can be responsible, you know."

"I never thought you were irresponsible. But yes, it would be rather strange to hear your voice coming from Ron's mouth."

"Well, then, take a look into the mirror and you can see how I look to everyone else," Snape said. "Perhaps you should try to guess who I am supposed to look like."

Hermione gave him a glare and looked into the mirror behind them. She gasped at the younger man in the mirror.

"Severus, is that you? You're you, but younger, my age. Is this what you looked like in school?" Hermione said, transfixed by the image in the mirror and her knowledge of the man in the image.

In the mirror, Hermione could see a perhaps sixteen or seventeen year-old Severus Snape, but cleaned up and not at all how Remus and Sirius had described him from school. His hair was longer and fuller then she'd imagined, not greasy at all and actually falling over one eye, an eye that was no longer black but the deepest green it could be without being black. His face was younger, a little fuller, and his skin was translucent instead of sallow, as it had been while he was a Deatheater and Dumbledore's spy. Hermione bit her lip at the reaction her body was having to the image.

She turned to Severus, her Severus

Her Severus?

She sighed and gave into the inevitable. She faced the man and saw that the promise in his younger image fulfilled: he'd grown into the nose, and the time away from Hogwart's had done him so much good; his hair was clean and almost as full as that in the younger image, and the skin was beginning to regain its translucence, losing the jaundiced look from before.

"Hermione, do you know about the Aging Charm?" Severus said quietly as Hermione gazed into his face.

"Yes. All adult wizards use a complex system of charms and other things to appear to grow old at the same rate as muggles, due to the increasing number of muggle-born wizards. Most wizards and witches age so slowly once they reach twenty to twenty-five years old that they seem to not age at all to the people who see them daily. This can continue for hundreds of years, and few people know the actual life span of wizards and witches, as due to the wizarding wars and accidents there are few that have died due to 'natural causes' or 'old age'," Hermione recited, and Severus knew that she must have researched it on her own in her quest to find out why there were so many old wizards and witches still around, men and women who could speak for hours about how they defected and used magic to help upstarts like George Washington, Napoleon, and Julius Caesar.

"So you know that even though I'm in my forties, I only actually look about five years older than you?" Severus asked, and Hermione nodded, focusing on his eyes so she wouldn't kiss him again. "Do you prefer the one in the mirror?"

Hermione shook her head. "No. The way you look to me with the Aging Charm, or without it, but not the one in the mirror. He's beautiful, but not as beautiful as you," she whispered, reaching a hand up to slip behind Severus's head and bring his mouth to hers.

"I've never been called 'beautiful' before, Hermione," Severus breathed against her lips, about to lose himself in her kiss.

"More's the pity," Hermione whispered as she kissed him tenderly yet passionately.

The two remained in a tongue lock for a few minutes, different from all the kisses that had come before. They nipped carefully, but each was so intent on healing the other's unseen wounds that didn't matter. When they parted, Severus put his hand over Hermione's eyes for a moment, and when he removed his hand, she could see how he really looked.

Hermione gasped; he was more handsome than she had figured on. She smiled and hugged him, which he hadn't expected.

"I would feel the same way even if you looked older than your years, Severus," Hermione breathed. She let him go and opened the door that had somehow gotten closed. The rain was still falling, but it felt like a quiet benediction for what they would be doing.

"Shall I apparate us to Diagon Alley?" Severus asked, giving Hermione his hand.

Nodding, Hermione took his hand and smiled.

Hermione did her shopping quickly after they stopped at Gringott's so she could take out some of the money her parents had exchanged and left for her use. The Order had taken them into protective custody, but before they had gone away, they had exchanged most of their wealth for wizarding currency, telling Hermione that she would have the best use of it. Hermione had heard the unspoken addition that her parents weren't expecting to survive the war or have to support her once the war was over. Hermione was more than prepared to exchange the wizarding currency back to muggle coinage for her parents once the war was over.

Hermione had gone into many witches clothing boutiques, trying to find suitable robes for her upcoming year as Head Girl. She finally settled on robes in different materials in varying shades of crimson and gold. Severus had nodded his agreement as she tried the robes on and asked his opinion, but he was getting antsy as women her age and his were stopping to check him out.

Hermione had finally gotten back into the robes Severus had conjured for her and was leaving the dressing rooms when she caught sight of a blonde beauty trying her damnedest to rub certain parts of her own anatomy against Severus's. Hermione squared her shoulders and pushed her robes off her shoulders, baring a creamy expansion of bosom as she sashayed over to her lover.

The blonde was beautiful in a skinny, skanky kind of way, but she couldn't compare to Hermione's Earth Mother fullness and ripeness, by Severus's reckoning. The blonde looked limp and underfed in comparison to Hermione's shining auburn waves and lush curves. Severus hadn't even bothered to get the blonde's name, and as Hermione approached him he moved from the waif to the goddess before him.

"I should be hit on more often, if this is my reward for resisting," Severus said, bending down to put his mouth over hers. Hermione nipped him and glared at him.

"You should have rebuffed her," Hermione sniffed as she led him out of the clothing shop and into the streets of Diagon Alley.

"Hermione, had I rebuffed her, she would have become more interested and tried something there, followed us and tried something else, or tried to get you out of the way. I remember her she was at Hogwart's before you, and a Slytherin, to boot. I wouldn't put anything past her," Severus said, wrapping his hand around Hermione's upper arm, squeezing slightly.

"But she was a student" Hermione began, then blushed as Severus gave her the 'look'.

"So were you, and look what protection from my lusts that afforded you," Severus whispered in her ear, lingering and breathing softly over that sensitive spot between ear and hairline. Hermione shivered and her eyes darkened.

"My gods, right in the middle of the street? Haven't you any sense of discretion, Da? Or shall I get my room clean for when you bring my new mummy home?" a voice sneered behind them.

Hermione stiffened at the voice behind them. She looked at Severus before she turned around.

"The woman you loved you got her pregnant? And the result was" Hermione said, closing her eyes in exasperation. "Don't tell me."

"Are you my new Mummy?" Draco said in a half-sneer, half-smiling at Hermione as she regarded him with something not quite approaching distain but certainly not affection. "He didn't tell you, did he?"

"The woman who lured you into everything was Narcissa Malfoy?" Hermione groaned, her gaze divided between the two men. "Do me a favor and stand next to one another."

Draco moved next to Severus, and even with the difference in some of their colorings, the resemblance was unmistakable: they were father and son. Draco's skin had the same translucent quality as Severus's and his eyes were taking on the same green-black of his father's; each had the same slim yet muscular build but suddenly Hermione was weirded out: they looked too much alike for her comfort, given her relations with the father and antagonism towards the son. She gagged at little at the thought that had things been different, she might have dated Draco.

Hermione coughed and Severus reached out to steady her.

"Are you alright, Hermione?" he asked, his eyes searching her face.

Draco was at her other side, reaching for her to pat her back and calm her when Severus hissed at him.

"Get back from her," Severus continued to hiss, and Draco hissed right back.

"I'm not going to steal her, Da; I don't want your mudblood 'sloppy seconds'," Draco hissed.

CRACK!

"You will not use language like that anymore! You are no more full-blooded than I am or Potter or Tonks, and I refuse to have you speak like that," Severus growled. He grabbed both of the teenagers and dragged them into a tavern, away from the seeking eyes of the gathering crowd.

Severus seated them both at a table and went in search of drink. Hermione glared at Draco, who just rolled his eyes.

"I'm not deferring to you, Granger, just because you're sleeping with him. You can help us, but then you're going back to Weaselby, and my mother will be with him, not you. No offense, of course," Draco smirked. He leaned back in his chair and waited for her to explode.

"How'd you know it was us?" Hermione asked, changing the subject.

"How can you even ask that? Switch the Snape nose for the Black nose and the Black hair for the Snape hair and you have me. It always was disconcerting whenever I saw him, but my mother only broke it to him recently," Draco said, distracted by Hermione's lack of anger.

"Well, if she means no harm and she is back for your father, I leave her to it. Once we're back at school, that is," Hermione said quietly. "Best that someone has his or her family than none."

Draco sat forward in his seat. "What do you mean? Weaselby's parents are fine, if overly fertile and yours are muggles; its Potter you should worry about."

"My parents are in hiding. Their practice was destroyed by Deatheaters because of the prophecies; they thought they could kill me or scare me into leaving Ron and Harry. Unfortunately for them, I was with Ron and Harry at that time. Tonks and Lupin took my parents, who now have a secret-keeper and not even I know where they are," Hermione said quietly.

"Hermione," Draco said, realization dawning on his face.

"Drink up, we have to get your damn books," Severus growled, dragging a chair next to Hermione's and throwing his arm around her possessively. Draco sighed and gulped down his butterbeer while Hermione sipped hers daintily.

After they finished their drinks, Hermione excused herself for a moment. Severus and Draco regarded each other silently for a moment before Severus spoke.

"Why would you announce something like that now?" Severus asked quietly.

"She needs to know that she can't keep this up, Da. The final battle is upon us, and when you return to your position at Hogwart's, it will end. You'll be separated, she'll go back to Weaselby, and you'll go back to Mum," Draco said matter-of-factly.

"You should know better than that by now. Your mother was a girl and young woman to be cherished, but she was always too weak. I begged Dumbledore to offer her the same protection, but she had already fallen to the Dark Lord. She lied and killed in her husband's name and that of his master. I won't forgive her, Draco, and I doubt that she'll survive the war," Severus said severely, trying to save his son from the worst of it all; he had been doing that all Draco's life, even before he knew the boy before him was his own son.

"Whatever happens between you and Mum won't change the fact that Hermione is Weaselby's. She'll go back to him because it will be the right thing to do. You underestimate her capacity to suffer nobly," Draco said, standing. "I believe the lady is ready to go. We have many things to do today, Da, and we must needs do them quickly."