"Hope, Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'it will be happier'..."
― Alfred Tennyson
"I'm Dr. Carter," a young man who did not look old enough to be a doctor said as he slid into the seat behind the desk that set in front of Hermione and Severus. "I want to talk to you about what I saw on your scans."
Hermione's back stiffened in her seat, and she automatically reached to take Severus's hand. She focused on keeping her breathing even as she lifted her gaze to meet this young doctor's eyes.
"I don't understand why Dr. Chen isn't here," Hermione said quietly.
"She is doing intake with a different patient at the moment," Dr. Carter said politely but dismissively.
"We can wait," Severus said tersely, clearly not likely the way Hermione had been brushed off.
"She is going to be with her other patient for quite some time," Dr. Cater explained. "She asked me to speak to you about your scans and the changes in care."
"I've come to a place where I can accept more bad news," Hermione said very quietly. "I am able to do that, when the bad news is delivered by Dr. Chen."
"Then I suppose it is a good thing I am not here to give you bad news," he said with a smile.
"But she is my doctor," Hermione went on, clearly not listening to him. "I don't appreciate being shuffled off."
"Dr. Chen is the head of the department," Dr. Carter said, continuing with a smile even though Hermione was clearly upset with him. "With that job comes the responsibility of dealing with the more sensitive cases. She tends to work specifically on terminal cases. So right now she is having her first appointment with a dying patient, and she has transferred you to me because you no longer fit the criteria."
"Is she in remission?" Severus asked pointedly, sitting forward in his seat to focus his attention but not releasing Hermione's hand.
"Not yet," Dr. Carter said, the smile refusing to fail. "But it looks like a real possibility now. Tumor growth has stopped, and while there are a few mets left in your abdomen that I'd like to go in and remove as soon as possible, it looks like your treatments are working. I think we can start scaling back your chemotherapy sessions as well."
"I'm sorry, I don't think I heard you properly." She stammered her heart beginning to pound more quickly in her chest.
"You aren't dying," he answered plainly. "You are living with cancer, but you are not a terminal patient any longer."
"So where do we go from here?" Severus asked when Hermione continued to flounder, her mouth moving but no sound coming out.
"For today, I think we should go through with the chemo session that was already scheduled," Dr. Carter said. "And on Friday I would like to go in for what will hopefully be the final surgery."
"Okay," Hermione finally managed to say, happy tears starting to form in her eyes as she squeezed the hand that held hers repetitively.
"Okay," Severus said in a voice that had grown much deeper as he squeezed her hand back.
Hours later found the pair of them seated in the living room of the farm house. The sun was hidden away by the clouds, and rain was pouring outside. The weather hardly fit with the celebratory mood, and it certainly wasn't conducive to allowing Hermione to sit amongst her little grove of trees and seek relief from the side effects of the treatment she had just gone through.
"Do you suppose I could have a pain potion?" she asked from where she was curled around a pillow on the couch.
"I haven't brewed any," Severus said before offering her one of the rare smiles that lit up his entire face. "I've told you already that you have my permission to smoke in the house. So long as you don't take up cigarettes."
"That would be a sad joke," Hermione laughed. "The cancer patient that starts smoking a product that causes cancer? I'd have to slap myself."
She laughed at her own joke until it turned into a groan. She buried her head in the pillow to try and hide the sound of it from Severus, but there was no point. He heard it clearly and he clucked at her.
"The rain isn't expected to let up until late into the night," he sighed. "Will you please just smoke in the house?"
"The smell will seep into your furniture," she pointed out.
"I am a wizard," he countered.
"You will see me looking like a fool," she said quietly, refusing to meet his gaze.
"I will not pass judgment on you," he sighed. "I was planning to have a celebratory drink this evening anyway, why don't I drink while you smoke. Then we can both act the part of the fool."
"Do you promise to get pissed?" she asked, her eyes lighting up at the thought of seeing him uninhibited.
"Oh, that intrigued you didn't it?" he said with a rolling chuckle that seemed to fill the room. "I cannot remember the last time I was drunk, so I cannot make that promise. But I will certainly drink with you."
"Okay," she smiled, attempting to unwrap her aching body from around the pillow.
"Sit tight, I'll grab your box for you," he said, quickly hopping up from his seat and slipping into her room.
Hermione was set on the fact that she was not going to smoke while lying on the couch. So she ignored the protests of her aching limbs and she essentially slithered off the couch until she was lying on her stomach with the pillow tucked beneath her. She had to pause, and just breath until the wave of nausea incurred by moving passed, but then she was able to roll onto her back. She lay her head on the pillow and shifted her body around until her feet were aimed out toward the door and the little light the clouds allowed shone down on her.
"Civilized people do not typically sprawl across the floor," Severus chuckled as he handed her the little wooden box she normally kept hidden in her room.
"They also don't smoke pot," Hermione pointed out with a quirked brow. "So tonight let's just pretend we aren't civilized."
He just shook his head at her and left her lying there on the floor while he disappeared into the kitchen. She listened to the sounds of him opening a bottle and pouring a drink while she methodically rolled her joint. She still couldn't help but laugh to herself when she thought of little Hermione Granger breaking all the rules now. She tapped her wand against the end, producing a spark to start it burning. She was just pressing it to her lips when Severus returned to the living room with what looked like a glass of water but smelled distinctly of vodka and slid sinuously down onto the floor beside her.
"I would have had you pegged you for a whiskey man," she laughed before she inhaled the first bit of smoke that would give her relief.
"My father was a whiskey man," he said somewhat darkly as he leaned back on his elbow so his head was closer to hers, but he wasn't actually lying on the floor like she was. "I can't stand the smell of it myself."
Hermione sensed a story there but she didn't push him. He'd tell her if he wanted too. Instead she smoked until the world blurred around the edges, and she listened to the vodka sloshing in his glass while Severus drank.
"It's nice here," she said quietly, when the pain had receded from her limbs. "With the rain, and the soft carpet, and the quiet sounds. I'd like to stay right here, in the little bubble forever."
"You are easy to please," Severus chuckled as he reached out to pull the smoldering bit before it could burn down to her fingers. "I've always taken much longer to find peace."
"But it's peaceful here isn't it?" she asked him as she closed her eyes and ran her hands over her the very short hair that was starting to grow on her head. "You have your house, and your job, and other than me there isn't anyone from your old life to trouble you. This is a nice little town, you like it here don't you."
"I do," He said after taking another drink. "It's been a nice place to settle. It's been a place of peace for me. For the record, I do not consider you a trouble."
"Mmm," she sighed, the sound of his voice lulling her into a deeper calm. "I didn't think I'd be a trouble to you long. I didn't think I'd be around much longer. I fought because you asked me to, but I didn't believe I'd be fighting long."
"I trusted a gut feeling that you would," he admitted before he finished off his drink and set the glass off to the side and turning his full attention to her. "I am relieved to see you coming around to the idea that your life isn't over."
"Maybe my life is just beginning," she said with a smile. "Maybe I'll settle down here. Maybe stay on the artist commune, or maybe I'll get a job here in town. Maybe I'll move to Africa. Anything would be better than going back to my old job in England. I think maybe I hated my job. Or I might have just hated England."
"What was your job?" he asked, wondering how this had never come up in any of their conversations before.
"I worked as an oblivator," she shrugged letting her hands flop down onto the floor and lying very still.
"I would have expected you to become a teacher," Severus admitted drawing lazy patterns in the carpet while he watched the happiness seep out of her face. "Or working high up in the ministry. Why would they put a war hero on the muggle response team?"
"I have a significant talent for removing memories," she said softly, clenching her eyes tightly shut. "I can make any muggle forget any magic they have seen, no matter how extraordinary. I could make you forget I had ever existed."
She had said it without emotion in her voice, but he saw the way her lip trembled at the end of it. He watched her as tears began to seep out from under her tightly clenched eye lids and he knew she had done just that to someone. He reached out, and gently caressed the side of her head where she had been playing with her hair.
"Who did you make forget you?" he asked quietly.
"My parents," she whispered, the tears flowing freely as she turned her head to the side so she could look at him. "I did such a good job of it that it cannot be reversed. My parents don't know they ever had a child, or that the ever even wanted one."
"You made them safe," he reassured her, shifting his hand so it wasn't pinned beneath her head anymore, and lying down so they shared the pillow while they stared up at the ceiling together. "If you could ask them, I think they would tell you they forgive you. They couldn't be the people that raised you and not be understanding."
"You're the first person whose ever thought of it from their perspective," Hermione said as she reached up to wipe her tears away. "Everyone is always so quick to tell me that I did the right thing, that I knew what was right, they never stop to think about what my parents would think was the right answer. Thank you for that."
He nodded his acceptance of what she had said but his mind was still whirring along with what she had shared with him.
"Did you take the job as an oblivator to punish yourself?" he asked.
"That was part of it," she answered, leaning her head over so it was pressed against his in a comforting way. "I think I also took it because it pleased Ron. He wanted me to have his children, so he didn't want me working as an auror with him and Harry."
"Did you want children?" he asked her, the weight of that impossibility hanging in the air between them,
"I didn't with him," she whispered. "I always thought someday in the future I would want children, but the day when I wanted them never seemed to come. Now it doesn't matter anymore does it?"
"You can't bear children," he said plainly, agreeing with her sentiment, but not agreeing either. "That doesn't mean you can't have children though. You could adopt if you wanted children."
"I don't know if I want them," she admitted. "I had given up on wanting anything, but now that I am going to live? There's a lot I'm not sure I want. There are only a couple things I do know I want."
"What do you want?" he pushed.
"I want to tell Harry and Ginny about all these things I've kept secret from them," she told him as she reached her arms up into the air and watched the flickering light from the wind blowing through the trees playing off of her skin. "I want to send them that painting of you, the one in the wheat field, because I know Harry would like it. I won't tell them you're alive if you don't want though."
"Will you move back to England?" he asked. "To be with them?"
"No I think I'll stay here in Abbeville," she whispered back. "I want a relationship, and it would be hard to have one if I moved away."
"Brandon would move to England if you asked him too," Severus pointed out even though it pained him to do it.
"Brandon?" she said, lurching up from where she lay so she could look down into his eyes. "For someone of such intelligence you have really missed the mark."
"Sierra then?" he said with a smirk.
She wasn't sure if she would have done it if she hadn't be high, and she doubted he would have let her if he hadn't been drinking, but the circumstances were what they were, and she leaned down to press her lips to his. She'd been dreaming about kissing him for days now, but she hadn't imagined it could feel quiet as amazing as it did. What felt better was the swooping sensation in her stomach when he kissed her back.
Hermione had much more vivid dreams of Severus that night, and she woke with a smile on her face. She was glad it was Sunday because it meant that Severus would still be in the house. Her body still felt a bit fatigued, but she hopped out of bed energetically anyway. She hurried into the kitchen where she could hear him puttering about. She was excited to see him, and perhaps to kiss him again, but when she saw him looking grumpy still bumming around the house in his pajamas she hesitated.
"Do you regret it?" she asked somberly from where she stood in the doorway.
"I regret drinking enough vodka to wake with a splitting headache," she said, turning away from the stove to meet her eyes. "That is all I regret however. Do you?"
"I regret that it took me so long to do it," she said as the smile crept onto her face once more.
"How long have you been thinking of doing it?" he asked with one of his patented smirks.
"Well I've been dreaming of it for a few weeks now," she admitted with a blush. "Though I have to admit I'm still surprised you kissed me back. I don't see the draw for you."
"Perhaps you should look a little more closely in the mirror then Hermione," he chuckled as he returned to the eggs on the stove. "I think you are beautiful, and you may have the only personality in the world that is actually compatible with me."
"You just think that because I'm the only person that laughs when you say something sarcastic," she chuckled as she sauntered over to the kitchen table to take a seat and watch him work.
"I also rather like your artwork," he said dismissively, though Hermione knew he was being anything but. "Though I assume that would be obvious since you somehow tricked me into painting myself."
Hermione couldn't help but smile when she thought of his artful way of cheering her up when she had been so upset about her tattoos.
"Speaking of," she piped up. "Do you think we could remove the tattoos soon?"
"We need to leave them through the last surgery, but I think we can do it after that," Severus said as he began plating the finished eggs. "The day we get the okay to end chemo treatments we can talk about the scars as well."
Hermione's smile was radiant when she thought of that. She turned the full force of it on him when he brought a plate over to her. She could certainly get used to a relationship with Severus, not that they had discussed labels the night before. Should she ask about labels? It could wait, for now she just wanted to enjoy the moment.
