Chapter 49

Were the first years always so little? Every year, Severus swears they get smaller. They have to practically run to keep up with him as he stalks, black robes billowing, from the boats to the front entrance.

"He looks like a great bat," he hears a little girl whisper behind him, and whirls to glower at her as she nearly collides with him. The children stare up at him, eyes wide, barely breathing. God, this is fun.

"You will be Sorted alphabetically. Take your place on the stool when I call your name, and the Hat will place you where you belong." The children nod solemnly and exchange nervous glances. "Come!"

In the Great Hall, Minerva sits in the center of the head table, having assumed the role of Headmistress during the summer, Albus being too ill from the curse working its way up his arm and into his chest to continue. Filius declined the position of Deputy Head, as he plans to retire as soon as Granger finishes her apprenticeship. Pomona did the same, as Longbottom plans to apprentice with her when he graduates this year, and then Pomona will retire as well. The offer came next to Severus, and like a dunderhead, he accepted it. As bad as the Dark Lord was, at least he didn't tie you up in paperwork the way Minerva and her board of governors have done to him.

Tomorrow he'll be back in the Potions classroom. This time, however, it was his choice. Severus may not like children, but leaving them to brew dangerous chemicals under the supervision of the indolent Slughorn is tantamount to child endangerment. And since he has an apprentice now, he has someone to help with the marking and the grubby parts of the job. Minerva had the audacity to laugh at him when he made his choice. "After whingeing about the Defence position all those years? Really, Severus?"

As if mocking him wasn't bad enough, she went and hired the werewolf to replace him in DADA. Though if he's being honest, Lupin doesn't get under his skin the way he used to. Things in general no longer irritate him the way they used to. With an apprentice, he has less work and more free time. With no Dark Lord to worry about, he has no real stress. Accustomed to stress, however, he manufactures sources of it, primarily obsessing about Hermione, whom he has given up trying to think of as Granger.

He looks at the far end of the table, where the two apprentices sit. Hermione and Levin are whispering about something. Her curls are pulled away from her face and held in place with silver combs. Her robes are black, simultaneously professional and sexy. She's wearing makeup, too. It's subtle, enhancing her natural beauty. She's breathtaking. And for a time, such a brief time, she was his. If what Draco told him is true, she wants to be again. She loves him, as he loves her. He's not quite used to thinking those words without immediately refuting them.

And then she turns toward him, catches him staring. Before he can look away, she smiles. It's the way she used to smile at him, before the final battle, before he came back from the Ministry and made the foolish mistake of not sending her a Patronus the moment he was out. Before he behaved during their practice duel as though he was her teacher rather than her husband. Before he watched the words in his charmed journal disappear when she destroyed hers, and instead of rushing to her and begging her forgiveness for acting like an ass, talked himself into believing she didn't love him.

If she did love him, he reasoned at the time, she'd have acted like the overly emotional Gryffindor she was and told him how she felt. But instead, she hexed him practically into the hospital wing when he tried to help her prepare for her Defence NEWT. After that, she ignored him, never showing up for another review session for Defence or Potions, leaving him to wait and wonder if she would come, sitting there like a fool even after it was clear she wasn't going to. She left the castle after her exams without saying goodbye, and never so much as sent him an owl letting him know her scores after she received them.

At the time, he told himself it was proof that she had never really cared for him, and since the Dark Lord was dead, she no longer had any use for him. He now understands that she was furious because she was hurt—because he had hurt her—and was acting as any self-respecting woman would when treated so shabbily by a man she loved.

"Severus?"

He turns toward the sound of Minerva's voice. He nods and picks up the Sorting Hat. "Michael Abbott," he calls, and a freckle-faced boy approaches the stool and stands there uncertainly. "Well, what are you waiting for, Mr. Abbott?" After a last look back at his mates, the boy climbs onto the stool and Severus places the Hat on his head.

When the feast is finished and the students being dismissed to go to their dormitories, Severus stands and walks toward the end of the table where Hermione is sitting. As he passes her, he drops a scroll onto the table beside her plate. She looks up in surprise, but his back is already turned and he is striding in full billow toward the gaggle of eleven-year-olds in green ties.

She looks down at the scroll. Apprentice Granger is written in his familiar spiky script on the outside. So, it's still to be surnames and titles. She unrolls it and reads.

Hermione,

I would very much like to speak with you. I shall be in my quarters in about an hour, and would be grateful if you could stop by. If this evening is not convenient, please suggest another time.

Severus

She reads it through three times. First names again. This suggests that Malfoy did as he promised, and told Severus what happened the night neither of them remembers. She feels a flutter of nerves in her belly. Rather than go to her room to wait, pacing and worrying, she joins her former Housemates as they're leaving Gryffindor table.

"Come to the common room for a while?" Ron asks.

"If the Fat Lady will let me in," Hermione says. "Now that I'm an apprentice, I don't actually belong to your House anymore."

"Once a Gryffindor, always a Gryffindor," Harry says, holding Ginny's hand as the four of them walk up the stairs.

"Where's Philippa?" Hermione asks, referring to the sixth year Ravenclaw Ron started dating after he and Lav-Lav broke up at the end of last year. A Ravenclaw? As if that's going to last.

"She's a prefect," Ron says. "Off doing prefecty things."

Without Hermione's help in sixth year, neither Ron nor Harry had the marks to be a prefect, let alone Head Boy. Minerva bypassed the two rival houses entirely this year and chose Ernie Macmillan and Sue Li as Head Boy and Girl. Had there been no marriage law, and if Hermione was a seventh year rather than an apprentice, it probably would have been her, and she would have been thrilled—or desperately disappointed had she not been chosen. Now, it seems entirely irrelevant. She doesn't mind at all missing her seventh year. She's moved on.

"Are you nervous about teaching the little ones tomorrow?" Ginny asks.

"Not too much. Filius will be there to supervise until we both feel comfortable with me doing it on my own."

"I wish Snape's apprentice was teaching our class," Ron grumbles. "I can't believe we're stuck having Potions with that git again. He wasn't quite as unbearable for Defence."

"He might not be unbearable in Potions this year, either," Hermione says. "With Riddle dead, his biggest worry will be keeping you lot from blowing up your cauldrons rather keeping himself from being Crucioed."

Ginny pokes Hermione in the ribs. "I think he was better last year not because of the subject he was teaching, but because he was getting it on the regular."

"Ginny!" Ron punches her arm. "Do you want to make me lose my dinner?"

Ginny rubs her bicep. "Ow." She looks at Harry. "Are you going to let him beat up your girlfriend?"

"I suppose not, but honestly, Gin, you know how we both hate it when you say things like that."

Ginny grins at Hermione. "What are the chances old Snape might be in a good mood again this year?"

Hermione smiles. "I'll let you know tomorrow."

Ron grimaces. "Merlin's balls, Mione, seriously?"

"If you get back together," Harry says, "could you ask him to show me more memories of my mum?"

"You're okay with her and the bat, Harry?" Ron asks.

Harry shrugs. "She's a grown witch. It's not really our business, is it?"

"I guess not," Ron says. "So, exploding snap?"

Severus opens the door almost before Hermione has finished knocking. He's nervous. She knows him well enough now to tell, though most people wouldn't be able to.

He steps back. "Come in."

She does. It's strange being back here. It was her home for nearly half a year. At first, she thought of it as his sitting room, and she avoided it when he was at home. Then, gradually, it became theirs, like the bedroom. She glances at the bedroom door, open, through which she can see a corner of the large four-poster bed in which they spent so many nights. Her eyes move to the wall where the door to her bedroom used to be. It's gone now, swallowed up by the castle after their marriage was annulled. Finally, she looks at her former husband.

"Would you like to sit?" he asks.

She walks to the sofa and sits where she always used to, when they were married. He sits at the opposite end, leaving space between them. She waits for him to speak.

"Draco told me what we both said, the night he took the potion," he says.

She waits. She needs him to hear him say it.

He sighs. "This is difficult for me."

"Obviously."

"I should have come to you when I was released from the Ministry, especially after you wrote in our journal that you had been there to see me."

"I went there every day. At first, they sent me to a waiting room and let me sit there all day, until they threw me out at five o'clock. Then one day they wouldn't even let me in the building because they'd annulled our marriage and said I had no right to be there. You were my husband and those bastards passed a law and told me you weren't."

"Everyone assumed that was what we would want."

"Right. They assumed. Even if we didn't have much of a choice going into the marriage, it should have been our decision about whether to end it, don't you think?"

"If we had chosen not to, I suspect the term Stockholm Syndrome would have come up."

"I was never your prisoner, Severus. I was your wife. And I loved you." She scowls, then blurts out, "Goddamn it!"

"Those are not usually the words that follow a declaration of love, even when it's in the past tense," Severus observes.

"I didn't want to say it first. I wanted you to."

He smiles. "What if I say it first in the present tense? Or say it first without following it up immediately by swearing angrily?"

She tries to suppress a smile. "Now you're just making fun of me. I'm going to take it back if you don't stop being so awful."

"Then I'll stop." He moves closer to her on the sofa and takes her hand. "I do love you, Hermione. I have for some time now."

"Do you? Truly?"

"I do." He brings his hand to her cheek and she leans into it, closing her eyes. "Truly." Then she feels his lips touch hers, and in an instant it's as if none of this ridiculousness of the past months has happened. Her arms are around his neck and his are around her waist and they're kissing one another desperately, hungrily.

When the initial urgency is spent, she asks, "Why didn't you tell me? Why did you ignore me when you came back from the Ministry and start calling me Miss Granger again? You do realize how passive-aggressive and childish that was?"

"Unlike destroying your journal, which was the height of maturity and good sense?" he asks, and kisses her again.

She lets herself be kissed and, as things progress from snogging to groping, admits, "I regretted it almost at once."

"Not as much I did, I'll wager." He removes his hand from her breast and toys with one of her curls, pulling it straight and letting it spring back into shape. "I suppose I was trying to protect myself from disappointment."

"Why would you need to? I should have thought it was totally obvious that I was in love with you?"

"It was obvious that you…felt something for me, but I convinced myself that even if you thought that something was love, it really wasn't. I reminded myself that you were young—"

"Oh, will you leave off about that already!"

"And I was the only man you'd been with," he continues, giving her the sort of look he used to in Potions class, which only makes her roll her eyes now. "You were in danger and I protected you. I told myself that because you were grateful, and the sex was good, you imagined yourself in love with me. But now that the danger was gone, if we stayed married, we'd eventually fuck ourselves into satiety, and then one day you'd wake up and find yourself stuck with a cantankerous schoolteacher looking down the barrel of forty."

"I'm not going to be stuck with you because I'm not proposing we remarry right away, only that we determine whether it's actually possible to fuck ourselves into satiety."

He stares at her, so completely dumbstruck that she wants to laugh, but thinks better of it. If he's insecure enough to try to talk himself out of loving her, he may require gentler handling than she's used thus far. She turns toward him, throwing a leg over both of his so she's straddling him. "Go on, then. Let's get started with the experiment."

Author's Note

And so, dear readers, we have at last reached the part you have all been waiting for so patiently (or impatiently, judging from reviews and comments). Our insecure, overthinking lovers have finally run out of ways to talk themselves out of a Happily Ever After. Only one chapter remains. Unlike most of my stories, which conclude with an epilogue that takes place years after the story ends and nicely tie up all the loose ends, this one ends on Halloween, scarcely two months after the events of this chapter.