"Erm… Sev… Severus?" A high-pitched, apprehensive voice coming from the Potion's laboratory that hid in the cellar filled the kitchen of the battered, decrepit house.
Severus lifted his eyes from his newspaper and proceeded to roll them in genuine amusement. With a soft smirk, he carefully grabbed the large mug next to him, taking his time to savour the delicious black coffee he had prepared five minutes ago. Finally, he deigned himself to answer.
"What is it this time, Miss Granger?" He drawled, feigning boredom.
Truth was he was extremely interested in what that clever, resourceful Know-It-All was up to in his cellar. Severus knew Herm… Miss Granger was a very accomplished Potioneer and an even more efficient colleague; so, in the end, he had decided to trust her with the next badge of his latest invention, a significant improvement to the original Pepper-Up potion. True, she had never tried to brew it on her own before that morning, but Severus had seen her succeeding in much more complicated brews. His faith in her skills was positively obstinate…
Or, at least, it was until a horrendous, fetid smell reached his nostrils, making him grimace in disgust while swallowing another mouthful of coffee.
"You told me to call you if something went wrong… So… Severus, is it normal for a cauldron to melt?" The hysteria in her voice was increasing with every uttered word.
"What?!" Severus managed to sputter after coughing up the last remnants of coffee which, a second ago, were still in his mouth.
"Melting… Severus, it's melting… It's melting, it's MELTING, IT'S MELTING!"
Carelessly throwing his half-empty mug of hot coffee onto the table, Severus stood up in a blink of an eye and reached the wooden door leading to the cellar as if his life depended on it. The whole thing was about to explode, for Merlin's sake!
Running down the stairs as quick as a bolt, he entered the room with his wand already in his hand, ready to act as nimbly as his old reflexes allowed him to. Severus cast a hasty non-verbal cooling charm to the bloody concoction, and the last thing he saw before the contents of the cauldron finally exploded was a pair of big, brown eyes staring at him, incomprehension and embarrassment obscuring their usual brightness.
The few seconds after the explosion felt like hours, deafening silence eerily filling the small, narrow room. Lazily lowering the arm he had swiftly lifted up to protect his face, Severus opened one eye, then the other, and his gaze instantly fell upon the brunette witch in front of him. Eyes wide open, beige jumper and impossible hair covered in foul, gooey compound, her chest was heavily rising and falling at the rhythm of her shallow, rapid breaths.
"What the hell happened in here?" Severus exclaimed, once he was able to find his voice. "Are you so thick you can't follow simple instructions, you incompetent dunderhead? You were supposed to slice the Jewelweed! Slices, Miss Granger! Not chunks! What are you, a first-year student?! Are you-"
His voice suddenly faltered when strange noises reached his fuming ears. He shockingly gaped at her when he understood that those noises were, in fact, her barely suppressed giggles.
"What in Merlin's beard…" Severus's outraged display of shock was halted, for Hermione's giggles had turned into outright hysterical fits of laughter. Left hand helplessly clutching her belly, she pointed her right one at him while trying to speak coherently, gasping for air.
"Your… Your face! You are… You are all covered in shit!" She merrily wiped the joyful tears from her beautiful eyes, coating her right cheek with a smear of more disgusting product in the process.
Despite the severity of the situation, despite the danger, despite the serious damage that could have occurred mere minutes ago, Severus's lips slowly curved into a smile and, soon, their joint cackles reached the solitary kitchen, a still steaming mug of black coffee as their only witness.
Severus languidly opened his eyes, painful peace and raw stillness greeting him in the coldness of the night. Staring sadly at the cracked ceiling of his childhood bedroom, he once again surrendered to a troublesome slumber, realising absentmindedly that not only cauldrons had been melted that day, but also old, frozen hearts.