Notes:
Goldenrod means stubbornness.
Snape, lounging on the couch with his hands behind his head, watched with interest as Hermione dashed through the rooms. They had fallen asleep by the fireplace last night, chilled to the bone by midnight, and now, thanks to that activity, he had a terrible backache. They never managed to find their bedroom, they were too drunk and too lazy to care. So, they crawled to the couch instead and fell asleep, finding warmth in each other's arms. Not that Severus was complaining, he even started to get used to her mane of brown hair, which found its way into his mouth at every opportunity.
In the morning, Hermione occupied the shower. From time to time, her enthusiastic singing interrupted with hysterical shrieks, when the hot water suddenly changed to icy water, could be heard. Snape made a mental note to check the pipes. Better yet, of course, would be to find him and Hermione a suitable home in Hogsmeade. Winter holidays were approaching, and Severus did not want to spend them at Hogwarts.
Reality caught up with him, and with the inevitability of that icy water from Hermione's shower, fell on his head. Snape was one step away from making his dream come true and he was terrified of the consequences.
He wanted to take Hermione into his arms, hug her and never let her go. He wanted to protect her from troubles, but his wife's amazing ability to get involved in fantastic scrapes sarcastically insisted that he would not manage to hide Hermione from the whole world.
Reluctantly getting up from the sofa and getting rid of the morning chaos in the room, Snape went to the second bathroom, habitually marveling at the variety of jars and bottles lined up on the shelves. Severus Snape was a family man. He snorted, showing an obscene gesture to the mirror that cracked something sarcastic to him, and went about his usual routine.
Snape dropped his toothbrush, startled by a sudden though and shook his head. He wanted to make his own wife happy. He remembered the words of Narcissa that he, too, was a living person, who was no stranger to ordinary mundane dreams about the warmth of the hearth, about the smile of a beautiful woman, and about quiet family happiness.
However, a hothead named Hermione Granger, sorry, Hermione Snape, was not going to try on the role of an exemplary wife and keep the warmth of the hearth every day. Well, Severus knew what he was doing by marrying her.
"Tell me about your obsession with saving the world, Hermione," Snape asked after half an hour when they settled in the kitchen and started making breakfast. He enjoyed guiding her steps by teaching her the art of cooking. His wife, in the end, turned out to be a good potion maker, and with proper training, she would compete with many employees of the Ministry. In the kitchen, Hermione turned into a walking disaster. Snape chuckled to himself as he explained simple recipes to her.
"Here, tilt the bowl toward you and gently whisk the eggs while I slice the ham. Hey, no magic!"
"Then what's the point of being a witch?" Hermione grumbled, blowing stray curls off her forehead.
"The point is that you seem to have forgotten the basic tenet of all my lectures, Madame Snape."
"No foolish wand-waving near the cauldrons," she rattled clearly, beaming in response to his appeal.
How little it takes to make her happy, Snape thought, slicing ham and chopping tomatoes for a traditional English breakfast. After the war, he set out to keep an eye on his own regime, much to the satisfaction of Poppy, who reprimanded Severus more than once for operating solely on coffee and rage. "And yet, you did not answer my question."
"Are you saying that I have a hero complex?" Hermione shrugged, serving the eggs to him and leaning over to the toaster. "You will be right if you think so, I really do not sit still."
"It's one thing - your desire for knowledge," - ignoring her remark, continued Snape, not looking up from the frying pan, on which the eggs were whitening. "Quite another thing is an endless series of troubles that follow you."
"Severus, I want and will help as many people as possible, what's wrong with that desire?"
"Let's say you're right. But you grab on to a huge number of projects and do not complete any of them. If this isn't Black's salvation, then it's researching mental magic for the Longbottoms. If you are not busy fighting for house-elf rights, you are constantly proving to Kingsley the importance of reform and working with the Muggle Ministry. And when you have those rare moments when you can rest, you bombard Bill Weasley with letters, coaxing him to lecture you on dark artifacts. What else? Ah yes, you meet with Draco to rid him of the remnants of the Mark."
Hermione flushed indignantly and banged the metal bowl of salad on the countertop.
"Severus, I don't need psychotherapy, and forgive me, that's what you're doing right now. Can we just have breakfast?"
Snape lowered the heat under the skillet, added aromatic herbs to the dish, and turned to his wife.
"No. Until you hear the grain of rationality in my speeches, I do not intend to watch you spend your potential on something incomprehensible."
"Sure, Professor Snape! Are you not caring for orphans, perfecting the Wolfsbane, or compiling antidepressants for Narcissa Malfoy? Didn't you make the Unbreakable Vow to save Draco's life?"
"Do not bring the Malfoys into this conversation, you know nothing about that!"
"On the contrary, Severus, I understand everything very well! You helped the Malfoys because there was no one else. Who else will help Neville and his parents? Who is able to pull Sirius out of the Arch? Call me an arrogant swot, but Celtic magic is unlikely to be understood by anyone other than me, you, and Professor Flitwick!" Hermione snapped, angrily arranging the plates. Severus gazed at her unyieldingly from the stove.
"You're taking on too much, Hermione."
"Not at all. Remember when we hunted the Horcruxes in that damned forest in the middle of winter what you told me?"
Severus considered her words. Even with the active participation of Minerva and the help of the Malfoys, the children had a hard time. He often visited them then, having found out their whereabouts with the help of a portrait of Phineas Black. Severus brought them food, or tea in a thermos and sat by the fire, giving them lectures and telling all sorts of stories.
"I told you that someone has to take the first step, otherwise, you may never find a way out of the darkness," Snape quoted his own words.
"And I followed your instructions, don't you understand, Severus? I considered myself so helpless, so useless! What could I do? I was a seventeen-year-old girl who dreamed herself a hero!"
"If it weren't for you and your efforts to educate Potter and his sidekick, Hermione, we would have lost the war."
"Do you really think so?" Hermione asked, looking up at Snape with a happy smile.
"Of course! You are completely unaware of your own worth. If you hadn't constantly nudged Potter and Weasley with lectures about the need to do homework if you did not tutor them and did not give them colorful planners for each holiday, the only spell that our Wonder-Boy-Who-Survived-Twice would have learned would have been Wingardium Leviosa! "It's Leviooosa, not Leviosaa, Ron," Snape mimicked, brushing the egg husks off Hermione's cheek. She laughed.
"How do you know about this?"
"You have no idea what gossip went around the teacher's room during your studies. And from my secret corner, everything was perfectly seen and audible. But, jokes aside, Hermione. Sooner or later you will have to face your own fears, and the later you do this, the more painful the conclusions will be."
"What do you mean?"
"My dear, you are trying to fill the void inside your heart. You know I could have stopped giving a damn about Dumbledore's orders or Voldemort's manipulations, and I could have left the country. I could have gone to Cuba and open a Tarot club there," Hermione giggled at the suggestion. "Stop laughing, I would have made a pretty good Sybil Trelawney. Perhaps, I could have taken Lucius with me and could have hidden in France, preferably in the distilleries of Provence, and until Narcissa and her rage would have found find us, we would have had a good time. However, I also tried to prove to myself that without me everything would collapse here, that life would stop and the Earth would go out of orbit. I tried to justify my endless failures by owning various debts and taking vows."
"But the Malfoys are your family, you said that yourself… And Professor McGonagall couldn't have done it without you, and neither could have we in that forest," Hermione murmured, pursing her lip: Severus's words hit the target.
"Undoubtedly, each of us has friends, even I am no exception, I would never refuse the Malfoys, but it would have been possible, for example, not to engage in the reorganization of Hogwarts, guardianship of orphans, and so on, but I decided that it was my duty to help them, as you did. I always wanted to prove to everyone that I can do more, and also, probably, I wished to somehow justify my reputation of the Bat of the Dungeons. I said don't laugh, the gossip in the staff room did the trick."
Severus took a step towards Hermione and lifted her chin with his forefinger.
"I'm not rushing you, Hermione, but sooner or later you will have to realize the fact that your parents can get back their lost memories. And take a step in this direction."
"They are going to hate me..." Hermione whispered, trying to turn away, but Severus's hands held her in place.
"Look at me: you don't have to do this alone, after all, know, if not us then who can help your parents?"
"Gryffindor Swot and Dungeon Bat, aren't we a good couple?" Hermione shook her head, not noticing that Severus was slowly wiping her tears away.
"Take Gryffindor's stubbornness and Slytherin's cunningness and you'll have allies that make Voldemort himself a snotty first year by comparison. Perhaps that's why Dumbledore tried so hard to make our two houses split."
Hermione snorted and wiped her nose with her sleeve, earning a reprimand from Severus.
"Severus? "she asked after a few minutes.
"Yes?"
"The Malfoys have sent us an invitation to the Christmas ball, and this is a disaster."
"Why? If you don't want to go, I'll write Narcissa a polite refusal." Severus frowned.
"No, it's not about Bellatrix and my nightmarish memories, the ball will be at the Summer Residence, but..."
"What is it then?"
"I can't dance!" Hermione muttered ruefully.
"Ah, that! Fear not, my dear. Who do you think coached the junior Slytherins before the Triwizard Tournament?"
Hermione gasped in surprise. Severus smiled.
"Cunning Slytherins, I told you."