Geranium means recklessness. And hugs and chocolate to my beta!
With a flick of his pen, Severus crossed out a few paragraphs in the final essay of his hapless seventh-year students. Shaking his head, he took a sip of the cold tea and put aside the pile of parchments in annoyance. He was trying to keep himself busy in order to shut his tormented mind down. However, his efforts were in vain.
Since last night, he had been tormented by migraines. The would-be graduates who had hosted a creepy secret party the day before on the ruins of Gryffindor Tower were now diligently sprinkling essays on the thirteen properties of Dragon's blood. Snape did not care that the notorious liquid had only twelve known magic properties. His unfortunate students, when driven to despair, could very well have invented the fourth Unforgivable, he had no doubt about their abilities.
Peeves hovered over Snape's right shoulder, eager for praise for uncovering the seventh-year conspiracy at midnight yesterday.
"What do you want?" Snape muttered.
"Give me a month of unpunished pranks, Headmaster."
"Keep dreaming! I've renovated Hogwarts once, I don't want to renovate it once more after your mischief."
"Two weeks, or Peeves will tell Minerva who the Castle has chosen to be its true Headmaster."
"A week." Snape held up a finger in warning. "And not a day more. Minerva is already well aware of the Castle's decision, which surprised me too."
"Who, who taught you everything, Batty?"
"Get lost. I gave you a week. Oh, one more thing, don't you dare prank my wife again!" Snape snapped at Peeves, overwhelmed by his sudden, happy squeal.
"She's not your wife yet! Yiiihaaaa!"
The poltergeist disappeared from his view. Snape squeezed the bridge of his nose: just like that, even this victim of exorcism dared to accuse him of neglect of his marital duties.
Of course, he lied to Narcissa when he shared the story of his intimate life. There were some things in Snape's life that he was ashamed to admit, even to himself. One of these things was his impenetrable stubbornness and self-righteousness.
That time in the past, as he had already said to Narcissa, Hermione was seriously concerned about the return to the normal life of Neville's parents, and neither the protests nor the convictions of Severus stopped her. He could lecture her of the importance of their conjugal duties as much as he wanted, telling her that the forty days agreed by the Ministry were coming to an end. This meant if they did not take vows to each other, she could as well seek refuge in Australia.
Hermione, of course, refused to listen to Snape and left the house, slamming the door goodbye.
"Good kids don't make revolutions, Severus," she repeated the line so often that Snape began feeling nauseous at the very mention of that phrase.
All they did was bombard each other with reproaches. Everyone stood their ground. Snape recalled the accusing Hermione poking her finger at him as he swallowed the third headache pill. Muggle pill, by the way.
"I'll never believe you can't brew yourself a potion from the pale blue mistletoe seed extract!"
"I can, of course, but this plant, as far as I know, grows in the Forbidden Forest, in a clearing, which leads to the settlement of Centaurs, and I have a strained relationship with them."
Hermione snorted.
"You could just ask them, you know."
"Could I? I could have asked them like you asked the Centaurus to kill Umbridge. Are you aware of the fact that Ministerial campaigners threatened to burn down the entire forest in order to find at least her corpse. Your prank, you and your one-celled friends, nearly cost the Centaurs their very existence!"
"You are overdramatizing, Severus," Hermione replied adamantly and went off to make the world a better place and to fight for justice that only she understood.
Severus did not approve of her revolutionary activities, but she did not listen to him. Who was he to her? Not even a husband. The first couple of years after the war, Hermione honestly tried to put together a career in the Ministry, grabbing from one project, then another. If she did not defend the rights of house-elves, then she sought to find justice and the free provision of the Wolfsbane for werewolves. After another failure, Hermione decided to become an Unspeakable but failed at the selection stage, then, for some time she worked as Kingsley's personal secretary, personally controlling the press and trying to call Rita Skitter to order.
Naive idealism behind which Hermione hid her pain and longing for her parents, had never subsided. Her endless search for herself led Hermione first to the Ministry, then to Hogwarts, and ultimately forced her to change the world for the better, even at the cost of her own health.
Her obsession with saving the Longbottoms hadn't done much good either. Snape was busy that evening, as usual, putting together a curriculum for the week. There was silence in the rooms, somewhere in the corner a cauldron was bubbling, parchment rustled, a pen creaked. Snape gritted his teeth and tried not to think about the fact that his almost-wife was now suffering from the effects of the Cruciatus outside the bedroom door.
As he suspected, the experiment to apply Legillimency to the Longbottoms was unsuccessful. Yes, during her time in the Ministry and preparing for exams for the Unspeakable position, Hermione became skilled in mental magic, having learned to put up good shields and control the reading of emotions and images. What she did not suspect was the notorious power of mutual suffering. Before this incident, Snape did not know about that particular spell that bound them together either.
That day did not bode well. Snape was waiting for his wife for dinner to discuss with her their marriage vows, which he had found in ancient books the day before. He did not have high hopes that she would be able to at least temporarily make the Longbottoms respond to the healers: the traumas they inflicted were too severe. Therefore, when Hermione stumbled through the fireplace onto the carpet and immediately shuffled into the bedroom, he did not notice anything suspicious. Not for the first time, serving in the Ministry had worn her out and brought her insomnia. Snape sincerely didn't know why she kept tormenting herself with the job like that.
What made him wary were the choked sobs that came from the bedroom forty minutes later. Rushing into the bedroom, Snape found his wife huddled on the bed, shivering with cold and convulsions. She sobbed and tried to overcome the shiver that beat her. Snape knew the Cruciatus and its aftershocks very well.
"Did you get what you wanted?" He snapped not too kindly. "We'll have to endure until morning, I have no ready-made antidote, or will have to go to St. Mungo's."
"Go away, Severus," Hermione rattled her teeth. "I'll help Neville's parents no matter the cost!"
"Merlin, they do not need your help, you stupid witch! Answer me where would they return to: to a world that does not know them, to a son who grew up without them, to a life that doesn't need them! As your husband, I forbid you to meddle with them, it's too dangerous!"
"Don't you dare yell at me! I'm not your wife yet."
Hermione's last words thundered into the silence of the room. Severus turned and walked out of the bedroom, closing the door with extreme caution. It would be better if he slammed it so that plaster fell from the ceiling.
Pouring whiskey into the glass, he began to drown the raging anger in his soul in alcohol. Whenever he happened to be a victim of Crucio and, of course, there was no pain reliever at hand, he went to the Red Lace, and Daisy was there. It was an excellent remedy for suffering, and for seizures, and for memories: sex, devoid of emotions and desires, when consciousness was switched off, when the phrase "Take her, take her, take her" just flashed through his brain. When it did not matter how and with whom, when it was only important to forget everything and himself. Daisy was the main madam in the brothel and in her own way she felt sorry for the thin boy with matted black hair who often came to visit her. He did not want to get attached to her, did not even want to talk, but she endeared him to herself.
"I wanted to become a Healer a long time ago, you know? I will the Unforgivable when I see it. And I see Crucio on you too often. What are you being punished for?"
"I am not good enough for them, it seems," Severus muttered, tired of the endless squabbles. "Not smart enough, not rich enough, not talented enough, and generally ill-mannered blockhead. They punish me for being too strange for them, I don't know what to do."
In that strange time, when Voldemort was trying to take over the masses, Severus was not afraid to talk openly about him.
"Learn, Sweet Darling," Daisy cooed softly, brushing his hair from his face. "Study as hard as you can, and whatever you can. There you have, if not friends, then acquaintances, former fellows in the faculty, talk to them, promise to tell them about potions, ask them for help."
Daisy kept talking and talking, and Severus stared at her in fascination: "Sweet Darling."He must find Narcissa and beg her for help. He will start with good manners and good demeanor, and perhaps then the Death Eaters will cease to despise him.
He learned as much as he could. He gained his place among the Death Eaters. Snape was grateful to another woman with a flower name who had once given him unexpected advice. He also learned clearly during their encounters with Daisy that the Cruciatus was easily cured with the help of banal sex.
Long after midnight, just as Severus had almost finished his firewhiskey bottle and was considering collapsing on his face on the sofa and forgetting himself until morning, the door swung open, and a disheveled Hermione appeared on the threshold. Eyes red from fatigue and tears, hair standing on end, blue lips - there was little that could seem attractive in her, especially a nightgown with geranium flowers, symbolizing recklessness in floristry. She reached the chair and collapsed onto Severus.
"I am your wife. Help me."
He had only to get up and catch her...
Snape did not remember exactly what they had vowed to each other that night. It was the night filled with despair, pain, and whiskey, but in the morning a parchment appeared on Kingsley's table, attesting to their marriage.
So they became husband and wife.
Things were supposed to be different now. No nonsense, naivety, and reproaches. But Hermione disappeared with Potter on Grimmauld, trying to find the Black family heirlooms that were dear to Sirius, and Snape was sitting on the floor, leaning against the sofa, staring into the fireplace and suffering from migraines.
He should have walked around the Forbidden Forest long ago and begged the Centaurs for mistletoe. He should have brewed the potions and calmed down, but headaches were a kind of constancy in the continuous chaos of Snape's life, so he hesitated. Marriage vows, however, taken from an ancient ritual, rested on his desk. As a cursory inspection of her own library showed, Hermione was also interested in Celtic magic. He'd have to discuss everything with her tonight.
In the end, they had just only two days left to truly become a husband and wife.