Author's Note:
The Houses Competition (or THC) Round 6
Story Type: Drabble (up to 1,000 words)
House: Hufflepuff
Class: Astronomy
Prompt: 10. [Word] Adventure
Word Count: 998
Disclaimers/triggers: Snamione HEA/Severus Lives AU.
Beta Love: Thanks to First Silver King and Amanda for looking over my story!
An Adventure to Remember
The album lay open on Hermione's desk. Severus knew it wasn't right to snoop, but his wife had been sighing deeply all day long, and he needed to know why.
"Now, then, what are you hiding?" he mused softly.
The last few years had been difficult for her. Ron Weasley had been hospitalized due to an Auror raid of an underground troll-fighting ring gone wrong two years prior and had to be fitted with magical leg braces. While it was unlikely that he would ever regain the full use of his legs, he was already becoming well known for his magical travelog show on the Wizarding Wireless Web that he co-produced with Luna Lovegood. Harry Potter had become the Defence professor at Hogwarts. Each year at the holidays, he regaled them all with the story of that year's adventures, for there was never a dull moment in the hallowed halls of Hogwarts.
The first page of the album showed three faces he knew very well—the photos must have been taken by Hagrid because they were taken from such a height as to make them look even smaller than they actually were. Severus had always neatly kept the two parts of his life apart in his mind. His time as the Dungeon Bat of Slytherin had ended with his death, however short-lived it had been. His resuscitation and recuperation at the hands of a very stubborn Minerva had been the beginning of something different.
He'd traveled across Europe trying to find personal fulfillment, but it was over a decade later at the Black Forest Institute in Germany that he'd met Hermione. Neither of them had realized who the other was. They'd looked so different, him in his deep teal robes with a braided topknot and graying temples, and her with her tamed hair braided in two long strands in the front and short and riotously curly in the back wearing forest green. They'd gotten to know one another by first names, so it had been quite the shock when they'd both realized, long after feelings had developed and consummated several times, that they'd both known each other in a drastically different capacity years ago.
"We truly had our own adventure, didn't we?" he murmured aloud, turning the pages until he saw the picture their colleague had taken of Hermione and himself wearing elaborate golden masks. That evening had consisted of puzzles and a full scale magical hedge maze that Hermione and Severus had solved together after a few hair-singing moments. He could recall her face, cheeks kissed red with the cold night air as she looked up at him grinning with delight. She'd kissed him so deeply when they'd reached the center first he'd thought he'd left the ground. But there was no surge of accidental magic, no. It was her.
It would always be her.
Interspersed in the pages were postcards from Ron and Luna, and photos and letters peppered with small note cards Hermione had written in her hand and placed with them in order to show her joy at receiving little souvenirs and stories they'd sent back.
Each page spoke of excitement and adventure—something unexpected and new.
Severus never realized just what this meant for his wife, who worked in the Ministry Stacks- a massive archival space that doubled as a library and research space. While academia had its own kind of charm, there was nothing exciting or adventurous about dust and parchment. It wasn't even as though she might run into a book that would curse her or bite like that horrid thing that Hagrid had once required for his class. By the time anything got to Hermione's archival desk, it was nothing but leather and parchment.
He turned the page and traced his fingers in the indentations left by her pen as she'd written another wistful note. "Maybe she needs something...exciting. A real adventure after all these years."
She'd written, "the fur looks so soft," next to a photo of Luna stroking the fur of some sort of winged lion creature.
Their anniversary was coming up in only a few weeks and Severus had been in a funk trying to figure out what she would like. She'd been in a funk of her own; she always got sad and gloomy in the winter months from lack of sun. Perhaps a vacation adventure would be just what she needed? He began to think of places where they might go, perhaps roughing it in a tent near an active volcano in Iceland or renting one of those raised structures that were common in the Pacific Islands due to seasonal flooding.
Severus was so thoroughly absorbed with thinking through all of the truly adventurous and amazing things that he could plan for his wonderful wife to help her feel less depressed about the mundane life she'd built with him, that he didn't realize she was standing behind him until she'd tapped him on the shoulder.
"Severus? What's going on?" she asked in a puzzled tone when he nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise at having been caught.
"I— it's—um—" he stammered, trying to think of a plausible excuse for having been so soundly caught in the act of looking through her things.
"Oh!" she said, smiling and gently taking the album from him. "I was just getting everything safely in my album before they got lost. Work's been so draining these past few weeks. The Head Archivist is giving me a chance to try out for Senior Archival Assistant, and the training has been a doozy. But I'd take that any day over photobombing a manticore mating ritual."
"You mean you don't wish to go on an adventure of your own?" Severus asked, still somewhat dazed at this confession.
"Oh Severus," Hermione said, pulling him close to her and looking up at him with adoration in her eyes. "This, right here, is exactly the sort of adventure I've always wanted."