The gravel crunched underneath his boots, cold and frost-hard. Hogwarts looked unchanged since this morning, despite the weak autumn sun filtering in through the clouds. He marched up through the doors and towards his quarters, his only aim a strong whiskey and a good book. The thought of Eri flitted through his mind, but he shook his head. He didn't want some pale reflection of Hermione to fill this void inside him. It would never be enough.
He kept seeing her gaze wherever he looked, shocked and confused. Severus was disgusted in himself, in his pretensions. She'd thought that this was only a friendship, only a meeting of two minds. Perhaps she'd seen him as a Mentor. A father figure.
Severus shuddered, took the corner of the staircase hard, and nearly collided with Vector.
"Severus! I've been waiting for you!"
Severus blinked. "You have? Here?"
"Well, no. I mean, I'm just on my way back from the library. But I was looking for you."
"In… the library?"
A strained smile stretched across Vector's lips. "Not exactly. Just keeping my eyes open."
"I see…" said Severus, though he didn't. "What can I help you with?"
There was a shift in the air behind him that made Severus shiver - like someone had walked on his grave. He almost turned around, and then-
"I wanted to ask you out. For a beer. Or a coffee. Your choice."
Severus gaped at her, his whiskey forgotten. "Ask me out?" he repeated. It felt as though his IQ had plummeted through the floor, leaving his mouth able only to mimic conversation.
"Yes." Vector rubbed her neck, glancing up at him as she did so. "I know the war wasn't kind on you. It wasn't kind on any of us. But your actions… they've shown you to be an honourable man. A good man. I know few women who wouldn't want to… to go out with you." She swallowed, and Severus did the same, his throat numb and dry.
"That…" Severus coughed, the thoughts lodging in his throat. "That's very kind, but…" he thought back to Hermione's stricken expression in the cafe, how beautiful she had looked in the sunlight, even as she seemed shocked at his words.
Vector stiffened. "I understand."
"You do?" Severus laughed, surprising himself with the bitter, sharp notes. "I'm not sure I do myself. You're a good woman, Septima. If I might call you-" he interrupted himself at her nod. "You're smart - razor sharp - and you have a dark and delicious sense of humour. Any man would be lucky to gain your attention."
"Except you?"
"Yes." Severus' mouth twitched in self-mockery. "I seem to have become rather entangled with someone else - and, despite the fact that she would never return my feelings, could never… It wouldn't be fair to you to try to start something."
"That's… very noble." Vector looked past his face and blushed, a scarlet colour that crept up her neckline and across her cheeks.
Noble was one word for it, Severus thought, as he smiled a strained smile at the Arithmancy professor. Stupidity was another. Severus was well aware that despite Vector's optimistic summary of his dating field, he was rather limited in that regard. He'd taught most of Wizarding England whilst pretending to be a bitter bastard, conniving always to put Slytherin's worst members on top. Few women - or men, for that matter, had Severus leant that way - would be willing to overlook such past interactions.
Vector interrupted his maudlin thoughts with a nod of farewell as she turned and went back the way she'd came.
"Severus?"
The voice behind him was soft, brushed with surprise. Severus started as though somebody had stabbed him. Closing his eyes with a quick prayer for patience, Severus turned on his heel and stared down at Hermione's face, haloed by bushy hair. "Miss Granger. Can I help you?"
"I heard what you said."
"Congratulations." Severus felt himself retreat into sarcasm, protecting himself from further conversation. "You have at least one functioning ear. Perhaps you ought to have used it more in the classroom, and learnt to listen, not speak."
She ignored the barb. "Was that… are you…" she swallowed, and Severus found himself oddly captivated by the shadows in her throat. "When you said we were on a date, earlier-"
Severus cast about the corridor, his cheeks hot. Why did women suddenly want to accost him in corridors, where there might be students about? Vector had been lucky, but he could feel the clocks ticking closer to dinner, when the passages would be flooded by chattering, short, gossiping little shits.
"Hermione," Severus cut off whatever it was she'd been about to say. "I did indeed. Surprisingly your ears were working then too."
He span on his heel and marched towards his quarters, desperate to reach their sanctity before his personal life was spread all around the school. Children could be cruel, especially to their teachers, and he could feel tears prickling at the corners of his eyes and the bridge of his nose, threatening to disgrace him. He would never live down tears.
"Severus," Hermione panted, following his footsteps. "Don't you want to talk about it?"
With a sigh that bordered on his entire lung capacity, Severus bit out, "If you'd like to follow me to my rooms?"
"Right." Hermione darted a look around them, then added in a hushed whisper. "Do the walls have ears?"
"Miss Granger." Severus stopped walking. "That painting there is usually inhabited by a woman of the name of Lucy Miqueal, who is, as far as I can currently tell, hiding behind the painted curtain." A twitch of curtain confirmed the theory. "This frame belongs to the fat lady - she likes a home away from the students, especially after her frame was destroyed last year - and anything that woman learns she immediately tells both the Headmistress and the Head of Gryffindor. And this statue-" Severus moved his foot in a threatening manner towards it, and it shivered and uncurled, glaring pointedly at Severus as it trundled a few steps away and sat down. "This is a prototype the Weasley twin made and sold to his niece and nephew. I'm almost certain it was made with 'annoying Snape' as its main goal, but other than that it-"
"I take notes-" the statue interrupted. If one squinted, you could see that it was supposed to be a garden gnome. "I take notes in lessons, except that bat won't let me in his classroom."
"Yes, because the students should be taking notes themselves," Severus growled. "We've discussed this already."
"Yeah but-"
"He's right, you know." Hermione cut in. "Students who take their own notes often show higher recall. But maybe…" she tapped her finger against her lips. "I'll talk to George. I can see applications for this for students who can't write or read quickly, or as a revision or checking device against the student's own notes."
Severus, as impressed as he was with her educational knowledge, did not want to talk about George Weasley's Gnote Gnome. He snarled at it - and her - and stalked into the dungeons.
His temper was developing into a fine flurry, and he let it. He needed something to protect him from the awkward 'just friends' conversation that they were on the brink of, after all.
"So," he said, opening the heavy, dark brown door and ushering her through the threshold. "Drink?"
"Sure. Do you have tea?"
"Yes."
"What kinds?"
Severus stared at her, then shrugged and summoned a House Elf. He didn't normally use them - his whiskey was in his rooms, his tea in a box on his desk, and that was about all he needed - but if Hermione wanted to be picky, she could have the run of Hogwarts.
"Erm…. Just a black tea, please."
"Dab of milk and sugar, miss? Just like you used to drink it?"
Severus smiled at Hermione's vaguely shocked expression - he'd long ago become used to the House Elf eidetic memory for people and their preferences.
"Please."
"I'm surprised you agreed to order from an Elf," drawled Severus, deciding against the whisky. He promised himself the indulgence after she left - and besides, the elf would return with a tea for him, too. "I remember that during your time at Hogwarts you tried to boycott them."
"Boycott them?" Hermione spluttered. "I never- I tried to get them to realise that they could have their own lives, that they didn't need to belong to anyone - they were people, too."
"Not every person has that right," Severus shot back, before realising that his anger surged through the words, hot enough to melt iron.
Hermione blinked. "You didn't, you mean."
"The Headmaster was many things. Unlike Aristotle, though, he did not free his slaves upon his death." Hermione's gaze felt heavy on the tortured skin at the base of his neck, and Severus drew a long, shaky breath. "I'm sorry. This was-"
"I understand," she interrupted. "Nobody campaigned for you."
"And I wouldn't have wanted them to!"
"But you would have liked the thought," she challenged.
Severus' mouth actually hung open for a few moments before he laughed, surprising himself. "Perhaps," he acknowledged. "Perhaps."
The tea arrived - as Severus had suspected, two cups and a teapot, a small bowl of sugar cubes, with tongs, and a tiny jug of milk. The Elf did not reappear, the tea appearing as if by magic at his elbow.
"It's kind of admirable, in a way," Hermione said, stirring the tea. "The House Elves are powerful, really very powerful compared to the average witch or wizard. They can do things we think of as impossible. And they choose to serve us with all that power, for some reason."
Severus had that uncomfortable itch in his shoulder that told him they were no longer just talking about House Elves. He could snarl that his was never a choice to serve, that he had been serving time for Lily's death, for his bad choices, but that would require reopening wounds he'd long since begged to be free of. Even being rebuffed might be an easier conversation than that.
"So, you followed me here…". Severus raised an eyebrow expectantly as she began pouring tea.
"Those things you said in the hall. That you're… interested in someone. Romantically." The bright red Hermione turned as she sucked in a deep breath and rushed into the question made Severus think she was going for some kind of Gryffindor award, in the distant part of himself that could still think. The rest of him was waiting with breathless anticipation for the words that would follow, practically vibrating with the impulse to fight or flee. Or both - Severus had long been the master of both. "Would you… is it me?"
Her gaze shot up from the teapot to meet his own dark eyes.
Here was a pretty problem. Severus still had no idea how she felt. If he told the truth, he risked being laughed at - or worse, losing Hermione's friendship. But if he lied, if he said he was infatuated with someone else… he risked losing any interest Hermione might have in him, however slight.
That wasn't a risk he was willing to take.
"Yes," he growled, picking up the delicate tea cup and holding it as a shield between them. He couldn't look away from the floor, his gaze drawn there like a magnet.
"And when you said it was a date, earlier. That wasn't a slip of the tongue? We were…. You thought we were on a date?"
Severus felt as though his entire body was burning up with shame. He couldn't answer, his voice failing him. He nodded instead.
When he looked up at her, she was grinning brightly at him. Severus was still trying to figure out whether that was a good sign or not when she put down her tea cup and barrelled into him, wrapping her arms around his chest. He thanked Merlin that his reactions were still as fast as ever - his tea cup full of scalding tea hovered safely above them.
"Severus," she whispered. "I… I was really hoping…" She tailed off, squeezing him even more tightly.
Severus pat her on the back awkwardly. This had not been the reaction he'd expected, but it felt like a vice squeezed around his heart. He couldn't silence that voice in the back of his mind that told him this couldn't really be happening, that nobody was this lucky, that he didn't deserve this.
She reared back and smiled up at him, as bright as the sun. He managed to wrap his tongue around something resembling a sentence.
He had to know for sure. "So then… you do feel the same way? That is to say…"
Hermione took a step backwards, her eyes bright in a rosy pink face, almost bumping into the teapot cooling on the desk. "Severus Snape, yes, I'd love to go out on a date with you." She hesitated. "Unless Ron scared you off. Or my dingy apartment. Ministry pay isn't exactly the best in the world but I make it work-"
Severus followed her, stepping so that he could almost feel the heat radiating from her soft skin. Her mouth was running, listing reasons that he shouldn't want to date her, but Severus didn't care about those. He watched the shapes it made, but he was already far too invested to worry about her pay, or her hair, or the fact that when she focused, she tended to lose track of time. And if she were a terrible chef, well, Severus knew a thing or two about knives and he was sure the skill transferred to cooking and-
By Merlin, the only thing he wanted to do was kiss her. Press his lips against her rosy pink ones. Slowly, leaving her plenty of ways to escape, he leaned down. Her voice trailed off.
"Hermione," he whispered, his eyes flicking up to hers. His voice sounded breathless and as full of anticipation as he was. "I'm going to kiss you."
"Yes." The word was filled with longing. As if to underscore it, she tilted her chin upwards, giving him easier access.
He pressed his thin lips to her full ones, feeling the softness give beneath him, the subtle play of lips sending bursts of joy through his body like fireworks, exploding around his heart, and felt his walls melt and crumble.
fin
AN
Thank you so much to everyone who has read this story, and double thanks for the reviewers! There is an epilogue still to come, but this piece is now finished! Thank you once again - without your favourites and reviews, this story would have sat, half-written, amassing literary cobwebs and never seen the light of day. So if you enjoyed it, you have only yourselves to thank!
