A/N: Not my universe, I just play here.
In the years since I finished Camerado, I've had my third child and have somehow, to my astonishment, begun to make my living my writing actual novels, of the bound-and-sold-in-bookstores, published-by-a-Big-4-publisher variety. Life has become much busier than it used to be, and the stories that actually feed my family have, by necessity, taken up much of my time. But I've never forgotten that I promised to write Severus and Hermione an epilogue.
This was written today in a couple of rare, blessedly spare hours on the last day of my family's vacation. It hasn't been beta'd (to be honest, I haven't actually re-read what I wrote), so there are probably plenty of errors, and it's not nearly as in-depth as I intended years ago. For that, I apologize (sort of—I'm honestly mostly proud of myself for managing to get it written at all!). To those who have continued to send messages and requests for a last look into Severus and Hermione's post-war relationship—thank you, from the bottom of my heart. And I'm (truly) sorry for the long wait!
#
This early on a Saturday, the church car park is empty. Hermione pulls neatly into a space and rolls all the windows down before cutting the engine. The air conditioning in her car broke within three days of her buying it, but luckily it's still too close to dawn for the air to have stirred itself into a hot and sludgy wall. She slides a little down into her seat and opens a book, determined to distract herself. Of course, she's stupidly early.
But even her book—a fat, fascinating tome on wandless magic, only just published, a ridiculous splurge for a young woman without a steady income but one she couldn't resist, three meals a day be damned—cannot hold her attention. Her heart beats against her breastbone, almost painful in its intensity. Her very skin feels tight with waiting.
When he arrives, rounding the corner and entering the car park on foot, she slides her sunglasses down over her eyes so that she can watch him while pretending not to. His head is a little ducked so that she can't fully see his face, just the broad plane of his brow, the long sloping bone of his nose. His hair is pulled back at the nape of his neck the way he used to wear it when brewing. He's wearing a T-shirt, dark blue, and casual grey trousers, trainers on his feet. Behind her sunglasses, Hermione blinks.
The last time they saw each other, Severus Snape was still recuperating, spending his days in a pair of her father's cotton pajama bottoms. He was too thin then, all the meat he hadn't had to lose melted off his bones, leaving only sharpness behind. As he nears her, Hermione is glad to see that, though he will perhaps always be composed of more bone than flesh, he no longer looks as if he might fade away altogether. The last year has been good to him, it seems. Physically, at least.
When he reaches the car, Severus hesitates. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows, and something loosens inside Hermione's belly at the realization that he is as nervous as she. She closes her book and reaches across the passenger seat and opens his door, doing her best to smile up at him.
He slides inside and holds out a paper takeaway cup. She can see the remnants of the Dark Mark on his forearm, over the pale blue of his veins. It has taken on the blurred grey appearance of a amateurish tattoo that has aged badly. "I… hope you still take it the way you used to," are the first words he says to her, his voice still rough, as though that bit of him will never quite heal. Hermione takes the cup from him, inhales the rising steam, and smiles for real.
"Oh God, thank you. I didn't have time to make tea before I left this morning." She takes a sip, and then another. "Mmmm. That's good. I could kiss you."
Severus snorts into his own cup—coffee, she knows, utterly black, unless things have changed drastically—and when Hermione glances at him, his cheeks are as pink as hers feel. They both take refuge in their morning caffeine for a moment, Hermione letting her hair swing forward—in a manner reminiscent of him back at Hogwarts—to hide her mortification. She should have gotten out of the car when he arrived, she thinks. She should have hugged him. Greeted him properly. Not talked about kissing him.
Courage, she thinks furiously to herself, and sets her cup in one of the holders between their two seats. Turns to face him.
"Hello," she says, and is relieved that when Severus meets her eyes, it is with a faint smile hovering at the corners of his mouth.
"Hello," he says.
Hermione finds herself tracing the familiar lines of his face for a long moment, cataloguing the depth of the lines bracketing his mouth, the whisper of silver in the beard he'd admitted to her that he'd begun to grow. He notices her stare, and his cheeks, above the beard, go red once more.
"Is it dreadful?" he says, reaching up self-consciously to touch it.
"No," Hermione says, too quickly, and then, when he raises one brow, she laughs a little, rueful. "Sorry—really, no, not at all. It's just—different. But—I like it,"—and she realizes, as she says it, that it's true—"I think you look… very distinguished. It sort of… emphasizes the sharpness of your nose. In a good way, of course. Though I've always quite liked your nose…"
She closes her mouth firmly, mortification returning. God, she'd meant to look like an adult to him, a woman, and here she is babbling the schoolgirl he once taught. She hadn't had time for tea because she wasted an hour fussing with her hair, trying to coax the heavy mass of it into a style that was at least vaguely elegant. Sitting here now, she can feel the weight of it pulling against its pins, threatening to tumble.
He laughs, but it's a forced and awkward sound. Damn it. She doesn't even know—might he have a… girlfriend? This is not something they've discussed, and though she has not gone on so much as a single date in the months since she last saw him, she has never managed to gather the Gryffindor courage to ask about his romantic life.
They loved each other, once upon a time. This should all be—easy. Natural. But it's not.
"Is work still…?" she says, trailing off meaningfully. He works at an apothecary in the Wizarding district of Melbourne, and though he was at first merely grateful to have a job, to have found a boss who didn't seem to care who he was or what he'd done back in jolly old England, after a few months he'd begun sniping about the work to Hermione via the pendants they both still wear. The shop owner, an ancient wizard who didn't even have Dumbledore's genial front to recommend him, was a sloppy potion maker, and it was always Severus who wound up blamed when customers returned complaining that their Pepper-Up had merely made their noses run harder.
He grimaces, sips his coffee. "It's… an income." A long pause, and then he says, "And you?"
Hermione grimaces in turn. After finally taking her NEWTs, she stayed with Harry for a while as she decided what to do with all the Outstandings she'd earned. Job offers, unsolicited, came in—from groups who advocated for everything from werewolf rights to war orphans, from publishers of textbooks, from the bloody Ministry. This last she'd burned, watching the message curl into ash with as much fury as relish. Even George had offered her a job at Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, saying sheepishly that she mightn't have any sense of fun but she at least knew her charms and potions forwards and backwards. Hermione had been gentler in her rejection of that offer.
In the end, she accepted one of publishers' offers, despite its being only sporadic, because the work wasn't completely boring and—more importantly—because she could do it from anywhere in the world. Her skin itched, her mind was restless. She wasn't ready, quite yet, to commit to a cause, a career, a home.
"It's all right," she says, and her smile is small and wry. "It's an income."
He touches his cup to hers in mocking solemnity, and they both drain their drinks as the rapidly rising sun sends light pooling across the asphalt.
Her voice is bright and false when she says, "Ready to begin?"
#
After she got him to Australia, after he helped to restore her parents' memories, after two weeks spent together in her parents' house before the looming deadline of her NEWTs drew her back to England, they agreed to release one another, for the time being, from any obligation implied by their wartime romance. Hermione was very young, she had school to finish and a career to establish and a relationship with her parents to mend, and Severus was adrift in a new world, stripped of all the old obligations, uncertain how to make a space here that was entirely his. He found he liked the press of the sun—this vaguely surprised him—and she found herself worrying about him even then, just as she had when he was missing and presumed gone forever, to the point that she could not concentrate on her studies, could not think of her own future at all. Each needed time apart, they agreed.
But a hollowness lingered. Hermione was determined not to be the first to disturb him, knowing herself well enough to understand that if she contacted him just once it would be nearly impossible for her to stop. So when, one evening while she was studying in the Grimmauld Place library, her pendant burned suddenly hot against her chest, the mingled happiness and terror she felt were breath-stopping.
How are you? was all he said, but it was enough. And when, many months later, she mentioned with studied casualness that she was moving to Melbourne for a little while to be nearer her parents, and would he perhaps like that driving lesson they talked about so long ago?—well, her smile at his immediate, Yes. When? was so broad as to nearly hurt.
#
It turns out that teaching Severus Snape to drive a Muggle car is every bit as surreal an experience as any of his former students might have imagined. They switch seats, and Hermione shows him how to work the indicators and handbrake, tells him which pedal is meant to do what. He goes almost instantly irritable, and she snaps at him, and he bites back, and then, jaw clenched, he follows her instructions to ease the car out of its space and turn it so that he can make a slow circle of the empty car park, except that his exit from the space is rather more jerky than smooth, and his circuit of the car park is as slow as an old man's, his shoulders hunched and his knuckles white against the black of the wheel. Hermione has a wild impulse to contact Neville, and stuffs her fingers against her mouth so Severus doesn't realize how close she is to laughter.
A few more circuits, and he's using the indicators more smoothly and even managing something like a normal driving pace for a church car park. At her instruction, he maneuvers himself into a space, and his grin, the little boy glee of it when she praises him for fitting the car so precisely within the painted lines, makes something clench inside her chest, something so near to joy it feels like grief.
"Next week?" he says, hesitating before letting himself out of the car, the dark of his eyes holding hers firmly for the first time since he joined her here. They hold within them something she recognizes, something bruisingly tender, and Hermione nods, her voice lost, and impulsively kisses his cheek, very near the corner of his mouth, his beard at once soft and rough under her lips.
"I've missed you so much," she says, and his breath is hot on the tip of her nose when he exhales, when he turns his head, when, with a last, desperate catching of eyes, he touches his mouth to hers.