Hermione?

Not now, Albus.

It's important.

You ancient, insufferable warlock. She said "Not now!"

Severus? Now this was an interesting wrinkle. I take it you're, er, in physical contact with Dr. Granger.

You could say that. Now leave us be.

A knowing grin appeared on Dumbledore's lips, not going unnoticed by Minerva McGonagall, who happened to be seated in his office eyeing him suspiciously. Just thought I'd let you both know that Harry has been retrieved by the Aurors, and Lucius is in for questioning. He's spitting mad and cursing the day you were born, Hermione. I daresay we finally have the goods to put him in Azkaban, because he can't seem to hold his tongue.

Touching, really. Now Albus?

Yes, my lemondrop?

Get out of my head. I have some important…things to do.

Indeed, she does, old man, so bugger off.

Oh, I'll go, you lovebirds! I do love happy endings…

"I think, Minerva, that we have much to celebrate this evening. Much indeed." With that, he began preparing an owl to Florean apprising him that, in fact, he thought they could let that Muggle flat in London go…he didn't think she'd be needing it any longer.

*~*

"Hermione?" he whispered as he lightly massaged her shoulders. She was sitting in his lap, savoring the quiet nearness of him before heading up to Dumbledore's office for a full debriefing.

"Yes?"

"I don't even know where to begin. I have so much to say to you, and you know I'm a man of very few words and even less sentimentality."

"Let's not rush it, then. One thing at a time." She was, truthfully, a bit overwhelmed that she was sitting in the Head of Slytherin's lap again, and that he wasn't resisting. She knew that it should be a long way from an admission of long-denied love made in stressful circumstances, to being comfortable in each other's arms, but somehow they were both comfortable indeed.

Is this the Good Part? The Payoff? The Happily Ever After? She mused.

Oh, most definitely.

"Severus, I had this awful crush on you that started shortly before Lucius abducted me. You see, one day in class you were being particularly awful to poor Neville, and I leapt to his defense as usual."

"Ten points from Gryffindor for being an insufferable know-it-all, and you'll be scrubbing out cauldrons as a detention."

"Exactly. But the way you said it, see… it was the first week after the summer holidays, and I guess I'd changed – your voice struck me as sexy rather than frightening. Naturally, I was appalled by that realization, and having more or less committed to consummate a relationship with Ron in our correspondence over the summer, I pushed you out of my mind. But when I returned for detention, I found myself watching you as you marked papers and tidied up the room, and saw you as a man rather than that greasy git who never cut any of us slack. I fell rather hard. Ron had no chance; I was in the throes of teenage lust for the teacher."

"This is the part where I get sanctimonious about the whole idea of a student-teacher relationship, and chastise you for a silly schoolgirl crush, right?"

"Well?"

"I had the same problem. I knew it was foolish and ill-advised of course, and kept it to myself, and never would have acted upon it. But I remember the detention in question very well. I knew you were watching me, and my heart was in my throat the whole night. I couldn't wait for that long year to end, so you'd be out of my sight and I could go back to my usual self-hate and unworthiness…the old tried and true Snape-as-unworthy-ex-Death-Eater angst."

"And, after Lucius did what he did, we both turned away from our feelings as too awful and unsavory to bear. That bastard robbed us of what could have been."

"Some might say he pushed us together." At her goggle, he said, "I'm not trying to make what he did, or what I did, any less heinous than it was. But if all had gone smoothly and there had been no dungeon battle, you would have graduated and left and we would have likely never gotten together."

"See, that's the kind of paradox that says that Ron had to die for me to escape. I hate that kind of logic."

"It's so Dumbledoreian."

"And sounds suspiciously like a plot contrivance for an angsty piece of fiction."

"Too true…"

"I think it's time to turn this story into romance, don't you?" And with that, the first kiss of a new relationship, free of the demons of the past, began. As his hands caressed her arms, her back, and settled into her long hair, and their passion grew, she knew that this was right. For the first time in her life, everything really felt right. Amazing.