Addendum Two
"Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun." Ecclesiastes 9:9
(Around the same timeframe as Addendum One - approximately 1 year after Voldemort was put in Azkaban.)
Hermione, Luna, Ginny and Padma were having a girly gab session while their husbands were testing Harry's new Nimbus 3000 one Sunday afternoon on the Malfoy Quidditch pitch.
Ginny was watching Harry from a window as he whizzed by with perfect control. Lily and Molly, Albert and Eddie were watching avidly. Ginny smiled as she heard Lily's thrilled crow from over 500m away. "Da-dee!" she squealed happily.
"Don't you think Harry's got great muscles?" Ginny said to Hermione rather dreamily then giggled like a girl half her actual age.
Hermione blinked then laughed frankly. "Do you know, I've never noticed?" she said honestly. She squinted up her eyes and tried to check out Harry from the perspective of someone who didn't think of him like a brother. "Actually, you're right. He does have nice biceps," she admitted with surprise.
"Don't tell me you've never noticed what great arms Harry has," Padma said disbelievingly to Hermione. "You can't miss it!" Padma had not fallen in love with Ron because of his non-existent biceps but she had noticed Harry's nice set.
"Nup," Hermione said, quite unconcerned by her lack of observation. "Harry is like a brother, for goodness sake. Who checks out their brother? Ew! Now I'm squicked!" she complained.
Luna laughed her frank laugh at Hermione. "He does have nice arms," she conceded. "But I'm sorry, I still think Draco is sexier."
"Of course you do," Ginny grinned. "There's something very charismatic about Draco but I knew him at school and that killed the effect for me."
"Yes, he is charismatic. Too bad we all knew him when he was a nasty little nerk," Padma said matter-of-factly, winking at Luna.
Luna laughed heartily. "I almost wish I had known him then now," she said.
"You know, I have a feeling things would have been very different for Draco if you'd gone to Hogwarts rather than Beauxbatons," Hermione said, suddenly thoughtful.
"Perhaps," Luna said with her elegant shrug, flicking back her short, shining bob and refusing to take the idea too seriously. Luna lived in the present and was not inclined to analyse things long gone.
"What we'd all like to know is what on earth you see in Snape!" Padma teased Hermione.
Hermione glanced impishly at Padma from under a thick lock of dark hair. "Oh, I tried to hit on him very early," she admitted.
Ginny and Padma stared at Hermione and Luna laughed again. "You're kidding!" Ginny exclaimed incredulously. "You hit on him first? I thought he must have being trying it on for ages initially," she breathed.
"Nope. It was a case of lust at first. um. realization that he was no longer a teacher," Hermione said roguishly.
All three of the women now stared breathlessly at Hermione. "No way," Ginny said, drawing it out in wonder.
"Um. What exactly is it that you find to. er. lust after, if that's not too rude a question?" Padma asked curiously.
"I just think he's sexy," Hermione said mischievously. "To be honest, it was an odd situation. I had just lost my parents and still saw him as a particularly nasty teacher. I didn't even see him as a person really, at that point in time. Then next thing I knew he was in Muggle clothes and in my home and I suddenly realized he was a man - a rather new thought. Who can explain sexual chemistry? Why is Ginny so bowled over by Harry's biceps when I don't even notice them? Why is Padma attracted to Ron when his freckled lips would make me incapable of kissing him? Why does Luna love Draco when the rest of us think he's a pointy-faced, skinny albino?" Hermione mused aloud.
Luna gasped. "You take that back!" she said with mock indignation. "He is not! He's totally sexy," she said with a look of smug satisfaction.
"I don't think I even knew why I was baiting Severus," Hermione continued, more to herself than the other women. "I just wanted to get a reaction of him. I wanted him to notice me and pay attention to me, not as a ward or ex-student either but as. me. I actually fell in lust with him long before I fell in love with him."
Padma snorted. "Well, you certainly succeeded in getting his attention. You've been glued together ever since."
"It was surprisingly hard," Hermione pointed out, in fairness. "He was very distant more often than not. It was so frustrating!" she added with a laugh. "It just spurred me on even more."
"You never could resist a challenge," Ginny said wryly.
"I loved his complexity. I loved the fact I really didn't know anything about him at all. I respected his brains which is important to me, as you know," she said pointedly. "And above all, I emphatically wanted to take off all his clothes and haul him off to bed!" she added with a laugh. "All of that was confused by all the other emotions crowding in on me with my parent's death and the threat of Voldemort at the time," she said reflectively.
The other three exchanged looks of amazement. "I guess I can understand that urge," Ginny said finally with another look out the window at her messy-haired husband.
"Naturally," Luna drawled in amusement. "I was very irritated at Draco when he made me wait for him."
Padma merely nodded with a glance out of the window at her red-haired husband whooping happily on Harry's old Nimbus 2000.
Snape, who had returned to fetch a speed monitoring gadget from the library, had unintentionally overhead most of the conversation. With burning cheeks, he apparated back outside clutching the small object but didn't go immediately to the pitch. He paced outside in the cool air until his face had returned to its normal pale colour.
All of a sudden he understood Hermione's actions all those years ago when she had been a surprisingly mature adolescent. She had been churning with grief over her parent's death which had been confused by anger at their abuse and neglect. All the emotional fall out of finding out her animagus and the power it had hadn't helped, and then he had confused all these issues by sending her hormones crazy. No wonder she had been all over the place.
He sat down on a nearby stone bench and an unusual and rather self- satisfied smile tugged at one corner of his lean mouth. Had she really lusted after him so early? All this time, he had thought it was mostly one- sided at the beginning; obviously not. He had always felt guilty for kissing her that night when she had been so upset. He had felt that he had taken advantage. Now he realized he had been deliberately provoked and manipulated. The level of smugness in his smile grew. He wondered if she had even known at eighteen that that was what she was doing. He suspected she had but probably not at a really fully conscious level. He didn't believe that the eighteen year old Hermione had had any idea of the power she had over his senses. He smirked. If only she'd known how easy it would have been for her to seduce him regardless of his guardianship. He had burned all night after he had pushed her away that time.
For the first time, he understood his own power with Hermione from a very early stage. It felt heady, like wine. It permeated his bloodstream and made him feel light-headed. For the first time, he didn't feel a cursed man suddenly blessed with unbelievable luck in having a woman like Hermione in his life. In a bizarre way, Hermione had just unintentionally given his sense of worth and masculinity back to him. He knew that Hermione could have told him all of that and he wouldn't have believed her. He would have thought she was saying it to him to make him feel better because she was kind. There was no reason for Hermione to be kind about him behind his back however. She had been telling nothing but the blunt truth.
Fortunately, Ron and Harry and Draco were too busy whizzing around on their brooms practicing maneuvers to see the changed expression on Snape's face.
* * *
That night, Snape and Hermione were watching Charlotte and little Severus play in front of the fire. The babies were asleep in the nursery.
Severus toddled over to his mother. "Dear, you smell," Hermione said bluntly to the baby but with a gentle affection and amusement shining out of her eyes.
Snape frowned at her. "Must you speak to my son like that?" he asked irritably.
Little Severus merely nodded in solemn agreement with his mother. He knew his nappy was dirty and he was too little to be anything other than completely unself-conscious about it. "He knows he's got a dirty nappy," Hermione said matter-of-factly to Snape, completely unperturbed by his crankiness as per usual. "Don't you, darling?" she said, leaning down almost nose-to-nose with her favourite. Little Severus smiled happily at her. "See? He's not worried," she added to Snape.
"That's because he adores his Mama," Snape said drily, still looking unimpressed.
"That's because his Mama adores him," Hermione said quite truthfully to her son, smiling down into his gentle black eyes and stroking his silky dark hair.
"Love Mama!" little Severus declared cheerfully before the nanny House Elf took him off to change his nappy.
"I love you too, baby," she said, waving after him and blowing kisses, her usually sharp grey eyes tender.
Hermione's bond with little Severus always made Snape feel uncomfortably emotional. "Why do you love Severus so much?" he asked her curiously as he watched Charlotte throw her toy across the room in a fit of temper.
Hermione crossed her slim legs, propped her sharp chin in one hand and regarded Snape solemnly from her dark iron grey eyes. "Because he reminds me of you," she said simply. Snape suddenly saw the same depth of feeling that was often in her eyes when they rested on little Severus directed toward himself. Her eyes caressed his face.
Snape had always found it fascinating that Hermione was capable of being so open. That kind of nakedness would make him feel unbearably vulnerable. He knew there was no need to practice Occulmency and Legilemency on her even if he had been inclined to which he hadn't. There was no need, she hid nothing. In fact, she was incapable of hiding anything. He still found that breath-taking. If she had ever really lied to him about anything important, he would have known. In well over 10 years, she never had. Not once. He supposed it was that very reason that she was able to deceive him on the rare occasions that she had in relation to the black unicorn.
He leaned forward and brushed his lips across Hermione's as little Severus toddled back into the room. Little Severus gurgled in pleasure to see his parents kissing. It was a rare display as his father was reserved in front of him and his siblings usually.
"Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun." Ecclesiastes 9:9
(Around the same timeframe as Addendum One - approximately 1 year after Voldemort was put in Azkaban.)
Hermione, Luna, Ginny and Padma were having a girly gab session while their husbands were testing Harry's new Nimbus 3000 one Sunday afternoon on the Malfoy Quidditch pitch.
Ginny was watching Harry from a window as he whizzed by with perfect control. Lily and Molly, Albert and Eddie were watching avidly. Ginny smiled as she heard Lily's thrilled crow from over 500m away. "Da-dee!" she squealed happily.
"Don't you think Harry's got great muscles?" Ginny said to Hermione rather dreamily then giggled like a girl half her actual age.
Hermione blinked then laughed frankly. "Do you know, I've never noticed?" she said honestly. She squinted up her eyes and tried to check out Harry from the perspective of someone who didn't think of him like a brother. "Actually, you're right. He does have nice biceps," she admitted with surprise.
"Don't tell me you've never noticed what great arms Harry has," Padma said disbelievingly to Hermione. "You can't miss it!" Padma had not fallen in love with Ron because of his non-existent biceps but she had noticed Harry's nice set.
"Nup," Hermione said, quite unconcerned by her lack of observation. "Harry is like a brother, for goodness sake. Who checks out their brother? Ew! Now I'm squicked!" she complained.
Luna laughed her frank laugh at Hermione. "He does have nice arms," she conceded. "But I'm sorry, I still think Draco is sexier."
"Of course you do," Ginny grinned. "There's something very charismatic about Draco but I knew him at school and that killed the effect for me."
"Yes, he is charismatic. Too bad we all knew him when he was a nasty little nerk," Padma said matter-of-factly, winking at Luna.
Luna laughed heartily. "I almost wish I had known him then now," she said.
"You know, I have a feeling things would have been very different for Draco if you'd gone to Hogwarts rather than Beauxbatons," Hermione said, suddenly thoughtful.
"Perhaps," Luna said with her elegant shrug, flicking back her short, shining bob and refusing to take the idea too seriously. Luna lived in the present and was not inclined to analyse things long gone.
"What we'd all like to know is what on earth you see in Snape!" Padma teased Hermione.
Hermione glanced impishly at Padma from under a thick lock of dark hair. "Oh, I tried to hit on him very early," she admitted.
Ginny and Padma stared at Hermione and Luna laughed again. "You're kidding!" Ginny exclaimed incredulously. "You hit on him first? I thought he must have being trying it on for ages initially," she breathed.
"Nope. It was a case of lust at first. um. realization that he was no longer a teacher," Hermione said roguishly.
All three of the women now stared breathlessly at Hermione. "No way," Ginny said, drawing it out in wonder.
"Um. What exactly is it that you find to. er. lust after, if that's not too rude a question?" Padma asked curiously.
"I just think he's sexy," Hermione said mischievously. "To be honest, it was an odd situation. I had just lost my parents and still saw him as a particularly nasty teacher. I didn't even see him as a person really, at that point in time. Then next thing I knew he was in Muggle clothes and in my home and I suddenly realized he was a man - a rather new thought. Who can explain sexual chemistry? Why is Ginny so bowled over by Harry's biceps when I don't even notice them? Why is Padma attracted to Ron when his freckled lips would make me incapable of kissing him? Why does Luna love Draco when the rest of us think he's a pointy-faced, skinny albino?" Hermione mused aloud.
Luna gasped. "You take that back!" she said with mock indignation. "He is not! He's totally sexy," she said with a look of smug satisfaction.
"I don't think I even knew why I was baiting Severus," Hermione continued, more to herself than the other women. "I just wanted to get a reaction of him. I wanted him to notice me and pay attention to me, not as a ward or ex-student either but as. me. I actually fell in lust with him long before I fell in love with him."
Padma snorted. "Well, you certainly succeeded in getting his attention. You've been glued together ever since."
"It was surprisingly hard," Hermione pointed out, in fairness. "He was very distant more often than not. It was so frustrating!" she added with a laugh. "It just spurred me on even more."
"You never could resist a challenge," Ginny said wryly.
"I loved his complexity. I loved the fact I really didn't know anything about him at all. I respected his brains which is important to me, as you know," she said pointedly. "And above all, I emphatically wanted to take off all his clothes and haul him off to bed!" she added with a laugh. "All of that was confused by all the other emotions crowding in on me with my parent's death and the threat of Voldemort at the time," she said reflectively.
The other three exchanged looks of amazement. "I guess I can understand that urge," Ginny said finally with another look out the window at her messy-haired husband.
"Naturally," Luna drawled in amusement. "I was very irritated at Draco when he made me wait for him."
Padma merely nodded with a glance out of the window at her red-haired husband whooping happily on Harry's old Nimbus 2000.
Snape, who had returned to fetch a speed monitoring gadget from the library, had unintentionally overhead most of the conversation. With burning cheeks, he apparated back outside clutching the small object but didn't go immediately to the pitch. He paced outside in the cool air until his face had returned to its normal pale colour.
All of a sudden he understood Hermione's actions all those years ago when she had been a surprisingly mature adolescent. She had been churning with grief over her parent's death which had been confused by anger at their abuse and neglect. All the emotional fall out of finding out her animagus and the power it had hadn't helped, and then he had confused all these issues by sending her hormones crazy. No wonder she had been all over the place.
He sat down on a nearby stone bench and an unusual and rather self- satisfied smile tugged at one corner of his lean mouth. Had she really lusted after him so early? All this time, he had thought it was mostly one- sided at the beginning; obviously not. He had always felt guilty for kissing her that night when she had been so upset. He had felt that he had taken advantage. Now he realized he had been deliberately provoked and manipulated. The level of smugness in his smile grew. He wondered if she had even known at eighteen that that was what she was doing. He suspected she had but probably not at a really fully conscious level. He didn't believe that the eighteen year old Hermione had had any idea of the power she had over his senses. He smirked. If only she'd known how easy it would have been for her to seduce him regardless of his guardianship. He had burned all night after he had pushed her away that time.
For the first time, he understood his own power with Hermione from a very early stage. It felt heady, like wine. It permeated his bloodstream and made him feel light-headed. For the first time, he didn't feel a cursed man suddenly blessed with unbelievable luck in having a woman like Hermione in his life. In a bizarre way, Hermione had just unintentionally given his sense of worth and masculinity back to him. He knew that Hermione could have told him all of that and he wouldn't have believed her. He would have thought she was saying it to him to make him feel better because she was kind. There was no reason for Hermione to be kind about him behind his back however. She had been telling nothing but the blunt truth.
Fortunately, Ron and Harry and Draco were too busy whizzing around on their brooms practicing maneuvers to see the changed expression on Snape's face.
* * *
That night, Snape and Hermione were watching Charlotte and little Severus play in front of the fire. The babies were asleep in the nursery.
Severus toddled over to his mother. "Dear, you smell," Hermione said bluntly to the baby but with a gentle affection and amusement shining out of her eyes.
Snape frowned at her. "Must you speak to my son like that?" he asked irritably.
Little Severus merely nodded in solemn agreement with his mother. He knew his nappy was dirty and he was too little to be anything other than completely unself-conscious about it. "He knows he's got a dirty nappy," Hermione said matter-of-factly to Snape, completely unperturbed by his crankiness as per usual. "Don't you, darling?" she said, leaning down almost nose-to-nose with her favourite. Little Severus smiled happily at her. "See? He's not worried," she added to Snape.
"That's because he adores his Mama," Snape said drily, still looking unimpressed.
"That's because his Mama adores him," Hermione said quite truthfully to her son, smiling down into his gentle black eyes and stroking his silky dark hair.
"Love Mama!" little Severus declared cheerfully before the nanny House Elf took him off to change his nappy.
"I love you too, baby," she said, waving after him and blowing kisses, her usually sharp grey eyes tender.
Hermione's bond with little Severus always made Snape feel uncomfortably emotional. "Why do you love Severus so much?" he asked her curiously as he watched Charlotte throw her toy across the room in a fit of temper.
Hermione crossed her slim legs, propped her sharp chin in one hand and regarded Snape solemnly from her dark iron grey eyes. "Because he reminds me of you," she said simply. Snape suddenly saw the same depth of feeling that was often in her eyes when they rested on little Severus directed toward himself. Her eyes caressed his face.
Snape had always found it fascinating that Hermione was capable of being so open. That kind of nakedness would make him feel unbearably vulnerable. He knew there was no need to practice Occulmency and Legilemency on her even if he had been inclined to which he hadn't. There was no need, she hid nothing. In fact, she was incapable of hiding anything. He still found that breath-taking. If she had ever really lied to him about anything important, he would have known. In well over 10 years, she never had. Not once. He supposed it was that very reason that she was able to deceive him on the rare occasions that she had in relation to the black unicorn.
He leaned forward and brushed his lips across Hermione's as little Severus toddled back into the room. Little Severus gurgled in pleasure to see his parents kissing. It was a rare display as his father was reserved in front of him and his siblings usually.
