A/N: Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn't mine.This is my first attempt at a Hermione/Snape relationship, so please bare with me, and please tell me what you think.
Two o'clock, the morning of July 16th found a twenty year old Hermione Granger reading on the couch of number 12 Grimmwald Place, while everyone else in the house slept.
Six months ago her best friend Harry Potter had killed the most evil wizard of all time, Lord Voldemort. It was the second war against the mad man, the first having took place when Harry was only one, when he defeated, but did not kill, Voldemort.
Both wars had many casualties; the first took Harry's parents along with many other witches and wizards, and Muggles as well. The second took her own. Mr. and Mrs. Granger had died a month before Voldemort was overthrown, and Hermione was still getting over it.
As a matter of fact, that was what she had been doing this very night when her friends had all decided to go out to dinner. She had been particularly upset this night, reliving every moment she had spent with her parents, properly grieving for them for the first time since they had died. She had been too busy before.
At the age of 20 she had become a certified Potion's Mistress as well as a Charms Professor, and now, she was working on earning her Transfiguration degree. To pay for her secondary magical education, Hermione worked as a teacher, home-schooling many different children across Europe and America as well. Up until that night, her job and her studies had kept her mind off of the fate of her parents.
She had broken down in the middle of the afternoon, and decided not to go with her friends to dinner, urging them to go without her. When they finally gave in, realizing how stubborn she was and knowing that they couldn't win an argument with her, they left to her emotions.
Eventually she cried herself to sleep, only waking when everyone came crashing through the front door of the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix, where she was still staying, were they where all still staying.
The crash of the door hitting the wall made her sit straight up and rush down the stairs to see what had happened. She found all of them, the Weasleys, Harry, Remus, Tonks and even Kingsly Shaklebolt, staggering in through the open door. They were all quite wobbly and none of them had the right color.
She had shrieked and rushed over to them, demanding to know exactly what had happened.
"Calm down Hermione," Harry had told her, "We're all fine, just a bit tired. There was a fight at the restaurant, some jumped up Italian mobsters, and when we tried to break it up we were hit with some of the curses."
"But you're all hurt!" she had protested, "You can't tell me that it was all from one fight!"
"You're right 'Mione, it wasn't just one fight," Ron interrupted. "Once the first one broke out the whole place felt the need to kill each other, so there were a lot of fights. And we were in the middle of all of them."
"But we're all just fine dear," Mrs. Weasley said before Hermione could answer Ron. "We just need to rest; we'll be alright in the morning." Hermione had just nodded her head, speechless as she watched them ascend the steps up to their rooms.
That had been four hours ago.
Since then she found that she couldn't go back to sleep, and not wanting to dwell on thoughts of her parents any longer, she had decided to take a shower, hoping that the running water would take away all of her problems as it flowed down her body. No such luck.
Upon finding that the shower did not work, Hermione turned to the only thing she knew would: a book.
She had plodded down the creaky old steps into the kitchen to make herself some tea, and then proceeded into the living room off of the main hall of the house.
She spent the first few moments down there making herself comfortable, and the next admiring how much they had changed the dirty old house. After five years of inhabitants it was now doxy and boggart free, as well as well lit. They had cleaned up all the dust and dirt, throwing away the old curtains rugs that refused to give up years of dust and grime. They had placed new candle on all of the walls, having taken down all of the past house elves' heads. They had even given it a new paint job. All in all, it now a much more cheery place to live.
When she finally settled down to read, it was forty-five minutes after she got down there. She nestled herself into the corner of the couch, leaning her back against the arm with a pillow between them.
She had been reading for an hour when she heard the door bang open for the second time that night.
Severus Snape stumbled up the steps to Number 12 Girmmwald Place his normally billowing black robes clinging to his body, but not because it was raining.
That evening he had made a trip to Diagon Alley to refill his potion supplies. He had owled ahead, telling the store owner what he need and was assured that it would all be ready for him at seven o'clock. So he had gone to get them.
He had on his ever present black robes and his wand was shoved into on of his pockets when he walked through the Leaky Cauldron to get into the magical alley. On his way to the potions supply shop, he had been pulled roughly into a side alley.
He was outraged.
He was Severus Snape, the most feared professor at Hogwarts! Who could dare to attempt to hurt him! But there was just more than the attempt to hurt him in the eyes of more than one of his attackers.
He looked up, his arms bound by someone behind him, into cold grey eyes that he knew only two people in the world ever possessed, and one of them was now dead. The small gang that had pulled him so unceremoniously from the public eye was made up of many of his old students, many sons and daughters of now deceased, or captured, DeathEaters.
Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zambinni, Pansy Parkinson, Gregory Goyle, Vincent Crabbe, Marcus Flint and more, the thirst for his blood evident in their eyes.
Voldemort had discovered that he was a spy for the Order the same day he met his end. The battle that followed the discovery had killed him and many of his most faithful and loyal servants when the Order, in its entirety, had shown up, capturing those who had not died when the smoke cleared. Severus's attackers held him responsible for their now lack of parental figures.
They had beaten him horribly, thinking that they would get more satisfaction from hurting him with their bare hands/knives than they would with a simple spell, or had tried to. He had fought back, like any Slytherin would have done, but in the end there had been too many of them. His stomach was slashed in many different places and his back sported a long gash as well.
When they had finally let him go, thinking he was dead from blood loss, or would be soon, it was late into the night. He had lain there on the ground where they had left him, willing himself to move after entertaining thoughts of just dying there. In the end he had decided that would be playing into their hands, and he was never one to intentionally please others, apart from Dumbledore. So he had forced himself to stand. Forced himself to make his way back to the Leaky Cauldron. Forced himself to walk down the muggle streets of London to Number 12 Grimmwald place, it having been unsafe for him to Apperate with his injuries and even more painful to have gotten ashes in them had he Flooed to old Black manor.
He finally reached his old enemy's house after hours of walking /crawling and resting. He made his way up the steps and threw the door open as well as he could, alerting anyone awake to his presence.
But once he stepped through the door his eyes met a sight that made his already ragged breath catch in his throat.
There, on the couch in a room right off of the hall he was now in, was Hermione Granger, her long hair framing her face and flowing down her chest, ending just beneath her breasts, catching and reflecting the light, glittering all shades of brown, from a light honey to a dark amber. She had a book in hand as usual and her head was up, looking at him, showing her smooth, pale neck.
Even in his current state he couldn't stop a line from one of his favorite songs to pop into his mind
She's a Killer Queen
And that was just what she was.
She really did look regal, sitting there with her head tilted like that. And he knew she was as deadly as she was beautiful, he had seen her in battle.
Yes, he called her 'mudblood' 'know-it-all' and a 'goodie-two-shoes', but the Gryffindor was beautiful. The truth was, he had thought about her like that for awhile now. Ever since he had had to have been present, along with his colleagues (other Potions Masters and Mistresses) from the counsel he had been on ever since he had earned his title, to award her with her certificate that told any who saw it that she was a qualified Potions Mistress, an extremely coveted position.
She had been with five others receiving the title of Master or Mistress that day, but she had to go first, because the ceremony that would give her the Masters in Charms that she had been working for since she had left Hogwarts as well started ten minutes after the Potions one did.
He remembered her outfit amazingly well, a white, flowing sundress that tied around her neck and was cut quite a bit lower than he would have ever expected the self-conscious Gryffindor girl to wear. But she wasn't a girl anymore, and he had realized it that day, more precisely the brief moment that her hands touched his when he had handed her the scroll that listed her accomplishments in the field of potions. Her slender fingers brushed his, sending an uncommon, unwelcome tingle down his spine.
And now he felt that same tingle as he watched her jump up from the couch, her book lying forgotten on the floor, not realizing the picture she made. Her long, baggy pajama pants in Gryffindor colors sitting far beneath her hip bones and her camisole going down to just below her navel, leaving a good two or three inches of golden skin uncovered.
As Hermione reached him, he saw many different masks of emotions pass over her face before he fell unconscious where he stood.
Hermione stared, mouth agape at the man who came through the door. It was her former potions professor, Severus Snape. Curious as to what brought him to headquarters so late at night, or early in the morning as the case may be, she rose from her place on the couch and made her way over to him, noting his somewhat disheveled appearance that peaked her curiosity even more. She reached him and caught him as his body began to fall to the floor, her hands on either side of him, wrapped around his back.
She was astounded. Her old Potions teacher had just walked in and fainted, the most weakness she had ever seen him display.
But I guess that since he did faint he was in no condition to stop it. She thought to herself.
This started a train of thoughts, wondering what had happened to her not-so-beloved Potions professor. Sure, they had become civil to each other once she was out of school and did not have to act as though he hated her and her friends in front of the Slytherins that she had class with, but they had never been more than civil, never friendly.
She told herself that he really did dislike her and that he really meant those things he said to her all those years she had been his student. She told herself that he didn't feel the shiver up his spine when their hands had touched when he handed her that scroll, and she told herself that she hadn't either.
But the aching in her arms brought her out of her thoughts and back into reality, and the fact that she was holding an unconscious Severus against her body. She quickly decided to take him to the couch she had just been laying on and then decided what to do from there.
Her mind made up, Hermione shifted her hands so that she had a better grip on the man and began their trip to the couch.
Upon reaching it she turned, so that she could lay him on his back. She gently leaned down, her chest against his, as she put his head on the pillow she had been using and his upper body on the sofa. Once she was sure his upper half wasn't going to fall if she let go, she took her arms from around him and lifted his feet onto the rest of the couch and settled him so that he looked as if he was just sleeping.
She bent down again, intending on untying his shoes, when realized that there was blood on her hands. Looking down at her shirt she realized that it too was stained red.
She gasped. She hadn't noticed that he was bleeding! His black robes had soaked much of the blood, but retained their dark color and she hadn't noticed the rips in them.
She turned back to him and debated with in herself as whether or not to take off his robes to see what damage had been done to him. One voice told her to wake Molly, and that she would know what to do, but another told her that she was a Potions Mistress and a Charms Professor! She should know what to do in this kind of situation, and besides, Molly had had a rough night and needed her sleep.
Hermione went with the second voice.
She lifted one of his arms and proceeded to take it out of the sleeve that covered it, noticing his long slender hands as she did so, and revealing another long black sleeve as he had a shirt on under his robes. Slipping her arm behind his back once more, she lifted his torso up and slipped his other arm from the robe, which she dropped uncaringly on the floor. After setting him back down, she went to work his shirt.
It was a long sleeved, black, button up, collared shirt that one would find on many a muggle business man. And as Hermione look at it she noticed that it had his initials, intertwining S's on the pocket, picked out in a silver thread. Right after, she noticed he had the first few buttons undone, giving her a tempting look at his pale chest.
She reached out, tentatively, her fingers shaking somewhat at the thought of un-dressing the man in front of her. What if he woke up while she was taking off his shirt? What would he think of her? Would he believe that she was just trying to help? Would he yell at her for being such an idiot as to not get help?
Oh well, she deiced, what ever happens, happens.
And with that thought her fingers began to undo the buttons that held his shirt together. With every new one came more of his pale body for her to see, and once she was finished she was amazed as to what the man had been hiding beneath his billowing black robes.
While his chest was not overly muscled, he still had defined pectorals, milky white and strong. And his abdominal muscles, though not rippling and defined, were still flat and smooth despite his age, and it all left her absolutely speechless. As did the five bleed gashes that covered his abdomen.
Hermione quickly drew her wand and summoned two bowls of warm water and a cloth so that she could clean out the cuts. She dipped the cloth in on of the bowls and began to gently clean Severus's wounds.
Severus woke to a soft tickling sensation sweeping over his chest and a stinging pain on his back and stomach. Letting out a soft, almost undetectable moan, his eyes fluttered open making him aware of the curtain of slightly curly brown hair whose ends were brushing his bare chest.
Wait, his bare chest?
Severus sat up quickly, which he just as quickly regretted, causing his attendant to fall onto the floor before the couch he was laying on. He quickly took stock of all the clothes he had on, pleased that only his shirt and robe were gone and not his pants as well, before he looked to who had been caring for him.
It was Hermione. The same Hermione who had caught him when he fainted and the same Hermione who was covered in his blood. His shock that she had taken care of him was matched by her own look that he had woken up so violently.
All of this happened in a matter of seconds before the pain kicked in again and he groaned aloud, making Hermione jump up off the floor and try to push him back down onto the couch.
"Let me finish cleaning your cuts," she told him in a motherly voice she didn't know she was using, "then you can sit up."
He nodded meekly, allowing her to finish what she had started and enjoying the feel of her hands on his body as he admired her beauty.
She truly was a woman now. The curves she never thought she would acquire had finally made an appearance and she had really filled out. Her hair was no longer bushy, but had grown out with age and now fell in soft, silky ringlets down to the middle of her back. And her cinnamon eyes were framed by long black lashes that needed no make up to emphasize. Her lips were the same reddish-pink they had always been, and every now and then, when she was nervous or apprehensive, she would take the side of her full lower between her teeth, a habit that had not left her since she had left school. She was beautiful, like a goddess of the Earth from ancient times, and here she was taking care of him.
He concentrated on her touch through the whole thing, taking note that she was talking to him all the while, in that same motherly tone she had used before, but he only caught the last thing she said.
"And I would have used a spell on these, but I didn't know how you had gotten them or if there was in poison in them or anything, so I didn't want to risk it. And I don't have my potions with me or anything and I didn't want to leave you while I went up to get the few I do have with me incase you woke up or had a fit or something." She told him.
"Thank you," he said, his silky voice making her loose herself for a moment.
She just nodded, not trusting herself to speak aloud. When she finally got control of herself, and thought that she could talk with out her voice cracking, she asked him if he would stand so that she could wrap his wounds with clean cloths so he would not get infected until Madam Pomfrey had a chance to look at his injuries.
He just nodded and did as he was told by a student, for once in his life.