A New Chapter?
"You can't start a new chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one."
"Don't you lecture me, Albus." Severus warned as he turned, the tiny flask filled with his memories of the seventies—the time before and surrounding the moment his life got royally buggered and sentenced to a life of perpetual servitude to two masters. "I'm not the one hanging on the wall as animated paint smears due to some forlorn notion of seeing someone who was long dead and buried."
The portrait of Albus—this particular framed duplicate portrait had been especially ordered to hang in Severus's private brewing lab that Albus knew he would never abandon, even with his assigned tenure as Defense Master and later Headmaster—took the righteous rebuke from his former employee and valued spy stoically.
At least, until Severus uncorked the flask and began pouring the stored memories into the silver snake encircled pensive.
"You are spending a good deal of time in Miss Granger's company as of late…" Albus trailed off as he noted the ever-so-subtle tension between Severus shoulder blades. His inking that something was brewing—pun intended—between the sullen Professor Snape and the bright-eyed Ministry Intern Miss Granger had been right.
Albus silently patted himself on his back before continuing on, "And she in yours it appears… as unlikely as it seems, you both do complement each other well."
"Silence," Severus growled. He did not need this… chat, especially from the faded portrait of the late and great Albus I-got-seven-hundred-names-and-titles Dumbledore while his own subconscious (or whatever one called that annoying inner voice) had been observing the same… pattern, lately.
A pattern that was alarmingly starring Hermione with-the-warm-brown-eyes Granger.
It had all started sickeningly innocently enough four years ago—Granger had hunted him down shortly after his discharged from his inpatient prison room at St Mungo's and his exoneration of war-crimes from his thankfully, closed-door trial at the Ministry.
Granger had hounded him with apologies upon apologies before he agreed to see her for a coffee date, where her apologies gave way to questions.
If he hadn't been forced back into his role as Headmaster due to a the lengthy legality of claiming his maternal family's legacy—which he was still battling, the idiocy of bureaucratic Ministry paper-pushers knew no bounds—he wouldn't have seen her again, willingly.
Yes, he received those embellished holiday invitations to attend the Order's Christmas party but he had no notion of attending any such nonsense. He had spent more than enough time filed away in those God-forsaken rooms that that mutt called a home during the war.
The newly donned annual Hogwarts Yule Ball, however, was a mandatory event for all staff that Severus swore Minerva had orchestrated during one of her channeling Dumbledore moments as Deputy Headmistress—the two Gryffindors, late master and apprentice, were more attuned to one another than Severus had ever believed two wizards could be. (He would never underestimate Minerva again.)
It was at the first such event that he had run into Granger again, quite literally, near the dance floor.
It had been an interesting night—annoying questions and unwanted apologizes were instead replaced with witty, light banter and two shared dances that were… more than adequate—and one that had been repeated twice more in the next two Yule Balls before Severus had accepted her invite to a fortnightly reading meeting.
From there, over a course of a single year, they had begun to spend more time together. First, just a weekly chat over a good, strong cuppa at the Spoon of Sugar Coffee and Tea House off of Diagon Alley. Next, catching the odd academic lecture or seeing the newest addition to the modest wizarding wing at the British Museum.
From there… Severus sighed… it had only seemed natural to share Sunday lunches at the quaint sidewalk café near the center of Vallis Dubh, a winsome wizarding village near Mallaig, before engaging in a quiet stroll together in the shaded park across from Hermione's cottage.
The truth of the matter was that he, Severus lovesick-only-for-Lily Snape, was slowly developing feelings for the bookish yet alluring—her uniform had hid a magnitude of sins, one of which was a full figure—witch. A witch that was nearly twenty years his junior…
As if Albus could read his thoughts like he once could, he remarked before leaving the Potions Master to his brewing, "Twenty years are like ten to us wizards who live to be 150—not very long in the course of things.,"
Severus sighed again, before recollecting his memories back into his flask. Perhaps now wasn't the opportune time to view his memories, after all he did have essays to grade.
Fini
Author's Note: This is a missing scene of sorts and flashback from my submission for QLFC, Season 5, Round 11 entitled "Wintertime Blessings" (ie story five of my QLFC collection, Quaffles and Hoops).