"Hermione? Where the devil are you, witch?"
"Kitchen!"
"Why are you in the kitchen? They'll be here in two minutes. And what's that smell?" Severus's head poked around the door. "Salazar's sack, are you trying to ward off vampires in here? What on earth are you doing?"
"Just finishing the nibbles," Hermione replied, placing the garlic stuffed lamb into the oven and setting the little vampire shaped egg time she kept on the counter.
He rolled his eyes behind her back, though not before appreciating the view of his wife bending over the ancient Aga. "They're not here to eat, love. They're here for -"
"Yes yes, they're here for the experience. I know. But you always take ages and five hours from now it'll be dinner time. So we'll have our experience with a kebab. You'll cope."
"They'll get everything all greasy."
Now it was time for Hermione to roll her eyes, trying not to snort at her husband - the man whose hair turned into an oil slick at the mere mention of a heat source - complaining about grease anywhere. "As though we can't cast an oil-repelling charm on them? And I've made that hummus with the olive tapenade you like too."
He considered. "Well that's alright then. What about -"
"Yes, the smoked eggplant too. If you're kind to Catarina tonight, I might even let you have some of the lokma that I put together last night when you were down in your lab. I've had them in stasis all day." She smirked as a hungry light fired in his eye. She knew he was salivating beneath his rigid self-control.
Severus' smile spread slowly as he stepped closer to his bride of four months. "Do you have any of the syrup left?" he asked in a low voice. "Because I seem to recall that it tasted particularly lovely when licked from your nipples."
Her smile was just as wicked as his as she glanced up beneath her lashes. "Maaaybe. Maybe a few other surprises too. If you've the energy after our guests leave," she murmured, raising herself on her toes and meeting his wicked, wonderful lips with hers. She allowed him to steer the kiss, sighing as he slipped his tongue between her lips to play against hers. Really, they should just close the floo and -
The moment was interrupted by the sound of the sitting room floo roaring to life. "Severus! 'Mione! I brought ale!" Ron's voice called. "I even remembered the cooling charm this time. Where do you want it? I'm ready to murder some - oh, there you are. Gross. I'm putting this next to my chair then, and if you keep doing that I'm not going to share." His footsteps thudded toward the dining table as the floo ignited again.
"Severus! What kind of manners do you call this, not even here to greet your guests?" Lucius Malfoy stood at the entry to the kitchen, peering at his best friend and his pink-cheeked bride with not a little jealousy. He remembered that first blush of marriage. Not that his relationship was anything to complain about even now, but there was a certain practiced comfort about their encounters now. He sniffed a bit at that, both figuratively and literally, then immediately perked. "Oh, but it smells wonderful in here. What magic have you wrought today, Hermione? After last session, I dreamt - literally dreamt! - of your takoyaki!"
Narcissa Malfoy chuckled from behind her husband. "Yes, you've turned my gourmand of a husband into a street-food addict. Well done, Hermione. Though I'll admit, it does smell wonderful. Greek food?" He moved to slide two bottles of wine onto the counter as his wife slid two more behind him.
Hermione laughed and left her husband to embrace both the elder Malfoys before guiding them toward their dining room. "Yes, kebabs. I'm glad you've brought wine, since I've spared you the retsina."
"Foul stuff," another voice chimed as Draco Malfoy-Potter as he stepped from the floo, dragging Harry Potter-Malfoy behind him with an armload of crisps and a box of chocolates. "Uncle, Hermione. Are we the last?"
"Nearly," Severus replied, gesturing toward the table. "We're waiting on -"
"Sorry we're late!" a voice cried from the sitting room as the floo flared to life once again. "Luna couldn't find her...um…"
"I couldn't find my bra, I hope you don't mind," Luna Shacklebolt said as she swung into the room rather swishily. A blushing Kingsley followed moments later. Severus fixed his eyes on a point somewhere around Luna's left ear as he greeted the last of their guests while Hermione snorted at the rather permanently bemused look on the Minister's face.
"What horrid state function are we tonight?" Hermione asked, curious as always about what excuse Kings gave for his escape to their bi-monthly game night.
"Ah, you're not one but two fictitious calendar events! A meeting with the head of the Save the Moonfrogs Society and a meeting about diminishing dragonscale supply with the head of Snapothacarical Supplyhouse, this time. I thought Severus might run long. Mmmm what is that smell?"
Hermione laughed, guiding Kings to his seat. "That's for later, as Severus always runs long," she said, taking her seat.
"Oh, how delightful for you," cried Luna. "Kings runs long too. And rather thick. It really is just wonderful when he twists to the left while he -"
"The session, love," Kingsley interjected. "We were talking of the session, not -"
"Oh, well, your sessions are always very long Kings. It's the only way to keep the fuzzwhimples from lowering your sperm count." She tilted her head and looked around the table. "Wouldn't you agree Ronald?"
"I - er." Ron looked around the table in mild panic before asking Harry, "Did you get to the last Cannon's game? That new keeper is a right mess, isn't he?" His sperm count was the last thing he wanted to think about at the moment.
Hermione rolled her eyes at the antics of their friends. Ron always felt the odd man out as no amount of cajoling, enticing, of begging could convince his wife to join their sessions together. Pansy would certainly not be playing pretend for an entire evening that could be spent blissfully huband free and enjoying a very cold martini with Daphne Nott and Astoria Creevey and he could very much bugger off for a few hours and leave her to her people thank you.
Truthfully, Hermione rather thought he enjoyed the time away from the noise and commotion of their townhouse as well.
"Does anyone need something to drink before we start? Luna, Kings?" she asked, noting that the boys were already digging into Ron's cache of ale and that the elder Malfoys had full wine glasses in front of them. Severus' customary cup of tea-strong-enough-to-tapdance-on was already at his place at the head of the table.
"Wine for me, thanks," Kingsley replied.
"I've my own beverage, Hermione," Luna smiled before removing an enormous thermos from her bag. She took off the cap and seemed entirely unperturbed by the whiff of purple smoke that wafted out of the container. "I have to keep my sompping levels down to avoid conjoining the twins' karmic paths," she said, patting her slightly curved belly.
"You're sompping...right. I think I'll just help myself to some of that wine, then," Hermione replied vaguely.
Hermione waited until she was out of sight in the kitchen before rolling her eyes to the ceiling with a grin. She poured the wine into a very large glass, then snagged a tray of almonds and cheesy crisps for the table.
She sat down at the table and looked to her right, waiting for Severus to begin. He did so immediately, recapping their last session and their party's unfortunate encounter with a possessed druid priest in the woods and the injuries sustained by Harry, Ron, and Lucius in that drawn-out battle. Ron had broken his bow in the fight as well, so she was sure at least part of the party would be tromping back toward the town in an attempt to acquire new weaponry.
Hermione listened with half an ear as she looked at their gathered friends. She still wasn't sure how it came about, but four years before Severus had mentioned his interest in running a short tabletop campaign and might she be interested in joining even though it meant spending time with him outside her apprenticeship? And might some of her friends also be interested because he'd only convinced Lucius thus far and he wasn't even sure Cissa would want to come.
What had followed had led down some strange paths indeed. Their "short" campaign was now in its seventeenth "primary" quest with characters that had grown far beyond their original concepts. Harry and Ron, true to form, had chosen fighters with more points in brawn than brains and spent a good deal of their time healing their wounds or finding new weapons. Lucius, oddly, had chosen to play a bard and occasionally broke into song at the table which was….appalling beyond belief. His bard had recently developed some delusions of - well, delusions, and had begun to join the boys in the fray. It was terribly funny, but his character had almost lost an eye in the last battle.
Narcissa's character was a wily political manipulator, originally tagging along with the rest of the party so that she'd have an escort to her next politically-manipulatie event. They'd had to get creative about her motivations for remaining with the party, but eventually they'd decided that her politician had formed an unrequited attachment for Hermione's druidic healer and that was that. Draco's ranger spent most of his time poncing around the woods and looking pretty while Kingsley's knight errant followed looking menacing and protecting the women from the worst excesses of Harry and Ron's idiocy. Luna had chosen to create a wildling who did not speak the common tongue - even after seventeen quests with the party - and who regularly traipsed off and got in trouble, dragging the rest of the party with her. They'd been chased from three towns with pitchforks and encountered a were-capybara as a result.
They all drove Severus as Game Master positively, stark-raving mad, but to all their surprises, Severus was an excellent storyteller and they actually had a great deal of fun.
A great deal of other things too.
Their four years at the table had spawned not only countless NPCs and quests and loots, but also several romances.
For Narcissa and Lucius, it had rekindled a flame that had grown dim after the second fall of Voldemort. Watching Narcissa's character flirt with Hermione's uninterested druid seemed to have ignited an irrational jealousy that led to some - as Cissa confessed late one evening after far too much wine - amazingly inventive sex and the long-awaited for Malfoy sibling two years before.
Draco had not been amused to find himself a new big brother at the ripe age of twenty-four, but he'd been quickly charmed by the grey-eyed, blonde-haired Lyra Malfoy. The toddler already had every house elf, adult, and peacock she'd ever met neatly twisted around her pinky finger. Hermione was convinced there must be some Veela in the Malfoy bloodlines.
Alas, not a month after Lyra's birth, Draco had fallen in love himself. Six months of pointed jibes from his pretty, pretty ranger launched at Harry's brawny, brainless bruh had led to amusing banter. Said amusing banter had later led to one too many ales near the end of the night, which had led to a very unexpected Draco-Harry mashup in the potions garden outside Malfoy cottage (which Severus had occupied since the end of the war). Liplock had quickly led to a quiet drink at a muggle pub and, a year later, to a private wedding and absolutely glamorous and magically ostentatious reception in the Malfoy ballroom.
The floating ice sculpture of Zeus and Ganymede had really been too much.
Luna and Kingsley had ended up conceiving in that very same garden not three years later, which was not at all awkward for everyone at the table who had seen Kingsley's bare arse bouncing in the moonlight. Which was, unfortunately, everyone at the table. Shy Luna was not. She wasn't particularly quiet, either, and it was her cries that had originally drawn the gathering to the window for fear that Lucius' prize peacocks had gotten into Chinese chomping cabbages again. The Minister and his buxom magical zoologist had wed amid mild scandal a month later and were a few short months away from becoming first-time parents. Luna greeted that news with the same vague and foggy eyed serenity with which she greeted Nargles, but Kingley was simply beside himself with joy. The Minister was rarely seen without a smile these days, which made Wizengamot sessions truly disturbing.
Ron's hours-long absences from Pansy's side had garnered a renewed interest in her business-partner-turned-husband (Weaslinson Import Export was doing very well indeed), and they'd welcomed their fourth, fifth, and sixth (and final, Pansy assured Hermione) child ten months before. Ron, whose aspiration had been to never be as prolific as his parents, heartily agreed. They'd thought to stop at four, but the triplets had clearly had other ideas. After Harold had come twins Ignatius and Isaac, then triplets Jean, Joanna, and Jessamine. Ron was terrified that another pregnancy would result in quadruplets and he couldn't think of four names that began with a K that weren't simply awful.
Hermione rather thought Ron was doomed to surpass his parents, but wisely kept that thought - and the fact that Pansy had turned decidedly green when Severus ordered fish and chips at their last pub trivia night - to herself.
As for Severus...Hermione turned her eye toward her husband, who was examining his notes and gesturing with his hands as he guided Harry, Ron, and Lucius back toward the town for new weapons. Her romance with Severus had been a slower burn and not unexpected at all. After taking her on as an apprentice - a position that she'd fought for tooth and nail - it had only been a matter of time. Hermione smirked to herself, feigning interest in her character sheet. She'd won Severus fair and square, and he might be a great Game Master, but she was the true campaigner.
Hermione had known she was attracted to Severus from the moment she visited him at St. Mungo's during his post-war recovery, which was saying something since he'd look rather shite at the time. She'd visited every week during his recovery and therapy, then during his convalescence at Malfoy Cottage. By the time he'd decided to start the Snapothacarical Supplyhouse - and she'd thought of the name, thank you very much - she'd convinced him he needed an assistant and wasn't she has best student in the last decade? Step by step she'd wormed her way into a life at his side, and she couldn't be happier with the results. A career she loved, a relationship full of fire and passion, and a home build with her favorite person on earth.
Yes, Severus Snape had been worth fighting for. The man was all fire and intelligence and nips and sarcasm and hands and laughter and nimble fingers and pulsing, throbbing -
She jolted as a pair of fingers snapped in front of her face. "Sorry," she murmured. "Woolgathering. What did I miss?"
"That must have been some woolgathering, 'Mione. You had the goofiest look on your face."
"Yes, thank you, Ronald. Honestly, how does Pansy cope with these effusive compliments?" she replied sarcastically.
He shrugged. "She doesn't look like a goof? And she'd stab me with one of her heels if I said she did?"
"If we could continue," said their acerbic Game Master, "You were rolling initiative to deal with the pack of Cornish Pixie-Squirrels about to attack you. D20s, if you please."
Hermione smiled again, thinking of the bottle of syrup she had warming by the Aga. She had a very good idea of what she wanted to do with this table top after their guests finally left.