Like other readers, I couldn't stop wondering what might have happened after the scandalous events we witness in Sixpence_Jones' one-shot 'A Difficult Man' (published on A03). This is my take on it; credit for the original idea goes to her! It doesn't really matter which story you read first - you will figure out in what predicament our heroine finds herself and what lead to either way. :)
Huge thanks to Ouatic7 for beta-ing this for me, and to Opal Chalice on Deviant Art for allowing me to use her artwork for cover!
A Woman Scorned
The unavoidable crack of apparition momentarily stunned the nocturnal wildlife into silence when Severus and his newly acquired bride materialised in front of the high iron gates just outside the wards of his home. He had taken up residence at his ancestral abode a year after the war when somewhat tragic family circumstances had forced it upon him. Yet it had been a blessing in disguise. The thought of still having to live at Spinner's End after it had been infested with a particularly nasty kind of half-human vermin made him shudder. The alternative of dwelling in the Hogwarts dungeons and still having to deal with dunderheads on a daily basis was almost worse.
"Where are we?" Hermione asked, trying to get her bearings in the darkness. He was reluctant to let go of her hand which had been firmly cupped in his since they had made their exit from the ministry ballroom. It was hard to even make out the outlines of the house looming at the end of the driveway, and the flag-stoned path was dangerous in high heels. Confused as she probably still was, she didn't even attempt to move away from him but rather clung to his hand as if it was the only thing that kept her from going under.
"Welcome to Prince Manor," Severus offered, unlocking the gate with a flick of his wand and leading the way up the curved path towards the building.
"This is where you live?" The opulence of the place, obvious even in the dark, didn't match her vague image of his upbringing, which she suspected to have been difficult. But, then, she didn't really know anything about him: only that he had taught, spied, and almost died at the end of the war; that he had mysteriously survived and just as mysteriously vanished from public life after his recuperation and exoneration. Since then, nobody had heard or spoken much of the ex-spy, ex-Death Eater and ex-headmaster.
"Have you expected to be dragged off into a cave or some kind of underground dwelling, considering what your friends always used to call me?" She couldn't see the arching of his eyebrow in the dark, but she sensed it in the tone of his voice.
"I never had any reason to spend much time considering where you might live," Hermione answered, pulling her newly transfigured coat closer around her. She was cold. "I couldn't possibly have imagined that I would find myself walking home with you some day."
She would not have believed any of what had happened tonight if she had not just lived through it. When dressing for the ministry event, she would never have thought that she would become the cause of scandal by the end of the evening. She would never have believed that her own husband would embarrass himself and her with his drinking and then publicly humiliate and repudiate her. And she certainly had not foreseen that she would leave the party on the arm of one Severus Snape, whose role in the drama that had just unfolded yet remained to be evaluated.
Clinging to his arm nevertheless - more for stability than for comfort - Hermione shuddered as they stepped up to the main entrance.
He threw her a sidelong glance, trying to determine her state of mind. While she showed all signs of shock - the paleness, the clammy hands and the shivering – her demeanour was surprisingly composed. Probably the calm before the storm. Judging by what he remembered of her from the past, he still expected her to go off like a Weasley fire cracker any minute. Or worse, she could dissolve into tears. He hoped he would get her inside and settled for the night before that happened. He had no wish to witness the emotional breakdown she was probably entitled to.
He unwarded the main door and held it open for her, beckoning her to enter.
"Fancy," murmured Hermione, taking in the curved staircase, the tapestries and marble floors of the entrance hall. It felt a bit like stepping into a museum: it was spotless and stunning with its architectural splendour, but it didn't exude the feeling of a place that was actually filled with life. He was only one person, after all. "Have you been living here for long?"
How she could even make small talk in the face of this devastation was beyond him. But he was grateful that for once she kept a firm rein on the many questions that must be running circles in her mind and would probably pour out any minute.
"For a couple of years. The house was my mother's inheritance when her father died. Now it's mine."
He led her into the study. A flick of his wand ignited the fireplace, another for the mood lights placed along the walls. Hermione stood staring at the bookshelves, her predicament momentarily forgotten as she took in the sight and smell of volumes over volumes of old, leather-bound books.
"Of course," he muttered, his voice heavy with irony. "I should have anticipated that this is what would finally render you catatonic. Please, make yourself at home, Miss Granger."
"Is that even my name?" she wondered, stepping closer to the fireplace and holding out her hands to better absorb the heat.
"I'm not sure. But whatever it is, I definitely won't call you Mrs. Weasley."
"Please don't. It's not a name I care to hear right now. Call me Hermione. After all, we are apparently married."
So she had realized what had happened. "Let me take your coat, Hermione, while you have a seat. You look like you're about to faint any minute."
Hermione allowed him to help her out of the garment, only now taking conscious notice of the change in apparel and remembering the transfiguration he had done on it. "Why did you change it?" she asked, an accusatory note in her voice. Is that what she could expect from him as her new husband? That he would make choices for her without regard for her wishes? Truth be told, it wouldn't be so different from what Ron had done most of the time, so she probably shouldn't be upset. Still, she felt she had to make a point. "I liked it the way it was!"
"Did you?" He raised his eyebrow.
Hermione sighed and shook her head. "No. It was dull and boring. But it was a birthday gift so it would have been rude to make any changes to it." Perhaps she had always been way too polite to make her wishes known, always compromising for the sake of harmony, eager to keep the peace.
He smirked as if he had just proven a point. "Topsy!" he said with a raised voice and, before Hermione could wonder about the exclamation, a house elf appeared. Severus gave him her cloak and his own, almost burying the small creature beneath the mountain of cloth. "Put this away and tell Turvy to prepare the guest suite."
"Topsy? Turvy?" Hermione asked, incredulous. "Did you name those elves?"
"I certainly did not. It was my grandmother's form of humour. Would you like a cup of tea?"
"No." She adamantly shook her head. "I need something stronger. A lot stronger. A fire whisky would be nice."
"I don't have fire whisky."
Right. He had told her that he didn't drink. But he surely couldn't mean 'not a all'? A non-drinking husband would be a welcome change, for sure, only not in this particular moment. "Anything else then," she compromised. "As long it has lots of alcohol in it."
"Very well," he sighed and opened the door of a side cabinet. "I think there was an old bottle of Scotch in here. I understand that it's supposed to be savoured, though, not downed."
"Fine, you can savour it then, or not drink at all. But I will. I'm either getting drunk or hysterical. Your choice."
"By all means, drink, woman!" He offered her a full glass, half of which she finished as soon as he let go. He gave her a disapproving look. Hopefully over-imbibing was not a Weasley habit.
Her coughing fit, and the tears that immediately sprang to her eyes, told him that it wasn't, at least not hers. He took the glass out of her hand and wordlessly offered her a blanket, seeing that she was still trembling. She accepted it gratefully, wrapping it around herself like a shield. He called the elf again and ordered tea.
"Tell me again what happened tonight, please?" she eventually asked, finally addressing the events of the last hour. "And don't use big words. I think I need to hear it a few more times plain and simple before I might actually start to believe it."
"You have just been spectacularly divorced by your husband and sold to the first bidder," Severus obliged, not being one for sugar-coating anything. "Doubtlessly, the epic scandal will make the headlines tomorrow morning."
"Sold and bought," she repeated, anger creeping back into her voice, "from one man to another at the toss of a coin. How is that even impossible? Surely, selling one's wife to another on a drunken whim cannot truly be lawful!"
"As lawful as the possession of house-elves, unfortunately. You know how archaic the wizarding world is. It knows no divorce. Offering your spouse's hand up for marriage in exchange for a monetary compensation is the only way to get out of unwanted matrimony - unless one considers widowhood. You should look at the bright side of this."
"There is a bright side?"
Severus mentally applauded her use of sarcasm in the face of personal tragedy. "Sure there is. You have gotten rid of your embarrassing husband. Don't tell me that's something you never wished for. This surely didn't happen out of the blue of a blissful marriage."
Topsy arrived with a tray and put it on the coffee table in front of the sofa. Severus filled a cup, adding a splash of milk to it before passing it over. Hermione took it in slightly shaking hands, wrapping herself in the blanket again. How did he even know how she drank her tea? A lucky guess, probably. Not even Ron knew - he always gave it to her black. "No, we weren't blissfully married," she admitted reluctantly. "We haven't been happy for a long while."
"I'm amazed to hear that you have ever been happy at all, considering who you were married to. When I read the news about your betrothal, I would have bet all my money that you would kill him within the first year. Astonishing that you both managed to survive so long."
"We were happy in the beginning. Or at least we pretended to be. The war was over, we were the lauded heroes of the wizarding world, and everybody's eyes were on us. We only found quiet and normalcy with each other. Everybody expected us to live happily ever after. Getting married just seemed meant to be."
"What utter rubbish!" he exclaimed disdainfully. "Marriage is about the last thing that makes people eternally happy."
"Why did you do it, then?" Hermione asked the question that had been burning on her lips from the moment he had tossed the galleon. "Why did you take Ron up on his 'offer' and claim me as your wife?"
He sighed. "I'm not quite sure myself. I didn't exactly have time to think it through. Maybe I simply enjoy getting one over Potter and his sidekick too much. Maybe I just wanted to see the shock on all of their faces, dammed hypocrites they are. If they were really so appalled by my and your husband's actions, why did nobody intervene?"
"You married me on the spur of the moment just to be spiteful?" That seemed a bit extreme, even for him.
"As I said, I mostly reacted on instinct. Having been put in such a perilous position could easily have ended badly for you."
"Meaning it was some kind of rescue mission? How was I even in peril? I would still have gone home with Ronald if you hadn't literally bought me off him."
"Doubtful. There were plenty of supposedly reformed Death Eaters present in case you hadn't noticed. Malfoy, were he not married, would have been the first to jump to the occasion and make an offer, but Parkinson would have been a likely candidate, too - his wife recently died. And I daresay you'd find yourself in an entirely different predicament right now if it had come to that."
Parkinson? Pansy's father? No one had managed to tie him to Voldemort, but he was certainly a supporter of pureblood ideology. Ever since the war, he'd been trying to make nice with the ministry, presenting himself as a liberal. Knowing Pansy, now a Malfoy, he clearly was not. Hermione shuddered to think that one of Voldemort's sympathisers might have offered for her. She hadn't even thought of that, and she really hoped Ron hadn't either. Were there really men who would have wedded her purely for revenge? Had her former teacher just saved her again from a worse fate? She could not bring herself to feel fully relieved at this point. So far, he had been nothing but decent, probably afraid that she would turn on the waterworks. She wondered herself why she hadn't yet. Her life lay in shambles, and all she felt was disbelief and numbness.
"Forgive me if I don't thank you just yet," she said, overcome with a new feeling of dread when realizing her own vulnerability. "I'm still trying to determine in what situation I find myself here with you now. As I understand, you were just given full marital rights at the toss of a coin, and I am now entirely at your mercy. I'm sure you'll understand if I find that a bit unsettling!"
He had even made a rather suggestive remark before whisking her away... about how much he would like to make her shudder. What were his intentions with her? She couldn't really imagine that he would force her into anything against her will, but she would also never have guessed that her husband of ten years would put her up for auction.
"You are afraid that I will force myself on you?" Severus asked, incredulous. "What became of 'You always protect the people who depend on you' from an hour ago?"
"I guess after the evening I had, I don't feel particularly trusting right now," Hermione responded flatly.
'Small wonder,' Severus thought, accepting her point. The one who had sworn eternal love to her had just tossed her to the wolves. He had been the quickest one to latch on. He probably wouldn't feel particularly trusting either in her shoes. Some reassurance was probably in order.
"At the moment, my only intention is to get you into bed before this 'calm-in-crisis-mode' that you're currently running in fails you - which I am frankly amazed has not happened yet. And to clarify: I mean into your bed, not mine, however tempting the idea of having you there entirely at my mercy might be."
"Don't... just please don't make jokes like that tonight. My ability to recognize humour or sarcasm is seriously compromised at the moment." She wasn't able to think straight and her emotions were all over the place. She didn't even know how she felt about him. The kiss with which he had sealed the deal had not helped matters at all. At first, she had simply been shell-shocked, unable to react. Funnily enough, her next thought had been that she ought to push him away. And yet she still hadn't reacted. It was all very confusing.
"Which is why we will talk more about this tomorrow," he said firmly, and added a bit more gently, "This is not the end of the world, Hermione. Think of it as a chance for a new beginning."
"To be sold into slavery?" She shot him a look that clearly asked, 'Are you kidding me?'
"Is that what marriage is to you?" he asked back.
"It is, if I don't get a say in who I'm getting married to! I'm all for the freedom of choice."
"Yes, I remember," he said drily. "That's why you tried to liberate the house elves in your fourth year, no matter whether it was in their best interest or not. But then, you also married Weasley, which was definitely not in your best interest. You did it by free choice, too, and look where it got you."
"Point taken. But... despite all our problems... I just would never have thought that he would stoop so low as to stab me in the back like this. Drinking always turned him into a person I didn't like very much."
"Drinking often turns people into the worst they can be." Which is why he didn't drink. He was unpleasant enough at the best of times - who knew what he would turn into when drunk? His father?
Hermione shook her head. "No. Drinking just brings out the side people manage to hide while sober. Ron has always been prone to jealousy and fits of temper. He always acts rashly and sometimes aggressively."
Severus frowned. "Did he ever become physically aggressive towards you?"
"No. I would never have remained with him if he had, no matter what the wizarding world thinksabout divorces. He just often acted without thinking, especially when angry. And he was angry with me earlier today."
"What he did was unforgivable. You're better off without him. Come, then, Hermione, let me show you to your room."
He led her out of the study and up the stairs, to a bedroom with an en suite bathroom at the end of the hallway. It was spacious and just as tastefully decorated as the rest of the house.
"I realise you don't have any sleepwear with you. Allow me to send Turvy with one of my own shirts which you can transfigure to your liking. I trust you will find everything else you might need in the bathroom. If you require anything else at all, just call Turvy."
"Thank you." Hermione sat down on the huge bed, looking lost and defeated.
For some weird reason he didn't care to examine, he felt the urge to say something consoling. "Go to bed and try to get a good night's sleep. I'll get you a vial of Dreamless Sleep. I suggest you take it." A bit awkwardly he added, "Things will look brighter tomorrow."
"Will they?" she asked, raising a sceptical gaze to meet his.
He grimaced. "No, probably not. But, at least, I tried."
"Tried what? Being comforting?"
"Well, I'm apparently trying all kinds of new things." Like getting himself a wife. "Supposedly, they become easier with practice." New things. Not the wives, most likely.
"Thank you again. I appreciate the effort. I guess I don't loathe you quite so much as I loathe Ron after all."
"Lucky me! Good night, Hermione."