Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Rowling and/or Gato Azul.

Warning: NSFW content at the ending of the chapter.

37. The Mystery of a Flash of Lightning

Hermione tried on the blue dress her mum had gotten her; matched with her striped socks and unruly hair, it didn't seem like the best option for a wedding. She had to admit that, just like everyone else, she thought it was a rash wedding, but the frantic, bittersweet way of Harry and Ginny's kisses at the St. Mungo room had ended up disarming everyone and melting their arguments in their throats. If their union had survived a war, it'd surely survive a premature wedding.

Two weeks had passed since she'd last seen Snape; he'd been absorbed by his ranks and his Auror's strategies, and she was surrounded by Ginevra and Harry's wedding plans.

She knocked the worn wooden door; he was behind, and a sudden euphoria made her jump to surround him with her arms. She breathed in the black hair until it stuck in her nostrils; it smelled like sour roots, as always.

"How are you?"

The half-blood raised his brows, indicating that he just 'was'. He stepped aside to let her inside the gloomy house; on the table, there was a mountain of open books, of manuscripts and loose papers. Apparently, the man had been really busy; Hermione offered to help, and in a matter of minutes she was in a room on the second floor, looking in the books something with Greek or Latin roots that may help for summoning spells.

After a while, sticking her nose in books, she had already spread a lot of them on the desk, and even on the bed; she was writing in a paper any linguistic root she thought she might be useful. They'd have to try them all.

She hadn't heard any noise from downstairs; she supported herself against the desk for a moment and turned on the lamp. It had started to rain and dusk was near; a smell of wet soil came from the street; far away some lamps were struck by rain. She stood there, watching the destruction of the water drips against the pavement and the people running around, covering themselves with brollies or coats. The sky was a grey, striking vault with a monstrous vastness, beautiful in many ways.

Severus was behind her, standing under the door lintel, watching her. Who knew how long he'd been standing there, still and silent.

A black butterfly fluttered in his colourless eyes.

"I like rain, I like how it smells, I like that people go to their houses, ignite their chimneys, drink tea…"

The man was still immobile, arms crossed and the corners of his mouth sagging; he seemed to see beyond the water, through a stormy curtain.

"I like when they peek through the window…" He was looking outside, but not with the kind of gaze Hermione was talking about, not with the pacific observation of the open sky, but with the constant sound of a bitter memory. Snape's eyes were contaminated like two murky sockets.

"Are you angry?"

"No," a monotonous, empty voice answered.

She'd have liked to insist, but his monosyllabic, curt answer left her in silence for a few minutes. The man got close to read what Granger had written and flipped through the books scattered around the room.

"Are these all?"

"I still have those left." She pointed to a pile of books standing on the desk's right side. Snape folded the paper carefully and put it in his pocket; Hermione waited for him to thank her, hug her, or at least notice her presence.

"Is there something wrong?"

The half-blood looked at the clouds, disintegrating and turning into grey blurs in the sky. Hermione, in turn, looked at him and that rancid colour that had spread in his eyes and expression.

A flash of lighting split the mourner's face in half; it left for a few moments one half in absolute light, the other in a dark limbo. Jean remembered something, an image she couldn't completely reach nor rebuild in her memory. An image that had to do with Snape and flashes of lightning. Clouds smashed again like immense ships of smoke and water, a bolt zigzagged through the air, reflecting on the window's glass; once more the light appeared in the half-blood's face and in his shadows, a flower that budded just to whither in a second, but that mere second solidified Granger's musings. Lily Potter had died in a rainy night; Hermione was capable of building that pensive's vision, to put in the right place the pieces of that loss, the scraps of distress that she could feel, that everyone in the jury felt that day when Harry let them see. The same man of the liquid memories, the same man that cried, kneeled on the floor in Godric's Hollow; he was standing close to her, and his face was still full of ashes.

"That day was raining too, that's why you don't like rain."

The man raised his head, surprised of Granger. The drips disappeared after crashing against the glass.

"What day are you talking about?"

"The day when Harry's scar appeared."

Severus turned his eyes to some point in the stained glass, mouth rigid and face half hardened, half distorted. Hermione didn't avert her eyes from him, she just kept on watching his scrawny frame and altered expression.

"Why are you looking at me so closely? Weren't you doing something?"

Granger left her eyes on him and patiently stood up from her seat, with a calmness so perfect, it managed to irritate the man on the threshold. Snape followed her with his gaze, showing annoyance and surprise.

"Severus, have I told you that I love you?"

"You have," he answered with his voice too low and too deep, so much that he sounded like a cavern's echo. Hermione knew what it was like to be the objective of his glares and biting phrases, but she decided she didn't want to be scared because of that, she didn't want to be part of the group that got tired of him and called him loathsome, aggressive or neurotic. At least she'd try.

"I love you." She forced herself to kiss him on the cheek despite her nervous hands, a kiss she'd wanted to give him since hours ago, but the wizard's heavy and tense air had dissuaded her. She felt the cold, stiff cheek under her lips; she retreated to see the pale man's whole face. The hooked man's nostrils were opening with some aggressiveness; Jean flinched instinctively, for she feared that exact gaze from Severus, it was the thing she most feared and expected from him, when his eyes widened so much and seemed to tear her apart and create her again in the same movement.

The white, thin hand crossed the distance and touched Hermione's small, warm cheek, with so much caution, with so much thoroughness, the girl started to blush at the greedy, fixed eyes staring at her.

Snape's mouth was open and it seemed like a word had tangled in his vocal cords and kept them like that: mute. He thrust his head forward, as if he had finally decided to speak, but no sound came from him and he ended up on the girl, transforming it into a kiss, a kiss that asked Hermione every question possible, that asked for everything she could give, that said everything capable of being said with closed lips.

Snape wasn't capable of saying he loved her, but Hermione didn't need that to know it. She'd never seen her professor like this, desperate, humble, forced to be patient, needing something. Until that moment, she hadn't been completely aware that he could be hurt, that he could feel pain caused by someone. That she could cause him that pain, and that she might have already done so. Severus Snape was a man as mortal as the rest of them.

She tried to follow the half-blood shifting arms and that kind of dialogue of his dry mouth moving on hers; the floor passed under them, space unfolded until they found the bed's edge and the spines of the open books nibbled their sides. Snape's arm opened like a wing and threw all the books off the bed as if he suddenly didn't care about Greco-Latin roots or etymologies or words. Hermione laughed slightly at the sudden detachment they'd both developed towards the outside world. Something wasn't calibrated in her brain at that moment; she seemed to see Snape's silhouette over her like an infinite mountain eclipsed by a monumental shadow. The man was suddenly a giant to her, a slow, warm one; when she closed her eyes and touched him blindly, Severus was as brief as his body's existence under Jean's touch.

How incredible is the human being.

She told herself as she discovered the man's mystery and felt Snape caressing her soul. Some of her clothes relieved her of their weight; soon her sweater was in a distant corner of the bed, like one shell removed. Under her hands, there didn't exist the feeling of a cloak' or shirt's rough fabric anymore; Jean opened her eyes, the half-blood had uncovered the warm limits of his body, letting her see the paths light made on the surface of his frame. Hermione thought for a moment about the childish jokes they made in Hogwarts about the professor's intimate life, and she glad she never joined any of them, because it'd have been such an irony. Some trace of logic couldn't completely believe what was happening; it seemed like a part of her had left the loving figures and watched them from a corner, curious and sceptical. Snape crushed that part when he hugged her euphorically and blew in her ear like a wind whirl. Hermione explored the length of his back with uncertain hands and fingers; she recreated the figure of ribs, stopping her palm on a long stomach and felt movement under it. Ten walking, rough fingers filled her with traces: the half-blood's fingers. He was breathing so loudly, his breath seemed to announce the beginning of a storm. The man was the sun's rising behind some hills, she was expectation and patience. Ron opened his eyes in her mind, big, blue eyes full of reproach, but she closed his lids; she wouldn't be able to hide behind them anymore. Severus' eyes were opened too, they were gigantic, big like their heat extended around the universe, around that small room and over her. Snape was a thick liquid lowering slowly, like an expanding shadow. His forehead over hers, his big nose sticking in her cheek, his stony gaze melted, watching her closely. What was love if not that: a deep gaze, immobile, so close it might as well be her own; it might be her watching herself through Snape's eyes. And then she heard him like a remote voice; they squeezed each other, fought in a slight struggle of nails and lips, she felt him tremble and she trembled and sunk her fingers in the white sand that was him. She ended up splitting like a sea, like an ocean that lets through an meteor fallen from the sky. He was the moon of two sides, disintegrating when smashed against the sea of brown hair, wrecking in the woman, spreading in the depth of her waters. In a scream, both collapsed on the sea of sheets; Snape was no longer the cusp he was before, there were no more deep growls, nor wandering hands or tangled hair. Everything was silent again, they were two again; the human circle that had no beginning or end had dissolved. Just their voices stood, mumbled over an atom of infinity that had existed between them for a moment; they stayed there, spread and limp with bared legs tangled, with arms like tentacles travelling everywhere, with intentional slowness. Hermione was horrified and shamefully happy, so happy… For the first time, Snape was smiling at her with no sour cloud on his face, helping her adjust herself in his arms as if they were a nest. There he rested his head against hers and his eyes dripped on the girl's face; Granger drank the half-blood's tears, which were the strangest elixir he'd ever prepared. He gave her salty, wet kisses, whispering many things, things she barely heard but which made her smile, and she slowly fell asleep, stroking and stroking the straight, black hair until her lids closed.

She opened an eye unwillingly, closed it for a few more minutes; the mattress was warm and nice. She opened her eye again; beyond the window glass it was still raining, and a yellow lamp floated in the night, the same one she'd seen that afternoon; it seemed like a lot of time had passed since she'd last seen that lamp. Somehow, she wasn't the same person watching it: she had lost something and gained something too. She sat slowly, moving Snape's livid arm, and watched around the darkened room; the books were still open on the desk, more were laying on the floor. A cold breeze came from the window, a wind smelling of wet grass. She watched the clock on the desk, it was eleven at night. She had the wrong idea that it was about to dawn. It was probably too late to go back to her house, and actually, at that moment she didn't have the strength to pretend nothing strange had happened; she knew her dad would insist on knowing the reason why was she arriving so late, and she wouldn't be able to believe convincingly. She got back into the sheets roughly and snuggled, thinking that maybe she'd know what to do in the morning; after all, she wasn't sure she wanted to hide what had happened. Snape shifted under the quilt too, making an incoherent question and then stayed still, breathing strongly. He'd woken up and was watching her under the sheets with half-lidded eyes and scrambled hair. Hermione couldn't help but smile at the sudden ordinariness that surrounded them.

"What time is it?"

"It isn't midnight yet."

"Are you hungry?"

He could notice again the blurry smile Granger showed in her mouth.

"Yeah, I am, but—"

"There must be something I can cook quickly." She felt him move on the mattress and finally removed his weight. She heard clothes' friction and turned her head shyly; he was already half-dressed, putting his trousers and some socks mindlessly. She'd never watched him remove or put on clothes before, and that made her feel a spark of sympathy and tenderness. The man walked, dragging his feet around the room, opening the door and closing it behind him, growling that he'd be back in a few minutes. Hermione covered herself to her head and allowed herself to smile sincerely to the emptiness; maybe she could get used to living like that, knowing he was sleeping on her left, watching the yellow lamp through the window, helping him look for old words in his books. Maybe they could live like that, why not?

Note of the Translator: Well, it wasn't that nsfw, but just in case.