His defenses. What were they indeed? He had come to let his guard down in every sense in the years following the war. To answer her question in totality, he had none. He rarely used his wand unless he felt it absolutely necessary. Magic had become a burden for him; the association with his history had destroyed any good he thought magic had the potential of being. He discovered new hobbies, he collected, he tinkered, he read, he did many things in his time that distanced him from the terrors of his past.
Yet he was letting a reminder of his past stand beside him and bring about memories of a distant version of himself that he no longer knew or understood. It did not cause anger, he knew his past self would have been seething to find this witch in his presence.
And so, his response had been honest. He had considered her for quite some time, and she had let him look on in silence. Perhaps she could tell he was contemplating a response.
"I… have none in place now. My words spoken then were targeted towards an obligation to defend, I have since discovered that although dark forces may still be in play, in this world and the one I come from, I feel no obligation to defend against them," this response felt impassive, he paused and collected his thoughts, she still did not speak.
"Defenses are different in contexts, as you alluded to with your comparison to mental health. I myself have managed to respond to the… aftermath of my past… by letting go of the things that bind me to it. You have created from your emotions, I have… released them, so to speak."
She observed him for some time, they had not moved from the close proximity that seemed to bind them.
"In your… writing of me, are you only mentioning what I have done here or are you using my life during the war?"
At this, she did respond but it was a question answered with a question and he was becoming flummoxed.
"What would you rather me do?"
What would he rather her do? Not write about him at all? Leave the town so he could have his solitary life back? Write a novel length story of his heroism? The idea was laughable.
"Do what you must to quench your creativity," he finally answered.
She began speaking again, and it was difficult to follow with her this near, and though he began to take a step backward she stepped forward slightly keeping the distance. He decidedly stopped trying to evade her gaze and stood still as her lips moved rapturously.
"I think I can agree with your answer though it is difficult to accept. The man I had heard tales of following the war, and even the professor I knew during the war I could have never guessed to let his defenses fall. Yet here I am, and here you are, letting me speak and answering my questions. If there were any defenses left to you, I feel I would have noticed them by now and that is why I found the question so difficult to answer. I still have trauma reflexes when I feel I am being watched, around large groups of people, or in many other circumstances. I am more observant than necessary of my surroundings, but it does help in writing. Observing people is the best way to discern a story I think…"
This was not the same Hermione Granger he had taught, this was an experienced woman that had seen too much and had suffered a great deal. He recognized parts of her as shadows of him, but he had chosen a different path of coping. It was then he realized that with her presence and his apparent lack of defenses to her questioning, or even simply existing in the same space as him, was a sign of healing. The trauma of his past was still with him in the form of visible scars, but he no longer feared the memory of them.
"Severus, what were you thinking just now?" She was looking at him with that gaze of knowing all.
"I… was noting our similarities in dealing with our past. I also had a realization regarding my lack of defenses being a sign of healing. I believe that my face must be more readable at present due to my fallen walls, as you were able to read me that easily."
They stood in silence for some time, as she had not responded to him following this. Eventually she turned and sat on one of the bar stools, still watching him, her chin resting in her palm with an elbow on the table beside her. He felt that he was being calculated and could not discern if he was comfortable with it. Regardless of his uncertainty, he did not move from his standing position.
Finally, she spoke, pulling herself up suddenly and grabbing his wrist, "Come, lets go outside, I don't think you've ever seen the gardens."
Despite the late hour, he obliged. He had some latent curiosity that had fallen on him as he had never even contemplated the garden behind the shop.
Watching the woman gather up things by hand, he stood observing in confusion until she turned to exit the room and he followed suit. They walked outside the kitchen doorway that led into a garden room, he saw some tables and chairs here and as she ventured out further into the garden that was the backyard of 8th and Main, he took in the efflorescence around him.
The home-converted shop sat on a corner; many houses were near but none with yards as lush as this. Two roads that intersected to create the corner known as 8th and Main were easy to consider as polar opposites that met to create an unlikely location for a lively locale. Main Street was active for a small town, people driving up and down it at all hours of the day due to the other businesses and shops located further up the road; pedestrians walking themselves and wandering into the warm aura that the shop front emitted. The side of the house, as well as this backyard was another story. 8th street was not as spry for a road, hardly anyone turned down this way unless they lived along the short road, people rarely walked back here either though to his knowledge the garden was open to the public. The street itself was not well tended to and crumbled at the edges, causing some of the greenery to reclaim the cracks throughout the concrete.
This yard however, this was less of a garden; now that he stepped into it the simplest terms to describe the mass of flora was beautiful chaos. There were arrangements of all sorts, he recognized cornflowers, irises, and dahlias as they passed through, the recent blooms of all were extremely well tended to, with a small curving pathway leading throughout the entirety of the yard. Hardly any clearings were in sight, excluding the small one that his present companion was headed towards.
One of the items she had collected before they had come outside was a large blanket, and though he noticed she had tucked her wand behind her ear, she had not used it to gather the things she held in her arms, and she was not using it now to spread out the blanket on the ground. Once again, as if the witch had the ability to feel his thoughts, she spoke.
"Using magic in ways not intended for natural means is not generally welcome by nature. I try to complete my daily tasks that can be done with ease without using magic because I would prefer to not let it become a crutch. Nature responds in kind on the rare occasion I do make the choice to use magic and it knows that I have its best interests at hand."
The way she spoke and looked fondly at the world around her, even at the large house, bewildered him.
"Are you able to… communicate with nature?"
His question shook her from her own stasis of thoughts as she had halted in her actions of spreading out the blanket on the grass. Taking heed of a task that he would not have done in any other situation, he knelt and helped spread it and then pulled his body into a sitting position atop the blanket. His arms folded casually across his knees that he had bent parallel to his chest, and in thought of her words, he let each of his senses take in the beauty of his surroundings.
She responded to his question by pulling herself down next to him but instead of sitting she lay entirely on her back, staring at the stars in what appeared to be utter adoration, and after a moment, he shifted himself and followed suit.
"I think anyone can communicate with nature, if they choose to. A younger me would have thought the concept foolish but in my travels I've experienced too much to find anything outlandish anymore."
His face had turned slightly towards hers when she spoke, he realized how close she was again. Suddenly, memories of similar nights he had spent with Lily Evans flashed across his mind. And he felt lightness around him, these memories did not greet him with frustration any longer, he only viewed them fondly, a past friend greeting him in the present and then moving on to another place.
Though he may have been facing her when this happened, his eyes looked past her and he did not notice that she had turned her head from the sky, again looking straight into him.
Words were not conveyed for several minutes and as he processed the moment, he felt that this night was more like a fever dream. The stars above him, the home behind him, the garden around him, the woman beside him, all tantalizing, his mind could not process it all fully. He knew what he wanted to do in the moment but also knew moments like this were oft misinterpreted and he would prefer not to be the person to initiate without certainty. A precarious position he had found himself in, and so he finally broke the silence.
"Why does no one enter the garden? I notice there are no physical barriers keeping anyone from walking back here."
She had not moved her eyes from his until she moved to answer, turning entirely on her side and propping her head onto her palm.
"That is actually magic I found while studying natural foundations of magic in Ireland. There are many ways magic is cultivated and working with nature in kind is one. If you look closely around you will find familiar magical ingredients that you likely often used in potions, though they are somewhat hidden throughout the garden to emanate the impression of being naturally produced in this location."
At this comment, he did look around, much more closely this time. She was correct, though he felt bizarrely aware that this had to be next to impossible. Planting magical ingredients outside their naturally grown habitat was not a practice he knew to be possible.
"How?" All he could muster in response because the implications of growing magical ingredients at any location excited him and yet he was close to disbelief at her statement.
"Nature responds to your requests in kind if you treat it with respect. I never forcibly cultivate magic from nature but allow nature to work through my own magic. It is a shared power, even this house is protected by stronger means than a Fidelius charm."
Fidelius' were once thought impossible to break but that had been proven to be false time and again due to the precariousness of word of mouth when it comes to a single person being truly capable of keeping a secret. He still could not think of how this home was protected in ways stronger than the Fidelius, however, as people entered this home often without any issue.
"Nature with great power has the ability to ward itself to those who do not come with good purpose, but it is difficult to harness this ability. I binded my own magical properties to the natural… spirit, I suppose is the best term, of the house, as well as with the magical properties that I brought with me from my travels. This combination essentially makes it so anyone who enters 8th and Main will not be for any nefarious means. Those that have the distinct quality of not coming for right reasons as dictated by this combination will have ominous feelings of a varying nature, depending on their supposed reasoning for attempting to enter. In most cases, this causes the person to leave."
He desired to understand this branch of magic more, but it did not seem to be the most pressing matter at hand in the moment, for once in his life. He had inched closer to the woman in question and she had returned in kind at some point without his own cognizance, and, she still had not moved her eyes from his own, the dark brown piercing gaze that both tempted him and unnerved him.
"Severus, are you alright?"
"I believe… I would like to kiss you."
She hummed at him in response, "Well, only if you would like."
And so, he did.
There was no reason to make anyone aware of the nature of their relationship, though purportedly obvious; and yet the majority of the small town had nothing but talk of it for weeks when it was discovered that he had moved in to the shop and his own small home had been converted into a large antiques show hall.
Yet the town likely would have never known, had Hermione had not taken to occasional appearances in public now that she had Severus to keep her company. They traveled near and far, learned from one another and the outside world, collected magic from all around and created a bond together sealed in nature as a love purer than what most could attest to witnessing, much less having.
If anyone were to ask months or years down the line how they had happened to fall in love so quickly, so easily, so suddenly, his simple answer would have been that it was not so. He had fallen in love with the shop on 8th and Main first, a very natural extension to the remarkable woman that is Hermione Granger.