A note on the marriage law: I am assuming that Mrs Snape is older than the rest of her classmates and so was subject to the law while some of them were not.

Hufflepuffpride . com and SS/PS list Justin Finch-Fletchley as being Muggleborn, but they don't say anything about his age as far as I know.

Thank you to whitehound for correcting me on two counts; edits have been made. I hope blueberry pudding is more British than blueberry muffins; calls berry pudding a traditional British dessert.

- - -

CHAPTER NINE

Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair trigger balances, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act

James Thurber, Lanterns and Lances

- - -

There was a visit that he would never tell Hermione about.

Shortly after he was moved from St Mungo's to the Hogwarts infirmary, a hand pushed aside the curtains enclosing his bed. If he had the strength, he would have screamed out, but as it was he was only able to utter a few unmanly whimpers and to reach for the wand that lay beneath his pillow, even though he was probably going to be unable to use it.

"Silencio," said Harry Potter.

Snape struggled to sit up and brandish his wand, but Potter was too fast for him. In moments he had Snape held down by invisible tethers, and Snape's wand made a clattering sound as it fell to the floor and rolled beyond the curtains. Snape wanted to strangle him—the neck around which Hermione's arms had been twined.

"For once in your life, you're going to be quiet and sit still and listen," Potter muttered. Snape longed to gouge out his eyes as Potter cast silencing wards around the enclosure.

For a few moments, Snape feared for his life. Then, he shook himself because he was being ridiculous.

When he was done casting spells, Potter stood at the side of Snape's bed, calmly but stiffly and with hands clenched into fists. It was a familiar look on him. Snape did not know Potter well enough to read his expression, but the boy did not seem to be in a murderous rage, despite the invisible bind and the silencing spell. Snape told himself that he was disappointed.

"Look," Potter spat. "I don't care what you think of me. I personally couldn't care if you drowned in the lake. But," and here Potter couldn't seem to speak without swallowing first, "but Hermione's miserable. She's not talking to me right now, but Ron says she's miserable because you won't forgive her. She spends all of her time in here with you. She's hardly studying, she never goes out, and she's constantly worried about your sorry hide, and all she wants from you is your approval, so if you don't forgive her then you're even a bigger fool than I ever thought you—"

At that moment, the door to the infirmary opened. Cursing under his breath, Potter fished his cloak out from under his robe and covered himself just in time to avoid being seen by Hermione herself, who drew open the curtains.

Smiling and holding up his wand, she said, "You dropped your wand. How are you feeling?"

Unseen by Hermione and sensed by Snape, Potter edged past her, and out the door.

- - -

Most ironically, a day after his Attempt, the marriage law was repealed and divorces permitted. Arthur Weasley's campaign against the legislation, after half a year, was yielding results. Hermione looked uncomfortable as she told him this, weeks after the fact. Dozens of divorce cases had been filed already. According to Justin Flinch-Fletchley, who was getting a divorce from a Ravenclaw, many of the sixth- and seventh-years were congratulating themselves on having escaped the fate of a forced marriage.

Snape was happy for them, although he did not say so.

- - -

In the present, there was a knock on his door.

Snape, who had been staring dejectedly at the plate of runny eggs that the House-elf had put on a bed-tray before him, looked up warily as the door swung open with an Alohomora.

"Pomona is asking if you prefer the blueberries or the strawberries," said his wife, if indeed it was his wife behind the very large fruit basket that entered his room. All he could see of her were some brown, wayward curls. "She thinks the strawberries are sub-par, but she thought she would offer anyway."

He was at a complete loss for words. Face still hidden behind the basket she lowered her cargo to the carpeted floor beside his bed. When she straightened and looked down at him her eyes were perfectly bright, and her cheeks red with exertion. It was so very Muggle of her to want to carry the basket to the dungeons when she could have levitated it.

"Personally," she continued as though they had been having a conversation, "I think we should ask for the blueberries. There's something I've been wanting you to try—my mother's blueberry pudding. I owled her for the recipe. I hope you'll forgive my presumption," she added, and he couldn't tell if she was apologizing for owling her mother, or for suddenly seating herself beside him on the bed. She smelled like Pomona's greenhouses, and she was closer, so much closer now than she had been last night. An image whipped by his mind's eye—that of her bare shoulder and the pale column of her throat as she lay tangled in his sheets. He shoved the image away, hoping she wouldn't notice his cheeks getting redder.

Transfiguring an orange into a small tumbler, she poured herself a measure of juice from the jug that lay on the bed-tray, seeming perfectly at home. Her arm brushed his as she moved, and when her arm was motionless it was touching him, shoulder to elbow.

"Blueberries it is, then," Snape said, finally.

"I knew you'd agree," she said, beaming.

Not knowing what to say, Snape resumed eating silently as his heartbeat returned to normal. Having woken up without her and believing himself to be a fool for consigning himself to days and days without her company, he felt something in him expand with the knowledge that she hadn't taken his bit of foolishness seriously, and that despite his rudeness the day before and the embarrassment that had occurred the same night, she was still here. A smile fought to make its way to his face as she began chewing on a piece of toast that she pilfered from his plate.

"Severus," she said, suddenly serious.

"Yes?" he said, forcing himself to look at her, tense.

"Thank you for last night," she said quietly.

He felt warmth suffuse his face. "There's nothing to thank me for."

"Severus." She took his hand, which was a hard thing to do since he was still holding a knife with it. She never called him sir anymore. "I'm sorry about everything."

"I know," he said. "I know that."

"I hope you believe me one day," she said, her voice tight. "And I'm sorry for running off yesterday. I thought that I'd got used to you and your… irritability. I'm not going anywhere now. Even if you tell me you want to. I think you still need me," she added in a quiet voice.

I do. "I only meant to say that you are not my nursemaid, but my wife."

She began to smile, and had the audacity to wiggle her eyebrows. "You don't mean to tell me your nursemaids sit with you in bed like this."

"Poppy certainly never has," he rejoined, and as she laughed he felt his face relax into an almost uncomfortable but absolutely genuine smile.

"Oh, I pray not," she said, popping a blueberry into her mouth.

- - -

He had only invited her into his bed once but she seemed to take the invitation as a permanent one. He was now used to lying not in the middle of the bed but to the left of the middle, as she was prone to prance in while he was asleep and take up residence beside him. As the days passed—he asked her the date and realized that it was already three weeks since his self-inflicted injuries—he often woke to find her reading and with her feet stretched out in front of her, white socks peeking out from the waves of the sea that was his bedspread. He fell asleep to her smell and woke up to it.

For the first time he could remember he began to be physically comfortable with a person. When she was around she seemed to be always touching him in some way—taking his hand, brushing the hair away from his face. At first each overture made him nervous and happy and afraid, but now he found himself almost expecting them, not shying away from them, and itching to return each advance. There was something about the naturalness of each of her touches that made him gather every memory to himself, greedily, happily. Even as he grew more comfortable with her, every time she touched him, he felt almost a dizzying joy. He would never take her for granted.

One time he started awake, to find his nose poking into her side and his left arm hugging her upper legs. She was sitting up in bed while he languished beside her, but instead of holding a book in her hands she seemed to be examining the spot on the back of his head where he had hit the lab bench. Her torso was curled above him, and her fingers wandered his scalp. Almost as a reflex he felt himself jerk away from her, from the unfamiliarity of close contact, but she stilled him with her hands, murmuring something he didn't catch.

His skin tingled where she touched it. Her fingers worked through the abundant hair close to his forehead and traveled to the nearly bald patch where he had been shaven so that the mediwizards could examine the wound. He felt his throat constrict. Nobody had ever touched his hair like this before. Memories from his schooldays flooded his mind. He hugged her legs closer and felt himself relax, melting, melting.

She stroked her fingers back and forth across the expanse where the hair was shorter. He could almost hear the strands scratch against her skin. "Your hair," she said, "is miserably uneven."

"Yes," he murmured sleepily into the fabric of her school blouse. "They call them 'mediwizards' and not 'barbers' for a reason."

"Would you mind if I cut it?" she said as though he hadn't spoken. "Just to even it out a little bit."

"Does it bother you that much?" he asked.

"Think of it as an opportunity for change," she said with a short laugh.

He seemed to find himself yielding to her every command. She coaxed him so well.

At this point it no longer tired him to sit up for lengths of time, but he had yet to take for granted the miracle of walking easily; he hobbled and wheezed his way to the bathroom, Hermione fussing the whole while.

"Maybe this isn't such a good idea," she said worriedly as he sat sideways on the closed toilet, silently cursing. "We can do it next week if you want. Maybe you're not ready. Maybe we can do this in your sitting room." (Even after months of being married, she still referred to it as his.)

"I'm already here," he retorted, exasperated. He waited for her to fish out her scissors and her wand.

"I don't want you to be nervous or anything," she said as she took position behind him, "but I've never actually cut anyone's hair except my dad's."

Snape thought of Dr Granger's stern face and forbidding exterior, and the surprisingly even temperament and cordiality that lay beneath both. For the life of him he couldn't remember how his father-in-law's hair had looked, those few occasions that they had met.

He touched his hair gingerly. "I doubt there's anything you can do that can make this worse." His wife did not deign to comment.

He felt cold water being sprayed on his hair, and some of it trickled uncomfortably down his neck, to be absorbed by his dressing robe.

"This morning Ginny gave me the spell for using my wand to spray water," she continued as she combed his hair until it lay flat against his head. "I didn't even know a spell like that existed. I only asked her if she knew how wizards cut their hair. What an interesting spell; I wonder if it was first used to water gardens or to water hair. It's not exactly a spell mentioned in our textbooks, but then again, the Hogwarts curriculum isn't very heavy on gardening or magical grooming."

"I suppose the assumption is that those things are learnt at home," said Snape, whose mother had taught him very few spells, and none of them to do with either subject she had mentioned.

"There has to be a book somewhere," she said, sounding miffed. "I can't possibly be the first Muggleborn to find it frustrating that there are so many common spells that wizards regard as general knowledge, and that don't find their way to standard spell books."

"You might try writing one," he said, half-distracted by the way her hand was working through the thick hanks of wet hair. "I'm sure Molly Weasley would be glad to help."

"There's an idea," she muttered. "I doubt she'll speak to me at the moment."

"Why would that be?"

"I've alienated her son. Ron and I had a fight last week."

"Why?"

Her hands stilled in his hair.

"You can tell me about your friends, Hermione," he said—as gently as he could manage, head bowed and eyes closed. It pained him to say it but he knew by her tone that whatever the fight had been about, she was still bothered by it.

Her hands still hadn't moved. "He was complaining," she said slowly, "that I wasn't spending any time with him or any of my other friends anymore."

"Perfectly understandable that he should complain," he said, feeling himself almost choked by the words as he said them.

"He had no right to," she replied, with conviction. Her fingers moved through his hair again and he felt himself relax. "They're my friends. They of all people ought to understand why I need—why I want," she amended hurriedly, "to be where I am."

"Perhaps they simply… miss you." If she was trying, he could try, too.

Her hands stilled, and moved again. "Perhaps."

"I believe that you cannot really blame them."

"I believe that I really don't want to talk about this right now," she retorted, but it was said with so little bite that it was easy for him to forget her curtness and to simply float in the sensation of being touched.

Was this real, or a fevered dream? Was she really standing in his bathroom, snipping at his hair and murmuring to herself? Had she, truly, once stood in his classroom and waved her hand impatiently at him? The thought that it was the same person—the little girl who had tried to hard to catch his attention, and now the young woman calmly cutting his hair while she stood barefoot on the tiles, jarred him and at the same time pleased him with the strange intimacy. He waited, quietly, for it to finish, and when she pronounced the job done, he missed her hands immediately.

- - -

What followed was bliss. It was like being loved. It was like being married.

She tried so hard. He was not such a fool that he could fail to see that. She slept in his room now, and as the days passed several things happened: he grew in strength; she crept closer to him on the bed every night; and her things found their way into his room. Where before he had been irked by the very sight of a hair tie on his couch or a book left open on a table, now he rejoiced every time he saw the tip of a feminine shoe peeking out from under the bed they now shared. Her dressing gown, which was blue, was now draped over his chair.

She now kept a comb by her side of the bed. It both saddened and endeared him, the embarrassed way that she reached for it before anything else, every morning. He caught her at it once; bleary-eyed he stared at the flurry of motion that was her hands and that luridly pink comb that worked its way quickly, almost angrily, through her hair while she sat up in bed. He wondered if she did this every day. It was a brown nest this morning. He was, despite himself, utterly charmed.

She caught him staring and turned her head swiftly away; he saw the bright pink tips of her ears. "Don't look at me," she said. "I look a fright."

"Far from it," he said honestly.

"Go back to sleep," she said, "Or at least look away until I comb my way through this mess." She sounded unconvinced.

He obliged her and looked away, but he could see her from the tall mirror that stood at the foot of his bed. He watched her reflection. She finished combing through her hair, and wondered if she cared so little for it that she just ploughed her way through it, quickly, her only goal to disentangle the strands. He remembered the way she had touched his hair—the great care she took in combing it, in trying not to hurt him. He looked at her face—her small nose and the curve of her mouth, the sweep of her cheekbones—and caught sight of his own face in the mirror. Of the two of them, she was not the one who looked like a fright.

"You can stop pretending not to look now," she said, sounding cold. She stood up and threw on her dressing gown, cinching it around her waist and wearing a scowl on her face.

"You are a very strange creature," he told her as he looked up at her.

She touched her wild hair and shot him a hurt look.

"It's not like I haven't tried to tame it," she said defensively. "I've tried all sorts of potions and charms but they haven't worked, not even one. My hair tangles within minutes of combing." Seeing her misunderstand his meaning, he began to laugh; this, if anything, seemed to make her feel worse. "Since you find it so amusing," she said, sounding hurt, "I'll go ask Professor Flitwick if he knows a charm strong enough to handle it. I'm sure he'll find—"

"No," he cut her off, breath short with dying laughter. He sat up in bed to regard her seriously. "I expressly forbid you. Your hair is preferable the way it is."

He was still thinking of her answering blush long after she left the room.

- - -

Four weeks after his "accident"—for nobody but Hermione knew about what he had done—he was well enough to receive students in his office. Some of the staff poked their heads through the door to offer him a greeting or two, and the Slytherins each had their turn to talk to their Head of House. To those who had the audacity to ask about what happened to him, his answers were evasive. With the rest, he had only to deal with such normal, run-of-the-mill matters as NEWTs and OWLs and homesickness.

He was in the middle of one such interview when Kingsley Shacklebolt entered without knocking. Snape was too tired to stand but he threw the other man a glare as the student excused herself and fled the room.

"How will my Slytherins ever learn good manners," Snape drawled, "if they do not see decent etiquette practised by their elders?"

Shacklebolt ignored him and proceeded to sit on the uncomfortable high-backed chair facing Snape's desk. Snape felt himself grin inwardly at his guest's obvious discomfort.

"I've come to tell you," he said, "that a sort of Headquarters for the renegade Death-Eaters has been discovered. We're planning a stake-out tonight. We don't expect you to come," and here Snape shot him a glowering look, "but we thought you'd like to know. When many of them are brought in, you may have to confirm that they were Death-Eaters."

"Will I have to testify at the Wizengamot?" Snape said, who found the thought not only repugnant but somewhat worrying.

"There's a distinct possibility," Shacklebolt replied, "but we'll try to find a way around it. We would like to prevent them seeing you. It might just make them angrier at the fact that you're not in Azkaban along with the others of Voldemort's supporters." Shacklebolt used the name freely. "If they're not convicted, then that will just make things worse for you and your—your wife."

"I see." There was no bite in Snape's tone.

"We are trying, Snape," Shacklebolt retorted, as though he could read the other man's mind. "Despite the fact that Voldemort is gone, it's still not safe out there. We estimate that there must be at least fifty of his supporters still active, and that's a dangerous number. There was an attempted attack on Alastor last week, and Arthur still hasn't recovered from the time he was ambushed on his way home from the Ministry. You're not the only one who wants to see those bastards locked up."

The door opened. Both men—including Snape; Shacklebolt noted this with a raised eyebrow—stood up as Hermione walked into the room, her bookbag over her shoulders. She smiled at Snape and nodded at the auror.

"Kingsley," she said warmly.

"Madame," he acknowledged.

"What brings you to Hogwarts today?" she asked.

"I've been telling the Professor about the search for the renegade Death-Eaters," Shacklebolt said bluntly before Snape could stop him. Hermione laughed when he added, "I wanted him to know that progress is being made, so he wouldn't take it upon himself to find them all."

They turned to find Snape scowling at both of them.

"I won't let him," Hermione said softly. Shacklebolt looked back and forth between the two of them, made his excuses, and left the room.

- - -

He lay on the bed while she dressed. The Weasleys were having a party. He had given up pretending to be asleep. He faced the full-length mirror in his room. She stood in front of it wearing a green dress with flowers printed on it. The moment she saw her reflection she looked dismayed, and flounced off in the direction of his bathroom, before emerging again in a blue frock. The process repeated itself and with each trial he could see her becoming discouraged.

He couldn't resist. Eventually he said, "What are you doing?"

She jumped and turned around. "Just trying on a dress," she said self-consciously, smoothing it down and tugging down one sleeve. It was blue again, but darker than the second one she had tried. He thought it became her. He debated whether he should say so. It had been years since he had remarked, "I see no difference," and he would never again make the mistake of disparaging her appearance. Particularly not now, when he would be lying if he did.

"That's the seventh one you've tried," he pointed out.

"I can't decide," she said miserably. "This one makes me look like a pale fish, and the last made me look like a pregnant school marm, and the one before that made my thighs look big. Each one seems to look worse than the last."

"You know that's not true," he said, sitting up.

"You're such a flatterer," she sighed, half-irritably. She turned to her reflection in the mirror, conjured a brush, and began to attack her hair. She seemed to be genuinely distressed. He wondered if it was one of those days; she had been extremely sensitive all week. "I know my looks shouldn't matter to me, but they do. You may think that's silly but I can't help it. And I can't tell if you're patronizing me or mocking me or if you genuinely think—"

"That dress looks good," he interrupted. "On you. As did all the other dresses. As do all of your other things. As will anything else you might choose to wear to the Weasleys' thrice-damned party."

She dropped the brush. Inexplicably, she burst into tears, and it took him the rest of the morning to calm her down. He became more and more aware that things between them were beginning to look less like challenges, and more like domestic bliss. He distrusted the illusion, but allowed himself to be happy, for a little while, as he had her sit on the bed while he wiped away her tears with a rough finger. He thought of so many things he could tell her, but he wasn't sure if she would believe them.

She ended up going to the party in the blue dress, and she still looked good in it three hours later, when Fleur and Bill Weasley's new baby managed to spit on it.

- - -

(end of chapter)

It's surprising, but flatterers really exist outside of stories—and they talk so believably, too.

Things are moving; there are about three chapters left.