AN: Apologies for the delay in the update. We've had the plague – okay, not quite the plague, it's a virus that sends your temperature through the roof and makes your head feel like it's stuffed full of cotton wool.

To add to the apologies, also, when I came back to the land of the thinking, I re read the story plan I'd written, and realised that I've got a gap of about 18 months between Chapter 15 and the end (because I got distracted whilst writing it and then – idiot that I am – forgot that it wasn't finished) and at present I'm struggling to remember what I was going to fill that gap with – so keep your fingers crossed that it comes back to me...

As always, thanks to everyone who reviewed, story alerted or favourited.

WARNING: Mature readers only. Please respect the ratings system.

Disclaimer: Eternal thanks to JKR for allowing me, and all the other fanfic writers out there to play with her toys...

Chapter Eight

Hermione woke as usual to a sunlit room and an empty bed. Two weeks had passed since her wedding, and that strange evening when Severus and made her pasta, and talked about it like a potion, had talked to her so calmly, as if nothing had ever passed between them. Those two weeks had been... well, she couldn't really complain. It seemed she only need hint that there was something she wanted and he set it before her. It was a little disconcerting, actually, because other than appearing to suddenly fulfil her requests, he acted as if she didn't exist.

She got herself up, washed, dressed and went down stairs to find breakfast on the table, under a warming and preservation charm, along with a cup of tea and a glass of orange juice. Exactly as there was every morning. He, of course, was no where to be found. Probably hiding down in his lab, again, she mused. She had guessed that was what was behind the hidden door, based on the fact that when he did occasionally come up he had the lingering fumes from the cauldrons hovering around him, clinging to his clothes. Normally after breakfast she would have picked up the book she had set down the previous evening, but today she didn't want to read. Never before in her life had she reached a point where she had read so much, didn't she want to read more. As if in answer to her unasked question of what to do, she spotted a piece of parchment on top of her book.

I notice you haven't been out of the house much in the last two weeks. I thought perhaps you might enjoy a visit with Ginerva Potter. She is expecting you for lunch.

Should she be annoyed that he had even presumed to arrange her social schedule, or happy that she would be spending a day out of the house, with her friend? She glanced at the clock. It was almost eleven. She would be annoyed at him later. Right now, she just wanted to get out of the house.

She arrived, a full half hour later, outside number twelve Grimmauld Place. Breathing in the open air, she just stood for a while, enjoying the feel of the sunlight on her skin, and the sound of the birds in the trees. She hadn't even touched the knocker when the door was flung open by a somewhat harassed looking Ginny. "Oh, Hermione, you came." Ginny found the energy to smile and hug her friend, then, "Well, come on in, don't mind the chaos." Hermione stepped over a wooden train track that seemed to have taken over the hall, carefully avoiding the miniature Hogwarts Express that puffed away, lying on its side at the foot of the stairs. They went into the kitchen, were Lily sat at the table with Creature, doing a children's jigsaw puzzles.

"Hello, Lily" Hermione smiled at the small girl, who grinned back and then returned quickly to her puzzle. "Hello, creature." She smiled at the old house elf too, remembering the assistance he had given them when they had been hunting the horcrux's.

He bowed to her, with a polite "Miss." But had soon returned to the task at hand. "Where do you think this piece fits, Miss Lily?"

"He's brilliant with kids." Ginny's surprise was still evident in her voice. "Tea?" At her question, Creature, without really looking up, made as if to pour tea from an invisible pot and clapped his hands together. A tray of tea and biscuits appeared at the other end of the table. "Thanks, Creature." She poured the tea between two cups and added milk to both, sugar to one. Pushing the one without sugar towards Hermione she said "I wasn't quite sure what to think when I got an owl from him."

There was no reason for Hermione to ask who 'him' was. "Oh?" She sipped her tea, trying to avoid saying anything.

"yeah, I mean, if you'd owled to say you wanted to get out of the house, I could understand that, or if he'd owled saying he wanted you out of the house, I could understand that too, no offence." Hermione shook her head to show that none was taken. "But the owl I got, it sounded almost like he was concerned because you haven't left the house since you got married." Hermione sipped her tea again, trying to work out what she was supposed to say. "Don't get me wrong, 'Mione, I completely understand why a newly married couple might not want to leave the house for a couple of weeks, but I thought it was just the law that had you two walking down the aisle."

Hermione felt her cheeks burn and avoided looking at her red-head friend. "It was." She told her.

Ginny pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and looked closely at her friend. "Okay, Mrs Snape, what exactly is going on?"

"I don't really know." She confessed after a moment of mulling the answer over in her mind. "But it's got to change." She was met with raised eyebrows and took that as indicator that she should elaborate. "He's not doing anything wrong, per se, I mean, I couldn't complain about anything really. He treats me like a princess... or an invalid" she added as an after thought. "Let me take you through my day for the last two weeks. I wake up, on my own, I get dressed, I go down stairs and breakfast's on the table waiting for me. He's got everything charmed so it automatically clears up, if I want to take a bath I only have to so much as think it and there's oils and lotions and salts and all sorts waiting for me, and the bath's already running at the perfect temperature. He leaves which ever book I was reading the day before out ready. Work gave me a month off to 'adjust' to married life, and being as it's the MOM, you know what they really want us to do for a whole month." She took a deep breath and plunged on, "I don't see him except when he appears to cook dinner, and then he vanishes of down into his lab again. Honestly, I'd doubt he even came to bed if I hadn't woken up in the night a couple of times and found him there."

"So, basically, you're bored out of your mind, and the two of you don't even," she shot a glance down the table at her daughter, "you know."

Blushing almost scarlet Hermione told her, "Absolutely not. We did, once, on the night we married, obviously, because we had to."

"What was it like?" Ginny interrupted with a grin that sent Hermione straight back to fifth and sixth year Hogwarts, in the girls' dorms.

"Gin, you've got a kid, you know what it's like."

"I meant, what it's like with him?" Ginny was still grinning and now Hermione was blushing more than ever.

"It was... good." The uncertainty of whether this was the correct answer crept into her voice.

"You don't sound that convinced. You're allowed to say he was rubbish if he was, he's not here to hear you and get all offended."

"No, he wasn't rubbish. It was good, honestly, it's just that," She paused, not sure how to tell Ginny what was playing on her mind, or even if she should be telling her, "well, after he," it was her turn to shoot a quick glance down the table, "you know, he looked at me like I was something dirty or horrid. I think he really must hate me, or I was the rubbish one."

"Mione, if he reached completion, you weren't doing anything wrong." Ginny reassured her, kind of. "And if he really hated you, he would have found a way out of marrying you. There's got to be more to it than that." She fell into a thoughtful silence.

Hermione began to go over the details of her wedding night for the first time since it had happened. He had offered her a drink. She had asked him not to call her 'Miss Granger' because it made her feel like a child and he had said... "He thinks I'm a child." She said in a slightly astounded whisper.

"Excuse me?"

"That night, we went back to Spinners End and he offered me a drink, fire whiskey, because that's what he was drinking. He called me 'Miss Granger' and I asked him not to because it made me feel like a child and he said 'You are a child.'" the words came out all in a rush. "He wasn't disgusted with me, at all," She continued on, as realisation lifted a huge weight from her shoulders, "He was disgusted with himself because we'd just had sex, sorry," She'd forgotten about the young ears at the other end of the table, "we'd just done it, but he'd said earlier that to him I was, what was it? Oh yeah," she put on her potions-master-impressions voice, "' still every bit the bushy haired eleven year old who first entered my class room and then proceeded to answer every single question like a text book come to life.'"

"He said that." Ginny sounded indignant on Hermione's behalf, but Hermione was grinning almost ecstatically; she hadn't failed, he wasn't horrified by her. "He said those exact words? Jeeze, someone needs to teach him some better chat up lines."

"No, Ginny, don't you see? This means he wasn't looking at me with disgust. This means that he's probably punishing himself for some crime that he hasn't actually committed. This means that I know exactly what I need to do."

-#X#-

Hermione sat cross-legged on the floor of the front room surrounded by bits of parchment. She was trying to work out a plan to stop Severus from seeing her as a child, and to seize a bit of independence at the same time. She figured that the would go together quite well; once she had gotten herself some independence, he would see that she could take care of herself and wasn't a child that needed him to run after her, and once she had proved this, he would hopefully trust her to do more and more things for herself. In fact, she theorised that she should probably be doing as much as she could to make his life easier, after all, he hadn't wanted this marriage but he had done it anyway. She had also decided that she would make an effort to spend time with him, getting to know him and therefore getting to know how best to make his life easier.

The problem was how to entice him out of his lab? The only solution she could think of was to stop him from going down there in the first place, or at least delay him. She usually got up at 8.30, this, she decided, was too late as he was already gone when she woke up. She would set an alarm for 7, and place a silencing charm over his side of the bed so it didn't disturb him. She would get up before him and get the breakfast, and then they could sit together while they ate and talk.

That evening Hermione set the dusty old alarm clock she had found in a cupboard, she placed a careful silencing charm onto Severus' side of the bed, and then, feeling satisfied that tomorrow she could set her plan into action, went to sleep.

The next morning when Hermione was awoken by the harsh beep of the clock, she found herself quite alone in the bed. She went down the stairs still in her pyjamas to see if he was still eating breakfast, but the kitchen was just as it always was; empty, with her breakfast on the table. She looked at the clock to check the alarm had gone off at the right time. It was 7.05. Hermione swore, which was definitely something she did very often. Tomorrow she would set her alarm for 6.30, surely he couldn't be getting up before then, he only came to bed after midnight.

Once she was dressed, had eaten her breakfast and had scowled at the plate which cleaned itself and put itself away. Hermione was struck by another idea. He always came up at the same time each day to make the dinner. She would make the dinner before he came up, it was simple. It was genius. It was very nearly foolproof.

-#X#-

Severus sat in the lab drinking cup after cup of coffee, he needed the caffeine. When he had finally gone to bed last night, at just past 2am, he had noticed the old muggle alarm clock on Hermione's bedside table. He wasn't entirely certain why she had suddenly decided that she needed to be up earlier, but he was sure it couldn't be anything good for him to be there with her. He had checked the time she had set it for, and, finding it to be about half an hour before he usually got up himself, had resolved to get up earlier so that he still had his hour to get ready and have a peaceful breakfast. He just couldn't handle incessant chatter and questions that early in the morning. He had also noted her silencing spell as he had slipped beneath the covers, the way that suddenly all the usual noises, like her gentle snoring, weren't there anymore. There were many reasons that he could think of that someone would want to wake up earlier than him, and make sure he couldn't hear them doing so. None of them appealed to his survival instincts (which others seemed to think was all paranoia). He cancelled the charm and replaced it with a clever one of his own invention to ensure that he woke up at the right time.

Needless to say this had worked. He had had his breakfast in quiet solitude and just as he had entered the lab he had heard her alarm clock screeching. It was strange how missing only that single hour of sleep could leave his body feeling so drained. It was obviously just the break in his routine. If she persisted then he would soon adjust. Just now, however, he definitely needed caffeine. He had finished brewing early this afternoon, so he just sat, reading, drinking coffee, waiting for the clock to show him that it was time to cook the dinner.

The time came soon enough. Severus book marked his book, drained his cup, stood up and stretched. He thought perhaps he would do chicken tonight, yes, chicken in a red wine sauce, maybe some roast potatoes, he could almost smell it already. Wait, he could smell something. Severus sniffed where he stood, half way up the stairs to the kitchen. It smelt like... tomatoes, and cheese, and herbs, lots of herbs. What on earth was she doing?

He pushed the door open just as she set the plates down on the table, lasagne, she'd made lasagne. She was smiling at him. Why was she always smiling at him? Didn't she know all the horrid things he'd done? Of course she did, she wasn't stupid, and she certainly wasn't illiterate. He said nothing, just looked from the plates of steaming food to her and back again. "It's not much, but I hope you'll like it." She told him. He still didn't say anything, but something made him go over and sit down.

She looked so pleased with herself, foolish child, as she sat down opposite him. She was clearly waiting for him to try her food and, no doubt, expecting him to tell her how wonderful it was and how grateful he was that she had taken it upon herself to cook. Well, she'd obviously got him confused with all those other teachers that used to fawn over her brilliance and pay homage to her intelligence all the time. He tentatively took a very small forkful of the meal and tasted it. To his surprise, it wasn't inedible, not that he had any intention of telling her that. AS son as he had taken that tiny bite she as beaming at him again.

"So," oh, gods, she wanted to talk. Of course she wanted to talk, "are you brewing anything special down there?"

"yes." He took another bite so he didn't have to say further, it was definitely edible.

Hermione waited a moment to see if he would elaborate on his own, then internally rolled her eyes. "Normally, if someone asks about something you're working on, it's because they want you to tell them about it." She told him, calmly, knowing that she was pushing her luck.

"I know." He told her. Why was she pushing this? They hadn't had anything even resembling a proper conversation since the day after their wedding.

"So, are you going to tell me about it?" she prompted after another moment of silence.

"No." Stubborn arse, Hermione thought.

"Why not?" does this girl never give up? Severus asked himself.

"Because it is none of your concern." Ooh, dangerous teacher voice. Well, shed survived six years of him teaching, and a war, she would survive this as well.

"I think it is. I'm you're wife. I live here. I should know what's going on in my own home." She gave him her reasons clearly and concisely, like a mature adult debate.

"What goes on in my house, and more specifically in my private lab, is my business and mine alone." He was almost growling now. She really hadn't meant to annoy him. At least he was acknowledging her presence. At least he was talking to her.

"I think you mean our house." She told him defiantly, and then instantly regretted it as he stood up from the table suddenly, causing his chair to fall backwards. His eyes darkening with rage as he hissed at her.

"No, Miss Granger, it is not, our house. It is my house. You have lived here less than five minutes, you do not know where all the doors in this house lead, hell, you don't even know where all the doors in this house are. You think that just because the ministry says we are married means you get to cal everything I have partly your own? How can that be when I, and I alone take care of the wards, the maintenance, the mortgage, the bills. I alone know every secret this house holds." He finished abruptly and stormed off back down to his lab, leaving Hermione somewhat stunned behind him.

-#X#-

The next morning when Severus got up, pleased to see that his wife hadn't bothered to set her alarm this morning, he found a large and very neat stack of galleons on the kitchen table, with a note beside them.

My half of the mortgage and bills. If you need more just let me know, or if you'd prefer it in Pounds Stirling I can arrange that. ~ H

Severus slapped his palm to his forehead and then dragged his hand down over his face. Insufferable, stupid, bloody... Gryffindor. He growled to himself. He turned her note over and, summoning a quill and getting instead a biro from one of the drawers (much to his further annoyance), scrawled across the back of it.

I do not want your bloody gold. Grow up.

He didn't feel the need to sign it. Half an hour later, he was storming around his lab, brewing on auto pilot as a thousand thoughts swirled through his mind. How had she managed to misconstrue his meaning so thoroughly? He didn't want her gold. He didn't want her anything. He just wanted her to realise that... what? What had been the point of his little rant? What's mine is mine, keep your hands off? Now who was being immature? Fuck it. He slammed a cauldron onto a stand with such force that one of the legs crumpled. Severus swore aloud this time, and kicked the cauldron for good measure.

-#X#-

Almost three weeks passed after the first evening Hermione had made the dinner. She wasn't put off by his refusal to take her gold. Nor was she put off by his declaration that she knew next to nothing about the house. Quite the opposite in fact. She had spent most of her free time since that night, and admittedly that had been significantly reduced by her return to work, scouring every inch of the house looking for hidden doors, which he had implied where there. She had also added a new layer to the wards, which he had discovered when he went out to get some new ingredients and had then been unable to get back in. He hadn't been amused. She had arrived home to see him pacing on the front step positively smoking from the ears.

Hermione continued to make the dinner (the only thing he allowed her to do), and, to her pleasant surprise, Severus continued to eat it, though not once did he thank her or tell her that it was nice. Still, she figured that if he disliked it she would have heard about it. She also continued to try to engage him in conversation while they ate. Some nights he would just ignore her, eating very quickly and then disappearing for the rest of the evening. Some nights he would answer her, albeit in one or two word answers. Most nights, however, they ended up arguing. Hermione found herself deliberately provoking these fights after a few nights of him not talking to her, just so that he would actually respond to her. She found herself almost looking forward to seeing the dark rage bubble in his eyes, almost anticipated with joy the moment when he would lean a little closer to growl at her in that soft and deadly whisper of a voice. She knew it was wrong, and she tried not to do it, but somehow, it always ended the same.

Tonight was one of those nights. Hermione had been out celebrating Ginny's Birthday earlier, and was wearing a knee length, quite tight fitting denim skirt, and a bright red top, quite low cut by her usual standards, but nothing overly revealing, it had only been lunch out at a restaurant after all. She had made steak and kidney pie for dinner. It was steaming away on the table. Severus wasn't up from the lab yet. She checked the clock on the wall; it was strange, he was usually here by now. She waited another five minutes and then placed a warming charm on the plates to keep the food hot. He'd obviously just lost track of time, or had to do something to the potion before it could be left (she still had no idea what he was working on).

A further twenty minutes later he finally emerged from the hidden door, and Hermione found herself feeling quite annoyed. They always had dinner at the same time, every night; surely he could have left her a note to say he would be late up tonight, or even sent her a message with his patronus or something over the last half hour. He sat down with out a word, or even a glance in her direction. Nothing at all to indicate that he knew he was late, even though he must know, he just must. She felt her temper rising a little bit more. "Where have you been?" she asked, a little more sharply than she intended.

He paused, his fork half way to his mouth, his eyebrows slowly rising. "The lab. You've just seen me come out of it, haven't you?" Instantly on the defensive. Severus braced himself for another of the 'conversations' that always led to them standing opposite each other and shouting.

"What are you doing down there? How come you're late?"

"Are you my mother now as well as my wife?" She knew his own temper was rising from the way his voice got lower, opposite to her won, which got higher.

"I made an effort to come home early from my friend's birthday so that I could have dinner ready for the time we always have it, and you show up half an hour later than that, and think you don't even have to give me a reason why. I'm not your house elf, you know."

"You cook one meal a day, voluntarily, and you think I treat you like a house elf?" he gave a humourless bark of laughter. "You don't know what you are talking about, as usual."

"Well I'd do more if you weren't such a control freak!" she shot at him before the words had fully been considered in her mind.

"Oh, we're resorting to name calling now, are we?" he slammed his fork down on the plate and pushed the whole, relatively untouched meal away from him. "How mature of you. Then again, why should I expect more from you? you are, after all just a child."

"I'm NOT a bloody child!" she knew shouting wasn't helping, that this would just end where it always ended, with him hissing something at her before storming off to his lab without giving her enough time to properly form a reply, but her anger at being called a child (again!) clouded her better judgement and she just snapped. "If you'd open your eyes for thirty seconds and stop wallowing in pointless self recrimination or what ever the hell you think your doing then you'd see that! I mean, maybe, just maybe, if you actually bothered to pull your head out of your –" she caught herself just in time, "lab, every now and then," she recovered quickly, "you'd realise that as well as making you one measly meal a day, I've also been trying so hard to get to know you so that I can please you and you just throw it all back in my face and treat me like a prisoner!"

"A prisoner?" he was shouting too now, and that worried her on some subconscious level, because normally he would raise his voice, sure, but he never actually properly shouted at her. "I see no bars on the windows! I see no lock on the door! You are free to come and go as you please! Just so you know, the reason I don't come out of the lab very much is to avoid things like this! Has it occurred to you that perhaps I am the prisoner? A prisoner in my own home because you can't hold your bloody tongue for five minutes! As for throwing things back in your face, all I have done since the unfortunate day we were wed is try to make your life easier. I have tiptoed around on egg shells, trying to give you your space, trying to make sure that you are not left with all the demeaning tasks so many wizards dump on their wives. My payment? You constantly in my face, not even willing to give me the half hour I do spend in the main part of my house to myself! Why do you insist on arguing with me all the time anyway?"

He turned on his heel and headed for the lab, he had his hand on the door when he heard the shout from behind him. "Because arguing with you is the only time you even recognize that I am here! And most certainly the only time you show me any form of passion!" When he spun around once more, she had her hands over her mouth and her eyes were wide as though she couldn't believe she had just said that.

"Passion?" his voice was barely above a snarl, he stalked back across the kitchen, and Hermione found herself backing up in fear, waiting for him to draw his wand and hex her into oblivion, or maybe he didn't need his wand, maybe he could just destroy her with the power of his mind through those blazing black tunnels he had for eyes. She felt the kitchen units against her back and legs, and he was still advancing on her. She swallowed, her hands still over her mouth. "you want me to show you passion?" it wasn't a question, it was a threat, a threat she felt with every cell in her body, a threat that made her mind skid to a halt and tremble with anticipation and trepidation.

He was barely two inches from her now and his eyes burned into hers. The next thing she knew both her wrists were held in one of his hands and pinned above her head and he was kissing her very roughly, but she had to admit, very passionately. She felt his teeth on her lower lip, and her eyes slid closed, not sure whether this was a good thing or a very bad thing. The hand that wasn't holding her wrists was holding firmly at her waist as he used his entire body to stop her from escaping, his mouth travelled down to her neck where he bit hard enough to make her gasp, hard enough to leave a mark.

Hermione only opened her eyes when she felt his hand move from her waist and under her top. Part of her told her she should stop this, told her she should stop him before he turned this into something else to hate himself for, but another part of her told her, it a much louder voice, that she should just go with it, and enjoy it. She heard the fabric of her top rip before it was pulled roughly off her shoulders, and she shivered a little. His mouth was moving down now, over the newly exposed skin, still nipping, leaving trail of small red marks He pushed her harder with his body, until she could feel the edge of the unit digging into her lower back, not the most comfortable, but it didn't really detract from what his mouth was currently doing through the thin fabric of her bra. She moaned, pulled a little with her wrists as she fought to free her hands, wanting to run them through his hair, or divest him of his shirt. To her surprise, he released her, his hand moving to grip the back of her neck as he moved back up towards her lips. She found herself pushing back against him, not to move him away, but to get closer to him.

It all seemed like a blur to Severus, one minute he had thought to scare her a little, shoving her back into the units, biting her hard enough to cause her pain. Then she had moaned and now she was definitely not struggling to get away. The feel of her fingers tangles in his hair, feeling her fingernails digging into his shoulder, even through his shirt, as he bit her nipple, with a little more force than was perhaps necessary but not enough to seriously hurt her. Suddenly her skirt had gone the ay of her top and her legs were around his waist as he pressed her against the one full height cupboard the room contained. He had one of his hands on her backside, the other moving her hair out of the way to give him better access to the other side of her neck, and her earlobe. Another gasped moan and she shifted her hips, rubbing him through his trousers. It was his turn to make a sound now, only he didn't moan, he growled.

His shirt was on the floor in moments, her hands dragging across his chest, playing a little with the hair there. Severus clawed at his self control, this was going to far. He refused to take her like this in the kitchen. He shouldn't even be considering going any further, but somehow he didn't want to stop. Instead he pushed gently on her thigh to get her to put her feet on the floor, giving her one more kiss, their tongues battling furiously.

Hermione wasn't sure what to think when he pulled away from her. Was he just toying with her? Was he just trying to make a point? But then he had picked her up, well, slung her unceremoniously over his shoulder, and was carrying her upstairs. Hermione, her lack of experience weighing heavily in her mind, took the opportunity to drag her nails up his back, hard. Then wished she hadn't when he growled again and nearly dropped her. Maybe she'd wait until they weren't on the stairs before she tried anything else.

Before she knew really where she was, Hermione found herself once again against a wall. Severus' hands roving over her body, His tongue and teeth teasing once more at the sensitive skin at the base of her neck. Her hands eventually managed to loose his belt, and soon, her confidence rising at the feel of his erection against her hand, managed to get his trousers down enough for him to step out of them. She made to put her hand inside his boxers but he deftly batted it away without breaking the contact between his mouth and her skin. He traced a pattern of nips, licks and kisses until he was low enough to drop to his knees. Hermione's head tilted back as she gasped again.

-#X#-

Many hours later Hermione's brain was slowly pulling itself back into a workable state as she lay against the chest of her husband. She wasn't entirely certain how they had ended up cuddled together, or when it had gotten dark, but she was certain that she liked it, a lot. Unfortunately, she also knew that she had to do something that would probably ruin the entire thing.

"Severus?" she asked quietly, half hoping that he would be asleep and wouldn't answer her. Of course, he was awake, and as soon as she spoke he pulled away from her a little, disentangling himself before he responded.

"Yes?" he sounded so stiff. Hermione found it hard to believe that not half an hour ago he had been a groaning shuddering mass of heat when now he sounded like they could be back in the classroom.

She took a deep breath, pulled her courage and the blanket a little tighter around herself and said quietly, "do you think we could maybe sit down and talk about the marriage? Tomorrow, maybe?" She felt him tense even from the other side of the bed and realised that he (in his paranoia) probably thought she meant she was going to leave, or maybe that was what he hoped, either way, she quickly clarified. "If we're going to be stuck together for the foreseeable future because of this law, then I figure we can, at very least, learn to live with each other without treading on each others toes all the time. Maybe we could, I don't know, set some ground rules or something?"

He didn't relax any. Hermione sighed inwardly, well, she had tried. Silence reigned, and she had almost given up on getting any answer at all and was trying to get some sleep instead when he finally breathed, "I don't imagine that should be too much of a problem."

Hermione fell asleep smiling that night.

AN: Once again, many many apologies. Hopefully should get back on track now. If you've found any grammatical errors or misplaced words, blame by still somewhat cotton-woolly head... AS you can see, this chapter marks a kind of turning point in the progress of the story. Hope you enjoyed it... Hugs and cookies, ForeverPandora x