A/N- I know it's been ages but I'm sick, and this chapter was particularly hard to write. Hopefully Chapter 7 will make up for it soon. Sorry!

It had been two weeks since their date, and Hermione's letters had begun to tail off. Whereas before she would write him almost page per day in her neat cursive, she now barely wrote him a paragraph. Against his will, Severus found himself becoming increasingly concerned.

Had she decided that she no longer wanted to continue with him? Merlin, but he hoped not. He had honestly believed that she had enjoyed their time together, that she was receptive to his advances. Not once, during the whole night, had she looked uncomfortable with him. Not even when her body had been draped across his. So why, he wondered, was she suddenly rejecting contact with him?

A thought struck him out of the blue. Perhaps it wasn't him at all, but something else that was making Hermione so distracted that she stopped writing to him. After all, it wasn't like her to be so thoughtless. From her days as a student, he knew that she often got so focused on her work that she completely forgot everything else. Hopefully, that was what had happened here.

Severus really didn't want to contemplate the alternative.

When he didn't receive a letter from Hermione at all on Friday, he decided to pay her a visit. If he knew her as well as he thought he did, he knew that she was likely to be neglecting herself just to get her work done. To him, nothing could be that important. If she wouldn't care for herself, he would care for her instead. Even if he had to tie her down to do it.

Decided, he gathered restorative potions, realising that it was highly unlikely that she'd have anything of that calibre in stock. Task completed, he apparated to her flat in a swirl of black robes.

Hermione cursed loudly as she heard the knock on her door. Who the bloody hell could that be? Harry was away, Ginny was training and Luna was on another of her Snorkack-hunting expeditions.

Crap.

Severus.

Quickly, she hurried to the door, to find the unsmiling face of her… What would she call him now? Certainly not her boyfriend, she hated that title at least as much as he did. Severus was no boy.

From the stony look on his face, she could see that this was not the time to contemplate those sorts of things. No, she needed to appease the man. Having the grace to blush, she invited him in.

Severus started on her as soon as they entered the living room, having caught sight of her desk. Or rather, what he couldn't see of her desk.

"No wonder you've been unable to reply to me, witch. I'm surprised you can find anything in that mess of parchment." He raised an eyebrow at her, carefully studying her face to see if she'd actually taken care of her health.

She hadn't.

Her skin was sallow and pale, her now-dull eyes ringed with purple shadows and her hair almost unrecognisable in its snarl of tangles. He was fairly certain she'd forgotten about the pen she had lodged in her curls.

As she began to splutter her excuses, he cut her off with a look.

"Hermione, you must see that this isn't good for you. Tell me what you need to do and I'll sort it for you, but if you're not in the bath in the next minute so help me Merlin I'll wash you myself." He growled, his eyes glinting with promise.

Hermione gulped, knowing that he wasn't joking. To be honest, it had all got a bit ridiculous. She hadn't slept properly in several days, the amount of work one of the cases was providing getting on top of her.

"Alright, Severus." She wisely acquiesced. "I'll go. Could you just finish the patent paperwork for me? There are only a few details left, but there's so much red tape with the Ministry that it'll take me weeks to sort it myself."

Nodding curtly, Severus replied "Filling in a couple of forms is hardly the most strenuous task, I'm sure I can manage."

At her grateful look, he purred "I will need you to go and find them first, I'm sure I don't want to ruin what is undoubtedly the epitome of Granger organisation." He smirked, gesturing towards the massive pile of paperwork stacked on her desk.

Shaking her head at him in amusement, Hermione began rooting through the accumulated debris of a fortnight's solid work.

Meanwhile, Severus had gone into the bathroom and run her a bath. While the bathing facilities in her flat were, in his opinion, pathetically small, they would have to do. He added a couple of his own restoratives to the water, which would be absorbed through the skin to help her relax and heal. The wizard knew from experience how easily stress could affect a person, and he didn't want that for her.

Sheepishly, she proffers the forms as he impatiently waits for her.

Almost snatching them from her, he takes out a muggle biro to her surprise and begins the work.

"Although I'm sure you find me fascinating Hermione, your bath is getting cold and so will your dinner once I've done this." He griped without looking up.

Turning towards the bathroom to hide her smile, Hermione pondered his words. Not only was he going to the trouble of doing her patent for her, but he was willing to come and force her to take a break. Very few people bothered anymore. It was a surprisingly tender gesture from the typically cold man, and one that she greatly appreciated.

Plus, she really did enjoy his cooking.

Severus scribbled away furiously on the parchment before him, trying desperately to drown out the sound of the soft splashes of Hermione's bathing. It wasn't working. This was one torture the Dark Lord had never visited on him-having to listen to his beautiful witch bathe and refrain from breaking the door down and joining her. He'd been completely serious when he'd threatened to wash her. At this point, there was nothing he wanted more than to go in there and act on all of the 'impure thoughts' running through his head.

Funny really, you'd think a man who was a master of occlumnecy would have more control over his own thoughts.

Wait a minute, his? She had barely talked to him in a fortnight and had gone on one date with him, for Merlin's sake. Surely, it was far too early for him to start getting possessive of her. Yet, the thought of her with anyone other than him made him murderous. He wanted her to want to be his, to feel for him the way he felt for her. From what he had seen, she cared for him. But was it enough? She was so young, she could be wooed away from him by some younger wizard who could promise her the world.

No.

Hermione wasn't the type to make false promises, or go at anything half-heartedly. If she agreed to something, she would put her heart and soul into it. The same was true with courting him. It had to be. He was just pressing his old insecurities onto her; something that he knew was unfair of him. If anyone could be trusted, it was Hermione. She had never been known to be frivolous or stupid, and had only ever acted with the upmost loyalty to those she cared for.

Someday, he wanted to be added to that list.

A loud crash followed by a cry brought him out of his reverie. Leaping out of the chair, he raised his wand and pointed it at the closed bathroom door, prepared to duel.

"Hermione?!" He shouted, approaching the bathroom.

"Severus, I'm fine. I knocked a bottle and it smashed, that's all." She called, cursing under her breath.

"Hold on, I'll help." He slowly entered the room, not wanting to hit her with the door.

"No, wait!" Hermione shrieked, ducking behind the door and yanking a towel from the radiator. "I'm not decent!"

"There's glass everywhere you daft witch, would you rather be modest and ruin your feet?" He picked her up, wrapped in the towel and carried her out of the bathroom to place her on the sofa.

"Wait there." The wizard swept back into the room to clean up the glass shards.

"Severus!" Hermione cried, appalled. "I'm on the sofa, in a towel, soaking wet and without my wand!"

Shaking his head to clear the multitude of delicious images that created, he went back to help her. With a flick of his wrist, she was dry and in her nightdress. By how far it ended above her knees, he should have probably conjured a longer one. Smirking slightly, he knelt before her.

Raising a slightly mocking eyebrow at her, he lifted her foot to inspect the sole for glass. The smooth, pink skin was completely unblemished, and he slowly stroked a fingertip along it. Much to his surprise, she burst out laughing and tried to snatch her foot back. Ticklish, was she?

His small smirk turned into a full-out grin. Severus lifted her other foot and gently tapped the top of her foot with his fingers as she bit her lip. Again, he checked the bottom of her foot for shards of glass. It was completely fine. He smoothed his palm along the underside of her foot as she stifled a gasp, trying not to kick him in the nose.

Merlin, she was sensitive. It made him wonder how she'd react if his attentions were instead focused on other areas of her body…

But no. This was no time to be entertaining those thoughts about the witch, he could easily scare her away and right now she needed his care. Placing a kiss on the top of her foot in a mirror of how he had kissed her hand, he rose to his feet. Instead of speaking, he turned and headed to prepare their meal, leaving Hermione alone on the sofa.

Hermione tried to breathe evenly, tugging at the hem of her nightie in an attempt to make it longer. Eventually giving it up as a lost cause, she went to check the patent forms that Severus had completed for her. Unsurprisingly, he had done them perfectly, right down to the last details of the spell. By the time she had finished reading through the papers, an enticing smell was wafting around her flat, from their meal. Curious and more than a little bit hungry, she went to check on the wizard.

Entering the kitchen, she saw him bending to retrieve a tray from the grill, giving her a truly excellent view of his arse. Not that she was staring, of course. He was dressed only in his partially unbuttoned dress shirt and trousers, having discarded the robes due to the heat. She kept out of the way as she watched him move around the kitchen like it was his own, dishing up steak, potatoes and peas with the effortless grace he always seemed to possess. If he hadn't been a wizard, he should definitely have gone into cooking.

He turned with a plate in each hand, raising a sardonic eyebrow as he caught sight of her standing by the door in her nightdress. "Is there any reason why you've been staring at me, Hermione? Is something about my methods particularly interesting to you?"

She shook her head, blushing. "It's just that you prepare food the way you prepare potions, I find the parallel interesting."

Placing the food on the small table in the centre of the kitchen, he gestured for her to sit down. "Well, as you know, I was brought up in a Muggle household. My mother stopped practicing magic after she married my father. As such, I was taught to do most things the Muggle way, including cooking. I suppose that the way I cook led to the way I create potions, rather than the other way around." He finished quietly, sitting down opposite her.

Hermione nodded, her mind swirling with unanswered questions. Damn the man, as soon as he opened up in the slightest it created more questions than it answered! However, she knew that now was not the time to ask. Just the look on his face told her that. While his expression was its usual, cool façade, she could clearly see his discomfort in the way he gripped his cutlery like iron. It seemed she was learning to read him.

She considered her next words carefully. "Thank you, Severus."

He looked up, his eyes glittering. "There is no need to thank me, Hermione. I simply did as you needed."

"You always seem to know what I need." She acknowledged. "Even when I don't. I let the case get on top of me, but you forced me back to reality again."

"Be that as it may, your bloody-minded determination is admirable on occasion. Except when it gets you into difficulties. May I ask what caused you to exclude all else to work on it?"

She gave a sad smile. "Basically, there's a young couple who were forced into an arranged marriage by their parents, and have only just escaped it after meeting every clause. Unfortunately, one such clause was a child, so there's now a fierce custody battle over a two year old boy. I have been working to resolve that for the last fortnight."

He seemed to absorb this. "It's a terrible thing, that such an arcane practice is still legal in today's society. Particularly given how the new Ministry prides itself on being liberal."

Her eyes flashed with anger. "The Ministry is just as backward as the rest of society, it seems. There is so much stigma, still, against anything outside of the norm. While being Muggle-born is no longer overtly discriminated against, there is still a clear wariness among most people. I've never seen anything more resistant to change than the Wizarding world, and nothing that needs reform more desperately. Things that became common in the Muggle world almost a century ago are seen are revolutionary!"

During her tirade, Severus' own eyes had taken on a dangerous glint. "I know exactly what you mean, Hermione. For decades, the Ministry has been much more concerned with getting re-elected than actually making any progress. Fortunately, now your spell has created a whole new area of study, people will force them into making changes."

"I hope so. There is still the practical demonstration to complete before it is licensed." She bit her lip, worried.

"We both know you'll breeze through that. For now, focus on the case. You can file the paperwork and arrange the demonstration afterwards, when you're far less busy."

Hermione agreed wholeheartedly, and the pair finished their meal in companionable silence.

Afterwards, having cleared the dinner things, Severus made to leave. He had a potion brewing on twelve-hour rotation, and had to tend it. Before he left, he couldn't resist leaning down to press a gentle kiss to her cheek, breathing in the light vanilla scent of her hair.

He almost grinned when he saw the shell-shocked look on her face as he straightened, her cheeks flushing that deep pink he had come to appreciate. Slinging his robes over his arm, he purred "I expect I'll be seeing you soon, Hermione. Do take care of yourself, I shouldn't have to bully you into bathing. You're not a toddler, after all." With a parting smirk, the wizard disapparated, leaving Hermione to stare at the space he had left in shock.

Slowly, she brought her hand to her cheek, smoothing over the spot his lips had caressed. He had moved from her hand, to her foot, to her cheek. She dearly hoped that the next time he saw her, he would finally give her what she wanted most at that moment.

As it was, for now, she would return to her work. The sooner she completed that, the sooner she'd have a tangible reason to see him again.

She couldn't wait.

A/N- Love it? Hate it? Tell me in the reviews! I know it all got a bit political there, but there is a reason, I promise. Again, I'm sorry it's so late, I'll try and update a bit quicker this time around!