LIFE AND AFTER
Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.
A/N: Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers Bellegeste and Lady Memory, who supported me through multiple drafts of this chapter.
After Professor Snape reveals his true feelings to a newly graduated Hermione, an unexpected friendship develops and deepens. But no man is an island, and no couple either. Last chapter:
"You love me. I love you. What does anything else matter?"
"Right and wrong always matter," he said.
What could she say? She supposed it was true, but for her people had always mattered more. Enough dithering; you couldn't be Ron Weasley's second-best friend for seven years without learning plain speaking.
"Do you remember asking did I think you were made of stone?" she said, and watched his eyelids crease. "Are you sure you're not? Because I'm well within your arms' reach now."
He couldn't be. Stone didn't tremble.
"For the rest of your life," he said, "and even after, there'll be people who think less of you. They'll question your motives, your actions, your achievements. And there'll be nothing you can do. Even if you renounced me, the smear would remain. Are you sure I'm worth that?"
"The smear?" she repeated. "So you do think we're wrong."
She shivered. Moonlight gleamed on the half-frozen lake. The beech tree's arms shook in the wind. He drew her closer, under his cloak.
"No. You're not under my authority. You're not dependent on my good will. You're not in any way beholden." He let his head fall forward until their foreheads touched, and his hair shielded both of them from the night. "But we look wrong, and you'll suffer for it."
"I don't care." She tilted her head to look into his eyes. Their noses bumped, and she smiled. Eskimo kisses. Halfway to real ones.
"Looks don't matter. Achievements don't, either. And pleasing everybody except myself doesn't even come close," she said. If war had taught her anything, it was this. "Love is what matters – all that matters, really. I've never been surer of anything in my life."
"When I was your age, I was sure that a snake on my arm would bring me good fortune," he reminded her.
"Yes, but we agreed that I'm wiser than you, didn't we?" She reached up to caress his cheek, and he leaned into it.
"Hermione –"
"Don't think so much," she said, threading her other hand through his hair and nudging him closer. "You're not who they say you are. Don't try to be."
"Do you know what you've given me?" he said. "Happiness. Forgiveness. Trust. Friendship. All the things I thought I could never deserve - that everyone's born deserving, but that I'd always thought couldn't apply to me, until I saw myself in your eyes." His breath tickled her lips. She smiled again, wider.
"And all you have to give in return is you," she said. "I think I'm getting the better end of the deal, personally. You for my very own - do you think you can bear it?"
It seemed that he could.
...
"Send me a Howler, will you, Hermione Granger? We'll just see about that." Ginny's teeth gripped an inch of lower lip. Her parents had scolded her, Harry and Ron were ignoring her, Colin was demanding to know what she'd done with the photos from Hermione's party that she'd "borrowed", and even the twins thought she was wrong. But how could Hermione and Snape be right?
A/N The "made of stone ... arm's reach" line is from ch 3.
No offense intended to Inuit readers by "eskimo kisses".