For all her grand statements of throwing expectations out the window, Hermione didn't manage to see Severus again for the rest of the summer. He was still locked away in his miserable little house with the rat, and she was still talking Horcruxes with Dumbledore.
It was the third uninterrupted day in a row—the Death Eater attacks on Muggles and Order-sympathizers had fallen off in recent weeks—and Hermione had reluctantly agreed to meet Tonks for drinks.
She wore a blue dress, sleeveless with a sweetheart neckline, a bit '50s in the way the skirt flared out from hip to knee. It was a good summer dress for a night on the town with a friend. It showed off a bit of her scars, but that was half the reason she'd chosen it—Tonks had an ulterior motive for inviting her out, and the scars would surely put a crimp in whatever her plan of attack had been.
If she'd been meeting Severus in the dress, she would have added some jewelry and tamed her curls with Sleakeezy, but since it was just Tonks she skipped the jewelry and wore her hair in a French braid. She was dressed up enough not to be noticed for being underdressed, but not dressed up enough to stick out.
She'd never thought much about her clothes before she'd been hiding in plain sight.
"Sam."
"Tonks."
They sat at a booth near the bar. It was a smoky place not far from Diagon Alley, popular with young witches and wizards. Hermione had never been before.
"What're we drinkin'?" their waitress asked without actually looking at them.
They ordered—Tonks asked for a fruity cocktail and looked surprised when Hermione ordered firewhiskey—and the waitress wandered off. They sat awkwardly while they waited. Hermione couldn't think of a thing to talk about, and Tonks didn't seem particularly interested in making the first conversational move. Hermione began to expect it was an Auror's gambit, letting her do the talking.
"So…" Hermione said eventually. Their drinks had arrived, and they'd both taken a few tentative sips. "How is work?"
"Quieter lately, which is good," Tonks said, smiling politely. "And you?"
"It's our busy season, as it happens. All the summer cuttings are in, so there's plenty of prep work to do. This year's crop of mandrake turned out particularly well—I spent most of last week slicing them for pickilng. Not a fun task, let me tell you."
"I always thought they looked rather cute."
"At Hogwarts, maybe. I only remember repotting them before they reached maturity. The fully mature plant is gnarly and wrinkled-looking. They tend to bite, and they certainly don't like to be chopped up."
Tonks wrinkled her nose and sipped her drink. Hermione shrugged.
"It makes for a quiet day for me, which is nice. You have to ward in the screams, you know. And I wear charmed earmuffs. Keeps my boss out of my hair for the day."
They shared a smile and lapsed back into silence.
"When were you at Hogwarts?" Tonks asked, and Hermione had to remind herself not to narrow her eyes at the other woman. It was a leading question, surely.
"It seems like a lifetime ago, and like it was just last year," Hermione said instead, grinning. "You weren't there, surely. I would've remembered you." She looked deliberately up at Tonks's vibrant hair, which had recently shifted from bubblegum pink to a rich violet . Tonks grinned, and her hair turned blue to match Hermione's dress.
Wherever the conversation would've gone—and Hermione had been hoping to figure out who'd put Tonks up to it, and what they were trying to find out about her—was interrupted by Minerva's Patronus. The tabby cat darted through the north wall, startling more than a few people. There were a few curses, grumbled protests. Half the pub turned to watch.
"Floo to my office at Hogwarts immediately."
The cat vanished, leaving quiet in its wake.
"Well then," Hermione said, knocking back the last of her drink and putting a few sickles down to cover it. "I guess I'm off. Sorry, Tonks."
"It's alright. It was nice chatting."
Hermione nodded politely, and then paid the barkeep the knut fee for a pinch of Floo Powder.
The office was as it always was, except for the cold. That was telling of the problem there and then.
"Hermione?" Minerva said, and Hermione suddenly realized that this would be the Minerva who knew about their summer together, who had lived the tutoring. The first staff meeting before term had been today. She was finally catching up to herself.
"Minerva," Hermione said, feeling something uncramp inside her chest. She hadn't realized how much she'd missed the familiarity with her Head of House, the closeness from that summer.
"Why didn't you say something? I hardly recognize you! I didn't recognize you. Are you alright?" Minerva said, pulling her into a tight hug.
"Don't be daft," Severus's voice came from the chair, reminding Hermione of the source of the cold. "She was ordered not to say anything."
There might have been a snide undertone in that last sentence, but Hermione ignored it. She looked at Minerva and nodded apologetically, squeezing her hand once, silently promising details later. She turned to Severus. He was a wreck, mentally. He'd been Occluding too long, for one. And on top of that, somebody had been prodding at his shields.
"What's going on?" she asked, deciding not to leap to any conclusions. The obvious one was that she'd been called to force him to not damage himself, but she couldn't see him sitting there and waiting for her to arrive for that. Unless it was worse than she thought…
"Something about Occlumency," Minerva said, huffing. Hermione smiled. Severus scowled.
"It's been… since I saw you last," he said from his chair, and she noticed he was trembling.
"Oh," she said, her brain grinding to a halt for a long moment. "Shit."
"Language, Granger," he said, but there was none of the usual vitriol. In fact, even the scowls didn't have anything behind them. His eyes were perfectly blank. Not even fathomless, simply flat and empty. He was beyond the point of danger, beginning to actually do damage to his mind.
"You have to drop them right now," she said, taking a few steps closer to the chair. The cold intensified, and she felt his magic snap along her skin.
"Well thanks; I hadn't thought of that," he said, bitingly sarcastic. "Don't you think I fucking tried that already?"
"Language, Snape," she said, mimicking his tone from before, but thinking of other solutions. She could always… but that was invasive. Intimate.
"I had her call you for a reason," he snapped, obviously seeing where her mind had gone in her face, because he certainly wouldn't be picking up any leaking thoughts in his current state. "Just do it already."
"Er, Minerva," Hermione said, turning to look at the older witch. "Do you have any experience with Occlumency?"
"Not really," Minerva said. Hermione had thought not. For such a useful skill, especially with the war, surprisingly few people had studied mind magic. "I read a book on it once." She shrugged. "I can usually tell when somebody is trying Legilimency on me."
"You'll feel this, then," Hermione said, turning back to Severus. "You might want to sit down."
Minerva did so, settling across the room and looking wary. Hermione ignored her, stepping up to Severus. He had closed his eyes, fists clenched on his thighs. He was sitting up ramrod straight in the student chair by the desk, his usually immaculate teaching robes rumpled around him. She could feel him trying to force the shileds down and failing.
Hermione put her hands on his head, index fingers to his temples, thumbs on his cheekbones, the rest of her fingers spread back across his face. He hadn't been brewing lately, so there was no grease in his hair.
"Ready?"
"No." But he opened his eyes, and she started anyway.
At first, just that casual caress of his mind, her usual greeting, and he flinched under her hands. She lowered her forehead to his, bringing their eyes close. At such close range, she could see the line between pupil and iris, the darkest brown barely differentiated from the black. He was shaking more violently now, not quite twitching just trembling fiercely.
Her magic rolled out around them. It was habit, not to mention just plain polite, to keep it within, to veil it. It was also good strategy, as enemies who had never felt the brush of magic could be misled, could be made to underestimate. (Hermione had been underestimated a lot in her life.)
Once the room was thrumming with her magic, she pushed into his mind. His Occlumency was there, a solid wall, impenetrable. Usually, his Occlumency was subtle. He shielded his thoughts, the truths of his being, with innocuous and false memories. His subconscious was truly desperate to have gone on lockdown like this, staving off the madness and decay of too much mind magic.
She thought about their times together. Those not-arguments over books and academic points, the time they spent in the Grimmauld cellar brewing together, the hours and hours they'd spent in her kitchen while he bled and she patched him up.
His mind softened against hers, the gigantic mental wall going translucent and pliable.
She let out a relieved breath; she hadn't been sure it would work. He'd spent his entire adult life pushing people away. For good reason, yes, but that still left him here with her as his best option to draw him out. He had to trust her for it to work. Apparently he trusted her.
Slowly, the thrum of his magic, his presence, filtered into the room. It came in flashes, spurts of power, and a few leaked memories. She saw him crumpled outside the Fat Lady's portrait, begging forgiveness. She saw him tickling a toddler that could only be Draco Malfoy, comfortably sprawled with the baby on a blanket in a well-appointed nursery. She saw him pacing the length of his office at Hogwarts, scowling darkly.
She smoothed her mind over and around his again. She thought about how much she liked spending time with him, how he was a good man and she was glad to know him. She thought about how it felt when he kissed her. He wouldn't pick up on the specific thoughts; he just needed to feel the timbre of her mind, feel safe.
His Occlumency shields shattered. Hermione gripped his head tighter to keep from flinching. She contained the explosion of magic and thought. It wasn't quite painful, just overwhelming.
She felt what he'd felt when the memories washed over her. She felt his loneliness and terror and desire when he was first branded with the Dark Mark, and she felt the anxiety when he woke the next morning. She felt the pride of holding his Potions Mastery certificate in his hands, and the taint he'd associated with it because he'd only got the apprenticeship through Voldemort's connections and Malfoy's money. She felt his pain when Lily Potter died, and his hatred of the boy who she'd died for, then his self-loathing for the hatred of a child who couldn't help who he was, the guilt. She felt the swooping joy he did when he flew on a broomstick. She felt his rage when Harry had snooped in his Pensieve, and his lust the first time he'd kissed her. She felt a strange, hopeful tenderness in the memory of their conversation at her flat the morning after the debacle at the Ministry, and the terror he'd felt when he'd visited her younger self in St. Mungo's not long after.
But mostly, she felt the horror and guilt and disgust and fear of innumerable calls to meetings and revels with the Death Eaters. The shuddering terror of kneeling and exposing his neck to the madman who called himself Lord Voldemort. The sickness that ate down to his soul when he was forced to watch his Death Eater "brothers" rape, maim and kill, forced to smile as they did it. The guilt of brewing poisons for the Dark Lord, knowing that even if he brewed the antidotes, too, there would be no way to get them to the intended victims.
And through all of the memories, she felt his resolve to keep going, to do it, to see it through to the end. Not for Dumbledore, not for Lily Potter, not even for Harry Potter. He was doing it because he wanted a future where he could have a wife and children, where he wouldn't be afraid for his life and/or limbs, not to mention his sanity, on a daily basis. He wanted to end the war, and to put it all so thoroughly behind him that nobody remembered he'd been anything other than some dark-haired child's dad.
When the worst of it faded, Hermione realized she was crying. She wasn't sure why she was crying. Most of it wasn't new information—they'd talked about Lily Potter and what happened when he was summoned—but to feel it all as he felt it, so raw… It was no wonder he was scowling and miserable so often.
She wanted to kiss him. She wanted to take away the hurt of it, if she could.
Speckled through all the memories had been images of her, memories of her. Encounters over the last year, most of them at her flat. He liked it when she touched his hair. He liked waking up and she was the first person he saw. And in the half-view of the dream he had for his future, the one with a wife and children, she was cast as the wife.
If Minerva hadn't been in the room, she would have volunteered to help him make the dream a reality immediately. The antidote to her contraceptive took two hours to brew. Or she could take Blood Replenishing Potion, that had a 90 percent chance of nullifying the contraceptive.
Power continued to surge, but the memories had stopped. His mind was free of barriers again, and the initial tsunami had subsided back to the banks of his own mind. She could feel him against her mind, raw and sore but not damaged. His subconscious had successfully insulated him, and he'd called her to help him release in time.
Shaking, she stepped back. Her hands on his head became a caress, remembering that he liked the feel of it. She would've stroked his hair some more, kissed him, but Minerva was just behind her… Hermione let her hands fall to her sides. He sat there, hands braced on his thighs, and breathed deeply.
When Hermione looked back, she saw that Minerva was tense, her eyes wide. A glancing probe revealed that the Transfigurations Mistress could feel the power surging around the room, but hadn't glimpsed any of the thoughts or memories, and for that Hermione was thankful.
"Tea," Hermione said, breaking the tension in the room. "Let's have a pot of tea."
Severus's hand twitched when she stepped away, and she just knew that he'd wanted to reach for her hand to keep her by his side. She brushed his mind with hers as she turned away, acknowledging the aborted gesture.
Minerva looked up at her, eyes still wide, not comprehending. Hermione smiled and gathered the tea things. The professor had kept everything in the same place at her house, a little chest near the fireplace. There was an old copper kettle bubbling away eternally, hanging from a battered hook in the fireplace. Hermione put the leaves in the teapot, then added the water from the kettle, putting the kettle back in the fire and putting the teapot on the tray on the low table near Snape. The little chest where Minerva kept the tea also had sugar and slices of lemon and such, and she set the things out on the little side table.
After the tea had steeped, Hermione poured them each a cup, pressing them into each professors' hands. Severus took his with sugar; Minerva took hers with lemon. Minerva smiled, coming out of her shock at the contact. Severus took a bit more convincing, a squeeze of his hands as she handed over the teacup and another brush against his mind. He wasn't raw anymore, just tired.
Severus smiled at her gently as he took the teacup, and said, "Thank you."
The gesture surprised Minerva. Her teacup rattled on her saucer. Severus rolled his eyes, making Hermione chuckle. She was glad to see the softness in his inky eyes, glad to see that her chuckle had made him happy.
What an odd thought. An odd, enticing thought.
Hermione settled on the sofa, and Severus joined her a moment later. Minerva was in the chair closest to the fire, staring at the flames thoughtfully. Severus took advantage of Minerva's distraction to put his hand on Hermione's knee for a moment, squeezing gently before he settled back into the cushions. Hermione wished she could settle into his side the way he'd done with the cushions, but that would hardly be socially appropriate even if they weren't trying to keep their closeness a secret.
"You obviously did more with that Time Turner than I was led to believe," Minerva said, breaking the oddly relaxed silence that had settled on the room. Hermione and Severus had long since packed their magic and their minds back away into themselves. Hermione could feel him rebuilding his walls, sectioning off the nightmares from the rest of his consciousness, preparing the barriers and the internal defenses. Those walls were a good thing, a constant thing unless they were shattered as she'd had to do to them. It was the active Occlumency, forcefully keeping the world out, that led to damage, not compartmentalization. She maintained quite a bit of magical compartmentalization.
"Yes," Hermione agreed, smiling at her mentor.
"It would be quite rude to ask her her age next," Severus said, smirking over his teacup. "Never ask a woman her age."
Hermione smiled into her tea and withheld comment. Her heart was fluttering. She could practically feel her ovaries perking up, looking around, and fixing on Severus Snape in a decidedly predatory fashion. She knew his secret now, and she wanted in.
"He sent me all over the place, going back again and again so that I'd have more time," Hermione said.
There was something dancing in her stomach, fluttering almost like she was nervous. But why should she be nervous?
Oh, that's right, she remembered, you've just decided you want to be Mrs. Severus Snape. And have his babies.
Not nervous, then. It was anticipation. She'd get him alone before the night was out.
The conversation meandered for awhile as they drank their tea. Minerva told Severus a bit about their summer together, and Hermione told them the innocuous bits about France and Egypt. She found herself wondering if Minerva knew about "the dragon" but the more they talked the more she doubted it.
"And where did we call you in from?" Minerva asked while the third pot of tea steeped.
"Hm?" Hermione asked. Minerva smiled benignly.
"You're all dressed up. Were you someplace interesting?" Minerva handed out fresh cups of tea, then her smile turned wicked. "Did you have a date?"
Hermione felt Severus tense beside her, and leaned into his side as much as she figured she could without Minerva noticing. "No," she said, possibly more sharply than the question merited. She felt as though it had taken a long time to fall in properly with Severus, and the last thing they needed was nonexistent competition and unwarranted jealousy. "No, I was out with Tonks."
"Oh, isn't that nice," Minerva said, reverting to her benign smile from earlier. "I didn't realize the two of you were friendly."
"We aren't particularly," Hermione conceded, sipping her tea. "I think she can smell something off about Sam Barnes, and she was hoping to have a go at unraveling the mystery away from headquarters."
"Sorry to interrupt your evening of subterfuge, then," Severus said sullenly from beside her.
"I'm glad you did." Hermione resisted the urge to bump his shoulder with hers for a moment, and then decided that shoulder-bumping was allowed. Friends bumped shoulders, and Minerva would have already realized that they were friends. He looked surprised but pleased by the contact, and she grinned at him. "You certainly needed it. And, really, I was just yammering at her about the apothecary."
Severus chuckled. "I imagine you had plenty to say."
"We got the summer cuttings in last Thursday."
"I thought you smelled like brine."
She drove her elbow into his ribs, and he almost spilled his tea. Minerva laughed.
"I've been pickling mandrakes, you ass," she said. "And I don't smell like brine."
What does it say about me that I want to take you to bed despite the smell of the apothecary on you? he asked her when she met his eyes, and she had to look away to keep from blushing.
"Oh, Severus," Minerva said, catching sight of a folded newspaper when she went to set down her empty cup. "Did you see this? Over the summer…" She handed over the paper. It was folded open to the second page. "It was in Spain; it didn't get much mention in our papers, surprisingly—" She cut herself off, noting the look that passed between Severus and Hermione.
"Don't you dare!" Hermione snapped at him, feeling the cold as he drew his Occlumency around him again, too soon. "You don't have to hide from a conversation I don't want to have."
"I don't bloody want to have it, either," he muttered, dropping his shields and glaring petulantly at her, hiding behind his teacup.
Minerva cleared her throat, and the pair of them startled. Hermione looked guiltily down at her hands, which didn't help her feel any better. Then Severus was there. He poured a generous measure of scotch into her teacup and then left the bottle on the little table within easy reach of her and Minerva. He didn't take any himself.
"Why don't you want to talk about Remy Bird?" Minerva asked, looking from one of them to the other.
Hermione sighed and held out her scarred hand. It didn't mean anything to Minerva the way it had to Severus, as she'd never been to the Fights or hung around with a crowd that liked to share all the gory details of the setup. Minerva looked at the scars, brows furrowed.
"That is what Remy Bird did to the brawlers who tried to escape his Muggle Fights," Severus said. He leaned forward and traced a pair of parallel lines down the bone of her index finger. His hand was shaking. "As you can see, she had two unsuccessful attempts."
"I don't know what the headmaster was thinking, sending me to Spain," Hermione said. "That man was a bag of dicks."
Severus surprised them both by bursting out in gales of laughter. Hermione smirked.
\\
"I'll walk you out," Severus said, pushing himself to his feet with a groan, then holding out a hand to help her up.
"Thank you."
"You could use the Floo," Minerva offered, standing as well.
"My fireplace isn't connected," Hermione said, though she hadn't given it a thought. Surely Severus didn't mean to actually walk her out—this was the perfect opportunity to finally be alone. "It will be quicker if I go to the gates and Apparate back."
"Very well, then. Goodnight, my dear. It was lovely to see you properly." Minerva hugged her and patted her shoulder. "Goodnight to you too, Severus. I will see you in the morning—the Governors will be in for brunch."
"I can hardly wait," Severus said, words dripping with disdain even when he smirked at her. Minerva rolled her eyes at him before hugging him, too.
They left, and Severus put her arm through his. She wanted to walk close, put her other hand on his arm as well, and lean her head against his shoulder—anything for more contact—but the halls were lined with portraits duty-bound to report odd behavior to the headmaster. (Not to mention the only entertainment the portraits really had was gossip.) Occasionally, one of the portraits would call out a greeting to the professor, and he would nod politely as they kept moving.
"It's strange being back," she said softly. The only sound in the hall was the clip of her heels (his tread was silent, as he was in his dragonhide boots) and the rustle of their clothes; it would have been odd to speak above a whisper. "They're exactly the same as the last time I was here, of course. No time has actually passed."
"It has for you," he replied, his voice a low rumble.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, eventually coming to the familiar Defense classroom door. It opened at the touch of his hand, revealing the usual rows of desks, tall windows letting in the sunset along one wall, the staircase up to his office at the front of the room.
"Oh, you haven't hung the posters yet," she said. The blackboard was blank, the teacher's desk sitting in a pool of orange-red light. It was all as she remembered (if more romantically lit), but the walls were bare stone.
"Posters?"
"Yes. Those ghastly curse victims."
"Ah. I hadn't decided about those. The first years are so small, you know."
"You are a sweetheart under all that wool." She smiled at him and put her hand in his instead of looped through his elbow, squeezing gently. One side of his lips quirked up in a half-smile.
"I do actually like children, you know. I like teaching, even if most of them are dunderheads. I have a reputation for scaring them, but they need to be on their guard around cauldrons and I was always better at scaring them into it than coddling them."
"I was never afraid of you. You made me nervous, of course, but everything was too interesting to really be afraid."
"I made you cry at least once."
She didn't want to talk about any of that, least of all the episode with her teeth. Instead she walked down the aisle between the student desks and took a seat at the one that had been hers. She hadn't grown at all since then, aside form a bit of filling out in a feminine sort of way, so it felt almost the same to sit there.
Severus walked down the aisle toward his desk and suddenly she couldn't stand the reminder. She put her hands on her desk, spreading her fingers out and looking at them. She always tried not to, what with the reminder of the scars there, but sitting in her old desk and seeing them there was somehow grounding.
"Is it awkward for you?" she asked, looking up from her hands to see him watching her from the front of the room. He was leaning back against the desk, relaxed, in his element, in his place.
"Is what awkward?"
"It was a decade ago for me. Sitting in this chair, taking my copious notes." She said it lightly, trying to make it almost a joke.
She got up, looking at him from the desk making her uncomfortable. He held out his arm and pulled her into his side when she took his hand. It was warm against him, his robes pooling around both of them. She leaned into his embrace. His hands settled on her waist.
"And no, to answer your question. It's not particularly awkward. Not as awkward as it should probably be, anyway."
They stood like that for a long moment. She was hyper-aware of the heat of him, the little circle his thumb was tracing on her hip. The room was quiet, and the castle was quiet beyond it. The sun was warm, and there were particles of dust floating through the rays of light coming in the windows.
"Come with me," he said, breaking the silence. "I didn't bring you here to stand in a ruddy classroom."
She smirked as he led her up the stairs by the hand. They went up and through the door to his office, then through another door behind the desk in the office and into his private rooms. She barely had time to notice the stacks and stacks of papers on the big desk before the door was closed and the candles in his sitting room flickered to life.
His rooms at Hogwarts were almost the exact opposite of his house at Spinner's End. Where Spinner's End was threadbare, a barely-habitable storage space for his more dangerous books, these rooms were homey. There was a beautiful Oriental rug on the floor, wingback chairs by the fireplace with deep brown velvet upholstery, a sofa with cream-colored cushions, and a porcelain tea set waiting on the low coffee table. A large window with a deep window seat (converted into a shelf for books) overlooked the lake. Several doors led off to other rooms, all of them dark wood that looked like it had been recently been polished.
Hermione stopped once the door had closed behind her, and kept him close with her hold on his hand. He turned to face her, standing very straight, looking down at her with raised eyebrows.
"Severus," she said, then changed her mind and asked him a question instead: "Why were you so angry about my scar?"
"Because you wouldn't let me do anything about it."
"Why should you want to do anything about it?"
He raised an eyebrow at her, stepping closer. She could feel the door at her back, half a step away from leaning against it as she looked up at him.
"I think we've made that quite clear to each other already," he said softly. He swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. "You told me once that you were mine."
"I am." She didn't even hesitate. Maybe she should have, but she didn't.
"Then you should let me do things for you." He was very nearly smirking.
"I don't need to be protected. Or coddled."
"No, you don't need it. That's why I want to do it."
"Severus—"
"This is… There are small things… Gods, Hermione. I just want a normal life."
He sounded so defeated that she let go of his hand to run her hands up his chest and into his hair, pulling his face down so that she could snog him. She quickly lost control of it, and he had her pressed back against the door, their bodies molded together, his hands around her waist, her hips, teasing the undersides of her breasts.
"Severus," she said when she had to stop to breathe, "when I was… when we were—" She interrupted herself to lean her head back against the door so that she could look up at him more easily. "I love you," she sighed. "I want a normal life too, Sev. With you. With… no war, no killing, no only seeing you when you're hurt or we've thought of some other pretense."
She meant to keep going, but he interrupted her to say, "I love you, too, you know."
"I want you children, Severus," she said, and then snapped her mouth shut because that wasn't how she'd planned to bring that up at all. And, out loud, it sounded so stupid.
"Can you imagine bringing a child into the world right now?"
She smiled at him, then frowned. "Especially not a child of somebody like me."
"Don't," he said, his hands clenching on her hips. "Don't ever, Hermione."
She tried very hard not to smile like a loon. He looked down at her, eyes intense, and stepped away. He took hold of her hand again and led her through one of the doors into the bedroom, closing the door softly behind them.
It wasn't a large room, but it wasn't small either. There was a wardrobe on one wall, done in black lacquer and silver knobs. The bed was the Hogwarts standard four-poster, but a queen size instead of the single beds in the dorms. The wood was dark and polished like the doors, and the hangings were Slytherin green. The bedside tables each had books stacked on them, one of them had a proper reading lamp. The wall opposite the wardrobe had three narrow windows giving the same view as the one in the sitting room.
"You know," Severus said thoughtfully, dropping her hand so that he could put both hands on her hips again, "I don't think I've ever actually invited anybody into this room before."
"I'm flattered."
He smirked down at her, kissing her forehead. "If I had it my way, you'd live here with me."
"Is that your way of asking me to marry you?"
"I'm selfish enough to bring you here," he said, "but I'm not selfish enough to ask you to stay."
"That's good. I don't think I'd have the fortitude to turn you down."
He smiled and lifted a hand to cup her cheek, pulling her closer.
He was tentative at first, lips just brushing hers in a series of feather-light kisses. She leaned into him, wrapping her arms around his neck. She kissed him back, nipping at his lower lip. He groaned; his hand left her face and he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her closer.
She shoved his teaching robes off his shoulders, leaving them to puddle around them on the floor. He started working on the buttons of his frock coat. When those were done, he undid the shirt buttons beneath, then shrugged both off in a quick movement.
"Unzip me?" she asked, breaking away from his lips to turn around. His hands traced over her back and shoulders before finding the zip and drawing it down the back of the dress. She shrugged the straps off her shoulders and the dress fell to the floor; she kicked her shoes off as she stepped out of the cloth, losing a few inches when she did.
His eyes were dark and he looked… enraptured. It made her heart beat faster to see that look on his face when he was looking at her.
One long finger traced the curve of her waist, the outside edge of her breast, and then looped under the strap of her slip. He glanced at her, asking permission, and she nodded.
Yours, remember? she asked when he met her eyes, and he smiled before he leaned down to kiss her again.
Her slip was quickly gone. His hands were everywhere, pulling her to him. Naked skin on naked skin, and it was hard to breathe. Then his hands drifted, sliding lower, and he picked her up. She wrapped her legs around his waist.
They crashed down on the mattress. His hand snaked around to undo the clasp of her bra, and she pulled the straps down her arms a moment later.
He leaned down to kiss her again, and she threaded her hands through his hair. He kissed down her neck, across her collarbones. He found the beginning of the scar and kissed it, then continued down the length of it, over the swell of her breast, between her breasts, across her stomach, ending just above the knob of her hip bone.
Even after so many years, the scar tissue was sensitive. She was gasping from the tender touch, reveling in the kisses, and didn't realize he'd hooked his fingers into her knickers until they and her were off. She gasped, fingers clenching in his hair, when his tongue slid between her folds and drew a hot, wet line from her entrance to her clit.
"Severus!" Her knees spread without consulting her, giving him plenty of space to move. He grinned up at her, mouth hovering above her sex.
"I've wanted to do that for a long time."
"You—you—" She couldn't actually think what she wanted to say. He smirked and lowered his face.
For awhile, it was all sucking lips, probing fingers, and the flick of his tongue. Hermione writhed, moving her hands to fist the blankets instead of his hair. Then little bursts of light exploded across her eyes as she came, a moan turning into a scream.
His mouth was on hers again, and she could taste herself on his tongue. She muttered his name, trying to help him undo his belt and remove his trousers, but their fingers tangled with each other. He pressed her to the bed, ignoring his half-undone trousers, and pinned her hands to either side of her head. His hips thrust against hers, and she groaned in frustration.
"Off, Severus. Take them off."
He jerked away from her, yanking on the last of his clothes, stripping away boots and socks with frustrated hands when the trousers got stuck on them.
Finally, the last boot thunked to the floor, and she slid around, lifting her leg to swing over his lap, and straddled him. She sank down, sucking in a breath as he filled her. Severus groaned. She pushed against his shoulders, urging him to lay back, but he wouldn't go. He grabbed her by the hips, holding her body around his, and twisted them both so that she was lying beneath him.
Still slick and sensitive from the orgasm he'd brought her to with his mouth, it was all Hermione could do not to come again within seconds. He was stretching her, filling her. In and out. Delicious friction. His hips slammed to hers, his cock tickling that particular spot within her. His balls slapped wetly against her as he slammed home.
He shouted wordlessly, and he sunk in one last time, spasming. There was new warmth deep inside, spurting with each of his shivers on top of her.
"Oh," she said, and came again. Her body clenched around his cock, milking him as she arched into him.
They lay together breathing for a long while. He was mostly on top of her, almost too heavy, but she didn't have the energy to tell him to get off, and he didn't seem to have the energy to move anyway. She held onto him, their legs tangled in a lovers' braid, the sweat cooling on their bodies.
"I love you," he whispered. She opened her eyes; he was staring down at her, propped up on the elbows he had planted on either side of her head. She smiled and lifted her head to kiss him, biting her lip to keep herself from beaming like a fool when he smiled back at her. A warm, relaxed smile that took years off his face.
"I love you, too," she said, giving up on restraint and letting the smile escape.
"Here. Come here," he said, shifting off her and urging her to climb under the covers with him. They were clumsy, sleepy, but eventually they managed to settle. Hermione promptly fell asleep.
They roused sometime around two in the morning for slow, sleepy sex. At six, it was the mad pounding sort that set the bed creaking, and the headboard thumping against the wall.