The damn had broken now. While part of her, locked away for the moment, ached because she knew it would end, the rest of her exalted in him. He was tall and broad and warm and real. He held her close. He looked at her with such intensity that…

She smiled at him across the table. They'd gone out to dinner, an old-fashioned date. They were at a wrought-iron table with a white table cloth on the courtyard patio of a little Muggle bistro, a candle flickering in the center of their table. Other couples sat at identical tables, making eyes at each other and talking quietly.

Other couples, she thought, smirking to herself. It was a ridiculous thought, them as a couple. Undeniable, but it felt strange. Yet there were two marvelously dark hickies on his neck and shoulder, and she'd put them there, and she was the only one who knew they were there since he'd covered them with a black button-up shirt.

"I love you," she told him quietly because she was a sentimental fool. His lips quirked up, but he was distracted. She could feel the guilt simmering in his thoughts, just beneath the surface. "I meant what I said earlier, you know."

"Which bit?"

He was guilty because he was going to die. He was guilty because he didn't care about it, he wanted her anyway.

"All of it," she replied. "But, specifically, the part about Flourish and Blott's, and since we can't go out in public—at least not in our world—without risking everything, we're just going to have to win the war so that it can happen." He gave her a guarded look. To lighten the mood, she said, "And also, the part about morning kisses and horrible breath. That one can be fulfilled a little sooner, I think."

He looked at her for so long that she worried he was going to push her away, not just physically but everything. He would run for the greater good, and she would be miserable until he died, and then she'd be even more miserable. Instead, he smirked at long last, and reached across the table to take her hand in his. He lifted her captured hand to his lips and kissed it before putting it back next to her plate.

They sat there just looking at each other for a moment.

"I meant everything else, too, you know," she said. "I love you. We'll find a way."

"Hermione—"

"I want your jealousy. I want to fight with you, and I want brilliant make-up sex."

"Hermione."

"I want to make a go of it. Even if one or both of us end up dead. Even if we make each other miserable. I don't want 'what-ifs'. I want you and me, as often as possible, and sending stupid owls back and forth telling each other how much we miss each other."

"You don't want much, do you?"

"You said it yourself: all or nothing, no half measures. I choose 'all.' To be perfectly honest, the idea of 'nothing' makes me feel a little sick."

Me too. She smiled. His thought brushed into her mind with the feel of his peace. He was content, here with her.

"I love you, Severus." It was odd saying it. She hadn't realized she'd loved him at first. She'd known she liked him, and she'd known she found him attractive. Then there was the afternoon at the castle with him and Minerva, talking, before he'd even brought her to his rooms. And the feel of his mind within hers, helping him drop his shields and keeping him safe while he rebuilt. She knew him and she'd seen him, and he was absolutely wonderful. A good man hidden away behind a surly disguise.

Mine. She's mine. How? She was fairly sure that thought hadn't been intentionally shared.

"I love you, too." He closed his eyes, breathing deeply through his nose. Their hands found each other on the table between them, and his thumb stroked her skin gently.

"And children, Severus. I will have your children."

"Only after the bastard's dead," he said vehemently.

"When the war is over," she agreed.

\\

So what do I do when I'm the one injured?

Hermione stumbled through Grimmauld Place, not exactly surprised that it was empty. Harry was at the Burrow with the Weasleys since Sirius was dead, and mostly the Order hadn't moved back in entirely. And now she had her own knife sticking out of her ribs, and she could barely move, and there was nobody at Grimmauld to help her.

There was always St. Mungo's, but they would ask questions. A knife in the ribs was a pretty clear sign of something not on the level. She couldn't exactly claim a kitchen accident.

And she couldn't go to the Burrow; her younger self was there.

"Damn."

She shouldn't have stayed around to burn the place after she'd killed him. He'd got her knife in her just before he'd died, and she'd felt the blood well up and known better than to pull it out. Then she'd cast the Fiendfyre, burned the lot of it, and then she'd nearly passed out getting to headquarters.

The spinning of the Floo almost made her sick. It didn't usually do that.

"Please help," she said, stumbling out of the fireplace in the hospital wing at Hogwarts.

"Merlin's tits!"

Hermione passed out. When she came around again, she was staring at the familiar buttresses of the hospital wing ceiling. It was strangely comforting. Her wand sheath and wand were gone, which was discomforting, but it turned out they were just set on the bedside table.

Minerva was sitting in the visitor's chair, watching her nervously. Severus stood at the end of the bed, his hands braced on the foot, head hanging forward. He looked defeated.

Severus? His head jerked up at her mental caress, and his body sagged as the tension left him.

They were hoping you'd have to go to St. Mungo's. They wanted you tied up with suspicions.

It almost worked.

"Hermione, child," Minerva said, standing and beginning to fuss over her, tucking and smoothing the blanket, patting at her hair. "How are you feeling?"

"I'll be fine," she said. She could feel the compression of bandages around her middle, which was good; better to let it heal slowly.

Six hours ago, you were safe in my arms. Severus was staring down at her, eyes too wide. She wanted to reach for him, to hug him to her, but the movement would hurt, and besides, what would Minerva say? While she surely wouldn't disapprove, she'd tell Dumbledore.

"What do you think you're doing?" Madam Pomfrey said sharply, approaching with the clack of her heels, scowling. It almost made Hermione smile. She'd spent so much time in the hospital wing, whether it was for her own injuries of that of her friends. Even if she looked so angry, it was so familiar that it was comforting. "Get back in bed this instant!"

"Madam Pomfrey—" Hermione began, swinging her legs out from under the blankets, but she was cut off.

"No! Absolutely not. You show up here, a bloody knife sticking out of your liver, and you expect to walk away an hour later? I don't think so."

"I've had worse."

"Oh, I can see that," Madam Pomfrey growled. Hermione flushed, not sure why she was embarrassed. She realized that while she was still wearing her jeans and boots, she'd been stripped down to her bra. Sitting as she was, her back was on full display to Minerva, and the scars would be impossible to miss even with the bandages wrapped around her.

"Don't get up," Severus said when she began to shift her weight forward to get off the bed. Something in the timbre of his voice made her stop and look at him.

"What did you do?" she asked him, and he looked away.

And then she was in a nightmare. She knew it was a nightmare, but she couldn't wake up. They'd given her Dreamless Sleep, and that hadn't worked for years. It just kept her asleep.

She was in the Muggle Fights again. It was her first fight, only this time the giant of a man she'd been paired off against wasn't injured. He was almost seven feet tall, a brick wall of muscle. He was bald. In reality, she'd spent a good five minutes shuffling away from him trying to cover her nakedness and staring at his dangly bits, but in the dream they circled each other as she had learned to do by the end of her first week in the Fights.

They attacked each other. She bit him, scraped at him with her finger nails, aimed for his balls and his kidneys. He was too big, though. He slapped her around like she was nothing, slamming his fists into her. If it had been reality, a single blow from him would have knocked her out and it would have been over quickly, but in the dream she couldn't pass out. She endured.

She flailed, sliding out of his grip, and kicked his knee the wrong way. It didn't really slow him down, it just made him angry. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her in a half circle. The mass of her hair had always been a weakness in the Fights. She'd begged them to cut it off, but they hadn't listened. Of course they hadn't.

And then she was pinned beneath him, but he didn't have a good grip on her shoulders. She slipped the grip, twisting, throwing up her left fist to impact his jaw. She let herself continue slipping off the edge of the bed, her right hand going for the little knife she kept in her wand sheath, but neither knife nor sheath were there.

When she was behind him, she aimed for his knee. If the angle had been right, she could've kicked the joint the wrong way and kept him from following her, but the angle wasn't right and all her kick did was bend the knee. He fell on the bed, and she threw herself backwards over the next bed. She recovered her feet, bringing her arms up to fend off the next attack, calling her magic around her. She could feel it thrumming readily through the room, gliding comfortingly along her skin, making her hair stand up and spark.

And then his mind brushed hers, familiar and even more comforting than hers because it meant that she wasn't alone, wasn't back in the dirt "ring" of the Muggle Fights. The fight drained out of her in an instant, her magic pulling back in from its mad expansion around the room.

"I'm sorry," she said when she saw him. "I'm so sorry."

She climbed over the bed between them, suddenly aware of the soreness in her gut, the wet feeling of her wound bleeding again. She ignored it.

She'd smashed her fist into his face as hard as she could; she'd learned early that it was best for her to strike hard and fast then get out of the way and watch, plan her next attack. She threw a devastating punch. She was better with her right hand than with her left, but she'd gotten him in just the right spot and... His jaw was definitely broken, possibly dislocated, and teeth were loose.

"I'm sorry," she repeated, touching his face. He didn't flinch, but she figured that was because he was still stunned.

It was an easy injury to tend. Wandlessly and nonverbally, she put his jaw to rights, running her fingers along the bone to check the positioning. She had to stick her thumb in his mouth and physically press the teeth down into his gums before she charmed them back, but the only sign he gave of his discomfort was harsh breathing. She didn't get it quite right; his teeth had been crooked, and when she was done they were a bit straighter. She frowned. She was usually better at putting things back the way they had been.

Hermione wanted to hug him. She wanted his arms around her. They'd been "together"—if that was what they were—for less than a week, yet she'd already become strangely dependent on him. It was strange to want to share so much of herself and her life with somebody else.

"You've bled through your bandages," Minerva said. She was sitting just as she had been, beside the bed. Her hands were fisted tightly in her robes.

Looking away from them all, presenting Minerva with her scarred back again, Hermione unwound the bandages. The wound that remained after Madam Pomfrey's initial attentions was superficial, a little pucker with a large blackish scab in the middle of it. The skin around the scab was pink and irritated, bleeding freely around the edges.

"What are you doing? Why are you even up?" Madam Pomfrey asked, storming across the ward with a clack of heeled shoes. Hermione almost smiled.

"Dreamless Sleep hasn't worked properly on me in years," Hermione said. She carefully ignored Severus and Minerva. She didn't want to see if they pitied her, or if they were alarmed, or if they were avoiding her eyes as much as she was theirs. "I had a nightmare and thrashed around a bit. I must have opened this up."

"Lie back," Pomfrey ordered, putting a firm hand on her shoulder and pushing her down onto the bed. She Summoned a little vial of Essence of Dittany and used the dropper in the cap to apply three careful drops to the scab. The bleeding stopped immediately, the pinkness fading from around the scab. She felt instantly better. "You still need to rest."

"I can rest at home," Hermione said, suddenly desperate to be away. "I'm sure you have much to do, preparing for the students' arrival. I don't want to take up any more of your time than I have to."

"Don't be ridiculous," Pomfrey said, looking like she'd very much like to give Hermione more sleeping potions.

"Thank you so very much, Madam Pomfrey," Hermione said, finding her shirt on a nearby chair and putting it on carefully.

"At least let me get you a new bandage." The mediwitch didn't pause long enough for Hermione to reply, stepping away quickly and returning with a patch of gauze and a roll of medical tape. "Hold still."

Yes, ma'am, Hermione thought, exchanging half a smile with Severus.

"I wish you would stay here overnight," Minerva said, sitting up a little straighter. "We should have a look at the blade, at least. How do we know it wasn't cursed?"

"Minerva," Hermione said, and she might as well have called her 'mother' for the tone of it. It was a strange thing to cross her mind, Minerva as a surrogate mother. Why now? Why would I think of that connection now, but not when I spent that whole summer with her? It's been years since we spent any real time together. Hermione cleared her throat. "It was my own blade; it isn't cursed."

"Your own blade?" Pomfrey asked, putting the last piece of tape in place more forcefully than necessarily. "I thought you were a Healer."

"I am."

"Healers don't carry blades like that," Pomfrey said. Hermione couldn't meet her eyes, because she was right.

"I know."

\\

Later, Hermione sat with Severus in his quarters. She'd told Minerva and Pomfrey she was returning to her flat, but Severus had caught up to her before she'd made the entrance hall and rerouted her to his rooms.

He'd sat down in his usual wingback, and she'd draped herself across his lap with her legs off one side. She was too tired to do anything, and the wound in her gut ached even if it was almost fully healed. He didn't seem to mind her thorough invasion of his space, though. He was holding her close, one hand wrapped around her waist, the other trailing absently up and down the length of her thigh.

"You saw?" she asked, but it wasn't really a question so much as a prompt. Of course he'd seen.

"Yes."

She considered pinching him, but he kept talking before she'd made up her mind.

"There were six of us sent to watch. He wanted to know how you operate. If they were dead before they were burned. He knew you were coming, which is why he gave you so much trouble."

"Oh."

"God, is this what you feel like every time I come back?" He shuddered beneath her. She stroked his cheek, smiling. "I know you're going to be fine, I've seen for myself that you're healing, but I still can't…"

"Not every time," she said, shifting in his lap so that her lips were against his neck.

"It's awful."

"Yes."

They sat together in silence for awhile. She listened to the fire crackle and enjoyed the feel of his arms and chest surrounding her. There was something extremely gratifying in the fact that he'd watched her kill a man today, and she'd broken his jaw with her fist only hours later, and he was still concerned about her, still wanted to hold her close and never let her go.

It is perfectly ridiculous.

What is?

This.

What?

I love you, and it is ridiculous how happy it makes me to sit here in your lap.

I'm rather pleased with the arrangement, myself.

AN: I feel like I should apologize for all the sentimental tripe that crops up whenever I write them alone together in the last few chapters. It feels a bit like a broken record (a third of each new chapter rehashing that they're finally together and neither of them can quite believe their luck), and I promise to get on with it. More plot-furthering stuff in the upcoming chapters, less moony internal monologue, I swear.

Cheers!

— M