There was too much to do to lie in bed all morning. Severus wanted to grumble and swear and roll over until the children woke up, but Hermione wouldn't let him. She was up, tiptoeing into the bedroom for fresh clothes and a shower, then down to the office sorting through papers. Groaning, Severus followed her example.

When he finished in the shower, he found her sitting in the guest chair at his desk, her papers arranged across the desk.

"You could have just sat in the usual chair," he said, sitting in the second guest chair so that he could be closer to her.

"I did," she said, returning his good morning kiss and smiling. "It felt wrong."

He chuckled, and picked up one of the parchments she'd set aside. It was paperwork with the Ministry seal at the top of it.

"What are you up to?"

"Sorting out your inheritance," she said, gesturing to the papers strewn across the desk.

"Of all things to walk into, that wasn't something I'd even thought of."

"You were expecting trouble?"

"I expected to have to argue about time travel, at the very least."

"As far as I understand, it isn't unusual for Unspeakables to use Time Turners fairly regularly. Or at least it wasn't unusual before all their devices were destroyed. Accidentally."

He smirked, glancing up at her while he flipped through the pages of a detailed log from Gringotts.

"There's another hurdle, if you're looking for them."

"And what is that?"

"Gringotts."

"Have the goblins declared themselves with the Death Eaters, then?"

"No." She rolled her eyes at him, which made him smirk again. "I broke into their bank, though. And I destroyed property within a vault."

"Well we can easily pay for damages, now."

"They're goblins. They don't care about the money; they have money. They care about the principle of the thing, and they care about the history of the things they keep safe."

"You destroyed a Horcrux."

"And most of the contents of the Lestrange vault." He raised an eyebrow at her. "I was feeling a bit vindictive."

He nodded and looked away. He definitely understood feeling vindictive toward the Lestranges. He'd taken his anger out on their hides, though.

"The goblins can't legally do anything to you unless you damaged their building or stole from them. Did you knock out a wall? Steal one of their dragons?"

"Thought about it."

He laughed and kissed her.

"We could leave the country," he suggested. "Of course, Gringotts isn't solely a British establishment…"

"And we just waged a war to put this country to rights. That's a lot of work to go through only to leave."

"It's easy to sound righteous like that when you don't have to sit through a meeting with the Board of Governors later. Possibly twice."

"Twice?"

"They'll insist we have a chat about recent events before they tour the school, then we'll walk around and they'll be 'astonished at the extent of it all,' and then we'll probably sit down again so they can apologize for underestimating the damage."

Hermione just laughed.

\\

"I don't understand," Ezra Pierce, the governor who seemed to have taken it upon himself to act as spokesperson for the rest of the group, said. "Nobody is asking for you to step down, Headmaster Snape."

Severus wondered if they'd ask him to step down if he started hexing them.

"I know that, Mr. Pierce. I am resigning because it has been an awful year, and Hogwarts needs to rebuild. To do that, it needs me out of it. The students, even once they've been fully informed of what was actually happening, are still children. They need a headmaster they know they can trust, not one that they've just been told they can trust after watching him let the Carrows do as they would this past year."

"We'll have an official inquiry over the summer. We'll clear everything up."

"No, Mr. Pierce. Have your inquiry, clear everything up, but don't expect me to return." He stared at the man patiently, making lists of all the things he could be better spending his time on in the back of his head. "My resignation isn't contingent upon your approval. It is a formality, my alerting you to my intent so that you can find a suitable replacement. I've even suggested a candidate."

"But, Headmaster, I don't—"

"Please, Mr. Pierce," Severus said, standing up. He'd already had the meeting with the governors and Heads of House to discuss the plans for the repairs, and he'd had a walking tour of the school with the governors and the ghosts, and he'd had another meeting with Minerva and the governors. Minerva had departed for lunch and he'd stayed to speak with the governors a bit more. The polite thing to do would be to order up lunch for them in his office, but he was hoping they'd get the hint and leave him be. "I am not only resigning, I have already resigned. I have tendered my resignation, and alerted the staff to that fact. I have made plans with Minerva to officially hand over the wards. I have begun packing."

That last wasn't true, of course. He'd barely had time to breathe, let alone begin to pack.

"Very well." It was said reluctantly and only after the three representative governors had exchanged contemplative looks. Severus couldn't fathom why they so desperately wanted to keep him on, but he also didn't much care. He just wanted it to be over, to step down, to go back to bed.

That evening, the official letters came from the Ministry. They'd been summoned to a debriefing. Courtroom B, one of the larger chambers. And from the chatter around the Great Hall, most of those involved in the fight at Hogwarts had been called, as had all but a few members of the Order of the Phoenix.

"There will be Veritaserum involved," Hermione said, reading the letter over again. They'd each received their own, but they said the same thing. "And possibly a Pensieve to review extracted memories."

"It's just shy of a trial," Severus sighed. They'd both expected it, and it really was the best option. After the first fall of Voldemort, there hadn't been debriefings, just trials, and Sirius Black had ended up in Azkaban while nobody knew Peter Pettigrew had been the Secret Keeper.

"We're ready, Dad!" Sofia cried from the bedroom, and Severus took her copy of the letter from her as he stood up. She'd been having a soak in the bath and thinking about how she'd tell her story, and he'd come in to say hello while the kids put their pajamas on.

Hermione got out of the tub, charming her skin dry but using a towel on her hair to prevent frizz. Flannel pajama pants would be warm for the season, but it was a big stone castle and tended toward coolness. She had just pulled her camisole top on and was taking another swipe at her hair with the towel with she realized she was Occluding, and dropped her shields.

She passed through the bedroom, kissing the four of them sprawled on the big bed reading stories, and made her way to the sitting room. She was fine until she heard Severus singing a lullaby in the other room. Everything rushed up at her at once. The terror, the peril. He'd been bitten by a venomous snake and almost died, for Merlin's sake. Her husband. The man she loved more than she'd imagined it was possible to love anybody. He'd almost died. She'd almost died, too.

Hermione sat on the sofa and put her head between her knees, gasping for air. She was sure she was going to throw up. She could hear the explosion of spells hitting the castle, smell the sulfur of miss-castings. For a moment, she could've sworn she was choked by the dust of the battle.

And then Severus's humming penetrated, and relief washed over her. It was almost worse than the panic.

She had to move. She had to go.

Silently, Hermione made for the stairs leading down to the headmaster's office. She just needed a moment. She didn't want him to see her like this, to worry. He had too much to think about and do; he didn't need to be concerned for her and her stupid moment of weakness.

She sat on the bottom step, put her face in her hands, and lowered her hands and face to the tops of her knees. She'd just have a good cry in the privacy of the office, let the panic and relief pass out of her in the waves it seemed to be favoring, then go back up and hold onto Severus for awhile. They'd talk about it.

"Come here, my dear."

Hermione cried harder, unable to resist leaning into Minerva when she sat down on the steps next to her and put a hand on her back. For a moment, she was a twelve-year-old without any friends and her Head of House was comforting her after another lonely supper.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Hermione said, trying to sit up and pull herself together, but Minerva pulled her into a tight hug and Hermione cried all the harder.

"Don't apologize," Minerva instructed, rocking them soothingly and stroking a maternal hand up and down her back. Hermione wondered if she'd be able to feel the texture of her scars through the thin fabric of the camisole, but dismissed the thought as irrelevant. "You're alright, Hermione. You're alright."

Finally, Hermione took a deep breath and pulled back. "I know. Thank you, Minerva." She wiped the tears off her cheeks, forcing herself not to Occlude again out of habit; she didn't need to do that anymore. "It's ridiculous, really—"

"It's not ridiculous," Minerva said, almost scolding. "You've been through hell; you're allowed to cry about it!"

"I wasn't—that's not…" Hermione wiped away a few more tears. She felt like she needed to explain, more because she wanted to talk about it, to talk things through before she talked to Severus about all of it. They hadn't talked about the war yet, not really. They'd shared their experiences through Legilimency, mostly accidentally, but they hadn't discussed it. Hadn't discussed moving forward. "I'm—relieved."

"Of course you are," Minerva said, clearly not understanding the depth of Hermione's relief.

"Minerva…" Hermione started, then shifted her hips so her knees were pressed into Minerva's, so it was easier to look her straight in the eye. "Do you know why Severus asked me to marry him?"

"I assume because he loves you," Minerva replied immediately, smirking. One side of Hermione's mouth quirked into a smile, but she shook her head.

"That was always a given, but no, that's not why he asked me to marry him." She sighed again. "He wanted me to have widow's benefits."

Minerva sat up a little bit straighter, eyebrows raised high.

"He'd resigned himself to dying in this war a long time before we were ever together. It's actually—we tried not to fall in love, you know. We tried to play the parts we had to play as we were supposed to play them. The spy and the assassin." She rolled her eyes at the melodrama of it all. "Either of us could have died so easily at any point, especially him. He wanted me to have a piece of paper to show the Ministry at the end of it. He wanted to leave me his Hogwarts pension and the rights to the royalties from his patents, the land at Spinner's End, the contents of his vault at Gringotts." Her voice broke. "He wanted to provide for me even after he died. He wanted—"

She was relieved and shaky and happy and mourning all at once.

"But we made it anyway, Minerva," she said; she was crying again and she wiped at the tears. "My husband is upstairs s-singing our children to sleep. He had his throat ripped out by a snake, but he made it. And I'm alive, and the k-kids are fine, and we won, and there's no more spying or assassinating or…

"I'm relieved." She sighed, scrubbing at her face again. She wanted to be annoyed with herself for all the crying, but she was too wrung-out for it.

"I'm relieved, too," Minerva said, drawing her into another hug. It was awhile before either of them spoke again, and Hermione wasn't sure what prompted the story when she began talking.

"When I found out I was pregnant with Bast, I panicked. I couldn't do it, bring a child into the world at the time and in that place," she said, leaning back against the railing now so that they could look at each other properly again. Minerva was soaking in the words with rapt attention. "I cried for almost an hour in the bathroom at the safe house I had Harry and Ron hidden away in—and I was doing a lot of crying from hormones, anyway. I locked the boys down once I got myself under control and Apparated in.

"Severus didn't panic, though; he was happy. We made a plan, and we went so far back we broke the Time Turner, and then we went to Australia. It was… an oasis. It was wonderful: This little pocket of time when we could pretend we were living normal lives…

"Each day was a day closer to when we'd have to come back, though, and we hated it. We had the twins because we wanted them so badly, wanted to keep pretending, wanted to be done and in denial about reality for as long as we could be.

"And then we had to come back. Truly running away had never been an option, of course, but—it was even worse after having that time away. We were both just as sure that we'd be dead by the end of it, only now we knew what we were missing. We'd met our children and we knew how happy we could be living out normal lives in happy obscurity.

"And what would happen if one or both of us died? My parents were getting the Prophet in Australia. They'd read about it in the paper, is what would have happened. Either Headmaster Snape or Undesirable Number Two splattered across the front page in gory detail, just waiting on the front step for—" She broke off to wipe away more tears, and shoved those thoughts away. They'd made it; her father had never gone to get the paper only to read about his only daughter's demise. "So I'm relieved, because this could all have been so much worse. A few scars and the penchant to cry at the drop of a hat. I can live with that."

"I'm very glad you both made it through," Minerva said after a long moment. Hermione met her eyes and was careful not to sink into her mind; that wouldn't be polite. "You're—well, the two of you had the most difficult hands to play, I think."

"Don't discount your own part," Hermione said. Minerva's best friend, mentor, colleague of decades had been killed by a man she'd known since he was eleven and thought a friend. She'd had to stay at the school and try to protect the children from monsters who were very real.

Minerva opened her mouth to reply, but the door above jerked open silently but suddenly. The pair of them were on their feet in an instant, wands drawn. But it was only Severus, his own wand in his hand, eyes wide and panicked until he spotted them. He put his wand away and they followed suit.

"What is it?" Minerva asked, glancing back at the delicate-looking instruments on the little tables throughout the room; none of them were acting up. The castle was more-or-less at peace. "Is something wrong?"

"No, no; everything's fine," Severus said, running a hand through his hair. Hermione noted with some amusement that he was dressed for bed, too. Flannel pajama bottoms and a loose gray t-shirt. He looked very much like the Severus she'd shared a home with in Australia; it took some of the teary relief and turned it into burning hope.

You were gone, he said, thought, to her. I could tell you were distressed, but I couldn't find you.