Summary: SSHG, AU, Fate had always made Snape its fool. Just like love. Will he make the choice his heart wants or let it slip through his fingers?
A/N: What is this publishing shenanigans. Surely this is an illusion. I've been playing Diablo IV, and Season 1 starts in a few days, so this may be the last thing I publish for a while XD
Beta Love: Dragon and the Rose, Dutchgirl01
Prompt from 31 Days of Flash Fiction: He twisted his fate between his fingers.
Fate Between His Fingers
Prompted Story by CorvusDraconis
When the will defies fear, when duty throws the gauntlet down to fate, when honour scorns to compromise with death - that is heroism.
Robert Green Ingersoll
He'd never felt so right about someone. Oh, he'd once thought he had, but it had been a delusion.
He'd tried to convince himself that he was just as deluded this time around. He'd tried to push her away.
Convince her someone else was better suited.
But, it had been as effective as trying to dry out a kelpie.
She'd fit against him like a puzzle piece, and just the feel of her nestled against his body—trusting and relaxed.
It broke him.
It had broken him into so many scattered pieces, and she had put him back together again. Only she had redrawn the lines and defied what was expected. She had painted outside the lines. She had forged new pieces.
He could no more continue to resist her than sea arches on the coast could withstand the water's constant barrage forever. He was destined to fall against her waves because in the end, the sea swallowed all, distributing the life that was into the primordial depths to be reborn again.
And he had been reborn—for she was the sea.
Calm and destructive.
Beautiful and terrifying.
Supportive and yet capable of perfectly capable of teaching humility—
Primordial.
It was as if whatever fate had been destined to was worn down to sand on the beach, and that could only slip between his fingers. What remained was his own path, free of his grasping megalomaniacal masters.
Free of the sins that had plagued him for most of his adult life.
As his attention was jarred forward by the sound of squeaking not so unlike the sound of a balloon rubbing against another, a furry little miscreant bounced by leaving the salty scent of the sea along with a trail of wet web-footed paw prints and random grains of sand.
Perhaps, he thought, he'd only traded two megalomaniacal masters for one bossy little witch who didn't even have to be in a human form to be every bit as demanding as gravity.
Hermione's otter Animagus form had allowed them to harvest the rare magical urchins from the kelp forests—urchins that to Muggles appeared to be the same rather annoying purple sea urchin pests causing a kelp forest crisis in various parts of the world. The nice thing about it is, what we didn't harvest for their magical spines we either ate or sold to the sashimi vendors.
Magic made for an easy way to remove the precious gonads of the tasty little buggers as well as preserve them—and Hermione could only eat so many of them before even her otter belly was full. She preferred to bash them with her favourite charmed unbreakable bashing stone which she stowed in her nifty otter "pocket" under her arm.
Sea otters were rather violent bashers of urchins—utterly merciless in their hunger.
It took some convincing of her delicate sensibilities to get her to let me scan all the urchins before bashing them so we could harvest all the magical ones for their valuable potion reagents.
Ever tried to convince a hungry otter who was doing all the leg work not to eat her tasty catch? It's like trying to win the Wizarding War all over again. Only much cuter. With fur, wide adorable eyes and whiskers.
Now, one might ask why if the ingredients were so great, why didn't we just cast a spell and bring them up by the droves—
Well, there's where a sea otter comes in.
Turns out if you try to use magic on them in the water, they explode (well, shed their spines violently) and said spines have the most potent neurotoxin known to Wizardkind. You have to catch them (carefully) by hand—or rather, paw. Then, they just urchin along doing urchin normal things.
Once out of the water, the buggers are promptly stunned and do not violently explode in a cloud of death.
Bully for manual labour.
Now, the spines, when dried, also lost their neurotoxicity and became the most potent aphrodisiac and fertility-enhancing ingredient in the very best potions.
Severus smiled. Good thing he was a Potions master.
Needless to say, neither he nor Granger were going to starve or become homeless anytime soon, and the Goblin Nation was only too happy to help them find markets for the potions or rare ingredients they found.
The only problem, Snape mused, was that they couldn't seem to agree on where to have the wedding. Lucius wanted him to have a grand affair, fitting for a Malfoy. Hermione wanted a quiet, modest event that her Muggle parents could attend. Him? Well, he just wanted to sign a damn paper and be done with it.
It had, unfortunately, put a bad taste in Hermione's mouth, and since then she had been entirely silent on all fronts in even mentioning possible marriage plans.
And he, being the utter coward, couldn't possibly be the one to bring it up.
Defy a barmy Dark Lord? Sure.
Bring up marriage plans to the witch he loved? Ehhh—
There were definitely different expressions of courage, and he was certain that he was lacking in this one particular area.
Yet—
When his very damp witch surfaced with a final urchin and dumped it into the bucket before shifting and placing a kiss on his cheek before lugging in the haul, he had to wonder if getting married actually mattered all that much.
"I don't think we're suited," Hermione said as she gazed out the window. "I'll be leaving soon."
Severus stilled, his knuckles whitening as they tightened around his teacup. "When?"
"Just as soon as I'm finished packing."
"I see." He closed his eyes. "I suppose you'll want your shares from the business."
"Of course."
Severus' jaw tightened. "It will take some time to take down the wards on our safe. "I will need you to harvest twenty spines from the urchins to open your half of the wards."
"You have plenty in the laboratory."
"Not fresh ones, as you know."
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Fine. I'll be back soon." She set down her teacup and trudged out the door towards the beach.
Severus did not move for some time before he walked over to the fireplace and threw some powder in.
"Severus?" Minerva's voice called from the other side. "Is everything alright?"
"Is Hermione there?"
"Yes, she brought me the balm for my arthritis," Minerva replied. "She went to use the loo. Would you like me to fetch her?"
"No," Severus said. "Just—tell her whatever place she wants for the wedding is fine."
He could hear Minerva's cat ears spring out from her hair from over the floo, but to her credit she said nothing.
"I will," Minerva said. "Don't be a stranger, Severus. You can visit me too from time to time."
Severus grunted and closed the connection as a loud explosion sounded from the end of the deck and a scream that was distinctly not that of his fiancée.
For a moment, he pondered letting whatever debris that was left of his dock sink into the ocean unmourned. He sighed and sent off a Patronus to the Aurory.
"Trespasser on site. Explosion heard from the beach. Assistance requested."
"Beautiful ceremony, old man," Lucius said as he watched Hermione dancing with her father. "I take back what I said that only a large wedding would do.
Severus sighed and nodded. "She's worth it."
"What finally made you decide on a ceremony? I know you were having an argument with your witch over it."
Severus wrinkled his nose. "Someone sneaked into our house under Polyjuice and tried to break us up and make money out of it."
"Weasley." Lucius narrowed his eyes.
"Fortunately for us, he knew nothing about how to harvest magical urchins," Severus sniffed.
"My contacts at Mungos say he probably won't be able to walk again—or reproduce, for that matter."
"How terribly unfortunate for his paramour." Severus shook his head.
"Your witch didn't have to help Narcissa with her—witchy problems," Lucius said delicately.
"No, she didn't," Severus replied.
"And yet she helped us—why?" Lucius asked. "Not that I don't appreciate it."
Severus snorted and looked over to watch his witch dance and smiled. "She's always had more heart and patience than any of us deserve."
"And Weasley?"
Severus' eyes sparked. "Her patience finally ran out."
"How so, you said she wasn't even there that morning?"
Severus smiled darkly. "She didn't put up the wards the night before that would have blocked him from getting on that particular day. She knew quite well what could happen."
Lucius' eyes widened. "Brilliant—but scary."
"Always," Severus smirked.