Summary: SHG, Sanguini has a confession to make, but all that suave he normally has falls flat in the face of her.

Beta Love: Currently no beta. Sorry for the mistakes.

A/N: My brain is goo.

Confessions

"My sorrows are evil and they are at strife with joys that are good, and I cannot tell which will gain the victory."

-St Augustine

"I have no interest in that bushy-haired menace," Snape said with a curl of his lip. "Especially after what she did."

"She saved your life," Sanguini said, "not condemn you to death."

"She should have let me DIE then," Snape snarled, his spit flecking from his mouth. "As I should have."

Sanguini grimaced. "You are too young to be seeking your death.

"And what would you know of age with your pretty boy face and ability to sway a room with your swagger and people who are too busy lusting after your body to care what requests you make?" Snape growled.

"I know more than you think," Sanguini said. "About age and suffering."

"Go hang." Snape slammed the door in Sanguini's face.

Sanguini closed his eyes and sighed.

Hermione frowned. "I had hoped he would come. It is because of his teaching that this cure was possible."

"He cares not for fame, Sanguini said, grasping her hand reassuringly. "Nor credit due anymore."

Hermione shook her head. "I feel for him. He did so much for us during the war—and he suffered as much as anyone if not more for Dumbledore's cryptic vision. All I wanted was for him to be recognised for his teaching—something no one seemed to realise."

"It's been ten years since the end of the war, and he hasn't left that laboratory in the bowels of the Ministry to even check his mail," Sanguini said. "I'm surprised he didn't kick me between the legs."

"Extreme," Hermione said. "A bit barbaric."

"Age does not remove the primal need to beat our chest and swing a club or—insert knee between legs as it were," Sanguini said.

Hermione touched the shimmering plaque that displayed:

Masters of Excellence for

Cure for Lycanthropy

Masters Hermione Granger, Sanguini, Manfred Morgan

"I wish I could have known him as a person—outside of school and war," Hermione said. "I had hoped—well not to be besties but to at least be colleagues."

"You cannot force friendship, unfortunately," Sanguini said. "Think of the chaos."

Hermione snorted.

Sanguini grimaced.

"What's troubling you?" Hermione asked. "You look like you swallowed a hedgehog."

"I love you," he said breathily. "There is something—I need to tell you."

"Oh my god, you're married," Hermione whispered.

"What?" Sanguini stammered. "No! I am—I'm not married!" He wiped his brow and took her hands in his. "I have something important I need you to know."

Hermione's eyes grew wide. "You have an STI!" she cried.

Sanguini blinked furiously. "No! I can't—I don't have an STI." He winced, squeezing her hands in his.

"You—can't have an STI?" Hermione's brows furrowed.

Sanguini hung his head with a jerk. "I am incapable of having a disease save one."

Hermione's eyes widened. "You're dying of cancer." She looked ready to burst into tears at a moment's notice."

Sanguini jerked his head. "No! Love—please, let me—I need to get this off my chest!"

Hermione's head seemed to swell with worst-case scenarios as Sanguini pulled her to sit on the bed.

"I love you very much," Sanguini said. "I would never hurt you. Not ever."

"You're looking very pale," Hermione said with concern. "Do you need something to drink?"

"Yes, but— not—" Sanguini stumbled over his words and grimaced. He pulled her fingers to his mouth. "I want to spend my life with you. To share my life with you. A very long life."

Hermione's expression softened. "I want to be with you, too."

"What I mean to say is—" Sanguini began.

The bell rang, and Sanguini closed his eyes, counting to ten in Romanian.

Hermione touched his lips. "I'll be back. It's probably Harry trying to drag me off to some Weasley celebration, which I will say no, if you are going to ask."

Sanguini let out his breath and nodded.

Hermione kissed his cheek and moved to go answer the door.

"Brilliant, Mihail," Sanguini muttered to himself. "Sway the masses but absolutely trip over your own tongue trying to tell the woman you love that you want her to be your eternal mate."

He felt rather than heard Hermione's silent scream, and he was instantly moving, bursting through the doors with his body tensed and ready to do battle.

"Ah-ah-ah, Mihail," a voice cut right to his chest. "You wouldn't want to—get someone hurt now would you?"

Sanguini's body stiffened, and he felt the vice of his Master's grip upon his soul—a bond that could not be denied unless one's sire shared blood with their fledgling outside the initial Turning. His master never did. Not ever. All of his Line were there by his whim.

"I'm sure you thought yourself so clever, Mihail," his master said through bared teeth. "Siccing the Council on me for their petty little rules. Well, I am older than their little Council. I know all their weaknesses, and all their care for the Lines like they matter. So easily manipulated.

Sanguini took a step forward, but his master jerked Hermione up by the neck, his fangs bared.

"Now, now," his master cajoled. "You wouldn't want me to trip and accidentally sink fang into your little blood bank would you?"

"She is not a blood bank," Sanguini said tensely.

"Oh, but this tasty little wench is full of life," he said as he jerked Hermione by the neck. "And blood."

Sanguini hissed, snarling as Hermione was jerked into a choke hold.

"Ah, there is your true face," his master heckled. "Have you told her? That you are a monster? That you kill everything around you? That you are, under that facade, a murderer?" He made a gesture like a lover to move the strands of hair from her face.

"Leave her alone!" Sanguini roared, lunging, but his master's power wrapped around him and forced him to the floor.

"Now, here is what we'll do, young idiot," his master gloated. "You will return to my beck and call willingly and help me track down all of the others that are hiding from me, and I will let your blood bag leave."

He smiled malevolently. "Refuse, and I will make her my thrall and have my way with her every night and make you watch as she pleasures me with her mindless devotion."

He jerked her head to the side, fangs bared with threat. "Perhaps, I will Turn her, and she will be my slave eternal."

"No!" Sanguini said. "No, Please. Let her go, and I will be your servant. I will serve you."

"No," Hermione said as the vampire jerked her head back with a choke.

"I love you," Sanguini said, blood streaming from his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"You know what, Mihail?" his master said as his fangs lengthened and dragged across Hermione's neck. "I don't need your permission. You will always be my slave, and I will use her as a reminder for why you never fuck with me."

"NO!" Sanguini yelled as his master forced his head into the floorboards. He sobbed as he heard the distinctive sound of the other vampire descending upon Hermione's neck.

There was a bone-chilling shriek, tearing flesh, and the yell of his master as something heavy slammed into the floor, the wall, and the sound of a body hitting the wall and sliding down it with a wet, gurgle.

The heaviness on Sanguini's body and mind snapped, and he looked up to see very large mossassaur squeezed into Hermione's poor flat while the torn up, dismembered, decapitated body of his old master laying in pieces on the—well, everywhere.

The mosasaurus let out a sad note, mouth gaping to show his master's torso, sans head, with blood seeping from the neck.

Seeing his freedom in the bloody offering, Sanguini descended upon the headless heck and drank his master's freeing blood.

He panted and collapsed onto his rear, staring at the displaced prehistory beast with a speculative eye as the release of his old master's power became his own.

"Hermione?" he whispered.

The mosasaur clacked her mouth shut, blood dripping off her bloodied mouth. She pressed her head down to the floor with a thump.

Sanguini reached out and placed a hand on her snout. "I'm a closet vampire and you're a closet prehistoric sea predator. I'm not sure which of us has the better secret." He sighed with relief. "But I thank you for ridding me of my old master. I could not raise a hand against him physically, and my exposing him to the Council seemed to only hold him for a hundred years—long enough for me to think he was contained. Long enough to scatter his line across the world. Long enough for him to to know the key to getting them back was me—the one who helped them escape."

"I was a fool to think I could stop him with rules," he said with closed eyes. "I am sorry I brought such danger to your home."

Hermione rose her snout to touch his hand with a huff of air. Her large, elongated marine body awkwardly filled in most of the space of the poor flat. It was good that the flat was enlarged with magic.

"Marry me," the vampire said with a choked laugh. "Be my eternal mosasaur mate. We can pick out a piece of shore and have a pod of vampiric mosassaurlets and take over the seas and shore. Everyone else can sod off."

Hermione's eyes widened and she gave the pale man a giant mosasaur slurp.

"Getting a ring on your flipper is going to be challenge," Sanguini said dryly as he leaned against her heated body. "For the sake of logistics, I hope you can revert to a human form."

Hermione gave off a sad note and a small storm cloud materialised and rinsed her and Sanguini off.

"Not just a mosasaur. A magical, musical mosasaur," Sanguini mused. "Of course."

Hermione looked down at Sanguini as he lay practically boneless on their martial bed, his long black hair undone from his ponytail and scattered on the silk sheets. He looked so much younger, the lines on his face having disappeared with the consummation of their bond. The power between them resonated, shared equally in a way that supported and nurtured the magic between them with a tangible vibration.

She had never expected such acceptance or devotion. She had never thought a being such as Sanguini would find her interesting outside their professional collaboration on a long-term scale.

She had never expected her closet feelings to be reciprocated so completely.

She'd been trying to muster up enough courage to tell him she was a giant aquatic reptile, but the timing had always been horrible. By some twist of fate, however, mosasaurs didn't care how old you were when threatening someone they cared about. She'd ripped a thousands-year-old master vampire to pieces.

"He never gave us a name but master," Mihail had said. "Names have power, which is why he used mine often to remind me that he owned me. It is why my name to the Wizarding World is Sanguini, but my real name is known but to a few. Tradition perhaps. Who can say for sure."

"So they named me Lady Tylo?" Hermione said with a laugh.

"We do love our names for each other," Sanguini mused. "Besides, you are a prime specimen of a mosasaur tylosaurus."

Hermione snorted. "Technically,so are my parents."

"As long as they don't try to do as you did to my old master," Mihail mused.

"They think you are a charming young man."

The vampire had laughed heartily. "That is acceptable."

Now, the Line of the nameless tyrant was free. His blood, all that wasn't taken by Sanguini to ensure his freedom in the heated moment of survival, was put into countless crystal phials, preserved to give to those who wished to make absolutely sure they were free of the tyrant's yoke. His very memory.

It was a formality, really.

Sanguini did not wish for those who had suffered as he had suffered to have lingering doubts on what would happen should the tyrant return.

Which he wouldn't since the Council had taken his body parts and burned them in sunlight over the lava lake of an active volcano.

Just in case.

And now, there was a mated pair of somewhat pale, magical mosasaurs patrolling the ocean near a supposedly inhospitable shoreline. When they weren't enjoying the comfort of a human bed and home. Even mosasaurs liked their creature comforts.

It also made entertaining guests easier for those who were not aquatically blessed.

And as if magic approved of their union, it blessed them with gills in their mosasaur form, so they could enjoy the deep dark at their leisure.

Hermione knew a great blessing when she saw it. She wasn't complaining.

"Shall we enjoy day as our spawn inflicts themselves upon their grandparents?" Mihail murmured into her ear.

Hermione smiled. "Let's."

"Love?" Hermione whispered with a note of surprise. "How many Lethifolds does one usually acquire from their mate?"

"Just one, usually." Mihail said as he approached just in time to see a secondary Lethifold attach to his mate's shoulders with a rustle.

"This is what you get for being so cuddly," Mihail said with a chuckle.

Hermione shot him a glance. "There was hardly a line for the bushy-haired bookworm."

"If only because I would have driven them off with growling and peeing in the corners of the room," Mihail suggested.

Hermione shook his head. "Men are heathen barbarians."

The vampire shrugged. "It's a gift."

Hermione put a palm to his cheek. "But I love you just the same."

Sanguini pressed a tender kiss to her mouth, a simple promise for a lifetime of affection.

There was a soft knock at the door, and Sanguini's brows knit as his head tilted with curiosity.

Hermione shrugged and walked over to open the door.

She stared as she opened the door. Gathering her wits, she said, "Professor?"

The tall, black-clad man jerked his head. "I am not your teacher anymore, Lady Tyro."

Hermione blinked, unsure how her old teacher knew of her new "nickname." Mind—her marriage to Sanguini was anything but quiet. She sat beside him at the Wizengamot, a seat that had gone vacant for as long as records were kept of such things. Now that the Tyrant was gone, the Council had made his position as ambassador official to the Undead Nation, and few challenged him for the position since his wife had—rended the Tyrant into bloody chunks on a literal scale.

"Would you like to come in, Master Snape?" Hermione said, regaining her ability to think.

The man grimaced. "Thank you."

"What brings you to our home?" Sanguini asked. "I was under the impression you would rather bathe in acid than speak to either of us again."

Severus winced with a hint of teeth. "I apologise. The very thought of being noticed by the Tyrant by being anywhere near you was—inspiring enough to want everyone to think you and I were the furthest from each other's minds. I knew he was looking. And I knew if I even might look like I was going to tell you, he would have eviscerated me."

Sanguini cast his eyes down. "Or worse."

"Definitely worse," Snape said. "When he came to my door, he reminded me of all the things he could and would do—and reminded me why the Dark lord started creating Horcruxes."

Sanguini tilted his head. "He managed to threaten the whole of the world. In one way or another."

Snape pulled out a box and offered. "I come—with a peace offering."

Hermione took the box and opened it with a curious look. Her eyes widened. "Fish and chips! I haven't had these in—how did you know they were my favourite indulgence?"

"Well, you are British," Snape said with a tilt of his head. "But I do pay attention. Despite what you may think."

Hermione bit her lip. "Come in, please. I feel—there is a story we are not, were not, privy to."

Snape sighed. "A long one—but, if I may impose—"

Sanguini held out a phial of the Tyrant's blood. "You are welcome to it."

Snape closed his eyes and took it. "Thank you. While taking it is moot on paper, I think you understand why I want to be absolutely sure."

Hermione gestured for him to walk through. "I've learned just how horrible he was—to everyone. Thankfully some instincts kicked in before I knew them."

"Perhaps we should have all had a mosasaur in our pocket," Snape said. As he sat on the settee, he opened the phial and tipped it back, drinking it in one gulp. His body shuddered, his eyes flared wide, and he let out a choking cry as blood streamed down his face from his eyes.

He touched the crimson trail with his finger and stared at it in confusion. He looked at them, his brows furrowed, his hand on his chest as if he was having pain.

"Well," Mihail said with sympathy. "This changes some things."

The extra Lethifold on Hermione's shoulders rustled.

"Ah, so that is where you went, you cheeky bugger," Snape said with a groan. "You always were three steps ahead of me."

Hermione's eyes widened. "Oh—he's your—OH!" The realisation hit like a truck straight between her eyes.

Severus grimaced. "I hope you can both humour me a moment to gather the irony crushing my body from all sides."

Sanguini handed dug through the chippie box and distributed all the food. "Let's start with lunch and a tasty beverage." He brought out the bottle of bloodwine with a chuckle.

"That would be—acceptable," Severus said with a sigh. "Thank you."

Hermione snuggled into Sanguini as their insidious spawn curled up against Severus as he attempted to read his Treatise on the Cultivation of Bloodfruit in Temperate Climates. The insufferably cute witchling had latched onto his arm and was slowly lapping at the blood as she made herself at home in his lap. Severus, looking as if the world was out to make his life tedious, kept reading, every so often moving his arm to flip a page.

Meanwhile, her younger brother was out in the shallower (relatively) ocean with his two giant grandparents swimming beside him as he tested new manoeuvres out in his mossasaur body in the ocean waters.

"Are you content, my mate?" Sanguini asked, pressing his face into her curls.

Hermione hummed. "I think so," she said with a smile. "Very much so."

"It gladdens me to hear it," Sanguini purred. "We should go harass some night-hunting whaling boats."

Hermione brightened. "You always know the best things to say."

"Unless it comes to confessing my love for you," Sanguini said. "Then I fall flat on my face."

"As long as it is in water, then we'll be okay," Hermione said. "I never doubt your devotion."

Sanguini smiled. "Let's go have some fun," he said pulling her to him. "Severus?"

"Let me rid myself of this barnacle," Severus said dryly.

Hermione chuckled as Severus carried his sleeping "barnacle" over to her grandparents, who had moved from the ocean to the beach to watch their grandson build an epic castle in the sand.

As the trio slipped into the evening waters, they let their larger, prehistoric shape consume them before they began their hunt for some very unfortunate whale hunters.

And they lived mosasaurically ever after.

A/N: Dragon and the Rose is still very ill, and I have been playing the new season of Diablo IV, setting the world on fire with lightning spears. Please keep Dragon in your thoughts.