Undisclosed Desires

Nine

During his hasty apparition home, Severus was lucky not to splinch himself. His head pounded and he felt dizzy with confusion. To make matters worse, awaiting him was his own copy of the Prophet. He snatched it up with a grimace.

He read the article multiple times before throwing it to one side. Dropping into his chair, he tipped his head back and considered. The Ministry had discovered the magical theory behind their compatibility calculation was fundamentally flawed. A theory it transpires that Granger herself had developed… Or had completed, at least.

And now it was all done with. The debacle was over.

Yet, what perturbed him most was his sense of utter disappointment. The feeling had washed over him instantly on first reading and had only increased since. To see in print what he had thought from the outset, should have brought him relief. To have it confirmed the idea of him and Granger was a mistake, flawed, well, it was only right and proper. It was the obvious outcome. It should have been welcomed. Instead, it pained him. His audacity in allowing secret hopes to form, shamed him.

For her to then argue this was her double-crossing the Ministry, well, she had to be saving face. She had to be wrong. This whole mess could be traced back to her. Why did she play silly-beggars with him? To protect her intellectual vanity? Where was her humility? The theory could be hers and it could still be wrong—both of those things could be true, and yet, not in Granger's world.

Her idea of soul-mates was tosh, he thought. Fanciful tosh. Utter bollocks.

And he was supremely irritated, because he had sensed all along she was hiding something. He should have pushed that with her. He should have confronted her. She had duped him from the very start.

If there was one thing he disliked, it was being bested. And being made a fool of he disliked even more.

The arrival of an owl tapping at his window proved to be an omen of further torment. It was a Ministry owl. Severus tore the missive from it and just about resisted hexing the scroll into a million pieces. Instead, he downed a snifter of whisky and ripped the seal open. A strangled laugh left him when he got to the end of the missive.

It was the instructions for their next… appointment. Evidently, there had been no time to cancel it. Severus flung it onto his desk and dropped with a thump back into his armchair, passing a hand shakily across his brow.

It was a two night stay at some coastal retreat.

Of all the…

He drank from the glass and furiously emptied his mind.

The Ministry had actually booked them a dirty weekend.

The self-recrimination started earlier than he would have liked.

The next day, supremely deflated, he started to wish that he hadn't taken off without another word to her. Her earnest expression haunted his waking moments, making him shrink when they accosted him. He wished he had let her finish whatever she wanted to say. He did not now know the full story and he now had burning questions that repeatedly came to him. It would have at least saved his mind from toiling over the what-ifs and why-fors.

For someone so practised at nursing grudges, it was extremely tiresome that he could not seem to sustain any bad-feeling towards Hermione Granger. This was an emerging pattern. His initial anger had shifted to include space for regret at his treatment of her. He should have done better.

After all, she had been nothing but kind to him. He had not shown her kindness in return. He was selfish, always thinking of his self-interest and never seeing the bigger picture. The bigger picture had always been a struggle for him. His life could have been far different had he been able to think beyond himself. By the time he got to the right decision, it was almost always too late.

But then, he was used to watching from the shadows and there he should remain. No sooner would he conceive the thought than her smiling face would materialise, which he could not seem to free himself of. Thinking of the garden party, he only thought of how she had looked, amongst her friends, laughing, smiling, and truly incandescent. He thought of her hair, how its subdued brown came to life in the sun, glistening in tones of amber; sparkling, even.

Whilst he lurked on the edges, in the shadows, she sought him nevertheless.

But, he was not special. He should not benefit from Hermione Granger's regard any more than her other friends would. He should remember that, and be happy with it. There had never been the prospect of companionship, love, domesticity—that life was beyond his reach, his capabilities, even. The happy ending was not for him. He had long accepted this.

And yet… He could not be so stunted to have imagined the tangible pull that seemed to exist between them? The pull which, if he allowed himself the full satisfaction of it, could make his blood pump. An almost foreign sensation.

Maybe that was why, a day later, Severus found himself travelling from bookshop to bookshop, Magical and Muggle, and had spent half his monthly salary on a pile of books. If they were true, he had to know the real significance of her claims, and so he read. He read passage after passage on the split soul, the shared soul, the bonded soul; theories on connections, affinities, and understandings.

It was all twaddle. It had to be.

The idea that his soul, his dark and damaged soul, could be linked to anyone, left him cold.

All of those mythological theories, those Muggle theological theories, Magical theories, and somehow Hermione Granger had managed to unlock the hypothetical and make it tangible?

Ridiculous.

She must be wrong. Surely on discovery she should have obliviated herself at the very least? Wouldn't that be the most self-respecting action for her to take? Why would she have accepted it? Still, her behaviour towards him, the attention she showed him, did make a little more sense now. The girl had obviously convinced herself of certain truths. Did the Muggles call it confirmation bias? She had allowed herself to get tangled in this mess and had turned it into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Once she realised she was fallible, got over herself, and accepted that she was wrong, she would be able to move on.

Then he could move on, too.

Only mid-week did he summon the wherewithal to risk a trip to London.

Severus sloped into the office, fully determined to spend the day working—fully intending that he should not spare a single thought on anything other than potion-making. He would be happy to simply scrub cauldrons all day if it meant he would think of nothing else.

Nothing was ever straightforward, though.

There was a folded up square of parchment waiting for him on his desk, with his name on it. Her handwriting was a little less neater than it had been once upon a time, but he had seen it enough times to recognise it. Feeling his breath lodge in his lungs, he snatched it up and unfolded it quickly.

There was a mere sentence awaiting his attention.

I am in desperate need of a weekend away.

Severus released his breath and crumpled the parchment tightly into his fist. His ears buzzed.

Fuck.

She was tenacious.

That evening, he sought out the Ministry invitation that he had discarded carelessly on his desk. He turned it over in his hands, wondering why he had not destroyed it, and why they had not rescinded it.

In a world where he cared not a whit what anyone thought of him, she was the exception. He did not want to lose her good opinion. Could he make an effort this once? She had shown patience to him before, maybe she had not yet run out of it.

The Ministry Portkey sat on the mantel taunting him. Particularly at night, his mind took him places it ought to have no right to. Could they have spent the weekend together? What would that have been like? The idea both terrified and consumed him.

Most dangerously of all, he wondered if she also found herself reflecting on it. Did she sit, as he did, and regret that they would never find out?

When Friday afternoon came, he was still undecided. When the Portkey glowed and became active, Severus stared at it hard, knowing he had only five minutes before it would become defunct.

She would not be there. He told himself repeatedly she would not be there.

Growling angrily, he grasped the Portkey. When the world righted itself, he had been transported to a clifftop, somewhere, and he stood in front of a small, quaint cottage.

His breath caught a little and his palms clenched into fists when he saw that the front door was open.

She must be there.

In the garden of a small clifftop cottage, Hermione leaned against a balustrade that separated the garden from the rest of the headland. Beyond was a truly breathtaking view. She was impressed. For once, the Ministry had really outdone themselves.

Resisting the urge to consult her watch, she continued to stare determinedly out across the bay. When the sound of approaching footsteps reached her ears, she straightened up imperceptibly, an ominous feeling making the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

She turned around to see a dark figure standing in the doorway. 'Severus,' she stated. 'Fancy meeting you here.'

He said nothing, but walked towards her, stiffly.

'I'm glad you decided to come,' she added, docketing the slight rumpledness of his figure.

'I came because I wanted to express my regret for my behaviour last weekend.'

'It was not very gentlemanly,' she murmured carefully.

'I am not a gentleman.' His posture straightened. 'Nevertheless, I do not wish for you to think ill of me.'

'I do not think ill of you,' Hermione retorted, bristling.

'Be that as it may, I am here to discharge you from whatever duty or obligation you feel you are labouring under… I know you have your intellectual pride, but really, Granger, to ingratiate yourself with your much older former teacher, and ex-Death Eater, simply to avoid having to admit your theory was flawed is, quite frankly, demented.'

Her eyebrows shot up. 'You think proving a point would mean that much to me? That I would exploit you for that?'

He scoffed quietly, which irritated her.

'I do not blame you for your confusion, but I assure you, my theory was not wrong. And whatever my efforts were in all this, what of your own?'

She fixed him with a hard look and he glared back, jaw noticeably clenched.

'I only wished to get to know you, and you allowed it. Perhaps you also wished to ingratiate–'

He looked suddenly mutinous at her audacity, and she broke off abruptly. He turned away from her slightly, seemingly searching for something. She had never seen him so uncomfortable, she realised.

'Explain it to me again,' he said finally. 'All of it.'

Hermione took in a lungful of air, bracing herself mentally. 'I'm not stupid; as soon as I found out you were my match, I knew this theory could never go mainstream. This was not some tool for harmless fun. However, there are enchantments in the Department of Mysteries that meant I could not remove my work from there. My research was the Ministry's research—it belonged to them. So, the only other option was to tell no one and bury it in the hope it would remain undiscovered. After that, I decided hiding away in the pursuit of intellectual vanity was no good for me, so I left and started mediwitch training.'

Ironically, he had been her stimulus for that.

'Of course, someone did discover my project and of course it got used in a way it should not. You must see there was no way I was going to be partly responsible for such a gross misuse of power? Believe me, risking a prison sentence by sneaking into the Department of Mysteries was a last resort, but I did it. I tweaked the underlying enchantment. Apparently, some of the latest matches, well, let us say even the Ministry draws the line somewhere.'

'Why not explain this to me at the outset? You knew all this time and you never said anything? You agreed it was a mistake.'

She opened her mouth to defend herself, but he continued on forcefully.

'You have engaged with me under false pretences—tricked me into thoughts and feelings that I do not wish to have!'

'What was I supposed to do?' Hermione hissed defensively. 'What would you have done if I had rocked up seven years ago and told you we were a match made in heaven? I knew you never would have welcomed that. Why should eight weeks ago be any different? I saw an opportunity to get to know you better and I took it. I'm sorry that you feel deceived. However, I have not deceived you in our interactions. I have not tricked you, but go ahead, if it suits your low opinion of me, pretend that I have manipulated you for my own amusement!'

Hermione looked at her hands, wondering how she could not have foreseen this in her imaginings of how this would unfold. She could have played it differently, but he was Severus Snape. What he didn't know about subterfuge wasn't worth knowing about. She thought he of all people would understand the necessity of it.

Feeling he was in an impossible mood, she turned on her heel, intending to give him a moment. His arm quickly shot out to forestall her, however, catching her upper arm.

Their eyes met—hers accusatory at his high-handed manner, and his, totally guarded.

'You mean to tell me you could have paid the fine,' he murmured quietly.

She nodded grimly. 'And yours.' It was an unnecessary dig, but she said it with a little thrill of satisfaction nevertheless.

His fingers fell away and he seemed to be re-assessing her. Hermione felt unusually exposed by it.

'Are you angry?' she asked, wondering if she had mistaken a softening of his features.

'Not really… I simply do not have the words to describe what I am.'

'Severus, I apologise for not being honest from the outset, but we are where we are. I thought we were enjoying each other's company. I'm struggling to understand what has actually changed.' She picked nervously at her sleeve. 'Perhaps it would comfort you to know that in some discourse, soul-mates may be platonic. It does not automatically presume a romantic leaning. I, ah, assumed nothing. What I learned and what I hoped for were…' The words died a little in her throat, because she knew they were not quite true for her. 'I value free will,' she clarified, not sure she was making any sense.

'Is that what we have here?'

'Of course!'

'I do not like the idea that this has been predetermined, Hermione. It feels orchestrated. When did it happen? Why did it happen? How could it happen?'

He turned an expression of utter disbelief to her.

'I admit, I don't have all the answers—'

'You are so young, Hermione, and so beautiful, that this cannot be right. It is a cruel twist of fate that you, who is without equal, should be matched with someone so entirely unworthy.' His head shook desolately. 'No good can come from it.'

Unaccustomed to being on the receiving end of such emotive words, Hermione was quite struck dumb. Her throat burned unexpectedly as she struggled to work her voice free, despite having no idea how she should respond.

'We should let it be,' he decreed, nodding in agreement with himself.

Giving her one last sweeping look, it was his turn to take off back towards the house. It was this quick movement that powered Hermione back into action.

' Let it be?' she choked out, disbelievingly, ready to grasp for her wand if she needed it. 'I have spent the last seven years in some sort of ridiculous limbo knowing that any relationship would be doomed or would be, at best, a disappointment, because they would not be you. Yes, you , my much older former teacher—a complex, remote, prickly , unattainable figure of a man. It couldn't be more difficult! Yet, in spite of all that, we began to establish common ground—an understanding against the odds. There was a connection that I defy you to state was fabricated or trickery! But, despite that, you would let it be, would you?'

In the flow of her outburst, Hermione had found herself across his path, almost in his face. She had taken her wand and it was raised between them. They both looked at it. What she intended by it, she had no idea, but despite her inward cringe of embarrassment, she did not lower it, only gripped it tighter.

He surveyed her, eyes slightly wide and Hermione could barely tell whether he was aghast or impressed. The silence seemed to elongate beyond the realms of anything comfortable, and then:

'Seven years?' he eventually repeated, in a quiet voice.

Hermione nodded minutely, feeling her resolve starting to crumble. Her wand arm lowered in defeat. 'You would consign me to a life of what-if, would you? The continued torment of always wondering, and for what? Just so you can wallow in your self-righteous indignation–'

The last of her words were cut off as he quickly closed any distance between them. A hand clasped at the back of her head and he was kissing her. Her wand slipped from her grasp as she used both hands to hold on to his shoulders as she nearly fell backwards. Masking any surprise, she pushed back into the kiss with as much pressure as she could. In response he wrapped his free arm around her waist, pulling her tightly to him. Never to be outdone, she tilted her head further for better access and dug her fingers in tighter.

Distantly, in the upper reaches of her mind, this almost fierce battle between them started to register, and it dawned on her that there might finally come answers to her years of questioning and wondering. Feeling almost boneless with relief at the thought of it, she whimpered aloud.

He wrenched away from her at that, his shoulders heaving under her hands. Opening her eyes, she also took a breath, but it was shaky. Self-consciously, she smiled. That certainly had not unfolded in the way she had imagined it.

He made a soft huff of incredulity, his palm which cupped her hair moving slightly so that his thumb rested somewhere near the top of her cheek. An assimilating look in his eye developed as he watched her. Within the depths she was sure she saw vulnerability.

She had a few ideas how to chase that away.

Starting with an encore.

Severus, fresh from the shower, pulled on the dressing gown that was hanging on the back of the door and then sat on the edge of the bed. The bed was a mess. He looked away from its rumpled state and braced his elbows on his thighs, putting his head in his hands. He breathed, taking a moment of quiet to reflect and, in truth, to gather himself. The last twenty-four hours had undone everything he thought he knew about himself. The woman only a few metres away had unlocked thoughts and feelings that he had never experienced before–emotions that he had decided long ago were not for him. She had extracted from him actions and behaviours that he did not know he was capable of.

He was, very likely, forever changed.

It filled him with equal parts terror and euphoria. The terror told him to run and hide, to save himself, but a touch, a simple warm touch, even just a look, from her and he could not deny himself. The feeling left his head ringing with pleasure. Did succumbing make him weak? Or was he just lucky?

Whatever it was, there would have to be a reckoning at some point. For now, he would take what he could get. There were still things he needed to know; experiences he needed to feel.

Stuffing his feet into some slippers, he got up to go in search of his companion. The door to the garden was open and from there he could hear a dull hum and the sound of water bubbling. He grimaced, leaning against the door-frame, watching her recline in what she had told him was a hot tub. Her eyes were closed, head propped on the edge, and there was a half charged flute hovering to the side of her.

Severus raised his eyebrows at the sight. 'I hope you are not becoming accustomed to such decadence.'

Hermione's head snapped around. 'I love it,' she said brightly. 'Get in.'

'I don't think–'

'Get in ,' she ordered, nodding towards a chair. 'I have Transfigured some swim-shorts for you.'

Severus looked over to where a pair of shorts were folded on a chair. 'Ah; I wondered where my dignity had gone.'

She laughed. 'Never mind your dignity; it's not your dignity that will keep you warm at night.'

'That'll be your job, will it?'

Her shoulders lifted. 'Maybe,' she quipped coquettishly.

How could he dismiss that idea? It was far too early to deny her anything, perhaps he never would. He could imagine himself quickly becoming entirely consumed with her. He reluctantly pulled the shorts on and discarded his robe, aware that her eyes were on him the whole time. Trying for elegance, but maybe veering towards the ungainly, he lowered himself into the bubbling water. The warmth was not an entirely unwelcome pleasure.

'There,' she said, watching him settle into the corner opposite her. 'If I am aching after last night, then so must you.'

Hermione was very direct, he was learning. But if he was aching, he couldn't feel it. In fact, he had never felt more alive.

She closed her eyes and set her head back again, her cheeks a ruddy pink. Severus watched her, noting how her hair was piled on her head, but that wet tendrils clung around her neck. On the skin there was evidence of the manner in which they had spent the hours since their full and rather frank garden discussion. Occasionally, her body would bob upwards under the force of the jets and give him a prime view of her chest. He looked away, wishing the cottage had come with an ice bath instead.

He twisted his body slightly, feeling it safer to look out at the landscape than anywhere else. Now, in the light of day, out of the frenzy of physical conquest, he was unsure what he was supposed to do, or what he was supposed to be. Utterly clueless as to what she would expect.

Belatedly, he hoped that no one might wander past and witness their tableau. Surely, the Ministry would have considered discretion? The thrice-damned, thrice-hailed Ministry. He would have to be grateful to them now. And what if Hermione had never developed the calculation? Their lives may never have made any meaningful connection. His head hurt to think about all of the complexities of it.

Suddenly, the water rippled around him, signalling the movement of his companion until she was pressed alongside him.

'Are you all right? You look pensive.' Her fingers alighted gently on his shoulder.

Even such a delicate, innocuous touch filled him with such pleasure and pain. Would he ever get used to it? He dropped his arm below the water and scooped it around her waist, pulling her body across his chest so she was sitting in his lap.

'This is nice,' she commented, putting an arm around his neck.

He was almost eye level with her chest now; it was more than nice. 'I was just thinking about the Ministry,' he murmured as a distraction.

'Ah; thinking about their exquisite taste in romantic coastal getaways? It is a surprise, to be sure.'

Severus placed his free hand atop her knee, stroking it lightly with his thumb. 'Hermione, there is only one bedroom…'

'I did notice. I was wrong to call them puritanical, clearly.'

They had never got to the bottom of where this was supposed to end once they reached the conclusion of their series of 'appointments.' Something was nagging at the back of his mind–something that left him mildly discomfited, and it wasn't solely the novelty of an armful of a half-naked woman.

Absent-mindedly, he ran his hand down the smoothness of her leg, feeling the swell of her calf, and recalling how they had quivered for him. That was a novelty he was sure he could never tire of.

'Hermione… Do you think they will know we, ah, consummated our relationship?'

No need to specify who 'they' were.

Her chest suddenly heaved in front of him as she took a sharp intake of breath. 'What? The programme has been concluded, why would they–'

Severus felt her body tense in his arms. She looked towards the cottage before slowly turning her eyes back upon him.

'Surely, this is all null and void now?'

'This is the Ministry,' he cautioned. 'Did you receive official confirmation that we were released from our obligations?'

Head shaking negatively, her eyes looked into his, seemingly to search for guidance. This close, he could see the depth of colour that swirled in them–another detail he would need to commit to memory, he thought. Just in case.

'It's much too late to worry about it now, of course,' he conceded softly.

Her eyes closed with a resigned chuckle. 'Far, far , too late.'

She sought out a kiss, with a slight smirk. He was happy to oblige. In a moment, she was twisting to sit astride him, chest pushing into his with no mistaking of her intentions. It was this, he realised–this was why it was too easy to forget everything that was proper and sensible, in the moment. He could finally understand why passion made fools of men. He was finally at their level.

'You're ready for another go?' he whispered into her ear.

She nodded brightly, before smirking and getting to her feet. Severus followed, wondering how on earth he had managed to convince her into thinking he was some kind of practised lothario.

They had barely made it onto the patio before the rapid sound of flapping wings arrested their attention. An owl approached, its talons clashing loudly onto a glass table-top as it landed before them. The owl glanced around, nonplussed, and in its beak, held tightly, was a missive bearing the ministerial crest.

It was addressed to both Severus Snape and Hermione Granger.

'Ah, fuck,' they muttered in unison.

AN: Thanks for reading : )