Chapter 1

Author's note: Yes, I am still alive! Sorry about my absence, life does the life thing. I have picked up and tried to finish my other story several times, but I am hitting a huge block on it. So when this story idea came along, I had to write it. This isn't a long story, but I can't get it out of my head. This is VERY DIFFERENT than anything I have ever posted before, so please take the content warnings seriously. If you like my other work you may or may not like this. It's okay if you don't! I wrote what's in my head, and I don't really know always where my psyche gets this stuff.

This story takes place in no other universe I have ever written in. This is a world where Voldemort won the final battle, and most of the side of the right was wiped out. A remnant remains, and one of that remnant has a plan, if only she can get a snarky, grumpy git who is dedicated to hiding out to help her.

Warnings: Please take these seriously. There will be consensual spanking of an adult woman, sexual content, and angst galore. There is also talk about many character deaths. This is adult content.

Severus Snape sat down on his soft armchair and looked out at the night, sipping his tea. He could feel the violence of the coming storm and wondered at the season. So few thunderstorms happened in early spring, he hoped it did not mean that it would be a foreshadowing of a soggy spring. If the world even lasted that long. He glanced at the garden from his window and saw the shimmer of the shield that he had set against the worst of the wind and rain, protecting the delicate seedlings that he had set out. He went through the mental list he had done to prepare for the storm, knowing he had done everything, but still he couldn't shake the feeling of being unsettled. Though it had been seven long years since the war, and seven long years since he had hardly had a word with another person from the wizarding world, he still listened to his instincts. It felt like something was coming. Was it the end that was finally coming?

So when the knock came at his door, the startlement that could have happened when his door was never knocked upon, let alone after supper on a stormy night, never came, and rather he felt a sense of confirmation. Something was afoot.

"Master Snape," his house elf chirped as they appeared. "Should I's let them in?"

"Answer the door, Tilly," he told her. "Let them in the Foyer. The wards will not let them further. Then report back to me who it is."

The house elf popped away obediently, leaving Snape to ponder. No muggle could have gotten through the wards – carefully crafted to not hide the manor but to dissuade a muggle from wanting to visit it. So, a magical person – but knocking at his front door? This seemed very . . . pedestrian. He had no idea who to expect. He had not seen someone from the wizarding world for seven long years; he had done his best to disappear. He didn't believe anybody knew where he was. His senses tingled – was this a trap? Had the Dark Lord finally found him?

"Hermione Granger, Master Snape," Tilly chirped.

"Hermione Granger?" he repeated, blankly. Whomever he expected, she wasn't it.

"Master Snape, she is lookings – cold. May I . . ."

"I will talk with her," Snape told his house elf. "If warm beverages are required, I will let you know."

"Yes, Master, sir," she cheeped and blinked away.

Snape straightened his robe, a much more casual one than he wore when he had taught, and thought about seeing the young girl he had taught all those years ago. A lifetime ago. But not a young girl anymore – he reminded himself. She would be twenty-four now, she was a young woman. Maybe married? Children? Although in these uncertain times . . .

What are you doing? He demanded himself. Are you as curious about her as an old biddy? Are you really that starved for human company? You have no idea of her current loyalties, she could be serving the Dark Lord for all you know. Best to send her away.

But Snape knew he was lying to himself – if he truly wanted to send her away he wouldn't confirm that he was there. He would have his elf give her a meal, perhaps, and then send her away. Surely she was talented enough to apparate away from the storm?

Straightening his robe, he made a decision. Perhaps it might be good to talk with her and see how the survivors were doing. He was very good at Legilimancy, after all, it would be hard to fool him as to her intentions were she a spy. And any nefarious intentions, well, he was also very good at memory charms. And if he knew anything about the young Gryffindor, it was that she was one of the least likely to be corrupted by the Deatheaters. The only other option was Polyjuice, and as a Potions Master it had been little bother to tune his wards against it.

"Miss Granger," he snapped as he strode into the Foyer.

"Professor Snape," she gasped, glancing up at the tall, gaunt man. This entire time, she had half believed that the man they thought was Snape living in the North was someone else. But, looking at this man, there was no doubt as to who he was.

"What is the reason for this invasion of my privacy?"

"It's really you," she whispered. "How is it that you're alive after all this time?"

"That is none of your business," he growled. "You are dripping on my carpet. State your business and kindly leave."

"There's a storm!" Hermione objected.

"And you can apparate away from it," he glared. "Unless you are somehow incapacitated?"

"Don't you want to know what's happening?" she asked, incredulous. "I can catch you up on the Order business . . ."

"Had I wanted to know these things I would have sought them out," he told her. "I am uninterested in them now. I simply want a quiet life where I am left alone."

"We have respected that," she told him. "We have known where you were for some time, but we have respected that you wanted to live in peace. But now, well, now there might be something we can do."

"Who sent you?" he demanded, his eyes narrowing.

"Nobody sent me," she insisted. "There's nobody really to send me out, to be honest."

"You have clearly been well fed and housed," he observed. "You are not the skinny, dirty urchin you would be if you were living rough avoiding the hunters. So who have you been working with?"

"Bill Weasley," she answered promptly, blushing a bit at his observations. No woman wanted to hear she was well-fed.

"It would not have been safe for you in Britain," he observed.

"We have been in France," she told him. "With the Delacour family. After the fall . . . well, Fleur was one of the casualties. Bill had nowhere else to go. The Delacours took him in, and he married her younger sister a few years ago."

"Have you married?" he asked bluntly.

"I have not," she answered, looking down. "Ron was a casualty as well. Bill was actually the only Weasley to have made it."

"I have seen the death reports from the final battle," he told her, his voice hard but somewhat sad as well. "It would be easier to say who survived than who died."

"There are precious few," she agreed. "And getting fewer by the year. The hunters have been very . . . difficult."

"The only safe place is abroad, I expect," Snape told her.

"Or in a very well-protected, secret manor," Hermione observed.

"Unplottable and untraceable," he told her. "Thanks to the Prince family. I am safe as long as I maintain my privacy."

"I have a proposition for you," Hermione told him, ignoring the dig. "Invite me in, let's drink some tea together, and I will explain everything to you."

"Why do you want to come in?" he asked, his voice heavy with suspicion.

"Because I'm bloody cold!" she snapped at him. "There is a storm raging, which we both know will get worse. I had to apparate outside your wards and walk in."

"Your timing on your visit is not my problem," he growled.

Hermione looked at him, and then changed tact. "Surely you have been . . . lonely . . ." she said softly.

"Trust me, Miss Granger, you are not my type," he snapped at her. But her first attempt at what could be only termed as seduction caught his attention. There was no denying that he actually had been lonely, but also that he saw her as a child. But if she were desperate enough to try such a tactic, well, she wasn't the young girl he had last known. He did a gentle brush against her mind with legilimancy, and he could feel her desperate desire to talk with him, her passion for some plan, but no feelings of deception or harm.

"You may enter if you leave your wand here," he told her, deciding. With a flick of his wand, a wooden box appeared on the table in the foyer. "I have yet to determine your true motives, nor your loyalties. What you say sounds suspiciously like what I want to hear, but I am too wary to be sucked in by sweet words and a pretty face."

"You think I'm pretty?" she squeaked.

"Put your wand in the box, Miss Granger," he directed. "And I will order tea, as you requested."

"What about your loyalties?" she asked, looking at the box.

"You may ward the box however you wish," he told her. "I am not interested in claiming your wand, merely that you don't have it to hand when I am more vulnerable."

Nodding, Hermione set a few basic warding spells on the box so that her wand could be retrieved only by her, and then she placed her wand within it. She had learned in the past several years how dangerous it was to ever be without it, she hoped that the Professor recognized the trust she was giving him in her being willing to disarm.

He wondered at her easy trust of him – these years since the fall had not been easy for her, he could see it on her face. Though she was still undeniably pretty, she had a careworn look on her face, as if she had grieved far too much. And, as he watched her remove her coat and scarf, he saw that she had matured indeed. Gone was the soft, gangly looseness of adolescence and it was replaced with the softer curves and sure confidence of a grown woman. Uncomfortably, he realized that what she had said was true – it had been a very long time that he had been without any sort of company, especially the company of a woman. And she was not exactly unattractive. He might need to get her out of his house sooner than he thought.

"Are you hungry, Miss Granger?" he asked as they entered his sitting room.

"I could eat," she told him.

"Tilly," he snapped his fingers.

"Yes, Master Snape, sir?"

"Please bring us tea and sandwiches," he instructed. "And biscuits. Do you have any preferences?" he asked his guest.

"I am not picky," she told him.

"But are you partial to anything?" he pressed.

"I like egg and cress," she told him. "We don't tend to have proper English tea much . . ."

"My house elves are quite adept and the English staples," he told her. "Thank you, Tilly."

Tilly blinked out, leaving them alone.

"Should I prepare myself with a lecture about the enslavement of house elves?" he asked, sardonically. "They came with the manor, and are quite attached to the Prince family line."

"I, well, I still think their enslavement is a shame on wizardry," she told him honestly. "But I also have met so many house elves that do not want to be free – so yeah, I am not lecturing you on anything right now. I am grateful for your time."

"Then perhaps, Miss Granger," he began as the food popped forth on the table and he went to pour her tea. "You can tell me how you take your tea. Followed by how in the world you think there's any hope in a world where Harry Potter is dead."