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Grimmauld Place still creaks and groans at night. Hermione lies awake and stares at the shadows dancing over her ceiling. The book she read before bed – about three hours ago – lies open on her chest. She traces patterns over the aged paper absentmindedly. Crookshanks is lying at her feet, ever so slightly snoring away.
There is a thought at the edge of her mind. Nebulous, foggy, exhilarating.
She closes the book and turns to the side. She tucks her hands under her chin and closes her eyes with determination.
Three years ago, the last year of Hermione’s apprenticeship:
“Wormwood, Granger. Chop chop.”
Hermione bites back a retort and scoops the diced bits of wormwood up in her hollowed hands. She lets them drop into the cauldron with a bit less caution than perhaps strictly ideal. The potion splashes upwards, one or two drops falling over the side of the cauldron onto Snape’s robes.
He hisses, yanking his robes backwards with a glare.
“Granger.”
“Sorry.”
He bares his teeth at her. She clenches hers.
She is so annoyed.
She has no idea why. The moment she stepped foot into his classroom in the morning, she could already feel annoyance rising in her like nausea. She can almost taste it at the back of her throat. She has no idea what it is about him – his sneers, maybe, his arrogant air, his stupid dark robes, his horrible hair. She wants to yank it. She wants to – she doesn’t even know what she wants to do, but it makes her hands itch.
“Lilac oil. Three drops.” She glares up at him. “Where is your head Granger – now!”
She puts three drops in. The potion turns purple with a hiss.
She wants to smash the vial at his feet.
Present:
The pages are sticking together. The ink, runny from the dirty, gritty water, smudges under his fingertips.
Anger freezes Severus’ limbs. He breathes deeply, counting, as he has been instructed again and again. Inhale… one, two, three, four… Exhale… One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight… inhale…
He can feel the air move in his lungs. He focuses on that, instead of how soggy and frail the pages feel in his grasp.
If Yaxley wasn’t in Azkaban already for much larger crimes than taking a detour to curse Spinner’s End so thoroughly that Severus was still tripping over the remnants of his work years later, Severus would drag him there with his own hands. By the scruff of his neck.
That would not save his books, though, and neither would it salvage his sanity.
A sudden thought has him springing to his feet. He finds the locked box on his shelf and takes it down. He snaps open the mechanism.
The envelope inside is dry. He breathes a sigh of relief.
Slowly, carefully, he spells fingers clean. He resists the urge to wipe them on his robes, knowing it would only undo the spell’s work.
Ever so gently, he strokes over the envelope. He can feel the slight bumps of its contents in his fingertips.
Maybe it is time, then.
The day Severus Snape moves into Grimmauld Place dawns foggy and wet. Hermione, wrapped in her grandmother’s knitted quilt, stands barefooted at the top of the stairs. Snape, clad in black just like when she last saw him all these years ago at her apprenticeship graduation ceremony, levitates box after box through the narrow hallway.
“I appreciate this, Potter,” he says, sounding like someone is pulling his teeth. “Very forthcoming of you.”
Harry seems much more at ease with the situation. “Anything for Mr. Tall, Dark and Striking.”
Hermione can hear the capital letters in his voice. Snape apparently hasn’t stayed away from the Prophet all that much, considering how he frowns in recognition. “I will hex you.”
Harry sends him a dimpled smile.
Snape, having finished stacking his boxes next to the stairs, looks up. His gaze slides over Harry to settle on her.
Hermione is suddenly very conscious of her toes. The nailpolish on them is chipped. Can he tell, all the way from down there?
“Granger.”
“Professor.”
Their gazes tangle for a second, then he turns away. Kreacher creeps out of the kitchen to aid with the boxes.
And that is that.
Living with Snape is not as hard as Hermione thought.
It is easier than feigning patience when Harry and Ginny talk Quidditch next to her and forget she is there. It is easier than ignoring the twang of hurt when she accidentally sets a second set of cutlery right next to hers before remembering that Ron barely eats with them anymore. It is easier than trying to explain to her supervisor at work why his process is stupid and yes, she knows better, even though she barely has three years experience at the job. It’s not her fault he’s an idiot.
Definitely easier than keeping her face neutral when Harry tells her about Lavender . Again .
Snape is, surprisingly, an unremarkable houseguest. He leaves none of his things around, eats alone in his room, does not show his face at all, now that she thinks about it. The only indication that he is even there is the occasional swish of black fabric around a corner, the sound of steps in a room above their heads, their slowly dwindling supply of tea.
Apart from that, their lives go on as they always do, these days.
Hermione’s first interaction with Snape happens days after he moved in, on a Sunday morning. Hermione, dressing gown firmly wrapped around her, is poking a pancake in their large cast-iron pan. Crookshanks is twisting around her legs after finishing his own breakfast, seemingly content with just having her near.
The door creaks. She turns. There stands Snape, looking caught.
Hermione adjusts the dressing gown on her shoulder. Snape’s gaze goes to her hand.
“No ring?”
“I want to be with you always,” Ron said, knees pressed against the muddy grass. “I don’t ever want to part with you.”
The box in his hand was small, but it seemed to weigh a ton in Hermione’s hands.
She should have said no right then, instead of letting it drag on until he finally did.
“No.” She turns back to her pan. Slowly, steadily, the pancakes rise. Belatedly, she asks “Why?”.
“Basic intel gathering. First rule of staying ahead of everyone.” He rummages through the tea cabinet and wrinkles his nose at it.
Hermione scrutinizes the pancakes. Pokes them. Flips them, the golden brown of their bottom side being exposed to the late morning air. “You were never that kind of spy.”
“Says who?”
When she turns to him, his eyebrow is lifted. They look at each other for a second, then their gazes fall to her pan.
“What’s that?”
“Never seen a pancake before, Professor?”
“Very funny.”
Hermione plates the first batch of the pancakes. “I’m known for my wit. You want any?”
“Wit? No thank you, I’m all set.”
Before she can offer again, he slams the door to the cabinet shut and sweeps out the door. Crookshanks looks after him for a second, then meows and dedicates himself to cleaning his fur.
It sets the tone for her future interactions with Snape. They are brief, confusing, don’t lead anywhere and usually get interrupted by him leaving the room.
Hermione gets used to it.
The first dinner they have with Ron after the break-up happens by accident.
They’re late with it. They’d thought they had leftovers, so Harry hadn’t gone grocery shopping yet, but a brief inspection reveals the yawning emptiness of their fridge.
“Chinese?”
“Chinese.”
Harry calls them. Hermione spends that time digging through the abyss of their cabinets, looking for condiments.
Snape appears in their doorway like a spectre.
“You are ordering dinner?”
Harry blinks at him for a few seconds. “This is the first time I’ve seen you since you moved in.”
“I’ve been busy. Dinner?”
“Why,” Hermione asks, “would you want some, too?”
Snape takes the restaurant flyer from its place on the fridge, where it is secured in place by a collection of rotating animal magnets (today a seal) and begins to peruse it.
“They don’t happen to have pineapple fritters, do they?”
Harry frowns at the flyer as if it did him a personal injustice. “At the Chinese place? I don’t think so.”
“Fine. 34 then. Duck in plum sauce.”
Harry picks up the phone and adjusts the order. Hermione unearths the condiments and offers Snape some green tea. To her surprise, he takes it.
It’s weird enough having Snape at their table, glowering at his tea. It doesn’t get better when the door goes and heavy steps approach. Ron – tired, wrinkled, curious – appears in the doorway. He spots the boxes on the table.
“Oh,” he says, “Chinese?”
“Evidently,” Snape says.
Hermione tries to remember a situation in which she has ever been this uncomfortable and comes up with nothing.
Ron shuffles on his feet. His red auror cloak brushes the floor in a dusty kiss.
She can still read him too well. It hurts. She can tell he knows she is uncomfortable, knows she is hurting. She can tell he is hurting a little, too – she does not doubt he misses her.
She also knows he wants to eat.
He eyes the Chinese on the table with all the grace of a starving man. They ordered enough for at least five people – always have done. Hermione doesn’t know if Harry made that decision consciously, if he knew that Ron would be by. These days, the things Hermione doesn’t know number higher than the ones she does.
Before she can second-guess herself, she pushes against the chair opposite her with her socked foot. It moves out from under the table and towards Ron with a screech. “We have enough. We also got Szechuan beef.”
The moment stretches. Hermione is too conscious of what everyone is thinking. She can feel their gazes on her.
It pops. Ron sits down and pulls the boxes towards himself.
He begins to inhale the beef. Hermione tries to ignore the hole in her chest and devotes herself to her noodles.
She may be imagining it, but she feels like Snape is looking at her the whole dinner.
Three years ago:
Hermione’s knock on Snape’s door is so vehement, it hurts her knuckles. He rips the door open with more force than necessary.
It isn’t her fault, she knows. And yet his harsh glare stings. She pushes aside the hurt and welcomes the anger.
She shoves Professor McGonnagal’s letter under his nose. “Professor McGonnagal says to please lend me the Waller-Bridge manuscript. Sir.”
The explanation is unnecessary. He can read.
He tears the letter from her grasp and kicks open the door. “Help yourself then, if my library is to be your buffet.”
If you hadn’t sent me away twice this wouldn’t have been necessary, Hermione thinks. She doesn’t say it – they don’t need even more reasons to fight.
She doesn’t even know why they keep fighting. From the moment her apprenticeship had started, they were at each other’s throats all the time.
It’s him, she thinks, he’s just such an ass all the time.
She ignores the fact that she refuses to be the bigger person in these disputes. She tried, at first, to be nice, polite, even friendly. Somehow, that had only seemed to make matters worse.
He gets her a stool and shoves it into the right position. Then he stands there, arms crossed, while she stretches up as high as she can go to inch the heavy tome towards her with her fingertips.
“You’ll get hit in the face like that,” he points out after some seconds of careful inching.
Hermione huffs. She shakes a wispy strand of hair away from her eyes. “Then you’ll get to smirk in triumph.”
“When you inevitably ruin my book? Hardly.”
He comes closer. His arm, long, surprisingly muscly, wrapped in black robe, reaches past Hermione and upwards.
How is he so tall, she wonders. He carefully lifts the book from the shelf. On his tiptoes, he is taller than her on the stool.
His robe brushes the back of hers.
“There you go, Granger. You’ll give it back to me, of course. I’m not in the habit of just gifting my books to anyone.”
Their eyes meet for a second. His steady gaze stirs something in her, and anger rises inexplicably.
She snatches the book from him and presses it against her chest. “Thank you,” she snipes. “Was that so hard?”
She sweeps out of the room before she can hear his reply clearly. A part of her, however, thinks it might have been “You have no idea .” Whispered. Like a secret.
Present:
Hermione learns about his book problem after he’s been at Grimmauld for weeks.
She wonders if he would have told anyone. It seems ridiculous – she works in book restoration, for Merlin’s sake. He could have gone to her from the start.
Instead, she runs into him a quarter past midnight in her oversized shirt, mug of tea in hand.
They stare at each other for a second.
“Don’t let me keep you then, Granger.”
Granger. He’d called her that during her apprenticeship, instead of the much more proper Miss Granger. She’s always wondered why.
It doesn’t raise the same ire as it did then. It does something else.
Hermione looks at him. Looks at the corridor. Tries to indicate at the turn the hall takes, which he is currently blocking. Crookshanks, returning from Merlin knows where, squeezes past their legs and disappears around the corner. Hermione tries very hard not to feel indignant at this blatant abandonment. “You’re in the way.”
Snape’s mouth falls open the slightest bit. His lips look surprisingly rosy. “Ah.”
He steps to the side. She is halfway past him when she reconsiders and turns back.
The door to his room is open. It is much larger than it should be – cavernous, really.
“I cleared the extension charms with Potter, if you’re wondering. He said the building isn’t yet at full capacity.” He sounds defensive. Hermione goes to scratch her nose but then remembers the mug of tea in her hand.
“I was just wondering what you needed the room for.”
He studies her. She’s not even sure what he’s looking for – is it that secret? Does she need to pass an aptitude test to be told?
She studies back. Inexplicably, it makes her face heat, so she stares into his room again.
“I’m drying out books,” he says.
“Books?”
“Yes. Books. You may be familiar with them. Pages. Letters. Sometimes the odd salami.”
“Salami?”
“I’m a teacher, Granger. I have seen things.” A pause. “Like books.”
“Hah. Funny.”
He still isn’t stepping to the side. It leaves her leaning to the side awkwardly. Close enough to smell the products he seems to be using. He must have showered – the realisation hits her like a lightning bolt. His hair still looks slightly damp in the ends of the inky strands. They curl slightly.
“You’re staring so much, I wasn’t sure if you had seen any before. I can give you a tour if you like.”
“Of your bedroom?”
“The books , Granger.”
Hermione clutches her mug tighter and goes up on her tiptoes. “Well, don’t keep being a tease then. Show me.”
“I’ll show you tease.” But he kicks the door open wider and gestures her to go inside.
Turns out “cavernous” is a fitting adjective. Snape has extended the room to about five times its usual size – and twice its usual height. At first, Hermione thinks there is a window open, but the large wall of glass does not let in a single breeze. Still, her hair is stirred in its braid by a consistent wind.
When she glances towards the floor, she finds out why: There, like a sea of parchment and leather, sit rows upon rows of books. They rest spine-down on towels, are propped up or, in one or two cases, rotate in the air above the others. Their pages rustle like leaves in the wind. Hermione, very familiar with the scent of wet and dirty old paper, feels her nose twitch.
“What did you do to them?”
Snape seems to bristle at that. “Nothing. My only crime was existing in their general vicinity. People seem to enjoy putting curses on me and my places of residence. In this case, weather curses.”
Hermione crouches down on the floor and inspects his work. Whatever drenched these books, it had carried grit and dirt.
“You’re drying them first?”
“Evidently.” He comes a step closer, then a second one. He crouches down next to her, which puts their faces much closer than Hermione thinks they have been in a while. Or ever.
She traces a brown stain that spans across an illustration of belladonna flowers. “You know this is my job, right? I can help you with this. I know you’re probably doing well enough, but you literally have an expert on hand.”
He doesn’t reply for long enough that Hermione looks up from the belladonna.
He is studying her again. Hermione suddenly wonders what he sees. Her mug of tea, still steaming, is set on the floor near her bared knee. Her shirt has rucked up quite a bit. She doesn’t think he can see her knickers, but she’s not as confident as she’d like to be. She’s also cold – a sudden flush of heat at the realisation that he may see the evidence of that through her shirt.
She feels suddenly intensely unraveled.
“I know, right,” he murmurs finally. “How foolish of me.”
Three years ago:
Professor McGonagall's eyes look suspiciously wet as she hands Hermione her certificate. Hermione takes it with both hands and resists the temptation to press it to her chest.
Two years. Two years of late nights, no weekends, of staying up longer than all her friends, going out less, working harder – and here it is. The evidence of her success is tangible, touchable, she can trace it with her eyes and her hands – Outstanding.
At this moment, she feels it. She is outstanding.
She has never been prouder of herself.
The ceremony is a small one. Professor McGonaggal is there in her capacity as the headmistress. Professors Flitwick and Sinistra are present as well. And Snape, in the corner, watches the whole thing with dark eyes.
Today, not even his contempt can tear her down. She feels higher than the astronomy tower, lighter than a feather under a levitation charm. She is strong. She is determined. She is capable. She is outstanding.
In her excitement, she does not realise that the emotion in Snape’s eyes isn’t contempt at all.
Present:
The voices drift into the hallway. They are deep, the words unrecogniseable, but they sound amicable.
She does not know what she expects to find when she opens the kitchen door. For some reason, despite the voices, she hadn’t expected this:
Ron and Professor Snape are playing chess at the kitchen table. There is a half-full pot of tea steaming weakly between them. Crookshanks is curled up in the corner of the kitchen, watching them.
Hermione stops short in the doorway. Her own empty mug feels stupid in her hand.
“Am I interrupting something?”
Ron looks awkward. He’s even blushing. That’s dumb, Hermione thinks, if any of us have a reason to blush in Snape’s presence–
She shuts down that thought.
“We’re playing chess,” he says. “Together.”
“I can see that,” she says. “The chessboard is a clue.”
“We will make a spy out of you, yet,” Snape says. Does he look amused while he says it? It’s impossible to tell.
Hermione decides not to comment. That makes her the bigger person, right?
Instead, she inches closer to peer into the teapot. The tea in it is milky and softly amber coloured. The thin hint at grease on the surface clues her in.
Her look at Ron is withering. “You put cream into this, didn’t you?”
“He did,” Snape comments. Yes, that is definitely amusement. “It’s atrocious.”
“You don’t sound like it bothers you. It’s disgusting. I know nobody who does this. Except maybe Americans.”
Snape clicks his tongue in derision. “ Americans .” Hermione feels like she’s the one he is making fun of.
Ron rolls his eyes but does not comment. Hermione suddenly realises that this argument – volatile, sharp, dangerous, hurtful when they were still holding onto the brittle edges of their relationship – has become nothing more than good-natured bickering.
Snape reaches for the teapot, carefully keeping his sleeve from upsetting the chess pieces waiting impatiently for their turn. “If you drink a full cup of this, I will let you keep the first edition Waller-Bridge manuscript after you restore it.”
Hermione blinks at him. Is he–
She looks at Ron, who shrugs and goes back to debating his next move. He looks supremely unbothered, but Hermione’s heart is racing.
Snape holds out the pot.
Hermione takes it, fills her mug. “You are the strangest man I know.”
She empties it in two big gulps. Grimaces.
Snape smirks at her. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
Cheeks warm from the tea, and from whatever is running wild in her chest, Hermione avoids his eyes. She stares at the turtle magnet on the fridge instead.
“Er,” Ron says. “I’m just gonna move my rook, then?”
Hermione leaves the kitchen. Crookshanks follows her. Up in her room, he jumps on her bed and curls up to go to sleep.
She opens the window and sets her empty mug down on the windowsill.
Hermione, she thinks, what are you doing.
Three years ago:
Hermione floats her suitcase down the stairs in front of her. The large entrance hall door is open, allowing the scent of summer to float inside.
The wheels of her suitcase are loud on the flagstones. Still, Hermione feels she wants to do this the manual way. This is how she came back to Hogwarts after the war – hands sweaty on the grip of her suitcase. Now, her hands do not sweat, despite the summer heat. Her robes are imbued with cooling charms, and she feels strong. Tall.
Snape is waiting for her outside the doors. Why, she has no idea. The contrast of his black robes against the flowers outside is almost funny. Hermione would wonder whether he isn’t hot, but she knows from hours brewing in the same lab that he, too, uses cooling charms. In fact, it was him who had taught her.
When she reaches him, she stops a few feet away. His arms are crossed again.
“Sir.”
“Granger.”
They are silent. The anger she felt in his presence for all of her apprenticeship – ever since she had all but skipped into his office, full of determined optimism and holding on tightly to her decision to do well, to have a fresh start after the war and he had sneered at her, had treated her exactly the same as before – is curiously absent.
Instead, she feels sometimes like expectation.
What am I waiting for?
“The book, Granger.”
Despite the fact that he is right in front of her, hearing him speak shocks her. Something in her chest falls.
What did she even expect? He always does this, always slammed the door in her face, be it metaphorical or otherwise.
There is the anger: red hot and burning.
“Ah yes,” she sneers. She turns her suitcase over to lie on the floor and zips it open. “Can’t leave Hogwarts a thief now, can I.”
He just holds out his hand.
The Waller-Bridge manuscript is right on top. She guessed he might have asked for it back, but he didn’t. Not at the graduation, not at the celebratory dinner after, which he spent sitting glowering in the corner at first, and then being suspiciously absent during the rest of it. Not even after that when he – for some inexplicable reason, and she’d thought it had meant something, foolish, foolish girl – accompanied her back to her rooms and left her without saying goodnight.
But he didn’t ask for it, and somehow, she thought maybe–
She hands the book over. She wants to slap it into his palm, but it is too valuable to treat it like that, even in her anger.
To her surprise, Snape does not grab it and pull it to himself immediately. Instead, he leaves his palm open, book lying on it.
It surprises her so much, she looks at him.
His eyes are so very, very dark. Hermione suddenly feels like she’s losing the floor under her feet.
“I don’t give my books to just anyone, Granger.”
Hermione snatches her hand back as if burnt. A thousand retorts crowd onto her tongue, but she swallows all of them.
She zips her suitcase shut and yanks it upright. “I’ll be out of your hair then. Goodbye, Professor Snape.”
He says nothing back.
Good riddance, she thinks as she stomps her way to the gates. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Present:
Hermione doesn’t ask to see the manuscript for three days.
It’s not that she doesn’t think about it. She thinks about little else. Whether it’s Snape or his books that haunt her thoughts she isn’t willing to examine.
Harry knocks on her door on day three. She’s taken some work home and is bent over it on her worktable. Crookshanks is helping by attempting lazily to bat at her toes. When she hears the knock, she slides her goggles up to her forehead (her colleagues laugh at her for them, but she leaves her shifts without her eyes being red and irritated) and turns around.
“How can I help you, young man?”
He rolls his eyes at her and pokes around her room. In his early adulthood, Harry has luckily grown out of some of his forced independence. He has, however, not grown out of the need to poke his nose in everybody’s business.
“The question is how I can help you,” he finally says. “You alright, ‘Mione?”
Hermione frowns. “Just fine. Why do you ask?”
They have some sort of staring match for a few seconds, then Harry goes to close the door. He even layers privacy spells over it.
“Oh dear. Did you kill someone? I can’t bury a body, you’re better off asking Ron. He has the muscles.” Hermione is only half kidding. All her bulk comes from hauling sensitive books around. She’s not feeling like digging holes anytime soon.
Harry rolls his eyes. “Ha ha. No thank you. No murder today, but I’ll let you know if that changes.”
“Lovely, thank you. Communication is key in any relationship.”
Harry smirks. “Funny you should say that.”
Hermione sighs. She fully takes off her goggles and carefully places them on her desk. Then she turns to face Harry.
His face is soft and caring. It dismantles her walls instantly.
She gives him a smile. “I’ll be okay. I just have something on my mind.”
Harry looks around the room some more and bites his lip. “Yeah, I gathered. I was just wondering–” He stops suddenly. Then he takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. “You know Ron and I support you in anything, right? Even if we don’t understand it. If it makes you happy, we want it for you.”
The implication falls heavily into Hermione’s stomach. She’s not sure if it’s a comforting or a scary weight. She swallows. “Thank you.”
Awkwardness descends. They don’t often do this.
Harry nods to himself and rakes a hand through his hair. “Cool. Cool – I’ll just –” He gestures towards the door and turns away.
“Harry.”
He turns back. Hermione’s face feels hot. He’s pretending not to notice. “Yeah?”
“If – if someone indicated that they only give books to people special to them, and then they offer you a book. What does that mean?”
Harry’s lips are doing a strange thing. It looks like he’s trying not to smile. “I dunno, sounds like a logic experiment, Hermione. Like the thing with the potato skin.”
Her eyebrows are doing their best to disappear in her hairline, she can feel it. “The what now?”
Harry leans against the doorway, looking entirely too smug. “A potato has skin. I have skin, therefore I am a potato.”
“Congratulations.”
Harry tuts at her. “It’s a syllogism, Hermione. You told me about it, remember? They only give books to important people. They want to give you a book. You can figure out the rest, can’t you?”
Hermione feels like her face is on fire. “The potato skin one isn’t even right. Get out of here, you berk.”
He salutes her and rushes out the door. She can still hear his laughter as he descends the stairs.
Hermione stares after him without seeing anything for a while. Crookshanks succeeds at catching her toe with a triumphant mrew .
It takes her one more day to gather her courage and go knock on his door.
She skulked about the house all day, feeling a little like they had switched places. She could hear him, Harry and Ron amicably chatting in the kitchen during mealtimes. She didn’twant to meet Snape, and she didn’t have to: Harry, exhibiting extreme amounts of consideration, brought her potion to her door before sitting down with his own. He left a post-it on accompanying cup of tea. Potato skin, it says, with a winky face.
Hermione glowers at it for two hours in her room. Crookshanks joins her.
When she finally gets herself together, it’s dark outside. She doesn’t realise this until after she has knocked on the door and Snape opens it, hair tied and shirt replaced by a soft-looking t-shirt of an obscure looking rock-band.
“Granger. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Books.” Eloquent, Hermione. “I’m here to restore your manuscript.”
The way he looks at her sends a rush of gooseflesh pebbling across her arms. She bites her lip.
“At ten pm? How forward of you.”
She attempts a smile, but it feels weird. “I seem to be. Forward, I mean.”
He smirks. In the light of the candles and the moon, his face is paler than usual, and the black of his eyes reflects the warm, flickering light of the flames. “When it comes to books?” His voice is smooth. Teasing.
Hermione swallows. “Yes. Books.”
He opens the door wider, but makes no indication of moving himself. “Don’t let me stop you, then.”
She squeezes past him. She’s still in her day clothes, in this case jeans and a Weasley jumper. In the morning, when she pulled it out of her wardrobe, she waited for the familiar sting. It didn’t come, so she just pulled it over her head.
Despite the thick knit of the jumper, she thinks she can feel the heat of Snape’s body reach hers.
The manuscript is waiting for her on a desk under one of the windows. It is fully dried, but dirty. Through the emotional heaviness of the moment, Hermione feels the familiar excitement of a project waiting for her. She can almost ignore Snape like this.
She pulls out the chair and sits down. He’s somewhere behind her – she throws a glance over her shoulder and freezes. He’s reclining on his bed, hands behind him to prop him up. He is looking at her.
Hermione snaps back around and stares at the manuscript. The words blur in front of her eyes for a second but she makes herself focus.
She gets to work. The minutes tick by. She ignores the itching sensation of his gaze between her shoulder blades. She must be imagining it, anyway. There is no way he is still looking at her. Right?
She risks a glance after half an hour of work. He is.
Her heart is beating so hard, she is half afraid he can hear it.
She bends over the manuscript again. She’ll probably get this done in an hour, maybe two. However – “Do you have to keep looking at me like that?”
She can hear a smirk in his voice, but when she turns around, he hides it. “Like what?”
Hermione is getting used to the sensation of her flushed face by now. It is becoming her constant companion. She turns back around. “Like I’m the book.”
He just hums.
She gives her best to ignore it. It works a little – she does make progress. The work isn’t as difficult as she had imagined and the damage turns out to be minimal.
The bell of a nearby church tolling midnight jerks her from her concentration. It reassures her, in a strange way. Losing herself in her work is such an essential Hermione thing to do, and even his scrutiny could not take that from her.
She studies the fruit of her labour. The pages are much cleaner now. It will never be the same, of course, but she can at least promise that the dirt and grit have gone, and signs of wear have been patched up.
She is done.
Satisfied, she stretches.
She peeks over her shoulder again. He is still looking. With her arms in the air, the jumper rises up, and she is unsure if the rush of wind from his fanning charms or the heat of his gaze on the strip of naked back is causing her goosebumps.
She drops her arms.
“Why did you hate me?”
It comes out entirely involuntary. She didn’t even know she was thinking it.
Snape’s eyes meet hers. He blinks. It’s the only sign that he’s surprised. “Hate you? Who?”
Hermione huffs a laugh. “You. When I did my apprenticeship. You took every opportunity to show me that my presence is not only undesirable, but actively upsetting.” His eyebrows rise. Hermione looks at the floor. “Don’t pretend you’re surprised. I just wondered why. What did I do?” It comes out smaller than she wanted to. In her, it feels like the chasm she kept shut with nothing but spellotape and sheer determination rips open and yawns wide. From inside, old hurt feelings rise like noxious clouds. Out of nowhere, she feels angry again, but the hurt rises higher and throws a shadow over all the other emotions.
She finds herself, suddenly, teary-eyed.
The bed creaks. His feet – in socks, grey and unremarkable, but somehow startling because it is Snape in socks – come into view.
He crouches down in front of her. “Look at me? Please.”
She looks up. “Did you just say please?”
“I know a lot of words. That one only has six letters.”
“We’re not playing scrabble.”
He huffs. Seeing him from up close is strange, but having his face beneath hers is even stranger. All her life, she looked up to him. Now, his face upturned, she feels like she’s seeing this man for the first time.
“I want you to listen to me carefully, Hermione Granger. You’re a smart woman with working ears; listening comprehension should be in your range of skills.” He meets her eyes. It’s so intense it’s almost uncomfortable, utterly devoid of the contempt she grew so used to seeing there. “I have never hated you.”
Three years ago, apprenticeship graduation dinner:
Severus watches her all through the evening.
She is radiant. He is unsure whether it is the celebratory atmosphere of the day, which flushes her cheeks, or the confidence she is wearing like a second skin ever since McGonagall handed her the confirmation of all her hard work. He cannot take his eyes off her.
It is only a matter of time before it is noticed.
Hermione – Granger, he scolds himself, it’s Granger – is clinking glasses with Flitwick. Her laughter is so soft and joyous, it almost feels like a caress. His heart is light because he can see hers is, too. He is almost tempted to smile.
Minerva sidles up to him.
“You’re being obvious.”
Severus busies himself by taking a large gulp of wine. Minerva, unfortunately, waits him out.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says ultimately. “I’m very sneaky.”
“Either you are obvious or everyone around you is incredibly smart. Except Miss Granger, of course, since she remains oblivious. Your pick.”
Severus bristles. “I think we have summarily established that Miss Granger’s work is the best either of us have seen in our careers.”
Now it’s Minerva’s turn to raise her wine glass. She sips instead of swallowing carelessly. “Too obvious. She is nineteen, Severus.”
His fingers clench around the stem of his glass. Breaking it seems like a real possibility, so he forces himself to set it down with a clang. “If you would excuse me.”
He spends some time in the gardens, frowning at the rose bushes. Someone planted entirely too many, he thinks, surely nobody would object if he blasted some apart? Sprout has been complaining for days now that the upkeep of roses in addition to the greenhouses is straining her nerves.
In the end, he doesn’t destroy anything. When he returns to the hall, Hermione is bidding people goodnight.
It’s spite that makes him follow her. He is aware of it being his primary motivator, and he does not think there is anything wrong with it.
Still, when she hears his footsteps following and turns around, that tight, aggressive feeling vanishes and is replaced by something softer. She is wearing her dark brown robe over her more elegant dinner dress, and she has put a flower in her hair.
Looking at her feels akin to being punched in the chest.
“I’m bringing you to your quarters,” he says, and has no excuse whatsoever why this would be necessary. Thanks to some divine grace or sheer luck, she does not question it. Her brow furrows, though, in that way it always does around him. Anger, most likely. He wants to snipe back, like he always does. He cannot help it. She unsettles him. It is impossible to keep his calm around the infuriating girl.
He walks ahead of her, robes swishing around his ankles. She follows, the click clack click clack of her heels on the stones a steady reminder of her right at his back. As if he needs it. He can hear her breath flowing behind him, and it feels a little like he is losing his mind.
The walk is too short. He keeps considering and discarding conversation starters, topics, questions. None of them make any sense, all of them too familiar, too much or too little. Nothing would satisfy this need he feels itching in his fingertips.
He wants. Something.
She is nineteen, Severus.
He tries to think about who he was at that age. Nothing but an uncooked, unformed version of himself. It had taken him years to become confident in himself the way he is now. Years to feel like his skin is his, and to fit exactly the shape he carved out for himself in the world.
They reach her quarters. It’s her last night at Hogwarts – truly, this time.
She turns towards him, face turns upwards, as if she is waiting for something.
He has nothing to offer. And she is leaving, anyway.
He leaves her standing there, thoughts whirling, without a word.
Present:
“Well,” Hermione says, and her voice sounds weak. “You had a curious way of showing it.”
There is a twisting to his face, almost as if he is in pain. He takes a deep breath, and his features smooth out. “That’s because you didn’t know where to look.”
Somehow, Hermione finds herself getting offended at that. “Are you calling me stupid?”
He huffs and gets up. “You? Never.”
He rummages through a couple of boxes stacked in a corner. After a few seconds, he unearths an envelope. He hands it to her. “Open it.”
Hermione’s fingers shake a little. They brush against his, and she quickly grips the envelope and yanks it towards herself.
“Careful. It’s fragile.”
She gentles her grip and carefully explores the edges. It’s very flat, and not sealed. She can simply slip the seal flap free and peek inside.
At first, she doesn’t understand what she’s seeing. She upturns the envelope and carefully lets the thing slip into her palm.
It’s a flower. Pressed and a little greyed, it seems to have been in the envelope for a while. She turns it this way and that in the candle light. “A flower?”
He hums again. When she looks up, she finds he isn’t looking at her, but at the pressed flower in her hand. It’s only a little smaller than her palm, the petals tickling her in the breeze of the room.
His fingers reach out to trace them. The pressure on her palm, ever so gentle through the dried petals, feels like he is setting her on fire.
“A flower.”
“Why?” Is she whispering? Why is she whispering?
“Guess.”
Hermione frowns at him, then at the flower in question. Does it look familiar? Over the course of her studies, she had seen more flowers than people – how was she supposed to recognise a specific one?
Except when the candle light hits it just so, there seems to be a sparkle on its petals. It is ever so slight. As if enchanted.
Like the centerpieces at Hogwarts, the night of her final graduation.
She can’t help the gasp. Her eyes fly up. “I wore this,” she says, but she can tell by his gaze that it’s an unnecessary explanation. He knows she got it. “On my last night at Hogwarts. I was tipsy and put it in my hair. But why–”
Her heart is thundering in her ears. His face is unreadable, and yet it conveys perfectly well why .
“You dropped it. When you slammed the door after I left you that night.”
“You came back for it.”
He fixes his eyes on her. Makes sure she is looking back. “I did.”
It feels like someone pressed pause. Hermione stops. Stops thinking, stops moving. Stops breathing.
All she can do is look at him and try to comprehend – try to understand.
“I–” She says. “Wh– I–”
She almost wishes he would interrupt her but he doesn’t. He just waits.
When the seconds turn into minutes, he takes the flower from her ever so gently and puts it back. Back into the envelope, the envelope back into the box.
When he turns back, it feels as if something more than the envelope was tucked away. Hermione realises, suddenly and vehemently, that she objects to that. She wants the thing out, again.
“I finished your manuscript,” she says. She examines him. It’s his turn not to look her in the eye, though he is less obvious about it. His gaze is fixed somewhere on her nose, maybe lower.
“Yours,” he says. “If you want it.”
She finds herself stepping forward and reaching for him. “I do,” she says. “I do want it. Yes.”
He is closer now. Did he step forward, too? “The book?” He asks, and his voice sounds raw. She can feel his breath on her face.
Her hands settle on both sides on his face without her knowing how they got there. His skin is soft, and so very warm. His hair whispers against her hand in a tickling kiss. “I’m going to say something,” she whispers, almost too quietly for him to hear it. “And I want you to promise to never repeat it to anyone.”
His hands settle softly on her hips. “I swear,” he says, and there is no hesitation.
Hermione leans even closer. She feels like she is dreaming, but she has never been more awake. “I don’t give a damn,” she whispers, every syllable the softest breeze of air in the impossibly small space between their lips, “about the book.”
She is close enough to feel his chuckle with her whole body. She kisses him before he can waste more time on words.