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“DUCK!” One second, Severus is walking away from the job centre. The next, one of the doors to his left is blown off its hinges with a blast so strong, he gets knocked into the opposite wall and loses his breath for a second. He crumples and wheezes.
From inside the room, a string of curses.
Severus blinks the spots away from his vision and levers himself up. It’s his damned curiosity – he’s never been able to shake it, no matter how dark the world gets. He peeks around the doorframe and is met with utter chaos. It seems to be a potions lab, this room, and isn’t that just titillating? He can feel his fingers itch with the ghosts of mortars and silver knives and the proper way to hold your ingredients for chopping. He’s been brewing on and off, whenever he can, but recently money became too tight for even that. It was, in all honesty, the final push he’d needed to go to the unemployment office, as useless as it was. Former Death Eater, they said, as if that was news to him. We’ll have to see who takes you on.
Dunderheads, the lot of them.
This potions lab, however, is in shambles. Whatever was in the cauldron at the centre, it blew up and outwards, laying half the room to waste. In the middle of it stands a woman, soot on her jeans and t-shirt, hair about half her own size. She’s cursing quite colourfully.
Severus must have made some sort of noise. She whirls around.
“Oh finally, there you are. They told me you’d be here hours ago.”
Snape, being very sure he is not expected, points eloquently at himself. Seeing as she’s already turned away again (and something niggles at him from that brief look at her, but she is wearing goggles and he cannot place it), it’s a rather irrelevant move. “Me?”
“Yes, you!” she exclaims and, in a move both efficient and utterly horrifying, sweeps all the debris from the centre table, which is, somehow, still intact. “Now come over here; we need to write down what went wrong there.”
For some reason, he comes closer. The wild hair should have tipped him off immediately, he thinks with an edge of hysteria, but somehow he only realises it’s Granger when he’s standing right next to her. Hermione Granger, Potter’s crony, a look in her eyes that might either be madness or feverish genius. Possibly, if he’s honest, both.
“What were you even trying to do?” He sneaks a look at the cauldron. The residue at the bottom is sticky and smells vaguely like popcorn.
“You weren’t updated on our latest project? That’s typical – we’re working on poison-detecting drops. Government subsidised research.” She’s turned around now and their eyes meet. Severus realises with horror that she’s become rather pretty.
She blinks at him. “You’re Severus Snape.”
The words go down like rocks. Severus casts his eyes resolutely over her shoulder. “I am.”
Death Eater, they’d said, at some point leaving off the former entirely. As if it made no difference, as if it wasn’t the gulf between the worst and the best he’d ever been. Honestly, your chances are close to nil.
“Well, that’s perfect!” She exclaims, and even claps once, a single, sharp sound of triumph. “Honestly all my former assistants were quite… well, they didn’t have your level of expertise. This is delightful, we’ll make so much progress this way!”
“Delightful.” He repeats, simply to have something to do, something to busy his mouth with that isn’t the inevitable I think there’s been some sort of mix-up.
“I won’t call you Professor, though, if that’s alright with you. Unless you’d prefer it? But it’s not an academic title, is it? Not like potions master, but honestly, I won’t be addressing you as that either.”
Severus grimaces despite himself.
“Yes,” she hums. “I thought so.”
He can’t hold her attention for long. She’s like a dog with a bone, always turning back to the charred worktop, to the remnants of potion and ingredients crunching under her heel. Briefly, he wonders whether she is not worried about them combining and setting off another explosion because she knows her work well, or simply because she’s an idiot. He hopes (and, reluctantly, has to admit that his knowledge of her as a student supports his interpretation) the former.
He waves a hand over the cauldron, moving the air, heavy with the scent of potion, towards himself and sniffs. He smells rose. “Tell me you didn’t combine rosewater and flutterbywings in this.”
She smirks at him and leans her hip against the worktop. “I didn’t combine rosewater and flutterbywings.”
He clicks his tongue. “Stop lying to me.”
“You really can’t make up your mind, can you.”
He finds himself rolling his eyes at her. If he were her assistant, she’d probably fire him for impertinence sooner than he could send her home with supplementary reading on why adding any sort of flower water into an acid based potion is a ridiculous idea. As things are, he has little to lose and finds himself contemplating the homework.
“I thought it was rather smart, actually.” Granger says, drawing herself up. She’s not wrong – in a way, it was – but he’ll be damned before he tells her that.
“It was harebrained,” he says. “Rosewater and flutterbywings? What are you trying to achieve, to get rid of all your body hair?”
She hums. “What a disconcerting question. I had no idea those two did that.” Those two, she says, as if she’s talking about mutual friends at some sort of wine party, or whatever young adults do in their free time to meet friends. Severus finds himself reluctantly charmed. He pushes the feeling away and sighs. “Have I taught you nothing? Yes, that’s what they do. Quite explosively, obviously.”
Instead of horrified, she seems fascinated. “There are some people who would kill for that kind of efficiency, you know.” She’s turning away again, lured in by the beaten-up metal of the cauldron. “Some sort of removal cream maybe, they– or much rather, oral application! Yes– Write that down, would you? We could really do something with that.”
Severus wonders, as he takes out his trusty black notebook and makes a note, when he became part of a we.
Granger snaps on her goggles again. “Nothing for it, Snape, but to keep going. Would you pass me the elderberry root?”
He should really put up some sort of resistance to this seamless integration into the process. He does not work here. Whoever she is waiting for, he isn’t it. He passes her the elderberry root and is dismissed with the wave of a hand. He wanders away and discovers a storage room. Another glance over his shoulder shows Granger elbow-deep in the cauldron, scraping out bits of the popcorn-smelling concoction, most likely for later analysis. Severus goes looking for a way to label the sample and finds Muggle sticky labels. At some point, he muses while putting them into the test tube she hands him, this will become very awkward. Still, he thinks, as he gets to work setting the room to rights, it is work. At least it will keep him from sinking into his armchair with the flattened cushions that do nothing to protect his arse from the wooden skeleton of the frame underneath and stare at the same book he has read four times. He can go back to beating down doors tomorrow.
*
Except that does not happen.
He truly, honestly has the best intentions of continuing his job search the next day. After having spent the entirety of the work day and some overtime that he sure hopes Granger will pay her assistant for, if they ever deign to show up, barely making a dent in the chaos reigning supreme in that laboratory, Severus falls into bed and immediately falls asleep. His early night, however, means he is up at dawn, tea drunk and sad piece of toast consumed as the first rays of light peek over the horizon. He gets out his notebook and makes a pitifully short list of people he can ask whether they have any work for him. He then spends an entire fifteen minutes staring at the top name, trying to swallow past the ache of humiliation in his throat and attempting to formulate a way to approach Minerva McGonagall on perhaps taking him back as a contractor, or even a janitor. Any word he tries to sound out tastes sour in his mouth.
He wonders what Granger is up to. Whether that assistant of hers showed up. Whether the light of dawn, all rosy and gold, paints her cheeks the same hue. If those hints at freckles are more pronounced in the daylight. Whether she’s working on the poison-detection drops, or the hair removal potion, or both. If she made any progress.
There is a book he has, he realises, with an article that might be helpful for her.
He has no reason to get involved.
Still, he determines, chair already scraping over the old floor and halfway towards the bookshelf, he was her teacher once. Nothing wrong with helping her out a little, surely. McGonagall would do the same.
He doesn’t like that comparison.
Either way. Not sharing information you have is quite rude, he thinks. Shouldn’t be rude.
He floos to the Ministry and finds her office without much trouble. The door is open again, and there are banging noises coming from inside. He accelerates the last few steps until he is almost running, sure she is close to blowing herself up again.
When he skids to a stop in the doorway, he finds that she has covered the impressively large cauldron with a wrought-iron lid, which she is desperately trying to keep on top of the boiling cauldron, despite the potion inside apparently doing its best to try to get out. Without further thought, he rushes forwards, pausing only to set down his book before adding his own strength to the mix. Together, they get the bubbling subdued, until the potion subsides with a final sad hiccup.
Granger rocks back on her heels, exhales and wipes the sweat off her brow. “Impeccable timing, Severus Snap– Mister Snape– Snape? What do I call you? I got so hung up on all the things I won’t call you that now I’m all confused.”
“Your sleeve is on fire,” Severus says, because it is, and also because something about all of this has his face feeling like it might be considering blushing.
Granger yelps and attempts to beat out the flames. Severus extinguishes the flame with a wave of his wand. Granger freezes for a moment and stares at her sleeve in thought.
“Isn’t it so absurd,” she says, “that after all these years I still forget I can do that? Thank you.”
It’s heartfelt gratitude, and something lodges somewhere in his rib cage at hearing it. She’ll need a fire extinguisher, he decides, if she’s going to make a habit of this. Which office would he have to petition to to get that to happen?
On his lunch break, after making progress with the room and unearthing a lovely colour-coded project tracker Granger must have made and then lost sight of (and sticking it to the wall), Severus wolfs down the sandwich she hands him (“Mrs. Weasley keeps sending me lunch boxes that are more than a normal person can eat, help me.”) and tracks down a mousy government employee who promises him that Granger will have a fire extinguisher in her lab by the end of the week.
Not that he will still be here then. He’ll probably be at Hogwarts, clearing away muddy footprints or de-dusting old mops. The knowledge sits sour on his tongue.
When he returns to the room, he finds Granger standing in front of the project tracker, nibbling on a bit of lettuce peeking out of her sandwich. “I forgot I had this thing,” she muses, knowing, by some supernatural Granger-sense, that he’s back in the room without looking. “I was organised once, you know. Ron and Harry still tease me for that – but I’d like to see them with the amount of work I’m given. Anyone would get lost.” She taps a fingernail against the bright purple that represents the poison-detection drops. “This thing helps, though.”
Severus casts back in his memory to the last time when someone’s praise made him feel this warm and comes up short. It’s an embarrassing thought, and he pushes it aside. “What now?”
Granger swallows the last of her sandwich and goes to carefully wash her hands in the sink in the corner. At least Severus doesn’t have to re-instill basic hygiene in her; that’s something. Though the soap is running low – he makes a note to replace it.
“Now we see if isolating the potion from oxygen during the final stage did anything.”
(It did jack-all. But Granger’s look when she opens the lid and the potion jumps out at her, sludgy form forming limbs that seem to attempt to cling to her like a koala, has Severus chuckling to himself all evening.)
*
He’s not coming back the next day. He is not.
*
“I’ve been thinking,” Granger says the moment he steps over the threshold the following day. “Bugger the poison drops–”
“Poison-detection drops,” he corrects and drops his satchel, hanging his coat on a coat-hanger he discovered yesterday and put up. “That word does make a difference. Not the sort of thing you leave out.”
Granger waves her hand. “Potayto potahto. You understand me, that’s the important thing. The other important thing is that they can wait – we’ve been much faster with them than expected, anyway. What I’d really like to look into more is Joly over there–” She pronounces it French, and Severus is confused enough that at first, he doesn’t realise what he’s looking at. In the corner of the room, in a little wrought-iron cauldron, sits the glob of potion from yesterday, blubbering merrilly.
“You could have vanished it.”
Granger whirls around, and there’s that glint in her eyes again. “No, don’t you see, Sna– Mr. Sever–” gives up the attempt, “Don’t you see? It acts, which means agency. What if we can brew organic matter? Consciousness?”
“There’s an entire Muggle novel dedicated to why that’s a horrible idea,” Severus retorts, even while the scientific curiosity tugs at him. “I am rather sure it mentioned murder.”
Granger nibbles her lip. She shouldn’t be allowed to do that when they’re having a disagreement, Severus thinks waspishly. It’s an unfair advantage. How would she like it if she he nibbled–
Bad thought, Severus. Focus on Frankenstein’s monster.
“I see the point,” she says, and the but is inevitable, “but we wouldn’t be brewing human consciousness. Just, you know. Something small. To see if it could be done.”
“And then we burn the notes?” Severus asks, and why is he part of a we now? “Because you realise why we could never let the Ministry see this sort of stuff.”
“I am not an idiot, Snap–Mister–Snape…verus.”
“I really wish you’d sort out the name issue.”
“I’m working on it,” and is he imagining that, or are her cheeks a little rosy? Surely not. “Now, I think the best jumping off point would be whatever went wrong with that one,” she points at Joly in the corner. “And then go with that. Also, I think we’ll need to take a look at some of the research on brewing organic matter – that’s honestly such an understudied subject and it could be essential in the future. Imagine if we could just brew organs for transplants!”
She has to stop coming up with these mind-spinning ideas. Severus feels like he had, ever so briefly, after school, when he’d thought the world was open to him and all he could ever come up with. Like there was no limit. It’s intoxicating, it’s dangerous. It cannot last.
He has to make it last, somehow.
“Can I count on you for that?” she asks, and he has to wrench his mind back on track.
“Of course.”
*
So he does end up at Hogwarts. No other library compares. After steeling himself for this trip daily and never quite making it, it’s surprisingly easy to floo through McGonagall’s fireplace and step into that accursed office. Granger’s excited smile, the laboratory, Joly bubbling in the corner, they gather around him like a cloak, protecting him from the daggers that lie in wait for him in every corner.
McGonagall is with them, a spectre of the past, a soft smile on her face. It hurts worse for being genuine. “Severus.”
“Minerva.”
She wants to open up the can of worms, he can tell. He sets his teeth against it and draws himself up. “I’m here on Ministry business.” Too vague, probably. “Granger sent me.”
He’s managed to surprise her. “You work with Hermione?”
“In a manner of speaking. I’m supposed to do some research in your library. If you don’t object.” He can’t quite make himself make it a question.
“Of course not.”
He manages a curt nod and is halfway out the room when she calls after him.
“Severus.”
He turns around again. She’s playing with one of Albus’ gadgets, turning it over and over again in her hand so it catches the light and distributes it across the ceiling in a million small fragments. “If you need anything, you can come to me. You know that, right?”
He wonders whether she sees the threadbare nature of his robes, the sallow tinge to his cheeks that seems more pronounced now than it used to be even when he hid in a dungeon seven days a week. He swallows past the heaviness in his throat. “I know.” He wrenches out. “I am… grateful.”
There, that should be enough. Minerva certainly looks like it’s something. She even smiles at him, and Severus beats a hasty retreat.
*
He returns, somewhat victorious, during lunch. Granger is decimating a prawns salad and wordlessly conjures him a second bowl, so he helps himself to some and sits down. His shoulders unclench and he suddenly finds that he has an appetite. As he digs in, he bemoans the woefully slight selection the Hogwarts library has to offer on their quest.
“Honestly, I wasn’t getting my hopes up,” Granger says and spears a prawn on her fork. “Unless they added new books – which, you know how Pince feels about the process of that – all we could hope for were Experimental Potions of the Eighties, To Not Be or to Conjure, or maybe a new issue of The Metaphorical Cauldron.”
Severus hums and gestures to the books he has carefully parked on a side table. “Those were what I went for, in fact. With some extra reading thrown in.”
Granger leans forward to make out the titles and squints. Severus refuses to be endeared. “Frankenstein, really?”
“It’s a cautionary tale.”
“If you’re so set on that, you can read it to me while I brew.”
“You’re a Gryffindor, anyway. You’d probably treat it like an instruction manual.”
Granger huffs a laugh.
Despite her implicit promise of brewing, they spend most of the day stewing over equations and the samples taken from Joly. There are, as well, a thoroughly diverting two hours in which Granger attempts to test the thing’s intelligence and Severus sits back and entertains himself throwing in insults that Granger desperately tries to shield Joly from.
Later that day, the fire extinguisher arrives. He forces Granger away from attempting to teach Joly left and right to walk her through the process of using it and then mounts it on the wall.
It’s good, he has to admit. It’s really good.
It all comes crashing down the next morning, when he opens his breadbox and finds a singular piece of bread in there. It’s a sobering reminder, and swallowing the rest of it feels like swallowing rocks.
The journey to the Ministry goes too quickly, this time. He dithers at the doorstep, watching Granger poke Joly for no apparent reason except perhaps to provoke it. It is sporting googly eyes today. The urge to laugh hurts, knowing that he has to leave it all behind.
“I need to talk to you.”
Granger, for once, hadn’t heard him come in, apparently, and she whirls around. “How ominous. Come in then, let’s talk.”
Severus steps into the room. “Why the googly eyes?”
She throws a look over her shoulder at Joly, who is absorbing the eyes into itself as they speak. “It freaked me out that it couldn’t see, when it clearly has some sort of intelligence. Minimal as it is.”
Shlurp, goes Joly, and the googly eyes are no more.
Well, here goes nothing. Severus presses the necessary words past the wall of shame and reluctance. “I cannot come back here,” he says. “I would remain, if I could, but I am just here to inform you of that. Unpaid work, considering my funds–”
“Unpaid?” Granger interrupts, looking genuinely puzzled. “Why unpaid?”
He blinks into the foggy air. “Because… you are not paying me? And neither is the Ministry, since–”
Granger straightens up abruptly. “I am not?”
“Nooo,” he replies, dragging the syllable on, completely clueless what is going on here. It’s a pattern with Granger. “You are not.”
“Whyever not? You are a much better assistant than the one the official channels were supposed to be sending me – the fact alone that you showed up and that other person didn’t elevates you in my book. Which is why I kept you around – as sort of a personal assistant, I thought that was the tacit agreement.”
Severus, never having agreed to anything like this, wrestles down the urge to argue with that logic. “The fact remains that I have living expenses and this… arrangement… is not helping me pay them.”
Granger frowns. “I understand the issue on your end. Somewhat. But we filed the paperwork, why are you not paying yourself? In your capacity as my personal assistant.”
“We did what?”
“Filed the– I filled out the necessary forms days ago, did I not give them to you?”
Severus surreptitiously pinches himself. Goes over the last couple of days. “No. No you did not.”
“I didn’t?”
“No.”
“Oh.”
And then she’s off, whirling through the room. He drifts closer slowly, unsure what she is doing. She seems to be searching for something and finally finds it, tugging an envelope free from a stack of books. “Ha! There it is!”
She hands it to him. He flips it around. It’s heavy parchment, with his name scratched hastily on the front. The envelope is not sealed shut, so he just untucks the flap. A stack of parchment, rows upon rows of ridiculous Ministry formalities, mostly filled out, and a note fall into his hand. I filled out everything on my end. All it needs is your Gringotts vault and your signature, as well as your salary – I think 10 Galleons a day would be good for a start, but I don’t know the going rates. Do what you think is best & what the Ministry will go for.
Severus swallows drily. Something strange is happening in his chest. Idiot woman.
Granger studies his face. “That solves it, doesn’t it?”
His mouth opens and clicks shut. He clears his throat. “Twelve Galleons. I’m vastly overqualified for this, you know.”
Her smile is too bright to look at. “Twelve Galleons then. Hurry filing that, please, Mr. Sn– Se– Whatever. We’ve got samples to analyse.”
If Severus almost stumbles into the doorframe on his way out, with Granger’s back to him and her focus back on Joly, there is nobody to know.
He has a job.
That night, he splurges on groceries and even gets himself a celebratory burger to go. He eats it, taking in the night air, and feels optimistic about the future for the first time in months.
*
Somehow, miraculously, work becomes routine. Not the kind of routine that leaves you with a stale taste in your mouth, but the sort that helps you fall asleep at night, because it’s already beckoning on the horizon. Day after day after day, the same security, and it takes a while, but Severus gets used to it in the best way.
In the mornings, he rises with the sun, makes a quick trip to the bakery to get himself croissants and has them with tea. Then he apparates to London and strolls down to the Ministry, where he finds Granger, often already buried in her notes. Sometimes, she brings pastries with her, which they have together as a second breakfast, debating their approach for the day. Severus updates the project tracker while she clears the plates away or looks up something or other in a book, and then they get started. At lunch, a similar routine repeats itself, with her always bringing more food than a single person can consume. So they eat risotto, potato pancakes, prawn pasta, avocado toast together, and they plan their afternoon.
Officially, Severus clocks out at 5pm. More often than not, though, Granger is still around then, and they get caught up in something or other. Most nights, he’s at home at seven, if not eight, and he likes it. It’s not like anything much is waiting for him at home that he would rather spend his time on than the way Granger’s ears turn rosy when he insults her favourite potions scholars.
*
They attempt their second cauldron-created consciousness on a Wednesday. Severus has, by then, reorganised the entire storage room, and the facilities are tidier than he would have imagined to be possible. As the lab became more organised, Granger, too, seemed to become less frazzled. These days, even her hair is tidier, put back in a French braid, and he admires the wispy curls escaping while she goes over their plan a final time.
“Snape– Severus– Are you even listening to me?”
He snaps to attention and rolls his eyes. “We’ve been working together for weeks now, is there a particular reason you still find yourself unable to use my name?”
She is definitely blushing now. “It feels so intimate! I can’t just – but then the last name feels so distant and that feels– you were my teacher! You don’t feel like a teacher at all now– oh shut up–”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your eyebrow did the thing. You know I hate when your eyebrow does the thing.”
“Is this all your roundabout way of telling me that you find me unworthy of respect?”
She bristles. “I do not! Of course I respect you!”
Severus studies her, all up in arms on his behalf, and feels impossibly warm. “What’s the issue then? Just pick a name and stick with it.”
She puffs up. “I will!”
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“I will not. Severus.” She glances at him. Assessing.
He inclines his head ever so slightly and twitches the ghost of a smile. “Well done. With that sort of decisive decision making, we will be making leaps of progress in no time.”
“Stuff it. Hand me the unicorn horn, if you would.” He does, and they get to work.
*
They create their first on-purpose being one night at almost 2am. It’s far too late for anything sensible, but they are too high on the temptation of success to mind. When the cauldron quiets down and Severus inches the lid off, they lean over it with bated breath. Inside, something blinks at them.
It’s… not quite what they had envisioned. It’s something like a ball of gloop, but, as they discover when they set it on the floor, different from Joly, it does not need the cauldron. It can hold its form just fine on its own, rolling around the lab like an overactive beach ball. There is a slurping noise whenever it careens into a wall and bounces off.
But it is. And it acts.
The smiles they throw each other are just this side of mad, but they’re genuine. Severus cannot remember the last time he was this happy.
*
Granger calls the beachball Feuilly. Severus constructs a little pen in an unused corner of the lab and sets the sticky being down within the confines of it to make sure it doesn’t hurt itself. Or goes anywhere it shouldn’t. The latter is more likely than the former, seeing as it seems to have little agency other to go fast and has picked up a collection of things to shield itself with like a hermit crab. Granger thinks it’s the most adorable thing.
They spend a few days on excessive journaling, as well as finishing the poison detection drops so they have something to show for in case the incredibly bored supervisor were to ask.
“He never asks,” Granger tells him over a potato salad. “But it’s good to be on top of these things, I’m sure you agree.” Despite her somewhat high-handed way of soliciting his agreement, he finds that she has it. It’s a little disconcerting, how much they agree. Never with the science side of things – they spend hours debating back and forth, ruining the other’s hypotheses and coming up with their own again and again in an endless cycle. But when it comes to the skeletons of things – the how and when to work, how to communicate, how to organise certain things in the lab – things are surprisingly easy.
Severus buys himself new robes, new gloves, and starts bringing still steaming takeaway cups of tea with him when he comes to work. The grabby hands Granger makes for hers as soon as she smells the steam has him stifling a smile every time.
Their second attempt has bones – or something like bones. Enough that, when they open the lid and it stands up, it’s on eye-level. The proportions are comparable to a short-necked giraffe, and it reaches Severus’ knee. Compared to Feuilly, this one is much more sedate and mainly seems to want to curl up in places and nap. Granger gathers it up in her arms in its entire gloopy glory and coos at it.
“You know who you remind me of, Jean Prouvaire?” she asks it. It makes a squelching noise. Severus wonders whether it’s attempting to communicate. “Crookshanks. He also likes napping very, very much.”
He knows where this is going before she has even turned around to look at him with wide eyes. He sighs. “You want to attempt to brew a cat, don’t you?”
“Wouldn’t it be a marvellous project?”
There is nothing he can say to her wide eyes. He takes Jean Prouvaire off her and sets it down in the pen with the others. “Let’s get started, then.”
*
Bahorel, their first cat attempt, has no ears. Altogether it moves mostly like a cat, but seems to forget regularly what it was doing and just freezes in place. It also, somehow, has two tails.
“Trial and error,” Granger says as she sets it into the pen. She pets its back gently – they have not yet figured out how to effectively add skin and all their attempts so far are sticky. “Maybe we can dip them in something at the end. To change the surface texture.”
Severus makes a note. “Something as simple as ice water with some peppermint might already work, considering everything.”
“Not weeping willow bark?”
Severus grimaces. “Do you want to build cats that perpetually smell like burning plastic? Because that is how you get cats that smell like burning plastic.”
“We will also need to figure out the fur problem.”
“Let’s just scrap the skin idea and make them roll in some cat hair,” Severus replies drolly. “Same difference.”
“You are a fountain of wit.”
“Is that not why you hired me?”
“You know as well as I do that nobody hired you. You just sprang up from the ground one day. Like a mushroom.”
“I’ll remind you that you blew up half the lab.”
“Are you saying I unearthed you like a root?”
“I’m saying you were not half skillful enough to harvest me on purpose. It’s more like I am a helpful spirit who sensed a truly desperate soul and showed up to help.”
Granger snorts, but then she becomes quiet in a way that has Severus’ heart hammering. “You did, you know,” she says quietly. She doesn’t turn around in a way that seems purposeful. The tips of her ears, barely visible through the tangle of hair, are rosy again. “Help.”
“I’m glad.”
His heart drips sweetness like honey.
*
“You can call me Hermione, you know,” she says a few days later, apropos of nothing, as Severus lowers Lesgle into the pen. In his surprise, he lets go, and Lesgle bounces off the ground with an unhappy noise. It has something that could almost be paws, as well as semi-functioning eyes. Its body is covered in something skin-like that smells vaguely of peppermint.
“I knew that,” he says, defensive for some reason.
“Well then do it.”
“I will,” he hisses back. “Just watch me.”
Her eyes, when he turns back, are twinkling. “Can’t wait.”
*
Some nights, he stays up far too long thinking about Hermione’s fingers, her elegant, skillful hands, that quirk of a smile she sometimes sports when she’s onto something. He stays awake and feels pathetic and yet cannot wait until dawn arrives, so he can go see them in person.
*
A few weeks later, the Ministry enquires what they’ve been up to. The enquiry comes in the shape of another mousy young man (how many of those are they hiding in these offices?) who seems vaguely familiar.
“My supervisor was just wondering,” the young man squeals under the weight of their combined sceptical looks, “if you’d been doing… uh, anything. Since you hadn’t reported back on any new projects.”
“We’ve been improving old discarded prototypes,” Hermione answers glibly. “But nothing has borne fruit so far.”
“What’s that?” The man points to the project tracker where Hermione had just yesterday made a note of Grantaire, who was currently chasing a ball of wool around the disillusioned pen.
“A meal plan,” Severus returns. “Never seen one of those?”
The man quivers. “There’s a diagram of a dissected African lionfish on there.”
“I don’t see how your job qualifies you to have opinions on our lunch choices.”
He casts his eyes to the ceiling. “Just… please give my supervisor something before the eighteenth.”
“Of course.”
When the man has left, Severus closes the door and they giggle like children.
*
They keep going.
“Combeferre, I assume?” Severus asks, and puts their newest experiment in the pen with the others. He is immediately welcomed lovingly. Combeferre can waggle its tail and chirp, and Hermione is head over heels for the little creature.
“You caught on.” She smiles at him from where she is leaning over the little fence and booping the creature’s nose.
“I told you I know Muggle novels. Though there were much too many pages about sewers, if you ask me.”
Her laughter is a tinkling thing. Combeferre chomps on Severus’ hand with its gums, and he doesn’t even mind.
*
After Combeferre, there is Courfeyrac. Severus is not around when Courfeyrac comes into existence, but he is awoken before dawn by Hermione banging on his door and greeted by her shoving the thing into his face.
It has fur. As well as a tongue.
“He runs into furniture a lot,” Hermione tells him as they sit on his sofa, watching Courfeyrac smash straight into the coffee table. “But I really think we’re on the right track – I really think we’re doing this, Severus, can you believe that?”
Severus cannot believe any of it. Not Courfeyrac, begging for attention almost like a real cat. Not the fact that he’s had a steady income – as well as private health insurance, who knew the Ministry offered that sort of thing – for months now. Not Hermione Granger, sitting on his beaten-down sofa eating croissants.
The only thing he can do is smile back at her helplessly. He’s been helpless since the moment he laid eyes on her in that Ministry lab, and even months later, he cannot bring himself to mind.
*
Hermione brings Crookshanks in when they make Enjolras. Crookshanks sniffs at him dubiously, but adopts him without fanfare. Enjolras is, by all means except magical, indistinguishable from a real cat.
Hermione watches the two cats nap in a sunny spot. Her sweaty hand grasps Severus’ and holds on tightly. He squeezes back.
“We did it. Severus. We did it.”
“We did.”
He’s definitely part of a we now.
*
A day later, they destroy all evidence of their project. The results of their experiments, except Enjolras, are brought to a specially constructed pen outside the Burrow. The notes are burned, as is the project tracker, just to be thorough. They keep only a very condensed version and make two copies – one for each of them, to hide as they see fit.
“Things will be so much more boring now,” Hermione says as they watch the flames. Severus does not agree out loud. An idea is forming in his mind, careful and fragile, as they watch their research burn.
At first, he tells himself it’s ridiculous. She will never agree. But as the days go by, and they take on one uninspired project after the other, the idea expands until Severus can barely think of anything else. They’re working on see-in-the-dark lemon drops when Severus finds himself assaulted by an unexpected amount of courage.
“You know,” he says, “you’re really quite wasted on the Ministry.”
Hermione huffs. “Tell me about it.”
Carefully, Severus keeps measuring out drops of essence of moonbeam. Not only is it a delivishly expensive ingredient, the focus on the pearlescent drops also makes sure he doesn’t second-guess what he’s doing.
“You could stop. Leave, you know,” he says. “Start working independently.”
“Can’t believe you’re bringing this up less than half a year after we started working together. Already tired of me?”
“I’m serious,” he says.
“So am I. I’d need a partner for that sort of thing.”
He looks up. Looks straight at her, and watches realisation dawn on her face. “Oh.”
“Considering how smart you are, you’re remarkably slow.”
“You’d do that?” She says. “Leave this job – the security of this – with me?”
Anything. “I don’t care where I brew as long as I brew.” He says, and that’s the truth. “And it turns out I brew better with you. It’s in my interest to make you happy.”
“You hate the Ministry as much as I do, admit it.” She’s blushing, and the knowledge makes something in him trill with pleasure.
“I will do no such thing.” Water off a duck’s back. “But there would be an issue.”
She sits up straight, as if having expected this. “Hit me.”
His heart is jack-rabbiting, nearly hammering its way out of his throat. He’s doing this, he’s doing this. “I don’t think working partners should have … unresolved feelings between them,” he says.
“Feelings?” she asks weakly. “What feelings?”
“If one were in love with the other, for example. Unrequitedly, even. Possibly.”
For some reason, impossibly, she hangs her head in shame. “I’ll try to get a handle on it.”
“I was talking about me.”
It’s like the room itself is holding its breath. Ever so slowly, she looks up. “Pardon?”
“What?”
His hands are sweating, sweating straight through where he has them pressed against his knees. I’ll get a handle on it. She couldn’t possibly mean–
“Hold on hold on,” she says. “I’m – I’m not good at this stuff, okay, I’ve not – what, can you – can you repeat… that last bit.”
“What?”
“No – that – you ridiculous man, you know I didn’t mean that. That bit before that.”
He stares into her eyes. There are flecks of gold in there. “What – what did I say?” He says, and his voice is embarrassingly low. Rough. He clears his throat. “I forgot.”
Another suspended moment. Then Hermione exhales sharply. “Oh, fuck it.” And before he can understand what is going on, she has launched herself out of her seat and straight at him. He catches her because it’s the only option, but he still over balances and they crash onto the floor together. Something knocks the air out of his lungs, but he can’t be sure if it’s the impact on the cold stone floor, or her lips descending on his.
He’s pretty sure it’s the latter.
After an eternity of kissing and rolling around on the dusty floor, he disentangles himself from her to look at her face. He tries to project some seriousness, despite the fact that she’s cupping his cheek and he wants to turn into her like a plant turns into the sun. “Just to be very, very clear,” he says. “I’m in love with you.”
Her eyes shine like twin stars. “That’s convenient,” she says, and his heart is soaring. “It will make custody arrangements for Enjolras so much easier.”
Just for that, he kisses her again. And again. And again. Enough that he forgets everything else but her taste, the sound of her laughter, her breath on his face.
And things are good.