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Severus feet slide across the floor as Hermione’s spell slams into his shield. He changes his stance, slashing his wand through the air. Feet already at the edge of the platform, Hermione doesn’t use a shield charm. Instead, she dodges to the left, straight into thin air. The crowd gasps but she doesn’t fall. Of course she doesn’t fall.
Levitation spells may be expressly forbidden, but transfiguration spells are not. Probably because the organizers of the event had not anticipated someone being so reckless as to transfigure a stick thin extension to the dais itself that would enable them to jump back onto the main platform. More than that, they likely would not have expected such a split-second decision to actually work but Hermione Granger has been exceeding expectations since the day she stepped foot in the magical world.
Her extension holds for just the moment she needs to launch herself forward. She staggers on the main platform, arms swinging wildly to avoid falling. Instead of pressing the advantage, he waits for her to right herself, not wanting to be accused of cheating by the daft idiots judging the competition. An unseen force knocks against his ankle.
Severus stumbles. The clever witch had used her flailing act to hide her wandwork! With a deft flick of his wrist, the end of his platform snaps up to keep him from falling but he’s misjudged his distance. The stone catches him at the knees and he flips over the edge of it.
At the same time, Hermione shrieks. Apparently, it hadn’t been an act at all. She’s falling too. His back hits the net, forcing the breath from his lungs. A second later he feels her make contact with the net. The next moment, he’s got an elbow to his stomach and his mouth full of chestnut curls.
She uses his shoulders for leverage to try and push herself up, but then her foot slips through the netting. Hopelessly entangled, Hermione catches herself on his chest, the movement bringing her face close to his. Their eyes meet and she begins to laugh. Her forehead drops to his shoulder as she struggles for composure, her breath hot on his collarbone, and something in Severus shifts.
Somewhere beneath them, an intern is frantically shouting her apologies for the potent cushioning charm, but he’s too lost in an epiphany to pay her the scathing retort she deserves. After his recovery following the war, Minerva had begun to give him, well, she called them nudges, but he recognized them as threats of bodily harm towards his person. Under her influence, he became a more positively known name and a generally desired presence.
Particularly among women.
He dated. A lot.
He hated it. Mostly.
The physical bits were nice, but it was hard to be certain why a witch was with him. A large majority of his appeal early on had been his notoriety and the romantic notion of enduring love. Having been seduced by the dark arts himself, he could fathom the appeal of the former. The latter—choosing a man because you believed him to undyingly devoted to a dead woman—was utterly nonsensical; regardless, he didn’t want a woman who saw him as a caricature.
He is a difficult man, and utterly unwilling to change in most major ways. Knowing this about himself, he eventually sorted the women he knew into two distinct groups: women with whom he could be physical, and women with whom he could be himself. There was occasionally cross over between these two groups which led to short-lived relationships.
Up until a second ago, Hermione Granger had been firmly in that second category. Minerva had forced him into brewing with her for a special project of hers and it had been tolerable enough to allow it again. And again. When they worked together, they were partners. Equals.
Equals.
That was the shift.
Regardless of how the lines fell away when they worked together, Severus had continued to feel the imbalance. She was his former student. Too young. Too inappropriate. Their history had put her into the second group without him needing to consider it.
He is now reconsidering it.
The ground beneath them feels more solid and he realizes the net has been lowered. They stand quickly; their attention is immediately diverted towards the approaching officials. Weasley is bobbing near the front, his ears red.
“It’s not a bloody draw,” he yells. “He fell first.”
“Granger was falling before he did!”
“His feet left the platform first!”
“They hit the net at practically the same time.”
“What about points for complexity,” Weasley argues. “That ending transfiguration? Incredible.”
Hermione snorts. “I would find this far more endearing if I didn’t know he’d put galleons on this.”
“He’s always been an idiot.”
“What are you talking about,” she says, turning towards him and raising a brow. “You fell first.”
A teasing smile stretches across her face and he realizes that even that is different now. Previously he had appreciated her beauty like one might a painting, something that could be observed but not acted upon.
Now he wants to act.
Hermione Granger is not one of his charges whom he needs to protect. She is a grown woman. A woman who has just bested him in a duel, displaying skill and cleverness that rivals his own. She matches his wit and refuses to be cowed by his temper. If he goes too far with a joke, she is quick to correct him. At times she’s petty and can certainly hold a grudge as well as he can, but somehow, they’ve managed to just… work. Sod it all, perhaps she’s the woman.
“You’re right,” he murmurs.
He almost raises his hand to brush her hair back from the face but then he realizes it feels too much like one of his moves. She’s different. This should be different. He keeps his hand by his side.
“I’m right,” she repeats incredulously.
He shrugs. “I fell first.”
Then he turns towards the officials and repeats himself more loudly before walking away. In his mind he begins to count to three and by two she’s falling into step beside him, already talking a mile a minute. She accuses him of being up to something which he adamantly denies before deflecting onto a review of her performance in the duel. They go back and forth until they reach the floos. He pinches a bit of powder and moves to his hearth. Just before he steps into the flames, he calls over his shoulder to her.
“You are absolutely radiant when you duel, by the way.”
He says it plainly. No winks, no suggestive tone. It’s the way they’ve always spoken and yet utterly different. He resists the urge to smirk when she blinks at him in confusion, stepping into the flames as if he’d said nothing of note. He had fallen first. She is going to fall harder.