Chapter 5
The earth is damp and silty beneath his bare feet, the air thick with the biting brine of the sea as a cool, soothing breeze sweeps across his warm skin. Severus squints against the glow of the early evening sun as he finally opens his eyes and gives a broad smile. The North Sea stretches for miles before him, its waters set aflame by the brilliance of the dying light while the waves gently lap at the shore.
And Hermione is here, despite his continued surprise, and the beauty of the sea is nothing compared to the vision of her. She is painfully stunning, he thinks as he watches her splash playfully through the shallows, and he can’t help but be utterly mesmerized by the soft, pink glow of her cheeks, her curls wild and windswept and spilling down her shoulders.
She is sublime.
Heavenly.
She turns to him then, her amber gaze warming as it always does when their eyes meet, and it never ceases to make his chest tighten with the sweetest ache.
“Are you lost again, Severus?” She asks with a smile, her small hands clutching the hem of his sweater higher up her bare thighs as she shuffles her way out of the water.
“Far from it, dear witch,” he grins, and he cups a hand to her face to gently press his mouth to hers before drawing her into his arms.
Severus could never feel lost at her side, he thinks as he holds her to his chest. No… he hadn’t felt lost since that fateful night she dragged his near-lifeless body from the bloodied floor of the Shrieking Shack and plunged him into the healing waters that lay hidden at the castle’s heart. And he knew— oh, he knew— that Hermione had first and truly found him in the Black Lake, under the moonlight seemingly a lifetime ago, where she had beckoned him into the warm waters and had first given him the barest thread of hope, however tenuous, to cling to. It was there, in those waters, where their paths first became irrevocably intertwined. Where they were baptized by the very hands of fate.
That is what the water gave him.
It gave me life… It gave me her.
Severus knows this now.
“My dear witch… I love you, too.” He had rasped when he awoke in her arms all those months ago, and she looked at him with such tenderness, such hope and joy, such love, and the earth around them was bursting lush with pale blue forget-me-nots as they clung to one another.
And then she had whisked him away, merciful and battle-worn and goddess-like, from the harrowing vestiges of destruction and death before anyone could force him to face what he had done.
And it is here that he has remained, by her side for as long as she will have him.
Because she loves him… and he makes her happy.
Severus knows this now. Deep in his bones, in his very being, he knows this now.
And that will always be enough for him.
That night, they had just begun to prepare dinner when the frantic tapping of an owls’ claws clinks against the living room window of their quaint cottage.
Potter, no doubt, Severus thinks fleetingly as Hermione goes to investigate.
“Severus!” She cries suddenly, nearly toppling them both to the ground as the shrieking witch flies into his arms.
“We’re both being awarded an Order of Merlin! First class!”
His surprised laugh is muffled by her hair as she practically strangles him.
“Congratulations, my dear,” he smiles, smoothing a hand down her back. “You deserve it.”
“Oh, to hell with the award,” she says blithely, planting her feet back on the ground and vibrating with excitement as her wide brown eyes look up at him imploringly. “Don’t you know what this means?”
Severus arches a questioning brow.
“That neither of us will ever have to work again?” He asks, grinning when she scoffs.
“It means that you’re free, Severus!”
… Oh.
***
Severus Snape— the former death eater, the redeemed traitor, the dispensable spy who lived— is now… free.
For the first time in his entire life, Severus Snape is his own man. He could scarcely believe it.
It is no exaggeration that everyone is staring at him now, and their eyes prickling across his person is beginning to itch like a deep, invisible rash. Kingsley declared him a hero when pinning the shining medal of gold to his chest, but he knew tomorrow’s papers would surely not be so kind.
“Would you like to slip away for a moment?” Hermione whispers close to his ear.
“Gods, yes.”
Maybe he did die that night in the shack, he thinks, as she leads him by the hand down a desolate hallway. And maybe everything since then has been nothing but a splendid dream and death is simply a pleasant drifting through some eternal sleep… Surely, this isn’t his life now. Surely, he will awaken soon.
That cheeky grin of hers which he positively adores sparks in her eyes as she peers at him over her shoulder and he is suddenly seized with a desperate need to know that she is real, that he is real, that all of this is real and more than just a dead man’s fantasy.
Severus pulls her firmly against his chest the instant the sitting room door clicks shut, feverishly pressing her back against the wood to devour her warm mouth with his own. Their joint moans jolt through his veins like a vital flash of electricity, bursting through his fantastical stupor and shocking his flesh back to life.
“You are real,” he murmurs against her lips. He nuzzles gently just below her ear and drowns himself willingly in her scent, drawing her deep into his lungs as if to keep her there, before kissing and nipping along the delicate curve of her neck.
“Of course I am.” Hermione replies in a shuddering breath, gasping quietly as his hand that had been slowly drifting up her side ghosts across her breast, caressing her with a teasing touch through the thin silk of her gown.
“I’m not going anywhere, Severus.”
She whimpers so sweetly as he claims her mouth again, as he draws her closer by the back of her slender neck, and he wonders if there will ever be a time where her mere presence, her touch, her scent, doesn’t completely overwhelm him—
Knock, knock, knock.
They freeze instantly with a simultaneous huff of exasperation and Severus silently thanks the gods he thought to ward the door.
“I suppose we took more than a moment, Miss Granger,” Severus finally whispers as the silence stretches, their intruder still lurking just outside.
“Subjective.” Hermione whispers back with a grin.
“Hermione? Uhm— sorry to uh, interrupt but— Kingsley was looking for you. Sorry…”
Potter, he grates inwardly.
“I’ll be there in a moment!” Hermione calls after a brief pause, and Severus rests his forehead against hers with a heavy sigh.
“I’ll be quick about it and see what he wants,” She soothes, cupping a hand to his jaw and pressing a brief kiss to his parted lips.
“Quick. Good.” He replies, capturing her lips again with a long, lingering kiss.
“And then we’ll say our goodbyes. Very, very quickly.” She murmurs, melting against him as his hands flex around her hips.
“Mhm.” He hums close to her ear, dipping to press his lips to the tender spot just below.
“And then we’ll go home.”
Severus smiles against her neck.
“Yes, my darling witch… home.”
The majority of the papers were indeed not kind the next morning. Hermione, however, soon snatched them from his clutches with a look that dared him to object and it took every ounce of his self-control not to laugh as her tremendous ire crackled and sparked throughout her hair.
He watched curiously as she carved each photograph of the two of them from the pages and then reverently slipped them into a mysterious, ornate box before tossing the crumpled scraps into the fireplace.
Later, a single framed photograph of a laughing Hermione whirling across the dance floor in his arms appeared above the hearth.
Their hearth.
Severus smiled as his heart nearly burst from his chest.
***