Part II
She does not return to Hogwarts.
After asking Harry and Ginny to pick up Crookshanks and collect her things for her, she goes home to wait for the owl with her official results. She knows that it could be hours until she hears from the Guild, but there is no way she’ll be falling asleep tonight.
She gives up, choosing instead to watch the pelting rain streak her window while desperately seeking comfort from a lukewarm mug of hot chocolate. The darkness outside mirrors her melancholy, and she surrenders to it. Just as she turns to return to her bed, her wards tug at her magic.
A familiar figure pauses at her gate.
As he approaches, the light of the lamppost flickers over a face that is downturned and defeated, and the pull in her belly intensifies. She puts down her drink and descends to the foot of the stairs, where she waits until he knocks to open the door.
“Miss Granger.”
“Headmaster.”
They stand, each staring the other down, until he glances away from her.
“I have with me your letter from the Guild.”
She hugs the edge of the door, contemplating whether she should let him in or not. It would be disrespectful not to—
“It will be but a moment of your time, Miss Granger,” he implores.
Her eyes widen and she retreats to grant him entrance.
It’s strange, seeing him in her space. Instead of his usual cloak, he dons a black peacoat that he unbuttons as he walks inside.
The politeness ingrained in her escapes. “Can I take your coat?”
“That is not necessary. I do not wish to intrude.” He inspects her living room, his gaze raking over the framed pictures on the mantle and the stacks of books on her coffee table.
“May I offer you some tea, then?”
His face is closed off, but she is too flustered and frustrated to question it.
“I—” he sighs, then sits on her sofa. “Tea would be welcome.”
Hermione busies herself with the kettle in the kitchen, bracing herself for their upcoming discussion. She has no desire to simply accept her results—she remembers what he said about something being wrong with the Room of Requirement—and she had wanted to talk about it, but the way she left things, the way it got so personal—
As she waits for the tea to steep in the teapot, she wonders if that’s why he has brought her results to her in person. Because she’s failed, or that she may have to duel someone else, or because the Guild has conditions before they can grant her her Mastery.
She fidgets with worry, and she tries not to let her nerves show as she carries the tray to the table and sits in the armchair opposite from him. Just as she starts to prepare the tea, she notices that he is holding an envelope, turning it over with graceful hands.
The silence between them is stifling.
“Shouldn’t that have been owled directly to me?” she asks.
Embarrassed, he places the letter on the edge of the tea tray. “Indeed. I requested a favour to be able to deliver it to you personally.”
“I see.”
“My understanding is that the Guild’s safety parameters for our duel were overridden by the castle.”
"Oh." Her heartbeat is loud in her ears, but she soldiers on. “But, as Headmaster, wouldn’t you be able to command the castle, in a way?”
“Yes. But as Headmaster, I am only privy to what Hogwarts grants me access to. The Room of Requirement has always been… a wild card. Another game was afoot, although Filius and Minerva have assured me that it was a simple malfunction. They are investigating as we speak.”
She nods in understanding. She is still suspicious. All of this could have been explained in a letter. “Headmaster…”
“Please, call me Severus. We are no longer professionally associated.”
She rolls his name around her mouth, but it is bitter. He waits, but as though burned, she bites her tongue and shakes her head.
“Not to worry, Miss Granger, as you’ve been granted your Mastery. This letter confirms it.” He glances at the tea getting cold in the tray. “I must admit that I have… ulterior motives for being here.”
Shocked at such a blunt expression from him, she gives up all pretence of formality.
“Why?”
He takes a deep breath. “The circumstances under which you departed from Hogwarts have deeply unsettled me. Your accusations—”
“Are all true,” she interrupts. “Nothing I said was unfounded.”
“Yes,” he grimaces, “every word. I simply wished to ensure that you were alright after the duel. After what happened.”
Now that he has acknowledged it, being forthright is the only way forward.
“Why do you care?” Her knuckles crack from how hard she squeezes her fists together. “Shouldn’t this be beneath you? Shouldn’t I be beneath you?”
A minute shake of his head is all the answer she gets, and it is not enough to quell her rage.
“All this time, all I’ve been is a thorn in your side, a disruption to your regular programming.”
“Perhaps at first,” he agrees. “It all changed after the war.”
“After the war, you were polite. You barely put up with me. And I took everything you offered because I was hungry for knowledge and thirsty for your approval—or something resembling it. When you remained your regular, caustic self, I came to expect it, to spend hours dissecting the vitriol, simply because it wasn’t nothing.”
She finds herself standing near the fireplace, her back to him.
“It couldn’t be anything, Miss Granger.”
A suppressed cry of outrage gives him the space to proceed.
“You—you were in my care. I could not show preference to you, or anyone else.”
She whirls around to face him and finds him standing. “Preference? What little attention you gave me could never be deemed that. If it wasn’t outright dismissal, I felt like I had been given the world.”
“You must know that I look down on everything with disdain because it is the only way I can rise above it. It is how I function: I surround myself with little, and ignore what remains.”
“And the same applies to people?”
His eyelids flutter closed. “It is justified, given my history.”
“Maybe,” she whispers, biting her lip. “But it still hurts the same.”
“Miss Granger—”
“Hermione.”
“Hermione. I do not wish to inflict my presence upon anyone, let alone you. A war heroine, crowned victorious time and again, with a future so promising that any association with me would do her a disservice.”
“So what? You mock me and shame me for who I am?”
He pauses, weighing his words. “You are right,” he says. “It is… a defence mechanism that has you in its crosshairs. For that, I am sorry.”
“Is an apology supposed to placate me?” She shudders, realising that she’s about to cry. “You were needlessly cruel today, on a day when every word mattered. You never let me forget what you truly think of me, Severus!”
He moves towards her, his eyes unwavering from hers.
“You had every right. Every right, Hermione, with our rivalry so rooted. After the war, we were all lost. It seemed… easier… to settle back into old habits, rather than reform the character of a man with very little patience and too many grievances. I did not put in the work, as you did, although now I know that I must.”
Severus’ eyes were no longer black, but gilt gold like the dying embers of the fire in the hearth.
“Forgive me.”
She gasps, covering her mouth, and the sudden shift pushes her tears from her eyes.
“I know better now. You defeated me, as no one ever has.” He hesitates, his voice vulnerable. “And kissed me, as no one ever wanted to, ever before. And suddenly, it all made sense.”
She doesn’t look away from him. Him, whose lips are upturned and whose eyes are surrendered. He crowds her, and at first she is disconcerted at his proximity. But then his right hand cups her face, the cold tips of his fingers pushing into her curls.
“I have been miserable waiting for you. For your magic to strike me down to my place, wicked and unrelenting.”
A sob breaks free from her throat, and his arm comes around her and gathers her to his chest.
“Forgive me, I didn’t know,” he murmurs, his voice molten with regret. “I didn’t know.”
Severus holds her as she cries into his coat. Hermione wraps herself around him, and he is all warmth and sinew, the rounded tip of his nose just above her ear, his hand tracing waves over her shoulder blades. Her head fits perfectly between his jaw and his shoulder.
“I didn’t know,” she hears him say again, his lips grazing her forehead, descending to her temple and then her cheek.
A secret spills from her and into his collar. “Sometimes, I wished—I hoped,” she mumbles, pressing herself closer to him. “But it became clear that you would always despise me—”
“No.” He draws her face towards his, his thumbs brushing the tears from her face as he kisses her closed lids. “No, never again. I swear it.”
Angling her face upwards so she can see the flames in his eyes, she resolves to put all her cards on the table. “Severus, you cannot treat me like you did before—you cannot shut me out—”
“How can I, when I know now that you have burrowed under my skin just so?”
He nudges her nose with his, once, then again. The pocket of air between his mouth and hers shrinks until it is forced into the space around them.
The taste of the victory she craves is unmistakable. Indisputable, she recognises it instantly in the way they collide, the pointed nip at her lip, the tip of his tongue following to soothe his bite. Over and over until she opens to him, swallowing her hurt and taking in what he gives.
It seems that she, too, has been waiting for him.
She pulls back to peer at Severus, her hands settling on his stomach. The difference between the wool of his peacoat and the smooth fabric of his dress shirt is jarring.
“Take this off.”
He pauses, then covers her hands with his. “Hermione, we do not—”
“Do you not want this?”
An amused exhale cleaves his sombre expression, and she spots a flash of teeth before it disappears altogether. “You have no idea how much I do.”
A thrill trickles down her spine as she tries to remove his shirt tails from where they are tucked into his trousers.
“Do not tempt me to duel you out of your clothes, Headmaster.”
He laughs, a rolling sound that almost brings tears to her eyes. “Never.”
She kisses him again, and he lets her unbutton his slacks before he removes the coat from his shoulders. Unaware of where he drops it, she wants to care but cannot, not with this feast of a man before her—
A simple wandless spell parts his shirt in two, and Hermione’s heart skips a beat at the pale planes of his chest, the lines of his shoulders and his scars, and she smiles.
—
Severus is astonished at how her cottage mimics the Room of Requirement.
Her living room is where she undresses him, and quite unlike himself, he lets her disrobe him until he is bare before her. Clad in a fluffy morning robe, a ratty shirt and shorts, he itches to touch her, but she is a vision.
Raw in her joy, her magic sizzling over his skin, bright and blinding, almost to the point of burning, yet he holds still.
He did not know how starved he had been of the exultant glint in her eyes. The featherlight trace of her fingers over his sides, the curious licks of her tongue across the proof of life on his neck.
Her thumb flicking over his lips, the steep curve of his ribs, the weeping tip of his glans.
The teasing pull of her fist at the base of his cock—
How had he lived, content with being conceited, and insolent, indulging in hours of enjoyable discourse, yet never this, never more—
—
She stands, a few steps above him, in her brassiere—plain, skin-coloured cotton that seamlessly blends in with her breasts— and her knickers, black with lace on the edges and a bow below her belly button.
His hands know not where to go, or where to settle. Uncaring for the erection flagging against his stomach because he can smell her and he cannot resist, he parts her thighs and drops to his knees on the landing. Her hips are wedged into the corner and his lips descend until he tastes her, her essence tiding over the nose that has always brought him so much shame.
Until now.
He is proud of himself, and of her for giving him the honour. Her grip on his head brings him pain, her nails scratching his scalp and her hands pulling at the hair he unknowingly kept long for only this purpose—
—
Her bedroom suits her. Brass light fixtures on dark walls, photographs of meadows and fields beyond her halo of hair. He cannot bring himself to care what else is there, only that she is here, that she wants him.
She is too much of a distraction, looming above him with her arse grinding into his lap and her nipple in his mouth. Not enough—
He cannot get enough until she sinks onto him, hot and perfect and milking him for all that he is. A groan escapes him and it’s too much—his hands find her hips so that she stills, because the minx has risen too soon and he needs—
The bedding is white, English floral embroidery and so soft in his hands that it’s almost hard to dig his knees into it. She brings up her hand and pushes a lock of his hair behind his ear, and her eyes meet his.
He nearly comes right then and there.
“Severus—”
How his name sounds with his forehead against her throat, the softness of the sound. Her moans, louder and higher, her hold intoxicating and her cunt clenching around him. She moves her hips to meet his until he curses and curls over her and lets go.
—
He wakes to warmth.
Sunlight filters through the sheer curtains, and everything around him is gossamer on his skin. The downy comforter, the lie-in he is unaccustomed to, the hair tickling his nose.
Her back is to him, a beauty mark on her left shoulder that he kisses as she sleeps. Slowly extricating himself, he summons his pants as he walks down the stairs.
The tea tray is where they left it, tepid tea and all. Her letter is unopened, and he fetches them both into the kitchen where he rinses and prepares coffee for her, instead.
Surprisingly, he locates a bag of ground coffee—not an awful blend—and a french press in the cabinet above her kettle. He always has coffee before breakfast, and he risks the glory of this morning after and prepares one for her, too.
Just as he is about to embark on a search for milk and sugar, her arms wind around him. Pressed into his back, she is wearing her robe, and nothing else.
“Miss Granger,” he warns, turning around, “What do you think you are doing?”
She kisses him, a slow tantalisation that ends with a sharp bite to his lower lip. Leaning back against the opposite counter, she waits.
“What do you think?”
She is taunting him; her pupils wide and her eyes dark as molasses.
She truly is wearing nothing else beneath her robe.
Coffee can wait, because she— he—
—
fin
—