Warning: This is a fanfiction piece, a scene really. This happens just after Snape called Lily a Mudblood and the events that occurred afterwards as I wish they had been. Hermione is a year past the Final Battle in her time and is aged about 20 years. An accident threw her back in time and she has posed as Minerva McGonagall’s niece and assistant. She thought she wanted to go back home to her own time, but after this, does she really?
She wouldn’t speak to him. How could he apologise for what he had called her if she would not even speak to him?
With his back to the wall he slid down it, his legs folding up towards his chin as a profound grief weighed him down.
Severus did not cry. He had learned long ago, when he had been a child, that to cry was a weakness. And papi hated weakness.
But the tears were like a physical, painful swelling in his chest. Wrapping his arms around his shins and lowering his forehead to his bony knees he did not care if the Marauders found him. Maybe this time they would kill him. He’d be out of this misery, then.
Ages, months, weeks, days, hours or minutes had passed. Severus did not know. He was only aware when a hand gently rested on his shoulder. He started, but the hand remained.
“Severus.”
Crouched before him was that odd girl. The bushy-haired assistant to Minerva McGonagall that had arrived to Hogwarts mid-term. Her niece. A Gryffindor.
He grimaced as he imagined that his humiliation was laughter for all the Gryffindors in their common room, behind that stupid portrait. She’d been staying there. In the Head girl’s room, he knew.
Slytherins knew many things they weren’t supposed to know. He knew more than most.
“Severus,” she said very gently. A bustling, laughing noise had her raising her head towards the sound. She gripped his upper arm, and tugged. “Come on. Let’s go before any Gryffs see you.”
Severus rose to his feet and found that his knees felt like rubber. He leaned upon the young woman, a bit surprised that she did not bow under his weight. Thin he was, but he was tall for his age.
Together they left the corridor but not in the direction of the laughter but through a hidden passage the Slytherin young man did not know about. Once they were hidden away in the silent passage, she waved her wand to light the ancient torches lining the walls. She sat down on the floor against a lighted wall, and tugged him down beside her.
“Why aren’t you laughing with all your housemates, Hermione?” he sneered sharply through his exhausted depression.
Hermione’s sudden sneer matched his. She was not going to tell him that nearly all of the Gryffindors were in the common room reliving the Slytherin’s humiliation of that afternoon. It had sickened her to see Lily, she who seemed so kind to everyone, hugging James’ side as one arm was heavily draped over her shoulders. Both had been laughing at Sirius and Peter’s prancing about as they reconstructed the scene, over and over.
“They’re not my housemates, Severus. I’m just living there.” He glanced sideways to catch her grimacing sneer. “It’s the Head Girl’s room but it still in the tower and…” she shook her bushy hair that fell into long ringlets over her shoulders and back. “I’m sorry. That really doesn’t matter.”
“You saw Lily,” he muttered. “She won’t talk to me.”
Hermione heard the unspoken hope in his voice; the hope that perhaps she did want to talk to him, to see him so that he could tell her he was sorry.
“No,” sighed Hermione. “Lily doesn’t want to.” Hermione had seen James comforting Lily since that afternoon. It had been him and several other Gryffindors that had worked together to keep Lily parted from Snape as he hovered outside the portrait door.
So many hateful words, so many insults, had been crafted on Severus’ behalf. A few that Hermione had heard in her own time when she was a student.
She was struggling in her mind for something she could say to the young man, something to soothe his soul. Just when her mind thought it would scream for a lack of those sentiments, Severus leaned against her, dropping his head to her shoulder.
She glanced down at the dark-haired crown upon her shoulder. Hermione smiled softly and with her fingertips she stroked his sallow cheek.
The kiss, although unexpected, was not unwelcome in its tentative hesitation. Severus touched his lips to hers as a hunger he could not define rose up within him. More than lust, the feeling was a blossoming of comfort mixed with a heady desire. His thoughts berated him for this foolish dare that would have her pushing him away momentarily. Another part of his mind was begging that she not run away.
In the months since her arrival to Hogwarts, Hermione had sought him out. He annoyed her, at first. He was trying to spend time with Lily. But then, that first week that Sirius and James had caught him gathering herbs for Professor Sprout at the Forbidden Forest’ edge, she had been there.
Lily had been, too. Helping Severus, but when the hexing began Lily had stepped away from the fray. Seemingly out of nowhere Hermione had bounded in, her wand out, and with a hex that threw James off his feet and head over heels. In that split second, before Sirius caught his cheek with a Stinging Hex, he saw Lily running for the fallen James. James recovered quickly and then the duel was on but for once the odds were even as Hermione fought, as viciously as a Slytherin, at his side.
Eventually they were caught and all three students had detention. Hermione wasn’t a student, but later Severus found out, she had been severely lectured by her aunt. Severus only found out because he had been assigned to his Head of House for detention, and Hermione had arrived then to help him to peel slugs.
Severus had tried to ignore the young woman, but week after week she was a steady presence. When she offered to tutor him in Transfiguration, his worst subject, he had not hesitated.
Hermione never spoke ill of him when she wasn’t near him. She stood by him, and had even told several nearby students that she was his friend.
Now, in his darkest hour, he wanted that kindness, that friendship offered, and… more?
He was startled, but pleasantly so, when the pressure of her mouth was against his, her lips parting in invitation.
Emboldened, he wrapped his long arms around her. The embrace, even what his kiss was becoming, was possessive. Hermione did not shy from that and showed her own possession as she slid her fingers through his hair, cradling his skull, and bettering the angle for their kiss.
She was soft, and warm, and welcoming. He was knees and elbows and angles, and desperate… at first. Their kisses, their touches became a mutual need that left them breathless.
Reluctantly he pulled back, but only slightly. He did not want to let go of this witch. Hermione’s eyes, glowing with her satisfaction, her arousal, stunned him, and pleased him. He took in the rosy flush of her cheeks that fell down to the softness of her cleavage. He could not help himself as he planted wicked kisses, each with a stab of the tip of his tongue, to the exposed tops of her rose blushed breasts.
Finally, regaining some of his senses, he caught her lovely face between the long, slim fingers of his hands.
“Hermione, why are you here?” his voice was husky with his own desire and he blushed at its telling nature.
Her hand gently stroked his cheek, the sharp cut of his jaw, even the crook in his twice broken nose, and finally, his lips. He sighed and his eyelids fluttered as her fingertips brushed his now very sensitive lips.
He tried to repeat his question but could only manage the word, “Why?”
“I’m here for you, Severus. And for me.” She took one of his hands and held it tightly against the beat of her heart. “My heart is yours, if you wish it, Severus.” Lightly she kissed the corners of his mouth. “Always.”
It was startling as she moved to kiss him that he abruptly pushed her back. He glowered down into her face, her gaze, in the hopes of discerning some deception. He could see none. Still, he demanded, “Do my friends matter to you? Would you spurn me if I mistakenly called you M-m-mudblood?” At the slight tremor in his voice he tightened his grip on her upper arms.
“Your friends matter to me, but only because most of them I believe are fair-weather. Yet, it is not up to me to choose your friends. As to calling me Mudblood? I know how you hate that word and if it were to slip from your lips,” she briefly touched his mouth in emphasis, “I would not fault you for it.” She then crossed her arms so that she could loosen his fingers around her biceps. With a twinkle to her doe-ish eyes she added, “I would expect your most sincere apology, Severus.”
Once his grip had loosened, Hermione mirrored it by grasping his forearms; well aware that the Dark Mark was not yet upon his left forearm. She demanded of him, “Would you deny me as your friend to others, Severus? Or would you keep me as a dirty secret?”
Severus immediately crushed her to his chest and kissed the crown of her head. That anything of filth could be associated with this lovely young woman distressed him. He was also distressed, not a little bit puzzled, as to why he was holding her and not Lily.
Lily, who had been his best friend since they were children of eight years. But, how many times had he seen her with the Marauders, laughing? Most specifically, how many times had she gone to Potter’s aid, and not his?
She professed she was his friend, forever, but she would not acknowledge him in public (usually she would run to surround herself with her friends), and there had been one too many times when Lily had chided him for his hatred towards the Marauders. Citing that he ‘wasn’t giving them a chance’ and ‘James is really so kind!’
Perhaps this was why the young woman, Hermione, was in his arms. It was she he had kissed, and not Lily whom he thought he had pined for since their first day at Hogwarts.
His lips thinned as his embrace tightened, possessively, once again. Lily, who had slighted him at so many turns… whenever she could be seen by a Gryffindor.
And, this was such a little thing, she called him ‘Sev’. Not when they were children but when Potter had taunted him, calling him ‘Sevvy’. He had asked Lily time and again not to call him that heinous nickname, but never had she heeded him.
“Hermione,” he asked, stroking his thin fingers through her curls. “What’s my name?”
She tried to pull back, to look him in the eye, but he caught the back of her head and with a subtle nudge, encouraged her to nestle her head against his chest.
“Severus,” he could hear the smile of not derision, but pleasure in her voice. “Your name is Severus.”
“And yours is… Hermione.” He savoured each syllable and she shivered at the rich tones that thrummed like thunderous velvet within his chest. “Hermione,” he said again. He lifted her chin, and kissed her. This time he kissed the woman without any thought of Lily flitting through his mind. His mind and his body was consumed with the sensations he now let course through his body unfettered by misplaced guilt. Hermione was in his arms and he was kissing her with all the passion he had not recognised when first he saw her in the Great Hall by Professor McGonagall.
Severus was possessive, endless, in his passion for the witch he held, but Hermione was just as possessive as her hands touched and stroked and unashamedly caressing the hardness straining his already too tight trousers. He groaned his want, his need, his desire and his heart thumped with elation as she met his moans with several of her own.
Later, so very much later — in fact dawn was just beginning to christen the tall windows of Gryffindor corridor with its burning light — the now lovers emerged from their hiding place. Both were sated, yet hungry for more, and were content knowing that there would be more.
“A bed next time, Hermione?” he teased as his nose nuzzled the shell of her ear.
She giggled and turned her head to kiss his nose. A second year that had just stepped through the Fat Lady’s portrait gaped in astonishment as he saw the niece of his Head of House snogging the black clad Slytherin Turning sharply, he meant to tell his fellows of his gossip, but forgot the password, and collided, very hard, with the portrait.
To the dazed boy’s further shock he heard the young woman giggle, “Come to my room, Severus. It’s a few hours ’til breakfast.”
The second year watched, his jaw dropped open, as the couple walked through the now open portrait, through the common room, passed several other early risers, and to the Head Girl’s room.
Lily saw them vanish within the room as the door firmly shut behind them. She scowled, but that was erased as James, oblivious to what had just happened, slipped an arm around Lily’s waist and kissed her cheek.
“Ready for that walk, babe?”
Dedicated to Sister of My Heart and not to be reprinted without my permission.
