Ten: Here With Me
In her slumber, Hermione seemed so vulnerable, so innocent, and Severus wasn’t sure what to think of her. She was peaceful in such a way that it enveloped him, as well, and captivated him in her very aura, but she was totally unlike the spitfire Hermione of the daylight. She was delicate and precious as any jewel, though not frail. She was soft and lovely and perfect in a way that he had never seen her be before now, and he wondered distantly how she could possibly be so beautiful in so many different ways.
He had awoken in the early, unlit morning, and now still was gazing at her sleeping form huddled against his, as the first rays of dawn began peeking under and around the cheery yellow curtains on the window. Her warmth pressing against his chest proved to him that the previous evening’s events had not been simply a dream. But which was worse, to dream this, or actually experience it? He had to wonder.
It was certainly not that he had not enjoyed it, not savoured every minute it, not wished that he could hold her forever, but there were consequences. Always there were consequences, and always they became suddenly more apparent after the deed had been done. He did not resent last night, in fact, it was quite the opposite, but there was no doubting the fact that there would be something to pay for his recklessness.
What was it about her that could get him to do things he shouldn’t have? It was not her beauty, though that did hold a good deal of temptation with it. It was something in her very being, woven into her sinew, and flowing in her bloodstream. It was simply a sort of pure, unadulterated Hermione-ness about her, and that was something that could have made him jump off of a cliff for her, providing he didn’t die, because he wouldn’t have wanted not to see her one last time before he passed.
The only thing that he flat-out could not do was to admit to feeling whatever this warm, fuzzy feeling was. He hoped to God that it wasn’t love. That was the only thing that he was afraid of, and to love someone who it was nearly illegal to love would bring pain worse than the Cruciatus, pain that merely sat in his heart and didn’t move or change or fade.
As he was thinking of this, he realised something quite suddenly, something new and very odd. He was more afraid of Hermione Granger than anything, more than any person that he had ever been afraid of, and that wasn’t many. Not only was she the only person he was unable to figure out, but she was also the one person who had seen beyond his cynicism and harshness, and she obviously felt something deep for him, whatever it was.
The scariest part of all that was that she was not unwilling to show her feelings, unlike him, and in many ways, she was everything that he wished that he could be. He only wanted the world in such a state that he could not be so contemptible as he was, and more kind and gentle to her than simply lusting after her. But what was lust, now that he had had her? Was there any point to it? And what was this strange emotion that it had left in its place when it had gone, if indeed it was gone at all?
"I wish I could understand," Severus whispered to her, before kissing her forehead.
Hermione twitched slightly and mumbled some incoherent nonsense before sighing and falling deeply back into smooth slumber. Snape had never been so glad that anyone was asleep in his life. He would never have wanted to show his weakness to anyone, especially her. Weakness made others pity you, and that he did not need. Or if not pity, it made them scorn you, and though he could survive scorn, he needn’t receive more of it.
He knew he should leave now, if not because of fear than because it was probably the right thing to do. He should never have even come to see her, and both of them were very aware of it. It would be better if he simply left before she awoke, and spared them both the awkwardness of knowing that they had each done wrong with the other.
That, and he did not want to bear the pain that would come if he had to say goodbye to a person who could respond in kind. He did not want to hear the two painful words from her lips that signified farewell. Goodbye, Severus. He could not even think of them without cringing even the tiniest bit. In her voice, they would be all the more agonising.
"Fare thee well, nymph," he murmured.
Severus stood, dressed, and after a final, deeply longing look at Hermione, he disapparated with a pop.
It was some time before Hermione finally awoke, as the sensation of lying in her lover’s arms had given her the greatest sleep she had ever had and she’d slept like a stone, or once she had finished that silent cry of hers, anyway. How he hadn’t noticed the tiny beads of sadness sliding all down her cheeks and off of her nose like that, she didn’t know, but frankly, she was glad that he hadn’t. Had she seemed so feminine and childish in his presence, she didn’t know what she would have done.
Unexpectedly, she noticed that those strong arms encircling her were gone, though the spicy yet soft scent of the Potions Master lingered, woven into the fibres of the sheets and the coverlet and even the very air. Where was he? Hermione wondered. Had he gone? His clothes, which had been carelessly thrown into the chair in the corner in the confusion of their desire, were gone. There were no sounds in the rest of her home indicating that he might be here. Hermione fearfully clutched his empty pillow to her bosom, having nothing else to hold. He had left her.
Oh, what did you expect, ‘Mione? It’s not like he was going to stay here to make a declaration of his undying love. Get real, Hermione thought. But still, he had been so wonderful the previous night, so gentle and almost loving, that she had at least expected him to hang around until she woke up. Or maybe he had been acting all of it, maybe he had just been wanting to shag her, and now that he’d done it, his work was over with, and he could simply leave her crying. That bastard.
She should have expected this, knowing him. Rolling over, she still held on to the pillow as though it were a real person, soft and comforting. It wasn’t doing it’s job of comforting her properly. It smelled of him, and that scent sent stinging want through her, but it also caused the anger in her to swell a thousand times over. She had shared her bed with him, goddammit, and he had only been after her body.
Then, a saviour of a little voice came from the deeper darkness of the back of her already slightly dusky mind, and it sounded strangely like the overly-stern Professor McGonagall. Hermione Granger, get a hold of yourself. You’re getting far too ahead of yourself without knowing the whole story, and you know it well, too.
Still, it was so tempting to simply be angry with him. It was a more welcome emotion than this hollow aching that weighed down her limbs and made each heart beat sheer agony. As she closed her eyes, the scene of the previous night began to replay in her mind almost immediately. She had clung to him with such wanting and abandonment for reality. It had felt like her first time all over again, only without the awkwardness and sweet discovery of the secrets of life that you only learned once you grew up.
There was, however, the same paralysing fear, the same feeling of newness, the same tears afterwards. They were tears for which she did not know the reason, be it relief, regret, or even love. It must have been relief that he finally had joined with her, combined perhaps with the sometimes painful and always overwhelming, rather unknown emotion that comes with a deep intimacy like making love.
The only difference was that she had not had someone to kiss those tears away, like Ron had in sixth year. Oh, God. Ron. Hermione shivered, and refused to think of him. She was too busy with her current wounds to worry about anyone else. Though Severus had held her tightly, he had not known of her pain, and so had not made any move to comfort her. Would he have comforted her if he had known? She guessed she would never know.
For a long time, she simply lay there in her now cold and lonely bed, hugging her pillow loosely. She listlessly watched Soot’s tiny, black paws come at random intervals through the space between the bottom of the bedroom door and the carpet, as he tried to catch a dust bunny that had floated under the door. It would normally have been amusing to view.
Finally, she decided that the only thing that could cure this at least partially was a good, long soak in the tub. Lazily, she dragged herself out of bed, and with her limbs feeling far too heavy, she went into the bathroom. There must be some way that she could cleanse his fragrance, his very touch, from her skin. She didn’t want reminder of the mistake she had made. She didn’t want to feel as horrible as she did. She had thought that the morning after was supposed to be beautiful, and she had been wrong.
How long she stayed in the bath, she wasn’t sure, but she knew that by the time she had scrubbed her skin until it was rosy pink and then sat there for a long time simply thinking, the bath water was starting to cool. The gurgle as the water went down the drain brought her to reality, and she realised what a baby she was being. It was in the past, and there was no way to change it. He obviously didn’t feel the same way as she did for him.
Speaking of which, what on Earth did she feel?
Pausing in drying herself off, she did have to ponder this. Was it possible that she loved him? Or something like it, at any rate, something deep and undeniable. She surprisingly didn’t feel too guilty at the thought, except that she would never have that love returned. And wasn’t she getting ahead of herself for the second time?
Just because she’d slept with the man once didn’t automatically create some deep bond between them. Admittedly, there was definitely something there, but it couldn’t have been love. He’d said far too many hurtful things to her in the past, and now he’d gone and done this. Who could love someone who’d hurt them so many times? Thinking of love was a stupid idea, really.
Searching through her closet she selected a white, sleeveless shirt and a pair of faded jeans. She made the bed, and put her clothes from yesterday in the laundry, before grabbing a pair of tennis shoes from under the couch in the living room, where she had kicked them a few days ago when she had had unexpected company and had had to clean up quickly.
That company had been Harry and Ginny coming to rant about how they had just found out that they were going to have a baby, and wasn’t it wonderful, and didn’t she think that was great, and what they were going to name it, and whether it would be a boy or a girl. Naturally, it was great that they were having a baby, but she hadn’t quite been in the mood for it at that moment.
Anyway, she was putting her shoes on, now, and she was thinking about babies subsequently. A tension filled her as she thought about the ‘what if?’s. She knew that she and Severus hadn’t used protection, though she hadn’t really thought about it until now. She knew it didn’t happen immediately once you didn’t use protection, that in general there was always the chance that you got out without trouble. But there was also always the chance that you could get pregnant.
There you go getting ahead of yourself, again, she chided herself only after a moment of substantial shock. She did have to worry about it just in case, but she shouldn’t get overly worried. Shaking that thought away, she put her shoes on, and then went into her room, brushing her hair and sliding a light layer of lipstick across her lips.
Then she checked her reflection for any signs of difference, as though having sex with her former professor would make her look entirely different, and allow for every person that she met to know that she had done such a thing. No, she still looked the same, she noted with immense relief. She sure as hell felt different, though.
Thinking about Harry’s unexpected visit combined with her current less-than-fantastic mood had given her another idea, and not so frightening an idea as the thought of being with child was. Obviously, as it was now –she checked the clock –eleven thirty, he and Ginny would both be awake, or at least he would, as he always got up at absurdly early times, and she wanted desperately for a friend to talk to.
Her mind made up, she then fetched her coat from where it lay forgotten in the middle of the floor by the front door, and picked it up. She put it on, tried and failed not to think of the previous night as she did so, and then disappeared.
"Oh, Harry, what have I done?" she wailed into his shoulder as he rocked her gently. "I’ve messed everything up horribly, especially with Ron. There’s no one I can talk to except you, and I doubt even you want to talk to me, because I hurt your best friend so badly, and I’m just such a horrible person in the first place."
She and Harry were sitting on his sofa in Harry’s house, and Hermione had just fallen sobbing into her best friend’s arms. She had explained the entire thing, leaving out a few choice things, such as how the previous evening had actually ended. Even so, she had a nagging feeling that Harry knew that she had done what she had with Snape, and she felt even worse for it.
"Shh, now, don’t you say anything like that again," Harry said, looking straight at her, even though Hermione had trouble meeting his eyes. "You are not a horrible person. And who said I didn’t want to talk to you?"
"Well, after what I did to Ron…" Hermione said, her hands fluttering aimlessly. Finally, they found a place clutching each other loosely in her lap. "I don’t know." She felt like a two-year-old.
"I do admit to having been angry with you when Ron told me, but it was because you hadn’t told him the entire truth," said Harry, and Hermione cringed slightly. "I’m not angry anymore, though. You didn’t want to hurt Ron, and that much is obvious, but you couldn’t help it that you didn’t feel the same way for him that he did for you. It was just the way that things turned out. After all, you can’t control what your heart feels, even if it feels what you don’t want it to."
"What do you mean?" Hermione asked after a minute.
Harry thought on it a moment, and then said, "Well, for example, there was a point when I never would have thought that I would one day be married to Ron’s little sister, and look at me now. It’s just the same in this case. You would never have –at least, I hope you would never have –dreamed that you would unexpectedly fall on your face for someone like Snape."
Hermione looked away in shame at the tone in his voice. She knew very well how much Harry hated Professor Snape and the other way around, and she was ashamed that she would even come to Harry for advice regarding this whole mess, but she certainly couldn’t go to Ron. Interrupting her musings, Harry’s hand found her cheek and directed her eyes to his so that she couldn’t look away. His green gaze was sympathetic.
"Buck up, love," he said, tucking a lock of misplaced chestnut-coloured hair behind her ear and giving her a reassuring smile. "You’ve always got me."
"Well, I suppose, though I do prefer my conversational partners to talk about something other than Quidditch at will, rather than being forced to," Hermione said. Harry laughed amiably.
"I suppose I don’t fit the criteria, then, do I?" he asked. Hermione grinned.
"You always know how to make people feel better," she casually noted. "You know, I wish I knew how to do that. By the way, where’s Ginny?"
"Oh, she went to breakfast with her mum to talk about how babies are fantastic," said Harry.
"Why didn’t you go?" asked Hermione, brow furrowing just slightly.
"Well, I actually had practice this morning, and I just came home from that not a quarter of an hour before you got here," said Harry.
"Ah," said Hermione. She noticed for the first time since she’d come that he still smelled faintly of the grassy pitch, a scent she’d long become accustomed to with two Quidditch-players as best friends for most of her life. It was a homey sort of scent to her, something that had become a sort of regular in her life for the longest time.
Harry’s arm went around her shoulder in a brotherly manner, more comforting than any old pillow could ever be. Hermione rested her head on his shoulder, the woolly fabric of his green pullover soft against her cheek. She sighed and closed her eyes, more glad of his company than any other’s. He could have been her very own brother had they not been from different families.
"Thank you," she said.
"Any time," Harry replied, and Hermione smiled without looking up at him.
So, things were quite all right with Harry, as she always had expected that they would be. The only problem now, besides the obvious problem with her feelings for Severus, was to work things with Ron, that is, if they could be worked out at all.