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On a rainy day in March, Hermione spends an entire coffee date trying to dissuade Lavender from making her best friend appear on national TV.
“He is fine the way he is,” she hisses under her breath and attempts to pass her fork through the piece of Victoria sponge in front of her with too much force. The cake crumbles apart. “He doesn’t need fixing.”
Lavender clicks her tongue and quietly exchanges Hermione’s ruin of a cake with her gorgeous-looking red velvet one – the old fashioned kind, without the artificial food colouring. “And we will not be fixing him. He is not an old broom and I am not Oliver Wood. Though there is a riding joke to be made there somewhere. Also,” she says, pointing at Hermione with her fork, “I’ll have you know that you were the one who made the suggestion in the first place.”
“In joke! Or at least half a joke. Besides, it’s been years. I would never do that now.”
Lavender hums. “Maybe so, but the filed nomination form is there. Besides, it’s a great chance for him, truly.”
Hermione shoves a bite of cake into her mouth. The flavour is so good, it distracts her from her mounting panic for a second. “He will not see it that way.”
Lavender smirks at her and delicately moves some of the crumbly sponge cake into her mouth. “Let me worry about that, babe. Let go a little.”
Hermione pretends to consider it.
*
On the Day (capital letters required), Hermione finds herself on Severus’ doorstep. She isn’t even really sure why – it’s not like her presence there will help things. Still, when she imagines Lavender et al. crashing into his hard-won peace and quiet without her there to make sure nobody murders anyone else, she breaks out in full-body shudders.
Severus opens the door with an inquisitive eyebrow-lift. “You’re not usually here at this time.”
“Astute,” she says, and breezes past him. He hasn’t gone to work yet, and in the early spring light, Spinner’s End is at the height of its gloominess. Hermione shudders and puts her coat on the hanger behind the door. “Hope you haven’t had breakfast, I brought croissants.”
“I could have been undressed,” he comments mildly and goes to put on tea. Hermione stares at his hairy calves poking out from under his dressing gown, goes to put the croissants on the table and misses it by a good few inches.
“By some definition you are,” she says, clears her throat and sits down. The rickety chair screeches across the floor and she grimaces. He sets down two cups of tea – hers just the way she likes it. “Technically.”
“I’ll have you know I’m wearing pants,” Severus says and snaps open his newspaper.
Hermione’s face is on fire. “Yes, well–”
“I am talking about underwe–”
“I GOT IT, THANKS.”
A huff of laughter. She glances up through her hair and Severus has his lips pressed together tightly, eyes dancing with mirth.
“I hate you,” Hermione says, “passionately. I loathe you. Despise you, even. Seeing your face fills me with incandescent–”
“Did you have a point in coming here?”
Hermione takes a bite of her croissant and demonstratively ignores him. He exhales a chuckle again and dedicates himself to his newsletter. Meanwhile, Hermione starts taking apart her croissant.
She should tell him. She glances at the clock. They could be here any moment, and he will be so shocked by it. He will hate it, she just knows it, and what was she thinking coming here now he will know she knew it was coming.
She is so shocked by that realisation that she inhales her croissant carnage and chokes. He is beside her in a second, patting her back and blowing on her tea so she can sip it against the coughing. When she finally emerges from the teacup, eyes teary and not entirely sure a bit of croissant didn’t end up in her nose, his face is right next to hers, and his eyes are full of concern.
For a second, she can do nothing but stare back.
“Are you all right?”
Hermione clears her throat. It burns a little and she coughs. “Yes. Yes, I’m – fine, yes. Fine.” His eyes are so dark and framed by long lashes – when she was in school, she never suspected he might have eyes like this. Or that they could be this warm.
The doorbell rings and breaks the moment. Hermione swallows her panic.
She’s out of time.
*
Severus leaves Hermione in his kitchen, looking, still, like something is not at all right. It doesn’t sit right with him, the entire thing, but there is nothing he can do now. First, he has to get rid of whoever is at his doorstep. He is so focused on that that he doesn’t even look through the peephole.
A mistake.
As soon as he opens the door, they pour in. At first, all that hits him is the impression of too much blonde hair and a cloud of at least two different perfumes. Before he realises that he has automatically stepped back, they are in his house.
“Hello there,” one of them says. “I’m Lavender – Lavender Brown, if you remember me. Just Lavender is fine now, though. How are you doing on this fine day, Sir?”
“You are in my house,” Severus states, rather dumbly.
“House,” Lavender says, “is one way of putting it. Oh hi, Hermione, didn’t know you’d be here.”
Severus might be bowled over, but he can spot a liar from a mile away. He narrows his eyes and whips around. Hermione looks like he has only seen her twice in his life – once when she ate all his biscuits and was literally caught with her hand in the jar, and then back then, all these years ago, with the boomslang skin.
“Eep,” she says. Severus considers being angry with her for the entirety of a second but then, even if he were actually capable of such a thing, he has to admit that she has treated him with nothing but gentleness these past few years. There were people out to hurt him, of that there was no doubt. Hermione Granger would never be one of these people.
The urge to be angry does rear its head a second time when he spots the floating cameras – and realises where he knows this collection of people from.
“No,” he says. “Under no circumstances. No.”
“I told you,” Hermione says, and he recognises the hint of desperation in her smugness. She’s still worried he’s angry with her. He attempts to give her his best “do not worry” expression, but considering how unused his face is to such things, it’s no wonder she does not look any more relaxed.
“I refuse to appear on television,” Severus says, “and for such a ridiculous thing, too.”
Lavender Brown seems to have already grown bored of this discussion. She’s peeking her head into his living room, scrunching up her nose. “Are you aware of the existence of indoor lighting? And window cleaners, for that matter. Also, doilies.”
“Doilies?” Severus shrieks, “I’d hex you first!”
Someone shoves a stack of parchment under his nose. “Padma Patil,” the woman says, and he remembers her now – vaguely. “These are the papers you’ll have to sign, please.”
“What happens if I don’t?”
“Oh, our laws are very messed up that way,” comes a dreamy voice from his living room. His head pops through the doorframe quick enough to send a sharp pain through his neck. Luna Lovegood – here’s a student he didn’t forget and needs no introduction for – is looking through his books. He didn’t even realise she walked past him. “We need your signature to give us permission to edit the footage – we need no permission to air, though. It’s under the Unbiased Media Act, if you want to read up on it. You have a lot of books on gardening, for someone who doesn’t have a garden.”
“I had plans for the gard– what do you mean you need no permission to air?”
“I’m on it,” Hermione says quietly from his elbow. His head whips back around and he catches a whiff of her shampoo. She smells of lilacs. It calms him. “It’s an abomination. But the Wizengamot works with the speed of a geriatric snail.”
His gaze slants downwards. Her warm brown eyes feel like a punch to the stomach, like a sip of hot tea. Like the entire world slows down for a second so he can catch a breath.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t quick enough to prevent this,” she whispers.
He almost squeezes her hand.
A camera is shoved in his face. He drops his hand immediately.
*
Hermione watches Lavender, Padma and Luna file into Severus’ house with guilt heavy in her stomach. He is horrified – it’s not hard to tell. When he becomes aware of her involvement, she steels herself for anger, betrayal, hurt. She would deserve all of them, but Severus Snape is, once again, a better friend than she could ever hope to be. She can tell he wants to squeeze her hand, and for a second, she forgets about the cameras, about everyone else in the room. There is only him, the comforting darkness of his gaze, the warmth he emanates.
But then, there are cameras.
The three of them do their entire spiel – introduce themselves, tell Severus he has been nominated from a place of caring and that they are here to get to know him, to see what he needs and make sure he gets it. For a happier, more comfortable life.
This was why Hermione nominated him on a night of too much butterbeer, all these years ago. Because she’d just met him again, had just figured out how warm he was, how gentle, beneath that iron hard exterior. She still remembers how she had laid her head on the cool tabletop, drawing patterns over the wood pattern, and mumbled into the crook of her elbow. He’s so lovely, Lav, she’d said. So utterly lovely. I feel like he needs someone to show him that, to make sure he gets the life he deserves.
Her memories of filling out the nomination form are foggy, at best.
Severus ends up in his old armchair, somehow, and Hermione finds herself leaning against the armrest as the others take up the small couch. Luna remains standing, studying the wallpaper like it holds the secrets of the universe. Among them, the cameras float like ominous insects. Hermione tries not to look at them.
“Have you ever watched our programme?” Parvati asks, businesslike. “Are you familiar with the procedure?”
“Reluctantly,” he hisses past his clenched teeth. Hermione wants to massage his tense shoulders, wants to huff out a laugh. There was nothing reluctant about their Magic Eye marathon, back when she finally made sure his household got a wizarding TV set. She rather remembers him taking great pleasure in ranting at the staticky screen as Parvati remade someone’s home. Who doesn’t own a single book, he’d complained, almost spilling his hot chocolate on Hermione’s feet in his lap, something is wrong with you, woman.
“Something funny, babe?” Lavender asks Hermione, her gaze sharp. Hermione bites her lips and shakes her head.
“Why are you here, anyway?” Parvati pipes up. “Do you two live together?”
Severus chokes on air. Hermione pats his back distractedly, trying to force her face not to blush. “No.”
“It’s just, you’re here really early, babe,” Lavender says helpfully. The twinkle in her eyes tells Hermione all she needs to know about her intentions. “And then there’s the matter of clothing.”
“Clothing?”
“Or rather the lack of it.”
This is when Severus seems to remember how he’s dressed. He jumps up, face blotching red.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Hermione says as he hastens out of the room. “He’s wearing pants.”
Severus is already upstairs, but the (dis)advantage of his rickety house is the way the sound carries. “HERMIONE!” he screeches.
Lavender sighs.
*
Once Severus is dressed properly – all in black, naturally –, they reconvene in the sitting room and go over the procedure. Nobody is kicking Hermione out, so she stays and watches as Severus grows visibly more agitated with every passing moment.
After they went over the order of things, how he is to act with the cameras around (mainly as if they weren’t) and how long things will take (two days or three, at most), Hermione all but grabs Severus and drags him outside.
The outside of Spinner’s End isn’t exactly conducive to clandestine talks. Cramped and close as the buildings are, opening directly onto the pavement, there isn’t really a nook anywhere for two people two have a conversation without fearing that some neighbour may be curtain-twitching. Hermione casts a Muffliato and hopes for the best.
“I’m really, really sorry–” she starts, but Severus holds up a hand.
“I know.”
“No, really, it was a drunk conversation years ago, apparently i signed an official application thing but I don’t remember–”
“I know, Hermione, it’s fine–”
“I knew this would make you so uncomfortable and I tried to stop it but Lavender wouldn’t budge, so I thought if I was there, at least–”
A large, warm hand presses on her mouth. Hermione blinks at him. He lifts an eyebrow.
“Will you stop. Bloody. Talking.”
Hermione’s protest is muffled, and quite honestly, nonsensical anyway.
“Now, I will take my hand away and you will stop apologising and instead focus your energies on making sure they don’t throw you out, all right? Because I cannot remember the last time I was this bloody uncomfortable, bar perhaps that one time when Minerva decided to regale me with tales of her sex life, and just like that time I refuse to suffer alone.”
Hermione grimaces at the memory. While Severus is always welcome at her little flat, of course, there have been pleasanter nights than the time he arrived in her floo to draw her diagrams of sexual positions that should be, frankly, completely anatomically impossible.
Though then again, she figures maybe that is what magic is for.
*
With Hermione by his side, the entire ordeal seems a little more bearable. But then, that has been the story of his entire life after the war, which he tries not to study too closely.
The three fiends in his living room have different areas of expertise – he remembers that much from their TV marathon more than a year ago. Lavender Brown, to no-one’s surprise, is on fashion and style. Parvati Patil, apart from handling the legal aspect, deals with (interior) design. Luna Lovegood is the lifestyle expert – which makes Severus shudder just thinking about it.
They decide to start with the easiest. Patil walks through his modest house with him, the others trailing behind, Hermione never too far away, and treats every last bit of his existence with a series of derisive sniffs.
“What’s the thought behind this?” she’d ask, pointing at the most random things – the yellowed and bubbling wallpaper, the dirty windows, the picture his mother took of the mill his father had worked at, which he threw through the room in a fit of rage once and which now hung, glass cracked and distributing glittery dust over the floor if you knocked into it, next to the stove.
“I don’t know,” Severus says more often than not. “It just turned out like that.”
“Glitter distributor,” Hermione supplies helpfully, ignoring Lavender’s elbow knocking into her ribs. “It’s where Severus gets his magical sparkle from.”
Severus ducks his head so none of the cameras catch his smirk.
After the tour, they reconvene in the living room. Severus takes up a somewhat defensive stance in front of his bookshelf, which Patil has been eyeing. He’ll be damned before he allows them to touch his books. Hermione takes a seat in the armchair next to him.
“Now,” Patil starts, looking at some notes she has apparently taken in a nondescript black notebook. He almost applauds her for her choice in stationary before he remembers that she is an intruder who he hates with the fire of a thousand suns. “Thank you for showing us around, Mister Snape. Very kind of you.”
“I had no choice in the matter, but if you want to pretend that I had, feel free.”
Hermione next to him makes a strange noise. When he slants his eyes over to her, her expression is the picture of innocence.
Patil ignores him with an ease that he cannot help but admire. “I have some impressions of this house – mainly it being that it does not fit you as it is right now.”
“Many people would think gloomy and depressing is just up my alley,” Severus quips back. Instead of her laughing, her eyes turn sharper.
“So you find it depressing here?”
Severus shifts uncomfortably and doesn’t answer. After a second or two more of staring, Patil snaps her notebook shut and leans backwards.
“Have you ever thought about moving?”
He blinks. “What?”
“Don’t look at me like that, you’re a smart man, I’m sure it’s not a foreign concept. This house must be full of childhood memories for you,” Hermione seems to shake her head next to him and Patil moves on smoothly, “and it’s neither new, nor clean, nor particularly big. All the furniture is old and there are so many things you keep around that you don’t seem to be using. So why here?”
It sets his teeth on edge, the way she talks. “May I introduce you to a concept called poverty,” he hisses, “If you are unfamiliar, this is what it looks like.”
“Except you aren’t poor,” she counters. “I’m sorry, I’m not trying to devalue your experiences. If this house makes you happy the way it is, Merlin knows you should stay. But I looked into it, don’t think I didn’t – by all accounts, you should be quite comfortable now. You don’t have to live in the darkness of the past unless you choose to.”
Before he can figure out how to react (murder seems a definite option), Hermione has jumped up. “I think it’s time for a tea break. Severus, kitchen.”
He follows her without thinking about it. When she closes the door behind them, the silencing charm barely has time to stick before he turns away from her and kicks the fridge and begins cursing as colourfully as he is able.
When he is done, he turns to Hermione, whose face is a picture of carefully contained sympathy. She opens her mouth once, twice, but no words come out. Finally, Severus finds himself stepping towards her with hesitation, arms twitching, and she barrels into him with enough power to knock him back into the blasted fridge.
She hugs him so tightly that it’s almost painful, but he wouldn’t trade it for the world. His nose descends into her hair, and everything is Hermione. That knot in his chest – the humiliation, the frustration, the anger at the casual disregard of everything he has done in his life – dissolves like cotton candy in water. With a sigh, his shoulders relax. Impossibly, he holds her even tighter.
He doesn’t know how much time has passed when he finally thinks he should let her go. Selfishly, he wants to hold on even longer. They’re barely ever hugged, only an arm around a waist or a shoulder a handful of times. This is different. It sets his heart racing with enough power to make him dizzy, and makes him feel, for the first time today, like he is standing firmly on the floor. Like he is himself.
They let go, and Severus can’t tell, but he thinks she might be as reluctant to step back as he is. Her cheeks are flushed, and he keeps his hands at his side with all the willpower he has.
“Yes, well,” he says, but it comes out rough. He clears his throat and repeats it.
Hermione’s smile is soft and almost shy. “Feeling less like committing a crime?”
His lips twitch. “I don’t know,” he says. “Arson looks good any day of the week, if I’m honest.”
She just rolls her eyes. His chest is warm, so warm. He can barely remember who is outside this kitchen door, looking at her large, dark eyes.
Unfortunately, the people outside the kitchen door are not keen on being forgotten. There is a sharp rap and Lavender Brown’s voice following quickly. “I get that you’re probably either having a moment or plotting a murder, but we are sort of on a schedule here.”
Severus takes a deep breath, squares his shoulders, and goes to sweep out the door. A second before he does, he finds himself whirling back around and pressing the gentlest of kisses to Hermione’s soft cheek. “Thank you,” he whispers, and rushes out of the room before he can see her face.
*
Considering that Severus has proclaimed, upon his dramatic re-entry into the room, that he refuses to move, thank you very much, Parvati decides to knock down some walls.
Hermione, back to feeling amused now that Severus is obviously more relaxed, stands back as him and Parvati pour over some blueprints, cameras floating over their shoulder. Neither of them had addressed the break Severus took and Lavender confided in Hermione that they’re likely to edit it out in post-production.
“From what I see, your books and your brewing are the key areas of your life, aren’t they?” Parvati says, tracing something on the large parchment. “So I was thinking – we could knock down the hallway wall, and maybe add a plant or something to both brighten up the place and create some sort of visual division between the door and the room. I’d also like to apply an undetectable extension charm – here, here and here – so we can give you a brewing corner. I’d like to combine the two upstairs rooms, too – do you ever have guests?”
The entire room turns to Hermione, who tries not to blush. “I sleep on the sofa, usually,” she says, feeling entirely too vulnerable admitting so. Parvati just nods as if it’s not a big deal. “Speaking of the sofa – I’d like to replace your sofa, your armchair, and your stovetop. Everything else is up to you, but those are centrepieces of your life. I’d also like to get you a new bookshelf, I was thinking bookshelf wall, right here–”
Hermione tunes them out. Despite the fact that Parvati could be quite blunt, there was a reason this programme was as successful as it was – Magical Eye was known more for helping people make sure their lives fit them, rather than to change the people in question.
After a short debate on whether to replace the windows or just clean them – which Parvati (on team “replace”) won, surprisingly – they get to work. Hermione is already there, so she sets out to help, carefully blasting apart walls and knocking out windows. It’s therapeutic, in a way, and at some point Hermione catches herself looking over at Severus. They exchange a gleeful grin as glass shatters around them and sunlight pours into the kitchen. Something in her chest flutters.
Before they are done, they send Severus outside to prepare for the big reveal. Hermione offers to come with him, but he refuses, so she lets herself be dragged inside by Lavender to help suit things to Severus’ taste as much as possible.
When they are done, Hermione can’t help but stare, speechless, for a second or two. It’s almost like a different house. Spinner’s End is flooded in light now, the space open and inviting. The lounge now features a wall of bookshelves with room for all of Severus’ most treasured possessions, and a little cavern, courtesy of an undetectable extension charm, with a window front and a collection of cauldrons sitting in the centre.
Then they ask Severus to come inside, and Hermione watches him closely. He is not one given to strong displays of emotions, but she watches him swallow a few times.
“Do you think this is a place you’d like to come home to?” Parvati asks after a period of extended silence. Severus averts his gaze from the now freshly painted kitchen wall and the picture his mother had shot, now in a tidy, new frame, and swallows again.
“It is… passable.”
Parvati’s smile is as bright and unexpected as the sunlight cascading over the worn wooden kitchen table. “I’ll take passable.”
*
While interior design was much better than expected, fashion and style, to no-one’s surprise, is a living nightmare. It starts with Lavender opening his closet the next day with a dramatic flourish and as gasp, as if attacked. Severus frowns first at her, then at the contents of the closet (about five identical black robes, two pairs of black trousers, some socks and underwear in a drawer, two shirts, and one old and worn band t-shirt). Hermione’s chin lands on his shoulder as she attempts to look over it at whatever Lavender is seeing.
“Is there a boggart in your wardrobe?” Lavender asks shrilly, stumbling backwards. “Because I think I might be looking at my worst nightmare.”
Hermione’s snort of laughter is a gust of warm air against his cheek. He blindly pokes her side and she squirms away.
“I’ll have you know that my clothes have served me well for decades now,” Severus sniffs. Lavender’s responding laugh is shrill.
“No, you see,” she says, “I can see that. Clearly. With my eyes. Which is my entire problem, babe.”
Severus is so busy being offended that he has no time to react to the endearment. “There is nothing wrong with being efficient.”
“Maybe so, but I am here to tell you that you can be efficient and hot. Let’s get to work.” And with a flick of her wand, the entire contents of the wardrobe launch themselves past its doors and at them. Severus dodges in time, but Hermione does not, and ends up buried in a good chunk of the black fabric. Severus, once again, looks away in order not to laugh.
*
Hermione is in no way, shape or form, prepared for what comes after.
Lavender takes Severus with her into his bathroom to go through the products he uses. Hermione stays outside, figuring he might want his privacy for that process. Nothing much happens, but he does not look as stormy as she would have expected him to when they come out again. A measuring tape trails behind Lavender. When she snaps her fingers, it rolls itself up and slides into her pocket.
“Alright then,” she says. “I will go take care of the wardrobe issue, and I want you to sit still for our hairdress– oh, there he is.”
A knock had sounded at the door downstairs. Luna must have opened the door because moments later, heavy steps are coming up the stairs, and then the door opens to reveal a vision of flowy blonde hair and lilac robes.
Severus freezes. Hermione experiences a coughing fit so violent that she doubles over. Gilderoy Lockhart, appearing as if everything is right in the world, sweeps into the newly redone room and spins around. He is wearing some sort of flowery perfume and the scent of it nearly bowls Hermione over. Severus, next to her, is visibly in distress.
“Wha– what are you doing in my h–”
Hermione pets Severus’ back comfortingly. Lavender, blatantly ignoring everything else going on, conjures a mirror and a seat for Severus to take and strong-armes him into sitting. Lockhart, meanwhile, seems to be busy adjusting his hair.
The look Severus throws Hermione is so desperate, she feels horrible for being as amused by the situation as she is.
“Alright, loves,” Lockhart says, spins around, and materialises a pair of scissors in each hand out of thin air. “What do we have to work with, hm?”
Hermione’s hands move to Severus’ shoulders – half for a comforting massage, half to keep him from bolting.
“Don’t worry,” Lavender comments off-handedly, “he doesn’t remember you. But he’s good at what he does, you’ll look fabulous.”
“None of that is reassuring–” Severus starts, but then the pair of scissors snips in front of his nose and a strand of hair sails down. Severus goes cross-eyed following it.
“You’ve got split ends,” Lockhart trills. “That’s sad. I’ve never had split ends in my life.”
“I can fix that,” Severus says.
“Do you think bangs would suit you?” Lockhart asks sweetly. “I think it might make your face look less long. You look a little like an archaeopteryx this way.”
Severus’ eyes bug. “A what?!” Snip. Another strand of hair.
“I think we’re fine here, right? Lovely. See you soon.” Lavender is out of the room before anyone can protest. All Hermione can hope for is that there will be no blood.
*
There is no blood. Severus is so tense that she marvels at him being able to breathe still, but he allows Lockhart to spin around him like an enormous hummingbird, keeping up his commentary the entire time. At some point, Hermione bites her lips hard enough to hurt because she is desperately trying not to laugh.
She stops laughing once they’re done.
Somehow, absurdly, Lockhart truly is good at what he does – and that realisation alone would be enough to disturb her composure, or what was left of it. Before Hermione can really take in the changes all the snipping, cutting, combing and smearing things into Severus’ hair may or may not have brought, he is whisked away by Lavender to be introduced to his new closet contents. Which means when she sees him, it is after the entire pampering routine – wearing the new clothes Lavender has gotten him (still all in black) and sleek black hair tied back.
Hermione nearly falls off her chair.
Severus still looks… like Severus. She knows he feared that they would transform him into someone he isn’t, and if she’s honest, she had the same fear. There were horror visions of blonde hair, plucked eyebrows, outfits in bright colours. But no. He is still Severus – there is an unhappy frown on his face, and his pale skin shows quite clearly that he prefers staying up by candlelight to sensible bedtimes. But still – there are other things, too. His hair is longer, and somehow Hermione hadn’t expected that at all. A second later, she chides herself for forgetting about magic once again.
The combination of the longer hair, looking shinier and healthier than she has ever seen it, and the clothes Lavender has selected for him turn him into someone that Hermione feels indecent looking at for too long. It’s just a pair of black trousers and a shirt, but Lavender has made him tuck the shirt into the trousers in the front. There is also a broad, simple leather strap around his wrist, and simple earrings in his earlobes, where she has, in the past, spied the hints of piercings about to disappear.
Lavender does jazz hands. “What do you think?”
Severus huffs. “I look ridiculous.”
Lavender rolls her eyes and throws her impressive blonde curls over her shoulder. “Wasn’t talking to you, Mr. Grouchy. I was talking to the tomato in the corner. What do you think, babe? Hot?”
Hermione suddenly discovers she has important correspondence to take care of and pushes past Lockhart out the door. Lavender’s laughter follows her all the way down the stairs.
*
The last order of business is just him and Luna Lovegood and a single camera. She takes him out of the door and into the town, seemingly content to turn onto random streets, stopping now and then to stare at a house or two whenever the colour of the brick or the flowers creeping out through the cracks in the concrete catch her eye. She doesn’t even talk at first, seemingly happy to walk in silence. Severus, once or twice, feels almost awkward enough to break it, but then decides against it. He won’t help her with this, he determines, somewhat childishly. Nevermind that this entire thing has his house looking like a home for the first time in what feels like forever, nevermind that Hermione’s somewhat panicked, wide-eyed gaze and her flushed face still haunt him. He still maintains that he doesn’t need fixing.
Ten more minutes of silent walking, and that sentiment grows strong enough that he can do nothing to keep it in.
“I don’t need fixing,” he tells Lovegood as she kneels down to inspect a seemingly completely ordinary weed. “I don’t know what you want to hear, but there is nothing I can offer you.”
She doesn’t even turn around, just runs her fingertips along the blade of grass in repetitive, almost hypnotising motions. “I don’t think,” she finally says, “that anyone could change you in ways that you do not want to be changed.”
Severus isn’t sure what to reply to that. Luckily, or unluckily, depending on how one views it, she breaks the awkward moment for him.
“Do you like the changes of the last two days?”
The no is on his tongue already, sharp and immediate. But then Hermione’s flushed face appears before his inner eye. The way she looked, backlit by the sunshine, standing in his kitchen. He thinks about how his scalp isn’t itching for the first time in years, courtesy of whatever Lavender Brown had given him to use (“You may be a Potion Master, but I am a stylist. Let me do my job.”). Thinks about how comfortable he is in his new clothes, which she had tailored to fit him and to allow for all the range of movement he needs for brewing. Thinks of the brewing nook in his living room, full of natural light. Thinks of Hermione’s impossibly soft cheek under his lips. Finds, somehow, that he cannot be cruel right now, so he says nothing.
Lovegood does not seem to need an answer, or maybe she got her answer from the look on his face.
“Tell me about your family? Your dad worked over there, didn’t he?” He follows her pointed finger and indeed, she is right – she’d led him straight to the old mill building.
Somehow, he finds himself talking.
*
His episode airs a few weeks later.
They never agreed on it, but Hermione turns up on his doorstep an hour before it starts. While she waits for him to open the door, her fingers trace the black shell he has stuck to his doorframe since the last time she’d been here. He has started to do that, she found – collecting small things, pretty things that give him pleasure, or interesting things that are broken in just the right ways, and distributing them around his home to be exhibited. She enjoys it greatly. It’s like his personality is written on every bit of the house, and she loves finding new things that have previously gone unnoticed.
He lets her in with a slight smile. The butterflies in her stomach are impossible to ignore. She raises the plastic bag in her left hand. “I brought snacks.”
He lets her in.
They assemble the snacks on a tray side by side, shoulders knocking into each other now and then. Severus makes tea, and together they move to the living room, where the new couch is covered in a blanket Hermione knitted for him a while ago. Some of her books are on his coffee table, along with a new draft for an article she’s been working on. She must have left here a few days ago, when came by for pastry Friday. There is an inkwell and a quill next to it where he seems to have been making corrections. Following her gaze, he scratches his neck awkwardly.
“I hope you didn’t mind. It was really good – I was originally going to only read the first sentence, but it pulled me right in.”
Hermione flushes with pleasure and stands on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his cheek. She almost feels like he is swaying towards her ever so slightly when she pulls back.
This is another thing they do now, a new addition to their growing collection of intricate rituals and small secrets that nobody else would understand. Cheek kisses and hugs have become a part of their everyday interactions, and Hermione cannot believe her luck whenever he comes close like that, his aftershave filling her nose and his calloused thumbs tracing little circles on her back as they embrace, or on her shoulder when his lips touch her skin.
They sit down on the sofa together. He knows she runs cold, so he fetches a second blanket for her immediately and wraps it around her legs while Hermione turns on the TV. While he reaches for his cup of tea, she shoves her toes underneath his legs to keep them warm, and he just rolls her eyes at her.
Hermione grows unreasonably nervous as the opening to Magical Eye plays. Severus next to her seems similarly restless, and she wriggles her toes in an attempt of reassurance. His warm hand descends on her ankle for a second and squeezes.
They watch Parvati, Lavender and Luna arrive at Spinner’s End. Knowing how the house looks now, Hermione can appreciate all over again how dreary it was back then. The voiceover explains who Severus is in the broadest of terms, without touching on any of the topics that were dredged through the papers for months on end. Hermione made sure to tell Lavender to mind their editing there, but Lavender only rolled her eyes. “What do you take me for, babe? I’m not bloody Skeeter. We don’t make that kind of show. Of course we won’t humiliate him with this.”
Hermione hadn’t been sure whether she could believe it, but watching the show now, she had to acknowledge that Lavender stuck to her word. She watches Severus smile at her as they blast away a kitchen window and feels a warm glow in her chest. This is how he looks when he’s happy. He’s happy when he looks at me.
She chances a look to the side. His eyes are glued to the screen, but he does not look unhappy. Then his facial expression morphs into one of disgust and she turns back to see Lockhart has appeared on screen. She huffs a laugh, but her amusement dies when she watches herself become quite obviously flustered at Severus’ makeover reveal.
The real Severus turns to her and lifts an eyebrow. Hermione swats at him. “Oh, shut up.”
He catches her hand before she can take it back and engulfs it in his warm one. Suddenly, the air is charged with something – something she has never dared to name, but might be coming close to attempting to. There is his thumb again, moving over her skin in gentle, repeating motions. With a tug, she falls forward into his chest, his arm coming down around her shoulders.
“Watch the show, Hermione,” he mutters, the rumble of his voice deep and comforting under her cheek.
She tries. Instead, she falls asleep.
*
At first, Hermione doesn’t understand where she is. She blinks and the room swims into vague focus around her. On the screen across the room, she watches Luna twirl a daisy around her fingers. Severus is all around her, holding her securely. A hand is petting her head.
“What about Hermione?” Luna asks, voice slightly staticky through the speakers. Without moving her head, Hermione glances up at Severus. He is watching the screen with a thoughtful expression.
“What about Hermione?” Severus on TV asks.
“She’s around a lot.”
Severus on TV hums.
“How did that happen?” Luna asks. “Want to tell me about it?”
And Hermione could have bet that Severus never would. That he is a much too private man to speak about what they are – what they have – on national TV. But there he is, voice becoming more and more animated, seemingly becoming lost in recounting their meeting again, years after the end of the war, in an apothecary, where he spilled gillyweed water over her favourite sweater and somehow ended up buying her a new one. How she repaid him with a visit and some takeout, how he invited her in, in a moment of madness. “Or genius,” Severus on screen ads. “Honestly, seeing how it turned out, it’s probably genius.”
“How did it turn out?”
There is a silence for so long, Hermione is sure he will not reply. But then, voice sure and quiet, he says: “You know how Patil knocked down parts of the wall in my kitchen to let in sunlight?”
Luna hums.
“Like that,” he says. “Pretty much… exactly like that.”
Hermione squeezes her eyes shut, trying to fight the tears rising up. Carefully, she tilts her head up until Severus’ gaze meets hers. It’s grown dark in the room, and yet she can make him out perfectly.
Meeting his lips in a kiss is the easiest thing she has ever done.