Epilogue: Right Bettor

Waking was a sensation not unlike being ripped from the liquid comfort of his mother's womb, Severus supposed. Without even opening his eyes, he knew he was alone in his bed. Again. Still. Just as he had done every morning for the past three months, he took a moment to remind himself that this was his real life. Dreams and fantasies were nothing more than the offspring of whimsy.

You brought this on yourself, imbecile! It's your fault she isn't here with us!

Make up your mind! Either we are one or we are two!

But of course, it was his fault they... he was alone because he'd made all the wrong choices, said all the wrong things.

Then...

Hermione's hand had crept, slow and warm, up his thigh beneath her parents' table. Helen and Nick made pleasant conversation about the nature of magic and asked for explanations of things their daughter had apparently never explained. Harry bloody Potter grinned inanely between forkfuls of food.

"That's so interesting!" Helen exclaimed, having quickly grasped the concept of Arithmancy and its implications. "I'd imagine Hermione would really like that subject."

Severus glanced at the woman who hand was currently climbing towards dangerous territory. The look in her eyes had him quickly returning his gaze to Helen lest he embarrass himself and everyone else.

"Your daughter was said to be an excellent student of Arithmancy," he managed to say. He fervently hoped no one noticed the strain in his voice.

"The best in our year!" added Potter. The boy had the audacity to wink at Severus.

"She never said a word about it," Nick put in. "She never told us much of anything about her studies at that school of yours. I guess we Muggles didn't rate. Our own daughter, Severus! Can you imagine, never telling us – her own parents – that she was among the greatest Arithmanceress! Or is that Arithmancitian?"

Hermione rolled her eyes, Helen grimaced, saying, "Oh, Nikos" while Potter choked on a forkful of roast chicken. Severus was surprised to find himself defending Nick with, "Has your father-in-law finally learnt the difference between felly tone and a telephone, Potter?"

The comment was met with laughter from everyone but the bewildered Nick, and an unfamiliar sensation – nothing unpleasant – coiled in Severus's belly.

Dinner had continued in that manner, and by the time Potter rose from the table, claiming, "Ginny and the kids will be back from the Burrow soon", Severus knew this was a life he wouldn't mind getting used to.

Potter's winks and grins and genuinely welcoming smiles ceased to grate. So did one Granger's incessant chatter. And he truly enjoyed the other Granger's intelligent conversation. But nothing was so nice as his Granger, who might not have been ready to share his bed over the past week, but still did naughty things to him under the table.

And later...

Alone together in her tiny, tidy flat, she didn't seem so reluctant, after all. The kisses, perfectly designed to leave them both a bit dunderheaded for minutes at a time, had started on the steps leading up to her building. They'd made the walk up to her second-storey flat three times as long as it needed to be.

Those kisses got her out of her blouse, and when he looked up from the silky scrap of nothing posing as her brassiere, she gave him a cheeky grin.

"Front clasp," she said. "I was hoping..." Then she took his hands in hers to show him why front-clasping bras would ever after be his favourite foundation garment.

But, as had always been true for Severus Snape, all good things eventually came to an end.

He'd just edged his thumb across a tightly beaded nipple, eliciting the most delicious moan from his delectable Miss Granger, when green light flared from her fireplace.

"Hermione? Oh!" A pale green face with darker green freckles stared at them, wide-eyed, before turning away just enough to shout into whatever room it was in, "Oh, Harry! You were right! He's there with her right now, and it looks like I'm interrupting." Severus heard a soft chuckle. "Hermione hasn't got a shirt on, and Snape looked just like James the time Teddy hid his teddy!"

The head withdrew completely – finally! – but it was no use. The name "James" was like a bucket of icy water to his libido, and Severus deflated faster than a balloon mistaken for a pincushion.

Undaunted, Hermione had wrapped her arms round his neck and murmured, "Next time one of us needs to block the Floo."

Now

Not that there'd been a next time. Not quite like that, anyway. The interruption had brought him close to his senses.

He'd suggested a bit of caution, moving a bit more slowly.

"You're right," she'd agreed. "I guess we both got caught up in... everything. Of course we should slow down." Only, she'd taken "caution" and "slow down" to levels he hadn't actually been striving for.

At first, he'd been beyond happy to put the series of escapades behind him.

Or so you conveniently told yourself.

He knew better than to chalk any of it up to the nightmare he'd originally imagined it to be; the three days his calendar claimed he'd missed made sure of that. And he was pragmatic enough not to hope he was safe from it happening again, no matter the combined intentions of two hundred ninety-four Hermione Grangers/Granger-Snapes/Granger-Weasleys/Granger-Weasley-Snapes. Even they, he suspected, would find thwarting the whims and wishes of several headstrong little girls formidable. Children, after all, were known to frequently lack impulse control.

Since Granger and her two annoying friends had spent six years making a habit of showing up whenever he least wanted them in his vicinity, he'd expected her to come back straight away.

You mean you wanted her to come back next day!

Instead, he'd spent a blissful five days alone in his home. He had almost an entire nearly delightful week of solitude in which he could pretend he wasn't thinking about her intellectual growth and that thoughts of her physical maturation (and her hands and her lips and her soft skin) didn't distract him during dull moments of Potions research.

But by the end of the week he'd started to miss her.

Might as well tell the truth when it's just us!

Merlin's saggy sack! Can't I even wallow in my grief without you providing opposing commentary?

Not if you're going to lie to ourselves, no.

Severus harrumphed, still not risking opening his eyes.

But by the end of the week – To the hottest hell with "slow!" – he'd been burning to see her again, to kiss her again, to hold her again.

Then...

"I missed you, too," she'd whispered against his chest.

He pried himself out of her ironclad embrace and led her into his house. The first changes were so tiny, he thought he might need to point them out, but she noticed everything. And she was eager to help him make bigger ones.

Neither one of them saw much of anyone else over the next month. There was hardly time when they spent every evening and all five weekends preparing the shabby house at Spinner's End for its eventual close-up.

"For all the work I'm doing, I'll have to ask for an ownership share when we're through," Hermione told him. She was teasing.

"I'll have to keep your demands in mind," Severus replied. He was dead serious.

It shouldn't have been a problem, and – in spite of all sorts of hints even one of her dunderheaded friends could have recognised – Severus hadn't been prepared for any opposition to his propo... er, strategy.

He already owned the house next door. Renovation plans were surprisingly easy to procure. There was nothing stopping them from getting on with it.

Nothing except one Hermione Jean Granger, the two hundred and seventy-third known witch of that name.

"What do you mean, 'no'? How can you say 'no'?"

Hermione placed a hand on his forearm and gently squeezed. "I'm not saying 'no', Severus." She smiled, but he saw that her lips trembled just a bit. "I'm saying 'maybe, but not yet'. We... I need time to... to explore what this is between us, to learn what's best – for both of us."

"What is there to learn and explore?" he snapped. "We've known each other nearly fifteen years! Either you want this or you don't!"

"But that's just it – we don't know each other. Not really." Her voice and expression were so earnest and resolute, he'd known better than to argue. "Last week we couldn't even get through a decent snog without both of us going a little mental."

About that at least.

"So why can't you get to know me whilst living here? You didn't seem to mind spending a week sleeping in my childhood bed. What's changed?"

Her face turned red with what he instinctively knew wasn't embarrassment.

"Didn't mind? Of course I minded!" she fumed. "But you didn't give me much choice in the matter, did you? Not if I wanted to know if your little solution would work."

"I gave you a choice," he countered. "In fact, if you'll remember, the sleeping arrangements were your preference."

He hadn't thought her lovely face could turn any darker than it already had. He was wrong.

Now

Severus grimaced at the remembered conversation.

Just as embarrassing was his reaction when she'd flounced towards his front door: he'd practically begged her not to leave.

"Running away, Granger? Aren't you getting a bit overwrought over a little teasing?"

"It's either leave or hex you again, Snape!"

And then she'd done both.

He lay on the floor, his jelly-like legs unable to support his weight, thinking he'd never wanted her more than in the moment she'd slammed the door behind her.

Mornings like this one told another story.

Then...

Two days later, she was back before he'd even dragged himself from bed. And the next day, and the next and the one after that. Each morning, she watched him closely as he made his coffee before joining him at the kitchen table for a quick cup of chocolate before she left again for work.

Evenings and weekends went back to what he'd come to consider normal, only now he had her mornings, too. She was nearly living with him as it was, but he was careful not to point that out. Severus was clever enough to pretend patience.

"I'm not so much of an imbecile not to recognise when I need to change tactics," he told her. "If you need more time to learn what I'm already certain of, I'll give you time."

Hermione wanted so badly to believe in him, she fell for it without much scepticism.

"Oh, thank god, Severus!" She beamed at him, making his insides quiver like he was Travelling. "I don't want you thinking I don't want you... I just need to be sure."

Relieved she hadn't asked him how much time he was willing to give, Severus tried an indulgent smile. Because, being absolutely sure, himself, he had a plan. And he needed her trust if it were to succeed.

"Of course you do, darling," he said, pulling her in for a kiss designed to leave them as imbecilic as that sort of kiss always did.

Their interactions had already proved her to be as brave as the Gryffindor she'd once been while doing a good job of being as cunning and ambitious as Merlin, that greatest Slytherin of all. Thorough readings of The Notebook, The Account and even The Little Notebook (which he knew she'd only pretended to accidentally leave at his home one evening) had painted a picture of a witch who was as brilliant as a Ravenclaw and as loyal as a Hufflepuff. That last side of her personality was going to get him what he wanted.

By the end of the second week since her (second) return, he'd finished brewing fertility and anti-contraception potions.

Those second and third aspects of her personality prevented him from slipping her either brew.

"This is just like when Ron left, you know! He had this pretty picture of what our lives would be without even asking me if I wanted to paint it that way. And when he found out I didn't, first he tried to trick me into it, then he walked away rather than compromise when I caught him at it!"

Now

But he knew that last skirmish had been beyond the pale, and after four days had gone by without word from the bushy-haired harridan, he had given up on her making an appearance and was feeling more than a bit irritated over what he considered to be her poor manners.

She could at least come here and finish the argument, damn her ridiculously beautiful brown eyes!

Right, because a witch owes the wizard who would have impregnated her without her consent or even her knowledge a chance to explain himself.

I wouldn't have actually done it. I knew she would find me out.

Wouldn't you have?

I don't know.

So, it was a surlier than usual Severus Snape who eventually opened his eyes in the shabby-looking room in the run-down house at Spinner's End later that morning.

That is, he was a surlier than usual Severus Snape until he realised exactly what had wakened him.

He didn't bother with throwing a dressing gown over his tattered nightshirt or with slipping his wand from the skin-and-hair sheath he still wore on his left forearm. No thief or enemy could get past his wards. And what sort of thief stopped to make coffee?

SS~HG

"Fifty-three informs me that any idiot – even one of our dunderheaded friends – can learn to brew a halfway decent cup using a cafetiere. Doing the same with a percolator takes a master. I don't know that I'm a master, but Mum – who is very definitely a master – said I can make a decent pot."

She faced the worktop below his cupboards, her back to the kitchen doorway. Even after she'd poured him a steaming cup, she didn't turn.

"Your mother is a wise woman with exquisite taste," said Severus. "I'm prepared to accept her word on the matter."

"She also said a couple can't survive if only one of them is making all the decisions."

He didn't move beyond the threshold.

"As I said, your mother is wise. Wiser by far than a wizard who never learnt till recently what it is to be a man. First, because he was too angry and stubborn to grow up. Then because his life was not his own. But finally, because he became too accustomed to behaving like a sullen boy to even consider growing up."

"Idiot man," she muttered.

But he heard. And he heard the longing and the affection, and that was enough to give him... No, he wouldn't even think the word. Severus stepped into the room, and she turned as he reached her.

"I am sorry, Hermione. What I almost did was unforgiveable, but I hope you will forgive me, anyway."

"We can't make a Violet." Eyes wide with trepidation, she chewed her lower lip. "It's too late for that."

He smirked, and then he decided to take a risk. If she planned to stay, she'd really have to get used to it.

"If you apply your supposedly prodigious intellect to the matter, you will find 'Ellen' is a suitable tribute to both our dams. Don't get any ridiculous ideas about having 'Abbuses', either," he said before finally giving in to the desire to pull her to him. "Besides, flower names are overrated."

The arms about his waist tightened as if she were acknowledging his blatant lie.

"I wouldn't have tried to tweak the curse and find her, you know," he said because he both loved and hated that she so easily saw through him – and because he couldn't resist getting in one last dig; he was certain the rest of his life wouldn't offer many such opportunities.

"I never believed you would." Her voice was muffled against his chest. Not that it stopped him hearing and understanding every word. "That was the other Severuses' concern."

"Because she wouldn't have been my Lily, and I wouldn't have been her Sev," he went on as if she hadn't spoken. "And don't get any ideas about calling me 'Sev' just because you're my Hermione."

His Hermione pushed back just enough so she could tilt her head to look up at him.

"All right," she said. "As long as you remember you're mine, as well."

A/N: That's all, folks. The last gasp.

I must offer huge thanks to Wildcat for her generous support and approval in writing a story based (and referencing!) her story, A Roll of the Dice. I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that linlawless made this story better than it was when she came in and started beta reading halfway through.

Finally, thank you, the readers, for sticking by me, even when the re-writers got, er, sticky!