Overexposure

As always, Shanastay is wonderful. Thank you, my dear, for catching those silly mistakes and syntactical errors.

Chapter 24- Overexposure

After a rather peaceful and relaxing weekend, Severus was not ready to return to his duties as Deputy Headmaster. Actually, he was not ready to return to anything even remotely connected to work, or children, or the bureaucracy of the magical world, nor did he ever think he would be willing to return in a hundred years' time.

Unfortunately, wining and dining a woman would take funds, and that was certainly one thing that he did not have in his arsenal. So, back to teaching it was for what seemed like the rest of his life at this point. He sincerely liked Hermione, if not felt more for her, and he was not going to take a chance losing her to a man who could show her a better time because he had disposable income.

Not that he thought she would be so fickle as to leave him because of monetary issues. The reason she might leave him would be solely because he was no longer working at Hogwarts and was reduced to being a hanger-on, looking for handouts because he was unemployable elsewhere. He was confident that would be the reason she would leave, and he would not blame her if she did leave for that reason. He would have little respect for himself if he were to sink that low.

"Severus?"

He started at the voice coming from the sitting room.

"Are you there, Severus?"

"What the bloody hell does she want this early in the morning?" he muttered to himself, buttoning the last few buttons on his frock coat and running a comb through his lank hair.

"There you are," she said as he stepped out of his bedroom and into the line of sight of the head sitting in his fireplace.

He grumbled, "What is it, Minerva?"

"I'd like to see you in my office before you go to breakfast," she said, her voice rather surly. "Thank you."

Before he could respond, she was gone, and he was left in silence again. What could possibly be so problematic that it could not wait until the faculty meeting later in the day? Or, more troubling, for discussion over breakfast? Finished preparing for the day, he headed out the door and toward the Headmistress' office, wishing to put off this meeting for as long as he possibly could. He stopped to take a few points from a Hufflepuff couple behaving lewdly in the halls and took the long way around through the corridors.

The first thing he heard upon riding the circular stairwell up to the office entrance was Hermione's exasperated voice, cursing in several tongues and speaking unintelligibly otherwise. Had something happened to her? His chest suddenly ached with that thought, and he quickly pushed the door open, not knowing what he would do, if anything, to help her.

Hermione stood in front of Minerva, grasping a Daily Prophet so tightly in her hands that her knuckles were turning white. Her face was a bright red, and her expression was livid. He had never seen her so angry before, barely restrained as her temper was, and he would be lying if her anger and resulting wrath were not frightening things to behold.

"It just arrived," Hermione said, looking up at him as he inched closer. She thrust the paper into his face, too close for him to focus.

He pried her fingers away from the paper to hold it himself, but the moving, smiling faces on the page were enough to alert him to what it was that had Hermione so angry. Looking more closely at the picture and the article, Severus did not know what to say or do. He was, for the first time, utterly speechless and unable to comprehend what this meant. It couldn't be them. No, not at all. They had been completely alone on that beach. He would have felt it if someone else were there and snapping pictures.

Hell, he should have heard it and seen the flash.

His fury began to brim then, though not for the fact that they had been caught. He was angry for the sheer fact that he had been so involved by what was going on between them, and his beautiful, young paramour, that he could not have stopped this overexposure. What was wrong with him anyway? Severus Snape should have been able to sense the presence of gutter snipe.

"I had an early morning Floo visit from the chairman of the Board of Governors, Severus," McGonagall said. "They received their Daily Prophets before we did. The owls hadn't arrived here yet."

"This is ridiculous," he fumed. "How?"

Hermione snorted. "I know who did it. It was Skeeter."

"That isn't who it says it is," Minerva said.

"Oh, trust me, it's her," she seethed. "She has some sort of fascination with me."

"Perhaps they were just looking for a juicy story, Miss Granger," said the Headmistress as she walked around the edge of her desk and sat down. "It is possible, with all other sources of information. You know how it has been for the Weasleys after the War, especially Ronald. It could be your time to be in the light. That is a minus to being Harry Potter's friend."

"I don't care!" Hermione stomped her foot. "This woman is nothing but the basest evil. She doesn't care who she hurts along the way. How did she even find me there?"

"Is there something you haven't told us?" Severus asked evenly, meeting the woman's furious brown eyes.

She grumbled and fell into one of the chairs facing McGonagall and covered her face with her hands. Letting out a short groan, she began. "Do you recall those stories she wrote during the Triwizard cup? All the trouble she caused?"

"Vaguely," he said flatly.

"Well, I captured her in her illegal, unregistered Animagus form," she explained. "It's a beetle. That's how she got all those stories. I had her in a glass jar until we needed that article for The Quibbler. Then I let her out. She has since registered herself. Who knows what she does now to get stories."

"But this clearly is not her name," he remarked.

Hermione shook her head. "Is it so hard to imagine she writes under a different name now? Her credibility was shot a long time ago."

"How did she know where we were?" Snape asked.

"I don't know. There are millions of different possibilities, Severus," she said and ran a hand through her hair. "Oh, Merlin. Why did this have to happen now?"

"Why did it happen at all?"

The third voice startled them from their own worlds, and they turned to look at the stern woman with square spectacles.

"Minerva?"

"I warned you, Severus, that this could get out," Minerva admonished. "I told you not to push forward."

Hermione jumped in before he could. "He didn't push. No one pushed, Minerva. It just happened."

It was a small lie, but a needed one.

"Yes, but he is your superior," scolded the elder witch, giving Snape a pointed glare. "And I have had a conversation with him regarding my policy on workplace romances. He should have discouraged this a while ago."

"You have no right to dictate what we do in our personal time!" Hermione exclaimed, leaning her hands onto the desk and meeting Minerva eye-to-eye. "We're both grown adults."

That ruffled Minerva's feathers, and Severus was definitely not dim-witted enough to jump into the fray between two lionesses locked in a heated argument.

"Yes, you may be, but you are only twenty, Hermione. Severus is forty," Minerva countered. "The Ministry doesn't think this is very good publicity for the school. And neither does the Board of Governors."

"And they definitely may not dictate what we do with our personal lives!" Hermione frowned. "Especially the Ministry. What do you want, Minerva? We took it off school grounds. We were discreet. We had no way of knowing this would happen."

"And what will happen when something happens here?" she asked. "What will happen when your former professor decides to play favorites amongst his colleagues? Weren't you one of those unfortunate Gryffindors who received his wrath when it was Draco who should have been punished? You so disliked his favoritism."

Hermione rolled her eyes, exasperated. "We've discussed that already, and we have come to the conclusion that it won't happen, no matter the circumstances."

Minerva sighed heavily and sat back in her seat. "This is going to cause a rather large problem, and I am not going to stop any disciplinary action or whatever else occurs. As you say, it is your choice. But if this affects our students in any miniscule manner, I will get involved and you will not like the consequences."

"Fine," Hermione said and stood quickly. "I'm going down to breakfast."

Severus glanced at Minerva, who was pinching the bridge of her nose. The elder witch caught his eyes and waved him out of the room after Hermione. As soon as he had stepped out of the door and shut it behind him, Hermione was there, throwing herself into his arms. "I'm so sorry, Severus. I didn't mean for this to happen."

She was on the verge of breaking out into tears.

Oh, Merlin, don't cry. Please, don't cry. I can't deal with women crying. I can't deal with you crying.

"Hermione, I don't know what you're sorry for," he said, trying his hand at tenderness with the sniffling woman resting against him for support.

"This whole thing. If it's not this, it's that. Can't we ever just have peace in our lives?" she asked.

He shook his head and wrapped his arms around her. "You are Hermione Granger, and I am Severus Snape. We were never meant to have peace."

"But this could ruin one, or both, of us and our credibility," she bemoaned.

He let out a low chuckle. "Hermione, my credibility has been damaged and rebuilt so many times in my life, and for much more sordid dealings, that I certainly don't think this is going to ruin it forever. It's fodder, is all it is. After a week they'll forget about us and move on."

"Not if it's Skeeter," she insisted. "She will keeping eating away..."

"Hermione, we'll be fine," he soothed. It was peculiar to soothe rather than berate for a change. He found he strangely liked it.

She sighed and nodded her head. "This is just ridiculous."

"I know," he said.

Hermione fell against him a bit more when the stone stairs started to move downward, but she pushed back from him in an effort to appear separate for whomever had spoken the password at the bottom entrance. There stood Tonks, a rolled up copy of the Prophet in her hands. "I see she already found out."

Severus nodded his head at the brightly-colored witch. "Yes. We've been summarily reprimanded and sent on our way."

Tonks sighed. "Well, she's the least of your problems. You know how news spreads in this castle. Everyone in the Hall knows... and is awaiting your entrance."

"Lovely," Hermione muttered and stepped out into the corridor.

"What are you going to do?" Tonks asked, looking between the both of them.

Hermione sighed. "Get even."

With that, Hermione walked away, pushing her sleeves up to her elbows in a determined fashion. Gods forbid whoever crossed her path this morning. Severus was quite sure that this irate Hermione Granger was not one to tangle with and was definitely the rival to his own moods at the worst of times.

Tonks looked back at him and smiled brightly. "Well, now that I can safely break the secret Hermione and I had about this relationship, may I be the first to say that I'm happy for you?"

"You may." He smirked slightly.

"It looks as though you had quite the night at her place," she remarked and winked at him.

He stepped out into the corridor and straightened his robes. "You haven't any idea."