Peaceful Shores

The sun was warm, the sand soft under the blanket, and the sound of the surf as comforting as the pounding of a mother’s heartbeat heard from the womb. Hermione sprawled in lazy abandon underneath a huge beach umbrella; it was a concession to the pale complexion of the man who lay close by her side, the fingers of one hand tangled loosely in her own. She was in no hurry to go anywhere else, despite the draw of the surf surging against the shoreline.

A few months had passed since Voldemort’s fall and Hermione’s night of complete despair, when she had thought her Severus gone forever. Yet Hermione still had an almost unconscious need to touch Severus constantly. It was as if the proof before her eyes was not quite enough to satisfy her of his continued existence. For the most part, the touches were more casual than needy; a hand on his knee or arm, the brush of her fingers as she tucked his untidy hair away from his face, and the almost necessary feeling of her fingers twined with his whenever they were side-by-side.

Inexplicably, her once distant professor seemed perfectly at ease with all of this touching. Perhaps Severus, too, felt some need to remind himself that he was alive—that he was loved. Indeed, the only time he had brought her to task for her gentle and near constant assault on his person was when he returned to teaching Potions after Voldemort’s death and Hermione was once again a student in his class. Severus had patiently taken Hermione aside to discuss the matter. While he couldn’t be arsed if she touched him anywhere else—the Great Hall, the corridors, even before the entire Board of Governors for the school—she simply had to try to stop pawing him in class.

Hermione had been mortified. She’d no idea that she had been touching him during class time. Once Severus had pointed it out, Hermione had found herself literally having to sit on her hands to keep from winding her fingers in his robes as he swept past her worktable during Potions class.

When the war had ended, and classes had resumed, the remaining few months of Hermione’s last year of school had been decidedly odd. Neither she nor Severus had made any attempt to hide the fact that they cared for one another from the rest of the school. Certainly there had been no snogging in the corridors, but they were often to be seen walking arm in arm, sharing quiet discussions, laughing, smiling. The mere sight of the dreaded Potion master smiling caused quite a stir among the students. Generally, they treated him warily, as if he’d gone barking mad.

Perhaps he had, at that. In class, Severus Snape was just as exacting in his standards as he had ever been. However, Severus did behave differently, seeming almost manic at times. An exploded cauldron which caused any harm to the class room or the other students would result in the usual shouting and detentions. But if the accident caused no harm, Severus was as likely to dissolve into riotous laughter as he was to take points.

The students who witnessed this tended to gape at him in shock and mutter to each other that the stresses of the war must have driven him insane. Rather than attempting to take advantage of their Potions Professor’s better humor, his mercurial moods made the students more wary of him than ever before, and they were even more quiet and studious in his classroom than they had been before the end of the war.

That hadn’t been the only change. After Severus had been released from the infirmary, Hermione had returned to classes. At the end of her first day back, she had skipped dinner to go up to Gryffindor Tower and pack all of her belongings. With her arms full of Crookshanks and her trunk floating obediently before her, Hermione had then marched straight down to the dungeons and into Severus’ study.

All this she had done without even really thinking about it. Indeed, Hermione had not even considered Severus’ reaction to her arriving in his rooms with everything she possessed. Wide eyed, she regarded him with trepidation as he sat blinking at her in surprise. He never said a word about it; he simply walked into his bedroom and calmly charmed his wardrobe and dresser larger so that she would have room for her things. Then he had tossed Crookshanks unceremoniously out of the bedroom and taken her to bed.

In the morning, Hermione had gotten up early to begin putting her things away. While she unpacked, Severus had sat, naked on the bed, thumbing through one of her books.

“Hermione?” he’d said, his voice deceptively mild.

Here it comes, Hermione thought, almost panicking, “the big discussion…”

“I believe that if we are going to cohabitate while you are still a student,” he said, in an almost off-hand manner, “we really ought to file a statement of formal betrothal with the Ministry.”

Severus hadn’t even looked at Hermione; in fact, he was still lazily thumbing through her book as he waited for her to speak. After a moment, Hermione had simply said, “All right.”

Then he had looked at her, his eyes flashing with fire. He then proceeded to drag Hermione back to bed where he made her dreadfully late to her Transfiguration class.

Later that same day, Severus had produced the necessary Ministry form and it had obediently magicked itself away after they had both signed it. That was it. They were officially betrothed.

The last weeks of school had proceeded uneventfully. Both Severus and Hermione spoke casually about getting married, but they had made no concrete plans or set a date. To be honest, though both of them had once been driven and exacting personalities, in the wake of the war, they both felt in no hurry to do anything. True, they spent time discussing magical theories that they wished to someday explore together, and they did brew potions occasionally, but for the most part, they were content to share each other’s company and enjoy their newfound freedom.

This was how they found themselves on a beach in Jamaica. In no hurry to set about deciding what to do for the rest of their lives, when Andrene had invited them to her home for the summer break, the pair had quickly accepted. For the most part, Andrene had left the two lovebirds to their own devices, which suited Severus and Hermione just fine.

Every evening, Andrene demanded their company and dragged them out to a new restaurant, where Severus enjoyed Hermione’s discomfort as well as the food. While Hermione was slowly learning to enjoy more spicy food than she had been used to, she felt she would never learn to like the sorts of dishes which Andrene and Severus ate with relish. Severus assured the young witch that her blandness at table was more than compensated by her spiciness in the bedroom. In any event, it was easily apparent to all who saw the couple that neither found anything lacking in their partner.

Soon, they would head back to Hogwarts. Having decided to teach for one more year so that he and Hermione had time to decide what they wanted to do next, Severus had warned Albus that Hogwarts would need a new Potions Professor the following year. Severus had already privately expressed to Hermione an interest in going into commercial brewing.

That employment would be much more lucrative than teaching. It would give him more free time for research, more time with Hermione, and he could brew anywhere, so the couple could live close to wherever Hermione decided to work. Having received a deluge of job offers, Hermione intended to spend Severus’ last year at Hogwarts exploring her options. At present, the offer to work as an arbiter for Gringott’s seemed the most intriguing, but she was in no hurry to decide.

Her fingers wrapped a little tighter around the hand of the man sprawled lazily at her side. No, there was no hurry at all.