Chapter Seven

CHAPTER SEVEN

...

"AAAAAUGH! Your NOSE!!" Bags dropping at her feet, Hermione stared at Severus' face in dismayed shock. "What did you do to your nose?!"

"Shhh!" Grimacing, Severus shrunk and pocketed her bags, visibly trying not to draw any further attention from the other travelers in Sasquatch Square's North American Portkey Station. "We can talk about it after we get you home."

Hermione didn't care. "David S. Miller, you will tell me what in Merlin's greasy green undershorts you were thinking, to have messed with your nose!"

Grabbing her around the waist, Severus hauled her out of the Portkey Arrivals Platform and over to the Apparations Zone, giving her no further chance to protest. Thankfully, the wizarding population here in the States was a lot more laid-back about shrieking foreign nationals, for he managed to hustle her into the Zone and Side-Apparate her from their view, and any possible chance for eavesdropping.

Arriving with a bamphf in their front hall, Hermione elbowed him in the ribs. His grunt of pain made her feel guilt for hurting him, and satisfaction that her point had been made. Released from his grip, she rounded on him in the entryway of the house they had bought in the forest-shrouded suburbs of the Greater Seattle Area.

Sasquatch High wasn't run like an English boarding school, where its students lived on campus; these American pupils wore Portkey class rings that popped them to the school and back home again each day. To serve a detention, the teacher assigning it had to 'interrupt' the return-spell on the rings, delaying it for a specific span of time. The beauty of the system was that the teachers were not obligated to live at the school, either, granting them a private life...though Severus and Hermione both missed the pre-made breakfasts and suppers they used to enjoy back at Hogwarts.

It was her private life that had her so upset right now. "Severus, why did you mess with your nose?" Hermione demanded. "It doesn't look at all like it should!"

"That is precisely my point. I didn't know whether or not anyone would follow you...so I scheduled a visit with a perma-transfigurations Healer while you were gone, and had my nose resized," he explained, rubbing the broadened, blunted tip of his proboscis with a finger. "The shape of it has been one of the defining feature of my face since I was a child. With my nose redone...and some of my skin tightened, to make me look younger...I don't look like myself," Severus asserted. He shifted his fingers to his thumb-length, stylishly cut locks. "It is simply another measure to bury my old identity, the same as with my haircut, and the colour of my clothes."

"But..." His logic was impeccable...drat him!...but she still had to protest. "But your nose was perfect!"

He looked down the length his now aquiline nose at her. "Hermione, you are the only person in this entire world who has ever thought that...and you never said it, until now. How could it possibly have been perfect?"

Cheeks heating, Hermione muttered and prevaricated, then caved under the weight of his dark, pointed stare. "...Because it mashed against my clitoris perfectly, whenever you ate me. And now you've ruined it! I don't know if this new nose is even going to reach my clit, let alone rub it in all the right ways! We're going to have to change everything, particularly some of the suggestions in the Jar!"

Rolling his eyes, Severus gave her a pained look. "Hermione, even if I had a stub of a nose, I would still know how to use it on you...a fact which I will demonstrate shortly. But first, you will tell me how the interview with Shacklebolt went."

"Oh. Right."

"Oh, right," he mocked. "As if my whole future doesn't depend on Kingsley's word!"

"Relax, David. Your secret is safe with him. In fact..." Drawing a bundle of papers out of her coat pocket, she handed them over. "These are your official papers, listing David S. Miller as a former employee of the Department of Mysteries. You will note, of course, just how much of all your 'official' work has been magically blackened out so that it cannot be read...and with the official black-out ink, too, so no spell or solvent can lift it from the paper without the proper command-spell to authorize reading it."

Flicking through the pages, Severus frowned at the pages of line after line of text-broad black lines, completely obscuring the contents. Only a few words here and there escaped the official black-out ink, most being words along the lines of "the", "of", and "and"...plus a few more along the lines of "indisputable hero", "nation's gratitude", and "highest esteem".

Glancing up at him, Hermione found his dark eyes glittering. A moment later, he released one hand from the sheaf so that he could rub at the edges of his lids. Carefully keeping her mouth shut...she knew he hated being thought of as sentimental...she let him master his emotions at his own pace.

"He couldn't acknowledge it openly, but he still wanted to thank me..."

Hermione smiled at his muttered words, glad her beloved was able to accept the indirect praise so well. "I thought it was wonderful. And it'll make a nice replacement for those forged papers we initially submitted to the school board. Of course, in my defence, I was authorized to deputize anyone suitable in the course of my work, so what I wrote about you was perfectly legitimate, from a certain point of view."

"You would hardly have been my superior, woman, had I truly worked for the Department of Mysteries," he retorted, setting the papers on the entryway table. "My years of spying would have granted me instant seniority over most of the Department."

"Ha! You wish," she teased. Then tugged him close. "I need you to kiss me. It's been too long, and I've missed you too much."

"And I, you."

Cupping her face in his palms, Severus brushed his lips against hers for just a moment, before deepening the kiss to the point of plundering. His nose no longer pushed awkwardly against her cheek...and in a strange way, she missed that...but this was still her Severus, kissing her as he'd always kissed her. With a mixture of passion, tenderness, intensity, and love.

It did feel odd without the point of his nose pressing into her flesh, bumping against hers as he shifted to nip at the other corner of her mouth...but it also felt good. Less distracting. Melting into his embrace, Hermione tugged at the buttons of his blue shirt. Her shock over his nose had prevented her from greeting him as she had wanted to, with a deep, loving kiss, but this was better. They were at home, alone, with the rest of the weekend to enjoy their reunion.

Four weeks was three weeks and six days too long to be apart. He might not have wanted to be parted from her because of his memories of her sitting in his attic, speeding through time, but she hadn't had to endure anything longer than a few hours of separation over the last few years. She needed to feel his olive-tanned skin under her hands, to reassure herself not just that he was alive, but that he was still hers. Particularly now that time had resumed its natural course.

That was one worry that continued to lurk under the surface of her thoughts. Now that their time together had caught up with the timeline they should have been inhabiting all along. would he still want to be with her? Would he still want to spend his days conversing with her in intellectual discourse, and his nights convulsing with her in physical intercourse? Would he...pull her down with him to the runner carpet, tug impatiently at her clothes, and finally whisk them away with a snap of his hastily drawn wand so that he could devour her from breasts to bottom with his eyes, his hands, his lips?

That's why they...ohhh, yesss...call them rhetorical questions...ohhh, God, yes!

The feel of his fingers delving through her folds brought back so many good memories of how good a lover he was. Twisting his hand, he curled his first two fingers upward and fluttered. Hermione convulsed with pleasure, clutching at him. Wet warmth trickled out of her depths, slicked her flesh, coated his fingers to the knuckles.

He had rendered himself naked at the same time as her; his body was no longer pale, save for the span of skin from waist to knee where his shorts covered the pertinent, sallow-pale portions of his flesh. Now his nude, exercise-strengthened limbs curled and flexed, slotting his hips between them. Extracting his hand, he sucked her juices from his fingers even as he prodded at her folds with a different, much thicker bit of flesh.

Sinking home...and it did feel like he was coming home, to Hermione...Severus cradled her head in his palms. He didn't move from the waist down, just from the neck up. Twisting his head this way and that, he devoured her mouth from every succulent angle he could find. This, too, was familiar; they had learnt through trial and error that if he moved too much, too soon, it was usually over too fast.

Carefully, she spread her thighs. Lifting her knees, she tilted her pelvis up into him in slow, abdomen-clenching degrees, until he sank just that little bit deeper. Perfection. Knees hitched high on his sides, Hermione crossed her ankles behind his rump. That straightened out her lower back, taking some of the pressure off her spine. It also ground her clitoris into his pubic mound.

Releasing her mouth, he nipped at her right ear. Hermione clutched at him, heels pressing lightly to encourage him to move. But he didn't; not yet. Words rasped from him, rough with emotion as well as passion.

"I was very, very good, while you were gone," Severus told her. "I wanted to follow you, desperately wanted to join you, to spy on you, to keep you safe, and keep you away from that freckled twit you used to date. Just in case he changed his mind about you, and tried to change yours...but I didn't. I stayed here. I had faith in you. I do have faith in you, that you're mine and that you want to be mine... I was very, very good."

"Yes, you were," Hermione praised him, twisting so that she could kiss the corner of his mouth, the part she could reach.

"It was unbearable, for you weren't even sitting in my attic, this time...but I trusted you would return. The pain of having my nose reshaped was nothing compared to the pain of waiting for you."

"At least you had some practice in waiting," she muttered, licking her way to his ear. "I hadn't been apart from you since I rescued you. But...it was a good visit. And I packed up my old life, sold off everything I didn't want... Crooks was rather mad when I got back to him; he's half-Kneazle, and somehow knew I'd been gone a long time. He's still going to be mad, because he's sitting at Wizarding Customs, waiting to go through his quarantine weeks. I had to keep myself furiously busy with everything, just to keep from missing you too much."

"And the freckled twit?" Severus asked quietly, pulling back so he could search her face intensely. "Did you miss him? Were you happy to see him?"

She chuckled, amused and flattered by his carefully contained jealousy. "Only somewhat. He was still bubbling over some date with Katie Bell that I'd forgotten he was having. It only made me think of you, and the things we've done. I missed you terribly. I told him about corresponding with a David Miller, and how I planned to 'move out here', and he tried to go all heavy-handed-thug on me, wanting to know all about you and what your intentions were."

A small smile curled the corner of his mouth, not quite shy but not quite smug, either. "Strictly honourable. Summer needs to hurry...did you keep the Time-Turner, or did you hand it in?"

She laughed outright at that. "You know I had to turn it in! Besides, I can only turn it as far forward as I myself have lived."

Closing his eyes, he groaned softly. "God...laugh like that again."

Hermione chuckled, amused at the temerity of being ordered to laugh. She realized after a moment that he meant the way her stomach muscles tightened, and deliberately squeezed the flesh impaling her. Growling, Severus gripped her hair and devoured her mouth, finally galvanized into moving within her.

As wonderful as it was to talk with each other, to actually communicate whilst making love, they were both too passionate by nature to stick with mere words forever. He picked up speed faster than she expected, however; pounding into her, Severus rapidly brought himself to climax, stiffening and groaning over her. A few last, fast thrusts, and he pulled back, wriggling free of her clutching, disappointed grasp.

"Severus...dammit, I was so close!" she whinged. She struggled up onto one elbow, trying to grab him to pull him back up into her, but he moved too far down. Then his hands pressed on her knees, parting her thighs, and she thumped back onto the runner-carpet with the realization of his goal: the application of his lips, his teeth, his tongue, and most especially his altered nose to her nether-parts.

His nose wasn't quite so pointy anymore, true. That meant it didn't quite have the same narrow surface to work with. But it was large enough to still get the job done, and done well enough to pleasure her. Relieved her lover hadn't changed that much in the intervening weeks, Hermione relaxed into his passion-driven care. Her only non-pleasure thought was that they had better retire to the bedroom for round two, later, if they didn't want to end up with rug-burns in awkward-to-explain-away locations.

After all, Monday was a school-day, and both of them had to teach.

If he allowed her to catch her breath.

...

"Damn, I forgot the raspberries." Twisting and stretching, Hermione set the bowl in her hand on the nightstand. Returning to her lover, she stooped over Severus, planting a kiss on his forehead. Her naked breast pressed against his equally bare shoulder, but she didn't give him enough time to shift his hand close enough for a caress. "I'll be right back."

"You're not going to decorate me with the clotted cream, first?" he enquired, giving her a lazy, admiring smile as she rose from their bed.

"I like my cream fresh," she joked.

Glancing down the length of his naked body, Severus smirked. "It will be, if you hurry...."

For a middle-aged man who had just endured yet another horrid Friday in the ongoing struggle to stuff knowledge into the minds of unappreciative teenagers, her husband-to-be was remarkably randy, today. Then again, he did like "edible art day," particularly when he was her canvas.

Rather than risk gradually taking each other for granted, Severus had proposed in their first year together that they write down a whole slough of fantasies, from the simplest and most publically acceptable ones, to the ones so salacious that they still made her blush to contemplate. Once a week, each of them drew one of the scraps of paper out of a blackened jar, or the Jar for short. If it was something simple, such as bringing their partner a bouquet of flowers or buying them a new book, they just did it whenever and surprised the other. If it was something lengthy or involved...such as today's "edible art" experiment...they checked their schedules and planned for it in advance.

There was something to be said for spontaneity, yes, but there was nothing quite like anticipation, either.

Snagging his shirt from the floor, she pulled it over her head. She wasn't petite, but he was tall; the cuffs drooped over her knuckles and the scooped hemline fell halfway to her knees. It was also still slightly warm from his body, and it smelled of him. Cupping the collar points, she sniffed at the fabric appreciatively, turning her head first one way, then the other as she padded out of the bedroom.

Happy, she skipped down the steps to the ground floor, enjoying the plush new carpet covering them. The colour was a lovely tawny cream, making her wonder if she should grab a bottle of bubbly to drizzle over her lover, or if that would simply dilute the clotted cream, hazelnut-chocolate spread, and candied orange peels she already had waiting on the nightstand. Just as she passed the archway leading to the sitting room, however, a flare of greenish light from within the room startled her.

Whipping around, Hermione pressed herself flat against the archway, groping at the back of her head for her wand...which was on the nightstand upstairs, not stuck in her knotted-up curls. Teeth bared in a grimace, she peered cautiously into the living room. Two wizards finished stepping out of the fireplace, shaking soot from their clothes. One had messy black hair which had never been fully tamed in his life, while the other had carroty-red hair cropped stylishly shorter than she last remembered it. Green and blue eyes looked up, glanced around, and caught sight of her peering into the front room.

"Hey! Hermione!" Harry grinned at her and spread his hands, indicating his presence in her living room. "Look who's come for a visit!"

Acutely aware of her nearly naked state...sans undergarments and wearing a shirt that suddenly seemed far too small for decency, for all its true owner was larger than her by several inches...Hermione weakly smiled back at them. Her face felt like it was burning up, though she tried to act nonchalant. "Erm...Ron, Harry. It's, er, good to see you."

Ruffling his locks to get the last of the soot off his scalp, Ron eyed her askance. "Oy, that's a bit lower-key than I'd expected. Aren't you happy to see us?"

"Yeah, we came all the way out from England just to visit with you," Harry added, moving forward.

Ron frowned as Hermione shrank back a little from the edge of the archway. "What's wrong?"

"Erm...you caught me at a very awkward moment. If you'd just, you know...turn your backs for three seconds, I'll dash upstairs, get myself presentable, and be right back down for a proper greeting. Promise," she added.

That familiar, freckled brow wrinkled further, then cleared with wide-eyed comprehension. Blushing, Ron quickly turned his back. He nudged Harry with his elbow, until the other wizard blushed, realizing what Hermione meant. With both of her old friends muttering something that sounded like, "...scrub the brain...scrub the brain..." she dashed for the stairs.

Severus lurked at the top, trousers hastily donned and wand ready in his hand. Slowing as she reached the top, Hermione glanced briefly down the steps, addressing him in a whisper. "They don't know you're here. If you cast a Muffliato and then Apparated..."

Wrinkling his reshaped nose, looking very reluctant, Severus shook his head. "No," he muttered back. "I have to face them at some point. They were pains in my neck...but they are a part of your life. Just...give me a few minutes to get into character, as it were. And to get dressed. I trust you will be doing the same?"

Hermione shuddered. "Trust me, I want to be fully clothed. I cannot believe I used to want to date Ron. Great friend, absolutely. Great lover...not a chance. I won't settle for anything less, now that I've had the best."

Smiling softly at the compliment, Severus escorted her back into their bedroom. As she found and redonned her work clothes, a tasteful skirt-suit in a lovely shade of dark blue, he dug out a pair of faded bluejeans and a pale blue teeshirt bearing the logo of the local wizarding wireless station. He added a white-and-tan plaid shirt on top of it for an impromptu, unbuttoned jacket. Slipping his sockless feet into brown leather boat shoes, he checked his appearance in the broad mirror covering the sliding door of their closet.

Hermione eyed him askance, before realizing he had worn a navy blue suit for teaching today. Navy blue was too close to black, and a suit was too close to formal teaching robes. That makes more sense, changing into something utterly unlike Professor Snape.

Quickly stripping off her outer clothes, she grabbed a pair of jeans for herself, dithered a moment, then redonned his white shirt, tucking the long ends into the stonewashed denim waistband. Severus pulled her close for a quick kiss, then breathed deeply and calmly, visibly rewriting himself from being at-home-Severus to in-public-David. Much like she used to do whenever she had turned herself into Cindy, back before rescuing him.

Mindful of the food still waiting for them on the dresser, Hermione fetched her wand and cast a preserving charm on the clotted cream. Knowing Severus, or rather, David would follow her when he was ready, she took herself back downstairs, padding over the carpet once more. This time, the only reddish object waiting for her was the youngest male Weasley, and not one of those small, plastic crates of raspberries.

"So...erm... David will be down in just a moment or two," Hermione offered, gesturing vaguely behind her before tucking her fingers into her back pockets. "How is Ginny doing? And the others?"

"Everyone's fine," Harry reassured her. "They're all waiting to finally meet him, of course, but Ron and I thought we'd be the advance scouts, so to speak. That, and Ginny couldn't get off until Sunday, since she's working an odd shift at St. Mungo's right now. We all miss you...Teddy's grown another two inches since you've been gone. Or so it seems."

"You'd think he was eating his nana out of house and home, from the way Mrs. Tonks carries on," Ron joked. "Speaking of eating...got any tea? I'm a bit parched from the Floo. I think I got some soot in my lungs somewhere near the chimneys of Nebraska or something."

"Nebraska, gentlemen, is two thousand miles away, give or take."

The voice that drew their attention to the hallway didn't have the familiar hiss and mutter. Instead, though it was a little dry, it was warm...and Americanized. David Miller flashed the Boy Who Lived and his best friend a tooth-straightened grin. "But I'll admit the air in Montana chimneys is a little dry. You have the red hair, so you must be Ron Weasley."

Ron nodded, briefly clasping David's hand. "Yeah, I am. You're, um, Daniel, right?"

"David. David Miller. And you have the glasses, so you must be Harry Potter." He held out his hand to the younger man.

Harry accepted it with a lopsided smile. "Well, that's a refreshing change from 'you have the scar', I'll admit."

"Don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful for what you did, regarding the Dark Lord," David admitted candidly. "But Hermione told me how she used to repair your glasses, and that's what stuck out in my mind...the fact that you're her friend."

Harry grinned and shook the older wizard's hand with more enthusiasm. "Thank you...I really couldn't have done anything without her and Ron's help. And I miss her. As a best friend. I hope you're taking good care of her, for us."

"I'd like to know how she ended up with an older man, myself," Ron muttered. Harry shot him an annoyed look, following it up with a jab of his elbow. Ron grunted and frowned. "What? I'm just looking out for her! I might not want to date her anymore, but that doesn't mean I don't care...speaking of which, you'd better treat her right. We took down the Dark Lord, so we can take down any unwanted ex-boyfriends, too."

"Ronald Bilius Weasley!" Hermione snapped from the doorway to the dining room and the kitchen that lay beyond. "Stop threatening my fiance this instant!"

David grinned and tipped his head toward her. "Yeah, stop threatening me. That's her job."

Both younger wizards stared at him a moment, then choked on their snickers. Harry rolled his eyes, and Ron muttered under his breath, "No comment..."

"Behave, or I'll make you wash up the tea things. Which will be ready in a few more minutes. David, if you think you can entertain these two louts, I'll dig out some biscuits to go with the tea," Hermione stated, catching his eye. Her words were banal, light and friendly, and she tried to match her expression, but she needed his reassurance that he could keep up the pretence of being David Millar.

He nodded, holding her gaze. "Oh, I think I can keep them entertained. Don't use up all the raspberries, if you bring out any fruit with those cookies."

Relieved he was holding her own...and amused her two friends were such thickies...Hermione headed back into the kitchen. The success of his disguise was a relief. The old Severus Snape her friends remembered was so far removed from the David Miller he had become, she doubted they would ever catch on. Which is utterly fine by me, she thought, searching for the tea biscuits and a tray to serve them. He's earned his anonymity. Even more than Harry, he's earned the right to be free from all those old reputations.

I'm definitely going to have to reward him for getting along with my friends...ooh, an unopened bottle of toffee sauce! I forgot that was in this cupboard. I do believe I know how I'll thank him, after the boys have gone home again...