Saepe Creat Molles Aspera Spina Rosas

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or anything recognizable to the HP-Universe; JK Rowling does. I'm not making any money off the writing of this fanfic.

Gibson was at it again. Of all her R&D techs, Imelda Gibson was her most brilliant and inspired thinker. Hermione tried to give her all the latitude she needed to freely create. Unfortunately, Gibson's muse seemed to be less of an angel and more of a horrible shit-spewing demon, and she did her best work late at night on the weekends. This meant that for Hermione, her fantasy of finishing quarterly reports over the weekend was dashed upon the cruel rocks of reality when Gibson blew up the lab. Again.

The containment fields didn't hold, either. A large hole was blasted through the outer cinderblock wall causing Muggle media to speculate that it was an act of urban terrorism. Hermione's working weekend was spent making up press releases, talking to the authorities, and trying to salvage what was left of her experimental potions lab. The only good thing she had to say about the entire debacle was that Imelda had proper warning of the impending explosion and protected herself with a powerful shield and walked away with only a few bruises.

Hopper immediately argued it was a direct result of her utter incompetence, but then Hopper really hadn't produced a single noteworthy invention since joining the company. Hermione was sorely tempted to fire him, not because of his lack of results, but simply on principle. The man was a tiring ass.

Her saving grace was that Lee Jordan was back from leave, meaning he could pick back up on the Charms research that was slipping, but Jordan was having a difficult time concentrating. Every time Hermione visited the floor, Jordan was chatting with another co-worker, pushing pictures of cooing baby Felicity in their faces. In a fit of weary bitchiness, Hermione snapped at him, yelling for him to get his arse back to work. It was not her finest moment.

Not even her assistant, Jake Edwards, whom she leaned heavily upon to be the one to smooth things over, could help her there. Lee immediately took offense and raged that if they hadn't been mates at school, he would have told her to stick the job up where the sun didn't shine long ago.

Stupidly, Hermione shot back that if he really felt that way, he could leave at any time.

And he did.

Bugger, bugger, and double bugger.

Hermione employed twenty five workers, but only six of them were part of the Research and Development lab that she so desperately needed. The rest of her employees were either lab assistants or worked the production line. And though they were all fairly competent and highly skilled, none of them was promotable to R&D.

Lee packed up his desk Monday afternoon, leaving behind a mountain of half-finished research notes and backed-up reports. Hermione didn't know where the hell she was going to find another Charms maverick; she'd pinched Lee away from the twins by throwing extraordinary amounts of Galleons at him. As far as she was concerned, he was irreplaceable.

****

Tuesday evening saw Severus agitatedly pacing his cramped cell like a caged tiger. Occasionally an eye would drift to the bedside calendar clock duo she graciously bestowed upon him so that he could be constantly informed of how long he'd been incarcerated. The clock shuffled between the ledge on the back of the loo and the farthest darkest corner he could find in the deepest of the extendable boxes, depending on his mood.

Given his current mood he was inclined to smash the damn thing as hard as he could into the wall. As much as he yearned for his wand, physically destroying it would be immensely pleasurable. He pondered the effect the enchantments would have if he pitched it through his window. Would it bounce? He'd have to amuse himself destroying the clock cog by cog another time.

They supposedly had an appointment, one that she had even scheduled. Judging by the daylight left, his wife was standing him up. The inconsiderate tart, she knew how he felt about punctuality.

His bed was made, tea and biscuits were set out, he was wearing his new robes, and damn it, Severus had shaved. Did the witch not appreciate what he was putting himself through for her? It had taken all of his will power to gaze into the mirror she had brought for him. Severus had not wanted to see himself, and once he had, he'd regretted it immediately.

It took the better part of several hours to clip his long hanging beard and groom his shaggy hair. Her Good Hair Day product line needed several applications to cut through the cakiness of his matted hair before a comb would run through it properly, but once clean he was able to secure it into a suitable pony tail at the nape of his neck.

Apparently 'Mother Nature' deemed that his best look was the same as his regular every-day look. Her miracle shampoo did not produce a single wave or curl, but it did tingle and smell good. The remnants of his beard were easily swept away by a proper shave with what he now termed his 'wicked little blade.'

Gods, he almost looked presentable if one could get over the fact that he was still rotting in Azkaban.

Severus was close to throwing an all out tantrum when Mulciber's annoying whine called out, "Prisoner 11652, present yourself!"

"About damn time you got here, witch!" Severus obligingly held his arms out wide to demonstrate he wasn't wielding any sharp objects or weapons as much as he would have liked to.

As the wards dropped the door swung open. Severus saw her worn brown leather satchel, nearly bursting at the seams first before Hermione followed lumbering behind it. Severus easily recognized the satchel as the kind purported to hold anything and everything; he curiously wondered how she had gotten it so stuffed to the gills that she could barely manage it. Perhaps she really was moving out of her flat and had packed up the household into it.

"Sorry! Sorry! I know I'm late. I hate being late. I hope you're not too put out."

Hermione dropped her satchel with a heavy thud and a wince before looking up at Severus.

"Oh my..." She gaped. "You're dressed."

"And you're not," Severus said smugly.

If it was at all possible, the witch looked worse for wear than he'd ever seen her, the week before O.W.Ls included. All her perfect spiral curls had fallen out and resumed their unmanageable fly-away appearance. Her glamours weren't holding. The tell-tale shimmers around her face and eyes obviously meant she didn't have the energy to properly sustain them. And Hermione's navy robes were rumpled, and if Severus had to guess, he figured she had definitely slept in them. The only question was for how many days.

Hermione collapsed ungracefully into his leather armchair while Severus again sat on the bed.

"Please, I couldn't really give a rat's arse how I look." She gave him a shy sweet smile. "But I really didn't mean to be rude. You look very nice tonight."

Hermione fought herself not to call him 'Professor,' but that was exactly how he appeared. The haggard pirate was gone, and Hermione was staring at her Potions professor.

The wizarding world had given her vocabulary for colors. There was Inferi white, Killing-Curse acid green, and Voldemort vermilion. None of those were quite as indelibly inscribed on her psyche as Snape black. Seeing him again in his black robes caused Hermione to fight the natural instinct to punctuate every statement with 'Sir. Yes, sir.'

"Thank you. I was hoping we might have a civilized evening." He gestured to the small tea service.

"That sounds perfect right about now." Hermione was literally too tired to argue. If he had suggested they spend the evening making sock puppets and playing gobstones, she doubted she'd have the energy to say no.

As the delicate warm Assam brew eased down her throat, Hermione relaxed further into the cushions. It was absolute heaven just to sit and do f-all nothing, even if the moment wasn't meant to last. Hermione didn't allow herself much more than a minute. While Severus offered her a small plate of wafer thin orange spice biscuits, Hermione was already digging around in her satchel looking for the correct over-filled three ring binder.

Her binders were organized by subject matter and then further subdivided in several categories; backburner-working, currently-working, immediately-working, and you-had-better-get-your-tail-on-this-right-away-working. For some reason all of her work was currently flagged in the latter category. She was thinking of another category of: you-idiot-why-haven't-you-worked-this-working.

For his part, Severus stared at her agog. How dare she? The witch had no right to come into his home (for lack of a better word) and proceed to do homework. She was on his time.

"Put that away," he growled, throwing the plate of biscuits a bit violently on his bedspread. There'd be crumbs there tonight, but he didn't give a damn.

"Huh? Wha--?"

Hermione looked up at him, her silver wire rim reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, threatening to fall off. Her mum had always warned her that reading in the dark would catch up with her, but she had never suspected that it would take place so early in life.

"Are you deaf in addition to blind, Granger? I said put that away. This is not a library."

Hermione narrowed her eyes, "Who the hell are you to dictate how I spent my hour with you? I've got real work to do, so if you please, leave me to it, and I'll leave you to your tea and biscuits!"

"Granger," he growled out deep and menacingly, "do not make me repeat myself. Put the work away. We are going to attempt to have a normal, civilized evening like normal, civilized people." He held out his hand daring her to say 'no,' and Hermione reluctantly passed him her satchel.

In a more quiet voice Severus asked, "Can you really not spare an hour?"

Hermione slowly shook her head, pulling the spectacles from her nose. She slumped defeated into the chair.

"What happened?" he asked gingerly.

"Do you really want to hear it? I'm sure I'll just bore you to tears."

Severus raised a single sublime eyebrow, "Madam, do I look like someone who's easily moved to tears?"

Closing her eyes, Hermione began her story with the explosion that disrupted her lab, fried a critical hard drive, and caused her to lose all sleep that weekend. Never mind the fact that she had to give multiple statements to the authorities and reporters that she was NOT running a meth-lab (Severus didn't ask). The blast was large enough and witnessed by Muggles who had camera phones, so Ministry Obliviators weren't even able to be called in before it hit the evening news. Instead, they quickly made up a story about a storage locker filled with medical oxygen tanks and employed lots of Fascination Charms for a distraction.

Severus followed intently as she described the falling out with Jordan and what it meant to her Charms department. She hadn't begun searching for someone to take his place, but it became evident that she didn't even have the time to hold interviews. Instead, Hermione was shouldering the burden. Her ranting about quarterly reports, production meetings and supply chain woes began to break down as Hermione ran out of steam. She was holding on to her sanity by a quickly unraveling thread.

Severus was stumped when the tears finally broke from her misty eyes. He'd seen more than his share of school children crying, but somehow handing her a tissue and telling her to get to class didn't sit right. He'd been patient with his own House, fatherly, indulgent even, but was uncertain if Hermione would react favorably to coddling. Then again, the witch seemed to need a bit of coddling. And to his own astonishment, he wanted to soothe her. She was his wife, his responsibility. Fuck. That meant he probably should attempt to do something nice for her.

Hermione barely registered being picked up out of the armchair, but when his warm strong arms wrapped around her, Hermione could not have cared less that she was sitting in his lap like a small child and just allowed herself the divine luxury of having a good hard cry. And cry she did until she tuckered herself out from the sheer exhaustion of letting it all out. Hermione fell into such an exhausted sleep that she didn't stir when he put her to bed.

As she slept her glamours slipped and Severus could only shake his head. Hermione was doing her best human-bowtruckle impression. Why was it that a woman with a life ahead of her and all the opportunity in the world looked worse than an Azkaban prisoner?

*****

In the very early hours of the day, long before the sun announced its presence through his window, Severus sat in his armchair lost in paperwork. The night had been an exercise in will-power for him. Hermione had cried herself out, and when he realized she was out like a light, he put her to bed. It was the decent thing to do. The witch needed her sleep, but Severus was certain he'd catch all sorts of unholy hell for it.

With his wife soundly asleep, her wand was left completely unattended, and Severus found himself staring at it intently. He wasn't supposed to touch it. He didn't even know if it'd work for him. Or if the wards would go off if he attempted to use it, but his fingers itched. It had been so long since he'd felt magic thrum through his body.

The temptation proved too great.

As Severus picked up her discarded wand, he easily felt connected to the wand. It didn't channel power as his own wand so easily did, but it was there. With a hoarse voice Severus Snape quietly intoned his first real spell in years, "Lumos."

By wandlight he read. And read. Severus soaked up as much as he could as he sifted through product reports, market analyses, research updates, and proposals.

He just couldn't help himself. The temptation again proved too great. Taking the self-inking quill up in his hand, Severus furiously began the task of marking parchment as if grading a third-year's Potions essay. And by the gods it felt good.

He learned quite a bit about Granger Industries and was heartily impressed, but going through her satchel yielded other shockers. He was already quite aware that a man could tell a lot about a woman just by what she carried in her purse, and Severus was thoroughly unsurprised to find all sorts of womanly trinkets, filing cabinets, journals, 'emergency' whatnots, and... a tent? The bottom of her satchel - if it truly were the bottom, Severus wasn't quite convinced - was littered with oodles and oodles of tatty, frayed, and broken-nibbed quills, gum wrappers, and assorted loose coinage.

What had him most dumbfounded, though, was a small black case containing medical supplies. Apparently, Hermione kept a First Aid kit worthy of an entire paramedics team on her at all times. Again, interesting, but not noteworthy given how paranoid the girl tended to be. No, what caught his immediate attention were her prescription potions. She carried enough potions to stock Poppy for a term. The case contained: Migraine-Be-Gone, Femi-all Pain reliever, Heartburn and Indigestion suppressants, and Anti-depressants.

Lots of Anti-depressants.

By the looks of it, Non Solum Noctus, more commonly known by the street name, 'Liquid Sunshine,' for the physiological effect it had on the imbiber.

Severus pulled a tiny bottle of the whiskey-colored brew from the case, and it immediately resized itself to fit in the palm of his hand. Pulling the stopper, Severus took a good whiff and coughed. He had to spare a glance towards the soundly sleeping witch curled up in bed to make sure she didn't stir. No, Hermione was out.

"Shit," he muttered under his breath. He wasn't entirely sure who was brewing her anti-depressants, but she was certainly paying him some serious Galleons for them, given their potency. It was enough happy juice to make a Dementor produce its own Patronus.

No wonder the witch was unconcerned about her sex drive; it was non-existent. As far as he was aware (and unless there had been some major breakthrough in potions research in the last five years - which he highly doubted), no Potions master had been able to perfect an anti-depressant that didn't inhibit sexual desire.

Pleasure, happiness, and the brain's synaptic responses to both were a tight, closely bundled knot. Messing with one area caused a sympathetic or overcompensation from another. And as amazing as the brain was, it often had a difficult time of keeping confusing nervous system messages straight. Hence, he reflected with a wry grin, the juxtaposition between a little bit of pain thrown in with pleasure heightened a sexual act.

But not for Hermione. She was of course, as previously stated in their contract negotiations, a frigid bitch.

'Oh, well,' he resigned himself, 'it's not like I could have her anyway.'

****

Instead of waking up with a jerk to the sound of her blaring alarm clock, Hermione snuggled deeper into her soft duvet. She was holding on to the wonderful sensation of being just on the cusp of sleep and awareness. Any minute now, her alarm or chirping crackberry would break her peace, but she was bound and determined to enjoy the warm, comfy feeling as long as it lasted.

There was a slightly odd feeling nudging her at the back of her brain, registering that something was wrong, but Hermione mentally shooed it away. The sheets were so soft and smelled slightly of herbal soap that she couldn't help but want to wrap herself deeper in them and shut the rest of the world out.

When her eyelids finally relinquished their evening duties, Hermione gasped to notice how bright the light was that hit her eyes. She always woke before the sun was up. The second thing she noticed was her sheets were a honey taupe. That was funny... her bedclothes were pale blue.

Hermione bolted upright in bed.

"You!" she screeched.

Severus peered over the top of a folder to acknowledge the witch was finally up. "Yes, and hello to you, too," he said easily.

"You let me... Oh, I can't believe you... you... you... evil man. What were you thinking? Wait!" Hermione held up her hand, "What time is it?"

Severus only shrugged; it was sometime after breakfast and before lunch. Though by the slight whine of his stomach, lunch should be coming around fairly soon. "You're the one with the wristwatch, Hermione."

Of course. After a quick glance at her watch Hermione jumped out of bed. "How dare you let me sleep 'til noon!" she raged. "Do you have any idea how important today is? You can't possibly know how much you've ruined my day. What were you thinking, letting me sleep here?"

Again, Severus shrugged his shoulders. If only because it infuriated her. "Don't get snippy with me, Madam. I was the one forced to surrender my cot to you. You could at least give me the common courtesy of thanking me for it. You were certainly in no shape to Apparate last night, and I'd say the sleep has done you a world of good."

"Good? Good? What the hell would you know what's good for me? I've missed half the day, you moron. This will set me back weeks! Weeks!"

Hermione made a grab for the piles of parchment and notebooks Severus had laid on the floor, hastily shoving them in her satchel.

Calmly Severus replied, "You've only missed the daily planning meeting and production conference call, though I'm not exactly certain what a conference call is."

"And that's another thing!" she hissed, parchment clutched in her fist. "You had no right - no right! - to go through my stuff. Just where the hell do you get off, reading my intellectual property? These are trade secrets. I could sue you for this!"

Severus shrugged again, enjoying the way her eyes narrowed each time he did. "Go ahead, take me to court. You've already got my house. What else can you do to me? Extend my life sentence?"

A/N:

Chapter title: Saepe Creat Molles Aspera Spina Rosas - Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses.

Potion Name: Non Solum Noctus – Not by night alone

The chapter title comes from Ovid as a nod to Snape's nature. Though I don't know if he'd approve of the sentiment... or the rose reference.