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A/N: In preparation for objections that some of you may have, I wanted to let my readers know that this story operates under the assumption that wandless Apparition is generally considered not possible.

And since it's my last opportunity to do so, I wanted to thank sshg316, my beta extraordinaire for once again making my work much much better.

Chapter 4

Home

In which they return home.

Snape was stunned at the steadiness of Hermione's gait. Her fingers barely touched the elbow he held out for her as she walked at his side. She had managed to dress herself, although the buttons of her blouse were off by one. He held her close to him nonetheless, both of them walking straight and tall past many curious glances.

It was a good thing he was so close, for once they passed beyond the hospital parking lot and out of sight, her legs buckled immediately.

He scooped her fully into his arms before she could fall, barely noticing the weight. He was careful not to look at her. The warmth of her in his arms and her pounding heart were distracting enough.

Since his face was turned away, she asked her question to his Adam's apple. "Wow. Did I make you stronger as well?"

"No questions from you, Miss Granger. Remember," he said. No, you have made me weaker. You have broken me down completely.

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She had Apparated them to a hospital in the middle of Los Angeles. Therefore, it was a simple matter to check into a nondescript hotel where Snape insisted she would spend many hours resting. She tried to forget her embarrassment at the look on the receptionist's face when Snape had laid her prone form across the front desk and demanded a suite for two.

Her body started shimmering again when he carried her across the threshold and laid her on the bed. He released her as if she was an open flame and was backing out of the bedroom almost before she could speak.

"Wait... please?" she blurted out.

Snape looked downright miserable, but he stopped. Hermione talked fast, ever-conscious of her literally glowing cheeks. "Can you stay with me? You don't have to be right next to me or anything. I just need to hear your voice. With this... this thing that's happening to me... I don't want to be alone.

Snape's hands clenched and unclenched. Hermione could see his body fairly leaning towards the door, desperate to escape.

"You are in no further danger, Miss Granger," he said slowly. "In fact, it would be best if you were free from distractions or stimuli of any kind."

"I don't think so," she said, trying her best not to let her distress show. "Oh, how can I explain... Do you remember the time we worked together in Grimmauld Place?"

"The eight longest months of my life? Certainly I remember."

She frowned, and he noticed. Snape rolled his eyes. "I was not referring to yourself, Miss Granger. You were a more than able assistant."

"What about the time when I mixed the Ashwinder eggs, Runespoor scales and lovage together?"

"And blasted not only my best cauldron but also the stone table underneath into dust? Believe me, I have done my best to blot it from my memory."

Hermione grimaced. He had not been able to protect himself from the glittering shrapnel that had flown at his head. She had barely managed to stop him from bleeding to death.

"It was my incompetence that ruined your face."

"As if there was anything to ruin in the first place."

"Don't say that!" she exclaimed. "I couldn't stand how those witches and wizards stared at you over the past year. There were times that I probably could have managed an Unforgivable, watching them sneering and laughing behind your back when all along the fault was mine."

There. That was it. A year's worth of guilt finally laid bare at his unforgiving feet. Somehow, actually saying it out loud made her feel ridiculous. What Snape said next didn't help.

"Miss Granger, I would have gone mad years ago if I hadn't learned to ignore what anyone thought of me. And as I recall, it was your explosive concoction that was the key to destroying Voldemort. You are the reason he is currently in several hundred pieces on the floor of the North Sea. A slightly uglier face is a pittance for me to pay."

He sounded bemused, and that just made her even more upset. "I don't understand you. You should be furious at me and holding a grudge for years. Merlin knows you're good at that. You shouldn't be listening to me going into hysterics over being alone because it feels like that day I blew up Grimmauld Place. Except now it's all in my head – all jagged edges and loud noises. Whatever this is that's tearing me apart from inside, I'm scared. And I know it's probably no use telling you because you'll just tell me to deal with it. But I could really use some pointless reassurance right now. And – and I'm sorry. You didn't sign up to deal with hysterical females, so I'm going to shut up now." With that, she wrapped her arms around her knees and buried her forehead in her hands. She scrunched her eyes tightly closed against the brightness of her glowing skin.

She held her breath, fighting back sobs and dreading his reply. Then she heard a creak as he sat down in the chair about a meter away from the bed.

"Everything will be alright," he reassured pointlessly.

Her sob changed into a laugh as she lifted her head. "Liar," she said. "But thank you. Nothing will ever be the same again. For either you or me. I've seen to that. And even though I'm scared shitless, I'm still glad this happened to me. I was getting tired of feeling guilty every time I looked at you, knowing that of all the people in your life, the scars that I left were the ones visible. Really, healing you was the very least I could do."

"It is I who am indebted to you, Miss Granger," Snape said somberly. The chair creaked as he shifted into a more comfortable position. "I will stay until you have fallen asleep, but there is no doubt in my mind that you will get through this. Now, have you read Agassiz's most recent theories on moonstones in Ars Alchemica?"

She responded enthusiastically, welcoming his attempt at distraction. She wondered how long he could keep up a discussion that was surely elementary to him, all in the name of keeping her mind occupied. But in fact, she fell asleep only thirty minutes later, still exhausted from magic depletion.

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The world was dark outside when she opened her eyes again. She didn't remember what had awoken her. The floor creaked as something shifted its weight near the door.

"Miss Granger."

He was a black shape in the dim doorway.

Hermione lifted herself on her elbows. "Professor, wh-what time is it?"

"I wished to inform you that I am going out and will be back shortly."

Hermione had found her digital watch and peered at its glowing hands. "At two in the morning? Where could you possibly be going?"

"Out," Snape replied curtly. The door whispered closed behind him.

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Los Angeles was nearly as decadent as Vegas, and he had only wandered ten minutes when he saw an appropriate establishment. The red light bathed him in an eerie glow as he pushed his way through the door.

Inside, the room was overly warm and hazy with smoke. Snape made his way through the tables and raucous laughter to the front of the room. The woman behind the bar counter smiled broadly at him. Her lips were the color of a ripe pomegranate. "Good evening, sir. And what brings you here?"

He sat down at the bar with a great sigh. "A woman."

She laughed as she poured him a generous measure of whiskey. "That is rather the point, sir. But somehow I feel you are speaking of the woman that drove you to come here."

He downed the drink in a single gulp and blinked his red eyes. "I don't deserve her."

The woman's red lips smiled as she poured him another. "That's certainly never stopped men before. But are you sure that she thinks the same way as you?"

The second shot went down even more smoothly than the first. He set the empty glass down with a soft laugh. "I was her teacher. Her old, cranky, and despised teacher. And she is... she is going to be the light of the world. The day she knows what she wants, nothing on heaven or earth will be able to stand in her way."

The woman was staring at him when he looked up. Just before the silence became awkward, she smiled thinly. "How different my life might have been if someone had ever said those things to me."

Snape dropped his gaze. He kept his eyes fixated on his glass as she filled it for the third time.

"So how can we serve you tonight?" she asked in a different voice, an edgy and purely professional voice. She had already played her role of putting a new customer at ease, so niceties were no longer necessary.

Snape looked carefully around the room. Many of the women seemed to be occupied at this hour, but there were a few leaning against the walls, ready, winking at him. Blonde, brunette, redhead...

His eyes slid back to the bartender. She looked back, and her smile became a playful smirk. "I can't fault your taste, sir, but I'll cost you a pretty penny," she said.

Snape removed two $100 bills from his robes. It had been easy enough to take a few from Hermione's rucksack. The woman's eyes widened appreciatively as she reached for the money. She had warm golden-brown eyes. Hermione's eyes.

He held onto the money for a moment longer after she had reached out to take it.

"Just a pint of Guinness for an old, lost wretch," Snape said at last. "Keep the change."

He watched the money disappear into her ample bosom and her lips form a pout. "You're hardly old, sir. That is a very pleasant face you have." He imagined that he saw disappointment in her eyes before she turned away to get his drink.

Snape stumbled back into the hotel less than ten minutes later. He had forgotten how horrific Guinness tasted in America.

He cracked open Hermione's door, telling himself that he was merely checking to see that she was recovering. She had not moved from the position she had fallen asleep in, and her face was invisible beneath the mass of bushy hair spread out over the pillow.

Her skin tone had nearly returned to normal. She would be fine by morning.

He closed the door and went to the sofa in the other room. He stretched out atop the cushions, leaving his clothes on.

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Snape was especially irritable in the morning. As she dug into a croissant he had purchased for her breakfast, he snapped at her for eating too quickly. Then he sat and glared at her until she finally ordered him out.

Hermione wiped her mouth after completing her meal and lounged back against the bed pillows. She felt undeniably better. Her fingertips no longer tingled as if they would catch fire, and her insides had settled enough that she could stand without trembling.

But now she was anxious for a wholly new reason. Snape had fidgeted like a schoolboy over breakfast and had shown neither offence nor protest when she had demanded that he leave.

It was as if he had been trying but unable to say something to her. But she didn't quite believe her own theory. Never in all the years she'd known him did Snape have trouble saying exactly what was on his mind.

His odd behavior, coupled with the fact that only once in a best-forgotten dream had she seen Snape look so healthy and alive, made her extra jumpy.

The phone rang loudly. When her pounding heart had calmed somewhat, she picked it up. "Hello?"

"Hi. Am I speaking to a Miss Her-mee-own Granger?"

She would have been frightened if the mispronunciation was not so great. A telemarketer, perhaps? Was this the newest freak accident to befall them?

"I can take a message for her," she replied.

"Okay, well, tell her that a Mr. Bumbledore or something is here to see her and – hey, wait, old man! You can't go up there – !" There was a loud thump from the other end as the phone was dropped and the line went dead.

A few seconds passed before she thought to move the phone away from her ear and return it to its cradle. Snape's head swiveled to face her as she walked into his part of the suite. He had been pacing.

"Yes?" he asked testily.

Hermione hesitated. Saying the words out loud would mean that their time was over. They would rejoin their friends and colleagues; they would go back to their roles of former student and hated teacher. Road-trip-Snape: this funny, witty, noble and – alright, she would admit it – damn attractive Snape would no longer be hers alone. She had been the sole witness to a profound change in him, and she was selfish enough to not want to share.

"Professor Dumbledore is here for us, sir."

To a casual observer, Snape had no reaction. But Hermione had watched his face intently for hours over a poker table and thought she knew his tell. His jaw clenched a fraction of an inch, and his knee twitched. He was anxious.

"Hermione," he said, his voice barely audible, "before we go, I wish for you to know that..."

"Good morning, children," said a familiar, kindly voice.

Hermione felt like cursing its owner to deepest pits of hell. She whirled around, and Snape stiffened. Albus Dumbledore looked back, twinkling and looking supremely happy to see them. The silver sequined shirt he was wearing over corduroys certainly added to the twinkle.

Hermione couldn't stop staring. This brought wizards-attempting-to-dress-as-Muggles to a new level of disaster. She had to tamp down her urge to set a lighted match to his shirt and make the flaming image complete.

"Hello, Professor," Hermione replied in a quavering voice that was holding back a hysterical laugh.

Snape scowled. "Damn it, Albus. Could you have knocked first?" He stalked away into the bedroom.

Left alone with the Headmaster, Hermione tried her level best not to look directly at him. "So, er..." she said, "how did you finally find us?"

Dumbledore made himself comfortable on the sofa. "A few minutes ago, the American Ministry informed me that an abnormally large amount of wandless magic had been performed last night. They found it curious since the magic trail clearly indicated multiple Side-Along Apparitions stretching across several of their states. They informed me that such a thing was not possible, so I immediately assumed you and Severus must have been responsible."

Hermione blushed. "Yes, the two of us ran into an... incident."

"My apologies for not arriving sooner. We honestly had no idea how to track the two of you when you didn't show up with your Portkey. Yet you look no worse for the wear." Dumbledore chuckled, "And as for Severus, oh my, whatever did you do to him, Miss Granger?"

If possible, she flushed even deeper, relieved that her glowing skin did not return. "Professor, nothing..."

A great crash sounded from the bedroom followed by a muffled curse.

Snape stalked out of the other room, holding Hermione's rucksack by one strap. He tossed it to her, and she barely caught it before it fell to the floor.

"As you can see, old man," said Snape, "she is alive and unspoilt. Now, I believe we are going to rejoin the others? Merlin knows how you've managed without your other chaperone for so long."

If possible, Dumbledore's eyes twinkled more brightly than the sequins on his shirt. "On the contrary. You might be surprised how well-behaved children can be when given full freedom on holiday. Although I suspect they will be even more cheery now that they know the two of you are safe."

Snape scoffed. "That Miss Granger is safe perhaps. As for myself, don't fool yourself, Albus."

"Now," Dumbledore continued, ignoring Snape, "I have two Portkeys waiting downstairs in the form of equestrian magazines. I can assure you that these are in absolutely no danger of discovery. Miss Granger, you may go first. I would like a quick word with Severus."

"Yes sir," she muttered. Hermione paused at the door. "Um, Professor Snape? I just wanted to say, er ..." She looked over at Dumbledore. He seemed fascinated by the ugly hotel wallpaper and was pointedly ignoring her. She shifted her gaze to Snape's dark, unreadable eyes. She continued quietly, "I just wanted to thank you, sir. There's no one else I would have rather gotten lost with."

His jaw clenched and unclenched. Dumbledore nearly had his nose pressed against a spot on the wallpaper, examining it closely.

What could he say? I'm still lost with you. And I'll never tell, but there is nowhere else I would rather be. No, that would not do at all.

"I did my duty, Miss Granger. Now leave. Join your friends," Snape said.

Her face fell.

"I see. Sir," she replied. Hermione fled down the stairs.

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"You handled that rather abysmally."

"Shut it, old man." Snape was still staring at the empty doorway where Hermione had disappeared.

Then he turned to face the Headmaster. "I hijacked a Muggle vehicle, she stole all of my money, I was beaten half to death by former Death Eaters, and then she nearly killed herself by using too much wandless magic. This – " he gestured to himself, "– happened to be a side effect of her foolishness. Absolutely nothing untoward happened between the two of us. Does that satisfy you?"

Dumbledore sighed and stood from the sofa. "I'm afraid the quality of your reports has gone down since the war ended. My only interest was in ensuring that both of you are now safe."

"What about ensuring that Hogwarts' most brilliant pupil wasn't taken advantage of by the greasy black bat of her teacher?"

"Her former teacher, Severus."

"You can't be serious. Yet it is irrelevant, as there is nothing between us, nothing at all."

"Methinks the lady doth protest too much," Dumbledore replied with another twinkle.

Hamlet. How cheerful. "There's nothing," Snape said, more quietly. "There can be nothing. She has her whole life ahead of her: a life for the first time free of war or fear. I've proven that I can't escape my past even two thousand miles away. A new face and body are meaningless to offer her in comparison to the danger. I won't hold her back, Albus."

The Headmaster walked toward him slowly. "It is what I would have expected from you, Severus. You always were a martyr. But despite your attempts to repel her, I've noticed that nothing in the world can hold Miss Granger back once she knows what she wants. And when she does," he chuckled, causing Snape to grit his teeth, "it is your honor that I would worry for."

Snape grunted in disbelief.

"However," Albus continued, peering over his spectacles, "if you toy with her in any way, I will have no qualms about feeding you to the Acromantulas in the Forbidden Forest."

That caused him to nearly smile. That was more like the Dumbledore he knew. "I can assure you there is no danger of that, Headmaster. There wouldn't be enough left of me after Hermione had her way."

Albus patted his shoulder a bit too forcefully. "That's my boy."

Snape nearly stumbled forward. "You know I hate it when you call me that. And for Merlin's sake, change your shirt. You look like a constipated pixie."

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Six months later...

The knock came upon his door at precisely six o'clock. Severus put down his copy of the Daily Prophet. He had never opened it. The front page was all he'd needed to see.

Only six months had passed rather than the year that she had wagered. Ahead of schedule, as expected.

Severus straightened his Muggle tie and opened his front door. A vision from heaven stood before him, framed by the rolling hills of the Tuscan countryside outside.

"Come in, Miss Granger," he said, a few seconds later, when he could breathe again.

She smiled demurely and floated inside, a siren in red silk and white pearls. "Call me Hermione, please," she said as she laid her purse on the hall table. "I won't enjoy this evening at all if you keep reminding me of school robes and Potions dungeons."

"Hermione," he said, savoring every syllable. She began fidgeting with the plunging neckline of her dress. He smiled. "Our obscenely expensive dinner does not begin for several hours. Since you have over-achieved as always and are six months ahead of schedule, I added a pair of tickets to a very grandiose show.

Her eyes widened for a moment. "Wow," she said, sounding for a moment as young as her years. Then she blinked, and the haunting, beautiful siren was back. "I would expect no less. You were always too noble for your own good. Which reminds me that I'm also here to collect something else that is due." She walked resolutely in his direction.

"How is your Muggle-born initiative faring?" His tongue seemed to trip in his mouth as the siren encircled her silk-enclosed arms around his neck.

"Marvelously," she said. "I have a staff of sixteen already, and the Ministry is having an apoplexy. You were remarkably rude to send me off like that during our holiday six months ago."

"I have never claimed to be anything but rude."

"Because of you, I spent a week in mental agony when I should have been tanning on the beach. I notice that you still haven't lost your tan."

"That remains all your handiwork, Hermione. I haven't seen the beach since our holiday."

"You're a fool, Severus. And a damnable tease to make me wait these six months."

"I would have been in the way, Hermione."

"And are things so different now?"

"Well, you have won our wager for one." He took a breath, and the scent of her skin mixed with light floral perfume made his head spin. "And the Hermione Granger of six months ago would never have attacked me in my own home."

Her arms drew him closer until he could feel her heart fluttering like a bird's wing in her chest. The feel of silk against his skin was heavenly. He had no doubt that her skin against his would feel even better.

"Let's just say that at last I know exactly what I want," she said.

"We will be late for the show," he whispered as she placed a light kiss upon the base of his throat. Ah... definitely better in every way.

"Bizet can wait. After six months and a long, long drive through a strange country, I've finally arrived home."

As their lips met, tenderly at first, and then hungrily, Snape proceeded to assure her that the feeling was completely mutual.

The End

A/N: If you have enjoyed this long drive home as much as Severus and Hermione, please leave a review on your way out. Thank you for reading.