Chapter 7

It's closing in on four a.m., and though she wants nothing more than to stay with him here on the couch, she can hardly keep her eyes open.

She stifles a yawn, unsuccessfully.

"Time to sleep," he says from beneath drooping eyelids. He looks as exhausted as she feels. Even so, she's seen him smile more in the last few hours than in the entire year before he was taken.

They hesitate, each wedged into a corner of the couch, and Hermione wishes she had the courage to crawl into his lap and ask him to carry her to bed. She's had waves of thoughts just like that one all night, and her self-control is dwindling fast. The air between them crackles with the sort of energy generated by two people who have kept their hands to themselves for far too long against their better judgment. Well, her better judgment, at least.

She groans, reaching her arms up in a stretch, long and languid.

Severus shifts position and clears his throat.

"Where would you like to sleep?" He drops his eyes, as if he'd rather not watch her contemplate the options.

She considers scooting closer, but reconsiders. The risk of flinging herself into his lap grows exponentially larger with every inch of increased proximity.

"I'd like to sleep where I have every night for the last seven years...apart from the last six months, I mean," she says, her voice pitched low. "But I don't want to make you uncomfortable, or ruin what has been a truly lovely evening." There. Transparency at its Gryffindor finest.

He nods, slowly, as if buying time to think.

There's a part of her that is pleased he's not eager to jump into bed with a woman he's just met. But it's overshadowed by her bone-deep need for him and a fervent wish that sex magic were the legitimate branch of sorcery the publishers of wizarding erotica would like its readership to believe. It's a shortcut she could endorse wholeheartedly.

She sighs.

"Don't get me wrong," he says without preamble. "The thought of you in my bed is nothing short of..." Here he pauses, stammering, and she is charmed. "I just don't want to rush into anything, or for you to be..." He clears his throat and blushes just a bit.

"No expectations," she says. "If it's easier... I could sleep on the couch, or in another bed if you've got one."

He shakes his head. Not an option, then. She's not up to so complex a transfiguration at this hour.

"Or we could just crawl into bed and sleep, because I don't think I can keep my eyes open another minute."

He's standing close enough for her to see the stubble shadowing his cheeks and the slightly unfocused look in his eyes.

"Crawl into bed?" he echoes. "Together?"

Her heart sinks, and she eyes the couch. It is supremely unfair, Hermione thinks, that this is so difficult. They've already been through this once before, after all. He had not been an easy man to woo then, either.

"Only if it's what you want, Severus," she says.

But she's already turning away, trying to decide what to transfigure for sheets and pillows, when she feels a tug on her hand guiding her towards the staircase.

"I want" is all he says.

She follows him to the tiny room that houses a narrow bed she knows right away she will not enlarge a single, solitary inch. The loo is across the hall, and she ducks inside to transfigure a nightgown and ready herself for bed. When she returns, the lights are out, and he's already under the covers.

A powerful sensation of déjà vu comes over her as she approaches the bed, silently, in the dark. It's so like their first night together more than eight years ago. The night air then, too, was saturated with wanting tinged with fear.

She slips beneath the covers without a word, tucking herself into the curve of his body just as he turns to wrap an arm around her. His hand is fisted, lying on the mattress, and she holds it between hers, kissing one finger, then another, unfurling them like a flower to the light.

And when she presses the palm of his hand to her breastbone so he can feel her heart beating, thankful tears fall onto the mattress, unfettered.

~~**~~

He wakes to the scent of her skin and a war raging in his body.

She has wrapped herself around him sometime in the night, the warm contours of her body moulding to his, her hands tracing unconscious circles on the bare skin of his back.

Oh, hell. When did he take off his t-shirt?

He glances down at her, more disappointed than relieved her nightgown is still on. He's not sure what this says about him, though the fact that this woman is, she says, his wife ought to allay the nagging feeling that he's a dirty old man for his desire to tear away the cloth separating her bare skin from his. And while his thoughts are conflicted, his body has complete clarity about what to do with this woman...preferably naked...in his bed.

Remnants of his latest dream linger, and he's grateful she's still asleep.

He shifts position, trying to put a sliver of space between them before he does something he might regret. It would probably help if he removed his hand from where it's cupping her bottom, keeping her pressed firmly against him.

Reluctantly, he releases her and turns onto his back. The shock of cool air sweeps away the last bits of his dream and gives him hope that he might yet prevail over his baser instincts.

"Sev'rus?" She rolls over and slips her arms around him again and lays her head on his chest. Half-asleep, she mumbles, "Don't go."

His heart lurches.

"Going to the loo," he whispers. "I'll be right back. I promise."

She mumbles something incomprehensible and loosens her hold.

Slipping from the bed, he feels a pang and an urgency to finish his business quickly. It's odd, he thinks. He's not afraid he'll come back to find her gone...these are not the old insecurities of a man with a string of not quite-relationships behind him. It's that he feels uneasy away from her, even for just a few moments.

It seems impossible that he should feel so tethered to her and responsible for her well-being after not even a full day's cycle of day and night. And yet, already, detachment from her is unthinkable.

Back in the doorway of his room, he lingers, watching her sleep. He fills his lungs with air and takes in the scene in front of him. The soft sunlight slipping beneath the curtain, Hermione's steady breathing beneath rumpled bedclothes.

Warmth spreads through his chest, strengthening the recognition that this is right. It's completely inconsistent with everything he knows about himself; it's just a feeling, and he's never been one to put much stock in those. And yet, none of that diminishes his certainty a whit.

Hermione opens her eyes. Her sleepy smile sends his heart racing, then galloping faster still when she reaches her arms towards him.

"Come back, Severus." Back to me. He can almost hear those words, layered beneath.

An invitation.

A benediction.

He's in her arms in an instant, the blanket tangled around them. Kissing her, slipping his hands beneath her nightgown so he can pull it off and finally lose himself in the silken heat of her skin.

He cups one of her breasts in a trembling hand, gasping as she moans.

It's like in the dreams. Her touch inflames him until there is nothing but her, and him, and the absolute need to obliterate every barrier standing between them. For a moment, it feels as if even skin might melt away and he would sink into her completely. All he knows is sensation and the way his body sings at her touch and the whimpers and moans his mouth and hands and body...oh, god...wring from her.

The world dissolves. There is no past, no future. Only now. Clothing and bedding lie discarded on the floor, and all that's left is the two of them, stripped bare.

And a tendril of thought that brings him enough pause to whisper, "Are you sure?"

For a suspended moment, he thinks she might change her mind, might withdraw from him and put back layer after layer they've stripped from between them. But she only traces the contours of his face with gentle fingers and eyes shining with joy.

"I'm as sure as I was the day we promised ourselves to one another, body, heart and soul." She takes a shuddering breath, and he wonders at her willingness to embrace him, even as broken as he must be in her world. "I married you, Severus. Not your magic, and not your memory. And you've already shown me you are still that man in every way that matters to me."

It's as if a weight he didn't realise he'd been carrying has been cut loose, releasing him. He is buoyant, all at once no longer bound by a history he can't remember or trapped by the complexity of a power he's just begun to taste.

Freedom, entirely new.

He leans down to kiss her again.

Slowly.

They have all the time in the world.

They wake again in the afternoon, bedclothes retrieved to ward off the chill of early spring air on damp skin.

Asleep, the lines on his face relax, and his eyelids flutter just a bit as he sinks into his dreams. She'd feared he might wake in the clutches of a nightmare as he had done every night for months.

Before.

But their sleep had been restful, if tinged with the colour of longing barely denied.

And come morning, once released, the familiar rhythms of pleasure had taken hold and carried them forward and back to a place where their knowledge of one another could never be in doubt.

"Isn't there some magic that would allow us to remain here like this indefinitely?"

She hadn't noticed him waking, lost in daydreams as she'd been.

"I wish," she says, snuggling more firmly against him. "No witch or wizard that I've ever heard about has devised a way to get around basic bodily needs."

He raises his eyebrows, and she blushes.

"We were speaking of the needs we'd like to dispense with, weren't we?"

He smirks.

She plants an open mouthed kiss on the spot just above his navel. The combination gasp and groan is enough to shoot a bolt of heat low in her belly.

"Hermione?" he gasps. "I am prepared to die a very happy man. But could we have a last meal first?"

She grins and rolls off him, fingertips leaving a trail of promise behind her.

He's watching her, following every move as she gathers discarded clothing and heads for the bathroom.

"Is the shower big enough for two?" she wonders aloud as she passes the threshold.

The speed with which he joins her is more than answer enough.

**

"You and the bloke, Ron, looked surprised when I told you I'd worked odd jobs; I've no advanced schooling, you realise," he says into the silence that fell after they'd bathed and eaten.

He looks uneasy, and Hermione wants to answer all his questions...the ones he asks and the ones he doesn't know to wonder about...but she's frightened. Maybe even more than he.

"Do you want to know about the Severus I know? Severus the wizard?" she asks him.

He leans back in his chair, arms crossed.

"Depends," he says, finally.

"Of course it does."

His eyes crinkle.

"I don't know what I'd be getting myself into, see?"

She nods. Indeed, he doesn't.

"It's a lot to absorb."

"It's already been."

Yes, she nods.

"What if you just told me about yourself, your life now? If you start to wonder about your life from before, just ask."

If anything, he looks more uneasy.

"There's not much to me now," he says, looking just over her left shoulder.

She remembers what he'd said last night, what a disappointment he believes himself to be.

"Let's just go out," she says. "I fancy a walk, and it doesn't look rainy today."

He turns to peer out the window.

"Come," he says, rising. "It's not much, but I'll show you the local haunts."

It really isn't much, he thinks, but there is something to be said for taking a walk for old times' sake.

Battered school building, empty on a Saturday. The window to the principal's office covered in a layer of grime that looks left over from his time there. Down the block, the sweet shop where he'd spent too much time during his formative years peering through the window at treats he could get his hands on only by sneaking a coin from his mother's bag after his father finally dozed off late on Sunday afternoons.

Then around to the playground again. It looks even shabbier in the afternoon light. The shrubs along the perimeter are ragged, and he can't imagine children choosing to play here. There certainly aren't any around today, despite the mild weather.

He stops near the swing that had propelled Hermione through the air last night triggering...she says...his spontaneous magic.

Wait.

"There was a girl once," he mutters, more to himself than Hermione.

"A girl?" she asks, looking altogether too interested.

"At the playground. You asked me who I'd play with here. I'd forgotten. There was one girl."

She looks fit to burst, and he isn't sure he likes the sensation of knowing less about his early life than she apparently does.

"What do you remember about her?" she asks. Her face is unnaturally stiff, and Severus can see the strength of will it takes for her to not share every bit of information she knows about this girl.

"Mostly that she was irritating." The memory of a stringy looking girl with a shrill voice rushes back.

"Lily Evans was irritating?" Hermione asks looking an odd mixture of gratified and confused.

He's uneasy, but not surprised to have read her right. Even though she's got it wrong.

"Lily?" he says with a snort. "Her name wasn't Lily, though I'm sure she wished it were. Petunia. Her name was Petunia Evans, and she was a pain in the arse."

Hermione is looking at him with wide eyes, so he figures he should be sure he's being clear.

"I never knew anybody called Lily."

~~**~~