Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Thank you all for your reviews; I am truly awed by your responses. As I cannot personally serve you all a slice of chocolate cake, there will be an epilogue. Last, but not least, many thanks to my beta, Dreamy_Dragon who has been simply wonderful.

Severus felt as if someone had drenched him with cold water. This was what she was on about? He’d been expecting something like an incurable illness or a move to another continent. Their harmless joking had her in such a state?

Only then did he realise how comfortable he’d become with his fictitious family, how the idea of having one for real had grown on him. Having a relationship, children even, not just with anyone, but with the woman across the table. The very same woman who—by all appearances—seemed to abhor the very thought of even joking about such things with the greasy bat of the dungeons.

“—for real.”

Reining in his anger and disappointment, he looked at Hermione. She seemed to be waiting for an answer, looking tense. And hopeful. The silence grew, and the longer it lasted, the more her face fell. Then her last words registered. He cleared his throat. “Could you please say that again?”

She blushed deeply, seemed to summon her remaining courage and answered in a clipped voice, “I was asking you to consider a real relationship between us.”

The last time his thoughts had been in such a scrambled mess had been during his O.W.L. examination in Transfiguration. He was sure of his own feelings, however. He felt elation and joy, pure and simple. Severus Snape was given a chance to be happy finally.

His emotions couldn’t have shown on his face because he became aware that Hermione’s eyes were looking suspiciously moist, and she was rummaging in her bag.

“Hermione, please wait.”

For good measure, he took hold of her hand.

“Yes, I would very much like to have a relationship with you. For real.”

Hermione dropped her shoulders as some of the tension left her, and she was composed enough to answer, “Oh, good. Good!” Hermione left her bag where it was and took hold of Severus’ hands, blushing again.

Severus had a choice of grinning goofily at her or to start talking. He chose the latter.

“When you were so serious, I feared you wanted to tell me either that you were terminally ill, or that you’d been promoted to the MoM’s embassy in New Zealand. Then, your outburst led me to mistakenly believe that you were fed up with our joking because, ah, because of what we—”

“The reason I nearly ran away was that I didn’t dare to hope you might consider me in that light. When you didn’t answer at once, I feared you were searching for the right words to let me down gently.”

Severus became serious again. “I do want what we were joking about, but I do not know how.”

Hermione squeezed his hands. “I do not know either. We’ll take it one day at a time.”

Looking over her shoulder, she realised that she wouldn’t be able to claim a first kiss from Severus in a café that had filled up with people exhausted from their after-Christmas-bargain-hunting, even if there weren’t a table between them.

“Let’s take a walk.”

They paid and left the café.

Even though they were both intelligent people, they hadn’t counted on London’s streets being just as crowded as the café, which is why their little walk finally came to mutually satisfying conclusion in an alley next to a skip at a Marks and Spencer’s back entrance.

The End