Seven

Warning: Hermione/Ron is in this chapter. If this is not your thing, blah blah. The plot progresses. Not that I think I still have a readership for this story. I know I've been MIA for an entire year (yikes!), but I do know how this story will end.

To say that Severus Snape was angry at Hermione was like saying that Niagara Falls was large or that Machu Picchu was high.

At first, Hermione felt a little guilty because he really had seemed concerned that Lucius would try and take advantage of her, and truth be told, she wasn’t entirely sure that Lucius wasn’t trying to take advantage of her. He had also seemed so protective of her, even when Harry had interfered his first day on the job, and he had told Harry to leave her alone. It seemed as though he valued her.

It was obvious now that he didn’t value her, and that he didn’t think very much of her at all, really. She would greet him, and he would grunt. She would sit down across from him at lunch, and he would get up and leave, taking the best pages of The Prophet with him as he went, and leaving her only the Sport’s Page. She would ask him a question, and he would give her the shortest, most concise answer and then leave her alone.

Well, at least he hadn’t started picking on her potions for no good reason. Yet.

“Miss Granger, what is this?”

Check that.

“A calming draught, sir.”

“I find it unacceptable.”

Hermione raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”

He raised an eyebrow back in answer. “Most assuredly.”

She felt herself grow angry and pulled out her wand. “Very well. It is as you say, sir.” With that, she Evanescoed the contents of her cauldron and watched in satisfaction as Severus turned red with indignation and almost began to splutter. “I’m sorry, sir, did you not wish for me to start over?”

“My office. Now!” he practically shouted.

Feeling triumphant, Hermione practically bounced into his office, and then turned, hands on hips, ready to give him a piece of her mind, and just a little glad that he was actually about to talk to her for the first time in days.

“Do you have any idea how expensive your little childish display of temper was just now?” he began.

“My display of temper? I prefer to think of it as your display of petulance!”

“Petulance?” he exclaimed, but then grew calm again. “Ah yes, I have nearly forgotten that you choose to see things your own way, despite evidence to the contrary.”

“I knew you were upset about my talking with Malfoy. At a public house. In front of everyone. Where he could do nothing to harm me.”

“So you think,” he snarled back. “But I am done, Granger. I am done meddling and attempting to help you keep whatever dregs of reputation you still possess.”

He turned to go to his desk, but Hermione stepped in front of him. “And now we have what is really bothering you: you think that I did not heed your advice!”

He put his hands on her arms and forcefully steered her out of his way, pushing her against the wall as he did so. “I think that I rather have proof that you did not follow my advice!”

His face was very close to hers, and Hermione noted for the first time that while his lips were rather thin, his bottom lip was positively suckable. “I was at the pub to meet my friend. He happened to be there. I haven’t been getting on with writing a letter, and really, what I had to say needed to be said in person.” Was it her imagination, or was he staring at her lips, too?

“In person, in a letter. It doesn’t matter how you say it to him, he won’t listen! And neither do you, apparently!”

“Lucius Malfoy does not want to have sex with me!” Hermione shouted back, hoping to God and the Fates that he had silencing charms on his door.

“Doesn’t he?” Severus growled.

Hermione smoothed her hand over her hair. “Well, yes, he does, I suppose. But that wasn’t what our conversation was about! He wants to head up Harry’s orphanage. That’s what he wanted to talk with me about, that’s why he’s been dogging my steps.”

Now that she said it out loud, Hermione realized how silly it sounded. Lucius had been buttonholing and cornering her for weeks, and only so that he could head the orphanage, something that he could probably eventually get himself into on his own?

But she was angry at the man standing before her, and she wasn’t about to think about Lucius now.

“Potter wouldn’t allow it.”

“Harry could be persuaded, if I felt that Lucius were the correct person for the job.”

He was definitely staring at her lips. She licked them experimentally, and noted that his pupils actually seemed to dilate just an unth. Abruptly, he turned away from her and sat down in his large leather chair.

“Do you really have so little faith in me?” she asked after several long moments of silence. “Do you really think that I would let myself be taken in by Lucius? You really don’t know me well enough, Severus.”

He looked up sharply, but she was already turning the doorknob and leaving.

The rest of the day was a blur for Hermione, and the only thing she really noticed was that Severus handed her the paper at lunch time, and that Katherine kept staring at her. That evening, she stood in the line to use the Floo, and sent herself to Grimmauld Place, thankful that Harry was the first thing she saw when she stepped out of the dusty fireplace.

“Harry!” she practically whined as she threw herself against him, resting her forehead against the long hard bone of his shoulder. “God, you wouldn’t believe my day!”

She hardly ever did anything so crazy or out-of-character, so she wasn’t really surprised that he seemed surprised. Still, would it kill him to hold her a little tighter?

“What’s the matter?” he asked lightly, tugging a little at her plait. He pushed her away from him slightly and lifted her chin with his fingers.

Suddenly, she realized that she was surrounded by Weasleys, and that she and Harry were two dark-haired islands in a sea of ginger.

“Oh dear,” she said, putting her hands on her quickly blushing cheeks. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that you had your family over. I’ll…”

“Don’t you think of leaving, Hermione,” Mrs. Weasley said with a smile on her face. “You are a part of this family.”

Ginny stepped forward quickly and grabbed Hermione’s hand. “Why don’t I take Hermione to get freshened up while Harry gets everyone a drink?”

As Ginny dragged Hermione off, she looked over her shoulder at Harry, who was ushering everyone into the conservatory, a recent addition to the house, and one of Ginny’s favorite rooms. With a sinking feeling, she realized that she had slept with half the people currently in the house.

Hermione sat on the chair at Ginny’s vanity while Ginny ruffled through her closet. “I know it isn’t your usual bodice-and-peasant-blouse fare, but you do look rather nice in blue,” she said as she laid a light blue robe across Hermione’s lap.

“I’m so sorry I intruded, Gin. I should leave now while no one notices.”

“Nonsense,” Ginny said firmly. “We both wanted to invite you anyway, but then…”

Ginny put her head down and held up her left hand, which was currently home to a beautifully wrought gold band set with a large oval-shaped blood-red ruby.

Her day forgot (as well as the robe on her lap), Hermione rose to her feet and rushed to her friend, pulling her close and laughing.

“Ginny!”

“My Gran left the band to me, and Harry found the stone in Sirius’s vault…I’m not really a diamond sort of girl, and he thought they looked well together. It’s a bit big, don’t you think?”

Hermione grabbed Ginny’s hand and noted that the stone indeed felt huge under her palm, but it only made her want to laugh. “I think it’s perfect!”

Ginny smiled brightly and blushed. “You’ll be my maid of honor, won’t you?”

Tears sprang into Hermione’s eyes. “Just you try and stop me!”

They threw their arms around each other, laughing and crying at the same time, and that was how Harry found them when he came to check on them.

“Is she freshening up, or taking a bloody spa?” Harry stopped short and stared at them. “Or are you two just standing around and crying?”

Hermione launched herself at him and laughed. “Harry! You finally did it! You’re finally turning her into an honest woman!”

Harry gave her a proper hug this time, and tightening his arms around her waist, he lifted her up and spun her around.

“Now get dressed!” he ordered with a laugh. “I’m tired of entertaining my future in-laws on my own. Especially since most of my future in-laws are the older, menacing brothers of my future wife.”

At the word “wife”, he turned to Ginny and gave her a beautiful, intense smile that made Hermione feel as though she had actually blinked out of existence for a few moments.

Quietly, she picked up the robe from the floor and went into the dressing room that had also been equipped recently as a water closet where she changed and washed a little, and re-did her hair from her usual plait into a nice cascade of curls down her back.

Ginny was taller than Hermione, but she was rail-thin like her brother Ron, and as a result, the robe she gave to Hermione was a little too long (but it only grazed the floor, so it wasn’t too bad, but it was also a bit tight, especially across the hips, and Hermione felt very uncomfortably visible in it. To punctuate her thoughts, the looks of lust on three particular faces did little to dispel her discomfort. Fred, George and Ron all offered her a seat, but so did Arthur, and Hermione decided it was best to retreat to his side.

“I’m assuming that Ginny told you,” he said warmly, silver glinting in what little red hair he had left as the moonlight and candlelight softly diffused through the glass room.

“She did, Arthur, and I’m so happy for all of you! I knew that Harry was just giving her time to establish herself.”

Arthur laughed. “We live in a modern age, Hermione, but we Wizards are still quite old-fashioned about living together without marriage. That will probably never change.”

Hermione gave him an indulgent smile and then turned her attention to Molly, who would finally-FINALLY-get to plan the wedding of her dreams, and who at least wasn’t even attempting to hide that fact.

“The colors will have to be red and silver, of course,” Molly said. “With a bit of black.”

Hermione remembered how the Weasley wedding had been full of silver and purple, just like the coat of arms that they had adorning one of their walls.

“Oh, red!” Ginny protested. “And not just any red: blood red.”

Harry came up behind her and wrapped his arm around her. “Better than green and silver.”

“I wouldn’t look like a giant candle with a flesh wound in green and silver!” Ginny protested.

“You can wear all white if you like,” Molly said. “You don’t have to wear a sash.”

“I do want to be just a little traditional,” Ginny murmured. “Hermione will be maid of honor, and Ron will be best man…Luna can be a bridesmaid. I suppose that Victoire can be my flower girl.”

“Teddy can be the ring bearer,” Harry said with a nod.

“Don’t you think they’re a bit young?” Bill asked, cradling his daughter’s strawberry blonde head against his shoulder. She had just turned three.

“We won’t be getting married for at least a year,” Ginny said. “She’ll be old enough by then.”

Whatever Ginny felt about her sister-in-law, she loved little Tori to pieces and passed a fond hand over the sweet curls of the sleeping child.

“You know, Harry, I don’t mean to sound pretentious, but your wedding will be a very big deal in our society,” Arthur said. “Our family has been established for centuries, and yours has as well. This coming together will unite us all in a very significant way.”

“This can’t be the first time that a Potter has married a Weasley,” Harry said with a laugh.

“No, but there will be a lot of talk about it. Especially since you are…well, who you are.”

Harry’s face grew dark for a moment, but then he shook it off. “Arthur, if you’re trying to talk me out of marrying your daughter…”

They all laughed, and Hermione did too.

The evening passed quickly, and everyone eventually came to talk to Hermione. Fleur was ecstatic about the wedding and the part that her daughter would play in it. She was also pregnant again, but she didn’t want Hermione to tell anyone about it. Percy was optimistic and repeated to her many of the same things that Arthur had said about the two noble lines coming together, and even hinted at how he thought it might help his standing in the Ministry. Charlie was all goodwill and good humor and a little down that his good friend Oberon hadn’t been able to attend, because he was sure that he and Hermione would have hit it off rather well. Fred and George were flirtatious and made many comments about how happy they were to not be tying the knot any time soon, but they thought it was about bloody time that Harry asked Ginny to do it. They also extended an invitation to dinner that Hermione understood to mean something completely else.

Ron seemed to be the only calm in the storm. He loved both Harry and Ginny, and while he had always looked forward to this day with great expectations, he wasn’t entirely sure that Ginny wasn’t making the wrong decision. The family left, and Ron stayed behind with Hermione. They ended the evening in the study, Ron with his arm around Hermione’s shoulders as they sat together on the small but comfortable settee, and Hermione realized somewhat belatedly and pathetically that she and Ron could have been in the same situation, if only they hadn’t decided to break up.

Why did they break up? She looked up at him, his deep blue eyes reflecting the color of his robe, his smile sweet. Severus never looked at her like that, and Ron’s lips were definitely more kissable. Why had she been so conflicted about him earlier, anyway?

When he lowered his head and kissed her cheek, she didn’t stop him, and when he took her hand and told Harry that they were going to stay the night since they had drank too much-were five glasses of champagne too much?-and that they were going to give the lovebirds some time alone, she let him, knowing full well that Ginny and Harry wouldn’t think they were staying in separate rooms. Knowing full well that she and Harry and Ginny had made love under this very same roof well over two months ago. But she didn’t feel awkward about it.

No, it felt quite right, come to think of it.

Ron took them to “their” room-the room they used to use a few years ago, when all four of them were living in the house.

He removed their clothes and unspelled her hair so that it hung around her shoulders. He was tall and solid and strong as he lifted her and laid her gently against the sheets. He had also obviously had as much practice over the last several months as she had. It wasn’t the first time they had made love since their breakup, but to Hermione, it felt very significant. The last time, she had been working out her frustrations about Severus and Lucius. This time, she let him take control, which he did with the greatest tenderness.

She shivered when he made love to her breasts, kissing and caressing them, stroking, kneading, licking and occasionally biting. He ground his hip against her and sank his fingers into the flesh of her hips, claiming her lips in a deep kiss and then driving into her, his length familiar and sweet within her, hot and fiery as he moved slowly, drawing out to the tip and then thrusting back in. She arched and moved beneath him, welcoming him as she locked her ankles behind him.

Yes, this was right. This was beautiful.

TBC

AN: Yes, I updated! To the one or two of you that still care! (I hope one or two still cares...). I did have Bill be married, because I don't want Hermione to sleep with another Weasley.

OMG, What is Hermione thinking? Ron? Beautiful? Right?

Well, he is kinda cute, and very malleable. And what's up with Snape? Is he jealous, and if he is, is it of Malfoy or Granger?