Chapter Forty-Eight

A/N: Here we are at the end, at last. My most heartfelt thanks to Shellsnapeluver, RedOrchid, OpalJade and Lulabelle72, without whom this story and my life would be infinitely poorer.

When December came, unusually frigid and snowy, they had just finished the last of the Pepperup Potion. Snape had insisted that Hermione test it, as she had seemed... gray... since the weather had begun to change, and he teased her mercilessly when the steam came roaring out her ears, until she demanded that he sample it as well. He had done it, and submitted to her laughter, because he had hoped that perhaps a game would do what he feared the potion would not.

But when her giggles had subsided, she had slapped her hands together sharply and said, "All right. What's next?"

He had not known that it was possible to ache for someone else who stood right in front of you, who belonged to you, who was going nowhere. He wished that he could tell her that they were less than a month away, that he would fix this. That he had a plan.

And so he had owled for the last of the money in his vault and counted it out quite carefully, and now she was on her way to Hogsmeade to shop for Christmas presents with exactly what was left over after repaying Minerva and budgeting for one more month's daily expenses. And one trip brief trip to Australia.

She had balked when he'd pressed the money into her palm and insisted that it was not necessary, but she would be spending Christmas Eve at the Burrow in a week, and he had told her that he did not like to think of sending his wife to them with nothing, glaring at her until she had acquiesced.

He climbed the steps to the room they shared, and pulled his heavy traveling cloak from the closet. Minerva had sent everything over from Hogwarts, and though he now had all the robes he could want, he had found he did not wish to wear them, and had gone about in shirtsleeves for the last several months. But now the robes would be necessary.

Buttoning his waistcoat felt strange and unfamiliar, nearly restrictive, and he wondered how he had ever brewed wearing so much clothing, so much weight. He shrugged the cloak on, and steeled himself for what he was about to do.

Snape was returning to Hogwarts.

He opened the door and stood in the chilly December air for a moment. He knew he must hurry--that there was much to be done before she arrived back at home, but something arrested him on the steps, and he realized that he had not felt the wind on his face in almost four months. And suddenly it struck him that his life was a strange amalgam of things that had come before and the trappings of this new life here with her.

He took a deep breath and Apparated away.

***

Minerva could not hide her surprise, nor her pleasure, when he turned up at the gates. She pursed her lips together and looked at him sharply. She clucked and fussed and demanded to know whether he had been eating. She berated him for hiding himself away, and asked anxiously after Hermione as she hurried him through the gates and up to the office he had hoped never to see again.

When she reached for the doorknob, he stopped.

"I do not wish to--"

"Oh. Oh, my goodness, yes. Just a moment."

He could hear the murmur of her voice through the heavy office door, which suddenly swung open in front of him. He stepped inside, feeling relieved that it was so changed, and that the portrait was empty as the opened door had seemed to promise.

Minerva settled at her desk after ushering him into a wing backed chair and offering him a drink.

"What is wrong? Is it Hermione?" she asked.

"Hermione? No, of course not. Hermione is fine."

"Forgive me, Severus, but I never expected you to set foot in this place again."

"It is not my preference," he said stiffly. "But as I'm sure you must be aware, the terms of my sentence are nearly fulfilled. I will require employment."

"And you want to come back?" Minerva said, shocked. "I--of course, of course, Hogwarts would be more than pleased--"

"Do not be asinine," Snape said. "I would rather be savaged by a manticore."

Minerva looked slightly offended. "Well, I don't know if it's as bad as all that."

"The last four months have done little to remind me of the joys of teaching, nor the charms of this castle," he said. "No, what I wish from you is a reference."

There was a quill in her hand nearly before he had finished speaking.

***

Hermione nudged the door open with her hip, as her arms were laden with packages. Nearly half of them bore Severus's name, a fact that had touched her more than she had been able to say. The Burrow had been close and warm and nearly overwhelming compared to the spartan countenance of Spinner's End, and yet she had longed for home terribly during the few hours she had been away. She had longed for Severus, and for the kind of easy quiet they had in one another's company. She loved the Weasleys, loved Harry, and yet it seemed to her that the entire evening had had a kind of forced conviviality. No one felt the hearty good cheer they pretended at. They were all worn people, trying to rebuild their lives after a catastrophe, and the pretending, the struggling for happy conversation had tired her. Reminiscing seemed off limits; tonight, they had kept firmly in the present, and everyone had drunk liberally, giving the evening a desperate, high pitched quality.

She would have begged off sooner, but Kingsley had approached her after dinner, and asked to speak to her alone.

"I'm home," she called, edging into the sitting room, where she found herself stopped cold by the sight of her husband sitting on the couch beside a Christmas tree of absolutely gargantuan proportion. Snape feigned nonchalance, but beneath the façade, she saw his naked hope and trepidation.

Her first thought was of how many charms he must have used just to get that thing into the house. The second was the sudden thrill of certainty that he had gone out; he had gone somewhere to get that monstrosity. And the third was something less than a thought, but the recognition of her parents' star atop the tree, its dull, tarnished sides looking perfectly Muggle and more beautiful than anything she had ever seen.

Her eyes filled with tears, and she stood there without speaking, without doing anything but looking at this tree he'd brought her, so obviously a gift, and the tiny bit of her past on top of it.

"I didn't--" he began haltingly. "I don't know if it's right. I have only known the ones at Hogwarts."

She could not speak. She shifted her focus to the man who had risen to stand before her, his hands open.

"There's so much in the box, and I was not... I was not sure where it all went."

"The box," she said stupidly. The box.

"Forgive me for invading... for going through your things."

She shook her head to dismiss his apology.

"You shut yourself in that room so often. I began to wonder what had such a hold on you."

She nodded.

He stepped forward and took the packages from her arms. "Say something."

"Lights," she said.

"Yes. I rather thought so," he said, and she had the brief but amusing thought that he was babbling. "But I was not sure what you would prefer, and I did not want to charm it until you said... Hermione, if you hate it, I'll banish it."

She raised her wand and conjured the lights she remembered from her childhood, the large, heavy bulbs that twinkled long and slow. "Of course I don't hate it," she whispered as she sank onto the couch. "Where did you get it?"

Severus extinguished the sconces, plunging them into the soft, warm light of the tree. The shadows on the ceiling flickered and changed. He put the packages on the floor before it.

"The Forbidden Forest. Hagrid chose it. Minerva said it was far too large, but it looks like the Hogwarts trees--"

"You were at Hogwarts? When?"

"While you were shopping. Monday, was it? Just before we finished the Strengthening Solution."

"But why didn't you tell me? I would have gone with you."

"Woman, have you never heard of a surprise? And besides... I had other business there."

"Sit, Severus. What on earth are you talking about?"

He sat gingerly, as if he were afraid she might hit him or run.

"I finished the Wound Cleaning Potion."

"Without me? But I thought you were going to show me how to lacerate the--" She stopped suddenly. Wound Cleaning Potion was the last potion. "Wait, you finished the Wound Cleaning Potion?"

"Astute as always," he said, smirking. "And now, with my penance to society paid... I thought I had best secure myself some form of employment."

She waited silently. She would go where he went. If he told her they had to live in that place again, she would go, but she could not imagine it.

"Severus?" she said at last.

"Slug and Jiggers. The pay is meager, but they were willing to hire me, and for that I am... grateful."

She let out a breath that she had not realized she had been holding. "For a moment, I thought you meant--"

"No."

She nodded, and her blood quickened at the thought that they might stay here in Spinner's End. By Floo--oh, now she had the leverage she needed!--by Floo, he could commute without having to endure the public. She touched his hand lightly, and was gratified when he immediately folded it into his own.

"They would like me to begin in two weeks," he said. "I asked that there be enough time beforehand that we could make the trip to Australia."

Something inside her shivered and stopped. It was not that she had not realized that they would go. She had known it the moment he asked in Kingsley's office after the trial. But she had not allowed herself to think of it. She had not wanted to hope too hard or pin her happiness on something that could still go so dreadfully wrong. And so she had spent the last few months trying to build a world that she could live in regardless, but now she saw what he had meant in crowning the tree, this night, the way that he had.

"I do not know if I will be able to find them, Hermione. And even if I did, I do not know if it can be undone. But I want to try. I want to try to give you that much."

Idiot, she thought, half fiercely and half affectionately. She clutched his hand and turned to face him.

"Don't you ever speak to me that way," she said quietly, and he looked as if he had been slapped. "Like I'm some debt that can't be repaid. I will not have it. I am not Dumbledore, not Shacklebolt... not... not anyone but me."

His eyes were dark and guarded. They both knew what she had not said.

"I love my family, and I want them back so badly. But, Severus--listen to me. If we can't find them... No," she said, taking his jaw in her hand and turning it back toward her. "Look at me. If we can't find them, it doesn't change anything here. I'll still be your wife. I will still love you."

He shook his head slightly, and she withdrew her hand.

"I wish for you to be happy," he said, and she marveled that he could sound so stiff and so broken, all at once.

"Then tell me that when we get back, you'll teach me how to properly lacerate daisy roots. Tell me that we can connect to the Floo Network, and that if I choose to work for Kingsley you will harass me about it until we're a hundred, but that you won't really hate it. But don't you dare think that you have to earn my happiness."

His eyes closed, and the look that passed over his face was unreadable. It was as if something she had not known was there had fallen away.

***

He could see the world she spun in the air, as ethereal and strange as the tree that stood in the corner of the room, and he wondered if he dared to reach for it. It seemed to him that they would have to begin the beginning, that he would have to find it in himself to try again, and he felt flush with fear at what it might cost him, at the chance that he might try and fail.

He looked into her earnest face and pictured her as she had been outside a tent on a different snowy December evening, unbroken. He watched his hand as it moved tentatively to touch her, and the familiar burn of their flesh meeting was terrifying in its power. For a moment his heart quailed, and he nearly drew his fingers back, and then her hand covered his, in silent acceptance of his invitation. Terror and desire mingled in his bloodstream as he reached for her, and he was comforted by the fact that she trembled, too, as he folded her into his arms.

The shadows on the walls changed and morphed, soft reds and greens and golds. Snape could feel Hermione's shuddering breaths against his chest. He stroked a hand over her hair, and she tipped her head back to look at him. His eyes closed as he exhaled the last of his resistance and lowered his mouth to hers. For her, for this, he would try.