Chapter Five: In Which Truth is Told

Chapter Five

Severus sat across from Hermione in the kitchen of his cottage, his heart racing much faster than his outward calm would denote. So much rested on what was now to come; he had told himself, over and again, that he deserved whatever she chose to mete out to him, but he desperately hoped that he knew her as well he thought he did. Who had ever been more just or more merciful than Hermione Granger?

She sat there in her evening frock, the colour of cranberries, with her crazy hair charmed into long, loose ringlets, and frowned down at his pocket watch. 'How long do we have to wait?' she asked impatiently.

'Five to ten minutes,' he replied. He picked up his cup of swiftly cooling tea and drank automatically to occupy himself, to prevent the grovelling protestations currently longing to issue from his mouth. No doubt he would be humiliating himself enough, presently, without voluntarily getting an early start.

The seconds ticked past, and he passed the time by looking at her, making up for the years when he had only had the photographs from the newspapers, or the ones provided by Blue Moon Investigations. There was a vitality to her that never showed in the photographs, in which she often appeared either annoyed, in the case of newspaper ones, or harried, in the case of those snapped by the private investigators.

Gazing at her in his kitchen, it was so easy to imagine her in the other rooms of his cottage, and the notion touched him on the raw with his want of it. His mouth opened to tell her so, and he realised the potion was doing its job. 'I'm ready when you are,' he said quietly.

She pushed the pocket watch back to him, and he read in her face her desire to evince disinterest...but Hermione Granger's curiosity had ever been her besetting sin.

'Why did you leave Grimmauld Place six years ago?' she began.

'I obtained a job in Ireland,' he responded.

'For whom do you work?'

'Astride the Fence, Ltd.'

She frowned. 'What type of business is it?'

'It's a Muggle/wizard hybrid, seeking ways to combine knowledge from each culture to the betterment of each society.' He glanced at her from beneath his lashes. 'Just so you know, I am forbidden to reveal their existence or their mission statement to outsiders. I would appreciate it if you kept the information to yourself.'

She nodded absently, as if in agreement. 'Give me an example of the work you do there.'

He felt his lips twitching and quickly directed his eyes to his hands. How curious that she would take her opportunity to question him to her heart's content and use it to ask about his work rather than his intentions...or his emotions.

'I work with a chemist, a physicist, a biologist, and an Arithmancer, to devise experimental protocols combining our respective fields of study.'

She gestured somewhat impatiently, urging him to elaborate.

'For instance, our first project together was a work-around to attempt to carry the wizarding cure for juvenile diabetes into the Muggle world without violating the Statute of Secrecy.'

Hermione became very still, her luminous eyes riveted upon his face, the original reason for her interrogation of him gone by the wayside.

'What happened?' she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

'The company had been trying to accomplish this for years, without success. There was no way to introduce the proper ingredients without invoking the magical brewing process.' He sat forward a bit, becoming lost in his explanation. 'I suggested seeking out a natural process which would achieve the same results. You're familiar with the chemical reaction produced in fish when marinated with citrus?'

Hermione nodded, her eyes becoming ever brighter. 'It's brilliant,' she breathed.

Severus smiled at her, a full, joyful smile, and he knew he had to look like an idiot, but he couldn't bring himself to care. 'Thank you,' he said, sliding into his more natural smirk. 'We were able to produce enough of a chemical reaction in the mixture to "brew" without using magic.'

'And?' she prompted him. 'Why haven't I heard anything about this? If the Muggles found a cure for Type I Diabetes, there would be rejoicing in the streets! It would be on the front page of every newspaper and magazine ...'

'Yes,' he agreed, 'which would draw a terrific amount of scrutiny in the medical research field...something my employers seek to avoid. We have been forced to go about it in stages, setting up clinical trials, jumping through all the Muggles' hoops so establish a trail for the research.'

'But what about the patients?' Hermione asked indignantly. 'What about the ones who are really sick...dying, even!'

Severus stood impetuously. 'Come with me...let me show you something about that.'

Without hesitation, she took the hand he offered, and he led her out of the kitchen and into the room directly across the hall. His home office was very tidily arranged, a curious mixture of his Hogwarts sanctum and a modern business office. He turned her to face the wall directly to the left of his desk and switched on an electric light hanging there. The breath she released, as if she had been holding it in anxiety, was like music to his ears. Unable to resist the temptation, he encircled her torso from behind, and in her absorption, she did not think to object or fight him.

On the wall was a cork bulletin board, covered with the photographs of dozens of children, all of whom where smiling hugely.

'Who are they?' she asked, reaching with one finger to trace the edge of a snapshot of a small, thin, grinning Asian boy who was missing two front teeth.

'Our first clinical trial group,' he said with quiet pride. 'Oddly enough, there was a one hundred percent success rate with the new, experimental drug.'

She pulled away and turned to face him. 'But you don't even like children,' she said.

'Says who?' he demanded.

'But you always behaved ...'

'Like any secondary school teacher with a classroom combination of dunderheads and combustible ingredients,' he snapped.

'You were particularly nasty to Neville and Harry and me,' she snapped back.

'I had my reasons!'

She crossed her arms over her chest. 'What?' she inquired acidly. 'What were your reasons for behaving like an unmitigated arse to me and my friends for six years?'

'I disliked Potter on sight,' he answered, 'and Longbottom never gave me a moment's peace when he was in my classroom, because he was a disaster waiting to happen. If you hadn't done his thinking for him, he never would have scraped even an Acceptable O.W.L. in Potions!'

Her lips drew tighter with each syllable he uttered, until her mouth looked as pinched as Minerva McGonagall's in mid-snit. He waited for her to say something else, but she just glared at him. At last he was compelled to answer the rest of her question. 'You were so desperately pitiable, waving your hand about, wanting everyone to notice you, to commend you for memorizing your textbooks word-for-word ...'

He looked into her face again, and his resolve broke. 'Parker, you sounded and acted so much like I had done at your age ... it was painful to watch you trying so hard to fit in and yet so plainly not fitting.' A stern look passed over his face. 'By the time you were in your third year, you no longer cared about fitting in...all you cared about was finding more rules to break. Watching Potter lead you from one idiotic, capricious adventure to the next was enough to drive the sanest wizard mad! It was impossible to anticipate you or to protect you!'

He scowled at the unpleasant memories and turned away from her, moving to sit in the chair behind his desk.

'Please, sit down,' he said, indicating the other chair in the room. She looked mutinous, but finally, she sat, her pinched expression looking fair to become permanent. 'What's your next question?' he demanded irritably.

'When did you decide to seduce me?' she said, her voice carrying a dangerous edge of unidentifiable emotion.

The ridiculous notion catapulted him immediately from irritation to amusement. 'I never decided to seduce you,' he answered. 'The shoe was on the other foot, I thought.'

She squirmed for a moment, and he put a mark in his own tally column...he had scored a hit.

'All right,' she said. 'When did you decide to let me seduce you?'

'Ah, Parker,' he said, one side of his mouth curving up as he remembered. 'After you walked into the bathroom in the middle of my shower wearing nothing but that ridiculous handkerchief-sized thing you called a dressing gown.' He felt his gaze heat up, and he indulged himself in a good look at how nicely her shape filled out her dress. 'The dressing gown was moulded to your body by the steamy air in about fifteen seconds...and then you turned away and bent over to clean your teeth without a stitch on your bottom...sweet Nimüe, girl, did you think I was made of steel?'

Wisely, she chose not to answer that. 'How did you feel about me then?'

He frowned a bit. 'I wanted you. I needed you. I couldn't bear for you to leave the house with your friends, because I thought every time you left you would come back with a younger, fitter bloke on your arm.'

She shook her head a bit. 'I would have been very happy if you had gone out with me,' she said. 'I thought you wouldn't come because you were ashamed to be seen with me.'

He heard the memory of hurt in her voice, and he was on his feet, rounding the desk to kneel at her side. 'No!' he said earnestly. 'Parker...no! How could you think such a thing?' He reached to cup her cheek, and she met his eyes steadily. 'I was ashamed,' he admitted, 'but of myself...never of you.'

She batted his hand away. 'Then what was that when you left?' she cried. 'You wouldn't even let me come to see you...you said you could afford to buy a proper shag! That's the foulest thing you ever said to me! And then you left without saying good-bye!'

He reached for her again, blinded by her anguish, wanting only to comfort, but she stood and began to pace. Well remembering her tendency to do so when distressed, he rested a hip against the edge of his desk and answered her.

'It was some mixture of fear, pride, shame, and sheer bloody-mindedness.' Her snort prodded him to elaborate. 'I was a miserable sod the whole time you knew me, Parker. After the war was the worst...I'd made no plans, saved no gold, dreamed no dreams...I was supposed to be fucking dead. I was not supposed to be skulking about, living on Potter's charity, scorned by every decent-living witch and wizard in England...and taking advantage of the best person I knew.'

She paused in her progress to cast him a look of disbelief. 'If you're referring to me, I believe the shoe was on the other foot...I was taking advantage of you, not the other way around.'

'I was the adult...technically speaking,' he added before she could, quite rightly, refute his claim. 'You were half my age, Parker...I had no business encouraging you.'

She managed a wry half-smile. 'I would scarcely call your behaviour toward me encouraging, you know. You scarcely spoke to me unless we were alone, and even then, you barely opened your mouth unless we were in bed.' She flushed a bit at that, and he strenuously fought the urge to cross the floor and kiss that spot on her throat where the delicious colour touched her collar bone.

'My bitter disappointment in myself and my life spilled over into everything I touched,' he said. 'For the most part, I was unfit for human companionship...but not so large-minded that I would decline the willing presence of a desirable female in my bed, Parker.' He scowled. 'I'm not proud of how I behaved with you; it was inexcusable.'

He stood and walked up to her, stopping a foot away. She looked at him expectantly, and he forced himself to swallow. In for a Knut, in for a Galleon, he thought.

'I'm sorry, Hermione,' he said.

Her startled expression was not reassuring. 'What is it that you're apologising for, Severus?' she asked pointedly.

'I am apologising for treating you like a dirty little secret instead of acknowledging your presence in my life...and mine in yours. I am apologising for taking out my own misery and self-loathing on you, an innocent bystander.' He raked a hand restlessly through his hair, jerking strands free from their orderly queue, then yanking the tie from his hair and letting it fall free. 'I am saying sorry for allowing you to believe that you had wasted your care and affection on someone who was indifferent to the comfort and ease you brought...sorry for pretending to be indifferent to you.'

Now he was pacing, talking out loud to her as he had practiced so many times in this very room, and she stood like a statue, watching and listening to him.

'I took the job because it was the first one offered to me in nearly a year of searching...by the time I got it, I had almost given up hope. I felt lower than the worms crawling through the dirt under your feet, but as long as I was near you, I could no more give you up than I could stop breathing. The only decent thing I could do was to exit your life as convincingly as possible and to free you of the taint of being associated with me.'

He stopped moving and looked to her face, gauging her reaction to his words. She did not leave him to guess.

'Oh, I see,' she said, her words dripping with sarcasm. 'It was all about you. Your wants, your needs, your shame, your pride, your job, your life...you selfish bloody tosser!'

He stood straight and held her gaze. 'I am a selfish, self-centred, arrogant, self-loathing bastard, Parker...but make no mistake: I know you cared for me once, and if you give me another chance, I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you for being a selfish tosser.'

If he had been a bit less desperately involved, he would have given her full marks for the sneer she directed at him then. 'Words, Snape...words are easy. You've been away for six years, living in your charming Irish country cottage, without a thought for me, until you saw my wedding announcement.'

'You're wrong, Parker...and I'll prove it to you,' he said.

He took her wrist and tugged her again into the hallway; turning away from the main part of the cottage, he led her to a room and pulled her in behind him, lighting the oil lamps overhead with the wave of a wand. This was a sitting room, furnished with comfortable, well-worn overstuffed chairs, a sofa, and walls lined with bookshelves. The middle shelf of the centre bookcase directly across from the sofa was covered with framed photographs...and they were all of Hermione.

She went to stand before this altar-like shrine, staring at herself. Three of the pictures were official portraits; one from the first anniversary of the fall of Voldemort, one from the fifth anniversary, and the one taken when she first took up her Ministry job. The others were candid shots, taken of her out and about in public.

What in the name of Merlin did this collection mean?

'That's not what I want to show you,' he said, interrupting her browsing.

She shrugged, turning to face him. 'A shelf of pictures doesn't prove anything, Snape. You could have put this together in an hour if you wanted to.'

He held a stack of narrow folders, which he extended to her without speaking. Taking them with a long-suffering grimace, Hermione flipped open the top file and began to read through the parchment within...and then she strode to the nearest armchair and sat down, going through each of the folders. This was a day-by-day, cursory log of her existence for the last several years. Deviations from her regular schedule, such as when she went on holiday or went out on a date, were marked in red. A very few of those red-flagged date entries were highlighted in yellow, showing nights when she had not returned home. At the end of each file was a summary report of her activities for that time period. She quickly counted through the files...there were sixteen of them.

Hermione tossed the folders onto a low table. 'So,' she said, crossing her arms over her chest and musing aloud, 'you crossed the line from first-rate git to second-rate stalker. Is that supposed to impress me?'

He sat down in the armchair across from her with an exhalation of vexation. 'Not impress you, Parker...just prove to you that you have been very much on my mind for a very long time.'

She curled her lip at him. 'Are you implying that you've gone all this time without female companionship?' Smooth move, Granger, she thought. Did she really want to hear the answer to this?

'I saw other women for the first few years,' he said quietly. 'But what I found, Parker, is that you are not replaceable.'

Hermione physically turned her face from him before she could cry, Neither are you! Damn him!

Mistaking her averted face for a further sign of disbelief, he continued to speak. 'Four years ago, I began to see someone ...' He stopped for a moment, as if the words were difficult to speak. 'I began to see a counsellor.'

Hermione slowly turned her face back to him and found his attention focussed on her. He had been to a therapist? After all the times she had urged him to go when they were together, he waited until he had destroyed her and moved on before he could be arsed to see one?

'I know,' he said in answer to her unspoken words. 'You suggested it many times...but Parker, you can lead a Thestral to water, but you can't make him drink.' He shrugged. 'It wasn't until I saw myself living a life of which I had never dreamed, with a rewarding job, appreciative colleagues, sufficient gold for my needs and enough to put away for the future...and still being a miserable bastard, that I understood the problem was within myself, rather than in my circumstances.'

As hurt as she had been, and as angry as she was with him for waiting until it was too late to show up again, she was not proof against the weight of his contrition. He was under the influence of Veritaserum...these words were the truth. This sentiment was sincere. The self-knowledge she had longed for him to seek was shining in him like a flame, and in spite of her best intentions, she was drawn to it like the proverbial moth. Yet still, she struggled against the treacherous maelstrom which pulled her relentlessly back into his life.

'Her name is Dr Shalvah Shadaim,' he said softly. 'I want very much for you to meet her, one day. She wants to meet you.'

Hermione shifted uncomfortably in her seat, trying to decide how she felt about a strange Irish witch having given that much thought to her.

'I decided to see her when I realised that I wanted to make changes in my life, but I had no idea what those changes needed to be.' He moved from his chair and knelt again beside her, as if he could not bear being so far away. 'I bought the cottage at the first of this year, and that was the first time I let myself hope that I might manage to get myself together before you found someone else.'

Hermione closed her eyes so she wouldn't see him right in front of her, there for the taking. Nothing he had told her about his feelings about himself surprised her; even at nineteen, she had recognised his anger and hopelessness as depression. No, the tragedy of this was that he had waited too long ....

'Parker,' he said, and she opened her eyes again, his nearness like a plague of breathlessness upon her.

The years had crinkled the corners of his eyes with small crow's feet, yet the severe creases scoring his forehead and the path from his nose to the corners of his lips were all but gone, eased by the reduction of the stress under which he had lived for so long. He would never be a handsome man, with his harshly jutting nose and the austere planes of his face, but she had always found him to be attractive...dangerously so. The scent of his cologne wafted to her...bergamot and sage, with a touch of lemon...and she vividly remembered the feel of the muscles of his thighs as he moved between hers, the scent memory tumbling her inexplicably into a state of acute want.

As if he could read her mind, he leant in and kissed her mouth. With a moan, she wrapped her fingers in the ultra-fine strands of ravens-wing hair and kissed him back, introducing urgency to the proceedings. Rather than jerking her out of the chair onto the floor, as he might have done when she had known him before, he cradled the back of her head in one large hand, angling her just so, and deepened his kiss accordingly. At the same moment, his spare hand passed soothingly between her shoulder blades, managing at once to inflame and comfort her...a devastating combination.

Hermione abandoned his hair, scrabbling against his muscled back, seeking to pull him closer; her reason told her to acquire this necessity else existence might cease, and she obeyed the imperative, biting at his lips and sliding one questing hand around to his abdomen, heading for his beltline. To her utter frustration, he broke the kiss, capturing her hand and drawing it to his lips.

'Do you have a bedroom in this place?' she asked huskily.

His eyes seemed to consume her. 'Yes, and I want to show it to you...I want you to see all of the cottage.'

She swayed toward him. 'The bedroom first.'

He stood and drew her to her feet, pulling her into his arms and kissing her again, taking his time over it, with such intensity that Hermione soon found herself whimpering into the warmth of his mouth. He released her then and stepped back, taking a steadying breath.

'Severus?' she said, stepping toward him, her formerly slumbering libido pounding a tattoo in her ears, with a matching rhythm betwixt her legs. She reached to trace a finger along his jaw.

'Not like this, Parker,' he said gruffly, closing his eyes and leaning into her touch. 'Not while you wear Longbottom's ring.'

Hermione did not spare a glance for the modest ring in question; she was far too intent upon her purpose. 'You don't want me,' she pouted, averting her face and simultaneously darting a glance up from beneath her lashes.

He growled and took possession of her chin. 'Don't play the coquette with me, woman...I want you more now than I want my next breath.' He kissed her again to prove his point, his tongue stroking firmly and aggressively into her mouth, giving what he wanted to give and not a whit more. When he put her from him again, he did so with finality.

'Come...I want you to see the rest of the rooms.'

Hermione wanted to scream with vexation; she didn't want a house tour, she wanted a shag! She didn't want to think about the next moment, much less the approaching dawn of the day before her wedding. She wanted to lose herself in the passion this man evoked...and he was determined not to give her what he made her want!

She turned from him, pressing her palms to her flushed cheeks, feeling the warmth there, struggling to reclaim her reason from the swamp of what had once been her brains and now seemed to be a viscous mess saturating her knickers.

'Give me my wand,' she managed, wondering if she could get back to her room and close the door before mortification set in.

His hands closed over her shoulders and did not yield when she attempted to twist away from him. 'I know what you want, Parker,' he murmured, his lips beside her ear. 'I want it, too...I want to take you to my bed and ravish you within an inch of your life...but I cannot bear to do it, knowing that you might climb out and trot off to marry another man.' The palms of his hands slid down her bare arms as he pressed a kiss beneath her ear. 'I'll take you to my bed when I can keep you, Parker...not before.'

She managed to wrench away from him, the desire he had roused roiling swiftly into anger. 'You're raving,' she said, hearing and hating the tremor in her voice. 'What makes you think I want to be kept by you?'

He stared across the distance between them, his face suddenly pale and his expression forbidding. He slipped his hand into an inner pocket and removed a newspaper clipping, which he held before her face between his thumb and index finger. Hermione buried her flaming face in her hands, wishing the floor would open up and swallow her whole.

'This made me hope you want to be kept by me,' he replied steadily. 'You didn't exactly leave it nailed to the wall in your room at Grimmauld Place, but it was on top of the mess in the drawer of your bedside table.'

Hermione resisted putting her fingers in her ears and singing, 'La la la la la!' to drown out the silky, inexorable voice.

'I knew this photograph ran in the Irish wizarding paper, Parker, so either you have been keeping up with the Shamrock, or the Daily Prophet has acquired an unnatural interest in Irish gossip.' Reaching out, Severus peeled the fingers of one hand from her face. 'Did you think I was seeing this witch?'

Hermione nodded feebly, her only wish now to end this humiliation as quickly as possible.

A vein of humour opened in his stern tone. 'This, Parker, is Dr Shadaim...my therapist. I was her last appointment of the day and we walked out of the building together...and thus a rumour was born.' He shrugged. 'There is a rather nice restaurant on the ground floor where we might have been dining together, I suppose.'

Hermione reached for the clipping, but Severus tucked it away again. 'Oh, no; I'll be keeping this...you see, it's evidence of your jealousy, which delights me.'

'You're a loathsome toad!' she cried. 'At least I didn't have you followed for four years, like some sort of a pathetic stalker!'

The corner of his lip twitched. 'Couldn't afford it, could you?' he commiserated.

'Oh, go to hell, Snape,' she said, and turning on her heel, she flounced to the door.

He was upon her before she passed through the doorway; he spun her around and held her at arm's length. 'I don't know when anything in my life ever made me happier than finding that clipping, Parker,' he said, his eyes like fathomless black pools as he looked at her. 'It's the reason why you entered into this ridiculous engagement with Longbottom, isn't it?'

She nodded helplessly, feeling like a complete fool, and he said, 'Tell me you still care for me.'

Hermione turned her face away from him, tears starting to her eyes. She felt as if she had run an emotional marathon in the last two hours...for the last four days, really...and her endurance for the exertion was about at an end. She could no more hold out against his unrelenting assault on her defences than she could engage to run another marathon.

He pulled her surely into his arms and held her against his heart, burying his nose in her hair. 'That will do to be getting on with,' he murmured, rocking her gently to and fro. 'And thank God, Parker...because I love you so.'

She toured the rest of his cottage, finally seeing his bedroom, decorated in gender-neutral mahogany with earth tone accents, as well as the two spare bedrooms, each of which bore a bed and a wardrobe, but no further items.

'Why do you need three bedrooms?' Hermione asked, and Severus smiled enigmatically, tightening the arm which held her to his side. He was glad the Veritaserum had finally worn off.

They stood together in the unfinished central portion of the cottage, the original structure over one hundred years old.

'How will you finish it?' she asked.

'I don't know...I thought you might like to decide,' he answered.

She buried her face against his chest. 'I can't decide how to decorate your house,' she said. 'I'm going to marry Neville.'

He stroked her hair. 'No,' he said calmly. 'Your heart is mine...and I shall spend the rest of my life endeavouring to deserve your hand, as well.'

And all through the remainder of the too short September night, they talked of many things, but ever circled back to the question of whether or not Hermione would marry Neville on Sunday. Severus steadfastly averred that she would not, whilst she remained adamant that her promise had been given and that she would follow through.

When the sun rose over the misty Dublin Mountains, Hermione and Severus were outdoors to witness it, seated upon a handy bench, so placed for just such a reason, and wrapped together in a warm rug.

'It's so beautiful here,' she sighed. 'I don't know how anyone could bear to leave it.'

'You'll be back soon,' he assured her, believing it was true. 'I made this place for us, Parker...you'll be back.'

And when the sunlight peeked over the nearest ridge, they Disapparated to Gretna Green, where he saw her safely to her hotel room before returning to his own.

A/N: This chapter was beta read by DeeMichelle and Brit-picked by LettyBird. It is Shug's birthday present, and we will finish up this bit of fluffy pinkness with one more chapter.

The name of Severus' therapist was playfully provided for me by the adorable Machshefa.

Here are the cottage and the misty mountains: