Chapter Text
Six weeks holed up in an Order safe house on the edge of nowhere sounded like a welcome reprieve at the time. After spending the better part of autumn mucking through the bogs of Scotland on a reconnaissance mission, the prospect of a warm, dry bed—of running water—had been irresistible.
It mattered little what she’d be required to do. Or with whom. Hermione had discarded her once argumentative nature sometime in the years prior, the impulse chipped away piece by piece until she was carved into the soldier she’d become. No longer a child playing at one. Assignments came and assignments went, and still, the war raged across Britain. Hermione wasn’t fool enough to conflate her contributions to their efforts. She was a cog in the machine, so she did what she must.
Even if that meant spending the better part of two months alone with Severus Snape. After the attempt on her former professor’s life by Voldemort and Nagini, he’d had no choice but to abandon his long-held role as spy at the right hand of Voldemort. It left the Order’s stream of intelligence crippled... for a time.
But the myths often mirrored life. Cut off one head, two more grow back.
Now, Snape served in Order leadership as a strategist, a fighter, and potioneer. Which was what necessitated Hermione’s assistance, having dabbled as a potioneer for the Order more than a time or two throughout the war when Snape’s attention was otherwise required on bigger, more pressing issues.
There was no problem bigger than the one they now faced. Snape was being sequestered to the safe house to work on an antidote for a vile new curse that sent a heavy yellow gas across the battlefield and caused victims’ skin to melt from their bodies within hours of exposure. There was no known counter curse. Hermione had witnessed the effects first hand, trying, and failing, to hold a young wizard’s flesh onto the bones of his thigh as Cho Chang screeched directions at her from another bedside across the makeshift hospital ward at headquarters the first time they’d encountered the dark spell. He died before she learned his name. Even now, she didn’t know who it was that had bled out in her arms.
Snape had stalked through the doorway of that ward sometime in the aftermath, his footfalls striking the brown tile floors methodically as he passed each bedside of the fallen covered loosely with white sheets stained red. Hermione watched him from her place against the far wall, his stoic demeanor unfaltering despite the horrors that surrounded them. Half covered in blood, too sticky and weary to rise from the floor where she’d sunk when the screams finally quieted, Hermione hadn’t bothered pretending she’d been doing anything but watching when his eyes finally met hers.
Snape hadn’t seemed surprised to find her there, as if he’d known he’d had an audience all along. She didn’t doubt that he did. The man saw everything. Silence stretched as they held eye contact for a beat, then another, the dark depths of his eyes betraying nothing. No sorrow, or fear, or even grief. Then he’d turned and departed the ward, black robes billowing behind him without a word.
That was the last time she’d seen him. More than three—four?—months ago. She was sent to Scotland, and he—she hadn’t the faintest clue what he’d done. Worked on an antidote, she assumed, given in that time they’d deduced that there must be one. Some kind of preventative measure taken prior to battle given their adversaries seemed to remain unaffected.
The first few days at the safe house passed in relative silence, the comings and goings of various Order members to deposit supplies or check the wards—which she’d done three times already—before her housemate arrived the only real marker of time passing. Hermione spent those days setting up their makeshift potions lab, organizing supplies, stocking the kitchen shelves, and cleaning dust and grime from the unused surfaces of… well, everything.
After fighting for a few minutes of hot water and her turn in the rotation for the good cushion on threadbare sofas in overpacked safe houses, Hermione found the silence to be rather blissful.
Until he arrived. Then the silence felt rather like a weapon.
The crack of apparition told her he’d entered the wards, and she rose, with no small amount of trepidation, from the chipped kitchen table and slipped into the front hall. With billowing capes and slamming doors, Snape stormed inside and up the stairs, disappearing into the bedroom across from hers without so much as an acknowledgment of her presence. For another few days, that was all she saw or heard of him. He remained shut up in the lab, the only signs of life slamming doors, robes disappearing behind corners, or creaking floorboards in the middle of the night that had her shooting from bed and leveling her wand at her bedroom door before she registered where she was.
She was beginning to think he didn’t sleep.
By the start of the second week, Hermione was growing frustrated. She’d long since ceased being his student, and while she respected his position in the Order, she wouldn’t cower in his mere presence. It wasn’t possible he was unaware of why exactly she was there—which, based on his behavior, led her to believe he hadn’t wanted her help at all. Too bad.
Gone were the days of one man making all the choices.
Hermione took it upon herself to bridge their gap in communication. Halfway through the second week, she raised her fist to the door outside of the potions lab and knocked. The door wrenched open before her knuckles finished meeting the surface a second time. She resisted the urge to step back when his towering frame filled the open doorway in front of her, the dark fabric of his robes across his chest filling her immediate line of sight.
“I require no assistance today,” he drawled. It was the first thing he’d said to her since his arrival. Then Snape promptly slammed the door in her face.
Hermione grit her teeth. For a moment, she had half a mind to blast open the door and demand he accept her help. The urge came and went without so much of a twitch of her fingers. Instead, she spent the rest of the evening reading up on dark counter curses from the scarce few reference texts the Order had been able to scrounge together for her.
The next day, she beat him to the lab.
She stood in the middle of the room, hands firmly on her hips. Snape had reorganized the workstations, swapping around her set up. The largest cauldron was now on the far table, and the once alphabetized ingredients were separated into a category she couldn’t make heads or tails of. It was the same with most of his notes. If one could even call the parchment scattered across two of the stations laden with sharp, severe handwriting crossed through too many times over such a thing.
Snape paused on the threshold a few minutes after she arrived, releasing a long suffering sigh before he seemed to accept her presence for what it was. With sharp, pointed directions to stay on her side of the room and to follow his instructions to a T, they worked in relative silence for the rest of the day. The methodical rhythm of slicing, chopping, and grinding filled the room. Hunched over cauldrons, the steam damped his dark hair and expanded Hermione’s curls three sizes larger than usual.
When the potion withered into a crusted purple film against the cauldron walls, Snape viciously scratched out two lines in his notes and left without a word.
The next day, his sigh was still long, but decidedly less suffering.
Her next mistake was attempting to make small talk.
“Good morning,” she greeted when Snape passed by the kitchen on his way to the potions lab. Her hip rested against the sharp edge of the counter as she finished off her second cup of coffee. “Sleep alright?”
He grunted a reply without looking at her before disappearing through the far doorway. It was a reply nonetheless.
She deposited the mug into the sink and followed after him. Snape had immediately set to work, his cauldron already humidifying the small space. Hermione had tied her hair back in anticipation of working in close quarters again. She hadn’t missed the way he’d assessed her overblown curls the day prior. While she didn’t think he’d comment on it without provocation, she’d rather not have reason to find out at all.
“Halve the mistletoe berries and strain the billywig sting slime this time,” he said without looking up from his cauldron.
She hummed her acknowledgement and set to work herself. After setting up her station, she riffled through the stores, finding the billywig sting slime easily enough. The mistletoe berries weren't there. Glass jars clinked as she searched through his barmy categorical system twice over without luck. Hermione stared at the jars so long it was growing rather uncomfortable—especially with the heavy weight of his eyes on her back.
When she started from the far end again, he clucked his tongue. “Miss Granger.”
She turned, and in his outstretched hand was the jar of mistletoe berries. He’d had them all along. Why hadn’t he said something?
Her cheeks began to warm, the small misstep thrusting her back into the student she’d once been, desperate for acknowledgment and praise. She shoved the old insecurity away. Minerva never made her feel this way. Never small, or childish, despite the many blunders Hermione had made in her presence throughout the years they’d worked closely together.
So why did he?
It must be the intensity that surrounded him like a thick fog. Even the way he was looking at her now threatened to flay her right down to the very fabric of her soul. Hermione took the berries, careful not to touch his long pale fingers wrapped around the bottom of the glass and returned to her station.
She shook out the necessary amount of berries. Straining the billywig sting slime may help with the absorption, but halving the mistletoe berries would change the acidity level. Perhaps too much. When he’d given the directive, it seemed like an incremental change. Seeing the sparse amount scattered across the brewing station only heightened her concern. It would be entirely too few for this kind of brew.
Hermione raised her head to say so, but before she could, Snape spoke.
“I can feel you thinking, Miss Granger,” he snipped with his back turned, though his methodical stirring didn’t falter. “Stop.”
She frowned down at the table. Wasting a day at this point seemed irresponsible at best, reckless at worst. But he was leadership, and she was not. She would take her orders and execute them. Even if she knew what the outcome would be.
Again they worked in silence, the only sounds between them the scratch of his quill or the scrape of a stirrer against their cauldrons walls. As her mind wandered, she considered the man a few short steps away. His dark hair hung heavy around his face as his head was tilted down, concealing his expression from her. She imagined it would be somewhere between concentration and boredom, a mix of general disinterest that seemed to even out his prominent features.
Ginny had been horrified when Hermione informed her of the upcoming assignment on the single night hiatus she’d had at headquarters between Scotland and this safe house with Snape. Heavily mythologized as he was, Hermione had known him too long to fear him from story alone. The only story that really mattered was the one he’d given to Harry with, what he’d thought was, his dying breath. Perhaps in these weeks of silence they were to share, he’d share something with her, too. There were a great many questions she might ask him, ranging from, ‘Do you truly believe in the things we’re fighting for or are you still repaying a debt to a woman dead twenty odd years?’ To ‘How are you finding the accommodations?’
She thought it might be best to start with the lighter of the two. Hermione opened her mouth, and his chopping paused. The nerve left her. He only resumed his chopping again when she closed her mouth once more.
Snape had forgone his robes that day, though he still donned black head to toe. In fact, she wondered if he usually discarded the robes for brewing anyway. They were inconvenient things, especially in such a small space. The idea almost made her snicker—that he’d removed them in here and put them back on just to barge past her in the halls and disappear dramatically around corners.
A huff of air escaped her nostrils.
“Miss Granger,” he snapped, his words sharp as the blade Bellatrix used to carve into her arm. This time, annoyance was replaced with real anger. “Do you relish in disturbing my concentration with the insufferable sounds you make? How many lives will be wasted due to your inability to—” he grit out the words “remain silent?”
She refrained from attempting any small talk the next few days.
By the end of the second week and after spending many days in relative silence, Hermione padded down from a much needed shower after a long day of brewing, intent on making a quick meal of whatever she could scrounge from the kitchen before turning in early. Tinned meats and some kind of dried grain, more than likely.
She spun around the scratchy banister and into the hall, the old wood floor cool against her bare feet. The sun shone through the small window above the sink. Hermione’s steps faltered in the doorway when she realized she wouldn’t be alone in the kitchen.
Snape stood at the far end by the fridge, writing something on a scrap of parchment with a ballpoint pen, dressed in muggle jeans and a loose jumper pushed up just above his wrists and a telltale glamour concealing the scars on his neck. Hermione wasn’t sure she’d ever seen his wrists. Or his arms. Or much of anything besides his hands and face. Usually he stayed in the lab, or in his room, waiting, she suspected, for her to turn in for the evening so he could emerge to make a meal or relax or whatever it was he did when she wasn’t around.
He paused his writing when she entered and looked up.
It was… odd. Seeing him out of his typical all black attire. Hermione had all but forgotten he was a half-blood, raised with a muggle father to boot. He seemed so… normal.
It was as strange an experience for him, she was sure. With her hair wet and hanging in loose ringlets around her face, dampening the shoulders of her oversized t-shirt, and her legs bare in pajama shorts to ward off the unseasonably warm evening.
The air shifted, tightening slightly in acknowledgement of the change of status quo they were experiencing together. This wasn’t Hogwarts anymore. He hadn’t come upon her emerging from the Prefect’s bathroom after curfew. He wouldn’t threaten her with the loss of points. She wouldn’t apologize. They were two adults, sharing a home.
He broke the silence first. “Making a supply run into the muggle village,” he said, by way of explanation. For his strange clothes, or his sudden presence, or some combination of the two. “Do you need anything?”
“Coffee,” she said as she bent to pull a pot from under the counter. It was her first thought. “And, erm—” when she stood he’d returned to looking down at his list “—shampoo and conditioner. Any kind will do.”
She was running out of both. Hermione had been lucky enough to get bottles of her favorite—the professional grade stuff they used in the hair salons her mother would take them to when she decided they deserved some pampering—from Ginny for her recent twenty-fourth birthday. Going into muggle London to find it had been an unnecessary risk that Hermione had chastised Ginny for, before crushing her into a tight embrace. After enduring a few rare occasions with nothing but a bar of soap to clean blood and grime from her matted curls after a battle, the commodity had become more precious than she’d ever thought possible. She’d rationed it, but it was running low already.
“Anything else?”
She shook her head and flicked on the stove, then placed the small pot over the flame. Snape pocketed the list then pushed his hair back and pulled a faded baseball cap low over his brow, concealing his characteristic features. Hermione turned down to the empty pot before he caught her staring and ignored the strange feeling it drummed up.
Too normal. Too domestic. Too strange.
She didn’t move again until the creaking kitchen door smacked closed behind him.
The next evening, when she slipped into their shared bathroom to shower, two new bottles were on the counter waiting for her.
Her favorites.
It was rather curious how often Hermione happened upon him after their short interaction in the kitchen.
For a housemate who had sequestered himself into relative hiding, Snape was suddenly everywhere. Reading in the lopsided armchair in the sitting room. Handwashing a dish in the kitchen. Crossing in the halls, on more than one occasion, every day.
Somewhere in the silence they’d found a fragile camaraderie.
The most surreal change was his acknowledgment of her presence in the potions lab, apart from the single directives he’d offered at the start of each day. He voiced aloud hypotheses, and considered her opinion on them. Once or twice, he’d even leaned over her cauldron to check her progress, and, to her astonishment, nodded his approval.
Whatever had shifted between them in that disarming moment in the kitchen, it seemed to make him more… amiable. It wasn’t a word she ever thought she’d associate with Severus Snape. With this strange change and his increased frequency of proximity, Hermione found herself watching him on more than one occasion. Seeking him out. Talking. Even if the words were few and the conversations brief.
In turn, she thought he might be doing the same.
At first, she told herself it was novelty. His strange behavior was a short-term distraction, one that only drew her attention because it was so wildly out of character for him and would return to his normal, prickly nature at any moment, so it was only natural she gather as much anecdotal evidence as possible.
Then she told herself it was fascination. Hermione liked puzzles. He’d changed the course of the war before it even began. He’d given his life to the protection of her best friend because of his capacity to love so deeply, so enduringly. Snape was more than a puzzle. He was an enigma. One she wanted to uncover completely.
He was deliberate and exacting in everything he did. His hands moved with a honed precision that was mesmerizing to Hermione. More often than not, he’d started pushing up his sleeves while he worked, and with every bared inch of pale, scarred skin, she paid closer and closer attention.
Snape's hair wasn't greasy. A common misconception, apparently, given it was often damp from cauldron steam. She saw it fresh and clean almost every evening. His nose wasn't hooked, but... prominent. Defined. Regal, even. When his expression wasn't twisted into a sneer, it was often thoughtful, deliberating, calculating. All qualities Hermione admired in a person. Perhaps he wasn't so bad looking after all.
Once the seed of thought landed in her mind, entirely against her will, it took up residence, sprouting roots and burrowing in. Soon the methodical slices, the scrape of blade against his board, the delicate, but solid and sure way that he gripped the stirrer had her imaging his hands in other ways. In other places. Only then did she admit—to herself, in the silence and darkness of her bedroom in the middle of the night with no one but the moon to bear witness—that it was attraction.
In week three, Hermione happened upon him around midnight in the dim kitchen, nursing something far too clear to be coffee from a mug at the table. She hadn’t been able to sleep, tossing and turning in her sheets, frustrated by their recent failure in the lab. And just when they’d gotten so close. Every day they failed, someone died.
It seemed he couldn’t either. His long legs were stretched beneath the chipped wood, almost reaching the other side.
Snape was rather tall. She’d never noticed the proportions under all the robes. He was a bit lanky, but they all were from so many years at war and hard to come by quality nutrition. Hermione herself had grown sharp in all the wrong places. He was still dressed from the day, but his hair was fresh and clean and hung lightly around his angular face.
She wanted to rake her fingers through it. What would he do if she did?
Probably curse her into oblivion for daring to be so bold.
He studied her over the mug as she studied him from the doorway. A silent standoff, and an understanding that this thing would pass when one of them spoke.
Hermione broke it anyway. “I never thanked you for the soap.”
His mouth twitched. It was the only thing she could think to say. When his lips weren’t pursed into such a tight line, they were plump enough that Hermione found herself eager to sink her teeth into. They closed around the edge of his mug again as he took a long sip. Then he closed his dark eyes and sighed, breaking their hold on her. He summoned another mug from the counter and poured a healthy glug from the glass bottle he’d hidden on the floor by the leg of the table and held it out to her.
Hermione took that as an invitation to join him. She crossed the room and accepted the mug, letting her fingers ghost over his as she did. Just to see what it would feel like. Once she had a grip on the handle, he snapped his hand away, balling it into a fist in his lap. The cursing into oblivion wasn’t so out of the realm of possibility, then.
She sniffed the contents of the mug then wrinkled her nose. “Is this tequila?”
Hermione pulled out a chair, scratching and bumping against the uneven floors. He pursed his lips and made some sound that she took to be in affirmation when she sat. She pulled her knees into her chest, hugging them as she took her own small sip. It was growing colder in the evenings, but she preferred less restriction when her nightmares came. Hermione hadn’t missed the way his eyes had flicked to her bare legs and away when she stood in the doorway.
The shorts may stay for a while longer yet.
He stared down at the table as she breathed a harsh breath through her nose, releasing some of the burn in her throat. Snape topped off his mug and hers then took a longer drink and let his eyes flutter closed. He sank further into his seat and raked one of those mesmerizing hands through his hair.
“Severus Snape,” she laughed beneath her breath. His eyes snapped open, straight to hers. “You like tequila?”
Snape quirked a brow and seemed to let the liberal use of his first name slide. A good sign. “I believe there are many things you do not know about me, Miss Granger.”
“Huh.” She swirled her mug and flicked her eyes up at him through her lashes. Hermione dropped her voice in the way that most men found appealing. It was a gamble. This man wasn’t most men. Still, she said, “I’d like to.” His brow rose higher. Heart pounding, with her eyes searching his near black ones in the darkness of the room, she added, “Would you like to show me?”
Snape stilled and Hermione waited, letting the thinly veiled offer remain as it was. She thought she might have the urge to claw it back once it was out, but now that it was, she felt no shame. They were at a remote safe house, in the middle of nowhere, alone. Drinking tequila. This was what happened at remote safe houses in a war when soldiers started drinking tequila. He wasn’t an idiot, and this wasn’t his first war.
What did it matter if she tried? What did it matter if he rejected her? What did it matter if he didn’t? They could die any minute of any day and shame would mean nothing then.
After a long pause, during which Hermione finished off the rest of her drink, he said lowly, “I’d advise you to keep inadvisable notions to yourself, Miss Granger.”
She didn’t cower from his intense gaze. A gaze that had darkened with her offer, despite his avoidance of it. It wasn't a rejection.
“We’re at war,” she offered. An excuse for him to cling onto, if he needed it.
“Did you think I was unaware?”
Fine. He wasn’t ready. Hermione sighed and rose to her feet. She rounded the corner of the table, and he leaned back in his chair to escape her new proximity as she did. Hermione leaned around him, watching as his scarred throat bobbed. She plucked the bottle of tequila and refilled her mug with too generous a pour. Something to soothe the sting of rejection.
“We’re at war,” she repeated, and handed him back the bottle. To her surprise, he took it. “The least you can do is call me Hermione.”
Hermione downed the tequila, deposited the mug on the table, and left the room.