HG/SS Moments

It had hit Severus harder than he had ever thought it might. The damned Gryffindor pixie with her untamable hair and matching spirit had just announced, practically out of the blue, that she was his friend. Severus did not regard friendship lightly. "What are friends for?" was a phrase that normally made his skin crawl, especially when it fell like treacle from Lucius Malfoy's lips. Severus had killed his closest friend and in the process betrayed another, who in turn condemned him. Knowing all this, Hermione pronounced her allegiance, and it was a gift he could ill afford to refuse.

A fierce determination engulfed him as he watched the girl sprawled on his sofa with a periodical. Whatever happened in this war, whether Potter won or lost, he was going to do everything in his power to make sure she made it through. He would aid her and prepare her to the best of his formidable capabilities.

"Hermione, the information about Regulus... I assume it has been of use?"

Instantly her face clouded with panic and embarrassment. "I— Yes. I can't say how, but yes." She rushed to explain her reticence. "I would, only we promised—" She shrugged. "Dumbledore."

She was pleasantly surprised when he limited his show of annoyance to a resigned sigh.

"One would think that the old fool might possibly have learned his lesson after the Ministry fiasco." He nodded towards the bookcases. "My library is at your disposal... though I think you may borrow no more than six at once, lest my entire collection migrate to your latest abode."

Hermione gave a wry smile. "Probably."

"If you need help in the application of anything from the texts..." He shrugged. "And I think it would be prudent for me to tutor you in Occlumency and duelling."

"I appreciate the offer. I really do..."

An eyebrow arched upwards. "But?"

"But I just can't spend so much time away from headquarters. It would be noticed eventually, and the last thing I would want to do is put you in danger if someone decides to follow me."

"Perhaps I should also add lessons in stealth and evasion?" he suggested smugly. "As for being missed, leave that problem with me. It may take some time to arrange but I believe I shall be able to do it."

Hermione smiled. "I'm still going to call you Severus."

"As you wish, Hermione."

Taking several of his precious books with her in a Tesco carrier, she shifted her weight from one foot to the other as he held the door open.

Severus wondered momentarily about the source of her nervousness.

The next second two feminine arms were wrapped around his waist, Hermione's cheek pressing into his chest. Before he could fully appreciate the brush of her hair against his collarbone, she was gone.

He fixed his expression into a stern glare, but she only grinned in return, completely uncowed.

A few minutes after she left, a Polyjuiced Potions professor Apparated to Diagon Alley.

For something so small and deceptively simple, the price was steep, several times what Severus had paid for the two-year-old Lexus parked outside his home. Its value, however, lay not in what it would have cost to manufacture. Its price reflected not only its complete illegality, but also the nearly infinite possibilities it conferred. Severus told himself that he would make the money back in a year or three, if he convinced Hermione to patent his more recent advances under her name. To do that, she needed the trinket.

Christmas was coming. He could always call it an early present.

"I didn't think that would have been a subject for amusement," Remus Lupin remarked, pointing at the passage on magical brands Hermione was reading.

"Just daydreaming," she reassured the werewolf, not managing to quell her smile. She'd actually been wondering how Severus would react when he she gave him his Christmas present, considering the fuss he made over a simple hug. He might snipe or yell or glare. She knew he'd never harm her and, now she didn't have to worry about inadvertently leading him on, she felt even more comfortable around him than she did with Ron or Harry.

He wasn't in the flat's main room the next time she called, nor the bathroom, nor his attic laboratory. The door to his bedroom stood ajar, and that was sufficiently unusual for her to make her way to it and knock gently. She pushed it open further when she heard no reply.

A figure curled in a foetal ball in the centre of the bed, still robed, booted, masked and hooded.

"Severus?" she half-whispered, afraid of waking him.

She reached over, smoothing back the raven wing that concealed his face. He trembled under her touch, his entire body shaking uncontrollably.

The mask was so cold it burned her fingers when she tried to remove it. She reached for his robes instead, suddenly realising that the darker patch around him was not just shadow. They were damp to the touch. Hermione wracked her brain to remember the correct treatment. Most importantly she had to get him out of the wet things. She took a deep breath, steeling herself for his reaction when she shredded his sodden clothes. She might have taken another, but that was when his shivering stopped.

Her spell didn't just slice his clothes open. It ripped them away.

She levitated him off the bed until she had stripped away the layers of wet bedding. Peeling away his mask, she winced as his skin seemed to adhere to the metal. She pulled everything out of his wardrobe and drawers, packing the smaller items around him before covering the resulting nest in layers of blankets and cloaks. Her teeth worried at her lip as she filled the kettle. If she was right, he had third-stage hypothermia. He needed professional medical care, but the Fidelius Charm kept everyone else out and St. Mungo's meant imprisonment or worse. There was only her.