Within a Forest Dark

Six

31 October 1991

"Hold still!"

Minerva casts a spell on Severus's bloodied right leg, and he lets out a yelp of pain.

"Be careful, woman. It's not a fucking matchstick you're trying to Transfigure."

"Even a sentient matchstick would have better sense than to get himself mangled by a three-headed hellhound. Honestly, where was your wand?"

"How was I to know my Stupefy would only work on one of its heads?"

"You might have asked Hagrid."

"Yes, because there was so much time for a chat between 'Troll in the dungeons' and 'keep Quirrell from getting the Philosopher's Stone.'"

She squints at the wound, looking for what, Severus doesn't know, as she speaks.

"I don't know why you're so fixated on Quirinius. Just because he changed from Muggle Studies to Defence doesn't mean he's a Dark wizard. You've applied to change from Potions to Defence every year for the past five, if I recall correctly."

"Even you must have noticed how odd he's become since returning from Albania. Ouch!"

She's stuck her wand into the wound, retrieving a bit of torn cloth from his trousers.

"I said, hold still. This needs to be cleaned properly unless you want to spend next month in the infirmary. I still don't know why you wanted me to do this rather than Poppy."

"It must be your bedside manner," he says through gritted teeth. "Or maybe we can consider this foreplay."

She looks up from her work.

"I didn't think you'd be coming tonight."

"Oh, I'll be coming tonight, Minerva. Don't even think of using my injury as an excuse to beg off."

She returns to her work. "You're much less amusing than you think."

She runs her wand carefully along the wound, bringing its ragged edges together and syphoning off the dried blood. "There. That's the best I can do with it. If you want to avoid scars, though, you'd best see Poppy."

"A few more scars won't matter," he says, putting on his teaching robe. "Nine o'clock?"

"Better make it ten. I expect Albus will want a debriefing."

Severus is relieved. She's apparently over their latest row about Potter and his Nimbus Fucking 2000. Severus has been afraid the tension caused by the baleful presence of James's spawn at Hogwarts would permanently damage their ... whatever it was.

He's resisted putting a name to it, even two years after their first tryst in Rome.

They didn't speak of what had happened the night they'd been Portkeyed to the wrong city. The following morning, they got up, and she Side-Alonged him to an alley outside the New York MACUSA office, and they saw a few of the sights while the new Portkey was being made.

When they arrived in Via Aradia, Minerva went straight to the conference stage to deliver her talk, while Severus registered them at the hotel. They attended a conference session on implicit bias against Muggle-borns in the secondary school curriculum, which was, they both agreed, better than they'd anticipated, and had dinner together. Water was the beverage of choice at their table.

The relief on her face when she answered his knock at her hotel room door banished any misgivings he had. The night that ensued was at turns delirious, awkward, instructive, messy, and altogether easier than he expected.

He has nothing to compare it to, but he thinks they do sex surprisingly well. At least, he was surprised. He doesn't know what Minerva thinks about it, but she keeps coming to his bed, and letting him into hers, at regular intervals, so he takes it to mean she enjoys what they do.

And it has changed things, as she said it would. But, uniquely in Severus's experience, they haven't changed for the worse. Quite the reverse, in fact. They are, if anything, freer with one another than before, and their ... friendship ... has only become at the same time more comfortable and more challenging, its edges sharper, its grooves smoother, its depths richer.

They will overcome their recent squabbles, he thinks as he makes his stealthy way up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower that night. There is another war coming, and they need to take pleasure and, dare he even think it, happiness, where they can. Who else can they turn to, after all? Both up to their necks in Dumbledorian plots and secrets, it would be foolhardy for either of them to take up with someone else on intimate terms.

He shakes his head to clear it. She would tell him that these sorts of thoughts are pointless and self-pitying, and he doesn't mind her voice in his head telling him so.

When she opens the door to admit him to her rooms, his darker thoughts evaporate. She is here, and he is here, and it is enough.