The ball was in full swing and obviously it was once again a success with the guests and students and teachers of Hogwarts amusing themselves immensely and after Severus - who wasn't much entertained by the music the 'Wicked Witches' were playing, but obviously liked watching the Malfoys struggle to keep up with showing manners while they surely wished to hex at least 99 % of those present - had taken over from Harry in once again saving Hermione out of the claws of a certainly too amused minister of magic, Albus could give himself at least a moment's rest. Taking a goblet with champagne from one of the trays hovering along the walls of the great hall, he sank down in one of the chairs at the round table under the big Christmas tree, stretching his long legs and wiggling his toes in the polished black shoes he was wearing. Knowing that he were to stand to dance through a long night, he'd of course provided himself with a cushion charm on his feet, but by now it seemed to have worn off and so his old feet were aching.
Looking to the dance floor in the middle of the hall he watched Hermione waltzing in the arms of his potion master and although Severus wore his usual black - admittedly he'd made concessions to the event in changing the plain teaching robes with a velvet dress robe, the high collar embroidered with tiny, silver snakes and binding his hair back in a neatly ponytail. By no means a handsome man, Severusked ked now rather good in a dark, patrician way. And with gracious moving, smiling, dashing Hermione in his arm - Albus was convinced that even Filch would have looked glorious with her as a dancing partner - Severus was a sight. And now she rose her head, looked in Severus' eyes and he whispered something in her ears - Albus didn't need expendable ears to know that it was probably something pretty malicious towards the minister - and Hermione laid her head back, laughing and showing not only Severus, but Albus her throat - creamy white skin, so silken one meant to see her red blood running through it. It didn't need more - in the moment Albus saw her throat, the misery he'd pushed in the darkest corner of his mind over the last hours, so well hidden that he'd almost managed to forget about, was back.
He remembered - and oh, how well he remembered! - how this throat of hers felt under his lips, he remembered the warmth and the pulsing of the blood on it and the sweet smell and the salty taste of her sweat and the sound she made as kissed her then, something between a whimper, a moan and a chuckle. And he remembered how her young body felt against his, the wonderful, torturing pressure of her firm breasts against his chest and her flat belly against his round one - and damn him, he'd never should have allowed her to kiss him when he was in his old body! It would have been bad enough to live with the memory of Hermione and his younger body, but it was agony to remember that she in Rome had kissed him passionately as he'd been his true self, the old man with the weak, softened body. To live with this memory without storming to the dance floor, throwing her away from Severus and pushing her in the next dark corner he only managed in telling himself once again, that she'd only done so because she'd been drunk and in the dark. She hadn't seen him by this kiss; she hadn't been aware that her lips were on a mouth so old and weathered like his.
Suddenly Albus heard a voice rubbing down on his nerves like sandpaper. Cornelius Fudge had approached the table, seated himself down next to Albus, a glass with fire whiskey in his hand and a fake as false as Leprechaun's gold in his face. "If I were in your shoes, Dumbledore," he said, "I wouldn't let my young wife dance so close with a former death eater."
Albus forced his features back in the benevolent smile he mostly used when talking to Fudge and he even managed to produce a twinkle before he answered: "You wouldn't like being in my shoes, Cornelius. Especially the left one is just becoming rather tight."
Fudge laughed as if Albus would just have told him an obscene joke, then he leaned closer, his breath smelling after the fire whiskey. "You rather surprised us with this marriage of yours. Who'd have thought you're such a dog, getting yourself such a toothsome sweetheart to bed. A head girl for the headmaster - tell me, Dumbledore: Who's giving who head then?"
