Albus shifted in his bed, pulling the blanket a bit tighter around Hermione and himself. After a heavy thunderstorm it rained in thick drops, the wind rattled at the windows and despite the fire in the fireplace he felt how the damp from the garden penetrated through the walls into the dark room. Cautiously he tried to stretch his left leg, weather like this always made his rheumatic becoming worse. This time it was his left knee which was aching - a numb pain, just enough to make him uncomfortable, but not enough to leave the warmth of the bed for getting a potion. He hoped he'd fall asleep soon despite the knee, but knew at the same time that his mind wouldn't stop spinning in the next two hours.
Being as old and experienced as he was, Albus was rarely surprised by his fellow human beings and their emotions anymore and he had of course noticed that the verbal battling of Severus and Hermione had lost the acid of former times. He'd also noticed how close they had become over the last weeks and would have had to be deaf, blind and utterly insensitive if he wouldn't have noticed the way Severus was looking at Hermione when he felt unwatched. Yet Albus was neither deaf nor blind nor insensitive, but fully aware of Hermione just being what the healer would have ordered for getting Severus Snape out of the misery which was his life. Hermione with her quick wit, her intelligence and independence of thinking, with her thirst for knowledge, her fierce loyalty, her outstanding courage, her warmth and her passion, if Albus would have been able to create a mate for Severus, he'd probably have made a Hermione for him. And knowing that Hermione had learned to look through the boy's sneer and malice to see the brave and honorable man behind it, she'd even learned to appreciate his dark sense of humor and his protectiveness about the people he cared for ' Albus was glad about it. And to think of them both coming closer' hopefulness one day even close enough to become an item had been for months a thought Albus felt warmed by. To leave Hermione and his child back in Severus' care would make it easier to go.
It even gave an additional sense to Hermione being pregnant. Albus knew Severus and his highly developed sense of fairness as well as he knew about Severus no less developed pride. The thought that being with him could mean a woman sacrificing something she could get with another partner would probably keep him away from forming a close bond with her. Even with Severus never wanting to have children of his own, even with his dislike of most children 'Albus was certain that he would never marry a woman who wanted to get a family. So with Hermione having a baby Albus could hardly imagine that she'd wish for an entire quidditch team' would probably make it possible for Severus to see himself as a potential long time partner for her.
So far, so good ' and under these circumstances Albus had not wondered about what obviously had happened between the two of them in Paris. Of course ' they hadn't told him, probably an unspoken mutual agreement of sparing him. But even if they would have stormed into his hotel room that night, shouting: 'So sorry, Albus, but we couldn't help ourselves ' we just had to snog like mad on the riverside' it couldn't have been more obvious. Even with Severus being a Slytherin and as a former spy used to hiding fee feelings in acting around Albus he wasn't much better than his partner in crime. And as far as she was concerned, Albus was by now convinced that even Ron Weasley as her husband would have noticed that something was wrong and though Ron was probably as sensitive as a brick wall he wouldn't have needed Hermione when she was with Severus. Hermione on her own was enough to make the most naive and harmless of husbands wonder.
Her clinging to him, her desperate attempts to show him that she loved him and only him and no one else she reminded Albus of a first year, a very small and shy boy he'd once seen walking down the steps to the dungeons, his eyes closed and repeating to himself over and over: 'No, I'm not afraid. Professor Snape won't do anything bad to me. No, I'm not afraid'
The little one in Hogwarts Albus had managed to comfort. With Hermione he hadn't found a way yet. He knew that he actually should talk to her and probably with Severus too. But for once it was a lack of time which prevented him from doing so, but the fact that in the three days since Severus and Hermione avoided even looking at each other Albus had not succeeded in coming to an agreement with himself. It was once again a lesson about the difference between academic knowledge and felt emotions. Only it was his emotions this time and they were much more mixed and even shaken up than he would have ever imagined. He loved Hermione. So much was clear. And that this love meant he wished her a happy future, a future in which she wasn't alone, but loved, admired and cared for by a good and decent man was clear also. So clear as that Severus was a good and decent man. But knowing all that and repeating it to himself at least three times a day didn't change the fact that Albus fought with the 'green eyed monster', called jealousy. And it sent him to live through the entire catalog of feelings connected with jealousy.
