The three years since the war's end had been nice to Severus Snape. He'd gained a little weight, he'd got a little tan during a long and lazy summer holiday and he felt at ease with the world and himself as he strolled on a nice, still sunny October Saturday morning through the wizard district of Oxford. It was just seven in the morning, even the usual very crowded yard of the Merlin Wizard's College 'short MWC' had been peacefully quiet and deserted from the students normally always loitering there. Even quieter was the park Severus crossed on his way to the little street he was now walking along. Most of its houses stood in nice gardens, over the days mostly filled with the cheerful noise of children playing there.
Severus knew most of the inhabitants of this street. Just over there, the big yellow house with the sunflowers in the garden, belongs to Terry Hooper, MWC's second potion professor, who was a specialist for medical potion and therefore mostly teaching the med wizard classes. His wife Susanna, one of the herbalists in the college, a very nice and hospitable woman who hardly let a week go over without inviting Severus to dinner. At first he'd always refused her with saying he wouldn't have time, but Susanna Hooper was not only nice, but most persistent and so Severus was finally going to see her and her husband. By that he learned that he enjoyed their company and so the Hoopers were by now almost something Severus could call 'friends' but he was still very careful with that word.
He even didn't use it in connection with the Wulfs, the family who lived opposite the Hoopers, though Desmond Wulf, Decan of the MWC, was a man Severus liked and felt liked by.
The only inhabitant of the street and member of the college and probably even the only member of the wizard's world who Severus called without hesitation a 'friend' was the only student living in the little street: Hermione Granger-Dumbledore. Just two years before after she'd for months apparated daily between the university and Dumbledore Hall she'd bought the house just at the end of the street, a nice, two floor home which she shared now with her son, her girlfriend Ginny Weasly and the house elf Woopy.
But most weekends Hermione and her son still spend time at the Hall and it went almost without saying that Severus mostly accompanied the both. The arrangements were mostly made short in the college's hall or wherever the both gates crashed into each other and it didn't need more than a 'Saturday at 7:30?' from Hermione and a nod from Severus to make clear that they would go to the Hall together.
Severus knew that these weekend arrangements made for a lot of rumors at the university. He was a professor there and Hermione was his student and so an intimate relationship between them would have been considered 'inappropriate'. But his superior never asked - as most people at the university knew that Severus had been very close to Hermione's late husband and he seemed to appreciate that Severus didn't only look after his dead friend's widow, but after his young son too. Yet some of Severus's colleagues had dared to ask but only in getting a stare back. And Severus was still very good at staring people down.
About the students talking, Severus didn't care. When he'd learned one thing in his past, then it was that rumors weren't worth any excitement. If people liked to think that he had an affair with the young widow, what was this to Severus? He could think of a lot worse things than people reckoning about him having an affair with a bright and certainly not ugly 21 year old. As long as no one dared to say he'd favor her he really couldn't have cared less. The only thing he had cared about was Hermione's reputation, but for saying so he earned a hearty laugh from her. 'Dear Severus! I don't give a fill-in-what-you-like for rumors anymore. The people I care for know who I am. On stranger's opinions about me I'm not interested. As long as your girlfriends don't come to throttle me because they're jealous, I don't have a problem living with people believing I'd share your bed too. Only it's a rather crowded place, isn't it?"
