A Room With a View

A Novel Romance

The scenery blurred again and Severus found that he and Hermione were staggering through the front door of his home in Spinner's End.

"I can't believe Minerva out-drank you! Minerva, of all people!" Hermione was giggling helplessly as she leaned her body to the side to hold a piece of wall up.

"You've never seen Minerva drink. Why do you think she offers to make the punch at these dos? That woman's bartending skills verge on alchemy. And never let her challenge you to a drinking contest. You'll wake up wishing your head were detached."

Hermione waved her hands about her face in some sort of gestural language that was lost on his present day self. "Severus, you let her challenge you to a drinking contest. Which you lost, I might point out."

"Only because Mr. Weasley also participated in said contest, and unlike me, does not have access to a well-stocked cabinet full of sober-up, anti-nausea, and headache potions. Two of which I should seek out immediately." He stumbled off toward the kitchen, where a small hutch did in fact contain several rows of carefully brewed potions, thanks to his renewed health and ability to brew and Hermione's welcome expertise in his basement laboratory over the past two weeks.

Severus quickly grabbed two sober-up potions and nausea potions and wove his way back toward Hermione who seemed to be listing rather sharply to the left and was in danger of causing serious damage to the hall table.

"Here, drink," he said, uncorking the sober-up potion first and pushing it into her hand before uncorking his own and quickly swallowing it down. Such brews were best consumed quickly and chased with... well, just about anything else. He handed her the anti-nausea potion next before quaffing his own. It tasted better thanks to the addition of cinnamon and stevia leaf to the brew; filthy tasting anti-nausea potions tended to be rather ineffective.

Severus braced a hand on the wall over Hermione's head, breathing slowly through his nose as they waited for the potions to take effect. After a few minutes, his head seemed to have cleared. He looked down at Hermione and saw that she was smiling up at him, her eyes clear and her body no longer listing to the side. He placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and guided her toward the sitting room, quickly conjuring a glass of water for her and then for himself. "Sit. I'll make tea. Sip at this in the meantime."

"I can do it. You should rest."

With an impatient sigh, he waved his hand toward the room at large. "Hermione, just sit down. I'm not so far from recovered that I can't manage bloody tea."

She shrugged and plopped down onto the sofa, her eyes trailing after him as he moved back toward the galley kitchen at the back of the house. She sipped at the water, wriggling into her normal place on the sofa and picking up her half-finished book on the coffee table. Glancing at the muggle clock on the wall, she was surprised to note it was still early. She mused aloud that she might be able to finish her book tonight.

Severus reflected that she seemed quite at ease in his home. It made a certain sense, he knew - she was living there, helping to care for the place and for him - but the rightness of her comfort is what struck him. She was sitting there with her feet tucked under the piles of tulle that were her skirt, leaning against the arm of the sofa with her head propped on her arm as she paged through a paperback novel (a period romance novel, he noted with a sneer). She looked... content. Even knowing that he was looking at the past, the scene gave him a little ache in the chest.

He strode back in carrying a bamboo wood tray with teapot, cups, saucers, milk, and sugar on it, all laid out properly as Eileen Snape would have demanded were she alive. Without a word he placed the tray on the table, sat, and doctored a cup the way he knew she liked it (milk, no sugar) before pouring his own cup (black, two sugars). He sat back and nodded toward her book. "Still reading that thing?"