A Room With a View

Between the Sheets

Severus' life had quickly fallen into a new routine. Wake up, often with Hermione, run to his quarters or chase her from his to prepare for the day. Head downstairs for breakfast in the Great Hall (most days), teach, dine in the Great Hall for dinner (most days), spend the evening reading or grading or lesson planning with Hermione, view a memory or two and discuss, make love or fuck, and sleep. With Hermione. He was surprised to find that nearly every aspect of his life had shifted slightly to make room for her and amazed that he didn't mind it one bit.

His relationship with the younger woman felt as natural as breathing, a fact that he could only guess had something to do with the memory remnants from their previous relationship. Hermione seemed content as well, sliding into a routine that she admitted felt natural to her too. He congratulated himself on managing to get the whole relationship-with-an-intelligent-woman thing right for once. She'd even liked her birthday gift.

He was pretty proud of that one. He'd spent the better part of the previous weekend formulating a scent tailored not to her, but to her emotions. It was an idea he'd been tinkering with on and off over the years, but he hadn't found much of a practical application for it and so hadn't pursued the research. However, the prospect of courting and making love to a woman in the last few weeks had driven him to take his ideas and turn them into reality. The project had come together more quickly than he'd anticipated and with minimal tinkering, almost as though it wanted to come into existence. After testing the potion on himself with no adverse effects, he'd bottled the pale green liquid into a crystal atomizer and placed it into the magically expanded book he'd purchased in Edinburgh on their first date. The book had seemed rather empty with only the lonely perfume bottle suspended there, so he'd literally run to Hogsmeade on Monday morning to purchase a ridiculous number of chocolate roses, sugar quills, and licorice wands to surround the vial. On some level he realized that the act was ludicrous, but he couldn't seem to help himself.

Hermione, of course, had been thrilled when he presented her with the gift on Monday night. She had immediately sprayed the perfume at her pulse points and spent another five minutes sniffing at her wrists. There may have been leaping followed by an hour of snogging on her sofa during which they'd discovered that 'happy' Hermione smelled of satsumas and honeysuckle and 'aroused' Hermione smelled of anise hyssop and crème caramel. They'd lain in bed as she plucked chocolate rose petals from her gift and fed them to him. The sugar quills had been used for other activities altogether.

They'd even managed to make tremendous progress on their plans for the advanced animagus course; the syllabus and lessons plans were complete, so the course would begin just before Halloween. His regular classes were going too well. They were on track to being caught up by month's end and he'd already began to lay the groundwork for their survival course in the spring.

He couldn't remember a time when he was this satisfied with both his work and personal lives. He was so preoccupied with containing the smirk that wanted to stretch across his face as he strode into the Great Hall Friday morning that he didn't notice the speculative looks he was receiving from each of his students. He'd taken his seat next to Hermione and nodded hello to the other faculty members before noticing that half of the students in the hall were openly staring.

He frowned. "What-" He didn't need to finish his statement before she slid a copy of The Hogwartian Spectator slid in front of him.

It would appear that they were front page news. The top headline read "The Dueling Professors" and contained a blow-by-blow of the dueling exhibition the previous weekend. It was quite well-written and struck a good balance between sports commentary and congratulatory excitement for Professor Granger's win. He quirked an eyebrow at Hermione in confusion - surely this hadn't caused the glances he was seeing around the hall.