Professor

{21}

{21~Apologizing}

Hermione pulled herself out of bed that morning and slipped on her dress robes, deciding to head to her classroom instead of to breakfast. She wasn't entirely up to that much noise that morning.

Her robes were just zipped up when she felt arms around her body, warm and encompassing arms that brought a kiss to her exposed neck with them.

"Good morning, Hermione."

"Morning, Severus. Are you going to breakfast?"

She felt his arms tighten, and Hermione automatically assumed that as a 'no.'

"Last night, while you were sleeping, I was wondering something."

Hermione broke from him and turned around, just to land in his arms again.

"And what were you wondering?"

A low hum emitted from the man who bent over a bit to kiss Hermione on the lips fully, his passion engulfing hers with a content need.

"I told you," she broke from him, "on Christmas that I wasn't quite ready for that, Severus." She felt shy saying it, but Hermione hadn't let them go too far that night of Christmas as much as they'd gotten close enough and passionate enough to do so.

"No," he spoke firmly, "I wasn't suggesting that... I was wondering if we could adopt Felix."

Wide eyes met Severus' hopeful gaze.

"Adopt him? You mean... go to the ministry and proclaim him as ours permanently? Severus, that's—" she stopped when she started to see the crushed look on his face, the way he began to harden his features at her denial of his proposal. Hermione didn't want to see him upset, and at this point it wasn't as if it wasn't logical. The boy had no where else to go, and he still had a whole year at Hogwarts to get through before he could leave.

"That's a wonderfully considerate idea."

"But you're going to decline, are you not?" He asked her bitterly, his voice already falling from the lovely way it had spoken earlier.

"No," she assured, "I was, true, but you have me thinking now... it would be best for him if we took him in officially, wouldn't it? Then the ministry couldn't take him away or send him back to his parents for the summer."

"Exactly." Severus seemed to have picked back up his feeling, looking, if anyone was so daring to say, excited.

"Well, I have classes, so I'll see you at dinner."

Hermione kissed him briefly and left the room in a flurry of dress robes.

-

Felix rubbed his hand anxiously. How long had he been standing outside of this classroom for? He wasn't entirely sure, but by his watch it looked to be about twenty minutes. No one had come into the classroom yet, bollocks, not even a teacher had passed by. He had gotten up so early that he even had time to tame his short hair back with this putty that he'd had for what felt like forever. It smelled pungently of oranges, and he'd picked it up on his first trip to Hogsmeade, if he recollected correctly.

"Felix?"

Oh, well, that wasn't entirely who he was waiting for, but seeing Hermione was to be expected.

"Hello, professor," he said quietly, looking at the woman he'd spent the past two weeks straight with. It had been the best two weeks of his life in all honesty, and he wouldn't have given it up for the world... maybe for Ellie's attention, but that's about it.