Chapter Text
Severus stirred, hearing familiar whimpers.
“Shh, sweet one,” he said, silently casting an illumination spell. The witch in his bed sat up with him, tears trickling down her cheeks, “Surely you know that nightmares will never hurt you.”
“I – I know,” Hermione said, her lower lip trembling. It wasn’t enough, as she felt the tears coming still. “Just – “
Severus knew what came next, their nightly pattern one he knew by heart. He was the one that she looked to for comfort, the only one that she would allow near, save for her familiar, Crookshanks. The half-kneazle was her faithful companion, though she preferred another companion for the night.
“Don’t leave me,” Hermione said, burying her face against his shoulder, “Please, Severus.”
Severus circled his arms around her, pulling her close against his lean frame. He felt pleased with the thought of keeping her safe inside his rooms when the world outside his door had little idea of their relationship. No one would be able to imagine how tenderly he regarded her, nor how he pressed a kiss to her brow; knowing exactly how to soothe her after a nightmare.
There were things she had done, and words she had said that she never imagined when she was a child at Hogwarts. She was safe and sure then, something that she would never feel again.
“Always so needy,” Severus murmured, “Have I exchanged one master for another?”
Hermione tilted her head up toward him, and he knew without looking, that she was amused by his tone. She was one of the few who could tell when he was teasing, though, unlike Lucius or Narcissa, Hermione was never afraid of guessing wrong. She could damage him far more than he could her, as she held his heart in her hands. “You know that you have,” Hermione replied lightly.
She brushed kisses across his jaw, as she burrowed closer still. Severus would never admit that he was glad she kept him near, with the press naming him her ‘shadow,’ with theories assuming that he was her bodyguard, or lover, or even her familiar in human form. Skeeter was the loudest voice, though hardly a soul turned to the last page of the Daily Prophet, where her column had been moved...
Oh, Miss Granger was far from what he had ever expected. Severus remembered her as a curly-haired witch, with her hand ever waving, and her essays far exceeding the required word count. She was his student and nothing more, until – well, when the Malfoys found their vaults lacking in gold, with other pureblooded families soon following as if they hadn't lost enough during the war...Severus had followed the trail right to her door.
“I’m here, Medusa,” Severus chuckled, her nickname as sweet as honey drizzled onto his tongue. "I'll always stay here – where else would I go?"
He had nothing that he wished to return to, there was nothing of his life that he wanted to remain.
Hermione had a subtleness that Tom Riddle and Dumbledore lacked, keeping her fingers clean as the pureblooded families found themselves in financial ruin, with the goblins closing rank. For, as everyone knew, there was nothing more goblins loved than gold: so why, when the purebloods had none to spare, were the goblins keeping the vaults open still?
Severus would have mocked Hermione if he’d known her original intentions, to move the galleons elsewhere. She wanted to fund people throughout the muggle and wizarding world, ones with hopes and dreams of becoming something more.
Only, she’d found the goblins eager to work with her –
No.
For her. The war had left the goblins with damages that none except for Hermione had cared to account for, and they dedicated themselves to her in turn. She soon taught them how to blur the line between fantastical and ordinary, as they made toyed with stocks and bonds, and sent Wall Street tumbling at will. She was likened to Medusa with her many snakes serving her while turning others to stone. Some whispered that Hermione had lost her way, becoming the next Voldemort –
Only she was infinitely more.
Why had Hermione shed her golden girl ways? Severus had asked her this only once when she spooned against his side, and they were both hazy from spiked wine. She was like a lost child then, as she confessed how grey the world had become after the war. The wizarding world was unwilling to accept her, her blood deeming her lesser, with Potter and Weasley abandoning her to become Aurors.
Severus, remembering how he’d trailed in Lucius’s shadow, couldn’t say that he didn’t understand how it felt. He was as alone as she was, their paradise established in the modern flat that she owned, set in the heart of London.
She never covered the scar on her arm, the slur that a raving, mad witch carved there a message to all around her. See me, it said, see who I am and everything that I’ll become.
“I don’t want to serve the Ministry,” Hermione had whispered, “I want to live, Severus– I already sacrificed my childhood, and my parents for Harry, in Dumbledore’s war.”
Could he understand?
Yes, yes, he could.
He heard the Marauders taunting him still, nor would he ever forget how Lily had looked at him with scorn after their friendship ended. Every day that he saw her son, he saw her. He'd given everything for her and her son and had nothing but the scars on his neck to show for it.
With Hermione, there were no scars, nor reminders of everything that he had failed to grasp or become.
For Severus, after surviving the war he never thought that Dumbledore nor his child soldiers would win, found himself captivated by all that Hermione had become. She was dangerous; enticing and infuriating entwined into one small lioness.
She wore power like another would gold, without allowing it to control her, as she fluidly moved throughout the muggle and wizarding world. Together, they duplicated galleons and replaced priceless, pureblood antiques with fakes; the families never believing otherwise. They made a world the Ministry could never have imagined, a world that gave the right ones power –
If you listened to Hermione, that was.
For Severus saw another world entirely, one that followed the lines of what a Gryffindor viewed as right or wrong. Hermione was taking from the rich to feed the poor while perpetuating the cycle itself. Yet the idea of penniless Malfoys or the sight of the Zabini mother and son tossed out of their home was hardly moving.
Many had the same memories as Hermione, as they were mocked for their lack of pure ancestry, and found little that welcomed them among the world of magic. There was nothing for them that the Ministry nor Hogwarts would allow.
But Hermione –
Medusa would.
She was changing everything that she could, and Severus embraced the snarling glee that lived inside her.; the same kind that lived inside him. He was no longer the greasy-haired bat that lived in the dungeons, but a wizard known for his potions, his power to please the woman beside him.
Or below or on top of him, raking her nails across his skin, and her laughter filling the air. It was intoxicating for them both, to sneer at the ones that had always thought them lesser. They were more than enough for the world she had created, brilliant and blinding with the power that pulsed inside them.
Severus felt alive when Hermione rode him, with her hands on his shoulders, and a wicked smile on her lips. His very sheets were spun from pure silk, the feeling unimaginable against his skin. There was nothing that he couldn’t have, as long as he stayed beside her.
And deep down, Severus could admit that he wanted to stay, with the ruthless, fascinating creature that wanted to keep him. She used him in far more sinful ways than Riddle or Dumbledore ever had, and he was amused at the scars she left on him.
She alone could drive thoughts of Lily and the war away, with her wickedness.