It wasn't that Hermione wasn't generous for the hospitality of the wonderful couple she roomed with, but it was about time that she get out on her own. She'd spent a little over a year with Harry and Draco now, and seeing the blonde almost every moment of the day was rigorous. She loved them both, really, but the time had come for her to fly the nest and maybe even find a new partner to call hers.

Severus nor Sagitta had spoken a word to her since the awful ending they'd endured together, and it truly broke her heart. Hermione had loved both of those wizards, and she felt the sudden ache of her heart whenever Draco would mention adoption, or Harry would talk out his proposal plans. Merlin she hated how happy they were sometimes.

It was actually impressive how well Severus had avoided her at any costs. Sure the two had been away for a while on a nice vacation, but they returned only a month later. Hermione heard all this second hand from Draco. Still, with Draco remaining in contact, and Narcissa who'd remained a diligent friend, Hermione still never ran into Severus. It was tragic, really.

Her apology had been formulated in even more detail than one of Severus' potions, but she hadn't had the chance to spew it out yet. She would beg and pray he hadn't found another, and maybe even appeal to Sagitta, seeing as they'd gotten rather close. Hermione knew secrets of both parties in more detail than either did of the other. Still, there was no longer room for her in their family, so she remained with out them.

"You're really leaving?" Draco asked sadly as he looked at her, grey eyes sad and yet proud all at once. Oh what a politician.

"Yes, I have to go, I've burdened the two of you long enough. I'm sick of you anyways," Hermione teased.

"Doubtful, we only spend every living moment together. Do you have the keys to your new flat?" He pestered.

Hermione raised them, smirking as she jingled them and watched grey orbs roll.

"Is she really leaving?"

Harry's shout was left unanswered as he seemed to fall down the staircase of Grimmauld Place.

"Yes, Harry, you know I've got to. I've been a leech," she eased the disheveled wizard, his hair a mess seeing as it was early morning and everyone's day off.

"Why so early, Herm, this is ridiculous," the Head Auror bemoaned, not looking very authoritative at all. "And you aren't a leech!"

"I am," she laughed, picking up her shrunken luggage, shoving it in her bag.

"I don't want you to go," Harry added, Draco looking at his partner in what seemed like very hard empathy.

"I know," Hermione replied, looking down to hopefully blink away the tears coming to her eyes. She loved her friends dearly, but it was still time to leave their home.

"Are you sure you want to?" He begged.

"Goodbye, Harry," she gently forced, reaching out to take his hand and squeeze.

"Goodbye, Hermione. See you for lunch tomorrow?" Harry assured, Draco adding how he'd still see enough of her anyways.

"Of course!"

She hugged them both, fleeing from the house with a flick of her wand, making sure she didn't cry right in front of her friends.

Everything had already been set up in her new flat, and it had furniture and about a thousand pictures of her and their friends upon Harry's insistence. Draco had covertly snuck one from Severus' house and gave it to her for safe keeping in her room. The picture was characteristic of a wizard's photo. The motion was not much, but in it Severus smiled, and Sagitta laughed, knowing her father couldn't bare the process of photo taking. Hermione cherished it.

If it wasn't a separate floor only for wizards and witches, she might have not noticed the note taped to her door. There was no apparating into the flats themselves, but the floor had direct access for apparation on doorstep. The matter of the fact was, luck was on Hermione's side in this aspect, as she found the elegantly scrawled note with her name on it, magically stuck to her door.

A silent finite to release the note, and she was inside her apartment, sitting with it and taking in the contents like a hungry lioness who'd been hunting for days on end.

The elegant scrawl had been Sagitta's, the poor thing reaching to Hermione after an entire year of being apart. Honestly, she'd thought neither of the Snapes would ever speak to her again, but there she was holding the proof to her wrongness. And how glad Hermione was to be wrong! She read about the girl's life, how she was getting older and slowly becoming only more and more attracted to Sirius Black, which was unthinkable to Hermione until she thought of the difference between her and Severus' age here. She was technically only nineteen and from that point of view it was mortifying to love a man as old as Severus. Love told no age, however, and if Hermione could still hold Severus dearly in her heart, she could bear the thought of Sagitta's crush.

The end of the letter came too quickly, with not a mention of Severus yet, Hermione almost screamed when the young girl had P.T.O. squeezed into the bottom of the parchment.

Father wants to see you, and if you'd like, he'll meet you at your new home this evening, two knocks and you'll know it's him!

Hermione could have fainted. He really wanted to see her!

Gods, she had to get ready... not that it wasn't tidy in her home, she just moved in; everything had no choice but to be in place.

The worry set in after. Worry about what he'd think of her, of what he'd want to say, and worry over the things he'd been thinking since that day a year ago. Hermione felt the pressure of Severus' glare even after being shunned by it for an entire year.

Breaths ragged, and time ticking by slower than anticipated, Hermione decided she needed to occupy herself.

It was about five in the evening when the two knocks came to her door. She'd unpacked her residual belongings from Harry's by hand, and had spent most of it shaking, and trying to hold meals down. It had really been a year since she'd seen Severus, a man she very dearly loved.

Never one to leave anyone waiting, Hermione rushed the door open almost before he finished the second knock.

He was every bit as stoic as she knew he would be. There was nearly no emotion in his face, and his eyes were blacker and sterner than she recalled.

"Hermione..."

As if he'd just betrayed his innermost secret, her name falling from his lips gave something away she never thought she'd find in him. Merlin, his voice told her he still loved her, and was her heart glad to hear that.

"Severus."

Neither had moved, but both were breathless, and the stern wizard's eyes had softened like ice cream on a hot day.

A hard kiss fell on Hermione's lips, and the unchanged man still felt the same against her. Sure, the fire was hot and intense from a year of separation, and quite cheesy had you asked Hermione about her thoughts, but it was still as strong as it had been a year prior.

This wasn't talking, and Hermione couldn't have been gladder. She knew that once they got past the groping, and the wanting, there would be disappointment on his features, and there would be hurt from the lies, but Hermione held her hopes high for him to forgive. She understood if he couldn't forget, however.

Severus' cloak was no where to be seen, and whatever top Hermione had had on was cast aside over the back of her sofa. She steered him towards the bedroom, the pulse of her heart and his needful push of lips wasn't anything to deny. Hermione hit the plush of her covers back first, laying vertically on the edge of her bed which was now firmly pushed against the wall. She felt him pin her down, kisses piling up on her lips, now being spread down to her cheek, jaw, and neck where everything only felt more sensational.

Black eyes met hers, and they gazed for a moment, lust and love all combined into one mess of entangled emotions that flickered like candles being fed much needed oxygen. Severus trailed his eyes over her, and Hermione smiled to feel the appreciation.

She frowned, however, when his eyes began to slowly survey where they were, and she began to wonder if he regretted where they were and how they'd ended up there. Neither of them had been people of impulse, she could say that for a very true fact. They had just been drowned in the wanting and missing of the other's magic and aura that this is where the magnetism had led them.

Severus' eyes fixed on one place, and as redness came to Hermione's cheeks and neck, a blush that would surely consume her with guilt, he looked back to her.

"Where did you obtain the photograph?" The wonder was cold and curious, but Hermione wasn't even sure what he was talking about.

She looked over her left shoulder and propped herself up on her elbows, hair falling backwards and making her recall the bareness of her body. How shameful they'd been! Hermione saw the one of her lover and Sagitta, smiling and laughing, and she felt guilt tenfold. Was she not supposed to have it? Was Draco going to be in enormous trouble for giving her the only piece of him she had had left?

"Don't be upset, but Draco gave it to me," Hermione whispered, feeling rather shameful now for letting him even get this far into her house without even a hello.

She gauged his reaction, praying that there would be no hurt or anger resting in the stern professor's face. Hermione didn't find any of that however, she seemed to find pride and longing staring back at her.

"You're not upset, are you?" She pried, feeling it was the only thing she could do to assure herself that anger wasn't present.

Their chests touched in their lust-fueled wake, sure, now there was less heat, but still the magnetism hadn't faded. Severus seemed to grow tired of holding himself over her and backed away, startling Hermione if he had looked confident before. The emotions on his face kept shifting and altering, so quickly Hermione couldn't grasp a single one. Merlin, couldn't he just speak?

"Upset? With you, not at all. With myself? Highly. I should have known you were not who you presented yourself to be, but I was selfish, and you became attached, and I clung to it like I was deprived of any type of affection. I hurt myself, and then I harmed you as well, Hermione. I barely knew you, and I knew that. I let myself go on, challenging it at every corner, wanting you and having you as I had. Merlin, I was an imbecile and hypocrite to learn the truth and then suddenly deny you because it was real."

Tears fell from Hermione's eyes at his stoicism and admissions. They'd both been so naive to think it could have worked, but surely he wasn't going to break her heart - and his - a second time?

"When did you know first?"

"The moment you returned from the bookshop to find a dress for the evening dinner, and you weren't my wife."

She laughed, the odd look on his face making it harder to explain why she had started.

"You knew the whole time? And you just convinced yourself out of it?"

The laughter died down at the look of one of his infamous and nasty glares.

"I did not know, not in any type of solid certainty, but the doubt I felt when you came to me was potent, yet I ignored it in favor of living life on with no interruptions. And how glad I am."

Am, he'd said, as if he still loved her and still cherished her so heartfully. Obviously Severus craved her, but Hermione couldn't live off that alone, wanting him and loving him, yet only getting half in return. Surely he loved her? It was all so damn confusing.

The debate was useless if Hermione didn't follow through and wonder her curiosities aloud.

"And us, Severus? Do you doubt us?"

"Not in the slightest," he professed, some of his dignity returned as his cravat was straightened, and the untidiness that came with frantic lips disappeared, "I will be frank, I had every intention of coming here simply to sate Sagitta, she has been so persistent. I did not expect to feel as I did when you opened the door, to find love so deeply rooted into a heart I had barred for only my daughter to hold the key."

Hermione didn't care that she was eager or wanting of Severus, she simply flung herself from the bed and into his warm embrace. How wonderful it felt to be surrounded by such a solid force of life, and how wonderful it was to have him back.

Everything was finally right in the world.

*!*

There was a click of the door to Hermione's office, and she sighed, couldn't work be done for the day?

Luckily, it wasn't work. Harry Potter seemed to prance right into her vicinity, placing a small box on her desk and grinning.

"And what is that?" She asked him, having a pretty solid guess lined up in her mind.

"And engagement ring."

"I'm flattered, really, but you know I love Severus," she jested, Harry shaking his head in disappointment.

"You're not funny, Hermione Granger. Open it, I plan on proposing to the Minister for Magic tonight, thank you very much," he told her haughtily.

Taking the box, she looked at the silver band, nestled into it's red, velvet surroundings. Gryffindor red no less.

"Very wonderful, I'm sure he will be thrilled. Is my so-called "bond renewal" really the place to do it, though, Mr. Potter?" She accused snidely.

Rolling his eyes, as if it were even a question, he answered her, "You mean your bonding ceremony that is just a cover up for you not being the actual you? And no, I'm not an idiot, Draco doesn't want that kind of attention. It's going to be right before so I can flaunt him once we get there."

"As if you haven't flaunted enough already," Hermione remarked, ducking the paper clip Harry threw at her innocent head of curls.

"You come to work and act like it's just a normal day, meanwhile I don't think I accomplished a true thing today. Aren't you excited?"

"Thrilled."

Harry shook his head, and Hermione felt her excitement bubble past the confines she'd set up for work that day, but she had to keep it calm. There was still plenty of time before the ceremony, and work was ending in mere hours.

"Well, why don't you just go home? I'll make excuses for you or throw the minister against a wall, haven't decided which yet," Harry told her mischievously, looking just as giddy as she felt.

Hermione snuck away from the Ministry and went to her home, Spinner's End of course, not the flat she'd spent only a single night in. That had been another year ago.

That evening, however, everything was a blur, the night of her true bonding to Severus, the swell of their magic, Harry and Draco engaged to marry, and Sagitta placing a tentative kiss on Sirius' cheek who'd allowed her one dance. Severus was so swept up in Hermione he didn't even notice the twelve other dances they'd taken.

And through it all, Hermione felt more like herself than she ever had, even if she wasn't who she was supposed to be at all.