Yellow Scarf

It's February, and it's cold. They are sitting in a small café, and Severus is watching the miserable-looking passers-by with a sense of deep understanding. It is truly awful out there.

"I have a surprise-present for you," she says suddenly, and places a brown paper bag in front of him.

"Why?" he asks, using a teacup as a shield and eyeing the bag warily. He doesn't like surprises. They always make him uneasy.

"I don't know." Hermione shrugs and pushes the present closer to him. "Come on, open it."

He sighs, puts the cup down, and reaches for the bag. Throwing one last wary glance at Hermione’s smiling face, he finally opens the bag and peeks inside. It's something fuzzy and bright – he can only decipher that much in the dim lighting of the café, and so he fishes the item out for a closer inspection. "It's a scarf," he declares, his voice laced with bewilderment, "a yellow scarf."

"Aha." She nods happily. "It's warm and fashionable," she adds, enthusiastically chewing her biscotti.

"But it's yellow," he protests weakly, despite the fact that his hands have somehow already wrapped the scarf around his neck. It is warm, and it probably does look fashionable.

"I thought that you needed a bit of sun. You've been looking kind of gloomy lately," she says.

He has to agree – he has been indeed feeling a bit blue these past weeks. "Thank you," he whispers, grabs her hand, and presses it to his lips.

"Of course," she says, and the warmth of her gaze caresses his face. She is his sun – doesn't she know that?

Many years later, when she is not around any more, he still wears his yellow scarf: his little piece of sun, his little piece of her.