The words filled the whole space of the room, leaving no place for air. He felt ready to AK himself, to escape the ridicule, the need to apologize, the awkwardness of the after. Then he looked at her. She had some fish in her, too, judging by the way her eyes and mouth were open, round and immobile.

When her face regained its liveliness, there was only hurt on it, though, a kind of raw hurt which pained him more than a slap to his cheek.

"Oh no," she whispered to herself. She pushed herself backwards on the battered sofa, put an elbow on her knee and her forehead in it. "I'm sorry," she said tonelessly. "I can't help it. I didn't think it was visible, or obnoxious. I... I'll restrain myself better. I'm sorry."

"What do you have to be sorry for?" he asked gloomily. It was totally understandable. Natural, really. He should be the one to apologize. Or maybe beg. Apologize and beg, or just slink out after he'd left the deed on the table?

But he wanted to look at her... just a little more. Just one more time, even though his eyes were prickly and his vision blurred. The pride that had propelled him to such heights, dark and light together, had crumbled like a card castle in less than one second. His throat was clenched and hurting. He should never had asked.

She let out a difficult laugh. "I may be behaving stupidly, Severus, but I'm not stupid. I know you would never want to- to be that way for me. I just- I really couldn't help dreaming, you know, being- falling for you. I hope I never made myself too obnoxious. I swear I'll be perfectly poised at the wedding, and I'll watch myself better. In the lab too. If you want to go on, I mean- with the lab- oh!" She puffed, and nastily wiped at her eyes, obviously furious with herself for loosing control. She swallowed and took a deep breath. "I know you can't be interested in me, that way."


"I just told you the contrary. What are you babbling about?" His voice sounded like a whiplash. He had to restrain himself. You didn't court a woman the way you talked to her in the lab. Scorpius wisdom, that, too. Although they went along just fine in the lab, H and he, and here... it was all going down the drain, and his muddled brains didn't even understand why.


"You just told me you'd like to humor me the way Scorpius does Rose, but you're too old for that and comfortable with your privacy, and please let you live in peace." She'd gone back to lab bickering tone, too, and it was better for the both of them. "He's not playing a role for Rose, by the way. I happen to believe he's really in love with her. Loves her. But I'll stay out of your hair. I- we can also dissolve the lab, you know. I can manage on my own, and you wouldn't have to be here so often. It's ok. I can make it. If it's better for you."


"This is not what I said. I said..." he sighed, barely leaving any air in his lungs. "I believe I just asked you to marry me, Hermione..." Not even the slightest elegance about it. To Hell in a handbasket, and to Hell with Scorpius, too. Now he wouldn't even get to meet her during the week.


He took a deep breath, and stood up from the sofa. His mind was too muddled to even try to make sense of her confused garblings. She was still on her previous tirade, conscious she was talking at cross-purposes with him. Not that he made much sense. "I know you don't even like me!" Screeching while breathless. You could sound worse, but it would take practice.


"Oh no?"He sighed. "I thought we could make it work- maybe. Never mind..."


"Whaddya mean, never mind? We've been seeing each other every other day for... six years, almost, weekly for ten years before that... and you never said anything! We've been together through more than most married couples, and you were... correctly indifferent, at best."

Apart from those all-night conversations, in his lab or at Hogwarts, the laughs they'd share and his piercing, burning eyes on her she caught from time to time... but she didn't dare remember them, even. She thought he'd been warming to her, just a little, but now he'd just asked her to butt out before she made a fool of herself at the wedding. Wait a second. What was it he just said before 'never mind'? Something with the word 'marry' but she was still reeling from the humiliation, she hadn't caught his meaning. He must have been talking about Rose and Scorpius? Her mind was trying to tell her something, but she couldn't keep up with the conversation.


She was seething, now, and he kept icily correct... like all their spats in the lab. The deed he'd done in the morning with the solicitor, where he turned over the cottage to Berenice and the business to her, weighed heavily in his pocket.


"You were married, remember? I had no intention of coming over like... how did you say that? One of those 'perverted, despicable lechers who tried to take advantage of a young married woman with a disabled husband.' Your own words. Then you were a young widow, and I wasn't a vulture."


"And you were engaged to Alexandra."


"That, too. You know how it came to be, and I regretted it from the second it happened. Thought it happened. I owe you, by the way, a Life Debt for having saved me from her...then you gave birth, and you wouldn't look me in the face for months!"


"You'd seen me naked, in the worst, ugliest situation a woman can be seen in, and I was fat and smelly and ugly and disgusting and you were used to Alexandra's body, which was a top-model's, whatever one can think about her personality!"


"I told you I would Obliviate myself!" He hadn't done it, though.


"Because I was so disgusting you didn't want to remember that! With all you saw as a Death Eater, the one memory you needed to erase was this one!"


It still stung.


In two steps he had moved from his sofa to hers, and his fingers dug painfully into her arms, his face just next to hers. His words came as hisses between clenched teeth, and she instinctively recoiled. He looked... like he must have looked under the Death Eater mask, in battle. He belly flip flopped.


"Never say that, Hermione. Berenice's birth... " He swallowed. The harsh planes and angles of his face seemed almost distorted in the fireplace's glow. "It was the first time I felt myself reacting as a human being since I had taken the Mark. Thirty five years, and it was the first time I saw something beautiful enough to move me to tears." His voice rang violent with emotion.

He swallowed and continued in a more subdued tone. "I did offer to Obliviate myself, to do the gentlemanly thing and respect your modesty, but.... the way you smiled at me when I gave her to you. When the cord was still pulsing, before you remembered to be embarrassed... the look of her, all new and pure and still wet in my hands... I had been lusting after you before, when you were forbidden... even when you were pregnant... I had found myself, before, coming up with all kinds of made-up questions in the hope you'd stay up to debate them with me into the night... but then, seeing you fighting and vanquishing the pain during the birth, watching your face when you looked at her for the first time... I fell in love with you. I still am," he said somberly, his eyes downcast, "but apart from the lab downstairs you cringe or act all professional and prim each time I enter a room. If Scorpius hadn't told me I had a chance, I'd never have talked today."


The next words were torn from his chest as if with Veritaserum. "I wait for our work sessions, every week, like a poor man for bread." When I see you hug Berenice back home from our outings I get out of my mind. I've even thought to convince her we should Polyjuice one into the other once, as a prank for you. That way I would know how it feels to be in your arms He was so ashamed of that one, but he kept thinking about it... Aloud he said, "I'd rather keep the status quo than lose you, and lose Berenice... just tell me what you want, Hermione... if... if you think there is only a chance, tell me why you act so uncomfortable around me, and I'll do whatever I can to correct that... tell me what you want. If you want me to disappear, tell me... If you want us to forget that conversation, tell me. But don't tell me you disgusted me. You've... it's never been true..."

He took his hands off her, and looked at her, opaque and unreadable. Waiting. His previous resolution was shot. He just didn't have the strength to put the deed on the table and leave. Oh, he would, but only if she told him to. Otherwise he would take the crumbs of the working cooperation and waiting for Berenice by the door, and cherish them.

No pride left, at all. His chest caught. What if she wanted an apology? He hadn't apologized in more than four decades...

He straightened and stood up, filling her living room with a Sioux, almost threatening presence. "What do you want, witch?"

She looked up at him from her slump on the sofa, cheeks red and hair in disarray. It took her ten seconds... fifteen... twenty... How long could did she think he hold without air? "I think I want a fourth child," she said slowly, with a hint of the mischievousness of the Hogwarts all-night-conversations in her puffy eyes. "With black hair, and a big nose. And I never want you to hide from me how you feel again. Even when you'll feel like strangling me."


Lucky twenty years of spying had ingrained so much self-control. Otherwise, he'd been whooping and jumping all over the place, and she would be put off him. Old black bats couldn't yoodle and jump over flowery sofas, even though his body was making a good case for it... and other joyous activities. He made a show of sternly looking at his watch. "I promise you'll know. As for the child... We may have time till Berenice comes home."


Her frightened look told him she wasn't ready for those jokes, yet. He neither, come to think of it. He who had not shaken before the Dark Lord was all a-tremble at the thought of... with her! It wasn't as if he hadn't imagined this, thousands of times. But for real? Now?


"I..." she stammered. "You know Berenice's fifth birthday is approaching, right?"

"Another three weeks," he said gravely. His chambers at Hogwarts already looked like a Toys-R'-Us small branch. The Junior Potioneer kit was labelled twelve years and up, but the girl was already better than most of his first-years anyway.


"Well, you add eight months, and it's the last time I've... you know. And I wasn't so... I'm dreadfully out of practice," she blushed. "You'll be disappointed, after Alexandra, and all those glamorous women you've been with, and..."


"I understand," he said sternly, and scooped her in his arms. "Time to begin practice, then. From the beginning."


He'd always been a very effective teacher.