He didn't remember exactly when everything had started. Perhaps in the first few years after the end of that ridiculous and pointless War, perhaps during the Battle in the Ministry, perhaps after the Malfoy Manor. Perhaps, sometime in-between. Now it didn't matter in the slightest. The fact had happened, and he had to deal with the consequences.


Oh, and he fought! The unfortunate one, who even for a second thought to doubt the stubbornness of Severus Snape or his moral code, would immediately lose his tongue, and even his life. Depends on how bad the mood of the eternally gloomy Potions Master would be in those fateful moments.


The years after the Battle of Hogwarts and the turmoil that followed after had immensely softened Snape's tough temper, but those around him still preferred to avoid him in dark corridors and not cross his path if it was not strictly necessary. Not that the Headmaster would have become more accommodating or more benevolent. Only one person was able to erase that disdainful sneer from his eternally dissatisfied face, but this person today, although close by, was terribly far away from him...


In the battle between fate and circumstances, for the first time in his life, Snape was aware of the prospect of his own defeat, but stubbornness and rage did not allow him to give up so easily. And, to be honest, the spy did not know how to give up. He trudged home through the autumn park that smelled of rotten leaves and smoke and blew cigarette plums into the sky. He listened to the leaves rustle under his feet and desperately wanted to have at least a glimmer of hope waiting for him at home. For the first time in three years, he felt his fatigue weighing heavily on his shoulders. And if alcohol could help him forget about their mutual doom, he would gladly use its services. However, liquor had not affected him since the First War. And, frankly, he did not want to forget.


A year after the Battle of Hogwarts, with Britain barely finding its lost footing, they got, as was expected, under the Marriage Law. Snape could have left everything, sold his shack in Spinner's End, and flown off to Goa, she could have gone off to legislate in Australia herself, but they both stayed at home. And something in the eyes of the future Head of the Department for the Protection of Magical Races made Snape agree to the marriage forced on them by the Ministry. And his own moral code.


"Who if not us, Severus?" His wife liked to repeat and rushed off to administer justice. And he agreed with her words because deep down he was the same, bound by duty, moral code, and the belief that he, too, was capable of a feat. Or maybe he simply wanted to be happy? He was tired of looking for meanings in their mutual pain.


He and Hermione were happy. As much as it was generally possible in the lives of two mentally and physically damaged people. They did not believe in love, but it seemed that they found just that in each other. After all, what else, if not love, could explain the short flashes of awareness that flashed in Hermione's eyes for several hours?


Of course, he didn't know when his wife's memory lapses began. And it didn't matter. Sometimes she froze, peering into the void, sometimes she confused dates and names, sometimes she lost the keys to their house, or circled London in rounds, confusing the points of Apparition. She remembered all her friends, all the dates and spells, no matter if they were new or learned during her studies, she remembered everything except him. Snape chalked it up to stress, her traumas, to the past, but the cynic inside him was too far from thinking that his so-called love would help them get through it all. Therefore, he brought his wife to the doctors, grimacing when the first object that came to her hand flew into him, and she shrilly demanded to know what, in Hell and Heaven, her Professor forgot in her apartment, and where her fiancé, Ron Weasley, had gone? And the wedding ring on her left hand did not help matters. Weeks passed, and Hermione suddenly woke him at dawn, giving love and attention to that part of his body, which was forbidden to name aloud and in polite society. And she looked into his eyes with perfect clarity.


He lived for those moments.


"I'm taking advantage of both you and your goodwill," Hermione sighed afterward, nestling against his chest. He grimaced.


“Would you like me to take you to the Insane Ward and leave you in their full custody? I believe, the Ministry will be glad that the only witch who can somehow influence the legislation has gone crazy."


Hermione snorted through her tears.


"Severus, how can we live like this?" I remember everything, I remember how I was, but I don't know who I am, and I don't remember you at all. Why are you sticking with me?"


"Because I am your husband and you are my wife. And if it wasn't the case, it wouldn't have changed anything."


He never confessed his love to her openly, but she knew that he loved her. Desperately, devotedly, gently, bitterly, surrendering to her without a second thought and taking all of her to the last breath. Like only he could love.


"I would have asked you to love me if we ever believed in love, but instead I will ask you not to forget me. Don’t make me just a memory,” Hermione pleaded as she flew away for another diagnostic, or went to the Asylum to become a guinea pig for a trial, or drinking just another promising potion, or left home to administer justice and not even remember that she ever had a husband.


And Snape stood silently and before each one of their forced separations he gave her azaleas, as a symbol of passion and sadness. A pessimist by nature, he knew that in this life his hope would be enough for both of them. Therefore, he looked into the sky until her plane melted high above, and waited. He had been waiting for all these three years, he waited every day, month, week, and hour for her to come home and say, "Hello, Severus."


He missed her madly. He missed her sharp mind, her sarcastic attitude to life, her timid dreams that she whispered to him in the quiet of their bedroom, he missed her crazy ambitions she lived out every day at the Ministry. He missed the pies she baked when she got down in the fall, the potions she helped him brew, the one-to-one novel they both started but never finished reading. He missed their life, which they could have had. He was waiting for her at home, but she still did not come back to him. His wife. His formidable witch. His overly-confident Hermione Snape.


He entered their empty house, petted Crookshanks that ran into the hall to meet him, took off his shoes, hung his coat on the hook, and froze halfway, alarmed either by a sound, a smell, or a premonition of something. Former instincts cannot be deceived so easily, no matter how much he would like to believe in possible happiness. Snape drew his wand and moved cautiously along the wall.


He wanted to spend this evening drinking his pain away in the company of old Ogden's and a good book and forget about everything. Today his wife was in a French clinic, and he was too desperate to hope, that's why he could afford this bout of cowardice tonight, however, something alerted him.


The house smelled of lemon pie, which Snape had a special weakness for, mulled wine, and rosemary. The air rippled as he entered the candlelit hall, his sensitive nose picking up the scent of her perfume, the one she had loved so much in their only happy year since their marriage. The shroud had lifted and his wife stepped forward to meet him, and the awareness that shone in her eyes told Severus much more than unnecessary words.


“Hello, Severus, the husband of mine."


She smiled at him as he pulled her into his arms, never to let go again.


She was home. And his wait for his wife was finally over.



The End.