Chemistry - Tricki - The Worst Witch (TV 2017) [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1: Snow White's a smoker

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Hecate Hardbroom is smoking in the staff room, feeling bitter and irritable, when she lays eyes on the new addition to the school. Hecate’s first thought is he’s far too neatly dressed in his well-cut black suit and narrow black tie to be in a school like this. She should know. She’s held the too-professionally-dressed title since she was relegated to this hellhole of a comprehensive almost two years ago.

She folds her left arm across her midriff and brings her cigarette back to her blood red lips, drawing on it contemplatively. Beyond looking too good to be here, he looks like he knows he’s too good to be here, and that rather puts Hecate off. The rest of the staff think the same of Hecate, of course, but that doesn’t give her any feelings of solidarity with the new teacher.

Bianca Bream, who has the dubious honour of serving as Headteacher of Bristol South Comprehensive, claps her hands to draw the attention of her staff. The clique of popular teachers – mainly men, mainly idiots – grind their conversation to a halt slowly enough to show their disdain for their boss. Hecate doesn’t have any particular affection for Bianca, either, but she disapproves of her colleagues’ lack of respect for the position of principal.

Hecate stares at Bianca, thinking of the trajectory she herself was once on: Head of Year at a prestigious independent school a hundred miles east of here, almost certain to progress to Deputy Head in less than five years and Head after that, if she could refrain from blotting her copy book. But Hecate hadn’t refrained. She had lost control of her temper one too many times, the last time at the daughter of a Junior Minister, and the cost had been her future. Hecate taps the ash from her cigarette into a half full cup of instant coffee someone has discarded near her.

Hecate hadn’t paid enough attention to realise that the enraged IT teacher just beyond her peripheral vision has actually only set the mug down to reply to a text message. She shrugs her eyebrow in response to the ferocious glare of Ms Wells, unfazed by her colleague’s ire, and pointedly flicks more ash into the mug.

“Morning everyone. Monday again, how can it be?” It’s Principal Bream’s standard Monday quip, and it’s felt stale since the first time she uttered it.

“I’d like to introduce you to our newest member of staff, Severus Snape. Severus will be taking over Caroline’s chemistry class. Hecate, I’m sure you’ll be relieved to be back to a normal workload.”

Hecate’s only response is to flash her eyebrows. Bianca expected nothing more from the younger woman.

“I hope you’ll all make Severus feel welcome. Now, Jack, I’d like to see you in my office before second period. Sarah, you’ll be covering fifth period for Julianne. I think that’s everything, and – oh, Noah Wylie from fifth form has been arrested again. Let’s have a good week, people.”

Hecate can see Bianca leading the new person towards the seat she’s currently occupying. She has no desire to make nice with anyone this morning – or any morning, really. She tries to avoid the encounter by rising from the tatty couch, gathering the workbooks she marked overnight and trying to find someone else to talk to. None of the other teaching staff will meet her gaze, and perhaps that’s not unreasonable. She’s taken against each of them at some point in her twenty-month tenure, and those pigeons seem to have come home to roost at this precise moment. When Hecate turns back in the direction of the staff room door, Bianca and the new recruit are between her and the exit.

“Hecate,” Bianca says, pinning Hecate with her eyes as well as blocking her with her body. “I’d like you to find some time to give Severus a handover. Particularly on some of the pointier issues with the GCSE students.”

“Of course.” She drawls, showing no enthusiasm whatsoever for the assignment.

“Terrific. Severus, you can go to Hecate with any questions. I’ve a feeling you’ll get along just fine. Hecate seems to know more about the school than any of us.” Bianca says with ill-veiled derision. Hecate’s jaw clenches at her new marching orders. The last thing she needs is to be saddled with some underperforming nitwit who couldn’t manage to land themselves in a better job than this.

Bianca ghosts away before Hecate can think of a reason to avoid this assignment of Bianca’s, so she’s left with no choice. The new addition holds out his hand to her. Hecate accepts the offering. She’s surprised to find that his skin is quite soft, and his grip pleasantly firm. This is the only positive thought Hecate Hardbroom has about Severus Snape.

The first positive thought Severus Snape has about Bristol South Comprehensive occurs to him when he makes contact with the other science teacher’s hand. There is a pleasant energy that flows from her skin, and her grip is firmer and more assured than he’d expected. But then again, Severus' expectations are proving to be seriously misguided. He never expected, for a random example, to be relegated to a backwater like this after working at two of the finest independent schools in the country. Severus expected to patiently do his time and ascend to a comfortable role as a Headteacher in a school that runs with militaristic precision and therefore requires almost no intervention from him. Instead, Severus has disgraced himself to such a point his best option is to teach chemistry – a subject which requires precision and discipline – in a school that’s had such poor Ofsted reports he doesn’t understand how the place is still open. And the worst part is, he’s not even secured a permanent position yet. His securing ongoing work in this hellscape depends on a performance review three month into the job. Severus didn’t think he’d ever fall so low, but here he is.

“Welcome to the BS Comp.” His new colleague drawls. The fact that she seems to dislike this place as much as he does endears her to him. She’s also clearly different to the rest of the teaching staff. She’s too well dressed for this place. She looks like one of his colleagues from better days – neatly clad in a charcoal pencil dress and a black blazer. She’s in chunky black heels, but even taking that into account she’s tall. Reed-like. Her black hair is pulled into a ballet-ready bun, and her makeup is precise – blood red lips, neat eyeliner. She looks like Snow White grew up, realised optimism was futile, and took up smoking. For a moment Severus thinks he rather likes it.

“I have never set foot in such a bleak educational setting.” He admits, giving no mind to the risk of turning his colleagues against him.

“I’d say the gloom diminishes, but that would be a cruel lie to tell you on your first day.” She replies, drawing on her cigarette and eyeing him speculatively. She notices his gaze flit to her cigarette and surprises herself by offering him the pack. He accepts and pulls a silver lighter from his pocket. It’s ostentatious and reeking of an independent school education.

She takes note of the length of his fingers when he brings the little cylinder to his lips. They are fine and capable-looking. She can imagine them handling burettes and droppers with confidence and skill. Hecate doesn’t feel threatened by the new chemistry teacher. In fact, she thinks she could almost like him. But Hecate doesn’t really like anyone, so bridging the gap between almost liking and liking seems an unlikely thing for this man to accomplish.

While Hecate is pondering this, Bianca, about to exit the staff room, turns back to the assembled teachers. “Oh, and from today smoking is banned on school grounds.”

The rumble of rage that burbles across the staff room is the force of a small earthquake. So, this is the hell Severus must now inhabit.

Chapter 2: Foolish test tube waving

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In his first lesson, Severus is met with a chorus of excitement, students gleeful at the prospect of a chemistry teacher who isn’t quite as ferocious as Miss Hardbroom. Severus is piqued by assumption and glares so viciously that every teenager in the room freezes in their place.

“I would like to disabuse you of the notion that this class will be one in which you may waste time.”

A smug looking girl in the middle of the room leans over to her friend and stage-whispers “Still not as scary as HB.”

Severus slams a book onto the desk and barks “By the time I am finished with you, you will be begging to be transferred into Miss Hardbroom’s class. Now, open your books to chapter four so I can see if you’ve retained anything in the last four years.”

“Aren’t you gonna take the register, sir?” Asks a gum-chewing girl with her shirt half unbuttoned. She is leaning back in her chair like she owns the classroom. There is not a trace of fear in her. Severus doesn’t know how to interpret such a situation. The most irritating part of it is, she’s correct. Severus will never admit that he’s rattled, but it’s the only explanation for him forgetting a step in the process as basic as this. He turns to the register without acknowledging that she’s right.

At the posh boys’ school he’s just been thrown out of, the register was organised by surnames – in fact, he could tell you the given names of perhaps a quarter of his students, generally those with a surname double-up. Joneses. Thompsons. This school, it seems, endeavours to treat their students as individuals. Severus has been here an hour and is already convinced it’s working rather too well.

Alex Stryer, Alice Box, and Andy Jones are all present and correct. It isn’t until he gets to Atrossitee Jenkins that Severus stumbles. He pronounces it Atross-ee-tee and is quickly corrected by the gum-chewing creature who first prompted him to take the register.

“You say it like ‘atrocity’.” She corrects him in a disdainful drawl. Severus straightens behind his desk and stares at her in incomprehension. He blinks slowly, trying to process this. How has he gone from teaching three minor royals to teaching a girl whose parents felt the desire to name their child ‘atrocity’? Severus wants a drink and a cigarette. Immediately.

In want of these calming substances, Severus cannot keep himself from asking “Do you know the meaning of the word ‘atrocity’?”

“Like a world war or wotever.” She replies, arms folded purposefully beneath her breasts.

“And how do you feel about your parents naming you after an act of barbarity?”

“Don’t fink abou’ it much, do I?”

“A sentiment I’m sure you could apply to any number of scenarios.” The words are out of his mouth even as he silently coaches himself to behave. There is nowhere further to fall from this point. If he loses this job, he will be relegated to Sainsbury’s. And yet he can’t bring himself to hold his tongue.

Atrossitee doesn’t seem to know how to respond to his snide remark, and Severus’ better instincts take hold, compelling him through the rest of the register. The register isn’t the hardest part of the class, as it turns out, although it comes close. The hardest part of class is when Brad Hawthorn throws water on Becca West – who Severus has already picked as the most studious of the bunch – while screaming “ACID ATTACK!” The room breaks out in hysteria, and Severus, utterly unused to leading an out-of-control of a classroom, is momentarily lost amidst the tide of screaming and laughter.

Also not accustomed to having to raise his voice to regain control, Severus takes a moment to gather himself before shouting “Silence!”

The students seem as shocked as he is by the sudden blast of his voice and come to order immediately. Severus takes his advantage to bring them to heel, but it is still the worst class he’s ever taught – worse, even, than the one that led to his dismissal.

The day doesn’t improve from there. Severus catches up to Hecate in the corridor on the way back to the staff room, sniping “Fourth form knows as much as the junior students at my last school.”

Hecate interprets this as an attack on her professionalism, given she’s been teaching them since Mr Clarkson was stabbed by a rabid student wielding a broken test tube. She becomes instantly prickly. “I take it you shall save the day and have them all straight on their way to Oxbridge?”

He doesn’t mean to start a fight with her – she’s the only person who’s seemed worthy of a conversation in his first half day of his new job, but Severus’ defences are finely tuned weapons. In his lifetime he’s not yet worked out how to sheathe them.

Instead of working to cultivate an ally, he snaps back “At least I have had students accepted to top universities.”

Hecate does not attempt to control her anger more than Severus would, hissing “As have I!” at him with murder in her eyes.

“I doubt half the student body could locate Oxford or Cambridge on a map, let alone achieve A Level results to warrant admission.”

“Perhaps some of us have taught at better institutions than this.” Hecate growls.

Severus exhales firmly. So, everyone knows. Everyone already knows. He’s not naïve enough to think that teachers don’t gossip with each other, but he had hoped the news of his sacking from a top college would hold for a few weeks at least rather than a few hours.

“Who told you?” He hisses.

“What are you talking about?” Hecate retorts waspishly. He combs her face for a tell that she's covering.

Oh god.

She doesn’t know.

He hasn’t known her long, but he can see her confusion is genuine. Severus turns his gaze forward and murmurs “Never mind,” before stalking off in the direction of the front doors to find somewhere private to smoke.

Chapter 3: There's a war going on here

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Severus’ esteem for the other chemistry teacher continues to fade over the course of the next week. She is terse and irritable with him at every opportunity. Despite his best intentions, they snipe at each other almost constantly. It’s a shame, because she’s the only member of staff who seems not to be an idiot. But she also seems determined to provoke him, and this is something Severus finds deeply irksome.

One day, nearly two weeks into his tenure, Hecate slips through the storeroom that joins their classrooms and settles herself in an empty seat beside the unsuspecting Brit Parson. Hecate’s lip ticks with satisfaction at the way Brit physically recoils from her. Severus’ eyes catch on her as he sweeps them over the students and his mouth curls with distaste. She has taken Bianca’s comment on his first day, words to the effect of wanting Hecate to keep an eye on him, in a managerial rather than supportive sense, and has been making overtures about it all week.

She clasps her hands in her lap and meets his gaze defiantly. She takes a twisted pleasure in knowing how much she’s annoying him. He had been trying to explain the difference between atoms and ions to the third form students when she slunk in. He has drawn two efficient diagrams on the whiteboard to illustrate his point, a neutral sodium and chlorine atom. Hecate has tried precisely this section of the syllabus on year nines past and has found, over her regretful time here, that they need far gentler leading towards the concept. Hecate resents it, of course. At her last school, the students would have absorbed this by rote out of sheer fear of their parents. Here, chemistry is an abstract and pointless pastime to most, except those attempting to manufacture drugs. Hecate has learnt that introducing the purpose of these concepts is critical to students at the BS Comp retaining anything. She ponders interrupting him, showing him up in front of the class, but she worries that might appear helpful. Helping him is never her intention.

Hecate suspects he's objectively less offensive than all other members of the teaching staff, but she still finds him superior and irksome, and Hecate doesn’t possess the requisite calmness to let him go on thinking he’s better than her. So she needles him, finds little ways to undermine him in the hopes of putting him in his place.

She decides the impact of her criticism will be maximised if she waits until the end of class, makes her assessment while the students are still filing out so they can hear as they pass. Severus knows exactly what she’s doing as soon as he hears her heels clicking up the room to his desk at the conclusion of class, and he hates her for it.

He can imagine the laughter of the students as they strut down the hallways, ‘did you hear the way HB shredded Snape? Bloody classic.’

“Why do you insist on undermining me?” He hisses at her before she’s even started speaking.

“I was intending to make a suggestion to one of my colleagues. I missed when that became a method of undermining.”

Severus tosses his hair off his face, irritated at his lack of control. “We both know your suggestions are not intended to help me.”

“Do we?” Hecate retorts, eyes flashing as if there’s lightening behind them – sudden, fleeting, lethal. He’d appreciate the drama of it, were they were on better terms.

While her intention at the commencement of this class had been to take him down a peg, standing before him Hecate can feel the despair rolling off him. She is painfully reminded of her first weeks in this place. How profoundly alone she had felt here. How much of a failure. The look in his eyes is one she recognises from meeting her own reflection. And the truth is, she is still alone here; she’s simply accepted it. Seeing the look in his eyes, such a perfect mirror of her own, Hecate feels like maybe she could have an ally for the first time in longer than she can remember, if only she allows herself to.

Hecate Hardbroom is not ordinarily a woman who takes pity on people, but today she surprises herself by taking pity on Severus Snape. He looks so haggard with the need for nicotine and the force of their warfare that she’s worried he’ll commit an act of violence. She decides in this moment that he’s good enough company to share her secret smoking place.

Hecate begins to walk away from him, pushes the door to the classroom. She turns her head back to him, saying “come with me” and barely pausing before setting off again. Severus isn’t sure what to expect if he does. She seems to hate him so much that he’s half convinced she’s luring him somewhere to kill him. But, nevertheless, soon she feels rather than hears him following her, and then he’s gliding beside her, a comfortable dark patch in her peripheral vision.

He hesitates when they reach the door of the second-floor female toilets, murmuring “Miss Hardbroom…”

“Don’t be tedious.” She snaps, pushing her way through the door without breaking stride. Severus pauses for another beat, then follows her. He catches sight of her slipping into the end stall and hesitates once again. He hears a click, the unmistakeable, delightful click of a lighter, and approaches the door just in time for her to blow a steady stream of smoke out of it. When he eventually enters and locks the door behind himself, Hecate remarks “You aren’t always quick to react, are you, Severus?”

He takes the proffered pack of cigarettes from her hand – reading it correctly as a peace offering - and sets about lighting one. Once he’s pulled the first intoxicating lungful of nicotine into his body, Severus replies “I prefer to have all possible information before deciding on a course of action.”

“A very pure scientific position to take.” She acknowledges.

“Do you advocate an alternative approach?” He queries, conscious that this is the first time they’ve been alone together for longer than it takes her to snipe at him, let alone confined to such a small space. Neither is confident enough in the dynamic between them to push the boundaries in any meaningful way. It is a process of very gentle investigation.

“Not at all. But bathrooms are not laboratories and there is little rational consideration in either of us smoking.” Severus wants to protest that some of their students most definitely use bathrooms as a certain kind of laboratory, and that addiction isn’t a rational state, but he holds his tongue, unsure how she’ll take his contradicting her when they have so recently set foot on the path to comradery.

Hecate, lost somewhere in her memory, saves this situation and reinforces his first instincts about her by noting, “Having said that, at least three of our students have attempted to use toilets for a kind of chemistry…”

Severus’ lips bend in a half smile, thinking how rare it is to find an equal in the bathroom of an underperforming comprehensive in Bristol.

Chapter 4: Permanent marker and memory

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From there they fall into an easy rhythm, one of them breezing past the other in a corridor, or sometimes in moments of desperation into an emptying classroom at the end of a lesson when they need a few minutes to ensure their continued sanity.

The students pay little mind to Hecate asking “May I have a quick word, Mr Snape?” while they gather their books, nor Severus murmuring “Might we discuss the next chemical order?” as he glides up beside her in the hallway. They both develop a sixth sense for the moments it’s safe to slip into the second floor ladies’ room without being detected. Severus has embraced the routine with the same fervour he does anything precise and procedural.

Once they’re safely locked in a cubicle, they don’t attempt to disguise their chatter. Hecate is relaxed about the perceptions of the other staff – half of them have staked a claim to various confined pockets of the school to sate their nicotine cravings, and this toilet is theirs. Severus muses that they’ve all become rather like sex workers or drug dealers, ferociously protective of their territory, always poised to chase a newcomer off it. Severus has taken to keeping a permanent marker in his inside pocket, next to his two elegant fountain pens, for their addiction interludes. While Hecate generally takes up residence on the lid of the loo, Severus turns fifteen percent of his attention to amending the graffiti on the walls of the cubicles.

“Why don’t you save yourself the time and write an explanation of the correct use of apostrophes instead?” Hecate asks before taking a drag and exhaling for seven seconds precisely. Severus rather likes the way she exhales.

“I doubt most of them could comprehend it sufficiently for it to alter their behaviour.” He retorts, adding an apostrophe and an ‘e’ to Dez your a limp prick.

“A sadly accurate assessment of our student body.” Hecate concedes, rising and plucking the pen from his hand. There isn’t enough space in the cubicle for her to avoid brushing against him as she moves.

She turns towards the back of the door, having already located a prime piece of empty space on the heavily graffitied cubicle. Severus draws calmly on the cigarette while he watches her scrawl in strategically disguised handwriting Ms Browne is a pedo. Severus chuckles softly. She turns away from him and leans against the door, her eyes carefully on his face.

“Would you say, Mr Snape, that this handwriting suspiciously resembles Brit Parson's?”

“Indeed I would, Miss Hardbroom.”

“Would you say that’s worth two or three evenings in detention?”

“Certainly three.” Severus says with a smirk that is nothing short of predatory. Now she's relaxed into their friendship, Hecate almost feels guilty for how difficult she made his first fortnight here. She’ll never admit it.

It’s in one of these cubicle confessional sessions that Severus tells Hecate the tale of his sacking, his disgrace. He tells her of throwing a whiteboard eraser at a student after roundly abusing the boy.

“There was a high tolerance for… using robust language with the students. Evidently, I misjudged the threshold.”

“I’m surprised that was sufficient to remove you from a position at a school like that.”

“It was not my first offence.”

“Ah.”

“I had applied for a job at Harrow when it happened. The compromise we reached was that I withdraw my application, leave the school, and find another suitable position. In exchange my employer agreed not to give me a bad reference, even informally.”

“Seems a reasonable compromise.”

“Objectively. Although being relegated to this so-called-educational-institution is a high price to pay.”

Hecate blows a stream of smoke into his face with a wicked smirk. “But think of all the friend you never would have made.”

Even though he’s choking, Severus gives her a wry smile. “I do enjoy having someone to help me speed my inevitable march towards lung cancer.”

“At least we’ll have a cause.” Severus co*cks his head, knowing there’s more to her comment. He watches her slide away from any depth in return. She settles on “Imagine having the consequence but none of the joy of the activity.”

Severus lets her avoid the topic and files it away as something to either avoid or probe in the future, depending on her mood.

It doesn’t take Severus long to decide that, even if she was initially the worst part of his experience here, Hecate is actually the only redeeming feature of Bristol South Comprehensive. Their friendship galvanises quickly, and soon he can read her as well as he’s ever been able to read anyone. Hecate doesn’t appreciate quite how well he’s come to know her until they’re prowling down the corridor towards their nicotine rendezvous. She looks distracted, feels less present than usual. Severus doesn’t mention it until she’s got a cigarette in her mouth and her back against the wall of the cubicle.

“You seem preoccupied, Miss Hardbroom.” Severus observes, flicking ash into the open toilet. For once, neither of them has decided to use it as a seat.

“Pardon?” She says, turning to him. He almost smiles at the confusion on her face.

“That rather proves my point.”

“Ah. Was I not paying you enough attention, Mr Snape?”

“I was remarking on your level of distraction.”

“Oh.”

“It seems something more than a bad meeting with Bianca is on your mind.”

She frowns deeply, and Severus can tell she’s weighing up whether she knows him well enough to tell him whatever is going on in her mind. He’s about to change the topic to something that won’t challenge her, but she speaks before he has the chance.

Slowly, she tells him, “I received a message from my former partner this morning.” Hecate takes a deep drag of her cigarette and leaves it between her lips, brushing her palms against each other in a way Severus has learnt means she is confused, or processing. She takes the cigarette from her lips again and notices that his eyes haven’t left her.

“You are allowed to ask, Severus.” She tells him. His gaze drops to the red mark her lips have left on the cigarette as he tries to formulate the proper question.

“You have never mentioned a lover before.”

Her lips pull into a wry smirk. “Do you think I simply materialise here each morning without any capacity for a personal life?”

“I confess, I never know what to think about your after-hours exploits.”

“I prefer to keep you wondering.” She flicks off her ash while she says it, smiling to herself as she does.

“You’ve never mentioned – ”

“My high-school boyfriend. Owen. We stayed together into my second year of university. We... we were engaged.” She pauses, and Severus feels the cubicle tighten with resentment. “He is the reason I teach science rather than practice it.”

“Why did he contact you, after so long?”

“He had to put down our cat.”

“You had a cat?”

“Yes. Samantha. A perfect little black thing. She was good company while Owen was off doing whatever it was he did.”

“But he kept her?”

“His parents kept her. He couldn’t be trusted to feed her, and I couldn’t afford to live somewhere that would have her after supporting him for so long. I moved into a dormitory after I left him.”

“I’m sorry you didn’t have a chance to say goodbye.” Hecate meets his gaze again with a sad smile.

“So am I.”

In an unprecedented moment between them, Severus reaches across the cubicle and squeezes her hand. Hecate stiffens, but only because for a moment, she thinks it would be quite nice to be in his arms. She pushes the thought away. She’s tired and grieving and mulling over moments she and Owen were happy with each other. Of course, she was a very different person then. She struggles to envisage her current self finding anything that Owen offered to be appealing. But she thinks, fleetingly, that perhaps she could let herself be happy with someone else.

Severus releases her, and she comes back to the moment like she's woken from a dream.

“What does Owen do?” Severus asks, drawing on his cigarette.

“He sells insurance. He changed university courses three times during our relationship. His four subjects of a law degree cost my savings. I transferred to teaching because it had lower contact hours than science. It allowed me to work, to support us.”

It seems such a waste of her potential Severus is momentarily struck by the desire to pull her into his arms. He quickly shakes himself out of it. He’s already overstepped the boundaries by squeezing her hand – and why he did that is beyond him, too.

“How long has it been since you spoke?”

Hecate shrugs with an eyebrow. “I think he last asked me for money fourteen months ago.”

“I’m sorry you loved someone so clearly unworthy of you.” Hecate smiles softly at him, but his face is stone on her behalf.

“I didn't expect to see your protective instinct rear its head, Severus.”

“I’d appreciate if you spared my reputation and refrained from mentioning it.”

“Your secrets are safe with me.”

Severus flicks his exhausted cigarette into the toilet. “As yours are with me.”

They share the ghost of a smile until Hecate says, “Shall we return to the rabble?”

Severus nods, ushers her out of the cubicle. Soon they’re making bad instant coffee in the staff room and everything is normal again - their first proper touch all but forgotten.

Chapter 5: Nerves and performance reviews do not mix

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The day of Severus’ performance review – three months into his time at the BS Comp – comes around at lightening speed, and Severus is unusually anxious about it. He knows the students don’t particularly like him. Their mock exams have already been woeful. That’s hardly his fault, but if Bianca doesn't want to make him a permanent employee, she’ll easily find a reason to be rid of him.

Severus tosses his cigarette into the toilet bowl of their regular cubicle, only now noticing he’s smoked it down to the filter. He’s perfected the art of keeping eye contact with Hecate while he performs this action, of not missing a single beat in whatever argument or debate they’re having. Today he lets his gaze break away from her to follow the butt into the bowl. Hecate doesn’t notice the shift, but she notices his profile, his ink-black hair swaying against his alabaster skin, the deepening of the frown line between his brows. She shouldn’t be so able to perceive his tension this soon into a work friendship, but she’s already an expert at reading him, like he’s letting her inside his thoughts.

“A casual observer might think you’re eager to stay here.”

“I am eager to avoid uprooting my life for the second time in three months.” He says, his voice defensive. Hecate runs her eyes over him and decides he’s too stressed to push the question.

“What time is your performance review?” She asks, still drawing evenly on her own cigarette. Severus turns his wrist to check the serviceable Rolex trench watch that belonged to his grandfather.

“Twelve minutes.”

“You should go.” Hecate says, stowing her cigarette between her violently red lips and taking him in. It’s hard to believe he’s been here three months – two and a half months of locking themselves in one of the second-floor loos and setting the world to rights while giving themselves cancer.

Before her brain can catch up with her hands, Hecate has closed what little distance there is between them in the cubicle and reached out to adjust his tie. She slips the perfectly balanced double-Windsor knot upwards, correcting a minor slippage, before trailing her fingers down the length of black silk. Hecate does not acknowledge the intimacy of the action. She does not realise how long she spends running her fingers down his chest. Severus watches her hands against him and can’t decide what to make of the action. It’s been a long time since he’s had a friend at work, so he assumes he’s simply forgotten what it’s like. Suddenly uncomfortable with how long she’s been touching another person, Hecate removes her hands, takes her cigarette from between her lips. Severus’ eyes linger on her face, watching the now-familiar way she takes smoke into her lungs then evenly sends it out in a toxic meditation. Her eyes follow the grey stream towards ceiling. Sometimes she watches him while she goes through this routine, and there’s something intimate about it, something conspiratorial. He rather enjoys it when she does.

She brings her gaze back to his and murmurs “Try not to get fired. I’ve come to like having an ally.”

Severus’ lips flash in a wry smile. “Misery loves company.”

Hecate’s bend to match his own. “I don’t reject your hypothesis.”

“Small progress, but progress nonetheless,” is Severus’ parting shot before he slips out of the cubicle.

“Good luck.” Hecate murmurs in his general direction. Her words are too quiet for him to hear, but she hopes the sentiment reaches him.

Hecate is already in the staff room by the time Severus gets to lunch. Their eyes lock but she finds his unreadable. She rises from the tragic olive green velour couch and meets him beside the kettle, flicking the appliance on and plucking two mugs off the cheap wooden tree. The kettle is the newest thing in the staff room, recently replaced after one of their colleagues overfilled the old one while hungover and shorted it out, triggering the safety switch and taking out half the school’s lights in the process.

The kettle burbles, masking their conversation. “Well?”

“You seem to be stuck with me.” Severus replies, catching Hecate’s lip bending into a soft smile before she can restrain it. “Are you pleased, Hecate?” His tone, while teasing, is uncharacteristically affectionate.

She makes a quarter turn of her head and meets his gaze. “Yes, actually.”

Severus emits a thoughtful hum from the back of his throat, and their eyes break apart, landing on the now boiling kettle. Hecate drops barely drinkable own brand teabags into the mugs and Severus pours water over them.

“Shall we… do something to mark the occasion?” Hecate suggests, gaze trained on the teabag she is dunking evenly in and out of the steaming water.

“What do you have in mind?” His actions perfectly mirror hers, quite without him meaning to.

“There is an Italian restaurant in Bedminster with an adequate wine list. We could… have a drink?” She chances a furtive glance at him, but learns nothing; he’s too focussed on his tea.

He hesitates, and Hecate fears she’s pushed their fledgling friendship too far. They are both emphatically non-conformist, regularly scoffing at their colleagues as they decamp to the worn-down pub around the corner each evening. The two of them going for a drink, even somewhere far from the school, might feel a little too much like obeying the natural flow of their workplace.

But he breaks the silence by muttering “Yes, that seems fitting,” and Hecate, for no reason she can name, feels relieved.

Severus drops his teabag into the bin, stirs in a liberal teaspoon of sugar and a dash of milk. He would hold the lid of the pedal bin open for her, but he knows she steeps her tea a full ninety seconds longer than him. Sometimes, while he is readying himself for bed, he finds himself running through a mental list of useless facts he’s learned about Hecate Hardbroom in the last three months. She takes her tea black, but coffee white with one sugar. She smokes Dunhills but doesn’t object to his Camels. She is entirely without vanity, but is particular about her nails. Her lipstick is different. Her lipstick is a kind of armour. He’s never seen her without it, nor has any member of the teaching staff as far as he can tell. She is incapable of controlling her lips when she’s angry, and the snarl they form at such moments would make a hyena flee in fear. She can perfectly calculate any percentage in her head. She objects to tomato in sandwiches. He has never seen her smile at anyone else in the staff room.

“Good.” Hecate says, depositing her own teabag into the bin when he is halfway through drinking his. “Good.”

Hecate and Severus meet in the corridor, falling into step easily as they make their way to Hecate’s car. Severus has never seen it properly before, but he could have guessed from the vehicles in the staff car park that hers would be the pristine black Mazda MX-5. He doesn’t remark on it, slips inside mutely and sets his briefcase at his feet. Hecate manoeuvres the sportscar nimbly during the ten-minute trip, pushing it to the edges of reasonable driving in largely residential areas. Severus notices her riskier actions, but he trusts her not to get them killed. He would trust very few people in with his life, but here they are.

She parks before a warmly lit restaurant with a full glass window and the word ‘Sugo’ painted in elegant gold script across the glass. She obviously frequents the place more than Severus anticipated, for when she walks in, an Italian man with a bawdy northern accent spreads his arms and says “Miss Hecate! We haven’t seen you in weeks!” He turns over his shoulder to one of the bar staff and shouts “And look, Arch, she’s brought a bloke rather than a book. Not the usual spot then?”

If Hecate were the type of person to blush, she would be furiously red by now, but she manages to maintain her dignified bearing, replying “No, somewhere different tonight, Bruno.”

He nods and purses his lips knowingly, nodding at Hecate as if she’s proven herself to be the dark horse he always suspected. “Menu?” He asks her under his breath.

“The wine list will do.” Bruno nods, plucking up a green leather-bound menu and leading them to a table towards the back of the narrow restaurant. The walls are half wood-panelled and half exposed brick. When they settle at the little table in the back corner, Hecate uses the candle on the table to light her cigarette, waits for him to do the same, then blows the candle out. Severus allows himself the rarity of a smile. Things are functional to Hecate Hardbroom; atmosphere is unnecessary to her. Severus appreciates it, although he does have a soft spot for certain ambiance enhancing things, like an open fire.

Hecate suggests a sangiovese – her regular – and Severus accepts the suggestion, fighting off his instinct to quibble about things like wine. Such behaviour earned brownie points with his colleagues at the posh private school that fired him. He doubts Hecate will take kindly to it, though, and he is right. When the manager – this Bruno fellow - takes their order (having obviously come to further inspect the man accompanying the inscrutable Hecate Hardbroom) he makes to re-light the candle.

“It’s fine, Bruno.” Hecate says, halting his motion before she exhales a steady stream of silvery smoke.

“Of course.” He says pleasantly, eyes darting between the two of them, trying to determine the dynamic. Bruno has seen thousands of customers pass through his doors, and he’s never been more confused by a couple than the one before him.

“You come here often, I take it?”

“Sometimes, yes.” She acknowledges. Then, once their wine has been poured, Hecate relaxes her grip on herself slightly and amends her statement. “Quite often. I find it a pleasant place to read.”

Before the two of them struck up this little friendship, Hecate spent at least two nights a week here, at a stool in the window with a glass of wine and a mind for escape. Sometimes she brings her marking in, but usually she saves that for when she gets home. Here she buries herself in a novel or lets her gaze follow the people who pass the restaurant, speculating about their stories.

“What do you read?” Severus asks, suddenly aware that this is an area of their interests they’ve never explored.

Hecate hesitates, her glass hovering before her lips, and murmurs “Crime fiction, mainly. Thrillers.” His eyebrows flash and Hecate prepares for a fight. “Is that a problem?”

“No. I am merely surprised.”

“What did you think I would read, Severus? Gossip magazines?”

“I had no preconceptions, Hecate. I have never seen you read anything other than a textbook or a scientific journal.”

“It hardly benefits one’s reputation to sit in the staff room reading Mystic River.”

Severus smirks at her conspiratorially, “It does sound like the story of a fortune teller.”

“My point.” Hecate nods, her eyes warm and amused. There is a pause while they both sip their wine, then Hecate picks up with “What do you read – if you read?”

Severus takes the comment in the spirit she’s intended, does not become defensive as he would've when they first met. “Biographies, mostly.” It’s his comfortable answer, but she knows him well enough to hear his hesitation. “And sometimes… classic literature.”

Hecate’s lips curl in a delicious show of pleasure at this titbit. “What are you reading now?”

“Hardy. Desperate Remedies.”

“Are you enjoying it?”

Severus turns the stem of his wine glass contemplatively between his fingers, not breaking eye contact with her. “It is less polished than his later works, but I enjoy the melodrama.”

“You are full of surprises, aren’t you, Severus?”

“Few people take the time to notice.”

Hecate holds his dark eyes with her own and tries to remember the last time, before now, she felt genuinely fond of someone.

Chapter 6: The two of them were in this together, after all

Chapter Text

It’s not until Severus has secured his position at BSC that Hecate acknowledges how nervous she’d been to lose him from this abysmal institution. Without being able to explain exactly how or why, Severus feels as if she’s relaxed. She laughs more freely at his wry remarks – just a single burst of enthusiasm bubbling from her throat each time, but enough to make his own perpetually scowling mouth kick up at the corners whenever she does. There’s an ease that comes from it; a comfort that holds him steady through the sheer agony of getting his first BSC GCSE cohort through their exams. It is, without a doubt, the hardest professional undertaking Severus has attempted. Where his well-heeled private school students had sailed through, revising diligently, heeding his warnings, and at times turning to private tutors, the BSC group are chaotic, still struggling to understand things he’s absolutely drilled into them over the past five months, and he’s sure Hecate has in the years prior. Severus almost gives up, ready to declare them a hopeless bunch, when he stumbles on Hecate sitting at one of the high lab tables, speaking to Cassie Fleetwood more patiently than he’s ever seen her speak to anyone but him. Severus can’t help but hover in the doorway and observe her.

“You do know this, Cassie.” Her voice is firm but not unkind. She’s spoken to Severus in that tone before. He almost smiles.

Cassie glances up at Hecate, eyes wide and anxious and beseeching, but seeing the confidence on Hecate’s face makes the teenager visibly uncoil. She looks back to the problem before her.

“The iron will react with the excess sulfuric acid…”

“Good.” Hecate encourages her.

“And become iron II sulfate. Which is…” Cassie takes another deep breath and begins to write, studies her answer, and then turns the page to Hecate.

“Correct.” Cassie beams at Hecate's praise. It’s so rare to see one of the BSC students genuinely trying, let alone so desperately seeking the approval of any of the teachers, it makes Severus take a moment to appreciate the sheer skill of his only friend here.

“And what would the molecular weight of six FeSO4 molecules be?”

“Well…” Cassie turns her attention to a periodic table and begins scribbling once again. “One would be… 151.92 moles per gram so it would be 911.52?”

“And the amount of iron you’d need to generate that?”

Cassie scribbles an answer on the paper and Hecate offers her a serene nod – just about the most coveted response any student hopes to get from her.

“You are well prepared for this exam, Cassie. Now go home and get some rest.”

Cassie nods, smiling gratefully, her eyes shining with admiration. As she hops down from the stool she says “Thanks for staying back with me, Miss Hardbroom.”

Hecate nods, murmuring “You’re welcome, Cassie.” The teenager grabs her things and sails out of the room in significantly better spirits than she had been when Severus arrived – so much so she doesn’t even notice him as she passes.

As Severus steps into the lab, Hecate is just noticing she’s left her lab coat on from her last class. She peels it off and hangs it on its rightful hook beside his, her black silk shirt moving smoothly over her torso. Severus should alert her to his presence, but he’s enjoying watching her in this quiet moment while she attends to minor things in the lab; tidying, making sure all the instruments are neatly parallel. Her soft crepe trousers float around her legs, and unbidden, the thought pops into Severus’ mind that she looks a bit like an avenging angel. He does not usually consider her in such terms. She is his co-conspirator, his fellow inmate in the prison that is the BS Comp. Rarely does Severus allow himself to look at her and acknowledge that she is lovely. Objectively, of course. Objectively lovely. He's so startled by the word ‘lovely’ popping into his head in regard to Hecate that he clears his throat, announcing himself at last.

Hecate turns to him with the ghost of a smile playing about her lips.

“Good afternoon, Mr Snape. Have you come in search of some kind of pleasurable carcinogen?”

Severus hasn’t recovered enough from his unbidden assessment of her to furnish her with a similarly smooth reply. Fortunately – or so he thinks in the moment – he is saved from doing so by Bianca striding into the lab.

“Good, I thought I’d find you two here. God knows everyone else is already at the pub. Anyway, school leavers' dance next week. I’ve put you down as chaperones. Enjoy your night!”

“Bianca.” Hecate’s voice halts her boss’ footsteps immediately. In truth, the Head of BSC had rather hoped to escape before Hecate could give her that look that makes the normally unflappable older woman sweat with discomfort.

When Bianca turns back with an easy “Yes?” Her face is serene, but she’s braced for discomfort.

“I’m unavailable to chaperone the leavers’ ball.”

Bianca meets Hecate’s gaze with a challenge. “And why is that, Hecate?”

“I’m visiting my cousin next Friday.” The lie is so smooth Severus almost raises an eyebrow.

And now Bianca has the upper hand. Hecate can’t glean her misstep, but the satisfied smirk on Bianca’s face tells her there definitely has been one.

“Lucky the leavers’ ball is on Thursday then, isn’t it, Miss Hardbroom?” Somehow Hecate’s face becomes even paler. Bianca rounds on Severus, who’s been watching this exchange like it’s a tennis match.

“I trust you have no prior commitments next Thursday, Severus?” Severus could save himself easily in this moment, but he glances at Hecate, whose eyes are beseeching so desperately he can almost hear her asking him not to abandon her, and decides he’ll suffer the night with her.

“I look forward to farewelling our students in an evening of contained enjoyment.”

At this Bianca laughs – laughs much too hard. “You really are new still, aren’t you Severus? Anyway, I’m off. Thank you both for your cooperation.”

Bianca breezes out of the room, and Hecate lets out a little shriek of rage.

“She knows I loathe…” But Hecate runs out of steam, shaking her head and making a last unnecessary adjustment to a crate of beakers before turning her gaze on Severus. “You really should’ve lied, Severus. You can’t even imagine the torture of this kind of school event.”

“I could hardly abandon you to such a fate. You are my only ally here.”

Hecate’s lip ticks up wryly. “For your sins.”

Severus’ eyes soften. “Yes. Perhaps I should sin more often.” And suddenly he’s flustered. “Drink?” He suggests, covering his own discomfort at bringing the idea of anything sinful into his friendship with objectively-lovely-Hecate-Hardbroom. Hecate is far away, though, pondering the night they’ll have to spend at the leavers’ ball.

“Yes, that just might make it survivable.”

Chapter 7: If you're ready to face some facts

Chapter Text

A week later, Hecate is leaning against the wall of the gym, watching the students grinding against each other to what passes for music these days with pure disdain. Out of the corner of her eye she notices Severus circle back around the gym to her, pause at her side. Her gaze only moves to him when he leans against the wall beside her, brushing her arm with the side of his on the way- warmth against her bare skin. She tingles at the contact, and she’s confused by how electric the moment is. He is usually more spatially aware around her. It’s not that they never touch, but they have almost never touched without intent.

Hecate turns back to the dancing students and hands him a clear water bottle with a black pop-up lid. It’s the kind of thing you’d normally see mounted on a bicycle, and it’s totally incongruous with her. Severus eyes the proffered bottle suspiciously.

“You look dehydrated.” She remarks drily. Feeling his eyes lingering on her, feeling the waves of scepticism rolling off him, Hecate turns, raises an eyebrow, and says “Trust me.”

Inexplicably, Severus’ first instinct has always been to trust her, so he obliges, and nearly chokes when the unexpected tang of gin and tonic hits his throat.

“You are full of surprises, Miss Hardbroom.” He comments, lips twisting wryly.

“And here I thought I was entirely predictable.” She says, trying to stop herself looking quite so pleased. He hands her back the bottle and she takes a liberal swig, silently relieved that all the students are far too preoccupied with each other to notice their strictest teachers smirking and sharing a water bottle.

But there’s nothing meaningful in the action, she reasons, fidgeting with the black plastic lid absently. Nothing in it at all, to the casual observer. It’s water. They work together. Hecate doesn’t know why she has fallen down a rabbit hole about this. Something about his mouth occupying the same space as hers is tugging at the back of her mind. Probably because of the gin, she reasons.

Her colleague breaks her out of her reverie by murmuring “Is it time to smoke, yet?”

“God, yes.” Hecate agrees, and the two of them set off for the women’s loos on the second floor.

With no classes the hallways are empty. Hecate does not expect to be interrupted as they so often are when they take the time to dose themselves with nicotine, but still, Severus locks the door to the cubicle behind them. For the first time in her life, Hecate feels like a naughty schoolgirl. They smoke in these toilets every day of their working lives, but tonight the action feels rebellious. They're abrogating their responsibility, which isn't something either of them is wont to do.

Severus hands her a cigarette and lights it for her before lighting his own. “Always so chivalrous, Severus,” she smiles.

“Only in certain company.” He retorts, angling his face to the ceiling and blowing a long ribbon of smoke from between his lips. Some new and alarming gremlin in Hecate’s brain wonders what smoke tastes like in his mouth rather than hers. She has no idea what’s gotten into her.

She takes another drag and exhales it too quickly, using the opportunity to look away from him, to control the heat that’s creeping up her neck. Severus takes the water bottle from her hand, takes another slug of G&T while looking at the line of her throat, the ring of violent red around the filter of her cigarette.

She folds her free arm over her ribs and rests the elbow of her right arm on her left wrist. He watches her thumb absently brush over her satin camisole. Severus’ brain, usually so perfectly under his control, begins spitting unhelpful questions at him. What does it feel like against her skin, that black satin? What does the skin beneath it feel like? He looks at the slope of her shoulder, thinks of the nub of bone that rolls in its socket beneath her skin to move her arm. He thinks of the cells that form his work colleague – thinks of the fact that they’ve formed together in a particular pleasing way.

Her dark eyes find his again, and Severus Snape, the coldest bastard any student at Bristol South Comprehensive has ever had the misfortune of coming across, finds his lips bending in a smile. He likes how unevenly her lips curve, how the left side of them always lifts first. He doesn’t remember the last time he noticed such an inconsequential detail about someone.

“Do you think they’re running riot without us?” She asks, co*cking her head wryly.

“I doubt our absence has been noticed.” He replies, flicking ash into the toilet without looking away from her. Her smile balances, her face perfectly symmetrical, the curve of her bun visible above her head, like a rising moon.

Hecate is suddenly aware of her breathing, aware of the beat of the music pulsing through the floor. She thinks she can feel the heat of him, in this little toilet cubicle where they’ve spent many collective hours locked together in secret. She takes a slow, deliberate pull on her cigarette, feeling dopamine flood her body as the nicotine attaches to the receptors in her brain – a brain that’s far too logical to have succumbed to an addiction like smoking, but did anyway.

Severus sets the water bottle on the battered cream cistern, and Hecate feels an urgent tug in her chest. She knows what’s going to happen before either of them has moved. It’s like she’s watching the events before they unfold. Like a premonition. Before he’s given himself permission to do it, Severus throws his half-smoked cigarette into the loo and reaches across the little cubicle for her, one hand on her cheek and one on her waist. The moment their lips meet Hecate lets herself admit how long she’s wanted this to happen. She’s tried not to, of course. It’s been such a long time since she had a genuine ally at this school, someone to share the highlights and irritations of her days with. A friend. She’s never wanted to compromise it, but Hecate’s sleeping mind has betrayed her on numerous occasions, crafting dreams of her body wrapped around his. Hecate has never dwelled on this. She cannot control her dreams, but she can control her actions. Up until now she always has.

Hecate has hesitated where Severus has not, so she is still encumbered with her cigarette. It’s in the hand furthest from the toilet, and she doesn’t trust her coordination to throw it across them without causing an injury. She holds her right arm in the air so she doesn’t set his hair on fire, but buries her left hand in the overlong tendrils of it.

Hecate feels as if every nerve in her body has been electrified. Her fingers are tingling so hard they almost itch. The cubicle suddenly feels overlarge, and Hecate can't get close enough to him. But he pushes her half a step back and she hits the flimsy partition wall and remembers where they are. They aren’t in the middle of a great open space, all alone. They’re in a dirty loo with graffiti on the walls – half of which they’ve authored themselves.

Hecate doesn’t recognise the little mewl of pleasure that escapes her, but she feels Severus’ mouth quirk in response to it. He runs his hand from her cheek to her shoulder, over the slippery fabric of her camisole. He lets his thumb brush over the side of her breast and growls a little. When he presses himself more firmly against her, the wall of the cubicle shifts perilously. One of Severus’ arms flies up and grabs the top of the partition. Hecate pulls back long enough to grin wickedly at him and stub out her cigarette on the wall. It falls to the floor and at last, Hecate has both hands free to explore his body. She tugs his tie down and unbuttons his top button more deftly than even she expected she could. She slips her fingers beneath his collar and feels the ridge of his collarbone, the cords of his throat. Music continues to thump below them. Hecate pulls the tails of his shirt from his trousers and lays her hand on skin that no one else in the building has the privilege of touching.

Taking it as permission, Severus begins to slip the camisole from beneath the waist of her sensible black pencil skirt. The very second his fingers find her cool alabaster skin, the door into the bathroom bangs against the wall.

“Told you it would be quiet up here!” Says the unmistakeable voice of Atrossitee Jenkins, accompanied, no doubt, by Brit Parson, both of whom have wheedled their way into the leavers’ ball as dates of graduates – a loophole Bianca tried, and failed, to close, given local A&E admissions generally spike following the BSC leavers’ ball.

Parson barks “Thank f*ck, I’m about to piss meself.”

Severus’ fingers slither down from the top of the partition while he prays to the spirit of every great chemist he can think of – from the Curies to Dorothy Hodgkin – that Atrossitee hasn’t noticed the action, or Hecate's still warm cigarette stub on the floor. He can feel Hecate holding her breath against him. He wonders how long she’ll be able to keep it up. He’s too afraid to meet her gaze, to read the realisation on her face, so he keeps his eyes on the fluorescent light above them. Were he to even glance at her, he would realise his evasion is futile – her eyes are clamped shut.

Hecate’s mind is full. She has no idea what’s possessed her to share her first kiss with Severus Snape in the least hygienic part of the school. She is not a woman who loses control like this. She’s not a woman who compromises her professional life for passing personal whims like passion. Anger, yes. Passion, no. But her heart is hammering against her ribs, and her fingers, of their own volition, are curling into his waist, trying to keep him with her. God she wants to keep him with her, even if that has to be in a grimy loo at an underperforming comprehensive that she hates to the tips of her fingernails. She can tell that his throat is near her face, even though she can’t bring herself to open her eyes. She can smell his skin so clearly – although how she can pick it out between the smoke and the ammonia and the overly floral air freshener, she can’t say. Before just now, Hecate wouldn’t have believed she knew the smell of his skin, but she’s so aware of it she can feel the hairs on her arms prickling. She’s afraid to move, but everything in her wants to press her lips to his jaw.

She listens to Atrossitee and Brit peeing and again, her mind is filled with how precisely this is not any of the many ways she has dreamed of kissing him. And then an unregulated part of Hecate’s mind murmurs that it’s better. Even though they’re in the second floor loo and it stinks a bit and if she looked over his shoulder she’d see bubble writing that declares HB needs co*ck with a rather vivid permanent marker drawing of an ejacul*ting penis under it, kissing him is infinitely better in the flesh than it is in her head. Hecate braces herself for the moment he pulls back from her, fixes his tie, makes a remark about the heat of the moment or too much gin or some other excuse she can’t yet predict. His fingers will leave the sliver of her skin he’s exposed, hers will fall from his back and waist. They will straighten their clothes. If things are salvageable between them, he will light another cigarette and they will laugh the encounter off before going back down to resume their chaperoning duties. If not, he will flee as soon as the room is clear. Perhaps she will before he gets the chance to. Yes, that’s a better plan. As long as she does it tactfully, she can escape first. Her clothes require less readjustment than his. It’s best they’re not seen leaving the bathroom together. These are easy excuses.

Having sorted all this through in her head, Hecate increases the pressure of her fingers on him. She doubts he’ll notice the minute change, but he does, and he’s glad she does it. Severus’ mind has been whirring with what’s happened between them. He’s initiated this. If she regrets this, he is at fault. He may have ruined everything between them. Severus wants to move the hand that’s beside her head on the wall of the cubicle back to her body, or drop his head to the curve of her neck, but he’s afraid to move – both because of the risk of detection and the risk of rejection. He is acutely aware that whichever of their students has taken the cubicle next to them will see two sets of feet if they happen to look under the cubicle. Two sets of adult feet. He and Hecate are the only staff here. He’s potentially about to be sacked from a school so underperforming he never would have dreamed of working in such a place, but his concern in this moment isn’t career related. His concern is for her, for how this will impact them. Severus hasn’t even contemplated letting someone in for years. Not until now. Not until he found this exceptional woman in this hateful school. She has become the highlight of his day. She is the only reason he manages to get up and come to this place each morning. What if he’s ruined it?

In the silence of their non-breathing Severus can make out the lyrics of the song pulsing below them in the gym.

Come on, come on, could you ever be one in a million?

The question seems eerily pointed, given the situation he’s found himself in.

The music is soon buried beneath a first, then a second toilet flushing. The two girls emerge, with Brit saying teasingly “Didja see the way Billy was lookin’ at you down there? Reckon he wants a little something.”

“Oi, piss off!” Is Atrossitee’s retort. “He’s gettin’ more than enough.”

The two girls exit, laughing and carrying on, and both Hecate and Severus remain perfectly still for what feels like ten minutes rather than ten seconds. Surprising even herself, Hecate frees a hand from beneath his shirt and brings his face back to hers.

Severus feels as though every cell in his body has exhaled with relief at her encouragement. Hecate relaxes once his mouth is back on hers and winds her arm around his neck.

Hecate feels like they’ve kissed for hours by the time their pace slows, but they’ve only been up here thirty-five minutes by her watch. He pecks her lips almost a dozen times before he begins to loosen his grip on her. Hecate leaves one of her hands on his face, tracing her thumb over the rise of his cheek. Severus meets her gaze for the first time since their lips touched and his whole world changed.

He always marvels at how dark her eyes are, but how warm at the same time. He knows his are cold; Hecate can manage it too, but right now her eyes are comforting, inviting. He doesn’t realise it, but his lips have pulled into a smile just as fond as her gaze.

Before Hecate can change her mind, the words “Come home with me” are out of her mouth.

He hesitates, sees the withdrawal that his hesitation causes in her, kisses her again to repair the damage.

“Are you sure?” He asks her because he isn’t. On one hand he absolutely is – he wants her enormously. He cares about her more than he meant to. The idea of waking up beside her pleases him more than it terrifies him. But he is still not sure. She is important to him. What if this ruins things between them? What if they want something different from the encounter? He doesn’t want to do further damage to their friendship than he possibly has already.

But Hecate nods, albeit diffidently. If she’s sure, then the only answer Severus is able to give is “Of course. How could I refuse you?” He bends to kiss her again, his chest swelling with the privilege of it. He is still terrified, but terror is no longer his driving force.

“We should make sure the students still have all their clothes on.” Hecate says when they reluctantly part, her mouth deliciously full of the taste of him.

His forehead resting against hers, Severus replies “I suppose it reflects rather badly on us if there’s a riot.”

Hecate twists and pulls a length of toilet paper from the dispenser, handing it to him. Severus frowns at her, bewildered.

“Red is more my colour than yours,” She smirks at him unabashedly, swiping her thumb over the corner of his lips and showing him the pigment on her finger.

She watches Severus’ eyes widen, and he begins to wipe his face. She’s a bit disappointed to see his face return to its normal pallor - she rather likes the physical evidence of their encounter smeared across his skin.

They slip out of the bathroom separately, Hecate taking a minute to reapply her lipstick before returning to the gym. To Hecate’s amazement, neither of them smirks smugly at the other from across the room. Between the two of them they hand out sixteen detentions. Even though there’s only one week of school left, none of the students is brave enough to argue the point with the school’s two most formidable teachers.

Once they’ve had the misfortune of having to partially reset the gym, they make for the car park, once again leaving the gym and making their way separately. Severus finds her resting against the bonnet of her black Mazda MX-5. He is still amused by how closely the car mirrors her – sleek and dark and slightly feline.

Her back is to him, but she recognises his footsteps on the gravel behind her. Hecate is gazing out on the lights of the city, smoking contemplatively. He settles beside her, even though he knows it’s foolish to loiter around their workplace together. Hecate passes him the cigarette with the same intuitive ease that guided a water bottle full of gin and tonic between them earlier.

He brushes her arm with his fingertips before pushing off her car. “We shouldn’t linger here unnecessarily.”

“No.” She agrees, peeling away from him and slipping into the car. He tosses the butt away and slides into the passenger side. Hecate seems to relax immediately once she’s in the vehicle, but Severus doubts anyone else who’s ever been in a car with her would have the same reaction. She drives too fast, she overtakes across double lines, she cuts people off. Her reflexes are spectacular, though, so Severus settles into the journey, lets her exorcise whatever it is she fancies she can leave behind her speeding vehicle. He doesn’t remember trusting someone as completely as he trusts her in this moment.

Hecate’s house is on the other side of Bristol, in Henleaze. It’s nicer than Severus expected; nicer than most of the places he looked at when he was moving here. It’s bluestone with limestone features, a powder blue door. He can only tell the colour in the flash of the headlights.

The air is cooler when they slip out of the Mazda than it had been twenty minutes ago. Severus watches the hairs at the back of her neck stand on end while she unlocks the door. Alarmingly, he finds himself wondering whether there will come a day he feels sufficiently comfortable to lift his hand to the nape of her neck, soothe her goosebumps down with his thumb. The image of it flashes behind his eyes, her head turning to meet his lips with a mirthful smile. Severus is so busy taking note of his chest tweaking at the thought he doesn’t notice himself drawing closer to her.

When Hecate turns her head to glance at him, she finds him near enough to kiss. He takes the opportunity, dipping his head to work his lips against hers. Without meaning to, Hecate lifts her hand and threads her fingers through his hair again. Mercifully, she has the foresight to push the door open with her free hand, to begin moving them inside the house and off the street.

“Drink?” Hecate asks, barely managing to separate her lips from his long enough to ask the question. Severus shakes his head while turning her by the hips to face him properly again.

“Good.” She whispers, guiding them up the stairs to her bedroom. Hecate finds herself straddling him on the bed, and for the first time in minutes removes her hands from his body. A frown clouds Severus’ features; he chases her lips with his, but Hecate sits straighter on his lap, moving out of reach. Severus concedes, turning his attention to her neck instead, settling his hands on the back of her ribs. He doesn’t work out what’s taken her fingers and lips away from him until he feels her hair whispering over his hands. Hecate is quite relived he’s been so distracted by her throat, because her fingers are failing her. She’s normally efficient letting her bun down, but tonight she’s undone by the man beneath her. It takes her slightly over a minute to perform what is normally a nineteen second exercise. When she's done, she discards his tie and sets about removing his shirt, while Severus runs his hands and eyes over her hair hungrily. He'd never expected there to be so much of it. He moves to allow Hecate to push his shirt off and watches her face shift with a surprised smile. She runs her fingers over the inside of his left forearm, her touch feather light and intoxicating.

"You have a tattoo." She remarks, glancing up from a serpent wound through the mouth of a skull and forming an infinity symbol. The whole thing is rather more devil-may-care than Hecate has ever thought Severus to be.

"A relic of my misspent youth." Severus manages, even though it's becoming increasingly harder to summon words with her perched on his lap examining him like this. Hecate smiles wickedly, thinking of all the things she might be able to uncover about him if this goes where she thinks it might. Severus reaches out and curves his hand around her cheek, rubbing his thumb over her cheek. Giving into a wanton impulse, Hecate peels his palm from her face, extends his arm, and traces the snake on his skin with her tongue. Every rational thought vanishes from Severus' mind. A little growl escapes his throat and Severus shifts so he's flush against her, his hands gripping her hips.

With her hair falling over her pearl-white skin in the moonlight, she looks like the goddess for whom she was named.

Severus has never felt so lucky in his life. He intends to spend the night showing it.

Chapter 8: Miss Hardbroom bids Professor Snape good day, and advises him to wash his hair

Chapter Text

Severus wakes in an empty bed with the promise of sunlight peeking through a crack in the curtains. He is instantly disappointed at the lack of Hecate’s lithe body in his arms.

Before he can give too much thought to where she might be, he hears a sound that might be blinds, then feels carefully maintained nails trailing down the exposed skin of his upper arm. He almost shivers with the delight of it.

He hears a mug being set down on the bedside table, and his lip twitches with appreciation. Hecate, after hesitating, not knowing the boundaries of the intimacy they’ve shared, perches on the edge of the bed, combs his hair back from his temple and kisses the rise of his cheekbone.

“You need to get dressed, Severus. We have to be at work in thirty-two minutes.” A low groan pulls itself from the back of Severus’ throat.

“Must we?” He mumbles, eyes still sealed shut. Later in the day, Severus will wonder why he didn’t take every chance he had this morning to look at her.

“I believe we must.” She confirms. Severus feels her rise from the bed, and this activates him. He opens his eyes into the now bright room and turns, catching her arm as she moves away. Severus has decided today is important, decided that he needs to remember her exactly this way. She’s summer and a cyclone all at once. How did it take him so long to let him himself want her?

Today she’s in a well-cut black dress with a fine pinstripe through it, knee length and boat necked. Their eyes catch in daylight for the first time in almost twelve hours, and Hecate is relieved to find that he studies her with the same hunger he did in the toilet cubicle last night. There’s something more to the look in his eye than hunger, though; something she daren’t name in case she’s wrong. His fingers are still around her wrist, a pleasant pressure, and she can’t bring herself to move. Severus rises to a sitting position, loosens his fingers and passes her hand to his other one so he’s free to hold both. He draws her in, and a smirk overtakes her lips as she recognises where he’s trying to lead them. Hecate sits on the edge of the bed again, draping her arms over his shoulders.

“We don’t have time,” she murmurs, kissing him – kissing him with a kind of easy ownership that she’s never experienced before. Severus runs his hands through her hair, something he enjoyed doing immensely last night, and is even happier to do now he can see the soft black waves falling about her shoulders in the daylight. Everything about Hecate is practical, but for her hair. Severus is captivated by the silky sheet of it hanging down to her waist.

“You are lovely.” Severus tells her this in a tone of indisputable fact, like he’s telling her alkali metals react with water.

“Not a descriptor I hear often.” Hecate retorts, her tone soft and warm. Few people have the luxury of Hecate like this, and Severus is aware of how lucky he is. But Hecate, too, is experiencing something rare – the affection of Severus Snape. His hands are delicate as they move over her, as they brush her hair over one of her shoulders so he can kiss the fragile skin of her neck. He can see her pulse beating beneath it.

Combing her fingers through his hair Hecate slows him, draws his face from her neck. She dusts her lips against his before murmuring “work,” and rising again.

“I did intend to leave enough time to go home and change.” Severus says as he scans the room for his briefs.

Hecate steps into a pair of black court shoes and crosses back to the bathroom to apply her makeup and arrange her hair into her signature bun. As she studies herself in the mirror Hecate murmurs with a wry smile “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Severus doesn’t say it, but at this moment he would happily follow her straight into the seventh circle of it.

It takes Hecate only three minutes to fasten her hair and trace her mouth with her signature crimson lipstick. Hecate catches a glimpse of him, naked in the daylight as he gathers his clothes, and the smile on her lips becomes decidedly smug. She doesn’t remember the last time she enjoyed someone’s body quite as much as she did last night. She is already itching to touch him again. She is about to vacate the bathroom so he can shower when she feels him draw up behind her. Their eyes meet in the mirror, and while Hecate smirks at him, Severus’ face is serious, eyes sharp as if he’s undertaking a complex experiment. He turns his head, inhales the scent of her clean hair greedily, kisses her temple, her cheek, her throat. His arms have curled around her of their own accord. Hecate turns in his grasp and runs her hands over the warm plane of his back. While she’s inclined to stay in this position, Hecate’s practicality overtakes her romantic inclinations.

“We have twenty-one minutes. And you need to shower.”

“Charming.” Severus drawls. His lips give him away by kicking into a smirk.

“I would kiss that smile from your lips, Severus, if I thought we had time to remove the lipstick.” He kisses her cheek again, earnestly, like a full stop. His mouth on her is the conclusion to a sentence he didn’t know he was writing. With that, he peels away and turns the shower on.

“I wouldn’t bother with the cold,” Hecate remarks. “The hot will barely do the job.”

“Thank you for the local knowledge.” Severus says over his shoulder. Now his attention is less preoccupied with Hecate, Severus takes the time to be pleasantly surprised by her rental. It’s not the grandest thing he’s ever seen, but it’s certainly nicer than flat he’s renting, which is serviceable at best. There is some heritage character to hers that he finds endearing. This is the thought running through his head while he washes last night off his skin with Hecate’s soap. Later on in the day he’ll notice the smell of her on him, and it will take even Severus’ superior intellect minutes to put together that it’s the cake of soap that’s done it rather than his mind playing tricks.

“Do you need a toothbrush?” Hecate asks through the bathroom door. Severus thanks her for the offer and accepts it. Once he concentrates on any flavour in his mouth beyond her, Severus realises he does indeed taste rancid, like cheap gin and tonic. Hecate leaves the toothbrush on the basin for him and tells him she’ll be downstairs.

He finds her sitting primly at the kitchen table. He is shirtless and wearing yesterday’s socks, his shirt, shoes and cup of tea in his hands. Hecate is bathed in the bright morning light; even doing something as simple as sipping tea, she looks ethereal, otherworldly.

“You haven’t washed your hair.” She says, unable to suppress a slight frown at the grease in it.

“There wasn’t time for it to dry.”

“You could have used my hair dryer.”

It’s an eminently practical suggestion, but it makes his brain whir and grind with confusion. Severus sets his tea on the table rather than answering her. “Iron?”

“In the cupboard.” She gestures down the little hallway. While he’s moving off, she offers to make him toast. It’s been a very long time since someone made Severus breakfast, and even though he usually forgoes it, today he accepts. He walks back still buttoning the precisely creaseless shirt on, unwilling to be away from her longer than he has to. Hecate studies him while he buttons the shirt, his chest disappearing from her view. Hecate’s life has been marked by rigidity, but this – whatever it is between them – is the first soft thing Hecate has felt in years. Hecate thinks about reaching for him, then finds herself so distracted by the fact of the impulse that she misses her opportunity. Tie secured around his neck, Severus sits and picks up a piece of toast she's made him.

“I haven’t poisoned it, Severus.” Hecate quips after watching him nibble dubiously at it.

“I don’t remember the last time I ate breakfast – particularly the last time someone made it for me.” It’s a lie, though. Severus remembers clearly the last time his former fiancé tried to force a plate of scrambled eggs on him - an attempt at an act of love before they fell spectacularly apart. He had had two mouthfuls, kissed her with a wry smile and made the pleasant drive to the glorious institution where he used to be employed. That was six weeks before Lily had told him she’d fallen in love with another civil servant, that she’d be moving out.

Severus comes back to the room, to the woman before him. Where Lily had been all softness, Hecate’s softness is carefully guarded. It has made uncovering it an immeasurably satisfying process. Severus rises and trails his fingers over her cheek, lightly, wonderingly. His eyes find hers, large and dark and enticing. She can’t keep the surprise out of them; it’s been a long time since someone touched her with such intent.

Severus dips his head, remembers her lips are off limits at the last moment and kisses her cheek. Reluctantly he murmurs “We should go.”

Hecate makes an unenthusiastic noise of assent, rises and slides a jacket over her arms. They walk to the car, bodies remaining close, hands brushing of their own accord. Hecate’s desire to be near him has taken her by complete surprise, but she suspects the impulse won’t pass any time soon.

They chat easily for the twenty-six minutes it takes them to get to work– the traffic makes the journey far slower than last night. “I don’t think it’s wise for us to arrive together.” Severus remarks when they’re five minutes from school gates. Hecate pulls the Mazda over, slowly. Severus has not spent enough time in a car with her yet to appreciate how out of character steady deceleration and a textbook stop is from the woman sitting beside him. She doubts she’s done such a thing since she passed her driving test.

Severus hesitates before getting out of the car, wondering where the lines of intimacy lie between us at this moment. One of his hands is already on the handle, but his touch is light, and his brain is far from giving his fingers the required instruction to open the door. His hesitation hangs heavy in the car, and then the words come out of his mouth without his permission, in much the same way Hecate experienced the night before.

“May I see you tonight?”

Hecate’s lips quirk, her head turns to him. There’s a glimmer promise in her eyes. “You may.” She reaches for his face across the car, fingers feather-light on his skin. Severus leans across the little car and kisses her delicately. An unfamiliarly soft smile pulls itself across Hecate’s mouth while they are still close enough for him to feel her lips move. Hecate fishes a tissue from her handbag, which is sitting at his feet. She passes it to him and waits until he’s cleaned the lipstick from his mouth.

“Satisfactory?”

Hecate considers him playfully. “Yes, I suppose you’ll do.”

They share a smirk, and Severus mutters “Later.”

“Later.” Hecate agrees. She peels off the shoulder of the road with considerably less caution than she pulled onto it.

When Severus next sights Hecate, she is making coffee in the staff room. She reaches for a second mug – as has become their custom – but now the action seems loaded, like it will give them away. Severus senses her hesitation, glides up and takes over from her. Hecate remains convinced people can sense the change in them. In reality, every member of staff is far too busy calculating the time until they are released for the summer holidays to give their least sociable colleagues a passing thought.

Hecate and Severus cruise through the day, a balance of autopilot and absolute focus. They are so overcautious about contact with each other that they don’t even chance their regular cigarette breaks in the second-floor loos. Hecate is uncomfortable to find herself positively itching to see him by the end of the day. They linger in the staff room, waiting for the other teachers to make their usual dash to the pub before they speak.

“My day has been excruciatingly long without our nicotine assignations.” Severus remarks from halfway across the empty staff room while Hecate gathers her things from her locker.

Hecate turns her head towards him, “It has been tedious.” He crosses to lean against the block of lockers beside her, and Hecate abandons sorting her old papers to touch his cheek. Severus drops one of his hands to her waist and draws her closer to him.

“Dinner?” He proposes.

Hecate doesn’t point out that it’s only quarter past five. Instead she asks, “Do you have somewhere in mind?”

“Sugo?”

“Are you trying to ruin my reputation?”

“Yes.” He drawls with a wry smile. Hecate shakes her head minutely. Severus forgets himself and kisses her, accidentally branding himself with her lipstick for the second time today and making Hecate smirk at him. He catches her expression and wipes his mouth roughly with his palm. “May I suggest you procure some form of smudge-proof lipstick?”

“I will reassess your request in a week if it still seems necessary.”

“I would expect nothing less of the strictest disciplinarian in South West England.”

Severus had not acknowledged it at the time, but when Hecate first took him to Sugo, jealousy had reared within him at Bruno the manager’s overly keen interest in her. Severus knows, intellectually, it’s far too early in whatever this is to be possessive of her, but he finds his fingers seeking the small of her back as he guides her to the same table up the back.

Where Bruno had struggled to put his finger on the dynamic between the two last time they were here, the shift is more blatant than a billboard – and not just because of Severus’ hand on her. Hecate seems properly relaxed for the first time in the dozens of times she’s been here. Her body pitches towards Severus, just subtly, almost by accident. Her fingers seek the backs of his when they part to take their seats. Tonight, Hecate does not blow out the candle after they have lit their cigarettes.

“Just the wine list again?” Bruno offers, observing the moment Hecate and Severus’ eyes meet and she delegates the talking to him.

“Food, as well, tonight, I think.”

Hecate can’t help the quirk of her lips. Whatever it is they’re engaged in, they have fallen into it with an ease Hecate has never experienced before.

When Hecate slips to the bathroom, Bruno hovers around the table until Severus looks at him with a dangerously quirked eyebrow.

“So are you and the old girl…?”

Severus continues to glower at him.

“You know, I just haven’t ever seen her eat with someone.” Severus’ silence remains icy. “Just, y’know, I’ve always been quite keen on her. And me mum’s a big fan.”

“Is that so?”

Bruno misinterprets Severus’ tone and offers a response where Severus wanted none. “Absolutely. Always hoped she’d go out with me, actually.”

Severus gives Bruno his most unnerving stare and suddenly Bruno excuses himself, claiming their food is ready. Severus thinks he must be losing his touch, for that to have taken so long.

Hecate intuits more of this than he’d anticipated when she returns to the table.

“Why do I get the sense you’re about to give someone a particularly painful detention?”

Severus looks at her, properly looks at her rather than glances at her like the rest of the people who share her company in Bristol. He doubts he’ll ever determine all the precise factors that make Hecate Hardbroom such a singular creature, but he is eager to spend his time considering it. Right now, that seems far more important than entering into a discussion about Bruno’s designs on her.

His mouth softens as he takes her in. “I assure you, I have no plans other than spending the evening with you.”

Chapter 9: I honestly can't see how I can get out of this particular nosedive

Chapter Text

The next morning, Severus wakes before Hecate. It's the first time he has the pleasure of studying her sleeping form in the dim morning light. Severus is certain he’s never seen anything lovelier – not even the old masters in the National Gallery. Severus kisses her shoulder, his lips belying a greater depth of feeling for the woman beside him than he is ready to acknowledge. Hecate shifts ever so slightly against him, her body seeking more of his. He is taken with the feeling of her ribs underneath his arm, her hand around his. She is soft and unyielding all at once. Her hair is everywhere, seeking out each edge of the bed. He's delighted to see it tangled around her face. She is so rarely anything but perfectly quaffed, he is acutely aware of the privilege of seeing her so superbly unfurled.

His name falls from her lips on a soft exhalation. Severus thinks, for a moment, that she’s woken, but she must be dreaming. He wonders what the tone of her dreams are, where he’s concerned. He feels her fingers tighten around his, her body shift an inch against his. He thinks his attention is disturbing her, and settles back behind her, his nose against the back of her neck. He lies perfectly still, trying to memorise the texture of every part of her that touches him, the smell of her skin, her hair. By the time she genuinely stirs in his arms forty minutes later, Severus is convinced he could pick precisely which perfumes would complement her from any boutique the world over.

“Have you been watching me sleep?” She murmurs groggily, twisting his arms and seeking his lips.

“I have.” Hecate smiles against his mouth as he kisses her.

“Two days in a row, Severus. Another and this will seem like a pattern.”

“Presumptuous, Miss Hardbroom.”

Hecate’s face becomes a perfect picture of innocence. “Am I incorrect, Mr Snape?”

A rare, genuine smile fills his face. They both know perfectly well that he could never deny her now. The magnetic pull between them overpowers her, and Hecate leans back into his lips.

“What shall we do?”

“May I take you out for breakfast?” Severus suggests. Hecate had hoped this would be his opening gambit, but as she casts her gaze around the room, she notices a small flaw in the plan.

“It’s a favourable idea, but I fear you’ll be overdressed for breakfast.”

She has a point. The black suit on the floor has also spent two nights with her, treated without the reverence he usually does. It’s worse for wear, even if it weren’t the wrong ensemble for the occasion.

“That is a snag.” Severus acknowledges.

“Let me shower and then I’ll drop you at your apartment to change.” Severus nods and lets his eyes follow her hungrily as she departs for the en-suite. Once he hears the water turn on, he rises, deciding to make himself useful while she bathes. He pulls on his trousers and shirt and makes his way downstairs to the kitchen. Unfortunately, while he fills the kettle, his kind gesture is met with a shriek from upstairs. He takes the stairs two at a time and knocks at the en-suite door. “Hecate? Are you alright?”

Hecate pokes her head out from behind the door, wrapping herself in a robe, hair still full of conditioner and body smelling deliciously of soap. “Did you by any chance use the hot tap in the kitchen?”

“I filled the kettle…” Hecate smiles at the bemusem*nt on his face, and kisses him with her face wet from the shower.

“My hot water service isn’t that robust.”

“My apologies, Cate.” Severus murmurs the sentence against her mouth, too close for her to read his expression.

Her tongue traces his lower lip of its own accord, while her fingers curl around his shirt. “Have you given me a pet name after two nights together, Severus?”

He reaches behind her, tracing the curve of her arse beneath soft terry towelling. “Do you object?”

Hecate is all but purring under his touch; she barely manages to get the words “I would, to anyone but you” out of her mouth.

“Shall I finish the tea?”

“As long as you don’t freeze me again.”

“Should I repeat the error, I will take full responsibility for warming you again.” Hecate smirks at him, shaking her head. She decides to kiss him rather than give him one of her scathing retorts.

They depart after Hecate has dressed and they have finished their tea. When they are in the car, Hecate deftly but too-quickly navigating them to the flat Severus rents, she says “I expect you will know all the many idiosyncrasies of my house before long.”

Severus wants to tell her she’s being presumptuous for the second time today, but he rather likes the implication.

“I’m afraid mine has fewer than yours. You will have less to learn.” Hecate turns to him with her classic armour of blood red lips and black eyeliner. Her smile lingers on him too long, and if not for another motorist’s horn, she would likely end up on the wrong side of the road. Severus does not flinch at her driving. She has kept herself alive on the roads for seventeen years, he expects she can keep him alive too.

As he’s noted, the flat Severus rents is colly modern, bordering on clinical. There is nothing yet that particularly marks the space as his, but for his books and a single picture of Severus and a woman who must be his mother at his university graduation. Hecate of course makes a beeline for it, plucking it gently from the bookshelf.

“Oxford.” Hecate remarks, allowing a little note of admiration into her voice.

Severus does not respond to it, instead saying “I expected you to remark on my mother.”

“Is there a correct remark to make?”

Severus’ lip ticks for a moment now, his fondness for her breaking through his armour.

“You look very handsome. And somehow rather alone.”

Severus glides up to her side. Hecate’s skin prickles under her the linen of her dress at his proximity. “I was. You’ll be unsurprised to discover I do not make friends particularly easily.”

“A shocking revelation.” Hecate purrs, and succumbs to her urge to kiss him.

“Do you mind if I…?” He gestures towards what must be the bathroom and Hecate’s smile becomes almost predatory.

“Not at all. I’ve been waiting for the chance to examine your home in peace for longer than I care to admit.”

Despite his best efforts, Severus looks a little afraid. “And what do you intend to do with the information you gain?”

The level of danger in her smirk ratchets up further. “That depends on what I find.”

Severus makes a little ‘hm’ at the back of his throat and turns sharply on his heel, determined to leave her alone for as short a time as possible.

“Severus?” She calls after him when he’s almost disappeared.

Over his shoulder, his eyes find hers. “Do wash your face carefully.” His brow furrows, and Hecate gestures to her mouth. How is it that her lipstick is almost entirely as it was, but his face is branded with her? It’s a mystery he will tackle from a chemist’s perspective in the moments he misses her. But right now, they have plans. He vanishes from her sight swiftly so he can return as soon as possible.

Left to her own devices, Hecate runs her fingers over the spotless black kitchen counter, finds the cupboards distressingly bare of everything but the most basic items. There are even fewer personal touches than she has in her flat. She supposes he’s had less time to populate his, but something in her senses this is as much as he’s ever intended to do. As much as he has capacity to do, somehow. A part of Hecate she won’t acknowledge is certain she’ll come to know why Severus Snape is determined to leave such a faint footprint on his own life. For now, she takes in the first glimpse of how he lives with her keen eye for detail.

The moment she’s in his bedroom, her eyes fall on the empty bedside table. She isn’t quick enough to divert her brain from populating it with her own things, mentally placing her body beneath the heavy slate grey sheets. Hecate moves to his side of the bed and sorts through the stack of four books that rest there. They are all fastidiously neat, as if he’s never read them, although they all have a scattering of little page markers in them. Hecate flips to one in The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and finds a soft pencil underline beneath “You must suffer me to go my own dark way.” Hecate’s lip ticks softly, half endeared by the habit and half anguished by his sense of solitude. She is surprised to find a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice at the bottom of the pile. It opens on the inscription, Sev, too much like Darcy for your own good – who would object to such a partner? Love, your Lily.

Hecate can’t contain the sting she feels that the book is still so close to hand for the man who’s started making her stomach clench with want every time she sets eyes on him. She sets the books back where she found them and gives her attention to the neat, alphabetised bookshelf. Among the books, an old wooden stacking Beefeater is nestled. He’s such a surprise to Hecate that Lily’s missive all but escapes her memory.

Hecate is so absorbed by the worn grain of the Beefeater she fails to notice Severus arrive behind her like an apparition. Hecate thinks if anyone else pulled such a trick, she might jump, twitch with surprise, probably curl her fingers into a fist to defend herself. But the sensation of Severus appearing behind her seems to make her every cell exhale. And through this budding telepathy between them, Hecate knows he is hesitating over reaching for her. Without looking at him, she knots her fingers through his and winds his arm around her waist, leaning into the warmth of him. Hecate hums softly at his proximity, at the smell of him fresh from the shower. Severus parts his lips to murmur something in her ear, but changes his mind and instead kisses the gently fluttering pulse point below her jaw bone.

“Did you rush your ablutions to prevent me poking through your drawers?”

“I am merely hungry.” He says, but the twitch of his lips against the skin of her neck is everything she needs to know she’s correct.

“Well then, take me…” Severus’ breath breaks rhythm, and for a moment he would happily forgo food to lose himself in her again. But she spins around and meets his gaze with a wicked smirk. “Wherever it is you’re intending we go for breakfast.”

She has withdrawn her car key from the pocket of her neat black linen shirt dress, and Severus reaches for it, as the one of them who knows the way. Hecate pulls her hand away and leans up to his ear. “Just because you’ve been inside me, Severus, does not mean I trust you to drive my car.”

Severus decides to analyse this sentiment another time.

Hecate is utterly confounded when Severus directs her to a small bluestone church. This is an aspect of his personality she’d not anticipated, and frankly one that she, as a woman of science, does not abide. She gives him a questioning look, and catches Severus fighting off a grin. Only the mischievous sparkle in his eyes prompts her to get out of the car and follow him. Inside, she finds the little church has been converted into a café – and she’s surprised. She had thought she knew of every venue in this city from her Sunday morning perusals of the restaurant reviews, her cover-to-cover consumption of the newspaper. Severus settles his hand in the small of her back and lord, the thrill of touching her is still enough to terrify him. The electricity that flows between them whenever they make contact is nothing short of magic.

Severus realises, once their meals have arrived, that he’s never seen her eat with such gusto. He wonders if this is more to do with the fare or the fact that she is beginning to unfurl in his presence. He wonders if she is beginning to relax into this dynamic, as he is. She laughs easily at a joke he tells – the kind of thing she’d merely let out a warm ‘hem’ through her nose were they at BSC.

“I think, now that I have a reason to remain in Bristol,” he’ll say the permanent position if she asks, but deep in his subconscious he knows it has always been her, “I should use the break to acquaint myself with some of the sites. The museum. The gallery. Anything else you might recommend.”

“Given your love of the classics, perhaps one of the theatres?”

“I would like that, were you to accompany me.” Severus says softly.

“Well, I did think Atrossitee Jenkins might be your ideal companion…” It’s Severus' turn to emit a proper laugh now. “But I would be happy to accompany you, failing Atrossitee’s acceptance.”

Smiling at her fondly – too fondly, for so short an entanglement – Severus reaches across the table and takes her hand. Hecate doesn’t believe in losing yourself in your lover. It’s a dangerous way to conduct yourself. But at the feeling of his fingers on her skin, Hecate thinks perhaps she’s been denying herself some middle ground. Being happy, succumbing to someone in a way that lets her keep herself and truly enjoy the ride. Maybe together they can find a way to navigate it.

Chapter 10: The pink became scarlet and the silver became gold

Chapter Text

The second Tuesday of Summer holidays, Hecate lets herself into Severus’ building with the security code he gave her last Thursday – a mere week into whatever this is they’re in. Hecate is much too scared to call it a relationship so early, but she has found herself factoring him into her life in a way that can imply nothing else.

She knocks on the door to flat nine and is admitted almost instantaneously. Severus kisses her as he draws her into the flat.

“Were you waiting for me, Severus?” She teases him.

“Yes, as it happens.” He doesn’t just mean this afternoon – he means all the years he spent without her. When Hecate winds her arms around his neck to kiss him more thoroughly, the Boots bag hanging from her wrist knocks him on the shoulder. He’d not noticed it initially, just the little suit bag she’d dropped on the floor as he’d pulled her in.

“When do we need to leave?”

“Not until six-twenty.” He replies, having of course memorised every detail of the tickets to the David Hare play they’re seeing tonight.

Hecate reaches for Severus’ wrist to check his watch. She hums softly. “Two and a half hours.”

His eyes sparkle wickedly, “Do you have something in mind?”

“Yes, actually.” Hecate smirks, picking up her suit bag from the floor and making her way towards his bathroom. Severus frowns after her. This was not what he’d expected to happen. He stands, inert until Hecate calls his name. He finds her standing before the mirror with the door open, six different red lipsticks and a fresh packet of makeup wipes on the counter.

“Hecate…?” He frowns.

“I realise it’s a few days overdue.” She remarks. Severus has almost forgotten the conversation they had on the last day of term – she has been bare-lipped for enough of the holidays that her marking him with red hasn’t posed so much of a problem. But there is an implication in this action. She is planning to keep kissing him when they are back at work, when they are armoured in suits and her lips are painted for battle every day. Severus’ heart pulses too hard at the thought.

She turns to the mirror and runs the first tube over her lips. It’s a pleasing blood-red in the same family as her regular. She studies it, satisfied, and waits half a minute for it to set, as was the direction on the box.

“Come here.” She instructs, bringing him to her lips and kissing him diligently.

Severus’ recovery from the kiss is slower than hers. By the time he comes back to himself, Hecate is already studying him sceptically. There is a pink blush on his mouth, and her lipstick is smudged.

“Hopeless.” Hecate murmurs, dropping the lipstick into the bin, handing him a makeup wipe while cleaning her lips.

“What delayed your decision?” Severus asks as she sets about applying the second lipstick.

“Distraction, rather than any deliberate delay.”

“What was the cause of your distraction?”

Hecate turns to him, lips red once more. She murmurs “What do you think?” before kissing him again.

She pulls back from him, frowning, and asks “Is it me or does this taste – ”

“Awful.” He confirms.

“Hmm. It hasn’t moved, though.” She remarks after scrutinising both their mouths. She sets the tube aside, and Severus prays there’s a better offering in the remaining four.

The third comes out too orange when Hecate gets it on her lips, and she throws it out and takes it off before running through her kiss-test. Severus is a little disappointed, if he’s honest.

The colour of the fourth is exactly as it should be and, miraculously, when Hecate sets upon his mouth her makeup remains intact, and his mouth maintains its normal colour.

“I am satisfied with the colour.” She says to her reflection in the mirror. “Are you satisfied with the taste?”

Severus draws her back to him, holding her fast by her hips. He purrs the word “extremely” before pulling her back in and trailing his hand over the curve of her arse.

Somehow, the testing of four lipsticks has taken them twenty minutes – something Hecate discovers by once again seeking out the watch on his wrist. She hums with approval at how much time they still have left, parts his collar so she can kiss his neck hungrily.

“How much do you think this lipstick can withstand?” She murmurs against his flushed skin.

“More, I suspect, than I can, if you carry on in this fashion.” Severus manages to keep his voice even as he says this, even though his pulse is racing. Hecate nips at the tender spot by his collar bone and seeks out his gaze. His eyes are pitch black with lust. Smirking, she sinks to her knees and begins unbuttoning his trousers. Severus will never understand how the heat of her mouth doesn’t sear red lipstick onto his skin.

Severus is utterly unable to concentrate on the play when they do get to the theatre, especially with her sitting beside him in the inky silk dress she removed from her suit bag he forgot because of her ministrations. Every time he so much as glances at her, the only thought in his head is the way the silk flows over her fair skin like water, skimming her cleavage with such delicious promise. And when something happens on stage that makes her mouth stretch with wry amusem*nt, the flash of her red lips hurtles Severus back to the memory of the most powerful woman he’s ever known down on her knees to please him.

Later when she asks what he thought of the play, Severus runs his fingers over the nub of bone at the base of her neck and murmurs that he would very much like to go to the theatre with her more often.

Chapter 11: The hottest day of the summer so far was drawing to a close

Chapter Text

The summer is sweltering. The air hangs heavily everywhere Hecate goes. She feels as if it’s holding her, a hundred hands running over her at every moment. Hecate loathes it. She loathes it so completely she can’t find a word to describe the level of it. She has at last come to rest after stalking about Severus’ flat, thinking she might have found peace before the pedestal fan in the lounge. She props her feet up on his coffee table. Her hypothesis is that if she can spread her body as much as possible there will be a greater surface area for the moving air to cool. It’s all going quite well until the fan’s motor breaks audibly. Hecate, despite being a woman of science, stares at it desperately as if she can will it back to life with her eyes.

When this fails, she flicks it with one of her neat black fingernails. This also yields no results. Severus is observing the scene with some amusem*nt. His brain is running at eighty percent of its normal lightning speed, so he doesn’t have a quip at his fingertips the way he often would. He knows he could fix the fan; it can’t be a mechanically complex appliance, but he also doesn’t feel like tackling the task at nine o’clock on this sweltering evening. Instead, Severus presses himself off the sofa and retrieves her car keys from the dish she now routinely deposits them in when she arrives in his home.

“Are you really expecting me to move?” She drawls with a dangerously arched eyebrow.

“Unless you’re intending to leave me unattended with your car.”

“That is never my intention.” Her words are sharp and without humour. The firmness of them makes Severus’ lips tweak affectionately. She really isn’t coping with the heat.

“Are you planning to use the air conditioner?” Her utter uncertainty about what he’s scheming pleases him.

“That is a consequence of the plan, but not the entirety of it.”

Hecate continues to gaze at him sceptically, and eventually he extends a hand to her and murmurs “Trust me.” The moment is achingly reminiscent of the lead up to their first kiss at the leavers’ ball. Part of Hecate knows he’s used this deliberately to his advantage, but she doesn’t begrudge him. She reaches for the hand he’s offered her and lets him pull her to her feet.

He offers her the keys once they reach the little black car, but Hecate closes his fingers back over them.

When he looks at her quizzically, Hecate drawls “You would need to tell me where we were going, and I feel you won’t be sharing that information any time soon.” Severus tips his head, accepting her assessment without making a point of the fact that not only has she never let him drive her car, she has heavily implied she never will.

Hecate slips into the passenger side of her car and lets Severus guide the Mazda down the A4. It’s not the quickest route, but he likes passing Blaise Castle. Something about its understated grandeur has pleased Severus ever since he moved to Bristol. Hecate, however, has never ventured here. She knows, in abstract terms that there is a castle nearby, but she has never thought to seek it out.

“Rather impressive.” Hecate remarks as they pass the dark turrets.

“I am somewhat sentimental about it.” Severus confesses.

“I still have no idea where we’re going.” She says, turning her face against the heel of her hand to look at him – her fair skin all but glows in the darkness, her black hair disappears against the background. He is desperately fond of her.

After thirty minutes of driving (Hecate could do it in twenty-two easily), Severus pulls onto a verge near a café.

“How dreary.” Hecate remarks, with a glance at the closed café.

“If possible it is worse when it’s open.” Hecate laughs shortly while slamming her door. Severus takes a particular kind of pleasure in making her laugh. Like a gold star on homework.

Hecate threads her fingers through his unthinkingly. She never would have thought herself capable of such easy displays of attachment to another person, particularly out in the open. But here she is, and Severus rather likes the feel of her slim fingers curled around his. Severus leads her down a path, then a ramp, and then Hecate finds herself on a vast expanse of beach, water stretching out lazily along the inlet.

“So, this is Severn Beach.” Hecate says. She picks it only because of the notable form of the Prince of Wales Bridge, arcing around to her right.

“It is.” He releases her hand and pushes the sleeves of his light linen shirt further up his arms. He is sweltering, but Hecate notes how delicious he looks, even if she has spent the last three days snapping at him.

If Hecate had the energy to move faster she might think about shagging him senseless when they get home. Instead she slips her sandals off and slowly picks her way to the ocean. The sand is damp and cool under her feet, but the water, once she reaches it, is heaven. She lets out a sigh so deep he hears it from halfway up the beach. She plucks up the hem of her light black dress and ties it in a knot at her hip, gliding deeper into the water until it reaches the middle of her thighs. She sighs again. This is the first time she can remember feeling comfortable in more than a week. She trails her fingertips over the surface of the ocean, breathing in its heady, salty tang. Hecate, finally feeling human again, turns around in the water, her eyes finding Severus on the shore. He has been watching her, enchanted by the sight of her sinking beneath the surface. The only thing that stops her submerging herself entirely is the knowledge that she would soak her car on the drive home.

In the time she’s been cooling herself, Severus has folded the cuffs of his trousers and waded in to his mid-calves. His arms are folded across his chest in a pose so typical of him her lips curve in a smile – an easier smile than most people have ever seen on her.

Hecate scoops a handful of water and futilely splashes at him. He’s too far for the water to reach him, but she sees his body convulse with a single chord of laughter.

She dips her head and turns her attention to the water beneath her, concentrating on the feel of the smooth stones and sand beneath her toes. She runs her hand over the top of her head, inadvertently wetting her hair. When she glances up at him again, she finds his eyes still on her. Even in the darkness she can tell he’s drinking her in.

“Do you come here often?” She asks for want of a better question. There is enough moonlight for her to see the vague motion of his face, which she correctly reads as his lips quirking into a smile.

“More often before you.” He replies, his voice bouncing over the empty space between them.

“You only had a few months here before me.” She retorts, wondering if he can see the satisfied smile playing about her mouth. He can’t, but he knows her well enough to hear it in her voice.

She lowers her hands into the water again, letting the ocean cool the insides of her wrists.

“I didn’t like it much.” Severus remarks. Hecate turns her head back to him, her neck arcing elegantly. “Being here before you.”

“I’d argue you don’t much like being here now.” She retorts. There’s no hint of judgement in her voice. Hecate doesn’t have any particular affection for Bristol. She’s come to appreciate the museum, the Old Vic, and the Suspension Bridge, but other than that she’s rather ambivalent about it.

“On the contrary. I am… happy here.” It’s as if he can feel the surprise rolling off her, for he amends the sentence. “I am happy being where you are.”

Hecate softens – she’s only human, even if half her students think she’s a witch – and begins to wade back to him. When she reaches him, she takes his unusually stubbled face in wet fingers and kisses him tenderly.

As they stand with their hands on each other, their foreheads touching, Severus can feel the heat making its oppressive presence known. He resents it utterly. He does not like the weather forcing physical distance between them. He wants to sleep with his arms around her again. He takes one of her hands from his face and kisses her still damp fingers; the intimacy of the moment makes her shift against him, trying to be closer. She, too, resents the weather for changing their sleeping patterns. They stay in the water until the sea breeze picks up in earnest, and they decide they may be able to sleep if they open the windows at his flat. Hecate sighs in resignation as she steps back onto the sand and unties her dress, letting the fabric fall around her damp legs. Severus touches her elbow gently in consolation as they begin to pick their way up the beach and towards the ramp. Hecate leaves her sandals dangling from her fingers, waiting until they’re back on bitumen before she brushes the sand from her skin and slips her shoes back on. When Severus threads his fingers back through hers – as he inevitably does – little grains of sand are still stuck to her, a distracting friction between their skin.

Severus still has the keys, so Hecate slips mutely into the passenger side once more. Severus does not ask her how many people she’s ever let handle the little black Mazda. He’s afraid of what it might mean if he’s the only one – and afraid at how much he wants to be the only one.

Hecate slides her sandals off again once she’s in the car, stretching her legs out luxuriantly under the air conditioner in the foot well. Most of the time, Hecate wishes she could magically transfer herself from one place to another, but tonight she is surprisingly content to let Severus meander through the dark roads towards his flat. She doesn’t even mind that he once again takes the long route. Without taking his eyes off the road, Severus drops one of his hands from the wheel to settle on her thigh. Hecate turns her head against the headrest, taking him in. Unlike her, when he drives he is all careful attention and concentration, determined not to damage her or her car, even on this empty street. Hecate covers his hand with hers.

“Thank you for cooling me down.” She hopes he understands how much he means to her anyway, until she is brave enough to put words to the reality of it.

The feel of her fingers on his makes him glance over at her; the ghost of a smile is on his lips, and even the momentary contact of their eyes makes Hecate think he knows, even if she hasn’t said it.

“I usually intend to have the opposite effect on you.” He remarks wryly when his gaze finds the road again. Hecate chuckles from the depths of her throat, and Severus feels a swell of achievement – yet another gold star on his homework.

Chapter 12: Stop worrying, it only makes things worse.

Chapter Text

Hecate does not normally feel anxiety about the first day of term, but tonight, she can’t get to sleep. It’s not actually work that’s keeping Hecate up – it’s all the complications work presents. She’s spent the summer entangling herself with Severus Snape. For the first time in years upon years, Hecate is happy. Genuinely, easily happy. But their happiness has only survived one day of them sleeping together and being at work together, and Hecate can’t help but worry their relationship might prove more fragile than it seems now when dropped back into the reality of working together at a school they both hate. She moves her gaze form the ceiling and watches his chest rising and falling softly in the dim light from the crack in the blinds. His skin positively glows, even against the clean cream of the sheets. Hecate reaches out and rests the tips of her fingers on his chest, just to feel it moving. His skin is smooth and warm, and Hecate is terrified of the way her chest fills from the inside, expands like a water balloon, just at the thought of him. While she is pondering this, Severus captures her hand beneath his, pressing her palm flat against his skin.

“Go to sleep, Cate.” He murmurs.

Hecate thinks about protesting, thinks about telling him how worried she is that their bubble will burst when set against the tedious backdrop of their workdays. She thinks about seeking some kind of reassurance from him, some promise that nothing will go wrong. But she isn’t a woman who places much faith in promises. No one has ever kept one to her, so she learned to believe in science and evidence. Both these things suggest that she is unlikely to spend the rest of her life with Severus Snape, no matter how much she wants to – the vast majority of relationships end, and hers have always ended badly. But she also believes in chemistry – and they have that. They definitely have that.

“Hecate.”

“How on earth can you tell I’m awake!” She hisses at him in the darkness.

His eyes stay closed, his face remains peacefully neutral. His voice rumbles like thunder in the darkness. “I can feel you thinking.”

Hecate’s anxiety climbs at this new piece of evidence to support her theory that he’s important – genuinely important in the grand scheme of her life. Hecate feels shaky with the weight of it.

Her silence makes him turn to her, open his eyes at last. She is backlit, and her features are hard to discern, but he can feel her tension.

“Are you alright?”

She stares at him, piercing dark brown eyes in his cool white face. She sinks against his chest, buries her face against his skin and concentrates on matching her breathing to his rather than wondering whether she could ever be in this house again if things went wrong between them. Despite her best efforts the thought intrudes that she mightn’t even be able to walk down the street again if things ended between them, and no amount of time would heal her. It’s terrifying to acknowledge, and while these thoughts intrude on her, Hecate’s grip tightens.

Severus is a wise enough man not to mention how ferociously she is clutching his ribs. He raises an arm and strokes her hair, and Hecate feels some of her tension ebbing away, marvelling at the way her body responds to him. She doesn’t want to be a person who has to take chances, but how could she not take a chance on him when the reward is continuing to feel this much? Hecate evens her breathing and murmurs, “There’s a chance I will be.”

Severus nuzzles softly against the top of her head and resolves to ask her about this when they’re both awake.

After Severus sold his car two years ago, he grew used to his morning bus ride to work. He used the time to plan lessons, and students to torture, and sometimes even indulge in a novel. He doesn’t like being in close proximity to strangers, but he quite enjoyed having some portion of his day in which he ceded control to someone else; let his mind whir of its own accord, with no possibility of doing anything else.

The first day of Autumn term 2002, Severus finds himself dressing for work at his… girlfriend’s house. The word sticks uncomfortably in his internal monologue. They’re both too sensible for such a word; he’s certainly not someone who fits the descriptor ‘boyfriend’, but he hasn’t found another way of describing her that doesn’t feel like he’s getting ahead of himself. They’ve spent the last six weeks almost inseparable – so much so that Severus did not actually intend to be here last night, the night before the new school year is beginning, but some magnetic force had driven them back here, and he had fallen into her orbit as inevitably as a planet succumbs to gravitational pull.

They are both people who plan, but in this matter they’ve decided to relinquish control as much as they can. So here he is, without fresh clothes, preparing to face a new class, but entirely too distracted by the happy little bubble they’ve created to stress about such comparative minutia.

They have coexisted with such ease this summer that Severus, in his more analytical moments, is anxious. He’s anxious because he doesn’t know how else to feel. Happiness and contentment are not emotions Severus has dwelled in for the majority of his life. But here he is - able to fall asleep beside a beautiful woman, wake with her fingers threaded through his and her hair tumbling across her chest. He has someone to kiss for no reason other than the mood is upon him. He has someone to debate scientific literature with over red wine and complain to about students. Someone who manages to make him laugh.

While he is lost in thought about her, Hecate seems to materialise in the room, placing a plate with two pieces of toast on the dresser in front of him while he knots his tie. She rises onto stockinged tiptoes so she can touch her lips to his cheek, making Severus hum softly in approval at her little display of affection. He drops his hand from the silk at his neck and runs it over her lower back, the perfect curve of her arse.

“We don’t have time.” Hecate says with a smirk; Severus turns until their bodies are flush so he can kiss her properly.

“No, we don’t.” He agrees against her mouth, before closing the distance between them again.

“You are insufferable.” Hecate smirks as she draws away from him.

“You have seemed to suffer me quite well most of the summer.”

Hecate turns him back to the mirror, brushing her body against his as she passes to the other side of the bedroom. “I am a woman of more patience than people credit me.”

“The evidence does not support that, Miss Hardbroom.” Severus replies wickedly. Hecate tries to glare at him while she slips a pair of black pumps onto her feet, and the wave of anxiety washes over Hecate just like it did the night before. Whatever this is feels far too precious to expose to somewhere as hellish as Bristol South Comprehensive.

Severus forgets for almost a week that he and Hecate had a fragment of a midnight conversation about her state of mind. He remembers when they are about to fall into bed the next Saturday night, her fingers deftly unbuttoning his shirt and her lips bent in a smile against his mouth. She frowns when he pulls away from her lips and begins to scrutinise her with intent that is something other than romantic.

“Severus, darling, why are you…?”

“What were you thinking of?”

Her frown deepens, her fingers twitch on his half-open shirt. “I would have thought that should be obvious?”

“The night before term started. I asked if you were alright and you said there was ‘a chance’ you would be. What were you thinking of?”

Hecate lets her hands fall down his chest and turns away from him. “Nothing of any consequence.”

“Hecate,” he chides her.

“It will make you panic.” She says to the street outside the bedroom window.

“Have you ever seen me panic, Cate?”

She turns over her shoulder and smirks at him. “There were several moments of distinct panic on your face after you first kissed me.” His lip quirks. She’s right, of course. His head had screamed at him for his actions in the beginning, told him becoming involved with her was dangerous and foolish and he should run. And perhaps, logically, he should have. But he is immensely glad he didn’t, and he does not intend to run from the difficult parts of her now.

“The experimental design has changed since then.” He remarks, and her smile widens as she turns back to the window.

“I thought things might change when we went back to work.” She cracks the window, takes a packet of cigarettes from the windowsill, fishes a cheap lighter from the box and inhales deeply. After she exhales her voice drops to little more than a whisper, “I worry about you leaving.”

Severus closes the distance between them, landing one hand on her shoulder and the other on her waist. He kisses her cheek, lets his lips rest against her skin, moves his arm from the side of her waist to wrap around her, pull her against him.

Severus murmurs against her cheek. “I can assure you, leaving you has never crossed my mind.”

“Of course it hasn’t yet. It’s been less than two months.”

Severus laughs softly, breath puffing against her skin. Hecate lays one of her arms over his; Severus takes his other hand from her shoulder to steal her cigarette. She hears him drawing on it. He exhales away from her.

“What do you need from me, Cate?”

She’s resigned to her answer. “Promises you can’t make, I fear.”

He releases her now, leans against the wall beside the window to study her profile.

“Nothing I have ever expected to eventuate has done so.” She knows what he means: Lily, his career, Bristol, her. She’s in precisely the same position. “But all the evidence I have suggests I will continue to feel more for you, rather than less.”

She nods and turns her head to him. Her eyes tell him she’d like some further reassurance, so he offers the only thing he can think of. “I told my mother I would visit during half term. Would you like to join me?”

Hecate smiles at him, at how well he’s interpreted her desire for something to indicate a permanence neither of them can guarantee. This is the most concrete thing he can offer, and it will do the job nicely.

“I would be happy to join you.” She turns to face him properly and presses her lips to his, like a full stop, a sealing of the almost-promise. When she pulls back her face rearranges into the one she wore when they backed into the bedroom. “Now, I should stop wasting time and resume my efforts to undress you.” Severus smiles wolfishly at her. He doesn’t need to be told twice.

Chapter 13: One does not parade the fact that one is All-Knowing

Chapter Text

Four weeks into term, Hecate relaxes into the fact that returning to school is fine. Painful, but painful in predictable ways, like trying to stop Shawn Stephens from setting his tie on fire with a Bunsen burner ‘for science’. She finds the new part of her life with Severus simply expands, causing no harm to the balance of things. They keep the staff in a continued state of exasperation, as they always have, and no one seems to question that there is anything more than an irksome friendship between the two staff outcasts. For a brief moment each of them considered diverting a portion of their bathroom nicotine assignations to snog each other senseless, but they discover, after weeks of comfortable coexistence during the break, they are confident that they will have enough time together without fondling each other in the loo like randy teenagers. For now, at least.

Instead of kissing, they return to an activity that bonded them early on – correcting the grammar of the graffiti. Hecate feels Severus’ hand softly trickle over her waist while she peruses. When she gives an unprecedented tick to ‘School sucks!’, she is smiling, and not because they have one student who can spell.

“In the third floor boys’ lavatory,” Severus begins, his voice a deep, delicious rumble in his chest, “There is a milk carton requesting donations.”

Hecate straightens after swapping ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ six times, looking at him quizzically.

“Is there some kind of fundraising campaign going on I’ve ignored?” She asks, taking the half-smoked cigarette from his hand and revelling in the intimacy of sharing it with him.

“Indeed. Breast augmentation for Atrossitee Jenkins.”

“That surely warrants discipline,” Hecate says with a displeased frown crinkling her forehead. “Did you recognise the writing?”

His face annoyingly neutral, Severus retrieves the cigarette from her and takes a deep drag. Miraculously, Hecate is not distracted from her question by the intoxicating sight of smoke curling from his mouth.

“Severus.”

His lip ticks. He enjoys making her wait. “Atrossitee’s.”

Hecate huffs with despair, glances at the cigarette between his fingers and decides there’s not enough of it left to calm her. She lights herself a Dunhill and inhales so deeply the cigarette all but vanishes before Severus’ eyes.

“The lack of ambition in these students, Severus. It causes me almost physical pain.” Absently – as absently as he stroked her waist before – Hecate adjusts his collar then grounds herself by gently rubbing the fine wool of his lapel between her thumb and forefingers.

“She does deserve a detention for it.” Hecate says quietly, lost in thought. “But perhaps being encouraged to speak to the counsellor will do more good? Not that Sybill is especially competent…”

Severus breaks into Hecate’s reverie.

“I would suggest you speak to Atrossitee about her surgical aspirations.”

Hecate sees the sense in his comment, but teases him anyway. “You teach junior biology on occasion, Severus. Perhaps you should have the honour. Breasts are nothing to be afraid of.”

Severus isn’t quick enough to stop his eyes flicking to her chest. “I suspect yours will put me in many a dangerous position.” He drawls, making the hairs at the back of Hecate’s neck stand on end.

“Perhaps if you are very, very lucky.” She blows out a steady stream of smoke at the ceiling before flicking the butt into the open toilet. She may not feel the need to ravage him at school, but she does want to kiss him. Badly. She leans across the cubicle and presses her lips against his, somehow firm and soft at the same time.

Severus nuzzles against her cheek before throwing his own dead cigarette after hers and flushing the toilet.

Back down in the bustle of the school, he touches her elbow softly as he asks “Will you be alright with Atrossitee?”

“I managed her long before you swept in here, Mr Snape.” She says, a soft smile belying the firmness of her comment.

Neither of them notices Bianca, frowning at the little display from two paces behind them.

It’s a number of small things such as this that makes BSC Headteacher Bianca Bream suspect there may be more than collegial feelings between her two science teachers. The next, after she sees Severus touch Hecate’s elbow so tenderly, is when Bianca decides to check on detention on her way home. She finds not Hecate, but Sybill Trelawney supervising the session – which is suspiciously empty.

“Sybill, I don’t remember you signing on for detention duty this week?”

“Oh, no, dear, I didn’t. Hecate asked me if I might – she’s been trying to get away from the place on time, and who could blame the poor woman. She must have been here after hours every night since she took the job! I suspect there’s a summer solstice resolution at play. This year we are said to be subject to particularly strong cosmic forces. Jupiter in particular is – ”

Bianca can’t stomach another moment of conversation with the school counsellor. She casts her eyes over the three students in the detention room and frowns at the absence of Atrossitee Jenkins, who’s also been in detention almost every day since Hecate began working at BSC.

“Have you been doing many of these for Hecate, Sybill?”

“Oh, not many at all, merely the last week or two. And in return Hecate has been sending more of the troubled darlings for my counselling services, so it is very much a two-way street.”

Somehow Bianca frowns even more deeply. “Hecate Hardbroom is recommending counselling instead of detention?”

Sybill nods, eyes earnest behind her co*ke-bottle base glasses. On a whim Bianca adds “Have you seen Severus this afternoon?”

“No, dear. But his horoscope did say he should prioritise his personal relationships, so – ”

Bianca barely bothers to utter “Have a good evening, Sybill,” as she cruises out of the room.

While Bianca’s right to suspect her science teachers of something more than professional regard for each other, she’s wrong to think Hecate’s shirked her detention duties so they can be together. Hecate is, in fact, sitting on a park bench with Atrossitee Jenkins. Hecate has shown enormous professionalism in seeking this conversation with the teenager, but she knows she won’t be able to survive the encounter without nicotine. She draws deeply before she launches into what she’s come to say.

“Can I bum one?” Atrossitee asks.

Hecate shoots her a withering glare. “No.”

“Ya just wanna hang out wiv me then?”

Hecate exhales deeply, steels and softens herself at once.

“Why do you want your breasts augmented, Atrossitee?”

“They’re small, innit?”

“No, they aren’t.” Hecate says without needing to look at the teenager. “And even if they were, I don’t see how that’s an answer to my question.”

Atrossitee eyes Hecate’s cigarette, and Hecate realises this might be the only chance she has to get the girl to open up. She pushes the packet across the seat, murmurs, “I will expel you if you tell anyone.”

Atrossitee lights up, inhales, and, now with something to distract her, unfurls a little. “Me mum has like, great tit*, ya know?” She draws on the cigarette again. “Guys are like, obsessed with her. She said that din’ happen till she got ‘em done.”

Hecate silences a sigh. She was not particularly well parented, but hearing Atrossitee’s tale makes her count her blessings.

“How important do you think it is to get attention from men?”

Atrossitee shrugs evasively. “S’wot’ I’m good at.”

“You could excel at many things if you showed the same industry you have with the donation box in the boys’ toilet.”

“Y’think so?” Atrossitee almost smiles – it’s plain to see Hecate does. Her frustration with the girl has always been her unwillingness to apply herself, the waste of ability, the laziness she demonstrates. She’s annoyed, of course, that Atrossitee is a disruption in her classes and to her other students, but if she believed the girl had no intelligence – like, for example, Jack Priest the PE teacher – Hecate wouldn’t bother trying to help her.

“Are you still seeing Billy?” Hecate asks, reading that perhaps there’s another level to this.

Atrossitee’s face darkens. “How’dja know bout that?”

“I’m afraid most teachers know much more than you students give them credit for.”

Atrossitee picks lurid pink polish off her nail. “Nah, he dumped me when he left school.”

“You can do better.” Hecate’s rapidly burning through her reserve of tolerance and compassion. She needs to wind this up. And she needs to see Severus. “Atrossitee, I’ll only say this once. There’s nothing wrong with your breasts. Anyone who matters will think the same. Anyone who disagrees isn’t someone you should waste your time on. Your mother’s insecurities don’t need to become yours. I despise these kinds of conversations but if you need to talk… I’d rather you came to me than mutilated yourself.”

Hecate stubs out her cigarette and turns her most penetrating stare on Atrossitee. “Alright?”

Atrossitee nods. “Thanks, HB.”

Hecate almost chokes on the words “You’re welcome.”

Soon, Hecate is letting herself into Severus’ flat. He’s reading on the couch, casual and handsome and the perfect reward for her good deed.

Hecate sets down her things, rests one knee on the sofa beside him and kisses him contentedly. Severus sets his book aside so he can take her by the hips, direct her onto his lap.

“Were you successful?”

“I think you should retrieve the donation box.” Severus kisses her neck.

“Will you give the proceeds to Atrossitee?”

Hecate takes his chin in her hand, changing the angle of his head so their eyes are locked, their mouths are level.

“No, we’ll take them to Sugo as a reward for my enduring that conversation.” She sinks into his mouth, kissing him languidly and thinking that, while she won’t say it, perhaps he’s her reward for every annoyance she’s endured in her time at BSC.

Chapter 14: Busted, tortoise-handed

Chapter Text

Severus doesn’t know exactly when he started to survey the staff room for Hecate every time he enters it. The truth is, it began long before they were even particularly friendly. But now she’s his, Severus is acutely aware of her presence or absence when he enters the dated, worn room that forms the backdrop of their non-working, non-smoking moments at the school. Today, Severus is hungry for her, having had a woeful double period trying (and failing) to contain Atrossitee and Brit. Somehow Atrossitee is even more of a menace after Hecate’s attempt at bolstering her self-esteem.

Were Hecate here, he suspects she’d smirk at him all but staggering into the room with his tie mangled. He folds onto the ugly velour couch, turning his attention to the ruined silk – Atrossitee’s doing, of course – Sybill floats into the seat beside him. For a moment, Severus considers how much his life might improve if he could find a way to vanish into thin air.

“Severus, how interesting. Is that a rune you’ve burnt into your tie?”

Severus barely keeps his frustration in check when he drawls “It is an acid burn, Sybill, and I assure you it is not there at my wish.”

“An acid burn! You see, my next guess, and I do have a slight instinct for these things, Severus. I wouldn’t use the word psychic but others have said… at any rate, my next guess was perhaps Hecate put her cigarette out on your tie.”

“Is that so?” Sybill does not read Severus’ tone for what it is – an end to the conversation. Instead, she presses on.

“Yes, I thought you might have displeased her perhaps during one of those secret rendezvous you have to canoodle in the toilets – or perhaps you’d simply distracted her, the instinct, you see, it doesn’t always provide those kinds of specifics but one does have a sense that the stars might have smiled on the second-floor ladies’ loo.”

Severus’ head pivots slowly towards her. With tremendous effort he keeps his face perfectly blank. “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about, Sybill.”

“Well, I mean, simply from Bianca’s reaction, it does seem like perhaps something intriguing might be -”

“Bianca?”

“Yes, well, she visited me in detention, although I suspect she was after Hecate, and of course she wasn’t there because she hasn’t been, really, not often, since you began your – ”

Severus’ mind is whirring, combing through every moment he’s noticed Bianca in the last few weeks. He kicks himself for all the times he’s seen her hovering just on the edge of his peripheral vision but not realised she’s been observing them.

Hecate is checking her lipstick in the second-floor ladies’ room mirror beside Ms Hughes, the tediously prim history teacher, when Severus sweeps through the door.

Hecate glances at him, lips still pursed at her reflection, but does not move. He can see her eyes soften at the sight of him in the mirror, but he takes no time to enjoy this fact.

“I need you.” He says, sweeping past her and into the end cubicle with a gentle brush of her elbow. Both women turn their heads in the direction he’s walked, Hecate’s brow co*cked with curiosity at his manner.

“Don’t trouble yourself, Helen, I’m sure all he wants is a quick shag.” Hecate says as she trails him into the cubicle.

She locks the door behind them and reaches for his chest, sensing the tension rolling off him. She runs the fingers of one hand down his tie while the other move down the crisp white cotton encasing his chest. Hecate is trying to soothe him without acknowledging that this is her intention.

She’s about to ask what happened to his tie when Severus announces, “Bianca knows.”

“Knows what?” Hecate frowns. She’s the smartest person he’s ever met, and right now she’s confused by what he considers the most basic logical progression. Perversely, it almost makes him smile; it definitely makes him want to kiss her.

“Bianca suspects.” He amends, expecting her to catch on. He waits three beats until her eyes widen with comprehension.

“Why?” Hecate hisses, suddenly furious with herself for her quip to Helen about shagging him in the loo. He watches tension bloom across her body and reaches for her hand, while she drops the lid of the toilet and sinks onto it like a chair.

He leans against the cold brick wall and fishes a pack of cigarettes out of his inside pocket, offering them to her. She takes one even though she’s only finished her last five minutes ago. Reluctantly, she frees her hand from his so she can extract his lighter from his jacket pocket. His lip quirks with the familiarity of the action. It’s been eleven and a half weeks, but he feels as if they belong to each other – as if they always have. It makes his stomach twist uncomfortably with the gravity of it all.

He takes his lighter back from her once he’s stowed the packet back in his inside pocket and planted a comforting carcinogenic cylinder between his own lips.

When they’ve each taken a deep drag of their cigarettes, Severus answers the question she’s almost forgotten she asked.

“Sybil – well for once Sybil seems to have read a situation accurately, and I wouldn’t like to speculate on what she may have blurted out to Bianca. Apparently, our absence from detentions has been noticed. We’ve been giving out less than last year.”

He watches Hecate prepare to protest, then realise the assertion is correct. When she’s felt the urge to punish a student rear its head, Hecate has hesitated as the image of all the other things she could be doing with her evening occur to her. She could be home – she could be somewhere with him. She could be smiling wryly at him over a glass of red wine, waiting for one of them to give in and start undressing the other.

And it’s not surprising, really. They’re in the same cubic metre and Hecate still feels he’s too far from her. She trails her knuckles over the outside of his knee, just to have some contact with him, while she pulls contemplatively at her cigarette.

“I love you.” Severus says softly. Hecate’s eyes fly to his face. She feels herself flood with anxiety and adrenalin and tries to regulate her breathing. A normal person’s brain might suggest this is too quick, but Hecate has never felt anything like this, so she doesn’t question it. She does, however, take a moment to snarl “Do you intend to listen to our entire conversation, Helen?” She waits for the ill-disguised sound of footsteps and the closing door to fade, hoping Helen Hughes has the sense to pretend none of this ever happened when they next cross paths.

Eventually Hecate whispers, “I love you, too.” even as her brain grumbles about why it seems every significant moment of her romantic life must happen in the second-floor women’s bathroom.

Severus pulls her to her feet and kisses her entirely differently to the way he kissed her on the night of the leavers’ ball. He kisses her like they have all the time in the world, without urgency or desperation or anxiety. He kisses her like he knows he always can. Hecate rather likes it. She presses herself to him as solidly she is able, arching her back against him, shifting, enjoying the feeling of his body against hers, enjoying the comfort of knowing he’s hers.

“Why are there two lessons left?” Hecate murmurs when they part. They do not break away gasping for air as they sometimes do. They peel apart naturally, slowing to a halt rather than crashing to it.

“I think it might be prudent for one of us to hand out a strategic detention.” Hecate sighs, resting her head against the curve of his shoulder.

“I resent that you are correct, my love.”

Severus drawls, “I should think you would be used to it by now.”

The two remain pointedly separate during school days, aside from their smoking sessions, until they are assigned to the same yard duty one Wednesday. When Severus pulls up beside Hecate, leaning casually against the brick wall at the back of the gym, she glares at him, telling him without needing to say it aloud that he should not risk them being in public together.

“Jack Priest was sent home sick after sneezing in a student’s mouth.”

“I suspect knowing more detail surrounding the incident would not give me any comfort.”

“He was yelling at her, rather than making any sexual advance.”

Hecate laughs softly. As always, he’s perfectly predicted the worst-case scenario her imagination has delivered.

“I’d have thought he’d observed us long enough to know snarling murderously at students is far more effective than mere shouting.”

Severus looks at her, chancing a fond smile.

“Severus,” she chides softly. “If you look at me with such unbridled affection, people will say we’re in love.”

“Do you really give anyone present credit such for observational power?”

Hecate turns back to the yard, watches Brit Parson put her cigarette out on an unsuspecting year seven’s sandwich, and co*cks her head in concession. “Almost certainly not, but given recent events I believe an abundance of caution is necessary.”

Severus nods, accepting her point, his eyes also on Brit Parson. “Why is it the students may smoke and we must hide in the toilets?”

“Because giving Brit detention would rob me of the unexpected pleasure of your company.” Her tone is teasing, but there is truth in her words. Having him by her side on the school grounds in broad daylight is a little luxury she wants to savour.

“Behaviour like that is what caused our trouble in the first place.” Severus remarks. For a moment Hecate thinks he means smoking, but before she can put the dots together, he is striding across the yard, plucking Brit’s fresh cigarette out of her fingers and forcing her to eat the ash-tainted sandwich. The tiny year seven, Tony Something-Hecate-hasn’t-bothered-to-learn-yet, watches, cowering.

As she observes the scene, Hecate’s lip twitches with the threat of a smile. She is dangerously in love with him, and thinking about it reminds her of the pang of anxiety she felt that their relationship would disintegrate in the real world. But here they are, on the cusp of half term break. And here he is, making her smile in the least appropriate setting. The only way Hecate can pull herself back into the correct frame of mind is to swoop on a pair of students inexpertly snogging by the car park. There are worse ways to amuse herself.

Chapter 15: We shall never be bosom friends, perhaps

Chapter Text

When half-term arrives, Severus regrets his promise to spend the break in his home town introducing his partner to his mother – a woman with whom he has a famously strained relationship – when he could be alone with Hecate. But Severus is a man who keeps his word, so off they set for co*keworth.

Severus has concocted a plan to introduce Hecate to his mother over morning tea on the basis this might soften his mother to his lover. They visit Eileen’s favourite bakery en route to her house, and Severus orders a selection of his mother’s favourite cakes. He does not tell Hecate that he has never gone to any effort to introduce Eileen to a paramour before her. Eileen knew Lily as his schoolfriend – their relationship had felt like an inevitability, and the transition to coupledom was done without fanfare. But he’s anxious to position Hecate well in Eileen’s eyes. It isn’t that he places any particular weight in his mother’s view of Hecate; he simply does not wish for her to endure any unpleasantness from his mother if he can avoid it – or at least minimise it. Hecate, of course, misreads his ministrations entirely.

“How many women have you taken through this routine, Severus?” She asks with an arched eyebrow when he insists upon her carrying the box of cakes to the door.

“Fewer than you think.” He says, rather than telling her she alone has had the privilege.

He looks her over once more before knocking on the door, taking in her neat black trousers and sheer black silk puss*bow blouse. She is neat and beautiful as ever, not a hair out of place in her bun, the armour of her crimson lipstick hugging the curves of her mouth. She looks ready, and he knows she is.

Severus’ knock is met by the prompt appearance of his mother. She is short and fine-boned, the top of her head barely meeting Hecate’s collarbone. Her hair is a dark steely grey, a clue to where Severus got his colouring. Her brows are heavy, her eyes small and precise.

“Mother.” Severus greets her, bending automatically to peck her cheek.

“Hello, Severus.” She pats his arm with little warmth, but notable affection. “You must be Hecate.” Eileen extends a fine hand to the younger woman. From looking at the hand extended to her, Hecate is worried she will break a bone shaking it. She is pleasantly surprised to find Eileen’s grip cool, firm, and assured – not unlike her son’s.

“A pleasure.” Hecate knows she is being scrutinised, but has the sense this scrutiny is merely a base level applied to anyone new Eileen comes across. It does not seem to Hecate that Eileen is particularly protective of her son.

Severus leads Hecate into the kitchen, insisting Eileen waits in the lounge. From the doorway, Eileen watches Severus navigate the space, pass plates to Hecate and fill the kettle. When he crosses behind her, Eileen notes her son touches the new woman’s back – lightly, tenderly. Eileen is surprised to see him expressing such intimacy. He shocks his mother utterly by kissing the nape of Hecate’s neck. Hecate reaches for his arm as he moves away, brushing her fingers down the dark fabric of his sportscoat. Eileen watched Severus fall totally in love with Lily from almost the moment he met her, but she thinks he is already more at ease with Hecate than he was with his ex-fiancé. There was something formal between Severus and Lily, as if he never quite believed she was his.

Before Hecate collects the tray of tea, Severus stills her, twines his fingers with hers, and brings the back of her hand to his mouth. Eileen, shrewd as her son, takes note of the way his eyes never leave his lover’s. Eileen wonders what he’s communicating to her, although it’s none of her business. What Eileen will not fully understand even after spending the day with the couple is that Severus’ motivation at all times is showing Hecate he is hers. A better mother would have averted her gaze from the whole scene, but Eileen Prince is nothing if not curious.

The couple returns to the lounge, Eileen watching on intently.

“You have instructed your paramour on my favourite pastries, I see, Severus.” Severus catches his mother’s gaze, the instruction that she must behave clear in his eyes.

“I assumed this was a well-practiced routine between the two of you.” Hecate replies smoothly as she straightens from depositing the tray on the coffee table. Eileen is surprised, but impressed. She had expected Hecate Hardbroom to be a delicate flower to sit in her son’s buttonhole, and she is coming to suspect she is sorely mistaken.

“Actually, aside from Lily, Severus has never introduced me to any of the women he’s stepped out with.”

Hecate shoots Severus a look, assessing him. “He failed to mention that to me.”

“It does little to recommend me.” Severus says.

“Depending on your perspective.” Hecate retorts lightly.

Severus does not respond to her. He’d considered making a quip about how hypotheses should be tested numerous times, but firing the paper bullets of his brain at her seems futile in front of his mother. Instead, he busies himself about doctoring and distributing the tea. They settle beside each other on a neat navy sofa while Eileen takes her place in her favourite armchair. Hecate’s sure the sofa is at least as old as Severus, but like everything in the house, it has been gently used and well cared for. There are no photos around the house, except one portrait of Severus at school. He looks solemn and joyless. Hecate wants to take him in her arms at even the thought of him being as lonely as he looks in the picture. However, she objected to him in the beginning, so perhaps she doesn’t have moral authority as Severus’ ultimate protector. She steals a look at his profile. He looks tenser than he often does, but she takes this as another sign of his investment in this day going well – investment in her. Under less scrutiny she would touch him, ground him. She does not realise that he is thinking precisely the same thing.

“So, Severus says you two work together?”

Hecate has been briefed on Severus’ level of honesty about his career progression with his mother, so she says “Yes, much like Severus I decided to try my hand in a more challenging teaching environment.”

“Is that how one politely refers to low-achieving schools these days?”

Hecate deigns to laugh. “It is, actually.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

Hecate is already fairly certain that Eileen has a fantastic instinct for dishonesty, and therefore replies “Not particularly, no. The children are either hopeless or so distracted by the hopeless ones they can barely retain anything.”

“Why bother then?”

“I dislike failing.”

Eileen huffs a laugh, chances a glance at her son. He’s headstrong in much the same way. “How long has this been going on now?” It’s an innocent inquiry.

“Shortly before the end of last term.” Severus answers while refilling his tea.

“It took us some time to warm to each other.” Hecate notes, perhaps revealing more than Severus would wish her to.

“That’s an incorrect assertion, Hecate. I quite liked you to begin with; it was you who took exception to me.”

“Almost on sight.” Hecate agrees, nibbling at the custard tart she and Severus have halved between them.

“Is that so...” Eileen mumbles under her breath with a wry smirk. Before he can catch it, Severus’ hand ticks towards Hecate. His mother is being more pleasant to Hecate than he’d expected, and he’s hoping she keeps it up. Severus, frankly, doesn’t care whether Eileen likes Hecate at all, but he is sure some buried part of Hecate, the part of her that confessed she’s afraid of losing him, will care rather a lot.

After another few minutes of chat, Hecate excuses herself to the bathroom, leaving Severus and his mother to their own devices. Severus sees the look on his mother’s face but doesn’t take the bait. She has never placed much stock in parenting him to this point; he would not tolerate it if she began now. All he requires of his mother is that she behaves with Hecate.

With deliberate nonchalance, Eileen observes, “She is clever.”

“She is.”

Severus lets the silence hang, forcing Eileen to say whatever is on her mind.

“She could be your twin.” Eileen remarks over the rim of her teacup.

“We are well-suited.” Severus replies, refusing to take her bait.

“Differences can be beneficial in a relationship.”

He parries, “Was that the case for you and father?”

“That is an unfair comparison, Severus.”

“I fail to see how. Both are examples of people we intend – or intended – to spend the rest of our lives with.”

“Is that your intention then, Severus? After a handful of months?”

“I recall you were engaged to my father in less than two months.”

“And you’ve never missed an opportunity to criticise the decision.”

They fall silent. She is entirely correct, and undoubtedly trying to prevent him making what she sees as a possible mistake, but Severus doesn’t particularly trust his mother’s judgement, and he has never been surer of anything than he is of Hecate. He is about to tell his mother this when his other half re-enters the room and glides back to her place beside him. Severus’ hand ticks towards her again, the backs of his fingers brushing her leg. Hecate detects the reassurance in his touch and knows she has been the topic of conversation while she was absent.

“What else do you two have planned this weekend?”

“Very little.” Severus says, only to be contradicted by his other half. She smiles dangerously at him and, forgetting where they are, curves her hand around his thigh.

“Don’t worry, my darling, I have a list of sites.”

Eileen watches her son hold this woman’s gaze and knows for certain he would follow her straight into Hell if she asked him to. Eileen is slowly forming the conclusion that Hecate would do precisely the same, and this, alone, keeps her from trying to resume her earlier conversation with her son. This visit, at least.

Chapter 16: You've decided where your loyalties lie.

Chapter Text

Severus has never seen any magic in Telford, the suburb that neighbours his and was the backdrop to much of his childhood; but Hecate seems to find some. They spend forty minutes on the Iron Bridge, even though it’s only sixty metres long. The air is crisp, the sky is the clearest blue, and Hecate’s eyes are alive with imaginings.

“Why can I picture you riding a bicycle over this bridge?” She asks, staring out over the water.

“I can assure you, I never did.” She turns to him with a questioningly quirked eyebrow. “Do I strike you as someone who has ever ridden eight miles on a bicycle?”

Hecate laughs from the back of her throat and turns to him, creeping her hands under his jacket to wrap her fingers around his waist. Severus is dipping his head to kiss her, the fondest smile imaginable touching every part of his face, when his eyes catch on a redheaded woman emerging from one of the cafes on Tontine Hill. Hecate watches his face change and turns to look over her shoulder. She’s never seen Lily Evans before, but she knows her as soon as she sets eyes on the redhead.

“That’s – ”

“Lily. Yes.” He confirms, still staring beyond his lover. Hecate doesn’t mean to tighten her grip on Severus, but her subconscious drives her nails into his shirt. Realising he’s been neglecting her, Severus turns his gaze back to the woman in his arms, letting the sight of her soften him. He graces her with the kiss Lily distracted him from moments ago, telling her he loves her so clearly she may as well have slipped inside his thoughts. And he does love her. Even with Lily less than fifteen metres away, he loves her with a kind of needy intensity he’s never experienced before. He loves her in a way he never thought he could love anyone.

Lily has shortened the distance between them by the time the couple has parted, showing no uncertainty about interrupting their moment.

“Sev! I didn’t expect to bump into you here.” Hecate can see Lily consider kissing his cheek. She decides against it, which is the best outcome for all concerned. Severus doesn’t know precisely when he knotted his fingers with Hecate’s, but he has, and he’s holding them like they might save him from drowning -hard enough that he doesn’t notice how tight and possessive Hecate’s grip on him is in return.

“I brought Hecate to meet my mother. Hecate, this is Lily. Lily, Hecate. My partner.”

Lily extends a slim white hand to Hecate, gabbling “So nice to meet you. Hecate’s such an unusual name. I didn’t realise Sev was seeing anyone.”

“In fairness, Lily, you haven’t seen me since you handed me back your engagement ring.” Lily shies from the truth in his words and attempts to change the subject.

“Well – how did you two meet?”

“We work together.” Hecate replies, failing to keep her tendency towards iciness under control.

“Another teacher. You two must have fantastic war stories to tell each other.” Neither half of the couple feels the need to confirm or deny the comment. Hecate knows how much Lily’s leaving damaged Severus; she feels no need to ease Lily’s discomfort.

“If you’ll excuse us, Lily, we have – ”

“ – Plans, of course you do. I shouldn’t keep you. But Sev, could we maybe grab a coffee before you go back to Brighton? I’m free all day.”

“Bristol.” Severus corrects her flatly. “We have quite a busy schedule. Excuse us.”

Severus settles his hand on the small of Hecate’s back and guides her towards her car.

When they are seatbelted and peeling away from the curb with alarming speed, Severus pinches the bridge of his nose wearily. He doesn’t force all the air from his lungs, but Hecate can feel that he wants to. She thinks about touching him, but keeps her hands on the steering wheel.

“You should see her, if you want to.” She doesn’t take her eyes off the road as she says it. Severus thinks about touching her, but can’t decide where best to place his hand. His hesitation on the topic of spending more time with Lily is so clear Hecate can all but hear his thoughts. “I trust you to come home to me, Severus.”

Before he can stop himself, “Why?” has sprung from Severus’ lips. Hecate laughs through her nose, her lips bending with affection and disbelief in equal measure.

“To begin with, you claim to be in love with me. I love you. I trust you. You haven’t demonstrated any particular aptitude for lying to me. And your house keys are at the hotel, so you don’t appear to have another option.”

He reaches for her now, a smile playing about his lips as his hand finds her trouser-clad thigh.

“I have done nothing to deserve you.”

She turns to him with the same predatory smile that’s often graces his lips and murmurs “It will serve you well to remember that.”

Hecate has pulled into a parking space at the plush hotel within two minutes. “Call her.” Hecate says, leaning across the car and kissing him. He appreciates the nuance of the way she kisses him, a full stop, a directive. Don’t disappoint me.

Severus lifts his hand, rests his fingers against her cheek. His touch is light and reverent. It says he has no intention of letting her down. They step out of her car, and Severus takes her by the hips, presses his mouth to hers solidly. Hecate trails her thumb over the pink ridges of his mouth.

“I shall return soon.”

She nods, brown eyes soft and warm for him. While Hecate has shown a remarkable lack of possessiveness over the man she loves, when she places the keys to the Mazda in his palm, she murmurs “Under no circ*mstances are you to let her in my car.”

Severus smiles at her, enjoying the glimmer of jealousy in the woman he loves. “I’ll ensure we travel separately to our torrid rendezvous at the Swan Inn.”

“Don’t test my patience, darling.”

He pecks her lips again before slipping into the Mazda and putting his phone to his ear. Hecate leaves before she has to watch him drive away from her.

Soon, Severus finds himself in the car park of his and Lily’s old primary school, less than two miles from the hotel in which he and Hecate are staying. The wind is sharp, and the little redbrick building is precisely as dank as he remembers it to be.

He is standing beside Hecate’s car – too concerned about scratching it with his belt to lean against it – when he sees Lily making her way through the gates, long red hair flying about in the wind. From twenty metres away he can her laughing as she pushes it back from her face. He tries not to recall how thick and heavy her hair is, how almost no hair tie could tame it.

“I was expecting a car.” Severus says by way of greeting.

“We’re just staying at Mum and Dad’s – seemed daft to drive.”

Severus flashes back to that house, small but made so deliberately homely by Lily’s mother. Always shortbread. Always warmth. Always smiles. That house had been such a balm to him in his childhood. Her parents had been delighted by Severus and Lily’s relationship, by his proposal, largely because they had watched him grow up in front of them. His aloofness would put off other parents, but they knew where it had sprung from; an abusive father and a mother struggling to keep the pieces of her life together. They wanted nothing but to offer Severus a safe place to land.

“How are Lois and Geoff?”

“Oh, same as always, really. Dad’s nine months off retirement. Not sure how he’ll cope with that much free time.” Severus agrees with her comment. Geoff has been working at the same factory all Severus’ life, he can’t picture him anywhere else.

“He used to joke about model making...” Severus suggests.

“I’m not sure he was joking. I caught him reading a book on ships in bottles when I arrived. Let’s sneak onto the oval – this is too depressing.”

In his mind’s eye, Severus watches their seven-year-old selves identifying the fault in the fence and sneaking through during school holidays. That sports pitch had seemed infinite in his childhood. He used to picture flying over it, being able to bounce across it as if it were an enormous trampoline. Years of his parents’ dysfunctional marriage squashed his imagination into a box at the rear corner of his brain until he could barely locate it. Now they walk through the gate with the air of confidence adults acquire when they have realised school rules no longer apply to them.

“You should visit them, next time you’re up. I don’t have to be there.” Lily says, breaking him out of his reverie. “I think they miss you quite a lot. Haven’t fully warmed to James yet.”

“Is that so.” It’s a phatic response. He doesn’t need a sermon on why his former in-laws – the people who showed him love through his childhood when his own parents couldn’t – should accept his replacement.

“We always made sense to them. They liked how we balanced each other. James, well… James is even more impulsive than me.”

Lily is still walking around the green playing field, leading them on a circuit or simply as far from the car park as she can, keeping him from making too quick an escape.

“I take it you didn’t tell them the details of our row, then.”

“No. No, there didn’t seem to be much point.”

Severus isn’t proud of how he reacted to her announcing she was leaving him, that she’d been having an affair with James. Severus is not generally a man who shouts, but he had snarled at her, called her a slu*t and all manner of things. Lily had reeled from it, having never before been subjected to the sharpest edge of Severus Snape’s tongue, but she had let him rail against her. He is a man so scarred by abandonment and neglect that she’d not expected anything else from him.

“I’m sorry I hurt you.” Lily says in a small voice.

“I’m sorry I lost my temper.” He replies.

Lightly, Lily bumps his arm with hers. “I forgive you.”

Severus finds he can’t say the same, no matter how happy he is now. Instead he settles for remarking, “We have both moved on with our lives.”

“She seems hard.” Lily says without preamble, brushing her mane of red hair over her shoulder. Severus always admired this gesture in his ex-fiancé. There's an unintentional grace about it.

“She is softer than I am.” He counters. There was a time - not that long ago - when he could not have imagined being more protective of any human being than he was of Lily. But the world has moved, as it is wont to do, and for once Severus has moved with it. More than that, he has found someone to move with. This all culminates in something within him bristling dangerously when Lily casts aspersions about Hecate.

“Titanium is softer than you, Severus.” Lily laughs, studying him with blinding green eyes and that affectionate, wicked smirk. It would have undone him once.

“Is that why you left?” His query is gentle. He is academically curious about the answer now, rather than desperate for instruction on how to remedy it.

“Not really, no.” Her hair has crept over her shoulder again as she turned away from him. She pushes it back once more. The gesture is not as relaxed this time.

“You seem very at ease with her.” Lily remarks, bringing the topic back to Hecate.

Lily is digging for something, and he doesn’t much like it. “I am.”

She probes him differently. “You seem to like her a lot.”

“I love her very much.” Severus counters. Lily tries to conceal her wince. Years ago he told her he’d never said those words about another woman. And yet, here the new addition is, and Lily has found herself replaceable after all.

“Would you leave her if I asked you to?” The question is out of Lily’s mouth before she’s thought it through. Her level of curiosity about his new relationship is staggering even to Lily herself.

“No.” His response is quick and honest. Lily knows he’s telling her the truth. “Are you going to ask me?”

“No.” There’s something in her manner that he’s struggling to read.

“Are you unhappy, Lily?”

“No. No, I’m just… I don’t know. I’m not used to you being – ”

“Happy?”

“Happy with someone else.” Lily hates herself for saying it. But for most of their life, his heart has been hers. Perhaps she thought it always would be.

“That’s not something I intend to change for you.”

“I don’t expect you to.” She hesitates for such a long moment Severus thinks he might extract himself from the conversation, but then she rushes on. “We always made sense, Sev. Even though I love James, I can’t handle the idea that there might be someone you love… more. I don’t like it. It’s not that I want you to be unhappy but I… didn’t expect us to be like this with each other.”

“That we are is your doing, Lily.” Severus says quietly; the accuracy of his words makes her turn her gaze to the worn-down grass. Severus decides this conversation is serving no purpose and makes to end it. “We are leaving for Bristol in the morning.”

“Right. I s’pose I’ll see you next time we’re both home?”

“Whenever that might be, yes, I expect so.”

Severus feels no pull to remain standing here with his erstwhile fiancé. Once he would have, but the gravitational pull of his life is now two miles away in a hotel room, not here on this oval. He strides away from her and slides back into his partner’s Mazda. His eyes do not seek Lily Evans in the rear vision mirror.

Chapter 17: There's plenty of fraternisation going on in here

Chapter Text

When Severus arrives back at the hotel, he finds Hecate curled in an armchair in a plush white bathrobe, black hair tumbling over her shoulders and her gaze fixed on the pages of a Scandinavian crime novel. Severus feels tension drop away from him as he watches her. He doesn’t remember loving anyone more than he loves her at this moment.

“How was she?” Hecate asks, half-glancing up at him.

“Jealous.” The word catches Hecate’s attention properly, and she folds the book closed, using her finger as a placeholder.

“Is that so?”

Severus doesn’t mean to be pleased by the glimmer of territoriality in her, but he is. “There didn’t seem to be intent in it. Merely…” He searches for the correct descriptor. “Cognitive dissonance at me belonging to someone else.”

Hecate’s lip twitches with pleasure. Her voice is little more than a whisper. “Do you belong to me, then, Severus?”

“You know perfectly well that I do.” His voice resonates deeply through the room, shifting the atmosphere.

“Come here.” The crispness of her whisper could not be further from the full rumble of his voice, but it changes the air in the room just as much.

Soon his mouth is on her. Soon his hands are searching out her warm skin under the towelling robe. Soon he has directed her onto the ornate four-poster bed, spread her robe open, and is trailing his lips down her body. Severus has never felt the need to please her as acutely as he does at this moment. He does so with scientific precision - he's made a point of learning the intricacies of her body over their time together - but the intangible magic between them is what sends her to new heights of pleasure.

“Do you think I would like her, under different circ*mstances?” Hecate asks, working her fingers hypnotically through his hair as he lies, recovering, on her chest.

“No, I doubt you would. She is, objectively, too nice.” His words are muffled by her sternum; his fingers grip at her hip unthinkingly while he speaks.

“You may be surprised. My best friend at school was… nice, in her own way.”

“That was some years ago now, my love.” He teases, tilting his head so he can kiss the top of her breast.

Hecate’s lips purse and she pulls his head back by his hair until their eyes meet; she playfully retorts, “be very careful, darling.” Severus shifts higher up the bed so he can kiss her properly. Hecate briefly considers that if this is the reaction feeling the need to prove his loyalty provokes, Hecate might have to engineer it more often.

He turns them, pulling her onto his lap all without parting their lips. “We have dinner with my mother in an hour.”

Hecate emits a whine of frustration, fighting for control of the kiss and rolling her hips maddeningly against his.

“I need to wash.” She murmurs after scraping her teeth across his jugular.

“You don’t.” He growls.

She touches her lips to his ear, smoothing her hands over her face and laughing wryly at him. “My whole body smells of you, Severus.”

Severus groans, gripping her hips hungrily, but Hecate is not deterred from her mission. She knows Severus’ mother is not an easy woman to win, and she intends to give herself the best chance of success, even if it means delaying her own gratification.

When Lois Evans walks into her kitchen for a cup of tea, she finds her youngest daughter washing dishes with the attention to detail of a surgeon.

“Didn’t realise you were back, pet.” Lois says, passing behind Lily and flicking on the kettle.

“Mm.” Lily hems, not looking up from the dishes. A beat of silence fills the room, and then Lily can resist no more. “Sev sends his best.”

“Oh, is he in town!”

“Just for the weekend.”

“You should’ve asked him round for a cuppa.” Lois says gently, lost in memories. She has loved Severus since he was a skinny little lad, starved of love, with keen, intelligent eyes. She loved altering his clothes so he didn’t look like a street urchin. She loved his rapt attention while she was reading to him. She even loved the tightly held man he grew into.

“He’s busy.”

“Oh.”

“Actually I didn’t ask. He’s brought a woman home to meet Eileen.” A dish clangs as Lily accidentally hits it against the metal side of the sink.

“Has he now? Well, have you met her? What’s she like?”

“Too much like him for his own good.” Lily grumbles under her breath.

“What’s her name, where’d they meet?” Lois presses, not heeding the tone in her daughter’s voice.

“At the school he works at now. By all accounts it’s a hell hole. Her name is Hecate.”

“Exotic.”

“Pretentious.” Lily counters.

“Why are you so upset by this, pet?” Lois asks, turning to her daughter once she’s poured the newly boiled water into the mugs on the counter.

“Because…” Lily begins, swinging away from the sink to face her mother. “Because they look at each other like they’d go to Hell to save each other, get tricked and both get stuck there, and then not mind because at least they’re in Hell together.”

“And that’s bad because…?”

“I’m not sure he ever looked at me like that.” Lily whispers.

Lois strokes Lily’s face, kisses her daughter on the cheek. “Lil. He did. You just never really looked back.”

“Do you blame me for that?”

“What on Earth does that mean?”

“I know you love him, Mum. The son you always wanted.”

“Oh, pet. Of course I don’t blame you. I love that boy to pieces, but that doesn’t mean you had to marry him. You have to find the person you’d follow into Hell. If you tell me that’s James then that’s all I need to know.”

Lily sniffs, reminding her mother irresistibly of the little girl she once was. “I think he is.”

“That’s really all you need, then, isn’t it?” Lois pulls Lily into her arms, stroking her long red hair and letting Lily process the events of the day.

“…Not interrupting, am I?” James asks awkwardly, all shaggy black hair and sharp elbows. James has the energy of a Labrador, tripping over his feet with excitement and wanting to please, to play. Lois thinks about the way Severus would glide into the room, fill the space for a moment before slipping into his normal place at the kitchen table, asking Lois questions about her day that few people ever take the time to ask her. Severus is listening and James is doing. Lois knows she’ll adjust, and that the time will come when the balance restores itself so she can still see Severus, the boy she feels like she raised. But they aren’t quite there yet.

“No, love. Not interrupting.” Lily says, gathering herself. She smiles at her partner, staring at his hazel eyes and feeling not entirely better, but certainly less at sea than she did ten minutes ago. And maybe that’s enough.

While Lily is adjusting to the idea of no longer being the most important woman in Severus Snape’s life, Hecate is putting the finishing touches on herself before they leave for dinner with Eileen. Severus cannot resist the urge to run his hands over the gentle swell of her hips in her tight black dress. The action makes her turn over her shoulder to kiss him.

“Stop distracting me.” She instructs him wryly, awkwardly contorted to caress his face.

“Am I able to make the same request of your dress?”

“I am more than happy for you to converse with my clothing if it pleases you, my love.” He shakes his head and kisses her neck.

The Mazda isn’t big enough for the three of them; Hecate navigates it to Eileen’s house, where they collect Severus’ mother and swap into Eileen’s silver Vauxhall. She has deigned to let Severus drive, having correctly assessed that Eileen has held onto irrationally rigid views about some minor and specific aspects of gender roles. Hecate having a job – having prospects of advancing in her career – does not make Eileen bat an eyelid. The idea of Hecate driving the three of them to an evening meal is unacceptable. Hecate insists on sitting in the back, which, Severus knows, will also please his mother, even if Eileen won’t admit it. He keenly feels the absence of Hecate’s fingers being in reaching distance.

They take Eileen to a nice restaurant in Ironbridge, all white tablecloths and rich mahogany. Severus lets the waiter light the candle; his acceptance makes Hecate catch eyes with him, share a secret smile. Eileen, sharp-eyed as ever, catches the warmth that passes between her son and his paramour. She reflects on the years she spent with Tobias, miserable and afraid, but so hopeful that the glimmer of happiness she’d initially felt with him would return. Every now and then it did, as intense and heady as ever, and that had kept Eileen coming back long after she should have known better.

Eileen had worried, when Lily left her son, that he would never let himself feel love again, would protect himself in the same way Eileen has attempted (and only intermittently succeeded in doing). She expected her son to would walk a lonely road after being exposed to his parents’ relationship. Observing the young couple now, Eileen sees more intimacy between them than most people experience in a lifetime.

Severus excuses himself after main course, leaving his partner and mother alone for the first time since their introduction.

Hecate, anticipating a question from Eileen, takes a pre-emptive sip of wine, bright brown eyes on the elder woman.

“You are nothing like Lily.” She observes at long last.

“Having spent all of five minutes with her, I’m confident to agree.” Eileen makes a little hem at the back of her throat. Unfazed, Hecate asks, “Are you concerned he would prefer Lily?”

“I have spent the years since she left him worried he would never love anyone else. He does seem fond of you, of course, but he loved Lily for almost all his life. So you see, it’s rather a high bar you need to clear.” Hecate is not well versed enough in the mythology of Severus’ parents to know Eileen is speaking more of herself and her own ex-lover, Tobias Snape, than she is of Hecate and Severus. If she were armed with this information, Hecate would respond to the other woman with more insight, less personal attachment.

Hecate takes another deliberate sip of her wine to keep from escalating the conversation. After a calming breath, she notes, “I love your son very much. I don’t see the utility in classing his ex-partner and I as being in competition.”

“Perhaps not. But I believe Severus needs someone who challenges him. Someone whose world view draws him out rather than cements his further. It may be advisable to prepare yourself for an unhappy outcome.”

Hecate’s eyes flash with fury, but across the room they find Severus. Her chest fills with a dizzying rush of love for him, and she knows there is no point quarrelling with his mother. She believes in what they have. Hecate decides from this moment onwards, she will be unperturbed by whatever view Eileen holds of her.

When he’s close enough to read her properly, Severus catches Hecate’s eye and tilts his head slightly, asking without words if she’s alright. Hecate nods back, the gesture so small Eileen doesn’t notice it.

With a gentle hand on her back, Severus takes his place beside his partner, opposite his mother. He locks eyes with Eileen, trying to read what might be going on in his mother’s mind. The only thing he’s certain about is the dull ache she’s carried with her as long as he can remember – and the bitter crust she’s grown around it to protect herself. Beneath the table, he closes his fingers around Hecate’s, making a mental note never to hold himself apart from Hecate the way his mother does with everyone in her life, including him.

After they bid Eileen farewell, Hecate surprises him by passing him the keys to her Mazda. He does not question her until they’re on the road, and when he does, it’s merely with a raised eyebrow. Hecate reaches for the silken black locks that hang over his collar, smoothing her fingers through them.

“Would it be absurdly sentimental of me to say just this once, I would rather look at you than the road?”

Severus’ lip ticks with a wry smile. “Once may be considered within an acceptable threshold.”

“Your mother seems to dislike me.” She notes neutrally.

“My mother has had very little happiness. She is uneducated in the signifiers of it.”

“She has you.” Her words are a gentle contradiction, but Severus is too much a realist to accept the comfort she’s offering.

Impassively, he replies, “There are other things she wanted more.”

Hecate reaches for his hand, a silent show of support. Severus brings her fingers to his lips and kisses them. “I assure you, my mother’s yearning for another life does not impact my own. I have the things I most want.”

Her lip twitches with pleasure. Hecate keeps their hands intertwined and draws them across the car to rest on her lap. Softly, her gaze never leaving his profile, Hecate murmurs, “As do I.”

Chapter 18: A witch makes things happen

Chapter Text

Although it’s a simple change in their relationship, Hecate does feel more secure after being so pointedly inserted into Severus’ life during their time with his mother. Grudgingly, she’ll even admit to herself that stumbling into the presence of Lily Evans has been beneficial to her. Every action of Severus’ during their trip felt like it was intended to assure her – his fingers ghosting over her, his body twisting towards her, not to mention his commitment to making her come as often as possible in the moments they spent alone at the hotel.

With all this evidence stored away, Hecate relaxes entirely into their life at the BS Comp, certain that if her relationship can survive her partner’s disapproving mother and his annoyingly beautiful ex-fiancé, it can surely survive a few hours parted by detentions, a few suspicious glances from the other staff.

So confident is Hecate feeling, she doesn’t bat an eyelid when Bianca summons Hecate for a meeting during her spare period one Thursday two months after their expedition to Telford. She has no idea how badly the conversation will unbalance her.

When Severus slips into their usual cubicle at the usual time, Hecate is already sitting on the closed toilet with a cigarette between her violently red lips. He would smile at the sight if Hecate didn’t look quite so… shocked. In fact, somehow she’s even paler than usual.

She reaches up to light his cigarette, another well-worn part of their routine, but she does not meet his eye conspiratorially, does not quirk her lovely lips at him.

“Hecate?” He asks, reaching for her chin so he can direct her gaze towards his.

“They want to appoint me Deputy Head.”

Severus had not expected this to be the cause of his lover’s pallor.

“There will be a process, but… Bianca has said the position is mine if I want it.”

Severus hesitates, attempting to read her. He asks, “Do you?” even though he knows her well enough to know she’s naturally ambitious.

“Yes, I think I do.” She takes a deep drag, almost finishing her cigarette. She lifts the flap on the sanitary bin and taps off her ash. “Obviously this school is not where I wish to peak in my career. This role would be helpful.” Severus nods, pulling on his own cigarette thoughtfully. His assessment matches hers.

He’d not had his eyes on the idea of a promotion here at BSC, but the prize is brought into sharp relief by the fact of it being within Hecate’s grasp. This role satisfies her no more than it does him – but that’s the rub in the end. Perhaps she will find better work because of this promotion, while he continues to suffer under the weight of idiotic students and poor quality staff room teabags. Severus wishes he could stifle the competitive serpent within him, but he’s never been able to. It’s been his downfall since his youth – the reason his teachers were so constantly irked by him even though he got the best marks in the school. Of all the moments in his life, the success of the woman he loves should be the one that supersedes his own ambition. And yet…

“Congratulations.” He musters the word with effort. Hecate can sense the tightness in him, even while she’s this deep in her own inner turmoil. Does she have it in her to do more work for this school she so loathes? Will being Deputy Head of one of the poorest ranking schools in the Kingdom actually endear her to any of the prestigious academies she longs to work in? She has little headspace for anything beyond these immediate questions, and frankly, she’s not equipped to unpack his tone.

Severus pretends to look at his battered Rolex – Hecate has seen him perform the action before; she is far from fooled. He murmurs an excuse to the woman he loves before peeling out of their cubicle. He tosses his cigarette into a basin, failing to notice the butt hissing, snakelike, on the damp white surface before it drops through the drain.

Hecate can’t find Severus at the end of the day. Their routine is well worn after these last months; he has never left her hovering in the staff room after the bell tolls before.

“You’re not gonna finally give up and come along to the pub with us, are you, HB?” Jack Priest, one of the sport teachers teases, considering smacking her arse and then thinking better of it when her most dangerous glare hits him. Hecate slings her handbag over her shoulder once the staff room has emptied, leaning against her locker for three minutes before deciding Severus is, as she suspected, having some kind of tantrum, and stalking out of the building.

Hecate spends the night chain smoking on the couch with whatever comes on BBC1 flashing before her eyes. She tucks her toes into the cuffs of her loose black pyjama bottoms and tries to push the man she loves from her mind. Clearly, this is a losing battle. Hecate has grown used to sharing her evenings with Severus. She has grown used to them working to make each other laugh, to his hands seeking her out for no reason other than he likes touching her. She has grown used to doing the same. But here she is. Hecate is a person who relishes time on her own, but over the past few months she’s come to expect his presence. To long for his presence, really.

Her ashtray is overflowing while she ponders some ancient rerun of a costume drama, her head filled with all the ways the men in the Jane Austen before her are irritatingly reminiscent of Severus. Repressed, precise, but filled with more emotion than they are given credit for. It’s something Lily observed about him too, Hecate recalls from her first perusal of his flat after their second night together.

She snarls as she flips onto a news channel, attempting to lose herself in the ecological disaster developing in Spain with the Prestige oil tanker spilling its load. When Hecate has had her fill of environmental catastrophe, she turns off the television and makes her way to the bedroom. She slips into bed, hyper-aware of the cold from the other side of the mattress. She dreams of Severus in all kinds of improbable situations – waking when the two of them are on dodgem cars and he continues to ram her novelty vehicle until she flies off the floor of the ride and lands with the car on top of her. She lies in the darkness wondering if she’s been wrong about him all this time. Is it possible he’s exactly like Owen after all - unable to cope with her ambition, her intelligence, her success? He has always seemed to like her ruthless desire for advancement. She supposes it has never impacted him before. And that’s the rub with men, isn’t it? Your successes are applauded, providing their ego isn’t damaged in the process. Hecate falls asleep again, but she continues to be haunted by dreams of the man she loves, and not the usual kind of dreams, either.

If Hecate sleeps fitfully, Severus does not sleep at all. He does not like being on bad terms with her. Severus attempts to call the competitive part of himself to order, balance it against the part of him that is happy – genuinely happy for the first time in years. Perhaps he’s being self-destructive. Perhaps the only reason he’s responding in this manner is because he’s expecting something to go wrong, so it might as well be him who ruins it.

The next day at work, they are brusque with each other. Hecate does not make him tea while she prepares herself one. Severus does not touch her back covertly as he passes her. They do not meet in the second-floor ladies’ room to smoke together.

Instead, Severus finds his way to a set of fire stairs which he deems covert enough to smoke without reprimand from Bianca. When he leans on the railing, Severus can see onto the grounds of the school. He notices Hecate on yard duty, and this is the first time he’s consciously acknowledged today is Friday. From two storeys up, he watches Hecate making a slow lap of the yard, stopping students behaving badly with little more than a pointed look. He watches her make what must be a wry remark to a group of relatively well-behaved A Level students, and the group laughs before Hecate glides off.

Hecate holds a unique position in the hearts of the BSC cohort– one he can’t imagine ever occupying. Those of their students with some semblance of future prospects respond well to Hecate’s exactness, her indiscriminate discipline, the reliability of her routines. Even if, at a glance, Hecate is universally loathed by the teachers, a more detailed analysis shows there’s respect for her throughout the school, and affection for her in certain sections of it. No one here is fond of him except her.

Severus remembers her telling him in one of their toilet cubicle confessional sessions – long before there was even a hint of romance between them – of her thwarted ambition to study biochemistry and neuroscience, of the high school boyfriend who’d proposed to her and clung onto her for her first two years of university, just long enough to derail her future. Severus takes the time to ask if he can live with himself if he is the reason for another such setback in her career.

“You are an insufferable fool…” Severus hisses at himself, throwing his cigarette over the balcony and disappearing back into the building with a newfound determination to fix things between them – assuming he still can.

Chapter 19: The most important of staffing changes

Chapter Text

Severus has a free period last, and he uses this to disappear from the school grounds without Bianca’s permission. He doesn’t realise that his absence in the staff room at the end of the day will stoke his partner’s irritation. When she can’t find him, Hecate assumes Severus is still avoiding her. She storms home in a huff, driving so fast she nearly takes out no less than three cyclists.

When Severus knocks on her door at seven in the evening, he is not greeted warmly, even though he’s holding a bag of Chinese food from Hecate’s favourite takeaway restaurant. She stands in the doorway, filling the space with squared shoulders and no intention of making space for him.

“Good evening, Severus.”

“May I come in?”

Hecate stares at him, her face hard and unreadable, as if he’s someone else, one of the PE teachers rather than someone she loves very, very much. But she does love him. So she relents, moves back from the door without a word, lets him glide past her and deposit the bag of takeaway on the kitchen counter. Being in the little house on Cavendish Road is a balm to him, even while she continues to make her displeasure with him obvious.

He decides against serving the food before fixing things, thinking, correctly, it will aggravate her further, imply she will certainly allow him to stay. It’s not a bet even Severus considers a safe one.

He holds her gaze, trying to find the moment she might soften, but it doesn’t come, so he launches in. “Hecate, I am deeply sorry.”

“For what?” She is still tightly held. Severus can sense the danger in the question. It’s a pass or fail situation. He properly understands for the first time that he could lose her if he handles this badly, and the thought makes a cold rock form in his stomach.

“I let my insecurity about work distract me from what’s important.”

“Which is?”

“You. I love you, and I was unsupportive when you needed me.”

“Because?”

He gathers himself, not proud of the answer he is about to give, but knowing Hecate won’t tolerate anything but absolute honesty. “I felt…threatened. We have both worked in the best schools in the Kingdom, and I know you feel as I do about our current employment. I was envious of your advancement.”

“Even in an institution neither of us respects?”

“It will assist you in leaving for a better school.”

“Are you worried about me leaving you behind?” She is still quizzing him. Severus isn’t enjoying finding himself in the place of their students.

“I was discomfited at the thought of following you while you advance and never doing so myself. I was, briefly, resentful at the thought.”

“And now?” She softens a little, becoming something closer to his lover rather than his colleague.

Severus gathers himself and puts aside his pride.

“I don’t want to be another man who holds you back.”

“Will you do it again?”

“No.”

“Will you resent me if I become more successful than you?”

“I won’t lie to you by promising I will have no more moments of competitiveness, Hecate. But I will be more aware of them now. And I will always choose you. I will always love you more than any professional achievement.”

Hecate weighs this up, asks herself whether this is good enough, whether she can reasonably ask him for more. She thinks about how awful she’s felt being at odds with him, how much more she likes her life with him in it. She purses her lips and nods minutely, waiting for him to draw her into his arms. She tangles her fingers in his hair, breathing the scent of him from the expensive black wool of his jacket.

“I have missed you.” She whispers against him.

“I am sorry I gave you cause to miss me.” He punctuates the sentence with a kiss against her cheekbone.

“You should be.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too. I hope you remember that better next time.”

Severus, sensing himself all but forgiven, bends to kiss her for the first time in far too long. He moans softly into her mouth, pulling her hips closer to his. Hecate tightens her grip on his hair. She doesn’t like him being too far away to touch for any length of time, and her patience has been thoroughly tested.

She kisses his throat as they break apart, breathing in his skin greedily.

“Dinner?” He purrs, and Hecate nods. He pushes her gently towards the little kitchen table, and given the past two days, she is happy to let him do the work. After a few moments he returns with an uncorked bottle of pinot noir, two glasses, and cutlery. After another trip he slides a plate of Szechuan king prawns and special fried rice to her. Behind them, he pushes a jewellery box across the table.

She glances up at him, confused. “What is this?”

“To make up for my egregious lack of judgement. Something to utilise in your new role.”

She gives him the slow smile that tells him he’s done something very well and takes up the box. It holds an antique gold fob watch. She takes in a breath on sighting it. “Severus, it’s beautiful.”

“It belonged to my grandmother.” He says softly, watching her examine the intricate gold timepiece. She glances up at him and he reads every thought that passes behind her eyes, the depth of emotion she feels over the gesture. “My grandfather gifted it to her when he came home from the war. He traded three packets of cigarettes for it while he was serving in France. It was an exorbitant price, by the standards of the time.”

Hecate smiles softly, running a well-manicured finger over the delicate design. She flips it open, finds a tiny inscription in a circle around the solid part of the cover – I will always come home to you.

Hecate reaches across the table for his fingers without looking up at him, trying to process the gesture. There is a permanence implied in him giving her such an important family heirloom.

“Did she give him your Rolex, before he was deployed?” She looks up at last.

“No, that was military issue.”

Hecate rises from her seat and bends to kiss him. “Thank you, my love.” She whispers against his lips. He smooths his hand over her hip.

Severus reaches across the table for the box she’s left the fob in, drawing it close enough for him to settle it around her neck. When she straightens, Severus takes her in in his grandmother’s favourite piece of jewellery, hanging perfectly to the base of her ribs. It looks at home on her – just as he has felt at home with her since the third week of their acquaintance, when they put whatever competitive angst was between them aside and became allies.

Hecate returns to her seat and succumbs to the desire to eat. In truth, she’d been about to order this exact meal as he arrived. Severus, clocking the menu on the kitchen counter, has guessed as much.

Hecate sips at her wine and studies him over the rim of her glass. She doesn’t remember ever feeling so much for another person. Severus glances up from his beef in black bean sauce and finds her eyes on him. Her expression makes his lips quirk. Even though he’s ravenously hungry, Severus can’t wait to get her to bed.

They spend the night dispelling the tension between them. Severus is studiously attentive, aware of the jeopardy he’s placed them in and his need to make up for it. The two of them have always done well together, physically. Their bodies are suited to each other, and Hecate has always been immensely satisfied by their sexual encounters. Tonight, Severus is so intent on pleasing her it makes her head spin. He is the only man who has ever made her lose control completely, to release the last three per cent of rationality she maintains in even the most intimate situations. They kiss sleepily as they come down from their high – too tired even for their customary post-coital cigarette. Severus murmurs “I love you,” against her throat, and the deep rumble of his voice sends another jolt of pleasure through her. Hecate usually sleeps on Severus’ shoulder, but tonight she pulls him around her back, makes him crush her against his chest. She only demands spooning in this manner when she needs comfort. Usually he is not the cause of this need in her.

After midnight, Severus still can’t sleep for counting his blessings. He could have lost her this week. The thought terrifies him. Severus nuzzles against her neck, kisses her shoulder until she stirs with a grizzle of irritation. Severus knows it’s a dangerous thing to do, interrupting Hecate Hardbroom’s sleep, but he continues to recklessly pepper kisses across her shoulder blade.

“Severus, what?” She mumbles, scrunching her face. Even through her irritation, Hecate finds herself reaching behind her for his hair.

“I haven’t spent a night without you for three weeks, before all this.” This is a revelation to Severus. The kisses he presses to her neck become more insistent, his tongue teasing her pulse point. Hecate whimpers at his ministrations. “I don’t care for it anymore.” Hecate rolls in his arms to kiss him properly, comb his hair back from his eyes with her sharp nails.

Her lips are quirked wickedly, but she becomes serious all of a sudden. “Don’t do anything to cause it again.”

“Nothing has frightened me more in recent history than the prospect of losing you this week. I assure you, I will not be seeking to repeat the situation.”

Hecate closes her eyes, nuzzles her nose against his and focusses on breathing – breathing the same air as the man she loves for the first time in days. Hecate falls asleep again soon after, feeling safe now she’s back his arms. This time Severus does not disturb her.

After making a show of going through an official process, Bianca, as predicted, appoints Hecate Deputy Head of Bristol South Comprehensive.

The announcement is made in a Friday assembly, and a rumble runs over the student body – equal measure endorsem*nt of Hecate as the logical choice and abject terror.

The student rumour mill is hurtled into overdrive when Bianca is making the announcement about the promotion, and Hecate and Severus have the temerity to catch eyes. Hecate’s smile barely alters her face, but the students are so used to her normal range of Irritable Neutral to Bone Chillingly Furious that the modicum of softness written across her face is like a lighthouse beacon. By now, half the student body keeps each other entertained by speculating about the two chemistry teachers. They have no evidence, of course, and miss the most obvious signs between the couple – but they’re happy to write bad limericks on the loo walls and scratch them into the desktops.

Only a handful of students are on the right angle to see Severus return the microscopic smile, clapping quickly and emphatically for his other half’s success. It bolsters the students’ case significantly, and Hecate and Severus are the topic of gossip for the rest of the day. At one point Bianca passes Atrossitee Jenkins laughing to a group of rapt minions “Do you reckon HB is having fun with Snapey’s old snake, then?”

“Detention, Miss Jenkins.” Bianca states without breaking stride.

“You know I won’t come, but.”

Bianca turns and meets Atrossitee’s pale blue eyes. “Then I shall have no choice but to tell Miss Hardbroom what you’ve been saying about her.”

Atrossitee blanches. “After school, then yeah?” Bianca nods, hiding her smug smile until she’s set off again. She’s clearly selected the right Deputy if invoking the younger woman’s name can induce such terror in even the worst of her students.

When Atrossitee turns back to her friends, they look at her like she’s lost all credibility. Venomously, Atrossitee barks, “If you lot’s such top sh*t why doncha tell HB we changed all the computer lab screensavers?” The gang swiftly falls silent, praying Hecate never finds out about their p*rnographic doodle of her spreading throughout the IT class.

While Atrossitee is torturing Sybill Trelawney through detention that evening, Severus takes Hecate to Sugo to celebrate, making a show of precisely how comfortable he is with this new power imbalance between them. He orders them gin and tonics to toast her success, a hark back to the night that tipped them from friends to lovers. He touches her ostentatiously whenever Bruno circles the table. He orders two serves of tiramisu, knowing full well she will eat half of his as well as her own. Hecate smiles at how hard he is trying, and thinks, for the first time in some time, all the parts of her life that matter most are moving in the right direction.

Chapter 20: Pay much more attention to your studies, if you ever hope to graduate from this institution

Chapter Text

What Hecate failed to appreciate before her appointment was the amount of irritating minutia that must be attended to as Deputy Head of BSC. This first hits her when Bianca offloads the school concert onto her, breezing away quickly before Hecate can object.

“I have no talent for nonsense like this!” She rages at Severus, pacing the lounge ferociously, a blur of pale white limbs and a jet black pencil dress. “What does she possibly think I can add to this event?” She rounds on Severus as if this is somehow her lover’s fault.

“I think it more likely Bianca simply wants to avoid undertaking the task herself.” He remarks. Hecate hesitates. He’s almost certainly correct, but this does not help her, does not play into the narrative of punishment she’s been running in her head. Severus can see the plea in her eyes, be on my side, and decides this is not the moment to make himself the enemy.

“Perhaps Bianca is testing you.”

“She has been since I arrived in this wretched school, Severus.”

“You are assuming Bianca’s actions are fair, my love.”

Hecate grumbles incomprehensibly before stalking to the kitchen for a whiskey. Severus is amused that she has not brought him one. Even in her most extreme moments of pique, she will ordinarily tend to him as well as herself, and he does the same for her.

She flops into an armchair dramatically, and Severus has a flash of the child she may have been. She is so held now, so carefully contained, that the expression of exasperation is foreign even to him.

“I despise children.” Hecate grumbles, swilling her whiskey thoughtfully.

“They are an unhappy consequence of our profession.” Hecate looks in his direction but doesn’t see him. She whimpers and drops her head to her hand. He wonders if she’s downed a whiskey in the kitchen before walking back with this one.

“I could have been more than this, Severus.” She whispers. Severus pictures her in a crisp white lab coat, looking through a microscope, deciphering results from a mass-spectrometer. Severus thinks of all the things the woman he loves could have achieved had she not chosen such a woeful partner in her youth. His breath refuses to fill his lungs. He would never have met this alternate Hecate; but perhaps she would have been happier. Even the thought feels like a knife through him.

“You still can, Hecate.” He says it before he’s worked out the full implications of his comment, but he knows he’s right. She is brilliant and instinctively attuned to details. She is the kind of person who should be curing incurable diseases, not presiding over frog dissections.

Hecate lifts her head slowly. When she looks at him, she studies him as if he’s a new chemical composition – something foreign and complex that she can’t quite decipher. She can’t describe how different he is from Owen in this moment; Owen who held her back, Owen who thought her ambitions were inconvenient. She also can’t help thinking how fiercely he’s kept his promise that he won’t let competitiveness cause problems between them again. Severus only breaks their eye contact to light a cigarette and pass it into her empty fingers. She lifts it to her violent red lips and takes a drag she hadn’t realised she was craving, even though her partner clearly had.

“You could complete your Doctorate.” He continues once she’s exhaled deeply. He marvels at how the spill of smoke from her lips is still utterly bewitching to him, even after watching her do it approximately two thousand times.

“You never wanted more than this.” Hecate says softly, making Severus laugh.

“I wanted to be Head Master of Eton. But no, I did not have any grand ambitions beyond teaching. I wanted to be able to bring out the best in the kind of student I was, give opportunities to people who would otherwise have to make such opportunities for themselves.”

Hecate imagines him, the scholarship student among all the privilege. She thinks of the boy whose mother left her abusive husband in a time when it was commonplace for his schoolmates’ parents to simply cease communicating with their spouses, hide the depth of pain and unhappiness and suffer in silence. She thinks of his ill-fitting uniforms that Lois Evans adjusted whenever she could, the story he told about his adult obsession with clothes being true black, for all his second-hand uniforms were a washed out grey. “You wanted to correct your own childhood.”

Severus tips his head in concession, lighting himself a cigarette at long last after watching his lover smoking pensively for the past three minutes. “And I suppose I wanted some of the power and prestige my college tutors had.”

“You could have done any number of things to earn prestige. Politics. Medicine. Law.”

He draws on his cigarette. “My mother is a pragmatic woman, Hecate. She did not believe in filling my head with unachievable dreams.”

“You could have achieved them.” Severus holds her gaze thoughtfully. If someone had believed in him the way Hecate does, he’s sure he could. But he and Lily had sought a conventional life after the storms they weathered when they were young. And the truth is, Severus has no desire to be on a different trajectory to the one he’s on now. He’d like to be in a better institution, but teaching suits him. The life he and Hecate share suits him. Severus stands, kisses her crimson lips and prises her empty whiskey glass from her hand, briefly disappearing and then reappearing with two full ones.

Handing one to Hecate he says “Contact your preferred universities. Detail your previous work. Any of them would be lucky to have you.”

Hecate catches him by curving two of her fingers through a gap between his shirt buttons. “I am lucky to have you.”

On a purr, Severus murmurs “We are lucky to have each other,” while he moves to kiss her.

Hecate tries not to think about how little support it took to propel her into starting a spreadsheet of all the possible universities at which she’d like to complete her PhD– and by extension, how little support Owen would’ve needed to give her to make their relationship something close to viable. Soon, Hecate has a list of seven possible institutions, ordered by preference, cross-referenced by application requirements. Adding extra tasks to her already busy days should send Hecate spinning, but there’s something delicious about thinking of her life as it may have been. Taking steps to bring it closer to that reality is almost exhilarating.

Hecate slaves over all seven applications, Severus at her elbow, plying her with tea and wine without being asked, quietly reviewing students’ assessments or losing himself a novel to the sound of her fingers flying over the keyboard. With a combination of love and forensic attention to detail, Severus reviews each application before she submits it. By the time responses to her applications start filtering into their letterbox, Hecate is an uncharacteristic ball of nerves.

Unsurprisingly, Hecate is accepted to each university to which she’s applied. She leaves her preferred institution until last, tearing open the heavy parchment envelope with shaking fingers. She smiles, feels her eyes well with tears, and lets out a tiny sound Severus isn’t brave enough to call a sob before he pulls her into his arms.

“Well done.” He murmurs against her hair, sleekly pulled back in its customary bun.

“Thank you.” She murmurs, burrowing further into his chest, wondering how long this stepd may have taken her without his encouragement.

Hecate knows this will be an adjustment, managing her role as Deputy Head and what is sure to be a demanding academic workload from one of the best tertiary institutions in the world, but she’s confident she’ll navigate it with Severus in her corner.

Chapter 21: “And you will need to move a little closer,” he said.

Chapter Text

Hecate is generally highly strung, but once she is in the thick of research and the end of year concert, she becomes more like a tropical storm than Severus has ever seen her. Hecate is forced to stay at school after hours to supervise rehearsals, then lose sleep while she writes once she returns home. In the early days of Hecate’s extracurricular commitments, Severus had lingered at the school to wait for her, but he’d not been able to sit in on rehearsals without all-but confirming their relationship, and the exercise had come to seem rather pointless without the benefit of spending additional time with her. Now he lingers only for a final cigarette in the second-floor ladies’ room before she goes to supervise rehearsals, and helps her in more practical ways, like doing her marking. She had protested in the beginning, but he had neatly batted back her objections by reminding her that he was marking the same assignments, so it made little sense for him to sit at home without her when he could be keeping occupied and taking some of the load off her. The first time she had handed something back to her class that he had marked, Hecate had felt an unusual spike of anxiety.

“Miss Hardbroom, this doesn’t look like your writing?” Louise Halfpenny, one of Hecate’s most conscientious students had, predictably, piped up. Severus’ cramped, spiky writing is indeed notably different to Hecate’s violent cursive.

“Mr Snape and I will be cross-marking your assignments to ensure all students are at an equivalent level of skill.” She had seemed ice cold as she said it, but her pulse had quickened in her throat.

The rumours about them are now writ-large across the walls of the cubicle they smoke in – and, Severus presumes, many of the other bathrooms across the school. The old declaration of HB needs co*ck has been amended to HB needs Snape’s co*ck. There’s a sketch of the two of them styled as Frankenstein’s monsters on one wall with the caption Bride of Snapenstein. Severus thinks this one of the wittier comments, far beyond the skill of Atrossitee and her minions. Comments about him are generally uninventive insults, that he’s a dick or a f*cker or a try hard. Some of the comments about his partner, however, are so crude he’s thought about asking for them to be removed, but that would give the game away. What possible reason does he have for being in the ladies’ room other than some kind of assignation that he’d rather not have to explain? No, it would undo too much of the hard work they’ve put into convincing Bianca that they are not, in fact, an item. This has included hours of separation caused by supervising detention, and Severus frankly doesn’t have the energy to spend any more time in this building without her than he already does.

Over their courtship they have fallen into a comfortable routine of alternating between each other’s houses. As they finish their end-of-workday cigarettes, Hecate has taken to asking him “Where are we tonight?” Her head is too full of minutia to hold on to where she’s sleeping as well. Severus is happy to take any of the mental load he can.

By now both their wardrobes are split across the two residences. For Severus, this poses few problems. Most of his outfits are substantively the same; as long as he has a clean shirt and underwear, he’s unfazed by wearing a charcoal suit rather than a black one. Hecate’s wardrobe is slightly more varied than her partner’s; it comprises pantsuits and skirt suits and some neat pencil dresses, mostly in shades of black and grey with the occasional dash of colour in the fabric – such as her favourite blue-splashed brocade skirt. But the colours only come out to play on special occasions or in certain moods. In periods of peak stress Severus has come to appreciate that Hecate wants the comfort of a suit the way a knight wants the comfort of their armour. One morning, after Hecate has barely slept while researching for her thesis and redoing the running sheet for the school concert, she tears through her wardrobe in a way he never sees. She is careless with her garments, even tosses something on the bed.

“Cate?” He asks her gently, fingers falling away from their task of buttoning his shirt.

“I can’t find my Jaeger suit.” She says. He can feel her trying not to yell at him. The black Jaeger pantsuit – one of the most expensive outfits Hecate owns – is her preferred ensemble for the most challenging moments of her career. It shrouded her during her dismissal as well as her recent promotion. It is a comfort in moments of tension and trial.

Today Severus has the misfortune of informing her “I believe that suit is among the items you left at my flat.” Hecate freezes, turns her near-black eyes on him. Her rage is so palpable Severus thinks he can see sparks crackle in the air around her. Her fingers flex and she lets out a mewl of frustration; Severus thinks it would be a scream if she hadn’t clamped her lips shut.

“I don’t have time to…” She mumbles more to herself than him. He knows she is considering making the journey to his rental before going to work, but they’ve not allowed enough time.

Severus passes before her and retrieves from the wardrobe a black sleeveless dress with a matching jacket that he knows will serve her as well as the Jaeger. Hecate’s fingers close around the coat hanger and he watches her attempt to master her breathing. Severus doesn’t say anything trite to her, like the suit isn’t doing the job for you. He thinks she would strike him if he attempted to placate her. What Severus does, however, is perhaps even more ill-advised.

“Situations such as this could be avoided if we chose one house to live in.”

Hecate blinks at him. She loves him desperately, in a way she never thought she could love anyone, but right now she genuinely considers closing her fingers around his neck and choking him to death for adding another thought to her already clogged brain.

Severus’ superior mind knows he has picked the absolute wrong moment to suggest that they live together, but sometimes he cannot help making what he considers to be a logical observation. Moving will be stressful, yes, but at this point keeping track of where they are sleeping on a given day is also causing her stress. A normal person would back away from the comment based solely on the look in her eyes, but Severus Snape has never said anything to Hecate that he does not mean, and he certainly means this.

Hecate shakes her head at him numbly, turns on her heel and shuts herself in the bathroom to dress and dry her hair. She does not usually shut the door.

When she emerges, dry and made up and dressed in her protective black wool dress and jacket, Hecate pretends he’s not mentioned the prospect of them living together. She has too much on her mind, she rationalises. This is simply one too many things for her to deal with. Hecate had skimmed his comments on her students’ learning module quizzes before sinking into bed beside him early this morning, so instead of addressing anything real, she makes idle conversation about the students who have fully comprehended acids and bases. Severus decides not to challenge their equilibrium by mentioning them cohabiting again. They drive to work with a normal flow of conversation passing between them, a normal level of affection. Hecate lets Severus out of her car five minutes from the school gates as usual, pressing her stay-put crimson coated lips to his tenderly.

“I love you.” She whispers, the only indication of her trying to smooth the waters after he suggested they live together. Severus nudges her nose with his, pecks her lips again.

“And I love you.”

“I shall see you for nicotine.” She says wryly as he slips out of the car. Severus marvels at the fact that he still feels the overwhelming urge to undress her and pin her to the nearest flat surface every time she arches her eyebrow at him in this way.

They see each other for cigarettes three times during the day. They text. They make incidental contact. She pops into one of his classes with a feeble excuse when, really, she can’t remember which chapter she’s supposed to be teaching the year eights. While Hecate is keeping herself together remarkably well for someone doing as much work as she is, Severus worries. These little lapses are absolutely uncharacteristic of her, and bely the pressure she is placing on herself.

While they smoke their end of day cigarettes, Hecate keeps one of her hands on Severus, running her fingers absently up and down his lapel. He’s not sure she realises she’s doing it – her eyes are unfocussed, like she is somewhere very far away. He suspects she’s somewhere without PhD deadlines and school concerts. He hopes he is still there in some form. When she focuses on him at last, she’s sure he’s been watching her this whole time.

“Where are we tonight?” She asks, trying to bring back some sense of normalcy and dispel the concern in his eyes.

“Your house, unless you want your suit.”

Hecate moves her hand instinctively to his grandmother’s watch, drums her fingers on the intricate metal cover. He’s noticed this tick develop since he gifted it to her, Hecate steadying herself while she calculates.

Today is Thursday. She thinks. Tomorrow there is an assembly.

“Your flat, I think.” She says. Severus nods and brushes his lips against hers.

“Good luck with the new running order.”

“Thank you, my love.”

Hecate slides into bed beside him at 11:30; a relatively early night for her these days, but Severus is already half asleep. He turns instinctively towards her when he feels her cool arm wind around his torso.

“Good evening.” He murmurs. Hecate smiles at the thickness of his voice, flowing slowly from his mouth like cold molasses. She breathes in the soft fragrance of his skin and feels her shoulder muscles loosen. Hecate’s fingers itch for him even though she’s already touching him. She flexes them against the firm reality of his ribs and presses her bare pink lips to the skin beneath his collar bone.

“Where would we live, if we lived together?” She feels his energy rise, like electricity under her palm.

“I have no preference.” She concentrates on the feel of his breath on her forehead. Hecate struggles to remember what her life was before she knew all the little sensations that accompany their relationship. She’s sure she was different before him. She’s sure the Hecate who didn’t know the comfort of his heartbeat under her hand was a more stable creature. Impervious, but untouched, too. She never would have expected to find such vulnerability a positive thing, a strength in its own way, but she thinks she’s better for loving him. She thinks she’s better for having defrosted a little.

“Your flat is newer.” Hecate notes, knowing she should let him sleep, knowing this isn’t a question that needs to be answered tonight.

“Yours house larger.” He counters on a mumble.

“We can determine a weighting system and come to a conclusion the Saturday after the concert.” Hecate says, visions of the two of them sitting at her kitchen table in robes, eating eggs and debating the most important factors of a home flashing behind her eyes.

“Are you saying ‘yes’, Hecate?”

“It’s far too soon for us to move in together. But coming home to you is the best part of my day.” Hecate remarks, sliding up his body to find his lips and press a lazy kiss to them. “Naturally I’m saying yes. Are you surprised?”

Severus’ mouth curves into a sinful smirk as the word “Obviously,” slithers out of his perfect lips. Content, Hecate burrows further into the warmth of him and falls asleep to the sound of Severus’ even breathing.

When Hecate wakes, she finds a pile of marking on her bedside table, which Severus sets a mug of coffee beside. Hecate reaches for him before he can peel away, kissing him deeply.

“I had forgotten there was anything due.”

Once again Severus feels a pang of anxiety. This is completely unlike her. “You have many pressing matters on your mind.” He observes to avoid expressing his concern.

Although she won’t voice this, Hecate is also concerned by the slip in her normally conscientious work.

She is glad of the protection of her fine wool Jaeger pantsuit and crisp white shirt. She hangs the antique fob watch around her neck as she does every day now, taps it idly with her sharp fingernails while she sips at her coffee.

“Do you think I’ve taken on too much, Severus?” She asks over the rim of her mug while he’s fastening his tie in the mirror. He turns back to her, surprised to find them on the same wavelength on this particular matter.

“You can do whatever you set your mind to, Hecate. I think you should prioritise things as you see fit.”

Hecate nods, rolling his answer over in her mind, trying to organise her thoughts, formulate a list for the day.

“Shall we?” He asks, glancing at his watch and pulling her back into the room with him. Hecate sculls the rest of her coffee and nods at him, enjoying the way his hand brushes over the small of her back as he trails her out of his charmless flat. At last something begins to dawn on Hecate that she was only dimly aware of last night: deciding to live with Severus is a decision that will brighten the rest of her life.