5 months, 1 week:

"Ooohhh...yes," Hermione moaned, slipping her arms underneath her pillow and dropping her head down on it.

"Is that so?" Severus smirked at her from the other side of the bed as he unbuttoned his shirt.

"Mmmhmm," Hermione mumbled, rubbing her face into the pillow and stretching out on her stomach. "You have no idea how glorious this feels."

"I thought you would be less tired with him sleeping through the night now," Severus said, slipping out of his shirt and draping it over a chair. She watched him lazily from the bed as he started in on his trousers.

"If he wasn't I'd probably have started offing people by now. Perhaps I should start with the reporters who have given up on the Atrium and have taken to stalking me whenever I step out of doors," she grumbled, her voice slightly muffled.

"They're still after you?" he asked, stepping out of his black slacks and hanging them with the shirt.

"Yes," she said, poking her head up a bit as she took him in standing there in nothing but a pair of black cotton pants. "Why don't they stalk you?"

"They tried," he said. "My wards jinx anyone who walks in my shop with a camera and a press pass on their person."

"Too bad I can't do that to the Ministry," she said, leaning up on her elbows. "Are you coming to bed, or what?" she demanded, watching him rifle through the pockets of the trousers he had just taken off.

He looked up and smirked at her. "I thought you were tired?"

"I found my second wind," she said, grinning and rolling over to her side so that she could face him. "Are you coming?"

"Is this where I make a crude comment? Something along the lines of 'not quite yet'?" he grinned, pulling back the duvet and sliding underneath it in a smooth motion. Hermione tossed her head back and laughed.

"It takes away from the crudeness when you use the word 'quite' in the sentence," she said, leaning forward to kiss his smirking lips, "but sure, whatever works for you Severus."

"How about just this?" he murmured, reaching up to cup her face and bring it closer for another kiss.

Hermione melted into him, her own hand working up his neck, over his sharp jaw line and into his hair. It was, admittedly, a bit greasy but she had quickly learned that this was through no fault of his own. In school Ron and Harry had assumed that Severus was simply dirty and afraid of a little soap while Hermione had never really given it much thought. Now she knew that he was, in fact, a bit of a neat freak and took great care in his hygiene. He simply happened to pick a profession that, when combined with crap genetics, meant that his skin was oilier than most.

They separated for breath and Hermione slid onto her back so that she was almost under him. "If I said you have to do all the work, would you object?" she asked, tucking his hair behind an ear.

"The things I do for you, witch," he muttered but there was a smile playing about his lips as he ducked his head to kiss down her neck.

He slowly divested her of her night shirt and knickers, kicking off his own pants at some point, and proceeded to 'do all the work'. When he wasn't drunk and horny, Severus was a slow and methodical lover. He kissed as much of her body as he could reach while purposely avoiding the one place she desperately wanted his mouth as she wriggled around. He exploited the fact that her thighs were extremely ticklish, letting his stubbly chin drag along the sensitive skin leading up to her apex and making her shriek. She flailed, her legs kicking out as she shot up to grab at his head.

"You're going to make me bald, woman," he growled at her from between her legs, pulling on the hand that had latched on to his hair.

"And you're going to make me knee you in the face by accident if you don't stop that!" she retorted, laughing.

"Stop? Stop what?" he smirked. "This?" he leaned forward and swiftly placed a kiss against her sex, slipping his tongue between her lips and making her gasp. Her legs, which had clamped down on his shoulders fell open with a speed that shouldhave made her blush—but didn't.

"Would you like me to stop, Hermione?" he asked, looking up at her with his dark eyes.

"No," she said softly, her gaze locked on his.

"Tell me," he murmured, teasing her gently with his fingers while he watched the sensations play across her face. "Tell me what you want, Hermione."

"I want you to kiss me again," she murmured, gasping as he complied. His lips found her clitoris and gently pulled, making her back arch.

"And?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"Tongue," she managed to get out, leaning back on one hand as the other carded though his hair.

Again, he quickly obeyed, teasing her with his tongue and making her head fall back on her shoulders. She fought with instinct to raise her hips, seeking out more friction.

"Anything else?"

"Fingers," her whisper quickly morphed into a groan as he began pumping into her with his hand. "More, Severus. Please."

It was only after such moments, after the haze and the glow had faded, that Hermione remembered the wanton ways she responded to this man, the way she fell apart with the slightest urgings from him. She'd blush later as her mind recalled the way she'd breathed his name but not now. Now was for shelving things like pride and dignity in favour of pleasure at his hands.

"Se-Severus," she moaned. "Please."

"Please what?" he asked, sitting up.

"More," she demanded.

He smirked at her and grabbed her from behind the knees, tugging her sharply down the bed and closer to where he knelt. Leaning forward, he covered her body with his and felt her thighs cradle his hips as he guided himself inside her. She watched his eyes drift shut and caught his soft 'oh' of pleasure with her lips.

Their lovemaking was slow and sweet, as befitted the mood they both found themselves in. When Hermione reached her release she brought him with her, almost at the same moment, and she basked in the wave of pleasure that washed over both of them. He always pulled her tightly against him in that moment, grunting her name while he hid his face against her skin as if he didn't want her to see him come undone. It didn't matter to her, not when he pressed gentle kisses to whatever skin he could find as their hearts slowed to a normal pace. It didn't matter because, without fail, he would lie next to her afterwards, trailing his fingers over her skin, and watch her succumb to her exhaustion with an unguarded face. It didn't matter because in those moments between an orgasm and the bliss of sleep, she thought he just might love her, too.

xXx

The next morning was slow and lazy, as befitted a Saturday with nothing to do. Severus would open his shop at eleven or so and Hermione would take Sebastian to visit her mother and go grocery shopping at the local Tesco near her family home. It had become part of their routine; she and her mother would spend Saturday together doing the things that needed being done out of the microscopic view of the Wizarding world.

Pouring hot water into the teapot and setting it on the table near Severus, Hermione decided to broach the topic that she had been avoiding for almost a week.

She doled out porridge into two bowls and sweetened it with milk and honey, adding in some fruit for good measure and set one down in front of Severus who was trying to convince Sebastian to take a bottle. The baby was having none of it and it was only his father's arm wrapped firmly around his midsection that kept the babe from flailing his way off his father's lap.

"Thank you," he mumbled without looking at the bowl. "Sebastian, take the damn bottle."

Sebastian screwed up his face and yelled at his father, batting away the bottle at the same time. Severus growled lowly in his throat. "I've never had this much trouble from a child before."

"That's because your students feared you," Hermione said, walking around the back of his chair and plucking the bottle out of his hands. "And your son does not." She crouched in front of the two of them and reached out to tickle Sebastian's foot. He giggled and kicked out.

"You've got ticklish feet like, Mummy, don't you sweetie?" she smiled at him. She continued to tease her son, walking her fingers up his little legs and tickling him gently; he squealed and flapped his arms happily at her while Severus watched her silently. Without making a big fuss of it, Hermione slipped the bottle in her mouth and made it look as if she were drinking from it. She continued to tease and tickle her son as she did so but his attention slowly wandered from what she was doing with her free hand to what she was doing with the one that held the bottle.

When he reached out for it, both hands grasping, and let out a low whine in the back of his throat Severus chuckled. "You cannot be serious," he muttered, watching as Hermione handed over the bottle with a smile. She helped guide it into her son's mouth, letting his little hands take over. Sebastian hadn't gotten the hang of holding it up properly but Severus quickly steadied him.

With a grin and a kiss on his foot, Hermione got up and made her way to her seat. Digging into her breakfast, she watched Severus feed himself with one hand and Sebastian with the other. Smiling indulgently, she fixed him a cup of tea since he couldn't do it himself.

"Thank you," he murmured again, taking a sip. Sebastian watched his father's movements carefully, chewing on the nipple of his bottle more than actually drinking from it.

"If you'd be so inclined to not bite my head off this time," Hermione said, putting down her mug of tea and looking over at Severus, "I'd like to talk to you about the possible merits of giving the press what they want."

He frowned at her. "Why do you care for my opinion, Hermione?"

"Because I value your opinion," she frowned back. "Doesn't mean I'll agree with it but I want it nonetheless."

"It's your decision," he said, shrugging and spooning up more porridge.

"No," she insisted. "It's our decision, Severus. It concerns both of us, and our son. That's what people in a relationship, especially people who have a child together, do."

Severus was silent as Sebastian reached out for his father's spoon, making a sound that vaguely translated into 'I want that!'. Severus scooped up a tiny bit of porridge and held it up to Sebastian's lips for him to taste. She smiled as she watched Sebastian open his mouth, taste the food, and decided that no, he did not want it anymore. With a wet splat the tiny morsel landed on his father's robes.

"Well don't ask for it next time," Severus told him quietly, putting down his spoon and picking up his wand to clean up the mess. When he placed his wand back down on the table next to his mug, he finally looked up at Hermione.

"It might satisfy them," he agreed, sounding as if it was hard for him to do so. "But the question is for how long? Do you want to set a precedent for giving them what they want? They will want more from you eventually."

"There is that possibility," she agreed, relieved that he was finally talking to her. "I could use that to my advantage, though, no? Offer an exclusive interview to one paper and one only with the agreement that they would never ask for another."

"That would not stop others from seeking you out, however," he reminded her, picking up his mug. Sebastian reached out for this, apparently not satisfied with his bottle, but Severus guided his hand out of his son's reach. "Not until you're at least sixteen," he told the baby.

"Sixteen?" Hermione questioned. She had started drinking tea far before that.

"Caffeine stunts the growth," Severus supplied easily. "You have received offers for interviews before this idea, I'm assuming?"

"Yes," she nodded and reached over the table to help Sebastian guide the bottle back to his mouth. "The parchment alone could keep me in good supply of kindling for a year."

"And are you sure you're willing to confess all?" he asked, changing the topic. "Do you really want all of Wizarding Britain to know that you conceived after a drunken shag?"

"I never said I'd be willing to confess all," she said, shrugging lightly. "I figured that we would make it out to be something that, while not planned, was not quite as cliché as reality."

"Are you ashamed, then?" he asked, his eyes zeroed in on her. Trust him to ask the awkward questions.

"Somewhat," she admitted, breaking his gaze and looking at her the child in his lap. "I'm not ashamed of him, or you, but I do wish that it had come about differently."

"Telling the exact details of how he came about would be counterproductive to your goals here," Severus said softly. "What will you tell them, instead?"

"Why not something about us seeing each other privately?" she said, tracing her finger against the wooden table.

"And how long have we been in this imaginary relationship?" Severus asked, his tone dry and amused. She looked up to see a smirk on his face. "Weeks? Months? Are we to appear inexperienced with the concept of contraception or merely careless?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Either way, we're going to look careless, we already do. How about a couple of months? It makes us seem a little bit less like a pair of idiots and more like an honest slip up."

He nodded and looked down at his son who was leaning against his chest and sucking heartily at the bottle. "My biggest concern is the attention that will be thrown on to Sebastian and for how long. He is too young to understand it now, but what if this scrutiny continues, or picks up again when he is older? Potter experienced plenty of that kind of attention when he was a child and look how he turned out."

Hermione grinned. "Which is to say, he turned out fine," she teased. "I know what you're saying, and I agree, but what can we do Severus? They'll probably always wonder how we ended up here, and speculation about him will probably come and go; it will most likely pick up again when he enters Hogwarts and die down again afterwards."

"Why would the press care about his attending Hogwarts?" Severus asked. "Hundreds of children do every year."

"They'll want to know what House he ends up in," she said, amused. "And then they'll make up ridiculous assumptions about his character, and ours, depending on it."

"Lovely," he rolled his eyes. "I hadn't thought of that."

"I've given it too much thought," she admitted. "It's been driving me round the bend but the bottom line is that I'm willing to try it. If it would get them to stop hounding me, that would be lovely. As it is, I feel like I'm a giant inconvenience to the department when at least once a week they have to collar some idiot who tried to sneak up to get a picture of Sebastian and I. Not to mention it makes going to Diagon Alley impossible! I travel everywhere through Floo or Apparition, I don't remember the last time I walked through the street and into your shop."

He sighed. "I despise the fact that they will be able to use those photographs of him whenever they see fit, for whatever rubbish they choose to spew."

"They're going to get them one way or another, Severus," she said again. "I'd really rather it be on our terms."

He was silent for a while and she hoped that the contemplative look on his face, combined with the fact that she had actually gotten a conversation out of him this time, meant that he was actually giving it thought. She was open to other ideas, but she was pretty certain that if there were other options besides 'ignore them' she would have thought of it by now.

Sighing heavily he finally said, "Fine, but I will be there with you."

She smirked. "As if I could, or would want to, stop you."

"I think a reward is in order after this," he groused, eyeing her with obvious intent.

"Is that how our relationship is going to work?" she laughed. "Am I to bribe you with sex?"

"I'm not opposed to it," he shrugged and his lips quirked.

"And what about when you want something?" she asked, arching her eyebrows.

"Are you suggesting that sex is not enough incentive for you?" he asked. His voice was light but there was a hint of something there, something that might have been vulnerability. If he had been anyone other than Severus Snape she might have thought he was fishing for reassurance. Without a word, she got up and moved to stand behind him.

Threading her fingers through his hair, she combed it back off his face, dragging her nails lightly down his scalp the way she knew he liked. His head fell back slightly even as his grip on Sebastian increased. He watched her with dark, intense eyes, as she lowered her lips to his ear and whispered.

"It really depends, Severus," she tugged lightly on the end of his hair. "On whether or not you're willing to make my...dreams come true."

"That depends on what you dream about," he murmured.

She grinned wolfishly and pressed a kiss against his neck. "Hmm...my favourite was the one where you fucked me against the wall next to my front door."

She heard him swallow and his breathing hitch.

"I'm holding your son, you do realize this, correct?" he asked, a trace of his usual sneer in his voice. She straightened and smiled triumphantly at him before placing a kiss on his upturned lips.

"I know," she laughed. "And with that, I'm off to owl Kingsley and take a shower. You don't mind watching Sebastian for a few, do you?"

He growled, she laughed.