At the end of it all, it didn't end with a whimper or a with a bang.

Friends reacted with shock, then with resignation, and finally with that sort of tired boredom. Yes, Hermione. We're here for you, love, just...not tonight. I'll call tomorrow. You'll be fine - you're strong and fierce. We'll talk. Later.

It had been small things at first. Then bigger ones. Evenings spent cuddled on the couch had become evenings of "what's for dinner?" and "Thanks 'Mione! I'm meeting the boys for a drink." Eventually ever dinner became too much of an effort and he came home after the fun and games were done.

She'd tried to compensate. Better meals, things she knew he liked. She bought books. A lot of books, then took up a second job to free a little more room in the budget would make up for the time she spent away from home. And the money she spent on books. It was thankless work, not terribly suited to her skillset or her training, but it paid decently even if she didn't have much time for her books anymore. Driving the graveyard shift on the Knight Bus made for a strange existence, turning her already pale complexion wan as she drove drunken wizards and witches across back and forth across the British motorways. Ron never seemed to notice that she wasn't there and rarely woke when she stumbled in an hour before dawn.

She lay there, night after night, listening to his snores bounce off the ceiling, dreading the next meal with Molly when the woman would fret over Hermione's lackluster appearance and low energy.

Two years of this before Ron sat her down. Before he explained that the sex wasn't good. It wasn't plentiful. That he was unfulfilled. That he simply didn't feel that he could be emotionally secure in their relationship. At least, not their relationship alone. That he needed more - a girlfriend. Maybe two.

The silencing charms on their flat hadn't held that night. They'd shattered with her first embarrassing screech, and stayed down as her anger and her tears threatened to flood the kitchenette.

She'd moved out two weeks later, taking refuge with Harry and Draco whose home - thank the Gods - was always open to her. They'd fed her tea and hugged her as she'd sobbed and generally made her feel safe in a way she hadn't realized she was missing.

Ron didn't call to bring her back home.

After a few weeks, Ron didn't call at all.

I love you, 'Mione. You're my wife. I just need time to sort myself out right now. We'll go out next week. Mum sends her love by the way. Oh, gotta go now. Early morning tomorrow, y'know.

She tried to ignore her misgivings for the first few months. He assured her that they would work on reconciliation just as soon as he sorted out the mess in his own head. So she waited. She got up most mornings to go to work at the ministry, (mis)using her hard-won Potions mastery to brew standard healing potions for the auror department. She missed a few days here and there - the bed was so comfortable and sleep so wonderfully numbing - but her supervisor was fairly uninterested in Hermione's physical presence so long as the work got done.

She'd gone to a therapist and that helped. And the work always got done. The bills always got paid. Even when she drove an extra shift on the weekend, adding hours to her already hectic schedule.

She tried to ignore the visible worry on Harry and Draco's faces.

She gently refused their offers of financial assistance, if only to save her own pride.

She survived that way for more than eight months before it all fell apart. So it ended not with a whimper, not with a bang. It ended with the tap of Draco's nails on her bedroom door. With a murmured we need to talk.

He has a girlfriend.

Has had. For awhile. Told everyone you okayed it.

I'm so sorry, love. A hug so gentle it made her want to scream.

She'd hired a lawyer the next day.

It took awhile to get back into the swing of things. She'd never been good at dating. Ten years of marriage to Ron hadn't improved those skills, and the advent of wizarding matchmaking spells hadn't made the process any more simple or streamlined in the ten years she'd been away from the dating scene.

It was utterly exhausting. After her fourth near-silent date over mediocre steamed chicken and warm rosé, Hermione opted to leave it behind entirely. She took up macrame. Then ceramics. Both were near-utter failures. Finally, she returned to her roots and steeped herself in herself in academia. She quit her job, thanks to a grant from friends in high places (bless Kingley and his continuing education initiative).

Three years in a research-heavy programme that would leave her with a mastery double mastery in Conservation Herbology and Healing Draftsmanship. At its conclusion, she would be able to write her own ticket professionally, no longer locked into the drudgery of brewing for the ministry day in and day out, but able to move into non-corporeal healing potions research and development as she'd once dreamed.

She anticipated that the time away from her friends and family, cloistered with her academic peers, would be the best thing to happen to her since killing a megalomaniacal, snake-faced pretender to the proverbial crown of wizarding Britain. Even better, she would escape the constant, smothering care of her roommates and parents. The Madagascar rainforests were supposed to be beautiful year round, if a bit overly-wet. Though she'd never lived in a climate like that before, she felt her reading had more than prepared her for the experience.

What she was not prepared for was the fact that her academic cohort contained only one other person.

And that her peer - her sole equal for the next two years of study beneath the greatest herbal healer since Airmed herself - was one Severus Snape, potions master, war hero, and git extraordinaire.

Or that they would be sharing a small cabin in the isolated Mandrare Sud Wizarding reserve for the entirety of their three year Mastery.

"Granger." The greeting was grunted as Snape, still clad in his pajama bottoms and open dressing gown, stumbled his way out of his room and toward the brewing tea pot. He sent a thoughtful glance toward the torrential downpour outside their cabin before snagging a mug from the shelf.

"Good morning, Severus ," Hermione responded as had nearly every day for the past six monthsd of their cohabitation. She smirked at his repeated grunt as he poured black-as-pitch tea into an oversized mug. She had been trying to break his habit of addressing her like a recalcitrant school girl since orientation week with only limited success. He remembered to call her by her given name during field work or when in town, but when ensconced in reading or during his slow-waking mornings, he generally reverted to a terse "Granger." At least he'd had the temerity to avoid her married surname in favor of her newly reinstated maiden moniker.

"Olitiana left some mofo gasy before she left this morning," Hermione replied, referring to the Kalanaro who served as their part-time cook and guide to local culture. "There's guava too."

Severus's eyes lit up at that. He padded toward the stove and picked up one of the still-warm mofo gasy with long, elegant fingers, bringing it to his nose to inhale deeply before taking a healthy bite. Hermione watched as he chewed and swallowed. Her eyes traced over the contours of his jaw and down the lean lines of his throat, fascinated by the movement of the muscles under his still-pale skin. She felt herself flush under the collar of her own dressing gown.

Severus continued to eat his way through a stack of the fried Malagasy breakfast treats, seemingly oblivious to Hermione's attentions.

Probably for the best, she thought, shifting slightly in her seat.

Living with Snape - with Severus - had become increasingly problematic in the past few weeks. It had started innocently enough. They'd been out with Rakotoarisoa, their master and guide on the reserve, gathering a magical offshoot of Madagascar periwinkle to be cultivated in the greenhouse adjacent to their living quarters. Severus had been bent double, working his wand over the delicate roots of the flower, attempting to lift the plant and its roots whole from the ground as carefully as possible. Rather than watching Severus's hands as they were guided by Rakotoarisoa, Hermione found herself disturbingly fixated on a rather more rear-facing part of his anatomy.

She remembered licking her lips and tilting her head, thinking that she could bounce a sickle off that arse.

The realization had been startling to say the least.

And arousing. More than arousing, truth be told.

Since then, her fantasies had been fueled by thoughts of gripping the muscled posterior of her academic peer as he pounded into her with swift, smooth strokes.

And it hadn't stopped there.

The next week she'd been found herself speculating that the long, hooked nose that she'd mentally derided throughout her formative years would do some rather interesting things to her clitoris during a round (or three) of mutual oral sex.

And that his fingers might be equally stimulating when wrapped around the softness of her breast or stroking her nipples.

She'd had to place an embarrassing and extremely expensive floo call to Luna the next time she'd gone to town and ask her to send her one of the new magic-powered vibrators that Lavender Brown stocked in her Sensu Alley store. Luna had giggled like...well, like a loon. But she had come through in spectacular style by sending not just a handy little pocket vibe, but a pulsating, gyrating thing that could only be described as part dildo, part vibrator, and part G-spot stimulator. She'd excused herself from the shared sitting-room-turned-library early that night, cast the strongest silencing spell she knew, and proceeded to send herself to the moon whilst imagining Severus Snape - he of the firm buttocks and long fingers and irresistibly sexy voice - perched behind her and pistoning into her like a madman.

She'd been at a loss to explain her exhaustion the next day.

The worst of it is that she was fairly sure she'd never been less subtle about a developing crush in her life...and for a Gryffindor who spent multiple years mooning after her philandering asshole of an ex-husband before he finally noticed that she was female and yes she'd very much like to have sex, that was truly saying something.

"You're staring." His voice - that voice - startled her from her reverie.

"Sorry?"

" You're staring, Granger. Again."

She could feel the blush from the roots of her hair to her toes. "Oh. Um. Apologies. Wool gathering, I suppose."

Severus snorted delicately before taking a sip of his tea and joining her at the table. "You've been gathering quite a bit of wool the past few weeks," he commented dryly.

"Well, so much to learn, you know. I'm...absorbing," she improvised.

Severus raised an eyebrow. "Really? Because I've noted that you've also been distressingly absent from the sitting room most evenings. I suspect you're woefully behind in your reading. Are you sure you're not coming down with something?"

Damn. This is the problem with living with a bloody spy, she thought. Yes, I'm coming down with something. Adolescent fever dreams about having a hard cock between my-

"Hermione?" he probed.

"N-no!" she stammered. "I've been doing some independent study. Alone. Individually."

"Indeed. That would be the definition of independent," he quipped as he sipped at his tea again. Hermione watched as he stroked one long finger down the side of the mug. She tried not to salivate. "You know," he continued, "too much time in individual study could be detrimental to your work."

"How so?" she asked with some trepidation.

"Well, as someone who works...adjacent to you so frequently, I worry that your technique might become sloppy." That finger was stroking the rim of the mug now, around and around. Hermione was trying very, very hard not to imagine it tracing similar circles around her navel.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," she replied on a slow exhale. Gods. How was it possible for the man to make her wet before he'd finished his first cuppa?

"Don't you?" he asked, leaning back in his chair. "Speaking of adjacent, did you know that our rooms are near mirror images of one another?"

Confused by the shift in topic, Hermione glanced up. "Of course. I got the same tour you did when we moved in."

He nodded sagely. "Then you'd like that my your headboard occupies the same space of wall that yours does."

She drew up short. "I...what are you getting at, Severus?"

"Oh nothing. Just that silencing spells do very little when the sudden jostling of one's headboard wakes one's flatmate by knocking him in the head."

She felt her cheeks heat further. "I'm so sorry. I'm, uh...a restless sleeper."

"Are you? And did you know that a caster can break their own silencing spell in a moment of heightened emotion?"

Hermione felt all the blood drain from her face. She was suddenly lightheaded. "Oh Gods."

"I believe the phrase I heard you scream last night was 'Oh, Severus,' if I'm not mistaken." She watched in fascination as a slow, wicked smile spread across his face.

"Kill me now," Hermione whimpered, lowering her head into her hands.

"That hardly seems sporting," the dark-haired man replied, setting his mug on the table. She heard him rise, and looked up through her mass of curls when she heard him clear his throat next to her. She saw his hand hovering near hers, elegant fingers extended in a gesture of invitation. "As it happens, I've been engaging in some independent study myself these past few weeks."

Hermione looked at him fully then, eyes wide in shock. "Have you?" she asked in a shaky voice.

"I have. And I've developed a hypothesis, if you're interested."

Hermione placed her hand in his and allowed him to draw her to her feet. "And what would that be," she asked in a quiet voice.

"Mmmhmm. I hypothesize that the height of the kitchen counters would be truly excellent for inventive fucking." His dark eyes fired with laughter in his otherwise serious face.

Hermione spluttered a laugh. "You might be right," she said on a giggle. "But I think I'd rather test equipment form and function before taking it into more adventurous locales."

"By all means," he replied, dipping his head toward hers. "Even the most inexperienced scientist will tell you that any hypothesis requires rigorous testing." Still grasping her hand, he led her toward his bedroom. "And as the weather precludes any field work, I suggest we start establishing a baseline this morning."

Hermione tossed her head back and allowed herself to be led. "By all means, let's begin data collection."

Draco smiled as Harry leaned against him in the arrivals terminal of the International Portkeys Office. "Nearly years is a long time," Harry murmured worriedly. "And she said she had a surprise. D'you think that's why she's coming home early?"

"Calm yourself love. I'm sure it's a good one," Draco replied, draping an arm around his lover's shoulder. "She probably just outperformed everyone in a thousand mile radius, earned her mastery, and saved the world again. I'm sure that's the only reason she's home four months early."

They watched as a crowd began to emerge through the frosted glass doors separating the upper-level arrival platforms from the waiting area, hoping to see a familiar head of curly hair. Within moments their wish was granted and they saw Hermione's head bobbing above the crowd as they descended the stairs.

"Is that -" Harry began.

"Uncle!" Draco cried, accidentally cuffing Harry in the head as he started forward without removing his arm from the shorter man's shoulders. "I didn't know you were expected back today. And Hermion-" he cut himself off as he glanced down, caught short. "You're -"

Harry skidded to a stop beside him and made a very strange squawking noise as a noticeably pregnant Hermione ran toward her best friend for a hug.

"Shut your mouth, Draco. You don't want to attract flies," Severus drawled as Hermione flung herself at Draco in turn.

"How on earth-" Draco started in a choked voice as he squeezed her gently in return.

Hermione released him to place her hand in Severus's, her grin broadening when her wedding ring - only a few weeks old - glinted in the bright lights of the ministry offices. "Surprise?" she said, trying to hold in her giggles as Harry fainted dead away in the middle of the polished travertine floor.