A/N: A bit of a what if story...

A Matter of Need

By Catsitta

Ebon eyes watch from across the room. Brown pull from the simmering cauldron, alert and aware. Then, someone blinks. The moment broken. This is a familiar dance, one that would end soon. She would graduate and he would hide his prize away in the depths of the Hogwarts dungeons. No one would question it. Two bright minds finding each other in the agonizing doldrums.

One could argue that she was too young. Hermione Granger was but eighteen to his thirty-eight years. Two decades stood between them. But when one is Severus Snape, eighteen is far more familiar than nearly forty. He started teaching young, out of sheer desperation when he gained his mastery as a half-blood slytherin in a post-war world. A suspected follower of the Dark Lord before his fall. The black ink marring his forearm attested to his guilt, and only Dumbledore granted him mercy.

Thus here he was, stewing in a cesspool of teenage angst, practically ostracized from adult companionship. True, there were the other professors, but they were beyond him in years by decades. Even after all these years of teaching, he felt little kinship, their judging eyes hot on his back. Most of them barely tolerated the dark man in their midst and those who claimed to enjoy his company were akin to the parents he never knew. As such, Severus Snape felt very...young. Like an abused, neglected child in the skin of an ugly, malnourished, middle-aged man. His only comfort was his mind. At least, until Hermione came along.

On occasion, bright students lit the halls and his heart, and when he reached the bottom of a bottle of firewhiskey he'd confess to a few attempts at seduction. Brilliant minds were beautiful to him, but every glimmer of hope he found in these students sputtered out when they boarded the train one last time and never returned. This time, he was not going to fail. Hermione was his. They were two lost souls that found each other in this nothingness they called living.

She was the busy-haired misfit who was an outcast even Ravenclaw. Her house boasting brains over all else. And he was her lonely professor, who was reluctant to admit his predatory nature. But who wouldn't crave that delicious innocence, that unpolished wit? Under his care, she flourished. Ever since fourth-year, when Hermione became old enough to take on the duties as a teacher's aid, he assumed a kind of guardianship over her. Built a friendship with the child who was too smart for her own good.

Severus stepped into the aisle, sweeping between the rows of potion benches, mitigating disasters with a flick of his wand, or wrist, whichever the situation called for. As he came to stand by Hermione, their eyes met again.

He was glad for the differences in wizarding culture from that of muggle. When he made her his fiance, there would be no stain on his name or hers. It used to be exceptionally common for such matches to be made. Now, it was more heard of for masters and apprentices to make suits, be it between themselves or with sons and daughters. It was all very archaic and meant this need they shared could be met. Because it was a shared need. A need not built of lust, nor love even, but of belonging.

She was beautiful to him, a sinful temptation as lovely as Eve herself. And he was salvation cloaked in black robes. In this world, marriage meant everything if you were a woman. Hermione knew she would never find a suitable match in time to start a career, not unless she was willing to barter herself off to some old master's son. Thus in need these two each other. In any other place or time, this quiet affair would be a scandal, their reputations ruined. But perhaps, had things been different, Severus would not be a lonely child stuck in a man's body and Hermione would not be the mousy outcast tucked away in the back most corner of the library. They would have never looked at each other and seen fulfillment.

This world, however, would be content to ignore them further. In this world without heroes and looming wars, where the quiet is a lazy haze of peace.

"Time is up," Severus drawled, once again pulling away from his chosen consort to glide to the front of the classroom. "Class dismissed."

As the students dispersed, he picked up a quill and dipped it in the pot of ink resting at the corner of his desk. Without a flourish, he made a single mark on a rumpled sheet of parchment.

"Two months," he murmured.

In two months, maybe he'd at last find his purpose.