Literatti: Fiction By Deslea

I Enjoy You
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2011


Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Keywords: SSHG (Snape, Hermione).
Rating: G.
Summary: At a function at Hogwarts, Hermione uses a willing Snape to make Ron jealous. At least, that's the way it starts. Postwar 300 word ficlet.
Disclaimer: Characters not mine. Interpretation mine.
More fic: http://fiction.deslea.com
Feedback: deslea@deslea.com

Author's note: I was tempted to make this into a bigger one, but I wasn't really sure where it would go, and it seemed so sweet and simple and complete just the way it was.



"So, is he jealous yet?"

He says this on their fifth dance, when polite conversation has become banter and banter has become comfortable silence, bodies relaxed into one another and her hand stroking gently on his neck. He has tolerated being used as a prop in her little play because he likes to dance and he likes her company and it was harmless enough, but she's much younger and his colleagues are starting to whisper and it's time for it to stop.

"I wouldn't know," she says into his cheek. He can feel her lips moving and warm air passing by his ear. "I stopped caring before the end of the first dance."

"Really," he says. "Because your ginger-haired boy wonder is just itching to come and punch me across the jaw." He wonders if that information will spark her interest.

It doesn't. "Let him itch," she says mildly. "I'm happy where I am."

He reproves, "You're a girl, Hermione. I'm old enough to be your father."

She laughs, softly, makes it sound intimate. "I'm twenty-one, Severus. I'm not a girl, not even in the Muggle world anymore. I'm a self-supporting woman. And as for you, the only way you could be my father is if you were indiscreet in seventh year." She's off in her calculations by a year or two, but he doesn't bother to correct her.

"You can't possibly be enjoying this," he says, but he says it with a slow smile, because she's happy, really happy for the first time since the war ended, maybe, and their bodies fit perfectly and he knows, against all common sense, that this is the way it starts. That the reason he was allowed to live is about to become clear.

"Oh, but I do," she says. "I enjoy you."

END