Our Shelter

by Annabelle_Rivers

Summary:

In the quiet of Spinner’s End, an unlikely pair healed and found a spark of hope in each other’s arms. But when the rest of the world comes knocking, will the home they found together be enough?

OR

Professor Snape is back to teaching DADA again. But in a Hogwarts changed by war and loss, can he find some acceptance? And what’s with the new Healer apprentice -- could Hermione Granger actually be dating Severus Snape?!

Notes:

Welcome to part two of the story started with ROOM AND BOARD!

Just a note at the top here - while this story will involve more people and tension, the core of this is still two people healing in the safety of each other. I promise a HEA.

Thank you for reading! <3

Chapter 1: The Letter

Hermione Granger needed something solid to fight against. Something real and unfeeling to drive her frustration into. And so it was the kitchen table that took her wrath. 

She leaned her weight against the rickety kitchen table she had dragged out into the back garden, pressing her strength into the pad of sandpaper in her hand as she scrubbed back and forth along its surface. Up and down with the grain, the rasp of the grit against wood filling her head to die back the scream clawing inside her chest, wanting to break free.

It wouldn’t help to scream. Or cry. Or fight Severus on this one. The truth of that did little to quell the need to do all three. 

She was angry at something she couldn’t fight. 

At the very universe for poor timing. At whomever had sent out the missive from the Minister for Magic this morning instead of tomorrow. At the owl who had brought it instead of losing it along the way.

At herself. At Severus. At powerful men long dead. At powerful men waiting in offices in London.

She was just angry, plain and simple, and rolling in the fear of what was to come. 

It was horribly unfair. They had had barely a full day to finally name their feelings and bask in the glow of new love before the world broke their peace back open. Weeks of long talks and mounting tension that culminated into one perfect day together and now there was a letter. 

A summons with language just soft enough to not be an official arrest. Severus was called in.

Of course, it was the Ministry that broke through the fragile walls they’d built. The pull of duty was too great for the man she’d fallen for to ignore. If the Ministry wanted him to show himself, he would without resisting. 

“I hate the Ministry,” she spit out to no one, dragging her hands back up the length of the small table. 

It wasn’t just this letter. It was everything.

This was the same Ministry that had waffled enough in the beginning of the war to make it easy for Voldemort to gain more traction. The same Ministry that had crumbled into totalitarian madness, putting people like herself away in Azkaban as Death Eaters took over the very foundation of their government. 

And now here they were, again , pulling the strings and Severus was too tied to duty to ignore them. How could she trust them to give him back?

She hadn’t seen it coming, not that afternoon.

Hours of bathing, lovemaking, and cuddling that she was delighted to find Severus an equal fan of had left her glowing.

They had finally come downstairs that early afternoon, still grinning madly at each other as he moved to make them some food and she’d leaned out the kitchen window to grab the paper. And there it was, that same Ministry seal stamped on an envelope on top of the folded Prophet . 

A summons in ink on parchment for Severus Snape to show himself to the new Minister.

The letter had been as vague as it had been commanding. The only offering back was that Severus was not being arrested and would be able to leave the same day to return home safely. 

Apparently, that was enough for him to not fight against it. Saying not another word to her, he had moved quickly to go upstairs and prepare himself, barely saying a word to her after they had read it. His quick agreement to heed the command had left her in the kitchen alone, pacing back and forth as her hands twisted in the fabric of her t-shirt. 

The written promise that he wasn’t being arrested today was not enough for her. Not nearly enough. 

The truth of him was out there - it had to be after what Harry had shared in the battle. There was no way her friend would have let that rest without spilling the truth of the memories to the Order. The very same Order that Kingsley Shacklebolt, their new Minister, was part of.

Except that wasn’t the guilt that gnawed on the lining of her stomach and spurred Hermione into the action of pulling the kitchen table outside to begin sanding it, needing something to focus on before she launched herself upstairs and begged him to stay. 

No, it was knowing that at any point in these weeks spent redoing Severus’s house, she herself could have left and made his innocence clearly known. 

Drawing in a sharp inhale as she pushed against the grain again, she cursed herself for her own inaction. It could have made a difference if she had left the safe cocoon of this house and returned to the magical world. Had added her voice to Harry’s in declaring Severus a man always and forever on the side of the good.

What use was her love for him if he was to be dragged across the coals today? How could she protect him if there was a trial? Her youth and lack of standing where it mattered in their world brushed harshly against her. 

Severus had been saying for weeks that at some point, they would come. She should have listened. Shouldn’t have gotten complacent in the safety of his house. She could have left once the potions began working on him, gone to defend his role in the war.

But then she wouldn’t have known him as she did now. Wouldn’t have fallen for him and experienced the happiness of waking in his arms. She felt selfish in how she didn’t want a world where she would have given that possibility up. 

Huffing out a frustrated breath of air, she bent low to sand one of the legs, her eyes drifting up to the window above. 

Upstairs was the man she had come to care the most about, buttoning up the stiff, black frock coat under his usual black robes. Preparing his armor against the world as he was invited - no, beckoned with little room for interpretation, back into their world to meet with the new Minister for Magic. He would go, no matter the risk, because it was his duty to do so. And there was nothing she could do to stop it, her protests against him leaving would only hurt him. Hurt them.

This was a choice she had to accept. Severus believed the letter and the promises he would leave the Ministry as intact as he came. And so Hermione took it out on the table, buffing away years of wear and tear to help create something more polished and newer. Something for them.

A chant forming in her mind with each stroke. Let him be safe. Let him come home. Let it be okay. 

She leaned harder into the sandpaper, the scrape of it and the chant in her mind steadying her. Grounding her. This was something she could help, ticking off something more on their list as they revived his home into something that could be theirs to keep too. 

It wasn’t just that the letter had broken the peace of today. It was the weeks that had come before. Of the openness they had both softly invited in each other.

Spinner’s End had been little more than a shell when she had arrived with him bleeding out in her arms. So neglected that she had assumed it as some abandoned safe house rather than her former professor’s home. The carpets threadbare, the air stale, and a heavy weight of grief in the very walls.

It was his bravery to let her in, slowly and surely, that had started the entire transformation. First with revealing the truth of the bedroom now turned into her own, weeks of scrubbing and painting and repairing parts of his home as they grew closer through it all. The house has shifted under their sweat and work, softening into something livable. Something that made her smile and want to curl into his side all the more. 

Severus had shifted too. In quiet, sure ways as he trusted her with more and more of his past, opening a place for her in his future. How could she not have fallen for a man so willing to push past his instincts and let her in?

Waking in his arms this morning after a night of first pleasure had been the culmination of it all. It was why she was grieving at the feeling it was being torn away with one summons. How long until there were more pulls for his attention? More demands for his penance?

It was the sight of his black, dragon-hide boots that broke her rhythm. Hermione glanced up, seeing the dark sight of Professor Severus Snape in all his full glory for the first time at the home. 

Gone was Severus in his softer Muggle clothes, his hair often pushed back so that it fell asymmetrical and broke up the lines of his features. There was no faint trace of a smile or warmth in his eyes. 

Here was the hard face of the professor she had known before with cold, dark eyes and closed off face. His robes were dark enough to soak in the sunlight of the afternoon, a row of perfectly marked buttons long and clear in their message. 

This was a man prepared. They had asked for Severus Snape, and they would get him. The one people feared and hated. Not her Severus, the one she kissed long into the morning. 

This was a man used to answering summons he didn’t want out of need, ready to face the pain and harm that came with them. Would their Minister treat him as Voldemort had? Or even the late Headmaster?

Hermione glanced back at the table, moving to a new leg as neither broke the silence. Her anger finding a new home in Severus for accepting the summons without argument, as though punishment was something he still expected. Welcomed, even. 

Her grip tightened. Dust fell below her hands. 

Neither spoke. It wasn’t one of their silences that meant acceptance, one that stretched out as they scrambled for what to say in the safety of soft conversations against his headboard. 

This one crackled with new tension. He had retreated behind his walls, and she was barely in check from breaking down.

It was stubborn and ridiculous that she didn’t want to be the first to break the silence that strummed uncomfortably between them. Her cheeks flushed warm with her own behaviour, feeling far from the confident woman who had pulled him closer in the bath only an hour or so ago.

She kept sanding, the rasp of the motion filling in where the birds didn’t in the garden.

After a while, Severus snorted, a harsh sound she’d heard many times as his student.

 “Have I suddenly grown horns? Am I so grotesque to you now?”

She glanced up sharply, “Of course not.”

His reply was as cold and brittle as she had heard from him before coming to his home. “Ah, she manages to glance my way.”

Hermione bristled, bearing down on the sandpaper harder to keep from taking the bait of the fight. Saying nothing to stop from saying the wrong thing. 

“What would you have me do?” Even his voice was colder, more distant. “I come now, or I’m dragged out here, Hermione. What do you want from me? ”

She knew it to be true, even as she pressed the sandpaper harder against the table leg, the grit biting at the wood. She didn’t meet his eyes. If she did, she would relent immediately, already feeling foolish at how overwhelming her frustration was as it sought out someone to blame. 

It was easier to be angry than to let her fear take over. To be forced to trust a government that had never done her much good to let Severus return home that night, somehow unharmed when she knew at her core, there was no easy peace for a man forced to be Voldemort’s right hand only mere weeks ago. 

“I want you to tell me how you’re feeling about it,” Hermione said quietly, standing to meet him at last, brushing sand and grit away from her hands. “I want you to say something instead of just obeying.”

Severus stood rigid, his fingers flexing the only indication of his feelings. This wasn’t the man who let his shields stay dropped, allowing her to know him so deeply. He was too prepared for what waited for him to allow that, and she saw it.

“There’s no point,” he said at last in a flat voice. 

“That’s not true…how you feel matters to me. You matter.” 

“Not to them.” Severus ground out. “Talking about it doesn’t change anything now. I will answer this… request lest it turn into something worse.”

Hermione gave him a hard look, wanting to shake this away from him but knowing it would do nothing to help the situation. He would either leave with her angry at him or leave with what support she could muster. 

Rather than push again, she sighed, deflating some as she stepped closer. She reached for his collar before rethinking it, offering a small smile at the state of her hands coated in sawdust. 

It was enough to break this first level of tension, an edge of warmth returning to his eyes as he looked down at her. 

This next pause was now one of theirs, holding space for each other again. The air around and between them seemed to calm, magic receding back. They both exalted.

“If you don’t come home, I’ll raise hell,” she said, her voice softer now. “And we talk then. Or else.” The threat was barely strong enough to land but doing its job as the corner of his mouth twitched.

Severus leaned down, the barest of kisses against her lips as he met her promise with his own. She melted despite the torrent of emotions tightening her belly, pressing her lips up more firmly to echo the same back to him.

“I’ll return to you. You have my word.”

Chapter 2: Come Home

Notes:

I'm sooo far behind in responding to reviews - coming soon! But a HUGE thank you for the incredible kindness and welcome of this story continuing on. You all are the literal BEST! <3

Cloaking himself in his Occlumency shields again after weeks of keeping them at the very edges of his mind felt like falling back into a lake just after the ice had receded in spring. It looked innocent at first, clear and still in the light, but beneath the surface the true, deathly cold nature revealed itself . Swallowing whole.

He was engulfed in almost painful coldness that surged up from all sides, deafening his ears with the thrum of rushing water, stealing his breath away in the shock of it all. Plunging into the icy abyss, his body initially fought against the overwhelming feeling until the nothingness of it began to creep in. Back into the empty bliss of his mind's protection.

It was both a rush that took over his entire being and a slow, aching coming back to dull him over again. He was safe here. Protected. Secrets, emotions, his past, his future, all of it was locked behind the shields. Inaccessible.  

A necessary step as he prepared to face the world again, stepping into too many unknowns. He couldn’t arrive at the Ministry with thoughts of Hermione or the life they were building day by day at the surface. It was too easy to be ruled by fear then, knowing how much he had to lose. It would make him react, drawing his wand before thinking it through.

The numbing of his shields, the protection being pulled back over his mind and heart was essential. 

Severus looked at himself in the mirror upstairs, touching his fingertips together as if he would feel the cold that flooded through him. His expression was drawn, guarded. No half-smiles that it so often sat on his face these days, no amused warmth in his eyes. 

The man he was used to seeing was back in the mirror stared back at him, one so jaded by the world that he made himself an impenetrable shield. 

This was the man who would step into the Ministry today, prepared with all that he had to face what truly lay ahead from this meeting. Too many years when a summons for him meant he would suffer for Severus to trust today to be any different.

Methodically, he fastened each black button of his teaching robes, taking on the guise of the man they would expect today. Shrouded in black, stern and serious. Rather to be one they hated, they feared, than the more vulnerable man he felt like in his new life. 

Without magic, he buttoned himself up one by one. Cuffs tight. Collar high. Preparing as his mind numbed over for what lay ahead. 

Fingers moving up to close a button, Severus looked into his own dark eyes in the mirror. His worries were not sharp as his mind froze over but ever present in the fog.

What if this is a trick? Am I a fool? The letter seemed too easy, a request with the date and time dressed up like an invitation for tea with the new Minister. No Aurors arriving at his door, no outwards threats. He would arrive on his own accord. 

He had known Kingsley Shacklebolt to be a reasonable man. One more keen on smooth processes and rationality than rash rushing into fighting when Severus had known him in the Order. Was he the same? Was there a demand for retribution paid beyond imprisonment? A death sentence this time?

How could it work out that he would get to keep the life he now wanted? To return back to the soft kisses and gentle touch of Hermione, to the life that still felt like a dream that he would be taken away from. 

Tying a cravat at his throat, he covered the scars that remained from what easily would have been the end of his life had she not intervened. His secret, blessed miracle.

Let me return.

Severus breathed in a deep inhale. There was no more hiding, no more quiet break from it all. 

Once he stepped into the Ministry today, Severus Snape would be back. Alive, and Merlin protect him , for the taking.

Anger was always the emotion that pushed back against the numbness of his shields, often entwined in them and first to rise. It sharpened his tongue, making the ire people were used to from him easy to give into. 

Hermione’s eyes avoiding him, not looking in his direction as he prepared to leave made a jolt of heat rip through him. An echo that sounded out that, of course, this witch didn’t want all of him. Here was the reminder that the man she recently took to bed was also her former professor.

It made venom drip from his lips when she finally glanced up, sending out the barb that could have, should have , started a fight worth sinking his teeth into. But she didn’t rise to meet it, those honey-brown eyes wide with too many open emotions to make his lashing last. 

Her look back deflated him, allowing the anger to sink back into the cold.

“What would you have me do? I come now, or I’m dragged out here, Hermione. What do you want from me? ” he had all but pleaded.

It was for him that she asked. The real him that he had let her know. She wanted to know his feelings, his fears. It nearly melted him, the reminder that however fragile and new their togetherness was, this witch wanted to know all of him. 

It wasn’t the time for it, but he made his vows to her. Giving a promise to return, one he prayed to whatever gods still listened to him that he could keep, Severus pressed his lips to hers before stepping back to Apparate away. 

---

 

He appeared at the far edge of the Ministry atrium with a crack that startled no one, lost in the sea of noise. 

The sight of it, the gleaming interior full of bustling people would have made him lose his nerve had the steel of his shields not been in place. With internal protection secured, Severus strode forward with a false confidence. 

The deeper he got into the atrium, the more he was noticed. Wizards and witches parting for him, nearly tripping over themselves as heads twisted his way. He focused on the sound of his boots on the stone floor, the power of his pace as he made a line towards the elevators. 

To those watching, he was the same man known to far too many. The formidable Professor Severus Snape.

He moved with familiar purpose, robes billowing the air behind him, expression frozen cold. His lip curled just enough to make people avert their eyes. A molten glare sent to the few who dared to make eye contact.

The curiosity of people seeing him again morphing into louder whispers, more obvious points. A camera flashed and he forced himself not to flinch. It was happening, his return from the names listed dead or missing brought back to life. His name would be all over the morning paper. 

With a sharp turn on his heel, he made his way to the elevators. Three Ministry workers standing by the lift he desired quickly fumbled out of the way. His cold look back offered no apology. 

Let them talk. Let them gawk. He would withstand it. 

Get in. Get out. Get back to Hermione. Give her the news before they take you away.

His fingers curled around the handrail in the blissfully empty lift, knuckles pale against the burnished copper. His face revealed none of the unease coiling beneath his ribs. He wrapped his heart tighter in the cool waters of his shields. Mission focused.

Being here was like stepping back into the belly of the beast. No matter who sat in the Minister’s office, this building reeked of control and scrutiny. 

Nothing good had ever awaited him in this building. His trail after the first war. The commands of the Ministry on Dumbledore’s Hogwarts. The evil of the Dark Lord’s hold.  

To the few loyal to the Dark Lord still hiding in plain sight, he was the greatest traitor. Perhaps more reviled than Potter himself. A target they would aim at if it wouldn’t reveal their own disguise amongst those who had won.

To the survivors caught between the fight, those who had endured Hogwarts under his rule, he was something worse. Dumbledore’s murder, no matter the cause. The man who had let children suffer and bleed. 

He was alive. And walking free at the moment. Two facts that made most people’s bellies twist, no matter where they once stood.

It would take more than declarations of the truth shouted over a battlefield to wash away the memory of what Severus had done. There was a penance to pay. He would do it, take his lumps, if it someday brought him back to his witch.

The lift rose. Floor by floor as he silently recounted the ingredients in Strengthening Solution to calm his overly fast heartbeat. Detaching even more as the lift jolted to a stop.

The hallway that laid before him was empty. Oddly so. Not a guard in sight. No receptionist at the desk. The ornate door that led to the Minister’s office cracked open.

Severus didn’t need to check the time. He knew he had arrived precisely to the minute and here was the door laid open for him.

He gripped the ebony of his wand tighter, keeping the end of it tucked away but ready in a moment’s need. His steps more sure than before, even as his gut twisted in warning. 

Ready.

In less than twenty paces, he was at the door, pushing it open to reveal the two powerful people waiting for him inside. 

His eyes went first to Kingsley, sitting behind his desk in a high-backed chair, the glint of an emerald and diamond earring catching his attention. The only hint of the change in him from leader in the war to Minister, his robes remained the same practical ones Severus had seen before. 

The Minister’s face was calm. Open and welcoming, juxtaposed with where he sat behind the large desk as the leader of all of magical Britain. Severus’s lips curled again, determined to not easily trust this. There was power still on display here.

Seeing the second person in the room stuck against his shields, threatening to bring up emotions that couldn’t exist here. 

Minerva McGonagall, her weary face holding more lines than last time he had dared to actually look in her direction. The matronly witch so often a topic of whispered conversations against his headboard with Hermione, the guilt of having to make sure Minerva hated him the most gnawed at his very soul. How he wanted to bend at his knee, whispering apologies he’d learned to set free to the woman who had shown him more respect than most. 

Quickly, he glanced away, stepping more fully into the room as the door shut quietly behind him. Severus kept his gaze steady, firm, on the Minister, assessing the many directions this conversation could go.

“Severus, welcome,” Kingsley spoke, deep and sure.

Welcome .  A word that meant next to nothing. The Dark Lord himself had often greeted him like an old friend, moments before throwing a torture curse his way before asking his spy of what news he had to report. Albus would welcome him with offered candy before asking things of him that ripped what was left of him apart.

“Minister,” Severus inclined his head slightly, still stiff and ready to act.

Kingsley made a show of opening his palm, gesturing to the other seat beside Minerva. 

“Please, sit. You are among friends.”

Friends? It was too easy, too simple. He wanted to lash out at them, demand the punishment he was well deserved to. The battle between wanting the freedom of his new life and a lifetime of paying a high fee for each breath pushed against his chest. 

“What game is this?” he spit out, standing ramrod straight and unmoving. 

Minerva, thankfully, remained quiet but he felt the weight of her gaze as Kingsley spoke again. 

“No games here,” he said, voice low but clear, leaning back in his chair in another clear show of disarming welcome. “If I wanted political mind games, I’d be in session with the Wizengamot. This is an offer. Sit.”

Severus held his ground, his second refusal to sit a small test of the new Minister’s patience.

“For what exactly?” he spat out. “I’ve tracked the papers, there have been no trails as of yet. Do you intend to make an example of mine? Hang the right hand first?”

“You are not on trial, Severus,” Minerva spoke finally, the roughness of her tone snapping his attention back to her. “There’s a plan in place if you would sit down long enough to hear it.”

He almost wanted to smirk back at her, the familiarity of her demand so lost in the time since he raised his wand to Albus. His throat ached to say things he couldn’t, but he sat, slowly sinking into the chair offered. Giving in an inch.

Kingsley nodded his thanks. “There are lessons to take forward from this war. Ones Minerva and I have already begun to reckon with - and wish to bring you into.” 

The Minister paused then, gesturing with one hand in a gentle wave. “We’re starting at the end. Let me go back.”

Severus leaned a bit forward, despite himself.

“Our first Order meeting the day after the battle, Harry Potter asked to speak with us. Minerva and me. He brought us the memories you gave him.” Kingsley paused, tilting his head a bit at Minerva before continuing. “We watched them. Spoke with Albus’s portrait. Neither account would hold in a court - the Wizengamot would demand proof that may not exist but what we saw held with me.”

He looked directly at Severus, eyes of deep brown full of conviction. Of knowing his choice was the right one. It was a confidence Severus didn’t feel at all, waiting on a held breath.

“I intend to issue a full and public pardon.”

“Why?” The question came out before he could even process the words. The repeated warning in his mind that this was too easy. “What happens instead?”

His old colleague scoffed openly. “Only you would take a pardon as a threat.”

Refusing to glance her way in case it cracked him, he shot back, “Last time I was let go, I served two masters. Tell me how many this time.”

Kingsley leaned forward slightly, elbows on the desk, voice even.

“None. There are no masters here. Just responsibilities towards the future.”

He snorted, “Bollocks. Your responsibilities must come with a high price.”

“I mean it. There are new, refined partnerships at play. The role of the Headmistress is evolving to be a better partner with the Ministry and vice versa. I’m not demanding what I’m about to ask of you. It doesn’t cost your freedom.”

There it was. An ask, after all. No true freedom for the former Death Eater. 

Severus ground his teeth, “Say it.”

Minerva moved to speak but Kingsley stopped her with a raise of his hand, resting back again as he watched Severus carefully.

“Come back to Hogwarts.”

It hung between the three of them for a few seconds, the words Severus was most surprised to hear. Of all places… something in him began to crack.

Kingsley took advantage of the quiet and continued on. “Come back to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. Your own curriculum, approved only by Minerva. Share the truth of what happens when the Dark calls us in. Prepare the next generations for the inevitable pull of power we’ve seen played out time and again.”

Severus spoke slowly, each word weighed. “You want me to…come back to Hogwarts?”

It was absurd. Beyond absurd. 

He turned now to look fully at Minerva, “You cannot be serious. The damage done in my wake alone is enough to keep me far and away from the students.”

She met his gaze without flinching, every bit of her the fierce Gryffindor he’d known. 

“You think we didn’t tally the damage, Severus? Think I haven’t marked the graves? The injured? The names not on those lists because of your cunning? I am aware ,” she stressed the word with a jut up of her chin. High and almost regal. “Of what happened. And I still want you back.”

At his attempt to stop her words, she glared full on. “Oh ,don’t you dare, Severus Snape. Do you not think that I know the students will be safer learning from a man who understands Dark magic beyond theory. Because he fought back against it and saved a good damn lot of us. This is offered on a whim.”

She didn’t soften her tone, but her hand reached out as if to rest on his knee, hovering as she had in the past. The ice over his mind didn’t allow him to move a muscle towards her, watching her hand as it offered forgiveness that made his throat hurt. 

“I wouldn’t ask this of you, lad, if I didn’t believe you could do it. Neither of us would. And I wouldn’t let you near a single child if I believed you to be a danger. Come back…come home.”

Come home.

Notes:

If you are into more post-war healing, I also started a story at Hogwarts where Severus helps Hermione recover called - Damn Permanent Reverie -oooorrrrr if you are looking for a little smut just for the fun of it, I have a 3-shot accent play lemon fest called -Gutter Filth In Yer Bed-. Adore you all!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 2 of Room and Board- Sevmione