"Do you really plan to let her go?" Minerva asked, her eyes settling on where two former pupils were dancing together as she proffered a glass of celebratory champagne to her colleague.

Snape's lip twitched in a sneer, though he took the glass. "Would you suggest that I chain her up in the dungeons, instead?"

Minerva's eyes took on a wicked gleam. "I think you'll find that most Gryffindor women prefer to be on the other end of that arrangement."

"For Merlin's sake, woman, are you trying to give me nightmares? I don't want to know what you and Diggle get up to."

"Nice deflection, Severus, but I know you too well," Minerva replied, casting her eyes around Classroom Eleven, which had been decorated for Hermione's farewell party with thousands of fairies glowing with soft iridescent light from the tree branches. "For one thing, you didn't even raise a token objection when I suggested this party—"

"You and the other members of staff are perfectly at liberty to arrange whatever entertainments you choose in your spare time. I could hardly prevent you."

"Rot! You're the one who stopped Slughorn from hosting his Slug Club soirées."

"Those events involved inappropriate fraternisation between staff and pupils," Severus pointed out. "Teachers are supposed to be authority figures, not gossip with their pupils, and there will be no playing favourites while I am headmaster."

"Hermione hasn't been a pupil here for a very long time. As of this afternoon, she's no longer even Slughorn's apprentice—"

"Lucky her."

"Very lucky, if you stop being such a stubborn old fool," Minerva added.

"Precisely," Severus answered. "I am an old fool, and Miss— I mean Madam Granger is just beginning her professional journey. She has many avenues available to her, and she should be free to make the most of those opportunities."

"Or free to stay right here?" Minerva countered.

"No!" Severus answered emphatically.

"Severus," Minerva chided.

"No, Minerva. I will choose Slughorn's successor, when the time comes, and it will not be Madam Granger."

"Horace is an old man; he'd retire in an instant if he thought you would let Hermione take over."

"Horace Slughorn has not handed in his notice, and I am not about to start making plans to replace him until he does," Severus muttered, making sure his words wouldn't carry to any of the other attendees. "In the meantime, I'm sure Madam Granger will find a far more prestigious appointment than dungeon monitor."

"Horace Slughorn has been trying to get an appointment with you to discuss his retirement for the past fortnight," Minerva replied, exasperatedly knocking back a larger mouthful of champagne than she intended.

"Horace Slughorn has done the same thing every year since I took over as headmaster. He pretends he wants to retire, and then tries to gouge me for a rise. This year, I decided to skip all the intervening steps and sent him a memo telling him he would get a rise in line with inflation, the same as all the other senior staff members whose duties are unchanged."

"Well, I just hope you can live with yourself if two years from now she's married to someone like Ronald Weasley and quits working to take care of his children," Minerva suggested.

"If that is her choice, then she is welcome to do so," Severus answered in a tight tone. "At least if she gets out of this accursed castle, she won't end up marrying Longbottom."

"It's not to be near Neville Longbottom that she takes the least comfortable seat in the staff room. It's not Neville Longbottom she talks to about her projects—"

"Because Neville Longbottom would be no help to her," Severus added bitterly, setting down his untouched champagne on a nearby table and turning towards the door.

"Severus!" Minerva grabbed at his sleeve. "You don't really think that is why Hermione seeks out your company! She might share many characteristics with Lily, but that is not one of them."

Severus looked at his former teacher over one shoulder as he tugged free of her grip. "Does it matter? In recent times, she has hardly had a great number of options," Severus hissed. "In her place, I might even talk to me rather than Slughorn, but as of this afternoon, she has the whole world to choose from. She will forget our talks."

He gave Minerva a crisp nod of dismissal. "I believe I have been here for as long as duty requires. I will see you at the curriculum meeting in the morning. Pass on my congratulations to Madam Granger on her graduation from Apprentice to Journeyman, and tell her that I wish her the best in her new career."

"Tell her yourself," Minerva remarked to thin air as Severus swept toward the exit in a billowing mass of black, and Hermione hurried to intercept him.

---

"Professor!" Hermione called out, her high heels slowing her down too much for her to get within arm's reach before Severus reached the door.

Severus turned and nodded a greeting. "Madam Granger."

An expression that was partly a smile and partly consternation flickered over her face. "You weren't planning on leaving?" she asked.

"Actually, yes," Severus admitted.

"Oh!" Her eyes dropped to where her red-varnished toes peeked out of her strappy sandals.

Severus gave a tiny little huff of air through his nose. "You almost sound disappointed."

"I am." She said the words in a flat, even tone. No coy fluttering of eyelashes, just honesty. "I hoped you might want to dance."

Severus shook his head. "I am too old for your Weird Sisters, and you are far too young for Celestina Warbeck."

Hermione nodded towards the trees further away from the clearing. "Perhaps a stroll, then. I really did want a chance to talk to you alone."

Severus half-expected the offer to be some joke at his expense. Potter and Weasley would undoubtedly appear and shout, "Surprise!" but the other half of him walked into the trap willingly to hear what she had to say. "As you wish, Madam Granger."

"Hermione, please." She wrapped a hand around his elbow, her face tilted up toward his. "I'm not even tenuously one of your staff any longer."

"No. No, you're not." Severus walked slowly, ever aware of her hand burning into him through the linen of his robes.

For minutes, no further words passed between them as they wound through the pseudo-forest's narrow pathways until the party's fairy lights were just a blur in the distance and they found themselves in another clearing.

Hermione slowed even more, stopping when they reached the clearing's centre and looking up. "Firenze says Venus is bright, tonight," she whispered.

"Hermione, why are we here?" Severus asked, turning to face her. "You should be back there with the others celebrating your graduation."

"You know that graduate was an alchemical term, dating back as far as the fifteenth century," Hermione blurted out.

"I was aware of that fact, yes." Severus's left brow crept up in question even as his lips twitched in amusement.

"It means tempering or refining something to a certain degree," Hermione went on, letting her hand slide down Severus's arm from his elbow to twine her fingers with his. "Say, for example, two people working together were to share a mutual affection, which we might classify as friendship, which is a perfectly valid gradation on the scale of mutual affection. Now, if, for example, these two people were to cease working together, then they could, if they both wanted, work together to—" She swallowed nervously "—temper that friendship, by applying heat and that friendship might over time be refined, until instead of friendship, they might call it dating and if they continued the refining process, they might find they loved each other. If they both wanted that."

"Hermione, you have job offers from all over the world."

"I don't want a job. I want to be free to do my own research. And if George is right about the projected sales for the new haircare and cosmetics range, and when it comes to business George is normally right, I, or rather since you helped me with the formulations, we can afford to do exactly that. Severus, I'm leaving for Australia the day after tomorrow. I'll be gone for a month, but it's up to you where I look for somewhere to stay when I come home."

"There's a cottage to rent behind Scrivenshafts," Severus suggested hopefully.

"I was thinking of somewhere a little more isolated," Hermione countered. "Somewhere that there aren't any neighbours to be disturbed by my experiments, and where a gentleman caller would be able to come and go without half the village gossiping about it if he leaves after sunrise."

"Oh."

"Someone said the old stationkeeper's cottage was vacant."

"Hogsmeade Station?"

"Well, I didn't mean Kings Cross. Now, are you going to kiss me or not?"

"That depends," Severus haggled. "How would you feel if instead of defining that next stage as dating, we were to call it courtship?"

The ersatz moonlight reflected off her teeth as she grinned up at him, and he slid his free hand into her hair and guided her lips to his.