I'm super sorry for leaving you hanging for over two years! Totally my bad. Oops! I hope you enjoy the ending all the same, and, as always, I'd love to hear what you think. I hope everyone is surviving their lockdowns, wherever they are, and are finding comfort in all sorts of HG/SS goodness :D

…

There was a moment where all three stood frozen. Hermione's heartbeat thudded loudly through her body, her mind a mess of confusion in which no thought could solidify. Her eyes were locked on Severus'. His expression was a battering ram against her chest.

And then he spoke. His voice was low and hoarse; the lines of his face were deepened by the downward turn of lips.

'Why him?' he rasped, 'anyone but him.' He was devastated. 'You've destroyed everything, Hermione.'

'Severus –' Hermione started, but Sirius interrupted her.

'Snivellus,' he sneered. 'What a nasty surprise. Why don't you leave Hermione here alone. Clearly… you're not wanted.' And he draped his arm around Hermione in a possessive gesture that made her recoil. Shit, how could she have forgotten how awful they were together?

Severus lunged at Sirius, his wand was suddenly in his hand, and Hermione was finally spurred into action. She shook off Sirius' arm and quickly stepped forward, standing between the snarling men who seemed ready to break into a fight. Severus stopped short before her, breathing heavily and still glaring at Sirius. Hermione raised her hand and put it on his chest, drawing his gaze down to hers. She held it steadily, ignoring the wild beating of her heart, and said calmly but surely: 'Sirius, leave. Now'.

'But-' Sirius began to protest.

'Now' she commanded without looking away from Severus, and she heard Sirius reluctantly retreat before going back downstairs.

There was a pregnant pause as Hermione and Severus stood there in the corridor alone, her hand still on his chest and their eyes locked. He was breathing heavily and her heart was pounding with the shock, the confused elation, of seeing him again.

And then she shoved him, hard, and he stumbled back a few steps.

'You left me, you bastard!' she shouted, and stepped towards him, angrily. 'Half a year! You just disappeared!' She stepped forward again, and he was stock still, a deer in her headlights. But his eyes – they were still hurt and seething.

'I saw you kiss Ron,' he spat out, 'I saw it. And now, now – him!' Severus choked on the last word, barely bringing it out, and his hands clenched. 'I thought – I hoped – but it's too late. It can never happen, now.'

Hermione was speechless, a moment, and then she was angry. She closed the distance between them and shoved him again, and again, until his back was against the wall, his eyes shooting anguished sparks at her but otherwise submitting to her force.

'So what,' she snarled, 'You don't want me now, I'm tainted now?' But at the very same time that her outrage spilled from her, the knowledge that he clearly did want her, had wanted her, bubbled up inside her, and she pushed his chest again, deeper into the wall, and then took his face in her hands and kissed him.

He pulled in a shocked gasp, his hands grasping onto her hips and squeezing, as if torn between pushing her away and pulling her closer, and she bit at his lips, how she had longed for those lips, and licked into his mouth and pressed her thumb against his sharp cheek bone and thrilled at feeling him, having him under her power, taking, finally, what she wanted.

And then she pulled back again, just as his hands had given in and tried to pull her closer.

Severus looked shell-shocked, the anger gone from his eyes and replaced by a kind of stunned desire. And then Hermione laughed –

'You idiot!' exploded from her, and she laughed harder, the shock, the irony, the ridiculousness of the situation setting in and she was, after all, still a bit drunk. She looked up at his face, which displayed an unusual range of emotions, not least of which was offence. She stepped back to him and leaned her head against his chest and took one if his hands in hers. It felt so wonderfully warm against hers, his long fingers the stuff of her dreams.

'You idiot,' she sighed, and buried her head deeper into him, inhaling his beautiful scent into her lungs. His fingers twitched, but he didn't take a move to hold her against him. He stayed stiff and silent.

'Oh Severus,' she sighed again, 'I didn't kiss Ron, he kissed me and I pushed him away. And I didn't have sex with Sirius, it was just a stupid prank.'

Severus stood stock still for a moment, and then he folded, his arms wrapping around her back and pulling her tightly against him, while he lowered his head to her shoulder and took in a deep, shuddering breath. Hermione wound her own arms around him and stroked his back, soothingly. 'You idiot,' she breathed again. 'I only want you'.

They stood there a while, holding each other. Hermione felt tired and drained and utterly content to be in his arms.

After a while, he lifted his head and moved back a bit, enough to be able to take her chin between his thumb and forefinger and lift her face up to meet her gaze. 'Hermione,' he said, and he smiled, not with his lips but in such a Severus way that she had to grin. 'I want you too,' he said, 'so much.' And then he kissed her gently, caressing her lips with his and sparking a happy flame which had been smouldering alone within her for so long.

They parted and breathed and looked at each other again, eyes glowing. 'Come,' she said to him, taking his hand in hers. 'I'm tired and a bit drunk.' She led him down the stairs. 'I'm going to say bye to the others, who have surely been regaled with Sirius' tales by now, and then you're going to take me home and let me sleep. And in the morning, when I'm sober, and you've thought about your actions,' she admonished him, not forgetting his implication that she had somehow been ruined for him by sleeping with Sirius, 'we'll talk again and perhaps, perhaps, I'll even let you take me to bed, for real this time.'

Severus huffed out a dry laugh at her bossiness, then smirked and said 'yes ma'am,' before leaning down to kiss her again, slightly more hungrily this time, his hands burying themselves into her wild mane and pressing his hips into hers and sliding his hand down her back to give her bum a squeeze which made her knees weaken, before pulling away again and letting her go into the living room to take her leave of the others, breathless and flushed and grinning from ear to ear.

She left the others in a mixture of awe, shock, drunken amusement and, in Ron's case, slack-jawed flabbergasted horror, and in no doubt about which man had mussed her hair, flushed her cheeks and made her eyes shine.

And then she went back to her man, took his hand in hers, and led him triumphantly from the house.