Work Text:
Holiday Prompt Fest 2025
Prompt: Snowflake kisses
Team: CKhaoS (Corvus, xoxkharisma, Superdimples)
A/N: The prompt is the art or the art is the prompt. But since I can’t post art without /stuff/ Team CKhaoS wrote three different “drabbles” to go with it.
Severus stepped out the doors behind the third-year Slytherins and immediately felt a tug as his scarf was slipped off his neck. Not even a year ago, this would have signified that he had been caught by the Marauders and could expect a string of stinging hexes, if not worse. But everything was different now.
He turned slowly and met Hermione’s playful eyes as she looped her own maroon and mustard scarf around his neck, wrapping his green and silver around her own.
“Hello,” she said grinning. “Ready to head back?”
She slipped her hand into his, their long robe sleeves slipping down and protecting them from the chill.
Severus paused for a moment, taking in her pink cheeks, her tousled curls, the Slytherin scarf around her neck. How had he gotten so lucky?
He couldn’t even imagine what life would have been like without Hermione. How things would have turned out if he had been alone and isolated, bullied by the popular Gryffindors and overlooked by the Headmaster until he broke and did or said something he could never take back.
But Hermione rewarded his honesty with loyalty. She recognised his hard work and added her strength to his. What had started as a simple partners project in Potions class where they had each been the odd one out within their housemates had bloomed first into a genuine friendship, and then into more, and if he could have done it all again he would’ve befriended her sooner. He wouldn’t have waited until their own third year for Professor Slughorn to pair them up. He would have walked right up to her outside of the Great Hall, even before the Sorting Ceremony, and taken her hand.
He reached down now and took her other hand in his, turning her so they faced each other.
“Thank you for accompanying me to Hogsmeade.”
Hermione blushed. “Professor McGonagall assigned me as a prefect to watch over the third-year Gryffindors, just as Professor Slughorn asked you to do the same for the Slytherins.”
“Yes, but you chose to walk with me.”
Hermione ducked her head, her fingers squeezing his. “Of course, Severus. I love walking and chatting with you.”
Severus tugged her hands gently until she looked up and met his eyes.
“I love you.”
Hermione blushed harder even as her body swayed toward him, her eyes searching his face.
He let his eyes fall shut, lashes resting against his cheek as he brought his nose to brush gently against hers, feeling the puff of her warm breath against his lips.
“Would it be okay if I kissed you now?” Hermione whispered.
“Always,” he replied softly.
And as the fat, fluffy snowflakes fell all around them, her soft lips met his, warm where her nose was cold against his cheek, and he thought there was nowhere else he would rather be.
He’d met her by the sea. The first time he’d ever gone there.
Back then, his father hadn’t known he was magical.
Back then, his family was still a family—the kind of thing that he could have looked back on and said “I’m so glad I had you.”
He’d been building sand castles in the surf and sand—the kind you can only dream up when you’re small and your imagination outweighs reason because no one has taught you what was possible or impossible.
Back then, his father was patient, helping him build with his plastic shovel and metal pail, helping with his hands over his to scoop and smooth the grains and create his masterpiece.
To him, it had looked perfect. To others, perhaps, they’d wonder what kind of acid trip he might have been on.
His father smiled back then.
Genuine.
Tolerant.
It was there he met his first whale.
There in the cold water of summer.
Others were throwing rocks at the small whale.
For fun.
For stupidity.
His father’s face had scrunched into a scowl, and he tore them a new arse with his voice, sending them packing down the beach, crying to their mummies.
The little orca came up closer.
And for the first time, father and son placed their hands on her nose, and she blew salt water on them from her blowhole.
Severus giggled, and his father pointed to the mother whale waiting in the deeper water.
The baby whale wanted to play, inviting Severus to swim with her.
And so he did.
His father had taught him to swim, and he was good at it.
Tobias followed him as they swam together with the baby whale, and she swam circles around them, sometimes breaching, sometimes putting her nose under Severus and hoisting him up into the air from the water.
He’d landed less than gracefully at first, but his father hadn’t laughed, instead helping him by allowing him to stabilise, using his father as a buoy.
He couldn’t remember how long they were out there.
It had felt like forever.
It had felt like magic.
The kind of magic his father was willing to accept because they could experience it together with the same wonder and same senses.
When it was time to go, they swam back to shore, and the little orca seemed to wave her fluke at him in farewell.
It was one of the last times that Severus remembered his family being happy. One of the few genuine times when he’d had a family like anyone else. They hadn’t been rich or well-to-do, but they had each other, and it was enough.
It hadn’t been until fifth year that he realised who Hermione had always been—
The night she’d saved him from a werewolf by throwing him into Black Lake, changing into a whale, and smashing Lupin and his little friends into the shore with her massive bulk before rolling into the lake and swimming away with Severus on her back.
His real first friend.
Not Lily, who he had befriended after he had found out he was magical.
No, this was the same whale he had befriended as a young child back when his family had been whole.
And she had just rolled them into the ground and probably broken many of their bones as well as squishing their organs.
Severus gave out a yell as Hermione launched into the air and swam in it like she was in the ocean, floating skyward to what seemed like the Northern Lights coming to visit, and nestled in the cosmic magnetism storm, the shape of a huge whale hung in the sky as one would expect to see it in the ocean.
Hermione swam quickly and headbonked her celestial mother, and the cosmic whale’s large eye stared into him as if evaluating him for the afterlife.
Hermione sang, and Severus felt the weight of every adventure, every thing she had learned, every kind word and every harsh one travel between mother and daughter. The large whale sang back to her, singing of the depths of space and places in between time and space, other dimensions, other Worlds that spread in the branches of the Yggdrasill.
As the songs quieted, so, too, did the storm of lights, and the mother whale nudged her daughter away to continue her adventures.
Hermione carried him down to the ramparts and siddled up to the edge so he could climb down safely, then she transformed into her human form, landing in the snow with a smile. For but a moment, her skin seemed to be cobalt and alive with runes he did not know—shifting, moving, and swirling across her body. Her alien eyes seemed to glow crimson.
But then, she was Hermione again.
Bushy-haired and Gryffindor—
She had saved his life—saved him from having to explain himself to the teachers.
All the teachers were down on the shore tending the flattened gang of wizards that had been, incidentally, infected with lycanthropy from their compressed—but still able to bite—best mate.
Severus knew he had to say something to her to convey how much he thought of her—
Instead, he took his scarf off and wrapped it around her neck.
She widened her eyes and, seemingly realising what he wanted, tugged at her own scarf and wrapped it around his neck.
He dipped his head as his mouth covered hers in a kiss.
“Thank you,” he whispered as he pulled away. “For saving my life.”
Hermione let out a series of whistles and clicks that sounded far more whale than human, but she beamed at him brightly.
“I do not have more than myself,” Severus said, “but everything I am and can be is yours—if you wish to be with me.”
“I’ve always wanted to be with you,” Hermione said. “Since that day.”
He cupped her face in his hands. “I cannot imagine anyone else for me but you,” he whispered.
“I can,” Hermione said, “but the stories don’t end well.”
Severus sputtered as Hermione placed a tender kiss to his mouth.
“Let’s get back to our dorms before that mess down there finds us up here,” Severus said. “Then tomorrow we can make stories your mother will be happy to hear.”
Hermione smiled brightly, and that was all Severus needed to know he had made the right choice.
The door to the Muggle pub blew open, causing a gust of snow to drift in behind the tall, dark, angular man who was looking in every direction for his intended target. He spotted the head of a woman with gravity-defying hair in the corner, nursing her mug of warm butterbeer and a book.
“I knew I might find you here,” he snarled at her–his eyebrows smashed down hard enough to create a unibrow.
“Ta, Severus,” she said nonchalantly, not taking her eyes away from her book to look at the glaring man standing before her.
“Would you care to explain why you asked me to dinner at a completely different pub, only to have me search this god-forsaken alley up and down for you when you didn’t show up?” he inhaled noisily, still standing next to her like an ominous storm cloud.
“Sit down, Severus, you’re causing a scene with your histrionics,” she said breezily, gesturing to the chair next to her, finally putting her book down to give him the attention he so readily demanded of others with less willpower than Hermione. Severus sat with ill-grace and huffed out what Hermione thought may have been Latin swear words, but she just smiled at him–causing even more confusion for Severus.
“Well, since you’ve barely let me come up for air in the last month with all your snogging, I had to find some way to get you out of my hair while I got your Yule gift.
Severus looked at her, dumbfounded.
“You wanted to get me a present, and this was your clever plan? To get me worked up enough at the thought of being stood up that I’d go hunting you down instead of calling it a night. You were most certainly sorted into the wrong house,” he said. “Why not just tell me that you needed some time to yourself?” he asked. Hermione smirked at him, pulling at his hand and dragging him out into the falling snow.
“Do you remember what we did after our last big fight?” she grinned evilly at him, causing him to blush a deep shade of maroon, and then he grabbed her—growling—and lowered his head to give her the snog of the century.
“Merry Christmas, Hermione, you wicked witch,”
“Merry Christmas, Severus.”
A/N: Could you tell who wrote which one?