And Then...

It all belongs to Rowling, except what you don't recognize.

She rolled off of him and began to get dressed.  He lay there, making no attempt to get ready.

"What did you ever see in me?" he hissed.

"Well, it wasn't your nose, teeth or hair," she quipped.  "I think it started that day in Potions when you read the newspaper article about me out loud to the whole class.  Or maybe when you made fun of my teeth..." She dressed quickly, sensing what was to come.  "I think your cruelty turned me on.  You were the bad boy of all the bad boys.  The only teacher I couldn't conquer. My friends hated you and that-- just made it more exciting."

Having finished dressing, she turned to him, "Well, this is it, goodbye Professor."  And she held out her hand.

And he cracked.  She destroyed him as no Cruciatus curse could have.  He broke in a way that neither the Dark Lord nor Dumbledore had the power to do.  And he groveled, and sniveled and made a scene.  He begged her to stay, to which she answered that the Wizarding world had nothing left to offer her.

And she left that day on the Hogwart's Express to return forever to the Muggle world where she'd never be called 'Mudblood' again.

And about a week later, the owls started to come.  They came to her home, and wherever she was vacationing, to the Burrow and to Nice.  In the letters, he poured himself out to her:  the minutia of his dreary life and the emptiness therein now that the Dark Lord was gone because, after all, Harry had done his job.  Sometimes he was drunk when he wrote and sometimes, simply crying.  And she read them, and instead of destroying them, she tied them up in a green ribbon and kept them in a silver box.

That autumn she went to Cambridge, by a special arrangement with the MOM that converted N.E.W.T.s to A level credits.  And after a week, the letters stopped.  At first she was relieved, then nervous and finally worried.

On a crisp Saturday in September, she Apparated to Hogsmeade.  She walked past the gates, up the hill, and into the castle.  She ignored the stares of her former lowerclassmen and headed to the dungeons.  Using the passwords, which she knew he hadn't changed, she found the place empty.

A knot in her stomach began to form and she used his secret bolthole to head for the lake.  She found him there at their special place.

"I was wrong," she said, "there is still something the Wizarding world has to offer."  And she stroked his hair and kissed his tears away.  And later they resumed exploration of one another's body and soul.

And he helped her pack and move in with him.  And she commuted to University during the school year.  And when she graduated, they bought a place in Hogsmeade and they lived there together, neither marrying nor having children because they weren't the type.  And they loved each other until Death parted them and then they loved each other in the great beyond.

A/N: Please read and review. 

A bit about this:  What do you do when there's a black out on a hot summer night in NYC?  Well, after the kid is asleep, you make love with your husband.  But what then afterwards when it's too hot in the bedroom to snuggle or cuddle?  You head for the couch in the living room where there's a slight cross breeze and you sit in the dark and make up stories.

Hope you enjoyed it.  If not, well, it didn't take much time to read, did it?