DRABBLE: Belated Valentines
Title: Belated Valentines
Pairing: RH/SS
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: JKR owns them.
Rubeus Hagrid always breathed a sigh of relief whenever the first of March arrived.
February was the month of taboos in the Hagrid-Snape household - unspoken, unwritten taboos, which he had long ago learned to heed. Boxes of chocolates that crossed the cottage threshold became sorry melted lumps. Bouquets of flowers faced either freezing or burning hexes depending on a certain party’s peevish mood. Hagrid had made the mistake of bringing home a Valentine’s Day card - only once. (The kitchen ceiling still bore scorch marks from the aftermath.) And roses... Well, roses always risked being turned into ashes no matter what day it was in the year.
Because some wounds never healed.
Hagrid saw proof of that adage every February in the way his husband snapped and snarled and seemed to stage a one-man vendetta against singing cupids, heart-shaped ornaments, and other signs of such ‘sentimental nonsense’. Yet, beneath the bellows and the bluster, Hagrid could see the pain. Even after all their time together, fear of mockery still lurked in his beloved’s eyes. A battered childhood, a bullied youth, a lonely adulthood, all had laid the foundation stones that made Severus doubt any overt gifts of affection. Little wonder. Hagrid knew enough to grasp how many times others had twisted the sentiments of Valentine’s Day into cruel jests against his mate.
So, Hagrid patiently waited through the days of February. No flowers, no chocolates, no written sentiments.
After all, he had the other eleven months in which to reassure his Severus each and every day that he was truly loved.
Pairing: RH/SS
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: JKR owns them.
Rubeus Hagrid always breathed a sigh of relief whenever the first of March arrived.
February was the month of taboos in the Hagrid-Snape household - unspoken, unwritten taboos, which he had long ago learned to heed. Boxes of chocolates that crossed the cottage threshold became sorry melted lumps. Bouquets of flowers faced either freezing or burning hexes depending on a certain party’s peevish mood. Hagrid had made the mistake of bringing home a Valentine’s Day card - only once. (The kitchen ceiling still bore scorch marks from the aftermath.) And roses... Well, roses always risked being turned into ashes no matter what day it was in the year.
Because some wounds never healed.
Hagrid saw proof of that adage every February in the way his husband snapped and snarled and seemed to stage a one-man vendetta against singing cupids, heart-shaped ornaments, and other signs of such ‘sentimental nonsense’. Yet, beneath the bellows and the bluster, Hagrid could see the pain. Even after all their time together, fear of mockery still lurked in his beloved’s eyes. A battered childhood, a bullied youth, a lonely adulthood, all had laid the foundation stones that made Severus doubt any overt gifts of affection. Little wonder. Hagrid knew enough to grasp how many times others had twisted the sentiments of Valentine’s Day into cruel jests against his mate.
So, Hagrid patiently waited through the days of February. No flowers, no chocolates, no written sentiments.
After all, he had the other eleven months in which to reassure his Severus each and every day that he was truly loved.