Bubble Bath

Chapter 4

By Shiv

Whilst Severus was enjoying a virtuous repose, about to awake to an entirely less-virtuous evening, the boys were putting the first steps of the plan into practice.

Mission: Locate Neville.

Not that that was difficult, Even Harry, the-boy-who-breathed-through-his-mouth, correctly suggested that Neville was likely to be found in the Gryffindor common room, and sure enough that was where he was.

Mission: Separate Neville from the herd for a discussion in private.

Ron had the feeling that neither Hermione nor Snape would like to have their private affairs spread all over Hogwarts. Professor McGonagall, whilst viewing Hermione as a favourite, would still come down on her like a ton of bricks, if she ever found out that she and Severus had been shagging like nifflers. Ron found the idea that Snape could be thought of as taking advantage of Hermione frankly ridiculous; if anyone was taking advantage it was her, and on a regular basis judging by the exhaustion lines on Snape’s face.

Having suffered beneath the onslaught of Hermione in full flow, he felt that the poor sod should be given a medal, and, if they ever broke up, a warning should be put in the Daily Prophet so that no other poor sod would end up in deep waters without knowing what he had let himself in for.

No, Hermione was more than capable of taking care of herself. She was a force of nature, like an avalanche, and all you could do was roll yourself up into a tight little ball and let it wash over you and hope that when it was all over you would still have the use of your limbs.

Neville was surprisingly difficult to lure out of the common room, and in the end Ron had hissed at him in exasperation, “For god’s sake, Neville, can’t you take a hint. We need to have a word with you in private.”

Apparently he could take a hint, when it was dropped on him from a great height, because he packed away his things, yawned elaborately and said he was going to see Trevor ‘for a little chat’.

Harry and Ron waited a suitable interval, and then followed. Not that there was any reason, other than the prying eyes of Ginny Weasley, to pretend that they weren’t going to have a little chat with Neville; it’s just that Ron felt that if a job was worth doing it was worth doing properly. If secrecy was the name of the game, then secrecy would be maintained at all times.

In many ways, Ron missed the war. It might have been violent, frightening and might occasionally have prevented him from having fun, but it has also been thrilling and interesting. Somehow, Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes didn’t have the same excitement value as a ducking a well-aimed hex from a Death Eater.

Mission: Persuade Neville to pull a prank in Potions. Without letting on that Snape was in on it.

This was easier than either Ron or Harry had expected, once Professor Snape’s name had been mentioned anyway. It was almost as if Neville wanted to get into trouble with him. Instead of the ‘oh, I’ll get into trouble and have a detention, no, no, no, I can’t do it’ they expected they got, ‘oh, I’ll get into trouble and have a detention, yes, yes, yes, I’ll do it.”

“Neville,” said Harry, in his best, we’re all Gryffindors together voice, “Ron and I were wondering if you were up for a bit of fun.”

Ron had anticipated and blocked Neville’s move for the door, although he had the grace to look apologetic. “Sorry, mate,” he said. “We need a favour.”

 “Honestly, Neville, it’ll be fun,” wheedled Harry.

Neville sagged a little, but Ron still kept a close eye on him to prevent him bolting.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked.

“We want to get our own back on Malfoy,” said Harry. Neville didn’t look impressed.

“So,” continued Ron, “what we have in mind is slipping a little something into your cauldron in Potions, and then slipping the contents to Malfoy when he’s not looking.”

“I’ll get detention,” said Neville, with an odd tone in his voice.

“Nah,” said Ron airily. “Snape’ll never notice.”

“I’ll get detention,” Neville said again, sounding even more peculiar than before. There was a pause whilst he considered the suggestion. “I’ll do it,” he said, sounding very decisive. “Just let me know what you want me to add, and I’ll do it.”

Ron looked at Neville with a terrible suspicion running through his mind. Neville liked Professor Snape. Liked him in the Hermione sense of the word. All the time Neville had been shaking in Potions, it had been with suppressed excitement and not terror at all. He wouldn’t put it past him to have made deliberate mistakes so that Professor Snape would shout at him, even hoping for a detention.

Dear god the boy needed help.

Even Harry thought it was suspicious, and after Neville had headed off back to the common room, he looked at Ron with dawning horror and said, “You don’t think he fancies Professor Snape, do you?”

“I’m afraid so.” Ron shook his head at the awfulness of it. “We’d better keep quiet about it as well; there’s no saying what Hermione would do if she found out. Could be very nasty.”

Harry nodded in agreement, and then looked up at Ron with a peculiar expression. “Ro-on,” said Harry. “You don’t fancy Professor Snape, do you?”

Ron didn’t like the way Harry was looking at him, almost as if he had grown another head. Of course he didn’t fancy Professor Snape; he liked girls. “Bugger off Harry. What on earth makes you think that?”

“The rest of Hogwarts seems to.”

“Fuck me,” said Ron. “The world’s gone mad. At this rate, we’ll all have to stop washing our hair and wear false noses if we ever want to shag again.”

They looked at each other before collapsing into fits of giggles, and if there was a touch of hysteria to their laughter no one would blame them. It’s one thing to face Voldemort; it was quite another thing to face up to the fact that two of your friends fancied the Greasy Git.

The world had indeed gone mad.

Severus was mildly disorientated when he woke. He thought he could get used to the prospect of waking with an armful of warm Hermione, and he’d certainly like the chance to try. He took a few minutes to simply luxuriate in the heady sensation of sharing a bed with a willing, if not a rampantly enthusiastic, woman.

Which created something of a tricky situation – how were they going to ‘come out’ about their relationship to a wider world than Draco, Harry and Ron? He didn’t think that it would be wise to broadcast the fact that they had formed an attachment whilst she was still at Hogwarts, but he wondered how well Hermione would take this. She was after all a Gryffindor and therefore prejudiced against telling lies, no matter how convenient.

He didn’t think that the news of their relationship would be greeted with universal jubilation and cries of joy; more like puzzled expressions, if not outright hostility.

In fact, he and Hermione had still to discuss the future, and what it held for them, at all. Where was she going to live? Where was she going to work? What was she going to do? Where did he fit into all of it?

And yet, whilst he had occasional doubts about his ability to make her happy, and periodically wondered what on earth she saw in him, and more often wondered whether he would be able to keep up with her and her apparently inexhaustible reserves of energy – he’d been so pleased when she’d confessed to being tired - he had no doubts that Hermione was serious about their future together. She wasn’t the sort of girl to enter into anything lightly, much less seducing her teacher.

He could always sooth his admittedly already elastic conscience with the thought that she had seduced him and not the other way around, and he’d been tempted, oh, how he’d been tempted. She’d definitely made the first move. If anyone was being taken advantage of here, it was him. Poor, innocent, unworldly Severus had fallen to the wiles of a teenage siren. He snorted at that, a little more loudly than he had intended.

He lay back for a moment, grinning widely at the thought of how often she’d taken advantage of him.

There was a faint stirring beside him, and Hermione blinked up at him sleepily. “You look happy; what are you plotting?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Ravishing you within an inch of your life,” he suggested.

“That sounds fun.”

He pulled her closer, and sighed. “Actually I was thinking; how are we going to come clean about us?”

A little huff of laughter played across his shoulder. “That’s obvious,” she said. “We bump into each other at some point during the holidays, and I ask you for a coffee. We go and have a spot of lunch somewhere highly visible and let the gossips do the rest.”

He hadn’t thought of that; it was simple, it was elegant, and it would avoid all necessity for awkward explanations. It would also allow her a sop to her Gryffindor conscience; they weren’t actually lying about anything, merely allowing others to draw their own – entirely wrong – conclusions.

Not that he would have provided an explanation anyway, merely glowered at people until they went away. It had worked for him in the past, and it would doubtless continue to work in the future, with others although not, he thought, with Hermione. She would merely ask him if he was feeling alright, offer him a pepper up potion, and then ignore his bad temper until he had worked himself out of what he would admit, only to himself, could be called a fit of the sulks. Or possibly apply more dramatic methods; it’s hard to sulk when someone was snogging you senseless.

“What are you going to tell your parents?” he asked, curious to see whether this new need-to-know approach would spill over into her relationship with her parents.

Apparently it did.

“I think we’ll stick to the expurgated version,” she said with a broad smile.

“That’s probably wise.” More than wise, he though, bloody essential if he were to survive any potential meeting with his future-in-laws with his genitalia intact. Her parents may be Muggles, but even Muggles could do damage with a blunted carving knife and enough determination.

That was every boyfriend’s nightmare, he supposed: meeting the parents; and he wasn’t even comfortable with the idea of being someone’s boyfriend. It made him sound like some spotty teenager, and he had been entirely grateful to leave that part of his life behind. He had no wish to be reminded of it now, not when his life was finally bursting into vibrant bloom. Mind you, he didn’t think that being introduced to her parents as her lover – which is how he thought of himself – was likely to smooths matters over.

Not at all.

He doubted if he would welcome his daughter’s boyfriend into his home with open arms. He was bloody certain he wouldn’t welcome his daughter’s boyfriend into his home with open arms if he was twenty years her senior and her teacher to boot.

That was a thought to go on the back burner for now, daughters, for a very long time in fact, because Hermione was giving him that look and saying, “Didn’t you have some sort of plan for the rest of this evening?”

“Let me think, what could it be?” he said, nibbling gently on her ear lobe. “Marking? Reviewing my lesson plans?”

And then Hermione was pulling his head down into a kiss, and he suddenly lost interest in teasing her, and the rest seemed to have done him some good because he was feeling all frisky again.

Much to Hermione’s evident appreciation.

Several times.

Hermione was looking forward to Potions with a great deal of excitement. Everything was set for the prank of a lifetime. Severus had indicated, by a short nod to her mute query when she entered the room, that the necessary charm had been cast on Draco. Neville had apparently been easier to persuade to take part in the joke than she had expected. When she had queried it with the boys, they had both looked uneasy and asked her to leave it alone. She had a horrible feeling she knew why, but she had no intention of crystallising that into a certainty.

She looked sideways at Neville and shuddered. There were some things friends should keep to themselves. She smiled; that was probably exactly how the boys felt about her and Severus.

Severus was swooping around the classroom in his usual fashion. It had been nearly three days, four hours, and eighteen minutes since they had last had a chance for some extra-curricular activities, and she had decided to extract maximum enjoyment from the class by pining. It was a shame she couldn’t be more overt about the whole business of pining, as she suspected that Severus would enjoy the thought of her mooning over him, just not when it would cost him his job.

From the faint smile that passed over his lips, it appeared that Severus had been using Legilimency on her again. She ought to object more, but the advantages of having a lover who knew exactly what you wanted and how you wanted it, outweighed the disadvantages. Even if the perverse git made you wait for it sometimes; actually, especially when the perverse git made you wait for it.

Severus was looking entirely too smug for her comfort, so she dwelled in loving detail on their last encounter when she had finally had the courage to try her hand at some teasing of her own. He really did beg quite nicely.

“Miss Granger,” came a voice across the classroom, “Pay attention to what you’re doing, or do I have to give you detention.”

She muttered, “No, sir”, dutifully, and put her head down. She could imagine what he was thinking about, all ‘you’ve been a naughty girl and you need to be punished’ – he was keen on discipline – but if anyone was the naughty one, it was him. She carefully built an image of Severus, naked, bent across her knee, being spanked.

There was a startled squeak from his direction, which he quickly turned into a complaint about the quality of Harry’s potion, and then he retreated behind his desk. He looked at Hermione with dark amusement, before turning his attention back to the rest of the class. Oh ho, so he liked that idea did he? She carefully filed that away for future reference, and then turned her attention to Neville and his potion.

He was, for once, doing a splendid job; it was entirely the wrong colour for the potion he was supposed to be making but entirely the right colour for the one he was making.

This was going to be fun.

It was fun. Of course, the most amusing aspect of the whole business is that Draco knew there was something up from the moment he was selected to try Neville’s potion. His suspicions were only confirmed by the predatory grins bestowed on him by Hermione, Harry and Ron as he walked to his doom. A quick glance at Snape showed that there was no hope of reprieve there, and with a sinking feeling he realised that there was no way that Snape would have allowed this to happen without ensuring his silence first.  His biggest bargaining chip – the threat to expose them – had gone.

Bugger.

He was high and dry and had no choice but to drink the potion and hope that nothing too drastic would happen as a result. After all, he had got them laid!

He swallowed hard, eyed the potion with a jaundiced eye, and then knocked it back in one swallow. He braced himself for a reaction and – nothing! He couldn’t resist a smirk. Of course, Neville couldn’t brew a cup of tea properly; he must have made some mistake, and Draco was going to get away with it after all.

“So, Mr Malfoy, how do you feel?” asked the Professor.

“Smug,” came the reply. His eyes widened in horror. He tried to say that he felt sick, and he needed to go to see Madam Pomfrey but the words wouldn’t come. Dear god, no, not a truth potion – not only was he forced to tell the truth to a direct question, it seemed that he couldn’t tell a lie either.

 He was fucked – he couldn’t even find the words to describe how fucked he was. He was dimly aware that Professor Snape had sneered at Neville for producing a defective potion, and then he was directed to return to his seat.

“Are you alright, Draco?” hissed Pansy.

“Of course I’m not alright,” he snapped.

“There’s no need the snap. Honestly, anyone would think you didn’t like me, the way you go on.”

There was a brief moment of thinking ‘oh bugger’, and then the floodgates opened. “Of course I don’t like you, you pug faced disaster of a woman.”

Pansy looked at him with an expression split equally between fury and shock, as the rest of the Slytherins looked on in amazement.

“What do you mean you don’t like me?”

Draco may have been backed into a corner, and Draco may be forced to tell the truth, but Draco was also a Malfoy. If he was going to have to tell the truth, he was going to do it in style. Seven years of dislike came boiling to the surface; if nothing else at least he would never have to speak to Pansy Parkinson once this entire fiasco was over. So it wasn’t entirely a bad thing after all. “I would have thought that was obvious to the meanest intelligence, even a Gryffindor would have grasped by now that I do – not – like – you – Pansy.”

“But – but – but-”

“But nothing,” he sneered, “I’d rather sleep with Neville than have anything to do with you. You two-face, backstabbing little creep.” The potion had made him admit rather more than he intended there, but at least no one else knew that it was a truth potion. They just thought that after seven years of Pansy’s solicitousness Draco had finally snapped.

Draco didn’t like the interested look that Neville was sending him. Unfortunately, the truth serum stopped him from lying even to himself, so he had to admit he DID like the interested look that Neville was sending him.

Dear god, could it get any worse?

It could, and it did. First, when Zabini objected to the way that he had spoken to Pansy, and he had treated the lad to a detailed description of her morals and present conquests that seemed to bode ill for the future of Zabini’s relationship with her. It appeared she had over-estimated his willingness to share.

Then, when taxed with the suggestion that he was a hypocrite of the worst type, and who did he think he was criticising Pansy when he had slept with most of Slytherin, and he heard himself admitting that he hadn’t actually shagged most of the girls at all, and only a few of the boys.

The destruction of his carefully established reputation for being a Slytherin Sex god was more than he could take. Whenever someone came near, he would start snarling abuse at them; if he could stop them asking a question, he might be able to survive the rest of the lesson with his sanity intact.

The rest of the potions class passed in silence. No one wanted to speak to Draco when he was in that kind of mood, and so he managed to make it to the door – ahead of everyone else – when class was finished without any more accidents. Now all he had to do was lie low until the potion wore off.

Gryffindor Tower was buzzing with the excitement of Potions. Pansy had a knack of annoying people: whether by her stupid remarks, her patronising attitude, or her tendency to kick someone when they were down.

Draco would have been amused to find that he had gone up in the Gryffindors estimation; amused, but also worried, because that was all he needed to destroy his carefully nurtured reputation - people liking him – fortunately for his peace of mind, they would return to disliking him in a few hours, once the excitement had worn off.

Neville sat in a corner, by the fire, gazing into the middle distance. Hermione watched him for a while, and then nudged Harry. “Fetch the Marauder’s map.”

Harry followed her gaze, and then sighed. “What is it with Slytherin men,” he sighed, before doing as he was told.

That was as far as his support took him though, and when he returned he handed the map over to Hermione so that she could do, as he put it, the tricky bit. After all, he reasoned, it wasn’t anything one bloke would be happy chatting about to another bloke unless that other bloke happened to be of the same persuasion. Otherwise, it was something much better left to girls.

Hermione rolled her eyes, but secretly thought Harry might have a point, even if it was in the limited sense that Neville would undoubtedly prefer to discuss it with her than Harry. If only because Harry would umm and ahh to such an extent that he could be talking about anything.

And after all, the truth serum only had another hour or so to run, so if Neville wanted to have a word with Draco at a time when he couldn’t lie, then he needed to be pointed in the right direction as quickly as possible.

Hermione sat next to Neville, and said softly, “I can tell you where he is, if you want to know.” She tapped the map, assured it she was up to no good, and then pushed it into his unresisting hands.

He didn’t pretend that he didn’t understand what she was talking about, but he didn’t seem that keen to take her up on the suggestion either. “Do you think he might really be interested in me?”

“I don’t know Neville but if I were you I’d go and find out.”

Neville looked over at Harry and Ron who were ostentatiously ignoring the whole conversation. “Don’t worry about them,” she said. “They’ve had worse shocks recently. Honestly, Draco will be tame in comparison.”

Neville looked at her in awe. “You’re shagging Snape. No wonder you weren’t worried about the points or detention,” he hissed. “You lucky, lucky bitch.”

Hermione neither denied nor confirmed his assumption, but her rosy blush was all that was needed to convince Neville he was right. He was disappointed, obviously, to find that his primary crush was no longer available – he didn’t think that he wanted to cross wands with Hermione over a man – and was indeed disappointingly heterosexual.

Who would have thought it? He’d hoped that Snape would be a bit pervy in a let-me-give-you-detention sort of a way, but to find out he liked girls!! Ew. It could put him off Potions for good, although if he wasn’t trying so hard to get detention from the silky-voiced Slytherin Sex God his marks might actually improve. It was hard to imagine that his hands would be shaking with suppressed excitement in the future, not when he knew that he and Hermione were an item. Ew. Ew. Ew. In fact, ew again.

However, there was the plus side: that today’s events had shown that his secondary crush was both available and slightly interested, and if Hermione could pull of a coup of such magnitude, who was to say that he couldn’t do the same. He looked down at the map in silence for a long moment, and then, without saying anything, headed out of the common room.

Neville was a man with a mission: Find Draco; snog Draco. They could argue about the fiddly bits of whether he wanted a relationship or not once the snogging – and more? – had been completed. He wasn’t about to blow the chance of a lifetime with pettifogging questions as to Draco’s intentions. They were probably dishonourable, in fact the more dishonourable the better.

It didn’t take him long to find Draco, who had secreted himself in a disused room in the Astronomy Tower. Draco didn’t look pleased to see him, and for two pins he would have turned round and left. However, this was likely to be his only chance to find out whether Draco was interested or not, and although being a Gryffindor should mean that he was too noble to take advantage of him, common sense indicated that it was a bloody good idea.

So he cautiously approached the blond – after all, being forced to tell the truth didn’t mean that Draco had to like telling the truth, and he did still have a wand – and decided to try his luck. He went for the direct I’m-a-Gryffindor-and-I’ve-never-heard-of-subtlety-much-less-able-to-spell-it approach.

“So, did you mean what you said in Potions?” Realising that even this managed to leave a certain amount of leeway to an experienced prevaricator and equivocator like Draco, he followed that up with, “Do you want to sleep with me?”

His heart sank when Draco replied, “No.” It rose again when the truth serum forced Draco to complete the half-truth. “I don’t want to sleep with you at all; I want to shag you. There wouldn’t be any sleeping involved.”

Neville smiled at that exciting prospect. “You know,” he said, “bearing in mind I’m at least partially responsible for your present condition, it seems to me that I really ought to do something to help you out. Now if we were to spend the next hour like this” – he bent and kissed Draco – “then you really couldn’t get any trouble with telling the truth, would you?”

Even the effects of the truth serum, Draco would recognise that as a rhetorical question and simply pulled Neville down into another kiss.

Once Hermione had packed Neville off to see Draco, she decided to go and find the love of her own life. She had an ulterior motive, and not just the usual one. It seemed to her that Neville needed a reward over and above the opportunity to snog Draco at his most vulnerable.

What she had in mind was deeply unethical and involved Polyjuice potion and a donation of hair from Severus. After all, Draco could turn Neville down in which case he would need cheering up, and if he didn’t turn him down it occurred to her that Draco was precisely the perverse sort of person who would find the idea of taking Polyjuice and impersonating Professor Snape for a shag entertaining.

Maybe two doses of Polyjuice – they may want to take turns; Neville was very definitely a dark horse.

All this had to be achieved without Severus’ knowledge, because she didn’t think that his reaction to the news that Neville fancied him was going to be anything other than locking himself in his rooms and refusing to come out until term was over.

She wouldn’t have minded if she would have been allowed to lock herself in there with him; but she suspected that the news would most likely render him incapable of performing for days and, whilst she was prepared to do a good deed for Neville, she wasn’t prepared to take the risk that it would lead to a curtailment of her nocturnal (as well as morningal, afternoonal, and eveningal) activities.

Stealing from Severus’ stores simply didn’t have the same thrill now that she had a perfectly valid excuse to be there. All it would take, if she was caught, was the simple suggestion that she was looking for him perhaps coupled with a revelation about a fantasy about the storeroom and he would almost certainly be distracted. He wasn’t there, so it was a simple case of giving the password, purloining the Polyjuice and slipping it into her bag. Mission accomplished in less than ten minutes.

All she had to do then was head into his bedroom to swipe some hair, and it wasn’t as if she would be unwelcome there either if he did find her, and at least she wouldn’t have to fall back on some daft idea about a fantasy involving the storeroom. After all there were things in jars in there that had eyes, and she wasn’t entirely certain that they were dead. She may have moved from relying on Madam Melchior’s Marvellous Modulating Wand to exhausting but extremely satisfying sex – and she hoped Severus would calm down a bit soon, because she needed to sleep some time, but she hadn’t got the heart to say no when he was a man on a mission – but she wasn’t prepared to move into the rather advanced concept of shagging as performance art.

She triggered the wards and slipped inside. His hairbrush was sitting on the dressing table, and sure enough there were some long, dark hairs on it. She wrapped them carefully in a twist of paper, and looked round the room. She had some fond memories of this place, and soon she would be leaving, probably for good.

Oh well, while she was here…….. She went back into the lounge, picked a book off the shelves and sat on the sofa. It might be nice to have a chat with Severus, and for once that wasn’t a euphemism, she really did want to talk.

He was pleased to see her, which made her feel mildly guilty. He deposited himself next to her on the sofa with a decided flumph, and put an arm round her.

“I’ve missed this you know.”

She just made a humming sound and then insinuated herself more firmly into his embrace.

He took a deep breath, gathered all his courage together, reminded himself that she had said that honesty was important and said, rather plaintively, “We never seem to talk any more.”

He felt a little hurt when she just chuckled, and then immensely relieved that this honesty business seemed to pay off. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“I thought….” he began tentatively, not sure how to bring up the Ron incident tactfully.

She sighed. “You thought because of Ron that I was a raving nymphomaniac?”

“I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but something along those lines.”

“Ron needed the practice,” she said.

He digested that, worked out the implications, and felt flattered about the compliment buried in that short comment. “Oh. That’s a relief; I’m an old man, and I need my sleep.”

She shifted a little until she was looking at him and said, very earnestly, “You are not an old man, and you’re not the only one that needs some sleep.”

 This was all working out very well, and so he decided to go for broke on the honest front. “Hermione, what did you steal from my store cupboard?”

There was a fraught silence, and then she said, “If I told you, I’d have to Obliviate you. In fact, if I told you, you’d beg me to Obliviate you.”

“Ah.” A pause. “So would I be right in thinking that it’s Polyjuice potion, and some of my hair, all wrapped up in a little parcel for Mr Longbottom.”

An even longer pause. “You mean you knew.”

“I didn’t know, not until you just told me.”

“Not about the Polyjuice; I mean about Neville,” she said, a trifle impatiently.

“Oh, that. It’s been obvious since his sixth year. Haven’t you ever wondered why I’ve never given him detention despite all the cauldrons he’s melted?”

Now she thought about it, it seemed obvious. There had been a lot of sneering, some shouting, and deduction of points into triple figures but never a detention.

“Blimey,” she said.

“So next time you want to set up a tryst involving my Polyjuice double, perhaps you’ll just ask me for my hair?” he said in an airy manner.

“I can't think that’s going to happen more than once in my lifetime,” she said “I don’t like sharing my toys.”

“If I said the same thing about you, you’d be up in arms,” he said, sounding amused.

“I know, but no one ever said life was fair.”

He couldn’t argue with that; it was the entire basis of his teaching technique after all. So, wisely, he didn’t try, and just pulled her more firmly against him and dropped a kiss on her hair.