A/N: Just a very dark, very weird ficlet that my twisted little sadistic mind came up with during my writer's block with the rest of my fics. Perhaps, I shall question your fantasies of happily-ever-after, your fluffy candy-coated ideas of love, your sweet little facades you've created for your favorite characters, or I may simply open your eyes and cause your to go, "Whoa…" I'm simply here to challenge you to expand your minds just a tad more. Or not.-.-; Either way, love does not always have happy endings, which is okay since most of the time they are overrated anyways… :) Mwahahahaha…

Don't forget to please Read 'n Review!

Now I present to you...

Love and Deceit
By: DarkRoseBlood

Drafty, stale-tasting air drifted languidly into the parched mouth of the dark-haired prisoner sprawled across a dusty and splintered bed of which large chunks of its fractured mahogany frame appeared to have been bitten out of it.

Hooded eyes the color of sinister obsidian blinked hazily open, their first sight being the miniscule particles of dust lazily floating in a few wayward beams of pale light that escaped through the rotted boards nailed to a nearby window.

Immediately, the raven-haired man's senses reverted to full alert.

Or at least, they attempted to, but he soon found that some unknown force withheld his awareness, as if a thick suffocating cloak had been placed over his mind. Or perhaps, it was as if his mind had been drunken into a muddled stupor. Either way, he had a splitting headache and was unable to think properly.

An unheard part of his mind, buried in the farthest corner that was not so obviously disorientated, observed that if his mind had been in a more rational state he would have easily identified the spell that been placed upon him. But, of course, in his dazed drunken stupor he was unable to do so, after all the spell-caster hadn't been one of the most brilliant and powerful witches ever to enter the wizarding world for nothing.

'But obviously not powerful enough…'

As the befuddled raven-haired man attempted to sit up, a mix of jumbled curses and unidentifiable words spilling venomously from his mouth, an obscured figure hidden in the forbidding shadows moved like rippling scarlet water into the lighter area of the grimy room.

"Tsk-tsk, my love, having a bit of trouble aren't we?" asked an affectionately soft voice that seemed to be created out of rose petals and chocolate, yet something else was warped unnaturally into the frighteningly sweet voice.

Something that did not belong there. Something twisted… threatening… disturbing… even mocking…

At the sweetly biting voice, the obsidian-eyed man snapped his head forward to peer at the elegant woman, who appeared to be in her early twenties, approaching from the dreary room's baleful shadows.

Lovely waves of russet hair shifted between lightness and darkness as the young woman leisurely approached the severely broken bed, passing beneath the yellowish-white beams of light peeking through the boarded windows. Mysterious honey-brown eyes glittered perilously as they surveyed their delicious prey.

"How does it feel, my love, to be the prey?" the woman's silky voice whispered through the silent room, ever so lethal and deceiving. "How does it feel to be at the mercy of me, your love, your little lioness? Hmm?"

With a rare sneer that was unnatural on her serene features, she flicked the dark wood wand held in her hand, and the black-eyed man's senses immediately returned to him; now however, he could barely move a muscle as every tendon seemed to burn with blistering white-hot fire.

"Hermione Granger," hissed the raven-haired man in a menacing voice, which instantly reminded the stunning woman, whose eyes had seen too much in her relatively young life, of several more occasions when she'd heard that tone before. A forceful shudder threatened to trail down her spine but she easily suppressed it.

Fear was a weakness. And weakness was of no use to her now. Besides, only those with something to lose had the need to fear.

Hermione Granger had nothing left to lose, not anymore at least.

"Oh, dear Severus," she mocked, laughing softly, her silky voice as sly and deceptive as any Slytherin's, "why ever so formal? What happened to 'my love' or 'my little lioness'—those ever adoring names you used to call me? But, Granger, sweet beloved? Why, you haven't called me Granger for so long. Since… once upon a time, isn't that right my love? So why now?"

Slipping the black wood wand into her flowing burgundy robe's pocket, she paused for a moment as if contemplating her words.

"Oh, yes–" She chuckled, her laugh like that of a terrorizing ghost's, climbed onto the ancient filthy bed, and straddled her quarry. "–that was before you murdered everyone dear to me. Yes… indeed, now I remember. That was before you handed them over to your psychotic Master. Before you played and then betrayed me, wasn't it, my love, my sweet, you damnable bastard?"

A clear, unpainted nail slowly trailed down the Potion's Master black collared shirt.

"Before I watched, in front of my very own eyes, them cry out in bleeding pain as they were mercilessly tortured, isn't that right, my dearly loved Professor? Before my hands became stained with their blood as it spilled upon the vile graveyard, pooling treacherously around me," she hissed furiously, her nails digging angrily into the thick cloth of her former professor's midnight black shirt.

"Do you know what it feels like, my dear love, to watch as your world crashes and burns around you. As those you trusted with your whole life deceived you, betrayed you. As you betrayed me? Do you know, Severus, my sweet, my love!" she screamed at him, voice so silky and dangerous in all its unrepressed rage.

Like at dark forbidding wave that threatened to consume her vulnerable prey, her wavy locks of rich gorgeous russet cascaded down her jagged shoulders onto the smooth black cloth of her victim's spotless robes. Blazing with icy fire, her once kind chocolate brown eyes raged heartlessly with something wild, something dangerous, hostile even—something mad, in her unforgiving pools of endless brown, and for a mere second he almost knew true fear. And how it burned.

Sadistic amusement sparkled precariously in her hauntingly fathomless chocolate irises as Hermione, with one pale slender hand, drew out a fatally curved dagger, which glimmered ominously beneath the spare moonlight that leaked in through the boarded windows, from the mysterious depths of her deep burgundy robes the color of lustrous blood. With pure, unadulterated enjoyment twisting sickly in her lovely milk-white features, she idly trailed the razor-sharp dagger down her prisoner's chest delighting in each small pop as the steely black buttons holding his black satin-like shirt closed snapped harshly open.

"Oh, don't worry Hermione," he managed to taunt through clenched teeth into the old dusty, upper bedroom of the age-old Shrieking Shack, obsidian hues narrowed and glaring at the revengeful woman atop him. "You're fate would have been the same as those inferior fools if you hadn't escaped. Damn bitch."

"But, aren't I, my love? After all, I learned from the best, sweetheart," she murmured softly and sardonically into his ear, the dagger currently skimming against the sickly pallid skin of his bare chest.

"I wonder," she whispered, crooning in deriding tenderness, teasingly trailing light kisses down his firm jaw, "I wonder, Severus my love, do you think it felt like this," —she pressed the gleaming blade edge harshly and brutally into his pale flesh, vivid crimson blood instantly spurting forth—, "when you led them into your faulty trap, warped them in your disgusting lies? Do you think they felt the pain when you revealed your true malicious loyalties? Do you think they felt as if you had shoved a knife straight through their hearts, hmm, my darling Severus?"

As the sharp silver dagger slid slowly down his chest, creating unknown designs on his pasty white skin, her sharp unpainted nails dug into his jaw as she jerked his face, curved angrily into a vicious snarl, closer to her own hauntingly beautiful one. Reflecting inhumanly in her once chaste, lovely features and loving chocolate eyes was the treacherous pains and misery of her past—the catastrophe as her life fell down upon her in roaring blood red flames.

Her smirk widened as she saw the momentary flinch of unbearable pain reflected in his black bottomless eyes as her actions contradicted harshly and agonizingly with the full body-binding spell she had placed upon him earlier. She reveled deeply in his torturous pain, his ongoing suffering, and she laughed as she relished in the blissful feeling as his sinful Death Eater blood poured down his chest in thick juicy streams.

And, oh, how she would become drunk in the rapturous highs that his hideous death would bring, this man who had once murmured sweet, sweet nothings of passion and devotion as he made love to her, as he fucked her against the cold stone of Hogwarts' dungeon walls.

That was, all of course, before he betrayed them and her. Yet, truth be told, he had been playing with their minds all along.

All along. Playing with her. Using her. Like some kind of weak, naive toy.

"I wouldn't know," he said, sneering with obvious painful effort, "but I'm sure it hurt immensely as their pitiful, mudblood-loving lives left their useless bodies, don't you think, Hermione?"

"Why, why, why?" she quietly repeated aloud the hopeless mantra, which had become a part of her wretched life since that day, even though she knew her words were a slip of weakness.

"Why?" the former Potions Master scoffed through clenched teeth. "Don't you know, Hermione dear? Sweet, know-it-all Gryffindor bitch."

She knew it. Always and forever. A weakness.

"You played with them! All of them! Their minds, their compassion!" she snarled, a dangerous feral look raging wild in her once sweet chocolate brown eyes. "Why? Why? You damn bastard, you used me."

Contemptuously, her chocolate brown eyes suddenly flashed maliciously as she slashed the sparkling silver blade stained with spiteful blood down his chest in one ferocious swipe, causing a slow hiss to escape through her quarry's gritted teeth.

No, he wouldn't play with her mind; not today—this was her day.

"Don't you wish, darling Severus, my love, that you could scream?" she whispered scornfully, as she slowly licked the dark ruby blood, which poured down his muscled yet pasty white chest in copious rivers. "I'm sure by now you could feel the poison coursing through your veins as it ever so slowly deteriorates your muscles and flesh from the inside. And just think, soon, once the poison reaches its pinnacle, you will plead for me to take off the body-binding spell so you can claw at your flesh and eyes in sheer agony—and you will damn your useless Slytherin pride, so you can scream."

"Going to torture me before killing me, are you now, Hermione sweet? What happened to the little goody-two-shoes Gryffindor?" He sneered derisively, straining to repress his urge to tremble in pain as he did, indeed, feel the effects of the poison take affect. He would have laughed bitterly at the irony of it all, if he'd had the strength to, that is. After all, hadn't it been he, himself, who had taught Hermione Granger about this particular poison.

"You were the one who told me that we always hurt the ones we love," she murmured tenderly into his ear, licking it gently and leaving a smudge of his own blood in the process. "Don't you remember, Severus, my love?" Her slender white hands, along with the tainted dagger, roamed his chest, becoming stained in his blood just as the spilled blood of her fallen friends had stained them previously. "You were right."

With unexpected, abrupt movements, the dirtied hand not grasping the blood-spattered dagger swiftly seized his grimy raven-black hair yanking his face toward hers until they were nose-to-nose.

"For I can tell you it had indeed felt like a knife plunging into my beating heart, full of naively-placed love for you, as I watched each one of the members of the Order, my friends, people who I had loved, fall and die right before me, and you—you standing there before your wretched snake of a Lord, daring to laugh, daring to smirk!"

Though the words began as a harsh cough, and blood dripped from his mouth, he continued to scoff her tauntingly: "Ah, but did you not love me, sweet, sweet Hermione?"

"I will make you feel what it's like to have a knife plunged into your heart, lover of mine," she hissed spitefully, "and it will hurt."

"Oh, really, what happened to your disgustingly honorable, self-righteous Gryffindor traits?" His fathomless irises of black, where no light could penetrate though she had once foolishly believed hers had, still mocked, still taunted even when he looked her straight in the eyes and saw death. Even when he felt death flowing through his veins like sheer acid. After all, he was Severus Snape… and that had been one of the numerous things she'd loved about him.

"They died," she whispered sadistically. "They died the moment you betrayed all the people who had trusted you with their lives. The moment you shattered my heart and killed the Hermione Granger you knew."

Hermione paused, her forehead coming to rest upon her former lover's. As she looked upon the face she had once recognized as one of trust, faith, and love, her chocolate eyes once again swirled with a solemn sadness and heartache for a mere moment, even as his immoral obsidian orbs still regarded her with pure contempt.

"Oh, how idiotically sentimental of you, dear Hermione," he jeered, his bottomless obsidian eyes desperately craving to roll up into his head as the poison began to take over his mind; however, being the ever stubborn Severus Snape he would not give Hermione the satisfaction just yet.

Slowly, almost tiredly, as if exhausted from all the suffering, all the pain, all the treacherous games people played with each other, Hermione slid down her prisoner's body until her forehead rested in the crook of his neck and the front of her robes became soaked with her former lover's rich ruby blood as she lay upon his chest. Her lovely russet locks also become heavy with his thick crimson blood as they scattered out around her.

"Even now, you are my only weakness," she murmured into the pale flesh of his neck, which she knew so well, where her love bites had once marked her ownership. "I did love you, Severus Snape, my only love."

"Fo–foolish girl," he was able to mutter as vivid ruby blood poured from his mouth. He knew in his mind the excruciating pain he felt, eating his soul alive, was nothing compared to the agony he would endure in a matter of moments as the poison hit its climax, burning the flesh off his bones.

Hermione breathed against his pale neck and raven locks, taking in the fresh earthly smell of Severus Snape one more time, before whispering ever-so softly: "And I always will…"

And she plunged the knife straight in his beating heart before the poison could take full effect.

"We always hurt the ones we love, isn't that right, my beloved husband?" she whispered to the now lifeless body.

And then she wept.

End

End notes:

So what did you think? Flames will merely make me laugh at your idiocy. Other than that, anything else is always welcome please! (: