Criminal

Pairing: Hermione/Severus

"Criminal" by Britney Spears

Summary: Outside expectations drive certain people to the edge, some are satisfied, some are not.

A/N: This story is based loosely off of the song "Criminal" by Britney Spears, and is also part of my Songs of Life story where my songfics are grouped together but has the lyrics of the songs to go along with them. Hope y'all like this one!

He was a liar, but I knew who he was for years before we ever started this, thing, we have. Or at least I had an inkling about it since... I don't know. Maybe it just sort of sat in the back of my mind until it was confirmed, and that's why I didn't care all that much about it as it wasn't that much of a surprise. It was more of that "Oh! Okay… so that happened. Now let's move on..." moment when Dumbledore told us he was a spy. I remember looking around at the shocked faces around me thinking, "How could you not have known? It was in front of us the entire time!" But I guess that is just what happens with teenagers, their world revolves around them, and their problems. Granted their problems and his problems were the same evil megalomaniac with no nose, but whatever, he was just as bad and an evil bastard who buttons up his true intentions in his frock coat. That was his goal, and he succeeded against the more less- aware minds of this generation.

The moment his secret was out, it was as if a disease took root in my brain, a parasite that had been dormant for years until his secret poked it with a needle and let it's venom spread into my bloodstream.

I was helpless against it's power, but then again, I didn't really care.

I was always the good little Hermione who always did her schoolwork on time, never snuck out of the house to meet a boy, and always listened to her parents. I listened to Mum when she said I should stay away from certain people, if they were bad for me. Now that I think about it, that was probably what started this little- big rebellion. That side of me was so repressed even with all the trouble Harry, Ron, and I got ourselves into, it still couldn't let go for fear of failing what my parents had planned for me. Had expected of me.

There was one time it had made an attempt, but that had been crushed into dust and strangled with my mother's curls so like mine.

"My baby girl," she said, pushing my hair back from my face. "I just don't want you to get hurt. He isn't good enough for you, you need someone who can take care of you as much as you take care of them. Not one who flies around on one of those broomsticks without the proper protection." She whispered the last words as if Viktor was sitting across from us in my dad's favorite chair.

I held my tongue from saying, "Well, Mummy, Daddy has a tattoo and had a motorcycle when you brought him home to Gran and Granpa."

"Maybe he just needs a little while to find himself in the world first, then you can look him up in a few years, yes?" She nodded to herself as if it was decided and went into the kitchen to put the kettle on the stove, as if tea would mend the years of cracks in my heart from their 'supportive advice,' and 'good intentions.'

"But Viktor is already established, Mum. He has been flying for years, and he is already on a professional team." I looked at her forlornly as she disappeared around the corner. "Why can't you let me be happy for once! I'm not happy!" I wanted to scream.

It had nothing to do with that he was a few years older than me, they just automatically thought that anyone who wasn't in an intellectual job was lower than them on the social scale.

We had started something that I knew would be hard, and was against everything that I was brought up in. I couldn't help it. We couldn't help it. We had to get away from the lives that had been forced upon us by others, and we saw kindred spirits in one another. At least that is what I saw in him, I never knew what drew him to me in the first place: His student, the insufferable- know- it- all who had to validate what the people around her thought about her.

They thought I was pure, and untainted, and immune to everything bad that had happened to us up to this point. I was the constant in their lives that they knew wouldn't change. I was still little Hermione with her nose stuck in a book, adhering to their views.

They were wrong, but I wasn't going to tell them that. He was my little secret with the tainted heart right up until they could finally see what was right in front of them.

He came back to the house countless times covered in blood, most not belonging to him, and he would glide through the kitchen without a glance to the disgusted looks sent his way by the others. After he got his water he would glide out just as silently as he would come in, but once, his eyes connected with mine, and he cocked his eyebrow at the blank look of my face.

That was it for me. I fell in love with a criminal, a villian by the devil's law who was a killer for a cause, but sometimes I wondered if he did it for fun as well. He didn't seem to have much remorse after the fact, but then again, that's what he did to stay alive.

After he had probably murdered, or tortured, children, he cocked that single perfect eyebrow at me, and I felt the urge to laugh but refrained in lue of propriety. He had no consciense that I could see.

As soon as I had him, I held on tight and wouldn't let him go. Sometimes it seemed as if he didn't want to let me go either, but we had to fulfill our obligations. It couldn't be helped. I was attracted to his darkness in a way few people would be, and it was as if all the times the people around me praised me for my good heart, it was a little nudge towards him.

Some people would claim that love had a mind of it's own, others would claim that it was incapable of being sentient. Either way, I felt that the shared claim was that it was, and always would, have actions of it's own. Once I knew what to call this feeling that I had developed in my chest, I didn't particularly care to deny it.

He looked up at me as I cauterized his shoulder with my wand, having not wanted to wait for stitches to heal. "You are not afraid of me."

I grinned at him a little, twisting my wrist to follow the opening of his skin, he didn't even waver, "Not anymore." His hand curled into a ball as his lips turned up into a sneer.

"And why not? I have killed many."

I looked into his dilated eyes, "Because, Professor, you have never hurt me before. You have protected us for years."

It was a long time coming, I guess, but what he had done that day still surprises me.

His fingers gripped my hips as soon as my wand came apart from his skin, throwing me up against the wall next to the chair he had been sitting in. I gasped as his fingers felt as if they would break my bones, my nails dug into his bare shoulders drawing blood. His nose ran up the side of my neck gently, contradicting the actions of his hands, and my eyes rolled back in my head as he rolled his hips into mine. Hard.

"We will have to fix that then."

That was the first of many times he had fixed my view of him, just not the way he thought, and I fell in love with him anyway.

"Severus!" Was a laughed out name through gritted teeth and a mending heart.

When our little secret came out, it was like a series of little bombs in the ocean. The sound swallowed up by the water that were the children in the house, until the waves reached the shore that was the adults. Slowly it came out, the series forming a single grenade that reached the shore all at once. I heard them talking, making their little remarks in their minds whenever I sat next to them at the table. I didn't care.

It was Ginny first that saw us. I had an inkling of it as soon after Severus had finished pounding me into my bed and we had heard footsteps outside the door, she couldn't look me and our professor in the eye as we came down to dinner.

Next was Fred and George, of this I am sure because I had seen them as I looked up from Severus' head buried in between my thighs under my dress to see them standing with their mouths dropped open. We had been in the garden on the side of the Burrow during a birthday party at the time, so they had taken to giving me little roses at weird times that confused everyone else as to the why. They still gift them to me to this day, and I still blush and smack them with them as they laugh and everyone still looks bewildered but laughs at the silliness of the inside- joke no one will explain. Severus sometimes even quirks a little self- satisfied smirk, making the others uncomfortable as they are not used to their taciturn professor showing anything other than loathing.

Then was Ron who I was sure would blow up the secret as he sees my head this time between Severus' thighs, his fingers tangled in my hair as he stood against the sink in the bathroom.

It took three innocent words with no sexual context whatsoever, and the last of my close group of friends, to finally fill in the rest of the people in our familial world.

"I love you," Severus told me for the first time rather than just showing me that he did.

He was on his knees in front of me, his arms wrapped around my waist as he spoke into my stomach. We had gotten into a fight, about what I don't even remember, but it happened, and it was the best fight that we had in my opinion because it led to this.

I looked down to his head in the dusty light that shone through the window in the otherwise dark library. I marveled at how I could get this man, this spy who has no feelings towards right or wrong, to fall in love with me.

I smiled as I hugged his head, "I love you."

This time, neither of us see Harry slink back slowly into the hallway and combine his part of the bomb with the others.

We didn't care when words slapped us in the face. Accusations, pleads, and advice was sent to us, the latter two more towards me and the former two towards him.

It happened, get over it.

"He is a perfect fit, love!" My mother told me when I brought my tall, dark lover home to meet her and Daddy. "He's not exactly handsome, but he's a teacher. That's what counts, he must be smart to be a Potions Master."

I smiled, "He is, Mum. He's perfect."

He's the perfect guy to my parents, to satisfy their needs, and he's the perfect guy to satisfy mine.

They knew nothing about Severus except what he wanted them to see, and that was fine for me. I saw all of him, and accepted that he was who he was. I just couldn't deny it, I loved the guy.

No one is perfect, least of all us.

A/N: Thank you for reading! Review!