Summary: What will Severus and Hermione do when they discover they share an identical dream?
Rating: MATURE for sexual content, and strong language (consider yourself warned)
Parings: Severus Snape/Hermione Granger
Genre: Romance/Fluff and Smut
Timeframe: post DH plus epilogue
A/N: Obviously, this is an EWE story. It also happens to be HEA. Please note that Hermione is an adult (of age in the wizarding world) in this story.
Disclaimer: All things Harry Potter are the express property of J. K. Rowling (including "it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live"). I adore these characters, but I don't own them.
Hermione Granger tentatively cracked open one eyelid and was assaulted by the hostile sun glaring at her through the open drape of her dormitory window. Bloody hell. She closed her eye again. Why does that slut insist on opening the curtains when she leaves every morning? I hope she chokes on his bloody tongue and gags on his…oh, whatthefuckever.
While it was difficult for Hermione to live with the seventh years, there simply wasn't any other place in the girls' dormitory for her. Since she was the only one in history to return for part of an eighth year, there had been no private room provided for her, war hero or not. Headmistress McGonagall had offered to allow her to reside in Hogsmeade since she was an adult, but Hermione had refused: the village was too far from the Hogwarts library. She only had to survive a scant twelve weeks before taking her specially-scheduled N.E.W.T.S. Hell, if she lived through months in a tent with boys with deplorable hygiene skills, she sure-as-shit could hold her own with some randy sixteen year old girls. At least girls smelled better.
Hermione abandoned any hope of falling back to sleep and made to get out of bed. What the…? Moving, she found her panties were in a hopeless state. Wadded up and pushing into her sex, her underwear was stuck to her in unimaginable ways, still damp but a bit stiff from beginning to dry. She pulled them away from her body tentatively and realized she was experiencing the dull throb of a recent climax. It was then that she remembered her dream. Vividly. Oh, shit. Who's the bloody slut now?
He'd been standing in a doorway, a stone arch really, leaning against the grey with his arms folded and his feet crossed at the ankles. Her heart leapt. He wasn't wearing his usual black frock coat; instead he had on a finely cut white long sleeve button down shirt, exquisitely tailored black trousers, and black dress shoes. He had a sly smile on his face, as though he was not surprised to see her staring back at him from across the portico. Her flowy emerald green dress ended just above her knees; its neckline was cut into a deep V. She felt a heavy pendant pulling at her neck. She smiled at him and he reached out his hand; she crossed the flagstone to take it, entwining her fingers in his, pulling him back into the cottage. God, she adored this man. He began to kiss her. "Hermione," he said in his silky as sin voice around his kiss…
Lovely. As if her life wasn't fucked up enough already, now she'd dreamed about shagging a former Death Eater turned spy—who was currently her Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher—until she couldn't walk straight. Fab-u-lous. Obviously, she was spending far too many hours overhearing her dull roommates detail their latest sexual exploits. She must find a way to spend a lot less time in her room.
Perhaps a shower and breakfast would help her with her plan.
When Hermione reached the Great Hall for breakfast, he was already there, seated imperiously at the staff table next to Headmistress McGonagall, eating his breakfast while surveying the room. She stole a look at him. Wrapped in his usual raven coat, he looked restrained, composed, disciplined; not the man from her dream that looked hungry enough to ravish her senseless. As if he sensed her gaze on him, he turned, focusing a cold stare on her. She felt her face grow hot and hurriedly looked down at her toast. Yeah, like I'll be able to block the most brilliant Legilimens in the world. Actually one look at me and he probably won't need his gift to know what I've been fantasizing about. Bloody fabulous.
Severus Snape was supposed to be dead.
Well, if not dead, at least safely incarcerated in Azkaban. And if not in Azkaban, at least vanished without a trace, out of every decent wizard's way. At the very least, he was not supposed to be teaching children Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But here he was nonetheless.
It was laughable. The job he had always craved had been his to claim. Thanks to his Order of Merlin and his recently upheld claims on the Prince family fortune, if he spent more gold daily than he could fathom, his vault at Gringotts would never find itself lacking. Witches of every type—including far too many sporting unnaturally dyed red hair, Merlin help him—flung themselves in his path, making their intentions all too clear. But along with these secular joys, he overheard more and more whispers and noticed furtive looks stolen by passersby. And with each accolade after bloody accolade, with each unnecessary war hero's welcome, with each droning award ceremony, Severus became more and more restless. Disenchanted. And lonely.
After his surprisingly fast recovery over the summer that allowed him to return to Hogwarts and assume the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor position, Severus found the things he had always wanted—position, wealth, attention—were his to exact from those around him. But attaining them—even though they had been so hard won—left his heart emptier than ever. So he treated each day much as the one before.
Actually, he had no idea what else he was supposed to do.
Severus rolled over in his bed and opened his eyes. His hair was stuck to the sides of his face, his heart was racing as if he had just run a Muggle marathon, and a pleasant post-climax high was reverberating in his groin. Remembering his dream, he groaned. Again? She was pretty, but before this had begun, it had never occurred to him to think of her in that way. And he'd seen some pretty witches in his time as a professor at Hogwarts—some damn gorgeous ones at that—but he'd never, ever awoke to find one had breached his dreams. Just what in the hell Hermione Fucking Granger was doing there, he didn't know. And that's exactly what he'd been doing to her in his dream. Fucking.
Merlin, he was a deplorable letch. If it ever came to light that he was lusting after a pupil—albeit subconsciously—they'd escort him to those vaulted wrought iron gates so fast that he'd probably escape without a stoning. Unless they dragged him there, behind, say, a horse. Through the mud. Then they could stone him at their leisure along the way.
He turned toward the clock on his nightstand and realized that his underwear was a ruinous mess for the third time this week. He groaned again and hauled himself out of bed and into the shower, the feeling of warm spray on his back helping to lighten his sour mood. Well, what the hell, I'm in the shower anyway…and he allowed himself to recall the most vivid dream of his life.
She was standing in an open door frame of a lovely little stone cottage, dressed in a rich green dress, cut with a deliciously deep V-neck. She was wearing, of all things, his grandmother's emerald pendant around her neck. She was beaming. He was without his frock coat, yet he didn't feel uncomfortably exposed; he reached out his hand to her and she walked towards him and took it, delight evident on her face. She curled her tiny fingers around his and pulled him back toward the cottage, looking up at him with her big, honey brown eyes. As they got inside, he leaned in to kiss her tenderly and whisper her name. Oh, the taste of her…of strawberries…chocolate… She reached up to thread her fingers in his hair and he proceeded to pull her toward the bedroom—their bedroom—and…
Damn, he nearly went off again just remembering the lavender smell of her soft skin...her tongue, so urgent and deliberate in its exploration…the way she bit her lip when he entered her, closed her eyes and threw her head back as she hooked her legs around him, urging him further inside... What the fuck was wrong with him? He got dressed and willed his way to breakfast. Sitting next to the Headmistress would do him good. Take his mind off this ridiculousness. Encourage him to focus.
As he strode to the Great Hall, he realized that what was far more unsettling than the mind-blowing sex was the fact he was certain, absolutely certain, that they were married in the dream, and—beyond that unfathomable thought—he'd been content. He loved her. He settled into his seat next to Minerva and started on his breakfast. He simply would not tolerate this. He'd fucking chug Dreamless Sleep for the rest of his life if he had to, but he would not, absolutely not, allow himself to experience that dream again. Three times were three times too many.
The meal was going flawlessly—Minerva was chatting away about the upcoming Quiddich match and Slughorn seemed to be blathering about whom to invite to this year's Slug Club—he wasn't sure—until she ambled in and sat down at the Gryffindor table alone. He turned to Minerva and pretended to be interested in her choice for Seeker this year. And then, as he felt her gaze on him, he turned to meet her eyes. She looked down, her fair face deepening to a splotchy red. What the fuck was that?
That's it. He was going to the infirmary. He needed Madam Pomfrey and her Potion for Dreamless Sleep, right-the-fuck now.
