She had been fourteen when she had first asked him, trails of tears still drying upon her pale, freckled cheeks. A hardly decent nightshirt had clung to her sweaty, shaken form and when she tilted her head to look up at him, he could see in the candlelight that her nutmeg-hued pupils were dilated and glazed with fear. Not of him, but of the night terrors she had woken from just a few minutes prior.

"Professor," she gasped, as she continued to gaze up at the towering form of the Potion Master of Hogwarts. Her soft soprano was breathy with the shock of encountering another in the dark hours of the early morning in the dimly-lit hallways of number twelve, Grimmauld Place. She opened her mouth to speak again and just as her plush pink lips were about to form a question, she closed them. Eyes framed with sodden lashes stole a glance to the clothed forearm that she knew was adorned by his Mark before finding his eyes again. "Order business?" It was more a statement than an inquiry.

A flash of anger filled the prideful Slytherin. That a simpering fourteen-year-old Gryffindor, a Weasley no less, would dare look him in the face and let lose two words fall from her lips with such calm acceptance and understanding was more than he could stand. With ill intent, Severus Snape dipped into the young girl's thoughts, seeking a flash of embarrassment to taunt her with for the audacity of presuming to understand the motives of his comings and goings. Instead he found the image of the eleven-year-old Ginevra Weasley, small arms covered in blood and tiny form shaking almost violently as she pleaded with the ghostly image of Tom Riddle, his icy touch sliding beneath her skirt. Giving only the slightest of flinches, Severus pulled from the redhead's mind and with a barely perceptible nod, he confirmed her assessment.

"Are... Are you staying the night?" Her small voice was just above a whisper, shaking as the memory surfaced.

"Just passing through. Goodnight, Miss Weasley." Never had Severus been so eager to leave Order headquarters. He could easily face the malice and bloodlust in the eyes of the most sadistic of Death Eaters, yet he could not bring himself to face the mixture of despair and longing in the eyes of that broken young girl.

Of course, that was five years ago and now she was nineteen and all traces of that frightened child were dead and buried with both the Dark Lord and Harry Potter. No one would equate her with the frail, weak little girl she had once been, pining after a cruel boy made of paper and ink. Not her family, not her former schoolmates, not the Daily Prophet and the whole of the wizarding world along with it. And not Severus. Not as he currently was, buried to the hilt inside of the eager, panting redhead and roughly forcing her hips into a brutal rhythm as he took her from behind against the wall of her apartment's dimly lit hallway.

The hold his long-fingered hands had taken just below her waist as he slammed relentlessly into her heat was strong enough to bruise. It would. It always did. But if the moans coming from his partner were any indication, the pain only aided Ginny in reaching the peak she so desperately sought. And as she climbed closer, she allowed herself to fall against the wall in front of her, the force of her lover's violent thrusts shoving full breasts painfully into the hard surface. Finding his own climax rapidly approaching, the tall man lowered his head until his teeth found a painful hold on the freckled flesh of the girl's right shoulder. When blood was drawn, she cried out with the force of her release, tightening almost impossibly further around his length. Severus fell quickly afterwards.

As he withdrew from her, sated and languid, she asked him yet again. It had become habit.

"Are you staying the night?" Desperately trying to mask the quaver in her voice.

He always gave her the same response. Habit, after all. "Just passing through." And when she turned to face him, her legs shaking from the ebbing waves of bliss that ran through her and his seed trickling down her thigh, he saw that same despair and longing that he had first seen in those nutmeg eyes five short years ago. It had never been so hard to leave.