It had proved to be a long and busy weekend. Visits from friends, research, a meeting with her publisher and tea with the Headmistress had meant that Hermione had very little time to spend brooding. Normally when she was confused about her feelings, she would spend time writing lists and creating mindmaps to work out how she felt; what should be her course of action. There had been no chance to do that. Luckily, she had also failed to cross paths with her former Potions professor, though he had frequently occupied her thoughts.
On leaving his classroom late Friday night, she had returned to her room and spent time thinking about him. Specifically, about the bulge in his trousers which he seemed to think was nothing special; about his ability to make women come using mind magic, without any physical contact; about the many revelations he had shared with her. Mostly, though, she thought about his hand sliding into her knickers, a slender finger probing her pussy, and his dark eyes watching her reaction intently. That, she reflected, had been the sexiest thing. The intensity with which he observed her. She wondered if he was like that all the time during sex, or if there was a point at which he became too turned on to analyse. She wondered which was sexier.
Whenever Hermione had found time to herself, this had been the occupation of her thoughts. Not what she was going to do next, or how she was supposed to look the man in the eye over breakfast, or whether it had been wise to tell him quite as much as she had. She spent her time masturbating.
And they called her the finest witch of her generation. That really was one hell of a monicker to live up to.
At first, when there was no contact from Snape, Hermione was relieved. The last thing she wanted was a relationship. She'd tried that with Ron and found that being domestic, even being monogamous, wasn't for her just at the moment. The thought of being tied anywhere, to anyone, was cloying. Her life had been narrowed to life or death during years which should have been her most care free, and she had grown determined that this was not the way she would live the rest of her life. There would be no boundaries, no rules, no pre-determined grooves. There would always be expectations from other people, there was no escaping that. But how she reacted to them and whether she met them or not were entirely her own decision. At the moment she was happy at Hogwarts. It afforded her the space, peace and resources to research, and teaching had it's own rewards - but she would not stay more than two years. She wanted to travel. She didn't want to be bored. There was always the nagging fear that if she got bored, the memories and feelings from her teenage years, so harshly pushed down and out of the way in her mind, would surface and demand attention. Best to be busy. Best to keep moving.
Still, two days passed and Hermione became a little peeved. She was under the impression she had made an effect on him. It was galling not to have him pursue her, just a little.
Perhaps, if she had stayed...
No. It was for the best that she left when she did. Hermione might have become slightly more impulsive than in her teenage years, but she still knew better than to tumble on a classroom floor with a colleague while stoned. Waking up the next morning would have been a hideous reality check. Leaving had been for the best.
Monday morning saw her buried in a book - a pile of books, in fact - working on translations. She was trying to tie the writings of John Dee's possession in the seventeenth century to a more recent possession in the American Deep South, and find a common language and rune usage between them. It involved flicking between three texts and some natty comparative text charms of her own devising. Needless to say, she was not very aware of her surroundings.
It took her by surprise, then, when a small paper aeroplane skidded to a halt on the text book before her. She frowned and glanced around. There were a group of students in the Potions section, a class of ravenclaw and Gryffindor third or maybe second years. And there, overseeing, like the giant bat she loathed to recall, was Professor Snape.
Hermione stretched and rubbed her eyes, flicking her wand to dispel the charms. She flattened the aeroplane, the folded it into quarters and stashed it in the sleeve of her teaching robes. Muscles groaning with stiffness, she rose from her chair and drifted towards the gaggle of students.
Most of them had, by this point, taken text books to tables and wee studying in near silence. Snape was drifting between the desks and the stacks. It was easy enough to intercept him, and he seemed willing enough to glide close to Hermione.
"Did you just pass me a note during a study period?" She whispered, smirking as she raised her gaze to meet his.
He was smirking in return, actually looking very pleased with himself. "Tell it a lie and it will reveal its message."
"Very clandestine. Is that necessary?"
Snape frowned, suddenly on alert. It was like watching a dog that's spotted a rabbit far off and hadn't yet been told to fetch it.
"Accio note!" He hissed, and a scrap of parchment whistled through the air into his hand. At the table, one of the Gryffindor girls was turning an unpleasant shade of peuce. Snape opened the note and then turned it so she could see. A crude drawing of a woman in black robes pressed back against a bookshelf, while a man buried his large nose in her cleavage. "I think it's necessary," Snape growled. "Twenty points from Gryffindor for a painful lack of originality, Hopkins."
Her books engrossed her once more, and Hermione had no time or attention for anything else. She had no students on a Monday, no obligation to attend meals. The note quite slipped her mind until she came to undress for her bath before dinner that evening and found it in the sleeve of her robes. It looked like just a normal sheet of parchment. She thought of the Marauder's Map and lay her wand against the crinkled surface. "My name is Harry Potter," she told it, and smiled when cramped, spidery handwriting slithered across the page:
Firstly, I want you to know this is not an apology of any kind. We are both consenting adults who gained enjoyment from a shared sexual experience. And some pot. You left when you wanted and I didn't stop you. I am happy with the way things panned out. Pleasantly surprised.
That said, it is difficult to open a dialogue with someone I have spent so much time actively avoiding. I would like to open a dialogue.
There is bad blood between us and, despite revelations on both sides Friday night that could be both costly and embarrassing, I suspect you still don't trust me. So here is your opportunity. Ask me anything. I will be busy with classes probably until the weekend, but I will write as full a reply as I can. And I will be truthful. How often do you find a Slytherin promising that?
Hermione took the time to run her bath, as she had planned. She disrobed and soaked herself, scrubbed and rinsed away the library dust. There was nothing specific she wanted to know about her colleague. Rather, she appreciated the gesture of honesty and would take him up on it ... But she was more interested in spending time with him, conversing with him than asking a question and receiving a response. It felt too much like an interview. Not at all like building a ... Rapport.
She sighed, sending bubbles skidding across the surface of the water. Being close to Snape in the library, close enough to smell the faint sour scent of tobacco on him, had been a small thrill in her otherwise academic day. It would be nice to spend an hour in the bath, paying attention to the warm coil of pleasure standing close to him also caused, but there was no time. Not if she was going to return his note.
Out of the bath and wrapped in fluffy white towels, Hermione took a quill and wrote her question beneath his letter: "Tell me about Lily Potter." Best to keep it open. For all she knew it was still a sore subject, but she trusted him enough that something interesting would come from the request.
The question now was how to Disappear the text once more. The Marauder's Map had a specific phrase that turned it blank once more but she had received no instructions of that kind. With a twist of her mouth, she placed the tip of her wand against the parchment. A lie had revealed it. Perhaps a truth would conceal it.
"Severus Snape is sexier than you might think," she said with a wry twist of her mouth. When the black writing seemed to melt into the page and vanish, she let out a dry laugh. "I hope it doesn't store up what you tell it," she muttered, slipping the parchment back into the sleeve of her robe as she dressed.
At dinner she took the long route around the high table, dropping the parchment into Snape's lap as she passed behind him. It took a lot of effort not to giggle at the thought of passing notes to Professor Snape and more effort still not to look over her shoulder to check it had, in fact, been picked up by its intended target and no one else. As she sat in her seat at the end beside Professor Vector, she leaned forward to reach for the salt and glanced down the table. Snape was eating and glowering at the Gryffindors. No sign of the parchment. This must surely be a good thing.
Dinner passed without incident. Professor Vector asked about her research and shared some insights, they discussed the possibility of a combined Ancient Runes and Arithmancy field trip to Stone Henge. It was a very pleasant dinner, though Hermione knew she was distracted. Snape left early as he often did. She sometimes wondered if he'd eaten anything at all. Minerva had, in a tipsy moment, revealed that after spending three weeks 'forgetting' meals, Dumbledore had obliged him to be present at mealtimes for at least ten minutes of pain of losing his head of houseship. Hermione was not so hasty. Her feelings about House Elf rights aside, it was a relief to be fed regular nutritious meals, a luxury she had come to appreciate.
An hour or so later Hermione unwarded the floor length mirror that led to her private apartments. The mirror swung forward and she saw a fresh parchment Spellotaped to it's back. She smirked and pulled it free, closing and warding the mirror behind her. She wondered how long the sneaky bastard had known the precise location of her rooms. Heaven knows, she had no idea where he roosted, besides that it was somewhere in 'his' dungeons.
Hermione stretched and undressed, combed out her hair and brushed her teeth. It was not late, but she wanted to enjoy this letter and, given the blank parchment was a good three feet in length, she suspected it would make excellent bedtime reading.
Once she was snugly tucked under the covers, Hermione took out her wand and held it to the parchment. "Blondes have more fun," she said drily, unable to shake the suspicion that he might somehow be collecting whatever she said to the parchment. The lie was acceptable, and his spiky scrawl wrote itself across the parchment, covering it entirely. Hermione settled back into her pillows, and this is what she read:
An interesting choice.
Lily was beautiful. In many ways I loved her from the moment I saw her when I was ten years old. There wasn't a lot of love when I was young, and I latched on to the first creature that showed me affection. I can be obsessive. It serves me well academically. Not so much socially. When we both came to Hogwarts I became very reluctant to share her, but wasn't left a lot of choice.
Lust crowded in with affection when I was about fourteen. Which meant I had a year to enjoy wanking over her and hoping desperately that she might, one glorious day, let me touch he breast. After that, being surrounded by bigotry and intimidation and political unrest got the better of me. It is difficult to describe the way my feelings towards her changed in those very strange, dirty years. I still wanted her, still craved her attention and body; but at the same time I despised her for being Muggleborn, and for scorning me when I felt myself to be superior.
I consider myself lucky those feelings confined themselves to my adolescence. By the time I was twenty, she was married and I had found there was more than one cunt in the world. It might be inferior, but it was there nonetheless. My hate became less focused. We were estranged until my father died when I was twenty-one. She came to the funeral. She was different in some respects, entirely unchanged in many. Married life was not what she had expected. Being a wife restricted her in a way she had not anticipated. And then there was a baby on the way.
I became an avenue for her to vent her frustration. I did not judge, I was in no place to. And I kept her secrets. We fucked once. She was four months pregnant, just over the nausea and misery and frustration that had underscored the prior three months. I was brewing her potions to help. They were about to make the family go into hiding. She was frightened about who would deliver the baby. Potter had been venting his frustration about the prospect of being cooped up, was spending less and less time at home. I'm not proud of it. I'm not ashamed either. She wanted to feel wanted, and I was more than happy to deliver. Even with his baby fluttering around inside of her, she was still the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.
That was the last time I saw her alive. She expressed regret afterwards, most of the time. Very occasionally I would get a tearful letter saying she missed me and wished she could see me again. Wished I could hold her again. Whether that was honesty or desperation I don't know and I would rather not examine too closely.
The nobler types who remember how hard I worked to protect her like to think of me as some sort of desperate lunatic who's spent his life wanking over one woman and self flagellating because he will never have or deserve her. There has been a time for self flagellation. I still despise myself sometimes that I couldn't do more, bargain more with either side to ensure her safety. And I wonder what might have been. Yet life drags on relentlessly and I have not spent twenty-five years in abstinence for the sake of a dead woman. My life carried on.
So now I get a question in return. What are your intentions, Granger?
It was not the sexy missive Hermione realised she had been hoping for. Sitting opposite Snape on the Potions room floor, smoking his personal stash and flirting shamelessly had been exciting. Hermione sometimes mused that losing her adolescence to danger and battle had left her attracted to the sorts of behaviours in adulthood that should have been left at school. Jung would say that trauma had halted part of her development in her teenage years, these inner children doomed to forever act out the rebellions she never had the opportunity to live when they would have been relevant. As far as she knew the wizarding world didn't accept psychoanalysis.
Reading about Harry's mother carrying on an affair wasn't sexy. Interesting, yes. But not sexy. She spent a moment wondering, had she lived, had both the Potters lived, if they would be the happy family unit Harry had always imagined.
Her mind turned to his question. He, too, had left it open. What were her intentions? Towards him? Towards her job? Towards life in general?
Hermione heaved a sigh and summoned a quill and ink. She wasn't going to sleep until this was written.
As she took out a roll of parchment, Hermione smiled to herself. She thought of her first book deal, the negotiations over terms, boundaries, publishing rights and intellectual property. Was this their bargaining period? She shook her head, smirking to herself, and began to write out her terms.
Severus sank, if possible, a little deeper into his arm chair. His feet were propped on a stack of incredibly dull and largely inaccurate Potions texts. Shirt sleeves were rolled to the elbows, a tumbler of fire whiskey - his fifth - rested in the palm of his hand. He swirled the contents lazily, watching flames lick at the glass as the liquid rose and receded.
Nearly twenty-six years. He had never told anyone about the day Lily Flooed to Spinners End. She had been crying but she wasn't upset. Fury radiated from her. He didn't even have a chance to ask what the twat had done before she had him pushed against a book case. She was so little, she had to fist a hand in the front of his shirt and drag him down to her level to kiss him. Had he told anyone, he might have lied and said he put up an initial resistance. The truth was the moment he realised what was happening he made the most of it before she had a chance to come to her senses and leave. They ended up fucking on his desk. He was grateful it wasn't his first time. Fucking her wasn't perfect and it might have crushed him a couple of years earlier. He had learned that sex is never perfect - that's precisely what makes it exciting.
Afterwards he had expected her to storm out or refuse to talk to him, leave without saying goodbye. Instead she thanked him. Kissed him. Picked up her underwear with dignity and put on the kettle. Before she left they had tea. She frowned and pushed his hair back and said he wasn't eating properly.
Severus heaved a sigh and downed his drink. He reached for the bottle on the floor and found it empty. Fuck. He pressed his thumb and forefinger to his eyes. Perhaps he was drunk enough. Perhaps he could sleep without staring at the black ceiling and seeing a flush spread over what he could see of Hermione's breasts as he slid a finger inside her cunny.
His cock stirred half heartedly, even through the haze of alcohol and physical exhaustion.
One more glass.
He stood and steadied himself on the arm of the chair as the world shifted and swayed beneath him. Eventually it steadied and Severus took the three steps to his liquor cabinet. He did not stagger. He definitely did not stagger. He opened the cabinet and sighed.
"And when he got there the cupboard was bare. Fuck sakes!"
Snape turned and flung his tumbler against the far wall. Before the shards of glass had hit the floor his wands was out, and they were reforming and flying back towards him. He caught the glass in his left hand. He used the momentum of the glass to throw it again, harder. No sooner had it exploded than it reformed and flew back to him once again. His hand was open, ready to receive the glass. Instead, an envelope nudged his palm. He frowned, glanced at it, took it from the air...
And his favourite tumbler smashed into the wall beside his head.
"Fuck!"
Snape flicked his wand. Sluggishly the glass reformed. He growled as some small shards wriggled free from his face to return to the glass. He ran his thumb over the glass, trying to feel the tiny veins showing his blood, fused into the tumbler. He smiled. Only because he was alone. And because magic sometimes still made him happy, if only for a split second before the hideousness of existence nudged him back into his normal frame of mind.
He flicked a handkerchief from thin air and held it to the side of his face. Smears of blood. Only a scratch.
Now, what was the bloody letter.
"Professor S Snape. Very formal, Ms Granger." He slit it open with his wand and drew out the parchment from within. "Terms of agreement between the author and publisher as agreed on... What on earth?" He scanned the paper down to the bottom line. "Do you agree to the terms of service?" He frowned and rested the tip of his wand against the parchment. "Terms agreed," he said shortly, and smirked as the letters shuffled around the page.
Snape dropped back into his armchair, the need for an alcohol induced oblivion temporarily forgotten. This is what he read:
My intentions. In writing this I found the difficulty was that there are a lot of things I don't want, which obscured the things I do want. I think I know how difficult it must have been to write to me about Lily. I have done my best to repay your honesty.
1) I intend to live my life, as much as I possibly can, without influence or pre-conception based on my past. There are advantages to what I have done and the way I have done it - money, privilege - but there are also draw backs. Like people thinking they get to decide what I do and how I do it. I don't want to be controlled. I want to be free to make my own decisions. Even bad ones.
2) I intend to be free. I intend to achieve this by avoiding committed romantic relationships, being financially stable as much as I can, and embracing opportunities.
3) I intend to make the most of any opportunity. I know I already wrote that once, but I think it deserves repeating. It's easy to be cynical and not recognise the possibilities that are presented every day. As a Slytherin, you know this. Maybe I need to be a little more Slytherin. I'm proud of what I achieved as a teenager, but I have more to give. I'm not going to live in a rut. I'm not going to be Mrs Anyone. I am my own person.
4) And my intentions towards you. I suppose that's what you really wanted. I'm not going to waste parchment saying I find you sexy - that much is self evident. I will say I find you interesting. You aren't what I expected. And I think ... I really think that contrary to what anybody looking at us externally might think, we have a very similar way of looking at things.
So my intentions. I'd like to spend more time with you. That simple. I'd like to see if you can get me topless again - and be warned, I'll be on my guard next time. And I'd like to offer my honesty, in return for yours. Truth is a rare commodity.
So, what do you say? Do you agree to my terms?"
Snape smirked. "Terms agreed," he murmured under his breath. Then he frowned as the words shuffled on the page once again, creating an additional final line.
"Delighted to hear it. We both have a free period Thursday morning. Wednesday night, my rooms? You obviously know where they are. BYO tobacco unless you want my chemically enhanced filth."
He stood and considered his face in the mirror over the fireplace. Two bright cuts stood out: one on his temple, the other on his cheek. They would be easily healed. He was otherwise an ugly man. There was no getting around that. He thought or Cissy, pissed at Christmas and looking up at him from beneath magically enhanced eyelashes. "You can be sexy without being good looking, you know," she had murmured in a husky voice. She was a tease and he never got much out of her but longing looks and a snog or two when Lucius was in Azkaban, but there must have been something in that.
Sexy without being good looking. Apparently so.
