Chapter 9: Open Your Eyes
When Hermione opened her eyes, she realized that she was sitting on a bench. She knew it well. It was the worn, wooden one from the nearby park that lay only a couple of blocks from her childhood home. She'd sat on its splintery seat many times throwing seeds and stale bread crumbs for the ducks.
But, as she raised her head, she realized that she wasn't in the park. She was looking out over the Black Lake, which should have been impossible, but for some reason, her mind simply accepted it for what it was. A tear slid down her cheek and landed on her lap and she realized, then, that she was crying steadily, though she couldn't say what had prompted the emotion. It was only after she'd noticed the tears that she was filled with a deep sense of sorrow, as though someone dear to her had died but she couldn't remember who it was.
And then, there was a loud crackling of fabric as it was snapped back in the wind and she looked up to see a much older Severus Snape striding purposefully towards her with a nasty scowl upon his face. It was hard to see him clearly through the blurriness of her tear-filled eyes, but she knew him at once.
"Miss Granger. What in the Seven Hells are you doing here?" he hissed; his yellowed teeth and greasy hair framing his face in a terrifying manner.
"I...I don't…" Hermine blubbered, trying futilely to stop herself from crying, "W..what do you…?"
"I mean," Snape said, stopping directly in front of her and crossing his arms abruptly, "what are you doing out of class on a school day? You also seem to have forgotten your...garments."
Hermione looked down at her legs and realized that she had indeed forgotten to get dressed. She was sitting in a pair of gray cotton underwear and a long, formless t-shirt. She grabbed at the hem of the shirt and tried desperately to pull the material down past her thighs, but the material wasn't very stretchy and she only succeeded in tiring herself out. She felt a stab of self-consciousness and terror before her mind suddenly realized that she was dreaming.
"Why should I even be worried?" Hermione asked, crossing her arms and looking at the grumpy-faced professor. "I already graduated, so you can't exactly take points from my House. Besides, you're dead and I'm dreaming."
"Oh?" His voice had changed and she didn't have to look at him to know that he was arching an eyebrow at her. "Well, then, if you are dreaming, then what do you think of this?"
He closed the distance between both of them and he turned on his heel, sliding into the open space next to her with a flourish of robes that looked somehow both cartoonishly theatrical and severe at the same time.
"What do you mean by that?" Hermione asked as she turned to look at him cautiously only to find him staring at her intently.
"Look at me, Hermione," he said, suddenly, and she couldn't help it. She felt drawn to stare into the darkness of his eyes.
It was then that everything in the dream seemed to slow down. Hermione was vaguely aware of a bird flying so slowly through the clear blue sky that she could see each individual beat of its wings. She could hear a tree's leaves moving slowly in the breeze, making a deep rattling noise that unsettled her. And then there were the dark eyes that held her gaze unblinkingly, the scent of his robes both herbal and spicy as he reached towards her and cupped her face in his calloused, scarred hands.
"Severus," she whispered, almost wondering if she'd only thought his name instead of uttering it aloud.
His eyes went wide and he pulled her to him, slowly closing the distance between their lips until she could hardly stand the anticipation of it any longer.
When he kissed her, she couldn't help but keep her eyes open, holding his gaze as their lips pressed together and he tentatively licked at her bottom lip with the tip of his tongue.
She inhaled deeply. Good lord, but he smelled divine and the flavor of his lips was pleasurable beyond words. The fact that he had let out an obviously unintentional moan was even more titillating and Hermione felt herself driven to press back, to mark him, to make him hers.
He pulled her close as she kissed him harder, licking at his lips until he allowed her to press inside of his mouth. She didn't even care that she was probably running her tongue over his yellowed teeth, for all she could think of was the taste and scent of him filling her sense until she thought she might burst.
It felt so real and lovely that Hermione would have been content to dream-snog Snape forever had she not realized that many of these sensations were so absurdly real to her that she could barely believe that her mind could create them.
Pulling back slightly, she caught her breath and looked at him again.
"Are you...real?" she asked, knowing she sounded far more naive than she wanted to sound.
He snorted and smirked at her.
"You of all people should know the difference between fantasy and reality," he replied shortly, though the harshness never quite reached his eyes or his fingers, which were twisting idly around her hair as he held her tightly with his other hand. "Now, then, I want you to go back and talk some sense into me before I muck everything up. Can you do that for me, Hermione?"
Hermione nodded, not knowing what to say. She was still confused about what all of this meant. She'd obviously never harbored even a fleeting crush on Professor Snape while she'd been in school, but after meeting his younger self, there was something growing in her heart that she'd never felt before.
"I...but…" she stammered, feeling lost.
And suddenly he was kissing her again, and her mind was zooming along at a million miles a minute and she didn't care anymore about who he was or how he appeared. She simply focused on the sensations and swore to herself that she would never allow herself to forget them.
"Wake up, Hermione," he panted into her mouth as she desperately fumbled with the buttons at his throat. "Wake up, or I won't-"
But she didn't find out what he wouldn't be able to do, because it was at that moment that she found herself back in the bed in the magical tent in the frozen wasteland within the Room of Requirement.
And she was on top of the much younger and very confused-looking Severus Snape, who was still shaking her gently awake when her eyes fluttered open.
"Merlin's balls!" Hermione cursed, feeling her face light up with embarrassment, "I'm so sorry, what was I-?"
"Before you go on commending me for being noble, you must know that I didn't want to wake you," Severus said, turning his head to the side as he blushed furiously. "But...but it was the right thing to do and I couldn't let you continue to kiss me if you were still asleep. Are you aware that you are surprisingly strong? I couldn't seem to keep you from pinning me down like this and...er...it's rather inconvenient, if you know what I mean."
Hermione suddenly noticed that she was straddled over a rather lumpy part of him that was growing lumpier by the moment. Even though she was horribly embarrassed that she'd been sleep-snogging (and also apparently inadvertently actually snogging) Severus Snape, there was a growing part of her that was filled with an insistent sort of need that couldn't be fulfilled with mere kisses.
And yet…
Hermione bit her lip and summoned every ounce of Gryffindor courage as she bent down until her lips were nearly touching his.
"Do...do you want me to continue?" she whispered breathlessly, her eyes searching his with wide-eyed curiosity.
"Oh, yesssss...yes please…." he whimpered back, his body so rigid from trying to control what was certainly an instinctive desire to grab her that it nearly seemed painful.
"Severus," she whispered softly, touching his cheek the way his older self had touched hers in the dream. "Please. Touch me. I need you to touch me."
He didn't need to be told twice.
And, as she finally brought her lips crashing down against his, their mutual desire taking hold of all rational thought, Hermione couldn't help but realize that his scent and taste were slightly different than what she'd encountered in the dream, which was decidedly odd.
There was no time to think, though. There was only their bodies moving together, nerves singing with pleasure as they allowed each other the blessed luxury of forgetting everything but the feeling of skin upon skin.
