A/N:
I apologize for any missing spaces between words. For some reason, the editor keeps deleting the spaces after some of the italicized words.
At the third Apparition lesson he trails his fingers across the back of her hand as he passes her, and she gasps in surprise. She finds a note in her pocket at the end of it, and she tells Harry she has to head off to the library. She keeps fingering the note in her pocket, giddy with the naughtinessof what she is doing, and trying to prove to herself that this isn't one of her rare daydreams.
She hasn't seen him, hasn't really seenhim for nine days now, but she was afraid of seeming needy, or clingy, or any one of those adjectives she's heard used to describe bothersome girls, so she made herself wait for some indication of continued interest from him.
As she climbs the flights of stairs to the fifth floor, it suddenly occurs to her that he might not be asking to meet her for the reasons she thinks he is. He isn't some frivolous, lust-addled teenager, after all. Soon the silly smile on her face is replaced by an anxious grimace, and she has half a mind to turn back and pretend she never got the note.
He grabs her wrist when she passes the tapestry, and she would have shrieked had he not plastered his palm over her mouth. She nips at the pad of his forefinger in retaliation. The salt of his skin melts against her tongue, and he draws his hand back once they are safely ensconced in the cold cage of stone and shadows.
"What the fuck are you doing?" he growls low and annoyed at her.
He doesn't mention the book again, but from the way he is attackingher mouth, she doesn't think he's forgot. She wanted to tell him earlier that it isn't what he thinks, that she wasn't withholding information because she didn't trust him, but she doesn't know how to bring it up without digging herself further in.
He flips them suddenly so he is the one with his back pressed into the wall, his knees bent to allow her to reach his mouth. His hands press into the small of her back, pressing all of her into him, and she thinks oh hell, oh hell, because they are in an alcove cut off only by a tapestry and she doesn't know if she is ready for the intimacy of their chests rising and falling in tandem, and this is why she pulls back.
He is looking at her in a way that makes her think of secrets, and of the wooziness in her head, and the throbbing, aching life pounding through all of her, and it's strange because they are always enveloped in some half-dim, half-hazy suspension of light whenever they do this. It's strange because the man in front of her now, with his half-lidded eyes and the slackness in his jaw, this man is so different from her Defence professor, and she doesn't know what to make of it. He doesn't speak. He just looks at her, his hands fisting into the back of her robes, waiting for her to make a move.
Alright, Granger.
She cannot bear the slowness of the moment, and so she crashes her open mouth onto his, pressing her breasts against his chest. It is the kind of tearing kiss with teeth-clacking and breath-stealing. She feels his cock between them, and the sheer power of awareness makes her eyelids fly open and pushes a mewling, ragged sound from her throat. She doesn't know why she wasn't expecting it, when it had happened before, and it was only natural, but the fact is that he is Severus Snape, Potions Master, Death Eater, and his penis is at the moment gorged with blood because of her, and that is what is surprising.
He responds to the noise she makes with something shallow and gasping and breathy. His hands squeeze her waist, then travel lower and lower until the heat of his palms are pressing into her bum, and he swivels his hips against hers. Their tangled moans are bluntly provocative when bounced against the close stone walls. She is wishing for his touch to press against other parts of her. She is dreading his touch against other parts of her.
She wants him, she wantshim fervently, and her knickers are chafing and damp, and she is terrified of where this is going, and of where she will let this go, if she doesn't get out.
"Essay," she blurts out. He raises his eyebrows at her, still not speaking. She flushes hot, and the pressure in her chest is getting hard to take.
"I have to... er... write an essay. Yes. It's not due until next week, but I have prefect duties, and other... things." The corner of his lip twitches as if he is going to laugh, or sneer, though she thinks it is probably the latter.
She flaps out of the tapestry, dithering for a few seconds in front of it, wondering if it would be rude to just leave him there. But then he pushes it aside and emerges from the darkness with that familiar scowl on his mouth, and he gives her a look that makes her feel all kinds of stupid. She stalks off, blushing all the way to the common room. When she gets to her bed, she ignores Parvati's prying (ooh, what happened to you, Hermione?) and yanks her hangings shut, shoving her face into the coolness of her pillow.
On the first of March the sky splits open with an implausible brightness, and the muddy grounds all around the castle gleam like new. She watches the fractured sunlight glint bronze and alive in Ron's hair, so vivid against his pale face. She clings to his hand, trying to knead some of her warmth into it, and thinks that she will forgive him for every single nasty thing he's said to her, if only he (please, please) wakes up.
She pushes the air past the gaps between her clasped fingers, and wonders that her own two hands don't fit together properly. There are spaces in between the soft flesh of her pressed-together palms, and her knuckles catch and bump against each other awkwardly as she cracks them.
She read somewhere, in one of her Dad's astronomy books, that every atom in the universe, every atom in your body comes from the death of a star, and the atoms in your right hand could have come from a star say, ten thousand light years away from the star that produced the atoms of your left.
There is something in this thought, something that feels like a revelation, because she thinks a bit of this truth has to do with why there is unhappiness in the world.
"I think," she begins tentatively, her voice rather louder than it needs to be. "I think I should head down to the kitchens for some ginger-lemon cremes."
Parvati looks at her strangely. "Okay, Hermione. Erm... good on you, I suppose?"
Hermione clears her throat. "Well. Do you lot want me to bring up anything for you?"
There is silence for almost twelve seconds. Almost, but not quite.
"See if they have any of those chocolate-dipped things, would you?" Lavender says without looking up from painting her toenails. Her voice is a bit higher pitched than usual.
"Sure," Hermione replies, pushing her blankets off her feet.
There are six billion people, each alive, each wanting his own kind of peace, and if her own two hands don't fit together perfectly, how is it possible that six billion people can live together without conflict? Each person hauls the great sorrow of individual consciousness, of the wonderful torment of life's intricacies, the birthright to oxygen and freedom and passion and the little things too, like Neville said, and it is impossible for each person to comprehend that every other person is as real as they are. That each person's prerogative to life has equal value.
Maybe this is why wars start. Maybe wars don't really begin anywhere, but sort of just burst out from the smallest thing, like a misunderstanding. It is ever so easy to misunderstand things, after all. Twenty-six letters in the English alphabet alone; an infinite number of combinations of sound and expression, of interpretation, and of inquiry.
At the moment she would give anything to understand why Snape is avoiding her. She's gone back over her actions for the past two weeks, and has found nothing incriminating in her memories. Maybe she's grossly misinterpreted things, and he's got his fill of her and now things are supposed to go back to normal. She is tired of second-guessing herself, and tired of not knowing the rules. Most of all she is tired of this start-and-stop, start-and-stop thing they are going on, and she is afraid that she is tired enough to just let it go. She tells herself that it doesn't matter, that what they are doing is wrong anyway, and that they have to stop somewhere, so she might as well get out early.
The thing is, she thought that the intensity of the feelings he arouses in her would go down with time. But it doesn't. It just doesn't.
The double doors burst open and the Entrance Hall is soaked in a milky twilight haze that would have been beautiful, had Hermione been paying attention to the scenery. She gives a start as she notices the silhouette, a cutout of black outlined in sooty blue-black. Then her heart slides back into its normal pace as she recognizes who it is. She might have surprised herself with how instantly she recognized his form, but she is busy wondering what he could possibly be doing on the grounds at this hour.
"Professor?"
As he steps into the Entrance Hall, the doors slam shut behind him, and the cool night air creeps into the high corners and disappears. There is a mutinous set to his shoulders, a potent anger creaking in his bones, and he walks past her to the dungeons.
"Professor?" she calls after him. Then, "Snape!" she shouts as he retreats into the darkness. Her voice lingers pathetically in the largeness of the room, and she is alone.
The double doors open again. Quietly, this time. Timidly. Another silhouette, this one slightly taller, but stooped and weary.
"Headmaster?"
His head snaps up at her voice, and it's the oddest thing, because she never thought it was possible to catch Albus Dumbledore unawares.
"Miss Granger, good evening. What are you doing here?"
"Patrolling, sir."
"Of course, of course," he says good-naturedly. "Have you, by any chance, seen Professor Snape come this way?"
"Yes, sir. I think he went to the dungeons."
"Ah, yes, thank you, my dear. Of course. The dungeons. Of course."
Dumbledore sweeps past her in the same direction that Snape went, all the while muttering of course, of course, of course.
He has set them in pairs once again, and she spies him out of the corner of her eye with his chin resting in his palm at his desk. It is an unusual pose for him; she rarely sees him without his spine so straight that she thinks it might break, or without that mask of impassiveness on his face. If it even isa mask. Sometimes she is sure that he feels nothing at all, that maybe she was wrong about him, and perhaps at his core he is as cold and dead as he seems on surface. But then she would remember how the tips of his fingers were warm as they traced their way down her throat, across the span of her shoulders and down the length of her arm. And how his breath was heavy with moisture and the promise of building heat. And how the salacious gleam in his eyes as he dragged them down her body awakened a rival thirst in hers.
But even then... even when she was panting with that unknown yet irresistible pressure in her chest, in her groin, even then he would do something to show her that he was in control, and that however high the flames leapt in him, he could always kill them with a shuttering of his eyelids, and a flick of his robes, and a sneer for good measure. It is infuriating. It is terribly arousing.
And this is why she is alarmed when she sees his head sink into his hand, his fingers digging into his thin cheek, like he doesn't careif everyone sees him looking so tired, like he might not make it to the end of the year.
This is why she lingers after class, and waits until the door closes. She tries not to think of what they've done in this very classroom, the last time she stayed after like this. He straightens in his seat, a splotch of red on the spot where his chin rested against his hand. She stares at it instead of looking at his eyes.
"We need to..."
We need to what?
"We need to stop," she finishes lamely, without preamble.
"Stop what, Miss Granger?" She thinks that maybe she should have qualified what she meant, but she knows that he is quite possibly the most intelligent person she knows, and there is no way he doesn't understand what she means.
"You know what I mean."
"I assure you that I haven't the faintest idea," he sneers. She closes her eyes and concentrates on the sound of her breathing.
"You want me to say it, then? Fine. I can do that. I was... I was selfish, and stupid, and you took advantage of that—" his top lip curls up even higher at this— "and we need to stop this... thingwe started."
She doesn't know if they have already stopped even before she asked, because she hasn't felt his touch in what seems like months. She hates leaving loose threads hanging, though.
He traces a finger around his thinly pressed lips, and she labors under the weight of his stare. It's worse like this; when he just looks at her. When he glares, she knows he is angry, and she can brace herself against his attack, or plan a line of defense. But when he is just looking at her, like this, she is left feeling discomfited and utterly confused.
"Why, Miss Granger, I wasn't aware that we startedanything."
She is bewildered momentarily, even though she told herself that this is what she should expect. But perhaps the single thing they have in common is their disdain for weakness, so she pulls herself together.
"Of course, sir." She gathers her things and holds them to her chest and ducks her head so her hair excludes him from her field of vision and leaves.
"So what's up with you and Snape?"
"What? Nothing's up. What are you talking about?" Her heart does something between a skip and a stutter, and she rushes out her words in one big breath.
"Oh. I didn't mean to—it's just that he seems to be picking on you more than usual." Ron's tone is gently soothing. Tentative. They haven't quite swung back into the usual pace of things, and they are each careful with their words to the other.
"I never knew you were so observant," she says slowly, making sure to smile so he knows it is a joke.
"Shut up," he mutters, looking down at his lap and smiling, and it's almost close to normal. "Look. Just tell me, yeah? If you need any help dealing with him."
She's missed this somuch, their ease with each other, and not having to find hurt in every other sentence.
"Okay, Ron. But really, it's nothi—"
"Miss Granger, I thought I taught you a lesson about the consequences of whisperingwith your little paramours in my class."
Everyone's heads turns toward the icy drawl from the front of the room. The silence is punctuated by sounds of Slytherins trying not to laugh. Snape turns an indulgent gaze on them before leveling his noxious sneer back on her. Ron looks at her as she places a hand on his forearm.
"But Hermione, he—"
"No, Ron," she hisses lowly into his ear.
"I suggest you do as your sweetheart says, Mr. Weasley," Snape says with a sickeningly false graciousness to his tone. "Ten points from Gryffindor, from each of you."
She avoids his gaze for the rest of the class, and meets his eyes only once, briefly, when she gets up from her seat to leave.
It was a distraction. That's all it was. She was stressed. She gave in because she is young, and the thrill of being wanted was new and heady and made her feel like...
Like...
Like something burning. And alive. And just... it was wonderful.
And he did it because she understands him to be one of those people who cannot sacrifice irresolutely, or sin half-heartedly, or do anythingwithout throwing the whole of himself under the weight of it. He is the type of man to make Unbreakable Vows, and there is an autonomy to his tragedy that tugs on some buried part of her.
She wonders if she can just let this thing die without ever having felt his hands on her body, and then she tells herself that there is nothing to let die, because it's been dead weeks ago.
Draco Malfoy is a pale little boy getting lost in the sheets of his bed.
Hermione doesn't know what brought her here. Maybe it was the same sort of fascination that makes people slow at a car crash to survey the carnage. Maybe it was that unacknowledged human obsession with death and all its accoutrements. In any case, she found herself walking to the Hospital Wing one night after patrol. She didn't really plan it, but she is here now.
She feels a strange, unbalancing sort of sympathy for Malfoy, and she quickly pushes it away to the back of her head, to that dark junction where other disconcerting things are stored.
Harry told her how Snape came bursting in through the door. She pictures him now; angry and worried. He had saved her life not because he could not stand the thought of her death, but because he had been doing his job. She holds no illusions about that.
But it was different with Malfoy.
She'd thought before, abstractly, how much Malfoy looked like his father. She realizes now that she was wrong. Lucius Malfoy's face is more... conniving, and much more patrician.
There is a sharp imperturbability to Malfoy's features. Once shucked of his scornful sneers, there is an almost entrancing delicacy to the bow of his lip, and the narrow turn of his jaw. There is far more of his mother in his face than she thought.
She wonders if Malfoy has a scar like hers. She leaves before he wakes up and the animosity has a chance to settle in.
She taps her planner and watches her schedule rearrange itself into color-coded categorization in front of her, and smiles with grim satisfaction at the anticipation of two week's worth of homework. This small part of her life, at the very least, is under her control.
There is a story that begins, as most stories do, with a choice.
There was darkness, and then there was light. There was the primordial soup, and then there was life. Sometime during that span of years, there was a man, a woman, a treacherous serpent, and a fruit laden heavy and ripe with the promise of knowledge.
It was a choice between the writhing, attenuated, ephemeral mass of complications that is life. Real life, with all its imperfection and its sharp edges, with all the risks of stubbing your little toe against the foot of the bed or breaking your wrist or mangling your heart, with all the little things, those few little good things that are wretchedly few and far between. A choice between the burn of oxygen in your lungs, and the anodyne of ignorance. Between the strum of perdition and the certaintyof safety, and of deep sleep, and the knowledge of waking up whole in the morning.
The choice should have been an easy one. It should have been self-fucking-evident, but it isn't.
She made the choice to stop. She made herself forget him, and his kisses, and the gripping immediacy of wantinghim so much.
So why—why?—then, is she here?
"Snape?" she calls, stepping into his office. The door was ajar when she passed it, and she had been unable to stop the motions of her legs.
She follows the sound of breaking glass into his lab. She opens the door and squints into the darkness and gasps at the wreckage she finds there. He is in the center of it all, squatting on the floor with his back turned to her. He doesn't respond when she calls his name again, and she thinks he might be gazing into some intact internal world of his, and that he didn't hear her.
She really should leave.
"I trust you, you know," she states flatly to his back. She thinks this is what she came to say, but she is still here.
"Is that so," he answers without looking at her. He doesn't seem surprised to hear her voice.
"There are some things that I can't tell you. But that doesn't mean I don't trust you. I think you are an honourable man." She pushes these words right past the uncertainty thrumming in her gut.
"Our ideas of honour differ." At another time he would have said this with disdain, but now he just says it like it is the most true thing in the world, and it is.
"Honour is... honour is living and dying for what you believe in, and isn't that what you're doing?"
He gives a short, fake laugh.
"Honour is to be useful without vanity. Anything else is just vague chatter."
"I think you have a very distorted view of reality."
"And I think you are a callow little thing. I'm surprised you still think I am honourable, given that I am consumed with lust for you."
She ducks her head to hide the flush on her cheeks. The room is silent except for the scuffing of the toe of her left shoe against the instep of the other, and a steady drip-drip-drip as the potion ebbs down the drain.
"Did you do this?" she asks, her voice hewing at the quiet. She gestures at the destruction in his lab, and the watery golden gleam spreading over the stone floor. The answer, of course, is yes, because no one else comes in here but him. What she really wanted to ask him was why, but she is afraid of what he might respond with.
He turns to look over his shoulder at her. There is an almost nacreous gleam in his rimmed-raw and watery eyes, and his face is streaked with dirt. The muscle under his left cheekbone twitches when he blinks. She thinks that she does not care to know which of his masters he has just returned from.
"It was inexcusable and unconscionable," he says distantly.
"What do you mean?"
"You want me to say it, then? Fine. I can do that," he smirks fiendishly, throwing her words back at her. He stands up slowly and approaches her. His feet leave uneven, ridged imprints on the mucky floor. He is limping.
"You were selfish and stupid." He stops until he is too close for her to be able to look into his eyes without tilting her head back, and she thinks that she hates it when she has to do this with Ron, or Seamus, or any of her other tall friends, but she doesn't mind it with him.
"And I took advantage of it." It sounds like a confession. He brings a hand up to her cheek and skims his knuckles down the curve of her jaw. The grit on his skin scratches against hers. He watches its trail down her face.
"I don't care," she says defiantly. She places a hand on his neck and tries to pull him down so she can taste his mouth, but he resists, bracing himself against her and wrapping his hands around her waist. It's ridiculous how much she's missed his the feel of his hands on her.
"Severus," she whispers before she can stop herself. She can almost feel his bones lock, the tug in his muscles as he freezes.
"Severus," she says again, with the air of a child testing out the syllables of a new word. The tension seeping from him is thick in the air around them. There is something very personal in a name. In hisname, with all its history.
"Let me touch you," she sighs into him. She wants him to touch her, but she doesn't have quite enough courage to say that out loud. Instead, she settles for the next best thing. They are pressed together now, and she feels his chest rising against hers when he breathes in. There is the longest pause, and then—
"I shouldn't... we shouldn't—"
"No. We shouldn't."
He straightens, and she knows a moment of fear as she thinks that he will walk away and leave her here to stew in her own shame.
But he doesn't.
His black stare knifes through the pall of darkness with a pitiless efficiency. He looks almost angry. Infuriated. His mouth is drawn white and stiff, the lines around them carved into twin brackets of disapproval. He looks so different, so unrecognizable from the man whose moist, warm lips molded against hers so long ago. She clings to the fact that he still hasn't left. His hands drop from her waist, and she watches as he flexes them at his side. Words like metacarpals and proximal phalanges flit through her head.
She places her hands on his chest. He looks at her with an air of aloof compliance. There is a delicious self-destruction in this; in his cold reticence, in the weave of his robes under her fingertips, in the intimacy of having her palms resting against his ribcage, in the absence of his arms around her. She is reminded once again of his mortality, of his unexpected frailty, and of his need to disunite the facets of his existence, to exist in two separate forms. She indulges herself with the thought that, with her, hislines are muddied and blurred, just like hers are with him.
Later, she will tell herself to stop being such a silly twit. That she shouldn't be so... strickenwith him.
She wants to taste it again, his name on her lips.
"Severus," she whispers. His chest rises under her hands as he breathes in hard through his nose.
She smoothes her palms up to his shoulders, pressing down slightly on the curves of his muscles. She slides them under the edges of his teaching robes and moves them down his arms until his robes fall with a soft, sensuous wooshto his feet. Still his hands remain at his sides.
She thinks this is the most naked she's seen him. She is practically choking on all the expectation crackling in the air, and her movements are unsure and awkward but she makes her hands move to that first button. Her toes curl in her socks as she slips it through its hole. She can almost hear his flesh and sinew moving together as his fists clench. She moves to the second button, and he swallows, the muscles of his throat moving in a complicated rearrangement before settling under his skin. On the third, he draws his bottom lip into his mouth just the slightest bit, and she has a mighty urge to run away. Her feelings are swelling in the most delectable, most unbearable way, but she makes herself conquer them, because she is a Gryffindor, damnit!and moves her trembling fingers to the fourth button.
When she reaches the last button his frock coat gapes open, and she pushes that off his shoulders too. She cannot bring herself to look into his eyes, so she watches his pulse beat in the hollow of his exposed throat. The white of his shirt is shocking; a dramatically stark antithesis to the image of the drawn, sour Potions Master.
"I did not come to you for absolution, Granger," he whispers. She doesn't know what he came to her for, but she knows that she wants to give it to him. She doesn't think she owes it to him, but he's spent his entire life asking permission.
"Will you touch me too?"
He stares at her with something like regret in his expression, and it doesn't make sense to her. She feels like he is mapping the contours of her face, and he looks so lost in the act that she says his name again. His mouth quirks a little bit at this. He traces her lower lip with his thumb.
"Like this?" he asks.
His thumb dips into the heat of her mouth briefly, before darting back out and continuing down the line of her jaw. She stares at him, his eyes half-lidded, and nods. His lets his roughened fingers trail down her throat, curving them across the curve of her shoulder, skimming across the top of her chest.
"Like this?"
His palm ghosts over the contour of her breast, and she tries not to arch into his touch. She should be scared now, confronted by her own inexperience in the face of his torturous calm, but she finds that she can't concentrate for long on any one thought.
"Yes, just... just like that." She holds her breath.
He presses harder, then, and steps forward with her until her back slams against the wall. He lifts the weight of her breast in his palm, squeezing it lightly, and she gasps at the sensation of it. His eyes flicker to hers at the sound, and he shoves her shirt up to her armpits and yanks the cup of her bra down. There is some inexpert fumbling until he finds her nipple and places his open mouth around it. The hard suction of his tongue against her areola pulls a fevered groan from her lips.
"You... you taste like..." She feels his deep voice vibrate against her skin. His hips move against hers.
Her hands find their way into his hair, and she tugs the strands against his scalp when he swipes the pad of his tongue against her other nipple. The sight of his dark head moving over her chest, and the little sucking, breathy sounds he is making against her skin make her so-so-so wet and needy in a way that will frighten her later.
He straightens and covers her with his chest, and she whimpers raggedly at the feel of cotton against her bare breasts. He buries his face in the curve of her neck, suckling and scraping and biting on the skin there, licking the knob of her collarbone, dragging his crooked teeth across the dip of her shoulder. She counts back the hours to her last shower, forcing herself to think past the murk in her brain. Then her head snaps up when he pulls her shirt up brutally, her bra with it, and the sound of the seams popping brings her back into herself a little bit.
She is naked-sheisnaked-naked-naked—
"Wait, I—ah!" she yelps as his lips close around her nipple again. "Nothing I haven't seen before," he mutters. But that was different—this is different, and her life isn't in danger and she winces as her breasts bounce unattractively with his movement—
"Can I touch you like this?" His fingers dip into the waistband of her jeans. She breathes out hard through her nose as little spots of black and grey and purple web around the edges of her vision, and she presses her thighs together.
"I—okay. Okay," she says, her tongue thick and unwieldy in her mouth.
Then he drops to his knees and pulls her trousers down.
"What are you... what are you..." she gasps, bordering on incoherence, her brain reduced to a bubbly froth and her heart trying to claw its way out of her chest cavity. She braces her hands on his shoulders because the sight of him like that on his knees, his eyes peeking up at her and his lips cocked in a strange little half-smile she's never seen before pushes the heat even higher until she thinks her head might explode and splatter all over the walls.
"Don't think, Granger. Don't think. Don't talk. Don't think." He pushes her knees aside so very easily, pressing her palms against her thighs so she can't move them. And she lets him. She lets him, and his nostrils flare as she letshim.
She presses herself back into the wall, smacking her palm against her eyes, unable to take in the nearness of his face to her naked crotch. He is looking at her with such concentration, like he wants to takesomething—everything—from her.
"I really don't think—"
"Shh," he whispers as he slides his finger there, and presses up, and swirls it around and around that spot that makes her hips buck against his hand. Something pops between her ears, and the sound trails off into a droning whine ringing in her head. Then suddenly his fingers are still, and his mouth is moving but she can't remember hearing anything—
"I said, does it feel good when I do this?" He swirls his finger around her clit again. She cries out, her voice catching on something in her chest. She realises that he is waiting for her to answer him.
"Yes—please—don't stop—"
Then he is standing again, his hand neatly tucked between her legs. His eyes scan her face, gauging her reactions. She feels a finger at her opening, and then he is fucking her with it, curving it forward and rubbing at her clit with his thumb. She doesn't make the conscious decision to bob up and down on his hand, but she finds herself doing it anyway. His lips chafe against the soft skin under her ear as he whispers, "Yessss... That's it. Fuck my hand, Granger."
He is breathing as heavy as she is now, thrusting rhythmically against her thigh. She lets her fingernails scratch down the back of his neck, cutting across the neat vertical trails of his sweat, and his hips suddenly snap forward. He bites her earlobe in retaliation and inserts a second finger in her, and she cries out at the pressure and the squelching sounds it makes against the slick wetness of her.
She is so close, sososososo close, and the friction of his fingers pumping in and out, in and out of her makes her smack her head against the wall.
"Please, please, please," she chants restlessly under her breath. She feels as if she is standing on tiptoe at the edge of the world, and she desperately wants to fling herself off of it.
"I'm going to make you come, Granger. I'm going to taste your cunt and I'm going to make. You. Come."
He bends on his knees once again and lifts one of her feet from the leg of her trousers and hooks it over his shoulder. She feels his hair slide along her inner thigh, then the tip of his nose prod her labia, and she should be embarrassed, but then his lips fasten around her clit and she forgets to care about anything anymore. A weak gargling sound comes out of her throat at the sight of his head moving between her legs, and when his eyes find hers, she finds herself unable to look away.
She is practically weeping now, and she is certain that she will either collapse or catch fire. She steeples her hands to enclose her nose and mouth, to stop herself from being so loud. He moves his hot mouth over her with a fierce possessiveness, delving and licking in utter abandon, his earlier hesitation nowhere to be found. She sobs out his name, thrusting her hips against his face and digging the heel of her foot into his back.
He takes his hand from her stomach and, without breaking eye contact, starts to rub himself through his trousers. His hips bounce against the motion of his fist.
"I...I..." she stutters, her mind a heated, quivering mess. She needs—God—she needs—
Then he somehow clamps his lips even more firmly against her clit, swiping at it broadly with the flat of his tongue, and sucks. He presses his fingers tight and hard and deep and pulsing into her, his knuckles shoved against her entrance.
She comes shrieking with the fingers of one hand pressed against her lips, and the other balled into a fist around his hair. She feels her spine go rigid, her insides coil into tight little points of tension, before releasing in a pulsating wave of something soaring and fragmented that devours all that was left of rational thought. Her toes curl almost painfully, and the sheer powerof the pleasure racking her bones frightens her, and she thinks she might black out or crumble into pieces all over him.
When she comes to, he is moaning softly against her neck as he fondles himself and thrusts against her. She sinks her teeth into the spot where his neck meets his shoulder, and then he goes completely still for three seconds before something soft and stifled and shuddering trips out from between his teeth and blows against her skin like water over stones.
"I have this dream." She is feeling unbelievably drowsy. And chatty.
He says nothing, turning his back to her to button his frock coat.
"It's strange. It doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but I keep having it."
"Stay awake, then."
She gives the back of his head a look. When she reckons that she has properly expressed her indignation, she continues to speak.
"I wake up and it's always freezing. At first it was in the snow, then it turned to dirt. I wake up somewhere really cold, and then the sun rises, and I can't feel my fingers. And you're..."
You're in it,she was going to say. She always woke up with an image of him watching her as her breath froze and the tips of her fingers and toes turned purple.
She watches the motions of his shoulders as he straightens his stiff collar.
"It's just a dream. I thought you weren't the sort to put stock in such rubbish," he sneers at her over his shoulder.
"I knowit isn't real. It's just—"
"You can't control everything, Granger. Not even your own subconscious. One day you're going to choke on your pathological need for order."
"Not before you keel over from all that spite in your system," she scoffs. The room is quite silent but for the sound of his fingers sliding over the fabric of his coat. She wonders if she should have left earlier, but it felt cheap, slinking out of her professor's lab like that. What is the protocol for this sort of thing, anyway? Perhaps she should have thanked him or something. Why the hell did she even tell him about that dream?
She scowls when she realises that her internal monologue only proves him right about her need for rules.
He turns to her then, his face blank.
"I suggest you return to your common room, Miss Granger. I would hate to take off points for being out past curfew."
Merlin, but he's quick to the draw. She thinks she's beginning to understand how it works, though. She reaches out to brush her fingers against his chest, keeping her eyes on his buttons.
"Okay," she says, nodding. "Okay."
Three weeks later Dumbledore will be dead, and Hermione will search the sky for something that resembles truth.
A/N:
*Taken directly from canon
**'A Forsaken Garden,' by Algernon Charles Swinburne
***Do I really have to say where this is from? Okay, okay. 'The Raven,' by Edgar Allan Poe.