AN: I was only able to cover about half of what I wanted to cover in this chapter…we'll have to see if that changes the projected total of 18 chapters…I did leave myself some wiggle room while planning this thing.
Chapter Fourteen
"Severus! Please…?" Hermione begging was not a sight he wanted to miss.
"On one condition witch…"
She looked at him, smiling.
"A kiss."
She chuckled as she pulled him down and proceeded to set his world on fire with the heat of her body next to his.
"Now, I think you owe me something." She was so smug.
He released the book he'd been withholding.
He was sitting on a couch that he'd largely ignored since the day he'd purchased it. It matched the chairs he wanted in his personal library. It made the room look less…empty. He'd spent too many years around Lucius and Narcissa to want his own personal domain to be anything less than aesthetically pleasing, no matter how little chance there was of anyone else seeing it. And so he'd bought the couch as well as the chairs and ottoman.
He was currently very pleased with the purchase, because his witch was curled up at his side with a stack of his books. It would have been impossible to tease that last kiss out of if they'd been sitting in separate wingback chairs.
He buried his sensitive nose in her hair, enjoying the fragrance.
"I never thought about using my library as a tool for seduction before."
Hermione smirked as she turned her page. "Clearly, you've been dating the wrong women if they didn't get excited at the sight of this room."
He kissed her neck lightly, nipping the delicate skin before applying a little more pressure…exactly the way she liked it.
"Don't be daft woman. I don't let just anyone near my library. You and my godson are the only other human beings I've allowed in it." He was rather focused on the texture of her skin under his tongue and he didn't notice her expression.
"Really?"
She sounded so pleased. He couldn't imagine why. He thought he'd made it clear that she was more than some passing fling…and he wasn't a man who often allowed himself more than a passing fling.
She marked her place in her book and put it carefully to the side. Then she crawled into his lap, straddling him. It seemed he was never far from a full erection these days, and this was no exception. He knew she'd love the library. She was Hermione Granger after all; she categorically loved all libraries. The shocking thing was that she allowed her lust for him to interrupt her reading.
She vanished their clothing, and leaned in for another kiss.
He let his tongue dart out to taste her skin again, but he stilled her when she reached for him.
"Just relax. We never seem to take things slow…I'm always so hungry for you…" And she was always so ready for him…he took the complement with no small amount of internal glee.
With one deft movement he penned the witch to his formally despised couch, extended it to the size of a bed, and laid his wand on the coffee table.
Her hair was spread out behind her in corkscrews, her lips were pink and moist, her pupils dilated. Her neck had a small love bite he'd given her this morning. He growled and licked the spot…slightly shocked at the amount of satisfaction it gave him to see her marked…that she had allowed that little mark of his love-making to remain on her skin.
He moved his mouth over her body, but they quickly reached the point where they were both too desperate to wait any longer.
He sighed in satisfaction as he slid into her. Perhaps, at some point in the distant future, the two of them would make love slowly, actively working toward arousal like every other coupling he'd ever been in. But for now, he supposed he should just enjoy the sensation of not having to work to get to the point of mindless pleasure. Still, there were so many areas of her body he'd barely touched…her lovely back for instance…he ran his pale fingers up her spine…but it wasn't the time.
He pulled her back on top of him, letting her set the pace. She was so tight that they sometimes had to work a bit to get his full length inside her, but they'd done enough work this morning and last night that he was able to slide into her. It was pure pleasure.
She screamed his name twice before he allowed himself a release.
"Merlin's beard woman…you are addictive." He kissed her again, with their bodies still merged, slipping his tongue inside the silken heat of her mouth.
"Hmmm…" She smiled sleepily at him. "We may have to stop doing this during the day…now all I want is to fall asleep with you on top of me."
"What, cold again witch?"
"No your body does an admirable job of keeping me warm. If you could just like this till….forever, I'd be perfectly content."
He ignored the way her teasing words made his heart beat erratically and kissed her neck. After careful consideration he moved to her lips. Eventually he picked up his wand and moved far enough away from her to cast a cleansing charm on both of them.
She summoned their clothing, and they dressed in a leisurely manner, with many kisses and caresses exchanged.
Hermione picked up her abandoned book and sighed. "It's so interesting, but none of the rituals covered in this require bits and pieces of magical animals." She put it in a growing stack…there were several in front of her. Severus had snickered when she told him her private names for the stacks.
"Oh, this one is 'useless and codswallop', and this one is called 'dry and boring but accurate' and the last pile is 'Hermione will be reading later."
He eyed the stacks and sighed. "I just wish you had a stack labeled 'Eliminates annoying stalker'".
She nodded. "I'll find something somewhere. I've only covered a few of your books in the last two days. If you like, why don't you take this…" She handed him an enormous binder. "And read up on the results of the Lineage Charm that I created. My staff and I charted half of the Wizards in the country. The results are scary enough that I don't recommend reading it before bedtime."
They were silent then. She made quick forays to his shelves and he made quick notes s read her research.
"Hermione?"
She looked up at him absently. "Yes."
"Are you certain these numbers are right?"
She blanched, guessing which numbers he was referring to. "I ran them, Susan Bones ran them to check my work…we took the spells back down to formula to make sure there weren't any errors."
"There aren't many of us left that aren't closely related, are there?"
She put down her book and shook her head. "No, there aren't. The people who have seen that matrix really didn't get what it means, but if you look at the next page…"
"We're dying."
She nodded. "The pureblood families are. It's only the fact that they tended to stray into muggle blood lines that's kept them going this long." She sighed. "If they keep to their current patterns, serious genetic deformities are going to start in the next three generations. We do not need another Easter Island."
Severus shivered. It was well known in the Wizarding world that Easter Island was a pure-blooded breeding experiment gone very, very wrong.
She flipped to another sheet of numbers. "You see, even adding the current batch of 'muggle-borns' won't help all that much without the families also using charms to discover the bloodlines. And I factored in witches and wizards from other countries…but some of the other wizarding populations are even worse off than we are as far as genetic diversity goes."
Severus covered her hand. She was becoming distraught.
"There's your obsession with wedding and bedding again. The obvious thing would be to simply add more muggle-blood to the equation."
She nodded and flipped a few pages in the binder. "Here's the numbers on that. It would work, but only if we managed to get sixty percent participation, and I can't see that happening…not short of the Ministry enacting some sort of ridiculous marriage law or other foolishness. Can you imagine the backlash?"
Severus grimaced. "From every corner."
"That's when I worked out the Magical Dominance Genes." She nodded to another diagram. "You see? The protein that allows us to convert magical energy for our own use is located on one set of chromosomes, that's the one that the Squib potion affects too…the genes that regulate magical talents are located on no less than twelve chromosomes…and the limited amount of research I've been able to do seems to indicate that that amount varies from one witch or wizard to another…"
It was nearly too much for him to take in.
"So…you are saying that a charm to 'turn on' the ability to conduct magic would be comparatively simple."
"If your comparative task is regulating magical talent, then I would have to say that yes…it would be comparatively simple."
"Do you think this research could be used by those who would wish to increase their own power?"
She shook her head.
"Even with magic, changing genetic makeup is a tricky, dangerous task. Doing it once in an egg or sperm cell would be hard enough. Imagine changing the billions upon billions of cells in a body…I hate to call anything impossible…but I would never attempt it."
"Ah…so attempting to unlock magical potential in adults with a potion would be very difficult."
She seemed to think about it. "I'm….not sure. I'm a competent potions maker…"
"More than merely competent, surely…"
She gave him a long look. "But I'm no Severus Snape either…on one hand, a charm would allow the children to slip into the magical world without a ripple…no taunts from the other children…"
Severus nodded. "But it would allow the magical population to simply ignore how close to extinction they are getting with their prejudices. A potion that could be administered at age eleven would give the child the option to turn their back on the lot of us if they so choose. And having the potion ready before announcing the threat would keep those idiots in the Ministry from doing anything stupid."
"There's no reason we can't research both…we aren't going to settle this question today or tomorrow."
He kissed her hand.
"Very true." He stood up and pulled her to him. "And on that note, I'd say that we should call a halt to the research for today."
"But…"
"No buts. This library will be here tomorrow. I can't have you wasting away while you're visiting me…Potter would have my head. And since you've been very physically active lately…."
She smiled like a cat that had been onto the cream. "Very. "
"Dinner then. And an early night tonight."
Her eyes danced. "And you call me insatiable."
AN: I know that my updates haven't been as often this week, but I hope to get that sorted out soon. We had a family member in the hospital this last weekend (no worries, she's fine!) and I didn't get to write. I will update on Friday. Thank you all for reading!