A/N: Hi folks, and welcome back to 'Accommodations'! In case you haven't noticed, within this past week I've published a song fic called 'Empire of Dirt'. It's a four-chapter-story on Lord Voldemort's thoughts in an AU in which he wins. Check it out, will you? It's a rather short read, it'll only take 15-20min of your time, max, and it would bring me so much joy. :)

I am disappointed in myself to tell you that next week's chapter isn't written yet. :( I have extensive notes on that one, so it shouldn't be a problem to actually put those notes into coherent sentences that, when strung together, form a chapter, but life's been - you know - life, and I haven't managed to write that one yet. I'm sorry.

In the hopes that you'll forgive me (for I will write that chapter to have it published next Monday, as always), I thank you for all your kind words on last week's chapter, and I'm looking forward to reading your thoughts on this week's one. It's a little shorter than usual, but it has plenty of POV-changes, so I suppose it won't seem too short. ;) Have fun!

Marcella xxx

Thursday, February 5th, 1996

Today's task was not an easy one, not that Hermione had expected anything less of the professor. The concentration necessary to juggle several knives and other tools for ingredient preparation, plus the stirring rod, not to mention doing so wandlessly – it would have been a Herculean task in itself, but Hermione had to brew magically and wandlessly while Occluding.

"Please, sir," she had asked when the professor had set her this impossible task, "what about any adverse reactions that some ingredients might have to being directly exposed to magical interference?"

The professor had merely stared her down some more, in this way that he had of doing so.

"We have been over this, Miss Granger, if I am correct," and they both had known that he was. "Intent, above all else, will determine the outcome of the magic you are casting. If you will your magic not to interact with the ingredients' properties, then it will not do so."

And thus it had come that Hermione was feeling her brain burn through from the high-wired concentration she needed to keep up if she was disinclined, as she was, to blow herself up, and the whole class with her. It was all she could do to maintain a sliver of a wall surrounding her mind as the professor was trying to break through while patrolling the classroom.

Things relaxed a little when all the ingredients had finally been added into the cauldron and all that was left to do was stir. Of course, intricate and exact stirring movements were not much easier than attempting not to chop your own fingers off with magic knives, but at least Hermione didn't need to multitask anymore… too much.

Enough mental capacity freed to fortify her mental barriers, Hermione was so intent on strengthening her Occlumency shields that she noticed barely anything of her surroundings. As it was, she almost jumped into her cauldron in fright when the Potions Master suddenly appeared at her side.

"Where is your quill, Miss Granger?" he asked without much (or any) preamble.

"It's in my book bag, sir," Hermione replied, trying not to let her confusion show.

"Retrieve it for me, if you will."

Letting the cauldron out of her sight was a huge risk, Hermione knew. Magically performing a task was far easier when you could actually watch what you were doing. That was a big part of the reason why the professor had not yet broken into her mind during the lesson, she thought. With Hermione's eyes trained on her potioneering tools, Professor Snape had not been able to gain the perfect angle for a brute force attack on her mind.

Bending down now to search for her quill amidst all the books that were crammed inside her bag, while continuing both to stir and to Occlude, proved almost too much for her mind, but she managed somehow. Rushing to a standing position again after getting ahold of her quill, Hermione felt her blood singing through her body, but the stirring continued and her mind was still protected.

Professor Snape took the quill from her hand. Twirling the feather between his fingers and perusing the beautifully worked tip, he was not even looking at her when he said, "Open your blouse, Miss Granger."

It took her a moment to have the words register in her brain, as it refused to accept their meaning for what her ears had heard.

"Excuse me?" she spluttered eventually.

"You heard me," came the dry reply.

"Why?"

The word was equally confusion, worry, and indignation. Of course, considering all that had happened in the dungeon classroom between the two of them – her bleeding determinedly to her death, him fingering her to orgasm, the two of them engaging in sexual acts in the store room – opening her blouse was a rather small demand, really. Nevertheless, Hermione refused to just follow the Potions Master's every command, simply because he wished it so.

"Because," the professor returned, "you are generally paying attention whenever a teacher is talking to you."

Again, Hermione needed a few moments until she realized what question the professor had answered. His reply did not fit the question she had meant to ask, namely why did he see fit for her to open her blouse. His reply was meant for the question she had put into words – why had she heard him?

Leave it to the professor to twist her every word around, Hermione thought.

"Now follow my request."

Hermione was too mentally exhausted to point out that technically speaking, there had never been a request, only a command. Instead of talking back, she just ignored him.

She started when his fingers gripped her wrist, raising her arm and stretching it a little to the side. Feeling the air ripple against her fingertips, Hermione became aware of the wards surrounding them. None of her classmates would see or hear what she and the professor were doing back here. In fact, the wards went so far that none of them would even think to turn around and look.

"Opening buttons will help school your mental separation of physical and magical tasks," the professor explained, much to Hermione's surprise, when she still had not begun to open her blouse. "As of now, you are still focussing on the aspect of stirring that is the motion. You need to train your ability to concentrate on multiple motoric tasks at once, and some of them perhaps executed in different ways – one wandlessly with magic, one manually with your fingers."

Not wasting another moment, Hermione's fingers deftly began to pop the buttons of her blouse out of their holes. The steady circles of her stirring rod faltered slightly, becoming shaky, but the rod's motion was never fully interrupted.

"Good girl," the professor complimented her, and Hermione had to temper down her preening before she lost all concentration.

That became even harder to do when the professor's hand came up to cup her cheek. His thumb went to caress her bottom lip, lingering there for a moment. It reminded them both of their last Potions lesson together, when her lips had been wrapped around his cock. It also brought back memories of how she had kissed Professor Snape's thumb a moment before he took her virginity.

The professor's hand did not remain on her face for long. Sliding down the curve of her neck, it trailed lightly over her collarbone…

…before turning her around and forcefully yanking her blouse down her arms. The fabric came to rest midway down her upper arms, effectively trapping her arms behind her back.

When the girl turned back around, slowly, so as not to provoke another action of his like this one just now, Severus marvelled at his work. With the girl's arms secured behind her back, her spine straightened, thus pushing her breasts out towards him beautifully. Her blouse, now off her shoulders, was opened far enough to reveal the girl's front completely.

Bringing the quill up to his lips, Severus whispered a spell over the feathery length of it, the words of which were too quiet for the girl to hear.

"Stand very still now, Miss Granger," he bade her.

She was already concentrating on her cauldron and on managing the stirring rod, Severus could see, electing to fulfil her task rather than fight against the fabric holding her arms back. Whether she heard him or not, Severus did not know, but was happy to find out.

Deliberately tracing the tip of the quill's plume over the girl's stomach, Severus was fascinated to see goose bumps break out all over the soft plane of her belly. The girl's lips twisted into a smile and allowed a soft giggle to slip through before her mask of indifferent determination fell back into place. Severus had to smile despite himself. It had been a long time since he had tickled anyone, and he revelled in the fact that he was still able to perform such an innocuous act, and that he had somebody as innocent as the girl, for him to tickle.

He was not done, though - far from it.

Setting the plume back to the girl's skin, Severus began in earnest.

Maintaining her shields and the steady stirring motion became harder and harder to do, Hermione found, the longer Professor Snape traced the quill over her stomach. She did not dare to look down, lest the fact that he was using a feather on her very sensitive, very ticklish skin became real enough for her to break out in laughter and lose all concentration that she had worked so hard to build up.

That determination not to look failed, however, when Hermione felt something warm trickle down her belly.

Lowering her gaze, she saw red.

Red.

Blood red.

Severus watched the emotions in the girl's eyes change from forcibly reigned in amusement to open shock. She had been unaware that his almost-silent charm had strengthened and sharpened the quill's feather to a deadly, cutting edge.

And cut, he did.

Severus was painting the girl's skin in her own blood. It was difficult, doing what he did, because levelling the cuts to a fineness that they would not slash her stomach open to expel her entrails was a subtle art. Far more subtle, even, was painting with the quill as he did. The wounds being so miniscule, they did not immediately leak blood, so Severus was essentially drawing blindly. Keeping the bigger picture in his mind and following it to the end, was by no means an easy task.

The cuts were so fine that they did not register as wounds at first, he knew. They were so cleanly drawn, and so softly inflicted, that the girl had not even felt them in the first place. Only when the sensation of warm life force running down her stomach in tiny rivulets registered with her, had she been made aware of the fact that she was bleeding.

And bleed, she did.

Hermione had not quite gotten over the brightness of this particular shade of red, when she began to seriously worry over the sheer amount of that colour. It had all started out as a ticklish feeling that had then turned out to be very fine, very soft, very clean cuts. So clean were they, in fact, that the wounds failed to knit themselves back together, thus substantially stalling the healing process. Hermione knew that coagulation would be slow to set in, and that natural healing was impaired by the nature of those wounds.

She did not even realize that she was becoming dizzy, until the crimson redness began to fill her whole perception.

Dizziness aside (and wouldn't it be wonderful if things worked as easily as that?), the wounds now began to hurt. Hurt. Awareness, as if happened so often, had brought with it the pain that lay behind those plentiful, artfully inflicted, miniature wounds. And still, the professor continued to draw patterns onto her skin, slashing her open with every movement of her own quill, leaving the skin red and tender.

Hermione forcibly withdrew her gaze from the sight that was her bleeding stomach. The dizziness receded somewhat, and she helped force it back into inexistence by focussing her mind on two tasks: stirring, and Occluding.

She would not fail in this one.

"What colour is this supposed to be?" the professor asked loudly when Hermione handed in her vial of potion at the end of the lesson. "I was asking for a clear turquoise, not mud drenched in food colouring."

Wandlessly chopping and slicing and juicing the ingredients had not procured quite the standard of results Professor Snape was used from her, Hermione knew, nor had the increasingly irregular and unsteady stirring helped matters any. As it was, the results that could be found in her cauldron by the time the professor had been done painting wounds onto her unmarred body, were subpar.

To be fair, they were still above the skill level of all of her classmates - even Malfoy's concoction was only barely blue, so the opaque brown-blue colour Hermione had managed was actually the best result in class today - but when was the professor ever fair to her, least of all publically, in front of the other students, and Slytherins at that.

He had stemmed the blood flow from her wounds with a simple spell, and cleaned the leaked blood from her skin, having a house elf take care of her skirt as he had the last term, just before Christmas, when he'd bled her. Instead of healing her cuts or even granting her some Blood Replenishing Potion, the professor had left her wounds fresh and open, merely blocking the flow so that her blouse would not bleed through. Another charm had the fabric of her blouse repel blood, so that in case anything ripped, cancelling the spell that kept the blood inside her body, it would not be easily visible to others.

"Do not heal yourself, Miss Granger," the professor had commanded. "I will personally deal with them later tonight."

And as she was leaving the classroom, her head lowered in shame at being called out for her subpar results in front of the whole class, despite still coming out on top of the others, Hermione cursed the professor. It appeared that he felt the constant need to leave an imprint on her at all times – on Monday, it had been his seed, this time she was leaving with his wounds. She felt that imprint very acutely. Every action that resulted in any movement of any kind on her sensitive stomach, including her every breath and her every step, hurt.

Hermione hurt, and the professor was the only one who could soothe that pain.

She was looking forward to her nightly bath.

Friday, February 6th, 1996

It was a quarter past two when the water surrounding Hermione's floating form lit up.

Immersing herself in the prefects' pool had been harder than usual tonight, the soap doing little to soothe her still open wounds, but Hermione had pushed herself to do so anyway. Now she was Occluding as usual, at the ground of the tiled tub, and watching the swirls of green bubble bath in the water around her.

She had been prepared for the professor's entry tonight, drawing more oxygen than usual into the water in preparation for his cutting off her air supply. If only they had read more books on magical theory, she pondered for a moment, then Harry might have gone into the Black Lake without worrying about his gillyweed-induced gills receding into nothingness. Then again, she thought to herself, Harry was not the most disciplined of students, and for him to study magical focus and intent to such an extent that he might be able to breathe underwater for an hour or more was highly unlikely, not to mention him continuing to do so when faced with unknown water creatures and angry merpeople.

As it was, Hermione's breathing was fine and secure, and she found the time and peace of mind to wonder at the light that shone through the surface of the pool. It appeared that the professor had lit the sconces lining the walls which she herself had neglected to do - for the reason of being harder to find, and because she knew the bathroom so well by now that she could navigate it in the dark without issue.

Hermione wondered for a while whether or not it might be prudent to abandon her Occlumency practice right away rather than having the Potions Master wait until she ran out of oxygen. But that course of action would mean that Professor Snape could heal her wounds, and Hermione was aware that this would be counterproductive to strengthening her ability to withstand pain for longer periods of time.

Mulling that question over for long enough, answered it for her. She had not noticed how much time had passed, but the moment had come at which breathing became well-near impossible, and she knew she had to get out.

Pushing herself off of the ground of the bathtub, Hermione allowed her body to float upwards until her head and shoulders broke through the surface. As expected, the professor had been waiting for her.

"Good evening, sir," she greeted politely.

"Miss Granger," came the reply, that in itself surprising her. "I see that your proclivity for copious amounts of bathing essence has not receded in the face of recent developments."

Hermione tried so very hard not to smile at his not-a-question.

"I found no reason to cut back on my rare indulgences," she returned, "considering that pain is never far from pleasure - so why not the other way around?"

Severus eyes lit up at this, he knew, but was unable to do anything against it. The girl in all probability thought that they were still talking about how well her wounds fared in soapy water, but her answer had spurred on a completely different line of thought in his mind. Did she really, as she had just said, believe that pleasure could be gained from pain? If that was the case, perhaps her time with Lucius, and with himself as their private lessons progressed towards more violent measures of education, would not be too hard on her.

"Will you come out and play tonight, Miss Granger?" he asked, changing the subject.

The girl visibly swallowed.

"What game would you suggest, sir?" she hesitantly queried.

Severus smiled, and the sight wasn't pretty.

"Perhaps not a game as much as a form of entertainment," he replied and found the girl relaxing a bit at that. Continuing to crush her hopes at some mild sex play, he elaborated, "There is a canvas I have not quite finished with. Would you like to watch me paint, Miss Granger?"

He watched as all blood left the girl's face. For her own interest, he hoped that it wasn't settling in her stomach. Merlin knew it wouldn't last long there.

Painting.

Hermione had been rather adept at this pastime, when she was younger. She could not for the life of her remember why she had abandoned that hobby growing up, but she vaguely assumed that it had something to do with her growing interest in the written word, rather than colourful pictures. Either way, painting had never been something she dreaded.

Until now.

She had hoped that he would be healing her when he joined her in the bathroom, as he had done after her whipping. Thinking back to his phrasing of the lesson earlier that day, she realized that the professor had merely said that he'd 'deal with them' this night, meaning her wounds. It appeared to her now that he might have no intention of healing them, electing to further them instead.

Plastering a shaky smile upon her face, she said, "Of course, sir," and swam to the ladder that would lead her out of the pool.

That ladder, incidentally, was directly in front of the professor, granting him a top notch view of her naked, glistening wet body as she left the bath. His eyes, which had been the deepest black before, darkened at the sight, and she blushed under his scrutiny. The red in her cheeks could not solely be contributed to her nerves under the professor's intense gaze, though - they stemmed equally from her pride at catching his attention in such a manner.

"Do you have all the tools you need, sir, or will I need to fetch my quill for you again?" Hermione cheekily queried.

The Potions Master's eyes narrowed at her gall, as they were both well aware that her book bag was safely stowed in her dorm room, several floors away.

"Thank you, Miss Granger," he smoothly, silkily returned, "but no, I will not require your quill tonight. I have everything I need."

And with that, he pulled out a beautiful black raven's plume. Hermione marvelled at the blue shine to the dark colour, yet dreaded the fascinating danger that lay behind the pretty sight.

"What I require of you," the professor continued as all the sconces went out around them, drenching the room in a black so dark and dense that Hermione almost wanted to cut through it with a knife, "is a little light. You will not need your wand for that, no fancy words, nor, in fact, your hands -," at which they were bound by invisible restraints behind her back, though everything was invisible in this darkness surrounding them, really, "- all you will need, Miss Granger, is a little concentration and perhaps some intent. After all, it is in your best interests that I do not spoil this piece of art, isn't it?"

Hermione breathed in a gasp as she realized how close the professor had come. His steps had been muffled and she had not noticed his approach. Now that his robes softly brushed against her legs, she could not ignore his closeness any longer.

Pinching her eyes shut, Hermione concentrated, hard. When she heard the professor sigh exaggeratedly, she knew she had accomplished at least a small part of her task.

"Ah," he exclaimed, "much better. Although in this tiny flame, it will be a wonder if I can stick to the larger picture. Then again, it is your body, Miss Granger, is it not? Who am I to judge what you let me do with it. I'll just plunge right in..."

And so it began. With warm tears leaking down her weeping stomach, Hermione desperately tried to light the sconces lining the walls, and keep them lit. Ignoring the constant drip-drip-drip of her blood upon the wet bathroom floor, she focused her concentration as best she could.

It would be a long night.