A/N: *snickers from the shadows*

*scampers under your bed while you're sleeping*

*drags nails across the floorboard to frighten you*

*sticks the chapter under the blankets by your feet while you panic*

*scurries away into the darkness*

xx-Kitten.

Relligo Spiritus

By Kittenshift17

Chapter Ten

Hermione waited in the living room for more than an hour. She was tired and she desperately wanted to return to bed, but she didn't dare when Snape might still be awake. She wasn't sure she could face him after the way he'd invaded her mind. She wasn't sure she would feel comfortable crawling into bed beside him now that they both knew an even better way to try and regain their strength and their good health could be achieved if they were willing to bump uglies.

She'd been horrified when she'd read about that. The bond wasn't supposed to be used in this manner, she knew. Not really. It had been a spell invented to prevent one's eternal love from passing into oblivion alone. A spell designed for people who loved each other so deeply that they wished to be together forever more, in this life and the next.

It wasn't supposed to be a spell employed as a means of saving someone's life. She'd known that when she came across it. She'd known it was supposed to be for lovers; partners; soulmates in heart already, intended to be bonded at the soul, as well.

It hadn't been intended for a foolish girl who'd trained herself to use it so that if the time ever came that the prophesized saviour of their generation faced death, she might lend him her strength and pull him back from the brink. It certainly hadn't been intended for one idiotic teenage girl to employ it on auto-pilot to saved her third least favourite teacher from the cusp of a death he had so desperately craved.

It wasn't meant for this.

It was meant to be about love and happiness and eternity, and the need to replenish themselves and each other for the sake of their health – when employed as intended – was something that most loving couples typically would already be engaging in by the time such an enchantment was enacted.

But not this.

Not Hermione Granger shagging her Potions professor. Not Severus Snape shagging a girl he undoubtedly still despised just because she'd been foolish enough to tether their souls, and then moronic enough not to be on her guard to such negligence as to allow Death Eaters to torture her to the very edge of her sanity, if not her life.

As they'd agreed, it was not worth considering.

But now he knew what she knew. Now he knew that he might be back to his spritely, bitter, jaded, and wholly unpleasant self if he just set aside his disgust and shagged her. Now they would both be uncomfortably aware of that solution the next time they each grew tired climbing the stairs. Now she'd have to figure out a way to look him in the eye without contemplating stripping him naked and ravishing him so that she might feel better and get on with her life as fate had intended before she'd gone and hitched her wagon to his.

Sighing, Hermione scrubbed her hands over her face, trying to think of something to say and some way to undo what she'd said and make him un-see what he'd seen. There wasn't one. Not really. And it wasn't like the option was in any way viable. She might be sharing his house and sleeping in his bed as a result of being completely depleted and almost dying a few days ago, but this arrangement was by no means sustainable. After all, not a single soul outside of herself – and she supposed Greyback, now – knew that Severus Snape was alive. No one knew he'd survived the Final Battle. No one knew that this entire time – for more than a year – he'd been hiding out in his own house and going about his life as though he hadn't been killed.

What kind of an existence must that be?

Hermione couldn't fathom it. There were too many people in her own life whom she would miss – whom she would rather actually be dead than go without talking to or seeing on a regular basis. Hermione couldn't understand the idea of what it would be like to sever all acquaintance and never speak to friends, loved ones, or even colleagues ever again.

Wouldn't he be terribly lonely?

Hermione signed, putting her head in her hands and closing her eyes. She was so tired. So ready to return to bed and sleep. Maybe she could sleep on the lounge. Surely Snape wouldn't mind terribly much considering that he wasn't overly fond of having her in his house or in his bed to begin with and things were currently awkward between them. It wasn't like she could struggle her way up the stairs despite her weariness just to climb into bed beside a man who had, until recently, been her school-teacher. It wasn't like either of them could even fathom the notion of sharing their bodies for the sake of recuperating their strength.

For a moment, Hermione tried to picture it. She'd grown quite comfortable touching Snape in the days since her arrival, and if she was being honest, he had on more than one occasion repeated the act of using her breasts as a pillow, as he'd done when they first woke up together on her couch several days ago. But the idea of kissing him… or touching his bare chest, or imagining him hovered over her, intending to impale her, to breach her body with his own and… well, she didn't imagine men like Severus Snape made love, but she supposed he must know how to practice coitus. At least she hoped he did. She didn't want to think of the man as a virgin. That would only complicate matters all the more.

"Miss Granger?" his low voice rasped from the doorway and Hermione's head snapped up as she twisted in his direction, her cheeks flooding crimson at the notion of being caught thinking about Snape and sex in the same sentence.

"Sir?" she asked, her heart hammering uncomfortably in her chest to think that this man was a practiced Leglimencer and might very well be able to hear every thought crossing her idiotic mind, even now.

"Do you plan to remain down here all day?" he asked quietly, his eyes wary as he met her gaze.

"I… I didn't think that you… um…. I thought it might be…"

"Awkward, yes," he nodded. "But as we've ruled out the coital pathway as a means of regaining our combined strength in rapid-time, it seems rather foolish to also deny the other pathways of increasing vitality through touch, does it not?"

"I…" Hermione bit her lip, her eyes widening at his choice of words.

"Unless you are sitting down here agonizing over whether the notion is actually worth considering?" he raised that damnable eyebrow at her sardonically.

Flustered, Hermione's mouth gaped open and closed like a fish tossed on the sand. Snape's expression never changed while her previous thoughts of what it would be like to shag him flooded her mind and Hermione couldn't look away from him, terrified though she was that he might dive right back into her brain and see everything she was picturing and imagining.

"I'm not a virgin, just so you know," he said, turning away and moving back toward the stairs.

"Oh, Merlin," Hermione whispered, horrified, realising he'd seen or heard everything she was thinking.

"Get off the couch and come to bed, Granger," he said without looking back at her. "If I have to waste more energy coming down to get you a third time, the prickly personality you associate with myself from my days as your professor will pale in comparison to my irritation."

Still mortified, Hermione rose quickly from the couch, following him to the stairs and beginning to climb though she was bone-weary and utterly exhausted and ever step felt like she was climbing Everest, rather than a thirteen-step staircase. By the time she reached the bedroom, Snape was already under the covers once more, his eyes closed though she could tell he was not yet asleep.

"Don't sleep in those," he warned when Hermione glanced down at her clothes from their outing and began thinking it would be too much effort to change into anything else when all she wanted was rest.

Sighing heavily, she began peeling them off one by one, before casting around for something comfortable to sleep in – her own pyjamas having been tossed in the wash with the sheets. She spied one of his night-shirts across the room and fetched it, pulling it on over her head before returning to the bed and peeling back the covers. When she climbed in, still embarrassed that she'd been caught thinking about his sex life, Hermione faced away from him, pulling the covers to her chin and stubbornly closing her eyes, trying to feel anything other than embarrassed.

She squeaked in surprise when he rolled toward her, slinging one long arm over her waist and dragging her across the mattress to the middle. He tucked his knees into the backs of hers, tangling their feet together and spooning himself around her entirely, his warmth engulfing her immediately. It wasn't the first time he'd done so. That very morning she'd woken in a similar position, in fact, but that was before he knew that if they had sex, they might heal faster. That was before he'd told her he wasn't a virgin.

"Miss Granger," he muttered into her curls, his nose buried against the back of her neck as he snuggled into her entirely, surprising her with his habit of being strangely comfortable touching her, despite everything.

"Yes, sir?" she asked frowning and squirming a little bit to relieve a kink in her neck, tucking the pillow a little more firmly beneath her cheek.

"Shut off that whirring mind of yours and sleep, witch," he commanded quietly, though his voice was already growing gravelly with sleep. "You'll need your energy to decorate for Christmas when we wake…"

Hermione bit her lip.

"You promised you'd help," she reminded him.

"If we're to do it properly, a trip to Diagon Alley will be in order," he muttered.

"Really?" she asked, attempting to twist and look at him, before finding herself held firm and earning a low growl of protest at her continued wriggling.

"Be still, girl," he grumbled. "Yes, really."

"Do you often go to Diagon Alley?" she asked. "How have you maintained the secrecy of your survival if you're gallivanting about the Alley on a regular basis."

"I am a Potions Master, Miss Granger," he reminded her, shaking his head, his tone positively dripping with scorn. Hermione had never met anyone so prone to sounding like they thought her fifteen kinds of moronic.

"Polyjuice?" she guessed.

"Mmmm," he hummed.

"Where do you get the hairs?" she asked.

"Muggles," he shrugged. "They are alarmingly unobservant."

Hermione couldn't help the small giggle that escaped her at his baffled and yet judgemental tone about the apparent lacking intelligence of the muggles he must be accosting for the DNA on a regular basis.

"And who might you impersonate to attend the alley to shop for holiday items with me?" she wanted to know, desperate to talk about anything other than the elephant in the room.

"The waitress, today," he replied.

"You stole her hair?" Hermione asked, horrified.

"I plucked it off her apron while she was clearing our plates," he answered. "It's not like I scalped the chit."

"Even so," Hermione protested. "You really mean to wear the face of a fifteen-year-old muggle girl just to come shopping with me?"

"Rather more appropriate than the face of an almost-forty-year-old Death Eater who is supposed to be dead," he reminded her.

"You're almost forty?" she frowned.

"Yes," he sniffed. "And any commentary on that number would be ill-advised, Miss Granger."

"Oh," she frowned. "I… well, I don't know why I'm surprised, since you went to school with Remus and Sirius and Harry's parents. I suppose I imagined you'd be older than that, sir."

"Miss Granger," he warned.

"Not that you look old, sir," she babbled nervously. "Just that because you taught us and you've always seemed so controlled and put together and mature, I suppose that I built up your age in my mind and it's a shock to learn you're so young."

"Are you attempting flattery?" he inquired, sounding suspicious and maybe a little bit amused, though she could not see his face to figure out if he was teasing or if he was furious with her.

"No," Hermione shook her head.

"Trying to rationalise to yourself that you're not in bed with someone twenty years older than you, and that as you are, it's really just a number and not a big deal?" he guessed, and she suspected he was definitely amused now.

"I…"

"Or have your thoughts returned to notions of my virginity and considerations about the additional means by which we might make use of this tether and replenish our strength and thus, you're calculating my youth comparative to my… abilities?"

Damn him for that silver tongue positively dripping with scorn and wicked amusement and maybe a little seduction.

No! There was no seduction. She was being foolish. He had said it was out of the question; not worth considering. He'd even put several meters distance between them downstairs at the very notion.

"You are impossible," Hermione huffed, her cheeks crimson. The urge to stamp her foot, cross her arms and stomp out of the room was overwhelming, but she could hardly do any of those things when he was wrapped around her like a boa constrictor and not looking like letting her go any time soon.

His low laugh tickled the back of her neck and Hermione huffed again, annoyed, drawing more laughter from him. Squeezing her eyes closed, determined to end the conversation by falling asleep, Hermione startled when she felt him roll a little more toward her before he nuzzled her cheek.

Her eyes snapped open, darting toward him and narrowing suspiciously when he peered at her for a moment, his face all but alien when se realised he was grinning like a Cheshire cat.

"What?" she asked, aware that she sounded hostile, but wholly annoyed with him for teasing her and wanting very much to escape his presence so that she could be mortified in peace.

"You were, weren't you?" he smirked.

Hermione scowled at him.

"I was what?" she demanded.

"Trying to figure out my age comparative to my abilities should such an inconsiderable notion actually be considered," he pushed.

"You're being ridiculous," she informed him, forgetting for a moment just who she was insulting.

His eyes narrowed a little and Hermione worked very hard to ensure her mind was blank of all thoughts, expecting he must be trying to pick up on them again. For several long moments, their eyes remained locked, Hermione stubbornly occluding him and Snape stubbornly trying to figure out what was running through her mind and colouring her cheeks.

"Indeed," he said eventually, surprising her, before he laid his head back on the pillow behind her, his arm tightening around her middle as he burrowed his nose back into her hair.

Hermione wanted to ask him what the hell that was supposed to mean but it seemed wiser to simply let it go and let the conversation be forgotten. Closing her eyes, Hermione tried to will herself to sleep despite the troublesome wizard holding her and the incessant thoughts plaguing her mind surrounding their bond, their depletion, and the notion that even if they didn't shag to replenish their strength this time, they were soulmates.

Resolved to do some further research about their tethered souls when she awoke to figure out how this was supposed to work when they weren't romantically involved and might fancy other people, Hermione drifted off to a land of dreams where his abilities were well and truly put to the test.