A/N: A late birthsmutday present for DeepShadows2
Summary: SSHG, AU, EWE, Severus decides to take a chance on Hermione Granger. Will she accept him as he is or flee like any normal person should?
Beta Love: Dragon and the Rose, TheFrenchPress, Dutchgirl01
Good Intentions
"To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow - this is a human offering that can border on miraculous."
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
Perhaps, it had always been so, but Hermione realised as Snape's hand gently touched her shoulder and alighted there, that she was doomed. The smallest of tugs became the draw of a powerful force—she knew there was no comparison to the tentative invitation to wallow in his warmth, his scent, his companionship. She saw it for what it was: awkward, unsure, yet painfully hopeful even as it gave her an easy way out should the gesture prove to be unwelcome.
All the surrounding books in the Grimmauld Place library fell away or else were pushed aside for something, perhaps the only thing, that could capture Hermione Granger's attention over the lure of knowledge and utter fascination with the written word.
She snuggled into him, pressing herself against him with a content sigh, closing her eyes as she felt him tuck her against him, his head laying over hers as a ragged breath left him. His arm curled around her, drawing her against him tighter, his breaths becoming more at ease as she responded to his touch with the curl of her hands against his robes in undeniable returned interest.
He rumbled lowly, a quiet sound caught somewhere between a growl and purr, and it sent a thrill up her spine as his cheek slid against hers, his lips seeking hers.
His mouth covered hers, the intoxicating heat contrasting with the coolness of his lips, and a soft mewl escaped her throat as the simple joining in a kiss triggered a cascade of needs she had no idea she had been harbouring.
Perhaps he felt the same, because the kiss deepened, as did the tenor of his growl, and the sense of urgency. His mouth worked on the sensitive skin of her neck, teeth lightly scraping even as it alternated with suction. She let loose a low moan of pleasure, her body unsure what to do with the sensation or its budding needs.
Ron's awkward fumblings had always been sloppy and entirely focused on his own needs, his rough hands quickly groping and squeezing her breasts to "get her interested" and then proceeding to grunt like an ogre as he eagerly pleasured himself at her expense.
That had been enough to turn Hermione away from any thought that sex could actually be pleasurable, and she had ended their so-called "courtship" (as an oblivious Molly had romantically cast it) and moved out of the Burrow faster than the near-scalding shower she had taken afterwards.
"Hermione—" his voice drawled, heavy with desire. "If you do not wish to—"
She cupped his face between her hands as she stared into his impossibly Dark eyes. "Don't you dare stop now, Severus Snape."
She saw the shifting of his eyes as they grew darker, pupils swallowing up the iris with the power of his desire, but she also saw them change as wisps of Dark "light" seemed to leak out the edges of his eyes as if mist were gathering inside them and leaking out of the corners.
"I—" he looked into her face with agony. "Hermione, I'm not like other men."
Hermione touched his ear, brushing his hair from it. "Obviously. I don't care."
"I don't even think I am a man— anymore."
"This is me, Severus," Hermione said heatedly. "Not caring about that at all."
Severus trembled, pulling her to him, yet seemingly struggling with his attempt to push her away. "I was cursed as a teen. Made into a monster; a demon. Potter's wish for my best friend to see me for what he believed I truly was."
Hermione's face changed into a frown. "Harry?" Her expression shifted as realisation dawned. "His father?"
"You are— familiar with the old Muggle movie? Fantasia? They thought it most appropriate to cast me as Chernabog in Night on Bald Mountain— not caring, of course, what extent they might go to in order to make it so. They thought themselves very clever. Righteous, even. In the midst of my attempt to beg forgiveness from Lily, they triggered it. She ran directly into Potter's waiting arms— and never left. Her hero. Her saviour. Saving her from the evil, vile Dark created by the power of music and animation then given very real life."
His voice brushed against her skin with his warm breath, and Hermione's eyes fluttered. "Don't care. Still want you."
His fingers drew across her jaw as his face twisted in exquisite torture. "I want you— so very much, Hermione, but what I want is forever." He dipped his head, wincing. "What I am will curse you just as I am. Change you. Forever. They made so very certain no witch in their right mind would ever wish to seek comfort from me."
Hermione pulled his head down and instigated a heated kiss that had Snape bracing himself against the poor, abused settee as a pair of dark, ominous wings burst outwards from his back. An inky Darkness spread swiftly across his pale skin, turning his body as black as soot, a colour that seemed to soak up all the light in the room and impossibly make it even darker. Wickedly sharp obsidian claws curved around her back leaving fine, delicate, almost imperceptible scratches as he pant-growled her name against her heated skin even as oil-like horns curved out from his hair and down.
He pulled her flush against him, his great wings undulating as his hands moved across her skin to places lower as his mouth found her breasts and teased them with both suction and tongue.
"To hell with humanity," Hermione whimpered as she clawed his back. "Please, Severus. Don't stop."
With every touch, she saw skeletons dance and spirits whirl, fires blaze, and ghosts twirl. She felt her need growing inside her, lower and demanding, and her hips ground upward in invitation as her tongue welcomed his in an enthusiastic duel.
"You. Foolish. Gorgeous. Wonderful, witch," he growled as the tip of his cock found her waiting passage, and he plunged inside her, his robes and hers having vanished completely into the Ether. He lost himself inside her, thrusting madly, pouring his need, devotion, and unspoken promises into the waves of mutual pleasure that drove them into the exultation of mutual climax.
Hermione screamed into his heated mouth as her entire world seemed to suddenly explode in a vivid brightness only to be plunged into the fathomless Dark of the abyss, Severus' arms and wings and body pressed so close to her that they could merge together into one being. Magic seemed to be drawn in and exploded outward, jostling the curtains, tossing the books, lighting the fireplace, and (much to the bafflement of the other portraits) ripping old Walburga clean off the wall, flinging her down the stairs, and then smacking her into the troll's leg umbrella stand, face first as she shrieked in impotent fury, cursing all the way.
Severus cradled Hermione against him as she limply oozed against him, a soft wheeze her only indicator of breath. The inky Darkness was spreading across her skin having started from her mouth where they had kissed and from her nether regions, where they had been— were— still joined.
Any movement at all caused jolts of electricity to arouse him again, and a possessive instinct simmered inside his soul to keep his new mate close, to protect and support her for the most important, terrible, and glorious transformation. His wings served as the cocoon for her metamorphosis as darkness formed her chrysalis, and even as part of him boggled at how she could accept such a thing also relished the feel of her sinking deep into his embrace— something his foes had heckled him that no woman in their right mind would EVER do, especially after they'd cursed him.
But then, no one had ever accused Hermione Granger of being a typical witch.
He'd been dancing around his feelings for months upon having realised that he'd come to care for Hermione Granger, despite every attempt to persuade himself it was a mad fantasy and equally mad notion to even entertain the idea. He'd thought, like so many others, that she would surely toddle off with the youngest red-headed weasel boy and content herself with a life of motherly expectation while fooling herself into thinking that she was somehow accomplishing something.
But she hadn't.
She'd sent the boy packing (rumours, of course, were totally unfounded and thus everyone knew all about them) with a numbed micropenis ogre curse that turned the boy into a literal ogre whenever he was aroused but equipped with a cock so small that he couldn't even give himself a proper wank to relieve the condition.
Come to think of it, he was glad Hermione Granger hadn't been mad at him back in the day. Who knows how long it had taken Potter, Black, Pettigrew, and Lupin to devise the curse that had condemned him to the eternal life of a Disneyfied mountain demon, and Granger had just been angry.
Just angry.
Though, he supposed, she had set him on fire, once.
She hadn't even been angry then, either.
So, no. Hermione Granger was about as far from typical as any one witch could be, but she was not psychotic like Bellatrix Lestrange. It made her more dangerous, perhaps, because you knew that whatever she did was not random and had a well thought out purpose and intent behind it.
Brightest witch of her age, to be sure.
Scariest witch of her age, indeed.
Maybe he shouldn't have worried so much that she could accept who and what he was— but he had to admit it wasn't really a logical sort of assumption. Logic definitely leaned away from Beauty marrying the Beast and even preferring him that way.
The Princess did not prefer the frog, after all.
Then again, if the prince was a pompous assuming misogynist, maybe they would have preferred that the prince stay a frog.
But, as Hermione's arms wrapped around him and her face snuggled against his skin, Severus felt something suspiciously like a laugh bubbling up within his chest as he thumbed his nose at the gang of bullies that had lived to ruin his life.
Willing consummation.
He was fairly certain that trumped the root of the curse they had set should they have been alive to feel the repercussions. Alas, they were already quite dead.
He dearly hoped they were writhing in a hellish afterlife.
He tucked her against him, closing his eyes, his monstrously otherworldly form seemingly comically domestic as he cuddled his mate on the settee in the library of Potter's son.
He smiled, a show of fang and flick of his elongated, blackened tongue. He hoped Potter was writhing in the afterlife.
Hermione's tender but needy nibbles on his neck caused him to jolt out of his woolgathering and growl as he attended to his mate's desires. Who was he to deny her pleasure when she could accept him in all of his cursed glory?
Some may have argued Severus Snape was never a good man, but he was an excellent creature of the Dark.
He covered Hermione's seeking mouth with a searing kiss as he wove his fingers with hers, pinning her to the settee as they began their "courtship" once more.
Hermione squealed with delight as they worked themselves up into a frenzy again and again until the library was looking rather rough around the edges.
Whoever said romance was dead?
Ron spritzed some of the best cologne recommended by Ginny's copy of Witch Weekly and tucked it away in his pocket. Harry had said that Hermione was holed up in the library making love to her books as usual, and Ron realised that cursing him had been her way of telling him she didn't want him fooling around with other witches.
Since he'd rather have his cock back than not, that meant he had to play nice with Hermione and do what his mum had been trying to get him to do and propose to the mad witch.
Sure, his mum didn't know about his problems since he'd last shown Hermione what a good fuck was, but it wasn't his fault that Hermione was such a frigid sow that she didn't know a good cock when she had one right in front of her. Now, she was just jealous that she didn't have it all to herself, that was all.
So, a little cologne and some flowers and some of the best chocolate frogs, and she'd come around and decide she needed a repeat performance and undo the curse on his bits. His mum didn't need to know the details.
He gathered the chocolate box and bouquet of yellow flowers he'd gotten cheap at the flower vendor and adjusted his collar. The florist had said yellow roses and tansy were probably not what he wanted if he was giving them to a woman, but the bloke wanted more money for the other colours. Yellow was fine. Witches liked flowers. Who cared what the colour was?
Striding toward the library door, he barged in knowing that Hermione was going to be alone with her bloody books.
What he saw when he opened the door was not Hermione reading books.
It was a demon locked in a passionate embrace with a curly-haired demoness— a tangle of wings, claws, and tongues— even as the larger male seemed to pull a cloak out of the moving shadows and wrap it around his lover's shoulders.
The black-skinned demon snorted a cloud of black smoke, fire seemingly blazing in the back of his mouth as a dark tongue flicked just before his mouth covered the she-demon's in a passionate snog.
The towering demon growled, pulling the female's body closer to him, one wing wrapping possessively around her as his eyes glowed with balefire as he fixed a pointed stare at Ronald.
Smokelike shadows moved and twisted in the room and formed into spidery shapes that loomed and twitched and grew. They jerked forward toward Ron en masse.
Ron dropped the flowers, chocolates, and his bladder as he ran screaming down the hallway and out the door of Grimmauld Place.
"Time to go home, my love," Severus purred as he wrapped Hermione in a tender, possessive embrace.
"And where shall we make our home?" Hermione asked sleepily, wisps of Darkness swirling around her transformed body.
Severus smiled wickedly, his fangs dripping both fire and smoke. "The Scottish Highlands are beautiful all times of the year." He breathed against her skin sending tendrils of Dark pleasure through her body. "I will build you a library the like of which the Royal Library of the ancient Kingdom of Ebla would covet—and a bed-chamber we shall rarely wish to leave."
Hermione's squeal of delight was the only sound before the flap of Severus' wings signalled their Disapparation from Grimmauld Place.
Mothers told their children to be good or the demons would find them, and none knew this to be more true than the village of Hogsmeade and the mischief-prone at Hogwarts.
They said, ever since the war ended, that trouble-makers found themselves troubled the moment the sun left the sky. Some were chased through the Forbidden Forest and beyond by red-eyed hounds and skeletal horses with riders that seemed both solid and not. Some were haunted by shadows, dancing flames, and eerie shape-shifting fire.
Yet, if a young child was lost, they would often report that a beautiful winged lady with horns like a crown helped them find their way home, chasing away the scary Dark as they walked.
Peace seemed to descend upon the night as crime and mischief in the night fell into the rarest of occurrences—
Because everyone knew the nights were no longer safe to those who would disrupt the seemingly more untroubled nights.
They knew that the demon Chernabog had made its home in the mountains, and he was watching, eager to send the minions of the Underworld to punish the wicked.
They knew because it was a rumour, so of course, everyone knew about it.
As the sun's rays trickled into the Snape's mountaintop home, Hermione yawned, snuggling up against Severus' warm body with a pleasant hum of satisfaction after a night of salubrious horizontal entertainment with her mate.
It never got old.
The day had become a time of rest, but they rarely took advantage of the return of their human forms with the return of daylight. Sometimes they would travel to get supplies either in Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley or visit Minerva, but usually, they slept entwined and satisfied until the sun set.
The curse ensured that their nights were free of guests or visitors, but they preferred it.
Severus' potions business kept them connected to the Wizarding World, and Hermione advocated for goblin equality while cleaning up invasive species in the Forbidden Forest to help broker a tighter treaty of peace between the centaur and Hogwarts.
Hagrid, of course, was in tears over it, but the centaur were much happier, and Minerva was glad that the Forbidden Forest was getting to the point where it wasn't going to have to be forbidden at all times.
Severus' hand alighted upon her shoulder and pulled her closer so his body could spoon against hers, and Hermione murmured her approval despite her plans to get up and visit the bookstore for new gems.
"Good morning," she said, pressing her lips to the back of his hand.
"Were you planning on escaping me today?" Severus whispered into her skin causing a shiver to travel down her spine.
"Not escape," she said. "I just have errands to run."
"Hn," he murmured. "I suppose that is an acceptable reason to brave the daylight hours." He nibbled on her neck and chuckled as she gave a soft groan of pleasure.
"You're distracting me."
"Do you find me— distracting?"
"Very much so."
"Excellent," he replied. "I find you very distracting also."
"Nnngggh!" Hermione said, squirming to get out of the bed. "I really need to go!"
Severus' voice was heavy with sleepy arousal. "Must you?"
Hermione wriggled in a vain attempt to escape her mate's warmth and attention. She reached for her cloak that was floating nearby, and it extended a tip for her to hold on to and attempt to pull herself out of the bed. "Ineedtogoandpickoutacrib."
Severus' body stilled against hers. "A CRIB?"
Hermione swallowed hard. "Surprise?"
Severus leapt out of bed, pulling Hermione with him to the shower, and they were washed and dressed and gone in a matter of minutes.
Meanwhile, in the Afterlife—
Lily Potter dropped the tea service as her husband, Sirius, and Remus spontaneously turned into twisted, half-beast monsters that seemed to be assembled by a committee using spare parts.
Lily's scream echoed through the Planes as she fled and jumped into a Greater Pool of Resurrection and was immediately reincarnated back on Earth as a peahen chick in Lucius Malfoy's garden.
And they lived Darkly ever after (because the best revenge is living well).
Eht Dne.
A/N: Karma finds a way… I hope you enjoyed your feel better story, DeepShadows2