Thanks with all the help on A Sprinkle of Latin. It's still percolating...so here's something more on this fic. I know. I'm contrary.


Hermione stood outside the compartment door and took a deep, steadying breath.

The rich scent of chocolate lingered in the air as the sweet trolley rattled off down the carriage. Around her the chug and huff of the train, its familiar rock, the groans and shrieks and laughter of children took her back to her first rides aboard the Hogwarts Express. Before their world turned dark…

She was twisting and turning her betrothal ring on her finger…and she was dawdling. Harry, Ginny and Luna were inside and she had to face them. Screwing down her courage, she slid back the compartment door and worked a smile across her mouth.

"Hermione!" Ginny grinned at her and bounced up from her seat. "How come you're travelling with us lowly students?"

A proper smile broke from Hermione. She flicked her right hand over her robes.

Septima had formally presented them to her the day before. Smooth and silky black, with the ancient Hogwarts' Apprentice crest stitched under her left shoulder. Septima's circular master's crest and that of the Guild of Arithmancers sat either side of it.

"One of an Apprentice's duties is to ride the train. So here I am."

She pulled the door shut behind her and cast a discreet muffling spell. With a twitch of a smile she sat and arranged the softness of her robes. They really were lovely—

A little gasp forced her gaze to Luna. The blonde girl, swimming in a startlingly purple Weasley jumper with a great L across its front, met her with shining blue eyes. Hermione gave her a quick smile.

Trust a Ravenclaw to see what two Gryffindors did not.

Oh, that one really sounded like Severus. The wizard was such a bad influence.

"How was New Year?" And yes, Hermione was delaying spilling her secret, but she had to work her way into it. She wanted her friends to be as happy with her choice, her decision as she was… She did seem to have Luna's favour. But how would Ginny and –Merlin preserve her— Harry react to her news?

"New Year? Someone…" Ginny's sharp brown gaze narrowed on Harry, "decided they had better plans than meeting us in the club. Someone who, when I floo-called to find out where the hell he was, was rather scandalously underdressed…"

Harry's cheeks pinked and he wiped a hand over his face.

"I saw your bare arse, Harry Potter!"

"Merlin, Ginny…" It was little more than a groan.

Ginny sat back in her seat and crossed her legs. Her mouth pinched. She was channelling a scary mix of Minerva and her mother. "He won't spill, Hermione. You, as a new, shiny apprentice, should make him."

Hermione held up her hands. "I will do no such thing." Her fingers dropped and twitched at her robes, the words she needed stuck to her tongue.

"They are lovely robes, Hermione. My mother was an Apprentice at Beauxbatons and hers were very similar. Professor Flitwick said he's happy for me to wear them when I take up my Apprenticeship with him next year."

Sweet Luna. Giving her time to collect her nerve.

"Congratulations." Hermione grinned and eased her fingers free of the soft material. She had to share her future plans. "I have my own news." She drew circles over the platinum mount of her betrothal ring, the easing magic of the Gaia stone soothing her. "Well, more news."

"Hermione…?" Ginny was staring at the fiercely green stone.

Harry frowned, looking from Luna, to Ginny to her. "What…?"

Hermione couldn't help the smile that broke from her. Poor clueless Harry.

"I accepted a betrothal just before Christmas. We plan to marry in the summer."

Harry's jaw dropped. "Are you and Ron back together…?"

"It's not Ron, Harry," Luna said softly.

He frowned. "Then who…" He blinked and what colour his embarrassment had flushed into his cheeks faded away. He got there faster then she expected…but then what other man shared any of her time? "Snape? You're marrying Snape? Severus Snape?"

Hermione glared at him. "No, Harry, his brother, Archibald."

"What? Oh…" Harry's fingers drove through his messy hair. "I don't know what to say? Merlin, Hermione."

"I think the word you're looking for is congratulations, Harry." Ginny said, pulling Hermione into a hard hug. "You will be very happy with him."

Hermione pulled back to stare at her friend, surprised at her whispered words.

Ginny smirked. "I'm Luna's girlfriend. She sees everything."

"Is this to do with what Ron said?"

Ginny rolled her eyes as she sat back down beside Luna. Hermione's lips thinned. Even with the truth known about Severus' true place within the war against Voldemort, Harry still held a reluctance about his role in her life. Even before her more…personal relationship smacked him in the face.

And Ron was his first wizarding friend. Harry had always supported him over her. Maybe it was a boy thing. She hoped one day he'd grow out of it…especially as she —and Severus, actually— had facilitated his bare-arsed New Year. Ungrateful git.

Hermione's lips were as pinched together as Ginny's. "And what did Ron say?"

Harry winced, an obvious realisation hitting him that it really hadn't anything to do with Ron Weasley. His face flushed a brighter red. "You're… So, it's not just…"

She arched an eyebrow at him. "I'm not simply using him for sex?" She paused, before a dark smile pulled at her mouth. "I will also use him for sex…in every way you can imagine."

Harry groaned into his hand. "Hermione, please…"

Ginny smirked and recrossed her legs, leaning into Harry's space. "I think you should tell him, Hermione. In vivid detail." Harry stared at her, horror flicking across his face. "Every kiss. Every lick. Every thrust—"

"Fuck's sake, Gin!"

Harry shrank back into his seat, scrambling to get away from her vision. Hermione was sure her face was quite pink, her pulse a riot. She still had months before those luscious images became her reality. Severus Snape was a wicked and tormenting man.

He'd left her in Kent, not an hour before, thoroughly kissed and with the dark promise to waylay her in some dark alcove in the very near future. His sinful voice wove through her, a delicious memory as his hand cupped her jaw, long fingers threaded through her wild curls.

"A dark passage, silent and still, and a certain Apprentice with her nose in a tome. Unaware. Easy pickings."

His lips brushed her ear, his breath warm, the rhythm of it igniting her pulse. The low ache between her thighs forced her to close her eyes. It wasn't even 8 o'clock in the morning. It was mortifying that everything about Severus Snape got her so ridiculously hot…

"An arm to her waist and a hand to her mouth to stifle her scream and she's swept into the shadows. Caught. He has her now. His delicious witchling. Pressed into to cold stone, she can't see the wizard who took her, whose magic draws up those new silken robes, exposing her calves, her thighs and the sweet, sweet roundness into which he so desperately wants to sink his teeth."

Hermione blinked, the image of him behind her, kneeling, his face, his mouth —Merlin, save her— his..nose…

"Ah, my witchling wants something…different." A large hand caressed her spine, easing her to the hard length of his body, the press of his infamous buttons a wanted bite into her breasts and belly. "The promise of a kiss. Of a lick and a taste."

Hermione groaned, her head falling to his shoulder. His scent, spices and cedar, and his heat wrapped around her as securely as his wicked words. "You're sending me off with…with soaked knickers!"

He huffed a laugh against her skin and she shivered, wriggling against him. His hand slipped over her backside and gave it a decided pinch. "I do —as always— aim to please—"

"Then tell us your secret, Harry Potter, or I'll make her!"

Hermione startled back into the train compartment, broken out of her heated memory at Ginny's strident threat.

Harry shook his head "You are an evil woman, Ginny Weasley." His smile was crooked and he glanced at a hot-faced Hermione before he let out a long breath. "All right, it's pointless me keeping my going out with Draco Malfoy a secret any longer, isn't it?"

Ginny's shriek of joy and disbelief rattled the windows in their frames.


Lavender walked her fingers up Ron's arm, the tactic delaying him before he charged into the compartment occupied by his muffledly shrieking friends.

There was a betrothal ring on Hermione's finger. A Gaia stone. And Lavender knew what the gift of that stone meant to a woman. It was a promise of fertility…and Ron had banged on and on about Hermione's insane need for a fistful of brats. His words. Always so pressured and angered, because his former-girlfriend's ache for a family had slashed through his plans. His very firm idea for his future.

Lavender could see Hermione was happy. She'd seen it at Grimmauld Place. It was their now in her shining eyes and pink cheeks. Lavender bore no grudge. Hermione was being decent. She hadn't led Ron on…and wished her the best with and for him.

So as a belated Christmas present, she would distract one Ronald Weasley. At least until they got back to Hogwarts.

Lavender pressed her head into his shoulder. "Do you realise…?" Her voice was low and soft, weaving the spell that worked so well on Ron…and little Ron. She grinned against his sleeve. "We're not twelve steps from that convenient little luggage room. The one with the smooth and so very sturdy waist high shelf."

Ron blinked down at her, the daze of lust there in his clear blue gaze.

"I must see if it's still as sturdy as it was before Christmas." Lavender eased past him, pressing her body in a slow, slow slide over his. She put a tempting sway into her hips, gave him a single look over her shoulder and sashayed down the corridor.

One...

Two...

…Three.

She smirked as Ron chased after her.


You know the most difficult thing about writing this? Writing Ron getting some... ;-)