NIGHT OF THE AWALIM
CHAPTER 3: UNNATURAL PRACTICES
They cleared the flat of men by early evening. Carmel shut the door behind Ron Weasley, who was yelling a cheerful goodbye to all concerned. The attractive Brit-asian girl stood with hands on hips and stared at Hermione.
"Holy hell, 'Mione. Professor Snape? Couldn't you find anyone….er…younger? Cleaner? Nicer? Shoot, human would have done."
Hermione finished picking up towels from the bathroom. Her lover had left an hour ago, apparating to Hogsmeade.
"I mean, what were you thinking of? What does he do for you?" Carmel wouldn't leave the subject alone. Possibly she was still in shock. Their unwritten house rule was that Carmel had all the men, while Hermionie got the high marks at university, the belly dance jobs, and didn't have to clean the toilet.
Hermione used her wand to siphon all the water spread across the bathroom floor down the plug hole, then muttered a 'clean and dry' spell on the towels. They writhed themselves clean, smoothed out their wrinkles, and folded neatly into bouncy squares that slotted into the linen cupboard.
"It's not as if Harry or Ron wouldn't be willing to…you know. I don't mind sharing. And I know they don't." Carmel smiled one of her ingenuous smiles, the one that said 'I know I'm way over the limit here, but I'm so lovely and cute that you won't mind'. Hermione had seen it all before, usually when it came to the toilet-cleaning issue.
"But Snape? I can't imagine-"
"That's your problem, Carmel. Lack of imagination. That's why you're failing the creative component of Arithmancy. Let me spell it out for you. It fits." Hermione left the communal area of the flat for the privacy of her own room. It still smelled of sweat, sex, and Snape's cologne. She spelled some of Uncle Mafufo's Drum music to play, and practiced her shimmies. Her hips were so loose the movements came easily.
Carmel shook her head. It wasn't right. It wasn't natural. Young women were supposed to want young men. That was the genetic heritage. Young men with vigourous sperm that would couple with fresh eggs and create the Muggle or wizarding equivalent of supermen. Hermione should be drawn to the likes of Ron, Harry, Seamus, and all the younger men who attended Elvenbows, or worked around London.
Sleeping with an older man was a mind-programming no-no. It was sick. That was it, Carmel decided. Hermione was sick. She didn't understand the error of her ways because she didn't have a big enough gene pool to choose from. Carmel set about giving Hermione some choices. That was what a free, democratic society was about. She polished the magic mirror in her bedroom and set up a three-way chat with a couple of prospects.
Hermione was working on a rolling shoulder shimmy when James Kirkham apparated into her bedroom. She stared over her down shoulder at him in a way that appeared to be flirtatious. She hadn't seen James for some years since the Potions incident in Year 6. She could still hear Snape's roar.
"The Potions laboratory is not a crack house! This institution is not to be used for the brewing of mind-altering substances! Professor Sprout has found what you are growing in the greenhouse. You, Kirkham, will go straight from here to the Headmaster's study. From there,I expect you will be sent home. Get. Out. Of. My. Sight." And he'd dismissed the whole class while he poured Kirkham's concoctions down the drain.
True to his word, James Kirkham had not been seen at Hogwarts again. His friends in Ravenclaw said that he'd been sent to Durmstrang, but no one had really heard from him again.
Until tonight. Trust Carmel to have kept in touch with every dodgy dude from Hogwarts. Possibly Durmstrang, Beauxbatons, Wilkes, Coyotebum, and Uluru as well. As well as the non-dodgy ones. Nothing like Carmel to have as wide a selection as possible.
"Hey, Hermione, how are you?" said James. He looked red around the eyes.
Hermione turned to face him. "James Kirkham?"
He grinned. "You remembered. Listen, I just happened to be in the neighbourhood, and-"
"You apparated into my bedroom."
"Hey, well, you know how it is."
"YOU APPARATED INTO MY BEDROOM!"
"Don't take on so. I was hoping we could have coffee or something."
"Petrificus totalis."
James froze in mid-sleeze and fell to the ground. Hermione kicked him into a corner, none to gently. His nose looked decidedly drippy. She turned away, and was confronted with Neville Longbottom. Neville had filled out over the years, becoming a tall, broad-shouldered man who bore the same bumbling air as Ron's father. Neville shot James a nervous glance.
"Hermione, hi, how are you?" He held up both hands to ward off her wand. "I was looking through my yearbook the other day and got to thinking about you." Neville licked his lips. "We used to have some fun times together, right? Huh? And I got to thinking about you, and….. well, I was thining about you, and-"
"Petrificus totalis."
Neville managed to get out "Oh no, not again!" before he stiffened and crashed to the ground.
"Now, 'Mione, don't get all shitty," said an overly-familiar voice. Ron Weasley stood there, a little worse for wear after the previous evening's strenuous activities.
"Petrificus totalis."
Ron joined his ex-classmates on the floor. They were an untidy mix of red hair, brown hair, black hair, various assortments of casual clothing, and a strong clash of aftershaves. Hermione turned her back on them, just in time to feel the air tingle. Another Apparition coming through. She raised her wand.
Snape appeared and stared at the pile of men on Hermione's floor. He lifted his gaze, just as his lover waved her wand. Now she had four men on her floor. Oops. She performed a quick 'awaken' spell on Snape. The man picked himself carefully off Ron, and stood. He cleared his throat.
"I was going to ask if I'd left my wallet here," he said. "But I can see you're in a bad mood." His gaze flicked over the other men. "Do I dare ask?"
"They were bothering me."
"Remind me never to get on the wrong side of you," Snape said drily. He dusted himself off and spotted his wallet under Hermione's bed. He pocketed it. "Thankyou for a most interesting demonstration of your temper, Miss Granger," he said evenly. "Now if you'll excuse me…"
"Oh, sit down," she said, cross. "They just appeared out of nowhere, right in my bedroom. I had every right."
"No doubt."
The tension between them stretched out. Difficult enough to make small talk after a full night of wild sexual antics, but when etiquette has been thrown out the window by some careless spell-casting….. Hermione was glad she hadn't been tempted to turn them all into penguins.
Snape broke the silence. "It is becoming a habit to tidy your room for you," he said.
Some not so foolish wand waving and the use of the "Originia" spell sent Ron, James and Neville back from whence they came. Snape reseated himself on the bed.
"Thankyou," Hermione said. 'I would have thought of that in a moment."
"It was no trouble."
Silence again. What to say?
"Well, I was just doing some practice. It's the last chance I'll have this weekend," Hermione said. "I've a heavy study schedule next week."
"When didn't you have a heavy schedule," Snape remarked. He looked at her leggings and crop top. "May I observe you as you practice?" he asked.
Hermione felt nervous. She either practiced alone or in a class full of women. Her teacher had always told her not to dance for a man alone, because of the heavy sexual connotations. As if belly dance didn't have enough of them to begin with. Two hundred years of modern belly dance, and people still thought they were prostitutes.
But Snape was her lover. She presumed. Nothing had been said about a repeat performance, but he hadn't crawled out of her bedroom saying "Bloody hell, never again" either. It was very early in their relationship. Either it was a good time to be setting firm boundaries and rules that could never, ever be broken, or it was a time to refuse him nothing. She wasn't sure which. There had been no books in the Hogwarts or Elvenbows libraries on this subject. And 'Wizards Are From Wands, Witches Are From Cauldrons' did nothing to enlighten her when she read it. Was she now supposed to insist that Snape go into his dungeon for some 'space'? Or do what 'Why Do I Think I'm Nothing Without A Wand?' recommended and involve herself with meaningful activities? And exactly what did 'Witches Who Love Wizards Who Hate Pumpkin Juice' have to do with the issue at all? She just had to stop reading those self-help books. Maybe there was a book on how to do that.
"You can watch, on the basis that you join in," she said. Where the hell had that come from?
Snape raised an eyebrow. "You want me to belly dance?" he said.
She shrugged.
"I doubt I have the right equipment."
"Just do your best."
She pulled him to his feet, grateful now for the extra floor space a clean room and a ground empty of men afforded(and how many times in one life could a woman use that sentence?). Snape managed some stretches. She knew he was supple, kept in shape, he confessed the previous night, by a regime of yoga, and acrobatic broom flying. He managed the back and forth wobble of the knees to produce a shimmy. But somehow it looked wrong on him. He didn't shimmy the way she did.
"What about some hip circles?" she asked, and taught him to imagine sliding his pelvis around the inside of a cylinder.
The male pelvis is already naturally tilted forward. So any further forward motion accentuates the tilt and therefore exposes the outline of the genitalia more fully. Hermione was copping an eyeful.
"Maybe some…er.." Body undulations would make it worse. He didn't seem to have the same side-to-side hip slide she did. Did men have steel bars running down their sides, or what? Hip drops and lifts would be out of the question, never mind a camel walk. Don't even think about a elegant fluidity of serpent arms or candle arms. Hermione grabbed her wand and conjured an Arabic drum. "What about you play the darabouka, and I dance?" she said.
Snape settled back on her bed, and experimentally tapped out a rhythm. It was closer to Chopsticks than Shiftatelli but it would do. Hermione got to work practicing her Egyptian walk.
Carmel stared at her mirror. She'd just received images from Ron, Neville and James. All were nursing various bruises and headaches. So Hermione didn't like men her own age. There still had to be more savoury options than Snape. Carmel shuddered at the thought of Snape naked. She had never,ever fantasised about that at Hogwarts. Well, there was that one time, but that had more to do with dipping the nasty sod in boiling oil than anything else.
Carmel would solve this sad misdirection of Hermione's sexual interest. She would! Even if Hermione did like older men(and there was something so WRONG about that), there were better men around than Snape.
The arabic drum lay abandoned on the bed. Hermione had managed a back bend, supported by Snape's arm. Her voice was muffled.
"Now if you'll just help me upright," she said.
Snape grinned. "No, I think I like the view from here." He bent forward and touched his lips to Hermione's taut belly. It shivered under his touch, and she pulled herself up.
"Practice," she said indistinctly, as Snape's mouth made its way up her body to her mouth.
"I am," he said.
The air tingled around them.
"Severus, I was beginning to wonder when you didn't show up for dinner," said a very familiar voice. Professor Dumbledore smiled at both of them. "Miss Granger. I can't say how much we all enjoyed your performance last night. Miss Chong said you were in dire need of my assistance. She wouldn't say exactly what, so I came at once." He peered at them closely. "I'm not at all sure I can help with any…er…personal problems you may be having."
Snape brought Hermione abruptly to her feet. "Albus, there is no problem." He glanced in the direction of Carmel's bedroom. "Not one that can't be fixed soon enough."
Hermione didn't bother to answer Dumbledore. "If you'll excuse me, please." She shot out of the bedroom.
Both men could hear her pounding on Carmel's locked door. "Open up, or I swear to all gods that turning your tampons into frogs will be the least of it." They heard a door open, shut, and much female screaming begin.
The two men made small talk for a few minutes. Snape had not had the pleasure of being caught like this in many years, no matter what situation Dumbledore dreamed up for him. Dumbledore was no perve to interfere in another man's sex life. Finally, the elder wizard rocked on his heels.
"Well, if there's nothing further I can do, I think I'll be going. I must say, Severus, you might think of spelling in some privacy screens. The walls here are dreadfully thin."
They could both hear Carmel at full tilt. "It's sick, Hermione, and you know it. There are plenty of guys out there, Muggle and wizard. Why him? I can't understand it. I thought the belly dancing would loosen you up-"
"I'm plenty loose, thankyou!"
Snape looked ready to say something. Dumbledore possibly didn't want to know.
"She's not really," Snape burst out.
Change that to definitely didn't want to know. This was as bad as Hermione's seventh year, when Harry Potter had broken up with Ginny Weasley. The girl had set her wand to glo-painting the outer walls of Hogwarts with the phrase: "Harry Potter is the worst lay in the whole of Hogwarts - ever". Her punishment had been to personally insert the word 'not'.
Dumbledore wasn't a man to apparate without saying goodbye, but this situation was beyond all reason. He spelled himself away with relief, trying very hard not to hear Snape saying, absently: "She's not loose at all".
Snape sat on Hermione's bed and listened to Carmel mention every one of his more unpleasant characteristics, loudly. Several times. Most went very well with his name. Slimy. Sneaky. Suckback. Snakelike. Sink of corruption(he liked that one).
"Sexy," Hermione countered. Snape raised an eyebrow. That was something he never expected. "I think he's sexy."
"But-"
"I LIKE HIM!"
Slamming of door. He thought he heard Hermione taking several deep breaths outside her door. She opened it.
"Hello," she said, all trace of anger gone. If only she'd had that much control at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy would not have suffered all those sudden attacks of shrinking anatomical parts, and Hermione would not have spent so many hours in detention. "Where were we?"
"Hermione, if my presence is going to cause you problems-"
"It's Carmel. She can't accept that I…" She swallowed.
"Like me? The walls are rather thin."
"All right then, I like you. She can't imagine why. She thinks I need a partner my own age."
"And do you?" Snape was testing the waters. Was he to be her partner? Nothing had been said.
Their eyes locked.
"I think I already have a partner," she said, her voice small.
Snape reached out, took her hand. "In that case, I think I have a solution for Miss Chong. It's not exactly ethical."
"I like it already."
"It's an invasion of privacy."
"Even better."
"But she will see what you see in me, gods only know what it is."
"If it shuts her up, I'm all for it."
"Are you sure you shouldn't have been Sorted into Slytherin?"
She grinned at him. "What are you going to do?"
He pulled her to him and slid his hands over her hips. "First I'm going to hold you like this. And then I'm going to do this." He moved one hand over her belly and between her legs. She pressed into him. "Then this." He pushed upwards, feeling her heat in his palm. She wound her hands into his hair. He murmured against her. "And when we've finished, I'll take care of Carmel."
Hermione succumbed to his roaming hands and mouth, all the while hoping Snape's solution wasn't to give Carmel a taste of what she herself was getting. Being an only child, she didn't like to share.
Carmel woke from her sleep, late as usual. It had been at least two in the morning before the sex noises next door had shut up. Couldn't they figure honest people were trying to sleep? How inconsiderate. They seemed to take it in turns. First Hermione would be bossy, telling him to do this, do that, put that there. Then a while later Snape's authoritarian teacher's voice would be ordering Hermione to lie down, stand up, and gods knew what else. Carmel found, after Snape's last order to turn over, that putting her pillow over her head blocked his voice out. If she'd used her under-utilised text books, she would have found the spell for sonic screens.
She shook herself and swallowed. Her mouth was dry. What a dream! When she'd finally slept, it had all been about Snape. Snape and her in the old Potions dungeon. Snape and her on the breakfast table in the Great Hall. Snape on her, she on him.
Carmel moved her hands from the tingling between her legs to the throb of lips well kissed. Snape was like 'that'? Really? Honest to gods? She'd been top of her year in Dream Divination at Hogwarts.
"It was a dream," she told herself. "A dream."
She rose for breakfast, and hoped the two root-rats next door hadn't used all the Corn Flakes as sex aids. No Corn Flakes to be found. She settled for Weetbix, and then went back to bed. With any luck, she'd have another dream. And Hermione said she had no imagination. Ha!
***** *****