Chapter 9  Lost in Whenever

Hermione gasped and coughed as her consciousness returned, and spluttered, choking on water.  Drowning!  She tried to flail her arms, to propel herself to the surface.  She was lying on the ground, on muddy, wet earth, with her face in a puddle.  Needles of ice stuck her face and hands: sleet mixed with rain.  She struggled to open eyes that felt pasted shut. She raised her head, and coughed again.  A shudder ran through her; her garments were soaked through.  Where was she? All was dark; dark and a downpour.  She managed to sit up.  Her neck and back ached.

Snape!  A figure next to her stirred and moaned.  The Potions Master lay in an ungainly heap, his head on a rock, his feet in the puddle where her head had been.  She crawled over to his side.  He was absolutely still. She tried to call his name, and coughed up more water.  She plucked at his soaked sleeve.  Finally she croaked, "Professor!  Get up!" He stirred, choked and retched water.  She put her arm around his shoulders, and he turned his head towards her.  She could barely see him or anything else, the rain poured down in sheets.  Holding on to each other, they managed to gain their feet.

"Are you all right?" he husked, coughing.

"Yes, come on, let's get out of this rain."  They could see nothing of where they were.  They walked forward, bent against the driving rain, until Snape bumped into a tree.  At least there was that:  they felt their way along, through what must be a forest.  A shape bulked in the half-light – could it be?  It resembled a familiar structure, but oddly out of place.  Hermione looked all around: there was only this building, and nothing else. Could it be Hagrid's cottage, in the middle of nowhere?  If it was, where was Hogwarts?

As they approached they could see, thank the gods; it was Hagrid's cottage!  Heads down, they ran through the ice-rain.  The door was open, and they burst inside.  It was empty except for a rope bed and a narrow bench; the fireplace was gone. There was a ring of large stones on the floor:  a fire-pit?  No chimney hole, either. What had happened?  Where was Hagrid?  Why was Hogwarts gone although this small structure was the same? Well, it wasn't quite the same. Snape examined the wood plank walls. They were almost new, yet Hagrid's cottage was hundreds of years old.  The one small window was paned in parchment, not Hagrid's beloved bottle-bottom glass.  The roof (thank Merlin it didn't leak) was thatch, not shingle.  Who lived there now with only a rope bed, obviously not half-giant-sized, and a bench, no fireplace, no wardrobe, no stove and surely no toilet?

It was freezing cold and damp in the cottage. Snape tried a warming charm, a drying charm, and a fireplace-building spell, all to no avail.  Finally, he had to use a vesta to light the one tiny oil lamp on the small bench against the wall.  No charm would work in that dreary place.

The bed was made up with quilts and pillows and looked decent enough; he peeled back the coverlet, expecting dank sheets and mildew.  But there was none: the plain cotton sheets were dry and smooth and the pillows were dry as well.  He looked under it:  no chamber pot.  Well, whoever lived there was not at home. Hermione stood in the doorway, looking about with shock.   "Come here," he commanded, holding out his hand to her. 

She stood still, shivering, her wet robes clutched about her.  "Well? Are you going to stand there, soaked to the skin, or are you going to get dry?"

She glared at him.  "You're wetter than I am.  We can't make a fire unless we burn the furniture, and I don't see any towels."  She looked around for a chair, a footstool, anything that might be ignited.  There was nothing, only that bed and the narrow bench.  One bed.  In this peculiar hut, in the middle of nowhere, in a place where magic refused to work, and in the midst of a ferocious storm: a bed and precious little else.  Not even a basin and ewer; no water.  The wind howled and rattled the shutters. The one tiny lamp guttered fitfully in the draft.

Snape began to take off his soaked clothing, laying it over the bench.  Finally he was down to his small breeches and a thin undershirt, chilled but not damp.  His heavy cloak and thick woollen jacket had protected him somewhat, but it was a relief to get them off; they seemed to have absorbed a hundredweight of cold rain apiece.  He got into the bed and prepared to lie down.  Damn her; let her stand there and freeze.

She walked over slowly and took off her sodden cloak.  Her hair lay in damp strings on her back.  He could not let her be thus:  he pulled a pillowslip off one of the pillows, got up and handed it to her.  "Dry your hair at least," he said.

She looked up at him.  "Thank you," she said, between chattering teeth, rubbing her hair with the pillowslip.  He could not let her be thus: he unbuttoned her robe and pulled it off her arms, and she did not resist.  He pulled her blouse off over her head, and unbuttoned her skirt, which fell to the floor.  She looked so tiny, so fragile in her camisole and knickers, so wet that her pale skin showed through them.  He took her hand and led her over to the bed, sat her on the edge and took the wet garments off her, including her pathetic soaked stockings, quickly wrapping her in a sheet and covering her with a quilt.  He bunched pillows around her shoulders.  Her chocolate brown eyes followed him.

He walked round the bed and got into it from the other side.  He could feel her trembling.  Do the right thing, man, he told himself. The Mother would approve, I suppose.  "Now," he said, "let's get you warmed up."

"Thank you," she whispered.  She turned onto her side and squirmed backwards towards him, until she fit against him like a spoon nested with another spoon. 

"Merlin's balls, woman, your bum's like ice!" he growled, and was rewarded with a snort of laughter from the woman he had often referred to during the past seven years as a rotten little thing.

"I'll be warm soon, Professor," she murmured, wriggling those chilly buttocks, cold even through the sheet, against his thighs, which protested with gooseflesh.

"Stop writhing and settle down!  Or shall I warm you with the flat of my hand?" She turned over and stared at him.

"You'd do that?  You'd spank me?"

"I'd like to murder you.  You cock up my demonstration and get us transported to this miserable whatever-it-is, drag me around in the sleet and rain, and now, you wretched ingrate, as snotty and arrogant as ever, you snort at my efforts to see to your comfort ---"

She moved closer. "I'll welcome your effort, then, if you can do it without spanking me," said she, and lay her head against his shoulder.

Snape sighed.  This must be another of my ridiculous dreams, he thought.  Druids and standing stones, and falling off the edge of the world with my arse tied up with ivy.   Soon I shall awaken in my own bed, in my own rooms.  I had hoped these nightmares were finished.  He reached over her small frame and placed his long-fingered hand on the small of her back.  As he moved his touch down over the curve of her buttocks, her breath caught in her throat, and he felt her belly clench involuntarily. "Like that, do you?" His voice could be as harsh and cutting as gravel; now it was velvet.

"Mmmm," he could feel her smile against his shoulder. Her hand crept up into his hair at his neck, and he tried unsuccessfully to stifle a groan.

"Like that, do you?" she whispered. She stretched against him.  He could feel her heartbeat against his breast.  "We should sleep," said she, and put her feet, as frigid as icicles, on top of his.

He recoiled, raised his head and looked down his nose at her.  "And how," he hissed, "do you expect me to sleep when you continue to place frozen portions of your anatomy on my helpless body?"  He glowered at her.  "And," he continued, "If you find the suffering you are causing me amusing, you can bloody well get out of this bed and sleep on the floor."

He pushed her away from himself, and she stiffened.  She turned her head away from him, turned her back and moved to the very edge of the bed.  Her voice was almost inaudible:  "I don't know what I was thinking, that I could sleep in the same bed with you and not get into more trouble than I could handle."

"You're no stranger to sleeping with men – I should say, boys, as the entire school is aware that you and your two idiot Gryffindor chums prefer snogging in Potter's bed to studying your lessons!"

She sat upright, clutching the sheet to cover herself.  "How could you?  You and the entire school know that I was one of many who gave Harry the body heat that saved his life after that Cruciatus curse! Snogging indeed:  you're despicable, Professor.  I can just imagine you sitting in your reeking dungeon, conjuring up scenes of students snogging. You're a voyeur!  And you have no right to judge me!  As for – oh! I can't stand it – cocking up 'your' creation, as I recall it, it is my creation, and you asked me to accompany you." Her voice rose and then broke.  "And if you think for one minute that my idea of a pleasant evening is – is to be stuck with you in this hideous shack, and – and – there's no loo…." She buried her head in her hands.

"I did not choose our method of departure, Miss Granger, nor our destination, if you recall."  He sat up and regarded her, huddled miserably on the edge of the bed, trying to contain her sobs.  Her pale skin was covered in gooseflesh; her hands were blue.  And she has to go to the loo, of course, women and their damned tiny bladders.   

He remembered something.  It was a slim chance, but perhaps…He got out of the bed, not bothering to cover himself, and walked over to the bench.  He rummaged in the large pocket sewn to the inside of his cloak, and retrieved a small leather bag.  It was a rarity; it operated outside of the usual laws of magic.

He held the bag in the palm of his hand and directed his gaze to it.  In his mind's eye it grew and flattened and became solid.  In his hands, it became a chamber pot.  Another minute's concentration and about two inches of water bubbled up into its bottom from some other plane of existence.  Carefully, he carried his creation over to the bed, and placed it on the floor in front of Hermione Granger.

"There," he said.  "Now you have a pot to piss in, and there's even a window to throw it out of." His mouth quirked as he realised he had rephrased an old joke.  Hermione looked up, and then down, her eyes round with surprise.  Snape turned his back, stalked around to the other side of the bed, got in and covered himself up to his eyebrows.

He felt the bed shift as her slight weight left it.  He covered his ears with the quilt.  Her feet were silent; he started when she whispered, right in front of him, "Shall I leave it for you, on your side?"

One black eye peered out of the quilt.  She was shivering, blue-lipped, and she had his magical chamber pot in her hand and started to bend down with it.  "Thank you," he said frostily, and she pushed it under the bed.  He sat up as she stood, and put out his hand to her.  "Miss Granger," he said.  "I did not mean to insult you. I know I generally do mean to insult you, but not this time. Please come to bed."  He held the covers up for her to get in.

She looked at him.  The Mother help her, she had never entertained the slightest thought of lying in the same bed as Severus Snape, but his hand on her backside had surprised and unnerved her.  She hated to be proven wrong, especially to herself.  She got into the bed.  "Thank you for the chamber pot," she said.  "You can't imagine how miserable---"

"Miss Granger, I know the feeling of a painfully full bladder. I trust you are no longer miserable."

She settled on her side, facing him.  "I am miserable still," she said. "I'm feeling something I haven't felt before, and I don't know what to do about it."

He waited patiently. Discussing feelings was not one of his favourite pastimes, still, the Mother asks you to open to her gifts…. Hermione Granger, the rotten little thing, a gift?  He said nothing, but moved a touch closer to her.  "I'm listening," he said.

"You were talking about comforting me.  We haven't exactly been friendly for the past seven years, and I have been a wretched prat.  But I've worked so closely with you for so long, I know your mind and your spirit. I even know that you like Muggle classical music.  Even so, I never took the time to look more closely.  And then, when I was playing the harpsichord, and you were so abysmally sad, I saw you, really, for the first time.  And I wanted to comfort you – and I did, and you let me."

She reached out her hand and pushed his hair back from his face.  Her look was so tender, so gentle, so foreign to anything he knew.  "You touch me as if I were your child," he breathed.

She smiled.  "It's part of what I feel. You're a good deal older than I am, but there are times I feel like, well, mothering you.  There are times I feel like your colleague – most times, I'd say – and then there are times when I feel like your child.  Now we are more than that; it's what's different."

:"Come here and give me a kiss," he said, his voice black velvet.  "Not like a mother, nor like a child."  He held out his arms and, icy feet and knees, gooseflesh, hard nipples and cold nose and all, she wrapped her arms around him and put her mouth on his. His lips were unexpectedly soft, pliant and warm.  Waves of male energy coursed through her body. I'm melting into a jelly, she thought.

The Runes Mistress was right, he realised. There was something in this little woman's indomitable spirit that touched him in so many ways.  It was right that he do the same for her.  Snape passed his hands over her back, over that chilly bum, still cold, warming her, pressing her closer.  Her eyes were wide, looking into his.  This was the first real kiss he had given and received from a woman in—what? Thirty years?  What he had done as a disciple of Voldemort could hardly be called kissing: it was about domination and invasion, causing pain instead of invoking pleasure. The soft, gentle touch of Hermione Granger's lips made his lips tingle and grow sensitive and want more of her kisses.  "Where do I begin with you?" he wondered.

"I'd say we've made a good start," she answered, moving her hands gently over his chest and shoulders.  "Would you take off this ugly undershirt and those worse breeches, please?"

"Ugly!  You have no practical sense, woman.  It's a special Scottish knit, and—"

"I might have known; it looks like knitted haggis—"

"Damn!  Why must you women take issue with my smallclothes—?"

"Aha! I'm not the only one to notice your dreadful taste in undergarments! Now, silk boxers –"

"Naf off with your bloody silk boxers!"

"Well, will you take them off or must I pull them off with my teeth?"

He stared at her. Gods, no, please... "Is this another dream?"

Hermione looked at him with surprise.  "You have dreams in which someone pulls off your undergarments with her teeth?  Have you been dreaming about me?"  She eased her hands beneath his undershirt and rolled it upwards.  He did not resist and let her take it off him.

"I've been having dreams, yes.  Disturbing dreams.  I don't know what's real any more."

"This is real.  I'm really here with you, at last, and I'll have no more excuses – Severus. Take off those breeches."  Without a word he complied. She rolled onto her back, and he looked down at her.

"At last indeed," he said, and unwrapped her from the sheet, as if she were a gift. He gathered her into his arms and abruptly the breath was sucked out of his lungs.  His ears were filled with roaring; he could see nothing.  He tried to call out to her, but he had no voice, and he fell endlessly, not knowing if she was with him.  Consciousness left him.

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