He was an illusion.

            A beautiful illusion I had created that visited me while I lived.

            Forbidden.  The word had made him more tempting.  It was an implicit rule that I dared to break.  Forbidden.  The command had never been broken before. 

            I wanted to shatter it.  My full heart lent power to my limbs and pushed my brain faster and faster.  The more speed it gained, the more it could think about him.

            Him.  The forbidden illusion. 

            No.  He could not be both.  It was him that was forbidden, so I had created what was allowed—an illusion of him.  It was the only thing I had, for I secretly devoted everything else to him.  My thoughts, the beating of my heart, my time, my life.  His.

            Nothing was mine but yet he had not taken it.  It lay delicately in some sort of middle-ground, waiting, like an open book, for him to pick it up.  That was all I wanted him to do.  If he turned me away because I was not good enough, that meant that I wasn't.  If he handed me over to the Dark Wizards because he hated me, that was all I deserved.  But if he loved me…

            If he loved me!  The thought was perfection that I hadn't earned.  I was imperfect and pathetic and weak and he was so strong.  I loved him through his cruelty and his hateful moments, but the thought that he would, even could, love me back…

            It was too much for me.  I had always understood everything, but I didn't understand this.  But I didn't care if I understood it or not.  The vision visited me each day, deep in the dungeons.

            My illusion would split from the real professor and come over to me.  He would confess his love and slip his hand beneath my chin to tilt it upward. 

            "I've loved you more than I ever loved myself," I'd say.  My speech hadn't started out that way, but with each day, more of my feelings were outpoured.  "You are all I've ever wanted…"

            Some days I would not be done for minutes and minutes, secretly admitting my guilt as I numbly chopped ingredients. It was almost as though I lived twice:  once in reality and once with my illusions.

            Illusions, dreams.  They swirled about me, lacing themselves with reality and giving it a crystalline glow.  I did not sleep at night; I dreamt.  I used to lie awake in bed and fear the sleep that replaced consciousness.  But, now, I surrendered into my enthralling dreams and only regretted that I had awoken. 

            Love didn't live in my heart, only my Love, who brightened every day with his dark presence.

            Snape.  Once the word had been chilly to me, but now I embraced the cold, heating it up and breathing life into it.  It didn't matter if he loved me, only that he let me love him.  I didn't care if he used me or broke me.  To myself, I was not a human but a life dedicated to him and to my ardor.

            This passion was such a strange feeling.  It surged through my fingertips that excitedly wrote his essay because he would read it.  It burnt beneath my eyes when they saw him.  I don't know if anyone else noticed it, but I could feel it, a hot, uncomfortable feeling that managed to make me long for it.  The sting of his hard words became a welcome caress.  He could not have known my feelings for him and I was glad he didn't.

            And yet I wished he did. 

            As a child, I had needed to categorize everyone as 'good' or 'evil.'  I'd put him in the wrong place and seen things I'd invented to strengthen my point.  How wrong I had been, Severus.  My heart, yet untouched by love, had been mistaken.  If only he loved me, it could have never made that mistake.

            I wanted to kiss away the hated mistake that I had washed so many times with my tears.  I didn't even care if he kissed me back. 

            I didn't care, for later that day, the illusion would visit me, tucking my unworthy hair behind my ear and telling me he loved me and kissing me back.

AN:  This may seem like another of my one-chapter stands, but it's actually not.  Snape's Hermione is so… different from Harry's.  Darker, with an inferiority complex.  Well, I suppose we'll see what happens between the two of them.  Warning:  I tend to update on my own time so the next chapter could be out tonight, tomorrow or a month from now. 
Please review!