I love you.
I cannot bear it.
"What happens when we our time here ends?"
They had not bothered to face the question through the tentative gestures that came with newly discovered passions; the awkward touches, the heart skipping newness that made one lose their breath and want to smile like a fool.
But he did not often smile, and she did not ask him too.
Instead they deluded themselves into thinking that they could make things work; That the world would not shun them if they were discovered, their peers would not be repulsed if they only knew.
"I am certain you are as aware as I myself am," he chides sternly, but beneath his rebuke there is pain.
She stands dejectedly, looking all her seventeen years with her riotous mass of chestnut curls and sad brown eyes. Her pale hands, with their clean trimmed nails and slender fingers, twist themselves together in a parody of a handshake. She smiles at him, tentatively, and he can feel his heart aching for tears sparkle though she tries to be brave.
I cannot bear it.
"Come, sweet," he whispers, but he dares not touch her for they have not yet crossed those lines and now he knows they never will. "we were fools to tread this dangerous ground. You are young, and to shackle yourself to a man nearly twenty years your senior, and one so tainted as I, is a fools gambit."
As he speaks, he walks around the richly decorated hotel room, muggle devices scattered about, and cobalt blue mixing with silver trimmings to make the room as cool as it is impersonal.
This was a world in which he had no place.
She was a thing to which he had no right.
He tips his head back, cursing himself that he had let it go too far already. Much too far.
"Stop regretting it," she chokes out behind him, and her voice is thick with tears and anger.
He turns to her, his black hair falling into his eyes.
"You don't understand what you've given me. You can't understand that you've made me happier than I've ever been."
She sweeps her tears away agitatedly, and his chest clenches when her eyes fall closed and her sooty lashes brush her cheeks.
And he wants to believe he cannot help himself any longer.
Let them call him a demon, a sinner, a pervert, a manipulator.
A Death Eater. I cannot…Let them heckle and call and insult and defile the only sacred thing he's ever wanted to possess. They exalt him and revile him as the murderer of Albus Dumbledore. He did not need to add to his list of atrocious sins.
Bear it…Hermione.
He steps forward, wanting to go to her, touch her, kiss her… But they never have, and he cannot stand to make such a move in case she realizes how wrong this was and was appalled.
He is everything she should not want.
But she takes the choice from him and surges forward into his arms, and he reflexively opens them to her. Then, when the shock of her impulse has passed them both, he draws in a shaky breath and breaths in the scent of her hair.
And he knows it is wrong, and he knows it is taboo, and the cruel, embittered parts of him want to shove her away, cut her down with his silver tongue and make her bleed inside; make her tears fall hard until she dares not approach him again, dares not rain soft kisses across his face, his hands as she does now; never taking more than was silently offered...merely because he is capable of it.
And for a moment he feels the urge to snatch her closer to him, to capture her mouth and actually kiss her, but he cannot for his deepest fear is to behold revulsion in her dark eyes. His hands flicker disjointedly over her arms, fluttering over her back because in her show of tenderness he was lost. He has no tender emotions to give to her, to spread over her.
Her soft, curling brown hair tickles his nose, and he is trapped by her; by her skin and her scent and her warmth and her words and he does not know how to escape.
I cannot bear it.
He can feel her pressed to him, the warmth of her breasts, the clutch of her fingers, and he stills himself because he knows he must not take what she offers no matter how desperately his soul screams for it. He grinds his teeth, the infamous sneer becoming a pained grimace as he loses face with himself.
She is still buried against his chest, his arms hopelessly limp, but she seems content and so he does not worry. Instead he battles with himself, the needs of the flesh always hampering the rational of the mind, and leaving the affection starved professor with gasping breath and a struggling loss over what to do.
It is too much! It is too little! He cannot accept her touch or her gentleness. She is only a child in the world, and he could be her father, her mentor, or her teacher, but never her lover.
No matter how badly he longed for her.
There is no going backBut the hot, selfish, angry part of him screams that he take, that he use her, that she be his and only his because she would be something to cling to when the pain comes. She will be honest, and strong, and stupid and beautiful when it comes to him, and he would never have to fear that aching, raw loneliness again.
And no going forward.
It was then that he realized the stinging in his eye was a tear.
"How can I bear to see you in this world? Knowing what they think of you… Knowing what I know," she whispers, and he nearly chokes on his tight throat because it means that she has resolved herself, and is willing to let go with much less fight than he would have thought.
No staying within the present.
His hands – hands that have killed, have seduced, have tortured – reach out and tangle themselves in her hair; hair he had once dreamed of seeing splayed over his pillow, and he allows himself to grip her as tightly as he wishes.
For this was good bye.
"You do not have to think of me if you cannot bear the thought," he says, and his voice is steady though he feels as if his entire body is shaking..
"I cannot bear the thought," she affirms, but her voice trembles, muffled by his black shirt.
Her hands creep upwards, unable to reach his own long black hair because she is so petite, and instead settle on his shirt, clutching the fabric.
"We are fools," he hisses harshly, and he rests his cheek against her head, bending spider-like and predatory around her.
"And why is that so wrong?" Hermione asks forlornly, and he smiles
despite himself. "I want to be with you, I can't just let go… I…"
He breaks in, looking down at her with a sort of desperate light in his fathomless eyes.
"Do not say it! I cannot bear it if you say it."
She looks up at him, her gaze luminous with tears and her skin pale. She is as beautiful in her pain as she is in her joy, and perhaps that had been -
His downfall.
- what had attracted him to her in the first place. She is beauty in anything she undertakes. He lets her go, distancing himself from her warmth and the smell of her skin.
Morning glories and dew.
Her chest heaves, and she blinks rapidly, attempting to garner her courage and face him as the adversary he is supposed to be.
He expected her to sob, to scream, to plead…
"I love you," she whispers resolutely.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
Something inside of him shatters, and his hands snap out, dragging her small form to him in a fierce embrace. Her own hands reach up, and he lets her drag his face down until he could feel her sweet breath on his lips.
"I love you."
There is no place for love here.
She repeats, and she kisses him longingly, inexpertly, her – I cannot bear - mouth like hell and heaven against his - I cannot - own. He groans against her lips, and – I cannot - he tugs her towards the bed, tumbling her down upon it and kissing – I cannot bear – her further, harder. Breathless, for she is the first to kiss him at will.
I cannot…Hermione gazes up at Severus with liquid eyes, red with tears and sadness, as he reaches for the buttons of her green dress and undoes them slowly, exaltedly, the uncertainty and doubt blinding within his eyes.
I love you.
I cannot bear it.