Hermione and Severus stared at each other, both a little dazed.

"I'm sorry, Professor," Hermione said, speaking first. "I never meant for you to end up in the middle of anything like this and I don't want you to feel like you're stuck having me here. I can go to Ron's."

A stab of something that felt suspiciously like jealousy hit Severus in the stomach.

"Miss Granger, it is not your fault that I am in the middle of anything. It is Draco Malfoy's fault, if we must assign blame."

And he bloody well was going to assign blame. He was going to kill the little shit the minute Voldemort was in his grave. And he was going to enjoy it.

"Do you mind if I just floo Ron?" Hermione asked, annoying Severus by not actually acknowledging the fact that he had spoken. "Molly loves me coming to stay and I'm sure..."

His glare silenced her and he felt quite proud of it.

I really must start practicing that glare in front of the mirror, he decided. Could use it on Longbottom when I see him in the hallway – see if I can actually get him to piss himself.

"If Dumbledore wishes you to stay here, then he has his reasons," Severus said, putting the very appealing image of Neville Longbottom filling his pants in terror out of his mind, while trying desperately to ignore his own reasons for wanting her to stay.

"I will get your room ready," he said, not letting her say anything else.

He stalked off, leaving Hermione staring after him as he disappeared through a door she hadn't even noticed in the corner of the room.

Severus was rummaging through his wardrobe for a blanket when her voice made him jump out of his skin. The very fact that she had made him jump annoyed him immensely. He was always on his guard and now she was managing to get under it.

She had wandered through the door and climbed the spiral staircase without him hearing her. Now she was looking around his bedroom and he'd told her a few minutes earlier that he didn't want her in the rest of his house!

"Miss Granger, are you completely unable to listen and respect people's wishes?" he asked, in a cold voice.

There was an old wardrobe made with dark, warm looking wood, and a chest of drawers to match. They had beautiful carvings in the doors and Hermione resisted the urge to go to them and run her fingers over them.

"Miss Granger!" he snapped.

Hermione jumped and glared up at the irate man.

"I'm sorry sir, I just got a little lonely."

In actual fact, she'd started panicking about her situation the moment he had left the room and had decided to go and find him before she drove herself mad.

She looked around the room. It was small and mostly empty, but underneath the window there was a space hollowed into the wall with a comfy looking seat in it, covered in dark green velvet. There was a four poster bed in the middle of the room, which was easily the biggest bed she had ever seen. It was made from the same wood as the wardrobe and drawers, with the same carvings. The drapes were in Slytherin colours and were rich and heavy. The bedcover matched and the bed looked so soft her legs almost gave way with the urge to sink onto it.

God, she was tired.

Hermione's eyes rested on the nightstand to the left of the bed. On top of it were two pictures, both of women. One was young, about Hermione's age, and the other about her mother's age. They both looked a lot like Severus, with their long black hair and pale faces, although neither had been cursed with that nose.

Must be from his father's side of the family, she mused.

She sensed Severus watching her and stopped looking at them, knowing he wasn't comfortable with her presence at all, without her looking at his private possessions.

I shouldn't have followed him in, she thought, backing towards the door.

"I'm sorry, I just... Well..."

Severus dropped the blanket he had been lifting from the wardrobe and he strode over to her, taking hold of her shoulders in a biting grip.

"You are going to leave, Miss Granger, and you are not going to return until Voldemort is dead. Do you understand?"

It took her a second to realize that he wasn't talking about her leaving his bedroom, but leaving Britain.

"I am not going to leave. Why won't you understand that?" Hermione snapped at him, trying to wrench herself free of his grasp. "I can do this, you know I can."

She looked into his eyes, pleading for understanding. Why couldn't he understand that she couldn't just run away, leave her life behind and leave other people to take the fall?

"You will not die to protect me, Miss Granger. Don't you realise that's what you're doing?"

Hermione winced as she thought about that. Dying to protect her nasty potions master?

"Not just you, sir, but all the people you're protecting by being a spy." She willed him to understand. "If something happens to me, then it happens. Having you killed won't help us win the war."

"The Malfoys will break you, Miss Granger. And enjoy breaking you."

"Just as Voldemort enjoys breaking you, sir."

He didn't flinch at her use of his name as she'd expected. She realized that it was silly of her to think he would. He had faced Voldemort countless times and survived – what was a name compared to that? Why couldn't he understand that she had to do this? It was the sensible thing. She couldn't let him die for her, even if the lives of others weren't involved.

"Don't you understand that that is why I don't want that happening to you," he sighed, trying to make he understand while also trying to keep his temper under control. "You're too young, too innocent to see the things you'll have to see."

"As I'm sure you were, once upon a time, Severus."

Severus flinched at the use of his first name and looked at her, gazing up at him, looking so breakable and yet so brave at the same time. She shouldn't be involved in this.

"Bloody Draco Malfoy," he cursed under his breath.

He looked into her eyes, which were filling with tears and groaned. He pulled her towards him, his arms going around her, crushing her against his body, holding her so close, it hurt them both. He pressed his chin down onto the top of her head and tried to pull her inside him, to protect her.

She clung to him, pressing herself just as tightly against him, needing the contact. She needed comfort and she needed to comfort him.

His lips came down on hers and she froze in shock, before frantically kissing him back. Their tongues brushed together and they both groaned and clung to each other more tightly.

It took Severus a few seconds to recover from the shock that she was actually responding to his kisses. That hadn't been what he had expected; he'd expected her to try to push him away, or to hit out at him, or to scream; but not for her to press herself against him and kiss him back with more passion than he'd ever felt before.

He concentrated and tried to distance himself from her soft, warm mouth. He cleared his thoughts enough to remember that he had started this kiss for a reason. He desperately didn't want to do it. More desperately, he wanted to keep kissing her, losing himself in her taste, but he knew what he had to do.

He opened his mind, consciously taking down his barriers one by one. Then he found the memories he was looking for and pushed them into Hermione's head with all the mental force he could gather. He felt her tongue falter and felt her gasp, her mouth still pressed against his.

Images flew through both their minds. The image of a girl, naked and covered in dirt, her hair matted with blood oozing from a wound. She was kneeling at Severus's feet, looking up at him in shock, horror and amazement, as he let the masked men take her a little distance away and force her legs apart as she screamed his name...

A girl, who could only have been about fourteen, bleeding to death on the ground, drowing in her own blood, a snake-like face laughing and smiling at her feeble struggles...

A boy of about eighteen being held down by masked men as Voldemort knelt over his face and pulled back his cloak...

A girl crying and screaming in horror as she stared at the mutilated body of her dead brother...

A woman hanging limp in some leather bondage device, where Hermione somehow knew, she'd been hanging for days, being tortured and raped and beaten...

Suddenly an image appeared accompanied with such extreme emotions she choked. She felt fear, pain, nausea, helplessness, hatred and complete terror. The emotions were so overwhelming that she could barely concentrate on the picture in her mind. She could see silver masks all staring at her, all leering at her. She could feel herself being held down as she struggled and they laughed.

She looked up and saw two women one young, one old, both with pale faces and long black hair, both kneeling with their hands tied behind their backs, terror on their faces. She heard a male voice begging and screaming for mercy, saying he'd do anything if they'd just let them go and kill him instead...

She looked down at the hands on the grass in front of her as she struggled frantically and hopelessly against the bodies holding her down. The hands were long, pale and thin. A distinctive ring glistened on the left hand...

My God, Severus...

"Enough!" Severus cried, tearing his mouth from hers. He dropped to the floor on all fours and retched. Hermione joined him.

After a few minutes, Severus sat up and pulled Hermione from her hands and knees into a sitting position and pulled her against him. She was shivering.

He cast a charm to clean the floor and then reached up to the bed pulling the duvet down on top of them. He wrapped it around them both.

He looked down at his hands and realized he was shaking too. He cursed himself for letting her see too much. A few of his memories would have done – he hadn't needed to go that far.

"Hermione?" he asked, tipping her face up, much the same way Albus had twenty minutes earlier. He needed to see if she was all right. He needed to fix what he had done, which was ridiculous, because he had meant to hurt her. He had meant her to see all that so she would understand and run as far away as she could.

She opened her eyes and looked into his, wrapping her arms around him, pulling him so he was half lying on her with his head resting against her shoulder. She held him tight and rocked him, stroking his hair gently.

"I'm so sorry," she said, stroking his hair over and over again. "God, I wish I could have stopped them. I wish I could have been there for you. I'm so sorry..."

Severus froze in shock. He had expected her to see everything that had happened and relate it back to herself and her situation and be scared witless. Instead, she had been filled with some unfathomable need to comfort him and he couldn't cope with it.

He tried to pull away from her, to put as much distance between them as he possibly could. A move to Australia wasn't out of the question. He struggled against her, telling her to let him go, to stay away, to leave him alone.

He was frantic and it just made her hold him harder, trying to use her body to absorb his struggles. She had no doubt that if he had really tried, he could have broken free, but he needed this, he needed to be held and comforted and loved.

Eventually he stopped struggling and lay breathing deeply in her arms.

"It's going to be okay," she said gently, stroking his hair. "I'll look after you. Just let go..."

"It will never be okay," he half said, half sobbed, before he broke down completely and wept into her neck, clinging to her as if he was drowning.

"I tried to stop him," he sobbed almost incoherently. "I fought and begged and promised them anything. They didn't need to hurt them. They hadn't done anything wrong...It was my fault, I was the one who deserved that. Not them."

Hermione rocked him gently; holding him so tightly her arms ached. He was no longer her Potions Professor who had hurt and snubbed her in the past; a man who was so distant she hadn't even realized he was human. He was a man in so much pain that it was killing him. Bit by bit, he was dying inside. And she had to help him.

"God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he sobbed.

Hermione kissed the top of his head over and over, pressing her face against his head, wanting to somehow take him into her skin and protect and fix him.

She kissed his forehead, his eyes, nose and cheeks, almost frantically, feeling his pain and desperately trying to fix it in the only way she knew how.

Exactly when she had started kissing his mouth, neither of them knew. All they knew was that suddenly the embrace had turned from comfort to passion. Tongues were fighting for dominance. Hands were frantically touching everywhere and removing every item of clothing they came across.

Severus rose to his feet, pulling Hermione with him, still kissing her and clinging to her as if she was his only lifeline. He pulled her onto the bed and pinned her underneath him with his body. His mouth moved from her mouth to her neck, as he showered kisses all over her, moving gradually lower.

At an impatient, muttered charm from Severus, they were both naked, their bodies writhing against each other, their hands touching everywhere. Severus flicked his tongue against her nipples, licking and biting each one gently in turn. He kissed and licked his way down to her stomach, then moved his head between her thighs and buried his head between them, tasting her.

Hermione whimpered and lifted her hips off the bed. He licked her again and again, holding her hips still with his hands. He plunged his tongue inside her and fucked her with his tongue. He licked her deliberately slowly, making her whimper. Then his tongue moved against her over and over again, until she cried out, moaning something incoherent.

She was just coming back down to earth again, when she felt him move from between her thighs to lie next to her, not touching her. She could practically feel the barriers going up again.

He jumped when she reached for him.

"What's wrong?" she asked, knowing that there were a million things wrong with the situation, but also knowing that right then she didn't care. She needed him inside her, moving against her. She needed to be part of him and to have him be part of her.

"Come back to me, Severus," she whispered, touching his face. At the sound of his name being whispered, he groaned.

Severus shivered as her hand stroked up his stomach and a thumb brushed against his nipple. Her hand wandered down and she ran the tip of her finger up and down his incredibly hard cock. She grasped him tightly in her hand, making him gasp.

"Do you want me to stop?" she asked, biting her lip and looking him in the face, knowing that some sanity had come back and he was probably trying to think of a way to get rid of her.

She looked so unsure and so alone, yet so brave and so beautiful. Severus groaned and pulled her onto his chest. He found her mouth with his and kissed her again and again, making her whimper.

"Never stop," he said, reverently, crushing her against his body.

She kissed wherever she could reach as he held her to his chest, nibbling on his earlobes, biting his neck, burying her hands in his hair. Then suddenly she felt him rubbing against her, pressing between her legs and she gasped. She wriggled down a little lower and groaned as she felt him pushing into her slowly.

"My God..." Severus whispered, his eyes closed, as he grasped her hips and pulled her slowly onto him. He looked almost in pain, as his fingers dug into her hips, fighting to regain some sort of control.

He thrusted all the way in and Hermione cried out, half in pain and half in pleasure as he finally filled her, stretching her and making her lose all her sanity.

She writhed against him, wriggling, trying to get him to move inside her. He groaned and flipped her over, his hands braced on either side of her head. She wrapped her legs around him and groaned as he thrust deep inside her.

"Open your eyes," he said, kissing her lips with something that could very easily be mistaken for tenderness.

Her eyes flew open and the depth of his heated gaze immediately drew her in. He thrust into her, watching her as she gasped and writhed against him. She clung to his shoulders, whimpering as he did it over and over again, not able to tear her eyes from his.

Emotions and passion seemed to completely overcome both of them at the same time. Suddenly all they could do was feel. They moved together again and again, clinging, scratching, biting, thrusting and sobbing, until they both came, almost as one.

The world came rushing slowly back to them as they lay entwined, panting.

A minute later, Severus lifted his head from her shoulder and made to pull away, not letting Hermione catch his eye.

"Hermione, I'm so sorry, I shouldn't have done that," Severus said, closing his eyes against the horror of what he had done. There was nothing more unforgivable than sleeping with a student. That was a huge abuse of power and... with her wriggling like that under him, he was beginning not to care...

"Shhh..." she said, pressing her fingers to his lips. He felt himself start to harden inside her again, as she ran her hands through his hair and over his back, lightly scraping her nails down it. He moved back from her, so he could see her properly. He lowered his head and sucked on one of her nipples, flicking it with her tongue, and then blowing cold air on it and watching it harden.

She whimpered and lifted her hips up to bury him deeper inside her. She reached down his body with both hands and ran her nails lightly down his back and over his arse. Then using just one finger, stroked the cleft between his cheeks. He jumped at the shot of pleasure that had gone through him and thrust into her, hard.

It was their undoing. This time, they made love slowly and gently. As he was about to come, he reached between their bodies and used his thumb to bring her to orgasm just before he came, deep inside her.

They lay together, too exhausted to think. Severus reached down and dragged the quilt onto the bed, covering both of them and warming Hermione, who had started to get goose pimples with the cold.

The last thing Hermione remembered were Severus' lips against her forehead...