Author's Notes: This is a fanfic - Standard disclaimers apply. I own nothing.

Thank you again to those who favorited/followed. Please do review; any feedback is appreciated. Please be advised that there are graphic descriptions of sexual situations in this chapter and those beyond.

A/N: 11.13.20 -

Thank you so, so, so much to xSiriuslyPadfoot, ImaginedElegance, Kate, and Anonymous for leaving reviews. It means a lot to me and keeps me motivated to update more frequently.

PS - If there's anything you'd like to see in upcoming chapters, feel free to mention it.

The Ferret and the Crow

Diagon Alley was crowded.

The street stretched and curved out of sight, packed with open businesses and shoppers busy examining wares, haggling with store-owners, chatting with their friends. Unminded children ran and played, stopping only to press their noses to the store windows, where Easter displays exploded with pastel colors and promises of chocolate-dipped joy. No shuttered doors, no air of furtive hurriedness, no urgency to get the chores done and return to the safety of home. Where others had, only a year or two ago, felt the presence of War here, Amy felt its absence.

It was just as keen, just as uncomfortable, as her parent's absence.

Again.

"It's kind of funny, if you think about it," she said suddenly.

Professor Snape didn't look as though he found anything about their current situation—waiting, once again, for her parents to collect her—funny.

"Anyone who's a parent has been late at least once," she pressed on.

Snape checked his pocket watch in pointed silence and ignored her. Given his capacity to ignore her very existence, it shouldn't have been surprising that he could simply pretend he hadn't told her, less than two weeks ago, how absurd it was that he wanted to fuck her.

That's fine. Amy's good at pretending, too.

She could pretend they weren't hurling toward something together—something forbidden and inexorable. It would come, just not today. Not in this sunshine, where ambiguity and doubt could not thrive.

"That's how parenthood starts," she told him. "Somebody is late. You know—Late?"

Haha, get it? Late? As in, one's period being late?

Whatever. Snape didn't get it, either. It wasn't very funny, anyway.

He put his watch away and stared at her expectantly, his eyes pinning her with that merciless, unblinking scrutiny which was his specialty. It was the kind of stare that made her squirm. She wished he'd say something. Anything, even if it wasn't about them.

"You might even say parenthood is defined by lateness..." Amy concluded lamely.

"You're accustomed to making excuses for them, aren't you?" Snape said. It wasn't a question.

Amy thought about his dusty kitchen, his severely neglected cat, his whatever-it-was that he would be attending to if he didn't have to remand juvenile delinquents back to the custody of their parents—a courtesy, if you recall, done at his convenience.

Or else just another condition of his probation.

"You can just leave me here," Amy told him. "They'll be along eventually."

Snape's eyes narrowed in scorn, as though the idea of her being unsupervised and entirely responsible for herself for a single afternoon was very ridiculous indeed. "I don't think so."

"Then just Apparate me home. They're probably there, sleeping in or something," she said.

He sighed again and put on a lecturing tone, the one he used when explaining something to an especially stupid first-year: "My time away from Hogwarts is extremely limited. I have errands to attend, appointments to keep, and my life does not come to a stand-still simply because I am burdened with you. Mind yourself and follow."

Amy did.

The first place they stopped was just down the road. At first it appeared to her to be an ordinary Diagon Alley bookstore, one crowded with dusty bookshelves and stuffed to the brim with dubiously-organized scrolls. Then she peered through the propped-open door and squinted at the titles. Each and every one was academic in nature, including a vast array of scholarly journals. There were heaps of Transfiguration Today, stacks of Challenges in Charms, and piles of The Practical Potioneer.

Was he...Was he submitting a paper for publication or something?

"Or something," Snape said mockingly, now entering the building and wasting no time in ringing the bell on the counter.

She hadn't realized she'd said it aloud.

When, exactly, had he found the time to publish? Somewhere in the scant moments between drinking and slicing Tremlett into tiny pieces and carrying on an illicit affair with his TA?

When no proprietor showed up after a minute, Snape rang the bell again and then began drumming his fingers on the counter. When a minute more passed, he muttered irritably about the unacceptable tardiness of other people, produced a sealed envelope from a pocket far too small to contain it, and shoved it in her hands. He then swept past her to the door, a cigarette appearing magically between his thin lips.

He spoke around it just before exiting the store: "Find someone to give that to and then meet me outside."

The door jingled shut behind him, and she watched through the window as he lit the cigarette with the tip of his wand.

Everything—absolutely everything—was a power play with him.

By dragging her along on this trip instead of leaving her be, he made it abundantly clear that her priorities, comfort, and general well-being were less important to him than his errands. By delegating his errands to her, he then made it clear that his errands weren't even important enough to personally attend. Ergo, she, Amy, was a thing of such unbelievable unimportance it was a wonder she managed to exist at all.

The insult of it all made her head swim. It was still swimming when she located the (apparently very deaf) proprietor behind a stack of books on Herbology theory. She was a thin, grey-haired old witch who seemed to be the very embodiment of the word "venerable."

"I've been looking forward to this," she shouted at Amy, smiling and opening Snape's envelope. "We'll get it reviewed and let you know via owl in the next few weeks—best of luck to you!"

"Uh-huh," said Amy, barely listening.

Snape dragged her to the Apothecary in Knockturn Alley after that, where he purchased some potions' ingredients of dubious legality. Then it was back to Diagon Alley, where he picked up a new quill, and then, on what appeared to be impulse, two chocolate Easter eggs. He passed one to her without comment, rather like one might reward a dog that had behaved itself very well.

"Woof, woof," she said under her breath, and watched out of the corner of her eye as he rolled his eyes, sighed, and checked his pocket watch for the millionth time that hour.

"I've a lunch appointment," Snape said, after he'd finished his sweet. "If your miserable progenitors haven't shown up by the time it's over, I'm taking you back to Hogwarts."

Then they sat at a table on Fortescue's sunny patio—or, rather, Amy tried to sit at his table, but he only pointed moodily to a different table, rather like he were directing a chess piece, and Amy sat there instead.

There had once been a time when she would have killed for the chance to spend a day with her childhood god, to follow him to deserted graveyards and secret meetings and watch him rid the world of the Mudbloods and Muggle-Borns and Trash that threatened their way of life.

But that was years ago, and this was now, April 25th, 1983, and there were no mysterious midnight meetings—only his 'miserable excuse for a private life' with its papers to publish and appointments to keep. 1983, and Amy had developed a most convenient apathy and a most amazing talent for tuning out. She didn't bother trying to eavesdrop. In fact, she didn't even bother trying to stay awake.

Instead, she sat and ate her Easter egg. The afternoon sun was warm and comfortable, and a lazy breeze brought spring smells to her nose—cherry blossoms, and pollen. Under the influence of this pleasant environment, plus the mild sedative effect of the chocolate, she began to feel very sleepy and stupid and compliant. She put her head on the table, let the general white noise of Diagon Alley fill her ears, and, before Snape's lunch appointment even got there, began to doze.

She dreamt of the winter night Rabastan's dog led her to the door. She saw the disemboweled corpse of that unfortunate garden gnome spread at St. Francis' feet like a sacrifice, but it wasn't alone this time. This time, a pure white ferret and a crow, black as death, were feasting on its entrails.

"He left a note," said the ferret around a mouthful of blood.

"And? His usual oratorical senility?" the crow drawled, sounding bored.

" 'I watched, my son, as the greatest minds of a generation were wasted…wizards fell from grace…Pureblood maidens defiled' so, yes, his usual oratorical senility," said the ferret. He paused, then—"You were mentioned."

"A great, wasted mind?" asked the crow.

The ferret looked shrewdly at his companion. "He called you a traitor."

"You have your gold, Lucius, and your name. I have only my tale of deepest remorse. We do what we must to survive."

"Is that what you call this, Severus? Surviving?"

"What would you have me say?" asked the crow with a touch of impatience. "That it was my deepest ambition to teach? That I don't find it tedious beyond measure? It wasn't. I do. Hogwarts is dull, but it keeps me in employment and out of Azkaban."

"Dull? I should send you a copy of Father's letter. He went from abusing you into a veritable treatise on the decline of the school under Dumbledore. Apparently he resigned from the School Board last year in protest. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?

"This must have been a very lengthy suicide note."

"He'd probably been writing it for days," said the ferret bitterly. "Merlin, he might even still be alive if that miserable house-elf had done its job and contacted me at the first sign of such behavior."

"If only we all had house-elves to kill our fathers and save us the trouble of doing it ourselves."

The ferret gave his companion a withering look. "A man doesn't simply abandon his Governorship after three decades without reason, Severus."

The crow tutted impatiently. "Is that why you're here? for your father's empty seat? You are aware that those are elected positions, not passed from father to son by divine right? I have absolutely no interest in your—or anyone else's—campaign for school governor."

"I suppose that's why you're on the advisory board charged with nominating a candidate?" said the ferret. "Your lack of interest?"

"As it so happens, yes. I signed up for the advisory board because it excuses me from nearly a half-dozen staff meetings, and if I am forced to hear my idiotic colleagues prattle on about the importance of learning with the student one more time, I may well drown myself in the shower."

"One would think, if you really despised Hogwarts so much, you'd stop signing yourself up for extra responsibilities: the Advisory Board, and whoever in God's name that is over there," the Ferret said, nodding at something in the distance.

"I have no idea what you're talking about," the crow replied indifferently.

"Oh? Am I to believe we just so happen to be sitting next to some random Slytherin teenager sleeping in the sun?"

"Believe whatever you'd like, Lucius. You always have."

"Isn't that the girl who laughed at my father's funeral?"

"I'm not at liberty to say."

The ferret sighed and looked back at his companion. "You're evading, Severus, I asked about the incident that prompted my father's resignation."

"I can't speak to that, either."

"If Dumbledore has hushed something up, I want to know about it. The public deserves to know about it. In fact, the lack of transparency at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizard—"

The crow interrupted. "Save your stump speech for an interested audience, Lucius. I don't want it."

"So what do you want? For me to pay for your tea while you bore me with bad conversation?"

"Ah, yes. Bad conversation. That's the trouble with Non-Disclosure Enchantments," drawled the crow drily. "They ruin conversation."

The ferret suddenly looked very interested indeed. "An NDE? So the Ministry got involved? This must have been quite the scandal."

The crow grabbed a large mouthful of Gnome in its beak and half-hopped, half-flew to the top of St. Francis' head. It then tossed its head in the air and let gravity drop something red and bloody—a kidney, maybe—down its gullet. It wiped its bill on its feet before answering:

"Incident—scandal—outrage—what does it matter? Whatever it was, it was killed in its crib. Your father was well aware of that—do you really desire to spend your time chasing his white whale?"

The ferret cracked a large bone and began sucking the marrow out of it. "Why don't you let me decide how I want to spend my time."

In answer, the crow nosed through the guts at its feet, searching for some choice part. It plucked something out of the mass—an organ so perfectly red, so perfectly shiny, and so perfectly round that it looked almost like a Christmas bauble. He tossed it to the ferret, who caught it in a distressingly human paw.

"Where did you get this?" said the ferret, turning the weird little organ in its paws. "This looks like it came from an Auror evidence room."

The crow tossed an errant rib off St. Francis' head. "The Auror evidence room has its share of disgruntled employees, I'm sure. And such things are known to find their way into the black market. I confiscated this one from a student."

"Won't there be some sort of secrecy charm on it? An Anonymity Enchantment?"

"Anything is possible, Lucius," said the crow from atop St. Francis' head.

"Can't you tell me who's in this? A surname, at least?"

The crow gave him a pointed look. "I'd prefer not to."

The ferret scoffed irritably. "My 'White Whale'? You'd 'prefer not to'? You and my father both with your Melville references…If I never have to hear the words 'Moby dick' or 'Bartleby the Scriven—'" But it broke off, as though a thought had just occurred to it. Its eyes flicked to something in the distance, then back to the crow.

The crow wiped its bill again and began preening the feathers on its chest.

"I see," the ferret finally said, its sharp little teeth bared in a horrid smile.

"Took you long enough," the crow returned irritably.

They both gobbled on the gnome corpse for a few more minutes. After a while, though, the crow looked up, blood dripping from its bill

"Bartleby!" It rasped. "Bartleby—wake up!"

It was her own magic, more than the dream, that woke Amy up. It surged through her with an instinctive kind of panic, starting at the tips of her toes and fingers, rising up across her arms, legs, and torso, and concentrated in her right shoulder, where it snapped like a small bolt of lightning. She sat up with a highly undignified noise, disoriented and oddly groggy, and looked up just in time to see Snape withdraw his hand from her shoulder as though burned.

Oh. He'd been shaking her awake.

They were alone at Fortescue's now, and the light seemed lower in the sky—lower than she'd expected, because she didn't think she'd been asleep that long. Amy had the sense that she'd been dreaming something important, something about a ferret and a crow, but even as the details slid out of her memory forever, she caught sight of Snape's hand.

There was a deep gash across his palm, and it was dripping blood.

Oh. Had she done that?

His eyes flicked from the cut to her face, and there was something strange in his look, something oddly tender. Something full of regret. But it was gone so quickly she might have just imagined it.

Still, he seemed distracted as he cast the healing charm, and although he insulted her ("And to think you're failing Defense!") his heart didn't really seem in it. She opened her mouth to apologize, but was interrupted by a voice calling her name from down the street. She looked past Snape to see her parents waving at her, and when she blinked he was gone.

Amy spent most of the Easter Holiday fighting with her parents.

Her report card—such as it was—came with a school owl while she sat at the kitchen table, tipping food on the floor for the Inexplicable Dog. She tried a bit of salami first, but the Dog merely sniffed at it unenthusiastically before putting his head back down on the floor with a sigh that reminded her of Snape's.

What was it about ex-Death Eaters and food? Even their dogs wouldn't eat.

Her mum was saying things about her "plans for the future."

Amy tried tipping a slice of fruit to the Dog, just on the off chance he was a vegetarian or something, but he just looked at it. Out of nowhere, she got the mental image of Snape, in full Death Eater regalia, peeling a banana, and struggled to hold onto the gravity of her reality.

Her father said something about her "potential."

"Sorry," Amy told the Dog.

"Amy, look at me—Look at me, please," her mother was saying.

Reluctantly, Amy did.

"We know this has been a difficult year for you—we know. But you have got to start applying yourself. There is so much at stake, and there's still time to turn things around." The desperation in her mother's voice was depressing.

Guilty, Amy looked back at the Dog and pushed a cracker from her plate onto the floor, which was now littered with uneaten morsels.

Her mother made an exasperated noise then and began yelling: "Do you have any idea the strings we had to pull to get you back on the list to take the NEWTs? You're a smart girl—I mean, Jesus, how hard is it to just go to class!?"

"Well, they still count you 'absent' if you're late," Amy explained quietly. "It's just hard to be on time sometimes." She looked up at her parents and held their gaze. "I mean—you know what that's like. Being late. Three hours late, even."

Her mother recoiled as if slapped, a look of shock on her face. Amy's father, overcome with a sudden need to check on the Gentleman Trees, simply got up and walked out the back door. The Dog bolted up and followed him out.

"Amy," Mum began, her voice choked with emotion. "You can't hold that over us forever…"

Amy looked out the kitchen window at her father, who sat on a dilapidated garden bench and began to weep. The Dog alternated between scanning the horizon and investigating Gnome holes, as though Rabastan were liable to just pop out of one any day now.

"You have to try, Amy. God knows we're trying…." Amy's mum said.

"Are you, though?," Amy wondered. The calmness in her own voice surprised her. "Last year—I get it. You weren't expecting...Well, you know. But the first day of Easter holiday? You were supposed to pick me up at noon. I had to wander around Diagon Alley with Snape for, like, two hours. It doesn't exactly make a person feel wanted."

Amy's mum made a face in confusion. "What are you talking about, Amy? His owl said two o'clock. We were there at one fifty-five."

Amy didn't believe her, so she went looking for the note later. When she found it, she saw that, indeed, her mother had been right. Amy frowned at the words "Two O'clock," right there on the parchment in Snape's spidery hand. Plain as day.

It didn't seem like him to make a mistake like that. He did everything with such anal-attentive deliberation, and he was so God-damned insistent on punctuality. He wouldn't get an appointment off by two hours any more than he would just haphazardly toss a random ingredient into a cauldron. Which—absurd as it seemed—could only mean that he'd contrived to spend a whole two hours with her, running errands and keeping appointments.

What are you up to, Snape?

Then she remembered his piles of undone grading, his drinking, the fact that he couldn't be bothered to approve anyone's Senior Project last year. Hell, he hadn't even updated the Common Room password since January.

"Whatever," she told the Dog, and dismissed the matter.

The paper airplane came at night.

It was the first night back from Easter Holidays, and Amy hadn't been asleep. She'd been sitting in the bath, thumbing through her now very well-worn copy of Bartleby. The tub in the girl's dorm wasn't very nice – there was nothing noteworthy in its size or shape or style. But the water was warm and, thanks to a bath potion stolen from Fiona's trunk, pleasantly lemon-scented. The water hugged every intimate place on Amy's body.

It felt…good.

Not precisely sexual, but not bad, either. She'd forgotten all those gentle little sensations, forgotten that her skin itself could feel good. She couldn't help imaging that the water gently lapping around her body was Snape's hand.

Amy was thinking about this, while simultaneously reading, when the paper airplane floated in, poked her in the head, and unfurled itself before her eyes.

NEWT Care of Magical Creatures Students,

Emergency class on the north side of the lake. Come immediately — you won't want to miss this.

Prof. S. Kettleburn.

She frowned. How odd. She'd never heard of anything like an emergency, unscheduled class before - certainly not one in the middle of the night.

She considered ignoring it and staying in the warm comfort of the bath. But then, curiosity piqued, she removed herself, cast a Drying Charm, and pulled on what Alex disapprovingly called her "Muggle-Style" pajamas. She wandered out of the loo, found shoes and a cloak, and opened her mouth to wake her roommates.

Then she remembered how bitchy they could be, especially first thing after waking up, and closed it again. Shrugging to herself, she padded quietly out the door and began the long walk to the north lawn.

Amy saw the cluster of people before she saw what they were clustered around. There, at the edge of the lake, was a peg-legged figure instantly recognizable as Kettleburn, three pajama-clad students—presumably Ravenclaws from class—and, kneeling, the huge mass of the Gamekeeper, whom Amy had never once spoken to.

She began to speak just a few metres from them. "What're we doing ou…"

But the words died on her lips when she saw it.

A dragon.

A dragon whelp—maybe 10 or 15 feet long from snout to tail—lay crumpled on the North lawn. It's great black wings were ragged and folded at awkward angles. It breathed heavily, its scaled chest heaving in the moonlight, clearly injured, or ill, or both.

"What's wrong with it?" she murmured.

"Poachers," Kettleburn said simply. "See the claws? The horns?—" he pointed them out "—They've been cut. Both fetch a good price in Knockturn Alley. They were probably about to harvest its heartstrings and liver, thinking it dead, when it woke and escaped."

"How—How would they have even caught it?" one of the Ravenclaws whispered.

"Look at its eyes," Kettleburn said, pointing.

Amy followed his finger to the creature's eyes, which were an angry red, and swollen almost shut.

"Conjunctivitis Curse?" she asked.

Kettleburn nodded. "A Conjunctivitis Curse to initially subdue it, and then something...Darker."

"Darker?" the Ravenclaw repeated. "What do you mean, like Dark Magic?" He sounded frightened.

"Indeed. It would have taken an extraordinary powerful curse—and a powerful wizard—to bring down even a fledgling dragon."

"What kind of curse?" another Ravenclaw wanted to know.

"That, I'm afraid, is rather outside my purview, Mr. Fawcett," Kettleburn said mournfully. "We're waiting on Professors Dumbledore and Snape to consult."

"It couldn't have been...Him, could it? He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?" whispered Fawcett. He sounded mildly hysterical now, and dark tense whispers broke out among the other students.

"Let's not let our imaginations run away with us," said Kettleburn chided gently. "It's only an injured dragon."

"What about Death Eaters? Could it have been some of them?" piped up another Ravenclaw.

But Kettleburn had suddenly turned away from his students and was waving his illuminated wand at two dark figures in the distance. "Ho! Speak of the devil! We're over here, Headmaster, Professor."

Amy looked over to find two people swiftly crossing the lawn—A tall figure instantly recognizable as the Headmaster, and, next to him, a shorter wizard with billowing black robes.

Snape.

She crossed her arms over her breasts, suddenly feeling very under-dressed indeed.

His eyes met hers for just a fraction of a second, once he and Dumbledore had reached the party, but then he immediately turned his attention to Kettleburn.

All three wizards walked over to the dragon and began examining it, consulting in low whispers. She caught snippets of information here and there—Hagrid had found it, alerted Kettleburn, who saw at once that it was badly injured. Once these facts were settled, Snape crouched on his heels gargoyle-like, and began waving his wand over the dragon, muttering various diagnosis spells as he did so. The moonlight slanted against his hair, drawing his face in chiaroscuro.

Years later, she'll still be struck by how he'd seemed to fit right in there, with the darkness of that moment.

Finally, after what felt like eons, Snape lowered his wand and, in an odd gesture she'd never seen before, quirked his head. Then he was straightening, standing, talking to Dumbledore and Kettleburn. She caught snippets again—names of Dark curses she'd never heard of, suggestions that perhaps Madam Pomfrey should be consulted, wondering aloud whether it wouldn't be kinder to just put the beast out of its misery (this last drew a sob from the gamekeeper).

Finally, Dumbledore nodded. "Quite right, quite right. Well, thank you all the same, Severus."

Dumbledore and Snape turned back to the waiting students while Kettleburn stayed behind, his hands shoved deep into his pockets as he looked mournfully down at the creature

The Headmaster caught Amy's eye suddenly, for the first time in her recollection, and for a moment his blue eyes pierced her, searching and unfriendly. Then he smiled. "Nice to see you in class, Miss Scrivener, even one as unconventional as this."

She hugged her cloak closer. "Yes, sir."

"I trust your term is going well?"

She nodded at her feet.

Dumbledore then did something very odd as he walked by her. He moved as if to touch her shoulder—casually, in passing. It appeared to be unconscious, as he'd already begun to abandon the gesture when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Snape twitch.

Literally twitch, the way a jealous child might if someone else approached his favorite toy.

"Scrivener, to me," he barked suddenly. Then, as if by afterthought, "You too, Fawcett, Shepard, Bones. It's late. We're going back to the Castle."

Dumbledore smiled enigmatically, then turned back to Kettleburn and the dragon while Snape escorted the students away from the scene.

Snape and Amy walked side by side, their hands almost brushing against one another.

Almost.

Behind them, the Ravenclaws babbled excitedly.

"Golly, a dragon! I've never seen one so close before," one of them said, apparently unable to contain himself. "Do you think it'll live, Professor?"

"I've really no idea, Shepherd," Snape responded indifferently as they crossed the lawn.

"Did I hear Dumbledore say something about Madam Pomfrey? Will she try to heal it?"

"Perhaps."

"You really don't think it could have been Death Eaters who brought it down, do you?" another Ravenclaw asked as they entered the Castle.

The complete lack of irony in his voice made Amy wonder if he had even the least idea who he was talking to.

But Snape had already come to a halt before a set of staircases and pointed a long, thin finger to the one Amy had often seen Ravenclaws ascend after dinner. "To your rooms. Don't dawdle."

The Ravenclaws trailed reluctantly up the staircase with muttered "Goodnight's"

Amy and her professor watched them go, then descended the other staircase, toward Slytherin territory. She felt suddenly very awake, hyper-aware of the sharp sound of Snape's boots against the stone steps, the dewy grass smell still clinging to him, and the fact that he was, as ever, fully dressed despite the late hour.

Perhaps he never slept.

She wondered what nightmares kept him up.

They turned a corner at the bottom of the staircase, then stopped before the door Amy knew to be his private quarters. The silence between them stretched on just a beat too long.

Finally, Snape's arms folded over his wiry chest. "Dormitory's that way," he said curtly, indicating with a dip of his head.

"I know," Amy breathed. She tipped her head toward him, watching, waiting for him to tell her to get the fuck out of his sight.

He didn't.

But neither did he approach her, or invite her in, or do anything but level an expectant gaze at her. The intent hung heavily, somehow both awkward and thrilling, between them.

Amy remembered how she'd left him last, with his raging erection and drunken declaration that he'd like to fuck her, and thought that maybe—just maybe—she was beginning to understand how this worked.

Maybe he was waiting for her to make the first move.

Tentatively, every nerve agitated and drawn and ready to spring, she took a step toward him and raised a hand to graze along the stubble of his jaw. His arms fell to his side, then to her waist, and, quite suddenly, his thin lips were upon hers again.

His kiss was deep and lingering and soft, no longer tinged with firewhisky. She felt his tongue move along the seam of her lips, then sneak forward to dip briefly into the heat of her mouth. It was like a dance—or an exploration—tentative, testing, teasing.

The stiffness in her spine melted as their tongues slanted against one another, and she became aware of other sensations—her feet, anchored to a ground that seemed suddenly quivering and unsteady; a dull, exquisite ache slowly growing in her womb; the feel of his hands clutched around her waist, pulling.

He began walking backward, murmuring something—a spell, perhaps—against her mouth, so that they melted together through the solid wood of his door.

Amy gasped in surprise at the sensation of his magic coiling around her and the realization that she now stood in her Potions Professor's sitting room, of all places.

Alone with him.

She's been here before, of course. She's even done...things with him here, before. But that was different, somehow. There was no pretense this time.

And she didn't care.

She became aware of Snape studying her, as if waiting for something. His left eyebrow quirked upward minutely.

"Yes," she whispered to him. And then, with more conviction, "Yes."

A fevered groan escaped his mouth; his hands tightened on her waist, and he was walking backward again, pulling her with him, until the backs of his knees hit the couch and he sat, pulling her down on top of him.

Amy found herself straddling him, gasping as she felt it again—his erection, pressed tightly to her center through their clothes

His erection.

His cock, engorged with blood and pulsing.

Because of her.

The headiness of feeling wanted snaked around her, then, chasing away any thoughts of being nervous or shy. The pressure of his cock against her clit promised something exquisite, lovely, and she found herself rocking against him experimentally.

This earned her another potent groan from him, his hips bucking under hers, and all of the sudden his hands were everywhere—clutching at her thighs, her waist, her breasts, and finally at her shoulders, where he began pushing her cloak back and back.

She shrugged out of it, overheated and impatient to get the garment off. Her shirt came next, and she opened her eyes to find herself naked from the waist up, her breasts bare and bouncing slightly in his face from her movement. She arched into his touch as his hands ghosted over the contours of her breasts, the curve of her sides.

His hands settled on her hips, guiding her, rocking her back and forth against his clothed member, as his lips captured a nipple.

"Ah—Fuck," she keened as his tongue flicked across the sensitive nub, the sensation sending something hot and tingling skittering down her spine. The fabric of her pajamas was damp, her clit positively on fire, and she was so close—so close—

"Wait!" she cried as he shifted away from her suddenly. "What are you—?"

But he had already rolled her off his lap and stood, leaving her alone on the couch, every nerve protesting the sudden end to sensation. Her fevered mind reeled, wondering if she'd done something wrong, half-expecting him to spit an insult at her and walk away.

But, no, nothing in his expression promised insult or injury. There were high points of color on her cheeks as he stared down at her, his eyes riveted to the curves and angles of her body, as though he couldn't quite believe what he was seeing and had to file away a mental image for later consideration. There was a look of hunger, there, too—like he wanted to take something, everything, away from her.

Then he was kneeling before her, one hand freeing his cock from the confines of his trousers as the other tugged at the waistband of her pajamas.

She lifted her hips and allowed him to slide her remaining clothes off, realizing with a start that she was slumped there on his couch, fully naked, while the only exposed part of his body bobbed, pale, engorged, and…

...and frankly quite large.

Her spine stiffened and locked into a rigid column as she expected to feel his body fall, hot and hard, on top of hers, his member—his frankly rather large member—pressing against her slit. She wanted it. Of course she wanted it. She wasn't sure she'd ever wanted anything more in her life, but…

But that was not what he did.

Snape was talking to her as he knelt there, hooking a hand under her knee and placing it on his shoulder, leaning forward. "I want to taste you," he was remarking silkily. "I want to taste you, I want you to come. Will you let me?"

And the image of him there, between her thighs, his beaked nose just inches from her quim, was so unbelievably erotic that she forgot to be embarrassed, forgot to worry about what it must smell or taste like down there, and she found herself babbling incoherent syllables.

"I—God—Okay—Yes."

He smirked and lowered his face to the dark triangle between her thighs. His hair whispered along the inside of her thigh, just grazing a corner of her curse scar, but she didn't care.

His tongue flicked against her center and she found herself sucking in a breath, holding it involuntarily. But soon she was breathing in frenzied pants as the sensations pummeled her. His tongue—so hot and wet—was sliding up and down her slit, plunging shallowly inside her. His lips moved, humming against her flesh, and she cried out as the broad flat of his tongue found her clit and dragged against it.

"Oh, fuck, fuck—"

She found herself chanting it, over and over again. Her thighs were quivering, her slit on fire, every nerve humming, and she was so close again, so close.

Her hands flew to his hair, pushing his face to her. Her thighs suddenly clamped, quite outside her control, around either side of his head as he planted his lips firmly on her clit, and sucked.

"Oh fuck—oh fuck—oh fuuuuck!"

Her orgasm came suddenly, like a crashing wave of pleasure, unbelievably wet and all-encompassing. She felt robbed of everything she knew, everything she was, until there was nothing left—no Amy, no Snape, no past or future—just a glittering moment of ecstasy suspended in time, stretching on to infinity, and finally receding into the sound of her breathing and his moan as he, fondling himself with his hand, also came.

For a moment, there was only breathing.

In

Out.

In again.

She felt him slide her leg from his shoulder, then withdraw from her.

Breathe out.

In.

Out again.

Finally, once recovered enough to be cognizant of her surroundings, Amy found that she was stretched out on the battered sofa, one hand over her eyes. She knew there were some...practicalities called for, now, like finding her clothes, and navigating her exit, and doing something about the squelching wetness between her legs. She drew her knees up, together, and started to sit up and collect herself.

She opened her eyes only when something stopped her.

Snape's hand was on her chest, splayed out across her breasts, not precisely holding her down, but gently restricting her ability to get up.

Her eyes snapped to his. Was something...more...expected?

The high points of color on his cheeks had faded, and his member was carefully concealed in his trousers again, but his look was the same—that hungry look, like a starving man supping himself by merely memorizing every detail of a great feast. His lips glistened faintly in the pallid green light coming from his lake-window.

She must have made a face in confusion, or maybe even in alarm, because he explained himself quietly as he drew his hand away and straightened.

"I only want to look, Bartleby."

Amy felt herself growing hot, the hairs prickling on her neck. It was one thing to be naked while they were in the act; quite another to just lie there as he, fully-clothed, dragged his eyes across every square inch of her flesh. It was strange, and so…

So intimate.

Finally, after what felt like eons, Snape looked away. He plucked her pajama top from the floor and, with an oddly unpracticed air, offered it to her.

She took it from his hand. "Thanks," she breathed.

"This isn't proper, you know," he said.

And she almost laughed, because that must be the understatement of the century. But the look on his face was somber. Serious. So she merely held the top to her chest and dipped her head in acknowledgement.

"I know."

"I don't fuck students." His tone brokered no argument.

This time she did laugh, just a little bit, because it was a line of reasoning quite familiar to her.

Severus Snape did not fuck students.

It simply wasn't done.

Ergo, in some mystical way, he hadn't fucked her after all, right?

Right?