A/N: Hello, hello, my dearest readers, and welcome to what you didn't even know you would need to wait another week for when you started reading last week's chapter! ;) Finally we're getting where you've been looking forward to since last June. As compensation for the mean cliffie last week (oh, I so love my cliffhangers!) I will spare you the lengthy Author's Note today. Many thanks for last week's reviews, I have thoroughly enjoyed receiving every single one of them!
Now, have fun reading, and let me know your thoughts - that is, once you've managed to collect the scrambles and put them back into some semblance of coherence after this. Or maybe I'm just overly confident? Yeah, probably. Anyway... There you go.
xxx Marcella
Tuesday, December 24th, 1995
The girl squeaked in surprise as she was thrown onto the bed, and Severus was quick to add several charms to the now locked door that would sound-proof the room, hindering any noise from escaping to the outside or to adjoining rooms as well as to floors above or below their bed chamber.
Another flick of his wand had the room temperature rise to a more moderate level that wouldn't have the girl's skin erupt into goose bumps as soon as it was exposed to his eyes. If the girl's skin was to be pebbled with goose bumps, Severus wanted to be the one to cause them.
Looking down at the young woman lying in the middle of the bed, he was part saddened, part glad to see that she'd closed her legs again, rather than elect to remain as he'd thrown her, as her thighs had fallen open in that process. He hadn't spared the sight a glance then, instead locking and warding the room they were in, lest somebody stumble upon them in a precarious position. Come to think of it, of course, every position they could ever be found in alone together, just the two of them, would be precarious or, even if it wasn't, at least would be perceived as such.
The fact that Severus was glad not to have seen the girl's core yet – he had kept his eyes fixed on hers when she'd pleasured herself on the desk earlier – was because he wanted to explore her, their first time together, and her first time ever. He wanted to open up her body, discover her soft spots, and watch her blossom under his attentions before deflowering her.
Of course, for that, the girl would need to be unwrapped first, gift that she was to him, much though she had insisted that this was his gift to her. Well, either way, she was to be thoroughly enjoyed – either for giving herself to him, or because he was giving himself to her. Severus knew that he didn't deserve the girl, not in any way, but he'd demanded to have her and she'd agreed to be his, wondrous as that fact was.
Carefully, he removed his outer robes. The girl seemed to be riveted by the sight, for her eyes never left his body. Severus noticed that because his gaze never wavered from her, either. Folding the robes, Severus crossed over to the chair and carefully hung them over the back. His frock coat was next, until he was left standing in his shirt – black, this time, to celebrate the holidays – and dress trousers.
A few steps had him back beside the bed, and he sat down on the edge of it, knowing he needed to get closer to the girl eventually. She looked up, as if unsure of what to do next, then sat up, coming to kneel next to him when his index finger beckoned her to do so.
"Miss Granger," Severus began, insecure about what he would be saying next, but not letting the girl know so. "If it gave you some comfort, that is, if you feel this might facilitate this for you, I might consider consenting to letting you call me by my given name."
If he was already surprised to hear himself utter the words, this offer of goodwill, then the girl was shocked beyond measure. Her eyes went wide until her whole face seemed to consist of round brown orbs and soft black lashes, and her lips parted until they formed a graceful 'O' – or as graceful as a mouth opened in shock could be.
"I –" she hesitated, swallowed, started anew, "I appreciate the gesture, professor, but I think I'd be more comfortable – that is, of course, unless you'd prefer I call you – well, and the same goes for you, if you want to call me 'Hermione', but really, I'm just –"
"Miss Granger," Severus thundered softly, and the resulting rumble had the girl involuntarily shudder in what he identified as pleasure, "a straight-forward answer, if you will."
"Of course, professor," the girl replied, and blushed most prettily. "I would rather continue addressing you with the respect due to a man of your position, sir. That is, unless you mind, and would rather I call you by your given name, in which case I will, of course, yield to your wishes. In turn, I would like for you to address me as you please, sir."
"Unless I call you a whore, Miss Granger?"
His single eyebrow, having wandered almost into his hairline, had the girl obviously confused as to whether his inquiry was sincere or perhaps might have been a rare and, in fact, formerly unexperienced joke.
"With all due respect, professor," the girl answered, and Severus had a feeling that even though she might actually mean to respect him, the following words would not sound like she did, "if that is what gets you going, then yes, you may even call me a whore."
Severus wasn't quite certain how appropriate it was to laugh out loud at her statement. Perhaps he should rather be angry with her, at the insult to his person. Then again, he never laughed, so the first option was out of the question, and a raging fit might be unconducive to the pleasure he meant to bestow on the girl, so perhaps this situation called for a middle way.
"If you still need to question whether I'm 'going', Miss Granger," Severus countered, now allowing some of the sexually-loaded amusement to play in his eyes, "perhaps I will need to impress the signals onto you some more."
For the split of a second, her eyes flicked to his nether regions, and even though the black fabric made a valiant effort to disguise his arousal, the girl's eyes widened remarkably.
"Perhaps I might even need to teach you some respect, Miss Granger," Severus continued, "starting with how to appropriately address your teacher. Though if you wish to keep me going, I would advise you not to call me 'professor' right now, in this kind of setting."
"Yes… sir?" the girl answered, though her address was posed as a question.
Severus nodded in confirmation, and a smile spread over her face in her delight to have settled the issue.
The smile gave way to an expression of sincere fascination when Severus grabbed the hem of her jumper and slowly, oh so slowly, lifted it over her head. One of her curls that had escaped the confinements of the messy bun atop the girl's head got snuck in the process, and what followed was an awkward struggle in which both he and the girl sought to free her hair from whatever it had gotten snuck in, and in the process completely destroyed what was supposed to be a sensual atmosphere.
Her top underneath was removed more easily, and then Severus found himself confronted with more emerald silk. His right index finger traced the white lining around the cups, stroking the tops of her soft mounds along the way. The girl's eyes were fixated on where his finger caressed her skin, only returning to his, shyly, when he reached around her form to open the clasp that allowed him to pull the confinement away from her beautiful breasts.
Severus needed a moment, and several deep breaths, to cope with the perfection that was the girl's breasts. Round and almost symmetrical, ivory dusted with pink rose buds that sat perched atop the mounds, pebbled not from the cool temperature but rather from his heated gaze. Instead of reaching forwards, cupping them in his bare hands, weighing them and caressing them, Severus looked the girl straight in the eye.
"Open your hair," he demanded, and she relented.
Her locks fell free and heavily down, tumbling down her back in a riot that was just so much her, it very nearly took Severus's breath away. The wildness surrounding her head in a furious halo painted a stark contrast to her inherent innocence, and Severus found himself hesitant to destroy what she had so willingly offered up to him.
He had no right to touch those perfect breasts, Severus realized once more, and this time, the thought almost paralyzed him. In fact, he must have frozen in so obvious a way that even the girl noticed.
"Sir?" she asked, confused. "Is this not to your liking after all? I can put my hair back up, if it pleases you –"
"Lie back, Miss Granger," Severus ignored her question.
Not questioning his request, the girl complied readily, stretching out on the bed as he'd demanded. Severus now edged closer to her and put his hand onto the breast closest to him, feeling defiant towards his own insecurities.
He revelled in the softness of her skin. His thumb quested over her pebbled nipple once, twice, and at the third time, the girl gasped softly. Incidentally, or perhaps even purposely, her legs fell slightly open at her gasp, and Severus took it as his cue, judging her body ready to receive him.
Lifting one leg over his shoulder, Severus knelt at her core. The lace top of her silk stocking was all askew from when she'd attempted to remove the item before he'd asked her to stop. There was no stopping Severus now. He traced the edge of where her stocking was crumpled against her skin, watching the almost naked girl beneath him shiver in pure pleasure at his touch.
Drawing the lace away from where it rested snugly against her thigh, Severus rolled the stocking upwards and off her leg. As soon as he got the fabric in a comfortable closeness to his face, his lips followed his fingers rolling the stocking off, ghosting the hints of kisses where he gradually exposed her skin.
Once he reached her toes, Severus flicked the stocking somewhere over his shoulder, not caring where it came to land. Fixing the girl with a stare that dared her to remove her foot from where it was rested on his shoulder, Severus turned his attention to her other leg.
He began in the bow of her foot. His fingers traced a line from there, resulting in a soft giggle from the ticklish girl, going over the inside of her lower leg upwards to the sensitive skin on the inside of her thigh. The sheer fabric of her stocking kept him from touching his fingertips directly to her skin, of course, but Severus delighted – as much as a man like him ever delighted in anything – in the feeling of the silk against his digits.
He only stopped when he reached the lace top of that stocking, lifting his hand away from her leg. The girl turned her eyes to his face, the confusion apparent in them, but Severus only shook his head.
"This stays on, Miss Granger," he growled, and his words had her whole body erupt in goose bumps.
The immense feeling of success and accomplishment coursing through Severus at the sight had him harden beyond anything he'd ever experienced before. There was nothing keeping him anymore; he had to free himself from the tight confinement of his trousers, and bury himself in the even tighter confinement of the girl's depth.
Opening the buttons on his dress trousers, Severus watched the girl bite her lower lip in her nervousness. That lip turned a deep cherry under her worrying, and even more so when his manhood sprang free. Leaning forward, over her, Severus once more used his thumb to pull her lip free from her teeth. He had not calculated, however, that the motion would bring his hardness in contact with her wetness.
The girl gasped as his cock grazed against her core, brushing over the nub that sat between her nether lips, making her twitch in pleasure at being touched there. Severus took a deep breath when he realized that the tip of his erection was resting against the apex of her thighs, partially hidden in the softest of curls he had ever felt in such a region.
His thumb still sat on the girl's lower lip. That was, until she drew the digit into her mouth to suck on the tip of it.
"Miss Granger," Severus growled, "if you keep that up, this will be over far sooner than I would need to make this remotely pleasant for you."
"Sir," the girl countered cheekily, strangely emboldened, it seemed, by her own vulnerability in lying naked beneath her professor, "if you don't move now, I might combust in suspense."
"As you wish," Severus simply said.
He sat back again, kneeling between her thighs. He readjusted the leg perched atop his shoulder, and stroked along the other one lying next to him on the bed. His hand caressed her thigh from the knee upwards until he reached her pink lips, nestled in another halo of chestnut curls. His thumb ghosted over her pubes, feeling how coarse they were in comparison to the rest of her, yet how soft in comparison to any other woman he'd ever bedded.
Electing not to linger for too long, Severus touched her wetness to discover that she was a long time ready for him. Positioning his cock at her opening, he pulled her lips slightly open, and pushed inside.
Full.
That was the only word that came to her mind in this moment. Hermione felt full.
Though perhaps, her brain elaborated, it wasn't the fullness that riveted her, but rather the sensation of being filled.
Under the professor's attentions, Hermione had felt like she would be melting into a puddle very soon if something didn't happen. Yet now that something had actually happened, with the Potions Master sliding inside her, she merely struggled to grasp the concept of something so big fitting into something so tight.
Of course, rationally thinking, Professor Snape was by no means a giant in that department. In fact, he was surprisingly average, though the surprise in that probably stemmed only from the knowledge that he was so rarely average in anything he did or was. Rationally thinking, Hermione knew that she was no tighter than the average virgin, either, but to experience the combination of the two facts for the first time, his mediocrity stretching her own mediocrity, Hermione was lost for words other than 'full' or 'filled'.
Other than most Muggle romance novels would lead one to believe, there was no big revelation in feeling a man inside of her for the first time. There was merely a slight pang of discomfort as be broke through the barrier he had demanded she rid herself of, and a tingle as the runic wards surrounding them went into effect, sensing the spilling of her virgin blood.
After that, everything went quite fast. Hermione was still pondering how the sight of her own foot next to Professor Snape's face was supposed to make her feel, and coming to terms with the sensation of him moving inside her, when he tensed and she knew their act to be over.
The Potions Master remained perched above her for a moment, before falling back onto his heels, pulling out in the process. His raven hair fell into his face, hiding his eyes from her gaze, as he looked down to tug himself away. A second after that, he was off of the bed and inside his frock coat and robes once more.
"Next time will be better, Miss Granger," he said, and even though Hermione was almost sure that it might be an apology for the fact that she had not orgasmed herself, she was not quite certain that it wasn't also a quip as to how little she had participated in the act.
"As you say, sir," she merely answered. "I will strive to be more… sufficient, next time."
A nod was all the reply she received, and he was gone from the room, leaving Hermione back alone with her thoughts.
When the resounding crack of Apparition carried him away, Severus wanted to free himself of any and all thought. Suffice to say, he failed at that. Instead, he stalked up the walk from the gates to the castle, and locked himself away in his private chambers. That included not only warding the doors, but also barring the windows against owls and the fireplace against Floo calls.
Only then, when he was confident that nobody would disturb him, did Severus allow himself to breathe freely. His first deep inhale, however, seemed to get stuck in his throat as he remembered how he'd embarrassed himself with the girl just a few minutes earlier.
It hadn't been his intention to disregard her own needs and to leave her bereft of an orgasm of her own as he had. He had been fully set on caring for her, as well, bestowing on her the best possible first time a young woman like her could expect. After all, she'd come to him, put her trust in him to be a capable and 'suitable', as she'd said, first partner, and he had intended to not only live up to her expectations, but to broaden her horizon to a whole new level of climaxing.
Of course, that had been before the protective runes around them caught on to the spilling of her blood. With his sensibility to strong magic, the subsequent tingle had made his whole skin crawl in an inexplicable, indescribable way that caused waves of pleasure to roll over him and draw him under. He had tried to hold on to his senses, to keep his wits about him, but there had been nothing he could do to stop his orgasm from pulling him in and away.
Severus had experienced a whole new kind of horror then. To fail in his self-set goal of bringing the girl to climax while wrapped around his hardness, by climaxing himself no less, had shaken him to the core. Why it was that this had emotionally shattered him so, when the act in and of itself had been quite the success – no tears, and no unnecessary amounts of blood; you could call that a success for a first time, in Severus's opinion – he could not explain.
And yes, he had come inside her, as he'd always intended. Something was nagging at the back of his brain, some notion that something about the act should disturb him, but he could not get a grasp on the thought. Perhaps it was because he'd violated her in a way that he hadn't planned on violating her in until the new year, spilling himself inside her without her permission. But then again, the girl was smart, and if she hadn't wanted to be filled with his seed, then she would have said so beforehand, wouldn't she?
The clock chimed. Two hours since the Malfoy Christmas dinner had started. Severus could not understand where the time had gone; had he caressed the girl for so long before eventually sinking into her, or had he sat here, in his chambers, pondering for hours what could not be changed now?
He did not know, nor did he particularly care.
His fireplace glowed green for a few seconds before turning back to the miserable grey that only an unlit fireplace in the midst of winter could display. Severus had no interest in joining the Malfoys on their estate now, and they would need to deal with that without Severus explaining himself.
A thought occurred to him.
A snap of his fingers had one of his personal elves appear. On the brink of his mind, Severus noticed that it was the same elf who had cleaned the girl's clothes when she'd been bleeding out on the dungeon classroom floor not even a week earlier.
"Please ward my chambers in a way that no external elf can enter them," he requested.
A nod and an intense look of concentration were his reply, before a powerful wave rolled over Severus. He felt the Elvish magic spread out to every nook and cranny of his chambers, creeping into the bricks of the walls and soaking through the very air. The sensation gave him no such thrill as the girl's runic wards had done earlier, and he was glad for that, but they caused a strong sense of calm to seep through him, allowing him to relax for the first time since – well, since ever, he felt.
With a nod of his own that almost let some of his gratitude shine through, Severus dismissed the elf. A crack later, he was alone.
A few hundred miles further south, Hermione had taken a couple of minutes for herself. She'd been content to lie on the bed for a little while longer, trying to discern if anything felt different to her.
Nothing really did.
Yes, she was a woman now, but the thought alone almost made her scoff out loud, before she realized that no one was there to hear her, and she actually scoffed out loud. There was nothing changed about herself, other than perhaps that she realized she was apparently desirable to at least one man, in the right setting. That was a revelation to her, although it should not have come as a surprise. After all, how often had the professor pressed his erection into her from behind these past months?
In hindsight, this evening had been a long time coming. Hermione remembered how intimate, how close they'd been atop the Astronomy tower that one night in September, and how they'd had intimate run-ins again and again over the following weeks. He'd watched her bathe, for Morgana's sake, had cared for her naked back – twice! – and had helped her dress not even a week ago. Couple that with the number of times he had touched her thighs, healing her, or just teasing her, and you had a history that was all but screaming for this night, their act together, to happen.
And here she was now, a woman in the traditional sense, though the act alone had not made her feel like one. No, what had made her feel like a woman, mature and desirable, had been the fire in his black eyes, darker than she'd ever seen them as he trailed kisses along her leg.
Hermione looked downwards, and had to giggle. Her left leg was still clad in the silk stocking, while her right one was naked, the rolled up fabric certainly somewhere in the room. That a single stocking could apparently arouse a man so, and a man like the Potions Master at that, had surprised her. Her breasts had seemed like an equal distraction to him, though he had not lingered long there. It seemed the professor was all for legs.
Hermione sighed. She needed to get up soon, there was nothing for it; if she was missing for much longer, the boys might come looking for her. Or rather, Harry and Ron would probably have forgotten all about her, as long as there was food and entertainment, but Ginny would notice and Sirius might actually search for her. And if he did not find her in the drawing room with the Christmas tree, and if he noticed that this door was warded shut – well, Hermione did not know what conclusions he might draw from that, but they sure as hell wouldn't be in her favour.
Drawing a deep breath, Hermione exhaled slowly, whispering the ancient incantation she had learned by heart from the book. As the words came spilling from her lips, she felt a tugging deep inside of her. Not only did the magic she was evoking draw the rest of the blood from her ripped hymen from inside her core, but it bound the magic she had possessed as an innocent to that blood. The runic circle she was lying inside of began to glow, making it appear as if she was trapped inside, when Hermione knew that it was a benevolent barrier meant to protect her. The circle drew closer, growing smaller and tighter, until it formed a single bright spot that eventually vanished, leaving behind a dark jewel.
Finally sitting up, Hermione reverently took the gem into her hand. Holding it up to her eye and against the light from one of the torches either she or the professor must have lit earlier, she saw that it wasn't black as she'd thought earlier. In fact, it shone a deep blood red, as if glowing from within, that was only visible in the back light.
What a wondrous little thing, Hermione mused. The blood diamond was tetrahedral in shape, a triangular pyramid, combining the strong magical numbers of four (sides) and three (edges to a side). She did not know what this meant, if the shape had a particular significance, but it must have, surely, or it would not be different depending on who worked the magic – would it?
Hermione remembered very distinctly that Professor McGonagall had created a diamond in a traditional princess cut. That was, of course, if she hadn't had it shaped like this, cutting the original stone into a more traditional piece. However, deep in her heart, Hermione just knew that a stone like this could not easily be cut, nor would her Head of House in any way diminish the jewel she had given to the love of her life.
To hold this precious gem in her hands, this blood diamond, created by the devotion she had to the cause of the Light and by the sexual attraction she certainly held towards the Potions Master, Hermione felt like she could burst from the rare power coursing through her.
All that was left now was the question how to present it to her professor, and how to convince him to accept this gift.
Coming up: Chapter twenty-seven, wherein the floral diet of carnivores is doubted.