Summary: AU, SSHG, Amortentia at last led her to his embrace, and he meant to push her away. If only his arms didn't do quite the opposite—
Warning: This is a Corvus Draconis story, so you know there are going to be monsters. Also… squid.
Beta Love: *eyedarts* Can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread bird-dragon! (Awww, Dragon and the Rose caught me!)
The Nose Knows
A Corvus Draconis Short (No really, I swear)
I never let schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain
The moment she first smelled the scent of the Amortentia, she knew she was doomed. She knew all of her previous conceptions had been misconstrued. She knew her carefully herded, filed, and colourful tags had nothing on the reality of life.
Life was ever an unplanned, chaotic thing.
Life made its own damn choices, and that should have been made perfectly obvious to her when she had that stupid crush on Ronald Weasley back in her fourth year or that even worse crush on Professor Lockhart that should be stricken from the record, burned, and utterly Obliviated from memory.
And now, wrapped tightly in the arms of a protesting (but not anymore) Potions Master, she realised what she had been missing in every horrible relationship she'd endure before this moment.
The pained sound that had wheezed from his throat as he had stiffly tried to push her away only to find his arms did something else entirely—
Never had she been so glad to have overdosed on time-turning, kept meticulous logs, and even happy that she was actually sitting rather solidly in her twenties while her teenage classmates plodded on in total obliviousness.
He knew.
Of course he knew.
He was a bloody potions master.
No matter what he taught, what he thought he was better meant for, potions were in his blood, his soul.
He would have known what his Amortentia smelled like.
And he did.
His nose pressed into her curls, into her skin—
The shudder of his breath against her skin as his arms engulfed her like a fleeting gift that would disappear into smoke if he moved—
Gods.
And in that stunning moment of clarity, she felt his magic sing to her.
What had once been limited by distance, a small, almost imperceptible taunt as he worked from across a crowded classroom, was now very personal and quite real, indeed.
She could smell the tea on his breath and feel magic's distinctive, undeniable pull.
She could feel the shift within his body— a warmth, a heat, a raging pyre. His growl was primal, possessive. She saw the gleam of sharp teeth, felt the ghost of claws upon her skin even through her robes.
Severus Snape had never been anything less than utterly magnificent in his magic, but he had always been something more under the surface— a carefully guarded secret.
So careful.
Never touching.
Never standing too close.
But with every second in his embrace, she felt the stir of something primordial within him, echoed in the deep, inhuman growl. Bindings were being erased. Bonds were being rewritten.
She felt the brush of wings before she saw them erupt from his back— great black things that stretched out impossibly large. Black feathers crowned his head, and while his face remained human— perhaps for her sake— she could see the ghost of the crow superimposed upon his facade.
Crow tengu, she realised.
The nose.
She should have known—
How many times had she curled up with her father's old Japanese mythology book and touched the pages with her fingers, wondering if such things could be true?
Yet, despite this transformation in what should have been her most hated teacher of childhood, she had never felt so safe. His magic called to her. His body called to her, and she so wanted both.
There would be a price, but there was always a price in magic to get what one truly wanted.
To accept him was to accept that inhumanity into herself and embrace it fully as her own. To accept his magic was to merge theirs together, and the stories of the Japanese yōkai's absconding with fair maidens, never to be seen again, seemed like a clouded half-truth.
Perhaps, like her, they weren't willing to be parted with the other half of their soul, either— not when she'd finally found it at long last.
The feeling seemed utterly mutual.
"Miss Granger." His voice was deep and all too sexy, laden with caramel and venom that seemed to caress her body with just the simple address of her name.
She placed her hands on his cheeks, cupping his face. "What do I call you?"
"Severus," he whispered, the sound of his first name sending shivers through her.
"Severus," she repeated, feeling her body shiver with its resonance. "Call me Hermione."
"Her. Mio. Ne," he said against her ear. "If you accept this— me— there is no going back. I cannot. Will not be able— to stop this magic, this— consummation." His entire body was tense, even as he struggled both to keep from holding her and pulling her into his body as tightly as possible.
She suddenly realised the strength of this man's control— his entire life. Even facing another lifetime alone, he would give her the choice to spurn him as he believed he deserved.
She wrapped her arms around his waist and pressed her head into his chest, tucking her head under his chin. "I choose you, Severus. I believe in you."
History be damned.
Childhood be damned.
What she had thought before be damned.
This, she felt in her soul, felt right.
Snape made a sound like a groan of a dying man, but his heat enveloped her utterly as his mouth descended upon hers, and she heard a moan transform into needy gasps— and it was her!
They were staggering into the back of the potions shoppe, a blast of Snape's wandless, wordless magic flipping the sign on the door to "Closed" even as the lights were snuffed out.
Clothes— overrated, overrated, sooooo overrated.
She clawed at them, her brain unable to decipher the complexity of buttons and latch hooks when the searing, probing, heat of the man's kiss unmade her from the ground up or the brain down.
It was more than tongues and heat, gods.
It was liquid magic passing from one to the other with each shuddering breath, each slide of the tongue against the other, each frantic clawing of hands against the other's body.
Apparently, he was slightly more coherent, as a blast of magic undressed them, and the blissful touch of skin against skin sent an intoxicating ecstasy through every electrified nerve.
Oh, gods. Hermione invoked them all by name in alphabetical order, thanking each one personally for the priceless gift that was Severus Snape.
His mouth enclosed upon her breast, tongue flicking against her erect nipple, and she cried out as her entire body bucked. His hand was between her legs, testing for her readiness, as if there would be any doubt at all.
"Severus!" she cried, her hands clawing at his back, feeling the ghost of his silken feathers, the pull of his magic, the need—
"Are you ready for me, witch?" His voice was pure sin. It had always been sin, but now, it was like sin dripping with decadent chocolate with a ripe cherry on top— she'd just been blind to its true power. With the power of his voice alone, she was practically in orgasm, and that was more than she could say she'd ever had with Ron's inept, wet, needy fumblings when his selfish needs came before her pleasure.
"Please," she begged. "Please, Severus."
His mouth wrought havoc upon her neck to the point she was going to explode.
And then, he was inside her, his entire length sheathed with a single powerful thrust, and Hermione Granger was utterly ruined as her body and soul imprinted on this one, glorious wizard in one fell swoop.
Her past had included mere boys.
Just boys.
This—
This was a man.
He positioned himself in a way that spoke of knowing, and he tore a shuddering scream from her as fire and ice chased through every inch of her flesh. Her body clamped around his invading cock, and he cursed raggedly in her ear as his body broke free of hers and then thrust into her again, again, and again—
Each thrust was accompanied by her name, hissed as a Mantra, a promise, a curse, an oath.
She writhed and mewled, her hips rising to meet his attentions and encourage more.
And more he gave.
Again and again.
Their bodies struggled to be together in all ways— physically and magically— and they weren't exactly arguing.
By the time the third, fourth, and maybe the ninth wave of magic blew through the potions shoppe and escaped into Diagon Alley, witches and wizards were flushing about the face and rushing home, driven to sate the sudden wave of lust that demanded to be filled.
She slept against him, and Severus felt torn against the desire to keep her nestled against him and the driving need to empty his protesting bladder which was not happy at all with his drinking far too much water during the day.
Their magic had been ripped from their moorings, and only now, it was weaving back together, strand by strand, particle by particle, atom by atom.
His inheritance from his father's line had found a safe harbour in the most unlikely of places, something his father had failed to do with his mum despite their coupling.
It had transformed his father in another way—
Instead of being a content crow tengu with a mate, nest, and family, his mum had refused to complete the assimilation and clung to to her humanity so hard that Tobias had become bitter— trapped in the body of a human with his magic both craving his mate but unable to have her in the ways that truly mattered. Then, he had taken to drinking to drown his grief and shame.
He could not return home, unable to mate with another. He was stuck trapped in a fleeting human life with a witch running from the magical world so hard that the thought of joining with Tobias had horrified her even more than losing her magic.
And Severus—
Well, he had believed he would never have such a thing anyway, so he had buried the need deep within to the point he had almost forgotten it truly existed. For all he had known, it was just a rumour, a story—
Until Hermione Granger had realised her fate lay with him, all thanks to the scent of Amortentia giving her the largest clue.
He watched as she itched her scalp where tiny pin feathers were starting to poke through— the mark of his legacy accepted.
Her acceptance.
Her magic and his were at peace— would be at peace forevermore.
The backroom and residence of his potions shoppe, however, would probably need to be redesigned to accommodate his insatiable mate and—
He could feel the new lives already growing within her, sparks of life that flickered into his awareness like fireflies in the night sky.
Children.
Tengu children but children nonetheless.
The backroom was in complete disarray, and it would probably take a week to reorganise it after their enthusiastic lovemaking.
And either replace or fix all the breakables—
Severus looked a bit sheepish despite himself.
Never had he expected such an enthusiastic return of his desire or affection.
What did he have to judge it against?
His father and mum?
Hah.
Lily and himself? Failure on both counts.
Hell, they hadn't even been able to stay friends.
Was it love?
Perhaps.
It was enough as it was to overshadow any human concept of love and devotion. If it wasn't love now, he was sure it would be very, very soon.
How could it not when he felt so driven to imprint the very cells of her body into his genetic memory—
Oh, but if she had been with him when he had been younger.
Gods—
They would have been a force to be reckoned with.
But they would have forever to make up for lost time.
He tenderly pressed his lips to Hermione's forehead, his fingers brushing back her curls from her face and caressing the growth of jet black feathers slowly infiltrating her hair. He smiled at the wonder of seeing the slight shift of her skin to a more telling red.
Hopefully, she would forgive him for the larger, more formidable nose—
He smoothly slid out from under the cover of an afghan he hadn't realised he'd even had and headed to the loo, inwardly cursing the evil that was the insistent bladder.
His body protested being separated from Hermione's side so soon even as his stupid bladder rudely cursed at him. He relieved himself after what seemed like a bloody hour (Merlin, how much had he drank yesterday?) and then washed up, looking at himself in the mirror.
His skin was a bright crimson, his dark hair falling about his shoulders in a cascade of raven hair and feathers. Dark wings stretched from his back, each feather glistening like obsidian in the light. His nose protruded prominently from his face, as usual, looking as if at any moment a bird might come and alight upon it. Dark claws dangled from his fingertips and toes, and his legs had taken on a more birdish look.
Was this what his mum feared to become?
Was his father's true form really too much for her to accept?
Had she convinced her son of the glory of the magical world only to keep him from looking too deeply into his father's true nature?
How could Hermione?
How could she so easily put aside all the horrible things he had said and done during her childhood when Lily could repudiate him for a single word spoken under duress—
Just one word.
Yet, a part of him realised that Lily had just been looking for a reason to push him away because she had chosen to forgive Potter and his vile little gang for everything they had done.
He wondered if she would have been eating crow had she survived to realise that Peter had been both a literal and figurative rat all along.
His claws itched his leg absently, a strange hunger to have seen Lily humbled replacing his long enshrined image of her.
He grimaced into the mirror, his yellow fangs bared like the Japanese oni mask.
No, he was sure that had Lily seen even a hint of his true form, she would have left him in the dirt post-haste.
Maybe she had, after all.
Snape closed his eyes and sighed.
Lily had made her choice, and now—
He was making his.
He would live despite all he had lost and in spite of those that would see him torn down.
He returned to Hermione's side with a renewed resolve and passion for life.
Albus would have had him believe that no one would ever see him as capable of love.
Hell, Snape himself had sworn Dumbledore to secrecy about his capacity to care.
Yet, somehow—
Hermione's eyes opened to look into his, a sleepy, languid stretch preceding her hand reaching out for his.
His fingers curled around hers, his claws ever so gently ticking across the skin of her palm as he allowed her to pull him down to the "nest" they had inadvertently crafted out of found soft blankets, afghans, and a duvet or three.
The mystery of where they had come from would probably remain a mystery for quite some time to come.
Hermione was delectably clothing-free, and he rumbled in approval, weaving his arms around her as his wings tried to find a place to be that didn't give him a cramp. Finding that being wrapped around his mate was a perfect compromise, he pressed his long nose into her curls, inhaling her scent of perfection and the heavy spice evoking the memories of that evening's rather long agenda of consummation.
Hermione purred, her hand roaming lower on his body and down the line of his hair.
His eyes widened as she gave him the eye, her breath tickling his face. "Severus."
"Yesss, my wicked girl?" he rumbled, his cock hardening in eager anticipation.
"Make love to me."
"You are utterly insatiable."
Her face shifted into a soft pout.
His response was a fierce growl, and he pinned her with his hands, his fingers weaving with hers as he caged her with his arms. She squeaked, making a soft rawk of surprise.
"Good thing I am equally so, Madam Snape," he drawled, delighted to see her pupils blow wide with arousal with just the sound of his voice.
Her lips parted, her tongue flicking across her bottom lip with anticipation.
With an invitation like that—
He captured her mouth with his as their passions met in a heated tangle of limbs, wings, and claws.
As his now-quite-experienced cock found Hermione's not-so-mythical g-spot, Hermione's back erupted in a spread of glossy black wings as a crow-like shriek cawed from her throat.
"Severus!"
As he held her trembling body, a slow, smug, utterly masculine smile spread across his face. "Shall we see if you are indeed satiable, my beautiful mate?"
Hermione's eyes widened as his mouth found her neck and his hands found her breast, and half the items in Diagon Alley that weren't bolted down were suddenly blown over as Hermione Snape found out that indeed one could orgasm from the whisper of her mate's voice against her ear as his wicked hands and mouth did all the rest.
Also, perhaps that part about tengu being able to control the weather may not have been a mere myth after all—
The Crow's Nest Apothecary became the most popular business in Diagon Alley after Ollivander's, Gringott's, and _ after the two crow daitengu discovered (quite by accident) that powdered tengu feather was a powerful aphrodisiac to humans (really, who purposely snorts a tengu feather? Hermione and Severus both protested that how could they have possibly known?!)
Not only that, whether it was because of their mating bond that infused them or whether it was tengu feathers in general, but there also seemed to be a bit of blessing of fertility on those that partook of the potion made of it.
The post-war Wizarding World could not get enough of it to sate their desires for children, and it was starting to look like many families that had once been thought lucky to have one child were starting to look the way of a certain ginger-haired weasel family.
Hermione's first clutch of pearlescent eggs had Severus hovering over her and the nest like one would expect a Dark wizard who knew what was out there, first tengu-father, and outright protective mate would be. Hermione's rather shocking realisation that she was laying eggs had required much cuddling and chocolate to stave off her anxiety, but by the time egg number four came out, she was feeling far more okay with the entire situation.
Six months to the day from when the eggs had been laid, Sora, their firstborn, hatched into the world with the morning sunrise, and Hermione said the clouds parted to greet her with the bluest sky to herald her arrival. Julen hatched next, immediately looking quite suspicious of the world he had been hatched into until his twin brother, Baird, burst from his shell spouting a warbling song worthy of a phoenix. Severus accused Hermione of sleeping with a songbird tengu, but Hermione immediately demanded to know exactly when that would have occurred during between HIS ever-dutiful attentiveness.
Severus had blushed a rather fetching shade of pink at that.
Amaya had hatched sometime after her brothers and sister, and her arrival had strangely brought on a rain.
Severus and Hermione spent the first month stuffing food into those hungry little beaks until each sleepy tengu-chick was sporting a rounded stomach of satiety.
By the time they were a few months old, the chicks had figured out how to pass as human, and their parents could then take them out into the shoppe or outside without worry that their secret would get out.
Thankfully, their proper weight-bearing wings apparently didn't grow in until they were older, and Severus was glad he wouldn't have to chase baby tengu off the ceiling, roof, or whatever high place of mischief might be found.
Small miracles and blessings for two tengu parents who knew well that mischief ran in the blood of their species.
Well, so did eating humans, according to the legends, but thankfully both the chicks and Severus and Hermione were happy enough with the standard fare of beef, chicken, pork, and fish.
Less legal entanglements that way, thank you very much.
Ron would show up from time to time, obviously wanting to hook up with Hermione again, and Hermione would have to promptly hex him out of the shoppe to keep Severus from outright murdering the utter berk of a wizard in cold blood for daring to look at his wife with impropriety.
The chicks started taking bets amongst themselves on how long it would take before Ron ended up dead, much to Hermione's horror.
Tengu chicks. No filter at all.
Uncle Harry found that the Snape "kids" were giving the much older Weasley twins a real run for their money when it came to pranks, and it was a rare icy day in hell when he actually managed to be prank-free for a day. His own children were enough for Harry Potter, and one of the few times Harry had been called in to "babysit" had ended up with Harry spellotaped to the ceiling, dripping with blackberry jam.
They seemed to realise that actual harm to anyone their parents cared about (and that included Hermione's actual care for Harry even if dad wanted to wring his neck for undisclosed "reasons") was a certifiable bad thing that ended with only vegetables for dinner, no dessert, and being banished to the colder, far less comfy nest.
Harry rarely visited with his kids for fear they would learn something quite alarming from the Snape kids.
Severus seemed to think that would have been a good start.
One day, however, when Severus had been quite busy taking a large order from a St Mungo's representative, Ron had come to visit yet again in an attempt to woo Hermione before she became a "right barmy old hag incapable of having children like a real witch." He claimed, right in front of the gods and everyone, that Hermione was just "pretending to be with greasy old git Snape" to get under his skin and play hard-to-get.
Hermione had cast him out on squarely his arse with a display of wordless, wandless magic, the very ghost of her dark wings flaring behind her. She bared her teeth at him like the tengu she was and slammed the door in his face.
The chicks had then taken it upon themselves to "defend their mum's honour" and hit Ron with a combined blast of their developing tengu magic which ended with him being swept away by a rampaging cyclone, dumped into the nearest ocean, and transformed into a gigantic, bright orange oyster with irritating bits of sand stuck in his mantle.
The chicks would then go out to harvest the oyster every summer to give their beloved mum beautiful pearl jewellery that they designed and made all by themselves.
Severus seemed strangely smug about it all, terribly proud of his… creative young progeny.
Hermione was happy her children were so thoughtful, but she did wonder if Ron had at long last "gotten a clue" and finally gave up on her.
By the time the chicks were of Hogwarts age, they knew enough to keep their true nature a secret, knew how to play human like any good tengu worth their salt could, and dutifully headed off to school ready to learn about that "strange human magic their parents did."
Sora was sorted into Ravenclaw, and promptly set about reading every book in the library. Amaya was sorted into Slytherin and had young Scorpius eating out of her hand by hour two. Julen, much to Severus' resignation, sorted to Gryffindor, but he became quite the talented Seeker, having successfully tied with Harry Potter's record of youngest Seeker ever. Baird, however, had caused a lengthy hat-stall, but the Sorting Hat finally decided that he was better off in Ravenclaw with his sister, and it proved to be a wise Sorting after Baird picked up Arithmancy in his very first year, making his mum incredibly proud.
So, with the nest empty save for Severus and Hermione, the pair celebrated long into the night and maybe a few more after that, much to the displeasure of many a shoppe in Diagon Alley whose goods continually fell off the shelves in some "freakish blast of wind." Despite a few years off raising their chicks to schooling age, Severus proved to his mate that he hadn't forgotten the fine art of pleasuring her endlessly and she was always one for enthusiastically engaging in in-depth scientific studies to test varied intriguing hypotheses and new theories, of course—
Not that either of them was complaining about that in the slightest.
No, definitely not that.
And high up in the store, amongst the wooden beams, enshrined in unbreakable glass, a small vial of Amortentia sat where the sun could catch the prism of the crystal vial and cast brilliant rainbows throughout the store. While most would never learn the story of why it was there, Master and Madam Snape always gave it the respect it deserved for it had brought them together without having ever been drunk.
Fin.
A/N: Oh my, another short story! What is this world coming to? See, this is what happens when my beta is AWOL for most of the day! But she found me this time— I wasn't quite quick enough. Praise her for finding my sneaky self and betaing this fic well past the pumpkin hour.
Name notes:
Sora - F, means 'she is like the sky'
Amaya - F, means 'beautiful night rain'
Julen - M, means 'youthful'
Baird - M,' means bard'