Chapter 110: A Lover's Vow and Slytherin's Safeguard
{A/N: Here's Another Update...late post}
My Thanks To All My Readers And Reviewers...Enjoy-S.S
{"Now the room is all hazy...We're too lost in the fumes...I feel like it's just me & you...Yeah, we got nothing to lose...It's too late to run away from it all...It's too late to get away from it all...I'm done with running so I give it to you..."} Nirvana, Sam Smith
Warning: Mild Sexual Content ahead...
The Snape Residence, Muggle London, England...
Severus Snape awoke later in the afternoon. Hermione had been in the sitting room. She seemed to still be upset with him for his recent antics and it only proved to reinforce the already thick tension in the air. Still a bit groggy from his slumber, Snape made his way toward his favorite chair and settled in. Hermione had not made any attempt to speak to him nor look his way. She seemed to be rather engrossed in a mundane muggle novel of the romance sort. Snape had been about to address her blatant attempts to ignore his presence when there had been a knock at the door. Snape watched Hermione for a moment. She seemed to be ignoring the door as well. Without a word, the Potions Master got to his feet and made his way over to the door. Upon opening it, he had been treated to the sight of Lily Potter, whom had become something of a regular at the Snape residence.
"Ginerva." said Snape with a pleasant smile. "Just the witch I wanted to see."
Ginny looked at Snape for a moment and wondered what he was getting at. The uneasy feeling of being under Snape's apparent gaze even in the best of circumstances had been left over from his stint as Headmaster of Hogwarts during the second wizarding war.
"Pro...Severus." she said returning his smile. "What's got you in such good spirits this morning...I heard that you were not feeling particularly well these last couple of days."
"Well Ginerva...if you would kindly come in I will tell you." said Snape.
Nodding, Ginny Potter stepped into the flat. She got a look at Hermione who had appeared to be passing the time with her nose in a book. The eerie quiet had been a little unsettling as well as she looked around.
"If you don't mind...Ginerva...I would ask a favor of you." said Snape closing the door behind him as he turned his attention to the red head Weasley girl now married to Harry Potter.
"A-A favor?" asked Ginny startled by the notion of her former Potions Professor asking her for a favor. "W-What do you have in mind?"
She dreaded it having to do with her less than favorable husband, whom she was barely on speaking terms with.
"First Ginerva...I'd like to know if you'd brought your wand with you." said Snape still with his attention on Ginny.
Hermione's ears had perked at the mention of a wand. Her mind had been filled with a storm of questions regarding her husband's strange conversation with Ginny.
The red head witch thought quickly.
"Um...I kind of forgot it today." said Ginny absently. "I came here via the muggle way...the house was such a mess and I had just wanted to get out of the house before Harry started trying to fix things again."
Snape had no love loss for the boy Harry Potter and knew next to nothing for the man he had become.
"Not to worry." he replied swiftly producing his wand. "We can use mine."
Ginny arched an eyebrow at him in question much in the style of The Potions Master himself.
"W-What for?" she asked curiously then added, "If you do not mind my asking."
It was at this point that Severus Snape smirked in his usual mischievous way. His Slytherin way.
"Are you familiar with the concept of an unbreakable vow?" he asked.
At the mention of this Hermione dropped the book she had been pretending to read in a bid to ignore her husband. She had still been a good deal upset with him but what he had been proposing had gotten her undivided attention. As he knew it would.
"I-I thinks so." replied Ginny looking back and forth from Snape to Hermione. "Isn't that what you had to take to keep Draco Malfoy safe from Voldemort?"
Snape nodded.
"It is indeed...Ginerva." He said looking over at his wife at last, his obsidian eyes meeting those of her shocked filled amber ones. "However, I wish to perform another unbreakable vow...and to do that I need your assistance with the binding."
Hermione had not know the extent of what her husband had been up to but she knew the definition of an unbreakable vow...a vow that if broken resulted in the death of the one who could not keep their end of it.
"Severus!?" said the amber eyed witch getting to her feet.
"Ginerva, I would like you to perform that very same binding for my wife and I." he continued handing the now stunned red head witch his wand.
"Pro...Severus are you sure?" asked a baffled Ginny Potter.
"Indeed I am." said Snape not taking his eyes off Hermione. "I am willing to do whatever is necessary to prove to my wife that she is the only witch that holds my interest."
Ginny turned her attention to Hermione. Then back to Snape. She had no idea that they were having marital problems. It seemed so strange to think of such a thing could occur between two people who have been through as much as Snape and Hermione have. Even the implication that Snape would have a wondering eye had been foreign concept to her. She was barely use to his apparent attraction to Hermione and her's to him.
"Severus..." started Hermione unsure what to say to him.
"I will do anything to put your mind at easy, witch." he replied. "And mine as well."
He held out his free arm. The length of it apparent as both Ginny and Hermione found themselves taking in the length of his lean frame all together.
"Mrs. Snape." said The Potions Master. "Would you be so kind as to join me."
Hermione tentatively made her way over toward her husband as both he and Ginny stood in the center of the sitting room. She extended her arm, which had seemed considerably smaller compared to that of her husband's.
Ginny Potter took a deep breath as she looked from Snape to Hermione then back again. The red head witch summoned the necessary enchantment to complete the binding.
Snape took the lead in invoking the vow.
"I...Severus Sebastian Snape, vow that I shall not betray my wife Hermione Jean Granger-Snape with another living soul...I will not engage Bellatrix LeStrange in any sort of sexual manner of my own free will...nor will I seek physical comfort with any inhabitant witches of brothels or Knockturn alley..." he said not taking his eyes off Hermione. "I will up hold the vows of my marriage to the best of my ability until the time of my death."
Hermione had flinched a bit at the mention of his impending death. His illness had been at the forefront of her mind for quite some time. His lack of interest in researching a cure for it had been what seemed to hurt the most.
"Hermione do you accept the terms of his vow?" asked Ginny.
The bushy haired witch looked at Snape meeting his obsidian gaze as clearly as he met her amber one.
"I Hermione Jean Granger-Snape accept the terms of my husband's vow." she said tightening the grip on Snape's hand as the magical binding came in the form of a golden rope of magic twisting and turning about the joined arms of both participants.
The magic swirled about Snape and Hermione then seemed to seep into their skin. There was a slight prickly feeling in Hermione's arm as she looked at her husband. Snape clearly felt something all together different as the magic seemed to hit him directly.
"It's done." said Ginny sealing the bond and handing Snape back his wand.
Hermione nodded massaging her arm in a bid to ease the prickly feeling.
Snape clutched his forearm as if he had been through a summoning by the dark lord.
"It is." he said not taking his eyes off his wife.
Hermione nodded then turned her attention to Ginny. Both witches went about their visit for the remainder of the afternoon while Snape lounged in his favorite chair. With the vow in place he now had a kind of safeguard for his next plan of action when it came to dealing with Bellatrix. He knew that she had a hold on Phaeron. The visit to the school proved as much...and breaking that hold would take some clever plan of attack on his part. The Potions Master could not risk Hermione finding out the extent of Bella's control over the boy...lest she ruin the plan and give the deranged witch cause to seek to harm the rest of the children.
No.
Snape decided that it would be best if a Slytherin handed this particularly nasty witch. And with the safeguard in place. He was just such a Slytherin. He made up his mind on how he was to approach this and had gone over the details with a fine tooth comb, as the muggle expression went.
Later...
The Bedroom...
The headboard beat rather steadily against the wall as Snape towered above the gasping Hermione. Her slender legs had been rapped around his pale lean waist as he thrust into her warmth repeatedly. They had not broken eye contact since they began this romantic encounter. Hermione moaned softly as Snape dug his long pale fingers into the crisp white sheet that covered their mattress. It had been a long while since they were together in this way due to their respective schedules and their fussy baby girl's antics right along with their curious younger son.
Snape tried to pace himself but his excitement seemed to proceed his thinking. The warmth of his wife's slender form being beneath him as well as her consistent pleasurable moans did little to quell his already overwhelming sense of thrill.
"Severus." said Hermione falling helpless to the thrusting of her husband.
Snape grunted in response. He had never been particularly vocal during encounters such as this, where something else in the wake of his lust for his beautiful young wife seemed to take over him.
The aforementioned witch's fingernails dug into the pale flesh of her husband's back. Both had been sweaty and nearing the point of relative exhaustion. Hermione had still been reeling from all that had transpired previously when they had stood in their very sitting room and took an unbreakable vow, a vow Severus had initiated in a bid to prove his love for her and ease her fears about him possibly leaving her for Bellatrix LeStrange.
Presently, The Potions Master's breathing had become increasingly ragged and Hermione began to note the tell-tale signs of her husband's impending release. His nostrils flared and eyes seemed to go blank for the time being as he increased the force of his thrusts and gripped the bed harder.
The bushy haired witch had been nearing her end as well. A situation that had been duly noted by her husband. He could feel her muscles clenching around him as his pace quickened and her breathing became labored. She wrapped her legs around him tighter squeezing his body to her's and forcing in deeper into her warm depths.
"SEVERUS!" shouted Hermione as her release had been ripped through her.
He followed only seconds after filling her with his seed like so many time since their wedding night. He gave a few involuntary thrusts before he had found himself out of breath and much too exhausted to hold his body up over that of his sweat blasted wife's. His lengthy raven hair had been sticking to his sallow pale cheeks and his eyes took on a dazed sort of look.
"Hermione." he said finally as the warmth of their encounter filled him.
The exhausted lovers kissed rather frantically despite themselves before Snape fell to his side of the bed and passed out from exertion. Hermione lingered for a few seconds more pleased at the sight of her loving, sated husband. He had made it quite clear in his choice of actions that he had belonged to her and no one else. For the first time in a long time, Hermione Granger-Snape drifted off to sleep with her once stormy mind at ease, with not a single ink-ling as to what her husband had planned for the coming week.