A/N: Long weekend. Work was rough, cops were called, winding down with some Star Wars D&D. We're those kind of nerds. Hope you guys enjoy! Two more chapters after this, and still another story.

Chapter Five

They arrived rather gracefully on a cold and bare wooden floor in what appeared to be a living room if the old couch and bookshelves wereanything to go by.

Hermione slowly came to her senses as the compulsive need to taste him ebbed, and she noticed an empty hearth as it roared to life, taking a bit of the chill, and the walls that surrounded her, covered in dusty tomes.

She slowly sat up, straddled Severus' waist, missing his soft groan. Obviously, she was unaware of his…condition. As gently and unobtrusively as he could, he removed them both to the well worn leather sofa, setting her beside him.

"Hermione? Do you understand what's happening to you?" he asked, avoiding looking directly into her eyes.

She nodded, peering anxiously at him. "I have these overwhelming urges to do things I would never dare," she whispered. "To follow you just to see you. To hear nothing but the sound of your voice. Merlin, Severus, I swear I was just about to attempt to lick Kreacher in the kitchen before you punched Sirius and snapped me out of it. I was frantic and almost hysterical!" She was so embarrassed to admit these things to him but he was well aware of her changed behavior and seemed to have a better grasp on what was causing all of this.

"Severus? What is wrong with me?" Hermione asked, afraid she was going to end up like Sirius' cousin Bellatrix.

He sighed as he leaned back on the couch, observant of her slight lean forward to follow him. "It appears as though the brilliant Mister Black got it into his head that the world needed another James and Lily Potter. Harry was going to be James, of course, and you were cast in the role of Lily."

Hermione gasped. "But he loves Ginny!"

"As we are all aware. However, for some reason, Black took a shine to you. Fulfilling his own personal fantasy perhaps." His words caused a shudder from his couch companion and Severus smirked. A look Hermione decided was very becoming on him, devious as though it were.

"Some point," he continued, "before you accosted me in Flourish and Blotts, he must have cast a spell on you. It requires you to fulfill all five of your senses with the person you desire."

Hermione's cheeks turned flaming red. There was no denying her feelings for him any longer. Damn Sirius Black! She never would have burdened her partner and friend with what he was sure to consider a passing attraction. She doubted she was his type, if he even had a type, and now there was no way things would go back to what they were before.

As her mind was reeling from his revelation, part of her realized it longed to hear him speak. His voice felt like a balm to her spirit and cool water to her heated skin. "And I'm assuming you're stuck helping me through this?"

He shifted in his seat. "I suppose that is one way of considering things. I don't believe I'll find the task too difficult. Why do you ask?"

"Because I seem to be on hearing."

His eyes rose to hers, and he noted the nibble of her still swollen lips and the slight shifting in her seat. She was clearly still aroused by their earlier actions and was waiting on pins and needles for him to speak to her. But what would he talk about?

"I suppose that's my cue," he rumbled, making Hermione practically purr as he rose to grab a random book from the shelf.

"'To Sherlock Holmes she is alwaysthewoman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler. All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind. He was, I take it, the most perfect reasoning and observing machine that the world has seen, but as a lover he would have placed himself in a false position,'" he read to her. Hermione hung on his every word, one small hand on his knee as he sat with a leg crossed next to her.

"Shall I continue?" he asked and she readily nodded. He made it almost to the end of the chapter, bantering back and forth with himself in the different tones of the characters, before she interrupted him.

"Severus?"

"Hmm?"

"This isn't working."

He sighed. Clearly, the effects of the curse were only increasing. The grip of her hand on his knee had become quite firm, almost as if she was holding herself in her seat. "How do you find working with the Ministry?" he asked, hoping that a conversation was more what she needed. "I personally find dealing with the bureaucracy a bore. It reminds me of my days at Hogwarts, and we all know how well that turned out."

Hermione listened as his voice droned on, talking about the daily tediousness of being a Ministry minion. Their days consisted of loads of paperwork with a sprinkling of actual curse breaking but no one saw fit to give them a secretary. While she agreed with what he said, and found some comfort if hearing his voice, it still wasn't what she needed.

And, if a part of her was honest, even without the curse, she was reveling in just listening to him talk to her. What girl wouldn't be? She would have to come clean about the depth of her feelings once this whole ordeal was over with.(Another distant portion of her realized she had also never been invited into his home.)

"Severus?" she once again interrupted.

"Hermione?" he asked, and she clearly heard the slight bit of exasperation in his tone. As much as he wanted to help her, and was very flattered to be the one to do so, it didn't mean he had all the answers as to how to do so and he was becoming impatient. "I take it this isn't working either?"

She mutely shook her head no.

"What do you want from me then?"

She crossed and uncrossed her arms, at a loss of what to do with her hands, with herself. Hermione looked away, as shy as she was randy, and softly spoke her request. "Talk dirty to me."

Head turned as it was, Hermione missed as Severus' eyebrows shot to the sky as her flatly responded, "I can teach you how to bewitch the minds and ensnare the senses."

"Like you mean it," she admonished, finally locking eyes with him as her tongue slowly licked her bottom lip. Oh the things she wanted to do to this wizard!

He started again, a throaty rumble in his chest that made Hermione quiver. "I can teach you how to bewitch the mind, and ensnare the senses. I can show you the undulating flame of the perfectly prepared concoction. I will show you how to hold a cauldron, to feel the weight in your hands, how run your finger over a petal and know if it's ready to be…plucked."

She visibly relaxed back against the sofa cushion. Her hands slowly unclenched where her white knuckled grip had clung to her pant legs after releasing his own. Severus didn't know what it felt like to be denied the compulsion but it must be incredibly frustrating to feel an urge you cannot control or satisfy on your own. To rely on another was something neither relished.

Hermione flexed the taut muscles of her neck, releasing the tension and letting the waves of his luxurious voice crash over her.

"There have been times, even as far back as meeting with the Order when I would watch you," he softly breathed near her ear. "I marveled at the way your intelligence shown like a moonstone amongst bezoars," he spoke and blushed as she giggled gently, releasing a sigh of relief that she was finally receiving that which she needed. "How I've longed to dare trace my hand down the slender column of your neck, to see my skin against yours. To feel your fingers run through my hair, or to touch those damnable curls. Are they as soft as they seem, Hermione?"

Severus leaned forward and ghosted his fingers over the end of one of her ringlets, not quite touching. "What do you need from me?" he asked her again, gentler and more earnest than before. Hermione looked to him, almost stricken at the thought that she might be compelled to tell him exactly what she wanted from him. Could he tell that she had watched him at those meetings too? Her breathing hitched as the memories flooded back to her, starting from the day he bared his Dark Mark to Fudge in her fourth year, through the fall of Voldemort and ensuing aftermath, and up to the present where she had been paired with him for the first time.

"Do you need to hear how much I long to carry you up those stairs, stairs that have never seen a woman, and toss you on my bed? How I want to throw your robes to the floor and let the moonlight shine over your naked breasts. Oh, Hermione," he purred to her and she nodded, encouraging him to go on. "I want to run my tongue over your nipples until the tender flesh becomes pebbles. I want to grab a fist of your hair as I take you from behind. I want to pour fragrant oil over your skin and smooth it down your body, releasing you from all of your cares. I want you so much."

Severus reached over to her and pulled her to him, their lips meeting in the space between them. She pulled his bottom lip between her teeth as his hands finally realized their goal of feeling her chestnuts curls.

Softer than he expected, he thought, and voluminous.

"How are you," asked his husky voice, out of breath as he pulled back. "Do I need to keep going?"

Hermione leaned back to catch her own breath, tension finally released. She was sorely tempted to tell him to keep going but she knew that anything between them shouldn't be based on lies. He didn't seem to be eager to get rid of her anyhow. "I don't think I'm on hearing anymore," she told him.

He seemed almost relieved. It had to be terribly awkward, not to mention extremely forthright for him to admit his feelings about her. If he was telling the truth, she thought. If he was making it up as he went, that used a completely different skill set but one that was still very much appreciated. He should think about recording racy novels for witches.

"How long has the compulsion been diminished?" he asked suspiciously.

She bit her lip warily, trying to fight back her nervousness. "I would have told you sooner but you were doing so well…"

"Hermione?"

"Somewhere around bezoars."

He was so flummoxed by her revelation that he hadn't realized only one sense was left.

And Hermione's hands were trembling.