Warning: this chapter contains some violent scenes and sexual harassment. The rating is not a joke!

"You are like perfume in the air, Hermione. You linger, though you are already gone." His words did not make much sense, but on some mysterious level of her consciousness, a series of complicated ideas and thoughts started to form. His face was so near she could discern every single small wrinkle around his black eyes. "And I don't like it," he finished with a hiss and let her go abruptly, as if he had burned himself. Her gaze followed him as his billowing robes disappeared, and her fogged brain slowly formed two realisations. One: he had used her given name for the first time since she could remember. Two: well, she did not really want to think about number two.

Chapter 15

Hermione stood paralysed on top of the stairs for a moment while she followed Snape's disappearing figure with her eyes. A mess of bizarre thoughts rushed through her head, but one of them gleamed crystal-clear. I need to know... I need to know, she kept thinking. Her logic and common sense were against it, but her instinct got the upper hand, and she started walking. She followed him without hesitation.

With uncanny instinct she knew that he had gone down to the dungeons, the place that had been his home for so many years. She took one step after another, now knowing what to expect. She did not like the muffled sound of her steps that sounded eerie in the gradually cooling air. What she liked even less was the prickling feeling of being observed by someone who had learned to melt with the shadows of the walls. Only he caused this feeling in her, and this was the main reason why she did not like it at all.

"You are moving in a dangerous direction." The voice sounded like liquid silk and surrounded her from all directions.

Hermione spun around. She did not know when or how it had happened, but he suddenly stood behind her as if he had been there all the time and she had not noticed. "Wha...?"

"Girls like you have no business in places like this one, Miss Granger," he whispered. He turned her around in one lithe movement and pressed her against the wall. She wanted to give him an acerbic reply, but found herself trying to remember how to breathe instead.

"Girls like you ought to care about the living, not the dead. Run while you can!" His harsh words belied the fact that he held her shoulders in an iron grip – she could not flee even if she wanted to.

She looked up to meet his eyes. His gaze was focused on her face, and his eyes, black and inscrutable as ever, observed every breath, every blink. His grip around her shoulders loosened considerably, but her mind was too foggy to realise that this would have been her opportunity to run from him and the mistake she had made. She realised very clearly that it had indeed been a mistake. Death Eater or not, he was a dangerous man – a man who played a game in which she could not hold her own because she did not know the rules. "I... I..." She tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he only pressed her harder against the wall in response and impeded every movement with his body weight.

"Where do you think you are going, Hermione? You can't just follow me here and then run away. That's impolite. Didn't your parents teach you that?" he murmured with a threatening smile. His warm breath touched her uncovered throat, and she made a last try to escape. But it was to no avail because he was so much stronger than she was – physically and magically. "Stupid girl," he murmured and bent his head to let his lips graze over her ear. "It is time for you to learn that every action has its consequences."

Her knees threatened to buckle when she realised that he would not let her go. Somebody shrieked when his hands suddenly let go of her shoulders and grabbed her hips instead. It took her some seconds to realise that it had been her own cry.

Snape pressed one knee between her legs and forced them apart. This is not happening. It is not true, it is only happening inside my head. Oh god, please no! The voices inside her head kept chasing one another and tried to get her attention, but the only thing that registered was his fast breathing and his lips that kept whispering words into her ear, repulsing and arousing her at the same time.

She lifted her arms to push him off, but they somehow landed on his shoulders and drew him even nearer.

"Eager, are we?" His mocking tone was supposed to hurt – and it did. His hands left her hips and started stroking her sides.

She wanted to yell at him to let go, but her treacherous body did not comply. Instead, it made her want certain things – want him. She wanted Snape – how did that happen? WHEN did that happen? His scent was strangely intense. She could not say what it reminded her of, but it made her slightly dizzy. Her left hand was buried in his black hair, which felt surprisingly silky between her fingers, and she caught herself arching towards him.

He parted her cloak and whispered soft words that she could not understand. It must have been a spell because the buttons of her blouse suddenly fell to the floor with a soft plopping noise. "Nice," he said, smiling malevolently when he saw her black lacy bra, "but it is in my way."

She felt completely at his mercy, body and soul. How could she have thought that she was in control, that she knew what she was doing?

"Girls like you ought to leave the dead in peace," he grunted while pressing his pelvis against her, which caused an unexpected wave of arousal in her. Hadn't he said that before? Something about the living and the dead? It could not have been more than a minute ago, but her overtaxed mind did not manage to make the connection. "What do you want, Hermione?" he murmured.

"I want... I want..." she gasped, well aware of the inadequacy of her words.

His fingers started drawing mad circles on her heated skin and pushed into the waistband of her trousers. "I am broken," he whispered. His lips did not move, but she could have sworn that his voice was around her, inside her. "It will not take long until you are just as cold and empty as I am. I will destroy you, pull you into my world with no heroes, no joy and no warmth. Do you want that, Hermione?"

Instead of answering, she grabbed his cloak and drew his head down, but he turned it to the side. Her knees buckled like broken matches, but she kept her hold on him as if she were drowning. He was not a man to play games. With him, it would be all or nothing at all.

"Do you want that, Hermione?" He was shouting now, grabbing her upper arms and shaking her so much it hurt. While she was staring into his gleaming eyes, she suddenly realised that she was not at his mercy at all, but his life depended on her.

"Do you want that, Hermione?"

…

"Do you want that?"

…

"Do you want to be a rotten egg? Did you know that a witch spends an average of eleven years of her life sleeping? Eleven years! You could read at least eight thousand books in this time. Do you want to miss the knowledge of eight thousand books?"

The metallic voice of her alarm clock was uncompromising and persistent. Hermione finally gave up and untied the last tendrils of her strange and creepy dream.

She got up with a funny feeling, and as soon as she glanced at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she realized that she looked alarmingly pale. Just as if she had been ill for quite a while. Something uncomfortably cold crept into her objecting stomach, and she threw up into the sink. She felt old and ill, as if she were a different person. Oh no! she thought desperately. This is not true, oh, please, don't let it be true!

Yet it was true, she realised. Just like the mystery between two heartbeats. Invisible, inaudible, but still there: she had fallen in love with Severus Snape.