AN:

— Part 2 of 3 of the Songs of Amortentia Series.

— If you haven't read When I Kissed the Teacher, it's not overly necessary as you can glean what's occurred from Severus's monologue but of course I would love it if you did.

The Name of the Game

A week. It had only been one blasted week of overseeing her nightly detentions and somehow in that short time, she had managed to do what no one had been capable of in the twenty years since he had closed himself off from the world. He was an impossible case he knew and yet Miss Granger - Hermione as she had swifty become in his mind - had made him more open-hearted.

It was dangerous to reciprocate her affections. She was a weakness he could not afford. A vulnerability not just to his body and mind should either Dumbledore or the Dark Lord learn of her but to his heart and soul. He wasn't sure if after the thirty-six years of hell he had lived if there was even enough of either, let alone both, to risk freely giving himself over to the fall with her. A second chance at love - one that might even be welcomed and reciprocated this time - could destroy him, making him useless in the war that was coming to a head. Still, Severus somehow found himself losing what was left of him to the seventeen year old witch who had so blatantly kissed him in front of her classmates, his students.

It wasn't as if she were even trying. She was simply being herself - if a little less reserved in how she gazed upon him and spoke to him having already made herself the talk of the school for years, if not generations, to come. In doing so, she claimed more and more of him each night, making off with the tattered, unworthy remnants he had to offer and treating each piece she collected as if it were a priceless jewel. It was a magic he hadn't experienced in all his years of voracious study and observation. A facet unique to her and her alone. One that enthralled him and healed him while leaving him scared and unsure.

Even now, seven days after the incident that had turned him into the brunt of several jokes and snickers amongst his fellow professors - especially from those who had known him since his own tenure as a student and were able to connect the dots into the not so unfortunately true logic leap that Hermione had been his first kiss - he could feel the whisper of her excited, tender, and equally unpracticed mouth along his own. He often found himself chasing the faded yet still present and electrifying sensation, his fingers tracing the lines and seam of his lips. It was an action he was sure would have drawn even more attention to himself if not for his history of doing such a thing when deep in thought. Little did anyone know - possibly not even the object of his sudden and growing aradent adoration - those thoughts now centered around one impossibly infectious, intelligent, and incandescent witch who was far too pure of heart and innocent of the true depth of cruelty in the world for one who lived in the shadows, too broken to even learn to lick the scraps of love one needed to survive off of knives having never been given it on a silver spoon like the rest. One such as himself.

She had a way about her that ensnared his senses, owning his every thought, captivating his attention for her command. He could look at her face, in her eyes, and see what she could teach him about love. What she maybe even wanted to teach him of it. She had come to possess him with little more than kind words, unfettered attention, and impetuous actions that would have seen the expulsion from his class had it been any other student. Scared and hesitant though he was, Severus knew whether he admitted it or not that he had fallen for her. He belonged to her and her alone for however long she would have him. Even if it obliterated what little remained of his parts not already destroyed or claimed by Dumbledore and the Dark Lord, he loved her unequivocally and without end.

She made him curious and in want of growth. She made him talk with surprising candor. Made him feel what he thought was long dead and never meant for the heavy likes of him. And she made him reveal things he often worked tirelessly to conceal from others with an effortless ease that neither of the men who presided over his life longer than she had been alive had been able to accomplish without force.

All that remained was the gnawing, insidious thoughts that begged him to question her. Could he trust in her? Would she let him down? Would she do as others had in his past and laugh at him if he said he cared for her? Could she possibly feel the same way he did? Or was it all merely a passing fancy of a young witch who lacked options in her peers? Worse, was it all an elaborate ruse to embarrass him in such a way no other had accomplished? An attempt to shatter him in a way that would make what was to date his worst memory pale by comparison.

Either way, he desperately wanted to know the name of the game and where he stood with her. So regardless of how little time had passed, how foolish he was about to be, and the risk to himself, he would prove once and for all that he was not a coward and seek the truth he needed from her.

"Professor?" Hermione questioned from his classroom, the sound of her voice carrying up into his office, drawing a smile from him as he ran his fingers one last time over his lips before getting up to meet her.

Coming down the stairs, he lazily flicked his fingers at the classroom door, making it shut with a soft snick of the latch.

Standing before her but safely tucked away behind his teaching desk, he greeted, "Good evening, Miss Granger - Hermione."

Her curious perusal of the empty classroom halted at the sound of her first name, her eyes snapping up to his as her lips softly parted in what he could only guess was shock. Swallowing in such a way that he could see the muscles of her delicate neck struggle, she quietly and awkwardly stated the obvious, saying, "There's no one else here."

Finding his mouth suddenly dry as his moment of courage presented itself, he choked on his words before coughing his throat clear but still managing to stumble as he responded, "Yes, I have no plans… that is to say, no one else to see… What I mean is, the others have been passed along to Filch. The invitation of your detention is for you alone."

"So it's just us?" She clarified, absently lowering her bag onto a desk.

"As it has been, yes."

Slowly approaching his desk, she stopped on the other side, glancing up to meet his eyes as he fought the reflex to shield himself by Occluding.

"Even though you assigned a multitude of detentions today and yesterday?"

Not trusting himself to vomit the words he was still searching for, he curtly replied, "Yes."

With her teeth sinking into her bottom lip before curling them both in, she once more proved her correct placement within Gryffindor and boldly stated, her words both coy and demure, "That excites me, Professor."

"Severus."

Granting him a beatific smile that lit her up from within, bathing him in her untainted warmth, she tested his name out on her tongue, caressing each syllable.

Fortified by her serene and triumphant features, he slowly spoke as though he were lecturing, "You see through me and I fear have given me little choice in the matter at hand, but it would mean a lot to me if you could tell me what's the name of whatever this is that you've awoken in me."

Her fingers trailed along the edge of his desk as she slowly circled it, reminding him of a predator and making him acutely aware of how eager he was at being her prey. Stopping a mere step or two away from him, she confessed, "I fear it is the same thing you've awoken in me, Severus," his name once again falling from her lips and making his heart race.

"And that is?" He whispered, drugged by her very presence into closing the gap between them.

"Infatuation… obsession… desire… love."

Needing no more from her, he acted without thought of the secrets they would carry from here on out and threaded his fingers through her hair, claiming her lips with a desperate devotion. She responded with a matching fervor, a delicious moan escaping her as he canted her head just so, opening her up further for his claiming.

Untangling a hand from her riotous curls as his tongue crept out to meet hers, each of them eager in learning how to increase the other's awakening passion, he trailed his fingers down her spine, drawing forth a needy whimper that he selfishly swallowed to keep and covet for his private memory. Cautiously continuing his path, he remained not wholly consumed by her heady kisses and noises to be on alert for her halting his movements. Feeling her head nod against him and hearing her keening assent, he grasped her bum, his fingers digging into the pert and taut muscle.

Groaning at their rapid exploration of each other - Hermione rising on her toes in want of more with each palming massage of his hand - Severus released her curls and matched his hold on her, lowering himself a fraction to better balance himself as he lifted her into his arms, her slender legs clutching him between her thighs like a vice as her skirt rippled back.

Breaking away from him with a heavy pant, she took her turn threading her fingers through his limp hair, her nails scratching at his scalp in a way that made him purr for her. Kissing her cheek, her jaw, the long line of her neck, he offered every remaining piece of his broken soul to her, his heart growing and waking up from its cold slumber as she whispered, "I love you, Severus."

"I love you too," he quietly and devoutly reciprocated into her neck, hugging her to him as if she would anchor his life through the war, her very presence in his arms and love protectively cradled in his calloused hands finally giving him something to fight and live for instead of dying in search of atonement for his sins.