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For the Potions Master's Amusement
Chapter 50: Cognitive Dissonance
They arrived back in their room, and he unceremoniously dumped Hermione on the love seat, her head near the upper corner, her stiff torso angling across the cushions, her legs jutting over the edge toward the floor. He stood immobile, his face in shadow—yet she could see how intense were his ebony eyes. Then he was gone from her sight, and she heard him in the ensuite bathroom, the toilet flushing, the water running. How long would he leave her this way? How dared he to Petrify her?
She could not calculate how long he left her alone, but it seemed like a very long time. She could not see the mantel clock from her position; her only choice was to stare at the bit of room within her line of sight and fume. At last, he stood before her again. His hairline was wet, as if he had washed his face, and he had removed his robes and his coat, leaving him clad in his pristine white lawn shirt and tailored black trousers. He stared down at her for a long time, his expression unreadable. Then he drew his wand.
'I am going to release you,' he said dispassionately. 'We will then discuss what happened in the Dungeon.'
His unspoken Finite Incantatem washed over her, and Hermione immediately pushed herself to her feet, her fists clenched at her sides. 'If I had my wand, I'd hex your bollocks off!' she raged.
He raised an eyebrow before producing her wand and extending it to her, handle first. 'Be my guest,' he said dryly, 'if you think you can do it.'
She snatched her weapon and squared her shoulders, assuming a wide battle stance. Anger thrummed through her like electricity in a power line; she knew she was out of control, but she was incapable of reining herself in. Still, she did not cast, and after a moment, he started toward her.
Hermione raised her wand and cast a quick Shield Charm, which her professor batted away as if it were an annoying gnat. Hermione gasped her outrage, but he stopped less than a foot from her. He took her wrist and raised her wand hand until the tip of her wand rested over his heart.
'Why bother with my bollocks when you can do the thing properly?' he inquired reasonably. He released her arm, and his empty hands hung at his sides, his wand sheathed.
Hermione stared at his chest, with her wand-tip pressed against his shirt, seeing clearly in her mind the flesh beneath the fabric, remembering the echo of the beating of his unfaltering heart. She raised her face to look at him, and he watched her with calm interest. In an instant, her indignation died, and she lowered her wand, covering her face with one shaking hand.
'Why …?' she began and abruptly sat down on the love seat, her knees of a sudden trembling with reaction.
He did not move from his position. 'Why do you think?' he asked.
She began to rock very slightly, forward, then back. 'Was it because I raised my wand to a Dominant?' She was trying very hard to think, but her brain was not functioning very well.
'No,' he answered. 'I will never object to you stepping up to assist a sister submissive in need.'
Her hand dropped to her lap, and Hermione looked hopefully at her professor—but there was no hint of invitation in his face, no indication that hurling herself into his safe, comforting arms would be welcomed now.
'The type of play in which we indulge in this community is dangerous in unskilled or impaired hands. I have never spoken to you in depth about the use of the single-tailed whip, but you knew instinctively that it was unsafe for Kell.' He paused for a moment. 'There will always be exceptions to rules, Hermione—this is why training is a necessary for a submissive. In many situations, drawing your wand on a Dominant would be improper. However, doing so in defence of a submissive, when her play partner was impaired and disregarding the submissive's verbal requests, was completely within your purview.'
Hermione took a deep breath, feeling the slight steadying of her nerves. 'Was it because I stepped up when Reg was disarmed?' she asked.
He lowered himself onto the edge of an armchair, his knees swivelled in her direction. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, and made eye contact with her. 'Not specifically, no.'
Hermione gave her head a slight shake, impatient now with her delayed reaction to the earlier excitement. She needed to be able to think. He was wholly engaged in their conversation, inviting her to work out why he had Petrified her. She wanted to be a full participant in the discussion.
'You put me behind you,' she murmured, looking at her hands and replaying the scene in her mind. 'Then Reg was disarmed, and—'
'No,' he cut across her. 'Something else happened when I put myself between you and Curtis' wand.'
She looked at him. 'You said, "Get back,"' she whispered.
He nodded and waited.
'You told me to do something, and I didn't do it.'
He granted her another terse nod, and again, he waited.
Hermione sighed noisily, slumping back against the sofa cushions, as best she could in a boned corset. She felt the dried candle wax breaking and flaking off, but she didn't care. 'You were in a fighting situation,' she said, speaking now to the ceiling of the room. 'An unfriendly wizard was facing you with his wand drawn. But because you gave me an order, I was supposed to just obey you, even though your life was in danger.'
'We were not in a dark alley facing a band of armed ruffians,' he informed her levelly. 'We were in Roissy House with one drunken lout. Did you truly imagine I was in need of your fighting skills?'
Hermione struggled upright again, stung by the slight hint of derision in his tone. 'I know how to fight!' she screeched.
He settled back in his chair, crossing one elegant leg over the other. 'Clearly,' he said wryly.
'Don't mock me!' she shouted.
'Don't,' he spat, and Hermione found herself brought up short by the warning in his voice. 'Do not,' he continued in a more controlled tone, 'take this license I am permitting you too far, Hermione.'
She pressed her lips together defiantly and averted her eyes. She had felt so sure at the time that her actions were correct, and he had admitted that many of them were—why did everything with him boil down to stupid, bloody obedience?
'Let us review,' her professor said, his tone once again even. 'You saw Kell in danger, and you stepped up to speak for her. This was a perfectly reasonable action. The Dominant wielded his wand, and you drew yours. This was an appropriate response.'
He stopped speaking, and Hermione glared at the hearthrug, knowing where the 'review' was headed and unwilling to go along agreeably. She hadn't meant to be disobedient! She had only meant to step up with the man she loved to face with him the threat he faced. How could that possibly put her in the wrong? She looked up to speak these words, and as soon as her eyes met his, he continued to speak, as if there had been no period of quiet.
'Your Master took you by the shoulder, put you behind him, and told you to stay back,' he said. 'You responded by placing yourself in the line of fire. It was then necessary for your Master to take the time to forcibly protect you, giving his opponent the perfect opportunity to cast an offensive spell unopposed.'
'It wasn't like that!' she objected hotly. 'It wasn't about disobedience; it was about loyalty. I will always stand with you! Always!'
She could see the whitening around his lips and the narrowing of his eyes, and she braced for the firestorm of his anger. Then she visibly saw him control the emotion, and he stood, crossing to her and pulling her to her feet, as well. Her drew her stiff, reluctant body against his, enveloping her in his embrace, his face bent to her ear. 'I am struck to silence by such a declaration,' he whispered into her hair. 'No one has ever betrayed such devotion to me.'
Hermione turned her face to his, smoothing black hair away so she could see his eyes. 'I love you,' she said simply, her secret pouring out of her in a rush of pure feeling. 'I can't help myself.'
The kiss he pressed to her lips then was the sweetest she had ever received, tasting of reverence and wonder. Her reservations fell away in the onslaught of tenderness, and she twined herself about him like a climbing vine. He kissed her as if it were an act of worship, rather than carnality, and she was utterly undone. His fingers removed the pins holding her chignon, and when each of them had fallen to the floor, he twined his fingers in her straightened hair, cradling her skull as his tongue slowly caressed hers. When he released her lips, she was like clay in his hands, ready to be shaped and fired. He turned her gently and loosened the corset, lifting it off and discarding it on the love seat. It was the work of mere seconds to untie the frilly knickers, and they joined the discarded corset. He smiled down at her with unspoken emotion, a touch of something approaching shyness in his eyes. Had her confession of love brought about this turn-around in his mood? She couldn't be sure, but she followed him with all eagerness when he took her hand and led her to the bedside. He paused only to take down his box from the top shelf of the cupboard.
'Will you yield yourself to me, Hermione?' he asked, setting the box on the bedside table and taking her hands in his, looking into her eyes. 'Will you allow me to make you a vessel of pleasure, mine to fill and use as I will?'
'Yes, please,' she answered, her naked body swaying toward him, the arousal stirred by his worshipful kiss beginning to tingle along her nerve endings in response to his words.
'Thank you,' he said sincerely, and from the box he withdrew her black blindfold. She did not need to be told but closed her eyes and waited for the whisper of silk against her eyelids. 'Let me take away your senses and fill your consciousness with only me,' he said, and then his lips brushed hers as he secured the blindfold.
He turned from her. 'Now for your ball gag,' he said, and she felt the press of the ball against her lips. She opened her mouth to receive it and felt him fasten it about her head.
'Move to the middle of the bed,' he said, assisting her to sit on its edge. 'Raise your arms above your head, so that I can tie you down.'
Hermione scrambled into position, dimly wondering how she had gone so quickly from disgrace to veneration, but much too enthralled to consider too closely. The silken ties looped about her wrists, and her quim throbbed. She would always and forever associate silken scarves with sexual pleasure.
She heard her Master moving about the bed, and she imagined him stripping out of his clothing, revealing his toned torso first, then dropping his trousers. Vividly she remembered the feel of his straining erection in her grasp in the Dungeon, and she could not suppress a light moan in her throat.
'That's right,' he said, lowering himself to the mattress near her feet and taking one foot in his warm hands. 'I am going to make your body sing, pet. Without the gag, the whole house would hear you.'
His lips pressed firmly to the arch of her naked foot, and the gag, as predicted, stifled her gasp. His broad tongue travelled up the inner curve to her great toe, and he licked it before closing his lips around it, sucking. He had sucked her toes before, and she had enjoyed it, but it surprised her how the blindfold intensified her reaction. With no visual stimuli to distract her, her whole attention was on what Severus Snape was doing to her naked body. He leisurely subjected each digit to the sucking treatment, his teeth nibbling the soft pads of her toes. By the time he released the tenth toe, he had so made himself the Master of her nervous system that he could stroke the sensitive soles of her feet without triggering ticklishness.
'It makes you wet for me when I lick your feet,' he said, sliding up her smooth legs, his hands parting her thighs as he moved. 'I can smell your quim, little one—you want to come already, and I have only just begun to pleasure you.'
Hermione groaned into the gag, lifting her knees and spreading her thighs wide for him, undulating her hips, wanting any attention he was willing to give. Licking, fingering, fucking, she had no preference, as long as he administered his inimitable skills to her aching clit.
'Divine,' he growled, his bare shoulders pressed to the backs of her thighs as he licked the seam of her slit, dancing lightly over flesh which screamed for direct, protracted attention.
He spread her labia with his long fingers and tongued her opening, lapping her secretions, the tip of his tongue flicking lazily at the very bottom of her clitoris. Hermione raised her hips beneath his mouth, encouraging him to give her clitoris his full attention, but he only chuckled, deliberately avoiding the full-on pressure she was longing to feel.
He turned his face, his lips closing over the soft skin of her inner thigh, and he applied suction, pulling the flesh between his uneven teeth. Lightly, he bit down, increasing the suction, and Hermione knew her inner thigh would bear the beauty of his love bite for a week. Counselling herself to patience, she abided beneath his ministrations, letting the sensations bathe her senses, drifting into sub-space and feeling very much at home.
'You belong to me, pet,' he said, his hooked nose stroking up the crease where her thigh met her mons. 'What's more important is you want to belong to me, don't you? Tell me.'
She could not resist the command of those silken tones, and she managed a sound of dreamy assent behind the ball gag.
She felt his teeth lightly nip at her tummy, just below her navel, and she was glad for his migration north, towards her head, for she could feel the weight and stiffness of his turgid cock on her leg as he moved up. Eventually, his cock would be at the entrance to her quim, and he would be inside her body, driving her to bliss, completing the union of their bodies, minds and souls.
He paused and lingered at her breasts, and she wrapped her legs about his torso, undulating her hips against his nude stomach, revelling in the contact of her flesh with his.
'Your candle wax is breaking off,' he told her, flicking a bit of it onto the bed sheets, 'but it was quite lovely with your corset.' He closed both hands over her breasts, kneading them. 'You behaved perfectly while I waxed you, pet—I was very pleased.'
Hermione purred beneath his hands and his words, proud to have pleased him with her conduct. Then a niggling worry intruded on her happy place. What about later, when she had disobeyed his direct order? True, she had distracted him with her profession of love, but was he going to allow her to go unpunished? Surely this behaviour was more of a reward than a punishment.
He slid further up her body, and then he was murmuring into her ear. 'I promised to fuck you until you couldn't walk, did I not?'
Her nod of agreement was transmuted to a moan as he thrust into her body. His pace was slow, almost leisurely, and it seemed as if his hands and lips were everywhere. He kissed her armpit, drawing a small scream from her and repeated the process on the other side, invading her most ticklish spot, completely open and vulnerable to him with her wrists bound above her head. His low laugh was at once playful and devilish, and an image of Rafe's face flittered across her mind—her Master and his best mate were more alike than she had realised. There was so much more of him to know and love; she had only begun to discover the depth and infinite variety of the man whose collar she wore.
She rolled her hips beneath him, feeling the impact of his hipbones on her pelvis, and reached for him with her mind, wondering if she could join her spirit to his without the aid of Legilimency. Under the blindfold, behind the gag, her world was narrowed to sound and sensation. The sound was the unmistakeable slap of flesh on flesh, the inarticulate gasps and groans of sex; the sensation was divine, carrying her beyond herself to the heights of sub-space. Reaching for him was an exercise of opening herself even more completely, feeling with every fibre of her being for him, for his unmistakeable presence.
Her first attempt carried her simply to the next notch of excitement, his unremitting movement in and out of her body further refining the quality of her arousal. Every nerve ending tingled, awaiting the dénouement, but she attempted again, concentrating on the symphony he wrought within her and seeking to converge with his own internal composition.
With that mental picture, she felt the connection, like two bubbles floating into contact, each a prism unto itself—and then they joined, separate entities, still, yet with a section of combined energy, where they were one.
And she was in his mind, loving him, accepting him, and his reaction was to become completely still. Their bodies were connected, his erection pulsing within the warm sheathe of her channel, but in his mind, he was entirely taken aback and bewildered.
How he asked, too disconcerted to finish his thought.
I opened myself to you, she explained, caressing his psyche.
But I didn't open myself! he protested, his emotions a mixture of alarm and longing.
You did, she assured him, gently grinding her hips and contracting her vaginal muscles. You do.
A pulse of magic passed between them, and she knew he had magicked the blindfold from her face moments before the candle light flooded the space between them, leaving him half in shadow.
The look on his face was fierce, and Hermione knew a moment of feral joy, meeting the snap of his hips with a thrust of her own, setting her on the edge of orgasm.
'You're mine,' he said, his voice rough with exertion. I don't understand how you do this, he said in her mind.
Only yours, she agreed, staring into his eyes. I don't understand it, but I know it's sacred.
No! he retorted, but even as he did, his climax was upon him, and she heard the litany in his mind as he came inside her body. Hermione, Hermione, Hermione!
And at the sound of her name, spoken in his voice in her mind with such dumbfounded reverence, her completion found her, shivering up her spine and down her extremities with the force of culmination.
Severus!
He did not languish beside her, but removed the ball gag, setting it aside. He moved to sit against the headboard, a spoken command releasing her wrists. Hermione rolled toward him, resting her cheek upon his slightly sweaty ribcage, stroking his torso with one hand. When he spoke, he sounded distant—removed.
'How do you do it?'
Hermione sat up, turning to face him, trying to think of how to explain it. 'I reach for you with my mind and my feelings,' she said.
His chin jerked up, as if he were shaking something off.
'I'm sorry that I can't explain it in technical terms,' she said, touching his arm, 'but it's a feeling, more than anything else.'
He stood. 'Tomorrow, you will be punished for your disobedience,' he informed her.
Hermione swallowed and crossed her arms over her nakedness, unconsciously drawing her knees up, as if she were curling into a ball. She did not speak.
'Because your infraction was public, your punishment will be public, as well.'
Now her lips parted, and she drew breath to protest, but his next words silenced her.
'By defying me in public, you showed disrespect, as well as disobedience,' he went on inexorably. 'Tomorrow, after lunch, there will be demonstrations taking place in the Dungeon. One of those will be my punishment of you.'
Hermione was completely bewildered, having moved from his displeasure to his reverence to his worship of her body to his confusion in her mind to this—a punishment she had, to be honest, thought she had averted with her confession of love.
In public? The words he had spoken earlier finally sunk in. Oh dear God, what was he going to do?
Tears welled up in her eyes, and she angrily dashed them away, still connected with him enough to hear the dissonance of his emotions and his actions.
'What will you do?' she asked, straining to keep her voice strong.
'You'll receive a whipping with the leather strap,' he said, removing the item from the wardrobe and laying it upon the bed, where she could see it.
Tentatively, Hermione reached out and picked it up, noting the heft of the handle and the width and weight of the doubled over leather strap. It was at least twice as wide as his belt and offered a much less awkward action than a folded over belt.
'I won't hide from you that it will hurt more than the belt,' he told her gravely.
Hermione pushed the strap away from her, and he replaced it in the wardrobe.
'You'll be naked, save for your collar,' he continued, his tone flat and merciless. 'You may wear robes or a dressing gown when walking through the house, but when I whip you, you'll be naked.'
Hermione turned her face away from him, too upset to speak to him. How could he call her sweet names and do such intimate things to her body in one moment and push her away in the next, explaining how he would display her to and humiliate her before a roomful of strangers?
'Try to get some sleep,' he advised her, pulling on his trousers. 'I have some things to discuss with Rafe and Hadrian.' He buttoned up his shirt and secured the cuffs. 'When I come back, I want to fuck you again.' He bent over to pull on his boots. 'I'll be leaving tomorrow or the next day, and I want to have you as many times as I can before I go.'
Without another word, he let himself out of the room, and Hermione hugged her pillow to her naked chest, her recent, earth-shattering orgasm still echoing through her nervous system, at complete odds with her overwhelming misery.
