For the Potions Master's Amusement

Chapter 62 : Disintegration and Reformation

Hermione was not surprised in the least to find herself standing in their bedroom at Roissy House, in the not quite steady embrace of her pasty professor, who looked horrible and smelled no better. She did not attempt to move away from him, nor did she speak. She stood firm, supporting rather more of his weight than was strictly comfortable for her, and looked up worriedly into his pinched, wan face.

After a moment, his eyes seemed to focus, and his hold on her tightened, even as his free hand spread over her throat. She remained passive in his arms, slightly panicked by the pressure exerted by the hand encompassing her throat, but doing her best not to show it. Her heart continued to hammer in her chest, for she had still not got over the confrontation between her Master and her friends. But truthfully, she had never expected to see him show up in that forest clearing—if she had known he was capable of rising from his sickbed, she would have stayed at Roissy House and let him make the delivery to Harry … or would she? Hadn't she been longing for an excuse to see Harry and Ron, to feel once again as if she were truly participating in their quest? In satisfying that impulse, she had been disobedient, and she had a feeling her Master would presently express his displeasure.

'Look at this bare neck,' he murmured, almost as if to himself. 'Someone has been careless with her collar.' His long fingers tightened almost imperceptibly. 'Do you value your collar so little, I wonder?'

'No, Master,' Hermione said softly. 'I value my collar very highly.'

'At Hogwarts, you were never to wear it outside my study,' he said meditatively.

'And at Roissy House, I was to wear it every minute of every day,' she supplied, a gentle reminder. He had been the one to take it back from Harry—what if he didn't return it to her? What if her punishment for going out when he told her to stay in, for showing her collar to non-lifestyle people when she wasn't supposed to do that, was for him to take her collar back? Her stomach clenched in fear, even as another part of her mind said, That's not fair! He was hurt! Harry had to have the spell! What was I supposed to do?

'Now you've shown it to your little friends, but they don't seem very … accepting.' His lip curled in a fearsome sneer. 'Do you think I give a fuck what your friends think of me or the choices I make?'

'Of course I don't,' she replied levelly, striving with all her might to sound calm, regardless of the clamour in her mind. 'I don't care what they think of either of us or the choices we've made,' she added for good measure, wondering if that were completely true.

'It does not appear that you care what I think of you either, Hermione.'

She stopped breathing and felt as if her heart had frozen in her chest. 'No!' she cried. 'That's not true! You're all I care about!'

'Silence!' he snarled, and even in her distress, she saw that he was not well—had he been at full power, that snarl would have been a roar.

He put her from him and sagged into a chair, a trembling hand raised to the patch over his eye. Unmindful of any other consideration, Hermione fell to her knees before him, fully dressed, but nevertheless in the submissive's pose.

'I know you will punish me for my disobedience, Master,' she said to the floor, her eyes deferentially averted, 'but please allow me to tend to you—to care for your needs. Please let me serve you.'

It took all her resolve to keep her hands on her thighs when she so longed to touch him, to run her hands over his body and make sure there were no other injuries than the terrible one she could see: the slash which had left behind the ugly, raw slice across his face … across his eye. Everything had happened so fast—he had suddenly been there, then been confronted by Harry, and finally whisked her away before she had the leisure to process the ghastly damage to his face.

'Do you deserve the boon of being permitted to wait on me?' he asked coldly, and it felt like a slap.

He was weakened by his injury—he had obviously gone out before he was well enough to do so—and by his lights, she had disobeyed a direct order. He was at best, disappointed in her, and at worst … well, she didn't have to think about that now. All she had to do was convince him to allow her to take care of him, and perhaps she could show him by her actions rather than tell him with the words he was not desirous of hearing how much she cared for him and how important he was to her. She had never been good at this bit—there was a part of her personality that rose up in rebellion at the notion of begging—but he wanted her to abase herself to him now, and if it brought him pleasure, she would do it.

Think! she commanded herself. What would t say?

'I do not deserve it, Master,' she said, hearing Taffy's soft voice in her mind as she spoke, 'but I beg that you will permit me to do it anyway.'

She remained where she was, forcing herself to keep her eyes averted, even though she was dying to peek at his face, to see if he was relenting at all. This reminded her forcibly of her times with him in his study when he was unhappy with her, or when he wanted to make a point; the clock on the mantel ticked loudly in the stillness, and she chanted in her mind, Let me let me let me let me let me until his voice broke the silence.

'Strip,' he ordered her. 'Then you may run a bath for me and attend me in the bathroom.'

'Thank you, Master,' she said, relieved.

'You do not have permission to speak,' he replied repressively, but even in his annoyance, he sounded exhausted.

Hermione stripped off her jumper and bra, then pulled off her boots and socks and stood to wriggle out of her jeans and knickers. She went immediately into the bathroom and began to run water into the tub. She heard him rise, and from the corner of her eye, she saw him enter the bathroom and move unsteadily to the sink. As she watched, he looked into the mirror.

'Oh, Christ,' he said, and she knew from the desolate, defeated tone of his voice that he had not previously had a mirror to see the damage to his face.

Tears of pity welled up in her eyes, but she couldn't take time to grieve now. This time was about him—not about her—it was her duty to care for his needs and keep her own emotions out of it.

She heard the water in the sink, and the unmistakeable sound of him brushing his teeth. Poor thing! Had he been somewhere that didn't provide the basic niceties of hygiene facilities?

Next, she heard him at the toilet, the zip on his trousers, the splash of urine in the bowl with its acrid odour, and the flush.

'Undress me,' he said tiredly.

Hermione rose from the half-filled tub and turned to him. He had left his cloak in the other room, and beneath its concealing black folds, he had been dressed all by guess, it appeared. He wore an ugly brown jumper both too long and too large for him, as if he had taken it from Rafe's cupboard. She took the hem and lifted it up; he raised his arms and bent at the waist to assist her efforts, as if he were an over-large child. She allowed the sweater to fall to the floor, and saw the other of his wounds: a savage slash across his midriff, as if the spell caster had hoped to sever his body in twain.

'Don't dawdle,' he snapped, and her fingers fell to his belt buckle, slipping the leather from the metal, forcing away her memories of him removing this belt in his study to spank her bottom.

He wore no pants underneath the trousers, and as she knelt to assist him to step out of the trouser legs, she saw he had no socks, either. Clearly, he had come to the tent from somewhere other than his own rooms.

He stepped over the pile of clothing, leaving her kneeling form behind him as he climbed over the edge of the tub. She heard his groan of … pleasure? relief? … as he submerged himself in the water, and she hurried to him with a flannel in her hand. She longed to wash his face—to make sure that the cut was as clean as it could be—but she would have to disturb the eye patch, and that would require speech. She wanted to lull him a bit before she tried to speak to him.

Hermione took up a fresh cake of the lime scented soap he favoured and lathered the face flannel, then began to wash his chest, well above the slash on his belly. Oh, it felt good to have his skin beneath her fingertips again, to hear his steady breathing—but seeing him was distressing, for he looked so unwell. Biting her lip to keep from speaking to him, she washed his arm, taking time over each of his beautiful, long fingers, and she dipped the hand in the water to rinse the soap off, before kissing it. His lips parted at the touch of her lips, but he did not speak, and she moved onto the side of the tub to reach his other arm. She repeated the process, finally rinsing and kissing the newly clean hand. This time, his good eye opened and he looked at her, stretched across the tub, naked and slightly chilled, her breasts dangling just above the water, nipples pebbled and taut.

With scarcely a murmur, he pulled her into the water, and she landed with a splash, drenching the bathmat. He seemed to have no concerns about the bathmat, for he dragged her up and kissed her mouth, hungry and demanding, his fingers seeking out her nipples to pinch and tweak and twist. Hermione could scarcely enjoy the sensations, for she was worried that her weight would hurt his tummy wound, or that she would hurt his face if she brushed against the face wound.

Sensing her reticence, he pulled back from her lips and murmured against the shell of her ear, 'Am I too hideous to kiss, little one?'

'You're not hideous at all!' she protested, tucking herself to one side of his long, lean body. 'I'm just afraid I'm going to hurt you!' She traced the outline of the slash on his cheek. 'Have you used any potions on it?'

His good eye closed again, and he held her close to him. 'We had none immediately available,' he answered. 'We couldn't go back to our lodgings because I was bleeding—it was Rafe's brothers who attacked us, and they would have known who they had been attacking if we had shown up covered in blood.' His lips twisted in a grimace. 'We holed up in a deserted cave in the hills above Hogsmeade for a couple of days—until I got Potter's important summons.'

Hermione opened her mouth to speak, but he silenced her with another hungry kiss, pulling her against his slick body, turning so that his lengthening cock slid along her skin. Hermione forgot his hurts, forgot his anger, and knew nothing except for his tongue in her mouth, his hands on her body, and his hardening member sliding against her thigh.

'I need to be inside you,' he said, his voice suddenly urgent, and Hermione was not proof against his need.

'Where do you want me?' she asked, wrapping her fingers around the silk-sheathed iron of his cock.

He growled and thrust into her fist; looking at the eye patch, she thought he looked like a sex-crazed pirate.

'I want you tied spread-eagle to my bed so I can fuck you through the sheets,' he said, turning onto his back again and dragging her atop of him, splashing more water onto the floor, 'but I don't think I can manage that in my condition.' He reached between her thighs, encountering her clean shaven pudendum and parting the lips expertly to slip a finger over her clitoris.

Hermione gasped, feeling as if it had been an eternity since last her Master's fingers had been there.

'My pet likes to have her pretty petted,' he observed smugly.

'Yes,' she agreed, rubbing herself against the invading digits.

'Ride my cock,' he commanded, suddenly all business. 'Ride me, little slut, and I'll make you scream.'

She did not think; she only obeyed. She rose on her knees to situate his cock at her entrance, then lowered herself onto him, feeling the thick column filling her as nothing else ever could.

'Good girl,' he groaned. He watched her with his good eye half-closed, the black iris glittering in the candlelight, and he set a leisurely pace, his hands at her waist directing her motions. After a moment, his palms trailed up her torso to her breasts, and he proceeded to torment her nipples, gauging her sounds of mingled pain and pleasure to determine his actions. He pinched and twisted, and it made her so hot she could scarcely bear the slow, teasing way his cock moved in and out of her body.

'Lean forward,' he told her. 'Grasp the edge of the tub behind my head. Let me suck and bite your beautiful breasts, little one.'

She angled her body over his and grabbed the edge of the tub, looking down to see her breasts dangling before his face like an offering to the god of her idolatry. In god-like fashion, he took his time with her, lazily drawing the full areola into his mouth and suckling hard enough to make her uterus contract. Hermione moaned aloud, and he thrust up hard into her quim, drawing a keening cry from her.

'That's right, filthy girl,' he growled, turning his head to ravage the other breast. 'Use that cock to make yourself come, like the little come slut you are.'

Hermione arched her back, thrusting her breasts more completely into his face and abandoning herself to the sensations he created in her body. It was, she thought muzzily, a combination of shame and erotic frenzy, the intertwining of which was the unbreakable bond with which he held her to him. He grazed her nipple with his teeth, latching onto the soft white under flesh of her breast and suckling hard enough to leave a harsh purple bruise. The sensation excited her, as he was well aware. She stared down at the marks his attentions had left on her breasts, feeling proud of these tokens of his pleasure, and he jerked his hips again, driving himself into her body, the exquisite friction of his flesh in hers causing her to toss her head wildly, sending her hair flying.

'You belong to me,' he informed her, as if this were a new development, and she forced her attention to his face, her eyes focussing on him just as his fingertips found her clit again, rubbing it with precise pressure in an inexorable circle. 'Say it!' he ordered her. 'Don't you dare come before you say it.'

Hermione experienced his fingers on her nerve centre and the delicious thrust of his full length into her cunt, and she felt herself losing concentration, losing the very ability to form words.

'Say it!' he thundered, taking her clitoris between his thumb and forefinger and plucking at it as if it were the string of a musical instrument.

'Yours!' she cried, abandoning the facility of speech to the delirium he was inducing. As an amorphous cry rose in her throat, he drove himself up into her, his hands closing like vises over her hipbones and forcing her down even as he rose to meet her.

'Hermione!' he cried, his own ability to form coherent communication disintegrating with the rush of mutual sensation. Hermione felt herself fragmenting, pieces flying outward against his overweening presence, and his roar of completion erupted from without, blowing inward all his will and insistence, until their beings were reformed, solidified as one, body to body and soul to soul.


They shuddered together, blinking as reality slipped back into the room, almost apologetically. He craned his neck to look down at her as she rested on his shoulder, and taking her chin in his hand, he inquired mildly, 'Just how did you manage that, my pet, without the aid of Legilimency?'

Hermione felt her naked flesh puckering and pebbling in the quickly cooling bathwater, and she closed her eyes, cuddling closer to his body heat. I have no idea, she confessed, seeing no point in the use of words when they shared one consciousness.