Chapter Two

Fresh ground cinnamon.

Crisp green apples.

Warm vanilla.

The scents ebbed and flowed all around him, thickening the air and muddling his mind. It was verging on oppressive. Or rather it should have been. It should have felt like a heavy weight pressing down upon him. One more burden to carry. Another piece of himself stolen away for the benefit of others. A continuous cycle of seeking penance and absolution in order to escape an eternity in purgatory. It should have sent him into a deep, cold, untouchable shame filled rage. The kind he would be forced to coexist with as if his entire life hadn't already been one dishonorable humiliation after another. It should have been, but it wasn't.

Instead it was the sweetest, most delicious and tantalizing thing to have ever filled his lungs. It breathed life into him.

Hope…

Renewal…

Peace…

Severus had caught the most faint tendril of it the moment he had crossed the Entrance Hall, returning from another night of scraping and bowing and protective intervention on behalf of Draco. Distracted as he was, he didn't have the presence of mind to fully attend to the boy's untried sensibilities as was his norm since the sixteen year old he had held as an infant had begun laying for the sins of his foolish father. Instead, he sent him to the dungeons for what little sleep he could collect before another day was to begin, drifting off in search of the siren whose rapturous call was summoning him home.

It wasn't until he made it to the third floor of the castle–fully enveloped in the aroma as his long loathed and slumbering cock prickled and awoken with eager awareness–that the reality of what was occurring hit him. It was there on the landing that he had crossed paths with a half-dressed seventh year Hufflepuff–their own erection betraying any sense of modesty as it tented their lounge pants. After pushing forth his Alpha–the bastard filled with growling anticipation over demonstrating his superiority in order to beat entice the budding omega–to command the barely presented pup to return to his dormitory, he further fortified the walls of his Occlumency that had both saved and damned him in equal measure over the decades and made off like the bat he was called for the scent's origins.

Of course the lure was coming from a bloody omega presenting for the first time. Life had descended into utter chaos the moment Potter stepped off the platform in Hogsmeade Station, his heroic destiny taking them all down with him. So why wouldn't he be forced to surrender the ten years of bodily autonomy he had so closely coveted and protected, as well as what remained of his shredded soul? It was a damn miracle he had been free for this long.

But it wasn't the surety with which he knew he would once again be asked to be of aide to the omega through what remained of her education, that saw him destroying the sitting room of his chambers. And it wasn't the egregious crime one of his students had tried to bring forth against another either–though it was an already established fact that he would see to it that Fergus Cowley got every bit of what he was owed. It wasn't even the fact that he had become so complacent in living with access to what should have been an undeniable human right that he had failed to see the warning signs of what was coming.

No, it was who the omega was and the quiet serenity she had falsely promised him. The way she had effortlessly drawn out a wanted and desired reaction from his happily celibate body. The way his Alpha urged him to keep her, knot her, claim her both at the neck and in her womb, so that she would be indisputably his. The way that for just a moment, he had longed to be undeniably hers. It was the prospect of finally being in possession of contentment, happiness, a home, only to have it all ripped away the moment he laid eyes on her.

Hermione fucking Granger.

One part of the magical trinity that was fated to rid them all of the Dark Lord. The brains of Potter's operation. The darling of the teaching staff. The second most protected student to have walked the castle's halls in recent memory. The ruddy princess of not only Gryffindor, but all of Hogwarts. If there was one person within the ancient walls he wanted to help less than all the others, it was her.

So of course, she would be an omega. Of course, she would be the one that stirred and awakened him. Of fucking course, she would be the one to have his Alpha circling and pacing and jumping against its cage, its voice an inescapable nuisance as it devoutly chanted about what it believed they needed.

So small…

So delicate…

Perfect omega…

She's ours…

She's home…

Rut… knot… claim… pups…

Mine!

Life was so un-fucking-fair.

Adjusting his cock for a countless time and biting back a groan he refused to voice, Severus pointed his wand at the drying rack of glass vials resting alongside the sink in his kitchenette, shattering them all as his anger reached for a crescendo. Amongst the sharp pings of glass hitting the stone floor, he could still hear her, driving him to turn his loathing rage elsewhere in a bid to rid himself of her crying hiccups and broken pleas of promising to be better, to please him. Books thrown across the room. Shelves splintered and crippled. Dishes cracked and jagged. Whiskey weeping down the walls in time with her tears. Nothing won against her call and his desperate, innate need to answer.

Giving up with a pained, inhuman roar, he slumped down against the warded door, his head thumping backward as he stared at the ceiling in defeat and pacified, "I'm here; Alpha's here. Rest for a time and then we will get through this, sweet girl. I won't let you suffer."

"Ah, wonderful," Albus observed in a placid tone. "You are already on the fringes of rut. I had concerns given how long you've been self-prescribing suppressants. This is most excellent."

"Get fucked," he snarled back, his knuckles turning white as he gripped his wand and grappled with the ramifications of killing the headmaster ahead of his grand designs.

"Maybe a little closer than on the fringes, hmm?"

"You cannot do this to her. When I was twenty-one and they were seventeen was one thing, but this? I'm old enough to have fathered her. Surely there must be someone, anyone, else who is more aligned with her age."

"Severus, you knew this road would not be an easy one when you presented it to me."

Sneering as he nearly snapped his wand, he responded, "Had I known all that you would have asked of me, I would have taken my chances with the Aurors and Azkaban."

Righting an overturned armchair, Dumbledore perched himself on the edge, giving a self-satisfied smile as he said, "You made your choices, Severus. There is no changing the past, only the future. What I have you do, is far more comfortable and enjoyable than a life under Voldemort or a cell in Azkaban could have ever been for you."

"NO!" he shouted, standing up and coming face to face with the dying man who held out the hand of salvation only to punch him with condemnation the moment he took it. "This was not my choice. It has never been my choice. You forced my hand the moment Evelynn Bigsby started to present and have been manipulating it ever since.

"So do not think I have ever enjoyed the humiliation and shame you put me through."

"What else are we to do with them? With Miss Granger? You saw for yourself what Mr. Cowley nearly accomplished. How many other Alphas do you think we have that would be unable to control their urges the moment her pheromones perfume the castle again? How many do you think if chosen would lose themselves to the rut and bite her against her will? Think of what Voldemort would do with her, who he would gift her to, if she was not under you as it were. She will be safest with you."

"Find someone else," Severus over enunciated, stepping back toward the door, his palm drifting to the carved wood as the lingering tendrils of her scent and the soft purrs of her surrender to slumber washed over him, calming his unfiltered anger.

Canting his head in careful observation, Dumbledore removed his glasses and proceeded to clean them on his robes as his tone suddenly changed.

"If you insist, my boy. I'll call an emergency meeting to take place here at the castle and see what we can arrange. You said yourself, her fever is coming in waves so she's not in full heat as of yet. How long would you guess us to have? I'm terribly out of practice at determining these things."

Speaking slowly as he tried to suss out whatever moves the headmaster was about to make, he answered, "A day. Two, tops. Her heat spikes are coming too closely together to safely offer her any more time than that."

"Marvelous, I'll set the meeting for later this morning. Please do see to it however that Miss Granger arrives a little less… potent," he decided on. "Her scent is rather pleasing and quite concentrated. We wouldn't want a battle for dominance to break out."

"Yes, magic forbid we expect Alphas to have control over themselves when in the presence of an omega."

"You know as well as I, that was not what I was implying. Merely that it has been an age since an omega has presented and been within our ranks. Especially one with such an allure as to have brought even you to your knees for her.

"But not to worry," he hummed, holding up his hand to stop the growl that was coming forth from Severus. "We will get everything sorted. You've been an asset to me over the years in protecting our female omegas but you are right. We must find someone much more worthy for our Miss Granger."

Biting back on the snarl that wanted to escape at the insinuation that he was too inferior for their prized pupil, Severus gritted out, "Precisely."

"Perhaps, Sirius," Dumbledore mulled over as he stood up to see himself out. "If I recall, Miss Weasley was quite taken with him last summer. What were the words she said…? No matter, I'm sure he will be much more amicable to the whole idea than you, Severus."

"Splendid," he muttered, silently summoning another decanter of liquor to himself and proceeding to take a hardy gulp, then two, before throwing it at the closing door of his chambers.

He was thirty-six years old and no longer terrified of the potential for an early death or life spent in Azkaban. He would not be cowed with the pathetic dangling of his school rival being seen as better than himself. If Albus wanted that mangy mutt to see Miss Granger through her heat, then that was more than acceptable. In fact, he would gladly hand off the mantle of being little more than an on-call stud to Black. He was done allowing his biology to be used against him. Determined to never succumb to the indignity of taking another student to his bed again. To never have to face the mortification of another student, who like him, was caught in an impossible place with no choice but to rely upon him.

Severus was wholly resolute in his decision. Satisfied even. Miss Granger was not for him, and he especially was not for her. He had enough complications and responsibilities without adding her to his plate.

So why then did he find himself lowering the wards and opening the door to his bed chambers when she awoke, looking for him and crying about feeling unclean? And why was he making himself at home in the nest she had crafted along the windows that showered them in the rippling reflection of the Black Lake, scooping her up to sit between his legs, his arms a protective cage around her? And why for the love of Merlin, Salazar, and all of magic, was he nuzzling and laving soothing swipes of his tongue along her glands until she fell back asleep, the scent of cinnamon, apples, and vanilla wrapping around him until he too was snuggled against her? And for good measure, why in the name of Mary and Jesus, was he purring deep in his chest as she tucked her head under his and clutched his arm between the small swells of her breasts as if she found him to be valuable and feared losing him?