Severus nudged the door and it slammed shut. Hermione giggled. "They heard that down in the Great Hall," she said.

"I don't care where they heard it," he growled. He laid his hand on her face and savoured the texture of her soft hair underneath his fingertips kissing her.

"I could get used to that," she murmured.

He drew back a bit and looked her in the eyes which somehow looked different than usual. A bit … enraptured. "To what?"

"You kissing me." She bit her lip.

Severus frowned. But she was right. It had always been her kissing him. He'd never been proactive himself. It just never occurred to him that she would like it. "I will keep it in mind," he assured in a dark voice and immediately started keeping that promise.

She sighed against his lips and under his robes her hands slipped around his waist, searching for his waistband. And then they suddenly were on his buttocks and she seemed to like what she found there.

Severus moaned, leaning his forehead against hers, and exhaled deeply. There was his arousal and Hermione's arousal and her hands on his posterior and the coconut scent of her hair and her taste on his lips and all of it would soon sum up to a big problem.

"What?" she asked.

Severus huffed. "I have to focus."

"On what?"

He looked at her and raised an eyebrow. "On not instantly climaxing in my trousers like a bloody teenager, Hermione!" He said it in as dry a voice that she started giggling uncontrollably and slumped her head against his chest.

Severus couldn't stop himself from laughing, either, and Hermione reacted to the roaring bass in his chest with a wave of arousal and a soft moan. "Maybe we should … take off your trousers then?" she suggested innocently and pursed her lips.

"We should take off a lot more than that," he growled and started with her shirt. He pulled it up and Hermione raised her arms so he could remove it. He had just dropped it to the ground when she reached under his cloak again and found his belt loops. Severus stumbled forwards when she pulled him closer.

"So much better than potions," she mumbled.

Severus smirked. "You were the one refusing it the last time."

"Because it would have only been a means to an end."

"And what is it now?"

She looked at him seriously. "I hope it is more than that."

Severus swallowed. For a few fast heartbeats, he looked her straight in the eyes, then he nodded. "It is more."

"Good." Hermione pivoted with him and shoved him backwards, closer to her bed. She unbuttoned his cloak and tore it from his shoulders eagerly and while she was busy with his button-down shirt, he opened her bra and slipped out of his shoes. There was an impatience that wasn't his.

Wave after wave of soft arousal sloshed against Severus's mind. Suddenly Hermione's bed pressed into his knee pits and he sat down. Pulled her closer and kissed her flat stomach, her cleavage, her collarbones. His fingers danced across her spine and he pushed her emotions away as well as possible. A little bit of Occlumency, just enough so he could restrain himself without getting too dizzy. Then he focused on her and how desirable the deep blush on her cheeks made her, the enraptured gaze, the swollen lips, her moaning, her shuddering.

Hermione sat down on his lap, leaned his head back and drew her fingers through his hair. Her nails scratched across his scalp, goosebumps rippled down his back, and her weight on his lap, the pressure on his erection, drove him out of his mind for a moment. "Hermione, stop!" he squeezed out when she additionally kissed him, his neck and his earlobe, and when she sucked the very thing in her mouth and made something with it that rolled straight down into his groin.

She retreated. "I'm sorry," she breathed.

"No, you're not," he countered.

She smirked. "Right. I like to fluster you."

"I bet you do." He kissed her neck and her shoulder, her hair in his face, and found it less unnerving this way than finding it in every corner of his lab. It was tantalising and smelled like coconut and herbs and he inhaled deeply and reached around her back so Hermione's naked upper body pressed against his half-clad one. She radiated so much heat, so many new nuances of her smell he got even dizzier. And the sounds she made at his ear – not to mention what she did with her lips – pushed him towards a swirl of feelings promising too much to follow them now.

"Circe …" he mumbled and tore himself from this foreign reeling. "You have to block the connection a little, Hermione, or I won't last long."

She brushed his black hair from his face. "I don't want to risk that." A second later he felt the arousal subsiding and sighed with relief.

Hermione pulled at his shirt and struggled to get it down his arms. Severus helped her and threw it away before he stood. She made a content sound and fumbled with his trousers while he brushed her hair behind her shoulder, touched her softly, and heard her sigh. The sudden clattering of his belt was disturbingly loud and dragged them back to reality so brutally he grabbed the buckle and tore the leather from the loops to stop it. Shortly after Hermione managed to open the five buttons ("Your next trousers will have a zip!" – "Over my dead body!") and was finally able to look at his naked body. And she did it so intently that he shuddered.

He watched her while her gaze travelled across his body. Over the scars stemming from his childhood, the dark hair on his chest, the line leading downwards. Her pulse raced as well as her breath. Then she looked him in the eyes and Severus didn't know what he saw in hers but it made him swallow. "Lie down," she said hoarsely.

"What are you up to?"

She shook her head, shoved him gently to the bed, and when he fell back, he hooked his fingers in her belt loops and dragged her with him. He wanted to kiss her but she leaned over his chest. Explored his skin with her lips, her tongue, her teeth. Suckled at his nipples, made him moan and fight for his self-restraint. Scooted further down and when her hair tickled his hard length Severus sat up abruptly. "Don't!"

Hermione looked up at him wide-eyed.

"Not today. Not now," he choked out.

She sighed. "The connection's a spoilsport."

"It is."

So Hermione stood up and let Severus open her trousers. He took it off together with her knickers. Her scent tickled his nostrils as she stood there. Warm and intense. With a growl, he dragged her onto the bed and now it was him exploring her body with his lips and his tongue and his teeth. Him suckling at her nipple and licking it slowly until Hermione curved her back and moaned deeply.

"Severus!" she gasped, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

He grunted into her belly and an echo of her shudder rippled through him as well. It wasn't much reaching him through the connection anymore, Hermione blocked it a bit, he did the same. But his voice seemed to arouse her so much that he still noticed it. A smug smile tugged on his lips. "I hope you use contraception?" he asked, mainly to tease her a little bit more while he tried to ignore his own arousal.

"Yes."

"Good," he said in a dark voice, kneeled down in front of the bed, and pulled Hermione across the mattress, down to him. She gasped for air when he kissed her inner thighs and bit by bit drew nearer to her most secret parts. She smelled so good he clenched his pelvic muscle to restrain himself at least to some extent. He licked her wet folds and slipped between them, gliding up to the nub above. While he circled it with his tongue he peered up to Hermione. Her back was still arched, her mouth open. Her legs twitched beside his head while she clawed her hands into the sheets. No sound escaped her mouth and still her pleasure and the sweet agony he brought her screamed at him.

"Sev-Severus," she whimpered and he laughed a rumbling bass. Her face was a little sweaty, she looked as if she had a fever.

"You are so beautiful," he murmured without noticing what he said. And when he noticed, he rose and kissed her before she could say anything.

But she could still do something - and she did. She reached between them, searched and found him (Severus groaned and bit her lip softly), and positioned him exactly where she apparently wanted him to be. "Do it!" she said and for the first time in her life, he did her the favour to comply with her command.

Severus closed his eyes when her heat surrounded him. His arms were shaking, his legs as well, he gasped. Even without sensing her arousal completely, it drove him almost beyond his self-restraint and when he was fully buried in her he stopped. He felt Hermione's breath on his face and when he placed his hand on her neck he sensed her racing pulse underneath his fingertips.

"Okay …" he eventually mumbled under his breath. But she nodded, then she smiled and grabbed his face, his hair, and finally his head to draw him nearer.

Severus's hands dug deep into the mattress to support himself beside her head while he withdrew a bit and glided back into her again. The movements made him growl unconsciously, then moan, and finally exhale slowly. Bit by bit he steadied his rhythm and the intense strain subsided a little.

Hermione's fingers brushed across his chest, through his black hair, over his shoulder, and to his neck. She softly scratched his skin, made him shudder and quiver, while she trembled and moaned under him. She closed her legs around his hips and supported his movements.

Severus straightened up and grabbed her hips, adjusting the angle at which he glided into her. And then he found the spot in her he was looking for. The spot that made her whimper and bit her lip – a complete waste in his eyes because he could do it so much better. Her eyelids flickered while she uttered sounds that originally maybe should have become words. Perhaps "Yes!" and "More!" and his name. Again and again his name and Severus had never thought he could ever savour hearing anybody calling him by his hated name so much.

What finally tore him from his thoughts was the first fluttering of her inner muscles around him. It drew his attention back to his own arousal that he had been so successful to ignore while he'd been immersed in the sight of her, almost lost like a rowing boat on a stormy sea. His thrusts got more vigorous and the sounds he couldn't stop from escaping his mouth more guttural. The tightness in his groin was growing and he leaned down to Hermione and growled, "Stop using Occlumency." She did and he did and the force of their combined arousal overwhelmed him so fervently that he almost blacked out.

Severus stiffened above Hermione, wasn't able to think, and experienced several seconds of total sensory overload before his body gave in. His balls tightened and the climax thundered through his whole body as he'd never experienced it before. He didn't know whether he cried or remained silent, whether he moved or paused. He even forgot his name and how he had got into this. He only knew that it was good and that he would do anything for it to last.

But of course, it didn't. After a few sweet seconds, sounds, colours, scents and especially exhaustion came back to him and he forced his body to collapse beside Hermione and not on her. Breathing heavily he rolled onto his back and listened to the swooshing in his ears with closed eyes.

After a few moments, Hermione placed her lean arm on his chest and he grasped it, oddly intimately, and drew it nearer. "How did it feel?" she asked and Severus smirked when he blinked and looked at her.

"Still nosy," he declared.

"Always."

He took a moment and then said, "Twenty years later and it would have been the sweetest death life can offer you."

Hermione stared at him for some heartbeats before she started giggling. "What an irony," she wheezed and when he thought about how he had come to experience an orgasm like this he had to agree.

Severus jolted from his sleep. Adrenaline rushed through his body, his heart thumped heavily. He needed some seconds until he was able to reorientate. He was in his bedroom. Just a dream.

But he hadn't dreamt. At least he didn't remember any dreams.

A sound beside him cleared the last bits of confusion sleep had left him with. Right, Hermione was sleeping at his. For the first time. They'd forgotten time earlier in the lab. And again afterwards. They had just fallen asleep.

He grabbed his wand and ignited a candle on his nightstand. Warm light flickered on the walls before the flame steadied. He turned his back on the candle and looked at Hermione. Her eyes moved rapidly behind her closed lids, she breathed frantically. Severus put his hand on her cheek and stroked her soft skin with his thumb. After a few seconds, she gasped for air and tore her eyes open. "It's just me," he said in a dark voice and even if she wasn't able to distinguish between dream and reality yet, her body reacted to it. He snorted softly. "How have you ever been able to focus in class when you were still a student?"

Hermione obviously had difficulties understanding what he was talking about. She rubbed her eyes, exhaling slowly. But to his amazement, she still answered his question after a while. "You talk differently when you're teaching."

"Do I?"

She nodded. "You know, with more revulsion and displeasure." She wrinkled her nose. "Did I talk in my sleep?" she asked then.

"No. Your fear woke me up."

She sighed heavily, drew her hands over her face.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he forced himself to ask when leaden waves of emotions sloshed against his mind.

"No."

Severus lifted his arm and Hermione scooted over, snuggled against him.

"I'm sorry I woke you."

"Irrelevant."

She was silent for a while and when he thought she'd already fallen asleep again she asked, "Do you have a clue why the connection is still active? I can't think of another conflict we could resolve." She rubbed her nose against his bare chest.

Severus swallowed. He had a faint suspicion but something inside him was reluctant to talk about it.

"Severus?" Hermione looked up at him. In the dim candlelight, her eyes looked almost black.

Severus brushed her hair back and closed his eyes. "I'm not ready to let it go."

She moved away a bit. Obviously, that hadn't been the answer she had expected for she sounded very astonished when she asked, "Why not?"

He rolled to his back. Now it was him drawing his hands over his face as if he had just awakened from a nightmare. The heavy feeling in his head and the itchy eyes fit. Hermione however seemed to be wide awake by now. She propped herself up on her elbow when he blinked. "Because I'm not … good. With all of this."

"All of this?"

"You and me," he growled. "Relationships. Emotions."

"Oh."

He hummed and looked up at the canopy. "If I sense what you feel -" He broke off but his mind added the rest of the sentence: … then it maybe takes a little bit longer until I scare you away.

Hermione reached out and caressed his face and the stubble of his growing beard. Forced him to look at her. "No matter whether we are connected like this or not: I will get it through your head what I'm feeling, Severus Snape." A smile played around her lips.

"You really believe love will conquer everything, don't you?" he asked and sounded a little more derogatory than he'd meant to.

She sighed. "Not everything, no. But it is a good foundation. Talks and honesty can conquer a lot, though." She looked at him. "I don't expect you to always know how I'm feeling and that you always have the right words or do the right things. You haven't been able to before all of this and I still fell in love with you. You and I, that will be a challenge. But as long as we both want it we will make it work."

"And what if we fail?"

Hermione smiled slyly. "Then we will borrow the recipe of this potion from Professor Dumbledore and create a new connection to resolve our conflicts until we succeed. And then maybe … on equal ground."

Severus raised an eyebrow. "You want to sense my emotions?"

"Sure, why not?"

He swallowed, only answering silently. Because they were dark and full of bottomless pits, not even he dared to look in. Because she was the only light he had found in the last twenty-seven years. Not even he wanted to sense his emotions.

Hermione leaned closer and kissed him, very gently. Sighed. "I'm not afraid of your emotions, Severus. Maybe that's the often criticised recklessness of Gryffindors -"

"Absolutely!"

"- but I know you love me and that means there's at least one good emotion in you. I will nourish and cherish it until it is bigger than everything else."

For long seconds he looked her in the eyes and now that she towered over him and he no longer shielded her from the candlelight they shimmered like honey. He wove his hand in her hair and pulled her down until he was able to kiss her. It felt so good for her and for him that he got a little dizzy and Hermione edged closer again, tried to touch him in as many spots as possible because for some inexplicable reason that felt good as well, and after Severus had extinguished the candle both of them let sleep drag them back.

Neither of them noticed the connection falling apart.

Only a small epilogue left, will be posting it soon!