With the roar of the fire, my heart rose to its feet,
Like the ashes of ash I saw rise in the heat,
Settle soft and as pure as snow,
I fell in love with the fire long ago.
With each love I cut loose, I was never the same,
Watching still living roots be consumed by the flame,
I was fixed on your hand of gold,
Laying waste to my lovin' long ago.
—Hozier, “Would That I”
Hermione Granger was twenty-seven years old, hanging half-in, half-out of the booth in her second-favourite pub, a glass of single-malt whiskey in front of her. The music was slightly too loud for her to pay close attention to the conversation around her, but she knew Ron was trying to be funny, and succeeding for once—that was uncharitable of her, Hermione inwardly chided herself. Ron was usually funny. She just couldn’t be bothered to focus on anything else except what she had done, how hideously, disastrously reckless she had been this afternoon.
Her leg bounced frantically under the table and it took every scrap of self-control not to gnaw on her fingers. Beneath the table, Ron’s hand found her furiously jogging leg. She stopped. He squeezed her thigh lightly, a silent message.
You’re being ridiculous.
And she was, of course, because objectively she hadn’t done anything criminally insane, nothing illegal, nothing even untoward. At least, not on the surface. What had she done, really? Give someone her contact information? Really, that was nothing. Insignificant. People exchanged phone numbers and emails every day. Christ, she even had business cards created for just that purpose, to give her contact information to people.
But it hadn’t been a business card, had it, Hermione, she thought, taking another sip of her whiskey, hoping the burn would calm her. (It didn’t.) It hadn’t been one of her impersonable, cheerful little cards, with her name embossed on the front in a sensible font. (Helvetica, her favourite.) And really, slipping a business card to a professor (former professor, she corrected herself,) was something students did all the time. Every day.
Her leg began to jog again. It hadn’t been a business card.
It had been a note, a scrap impulsively torn from a yellow legal pad, with her name hastily scribbled and her telephone number beneath. Then, as an afterthought, she had included her email. Her personal one—not her student email.
That was the untoward bit.
Well, not actually, because the truly untoward bit was when she had approached Professor Snape at the end of his book signing, breathless and moonstruck, and handed him the sweaty little scrap of paper with trembling hands. She had babbled something incoherent about his work and her studies and staying in touch, and then fled promptly before she could see the wry amusem*nt on his face. The look that was so familiar to her, the oh, aren’t you being obvious, little chit, face that he wore whenever his students were being especially stupid.
What’s the worst possible outcome, Hermione tried to think, letting her anxiety run wild for a minute. (She gave herself exactly one minute to be ridiculous. One minute. Then she’d stop.) The worst case scenario was that he didn’t contact her, and then really, was that the worst outcome? She had absolutely no reason to see him again, not after she’d completed her doctorate.
She hadn’t spoken to him in four long months after she graduated, and had sought out his book signing with the specific intention of instigating contact with him. And if he didn’t contact her, what would happen? Nothing, stupid girl, absolutely nothing. She’d go back to her regular life and her regular job with her regular boyfriend and absolutely nothing would change.
Hermione snapped back to reality after exactly sixty seconds of catatonic anxiety, at the same moment that Ron finished the punchline of an apparently very funny joke, because Harry had to stop and roar with laughter. She joined in hastily, laughing at whatever Ron had just said, pretending as though she were paying attention, and then stopped abruptly when she felt the mobile in her pocket vibrate.
It could be nothing. It could be a message from a coworker. Or an e-mail from her boss, Kingsley Shacklebolt, asking her to come in early tomorrow. It could be a push notification for some tragedy that had happened elsewhere in the world.
(Or, she thought daringly, breathlessly, or, it could be a message. From him.)
Ginny wriggled away from Harry’s arm with a vaguely distasteful expression and promptly knocked over Luna’s wine.
“Ah, f*ck, sorry, Loon, I didn’t—” Ginny tried, looking far more intoxicated than Hermione had assumed she was. There was an ensuing scuffle to mop up the spilled wine, and Hermione moved on autopilot, wadding paper napkins and blotting the creeping spill before it dripped further onto the floor.
“You really ought to get this stain out before it sets,” Hermione heard herself saying, wondering why she was bothering at all, who cared about the stupid stain on Luna’s lumpy old top that was already falling apart.
She pushed out of the booth to let Luna and Ginny escape to the bathroom, and this seemed to be the cue for everyone to take a moment to breathe—Hermione sank back down onto the cracked vinyl booth, her eyes far away. In her peripheral vision, she saw Ron take his phone out of his pocket, using the momentary silence to scroll through his notifications.
It would be awkward to not follow suit, Hermione told herself. And leaving the phone in her pocket wouldn’t change what the notification was. If she delayed longer, her disappointment would only ferment when she eventually checked her messages and saw it wasn’t him. Anyway, how long ago had the book signing been? Six hours? Really, she couldn’t expect him to have rushed home to compose a message to her.
Or what if it was a text? The idea of texting Professor Snape was too indescribably bizarre, and then it would have verged firmly into the inappropriate territory. Ron would surely ask who had texted her. But an email from a professor (former professor, she corrected herself) she could reasonably play off as a merely academic inquiry or exercise.
Not that she wanted to hide this from Ron, she thought desperately, and glanced over at him. He was swiping through Instagram stories, pausing at Lavender Brown’s new photo. (On the beach somewhere, as always, how did that girl afford so many vacations?) But it wasn’t like they were even back together again. Not officially. They had stayed broken up for exactly two months after a truly stunning row, but as always they drifted back together.
It was just impossible to break up with your best friend, Hermione mused, knowing she was distracting herself from checking her mobile, choosing to mull and wad up paper straw wrappers instead. They couldn’t stay broken up because they couldn’t stop seeing each other—they had all the same friends, the same routine. She went to his house for the holidays. He had named her cat. How were you supposed to truly break up with someone like that?
By breaking up with them, she told herself unkindly, and knocked back the last of her whiskey. Stop being a coward, Granger. Check the damn phone.
She unlocked her phone, swiped down her notifications, and it suddenly felt like she had swallowed the sun.
Severus Snape <[emailprotected]>
Subject: Your Book Recommendation
Hermione stared at the e-mail subject for a solid five seconds, blinking rapidly, trying to remember what on earth he could be talking about. Had she recommended a book to him? She didn’t even remember, it had all been such a panicky blur.
Butterflies spun uncomfortably, deliciously, ridiculously in her abdomen as she opened the message and began to read.
Severus Snape stared at the blinking cursor in the blank email, silently willing words to magically appear on the screen in front of him. This was idiotic. Really. He closed the e-mail and stalked away from his laptop, arms folded across his chest, pacing. Sulking, really. It wasn’t as though this were an especially out-of-the-ordinary e-mail that he needed to write. He corresponded with students every day. These conversations were usually limited to scathing reminders to complete assignments and attach class withdrawal forms, which made him slightly out of practice when it came to genuine collegiate interaction.
Was it a collegiate interaction? He lit a cigarette, hating himself while doing so. He hated himself while he did anything.
It wasn’t as though this was the first student he’d had who wanted to stay in touch after graduation. It happened at least once every few years. A student—usually a young man with a similar wedge on his shoulder—would latch onto him during the commencement ceremonies, pump his hand a few times, and say how much he enjoyed Professor Snape’s class. And then they would leave, and that would be that. Vague promises to keep in touch were few and far between, but not unheard of.
After all, he did not cultivate a reputation of being a thoughtful or considerate professor. He knew chemistry, he was a superb scientist, and he held his classes to an extraordinarily high standard. Those who passed his classes would leave with a better understanding of science and the world around them. Those who didn’t…
Well. Most people didn’t pass his classes.
That was why this correspondence was so unsettling to him, he reassured himself. He’d never done something like this before.
Granger, Hermione J. had been unusual in many respects. She was an outstanding student; also, an irksome chatterbox. Someone who not only understood the material, but would then use the classroom lectures as jumping-off points for extremely dense, theoretical questions, which she would hang around after class to ask him. More than once, she had followed him to his office, and then the two of them had lingered outside his door while he brusquely answered her ridiculous suppositions and questions that felt more like interrogations.
Made all the more maddening, Granger wasn’t even a chemistry student. She wasn’t even a sciences student—she had started as an international relations major, then changed to history, with a minor in literature and another minor in mathematics. Her interest in chemistry and biology was purely theoretical. She took his course for fun.
No, not for fun, he corrected himself, and sat back down at his laptop to write. For a challenge. He had tried to convince her to change at least her minor to chemistry; or rather, he had unobtrusively left a program of study request form on the back of a graded exam, but she ignored it.
Hunched over his laptop, he began a burst of machine-gun fire typing.
Dear Hermione,
It was good to see you this afternoon
No, no, absolutely not. He erased the message in its entirety, and lit another cigarette.
It had been good to see her. This he was able to admit, at least in the silence of his own flat, morose as he was. He glanced at the worn little scrap of paper she had pressed into his hand, a whirl of excitement and chatter and curly brown hair.
Despite his prickliness towards her during her undergraduate studies, they had developed a very strange, unlikely sort of bond during her graduate program. Someone more personably inclined might have called it a friendship. It was more of a…semi-regular, not-unpleasant series of interactions. Her advisor, Professor Vector, the one supervising her graduate work, had an office down the hall from Snape. Hermione frequently made copies in the staff copy centre, and she took her work as a teaching assistant very seriously—he often found her in the break room, grading exams or editing essays, a pencil stuck in her bramble of curls.
It just so happened that both Hermione and himself were creatures of strict habit and routine, and during one semester, their schedules happened to align quite nicely. Both would get tea at around the same time in the afternoon. And without the constraints of the classroom, he begrudgingly came to discover that Miss Granger was, in fact, rather good company—at least in the sense that she was a voracious reader, and the two would frequently drink their tea together in silence.
After her graduation, he had sunk into a wretchedly foul mood for reasons he did not want to examine. Snape was a reclusive man on the best of days, and without Miss Granger’s warm and amiable presence, he found his weekly afternoons strangely empty. But he had resigned himself to his fate. That was how academia worked, especially for students like her. They never stayed in one place long, off to the next institution, the next thesis, the next book. And after all, who would want to prolong their time with him? The cruel, derisive professor, whose online ratings never got above a 1.7?
So seeing her at his book signing had been a shock, to say the least. He had convinced himself he would never see her again, except perhaps in a footnote or listed next to an et al.
She had bound up to him, as was her custom, all infectious energy and smile. He signed her book.
“I’m so glad to see you again,” she had said, with such obvious affection that it made his heart squeeze painfully. “Here, let me just—”
She had torn off a scrap of paper, busily chatting, but he could hardly focus on what she was saying, staring stupidly at the information in front of him. Her phone number? And an e-mail address? What was her game here, what did she want?
“I thought your book was excellent, just excellent, it reminded me of Tuxpin—Tuspin? Whatever his name is, it might be Tuckspin, Edward Tuckspin, I didn’t see it referenced in your citations but I thought he would compliment your work beautifully.”
At that, she stopped her incessant chatter, and blinked a few times, as though she had gotten wildly off topic.
“Yes, well—” Severus began, but she was off again.
“Anyway, it was so wonderful to see you again! I hope we stay in touch!”
And then she was gone.
Severus took a long drag from his cigarette and stared at the empty inbox. He didn’t have to reach out to her. He could let the little scrap of paper moulder away on his desk until it was completely forgotten.
She obviously wasn’t romantically interested in him—perish the thought. Young, bright women with clear brown eyes and wide, effortless smiles didn’t want him, a spiky, cruel older man. Everything about him was ugly. Unflattering. He had never tried to be anything else.
No, she was clearly only interested in an academic relationship, the kind one might have with a colleague. He would have preferred to wait until she contacted him, but that was out of the question. She didn’t have his personal email address, only his academic one.
Raising the question: why did she give him her personal email address, if there weren’t some vague suggestion behind the gesture? She could easily look him up in the Hogwarts directory. He was even on the website, the address posted next to a terribly unhandsome photo of himself, that he absolutely did not occasionally get drunk and stare at malevolently.
That is, unless she intended to discuss things that were inappropriate for university e-mail servers.
She was in some kind of relationship, that much he knew. Some boorish, dimwitted fellow with freckles and red hair who had failed his class miserably, and then decided to take geology instead to fill his scientific elective requirement. Surely she didn’t mean this gesture as anything other than a friendly one.
But what if…?
He would try. Just to see. Subtly test the waters, prod her intentions.
Hermione,
Thank you for attending that dreadful signing this afternoon. Your presence made the event marginally tolerable.
Tuspin does not feature in my work, I find his theories inane and poorly-researched, and I have no desire to keep company with such idiocy, as it would call my own work into question. Keep that in mind as you move forward in academia.
If Tuspin’s style is intriguing, try reading Lovelin-Barrs instead. I find her work slightly less atrocious. I have a copy of her latest book if you would like, provided it’s returned in the same condition.
-Severus
He leaned back and took a last long drag of his cigarette, before pressing send and finally exhaling.
Hermione read the email four times before Ginny and Luna came back to the table, holding hands and giggling drunkenly about something. She read it another three times in the Uber home, chewing her fingernails anxiously and poring over every insignificant detail.
He called her Hermione. Not Miss Granger, as was his custom. There wasn’t a valediction at the end of the e-mail, no love or cheers or sincerely, but he wasn’t Professor Snape any longer. It appeared he had taken a small, but significant, step towards interacting with her as an actual human being. Severus. A name instead of a title.
Any concern she might have had over whether or not her technically-boyfriend read the email began easing the longer she stared at what he had written. To anyone unfamiliar with him, it would sound terse. Abrupt. Even a bit rude in places (marginally tolerable, indeed). But this was easily the longest written correspondence she’d ever had with him. Before now, he had sent single-line responses to her emails, no matter how lengthy hers were, and now he’d even offered up one of his books from his personal collection. This, combined with the use of both of their first names, could almost be flirtatious.
No, that was too far of a stretch. Hermione read it again as she unlocked the door to her flat and continued rereading the less-than-one-hundred-word email while she began undressing and getting ready for bed. It could also be read as a curt professor keeping a professional distance between himself and a former student, especially considering the bit about keeping his advice in mind as she moved forward in academia. That could be considered mentorly, almost.
Worse yet, maybe he did want to be friends, and had viewed their shared time together as a genuinely burgeoning friendship, but with no romantic intentions. Maybe he already had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. Hermione had really no way of knowing, they had never discussed anything explicitly romantic. How to ask about that in a demure way that kept their friendship (was it even a friendship?) intact?
This last option became more and more probable the longer Hermione thought about it. It wasn’t as though she were some great beauty—she didn’t like to think about her looks because she considered them wildly subpar, but if she would choose an adjective to describe herself it would be plain. Perhaps pretty, on days when her hair cooperated and she managed to add a little makeup. But never beautiful. Never gorgeous. Just pretty, on a good day.
Still mulling, Hermione sat down at her computer to respond, and reread the message one final time. She did the calculation quickly in her head and realised that—encouragingly—he had sent her an email a mere seven hours after receiving her contact information. Was it too much to hope that he thought of her often during those seven hours?
Dear Severus,
Hermione stopped, staring at the blinking cursor. Was that too forward?
Hi Severus,
No, that was even less right. Much too informal.
Severus,
I’m so glad to hear from you. I rather thought you only took my contact information to be polite.
No, no, absolutely not. She backspaced through the entire message, staring at the too-bright computer screen with a determined look on her face. Hermione cracked her knuckles quickly, one after the other, and then pulled her tumbleweed of hair behind her, securing it with a clip. It was time to get serious. It was 11:46pm, she could craft an appropriate email before midnight. Couldn’t she?
Severus,
It was so good to see you again this afternoon! I’ll happily come bother you at any future book signings you have, just let me know when.
It was 12:02am. Hermione stared at the two sentences she had written, hating every word. Why was this so difficult? She really just wanted to ask him out for coffee, that would make this so much easier, but that could be interpreted as overtly romantic, causing him to then create some excuse to fend her off. And then their correspondence would cease, because she had tipped her hand, and he would have no desire to lead her on once her intentions became clear.
Hermione bit off all her fingernails, tore two hangnails, and then tried again.
Severus,
I think you’re being too hard on Tuspin. His theories were much more groundbreaking in the era they were written, things have changed in the last forty-odd years. I daresay we wouldn’t have scholars like Lovelin-Barrs without him.
I haven’t read her new work though—mind if I stop by to borrow it sometime on Monday? It’d be nice to see the campus again. I rather miss the little staff room on the second floor, it was always a quiet spot to read.
I have your book on the shelf in my room. I’ll be sure to leave space next to it for your future work—I expect signed copies of those, too.
Yours,
Hermione
She sent it without reading it over, heart pounding, afraid she’d lose her nerve. It took her almost an hour to calm down enough so she could sleep, her mind racing with possibilities.
Hermione had always been an early riser, and no matter what time she went to bed the night before, she woke up at exactly six-thirty in the morning. She’d gotten a rousing four hours of sleep, and so, yawning massively, she shuffled into the kitchen to brew herself a cup of her favourite tea. (Don’t check your email.) Hermione loved her morning routine, and sleepy as she was, she indulged herself. (Don’t check your email.)
She used her favourite mug, a sturdy teal ceramic one that Luna had hand-thrown back in her pottery phase, and brewed herself a cup of strong, hot tea with a splash of milk. (Don’t check your email.) She popped two slices of wheat toast in her toaster oven, and then got out butter and jam so she could eat slowly in front of her computer, where she typically read the news until it was time to leave for work. (Don’t check your email.) Today, she would indulge and read the news until she felt suitably informed about the day, and then go read on the couch.
(Don’t check your email.)
Sitting down at her computer, toast and tea in hand, she checked her email.
Severus Snape <[emailprotected]>
Subject: Re: Your Book Recommendation
He had sent the email at 3:22am. Had he been waiting for her to respond? No, stupid, shut up, he absolutely didn’t. Maybe he was an insomniac. Whatever the reason, it was still incredibly fast—she was more accustomed to the academic world, where an email took at least seventy-two business hours to garner a reply.
She swallowed her hot tea too fast, and with a burnt mouth, she opened the e-mail and began to read.
Hermione,
Plenty of scholars of the past forty years have managed to stay relevant and have theories that are still intact. Tuspin is not one of them. I’ll be sure to pass along your compliments the next time I see him at a conference, provided he hasn’t died yet.
I am in the lab nearly all-day Monday. My office is unlocked, I assume you remember where it is. I’ll leave the book aside for you.
-Severus
P.S. The second floor staff room has been sorely underutilised since your departure.
Hermione wanted to scream in triumph. She settled for taking an enormous bite of her buttery toast, tearing the crust with aplomb. The message was even shorter than the last, and its tone even more terse and unflinching, but the postscript told a different story. At least, she hoped it did.
The two of them had taken tea in that same staff room at least two or three times a week together, either chatting lightly or working in silence. She had cherished those little interactions. Did he mean to tell her that since she’d left, he’d stopped going? Had he only been drinking tea in the break room because she had been there? Surely that had to be it. Why else would he have written that?
To make conversation, perhaps, but even so, he was trying to make conversation with her. She wanted to be bolder, write back immediately with some coy line about how she should start coming back to campus more often, or they could perhaps take their tea together somewhere else. But she couldn’t do that. One, because he doubtlessly was, at best, only moderately interested in her—and two, because she was sort-of-technically still dating someone else.
Her heart plummeted, and she felt a familiar swell of guilt when she thought about Ron. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him, of course she loved him, they’d known each other for so long now. But she’d never gotten this excited about their relationship before. Even if Snape wasn’t interested (which he wasn’t, she told herself firmly), she knew that staying with Ron wasn’t an option.
Impulsively, she texted Ginny.
hermione_of_troy: what if
hermione_of_troy: i broke up with your brother
No response. Of course not, it was the weekend, Ginny was probably having a lie-in. Or she had practice. Or she was tired of playing relationship counsellor between her brother and his on-again, off-again girlfriend.
By the time she had read the front few pages of her multiple news subscriptions and started on a second round of tea and toast (this time with clotted cream), Ginny had texted back.
gin&tonic: do it xx
hermione_of_troy: no but actually
gin&tonic: actually do it
Ginny was always telling people to break up—it was like a sport for her. Hermione wondered if the little redhead was secretly competitive, and wanted her and Harry to be the last couple standing. They were always the perfect couple, never fighting, no jealousies or anxieties, just the two of them playing football and being mates.
Now why couldn’t she have a relationship like that? An easy one. A simple one. The kind of love full of tea and books and quiet spots to read, of knowing how someone else liked their eggs. A quiet familiarity. As long as she had known Ron, he couldn’t tell her how she liked her eggs. Or what book she was reading. He loved her, she never doubted that, he loved her so much, but he didn’t know her. Or didn’t bother to know.
She texted Ron.
hermione_of_troy: do you have time to get coffee today?
hermione_of_troy: i want to have a chat about something
Hermione bit her lip, and then added:
hermione_of_troy: nothing urgent xx
When Ron’s typing bubble popped up, she tensed her shoulders unexpectedly. They’d done this before, hadn’t they? At least three times.
kingweasley01: breaking up with me again eh
Her jaw dropped.
She started to type, and then stopped. Tried again. Stopped. After a few more seconds of frantic short-circuiting, she decided it was just easier to call him.
He picked up on the first ring. “Hi,” he said, sounding so familiar and so kind and yet very far away.
“Hi,” she said, and her voice cracked. Something stung viciously behind her eyes.
“We’re doing this again?” he asked, trying to be light.
“I think so, yeah,” she whispered. It was suddenly very hard to swallow.
He sighed. She knew that sound so well—it was the same sigh he made whenever he missed a goal during football practice. A frequent, familiar frustration. “We can’t keep doing this, Hermione.”
“I know,” she said, her voice thick. “I think we ought to make it real this time. Really. Actually, I mean.”
“Really, actually?” he teased. God, she liked it when he made fun of her a little, a quick jest between friends. Why was this so hard? She knew she didn’t want to be with him. They’d done this before.
(So why did it hurt now, all of a sudden?)
“Really, actually,” she said. “I think I—” She stopped.
“Met someone?” Ron finished. There was bitterness there, trying to hide.
She gnawed at her thumbnail for a moment. “Not really,” she said (and that was true, she reminded herself). “I just…I think we both—”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, cutting her off, and then sighed again. There was a long moment of silence. Hermione felt something cold drip down her cheek. “Luna said something funny the other day.”
“Sounds right,” Hermione said. Her cracked little laugh sounded closer to a sob on the exhale.
“She said that relationships,” Ron paused, thinking, “relationships ought to be easy. Shouldn’t be hard to love someone.”
Tears really did threaten just then, stinging like nettles behind her lids, and Hermione did sob out a little laugh this time. She was quickly losing the battle to stay calm. “I’m never going to be easy, Ron,” she told him.
“Yeah,” he said, disappointed, understanding. “I know.”
“I’m sorry,” Hermione said. She put her phone down on the desk so she could press her fingers into her eyes, willing away tears. “I’m sorry, Ron, you deserve someone easy.”
“Never asked for easy,” Ron said, almost under his breath. “I just asked for you.”
The dam broke. Hermione cried. Ron was quiet. Part of her was so frustrated, trapped in this circle—how often had they done this? Been on the phone, one of them crying, the other patient and exhausted? They could never sync up. Something about them was perpetually off-kilter. Like a bicycle rolling along with a flat tire.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, stupidly not knowing what else to say. (Stupid girl, Granger.) “I’m sorry, Ron.”
“It’s all right, ‘Mione,” Ron said, but it didn’t sound all right, it sounded like he was dead tired. “Promise me something, though, yeah?”
She wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands and sniffled. “Anything.”
“Don’t take Harry in the break-up,” he said, very solemnly.
The way he said it tickled her, and she laughed. Ron could always make her laugh. “I’d never take Harry,” she promised, “he’s your best mate, anyway. He’d never go with me.”
“Listen, you’ve already got Gin,” Ron reminded her, “Pretty sure she’d choose anyone over me.”
“Not Draco Malfoy,” Hermione said, teasing.
“I dunno, the bloke’s pretty gorgeous,” Ron matched her levity effortlessly. “And I did finish off the last of her crisps when I was at her flat.”
“Oh, then she’ll definitely be on my side,” Hermione said, “Forever, probably.”
“Probably,” Ron agreed, and they lapsed into silence again. Hermione sniffled and tried to clear her throat, but the lump there remained. “I’ve got some of your stuff at my place still,” Ron added.
Little remnants of the very short period where they had lived together. (Less than a week—the fight had been horrendous.) She picked up the phone again, cradling it with both hands. “That’s okay. I’ll come pick it up sometime soon.”
“I’ll set stuff aside,” he said gently. “Still going to the Leaky this Friday?”
She looked at her own reflection in the dark screen of her mobile phone, and smiled at herself. The tears on her cheeks were already drying, but her throat still hurt. “Always.”
“All right. Later, then, ‘Mione.”
Love you, she thought, but did not say. “Later, Ron.”
Severus tried to imagine Hermione alone in the quiet sanctitude of his office. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t been in his office—even now, it didn’t take much imagination to remember how she looked, arms full of books and papers, taking a momentary reprieve on one of the chairs next to his door.
But she’d never been in his office without him being there, and he was uncharacteristically nervous. He thought it would come across as too forward, extending an open-office policy to the one swot most likely to abuse the privilege. But her response—f*ck, her response—had been enough to reassure him that what Miss Granger was looking for was not entirely platonic, and that his nudge about her intentions had been interpreted correctly.
He pulled on his lab coat and left his office behind, heading straight for the lab, where a class of nervous freshmen awaited him. He left his office unlocked, knowing that when he came back, the book he had left conspicuously on the desk would be gone.
Even without his mobile in hand, he knew what her email had said. He’d read it so many times on Sunday that he was almost certain he’d committed it to memory; after replying to her email mere hours after she had sent hers, he was sulky to then in-turn wait nearly an entire day before hearing a response. But the wait had been worth it. She had been uncharacteristically forthcoming—presumptuous, even.
Hermione Granger <[emailprotected]>
Subject: Re: RE: Your Book RecommendationSeverus,
So sorry for not getting back to you sooner, I had more errands to run this weekend than I previously anticipated. It’s a shame the break room isn’t getting used more, that was my favourite place on campus to read. It was the only place where I had both tea and good company.
I’ll stop by your office on Monday after work, maybe I’ll see you! I’ll be sure to bring it back as soon as I’m done. What luck, finding my own personal library.
If I’m ever able to lend you one of my books, just ask. I have quite a collection, and I’d like to return the favour.
Yours,
Hermione
They were quickly veering into dangerous territory, Severus mused as he stalked around his classroom. Obviously, he couldn’t pursue anything romantic with her. She was a former student. And, worse yet, it might be getting ahead of himself—Granger was always such a source of boundless optimism and energy, it could be that she was treating him the way she treated all her friends.
His mouth twisted sourly at the thought. Friends. It wasn’t as though he had much experience in that area.
Oh, there were a few colleagues he tolerated, even one or two he respected, and there were a handful of old school mates he had sporadic contact with over the years. But in his daily routine, his average life, he was alone. Purposefully alone, for that matter. It was easier to not try. Why would he? He was easily irritated by other people, and had carved out a perfectly routine, ordinary life for himself. He wanted for nothing.
And yet he couldn’t stop thinking about Hermione, alone in his office.
She was intelligent, that was certain. Beautiful. Much too beautiful. And perhaps coyly, cautiously interested in a friendship of sorts, at the very least. But as he was not in the business of bedding former students (or really bedding anyone, it had been at least two years since he’d last had a partner) he must put her out of his mind. He had no time for frivolities, least of all the feminine persuasion. They were distractions.
He purposefully stayed late in the lab, wiping counters, fastidiously counting pipettes, killing time. When it became obvious that his laboratory was sparklingly clean and its inventory exhaustively catalogued, Severus went back across campus. He knew that the book would be gone.
When he opened the door to his office, he was quite surprised to see a book still sitting on his desk. Not the Lovelin-Barr one, though, this was a slimmer tome that had been selected off his shelf. As soon as he closed the door behind him, he knew.
It was Bright Star, one of Keats most famous works. A book of romantic poetry, left tantalisingly on his desk, with another note left on top of it.
Can I borrow this one next? - HG
Severus plucked the note from the book and examined it. His tongue slowly travelled from the inside of his cheek to his lower lip as he studied the neat, girlish script. This was the most obvious signal yet, a gauntlet thrown down on his desk, an obvious challenge. She had been in his space, alone, perusing the books on his shelves, and then carefully selected the most romantic one in the collection. And she had to know its contents, otherwise it wouldn’t have been chosen.
Stunned, he sat down in his desk chair, and scrubbed his face with his hands. f*ck. f*ck. He had to put a stop to this, obviously, no matter how many signals she threw his way. There was always a veneer of plausible deniability over it, but he had been her instructor. Nine years ago, granted, but the premise remained. He might be an unpleasant person, but he liked to think that he was, at his core, a good man. Good men didn’t pursue relationships with their former students, not even lovely, slim-hipped ones with vibrant brown eyes and a nose that crinkled when she laughed.
He had resigned to crumple the note and throw it away when his e-mail inbox chirped at him.
Hermione Granger <[emailprotected]>
Subject: Proof
Inside the e-mail was simply a picture of Lovelin-Barr’s citations. E. Tuspin was cited not once, but twice. He stared at the photograph—he could see two of her fingers pressed against the spine of the book, holding it open as she snapped the photo. Her nails were bitten, cuticles red, clear varnish chipping away. He already knew she was a nailbiter, knew she was an anxious student, but there was something about the picture, the way she had obviously taken it without expecting him to study her fingernails closely. The way she spread the book open, pinning it in place.
It was the first thing she’d done upon reading the book—immediately wanting to prove him wrong.
Severus swallowed hard, feeling heat pool in his groin. Had he really sunk this far? Was he so desperate for company or attention of any sort that a single picture of a reference page was enough to arouse him?
It wasn’t just the reference page, it was the whole bloody game of it. The subtleties back and forth. The vaguely coded messages, the hesitant suggestion that yes, she enjoyed his company, and damn it all, if he didn’t enjoy hers. Testing the ice, to see if it would bear their weight.
He sat down to write an email.
Hermione had been heartbroken often enough that she had developed a routine for it. (Because of course she did.) The first time she and Ron had broken up, it sent her into a messy downward spiral that had involved a lot of takeaway and dishes that did not get washed for a solid month—she’d cried and thrown things and tried to bleach her own hair. Her curls were still recovering from it. For her own mental health (and the safety of her curl pattern) she developed Hermione’s Failsafe Heartbreak Plan to Make Bad Feelings Go Away.
First: call out of work for two days. That’s all she needed. Forty-eight hours and then she’d be good as new. Her boss, Kingsley Shacklebolt, was thankfully an accommodating man who didn’t mind if his best research assistant took a two day vacation once every six months or so.
Second: go grocery shopping. Ensure that she would have everything she needed for the next two days, so she wouldn’t have to venture out of the house. Junk food, tea, pads, anything she needed to replace.
Three (and this was the most important step): wallow.
Wallowing always meant a lot of pyjamas and baths and consuming fiction of some kind, getting lost in stories on either the television or in her books. Books usually won out, as she didn’t have the attention span to sit and watch something usually; plus, Hermione had a habit of wandering around her flat, and the television couldn’t exactly follow her, but books were extremely portable. By keeping her brain distracted for forty-eight straight hours, when she finally went back to her usual routine, whatever she had been trying to get over would be gone. Vanished. There would always be too much work to accomplish, things that had been left undone in her absence, and if there was anything Hermione was good at, it was distracting herself with work.
She’d gone to therapy while at Hogwarts University, attending for a good six months of her senior year, when her life was falling apart and she was trying to finish multiple degrees at the same time.
“Do you ever think,” her therapist had asked, “that taking forty-eight hours to repress your feelings isn’t healthy?”
“No,” Hermione had answered blithely, and they had discussed it no further. (He hadn’t been a very good therapist.)
But it did occur to her then, as she packed away Ron’s football gear and took down the photos of them, that perhaps forty-eight hours wasn’t long enough to get over a man she had dated for approximately six years. Even if, during the whole six years, neither had been wholly convinced their relationship was a good one. Even if, Hermione thought bitterly to herself while she drank her whiskey, even if during those six years, he hadn’t made her come once.
That’s not Ron’s fault, she told herself miserably. It was her own. There was something wrong with her, something wrong with her body. Well, her brain, more like it. She could get herself off easy enough, but once a partner was added to the mix, her brain went into spasms and she couldn’t stop fixating on tiny details; how she looked, how she smelled, how she sounded, where to put her hands. It was like everyone else had gotten some kind of instruction manual during puberty, and hers had gotten lost in the post. Or rather, she’d gotten one, but it was in a language she couldn’t read.
And, like anything that Hermione didn’t immediately show an aptitude for, she ignored it and decided it was an overrated load of tosh.
Sitting cross-legged on her kitchen floor, a mug of whiskey in one hand and the other in a bag of crisps, Pride and Prejudice balanced in her lap, she almost missed the chirp of her email notification.
As soon as she realised what it was, she scrambled to her feet, tossing aside the crisps and practically vaulting over her sofa to reach the desk. Her (all things considered) extremely daring email and note she had left for Professor Snape had been adding to the anxiety she was trying to repress.
She hastily wiped the grease from her hand and clicked open her e-mail.
Severus Snape <[emailprotected]>
Subject: Re: ProofI’m deducting ten points off your final grade for sheer cheek, Miss Granger.
-Severus
Attached was a picture. Her mouth went dry at the thumbnail, and she clicked it open.
Hermione knew right away it was his copy of Bright Star that she had left on his desk. She had been surprised at the amount of literature and poetry that adorned his shelves, considering he was such a staunch chemist; she assumed he would consider such things frivolous distractions. He had certainly seemed judgmental enough of her decision to minor in literature instead of biology or a similar science.
The picture was simple enough. Just him holding open Bright Star to the first page. There was a stamp of red ink there that said PROPERTY OF SEVERUS SNAPE. Her copy of Lovelin-Barr’s new book had the same identifier. However, he had added beneath it in pencil: not for personal loan.
But that wasn’t what caught her eye. It was his hands, the way he held the book splayed in front of him. Long, elegant fingers, like a pianist or an artist, holding the pages apart, drawing attention to the lurid red stamp on the inside cover. Clean fingernails. Pale, somewhat rough looking hands. She covered her mouth with her hand and scrolled down a little, wanting to commit every pixel to memory.
Did this count as p*rn? It might as well have. Shut up, Granger, stupid, stupid, shut up, it was a playful mimic of the photo she had already sent him. Still, he had to know what he was doing. Severus Snape didn’t do anything without purpose. Was this actually happening? He had to know what this kind of photo would suggest—his hand pressing against the soft yellow-white of the page, first two fingers spread into almost a V. Property of Severus Snape, indeed.
He’d responded to her thrown gauntlet—well, more of a dainty glove. He’d responded with a battering ram.
Hermione downed the rest of her whiskey, then hit reply.
Hermione Granger <[emailprotected]>
Subject: Re: RE: ProofSeverus,
A ten point deduction means I’m still sitting at an A-, an easily rectified grade if I put in a little work.
Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to convince you to let me borrow your book? No opportunities for extra credit?
Yours,
Hermione
This was openly flirting, now. There wasn’t any disguising it. Hermione tipped her mug back, draining the last few drops of whiskey out of it, and then it occurred to her that she had responded to his email entirely too quickly. It would show that she was just sitting around waiting for him to respond, like she had nothing better to do. God. He must think she was gagging for it. (She was, sort of. She was certainly being very obvious.)
Hermione groaned aloud and then shuffled back towards the kitchen, resigning to pour herself another glass of whiskey. It was warming her belly and sending a cloud of pleasant haze to her brain. She couldn’t stop thinking about his hands, holding books, holding her open like that.
Christ. She’d need to make a date with her vibrator later.
She began pouring herself another dollop of whiskey into her mug, but the sound of her email notification startled her so badly that it glugged onto the counter. “sh*t,” she hissed, reaching for a dishtowel and hastily sopping it up. She abandoned the effort and practically sprinted back to her laptop.
Severus Snape <[emailprotected]>
Subject: Re: Re: RE: ProofHermione,
Further cheek, assuming your grade is already at 100.
I might be convinced over a cup of tea, if you’re amenable. Be warned, however, that I loan books of this nature out very rarely.
-Severus
He had sent it three minutes after her reply. Good lord, were they both sitting around at their computers, waiting for the other to reply? (Was he also gagging for it?) She covered her mouth again and stared at the screen, feeling familiar little sparks travel up her spine, as iridescent and floaty as champagne bubbles. Was she really doing this? She was. She actually was. This was ridiculous.
Now that she had a near-ironclad confirmation that he was interested, she had to pause. What did he expect out of all this? Did he just make a habit of bedding flirtatious students? Surely not, the man was so principled and prickly and even rather dour; had a former student even been interested?
Well, obviously someone must have been in the past, she couldn’t be the only one who appreciated the brooding mystery of an intelligent man with long hair and striking features. Certainly she had developed crushes on far more theoretical concepts. (Fictional characters and historical figures, for example.)
There was only one thing to do: meet with him and find out.
Severus was in a foul mood.
He had arrived much too early to their decided-upon location, a truly reprehensible establishment called Madame Puddifoots, which seemed to own stock in lace doilies and squashy armchairs. Partly because he had never been there before, and partly because he had woken up that morning with a peculiar lightness in his chest. An absence of something. He wasn’t young or naive enough to call it hope, but it was something nonetheless, and upon recognizing the feeling, he became immediately ensconced in one of his trademark bad tempers.
The stupid girl must be looking to fulfill some failing student fantasy, exercising her youth and her beauty to snag the unattainable. Turn him into some sort of misguided conquest, something she could titter about with friends afterwards. Make no mistake about it, he knew she was looking for a check off her sexual bucket list, to be the daring one among her friend group.
But women didn’t seek him out for that kind of encounter, they looked for Professor Firenze, the sandy-haired little poet who trotted around campus with a dreamy look in his eye. Perhaps she’d already tried Firenze and been shot down; his tastes didn’t run towards the fairer sex, at any rate.
Severus sank into one of the overstuffed velvet armchairs and tried to quell his rising hackles. He had very angrily and bitterly showered and changed and used that stupid aftershave, which had been a present last Christmas from McGonagall. And why? So some twenty-something girl could bat her eyelashes demurely and quote poetry at him? Because some stupid, miserable part of him hoped that, for at least a minute or two, someone could pretend like he wasn’t awful company?
No, more likely this was all some elaborate jape. She would never show, leaving him here in this humiliatingly pink cafe, sitting and waiting for her like a dog told to heel. She might even take photographs and send it to her little friends with some sort of correspondingly evil message about his nose or his hair or his age.
The bell over the door tinkled and he hated how quickly he looked up.
It was her, of course it was her, framed in swirling golden dust motes and wearing a sweater that was entirely too warm for the weather, her cheeks stained pink and her hair in a glorious curly mass around her head. There was something lionlike about her; the straight bridge of her snubbed nose, her full lower lip, those round brown eyes, the way she tossed her hair over her shoulder as she came through the door.
As soon as she saw him, she beamed. The empty feeling in his chest grew lighter.
She stood at the counter for a moment, chatting with the woman behind the counter, and then bounded over to him.
“Hi,” she said, grinning, and sat opposite him in one of the squashy armchairs. “They’ve redecorated since I’ve been here last, there wasn’t quite so much…pink.”
“I was beginning to question your taste,” Severus said, trying to adopt the imperious, aloof tone he always took with students, and somehow failing miserably. It was hard to sound cold while sitting in a velvet armchair across from a beautiful woman, especially a beautiful woman who was smiling at him like that. He couldn’t recall the last time that had happened.
She arranged herself in the armchair, trying to find a comfortable position. “I used to study here,” Hermione said, looking around, “It used to be an ordinary little cafe—they have good scones.” Then, with her nose in the air: “And I have excellent taste.”
“That remains to be seen,” Severus said, half-sneering, “seeing your taste in both company and locale leave something to be desired.”
Why did he do this? What was he trying to accomplish? He fell back on his derisive, prickling defensiveness, as if he could goad her into admitting this was all a farce. He was waiting for her to laugh at him, to stand up and cruelly reveal that this was all some absurd prank. How could he even imagine that she, a beautiful, wildly accomplished young woman, was even remotely interested in him, a disgraced chemistry professor trapped in his profession?
“I think my taste in company is rather excellent, actually,” Hermione said, looking at him oddly, “but it is a strange place to discuss poetry. We can go elsewhere, if you like—”
“No,” he said at once, that light, empty feeling growing larger.
“All right,” she said, fidgeting. For one awful moment, silence stretched between them, expectant and unsettling. Who should speak first? What should he say? Should he acknowledge their flirtation at all, the photograph he’d sent?
She pulled out a stack of notecards and tapped them against the table to straighten them. He stared. “To begin with,” she started, reading from the cards, “I wanted to—”
“What’s this?”
Hermione looked up at him from under her lashes, doe-like brown eyes feigning innocence. “I’m convincing you to loan me your book.”
“With notecards?” he exclaimed, “Did you prepare a speech?”
She sat a little higher in her chair. “All good presentations have a prepared speech,” she said, prim and self-satisfied, “Anyway, as I was saying—to begin with, I wanted to first discuss my history with Keats, and also to discuss the importance of romantic poetry.”
“My desire to not loan out books of a personal nature have nothing to do with the subject matter,” Severus said, “and everything to do with the fact that they are my books.”
“I’ll get there,” Hermione said, flipping through the cards. “Hang on, I have a whole bit about—ah! Here we are. Now, as they are your books, I understand there may be annotations or other private musings in the margins that would, perhaps, shed more intimate insight on yourself. Please be assured I will in no way cast aspersions on your character, or judge you unnecessarily for them, and they are, in fact, the primary reason I’m seeking such a book from your collection in the first place.”
She stopped breathlessly, waiting. “Now this is where you say your arguments,” she prodded.
“Forgive me,” Severus drawled, his voice positively dripping with sarcasm, “It seems as though I missed the rehearsal process for this conversation.”
He could literally see the heat rise to her face, a pink flush crawling from under her collar to rest on her cheeks, pretty as a primrose. “Sorry,” she admitted, “I’ve never—I mean, I haven’t—I don’t quite know what to expect from this, you see.”
“Nor do I,” he said, eyes narrowing. “Perhaps it would be more illuminating if we were more straightforward.”
“Good idea,” Hermione leaned forward, eyes bright, “You first.”
He wanted to splutter and turned it into a cough at the last moment. “I would hardly know where to begin.”
“Well,” she said, shifting uneasily in her armchair, “I suppose we can begin with…what this is, really.”
“Meaning what?” Severus asked. The blood pounded in his ears, harsh and thumping. Here we are, he thought grimly.
She turned a deeper, more appealing shade of red, and something about it reminded him of flushed cheeks of a different sort. He rearranged himself in the chair, clearing his throat as he did so.
“Meaning,” she said, and took a breath, “Meaning, I’d like to discuss poetry with you. Or anything, really.” Her brown eyes shone. “I want—I want to know more about you. I’d like us to be…friends.”
He masked his deep well of disappointment with a derisive snort. “Friends?” he echoed.
“Or—or not friends,” she stumbled, “Or just—bollocks, Severus, this is difficult.”
Something about the way she swore and then said his name sent another powerful shiver towards his midsection. He disguised this with his traditional sneer.
“The mighty Miss Granger, at a loss for words,” he mocked, “Never thought I’d live to see the day.”
He regretted it at once; Hermione looked down at her lap, picking at something, not meeting his eyes. But her words, when she spoke them, were soft and clear, and it drained some of the wretchedness out of him.
“I sort of…fancy you,” she admitted, and it was like getting punched in the stomach. All the air was driven out of his lungs at that quiet confession, directed towards her own anxious hands. “I’ve fancied you for a while now, ever since we would read together in the staff room. And I’m single now, which I haven’t been in ages, and I thought—I thought I’d always regret it if I didn’t at least try, you know?” Her eyes were very bright now when she dared to look up at him.
“I feel,” he began hoarsely, “as though this is a setup to a very terrible joke.”
“No!” Hermione said earnestly, “No, never,” She softened. “I went to your book signing just for that. To see you again. To…to pluck up the courage, I suppose.” Something seemed to dawn on her, great and horrible, and her face clouded. “I understand if this is unwelcome, I would never want to make you u-uncomfortable, or if—”
“No,” he cut her off, almost instinctively, and then thought better of it. “It is an entirely inappropriate conversation,” he said, and watched her wilt, “though, not an unwelcome one.”
“Oh!” she said. Then: “Oh.”
He watched the line of her throat move as she swallowed, wondering how it would feel between his teeth. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him now, fascinated.
“Well then,” she said, “Should we…continue…such a conversation?”
Severus studied her for a moment. “I am a private man,” he began, his baritone voice pitched lower, “And I would not want either of us to be overheard discussing anything…indecorous.”
“Of course not,” Hermione agreed, and bit her lip. “We could always continue this conversation elsewhere, if that would make you more comfortable.”
“Where did you have in mind?” he heard himself asking.
Her eyes were very bright. “My flat.”
Hermione was having an out-of-body experience.
Surely she was possessed, she thought deliriously to herself as her back hit the closing door of her flat. Her legs were wrapped around Severus Snape’s waist, her fingers tangled in his long hair, and her tongue—unceasing, tormenting, chatterbox tongue—was in his mouth. He nearly slammed her against the door, his arms bracing her, and f*cking hell, who was she? What was she even doing?
She was rutting against her former professor like she’d gone mad. They’d started snogging in the taxi to her flat, because he’d said something funny and acerbic and it had both thrilled her and hurt her feelings a bit; so she’d kissed him, grabbing him by the front of his shirt, just to unsettle him and take some of the control back in their conversation. But it hadn’t worked, because then they’d spilled out of the cab and into her flat and now, now, she could feel the tight, straining heat of him against her centre, and had to break their kiss long enough to laugh.
His eyes were so very dark. She could get drunk on the way he looked at her in this moment, his mouth flushed, catching his breath, the strong line of his shoulders pulled tight as he held her against the door.
“If this doesn’t convince you, I don’t know what will,” she managed to say, and he buried his face in the side of her neck, his teeth finding the erratic pulse there. “Ah!”
She would have a mark the next day, she just knew it. What was she going to say at work? Shacklebolt would surely notice, and he would pretend not to, which would perhaps make it worse; Hermione shivered as he kissed the edge of her collarbone, jaw working as he scraped his teeth against the soft flesh there.
When he drew back, she couldn’t stop a whimper escaping her. He smirked—bastard, absolute bastard, smug, co*cky, son-of-a-bastard—and bit another mark into the opposite side of her neck, sucking a red bloom beneath her jaw. She keened.
“Where,” he purred against her throat, “is your bed.”
“Down the hall,” she said, and then nearly shrieked in alarm as he yanked her away from the door. They paused only once in the hallway, where he shoved her against the wall again and rucked her sweater up over her head. She flung the offending garment, and he groaned appreciatively into her newly bared cleavage.
Thank Christ she’d worn a nice bra that day. As she’d been getting ready for their (date? Not a date. Meeting? Not a meeting.) interaction that afternoon, she’d been reminding herself that nothing untoward would even happen; and yet she’d showered and shaved her legs anyway, and wore a matching set of bra and panties. Like an idiot. A hopeful, breathless, freshly-snogged idiot with a chain of maroon bruises now forming around her neck, exactly the colour of her best matching set.
(She felt a bizarre clench of triumph. She was always prepared. Always.)
It was, in fact, her only matching set, something Severus didn’t know nor seemed to care—by the time they made it to her bedroom, she was naked from the waist up. She briefly mourned the loss of her nice bra, as it held her breasts up so nicely, and without it she always thought her chest a bit undersized.
Severus was panting, staring hungrily down at her on the bed. She shivered. It looked like he wanted to devour her.
His teeth closed around her nipple and she stopped thinking about her bra.
She began to insistently pull at the collar of his shirt, and he broke away from her long enough to whisk it over his head—before she could even begin to comprehend that her former chemistry professor, Severus Snape, was now shirtless in her bedroom, he attacked her again, mouth finding the soft, vulnerable skin on the underside of her breast.
“Wait,” she said breathlessly, and he slowed. “Wait, wait, hang on.” He stopped. Hermione pulled him away, splaying a hand across his lean chest. “I want to see you.”
A shadow crossed his face, and for a single, flickering instant, he was a raw nerve of vulnerability. Fearful. Guarded. Mistrustful. Hermione knew at once that nobody had ever said that to him. Nobody had ever slept with him and expressed a desire to see more of him, to see him at all, even. It was as though she could read his thoughts; he thought she was lying. Her heart broke a little.
Hermione sat up. His hands falteringly found her waist, thumbs brushing lazy half-moons against her back, as if he suddenly wasn’t sure where or how to touch her. She trailed a soft touch down his ribs, feeling his lean muscle tense. He wasn’t a muscular man—he was a tall, skinny academic, pale as a vampire, with a smattering of coarse hair across his chest. His features were striking and overlarge, with a nose that looked as though it had been broken and badly set on several occasions.
He was, in fact, exactly her type.
“You’re beautiful,” she whispered, and meant it. “Can I kiss you?”
Something shuttered over his features again, as if his better nature had died, and he kissed her. It was such a lovely kiss that she scarcely had time to worry about what she said wrong, because he was kissing her as though it would be their last. His long, pianists fingers, the ones that had splayed that book open so flirtatiously, were cupping her face gently. Carefully. Lovingly, even.
They broke apart, and she let her forehead knock against his, their breath mingling. “f*ck, you’re a good kisser,” she said, and instantly flushed with embarrassment. “Sorry, that was—”
He was laughing. Smiling at her. It did something incredible to his face, opened him up, turned him younger. She marvelled at it, and wondered if this was the reason he spent so much time scowling and schooling his features into neutrality. Because when he smiled…god, someone could fall in love with a face like that.
“I should’ve expected you would chatter incessantly, even now,” he rumbled, but there wasn’t any sting in it, “Perhaps I should invest in a gag. Though,” he remarked, capturing her mouth again, once, then twice, “I would lose the pleasure of kissing you.”
She shuddered at this, thrilling, every hair on her arm rising at the sound of his voice. The pleasure of kissing you. She would memorise that for her next solitary endeavour; she was fairly certain she could come from that memory alone.
“Oh?” he said, practically purring, rolling his hips against her, “Does that appeal to you?”
Hermione tried to imagine herself gagged, and as usual, her brain went into overdrive, imagination exploding into images of herself at his mercy. She remembered the photograph again, and thought of that stamp across her arse cheek. Property of Severus Snape.
“Yes,” she heard herself saying, “it does, actually.”
She fumbled with the buckle of his belt and felt his breath catch, watching his abdomen jerk as her hand worked its way under his waistband. He was hard already, the tip of his co*ck leaking, and she smeared this messily with her thumb, revelling in how he hissed in pleasure. She squeezed once, wrapping her fingers around the length of him.
Severus caught her wrist. “Careful,” he warned.
“Did that hurt?” she asked, suddenly worried.
He glared at her. “No,” he gritted out pointedly, and she felt a rush of satisfaction.
“Well, then just relax,” she said, and helped pull down his trousers and pants in one go, leaving them crumpled on the floor. His co*ck slapped against his stomach, flushed dark against his pale skin, thicker than she had expected it to be given his lean stature.
Gangly boys are always packing, Ginny had said once, sagely stoned, and this bubbled to Hermione’s mind now. She had to bite a hole in her cheek to keep from laughing, and got to her knees, still only wearing her denim jeans and knickers.
He was looking down at her with something akin to disbelief, even as she licked a stripe on the underside of his co*ck, fist closing around the base of him. She had a certain amount of experience in this area, considering it was the easiest way to end most sexual encounters—given her apparent inability to org*sm, the past six years had given her a great deal of practice on pleasuring someone else.
“Oh,” he murmured, sounding drunk, and sank into her mouth.
Whatever she couldn’t take down her throat, she covered with her hand, moving her head in that very specific way that Ron liked—rapid, efficient bobs, pausing occasionally to let her tongue linger against the head. His hands shot to her hair, and then away, as if she would disapprove.
She wanted to say it was all right, he was allowed to pull her hair if he wanted, but only very nicely. Somehow, she managed to convey this to him without letting his co*ck leave her mouth; Hermione found his hand and brought it back up to her curls, and gave him a warning look from under her lashes.
When his fingers roved through her hair, finding the curve of her skull, a shiver of pleasure went down her spine. Her scalp had always been so sensitive. He was slowing her pace though, controlling her more, but with only slight directional pressure. Hermione took the hint and became more deliberate, hollowing her cheeks.
He groaned, a sinful noise that she would never forget until the day she died, and his fingers tightened in her hair. “Look at you,” he said raggedly, almost to himself, “On your knees like this. Aren’t you excellent.”
Hermione glowed from the praise, humming in approval. She was excellent, thankyouverymuch, she not only studied but practised. As with most things in her life, Hermione strove to excel, and this also applied to blowj*bs. She liked being of use. She liked being of service.
More importantly, she liked being the best.
Severus gathered her curls methodically, fisting them in one hand as his hips rocked leisurely in and out of her mouth. “Gorgeous,” he breathed, and it sent a bolt of lightning straight to her quim. She made a sucking, needy noise in her throat. “Do you like that, then? Being told you’ve done well?” His voice was a bolt of satin pulled taut, straining to keep calm.
She felt herself flush from embarrassment. Oh, how humiliating it was to be known, and so easily, too. Shocking, truly, that the overeager, high-achieving, gifted student liked to be praised in bed. Only the most genius, learnered mind could have deduced that. She shot him a look, but the blush on her cheeks was unmistakable.
“You do,” Severus said, out-of-breath and accusatory. “What a marvel you are.”
How could a compliment sound so cruel? It was as if he reverted back to jeering when he was out of his element. Hermione pulled away from him, his co*ck leaving her mouth with a pop. “You’re being unfair,” she protested, her voice raspy from effort.
“Am I?” he asked, and pulled her upright. Her knees wobbled, and went out entirely when he kissed her, tasting himself on her tongue. She melted against him.
“Yes,” she managed to say when they parted, “don’t be cruel, Severus.”
Something in him gentled. “I’m not trying to be cruel.” He nudged her back on the bed, his fingers unbuttoning the closure of her jeans, “Let me see if I can be kinder to you, then.” His breath ghosted across her midsection.
Her legs snapped closed. “You don’t have to do that!”
He stopped entirely. “What?”
“I don’t—I’m not—look, you just don’t…have to do that,” Hermione stumbled over the words, her jaw still stiff from her previous endeavour, “I’m—really, I’m happy to just focus on you.”
He was stroking the outer flanks of her closed thighs, softly, soothingly. “And if I want to?” he asked, almost casual.
Her heartbeat stuttered. “I—I—well—”
“If it isn’t your preference—”
“I can’t org*sm!”
Hermione clapped her hands over her mouth. Severus stared down at her “I can’t org*sm,” she repeated, more quietly, “Not with other people. I get—I just get in my head, and it becomes a—well, I just can’t. With others. It’s nothing to do with you!” she added hastily, feeling panic starting to bubble up. sh*t. sh*t. He was going to leave.
“I’ve always been like this,” she confessed, and once she started talking, it was difficult to stop. “I get so worried, and I feel as though it takes too long, and then I just…can’t. With Ron, with Viktor, with…everyone, really—”
“Viktor?” he repeated. “As in—”
“Viktor Krum, yes,” she said unhappily. Viktor Krum, the world-class Bulgarian football star, had been an exchange student for a semester and sent all of Hogwarts into a frenzy. They’d shared a few adorable dates and some excited, humid fumblings in his dormitory, but nothing beyond that. “It’s just how I am,” Hermione finished, “I’m sorry.”
Severus was looking at her with an absolutely inscrutable expression, his black eyes narrowed and unfathomable. She wondered if he was thinking of a reasonable excuse to leave, or perhaps mentally diagnosing her with a thousand different mental illnesses. Certainly not the impression she wanted to leave on him. It had all been going so well, too, Hermione thought miserably.
His fingers dug into her still-clothed hip. “Well then,” he said measuredly, “you simply aren’t permitted.”
Her heart stopped beating for a moment. “What?”
She lifted her hips, confused, even as he peeled her jeans off her body. “You aren’t permitted to org*sm,” he repeated, running his hands along her thighs again, gentle enough to be ticklish. He said this as though it was a perfectly obvious solution that others had missed—a trace of pride over utter disappointment in previous attempts.
“Wh—ohh!” Her voice choked off into a low moan as the pads of his fingers stroked her sodden quim, slipping through the evidence of her own desperate arousal.
“If you org*sm without my permission,” he continued, his voice dark and low, “you will, of course, be punished.”
It was as if her entire world flipped upside-down—Severus dropped to his knees, and Hermione felt her back arching into the mattress, taut as a bowstring, the second his hot mouth descended on her. Wasn’t permitted? Her brain turned in crazy circles, even as one of his big hands pinned down her left thigh, spreading her wickedly open. Wasn’t permitted.
“Severus!” she gasped.
“Yes?” he answered offhandedly, that filthy, filthy tongue slipping through her vulva, circling her cl*t. As though he expected her to answer! As though he expected her to form a coherent sentence! She could only manage a whimpered sob in reply.
His voice was heated silk against her c*nt. “Do let me know if anything is not to your liking,” he said, and she could hear the self-satisfied sneer in his voice, a kind of condescending pride, even as he hauled her right leg over his shoulder and got to work.
Punished? Punished. What did punishment entail, exactly? Her brain, as it always did whenever she was on the receiving end of pleasure, began to skitter about in circles. As if to counteract this, Severus lingered around her cl*tor*s, sending sharp, punishing shocks of pleasure through her core. One of his beautiful fingers slipped inside her, but it wasn’t enough, nowhere near enough.
The very idea of not being allowed to org*sm was causing the exact opposite effect—it was as if he’d said a magical phrase, and her body reacted as if hypnotised. Her hips jerked, trying and failing to rut against his face, chase harder friction, but one of his hands spread out possessively over her lower belly, pinning her. That sinful tongue slowed, and then stopped.
“Now, now, Miss Granger,” he taunted, “you must ask, first.”
“Oh, f*ck you!” Hermione couldn’t help herself, wiggling beneath his grip.
He scoffed a laugh against the sensitive skin of her inner thigh, where he was pressing gentle kisses. “Would you like permission?”
“Yes,” she gritted out. His mouth was on her again, two fingers this time, and for one searing, blissful moment, she thought he’d taken mercy on her; that all it took was a single, hissing admission in the throes of passion, and he would put her out of her misery. She let her eyes drift shut again, feeling that familiar rhythm build at the base of her spine, felt her hips flex upwards again, harder this time, and—
He stopped. “Then ask.”
“Please!” Hermione begged, half out of her mind. It was a game, she realised—he was clearly capable of giving her an org*sm, and would delight in doing so, which meant the only thing keeping that from happening was her own willingness to admit how much she wanted one.
And oh, f*ck, but she wanted one.
“Please what?” he prompted.
“Please let me come,” she said, her voice constricting into a whimper, “please, Severus.”
If she wasn’t mistaken, there was a smile pressed against her vulva, but then his tongue dragged lasciviously against her cl*tor*s, and white stars exploded behind her eyes. The muscles in her thighs and calves tried to snap closed out of sheer instinct, the pleasure was so immediate and blinding. His arm flexed; her hips stayed pinned against the mattress.
“You may,” he half-mumbled into her sticky flesh.
Why had it never been like this before, she wondered deliriously, as her hand crept tentatively towards his long, dark hair. Boys had eaten her out before, certainly—Ron had tried in the beginning, but she was always rigid as a board and clearly uncomfortable, so he’d stopped. And she’d just grown accustomed to not receiving it as the years went by.
But this…this was different. She glanced downwards, and the image of him between her thighs sent a fresh surge of arousal through her body. How could someone look so smug with a c*nt in their face?
Even as she thought this, as if in punishment, his mouth closed around her cl*tor*s, suckling, and her eyes rolled back in her head. Her org*sm was torturous, a thousand pulsing waves reverberating from her spine outwards, electric sparks dancing against her skin. His ministrations slowed but didn’t cease, riding through every needy, pulsing clench, his fingers rocking in and out, in and out, in and out.
She’d somehow migrated into the middle of the bed. His dark hair was twisted in her hands, and she let go with a shaky, warbling laugh. “Sorry,” she said weakly, and ran her nails against his scalp as an apology.
“Your hypothesis is incorrect,” he said, dry and deadpan as ever, even as he examined the shine on his middle two fingers.
“My hypothesis?” Hermione asked. Her pupils went round as saucers as Severus sucked the taste of her into his mouth. “Christ.”
“You aren’t unable to org*sm with a partner,” he reported, smirking, and then he was kissing her again—she moaned at the tang in his mouth, almost an electric charge. “You made it seem as though it were going to be a particularly difficult job.”
He advanced on the bed and did some funny trick with his knee, pushing her legs apart and fitting into the space they made. That was a move, Herimone thought to herself, but thankfully did not say.
“I am a particularly difficult job,” she said, even as he began nuzzling hot, biting kisses against her breasts once more. “Ask anyone.”
He said nothing, but there was something in his expression that she couldn’t identify. If she didn’t know any better, she would have thought it was pity.
She wanted that expression out of his eyes at once, so she hooked one leg around his waist, pulling him closer towards her. “I have condoms in my nightstand,” She smiled up at him. “That sounds like a line, but it’s true—I do actually have some in there.”
“Aren’t you prepared.”
“Always.”
His eyes were very black. “One might get the idea you make a habit of bedding your professors.”
It felt as though he’d pressed directly onto a bruise—a sharp jab in a soft place, at the exact moment her guard dropped. She recoiled. “No more than you make a habit of bedding your students,” she shot back.
Severus barked a short, mirthless laugh. “So never, then.”
“Right,” Hermione’s heart was pounding. “Never.”
They simply glared at each other for a long moment, Hermione propped on her elbows, Severus leaning over her, the two of them naked and defiant.
“Do you have an issue with this?” Hermione demanded, “Because I think you ought to have mentioned that before you gave me a screaming org*sm.”
He touched her lightly, a hand skimming against her ribs. She flinched, some of her previous vulnerability gone. “I don’t,” he said at last. “I simply…cannot imagine why you are here.”
“Well,” she said, looking around, “It is my flat.”
“With me,” he elaborated with a certain viciousness, punishing her for the sarcasm as though he weren’t guilty of the same crime, “Here, with me.”
She tucked a strand of hair behind his ear, and let her hand fall to his chest. His heart was pounding—it grew more rapid as her palm lingered, as if her touch was alien and exciting. This, somehow, was reassuring. He was affected by her, in some way, distrustful or not.
“I’m trying—I’m trying to actually live my life,” she told him, hoping honesty would soften him again. “I try not to…want things, I suppose. I’ve spent a long time doing things I have to do, and need to do, but nothing that I actually want to do. And I just sort of woke up the other day and thought that I should do something I wanted, anything I wanted. So I looked in my inbox and I saw the University sent out an advertisem*nt for your book signing.”
Hermione paused, and then feathered a touch against his cheek, his jaw. The knot of his Adam's apple moved sharply. “And I knew I wanted you,” she said simply, “so I thought I would try.”
She didn’t tell him that she’d made this decision in a moment of utter desperation, one of those terrible mornings where she felt her entire life crushing in on all sides, squeezing all the air from her lungs. Some mornings, the weight on her chest felt heavy enough to trap her in the mattress. She had to go to work and be a perfect researcher, to the pub and be a perfect friend, and then home to be a perfect girlfriend and student. Then, the day would start all over, and the weight on her chest would get heavier.
At nearly twenty-eight years old, Hermione was beginning to have a dawning suspicion that she wasn’t happy, and had no idea what to do about it.
The honesty had worked; whatever knee-jerk defensiveness that had raised his hackles faded, and he lowered himself next to her. She kissed him hesitantly, wondering if he would respond, and he did. His hand trailed across her stomach, her thigh, up her ribs, skimming across one breast. As if reorienting himself.
“Now,” she said, trying to smother the hitch in her voice as he thumbed one of her nipples, “are you going to get a condom out of my nightstand? Or do I have to?”
He kissed her, his earlier reservations gone, his tongue twining with hers. It stole the very breath from her, turning her delirious.
“In a moment,” he said, and settled back, taking her with him. It was an oddly fluid change of positions, as he sat with his back against her headboard, and before she knew it, she was straddling his lap, thighs wide, his erection prominent between them.
She dragged her slit against his co*ck, grinding. His hands settled against her hips. It was nice this way, Hermione mused to herself—she liked looking at him, liked keeping his dark eyes fixed on her as she slowly rocked against his length.
Her previous org*sm and their earlier tension had punctured some of the urgency, and she was quite content to simply rub, letting it build. His grip on her waist tightened, thumbs digging into her hip bones.
“Well?” he asked, raising a challenging eyebrow.
She tossed her hair defiantly and let her hand drop down to the apex of her thighs; he caught her wrist, and brought her fingers to his mouth. Left with only the motion of her hips, her pace increased, trying to find that particular rhythm that would—
“Not yet,” Severus ordered, and stopped her. “Patience, now.”
“What?” Hermione huffed a curl out of her face, “Do I not have your permission any longer?”
“You do not,” he said very seriously, and she squeaked in alarm as he partially dislodged her in order to reach into the nightstand. “The next time you come, it’ll be on my co*ck, and not a moment before.”
His words, silken and commanding, sent a bolt of arousal straight through her pelvis and down to her toes. “Oh, that’s good,” she said, biting her lip. “I like that, actually.”
“Do you?” he asked, and then he was easing inside of her, so gently, so exquisitely, “And this?” he asked, as she let her head fall back. She groaned, deep in her belly. He sank another inch inside of her. “Do you like this?”
“I do,” she breathed. The fullness was wonderful, a kind of tight, pressing stretch, letting gravity do most of the work. When he was seated to the hilt, she clenched, and heard him mutter a curse against her skin. “I like that very much.”
She lifted her hips and then let herself collapse. Rise and fall. It was odd to be so completely full of him and yet totally surrounded, his arms encircling her waist, his mouth on her breast. The movement was ancient. Primal instinct, rutting against him, a slap of flesh.
His mouth was a grim slash, and when she tried to move towards her cl*t again, he seized both wrists in one hand.
“Go on, then,” he said, his eyes burning into her, “Come for me.”
She wanted to say that was impossible, but then he slipped his free hand between their bodies, fingers gliding across her cl*t, feeling where they were joined. She cried out, hips stuttering at the loss of his leverage, the sweet shock of pleasure trilling beneath her skin. It was happening again, she thought deliriously, a second impossible org*sm—she’d never come once with Ron, let alone twice in a single afternoon.
Hermione continued to think it was impossible until the org*sm whited out her vision and she sank her teeth into Severus’s shoulder, hips jerking against his hand. She heard him hiss in mingled pleasure and pain, still stroking, feeling her inner muscles bear down in pulsing spirals as she continued to rock.
“f*ck,” she rasped against his skin. There was a clear, dark imprint of where her teeth had dented the skin, but it hadn’t broken; she peppered the area with whisper-soft kisses, silently apologising.
Severus released her wrists and she pressed shaky palms against his chest. She felt drunk. Every thread of muscle was overtaxed. Delicately, he eased out of her, disposing of the condom into her convenient wastepaper basket.
(Always prepared, she thought in dizzy triumph.)
They were both panting like they’d just finished a marathon. Hermione flopped on top of him, completely boneless and unconcerned with propriety, and buried her face into the crook of his neck.
“That was wonderful,” she said, her breath warm against his skin, “You’re wonderful.”
He looked utterly sated and supremely self-satisfied, even as he tucked one of her curls back into place. “Let’s not tell lies, now.”
“I’m not lying,” she mumbled, “That was…good lord, Severus.”
There was a noise, deep in his chest, like a rumble of satisfaction, and she closed her eyes to catch her breath. That’s all she needed, she told herself, just a moment or two to catch her breath.
That was the last thing she remembered telling herself for a long while.
He was fairly certain she’d fallen asleep.
By now, the light had changed in the little studio apartment, the shadows growing longer in the hazy, golden afternoon light. They’d been tangled together nearly all afternoon—the room was sure to reek of sweat and sex and them, a kind of alchemical mixture of pheromones. She was a weight on his chest, but not a burdensome one, as in her doze she’d mostly rolled off him.
Now that he had a minute to think, Severus allowed himself a minute to quietly panic. (One minute. Then he would figure out a plan.)
He’d just slept with a former student. Something he always said he’d never do. His professional integrity could come into question. It could all backfire spectacularly. She was also nearly twenty years his junior, although—he winced—he didn’t know her exact age. He didn’t know anything about her, really, aside from her preferred areas of research and her affinity for romantic poetry.
Oh, yes, it was a very nice little trick she’d pulled on him, he thought viciously, despairingly. She’d set out to get him, and then she’d had him—she’d wound him up with nothing more than her big brown eyes and an earnest expression. Yeats. How could he have fallen for such an obvious tactic?
And how cruelly did that speak to his own rampant self-loathing? Like he was a dog who could be trained to sit up for a scrap, begging for attention. As long as a beautiful woman wanted him, he would obey.
But if she’d only been trying to f*ck her professor, would she have acted like that? In the low light, he could still see her, half-reclined on the bed, her skin luminous. A Baroque painting come to life. You’re beautiful, she’d said. Can I kiss you?
Of course she was lying to him. He had no illusions about his looks; he knew what students said about him. On nights when he was feeling particularly disgruntled, he would read the comments on his RateTheFaculty page, where the students took delight in insulting his teaching style and his looks in the same breath. Greasy hair. Big nose. The Bat of Hogwarts, they called him.
And yet the most talented, hardworking, popular former student had sought him out. Told him he was beautiful. And was now, in fact, slumbering quite peacefully next to him, her cheek resting on his chest as if lulled by the sound of his heartbeat.
The part of him which remained an oily, spotty teenager felt a weird spike of possessiveness. He could be forgiven, couldn’t he? For being so easily had, when he had never been wanted before?
There were two options in front of him, and he had to decide which one was worse.
Option One was that Hermione had a very effective seduction routine to get a professor into bed, and was seeking some kind of novel thrill in order to shake up the excitement of her dull life. She feigned reluctance and put up a token resistance to centring her own pleasure, out of some pretend self-sacrifice, in order to make her partners feel accomplished.
Option Two was that she truly, genuinely liked him; that she had, in fact, gotten out of an unfulfilling, unsatisfying relationship, and over the course of it had convinced herself that she was deficient in some way. Because truthfully, she had not been difficult to please in the slightest, and it had left him bewildered. Had none of her previous partners even tried? It had to have been an act, he told himself, because the alternative painted a far more pathetic image of Hermione Granger than she intended.
He disentangled himself, taking great pains not to overly disturb her. She was pliant and well-f*cked, suck marks already blooming purple and blue around her throat. Some terrible, nameless emotion swept over him—god, but she was beautiful like this—and he had to look away.
Severus slunk out of the bedroom to collect evidence, silently gathering his belongings as he did so. He dressed in the hallway so as not to disturb her, and then began prowling through the small flat.
It wasn’t as if he’d been paying close attention when they’d first arrived, he thought, disgusted with himself. He’d been so wrapped up in her kissing him, of her making the first move, of feeling desired by someone who could so clearly have anyone. Severus went through the flat, eyes roving over every personal detail, collecting information.
There was a box of male belongings next to the door. Proof of the ex-boyfriend she’d mentioned. A few framed photographs of the two of them had been tucked into the sides; the two of them in Paris. Drunk at a pub. Kissing on New Year’s. All packed away neatly next to a football jersey—Puddlemere United, really?—and other assorted gear.
The amount of books in her flat could rival his own. They were everywhere, stacked on coffee tables, crammed onto bookshelves, tabbed and left for easy reference next to the sink. He paused, looking at a book that had been dog-eared and set next to the reading chair in her living room; it was about Sumer and cuneiform. The book right next to it was a biography of Madam Curie. In the kitchen, a slim tome about mycology. The life and letters John Brown, bookmarked and left beneath a book about string theory. A collection of 16th century French poetry, left open next to the sink, as if she’d been reading while washing dishes.
She was a savant. A vortex of information. She could have taken any path for herself, majored in any field, and would have found success—she could have had anyone, Severus thought to himself, so why him?
He didn’t know. It frightened him, and his fear always curdled into anger and accusation.
In the corner of her living room was a desk overflowing with notes and papers. It was an oddly intimate snapshot of her life—her work schedule was written on a sticky note and pasted next to her computer, along with a polaroid of her with two young women, a redhead and a blonde. He vaguely recognized them from their time at Hogwarts.
This was where she sat and composed her emails to him, he realised. He pictured her there, chewing her nails, typing rapidly and then deleting, exactly as he had done.
His book was lying face-down on the desk, spine cracked neatly down the middle. He picked it up, flipping a page, and saw that she’d littered the book with pencil annotations. Did she annotate all her books?
She’d highlighted a sentence of his research and scribbled ask him about this! in the margin.
Dread was creeping over him, chilling the back of his neck and turning his blood to ice. Option Two was becoming more and more likely, and this was by far the worse option. If she had been a shrewd, calculating woman seeking an interesting story to tell at parties, it would have been one thing—but it was obvious from flipping through his book that she, at the very least, had a great deal of admiration for him.
He thought of her choked gasps as she came undone, saw her open, radiant face at the moment of her climax; she’d been honest with him, he thought to himself. Did that mean she wanted a relationship? The very idea turned his stomach with anxiety. It was as if she was simply walking towards him unarmed, and he’d shown up prepared for a duel.
She was good, and earnest, and deserved someone worthy of her affections. Certainly not someone like him, a lecherous old man who was rifling through her personal effects.
“Severus?”
He froze.
The sleepy voice was muffled, but still clear. She was calling for him from the bedroom.
“Severus?” she called again.
He’d always been a coward. He never pretended to be otherwise. Before she could call his name a third time, Severus had left, closing the door behind him as quietly as he could.
Hermione padded out into the hallway, still naked. “Severus?” she called again, but the flat was empty. The room felt off. Recently disturbed. As if he’d been moving rapidly, trying to get out as quickly as possible.
An old, familiar ache began in her belly.
She wasn’t of use anymore, Hermione thought bitterly, returning to bed and swaddling herself in the duvet. Wasn’t that always the story? She could be so good—perfect, even—and it still wouldn’t be enough to get someone to stay. To choose her.
The huge wreckage of something within her threatened to surface. Her eyes were suddenly gritty, and she rubbed them harshly. (Don’t be stupid, Granger.) It was fine. Things had gone according to plan, even better than she expected; she’d been expecting a reasonable chat at a cafe, not mind-blowing sex with two shattering, impossible org*sms. Yes, the plan had worked beautifully.
Hadn’t it?
She remembered his dark, accusatory eyes. One might get the idea you make a habit of bedding your professors.
What had he been trying to figure out? Why had he taken advantage of that moment of vulnerability, to seek truth in only the most painful, punishing way? Of course she didn’t make a habit of f*cking her professors—she was carrying a torch for him, wasn’t that obvious?
Perhaps he’d felt used. Or perhaps he thought this was what she wanted, a no-strings-attached shag from an object of her desires. He’d certainly seemed out of his emotional depth at several points.
Maybe she’d been too much for him. She was used to that. Like her passion was some sloshing, overflowing thing, and whenever she opened her mouth she drowned the whole room. Hermione had lived with herself long enough to know that she was an acquired taste, a bittersweet companion who was too sharp to be any fun and too soft to be of any use.
Hermione groaned in frustration and untangled herself from her duvet. She’d never done this before—this was the first casual sexual encounter of her adult life, more or less, and she wasn’t exactly certain of the protocol. All her previous relationships had been that, relationships, not odd, fraught emails and encounters at cafes. Should she send him an email?
She went cold. Stupid, childish girl; she didn’t even have his phone number. They’d communicated exclusively by email until now. He had hers, but not the other way around.
She needed an outside perspective on the situation. Hermione found her mobile and messaged Ginny.
hermione_of_troy: can I call you?
hermione_of_troy: nothing urgent
gin&tonic: ofc xx
Ginny picked up on the third ring, sounding out of breath. “Is this about Ron’s post?”
“What?” Hermione said, and blinked. “No, I—wait, what did Ron post?”
She sucked her teeth. “Erm, well, he’s—it’s a bit—”
“Wait, I’m looking now,” Hermione said, scrolling. Her feed refreshed, and then she saw it.
Ron had posted a photograph of Lavender Brown drinking a soda, batting her enormous, mascaraed eyelashes at him. Behind her, barely visible, was a burnished orange sunset; the caption read lovely views this evening.
Hermione wondered if she was supposed to be angry at this, and found she wasn’t. There was a peculiar hollow feeling in her stomach, a kind of grim satisfaction at being proven right.
“He’s only doing it to get a rise out of you,” Ginny was saying, “You know how he gets when he’s pissed about something.”
“Are they dating, then?” Hermione said, zooming in on the photo. How did Lavender get such perfectly square, white teeth? She must have worn braces for years.
“I think they’ve been talking awhile,” Ginny said, “but this is the, well, the public notification.”
“That’s just lovely,” Hermione muttered, zooming in closer, “Perfect.”
“Ignore him,” Ginny told her, “He’s only being a prat. As usual.”
Hermione abruptly closed the photograph. “I don’t care,” she decided, “That isn’t even the reason I called—Ginny, I need your opinion on something.”
“Oh, my opinion,” Ginny said, “My professional opinion? You’re in serious trouble, then.”
“I think I am,” Hermione groaned, “I—look, I’ll just tell you, a man just left mine.”
There was a loud crashing noise on the other end of the line, as though something metal had been dropped from a great height. “Sorry, did you say a man? A man man? Just left yours?”
“What was that?” Hermione asked.
“I’m at the gym,” Ginny said, exasperated, “That’s not the point! Hermione!”
“Here’s the thing, though, we were only supposed to have coffee,” Hermione tried to explain, but Ginny burst into raucous, hysterical laughter. “Stop it! Shut up, Ginny—listen, I need to know what the next move is, here.”
“Was he any good?” Ginny demanded, still laughing, “What’s his name?”
Hermione flushed, feeling the heat crawl up her cheeks. “He was very good,” she admitted, and Ginny let out a war-whoop so loud that the tinny phone speaker crackled into static. “Shut up! He left before I woke up, and I don’t know what to do next.”
“Text him,” Ginny said immediately.
She bit her lip.
“Do you not have his number?” Ginny asked, sounding incredulous.
Hermione cringed. “I have his email.”
“His email?” Ginny exclaimed, “Oh, he’s old. You’re f*cking an old man, Hermione.”
“He’s not that old!”
“Not that—oh, Christ, he’s even older than I thought.”
“Not even forty yet,” Hermione lied—she actually didn’t know how old he was. f*ck. “We don’t—this isn’t a serious thing, Ginny.”
“No, of course not,” Ginny began to sober, “No, he’s just a bit of fun. Listen, if you want to see him again, send him an email, but only one. If he doesn’t respond, that’s it.”
“One email,” Hermione said, chewing her thumbnail.
“Only one,” Ginny repeated forcefully, “Right? Not answering is an answer.”
Later, when Hermione sat down to write, she privately lamented the advice Ginny had impressed upon her. Only one email?
Well, that was fine. She would just write the perfect email.
It has been two days since Severus Snape fled in terror, and during those two days he repeatedly tried and failed to purge the incident from his mind. She had taken root in his brain like an infection, spreading and multiplying at an alarming rate. A single band of sunlight would remind him of her, a breeze across his face somehow carried her scent. His body felt newly recategorized—when he showered, he stood in front of the mirror for a long while, exhaustively cataloguing the evidence of her. Each soft bruise brought a new light to previously despised territory, the circle of teeth marks on his shoulder becoming a crown.
He hated it. The obviousness burned him. All he could do was try not to think about her, try to scrub the remnants of her from his skin. Physical evidence of his mortality. His vulnerability. His willingness, even desire, to bear new marks.
At night, he would sit and stare at his email inbox, wondering what he would even say. He could ask for his book back, or perhaps offer her another selection from his personal library. He could recite Yeats. He could write sonnets about how she’d looked on top of him, thighs spread, head thrown back in shameless ecstacy, but studiously he did none of these things.
Severus remained at war with himself for forty-eight hours, taking it out on nearly every innocent person in his life. Students remarked he was in a particularly foul temper, which he made only the barest attempt at curbing; grades collapsed and morale was low.
He was in the middle of an evening lecture for his freshman class, which was his least favourite by far, when his email chirped. It did this multiple times per day, and each time he pretended it didn’t send a thrill down his back, but every time, he couldn’t resist glancing at his computer screen.
All he saw was the heading, still bolded and unopened:
Hermione Granger <[emailprotected]>
Subject: Long-legged fly
His mind immediately supplied the stanza. Like a long-legged fly upon the stream/His mind moves upon silence. A cryptic subject line that sent his mind pinballing in a multitude of directions. Was it a subtle dig at his disappearance? A plea for attention? A mysterious, lighthearted message about Yeats? This was why she was dangerous, he thought darkly to himself, because there was no telling what tactic she would take next.
“Professor?” one of his students said uncertainly.
Severus snapped back to attention. “The rest, I assume, you can extrapolate from the data provided,” he said, and gestured at the dry-erase board. There was a quiet, collective groan from his students, which he deliberately ignored.
He spent the remainder of the lecture with a dry mouth and clammy palms, not daring to open the message in the classroom. Who knew what it could contain? He didn’t think she was the sort to send lewd or scandalous material—but then, he was the one who began that little game, hadn’t he?
When he got back to his office, he locked the door. Just in case.
Hermione Granger <[emailprotected]>
Subject: Long-legged fly
Severus,
I’ve rewritten this email about fifty times now, I think. Each time I get a little bit closer to the truth. I’ve had a bit of wine and am feeling pretty brave, so I thought I might try again.
I had a very nice time together the other day, and I hope I haven’t done anything to upset you. This is all new to me, and I often act incorrectly if I’m uncertain where I’m supposed to be going. Keats said that greatness is held in silences, and so I’m hopeful our silence is proceeding something truly great.
If you’ve somehow changed your mind, or I’ve done something to offend you, please give me the chance to rectify it. I was advised to only send one email, and if you didn’t respond, then I’d have my answer—so don’t feel the need to reply if you’d like to be rid of me once and for all.
Yours,
Hermione
He kept the scrap of paper she’d given him in his desk. It was a torn-off piece of a yellow legal pad, and her handwriting was familiar and unmistakable. Neat. Formal. Severus toyed with it as he mused, smoothing the folds out on his desk.
It was hard to feel as though this wasn’t some form of elaborate cruelty—her interest in him was unmistakable, a situation he’d had precious little experience in. A perfect opportunity walking into his life, as though the divine had sensed his bitterness and finally relented. He spent his life waiting in tense suspicion for the other shoe to drop, for the bottom to fall out. He waited for the vicious punchline to the inevitable set-up that was his life.
But at every turn, she surprised him. Even now she surprised him, writing an email expressing her insecurities so openly. Have I done something wrong? she silently begged. Let me make it up to you. She trusted him not to hurt her already. Giving him a second chance at every opportunity. When had he ever been afforded this kind of trust?
She was so beautiful. And he was vile. He was wretched. Anything good or lovely about her would be ruined by him, he would be an ugly and unnecessary complication in the brilliant career she had ahead of her. The kindest thing he could do for her, he reasoned with himself, would be to never see her again.
But he had never been a kind man.
Severus was not a man prone to base impulse, but his next motions felt disconnected to logical thought: he double-checked that the door to his office was locked, and then sat at his desk, rolled up his sleeves, and dialled Hermione’s cell phone number.
She answered on the third ring. Wary. Evident, from the very first syllable, that she was veering into tipsy. “Hello? Can I help you?”
She didn’t even know who called, Severus quietly marvelled, and she was already offering help. “Hello,” he said, and his voice had a strange quality, echoed and disconnected from his brain.
There was an agonising heartbeat. “Severus?” she said, sounding at once exhilarated and uncertain, as though she couldn’t quite believe her good luck. “Is that you?”
“It is,” he answered, “I thought I might call.”
Another pause that was a fraction too long. “I’m—I’m so glad you did,” she said, her voice high.
“Have you—” he began, but she interrupted him almost immediately.
“I have to say,” she took a shaky breath, “It took quite a bit of wine to be brave enough to send that email.”
He fought the urge to smile. “Is this your way of saying I’ve caught you at an unsuitable moment?”
“No,” Hermione said, “only that I might—keep being brave, is all.”
“Oh?” he said, curious and approving, “And what would that entail, exactly?”
She made a funny choked noise, like she was trying to laugh and it got caught in her throat. “It’s just,” she sighed, “I’ve been trying to write that email for two days, drafting and editing and revising, and then—then I send it, and you just…call me. That’s—I don’t know what to do with that. What that is.”
She was thoroughly tipsy, Severus realised, and tried to stifle his amusem*nt when he said, “I’m not sure.” He paused. “Would you rather I hadn’t called?”
“Not at all!” Hermione said hastily, “Only that I’m not—not my cleverest in this particular frame of mind, and when I’m writing, you know, I have time to edit, and think before I…say things.”
He wondered why she felt the need to remind him she was a chatterbox. “Understandably.”
“Sorry,” she said, “you were asking me something.”
“I was,” Severus leaned back in his office chair. “I was asking if you’ve already had dinner.”
“Dinner?” Hermione repeated. “No, I haven’t.”
“Would you like to?”
“Tonight? Right now?”
“Yes.”
A shrill, slightly hysterical laugh. “Yes, but I—well, it’s just—Severus, I’m in my pyjamas. It’s Thursday.” She said this as though it were completely impossible to not be in pyjamas past seven o’clock on a week-night. “Also, I’m in no state to go anywhere. So I don’t know if—”
“I’ll cook,” he offered.
“You’ll cook?” she said, the shrill edge sharpening into giddy hysteria. “For me?”
“I’m an excellent cook,” he said, and he wasn’t too out of his own head to not sound arrogant, “Do you still have wine?”
“I have…erm, half a bottle left. Or so.”
“I’ll get more,” he decided.
“What is happening,” Hermione said under her breath, then: “You’re going to come over to my flat and cook for me? Is that what you’re saying?”
He hesitated. For an instant, insecurity gnawed at him, wondering if this was too much, if it was too presumptuous. If she didn’t feel quite that strongly about the entire situation. “I am also amenable to having dinner on a different occasion, if you would rather—”
“No!” she said at once, “No, I just…please. I would like that very much.” He could hear her smile. “It’s a date, then.”
(Don’t scream.) Hermione hung up the phone. (Don’t scream.) She surveyed her tiny flat, which was, even now at its messiest and most cluttered, was never more than ten or fifteen minutes away from being spotless. Her hair was a tangled, stringy mess in a bun at the top of her head. (Don’t scream.) Her cabinets were pitifully bare, as she was a truly horrendous cook, and largely subsisted on frozen, ready-to-eat meals.
Severus was going to be there in an hour. She was quite drunk off an entire bottle of wine.
(Don’t. Scream.)
When she was a girl, she used to time how long it took her to clean and arrange her entire room, and joked that if competitive cleaning existed, she would be a world champion; these skills, lightly mocked by nearly all her friends and derided by many of the previous romantic partners, certainly came in handy now. She flung herself into motion, vaulting from the bed and hurrying to pick up her mess.
Hermione scooped up armloads of books and stacked them in tidy piles in her closet, leaning her full weight against the door to ensure the jamb clicked. Several cold mugs of tea were dumped in the sink to soak, and as she passed by, she made sure the afghan was draped invitingly over her small loveseat. Her desk was a lost cause, heaped with papers and books tabbed for reference—carefully organised chaos was how she worked best—but her kitchen was clean with time to spare.
The only difficulty was her sense of balance was off due to her recent imbibing, and she knocked her hip against the counter as she whisked past.
“sh*t,” she hissed, rubbing the bruise. “I don’t have time for this!”
Hermione flew through the flat, already stripping on her way to the bathroom. She looked at herself in the mirror. (Don’t scream.)
“This is fixable,” she said to her rosy-cheeked, greasy-haired reflection. Her pupils were enormous—of course they were, she was drunk. She splashed cool water in her face and desperately patted the puffy skin under her eyes, hoping a bit of late-minute moisturiser would make up for a lifetime of poor sleep. (It didn’t.)
She worked a small miracle with dry shampoo and an extra-thick hair tie, turning the ratty knot of curls into something that could look presentable with the appropriate lighting. (Utter darkness.) And when she changed out of her comfortable Thursday night pyjamas into her daring (re: itchy) date night pyjamas, the effect was even rather charming.
By the time Severus knocked on the door, the crazy tangle of anxiety in her chest had faded to a dull tightness. Perfectly doable.
Hermione flung open the door, beaming. “Hi.”
He was so bloody tall, standing there with a paper grocery sack, his dark eyes glittering. The last time he’d been at her flat she hadn’t taken notice of the way he filled out her doorway, how out-of-place he looked on her stoop. As though someone had cut him from a magazine and pasted him here, into the collage of her life.
“Hello,” he replied, and raised an eyebrow. “May I come in?”
“Oh! Yes,” she jumped, covering, and then shut the door behind him. He brushed past her, confidently heading towards her kitchen. He had, after all, been there before.
Swept along by the tide, Hermione followed him.
“This would ordinarily be the part where I offer to help,” Hermione said, watching while Severus began unpacking his grocery sack, “but I have to confess, I’m a horrendous cook.”
A lemon joined garlic, an onion, and a bag of rice on the counter. “Your help isn’t necessary,” he told her, “though I do admit, I’m surprised you have such an obvious gap in your knowledge.”
“There was never time,” Hermione said, “I was always in school, or travelling, and then when I got to Hogwarts I discovered takeaway and there was never any hope for me after that.”
She watched raptly as he took off his dark outer jacket and hung it by the door. Was she being soppy, or did it look like it always belonged there? He began rolling up his sleeves and her gaze lingered on his bare forearms, revealed a few inches at a time. Why was that so bloody attractive?
“What are you making?” she asked, after a rather too-obvious pause.
He smirked at her as if he knew. “Risotto.”
“Risotto?” Hermione echoed incredulously, “Isn’t that…I don’t know, terribly complicated?”
“Perhaps,” His dark eyes glittered. “To those who can’t cook, it must seem that way.”
She flushed, feeling heat prickle up her cheeks once more, and oh, why was he looming over her now? “I’ve never—” she started to say, but then she was looking up at him, and her belly swooped as though she’d missed a step on the stairs.
“Never what?” he asked, the innocence he feigned only adding to the wickedness in his eyes as his hand found her hip, tugging her towards him.
“I’ve never had someone make dinner for me like this,” Hermione said, linking her arms around his neck. “I can’t remember the last time someone cooked for me. Nobody who wasn’t my mum.”
He kissed her then, very softly, and her breath hitched. A wild surge of hope crackled through her—two days she’d spent hunched over her computer, writing thousands of words, pouring her heart out through various drafts, trying to scheme the easiest tactic to entice him. And now here he was, holding her, kissing her in the kitchen, his hand on her hip, rubbing small circles with his thumb. It worked. Not only worked, but worked perfectly.
She couldn’t believe her luck, truly, and so she decided to press it; she deepened the kiss, one hand fluttering to cradle his jaw, and tore a low, appreciative groan from him.
“Temptress,” he said breathlessly, breaking the kiss. But he didn’t go far.
Hermione grinned at him. “We don’t have to make risotto.”
“If you think you’ve escaped one of my lectures about food chemistry, you are sorely mistaken,” Severus said, and his low voice thrilled her. She shivered. He kissed the side of her neck, as if admiring the bruises that were already fading. “I feel you trembling in revulsion.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she tried to say, but it came out quite choked and squeaky as she felt his teeth scrape against her battered pulse. “I think you’ve actually stumbled onto a secret fantasy of mine.”
“Oh?” he purred, “Is that so?”
“A man, cooking me dinner, talking to me about his research?” Hermione said, “I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.”
He was looking at her curiously, his eyes narrowed as if suspicious, but she couldn’t quite make out the emotion in his eyes. “You are a singular woman, Hermione.”
She wondered if that was some sort of code for being demented, but his look was so puzzling—it was as if no-one had ever spoken to him like this before. Hadn’t he ever been around female academics? “I suppose.”
“Though,” Severus said, disentangling himself in order to finish unpacking his groceries, “I feel the need to remind you that I don’t actually research food chemistry.”
“How else do you learn recipes?” she asked, brow furrowed.
He stared at her. “By cooking.”
“...Oh.”
He determined at once that she would be utterly useless and perhaps lethal if given a knife, especially in her current state of mind; instead, she set about opening the wine he had brought with him.
“I might not know my way around a kitchen, but I can open a bottle of wine,” Hermione said, the bottle between her knees for leverage.
“Clearly,” he said, scraping his diced onion into a pan of shimmering oil. He could scarcely look at her, she was so stunningly beautiful.
When she’d answered the door, his breath had caught in his throat—her hair piled on top of her head, a riot of sandy-brown curls, wearing aubergine pyjamas with a tantalising bit of lace detail, beaming at him as though he’d just hung the moon.
Did she know the charm and energy she brought into a room? The way her passion followed her around in a kind of aura, making lights brighter, music louder, laughter sweeter? True, she was no great beauty—wars would not be fought in her name—but she was barefoot in the kitchen, triumphantly drinking his wine, and in that moment he thought there was no greater sight on earth.
Thank Christ he was cooking. Doing something with his hands. It was very difficult to look at her, and harder still to think of things to say. He was trying to be courteous, minding his tongue as best he could, trying to remember the steps of this game. The rhythm of it.
It had been many years since he’d been interested in anyone at all, and even longer since the admiration had been mutual. He was…out of practice.
“Here,” Hermione said, handing him a generous glass of white wine, “Cheers.”
They clinked glasses. “Cheers,” he said, and took a sip.
Her brown eyes were dancing. It was almost unbearable to look at her. “I think you promised me a lecture,” Hermione pointed out. “I’m assuming it was about risotto, but I’m amenable to other topics.”
There was no room for impulsiveness—he couldn’t trust any of his instincts. And the more he spoke, the more like he was to say the wrong thing, and then she would despise him. Not to mention she couldn’t be serious; no woman wanted to hear him drone about his research. He’d been told that on several unfortunate dates.
“My research in risotto is hardly groundbreaking,” he said dryly, deglazing the pan with the leftover wine. “Though I can’t say the same for your work with Shacklebolt.”
Something flickered on her face, and she took another sip. “I suppose,” she said, “It’s mostly his work. I’m only researching and indexing—not that I’m not grateful!” she added hastily, “It’s just not what I expected to be doing after I finished my program.”
He stirred the risotto in the saucepan, adding a splash of hot broth. “Did Vector not provide any post-graduate opportunities?”
The flicker turned into a split, and for a second there was a desperate sadness reflected in her eyes. Something wanted and wasted. “She did,” she said uncertainly, “I, er, couldn’t take advantage of them.”
“Why not?” Severus asked.
Her mouth was tight. “Life,” she said, then: “I didn’t realise risotto was a kind of rice,” A clumsy pivot. “I always assumed it was a sort of pasta.”
Before he could stop himself, the words were out of his mouth: “You’re currently researching with one of the world’s leading historians, and you didn’t know risotto was rice?” He was appalled, not scornful, but for an instant he thought he’d gone too far—then she swatted him on the arm, and his shoulders relaxed.
“Bastard,” she declared, refilling her wine glass, “I can’t possibly know everything.”
“As if you haven’t tried.”
“That’s true,” Hermione said, grinning, “Give me enough time, I suppose.”
They chatted amiably for the next half-hour while Severus stirred and Hermione sipped wine. She liked to walk about as she talked, and while he stayed at the cramped stove, she paced and chatted, asking questions. He noticed almost immediately that she said almost nothing of consequence about herself, and turned the conversation back on him at every opportunity. She reminded him vaguely of a bird, brightly-coloured and flitting about, trying to entertain.
It wasn’t until after dinner—which Hermione moaned exaggeratedly over, proclaiming it the best thing she’d ever eaten—that the mask came down.
They’d migrated to the loveseat with the bottle of wine, her legs in his lap, eyes sleepy and half-lidded. He couldn’t help but notice it was significantly less cluttered than when he’d first been here. He let his hands roam over her calves and ankles, taking whatever he could get. When he squeezed her foot lightly, she groaned and let her head fall back; encouraged, he kneaded the ball of her foot.
“This doesn’t feel real,” Hermione murmured, “If you’d told me a few weeks ago that I’d be here, right now, I would…I don’t know.”
“Laugh?” he offered, somewhat uneasily.
“No,” she said, picking her head up. Her eyes softened as she considered him. “But I wouldn’t believe you. I’d say that my life doesn’t work like that. That I’m not the sort of girl who…” she trailed off.
f*cks her professors? he wanted to say, but bit his tongue.
“…gets what she wants, I suppose,” Hermione finished. “Look at me. Wine, risotto, a foot rub, a handsome man, what else could I ask for?”
He snorted in derision. A handsome man, indeed. She prodded him with her foot. “What?”
“What is it you want?” he asked. He watched her pupils expand, her lips part—she was drunk on something more than dry wine. “And why,” he continued, “don’t you get it?”
She contemplated this for a moment. “I don’t know,” she said. “Because I don’t ask for it, I think.”
Very carefully, so as not to spill her wine, she sat up—in her stretch to place her glass in a safe place, the hem of her pyjama top rode up, exposing a strip of pale midriff. He couldn’t resist reaching, taking advantage of the little couch and their proximity, skimming his hands against her sides; when she settled back down, she was more firmly in his lap. Her eyes were soft and sable-brown, hazy with alcohol and good food.
There was a part of him that was and would forever always remain a battered, underfed teenager; the version of himself who slept on a collapsing old couch and watched shiny roaches creep across the floor. A reeking, fleabitten boy with only a book of old poetry and one perfect pinprick of light beckoning him out of his miserable life—a girl by the name of Lily Evans. A girl he had loved, even if she didn’t love him back.
That boy knew a vulnerable moment when he saw it. That boy, with his crooked teeth and humongous nose, could always ferret out weakness when he saw it, and he saw it everywhere. In his enraged, drunken father, in his weak, simpering mother, in the world, in society, but most of all, in every part of himself.
He had to remind that boy not to break something fragile just because it frightened him. Not again.
“Why don’t you?” he asked, yet he didn’t quite know if he was being curious or cruel. “You could have anything.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said, “My life is—well, I don’t have a very simple life,” she laughed, sounding hollow. “I should probably have mentioned that sooner.”
“Oh?” he asked, his arms tightening around her. “Tell me.”
“About my life?” she asked, and shifted uncomfortably. “It’s…I don’t know. I’m not very interesting.”
“I seem to recall a Student Spotlight in the Hogwarts Herald saying otherwise.”
“You read that horrible rag?” Hermione groaned.
“Of course,” he deadpanned, “It is, after all, ‘the student’s voice.’”
He wanted to memorise the sound of her laughter. She was so charmed; he could see it in her eyes, the way her head fell to one side. He couldn’t recall anyone ever looking at him in such a way.
“You’re funny,” she said, “Very dry. But funny—you don’t get enough credit for that.”
“I’ll be sure to inform my colleagues,” Severus said, “though I recall asking you a question.”
“Did you?” Hermione asked. Her hand crept up his chest, tapping on the top button of his shirt. “It sounded more like an order, actually. Not a question. Questions sound like this,” she said, slipping one button free, then another. She lowered her voice, trying to do an impression of him. “‘Hermione, what would you rather do, have sex or talk about your unimaginably boring life?’” A third button. “Like that.”
“Would you prefer an order?” he asked. He felt her shiver again, very minutely.
“Maybe.”
“If that’s the case,” Severus said, pulling her quite firmly into his lap, “Then I order you to tell me about your unimaginably boring life.”
She frowned. It was almost a pout. “That isn’t a very fun order.”
“Do you only make a habit of obeying the fun ones?” he drawled. She was straddling him, so when she moved, he felt the soft heat of her through her pyjamas. He bit back a groan of appreciation as she slid against him, agonisingly slow.
She kissed him. Some of her weight settled more firmly onto him, and the erection he’d been fighting was well and truly straining against his zip when she whispered, “No, I’m very obedient.”
“I’ve yet to see evidence of that,” he managed to say, his voice not as unaffected as he would’ve liked.
She watched him curiously, and then—with only a moment of hesitation—started talking about herself. “I’m an only child,” she began, “And my parents always knew I was bright.”
As he traced nonsense patterns against her exposed skin, she went on. She told him about learning how to read at a very early age, how her parents were delighted that she was such a voracious student. “I saw so many doctors,” she said, “So many different exams, and waiting rooms, and tests with puzzles.”
Her parents, being dentists, could only just afford the specialised tutors her doctors recommended; but she had a gift, Hermione told him miserably, and her parents never let her forget it. She’d been exceeding expectations since well before childhood, and their standards crept ever higher as she aged.
By this time, he had slipped her lacy scrap of a pyjama shirt over her head, and her perfect breasts were on display. He watched them tremble as she took a shaky breath.
“My parents wanted me to go abroad for school, but I said I wanted to go to Hogwarts because there were so many more research opportunities,” she said, “But really, I just wanted to stay home.”
She had been the youngest recipient of the Ariana Dumbledore scholarship, a full-tuition scholarship for gifted students. It had been the only way her family had been able to afford sending her there.
His mouth closed around one of her nipples and she hesitated, nails digging into his scalp. “Christ,” she managed to whisper.
“Am I distracting you?” he asked innocently. “I’ll stop.”
“No!” She squirmed in his lap. “No, don’t stop, please.”
He pressed lazy, open-mouthed kisses against her, tasting her skin, wanting to impossibly, mindlessly consume her. He was ravenous, but there was no urgency—they did, after all, have all night.
She took a deep breath and then told him about Ron.
Severus listened, banking the low fires of his jealousy. They’d met at Hogwarts, and Hermione had at first been uninterested in any romantic endeavours. She and Ron and Harry had formed a sort of trio, meeting after class to study, but the boys weren’t as academically inclined. “That was when my real education began,” she laughed, and he could feel it vibrate in her chest. “Boys and pubs and shove ha’penny, so many things I’d never cared for until university.”
He’d broken her heart before they even started dating—she’d asked Ron out to dinner, and he’d laughed at her, thinking she was joking. Hearing this, Severus did his best not to react, yet his fingers tightened possessively around her hips anyway. A familiar story, though harder to believe when Hermione Granger was the protagonist.
“I don’t know why we dated for so long,” Hermione admitted after a while, after she’d finished laying out their entire, tumultuous breakup that had happened many times, over and over. “We never officially started dating, so it was hard to know when we stopped and then started up again.”
She then admitted a low, dark sort of truth: that dating Ron seemed the surest way to ensure he and Harry stayed friends with her. “It was always easier when we were friends,” Hermione sighed, “though I think we fought the same amount.”
Their biggest fight, the one that happened a week after she’d moved in, had been about Professor Vector.
“He didn’t want me following her,” she said quietly. Vector had gone to the States for her research, and wanted Hermione to come with her. “So we had a row. A big one. And he kicked me out.” She laughed shakily. “It didn’t matter, anyway—I never went to America with Vector.”
“Why not?” he asked.
She looked away from him. “My mother died.”
This was said with no fanfare, no hitch in her voice. He recognised the tone at once—it was the same way he’d told people when his father died. There was something deeper, much deeper, about her relationship with her mother, but he didn’t dare ask.
Hermione smiled crookedly down at him. “It’s all right,” she said, “It was quick. She didn’t suffer.”
“I’m sorry,” was all he could say.
“Don’t be,” Hermione finished her wine and set the glass on the shelf again. “My father is, of course, a shell of a man. His mind started going before she died, and now…he doesn’t even remember her. Or me. Completely gone.”
They were both alone, Severus thought to himself. He could see it so clearly in his mind’s eye, the similarities between the two of them. Both of them alone, somehow always alone, even in the midst of a crowd of people. The odd one out of a trio. He could see her as a child, taking exams alone in stark white offices; alone in school, buried in books; alone at her mother’s grave; alone, alone, alone.
And yet—not lonely. Not always.
She sank down, kissing him. She tasted like sweet wine and promises, and he wondered if they had been somehow made for each other.
“I think,” she whispered against his lips, “that I’ve done enough talking.”
Hermione had a Date Night routine that had a fairly high ratio of effectiveness—typically, she would order some sort of takeaway, put on some light music, and manoeuvre them both to the pitifully undersized loveseat so she could find an excuse to sit in their lap. It had worked with a variety of people, but none watched her with such rapt attention as one Severus Snape. His dark eyes followed her every move, and his hands (politely, she noted) kept her pinned near him.
It occurred to her—as it often did when she was talking—that she was talking too much. But he seemed perfectly content to listen to her, and would occasionally ask a clarifying question. Those beautiful black eyes were far too intense to keep drowning in, and the wine had loosened her tongue embarrassingly. God, Hermione, she chided herself inwardly, not a man alive wants to hear you blather on about your childhood issues.
She rolled off the sofa and got on her knees. She wasn’t too wine-drunk to notice his eyes darkening at the sight of her there, and nudged his legs apart. “I think it’s your turn.”
“My turn?” he asked, his hand already resting on her head, fingers twining through her curls. “To talk?”
“Yes,” she said, and began working on the zipper. He sucked in a breath—quiet, gritted—as she worked him out of his trousers. He’d been getting steadily harder beneath her as she talked and he explored her, and the evidence of this was soon in her hand.
“Look at you,” he breathed, “So demanding, all of a sudden.”
He had to know what he was doing, the way his low voice turned to velvet, the way it turned her knees to water. “I can be,” she said primly, “That’s another thing you ought to know about me.”
Her tongue fluttered around the tip of his co*ck, which was rapidly thickening in her fist; his hand in her hair tightened, but not painfully so. A nice little trick, or so Hermione thought, and glanced up at him. His face was sharp, and when she took another inch of him into her mouth, his hips rocked upwards.
“As am I,” he said, and she groaned in approval, her tongue dragging against the underside of his co*ck. “Occasionally demanding, that is,” he clarified, even as thrust slowly, steadily into her mouth.
There was a particular rhythm he liked. She was already learning. You could say a lot of things about Hermione Granger, but you couldn’t say she wasn’t a quick study. She took a breath and then the last few inches of him down her throat, steadying herself with a hand on his thigh.
His eyes were utterly black. “Aren’t you gorgeous like this.”
His hands stilled in her hair, simply holding her in place, and then agonisingly, he withdrew. He liked the slow, sinking plunge into her mouth, Hermione discovered, and let him. He sucked in a breath through his teeth as she took him down again, an inevitable descent.
She did, after all, have to be The Best. An exhausting performance, to be sure, but one she was quite familiar with.
Hermione soon realised the lush roll of his hips was hiding a truly bottomless well of self-control. His lips were a taut line as he f*cked into her mouth, careful and deliberate, and she felt her knickers grow clingy. God, but he was going to be the death of her; breathing shallowly through her nose, his co*ck down her throat, all she could smell was sandalwood and some clean, musky spice. Her nose pressed against the wiry curls at the base of him. Her eyelids fluttered; his rhythm stuttered.
“Christ,” he said hoarsely, and pulled her up.
“What?” she coughed. Her eyes were full of tears, but only from effort. He kissed her fiercely, and she took the opportunity to finish unbuttoning his shirt. He had to capture her wrists to stop her. “What?” she repeated, laughing, “Let me.”
“One moment,” he said, quite seriously, and then divested her of both pyjama bottoms and knickers in the same swift motion.
She squealed in alarm as he upended them and dragged her back onto the sofa. There was a tangling rearrangement of limbs, and suddenly she found herself spread out on her own loveseat, naked as the day she was born.
“Wicked man!” she cried, even as he settled in front of her, parting her legs, “Unfair!”
“I’m not a fair man,” he told her, and ruthlessly pinned her knees to either side, spreading her quim wide open. Colour rushed to her cheeks, and instinctively she resisted, trying to close her legs.
“Wait,” she laughed, trying to cover, “You don’t—”
“Wait?” he repeated. She felt his breath against her thigh. Her brain was beginning to race in crazed circles—when had she last showered? This morning? That wasn’t nearly soon enough, she ought to have showered before he came, but she simply didn’t have time—“Wait for what?” Severus interrupted.
“Do you actually like this?” she asked, sitting upright. His grip on her knees tightened momentarily, then relaxed.
“Yes.” His eyes were very dark.
“Why?” Hermione couldn’t help asking. She couldn’t. She had to know—she’d never slept with a man who seemingly enjoyed oral sex this much.
There hadn’t been time to ask that sort of question last time, Hermione remembered with a flush of pink. But there was now, and so she had to ask. If there was anything to be said about her, it was that she was going to ask inopportune questions, even in bed.
He tilted his head deliberately, his brows drawing together. It was a familiar expression of faint derisiveness, of obviousness, of seeing the answer so clearly and being appalled at her for not keeping up.
“Must I spell it out for you?” Severus asked, and his fingers skated across her c*nt. She was soaked. Her breath caught in her throat as he leaned over her, two fingers slipping against her cl*tor*s. “I enjoy pleasing you. You,” he fiddled the sensitive nub, tearing a gasp from her, “are lovely, when you come apart.”
“It takes forever,” Hermione complained, but the next words stuck in her throat as he slid those same two fingers inside her.
“You have an interesting dereliction of the mind,” Severus said, and it sounded positively taunting for someone who was knuckle deep in her c*nt, “to be so utterly goal-oriented that you’d deny yourself a satisfactory org*sm.”
“I don’t—ahh!—deny myself,” Hermione tried to insist, but the heel of his hand was grinding against her cl*tor*s and it was hard to think.
“It seems to me that you deny yourself quite frequently,” he said, “and in fact,” a hot, searing kiss against her inner thigh, “that you enjoy doing so.”
“I just want things to go well,” Hermione gasped. “I want you—” to like me, almost came out of her wine-sodden tongue, but she stopped it at the last possible second. “—to think I’m easy.”
A low chuckle. “Easy?”
“I’m difficult,” she said at last, “Everything about me is difficult, and I try—I try not to be difficult, at least at the beginning.”
This was true. The wholeness of her—her whole complicated, dysfunctional self—was not conducive for a relationship, especially a casual fling. Which is what she suspected this was; what this was supposed to be, at any rate.
(But what if it wasn’t?)
She didn’t know. But she knew that she wanted this, whatever this was, to continue. And her best chance of that happening was by figuring out if he actually enjoyed eating minge, because if he did, then she was going to figure out a way to keep him forever. If she had to chain him up in her bedroom, she would. A ridiculous laugh tried to burst from her mouth, but somehow she kept it at bay.
His hot mouth descended on her, and it stole her very breath away; her back arched off the sofa, but he’d resumed his grip on her knees, widening them further. For a moment he seemed content to simply lap at her, the rasp of his incipient beard scraping tingles straight to her brain. His fingers were still rocking in and out, crooked them upwards to pad at that rough spot of texture, and she couldn’t fully bite back her sob of pleasure.
“You are not difficult,” he murmured, “Look how easily you come undone for me.”
“It’s not—” she tried, and then he began suckling at her cl*tor*s once more and words flew out of reach, “It’s not—usually—like this—” Her voice sharpened and then cut off entirely as he resumed that unending, relentless pace, and she felt her hips start trying to move of their own accord, helpless to her own pleasure.
She felt the vibrations of his laugh as he buried his face back in her quim. His grip on her thigh was punishing now, hard spots of pressure that she already knew would leave inky bruise-prints, but she didn’t care.
Her org*sm started as a low roar, an approaching tsunami, and she was caught in the vicious undertow. A thousand waves, each one larger than the last, until she finally unravelled; dimly, she was aware of him talking to her, his voice a silken purr, but was too incoherent to understand what he was saying.
When she came down from the high, she realised she was gripping handfuls of his long black hair. “Oh, I’m—I’m so sorry,” she managed, her voice rusty from her own cries of pleasure. She smoothed his hair and kissed his shining face over and over, tasting herself, pathetically grateful. “I’m so sorry,” she said again, but didn’t know why.
(I’m sorry. For me. I’m sorry that it’s me.)
It was late. He knew that the night would have to end. But all he wanted to do was keep her on this sofa, keep her naked in his arms until the world came down around them. He was on his knees for her, and she was kissing him, peppering his face, apologising. The night would have to end—he would have to let her go.
It wasn’t as if he could keep her, after all. Not a ragged old thing like him. His arms tightened around her possessively. Why couldn’t he keep her? He had her here, here, right now.
“Very pretty apologies,” he said, “but I did tell you the consequences of coming without permission.”
Her jaw dropped.
“But—! But you!” She swatted him on the shoulder, and he let her. Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t keep his expression stern. “You’re a horrible bastard, Severus Snape!”
“I am indeed,” Severus said dryly.
“This isn’t fair!”
He arched an eyebrow.
She was so beautiful, so naked, blushing furiously and glaring down at him, trying to be angry. “I know, I know, you’ve never claimed to be fair,” she finally admitted, “So, what, am I getting a spanking? Detention?”
The idea of her over his knee sent a bolt of heat straight to his groin. He tried not to let it show in his expression. “Would you like a spanking?” he asked, feigning indifference.
“Yes,” she said, much too quickly. The blush on her cheeks deepened to scarlet. “I mean, if I must have some sort of punishment. Which I don’t feel I deserve, by the way. I’d like that noted for the record.”
“Ah, yes, the record,” Severus teased, “If you check the record, not once this evening did I say you were permitted—all I did was assure you how little of a challenge you presented.”
She pressed her lips together hard, eyes dancing, bright red to the roots of her curly hair; he was pleased to note it had come undone. “You are ridiculous,” she said at last, “The only man I’ve ever met who can make me org*sm, and he insists on being insufferable the entire time!”
The only man? What calibre of men had she previously been dating? Severus, who had been trying his hardest to woo and impress—despite his habitual sarcasm—wondered if he had a chance at this, after all.
“What a terrible standard of previous lovers,” Severus drawled, and she leapt to her feet, cheeks aflame. “Oh come now,” he said in protest, and caught her around the waist.
They stood by the sofa, and she was doing her best to pretend to be upset—but when he tilted her head back, he caught a glimpse of barely-contained mischief.
“You’re so cruel to me,” she said dramatically, “Cruel. In my own home. Casting aspersions on my character and good name—”
“Cruel,” he began manoeuvring her down the hallway, advancing until her back was against a wall. “One simple rule, and she calls me cruel.”
“Your rule is impossible!” Hermione cried.
He liked her like this, against a wall, with nowhere to run. Judging by the way she looked at him, still blushing furiously but unable to tear her eyes away from his, she agreed. They would certainly have to explore that later—but he had other plans.
“Impossible?” he asked, and began manoeuvring her once more, closer to the bedroom. He pressed a gentle kiss to her lovebitten collarbone. Felt her shiver. “I would never set an impossible rule.”
“You say I’m not permitted to come, and then you do everything in your power to make me,” Hermione grumbled, feathering her hands through his hair once more, “This was much easier when I couldn’t org*sm.”
He tsk’ed. “Foolish girl, you haven’t been listening, have you?”
They had reached Hermione’s bed. The back of her thighs hit the mattress. “You are permitted to come as many times as you like,” he explained, his voice low. “You must simply ask, first.”
They fell on top of the bed together in a tangle of limbs, kissing, losing themselves in each other. He could spend a very happy lifetime here, on top of her naked body.
But it was Hermione stopped him, hands bracketing his jaw. “Hang on,” she said, “I thought I was being punished.”
He couldn’t tear his eyes away from her—she was radiantly beautiful at this moment, lips kiss-swollen and parted, dark brown eyes swallowed by enormous pupils.
“Oh, you must be careful,” he breathed, “People will get the wrong idea about you, Miss Granger.” Severus kissed the column of her neck, then bit sharply into her pulse-point, drawing forth a needful little gasp. “They’ll say you enjoy being punished.”
“I most certainly do not!” Hermione tried to insist, even as she squirmed beneath his touch, “I will accept punishment when it’s warranted, certainly. And—and you s-said it was, so—”
“I seem to recall you wanted a spanking,” Severus continued, and then sucked another red mark into the side of her throat. “Am I correct?”
“I didn’t want—” the rest of her words were cut off by a delighted squeal as he rearranged her, settling her firmly over his knee. Oh, he quite liked her like this, with her delicious arse in the air, her face in a pillow.
“No?” he asked, stroking the curve of her arse cheek, admiring how well it fit into the palm of his hand.
She wiggled her bum rather expectantly. “I’ve never been spanked before,” she admitted, “So I don’t quite know what to expect.”
“Never?”
“Well, I mean, the odd arse-slap when they’re f*cking me from behind, I suppose,” Hermione said, her voice muffled. “But never—never like this.”
He thought of all the beatings he received in his life. Truthfully, he couldn’t remember a time when he’d been spanked in such an innocent fashion, over a knee with a bare arse in the air. He remembered fists and thrown punches and the hard crack of a belt; but to Hermione, it was novel, it was thrilling; the kind of thing a young woman trying to take control of her life would find adventurous.
She didn’t have any of the nasty associations that came along with it. The humiliation of being so vulnerable, so exposed, at the whim of someone who was supposed to care. He ran his hands lightly across the firm curve of her arse.
“It isn’t a requirement,” he heard himself saying, “Only if you’d like.”
“Are you going to make me say it?” she whined into the pillow, “Don’t be mean.”
His fingertips sank harder into her cheek, a warning. “Yes, actually,” he decided, “I would like to hear you ask.”
She turned her head so as to completely muffle the words into the pillow. “PleaseseverusmayIhaveaspanking.”
“What?” he asked, as his fingers ghosted closed to her puffy, sopping c*nt. “Let’s use our manners, now, Hermione. Enunciate.”
Another shiver. Laid out like she was, he could see the ripples of goosebumps travel down her spine, watch the fine hairs on her arm stand on end. She turned her head to the side again, her blush crimson against the crisp white pillow.
“Please, Severus,” she panted, “may I have a spanking?”
“Very nice,” he said approvingly, “You may.”
He smacked her hard enough to sting, the sharp crack echoing in the small room, and she yelped—mostly out of surprise, if he were to guess. He dug his elbow into her upper back, keeping her pinned in his lap, and spanked her again on the opposite cheek.
Visible as a brand on each plump curve was the clear outline of his handprint. He could get her arse to match the blush on her face; yes, he decided, that seemed like a worthy goal. An unnecessary savagery made purposeful.
“Oh,” she said, thighs rubbing together, “That’s not—what I expected.”
Severus let his hand trail lightly over the inflamed skin, dancing across her fiery nerves. “What did you expect?”
Smack!
She hissed in pain and squirmed in his lap, just a little. Blood rushed to her skin in beautiful, palm-shaped patches, like roses in snow. What a stunning canvas.
“It’s warm,” Hermione whispered. “It’s not as bad as I thought.”
He struck her a half-dozen more times, alternating intensities, until her arse matched the charming red flush on her face. Each time she would flinch and recoil, but never made any serious bid to escape; as a reward, his slaps grew more forceful. Mesmerised by the way her cheeks jiggled under his hand, the way her flesh reddened at once, like a peach.
Lazily, Severus dipped his hand between her shining thighs. She was drenched. “Well, well, well,” he said, the tips of his fingers feathering a touch against her labia. “Is there anything you would like to ask me?”
“Can you please f*ck me,” Hermione said into the pillow.
“I suppose,” he drawled. His attention grew more focused, long fingers sliding over her cl*tor*s. “Is that all?”
She mewled, a frenzied, needy sound. “Please, may I?”
He was tempted to make her beg for it again, as he had before—she would, too. If he told her to beg for his co*ck until he’d emptied himself inside of her, she would, in this moment. But she’d already been so good, had tried so hard, and was clearly exhausted.
So, for once in his miserable, godforsaken life, Severus Snape took pity on someone.
“You may,” he said softly, and, without letting her get up, brought her over the edge. Her hips spasmed, hands fisting the sheets—it took so little, he marvelled. All she needed was a bit of focused attention, and she came apart.
Had no one ever given her that kind of care?
She was boneless and spent, utterly sated, but his co*ck was like iron. Severus spent a moment considering practicalities, not wanting to flip her over, namely to keep her reddened arse from friction, but also to admire his handiwork.
Thankfully, she took advantage of his hesitation and crawled out of his lap. She made it to the centre of her bed, and then buried her face in her arms, leaving her glowing red arse temptingly high in the air. Thighs spread wide in the low light, he could see how she glistened; his mouth watered.
“Condoms,” she said, her voice very high, “in the nightstand.”
She knew it was very late because the world had a queer, muzzy stillness that only seemed to happen past midnight. The wine and food and climaxes had wrung out every bit of her, and now, a half-collapsed ruin on her hands and knees, Hermione wondered if it was too early to start thinking she was in love.
Certainly it was just her brain, doused in post-org*sm bliss and oxytocin, that was making her feel this way. But when he pressed against her, into her, so slowly and surely that it took her breath away, she thought about it again. Was it too early? They hadn’t even been out to dinner.
Yet here, in the low light of her bedroom, his large, elegant hands on her hips, it didn’t seem so ridiculous. He f*cked her with deliberation, solid, weighty thrusts that had her toes curling, and it soon became apparent that two org*sms, in fact, were not enough.
“I can’t,” she said, her voice absolutely gutted, “I can’t, Severus—”
“Can’t you?” he asked tenderly, so gently for the agony he was requiring of her. The humid slap of their flesh echoed in the room. “Let’s try.”
She wailed and her knees gave out as one of his hands snuck around to rub at her cl*t, but this didn’t deter him—he paused only momentarily to stuff a pillow beneath her hips, and then slid back inside her with a wet, lurid sound.
Hermione’s legs fully gave out soon after this, when his speed increased just slightly and his fingertips strummed against where they were joined, sending little sparks of electricity each time he touched her aching cl*tor*s. Her org*sm was painful this time, her internal muscles squeezing hard, and the noise that came out of her mouth did not fully sound human; but she couldn’t quite be sure, because there was a ringing in her ears.
“Beautiful,” She became vaguely aware of his voice as the ringing subsided, “What a beautiful sight you are like this.”
She felt wholly ruined, now, and was barely aware of him pulling out to dispose of the condom. Time felt strangely elastic, and when she blinked, Severus was standing over her with a warm rag.
He wiped her aching c*nt carefully, thoroughly, taking care not to press too harshly. “You don’t—” she mumbled, trying to sit up, “Don’t have to—”
“Be good for me, now,” he soothed, and he’d taken on that strange hypnotic quality again, where she felt compelled to obey. She fell back amid the pillows. “Excellent. Just like that. Well done.”
Even with her eyes closed, she could tell that he shut off the lights—the darkness was an instant balm.
“Come to bed,” she rasped.
He obeyed, the bed dipping near her. Her body felt loose and heavily weighted, impossible to move, but he folded her lovingly against him, tucking his arm around her waist. His nose bumped against the shell of her ear, and he kissed the vulnerable spot where her neck met shoulder. In the darkness, with her eyes closed, he could be gentle.
I think I love you, she thought to herself, and fell asleep.
“What was that?” he said. The blood in his veins had turned to ice. Severus had a sudden urge to shake her awake, make her repeat what she’d just mumbled under her breath. He hadn’t quite made it out—did she say she loved me?—but she was fast asleep now, fitted snugly against his body.
Warily, he settled once again. He had been hearing things, surely. Certainly she hadn’t said anything about being in love with him. It was his beleaguered, exhausted mind inventing conspiracy theories. Specks of hope for him to torture himself with, nothing more.
She couldn’t love someone like him. She was too pragmatic, too logical—she would wake in the morning, and in the grey dawn she would see him for what he truly was; an old, ugly man, an inconvenient wrinkle in her inevitable illustrious career. She would come to her senses. More's the pity.
His jaw clenched. He drew her to him more closely; she sighed in her sleep, curling closer.
Was it selfish of him to want her? His very existence could destroy her reputation. They wouldn’t come after the established, tenured professor who had multiple publications in the field; the brilliant, beautiful graduate would be the one whispered about.
Severus felt his defensiveness rising. What ethical boundaries had they crossed? He had instructed her in two classes during her undergraduate work, and she’d received top marks in them without any sort of impropriety between them. Nine years had elapsed since then, and she was in an entirely different field, with advanced degrees. They were effectively colleagues, he reasoned with himself.
Except there were—he’d remembered to ask—seventeen years between them. She would be thinking of her future, her children. He couldn’t offer her any of those things. Truly, there was nothing he could offer her except himself. Though he made a rather good living, he was too ugly and much too unpleasant to tempt anyone for a significant length of time; and he could not even offer all of himself, only the bare grey scraps left over.
What was he even thinking? Severus shook his head, as if he could physically dislodge the thoughts from his head. If he tried, he could convince her to stay—but that would be cruel, he reasoned with himself bitterly. Better a moment of slight discomfort now, than serious harm later, once his rot had spread out and infected her.
He wanted her. Was it so impossible that she could someday want him back? Perhaps not wholly, perhaps not without pity, but enough.
He could survive on only enough. He’d survived on less.
When Hermione’s alarm went off, she thought it must be a mistake. Surely it was—she never had her alarm go off on the weekends, so she could sleep in as much as possible, really enjoy her morning routines. And yet the dratted thing was going off. She reached out sleepily and silenced it.
As soon as she did, she bolted awake.
She became acutely aware of how truly exhausted she was. And perhaps a touch hungover. Her tongue felt furry and she reeked of sex and sweat; she needed to shower and brush her teeth immediately.
What had become of him? Her bed was completely empty, the sheets twisted and the duvet half-off the bed. “Severus?” she called out.
Silence.
Hermione rubbed her eyes. “All right,” she muttered, “I officially don’t like this.”
She went straight to the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror, and a horrifying apparition looked back. Wild curls, half of them stringy clumps, the other half tangled together in a single knot at the back of her head. Deep circles beneath her red-rimmed eyes. Of course Severus had left, she thought dully, he’d probably taken one look at her and reconsidered the whole affair.
Well, then fine. That was just fine by her. If he wanted this to happen again, he’d have to put in some effort. She’d sent the one email, and she’d gotten her answer—a nicer answer than she expected, to be sure, but if he was going to be pulling a disappearing act every time he slept over, she would have to start taking that into consideration.
Hermione showered, spending a longer time than usual detangling her hair. Her bum was as plump and unmarked as it usually was—the only evidence of their indulgent evening was a fresh litter of marks across her neck and collarbones. Internally however, she ached; deeper than her muscles, something in the pit of her stomach yawned emptily. Maybe she should call Shacklebolt and tell him she wasn’t feeling well. A three-day weekend would be lovely right now, really give her time to wallow and recover.
She emerged from the shower in a cloud of steam, scrubbed pink, only to hear movement from her kitchen. The refrigerator door opening and closing.
Hope—cruel, deceitful hope—flooded her chest, and she clutched her towel a little tighter. “Severus?” she called out. Had he just nipped out to get coffee…?
There was a beat. Then: “Is that who you’ve been f*cking?” The slightest pause. “Is he the one who left this very soppy note?”
“Ginny!” She hurried into the kitchen to see the redhead standing by her sink, drinking the last of her milk straight from the carton. “Ugh, Gin—and give me that!”
She ripped the scrap of yellow paper from her, ignoring Ginny’s knowing grin:
Dear Hermione,
I’ve always slept fitfully, so please forgive me. You looked so peaceful, I couldn’t stand to wake you.
Call when you have a spare moment.
-S
Beneath the scribbled initial was a string of digits. His telephone number. As if he hadn’t called her yesterday. She read and reread the note about twenty times, until Ginny began making fun of her.
“‘You looked so peaceful,’” Ginny said in a low, mournful tone, “‘I simply couldn’t stand to wake you.’”
She smacked her arm. “Shut up.”
“Ssssseverus sssssounds besssssotted,” Ginny went on, undeterred, “What a dreadfully ancient-sounding name.”
“What are you even doing in my flat?” Hermione demanded, voice gone all high and pitchy to hide her blush. (It didn’t work.) “It’s eight o’clock in the morning—I gave you that key for emergencies.”
“I didn’t think you’d have company!” Ginny said, “And anyway, this is an emergency. Harry and I broke up.”
She said this very matter-of-factly, as though she’d announced it was going to rain later. Hermione gaped at her. “What?”
“It’s been coming for awhile,” the younger girl admitted, “It just happened. I didn’t…quite know where else to go.”
“Oh, Ginny,” Hermione said, “I’m so sorry.”
Ginny eyed her. “Yeah, well, get dressed before your tit* fall out of your towel.” Her gaze went higher, and Hermione blushed, knowing her friend was taking in the variety of love bites decorating her throat and chest. “Blimey.”
“Shut up,” she said again instinctively, drawing her towel higher. She hurried to her bedroom.
“Did I say anything?” Ginny said, trailing after. “No wonder you aren’t being all weepy over Ron and Lavender, you’ve got Scott co*ck McChomper to keep you busy.”
Hermione began dressing rapidly, and Ginny leaned against the hallway wall, waiting. “What happened with you and Harry?” Hermione asked.
Ginny went quiet. “It was me,” she said finally, “I wasn’t—happy, really. And I figure…life's too short, y’know?”
It was always so bloody difficult to get Ginny to talk about her feelings. Her preference seemed to be swallowing down emotions until they exploded out of her in gigantic, irregular bursts, and then refusing to talk about it later. Upon reflection, perhaps their breakup wasn’t so out-of-the-blue.
“Well, you had to make the right decision for you,” Hermione tried, pulling on a turtleneck that would hide the worst of her marks, “How’s Harry?”
“Crying with Ron, probably,” Ginny muttered. “This just happened, mind.”
“Just happened?” Hermione echoed, coming around the corner. “Oh, Gin…”
Ginny shrugged. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes were glassy. “I’d been thinking on it awhile, though. He’s just—just so perfect, yeah? What girl wouldn’t want him?” She laughed. “And I wanted him for so long, and then I had him, and now…”
Hermione pulled her into a hug. Ginny trembled, and then relaxed, tucking herself beneath Herimone’s chin. She could have sworn she heard a sniffle.
“Life is too short,” Hermione told her, patting her back. “You shouldn’t be with someone who doesn’t make you happy.”
There was a long moment where the two simply hugged one another, and Hermione thought about how far they’d come. Ginny was her ex-boyfriend’s sister, but she was also the best friend of her college roommate, and now, in a moment of utter crisis, sought out Hermione first. She was a little surprised Ginny hadn’t turned to Luna, as the two were so close, but Hermione didn’t dare pry. She had some tact.
“This is stupid,” Ginny said at last, and pushed away to wipe her eyes. “Look, I just wanted to get out of my flat. You’ve got work, yeah?”
A bolt of panic—Hermione checked the clock. “sh*t. Yes. But, wait—”
“No, s’all right,” Ginny said, “I’ll lie on the sofa and eat crisps. Hang on—” she squinted at the loveseat. “Did you shag there?”
Hermione went pink.
“f*cking hell,” Ginny laughed, “You’re telling me about that later.”
She couldn’t help but join in laughing, only blushing harder, which in turn made Ginny laugh more. For one bewildering second, the full absurdity of the past week fell onto her shoulders, and now that she’d started laughing, she couldn’t stop. If she were to tell Ginny, where would she even begin?
The thought sent a fresh wave of laughter, and Hermione doubled over.
“What?” Ginny demanded, “Oh god, what did you do on the sofa?”
There were tears in her eyes. Hermione struggled to catch her breath, still laughing. “Did you know,” she gasped, “I never came once with your brother.”
Ginny’s jaw dropped in obvious horror. “Bloody hell!” She clapped a hand over her mouth and then she, too, began to laugh hysterically.
“Oh, no,” Ginny managed to get out, “Oh no, is that what happened? Did you have a mind-shattering org*sm on that sofa?”
Hermione could no longer form words, she simply nodded, sliding down the wall.
“Never once?” Ginny bellowed, “Never once, in six years! f*cking hell, I’ll kill him. I’m never going to let him live this down—” she paused, and then her eyes lit up with the horrible glee of a younger sibling; she pounced on her phone. “I’ve got to tell Percy—”
“No!” Hermione wiped her eyes. “Oh, no, you can’t, promise me you won’t! Ron was lovely, really, it’s not his fault.”
“I mean,” Ginny said, and giggled again, already texting, “it’s a bit his fault.”
“Stop it! Listen,” Hermione said, “I’m going to call Shacklebolt and tell him I’ve got a stomachache. But you,” she suddenly sobered, “you aren’t allowed to tell anyone. No one. Not a single soul. Understand? Oi,” she snapped her fingers, and Ginny tore her attention away from her phone, “Not even your brothers.”
“You’re so unfair,” Ginny protested at Hermione’s departing back. “Can I tell Luna?”
“Not even Luna!”
“That’s too bad,” Ginny muttered under her breath, just out of earshot, “seeing as I’ve already told her.”
Like a maggot sensing decay, Lucius Malfoy was oozing his sleek charm all throughout the building. Severus could always tell when he was around—perhaps it was his oily cologne that seemed to hang in the air behind him, or the way all the teaching assistants sat up a little straighter.
Still, it was an unpleasant surprise to find the man already in his office, sprawled in one of the abominable plastic chairs meant for students.
“Severus,” Lucius said warmly.
“Dr. Snape,” Severus corrected him.
The blonde man raised his eyebrows at his old colleague. “You wound me, old chap,” he said mockingly, “Are we playing with titles now? I don’t think you, of all people, want to start that.”
“What title would you prefer?” Severus asked, shutting his office door behind him with a snap. “Lord Malfoy, Most Excellent Thief of the Highest Order?”
Lucius’s silver eyes shone with malevolence. “And here I was wondering if you were still bitter about our ancient history.”
They had been boys once, a very long time ago—and for a single moment they became those boys again, wounded and sulking, driven by petty jealousies and wounded hearts.
Severus sat behind his desk, and with the expanse of walnut between them, became a man again.
“No,” he admitted, “I’m not.”
Lucius appraised him. “Good.”
“How’s Narcissa?”
“Horrible,” Lucius said, examining his buffed nailbeds, “Tearing at the wallpaper. Dreadfully bored, nowadays.”
“I’m certain she can find a few more impoverished orphans to pose next to for the Malfoy Foundation newsletter,” Severus sneered. “Or another award to accept on behalf of sending money to charities…or whatever it is she does, these days.”
“Now, now,” Lucius murmured, “Careful, old chap.”
Severus felt the phone in his pocket vibrate. Hermione. “Is there any particular reason you’ve come to torment me?” he asked, digging it out of his pocket.
“Someone important?” Lucius preened. Severus shot him a foul look. “Mm. Say no more.”
He hesitated, and then rejected the call.
The phone rang once, and then went to voicemail. Hermione blinked stupidly, disarmed by his bored drawl of an answering message: “You’ve reached the number you have dialled. Leave your name and a brief message.”
Unbearably cryptic for no good reason, Hermione thought to herself, and rolled her eyes. “Hey, Severus, I got your note. You keep running off on me,” she cleared her throat, trying not to sound sharp. Easy, Hermione, be easy. “Give me a call back when you get a chance. Love you.”
She hung up.
(Love you?)
Had she just said ‘love you’? Now she couldn’t remember. Her short-term memory fractured into anxious shards—had she said ‘love you’ or ‘see you’? Which was it? Did she risk calling back to explain? What if he checked his voicemail before calling her back—many reasonable people would do that, in fact, she was one of them—and she’d said ‘love you,’ and that frightened him off so he never returned the message?
“‘Mione?” Ginny called from the living area. “What’s this address, again?”
(Shut up!)
Hermione rattled off the address, but her brain had kicked into overdrive. Should she text him? Yes, that was the safest middle option—she didn’t want to risk panicking him with another phone call, nor did she want to irritate him by leaving the message unaccounted for.
“Why?” she asked Ginny, already drafting an initial text to Severus.
“I’m ordering a pizza,” the redhead said nonchalantly.
Hermione blinked. “It’s not even nine o’clock in the morning.”
“Yeah,” Ginny shrugged. “Breakfast pizza.”
She shook her head. “Oh, Gin, you’ve been living with the twins for too long,” Hermione sighed, and went back to her text.
If she had said ‘see you’ instead of ‘love you,’ she didn’t want to risk mentioning it to him. Perhaps she was remembering incorrectly, and she’d said ‘see you,’ like she’d intended. She absolutely hadn’t intended to tell him she loved him. Because she didn’t! It was absurd to think otherwise. It was a completely average slip of the tongue, not implying any hidden meanings—it was just unfortunate to have it happen at this stage of…whatever this was. f*cking? Dating? Neither? Both?
Her thumbs stopped tapping. Were they dating? Was that an accurate descriptor of their romantic entanglements? They hadn’t discussed anything about labels or a direction or done anything beyond having a few lovely nights together. Well—she had, unfortunately, drunkenly told him her entire life story.
God. If she had said ‘love you,’ she was going to need to move to the Arctic.
“This is a delicate topic,” Lucius was saying, “It would require a certain amount of assurances towards discretion.”
His phone vibrated once in his pocket. A voicemail. She’d left him something, then—wanted to talk to him. It took every ounce of his steely self-control not to hurl Lucius bodily out of the room so he could listen to it at once.
“Thanks to you, I’m a veritable pariah,” Severus drawled, “Who would I even tell?”
“Come now,” Lucius said, “A pariah—really.”
“What are you here to ask, Lucius?” he retorted.
Lucius leaned forward. His first words turned Severus’s blood to ice. “Vector had a very promising graduate student a few years ago,” he said, and something about the way Lucius said very promising made rage curl through Severus’s stomach. “She developed a deeply fascinating model for artificial intelligence, but didn’t continue with it. Vector is, as you know, retiring,” A cold smile at this, “Can’t hack the political game, apparently.”
“How tragic,” Severus said.
“Indeed,” Lucius smirked. “It’s quite a good model, what this girl built—but that’s not entirely what I’m interested in.”
His eyes narrowed. “Oh?” Severus said quietly. “And what are you interested in?”
He’d aged the best out of all of them, even though he was the oldest, Severus thought unhappily to himself as he surveyed Lucius’s cruel, beautiful face. Or perhaps being wealthy was the answer—certainly Lucius had very little to worry him.
“Shall I trot out a line?” Lucius said slowly, his eyes never leaving Severus’s, “‘I have a research project she’d be interested in,’ or, ‘her work highlighted an interesting deficiency in my own research,’ eugh…whatever rot I’ve used in the past.” He tried for a jaunty smile, but there was something strained in it. “Truth be told, old chap, I’ve got the, eh, the, you know…the itch again.”
Disgust rotted upwards, squatting in his throat like a toad. “Ah, yes. The itch.”
He only liked the beautiful, brilliant ones, Severus thought viciously to himself. The naive up-and-comers, the ones too clever for their own good. He liked the smart ones despite not being overly burdened with intelligence himself—Lucius Malfoy had a far greater skillset, and that was recognising opportunity when he saw it. He was always in the right photographs, caught whispering in the right corners, approached at the right parties.
It didn’t matter that Lucius Malfoy had been married for the better part of his life, and it didn’t matter that he’d never actually written a single word of research; but his name was on the articles and publications of those who did, and that was enough in the right circles.
They’d been a duo of sorts—almost a trio, for about two months, until Regulus because Lucius’s new obsession and Severus might as well have not existed. They’d gone to some of those parties together; some of those corners they’d whispered in had been together; and in a very select few photographs, now-scrubbed from the Internet and elsewhere, they’d been in them together.
He’d gotten bored of Severus. They all did, eventually. He wasn’t beautiful enough to earn the great Lucius Malfoy, and certainly much too brilliant to keep him, but Severus had wanted him all the same.
I’ve got the itch, he’d tell Severus when they were at a club or a party, and that was his cue to help find a suitably young, beautiful mark. Sometimes it wouldn’t even be sexual—Lucius would just want to flirt and charm a hopeful romantic, only to leave without asking their name. He liked the mystery it cultivated; better still, he liked the power it gave him.
Other times…
Well. He didn’t like to think about the other times.
“She’s really quite brilliant,” Lucius went on, “Shacklebolt’s got her locked away at the moment, researching some twaddle about genocide or colonisation or something absolutely no fun whatsoever. But her name comes up all the time ‘round here, haven’t you noticed? Hermione Granger, Hermione Granger, all anyone can talk about is Hermione f*cking Granger.”
The Hermione Granger in question had just left him a burning voicemail that he was anxious to hear, but Severus let none of that show on his face. “Yes, I’m familiar.”
“Are you?” Lucius said, “Ah, then you must understand. A little rough around the edges, perhaps, but with time, and the right resources, the right funding…she could really be quite something.”
His phone buzzed again. Severus surreptitiously checked his phone—it was a text message, but he could only see the first line.
Hermione Granger: Hello Severus, please disreg…
He absolutely had to get Lucius out of his office. But how to do that without arousing suspicion?
“Are you looking for my advice?” Severus asked.
“No! Nothing so terribly gauche as all that,” Lucius said, “Merely an introduction. You know Shacklebolt better than I. I was hoping to arrange a discreet, informal meeting.” His eyes were sharp again, flinty with tension. “You know the sort.”
For the space of a single heartbeat, Severus considered it. There was a chance—a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless—that Lucius would be exactly the sort of person Hermione needed. Someone established, with a tremendous amount of funding and opportunity, doing real work in an area she’d helped innovate. If she was clever, and he knew she was clever, she could pull off a very neat trick and use his social connections to her own advantage.
But then the moment passed, and the idea of Lucius Malfoy being anywhere near Hermione filled him with a creeping, glacial anger.
“I think,” he began quietly, “you have overestimated my friendship with Shacklebolt.”
“Have I, now?”
“Yes,” Severus went on, “and you have most certainly overestimated your friendship with me.”
Those silver-coin eyes tilted in a self-satisfied smirk. “Now I am wounded."
“Not nearly as wounded as you ought to be,” Severus stood. “Especially if I see you or your ilk sniffing around my graduate students.”
“Severus Snape, finding a moral compass,” Lucius said, almost awed, “I never thought I’d live to see the day.”
Hermione chewed her fingernails and reread the text message while Ginny was giving her a thoroughly detailed play-by-play of the game of football she had played yesterday. Trust the Weasley’s to never talk about their personal feelings, but spend a lot of time talking about unimportant nonsense like football rivalries.
Hermione Granger: Hello Severus, please disregard the voicemail I just left. Got cut off. Wanted to know when you’re free. Chat soon xx
Was that fine? Did it draw too much attention? Hopefully he would look at his phone, read the text, and then delete the voicemail without listening to it. Yes, that would be the best-case scenario.
“—this is how I know you aren’t paying attention,” Ginny was saying, “and it’s because you’re texting Scotty Mcco*cky-Chump, aren’t you?”
“I sent one text!” Hermione said defensively.
Ginny folded her arms. “What was the last thing you remember me saying?”
“Something…about football?” She cringed.
“Right,” said Ginny, “Point proven.”
She opened her mouth to defend herself, then thought better of it. Ginny had, after all, just broken up with her long-term boyfriend and had come over to Hermione’s place looking for support. Hermione put her phone away guiltily.
“Sorry,” she said, “I just—haven’t really done the whole, you know. Casual dating thing.”
Ginny frowned. “Be careful, then.”
“I know,” Hermione said, even though she didn’t, not really.
“That’s always how it goes, you know,” Ginny shook her head wisely, “Long-term relationship ends, you feel all right, and then you fall into some weirdo’s arms for a few weeks—bam! Heartbreak, even worse than before. That’s why you won’t catch me in any pubs anytime soon.”
“Is that always how it goes?” Hermione asked, feeling increasingly uncertain the more Ginny went on.
“Nearly always,” Ginny shrugged. She then noticed Hermione’s face growing more grave by the moment, and added hastily, “But, erm, not all the time! You’ve just got to watch it, is all. Make sure you both want the same things, and, you know…keep it casual.”
“Keep it casual,” Hermione echoed, her lips numb. “Right.”
Her phone went off, and her eyes went round as saucers.
“Is that him?” Ginny said, her voice lowering to a hush.
Hermione nodded.
“Answer it!”
“Not here,” Hermione hissed, and practically sprinted to the bedroom.
“Aw, but I wanted to listen!” Ginny called after her, then added: “If I hear any moans coming from behind that door, I’m leaving!”
“Shut up!” Hermione shouted back, and slammed the door. Breathless, hopeful, terrified, she answered: “Hello?”
Severus sat staring down at his phone. The blood had drained entirely from his face. Lucius was mercifully long gone, having been chased off by Severus’s foul temper; and now, alone in his office, Severus was on his third re-listen. The words didn’t change, but each time he replayed the message, he felt both curiously heavier and lighter.
“Hey, Severus, I got your note,” she’d said. Her voice was breezy but not without irritation. “You keep running off on me.”
He bent his ear closer to the phone, to ensure he heard the next words very clearly.
“Give me a call back when you get a chance. Love you!”
And then the message ended. Certainly no part of it was cut off. Or at least, none of it sounded as though it had gotten interrupted—it was obvious, at least to him, that Hermione had made a mistake.
For some reason, discovering her inadvertent admissions meant more to him than if she’d outright confessed her feelings. He reread the text message one more time just to be certain, and then listened to the message again.
Love you.
He saw it. For just a moment. His future, unspoilt, unfurling in front of him like a scroll. A future of moments like this, small voice messages left in times of missed connection, of quiet reassurances. A future—a life.
Severus had spent so long looking behind him that he’d forgotten to look forward; and here now, he’d walked sullenly straight into it, grumbling the whole way. Even when he’d been very young, he had been remembering, and wasn’t that a kind of pain all in itself? The pain of remembering? Of always looking behind, never forward, regretting and dwelling on past mistakes—a warped reality where he could only see life as it passed him by.
Severus took a shallow breath, and gathered himself. “Enough,” he said aloud, and the flatness of his own voice startled him.
He had a terrible affliction of the body and spirit, truly. A vicious, desperate neediness that drove him towards the smothering bosom of hope, over and over and over, like a kicked dog who simply would not learn its lesson. Love had been withheld from him for so long that when it was presented—purely, honestly, inadvertently—he couldn’t stop himself from responding to it.
One of his many terrible weaknesses.
Consider: he had lived his life according to certain principles, and in doing so, had made certain choices. Perhaps not consciously, but choices nonetheless. He was alone in life by choice—every bridge he had burned began with a knowingly stricken match. This connection he was developing with Hermione Granger was a dangerous one, and she was becoming seemingly enamoured with him.
It had been a very long time since he’d been any figure of importance in someone’s life. He’d forgotten how much trust felt like power. And—Severus grimaced, remembering—he was not a man who could be trusted with power.
But she did trust him, nonetheless. Because, he told himself sourly, he hadn’t yet done anything to break it. Although that was inevitable.
Wasn’t it?
You say you’ve made choices, a tiny inner voice said in his mind, a voice that sounded too much like his mother, why not make different ones?
He dialled Hermione’s number. She answered on the second ring.
“Hello?” Breathless. Hopeful. Terrified.
“Hello.”
There was a fraction of a pause, and then she said, “Listen, I, er, took the day off work.”
“Did you?” he said. He remembered how she had looked that morning when he’d first awoken—there had been a gap in the curtains, and a narrow stripe of sunlight had fallen across her face, turning every highlight in her hair shining gold. “I thought you slept rather well.”
“Shut up,” she said, and he couldn’t help barking a laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t mean you! My friend—it’s a long story, but my friend just broke up with her boyfriend so I’m here to be moral support.”
“Aren’t you saintly,” he drawled. Little wonder why he was half in-love with her: she collected charity cases. He would be another leper trailing behind her, desperate for even a touch of her hem.
“I can be,” He heard her smile. “Did you—did you have a reason for wanting me to call?”
“What are you doing tomorrow?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said at once. “I mean, I’m going out tonight to the pub with everyone, but tomorrow is—nothing. Not doing anything. Why?”
He tried to think of how he could say the next words without sounding besotted, and almost succeeded. “I would very much like to see you again.”
“So would I,” she breathed, “I mean, yes, the same, but for you. Opposite, rather. Er, I mean, I’d also like to see you again. Yes. So tomorrow?” Her voice had gone quite high and warbly.
“Tomorrow,” he said. He took a mean sort of pleasure in her obvious nervousness. “I think there are a few…topics we ought to discuss.”
“Topics?” she squeaked. “What kind of topics?”
“We should discuss them at dinner,” he said, hesitating. He wanted to see her in person again. If she hung up on him, then he would have almost no way of convincing her otherwise. Yes, his case was better made in person.
“Or we could discuss them now,” Hermione said quickly, “I mean, if they’re important. God, Severus, I—” She broke off with a bitter chuckle, then came back, “If I have to wait until tomorrow to find out what’s going on inside your head, I think I’m going to explode.”
“Are you?” he wondered aloud. He’d felt as though his heart was outside of his body, dripping and obvious. Making risotto, staying the night—wasn’t that proof of his utter obsession?
“Yes,” she huffed. When he didn’t immediately continue, she groaned. “You’re killing me, Severus.”
He considered for another moment, and then said, very carefully, “I’m not sure what your desired outcome is. For this…relationship.” His mouth twisted at the word.
“What a coincidence,” Hermione said sarcastically. “I’ve no idea what yours is, either.”
“Yes, I suppose we never discussed that.”
“And now here we are,” she said, and then, quietly: “I’m not good at this. This bit. The whole ‘what are we doing’ bit.”
“Neither am I,” Severus said, hollow.
“Well,” Hermione said, as if plucking up her courage, “What do you want?”
He wanted to wake up next to her and stay. He wanted to slip out of bed to make coffee, he wanted them to spend quiet afternoons reading and researching in opposite rooms; he wanted to cook dinner while she paced and talked, and he wanted her to die a thousand screaming org*smic deaths at his hands. He wanted to be a different person, to reinvent himself in some fashion, and there was a perfect, shining opportunity in front of him to do so.
Perhaps most ardently, he wanted to be good for her. He wasn’t sure he was capable, but he wanted to try.
“You,” was all he could say.
He heard her quiet intake of breath. “Lucky me,” she said, and her voice sounded rather choked, “That’s all I want, too.”
She was a stupid, idiotic girl if that was true—it was one thing for him to be hopelessly devoted to a beautiful, brilliant woman who’d come into his life like a hurricane, reciting poetry and sending him flirtatious emails, how could he resist her? But he was an unpleasant old man who’d spent half their time together being rude, and it certainly did not speak well of her taste and sophistication if he was the sort of man she was interested in.
What was wrong with him? Could he only love if it wasn’t returned? Was that his curse?
“I’m not good at casual,” Hermione was saying, “I’ve never done anything casual in my life. Not that this has to become serious, or anything! I was only—I’m just saying, I…want you. And I want to see where this goes.” That smile again, audible in her voice. “It might lead somewhere nice.”
She wasn’t grasping the gravity of this situation, of his admission. If she had, she would have hung up.
“I haven’t done this in a long while,” was what he told her instead, “I’m not…quite sure of the rules.”
“I think,” she said softly, “this is the part where you ask me on a date.”
“Thank you for the reminder,” he said, sarcasm dripping, “though I believe I already have.”
“No you haven’t,” Hermione said at once, “if you check the record, you said we had topics to discuss at dinner. Which isn’t the same as asking, technically.”
“Technically,” he repeated.
Her voice deepened, and it was so seductive that it took Severus a moment to realise she was trying to imitate him: “So, I think I’d like to hear you ask.”
He remembered her over his knee, blush against the pillow. It took him a moment to steady his breathing, and then, silken: “Hermione, would you like to accompany me to dinner tomorrow?”
“I would love to,” she said, and it was something about the way she emphasised love that sent a bolt of giddy anxiety through him. Freely. Joyfully. “Where did you have in mind?”
There was a choice, here. She deserved a rich, lavish place, a restaurant of decadence and finery—he imagined her in a daringly low-cut dress, shimmering like a diamond in the correct setting. She deserved elegance. In a year, perhaps less, she would be living that sort of life—her brilliance would take her there, he had no doubt.
But he was not a fine man. He didn’t live a fine life. And there was still a wariness in him, an unease, despite their banter. Despite her evident affection.
“It isn’t far.” He gave her the address, and she repeated it back to him to be sure she’d gotten it right. And long after they’d said their goodbyes, he wondered if he’d made the right choice.
Why not make different ones? his mother echoed in his head.
“Why not,” he said to himself, as his traitorous, hope-sick heart began to pound. Why not indeed.
Hermione threw open the door, grinning like an idiot, to see that Ginny was hovering obviously outside. Eavesdropper. She pointed at her, but was unable to keep the smile off her face. “Don’t!”
“‘I think I’d like to hear you ask,’” Ginny teased, her voice high and fluttery, “Aren’t you getting bold!”
Sometimes Hermione wished she had married Ron, if only so that Ginny could truly be her sister—because if Ginny were her sister, she would’ve been able to smack her on the back of the head.
Unfortunately, Ginny was only her very dear friend, so she settled for shoving her into the bathroom and holding the door shut. “How dare you eavesdrop!”
“Oh, come on!” Ginny cried, laughing, “I think it’s very sweet. Come off it, let me out!”
“Not ‘till you apologise!”
“Please!” Ginny said, pulling at the handle, “I won’t tell anyone how disgustingly mushy you’re being, no matter how funny it is.”
“Apologise!”
Ginny couldn’t stop laughing. “No really, Hermione, it’s cute, it’s very cute. I love it. Let me out, I’m sorry, all right?”
Hermione let the door open a crack, so Ginny could see how terribly red she was blushing. “If you tell anyone about this,” she said furiously, “especially your brothers, I will murder you.”
“I really ought to come ‘round more often,” Ginny said, her eyes dancing impishly, “I get to learn so many things I shouldn’t.”
“Ginny! Promise me!”
There was a frantic note of real panic in Hermione’s voice, one she couldn’t keep entirely buried, and Ginny relented. “I promise.” She stopped pulling on the door. “Listen, it sounds like you’ve…had a hard go of it, lately. And if he makes you happy, then…that’s what matters, yeah?”
Hermione let her out of the bathroom. “Yeah,” she admitted, “we’ve both had a hard go of it, I suppose.”
Ginny sucked on the inside of her cheek as they made their way back to the kitchen. “Well, I mean, I’ve had about….a thousand more org*sms in the past six years, so—ow!”
This time, Hermione did smack her on the back of the head.
At first, Hermione was sure she’d remembered the address wrong, even though she’d saved it the moment Severus told her. This area of the city was distinctly grittier, darker, and more cramped. A car without tires sat on cinderblocks; a cat yowled somewhere, obviously in heat; the pavers were cracked and uneven; and somewhere in the distance were faint sirens.
But she could see Severus standing stiffly in the distance, a straight line of black against the dreary grey surroundings. He never wore colours, she noted, and made a mental note to buy him a scarf of some sort. Crimson or aubergine or emerald, some sort of rich jewel tone to break up the endless variety of black, high-collared shirts.
He was staring away from her, obviously lost in thought, and as she approached, she spent a long time admiring his profile. The way his long dark hair fell to his jawline. His heavy brow, his strong, hooked nose, a proud chin. Like a Roman emperor on a coin, Hermione thought dreamily.
She hurried towards him, pulling her coat more tightly against the burgeoning autumn chill. It wasn’t a very nice area, and as she drew nearer, she realised he was standing in front of a very small, narrow restaurant with a yellowing sign. Not a very nice restaurant, either. One of the tight knots of tension inside of her relaxed, and then unravelled.
“Hi,” she called out, and his head snapped towards her at once. “Glad to see you—thought I’d gotten off at the wrong stop.”
“Hardly a glamorous location,” he replied, hands in the pockets of his long, dark coat. “But one of my favourites.”
His favourites. She needed to know everything about him, especially things he liked, and apparently what he liked were tiny, out-of-the-way noodle shops. It was clear he wasn’t trying to impress her, he was trying to show her—this was his life. This was a part of him, in some small way.
Inside was a long, narrow galley, with a long counter on the wall and a single row of vinyl booths. The man behind the counter smiled and waved at Severus, and the two exchanged a few words in a language Hermione didn’t speak. Japanese? She wasn’t certain.
The booths were so cramped that their coats took up most of the seat, and when they were settled, Severus cleared his throat somewhat awkwardly. “It’s not,” he began, and then faltered. “I come here quite often,” he said at last, his voice low, “More often than I would like to admit.”
She could envision him here, alone, with only his long coat for company. Perhaps reading a book, eating noodles, his expression guarded. Or was this a place of solace?
Either way, by taking her here, he was giving her the capacity to ruin something. If this ended poorly, there would be no way for him to return here without thinking of her, at least at first. There was a vulnerability in this, Hermione thought to herself, that perhaps he felt but could not otherwise show.
“I like it,” she reassured him, “It’s much better than the places I frequent. My friends and I have all been going to the same grotty pub for ages, I think it’s eroded my palate.”
“Entirely possible, judging from the contents of your freezer.”
Why did she like it so much when someone was just a little bit mean to her? Hermione kicked him under the table to try and distract him from her blush. “I don’t know how to cook!” she laughed, “At least, not anything edible. And I don’t like shopping really, of any sort, even groceries.”
“Ah,” Severus said, and sighed. “I knew this was a terrible idea.”
Something swooped unpleasantly in her stomach.
“Because I adore shopping,” Severus continued, “For groceries, best of all.”
Her laugh burst forth again, palpably relieved, and it coaxed a smile from him. God, but did that sight go straight to her heart. “You? Adore shopping? I would have never—”
“No, of course I don’t,” Severus said, drier than before, “What a horrid exercise. If I could shop alone and uninterrupted, then perhaps I would find the act mildly tolerable.” He watched her laugh harder, amused and approving. “Careful, Miss Granger, you’re in danger of convincing a man that he’s charming.”
“You are,” Hermione said, and then amended, “Well, you can be. When you’ve a mind to it.”
“I am most certainly not,” he retorted, “Nor am I attempting to be.”
She turned her attention to the menu, which was a single piece of paper between yellowing laminate. “You’ve certainly charmed me,” she said, “and that counts for something.”
“Perhaps it does,” Severus said. “You’ll forgive me for not looking at a menu. I come here chiefly for the udon. It’s the best I’ve found outside Kagawa.”
“You’ve been to Japan?” She couldn’t help asking.
He nodded. “Yes. I travel regularly—at least two to three times per year.” He arched an eyebrow, as if she was meant to challenge this. “Does it interest you?”
“It does,” Hermione admitted, “though I’m not very well-travelled, myself.”
The man behind the counter—Hermione began to believe he was the only man working in the entire shop—came by with a slim carafe of sake, for which she was utterly grateful.
“That surprises me,” he said. “Don’t I recall you presenting at the conference in Athens last year?”
“Oh, I’ve travelled everywhere for work,” she said, “but lots of my research was in laboratories and libraries, and when I graduated, it all sort of got away from me. I haven’t gone on a proper holiday in ages.”
His eyes were very dark over the rim of his glass of warm sake. “Japan is beautiful,” he said, “though I found nothing quite as stirring as Venice.”
She imagined him travelling, spare and alone, down the canals and waterlogged streets, the high collar of his coat pulled up. What did he do? Did he eat gelato and cannolis and get powdered sugar on his nose? Was there someone around to smudge it off and laugh at him, and press a sweet kiss against his lips?
“Venice, Keats,” Hermione teased, “Your favourites give you away, you know. The romantic in you.”
He scoffed. “Hardly. I wouldn’t describe Keats as my favourite poet, only worthy of being included in my selection of poetry.”
“And Venice?”
“Perhaps I find melancholy romantic,” he said, a touch sharply, as if to combat the sudden insight.
“Then we have that in common,” Hermione countered.
She was getting better at reading his expressions. Severus spent so much effort keeping his reactions hidden beneath a mask of discouraging neutrality, but there were little tells. The way his eyes widened just a fraction, for just a moment, as he comprehended her joke, and then softened into fondness.
“What a fortuitous coincidence,” he murmured, and finished his drink.
They lingered outside of the restaurant, hemmed in by a circle of dingy yellow light, both clearly unwilling to leave. She’d been anxious throughout dinner, hanging on his every word, and the ferocious attentiveness made him feel rather as though she were studying for an exam. He supposed this was what it felt like to be under the white-hot spotlight of Hermione Granger’s attention.
“There’s something I must confess,” he said, even as he reached for her.
She came at once, closing the distance between them by reaching up to adjust his collar. The action sent a surge of heat through him, coiling low in his belly as she smoothed his lapels, then looked up at him. Sweet. Expectant. “Don’t tell me you’re married.”
“Of course not,” he retorted, “No, the confession is that while I frequent this place chiefly for its superior udon, it’s also because my residence is nearby.”
Hermione bit her lip, as if trying to suppress a grin. “Is this your way of asking me back to yours for a nightcap?”
They were very close now. Sharing breath. He nudged her nose with his own, and her eyes fluttered closed as he kissed her. For a moment, that’s all he did, trying to memorise the soft press of her lips against his, a token for when this inevitably collapsed around him.
“I have wine,” he offered against her mouth. She kissed him again, more fiercely, biting his lip.
“Perfect,” she said. “Lead the way, then.”
She linked his arm through his without prompting, and they went off down the street. The walk was mercifully short, less than ten minutes, but the whole while he felt the dull ache of familiarity, of arousal, of comfort, of ease. A beautiful woman, kissing him, walking with him arm-in-arm, chatting quietly and laughing at his responses? Had he somehow woken up as a different man?
As they approached his residence, he tried to see it through her eyes: a single white door at the very end of a long row of houses, the paint faded. Inside was a frankly preposterous amount of stairs going straight upwards, and then a landing with his umbrellas and rubber boots lined neatly against the wall. Another door with faded paint.
Certainly less charming than her own apartments. Less decorated. The home of a lonely, solitary man, half-heartedly resigned to spend the rest of his life that way.
He’d taken four women home to this particular flat, and all four times they’d followed uneasily behind him, looking around almost suspiciously. None of them had stayed very long—only one spent the night—nor were any of their relationships particularly fruitful or memorable.
But he never forgot the way they both looked when they first saw his apartment. Surprise, first. Then pity. Then, on two occasions, fear. And then, sometimes, an excuse—a friend, a mother, an emergency, anything to get them out of his cramped, ugly residence. He kept a clean house, of course, but it was, for lack of a better term, built for a bachelor, and it showed.
The moment they were inside, she gasped. He cringed, looking at his shuttered windows and bare walls. The lopsided sofa. The low ceilings.
“Your books!” she cried, delighted, and went straight for his shelves.
He stared at her for a moment in wonder, then shut the door behind them. “I’m an amateur collector,” he said, “though most, I confess, are simply for my own reference.”
She tilted her head like an owl to read the titles. “There’s nothing amateur about this collection,” Hermione said in obvious admiration. A row of old books caught her eye, and she stood on tiptoe for a better look. “Are these first editions?’
“On the very top shelf, yes,” he said, coming up behind her. Her outstretched hand, which had been poised to select a book from said shelf, fluttered away.
“I’ll leave those alone, then,” she said, and her laugh had a hint of nerves to it, “Don’t want to risk spoiling them.”
How many times had he lamented the grubby paws of students and visitors who went through his collection? And these titles especially; the ones he kept in his office were the books he cared the least about ruining. But she was just looking, occasionally touching a spine, trailing fingers down embossed titles of the books on lower shelves. If he was a man who believed in such things, he might even call it a sign. From the Universe, or from God, or whatever machination of divine justice had thwarted him for so long.
A thin, cold trail of fear snaked down his spine. She hadn’t been disgusted. She hadn’t run off. In fact, she was perusing his collection with growing approval and—judging from the heavy-lidded glances she occasionally flicked towards him—even arousal.
He’d never gotten to this point before. And certainly not with someone like Hermione Granger. Severus kept waiting for her to vanish in a flourish of excuses, or stammer some joke about the dingy walls, or, more likely still, laugh at him for some perceived inadequacy.
But instead, she turned to him with those amber-golden eyes full of warmth and love and said, “Right. You mentioned wine?”
The investigation of Severus Snape continued into his bookshelf, and what Hermione really wanted more than anything was about an hour of uninterrupted time to go through the entire collection and take notes. There was nothing more revealing about a person than their bookshelf, something Hermione Granger believed so fervidly that for a brief period in college, that exact quote had been her laptop wallpaper; the titles themselves would unlock the mysteries of her new romantic entanglement.
But she could feel his tension bleeding through the air. His gaze never shifted from her, hawklike to her every movement, as if he knew exactly what she was doing. As if he knew she could take him apart with the tools left displayed around his apartment.
He’d left both the wine and the corkscrew out in a display of planning that Hermione found both endearing and erotic. Simply seeing the two items laid out on the counter gave her a flash of insight into his earlier routine—he’d been hopeful they’d come back here, had made provisions in case they did.
Little signs. Little tells. Little tests (that all her previous partners had failed). She hated this about herself, the deep-seated snobbishness and perfectionism. She didn’t like to state her expectations, she liked to wait and see if they were fulfilled first—that way, she could never be disappointed. But it turned her into a detective, analysing all signs for clues leading to potential heartbreak.
So far, her investigation was only turning up results that he was a subdued, intellectual older bachelor who spent a great deal of time alone—very few hints of the arrogant, dominant man who made her shamelessly beg for org*sms.
Remembering her own debauchery made her blush, and his presence in the kitchen increased the predicament. By the time he finished opening the bottle she was nearly the colour of a tomato; it was her turn to gawp now, watching his dextrous hands manipulate the corkscrew.
“You have excellent taste,” she exclaimed too loudly after her first sip, “in both wine and books. Really, I don’t understand how you’re still unattached.”
Something tightened in his face, “I’m not amused by jokes of that nature.”
“I’m not joking!” she said earnestly, “You’re accomplished, well-travelled, you have an excellent book collection, and you know the best spot in the city for udon. What else could you ask for?”
He forced a short, mirthless laugh. A taut muscle jumped in his jaw. “If you continue with that line of thinking, I really must invest in a gag,” Severus muttered.
Hermione’s brows scrunched together, the way they always did just before she asked her favourite question. “Why?” she asked, “You don’t like it when I say nice things about you?”
“No,” he said shortly. Something raw and twisted threatened to breach in his expression, but he looked away before she could identify it. “I do not.”
Hermione caught his cheek, cupping it, turning him to look at her. “That’s a shame,” she told him seriously, “I’d like to say nice things about you. How you’re so clever, and funny, and lovely, and intelligent. How I could talk to you for hours.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss his tight jaw. “How bloody handsome you are. How much I like doing this.”
They kissed, but only softly.
“This isn’t necessary,” he said, sounding very much like a man straining to keep himself under control—or tucked behind a zipper.
“I know,” she hummed, and let her teeth scrape the side of his throat. Felt him shiver. “I just want to say it.”
When she sealed her mouth around his pulse and sucked, she could feel his sudden inhalation, the sweet, startled shock of pleasure. For an instant, the control he gripped so tightly seemed to waver.
And then her wine glass was snatched from her hand and set safely out of reach, and Severus hiked up the tight little skirt she’d shimmied herself into that evening; his swept her knickers to one side and with no warning or fanfare, hooked his middle two fingers into her c*nt.
“Oh!” she squeaked, “I—I—Oh!”
“By all means, keep chattering,” Severus said, and although his eyes were dark and feral, his voice was sheer silk. “I’ve found other ways to occupy myself.”
She scrabbled for leverage and found it against his shoulder, even as the heel of his hand ground insistently against her cl*tor*s. “That’s my favourite thing about you,” Hermione gasped, “When you—when you look at me like that.”
Like he wanted to devour her. Utterly. Consumingly.
The energy between them changed, sharpening. He rucked up her jumper and pressed soft, mouthing kisses against the straining curve of her breasts, her ribs, her belly, and lower still. His hand came away shining, and he parted her thighs with the comfortable ease of a familiar lover.
“I changed my mind,” Hermione managed to get out, “This is my favourite. When—when you do this.”
He laved at the fabric of her knickers, a scrap of flimsy lace barring him from the searing heat. Even with the barrier it was electric, the deliberate lashing of his tongue soaking the already-drenched seam of her underwear. For a moment she thought he was going to make her come this way, without even properly touching her at all—and then she remembered she wasn’t supposed to be coming in the first place.
“Please,” she said the minute she realised, “please, Severus, can I—?”
She thought she felt a laugh, something dark and smug vibrating against her c*nt, but couldn’t be sure.
“Please,” she tried again, and the rest of it died in her throat as he yanked aside the crotch of her knickers at last. The intensity of sensation made her thighs jump closed, but he pressed her more firmly against his kitchen cabinets and made space for his shoulders.
Her nails dug into his scalp. She did her best not to shriek. The sensation was so overwhelming, and to try and endure it while standing—she wasn’t strong enough. It was too much. She wasn’t sure if she was going to org*sm so much as completely fly apart.
“I c-can’t—” she stuttered, and then her thighs were clamping shut against her will, a dozen fervid aftershocks rippling down her spine as he brought her over the edge. The sound of his jaw working against her was simultaneously exhilarating and disgusting, but quieted as his efforts gentled.
She could feel his warm breath against her trembling thigh. His voice was a rasp. “How exquisitely disobedient of you.”
Severus refused to allow his brain the appropriate time to analyse; he had to move on instinct, otherwise his mouth would certainly ruin whatever relationship was beginning to bloom here in his spare, squalid flat. Her words pounded in his skull, an echoing drumbeat that threatened to drown out all rational thought.
“Where did you even learn to do all of this?” Hermione asked, her voice muffled. She was a tempting sight like this, face-down on his bed, hands clasped behind her back. He wished he could keep her here forever, was seized with an impulse to drill chains to the bedposts and trap her indefinitely.
Severus paused in the act of securing her hands with one of his neckties. She’d selected it from his closet with great ceremony, and though he’d never been fond of this particular shade of vermillion, he found new appreciation for the way it looked wrapped around her slender wrists. Reds suited her. Reds and golds.
How much to tell her? Should he be somewhat truthful, and explain that sex and its varied, unspoken intricacies had terrified him as a young man, and he drifted towards encounters with clearer directives? Or be mostly truthful, and describe the selfish, cruel delight he took in watching others squirm in helplessness and vulnerability, how the power he felt in that moment—the godlike ability to bestow pain or pleasure according to his whims—assuaged the sting of his own insecurities?
The idea of being completely truthful—that he was a man so accustomed to pain even love had no taste if not soured by it—only briefly crossed his mind, and he rejected the idea at once.
“Too tight?” he asked instead of answering, testing the bond with a short tug.
She struggled for a moment, trying to escape. He enjoyed it with a kind of low thrill, watching the jiggle of her arse, and ran a hand down her side.
“No,” she said at last, “Do I get to know what my punishment is, now?”
There was a note of hazy thrill in her voice, as if she were trying to sound exasperated but couldn’t fully strip the desire from it. He tugged the bonds one final time to check, certain they weren’t too tight or too loose.
“It’s quite simple,” he told her once they were properly arranged; her pulled back against his chest, legs hooked over his knees, spreading her thighs wide for him, “You’re going to count for me.”
“Counting?” Hermione said, “What am I counting?”
His hands explored her lazily, tweaking a nipple, sliding through her slick labia. Restrained as she was, he had access nearly everywhere, and she could do little more than sit and tremble as he mapped the smooth planes and curves of her body. The alluring, sticky apex of her thighs was a pulsing core of need; she moaned at the easy glide of his first finger, the tighter stretch of the second, the pleasant fullness of three.
“Severus,” she panted, “What am I—?”
He bit down at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, one hand on her breast, the other half-buried in her tight c*nt. She couldn’t go anywhere to escape the deliberate, repetitive pleasure, the cyclical motion of his thumb against her cl*t, and squirmed helplessly; his co*ck thickened at the frantic pressing of her arse, arms tightening around her.
Her climax bled some of the tension from her, body going lax against his. His ministrations didn’t slow, however, and those same three fingers began stroking her hyper-sensitive cl*t, enjoying the way she tried to thrash.
“That’s one,” he said in her ear.
Hermione sucked in an airless breath. “I’m counting org*sms?”
“Best keep track, Miss Granger,” The words were hot enough to burn, whispered against her throat, “I certainly won’t be.”
Six. It was six.
Or was it seven?
Hermione couldn’t remember.
She was clinging to the headboard like it was wreckage from the Titanic, sobbing inarticulately around the necktie now shoved into her mouth. It had been necessary—after the fifth, Hermione couldn’t stop herself from screaming. She was straddling his face, nails digging into the wooden headboard for some attempt at leverage as he lapped at her drenched quim.
“I can’t,” she tried to say, but it was muffled by the gag.
Severus did not respond, too intent on his work. She kept trying to say she couldn’t, it wasn’t possible, another one simply wouldn’t happen—and then it did. Her legs were shaking. Her quim was aching, cl*tor*s raw and overstimulated from his nonstop attentions.
Surely his jaw had to hurt. Surely his hands grew tired of supporting her thighs. Surely there had to be some end to this torture; her poor c*nt would simply close up, wouldn’t it, after a certain amount of pleasure? He hadn’t even f*cked her yet.
Oh God. He hadn’t even f*cked her yet.
It was seven, because he sealed his mouth around her cl*t and began to suckle—yes, he’d done that on number three—that was what shoved her over the edge into her eighth org*sm. She was so grateful for the gag.
His tongue flickered kittenish licks against her spit-slicked labia, letting her cool off, but each touch was like a shock from a cattle prod. She couldn’t keep holding herself up much longer, she was letting more and more weight onto him as she grew increasingly tired. The org*sms hardly satisfied anymore, they only hurt. Her abdomen ached from the frequent tensing.
It felt cruel to pull so many from her, especially after so many years with a man who couldn’t be bothered to even give her one—couldn’t one die from such shocking changes to their lifestyle? She would need to speak to a doctor. What would she even say? Hello, I think I may die, my boyfriend gives me too many org*sms.
Boyfriend?
Her hips stuttered.
Perhaps he sensed her sudden change in mood, and eased her down and away from the headboard. Falling back onto the duvet felt like a glorious swan-dive from such a height, and she lay there, panting, his hands still roaming over her cooling body.
Severus pulled the wadded necktie from between her lips and a trail of saliva came with it. She blushed harder and wiped her mouth stupidly. She felt like some kind of hulking, slavering animal, a human turned bestial from an excess of pleasure and attention.
“Eight,” she reported at once. Never let it be said that Hermione Granger couldn’t complete a task when she was assigned it.
He appeared to be considering the necktie, wrapping it around his fist. “Ten, I think, is reasonable,” he began, but her eyes went huge and horrified.
“Ten!” she said shrilly, “You nearly killed me with eight! Ten, he says. Ten! I can’t have ten org*sms!”
“Can’t you?” Smug. Self-satisfied. Prat.
“It isn’t done,” Hermione protested, “It isn’t possible.”
There was a strange, obsessive quality in Severus’s glittering black eyes, as though he wanted to tear her apart and put her back together. That’s what he was doing, she supposed. And she knew better to tell an academic that something wasn’t possible. Perhaps she had done it on purpose.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, almost a challenge, “and I shall.”
She wilted. “Well, no,” Hermione admitted, “I don’t want you to stop, I just—”
His mouth was on hers, kissing fiercely, tongue in her mouth. She moaned, tasting herself. When he drew back, the obsessiveness had evolved into something sharper. Hungrier. More dangerous.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, more emphatically, “or I won’t.”
Hermione carded her fingers through his long black hair, feeling the stick of sweat. There was an undercurrent of desperation here, caught in the tight line of his shoulders and jaw, the hard knot of his brow. The quivering obedience of a beaten dog.
“You don’t have to do this,” she told him, “Not that I don’t like it. I do. Very much, even. But you don’t need to do all of this to get me to stay, if that’s the objective—you won, you have me.” She laughed, hoping it would deflate some of his nerves. “You don’t need to keep giving me org*sms, I’m already yours.”
It had, if possible, increased them trifold. He froze. “What do you mean?”
She shifted, propping herself up to look at him better. Had she said something wrong? “Just—I mean, just for as long as you’ll have me,” Hermione said, “or as long as you’re interested, or, I don’t know. I only mean that if this is some kind of…display, to make me obsessed with you, then it worked. I’m already mad about you, I don’t need ten org*sms to remind me.” She smiled. “Eight will do me plenty.”
Severus studied her. “Hermione,” he said slowly, “You ought to consider—I believe—” He stopped. The great Severus Snape, famously snide and always ready with a rude remark, fell silent, at a loss for words.
“I am a selfish man,” he said at last, “and I have selfishly considered only myself.”
Hermione reflected on the eight previous org*sms and wanted to disagree, but his face was so anguished she didn’t dare.
“You have greater things waiting for you in this life,” Severus said, “Better men, better lovers, better time spent. I only—” He looked away sharply, as if unwilling for her to see whatever emotion flickered into his gaze, “I only hope you look back on this time with fondness. That was my aim. To—to assure. And to take whatever pleasure or comfort I could find. I didn’t intend to…create attachments.”
He was talking to her like they were breaking up when they hadn’t defined anything worth stopping. They were both still naked. Hermione wondered what in the freshly brewed f*ck was happening.
“What are you talking about?” Hermione asked.
Severus gave her the lowest, guiltiest look imaginable, and pulled away. He bent to retrieve his trousers and began to dress.
“Wait,” Hermione said, kneeling on the bed, “Wait, hang on, what are you doing?”
“This was a mistake,” Severus said tiredly.
“No!” She snatched his trousers away from him without thinking, “No, I won’t—you can’t keep running off! This is your flat!” She shook the pants at him furiously. “I like you, Severus Snape, I really, really do, and I want to keep shagging you, and keep having so many org*sms, and going to little restaurants and talking about research, because I love it, I love this, I love—”
She stopped. The silence felt oppressive. Insufferable.
“I love everything about what we’ve done together,” Hermione finished, breathing hard, “and I won’t give it up. Not yet, anyway.”
“You deserve a better man,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“Then be a better man,” she snapped, “because I want you.”
He was staring at her again. Reeling. She could see it in his expression, that ironclad mask of neutrality broken apart and given away to numb shock, raw terror, desperate longing.
“You deserve a future,” he whispered, “A life. Children—”
“Oh, f*cking hell,” she said, and threw his trousers back at him. He caught them, shocked. “I don’t want children. We don’t all want children, you know! Some of us just want to have multiple org*sms with sexy older men!”
He seemed torn between disputing the sexy and older parts of that sentence and couldn’t stop to decide on which, but Hermione had no intention of giving him a moment to think.
“And anyway, if I change my mind someday, I can adopt,” Hermione said, “Or I’ll become a teacher and deal with horrible children all day, and then I won’t ever have the desire for my own.” She shuffled to the edge of the bed, still on her knees. “Is that what all of this has been about? The fact that you think I want children?”
“I can offer you nothing,” Severus said, as if to himself.
“You just gave me eight org*sms,” Hermione countered.
“I had a vasectomy eleven years ago,” he retorted, as if this was meant to horrify her.
She rolled her eyes at his dramatics. “And we’ve been using condoms this entire time?”
At last, the reaction she wanted. A small, minute change. A spark of heat. He glared at her. “You’re a reckless woman,” he said, but it was too late, she had him, the shift had already happened. “You must consider—”
“I’ve considered a lot of things,” Hermione interrupted him, “I spent quite a lot of time clinging to that headboard and considering what you’d feel like inside of me.”
She watched the notch of his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard.
“I’m sure you considered that, too,” she went on, her voice dropping lower. She feathered his hair away from his face, cradling his jaw. “I’m sure you considered quite a lot while I was rutting away against your face.”
Part of her wondered when she’d become the kind of girl who talks this way, but the rest of her was memorising Severus’s worshipful gaze, the way his eyes hardened to iron when her nails skated down his ribcage. His co*ck had gone soft against his thigh, doubtless from their conversation, but her touch reignited interest.
“So,” said Hermione, “are you going to f*ck me?” She kissed him teasingly. “Please?”
The kisses turned convincing, capturing his lower lip, and she shivered at the comfortable touch of his hands on her waist. It was the same act he’d done a dozen times before, but something was different now. Reverent. Like she was some kind of marvel.
But when his fingertips brushed her mons, she grabbed him at once. “Wait,” she said, “We’ve focused enough on me.”
His fingers hadn’t moved. “This isn’t for you,” he sneered, and she was relieved to hear that silky arrogance back in his voice, “You have a punishment to fulfil—or have you forgotten, Miss Granger?”
“Oh, that’s right,” Hermione beamed. “Ten org*sms.”
“Until your punishment is completed,” His middle two fingers slipped inside her, and she keened. “Afterwards, you’re free to have as many org*sms as you like. No asking required.”
“None at all?” Hermione cried, delighted.
“Until morning,” Severus amended, his thumb pressing cruelly against her cl*t, “Or until exhaustion. Whichever comes first.”
Exhaustion won in the downy grey dawn, their bodies loose and punched-out, drawn together in the wreckage of the bed. Sweat and sex hung in the air like a fine mist; one corner of the fitted sheet had come off the bed, and the rest lay in a twisted heap on the floor.
He’d wrung countless org*sms from her, until she was a messy, pliant ruin in his arms, until she was crying from overstimulation; then he pressed endless kisses against her cheeks and lashes and she’d fallen asleep on his chest as he soothed.
Now, together in bed, alone with his thoughts, his mind settled down to dwell on their many incompatibilities, all the reasons why this relationship would end in heartbreak and desolation for them both. But here, watching the microscopic flutter of her eyelids and listening to the soft snore from her exhale, he allowed himself to do something far more dangerous, something Severus hadn’t done in a very long time.
He looked forward and envisioned his future. Not desperate strategies jockeying for dominance, but just an imaginative wander, a daydream he allowed himself now, half-asleep.
They could have a very happy little life together. Farmers markets. Libraries. Research. Conferences. Summers off—oh, imagine the summers, the glorious weeks of travel and solitude and peace away from the endless crush of crowds. He wanted to spread her out on a beach somewhere, let her skin turn golden bronze, sample every inch with his tongue. They could write together, perhaps. He imagined buying her books, how thrilled she’d be at the prospect, how they could leave notes for one another in the margins. They’d need separate studies, of course, but with two incomes and no children, that wouldn’t be out of reach.
Severus considered the expanse of his life, the continents he’d travelled to, the books he’d read, the world he’d seen. What parts did he want to show Hermione? What could become theirs?
He would have to tell her about Lily, someday. Not soon. But someday he would. He’d find a secluded spot somewhere green, with flowers—somewhere she would have liked—and tell Hermione about the girl he’d been in love with. How she’d taught him about poetry, the way her ginger hair turned to fire in the sunlight, the way she always saw the best in others. How he resented her for that. He’d tell Hermione how in love he’d been, and how cowardly, how his love turned to poison inside his chest, and all his unspoken declarations turned to ash in his mouth.
And then he would tell her how Lily died. How it wasn’t his fault, but he did feel responsible. And he would have to tell her about the years he spent frozen, locked into his own body, a silent scream fighting to escape from between his clenched jaws, going through the motions of his life without paying any attention at all. What a prisoner he’d been in his own grief.
He fell asleep then, dreaming of telling her about Lily, imagining what she would say. I want you to be a better man, she told him in his dream.
I will try, he promised. For you. I will try.
When he awoke, he was alone in the bed.
His previous behaviour smacked him in the face. He’d been cruel to sneak away so often, letting her wake like this, alone and confused and lost in the wrappings of some pleasant dream. He’d never do it again.
Had she done this on purpose? Wanted to hurt him in the same way he’d hurt her, lure his affections out of hiding and then club them to death the very next morning? She couldn’t. She wouldn’t. He pulled on a pair of trousers and left the bedroom, but already he was beginning to anticipate the worst.
She was crying in the living room, wearing one of his shirts. Her face was red and blotchy, brown curls turned to brambles, wearing the black shirt he’d worn last night, and nothing else. In one hand she was clutching her mobile, as if she’d been reading and re-reading an email.
Severus thought he’d never seen a more beautiful sight. The relief that she was still here, despite her obvious distress, was an instant balm—he could soothe the distress. He wanted to, even. An alien feeling.
“Hi,” she said tearfully, lip quivering. “Do you know someone named Lucius Malfoy?”
“I do,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “What happened?”
“He—” she tried, and then burst into tears again. “He offered me a job,” she sobbed, sounding like she was telling him she’d been diagnosed with an incurable disease.
Severus raised an eyebrow. “And you find this…distressing?”
“It’s in the States,” she said, sniffling, “It’s essentially Vector’s old post. She was—she retired, and now he’s—I don’t know, I suppose he’s the one in charge of these things—she was researching this model, and—he sent this email, only I didn’t read it ‘till now—"
“When do you leave?” Severus asked.
She gaped at him. “I’m—no, Severus, I’m not—”
“You must,” he said gently.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said, so suddenly and fiercely it took him out at the knees, “I’ve—I’m not—this isn’t what I wanted my life to be like! Why does this always happen to me? I get—I get one shred of happiness, and it seems like all is going well, and then I just—”
“This is a wonderful opportunity,” Severus said, “despite Lucius’s obvious shortcomings. He likely offered you the position for his own personal reasons, but you are eminently qualified and a talented candidate.”
Hermione glared at him. “I’m not leaving you.”
“If you curtail your career for the romantic affections of a man, you’re less of a woman than I thought,” Severus retorted.
“It’s my bloody career!” Hermione shouted back. She was furious at him, radiant in her anger. “It’s my life! I get to choose what I want to do with it, not Ron or my mum or Vector or anyone—me, mine, it’s mine!”
She was right under his nose, on tiptoe to seem taller. His dress shirt was unbuttoned, gaping open to reveal the lush curves of her body.
“It’s yours,” Severus said calmly, “There was never any question of that.”
“It seems like there is,” Hermione spat at him, “Going on about what a wonderful opportunity, oh, yes, very wonderful, being me, all alone in a new country with no friends!”
“You wouldn’t be alone,” he said.
“I’m not good at making new friends,” Hermione went on miserably, “It took me all of University to make the ones I have!”
She wasn’t understanding. Severus fought to keep his face controlled. “You’ll have at least one travelling companion.”
“Oh, I will?” she sneered, so sarcastic and blinded by her own grief that she didn’t comprehend until the words were out of her mouth. “I will?” she said again. Her voice cracked.
“As long as you’ll have him,” Severus said gravely.
Hermione stared. He watched the blood drain from her face, turn her white as chalk. “I couldn’t ask that,” she whispered, eyes round, “I couldn’t—”
“You aren’t,” Severus said. He opened his arms and she came at once, burying herself against his chest. “I’m offering.”
“Your job,” she said, muffled by his bare chest, “Your career.” He could feel her trembling from head to foot; her anger had deflated, leaving behind nothing but quivering fear.
“It is, if you’ll remember, my career,” Severus said, but not ungently.
The dreams they’d both been having—idyllic domesticity, ferocious passion—dissolved there, in Severus’s apartments, with the two of them half-naked and holding one another. Something new bloomed in their wake, something neither had dared to envision: a reality that the two could build together.
“I’d be going back and forth a lot at the start,” Hermione said, wiping her eyes, “We could—I mean, it wouldn’t have to be right away. We have time.”
“Yes,” Severus agreed, “We do.”
And they did.
