Transcendent Quality of Remembrance Chapter 3
Transcendent Quality of Remembrance
Chapter 3
Even through the darkest phase, be it thick or thin
Always someone marches brave, here beneath my skin
Constant Craving - by k d lang
2 July, 1998
Hermione trailed up the staircase, her feet like lead and her mind in turmoil. The card game had ended, and everyone had put out the lights and headed upstairs, voices hushed in an effort not to disturb those who had already retired. Lupin left them on the first floor, then all her schoolmates went to their second floor rooms, and Hermione was left to climb the final flight of steps on her own.
Would the professor be awake or asleep? Would he be in the bed or on the floor? Which would be worse? If he was in the bed, she'd be forced to choose between a comfortable sleep on a mattress or a cold, uncomfortable time on the uncarpeted floor. If he was on the floor, then that meant he had conceded the bed to her, and she could sleep there … undisturbed.
But how would she feel if he was on the floor? What would it be like to know that he'd rather sleep on the hard floor than lie down next to her, even for something as innocent as a decent night's sleep?
She stopped halfway up the flight and sagged onto a step, her hands over her face. There was no one who knew her situation-no one in whom she could confide-and what was there to tell, really, when she didn't remember properly?
It wasn't that she was afraid of him. In truth, she scarcely knew him better now than she had done when they married. He had insisted that she maintain her sleeping quarters in his rooms, but she had spent little time there. As a Gryffindor prefect, she'd had many duties, in addition to her studies and her efforts on Harry's behalf, which had kept her busy from cockcrow to midnight. She and her husband had seldom crossed paths; when they had met by chance in his sitting room, he had usually been perfectly civil to her.
The times when he had not been civil were memorable.
'Why must I live with you?' she had demanded during their prenuptial negotiations. 'It's not as if we'll actually have a relationship with one another!'
He had sat across the table from her in a room off Dumbledore's office, away from the listening ears of the previous headmasters' portraits. His posture in his enveloping black robes had been rigidly erect, his arms crossed tightly over his chest, his dirty hair hanging about his face like stringy black curtains. His lip had lifted in a signature Snape sneer.
'How do you propose to present a front as a married couple if you continue to live in your dormitory like a schoolgirl?' he had inquired icily. 'Your position as the wife of a fully qualified wizard-the purpose for this farce, I might remind you-will be unassailable in my quarters. You will be safe there. The matter is not up for negotiation. Move to the next point on your agenda.'
Hermione pressed her fingers against her eyes so hard she saw lights behind her lids. He had kept her safe. That had been no idle promise on his part. And what had she done, beyond flouting and aggravating him?
'I've honoured our bargain,' she muttered aloud, dropping her hands to her lap.
But it had been easy to do at Hogwarts. All she'd had to do was sit with him at the High Table for dinner every night, per their agreement-only dinner-she could do what she liked the other meals. He had required no other show of wifely devotion of her there.
She drew in a deep breath. She couldn't spend the night sitting in the staircase; it was rather cold, and she'd never get comfortable. Besides, if she were discovered, that would definitely breach their agreement, the purpose of which, as far as Hermione could determine, was to shield Severus Snape from any hint of embarrassment. He had not specifically told her so, but Minerva McGonagall had explained it with great delicacy on Hermione's wedding day.
'Severus is a good man, and an honourable one,' McGonagall had said, avoiding Hermione's eyes in the mirror as she pinned a wedding wreath in her hair, 'but he's suffered some … disappointments in life. It is … important than he not be ridiculed in any way.'
It had seemed a rather vague explanation to Hermione, but it was all she got, and she dealt with it. She was good at dealing, when it was necessary. For now, the necessary action was to go to the room where Severus Snape was sleeping and shut herself in with him for several hours.
She only wished it didn't make her feel so anxious.
The odd dreams had begun several weeks before, flashes of heat-of passion-so intense that she'd woken from them disturbed and … well, aroused. There had been two occasions when she had woken after experiencing an orgasm in her sleep-something that had never happened to her before. And the most embarrassing thing of all was that the dreams, indistinct as they were, were about her husband. There was no question but that his voice, his hands, his lean, lithe body, were the ones she dreamed of-and there was equally no question but that the emotions stirred by the dreams were beginning to bleed over into her waking hours.
It was at its worst in his presence, and the scent of his aftershave doubled the intensity of the dream-memories. Still, it was her duty to go to him now, uncomfortable or not.
'So be the brave Gryffindor and face your fears,' she chastised herself. 'Go to bed!'
And rising to her feet, she trudged off to what felt like her doom.
Hermione entered the room as quietly as she could, desperately wishing for the use of her wand to muffle the creak of the door and the sound of her footsteps upon the floor. One candle burned, on a table on the far side of the bed; on the near side, a man-sized lump loomed under the covers. She held her breath and froze in place when she closed the door behind her, but the professor neither stirred nor spoke, so after a short time, she moved across the room.
She had hastily departed the room before she finished unpacking her things, and the neat stack of clothing she had left on the end of the bed was gone. There was an indistinct dark shape against the far wall, though, and reaching it, she was relieved to find that it was her rucksack, with her things piled atop it. Oddly enough, her plain white cotton nightdress was the first thing she found. Had he fished it out and put it on top, making it easy for her to find? No, she wouldn't think about those elegant, long-fingered hands amongst her underthings-she wouldn't.
Pulling the nightdress over her head, she turned her back to the bed and pulled her arms from her tee-shirt, finagling it from beneath the nightdress neckline to pull it over her head. The rest was easier to manage, dropping her bra on top of the tee-shirt and toeing off her trainers before wriggling out of her jeans. She left her discarded clothing in a pile and slipped into the narrow space between the wall and the bed, only large enough to accommodate the slim bedside table where the candle rested. Why couldn't he have taken this side of the bed, rather than make her wriggle into this impossibly small space?
She turned the covers back, and in the light of the candle, she saw a most disturbing prospect-the naked shoulders and back of her husband as he lay upon his side, facing away from her. The pale skin was faintly golden in the candlelight, marred in irregular slashes by what appeared to be scars. There was a slight concavity tracing the line of his spine, and his shoulder blades were in stark relief, like the incipient wings of a dark angel.
Stop it! she chided herself, but it was already too late; at the sight of the lean, lightly muscled expanse of his flesh, a familiar ache began, low in her abdomen.
Oh, not again.
She blew out the candle and clambered into the high bed, careful to keep to the edge of the mattress. It wasn't as if she'd never been on a bed with him before, she reasoned. But he had never so much as hinted to her that he wished to repeat the grim act of consummation they had endured together, and she would certainly never suggest it. Although … it was true that since the end of the war, his looks had improved tremendously. Regular sleep had removed the impossibly dark circles about his eyes, improved digestion had permitted him to partake more heartily of nourishment and filled out his somewhat skeletal frame-just look at him now! her unhelpful inner voice urged-and she was quite sure that he was bathing more frequently, taking more pains with his personal hygiene.
Not helping, she thought, squinching her eyes closed more tightly, as if doing so would remove the memory of his naked body from her mind. But was he completely naked? Had he thought this little forced holiday would be an opportunity to … make their marriage real? Had she actually disappointed him by staying downstairs to play cards?
She lay very still on her pillow, desperately willing herself not to think about Severus Snape or the dreams which increasingly haunted her sleep, and fisted her hands at her sides, determined not to ... But as she trembled beside him, he shifted in his sleep, turning towards her, and the sandalwood and musk of his signature scent wafted over her, like an incitement to riot.
The heat in the pit of her belly increased, spreading through her bloodstream like a sensual poison. Biting her lip nearly hard enough to draw blood, she turned her head on her pillow towards him, peering in the darkness to detect any sign of wakefulness, but his breathing was deep and even.
Thank Merlin for small mercies, she thought inanely, even as she insinuated one hand down the front of her knickers, fingers seeking and finding the slick, warm cleft of her quim. The gasp of pleasurable relief escaped her in spite of the grip on her lip, and in her desperation to squelch the sound, she bit harder. The taste of blood on her tongue was not too high a price to pay as she spread moisture from within over swollen, needful flesh, her fingers busy about the work they had come to know very well.
She made no effort now to stop the flittering, rippling images that flashed through her mind like a silent Muggle film. His hot mouth upon her breast, pulling the nipple between his lips-and then he was rising above her, shoulders blocking the light, the tips of long black hair kissing the skin of her face. Her gaze travelled down his wiry frame to the thick, engorged member jutting from the tangle of his pubic hair, and then he was within her, filling her, driving them both, until her entire world was down to the scorching point of light where their bodies joined and became one …
The orgasm exploded behind her closed eyes in a wash of light so intense that the dream images were burned away, and all that was left was Hermione, her breathing irregular, her heart beating too fast, and the fingers she removed from between clenched thighs, sticky and fragrant of a sated need she could neither explain nor accept.