Vanity Shattered : chapter five Severus/Hermione, R
Vanity Shattered
Chapter 5: A Need Too Strong…
When Hermione returned home a little later than usual, the vague September sunlight, which had struggled all day to make its way through the misty clouds, had all but vanished, and the curtain, still stretched taut over the window, allowed for little more than a glow around it. Flicking her wand to increase the light of the candles, she called, “Snape?” in a hesitant voice.
No sound. She took a few steps toward the closed bathroom door and called his name again, but still no response… After a minute or so listening and hearing no sound of water, breathing, anything, she hesitantly pushed the door open to find her bathroom completely empty.
For the next twenty minutes, she tried very, very hard not to panic. She thought about returning to the CRC, about fetching Dec, about Flooing someone, but who could she Floo? The Aurors? Draco Malfoy? She had a pinch of Floo powder ready in her hand to Floo to St. Mungo’s-perhaps something awful had happened, perhaps he was ill, but that was ridiculous; why would have go there? Still, she couldn’t think of anywhere else-when the door to the flat opened.
Whirling around, she at once flew toward him in relief and let out, “What have you been doing?” She halted about three paces away from him, his glare and her own reason bringing her up short.
“May I close the door before you assault me?” he purred in amusement at her anxious face. She glared at him and waited long enough for him to close the door before she let out:
“Where have you been? What have you been doing?” she demanded.
“Is that any of your concern, Miss Granger?” he growled back, affecting a cocky posture in front of her. She narrowed her eyes now and scanned his body: he had a small, brown-paper parcel under one arm.
“You went shopping?”
“You have a Floo. So do the shops in Diagon Alley…”
Hermione was almost lost for words now. He went shopping? What the hell? Still, a more rational part of her brain responded, what could she expect? For him to sit around all day being anxious, eagerly awaiting her return? Like an exotic pet? she internally snorted.
Bored of her attention now, he moved around her and laid his package down on the desk, atop a roughly made tower of books and parchments. Still a little shocked, still not having received a reasonable answer, she slowly revolved on the ball of her right foot, and she caught sight of him removing his robes, something she had perhaps never seen him do before. She had seen him in only a shirt and his trousers maybe once or twice at Grimmauld Place, but never the moment in which he disrobed.
And then, a moment later, she realised something was very wrong… “Leather trousers?” she couldn’t help herself letting out in surprise with a bubble of ridiculous, slightly surreal laughter. Those she had never seen before. As he turned to her, discarding his robes onto the chair and with a fierce scowl on his face, she couldn’t help but realise that there was something horribly, almost morbidly funny about their entire situation.
“Dragon-hide,” he snapped back irritably, and then, as if for some reason he were making a special effort, he added, “I rather like them. Don’t you?” with a small smile on his face.
“Oh, uh, I have no idea…” she replied a little stupidly, but she was still holding in her amusement; the word ‘dragon-hide’ would forever by associated with Hagrid in her mind, and she didn’t think she’d ever agreed with any of his fashion choices. She snorted now, completely out of context with the conversation they were having out loud, she knew, but she couldn’t help it: Snape and fashion choices? What was going on?
Trying to get a grip on herself, feeling simultaneously a little hysterical and a little concerned for herself, she was about to begin with a new topic, that of Snape’s wand, which she had retrieved from Gringotts after her lunch with Dec, when he spoke again. “Feel them,” he said in a low voice, watching her with a strange look in his eyes.
Hermione blushed and lowered her eyes from his as if they had been dazzled by a sudden light, and she only said, “No, no, I’ve felt dragon-hide before…”
A pause hung between them for a second, and then there was a rustling of brown paper, and Hermione lifted her gaze to find him holding out the parcel to her. “I have bought you a gift,” he said somewhat formally, but with a peculiar twist of his lips that almost but not quite spoke of humour. Feeling somewhat puzzled and very much wary, she reached out to take the book from him, but he brought his arm towards him, and she was forced to take a few steps and stand next to him before the desk. Now he released the parcel into her hands, and with the deft movements of someone who had received many books wrapped in exactly the same way, she quickly parted the string that held it together and the folds of paper. Discarding them onto the desk, she was running her hand and gaze of the front cover of the book when suddenly he moved towards her.
For an absurd second, she thought he was going to kiss her, and she lifted her eyes in alarm just in time to meet his as they came level with hers. She felt a brief touch at her side, and then, looking down, she realised that he had leaned over to take his wand from her pocket. How did he know it was there? was the first question that flitted through her mind, closely followed by, Did he feel the vial of Dec’s blood that’s also in that pocket? Snape’s face did not betray any of these answers as he rose to a fully erect position again and flicked his wand to get rid of the packaging she had discarded.
Staring up at him again now, she fought the urge to step away from him because being scared was ridiculous. Being scared is ridiculous, she repeated internally as his eyes bored into hers. Severus Snape was a wizard. Why shouldn’t he have is wand?
“It’s a book,” he said mockingly after a further moment of taut silence. Hermione giggled awkwardly now, blushed and looked down again, realising how ridiculous she was being.
“Propriétés de l'amaranthe?” Hermione read out loud.
“Prop-”
“Properties of the… amaranth,” she interrupted, but almost as if she hadn’t heard him.
“Yes… there’s a chapter that should interest you. Number twenty-four. But for now…” He reached out and took the book from her hand.
“What are you-” she began to protest, but her voice stuck in her throat as he leaned over and laid the book on the desk, all the while staring at her with a curiously intense and yet mocking stare.
“You seemed rather anxious about me when I came in…” he began smoothly, flicking the wand that was now like a seamless extension of his left hand and lowering the light of the candles a little for some reason Hermione couldn’t quite fathom at that moment…
“I wasn’t sure… I mean, it was the daytime, and…”
“Well, there’s not much direct sunlight in the Floo,” he retorted with a smile and a sound of laughter in his voice that suddenly made her feel very silly.
“Yes, of course, you’re right,” she replied with an attempt at a light laugh of her own. She laughed a little too long, and when she inhaled deeply a second later, she realised that the room was slowly filling with a warm, rich scent of… Orris root with a hint of the original iris flower. “How did…?” she asked, the question obvious in her eyes. Snape only raised his wand a little to gesture at the sconces.
Then he purred, “Close your eyes and breath it in. Subtle, powerful… Go on,” he added a little more sharply, and obediently, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose. “Yes?” he asked in a hushed voice that sounded very far away as Hermione took a second breath and began to imagine the scene the scent invoked: a small pool, late spring perhaps autumn, but some time moist with the air heavily scented, purple blooms all around, some dangling in the pool, reflected in the rippling water, lush grass, slender young trees adding a scent of warm, wet wood to the scent of sunshine and earth and green…
When he first kissed her on the temple, she barely even noticed. It was the second time, when he laid a hand on the opposite shoulder and after kissing nuzzled down a little further to breathe lightly across her ear that Hermione started, almost stepped back except suddenly there was a strong arm around her waist, and opened her eyes just in time to see his long hair almost touching her nose. All of a sudden she realised that she was not simply smelling the candles, the essential oil, but him: a spicier, more intoxicating scent.
“Sn-” she began in a little protest, but she cut herself off as her eyes fluttered closed in pleasure at the two combined scents that seemed to her to be wiping clean her brain.
“I bought you something also,” he purred into her ear, and then he stepped back, leaving her feeling suddenly bereft and almost swaying and dizzy as she opened her eyes to watch his every move. She didn’t know what had come over her, but as she watched him lift his robe slightly and slide a hand into a pocket, she felt languid and warm and content, as if she had nothing to do but watch.
He extracted from the pocket a small black box. Removing the lid, he extracted something equally small and black. She watched in muted curiosity as he unfolded a sheer, lace-trimmed negligee that seemed to have a glittering sheen woven into the soft fabric. She smiled gently, unable to animate her face much more, and opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off.
“You’re still in your work robes.”
He stepped towards her now, and just when she was preparing to reach out her arms to embrace him, he sidestepped her. When he slipped behind her, she had the vague thought that she ought to turn, but it flitted out of her vacant, placid mind as quickly as it had come. She heard him lay the negligee down on the desk, and then she felt his presence close behind her again as his arms suddenly encircled her and his hands met at her neck. She almost started, a feeling of vulnerability suddenly running through her and rippling her inner calmness, but then she took another breath and the scent that had now filled the room soothed her. A second later, she felt the first button of her robes pop open.
As his fingers worked lightly at the buttons of her robes, she was grateful that he was behind her. To look him in the eyes at that moment would have been… too much. There was something almost tender in the slow way that he removed the shirt from her now, but she couldn’t help feeling that if she were to turn around she would see a perverse smile on his face that would disturb her, and a cold shiver ran down her spine.
Noticing, he dragged one cool finger from the first swell of her arse, just covered by her knickers, all the way up to the clasp of her bra, which halted him. Deftly, he undid it with one hand and then gently tugged at the straps so that she consented to let it drop to the floor.
Still not asking her to turn around, he said now, “Arms up,” and she tentatively complied. With great precision, he slid the negligee over her head, and as it fell down her body, he deftly threaded the thin straps of her wrists and lowered her arms, letting the negligee fall completely into place over her body.
The cool, silky soft fabric brushed against her bare nipples and made her shiver. A little soft, plaint moan escaped her lips now, and Snape’s hand brushed up her stomach, between her breasts and over her neck, sweeping her hair aside as his lips lowered to her neck. The second before his lips made contact, Hermione, her head clearing a little, remembering who this was, squirmed from his grasp and spun to face him.
He had a sly grin on his face now. “Beautiful.”
She blushed warmly. “Thank you…”
He stepped into her personal space now and placed both hands on her waist, leaning down so slowly that Hermione had time to think, This is… Oh, this is Severus Snape… Oh, he’s going to… before his surprisingly cool yet perfectly soft lips pressed against hers.
As his lips moved gently against hers while his hands tightly gripped her and manoeuvred her slowly but forcefully toward the bed.
Breaking the kiss, Hermione stared up at his coal black eyes, which showed no distinction between iris and pupil in the dim light, and had the sense of the moment slipping through her grasp like water and out of her control. He was kissing her. She’d allowed him to undress her, put a negligee on her that he’d bought especially. All because of some bloody candles?
As he smiled a little wickedly down at her now, she caught a slight glimpse of white, of point on the left side of his mouth, where his smile was a little broader, and she shivered again. No, not because of candles. Because of that. Because he was… Because of what she’d done to him! He was right. It sang to her, that blood, but not in the way she’d been expecting, but through a scent that left her feeling languid and loose and liquid and-Oh. Catching her mentally wandering from the moment, he had taken the opportunity to push her down onto the surface of the bed.
Her eyes focused on him just in time to watch as he lowered himself on top of her and began to kiss her in earnest. He took her hands and held them above her head as he ground his body against hers, the soft leather feeling just like supple, sensuous human skin. Hermione felt as if all of her conscious thoughts, her very ability to think, was melting like ice suddenly exposed to a warm patch of sun. She could think of nothing more than this man, this strong, powerful, masculine man who seemed to desire, and that feeling of being desired was heady, made her ache.
She had just lifted her hips to further their contact when he broke the kiss by raising his head. Disappointed and startled, Hermione’s eyes fluttered open and met the strangely furious, coal black eyes above. Snape’s face was pale and taut, as if he were clenching his jaw, and suddenly Hermione felt that the grip he had on her hands was fierce and cutting, and she realised that her body was arched, taut like a bow as she strained to keep her hands as far out as possible, as far away from his long, cutting fingers.
“Sn-Snape…” she began to stutter weakly, beginning to squirm. “What-please, let go. It hurts,” she said in a stronger voice, her body wriggling beneath him and her feet kicking uselessly at his calves, the only part of him they could reach. Their eye contact seared a second longer, and then he rolled off her as if she had actually managed to hurt him in her struggling, his body almost slumped over in pain as he raised his head and gave her furious look.
“Where… need…”
The logical part of Hermione’s brain that she had always prided herself now sprang into action, and she leapt from the bed, barely sparing a millisecond to pay attention to the pain from her complaining wrists, and sprang toward her robes, where she knew she would find what he was looking for.
Lifting them with one hand, her face contorting into a wince even though she barely registered the pain of the motion of her bruised wrists, and with the other hand she fumbled in the pocket until she found what she was looking for. Dropping the robes to the floor clumsily, she stared at Snape’s hunched form for a moment, met his burning, insistent eyes for a second before realising that to advance upon him would be to endanger herself. Instead, she tossed the vial, and for the second that it spent turning head over heel as it swept along its arc, she had a view of Snape’s face as a contorted mask of need of a different sort, his lips curling apart enough that she could spot the briefest glimpse of the points of his teeth.
She shudder and stepped away, turning her head to the side as he snatched the vial out of the air and almost in the same motion seemed to open it and raise it to his lips. A split second later, she heard the sound of shattering glass against the wall, and as she whirled her head to follow the sound, her vision was obscured by Snape’s furious face.
“You bring me that? His blood? You dare to-you think that I would wish to-you dare, Miss Granger?” he growled once more, and he had her pushed against the desk in terror almost before he had finished speaking.
“I’m-I’m… I promise you that-I mean no disrespect!” she cried out, staring up into his face with pleading eyes. He grimaced down at her.
“No disrespect? You have perpetuated the greatest disrespect of all. Although you denied it, you’ve made me your pet, to be fed however you see fit!”
“You have made a toy of me!” she retorted quick-wittedly, almost so scared that she no longer had conscious control of her mouth. Without wanting to give ground to her, without wanting to give her space to breathe, Snape managed a fair approximation of a scathing look down her body while still towering above her.
“When I was dying-and I was aware that I was dying-you had total power over me. Now, I can have total power over you,” he sneered down at her.
“Please, won’t you…” Hermione groaned, although she had no idea how she would have finished that question if she hadn’t suddenly been overtaken by another thought. “I did what I did for you. To save you.”
“And yet now you feed me in the grossest ways you can find-animal blood, the blood of that snivelling idiot!”
“I’ll do better. Please. Tomorrow, I’ll go to the Muggle hospital down the road, I’ll fix this!” The second these desperate words were out of her mouth, Hermione could feel them hanging in the air like dark thunderclouds oppressively threatening to break. She opened her mouth to speak again, to try and pull the words out of existence using more words as a hook and line, but she never got that far.
Instead, Snape was only one step from spitting in her face as he snarled, “Your vanity cannot sustain me, Miss Granger. You cannot always save your own.”
Then, abruptly, he had stepped back from her and bent down to hoist the chair up by its leg. A second before he swung the chair down hard into the desk like an axe, sending broken quills and the sound of smashing glass into the air, Hermione realised what he was going to do and darted to the side, ducking her head down into her hands.
The cracking, crashing, smashing sound lingered in the air for a moment, and only when it had died out did she lift her head tentatively, fearful tears beginning to trace down her cheeks. There was no space for pity on Snape’s contorted, pained face, however, as he sprang towards her with the splintered chair leg he held in his, pushing her to the wall.
With his free hand, he reached down and grasped her hand, his fingers tightening over the same bruised areas as before and pulling it up, forcing her to grasp the wooden shard that he held between them. For a second, Hermione was confused, lost in her tears, but then he hissed, “Kill me. Now!” he insisted, tugging her hand, and with it the makeshift stake they were both grasping, toward his chest. When she only blinked in response, he repeated, his voice heavy, black and pendulous, “Kill me. Or I’ll kill you.”
Now, for the first time, he truly curled his lips, snarling fully, bearing his fearsome teeth to her, and she shuddered and looked away, her hand still limply held to the stake.
She heard him utter a guttural noise of disgust with her passivity, with her refusal to comply, but she couldn’t think of anything to say, of any way to explain, to reason with him… Then the stake was abruptly hurled to the side, and his hand still gripping her wrist, he flung her to the bed. She spun through the room and onto the soft surface in a daze, almost immobilized, suddenly scenting the Orris root once again as she twirled across the room, and then a shadow flew across the room to her, and she found herself in a macabre parody of the position she had been in only a few minutes ago-Merlin, only a few minutes?.
Snape’s coal black eyes bored into hers for a split second as she lay passively beneath him, her arms still flung up on either side of her head in the same position she had fallen in, and she suppressed the bubble of hysterical laughter at the ridiculousness of her presenting herself like that only because of the solemn fury in the thin line of his mouth.
Before she could register anything else, his hair was splayed across her face, and there was a pain, a sudden throb in her neck, and then she felt light-headed, dizzy, as if she were still swirling across the room from one end to the other in a twisted mime of a sensual ballroom dance.
And then there was but the flitting of a shadow in her peripheral vision-one last vision of black eyes in a white face-and she found herself alone. She was already struggling, attempting to sit up when the bang of the front door closing finally registered in her brain, and it seemed to release all the tension from her body. She flopped back down onto her bed again and gave in to the laughter that had threatened her earlier.
Raising a hand to her mouth as the strangely alien sound tinkled through the room, somehow she couldn’t stop the motion at the appropriate time, and her hand ran over the side of her face and into her hair almost automatically. It was completing its motion, fingering its way through her curls when she realised that the curls she was lying on were wet… sticky… hot…
~*~
Chapter 5: A Need Too Strong…
When Hermione returned home a little later than usual, the vague September sunlight, which had struggled all day to make its way through the misty clouds, had all but vanished, and the curtain, still stretched taut over the window, allowed for little more than a glow around it. Flicking her wand to increase the light of the candles, she called, “Snape?” in a hesitant voice.
No sound. She took a few steps toward the closed bathroom door and called his name again, but still no response… After a minute or so listening and hearing no sound of water, breathing, anything, she hesitantly pushed the door open to find her bathroom completely empty.
For the next twenty minutes, she tried very, very hard not to panic. She thought about returning to the CRC, about fetching Dec, about Flooing someone, but who could she Floo? The Aurors? Draco Malfoy? She had a pinch of Floo powder ready in her hand to Floo to St. Mungo’s-perhaps something awful had happened, perhaps he was ill, but that was ridiculous; why would have go there? Still, she couldn’t think of anywhere else-when the door to the flat opened.
Whirling around, she at once flew toward him in relief and let out, “What have you been doing?” She halted about three paces away from him, his glare and her own reason bringing her up short.
“May I close the door before you assault me?” he purred in amusement at her anxious face. She glared at him and waited long enough for him to close the door before she let out:
“Where have you been? What have you been doing?” she demanded.
“Is that any of your concern, Miss Granger?” he growled back, affecting a cocky posture in front of her. She narrowed her eyes now and scanned his body: he had a small, brown-paper parcel under one arm.
“You went shopping?”
“You have a Floo. So do the shops in Diagon Alley…”
Hermione was almost lost for words now. He went shopping? What the hell? Still, a more rational part of her brain responded, what could she expect? For him to sit around all day being anxious, eagerly awaiting her return? Like an exotic pet? she internally snorted.
Bored of her attention now, he moved around her and laid his package down on the desk, atop a roughly made tower of books and parchments. Still a little shocked, still not having received a reasonable answer, she slowly revolved on the ball of her right foot, and she caught sight of him removing his robes, something she had perhaps never seen him do before. She had seen him in only a shirt and his trousers maybe once or twice at Grimmauld Place, but never the moment in which he disrobed.
And then, a moment later, she realised something was very wrong… “Leather trousers?” she couldn’t help herself letting out in surprise with a bubble of ridiculous, slightly surreal laughter. Those she had never seen before. As he turned to her, discarding his robes onto the chair and with a fierce scowl on his face, she couldn’t help but realise that there was something horribly, almost morbidly funny about their entire situation.
“Dragon-hide,” he snapped back irritably, and then, as if for some reason he were making a special effort, he added, “I rather like them. Don’t you?” with a small smile on his face.
“Oh, uh, I have no idea…” she replied a little stupidly, but she was still holding in her amusement; the word ‘dragon-hide’ would forever by associated with Hagrid in her mind, and she didn’t think she’d ever agreed with any of his fashion choices. She snorted now, completely out of context with the conversation they were having out loud, she knew, but she couldn’t help it: Snape and fashion choices? What was going on?
Trying to get a grip on herself, feeling simultaneously a little hysterical and a little concerned for herself, she was about to begin with a new topic, that of Snape’s wand, which she had retrieved from Gringotts after her lunch with Dec, when he spoke again. “Feel them,” he said in a low voice, watching her with a strange look in his eyes.
Hermione blushed and lowered her eyes from his as if they had been dazzled by a sudden light, and she only said, “No, no, I’ve felt dragon-hide before…”
A pause hung between them for a second, and then there was a rustling of brown paper, and Hermione lifted her gaze to find him holding out the parcel to her. “I have bought you a gift,” he said somewhat formally, but with a peculiar twist of his lips that almost but not quite spoke of humour. Feeling somewhat puzzled and very much wary, she reached out to take the book from him, but he brought his arm towards him, and she was forced to take a few steps and stand next to him before the desk. Now he released the parcel into her hands, and with the deft movements of someone who had received many books wrapped in exactly the same way, she quickly parted the string that held it together and the folds of paper. Discarding them onto the desk, she was running her hand and gaze of the front cover of the book when suddenly he moved towards her.
For an absurd second, she thought he was going to kiss her, and she lifted her eyes in alarm just in time to meet his as they came level with hers. She felt a brief touch at her side, and then, looking down, she realised that he had leaned over to take his wand from her pocket. How did he know it was there? was the first question that flitted through her mind, closely followed by, Did he feel the vial of Dec’s blood that’s also in that pocket? Snape’s face did not betray any of these answers as he rose to a fully erect position again and flicked his wand to get rid of the packaging she had discarded.
Staring up at him again now, she fought the urge to step away from him because being scared was ridiculous. Being scared is ridiculous, she repeated internally as his eyes bored into hers. Severus Snape was a wizard. Why shouldn’t he have is wand?
“It’s a book,” he said mockingly after a further moment of taut silence. Hermione giggled awkwardly now, blushed and looked down again, realising how ridiculous she was being.
“Propriétés de l'amaranthe?” Hermione read out loud.
“Prop-”
“Properties of the… amaranth,” she interrupted, but almost as if she hadn’t heard him.
“Yes… there’s a chapter that should interest you. Number twenty-four. But for now…” He reached out and took the book from her hand.
“What are you-” she began to protest, but her voice stuck in her throat as he leaned over and laid the book on the desk, all the while staring at her with a curiously intense and yet mocking stare.
“You seemed rather anxious about me when I came in…” he began smoothly, flicking the wand that was now like a seamless extension of his left hand and lowering the light of the candles a little for some reason Hermione couldn’t quite fathom at that moment…
“I wasn’t sure… I mean, it was the daytime, and…”
“Well, there’s not much direct sunlight in the Floo,” he retorted with a smile and a sound of laughter in his voice that suddenly made her feel very silly.
“Yes, of course, you’re right,” she replied with an attempt at a light laugh of her own. She laughed a little too long, and when she inhaled deeply a second later, she realised that the room was slowly filling with a warm, rich scent of… Orris root with a hint of the original iris flower. “How did…?” she asked, the question obvious in her eyes. Snape only raised his wand a little to gesture at the sconces.
Then he purred, “Close your eyes and breath it in. Subtle, powerful… Go on,” he added a little more sharply, and obediently, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose. “Yes?” he asked in a hushed voice that sounded very far away as Hermione took a second breath and began to imagine the scene the scent invoked: a small pool, late spring perhaps autumn, but some time moist with the air heavily scented, purple blooms all around, some dangling in the pool, reflected in the rippling water, lush grass, slender young trees adding a scent of warm, wet wood to the scent of sunshine and earth and green…
When he first kissed her on the temple, she barely even noticed. It was the second time, when he laid a hand on the opposite shoulder and after kissing nuzzled down a little further to breathe lightly across her ear that Hermione started, almost stepped back except suddenly there was a strong arm around her waist, and opened her eyes just in time to see his long hair almost touching her nose. All of a sudden she realised that she was not simply smelling the candles, the essential oil, but him: a spicier, more intoxicating scent.
“Sn-” she began in a little protest, but she cut herself off as her eyes fluttered closed in pleasure at the two combined scents that seemed to her to be wiping clean her brain.
“I bought you something also,” he purred into her ear, and then he stepped back, leaving her feeling suddenly bereft and almost swaying and dizzy as she opened her eyes to watch his every move. She didn’t know what had come over her, but as she watched him lift his robe slightly and slide a hand into a pocket, she felt languid and warm and content, as if she had nothing to do but watch.
He extracted from the pocket a small black box. Removing the lid, he extracted something equally small and black. She watched in muted curiosity as he unfolded a sheer, lace-trimmed negligee that seemed to have a glittering sheen woven into the soft fabric. She smiled gently, unable to animate her face much more, and opened her mouth to speak, but he cut her off.
“You’re still in your work robes.”
He stepped towards her now, and just when she was preparing to reach out her arms to embrace him, he sidestepped her. When he slipped behind her, she had the vague thought that she ought to turn, but it flitted out of her vacant, placid mind as quickly as it had come. She heard him lay the negligee down on the desk, and then she felt his presence close behind her again as his arms suddenly encircled her and his hands met at her neck. She almost started, a feeling of vulnerability suddenly running through her and rippling her inner calmness, but then she took another breath and the scent that had now filled the room soothed her. A second later, she felt the first button of her robes pop open.
As his fingers worked lightly at the buttons of her robes, she was grateful that he was behind her. To look him in the eyes at that moment would have been… too much. There was something almost tender in the slow way that he removed the shirt from her now, but she couldn’t help feeling that if she were to turn around she would see a perverse smile on his face that would disturb her, and a cold shiver ran down her spine.
Noticing, he dragged one cool finger from the first swell of her arse, just covered by her knickers, all the way up to the clasp of her bra, which halted him. Deftly, he undid it with one hand and then gently tugged at the straps so that she consented to let it drop to the floor.
Still not asking her to turn around, he said now, “Arms up,” and she tentatively complied. With great precision, he slid the negligee over her head, and as it fell down her body, he deftly threaded the thin straps of her wrists and lowered her arms, letting the negligee fall completely into place over her body.
The cool, silky soft fabric brushed against her bare nipples and made her shiver. A little soft, plaint moan escaped her lips now, and Snape’s hand brushed up her stomach, between her breasts and over her neck, sweeping her hair aside as his lips lowered to her neck. The second before his lips made contact, Hermione, her head clearing a little, remembering who this was, squirmed from his grasp and spun to face him.
He had a sly grin on his face now. “Beautiful.”
She blushed warmly. “Thank you…”
He stepped into her personal space now and placed both hands on her waist, leaning down so slowly that Hermione had time to think, This is… Oh, this is Severus Snape… Oh, he’s going to… before his surprisingly cool yet perfectly soft lips pressed against hers.
As his lips moved gently against hers while his hands tightly gripped her and manoeuvred her slowly but forcefully toward the bed.
Breaking the kiss, Hermione stared up at his coal black eyes, which showed no distinction between iris and pupil in the dim light, and had the sense of the moment slipping through her grasp like water and out of her control. He was kissing her. She’d allowed him to undress her, put a negligee on her that he’d bought especially. All because of some bloody candles?
As he smiled a little wickedly down at her now, she caught a slight glimpse of white, of point on the left side of his mouth, where his smile was a little broader, and she shivered again. No, not because of candles. Because of that. Because he was… Because of what she’d done to him! He was right. It sang to her, that blood, but not in the way she’d been expecting, but through a scent that left her feeling languid and loose and liquid and-Oh. Catching her mentally wandering from the moment, he had taken the opportunity to push her down onto the surface of the bed.
Her eyes focused on him just in time to watch as he lowered himself on top of her and began to kiss her in earnest. He took her hands and held them above her head as he ground his body against hers, the soft leather feeling just like supple, sensuous human skin. Hermione felt as if all of her conscious thoughts, her very ability to think, was melting like ice suddenly exposed to a warm patch of sun. She could think of nothing more than this man, this strong, powerful, masculine man who seemed to desire, and that feeling of being desired was heady, made her ache.
She had just lifted her hips to further their contact when he broke the kiss by raising his head. Disappointed and startled, Hermione’s eyes fluttered open and met the strangely furious, coal black eyes above. Snape’s face was pale and taut, as if he were clenching his jaw, and suddenly Hermione felt that the grip he had on her hands was fierce and cutting, and she realised that her body was arched, taut like a bow as she strained to keep her hands as far out as possible, as far away from his long, cutting fingers.
“Sn-Snape…” she began to stutter weakly, beginning to squirm. “What-please, let go. It hurts,” she said in a stronger voice, her body wriggling beneath him and her feet kicking uselessly at his calves, the only part of him they could reach. Their eye contact seared a second longer, and then he rolled off her as if she had actually managed to hurt him in her struggling, his body almost slumped over in pain as he raised his head and gave her furious look.
“Where… need…”
The logical part of Hermione’s brain that she had always prided herself now sprang into action, and she leapt from the bed, barely sparing a millisecond to pay attention to the pain from her complaining wrists, and sprang toward her robes, where she knew she would find what he was looking for.
Lifting them with one hand, her face contorting into a wince even though she barely registered the pain of the motion of her bruised wrists, and with the other hand she fumbled in the pocket until she found what she was looking for. Dropping the robes to the floor clumsily, she stared at Snape’s hunched form for a moment, met his burning, insistent eyes for a second before realising that to advance upon him would be to endanger herself. Instead, she tossed the vial, and for the second that it spent turning head over heel as it swept along its arc, she had a view of Snape’s face as a contorted mask of need of a different sort, his lips curling apart enough that she could spot the briefest glimpse of the points of his teeth.
She shudder and stepped away, turning her head to the side as he snatched the vial out of the air and almost in the same motion seemed to open it and raise it to his lips. A split second later, she heard the sound of shattering glass against the wall, and as she whirled her head to follow the sound, her vision was obscured by Snape’s furious face.
“You bring me that? His blood? You dare to-you think that I would wish to-you dare, Miss Granger?” he growled once more, and he had her pushed against the desk in terror almost before he had finished speaking.
“I’m-I’m… I promise you that-I mean no disrespect!” she cried out, staring up into his face with pleading eyes. He grimaced down at her.
“No disrespect? You have perpetuated the greatest disrespect of all. Although you denied it, you’ve made me your pet, to be fed however you see fit!”
“You have made a toy of me!” she retorted quick-wittedly, almost so scared that she no longer had conscious control of her mouth. Without wanting to give ground to her, without wanting to give her space to breathe, Snape managed a fair approximation of a scathing look down her body while still towering above her.
“When I was dying-and I was aware that I was dying-you had total power over me. Now, I can have total power over you,” he sneered down at her.
“Please, won’t you…” Hermione groaned, although she had no idea how she would have finished that question if she hadn’t suddenly been overtaken by another thought. “I did what I did for you. To save you.”
“And yet now you feed me in the grossest ways you can find-animal blood, the blood of that snivelling idiot!”
“I’ll do better. Please. Tomorrow, I’ll go to the Muggle hospital down the road, I’ll fix this!” The second these desperate words were out of her mouth, Hermione could feel them hanging in the air like dark thunderclouds oppressively threatening to break. She opened her mouth to speak again, to try and pull the words out of existence using more words as a hook and line, but she never got that far.
Instead, Snape was only one step from spitting in her face as he snarled, “Your vanity cannot sustain me, Miss Granger. You cannot always save your own.”
Then, abruptly, he had stepped back from her and bent down to hoist the chair up by its leg. A second before he swung the chair down hard into the desk like an axe, sending broken quills and the sound of smashing glass into the air, Hermione realised what he was going to do and darted to the side, ducking her head down into her hands.
The cracking, crashing, smashing sound lingered in the air for a moment, and only when it had died out did she lift her head tentatively, fearful tears beginning to trace down her cheeks. There was no space for pity on Snape’s contorted, pained face, however, as he sprang towards her with the splintered chair leg he held in his, pushing her to the wall.
With his free hand, he reached down and grasped her hand, his fingers tightening over the same bruised areas as before and pulling it up, forcing her to grasp the wooden shard that he held between them. For a second, Hermione was confused, lost in her tears, but then he hissed, “Kill me. Now!” he insisted, tugging her hand, and with it the makeshift stake they were both grasping, toward his chest. When she only blinked in response, he repeated, his voice heavy, black and pendulous, “Kill me. Or I’ll kill you.”
Now, for the first time, he truly curled his lips, snarling fully, bearing his fearsome teeth to her, and she shuddered and looked away, her hand still limply held to the stake.
She heard him utter a guttural noise of disgust with her passivity, with her refusal to comply, but she couldn’t think of anything to say, of any way to explain, to reason with him… Then the stake was abruptly hurled to the side, and his hand still gripping her wrist, he flung her to the bed. She spun through the room and onto the soft surface in a daze, almost immobilized, suddenly scenting the Orris root once again as she twirled across the room, and then a shadow flew across the room to her, and she found herself in a macabre parody of the position she had been in only a few minutes ago-Merlin, only a few minutes?.
Snape’s coal black eyes bored into hers for a split second as she lay passively beneath him, her arms still flung up on either side of her head in the same position she had fallen in, and she suppressed the bubble of hysterical laughter at the ridiculousness of her presenting herself like that only because of the solemn fury in the thin line of his mouth.
Before she could register anything else, his hair was splayed across her face, and there was a pain, a sudden throb in her neck, and then she felt light-headed, dizzy, as if she were still swirling across the room from one end to the other in a twisted mime of a sensual ballroom dance.
And then there was but the flitting of a shadow in her peripheral vision-one last vision of black eyes in a white face-and she found herself alone. She was already struggling, attempting to sit up when the bang of the front door closing finally registered in her brain, and it seemed to release all the tension from her body. She flopped back down onto her bed again and gave in to the laughter that had threatened her earlier.
Raising a hand to her mouth as the strangely alien sound tinkled through the room, somehow she couldn’t stop the motion at the appropriate time, and her hand ran over the side of her face and into her hair almost automatically. It was completing its motion, fingering its way through her curls when she realised that the curls she was lying on were wet… sticky… hot…
~*~