Chapter 13

This Time

Chapter 13

If I don't say this now

I will surely break

Look After You - The Fray

On Sunday morning, the dormitory rang with the sounds of students packing their trunks to go home for the holidays. Severus sprawled in an armchair in the common room, watching the parade of people go by. Neville came down the stairs with his trunk levitated before him, clutching under one arm the basket containing his gloomy pet toad, Trevor. Spying Severus, Neville left his trunk under the stairs and came to sit down, a serious look on his face.

'You're not going home for Christmas?' he asked.

Severus shrugged. 'No, not this time. Thought I'd get some studying done for the N.E.W.T.s.' Severus had prepared this lie ahead of time and delivered it unblinkingly, even though he was far from planning to sit the examinations again.

Neville nodded. 'That makes sense,' he said. Shifting nervously in his seat, Neville stared at his hands for a moment, then looked up seriously into Severus' face. 'I wanted to talk to you about something.'

Severus felt a touch of discomfort. Why was Neville behaving so oddly? Had he actually recognised Adin as his former Potions professor? 'I'm listening,' he said neutrally, staving off incipient panic...time enough for that when he heard what Neville had to say.

Neville took a deep breath. 'I want to know when you started going out with Hermione.'

Severus blinked in surprise. 'I'm not going out with Hermione.'

Neville frowned. 'Then why were you cuddling her in your lap for hours last night?'

'We're friends,' Severus said, beginning to feel defensive.

Neville looked grim. 'Hermione's had Harry and Ron for friends ever since first year, and I've never seen her sit in their laps or look at either of them the way she looked at you.'

Severus opened his mouth to speak, but Neville stood.

'Hermione's got loads of friends, Adin...including me. Don't make us mad at you by hurting her.'

Severus closed his mouth and watched the boy whom he had always dismissed as a dunderhead walk away with his shoulders squared, undoubtedly by the courage of his convictions. Severus smiled wryly. Neville had been brave to stand up to him about Hermione. She was certainly fortunate in her friends ... with the glaring exception of himself, of course.

The students cleared out before lunch, and Severus had a very quiet repast in the echoing Great Hall. There were a few Ravenclaws and a handful of Hufflepuffs, but no Slytherins, and he was the only Gryffindor. He spent the afternoon lazing and dozing before the fire in the common room...certainly not thinking about Hermione...with Bother curled up in his lap. Only the insistent growling of his stomach convinced him to bestir himself to go back downstairs for his dinner. Finding that a day of lounging and reading...and not thinking about Hermione...had exhausted him, he went up to bed early, but could not lie down to sleep until he had pulled out the golden gryphon pendant and glared at it. Why had he not given it to her? Perhaps he should send it by owl...he didn't know where she lived, but an owl could find her anywhere, couldn't it? At last, he put the pendant beneath his pillow and slept deeply, his dreams a maze of deserted corridors, which he traversed endlessly in search of Hermione, to no avail.

He awoke in a snarling mood, his head aching, feeling empty and bereft. Could he not go twenty-four hours without having his life disrupted by a bushy-haired know-it-all? She accomplished her disruption even in her absence ... or perhaps by her absence. When she was not here, pestering him, his own thoughts did it for her.

He did not suffer fools gladly, but he would gladly suffer her...and more the fool she for permitting him near her.

Deciding to skip the morning shower, he threw on his clothes from the day before and slouched downstairs, his face like a thundercloud. When he reached the common room, an unexpected sight met his eyes: A great ginger tomcat with a smashed-in face lay upon the sofa by the fire, looking like nothing so much as a furry ginger cushion.

'Hallo,' he said. 'Did she go off and leave you, too?'

'Of course she didn't,' Hermione said, and Severus turned to see her behind him.

A thousand silly things to say crowded his mind, but he said none of them. Instead, he started towards her in the same instant she started towards him, and they met in an embrace so fraught with emotion that it felt like a tectonic shift beneath their feet. It was as if no time had passed, as if he had, just seconds before, sent her to bed alone after the Christmas party, and immediately, the charged air between them all but crackled with the words not spoken and the actions not taken.

She was the one who broke free, stepping away from him with a tiny smile about her lips. 'Let's go to breakfast,' she suggested.

He led the way to the portrait hole, his heart lifting with a joy perhaps one degree removed from pure giddiness. How could her mere presence make the everyday task of going down to breakfast such a happy event? Was it possible that, in a life shared with Hermione, contentment could be normal?

Snorting at such fanciful thinking, he allowed her to precede him into the corridor, taking the opportunity, when she slipped past him, to take a blissful breath of her hair.

Sitting over plates of scrambled eggs and bacon, he said, 'I thought you were going home for Christmas.'

'Oh, I changed my mind,' she said airily, spreading jam on her toast. 'My parents decided to go skiing, and that's really not my kind of thing.'

There was a part of him...the part that whinged and squirmed until he wanted to cast the Cruciatus Curse on it...that wanted to believe she had stayed because of him. The other voice, that of the ever more distant Professor Snape, told him that of course she hadn't stayed for him...what a fatuous notion!...and that he should hide himself away from her, for she was a danger to him in every imaginable way.

Severus had no wish to even listen to that part of himself, much less obey it. He had hidden and pretended for too long. Now, even though he was hiding at Hogwarts and pretending to be Adin, it was different, somehow. In the most fundamental ways, Adin was far more his authentic self than Professor Snape had ever been. Every instinct he possessed bade him to stay as close to Hermione as she would permit, and as that fit in precisely with his strongest desire, he was happy to follow the dictate.

They dawdled over their coffee until a house-elf confiscated the self-filling coffee pot and informed them, 'Breakfast is over, young miss and young sir!'

They surrendered their coffee cups, and as they left the table, Hermione said, 'Let's go for a walk!'

'You want to go out into the icy cold and walk in the snow?' he inquired.

Her smile could have lit the darkest dungeon, and he wondered fleetingly if she felt as gleeful as he did.

'Are you prepared for the consequences of such an outing?' he asked with mock gravity.

Her laugh, as she wrapped her scarf about her neck and fled into the cloudless, frigid day, was the only answer he received.

They walked about the lake, talking of nothing and everything, until Severus felt they were far enough away from the castle that casual prying eyes couldn't spy them. Then, he pointed to a snow covered boulder. 'That is your fort,' he informed her.

'My what?' She glanced at the lump and back to his face, her eyes alight with exuberance, and he struggled with himself not to grab her up and kiss her.

'Your fort,' he said again. 'You may have five minutes to amass your arsenal, and then you must defend your stronghold from the hordes of marauding, evil wizards.'

She bent to gather snow. 'What will happen if I fail?' she asked, laughter riming her voice like ice on the branch of a tree.

He formed snowballs with the speed and efficiency he had brought to chopping and brewing, his hands working independently of his mind. 'You don't want to find out,' he assured her.

The battle was rather one-sided. Even though Hermione had the benefit of the sheltering rock, she lacked one prime advantage...Severus' driving need to tumble her into the snow and pin her there. Trapped beneath him, she squirmed and struggled before falling still, immobilised by his superior strength...or was it by the strength of the agitation between them, which waxed and waned but never ceased?

At last she ceased to grapple and lay quiescent beneath him in the snow, her peppermint breaths coming in little panting bursts. The elation which surged through him then, stiffening his prick and loosening his resolve, had nothing to do with play-fighting and everything to do with dominance...and sex. He stared down into her brown eyes, his nose nearly touching hers, his head tilted slightly to one side, as if to kiss her. Her mouth opened slightly, the tip of her tongue darting out to moisten her lower lip, and he felt it like fire in his belly.

Sweet Merlin.

They were walking a very fine line between attraction and utter immersion, and he was afraid they were in danger of falling in ....

He had no intention of stopping.

He closed his eyes, his lips ghosting over hers ... and her stomach growled. They couldn't help it: They laughed like loons, and he rolled off of her before standing and offering a hand to help her up, as well.

They arrived back in the castle in time for an early lunch, after which they retired to the common room for an afternoon of wizard chess, Exploding Snap, and reading by the fire. Then they went down to the Great Hall for dinner and back to the common room to listen to the wireless, read, and talk far into the night.

'What do you think you'll do after school?' she said, sitting beside him on the couch in the darkened room, staring into the fire and stroking Bother.

Severus watched her hands upon his Kneazle's fur, imagining he was the recipient of her caresses and wishing it were so.

'Adin?' she murmured, and he tore his eyes from her hand and looked into her face.

'Dunno,' he admitted. 'I haven't given it much thought.'

'You should!' she said earnestly. 'It's what I'm always telling Harry and Ron...school is supposed to prepare us for life after school, so you can't spend it just arsing around!'

'I'd hardly call what I've been doing arsing around,' he grumbled.

She was gazing into the firelight again. 'I want to do something important,' she said. 'I want to help those who don't have a voice ...'

He snorted rudely. 'You want to free the house-elves, and they hate you for it.'

She pivoted, dislodging Bother, who sprang to the floor with a disgruntled meow. 'I know they don't want to be free,' she admitted. 'But there's no reason why they can't have more rights, if they choose to claim them...and other beings, such as centaurs and goblins, have seriously restricted rights amongst wizards. I want to make things fair for them.'

He watched her expression as he listened, unable to remain indifferent in the face of her eagerness.

'You actually believe you can make a difference,' he said when she paused.

Looking at him with her big brown eyes, she said, 'I know I have to try.'

He could only nod, realising he had entered Dumbledore's service with the same half-hopeless determination to stop the Dark Lord...and against all odds, he had succeeded. 'Of course you do,' he said, standing and offering his hand. 'But for now, we'd better get some sleep.'

Between the staircases, Hermione gave him a hug, then smiled up at him with such sweetness that he was driven to kiss her. She kissed him back hungrily, fanning the flames of the low burn of passion that persisted in her presence, regardless of their activity...and this activity was very difficult to stop once they had begun. It was agony to part from her, drawing on every bit of the discipline his years of abstinence had taught him, releasing her lips and pressing his forehead to hers as he strove to catch his breath.

'Please go to bed,' he said raggedly, stepping back from her.

'I'd rather...' she began but took another step back, pressing a finger across his lips to shush her.

He watched her ascension of the stairs, his desire pounding in him with every beat of his heart, until she disappeared from his sight. He turned to go to his room, a very vocal Adin railing at him every step of the way.

Why? Why do we have to stop?

'Shut up,' he muttered, desperately trying to remember the answer to the question.

On their second day of solitude, he sprawled in an armchair near the head of the sofa where she reclined; they both held books.

'What are you reading?' he asked, leaning over to get a closer look at the book propped on her chest.

'Read your own book!' she said crossly, closing hers and pushing it into the sofa cushions.

'Is it smut?' he asked, with a perfectly straight face.

'No!' she cried, sitting up. 'What a thing to say!'

He darted her a sidelong look. 'Well, why else would you hide it from me?'

She huffed at him, crossing her arms over her chest, and he lunged for the book, somehow managing to tumble her onto her back again with him sprawled on top of her.

'Bleak House?' he said, frowning over the book title. 'Why are you reading Bleak House?'

She scowled and gave him a shove. 'Because you're going on about it all the time, aren't you? And I've never read it before, so I can't talk to you about it.'

He smirked at her, letting the heavy book fall on the cushion. 'I'm seven hundred pages in...you'll never catch up.'

She directed her patented pitying look at him, which never failed to get up his nose. 'I'm on page six hundred thirty,' she said smugly. 'I read all day on Sunday.'

'No wonder you weren't at meals!' he said, the mystery solved.

'I read in bed last night, as well,' she admitted.

He wasn't about to admit what he'd done in bed last night.

'You're such a swot,' he said, beginning to notice how soft she was beneath him, and how much nicer it was to pin her on the sofa in the warm common room than in the snow on the cold grounds.

'Pot, kettle, black,' she said, her eyes taking on the languorous look she had assumed the night before during their goodnight kiss, which had finally caused him to send her to bed before he ended up taking her to his bed.

Why shouldn't I? he wondered, shifting his weight slightly, only to have her shift in accommodation, her body cradling his as nature intended. What can it hurt?

He had been very disciplined, rationing himself to one goodnight kiss...although that one kiss had many small interruptions and went on for an hour or more...but why continue to deny what they both so clearly wanted? No one else was denying themselves, were they? All his mates had taken their girlfriends to their bedrooms, hadn't they?

She raised a hand to his face, stroking his fringe out of his eyes, then hooked her hand behind his neck, pulling him down towards her slightly parted waiting lips. He felt the stiffening in his trousers and knew he was playing with fire, but could no more turn away from her blatant seduction than he could choose not to take his next breath.

The roar of a lion caused him to jerk away from her, his concentration broken.

'It's just the clock,' Hermione said, reaching for him now with both arms. 'The lion roars on the hour...you know that.'

He did know, and the clock was striking five, so dinner was being served in the Great Hall...and he was preparing to rut in the Gryffindor common room with an eighteen-year-old girl.

He pushed himself to his feet, self-consciously turning from her to hide the tent in his trousers...not that she hadn't already felt it, wriggling about as she'd been doing.

'Adin?' she said, and he felt her hand cup his bum from behind, making him nearly jump out of his skin.

'I have to go upstairs,' he choked out, beginning to move away from her.

'Why?'

He could hear her moving behind him, but he dared not turn around; he had to keep moving, or he might do something he would regret.

'Go down to dinner,' he said, walking faster, his hand closing desperately over the handrail of the stairwell. 'I'll be down later.'

'Adin!' she called, now sounding annoyed...and a bit hurt?...but he did not pause.

He continued up the stairs as if the hounds of hell were on his heels, hurtling into his own room with great relief. A wank would set him straight...clear his mind...and then he would be able to be around her without wanting to shag her through the sofa cushions ... for a little while, anyway.

The next day was Christmas Eve, a grey and overcast day, which they enjoyed in their usual way, minus the snow snuggling. He was determined not to tempt himself, having determined, in a complicated line of reasoning which would have made sense to no one but himself, that it was okay to kiss her as long as he didn't shag her...that kissing one's former student was not nearly so bad as shagging said student, and that he could be forgiven for kissing, but that shagging was right out.

He could kiss her and walk away, but if he took her ... made love to her ... made her his ... he would never be able to let her go.

His breath caught in his lungs, just thinking about it.

That afternoon, snow began to fall outside the mullioned windows in the common room, and they celebrated by conjuring cups of tea whilst Severus read aloud from Bleak House.

'Why don't you read?' he had said.

'I like to listen to you,' she had responded, and his vanity flattered, he had done as she asked.

Before long, she was curled up against him, her head upon his shoulder, and a contentment fell over them, so beguiling that his voice trailed off, and he set the book down, wrapping an arm about her shoulders and pulling her more closely to him as the light outside faded to darkness.

The clock roared five, and Hermione sat up. 'Let's have our own little tree in here,' she said. 'We can decorate it after dinner and listen to the Christmas programs on the wireless.'

Still relaxed back against the sofa cushions, he watched her face, in profile to him now, and admired the beauty in her, which seemed to grow more pronounced with each passing day.

'On one condition,' he said.

A smile curved her lips. 'Yes?'

'That you wear the dress you wore to the Christmas party,' he said.

'All right,' she said, 'but I'll have to wear my hair down...Lavender is the only one who can put it up'.

He tentatively touched her hair. 'I like it down,' he said.

She flushed with pleasure and stood up. 'Let's go down to dinner as we are now...I don't want anyone getting nosey about why we're dressing up.'

Joining her in the common room at eight o'clock, dressed, per her command, in the garments he had worn to the party, he could only admire her organisational skills. She had managed to nick a basketful of faeries from the trees in the Great Hall, as well as a fistful of everlasting icicles. She had conjured a tiny evergreen, less than two feet tall, which now sat upon the coffee table before the sofa, and she was kneeling on the rug, setting the faeries amongst the branches.

The wireless was playing traditional Yuletide fare, an abundance of harps and flutes and pennywhistles, and to his eyes, Hermione lit the room, her radiance putting the glowing faeries to shame. He sat in rapt contemplation of her, a swelling, gasp-inducing feeling growing behind his breastbone, making him want to run from her nearly as much as it made him want to cleave to her.

'There,' she said, placing the last tiny faerie atop the tree. 'Now, you place the icicles.'

He moved around the table and knelt at her side, then with a wave of his wand, he produced a length of ivy. A whispered incantation set the ivy to weaving itself into a circlet, which he placed upon Hermione's head, amidst the bushy curls. Then he plucked the icicles from the table, setting them to dangle from the ivy strands, until it looked as if she wore the winter crown of a wood-faerie queen.

'That's not what I meant!' she cried, but when he conjured a mirror and held it for her to see herself, she gasped with delight.

'Shall I put them on the tree instead?' he murmured.

'No!' She smiled at him, her enormous pleasure in such a simple gesture making him glad. 'They're pretty where they are.'

He flicked his fingers, Vanishing the mirror. 'They are striving to keep up,' he said quietly, picking up the remaining icicles and hanging them from the tiny tree branches.

She stood, moving back a few feet to survey their handiwork. 'It's a lovely little tree,' she said, and she did a little pirouette of joy in the middle of the room.

Severus watched her, feeling almost spellbound. He wanted to lift her onto her rightful throne and kneel at her feet, to keep the unworthy away from her...and he wanted to utterly possess her, to merge himself into her, to hear her shout of joy mingled with his own, even as their essences mingled into one.

She held out her hands to him. 'Dance with me,' she said, and he could deny her nothing.

He placed a hand upon her waist, and she moved confidently into his arms, sure of her welcome, so he retaliated by enfolding her as they circled in the dance. The music flowed, one song into the next, and they flowed with it, never moving very far away from their tree. After what seemed a very long time, the wireless program ended, and the sound of applause filled the room, ending the evening's programming.

Hermione moved away from him as she turned off the wireless, and he stood where she left him on the hearthrug, his arms empty of his own personal Siren.

'Are you tired?' she asked him.

'No,' he answered. 'Are you?'

'No,' she said, resuming her seat upon the sofa and patting the cushion beside her. 'Let's sit and look at our tree.'

He sat, placing his arm along the back of the sofa behind her, and when she curled against him, her fingers stroking the cashmere of his jumper, he draped the arm over her shoulders, his fingertips coming to rest upon her hip and beginning to lightly stroke her dress. In the dark room, lit only by faerie light, Hermione began to hum a Christmas song. She finished one song only to begin another, and when she hummed one he recognised, he hummed as well. Their impromptu duet pleased her so much that, when the song was done, she kissed him full on the mouth, her lips sliding over his in a way that had become delightfully familiar to him in the last week.

The lion roared, and when they counted the following bells, they knew it was midnight.

'Merry Christmas, Adin,' she whispered, and to his astonishment, she sat forward and laid a small, beribboned package upon his lap. 'Open it,' she instructed.

He sighed, wondering if he would ever manage to truly surprise the girl, and withdrew a package awkwardly wrapped in red tissue paper from the pocket of his coat.

'Only if you open yours,' he replied.

With a squeal of joy, she tore the paper open, and he did the same, finding a square flat black box, which he opened to find a broad hammered-gold bracelet, with a cut-out figure in the shape of a ...

'Adin,' she breathed, lifting the pendant so that it dangled from her fingers on its fine gold chain, her lips forming a perfect circle of amazement. 'Look!'

She lowered the figure of the flying gryphon until it lay upon its side, almost the perfect puzzle-piece fit inside the cut-out on the bracelet she had given him.

'How did you know?' they asked one another simultaneously.

'I didn't!' they answered, both sounding a bit indignant.

She recovered herself first, as she was wont to do. 'Fasten it for me, please,' she said, turning her back to him and offering the two ends of the necklace to be joined.

'Lift your hair,' he instructed, and with deft fingers, he fastened the necklace for her, giving in to his impulse and pressing a kiss to her nape as he did so.

She turned to him then, with a murmured incantation, and the high, tight neck of the dress was gone, replaced by a deeply scooped neckline, showing the ruby-eyed gryphon in flight against the milky smoothness of her skin.

'Now you,' she said, taking the dull hammered-gold cuff from its box.

Severus hesitated, inwardly quaking. It was one thing to give a girl a pretty trifle, but it seemed to him that it was another thing entirely to accept such a gift from a witch. The fact that it appeared that the two pieces had been fashioned from the same piece of metal also disturbed him...what did it mean?

'Don't you like it?' she asked, watching him with troubled eyes.

Damn, now her feelings were hurt.

'Of course I like it,' he said gruffly, 'it's just I've never ...' and he thrust his left arm out and watched as she fit the cuff over his wrist.

'It suits you,' she said, and he lowered the arm, allowing the sleeve of the coat to fall naturally, appreciating the slight gleam of the gold as the heavy bracelet slid to the juncture of his hand and his wrist.

'It does,' he agreed.

She sat back against the cushions, and he resumed his place as well, pressing a kiss to her temple. 'Happy Christmas, Hermione,' he murmured.

Her head came to rest upon his shoulder, and they sat and looked at their tree as the firelight died. When the lion roared at two o'clock, Hermione was asleep upon his chest, and Severus was rapt; all he could bear to do was Summon a blanket to keep them warm as Christmas morning stole over Hogwarts.