Riches Strange and New

Disclaimer: Everything you recognise belongs to JKR, who generously lets us play with her things. Or at least graciously looks the other way when we do.

* * *

September 1996

Hermione's seventeenth birthday dawned mild and clear.

The sun found her in the Quidditch stands, flat on her back on a bench, panting. She had run a couple of dozen laps around the pitch and finished by running the stairs three times. It was a lot of stairs, and now her heart was threatening to pound right out of her body.

When she was able to, she stood slowly and moved dazedly down to the pitch to stretch, then made her way into the girls' changing room. Lavender and Parvati might be up by the time she got back to the dormitory, and she didn't fancy competing for shower time.

Hermione emerged into the games building's main corridor twenty minutes later, fingers twisting an elastic band around the end of her French plait. As she drew level with the door to the duelling chamber, it opened, and out stepped Minerva McGonagall, flushed-faced and bright-eyed. She wore loose trousers and an open-necked shirt, and her robes were draped over one arm; her wand hung loose in her grip. A burnt, sulphurous smell billowed out after Professor McGonagall, as did her duelling partner: Professor Snape, in a similar state of dishabille, two spots of colour burning high on his pale cheeks.

Hermione stopped short, gaped, and blushed.

'Ah, good morning, Miss Granger. I see you have been taking your exercise early, as have we.' The Transfiguration teacher smiled warmly at Hermione.

Professor Snape, after narrowing his eyes at Hermione in a sour glare, ignored her. Thrusting his arms into the sleeves of his robes, he addressed his colleague. 'Thank you for the practise, Minerva. Good morning.'

With that, he turned and strode rapidly along the corridor and out of the door.

'Shall we walk back together, Miss Granger?' asked Professor McGonagall.

'Unh, yes. Yes, Professor.' Hermione had recovered her ability to speak, which had deserted her just for a tiny moment there.

As they traversed the slope towards the main entrance of the castle, she gathered her courage to ask, 'Do you and... and Professor Snape often duel?'

'Yes, several times a week. Most of the teachers do practice fairly often these days. As you might expect.' Professor McGonagall's face took on a rather grim expression.

'Oh.' Of course. The staff were preparing for war. Hermione's eyes tracked the black figure on the path ahead of them...he had almost reached the door. She shivered.

* * *

'For the next lesson, please read pages forty-two through to fifty-eight in your books and give me fourteen inches on Transfiguration in the culinary arts. Class is dismissed.'

'Miss Granger, can I see you for a moment in my office?' Professor McGonagall smiled at Hermione as the girl tucked her Transfiguration book into her bag. 'I have some Muggle post for you that Mr Filch has just brought up from Hogsmeade.'

Hermione turned to her friends and exclaimed, 'Ooooo, prezzies! Will you be in the common room later? For a little birthday cheer?'

Harry shot her an amused look. 'Of course we'll be there. As will a gigantic pink cake...it was pink, wasn't it, Ron?'

'Oh yeah, big and pink. I got a sugar rush from looking at it. Dobby will Apparate up with it after dinner; we just need to give him the signal.'

* * *

The ruins of Hermione's birthday cake presided over a common room table littered with cups and plates, cards, bits of wrapping paper, and assorted loot: a book and chocolates from Harry and Ron, respectively, in true Hermione's-birthday tradition; mittens from Mrs Weasley (in Gryffindor colours); and an ingenious handmade card from Ginny, featuring a miniscule bushy haired witch whose wand shot out rainbow coloured sparks whenever the card was opened.

There were Muggle cheques from both sets of grandparents, which Hermione would have to countersign and send back to her parents to put in the bank for her. Her mother had sent a glorious deep red cashmere jumper, which Hermione was holding in her lap and stroking as though it were a particularly silky and docile cat. Her aunt in America had sent a new translation of the Odyssey. And a card from her father had two pieces of paper tucked inside: a photocopy of three round-trip tickets for the Grangers to travel to Istanbul the day after Christmas, and a picture postcard of Cappadocia.

Hermione reached for the last wrapped package, which had come bundled in the parcel from her parents.

'It's from Jill,' Hermione said as she opened the card, a smile gathering in her eyes.

'Jill your Muggle friend?' asked Ron, reaching for another hunk of cake.

'Yes, my "Muggle friend." You make her sound like a pet. She's been my friend about twice as long as you, you know.'

And oh, how I needed a Muggle friend this summer. Returning home in July, after her extended convalescence at the Burrow, had been utterly surreal. Hermione avoided telling her parents half of what had happened at Hogwarts during her fifth year, and she didn't even mention the events at the Ministry. How could she burden them with that?

She had been nearly desperate to feel normal, and to have fun like any other teenage girl home for the summer holidays. Not like someone who had fought a horrific battle against grown-up witches and wizards, seen a friend die, and been gravely injured. Not like someone who would have to endure all this and more again, and soon.

Jill Fletcher knew how to have fun better than anyone Hermione knew. She was clever and unbelievably funny and knew everything about art and music and films. And for a few weeks in July and August, before Hermione returned to the Burrow and the wizarding world, she had been happy to be Jill's sidekick. Sneaking into nightclubs to see bands was so much nicer...so much more normal...than sneaking into the Department of Mysteries on a doomed rescue mission.

Hermione sighed. She put the card down and began to open the little package.

Harry picked up the card. It was small and square, made of heavy rag paper with rough edges, with a brilliant green apple printed on the front. Inside, it read 'Dear H Here is a new one I think you'll like: 60 A / 40 R. Track 3 especially makes me think of your dilemma. Happy 17th, and keep me posted. Love J.'

'What's 60 A / 40 R?' asked Harry.

'Oh, it's Jill's grand unified theory of pop. She thinks all pop music that's worth anything can be divided into two categories: Songs that Rock and Songs that Ache. 60 A / 40 R means this CD is 60 per cent Ache and 40 per cent Rock.' Hermione was studying the CD case, which had a picture of a red-haired woman holding a big green apple up in front of her face.

'What does she mean by your dilemma, Mione?' asked Ron, who had taken the card from Harry.

'Mmmm, not really sure,' said Hermione vaguely. 'We talked about a lot of things this past summer. I'll have to listen and see if I can work it out.'

She had a pretty good idea what Jill meant. Jill knew Hermione had a crush on one of her teachers. The CD was called 'Nine Objects of Desire.' Not rocket science.

She glanced at Harry and Ron, but they seemed to have lost interest in the subject. Ron was shovelling more cake into his mouth, and Harry had reached for the pumpkin juice.

'More PJ for the birthday girl?'

'That's birthday woman to you, laddie,' Hermione quipped. 'I am now of age, so show some respect.' Thank the gods my best friends are boys, and that Ginny skived off after the cake, she thought, regarding the two of them with affection. Girls wouldn't let me off so easily.

* * *

Later, in her room, Hermione spelled the music on the CD into her M-Clip and slipped the cuffs over her ears. "Three," she murmured.

The song was dark, intimate, and sultry, with bass and jazz guitar lines weaving a sinuous rhythm, and clarinet and accordion echoing one another above them. The lyrics spoke against indulging a hidden desire, but the music told a different story. The music was entranced and all too willing to fall. Naughty Jill, Hermione thought as she drifted into sleep.

* * *

Fortunately for Hermione, there wasn't a question of her falling into anything. The attraction she continued to feel for Professor Snape would never be reciprocated...and she truly didn't want it to be. The rest of her life...friends, family, school, the fight against He Who Must Not Be Named...was too precious to her to risk wrecking it. Which a liaison with her teacher would surely do.

Plus the object of her obsession did. Not. Like. Her. That fact could not be more evident.

But there was no mistaking her body's reaction to him, and the way it strove to drag her brain along with it into a hot, thrumming little cavern of lust.

In public, she handled herself pretty well. Her equilibrium was sometimes threatened, but never overturned. True, she flushed hot in places visible and invisible whenever she unexpectedly caught sight of Professor Snape. But if she knew she was going to see him...at meals, say, or in class...she could control her reactions quite well. In the Great Hall, she kept her back to him as much as possible, which helped.

In the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom, where Snape now presided, her strategy lay in narrowing her focus to the task at hand...reading, listening, analysing, and practising. The satisfactions of hard work were as rich as ever, no matter the hormonal joyride she seemed to be on.

At night, though, she let her body and brain conspire.

With all the curiosity, perseverance, and ingenuity she was capable of, Hermione built a secret fantasy life in the curtained privacy of her four-poster bed. It was a kind of refuge from the gnawing worry about just when and where the war with You Know Who would break out again. And it was delicious.

She quickly grew to be glad she'd had some experience with Viktor. It turned out, she discovered, that fantasy needs different kinds of fuel. Severus Snape's voice, eyes, and lips were the melody playing in her mind as her hands sought her own skin, but her body's memories of times alone with Viktor Krum formed the rhythm section.

She remembered the feel of hot breath on her ear, trailing enticements and promises and endearments, teeth biting the lobe; lips and tongue on her neck and shoulder; broom-callused hands moving down her belly and plucking at her waistband.

She remembered also the feel of a man's skin, rougher and hairier than her own, but with areas of silky softness in unexpected places...cool here where the chilly air touched it, hot there where the pulse hammered just below the skin.

Teenagers in a castle without their own private rooms, she and Viktor had snatched at each other when they could, ducking into supply cupboards, grinding their bodies together in alcoves in deserted corridors, groping each other under the library table where they both sat at work.

This was not the way these things played out in the steamy Muggle paperback novels she devoured during the summer. There the lovers were grownups with beds, fires, candles, wine, time, and privacy. They could leisurely undress each other, seduce one another, kiss, banter, and tease.

Not so for randy students: they rarely had much time and they were usually on the verge of discovery, hastily cast Silencing and Cloaking charms notwithstanding.

The excitement and urgency of these remembered rendezvous infused Hermione's Snape fantasies. Where would a Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher and a know-it-all sixth-year go to have each other, when what they were doing was so far out of bounds?

Well, she loved it when Fantasy Snape pulled her behind a tapestry and fell on his knees to yank down her trousers and ravage her with his mouth while students streamed by mere yards away and she gasped out his name, protected by his perfectly cast Muffliato charm.

Also most excellent were the library stacks, where she sometimes knelt down to return the favour. His beautiful hands tangled in her hair, cradling her head gently as she licked and sucked, then ducked to take one of his balls into her mouth, swirling it with her tongue as her fist stroked him, slick with her spit.

And detention... ah, detention.

Here she had to revise present circumstances a bit and put him back in his position as Potions teacher, just for the sake of location. The broad worktables, magically swept clear of detritus and scourgified of any old potion spills, were marvellous places to be splayed out under Snape's hands and tongue.

The teacher's chair was made of wood, with a tilting back and no arms. Perfect for straddling a firmly bound erstwhile Potions master while her hands dove into his shirt, caressing all the flesh of his torso then pinching his nipples hard as she flirted the tips of her own breasts into his open mouth.

It was a very good thing that she had to face Professor Slughorn, not Professor Snape, in a classroom that had become her mind's naughtiest playground.

All in all, she built up quite a repertoire of Having Snape tableaux over the autumn term. If some pieces of her fantasy pictures were still vague or missing, so be it. There were plenty of things she imagined doing that she had only read about. She didn't actually know what it felt like to have a man's cock inside her. She and Viktor had never got that far...there was so much else good to do with each other's bodies and so little opportunity to do it. And she had known, in her fourth year, that she wasn't ready for that particular step.

She also couldn't know what Severus Snape really smelled or tasted like, or how he would look or sound in the throes of passion. Her fantasy Snape was shadowy, a mosaic of her own experiences with Viktor, her diligent summer reading in Muggle-Smut Studies, and everything she saw, knew, or imagined about the man himself.

Her private Snape's eyes consumed hers, his hands gripped and stroked her, his mouth explored her everywhere, and his cock filled her night after night. But her pride and common sense warned her not to turn him into some misty teen dream, and she lectured herself sternly when she caught herself straying into the vicinity of tender smiles and hand-holding with Snape. Work with the facts, Hermione. He's your teacher, and a bastard, and he hates you, and you don't really even like him. Don't decide you're in love with him just because you think he's shaggable. Take what you can use and forget the rest.

So it was that Fantasy Snape came to her in her bed and did what she wanted him to do, and when she was done with him...when she lay sweating under her duvet, with her breath growing slower and deeper after her orgasm...she dismissed him.

Real Snape's presence had a reliably unsettling effect on her...even when he was being hateful. There wasn't a flick of his eyebrows that didn't ignite little whirls of fire under her skin, not a sneer she didn't want to crush from his mouth with her own.

But Fantasy Snape gave her a safe place to channel her unruly reactions to. Later, she would promise herself. Later. He can look like that for you tonight.

Her relationship with Fantasy Snape was hot; it was thrilling; and it was safely her own secret.

It was almost enough.

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A/N: As usual, big smoochies and bear hugs go to my beta, greenstuff, and Brit-picker, lifeasanamazon. I is luv u. And 1 million thanks go to those of you who took the time to review the first 3 chapters. It is a thrill to hear from you. I'll do my best to answer each of you promptly.

The song referred to in this chapter is 'Caramel' by Suzanne Vega from her 1996 album Nine Objects of Desire. When I started writing this story, I remembered this song about illicit desire, and dug it out. It became a touchstone for the story and gave me the title; some chapter titles (like this one) are also drawn from lyrics on that album. If you loathe songfic, never fear, I've kept the influence very light...the story stands completely on its own without the song, which has chiefly served as a private inspiration for me. It's torchy! Listen to / watch a live version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-1mIOBbKi0

Caramel lyrics:

It won't do / to dream of caramel / to think of cinnamon / and long for you. / It won't do / to stir a deep desire / to fan a hidden fire / that can never burn true. / I know your name; / I know your skin; / I know the way / these things begin; / But I don't know / how would live with myself / what I'd forgive of myself / if you don't go. / So goodbye / sweet appetite. / No single bite / could satisfy. / I know your name; / I know your skin; / I know the way / these things begin; / But I don't know / how would live with myself / what I would give of myself / if you don't go. / It won't do... etc.