Concealment

Disclaimer: *luvs JKR *luvs using JKR stuffs *promises to put JKR stuffs back when done *backs out of throne room bowing

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'Lick it. Please.'

She grinned and took the spoon from him.

'To think, young as I am, that I would live to hear those three words from your mouth. And not for the last time, I'll wager.'

'A vestige of your accustomed deference would not be amiss, Miss Granger. The merest scrap, really. I'd rather this conversation not descend into lewd innuendo.'

'Innuendo is off limits, then, sir? You prefer your lewdness to be more explicit?' She wriggled a bit in his lap, reaching her spoonless hand down to his belt buckle.

'As you know.' He lifted her hand away. 'The spoon, Hermione. Put it in your mouth.'

She leaned forward and whispered, 'Unfair. Why won't you let me have the double meaning?' Pulling back, she looked him in the eye and stuck the spoon in her mouth, dragging it slowly out over her tongue. 'Here.'

He snatched it away and thrust it in his pocket, then, as quick as a snake, caught both her wrists in his hands and held them up and away from his body.

'Now then. Say it.'

'"It."'

'Are you drunk?'

'Yes. I'm drunk on your, um, your charms. And your blandishments.' She was smiling. 'I've missed you all day long. I can't be serious now.'

The afternoon sun slanting in to the mezzanine office washed across their thighs...his encased in black, hers draped in grey. He let go of her hands and pushed her skirt halfway up her legs so that the sunlight fell on her bare skin. Her breath caught.

Five days into their affair he was learning that his sternness brought out her playfulness. Which was fine...even rather delightful...within limits. He kept his expression flat. 'We don't have much time.' He made circles with his thumbs on the fine skin of her inner thighs, and she shivered. 'Tell me what you want.'

She cast her eyes up to the ceiling and spoke as if she were ticking items off a checklist. 'I want your hands on me. That's taken care of, so that's, mmm, that's good. I want you to, uh, to kiss me.'

Ravaging the base of her throat, he thought, I'm storing up your taste for tonight. He breathed her in.

She reached again for his belt buckle and worked at it as she spoke: 'I want...you...to be wearing one...less...pair...of trousers.'

He stood, lifting her with him, and the trousers dropped. Her face and neck were aflame. 'I want you to put me on that desk,' gesturing towards it, 'and, and make, um, make love to me. On the desk.' Repeating the important part. A staple of her fantasies, he knew.

He deposited her on the warm wood.

* * *

15 May 1997

J

* * *

There was a gallery around the main reading room of the Hogwarts library. Three sides were threaded with narrow rows of bookcases; the fourth side held two rows of small tables.

The tables, bright with sunlight from the tall windows, were entirely empty on this Saturday morning. Hermione chose a table against the gallery railing and heaved her book bag onto one of the chairs. She stood for a moment, rubbing her neck and shoulder where the strap had dug into the flesh.

Today would be a serious work day. For most of the week, she had been coasting on the reading she had already done. Her work in Arithmancy and Ancient Runes was lacklustre. She'd weaseled out of as much prefect work as she could. She needed to pull her socks up, academically speaking.

However, this morning, research on the Marauders' Map was first on her agenda, and she walked over to the History of Magical Creatures section in search of Lawrence Larrabee's Whose Treasure?

An hour later, she pushed the book away and looked down at her notes, and at the copy she'd made of Larrabee's translation of the goblin spell that had been used to map the Castle of Dunsany. It was no help. What she needed was something that could fool or distort a Protean Charm. Where should she start looking?

The Galleon in her pocket went hot, and she pulled it out.

Are you alone?

Heart pounding, she transmitted yes and closed her hand around the coin.

The scrape of a chair across the polished stone floor made her jump.

Without asking if he could join her, Seamus swung the chair around beside her table and sat astride it, arms crossed over the chair back.

Hermione shoved the Galleon in her pocket, feeling it flare anew as she did so. Oh BOTHER!

'Morning, Mione. Thought I might find you here.' Seamus smiled, a complicated sort of smile that didn't reach his eyes.

'Seamus, hello; I, um...'

'I know. You're busy; been busy all week.' He gestured at her book and parchment. 'Please just let me say something I've been wanting and trying to say to you.'

'Um, couldn't we...' Seamus, LEAVE so I can read my message!

'Please.'

He wasn't going to leave until she let him speak. 'Okay,' she said, trying not to sound ungracious.

An invisible hand with a callused palm and long, rough-textured fingers slid into hers, and she quickly pulled her hand from the tabletop into her lap.

Which was not the best place for it just now: she felt Severus's thumb begin to stroke the top of her thigh. She squeezed his phantom hand, yanked it away from her leg, and pinned it back on the tabletop.

'...so sorry about that. I wanted to tell you how I felt about you and I think I was scared, so I drank too much and acted like an eejit. I wanted... I want... I'd like to start again. Hermione?'

'Ye...um, yes?' Severus's hand had gone, thank god. He must have got the extremely unsubtle hint.

'Would you, erm, would you have tea with me at Madam Puddifoot's next Saturday? I'd like to just, you know, talk. Get to know one another better.'

Was that...? Yes it was a very soft kiss on her temple. Two. Three. Madman! She began quarreling with him in her head.

Seamus was waiting for an answer.

'S-Saturday? I wasn't planning to go into Hogsmeade,' she said distractedly and gestured at her overflowing book bag. 'I'm so, um, so stretched.' She raked her hands into her hair as if to demonstrate her level of stress and anxiety, but really to dislodge Severus.

'Just for an hour.' Seamus leaned forward, lines of earnest pleading etching his forehead. 'One hour, two friends having tea. That's all.'

And the damnable man was shifting her hair so he could kiss the side of her neck. Seamus cocked his head and squinted. 'Hermione, what just happened to your hair?'

She stood up, knocking over her own chair in her haste. 'Seamus! This is not a good time, can't we talk another, oh! another time?'

He set his jaw. 'Yes, we can. Next Saturday at Madam Puddifoot's. I won't leave until you say yes.'

'Yes, then, yes, fine. Okay. Now I really need to get a book from over there.' She pointed to the other side of the gallery. 'Next Saturday,' she said over her shoulder as she hurried away towards the sheltering stacks.

We need some new ground rules, clearly. What was he thinking, using it during the day?

* * *

Severus was thinking, If you only knew, Potter. While you sit in detention and pine for your redheaded girlfriend, I am in the next room kissing my girl. Who is not your girl, but quite entirely mine.

True, the kissing was not going so well. Hermione's responses were less than welcoming.

His Galleon flared.

Stop! Not alone! Seamus came...bad timing. Tonight?

Finnegan. He fancies her. Severus curled his lip. Too late, Mr Finnegan. Play the mooncalf all you want; she's taken.

Still, Finnegan was with her right now and he was not. Severus swept out of his private laboratory and into his sitting room, where Potter sat sullenly shuffling through manky old scraps of parchment. Severus's mood had gone sour. Now it was just him and Potter, and the air was thick with their mutual resentment.

Severus stalked over to Potter's side and flicked his eyes over the boy's work. 'When you're done with those,' he gestured, 'start on these.' And he kicked a big box on the floor. Dust puffed out of it, and two silverfish scuttled away.

Potter scowled. 'Yes. Sir.'

Severus threw himself into his desk chair. He'd have to take his satisfaction in the usual way...by spreading the loathing around. He reached for his marking quill and his pot of blood-red ink.

After a time he found he had raised his eyes from his work and was staring at the top of Potter the Younger's dark, unruly head.

He put down his quill and leaned back in his chair as cascades of thought followed memory followed association, leading him along paths he'd been avoiding...and ending, finally, in resolve.

* * *

17 May 1997

H

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Dinnertime was long past, but the evening sun still lit the southern faces of the hills and brought out the warm amber colours in the gallery tables.

Students dotted the chairs and tables in the library...mostly fifth-years and seventh-years cramming for OWLs and NEWTs. The great school clock began to strike the hour. Nine. Bleary eyed and stiff from sitting too long, Hermione rose and began slowly to place her books and writing materials in her bag, leaving until last the Muggle-stamped envelope addressed to Jill, which she tucked into the bag's front pocket.

She would run up to the Owlery to send it, then go and work in the common room until bedtime. Severus would use Percipio Corium to join her around eleven. She was so tired, she didn't know how late she'd be able to stay awake with him.

They were getting better at the incorporeal having-sex part of the spell, though that was always so much better when they were in the same room with each other and could hear and see and taste and smell as well as touch. But she did love being able to fall asleep in his arms each night, or to feel him drift off in her embrace. How wonderful it would be to watch him sleep...

Oh, well.

The day had been very productive: she was caught up with DADA marking, had drafted her Charms essay due Tuesday and created a bibliography for her HoM paper due in two weeks; done all her assigned reading in three classes for the week; and, best of all, had an idea that might help her solve the Map problem. She'd look into it tomorrow, around the four tutoring sessions she had scheduled and the rest of her assigned reading.

She could see that weekends would have to be like this. If there were to be two days in a row during which she wouldn't be alone with Severus...couldn't have the satisfaction of looking her fill and talking to him unreservedly...those days would need to be filled with work and more work. Work would save her.

She felt the heat of her Galleon through her jeans pocket.

I am in the stairway alcove. Are you free?

Oh, thank god, she thought fervently. Yes. On my way now from library. She would send the letter in the morning.

His wards rippled around her as she opened the fourth-floor door into the stairwell. She walked down to the landing and deposited her bag on the floor beneath the window embrasure.

Severus was sitting on the ledge, arms resting on his knees, long hands dangling. He held one hand out to help her climb onto the ledge, then wordlessly pulled her to him so she was sitting between his tented legs, her back to his chest. Sighing, she let her head fall back against his shoulder and rested her forearm along the top of his arm, which encircled her waist.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, looking out of the window as daylight left the sky. The courtyard had long been in shadow, but they could see the tops of the south-facing wall of Gryffindor Tower and its adjoining battlement glowing in the pinkish light of the declining sun.

'This has been a place of mine since my second year at Hogwarts,' he said finally, his voice harsh and halting. 'That is now... twenty-five years.'

Hermione said nothing, waiting for him to speak.

He cleared his throat and swallowed. 'My best friend and I would meet here and talk and read and smoke cigarettes. She was a Muggleborn, like you.' He buried his nose in her hair and breathed in and out, and fell silent for a minute or so.

'I never thought I'd know such a person again. Someone clever and kind and, and lovely who would look at me and see...someone worth caring for.' He made a little sound somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. 'She and I...we didn't end well. And I came to believe that friendship and... trust... and... affection... were beyond me.' He seemed to be pulling the stubborn words out, like rusty nails stuck in a board.

Still she said nothing, though her heart was racing.

'Then you came.' A short, mirthless laugh. 'Now, of all times, at the very edge of disaster.' His arm tightened almost painfully about her midsection and his voice grew low and fierce. 'This desirable, brilliant, brave, generous, resourceful, strong, good girl, offering herself to me as my friend and my lover.'

She stifled a gasp and tears began to well up in her eyes, but she was silent yet.

'Do you remember,' he said, 'the first time we met here? It was in December.'

'The night of Professor Slughorn's party,' she murmured.

'Yes. I was weak and sick from my injuries. And it had been a grim day for me, though certainly no grimmer than many. I came in search of a moment of quiet, and here you were, in my quiet place. I was not best pleased about it.'

'I remember that.' She smiled slightly into the twilight. 'You looked very tired. I was so surprised to see you, because I'd just been thinking about you.'

'The hearts?'

'Yes.'

He squeezed her. 'Well, you looked lovely. And I was short with you, and you gave me a radiant smile.'

He wrapped his other arm around her and leaned forward to rest his chin on her shoulder. 'I have spent much of the day thinking about the last few months, including that night, when I believe the weakening of my reserve began.

'Hermione.' His voice was just above a whisper. 'I should not be holding you now. I should never have begun... holding you. My actions of the last week have been almost criminally foolish, selfish, and dangerous.'

She began to speak, trying to turn to face him. 'Shhh,' he said, tightening his arms again. 'Wait. I mean, please wait.'

'Just tell me,' she pleaded, twisting to look at him, her tears flowing freely now. 'Are you, are you breaking it off with me?'

'I... am not.' She sagged back against him in relief. 'That's too simple a solution.' She stiffened.

'I am not breaking it off with you,' he repeated. 'What I am doing is ending the pretense that we can go on blithely shagging one another as if our... desires... and our actions don't exist within a larger context.'

'We don't pretend that,' she protested, wiping at her tearstained cheeks. 'We take extraordinary precautions! I know the stakes are high. You could lose your position. It would be dreadful if we were found out.'

His spoke very softly. 'That's not what I'm talking about. There are far worse risks we run.'

'You, you mean war things? Things to do with your, um, your other job? With V-Voldemort?'

'Don't!' he growled. 'Don't say his name.'

Now she did turn around to face him, backing up so that she was sitting on her heels on the expanse of stone ledge opposite him. 'Why not? That's superstition, surely.'

'Names have power, Hermione. There are whole disciplines and traditions of Naming magic that we barely touch on at Hogwarts...they would be more or less in Sybill Trelawney's bailiwick, Merlin help us. That doesn't mean these magics are either insignificant or innocuous. Avoiding speaking the Dark Lord's name is prudent practice.'

'Oh.' Hermione suddenly felt small and scared. There had been a time when the mention of some unexplored magic would have thrilled her and propelled her towards the library on a mission of discovery.

A Hogwarts education was supposed to ready her to take her place in the wizarding world. She also needed it to be preparing her to fight in an apocalyptic war for the future of that world. But she was finishing her sixth year at Hogwarts, and her professor was telling her there were powerful magics that were utterly beyond her knowledge. This was not thrilling; it was terrifying.

'Hermione,' said Severus. The harsh lines of his face were softened in the dying light, his dark eyes glinting in the shadows. 'The last week with you has been a kind of heaven for me. You can have no idea. But this heaven is coexistent with a sort of hell. I can no longer cling to the one and ignore the other. And that means you and I have to make some decisions soon.'

He'd said 'you and I.' Not just 'I.' She took heart from it. 'What decisions? And when?'

Perhaps it was a trick of the light, but she thought a faint smile crossed his face. 'We have a great deal to discuss, and we'll need time and privacy. Tuesday evening will work.'

Tuesday! 'That's a long time from now,' she said sharply. 'It's rather unfair of you to scare me like this, then say we'll take it up again in three days.'

'Perhaps it is unfair. But Tuesday is within the realm of possibility. Just now, curfew is approaching,' he said, reaching out a hand to take hers. 'Come here and kiss me before you have to leave.'

She crawled forward over the stone and crouched between his legs, reaching out to touch his cheek. 'I've wanted to kiss you all day.' She sniffled.

'I typically start wanting to kiss you the moment I leave off kissing you,' he murmured, and kissed her.

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20 May 1997

PS: Your last? Torched, and the ashes ground to a fine powder and binned. Jxx

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A/N: Gratefullest thanks to the epically generous hechicera and lifeasanamazon for betaing and Brit-picking this chapter (three days earlier than requested!) and everything else I send their way. They are Just. So. Awesome.