Twenty-Seven

Sorry for the long wait for an update. I have edited this chapter a lot from what it originally was and like it a lot more now. Hope you do too. It's a long, very intense read, but well worth it in the end.

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They slept late the next day. Hermione was thrilled to see that Severus had had the foresight to order a room-service breakfast which arrived when he was in the bathroom. Hermione quickly slipped the 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the outside of the door after the steward had left.

Severus emerged from the bathroom to see her, legs crossed under her on the bed, tucking into a slice of buttered toast. He smiled softly at the sight.

"Thank you for sorting this," she grinned. "I don't think I have the energy to go downstairs."

"I doubted somehow that you would." His eyebrow cocked. "Don't make crumbs."

She smiled to herself. Domesticity was setting in in all its complexity. Even his little foibles, of which she was sure he had many, delighted her. She wondered momentarily if she would feel the same about them after five years.

As she ate, careful not to make any mess at all, she beamed over at him. "Severus, this is perfect. I get the impression you have done this sort of thing before."

He looked confused. "What sort of thing?"

"Taking a woman to a hotel for the weekend."

A trace of the old sneer passed across his face. "I can assure you that has never been the case. This is the first time."

She smiled tenderly. "Well, you're very good at it."

"Well, it's hardly like making the Wolfsbane potion for the first time is it? All it requires is a simple reservation. And I have stayed in hotels alone before, on numerous occasions, both wizarding and Muggle."

"One of the perks of working for the Dark Lord?" she inquired, trying to lighten the gravity of the question with a teasing lilt.

He shot her a cold look. She held his stare and raised her eyebrows, not afraid to get him to talk about that time of his life.

"I would hardly call them perks."

"And all those women?" she persisted. Another cold look. "However you see that time, I suppose I at least owe them something. You're bloody good, Severus."

His tense features softened a little and he dropped his eyes. Hermione smiled ruefully; she knew that men, even the most hardened, could not resist their sexual egos being stroked.

Severus continued more calmly. "I told you; that was all a long time ago. And there was never any emotional attachment."

"Not with any?"

"Not one." He looked up at her again with a searing intensity. "What I feel with you, what you do to me, the way you respond to me ... is a revelation ... an epiphany. It transcends anything I have ever felt before."

A tender smile graced Hermione's lips. Severus reached across smoothly but suddenly and brought his lips crashing onto hers, forcing her mouth apart. She allowed his tongue to search desperately within her. The crockery on the bed clattered loudly and they broke apart necessarily. "Oops," teased Hermione. "Crumbs."

Severus grinned, and with a wave of his wand had cleared the bed of all sign of the breakfast. He drew her into him and she lay on his chest, running her fingers up his torso.

"But you, Miss Granger ... you are quite skilled yourself, especially for someone so young. I suppose a brilliant and famous young witch can take her pick of the most eligible ― and ineligible, for that matter ― young wizards out there."

She laughed out loud. "Hardly! Believe me, I'm not sure where this supposed skill came from. I told you ― it's just you ... you inspire me."

"Don't become sentimental, now." He was teasing, but his tone changed quickly. "But ... have there been many?" The question came boldly, but Hermione could detect an anxious edge to his voice.

"No ... no, of course not. I don't need to tell you that, do I? I was still a virgin until after the war, although I admit, I'd done other things: everything but, I suppose you could say. But, you know, I was really just too busy to think about it, and I wasn't ready. I wanted to be certain I was doing the right thing. I thought I was with Ron, and I don't regret it, but obviously that didn't work out. We only had a fully physical relationship for a couple of months.

"Then when we split up, I saw someone else for a month or so, but it was so wrong ... that became clear quite soon. He was a reporter for the Daily Prophet. He's moved to America now. And, alright, I've had a couple of one-night stands after functions and events. Not my finest hour, but, you know ... we all make mistakes. I've never seen them again and never will, I hope. So there we are ... four."

Severus had been listening quietly. She glanced up cautiously. He was staring straight ahead, then he spoke, quite calmly, but with a tinge of surprise lacing his voice, "That's relatively adventurous for someone who was still a virgin a few months ago."

She giggled into his chest, before fixing her eyes into his seriously. "But not one ... not one ... was a patch on you ... god no! I mean, what we have transcends anything I thought possible. Like you said: you have been a revelation."

Severus at last allowed himself to smile. He had clearly needed that conversation, and it seemed to her a turning point in his own self-belief that he had asked and listened so freely.

They settled quietly again. She continued to run her fingers up and down his chest, lightly touching the many scars and abrasions she had become so familiar with.

"You have suffered greatly, haven't you?"

He inhaled. "At times, there was considerable ... discomfort."

"Were most of these at Voldemort's hand?"

"Most."

"Why?"

"That is how he exercised control."

"But he wasn't controlling you."

"No, but I had to let him think he was."

"What warranted these?"

He laughed derisively. "Anything. The slightest hint of criticism, a failed undertaking, normally through no fault of one's own ... boredom, a whim ..."

"And did you ..."

"What?"

"Did you have to inflict pain on others?"

He paused momentarily before answering flatly, "Many times."

She fell silent. She wanted to ask how he felt about that, but feared the answer.

"Does that trouble you?" he queried at length.

"I understand the need to do it. I suppose what matters is how you reacted to it."

"I tried not to react."

"But you must have regretted."

"No. That would have led to weakness. I could not afford to be weak. Regret leads to doubt and doubt leads to failure."

"But ... you did not enjoy inflicting pain, did you?"

"You are asking a lot of questions."

She simply inquired again. "Did you enjoy inflicting pain?"

"Not in the way that many of my colleagues did."

Hermione sat up, looking from one dark eye to the other, unsure whether she wanted to continue.

"If you question me, I will answer you honestly." He spoke plainly.

"How do you mean then?"

Severus responded, low and smooth as ever, as if detailing the ingredients for an OWL test potion. "Some of the people I was sent to ... deal with ... were people who had treated me very badly in the past. I admit, before doing what I had been ordered to do, there was with these people, a certain anticipation, a certain expectation of satisfaction, vengeful justice if you like. But ..."

"But what?"

"The reality of reducing a man to a brittle shell of paralysing agony, of seeing terror dragging any hope from their eyes, of seeing their skin tighten and wax with pallor, all at your hand ... it was as if the pain was reflected straight back onto me, the perpetrator. I always left as wretched as the quivering wreck of a human being I had left behind."

He was not looking at her. As he had spoken his voice had become thin and fragile. His features were as tense as she had ever seen them. She continued to stare at him, trying to alleviate some of the pain the memories had clearly dredged up.

"There is another question you wish to ask me." Still he did not look at her.

"Is there?"

"Ask it."

Hermione paused only briefly. "How many people have you killed?"

His head turned suddenly and fixed her with a look so intense it brought a flash of pain across her forehead. "How many people have you killed, Hermione?"

"I ..." She shook her head, not understanding.

"In battle, in war, in the heat of the struggle for survival, with your wand outstretched before you, desperate to cling on when all around you seems lost. How many people fell at your hand? Enemies, yes, but still human beings, still with souls and mothers and brothers and memories."

Hermione stared at him. She had tried to avoid killing, tried to use disabling curses, but she knew that even a mild curse when inflicted with enough force and despair and need, could result in death. Her mind replayed the moments in the battle. Death Eaters and Voldemort's lackeys fell around her. Due to her? Surely not. But ... she could not be certain.

She could not be certain.

Severus lifted a hand to her face and cast his eyes over it. "You see, Hermione Granger, you and I ... we are more alike than even you realised."

"Severus. When I said I forgive you, I meant everything. All your sins, all your transgressions. I accept and forgive them all."

"Enough questions. The answers are sometimes ... surplus to requirement." He drew his eyes back to hers. "Lie down."

She turned to him, her face still creased with confused desolation.

"Let me taste you."

His request surprised her. She opened her mouth to speak but no words emerged. The silence was instead filled with his own voice. "The taste of you helps me forget. And it will help you forget too."

And as Severus leant down to kiss her tenderly, the memory indeed began to blur, seeping back into the fog of past deeds. He pulled the bedclothes back and kissed down over her breasts, slowly, nipping, sucking as he went, down over her smooth flat belly. Her need for him took hold quickly and as his hand parted her thighs they fell open easily for him. A long finger swept up, finding her wet and pliant. Hermione closed her eyes and arched off the bed towards him, desire consuming her quickly and helplessly, banishing the turmoil of emotions which had beset her.

Severus kissed over the neat hairs at the apex of her thighs and she felt him breathe onto her, evaporating some of the wetness he found there. Then another sensation: warm, firm and moist, flitting in to take in her juices, then stroking languidly up towards her swollen clit. She jerked and his hand pressed on her belly to hold her down. Glancing down, she saw his black head buried between her legs, sucking her in leisurely but determinedly. She breathed in sharply, trying to focus on prolonging her pleasure for as long as possible.

His tongue was joined by a finger which quested in, stroking her walls. The knot in her belly twisted and that familiar prickling tingle started to spread over her flesh. For his sake, she wanted to last as long as possible, but his tongue, sucking, laving and probing was almost too much. Her clit throbbed under his touch, and she knew her passivity would not last much longer. Then just when she thought she could stand no more, she felt something else, something she had felt only once before, at the back of his classroom with the whole class working away before them. He had put a finger up her arse.

Her eyes shot open. God, that felt good. It was not something that she had ever been curious about before, but now that it was happening, as that first time, she wondered why she hadn't. His finger was not large enough to hurt, but stroked in and out of that deliciously tight and sensitive passage so sublimely she could not stop herself groaning loudly with delight and pushing onto it again.

She was suddenly so focused on the feeling there that she had ignored the sensation to her clit for a while. And then, more; another finger had joined the first. This time it was accompanied by slight discomfort, as her muscles stretched to accommodate it, but still she registered it only as the fullest sensation. She continued to moan and press against his fingers which he moved rhythmically but tenderly in and out of her arse, each push and release bringing her untold delight.

Then his tongue reapplied itself to its task.

"Oh god ... oh god ... too good ... too good ... don't stop ... please ... don't stop ..."

He didn't.

His tongue was swirling hard around her clit now, in time with his fingers inside her. He encircled the tight nub fully once again and sucked hard, his tongue sweeping over it at the same time.

Hermione gasped in with sudden revelation. Her eyes flew open and her body froze. Then she shattered around him, pleasure heaving through her over and over. She let out a groan of deepest rapture reflected in her body which refused to remain stationary, despite his attempts to press it into the bed. She jerked uncontrollably for some time, until the last droplet of pleasure had escaped her, and he had drunk it all in, in long soul-saving gulps.

Eventually she managed to regain the power of speech, albeit only in the crudest terms. "Fucking ... fucking hell. How did you do that? How did you fucking do that?"

"Eloquent as ever, Miss Granger," he drawled.

"I don't care ... I can't ... I can't think ..." She managed to sit up and pull his head up towards her, the faint memory of their earlier conversation lending a further intensity. She kissed him deeply in grateful appreciation, tasting herself strongly on his mouth. She fell back into the bed again. "Oh god, oh my god, I love you ... I love you so fucking much."

Severus smiled and moved to lie beside her, pulling her in close once again.

"You know, I was dreading the end of term, when I would have to leave you. But now, I can't wait for it, to get away together. If every day is half as good as this ..."

"I may struggle to find work, you know."

"You said that before. I don't know why. You're brilliant, efficient, organised; what more does an employer want?"

"Someone who wasn't one of Voldemort's Death Eaters. The questions you asked earlier are ones I will be asked again, many times."

"But everybody knows now what an amazing thing you did. All those years, Severus: the danger you put yourself in. I think you've fully vindicated your reputation by now. You could do any number of things. And ... you'll be with me ... I may be able to help."

"I told you before - I will not be beholden to you."

"I don't mean financially. I mean in terms of reputation, reference, that sort of thing."

He huffed softly.

"Anyway, you could sell your house. That would support you until you find work."

He glanced down at her. "It is almost obscene for a woman of your youth to be so ridiculously sensible."

She giggled a little and buried her head in his chest again, continuing to let her hands run over his body. Eventually they came to rest on the largest scar on his left forearm. He flinched slightly as her fingertips ran over it.

"Sorry," she murmured with concern.

"No. I'm sorry. I like your touch – it was an instinctive reaction."

"Is that where ...?"

"Yes."

"How did you get rid of it?"

"I do not know really. It had gone before I regained consciousness. I believe it simply disappeared after he was finally defeated, although I unfortunately still have the visible memory."

"Does it hurt?"

"Not the body."

She moved over and planted tender kisses around the area where the Dark Mark had been, finally allowing her lips to play lightly over the scar itself. No detail of the skull and snake were discernible, but the outline of the shape could still be made out.

Her lips soothed and caressed it, her tongue occasionally flitting over the rough flesh. He initially drew in a sharp breath, but his breathing steadied as she continued. Hermione continued her gentle healing long after he had fallen asleep.

At last she lay her head on his chest and let sleep take her as well.

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Hermione awoke with a start a while later, and opened her eyes suddenly to see him looking across at her. She gasped in with surprise.

"Sorry. Did I startle you?"

She was bewildered and oddly distressed. "I was dreaming about you."

"Good or bad?"

"I don't know. It was bit upsetting ... disturbing. You were in the Forbidden Forest. You were lost, trying to find your way out. I was trying to get to you, to help you, guide you, but you kept turning a corner and I lost sight of you. I kept calling your name but my voice just didn't travel to you. It was so frustrating."

"I do not get lost in the Forest," he replied snidely.

"I know; it was just a dream. Anyway, it didn't end there. I kept walking, always trying to catch up with you. It shifted to Diagon Alley, but still you kept walking, always just out of reach, out of earshot. And again, I was suddenly in a maze, you know, like in the garden of an old house, and you were turning corners ahead of me. And then it opened out in the middle into a large garden, just a normal nice garden with a lawn, like my garden at home as a child, but still with the tall hedges around. And you were there and you ... were all of a sudden naked. You stopped at last – there was nowhere else for you to go and you turned to me. You looked surprised to see me ... and then I woke up."

He stroked her arm reassuringly. "It was just a dream. You're beginning to sound like Trelawney."

She smiled, nestling into him. "I know. Anyway, at least I found you in the end."

"Naked?" he asked sardonically.

"Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way," she smirked, hoping humour would dispel the unease wrought by the dream. But she could not dismiss it completely and looked up at him for reassurance.

He kissed her. Her mind at last cleared. His tongue was soothing her, caressing away her anxieties. The kiss deepened. They did not think they would ever stop, but her hand quested down and she felt him hard again. Her core ached. Through all the pleasure they had given and received that morning, he had not been inside her all day.

She sat up, drawing her leg over him and placing herself over his tip. He held her hips and guided her down, unable to take his eyes off the sight of him disappearing into her. Once the feeling of conjoining had been absorbed by them both, they began a long slow rise and fall, deep and luxuriant.

Her breasts swayed gently as she moved and he removed his hands from his hips to cup them tenderly, enjoying the heaviness in his palms. One of her hands came to his and moved his fingers to her nipple. He knew what she wanted and rubbed lightly over them both, delighting in seeing the dark pink buds of flesh rise to firm points before him.

Hermione continued to rise and fall on him and he grunted as she sank down, encasing and squeezing his rigid shaft tightly. He focused on that, and his fingers stopped their ministrations for a moment. Instantly, her hands were back guiding them.

"More. Harder." Her voice came low and desperate.

He complied, taking the nipples between thumb and forefinger and pinching hard, not releasing them. He watched in awe as her eyes closed in bliss, a gasp as pain coursed through her body, translating only as sensation and heightening the pleasure. For a moment, she stopped moving. Her breathing shallowed as she focused on the feelings emanating from her agonised breasts.

And then she threw her head over to look at him, her face breaking into a delirious smile. The circle of feeling was complete: his member inside her and his hands gripping her breasts. Pain and pleasure became indistinct and she knew it only as ecstatic feeling. She bit her lip, focusing on what he was drawing from her. "So good ... so good."

When at last she started moving again, he finally relinquished his grip.

"How can you let me do that to you?" Despite his actions, the concern was evident in his voice.

"What?" she muttered, barely understanding.

"Pinch you like that. It hurts deeply."

"Yes." She looked down and spoke plainly. "But sometimes pain is good. As you said, Severus Snape - we are more alike than either of us realised."

She rose and fell more desperately now, bringing them both closer to the final release. When he knew she was nearly there, his hands once more came up to twist and squeeze her nipples. She exhaled through a smile, and with that came hard around him, her body shuddering as it struggled to remain upright. She leaned back to support herself and let the pleasure wash through her. With that he felt himself explode, crying out louder than she had ever heard him before.

Hermione collapsed on top of him and he threw an arm over, pinning her to him. Again, speech was impossible.

Later, as she lay propped up in bed, Severus rested his head in her lap. He glanced up at her nipples, still red and angry from their treatment of earlier.

"Are they sore?"

"Yes. I like it. It is a reminder of you."

"I don't like hurting you."

She looked down and spoke firmly. "As we have established: there is no black and white. I love you for your complexity, Severus. I want all you are, all you can give me. So be it. Nothing is straightforward."

Severus simply looked up at her quietly before gently taking one of the tormented nipples in his mouth, licking and soothing it with his tongue. She ran her fingers through his hair and stroked him. He stayed there for an age, sucking, tasting, nuzzling. She knew it was his weakness. She was only too happy to indulge him.

"I could stay at your breast forever."

"I noticed."

"Do you mind?" he asked as his hand quested down between her thighs.

"No. Especially not if you do that as well."

He continued to suckle while his fingers worked their way inside and along her, finding her clit once again eager for him. It was a familiar position for them and brought great comfort and delight to both. It was not long before she came again in long slow waves.

They were silent for a while, lying in the thin November light, listening to the other breathe. His heart beat steadily into her head and their breathing steadied into synchronicity.

"Severus?"

"Yes?"

"You know once we talked about when you were bitten, and what happened after that."

"Yes."

"You said some things. So much has happened since then, I had almost forgotten. You said you were essentially dead because you no longer had any meaning, any purpose. Do you remember?"

"Yes."

"But you said something else: that something pulled you back. What did you mean by that?"

He was silent for a long while, seemingly deep in thought. "I am not sure."

She glanced at him. "You must remember something to have said it."

"I have tried, but ... it is too indistinct. However, I know it involved another person."

She looked away, almost fearful. Placing his hand delicately under her chin, he lifted her head up. "I think that person was you."

Hermione lowered her gaze. Severus was galvanised by her desire to talk. He sat up, his body suddenly taut.

"Hermione. I do not know how or why, but here, inside ...." He took her hand and brought it to rest on his chest, directly over his heart. "I came back. What, Hermione? What was it?"

Her brows creased slightly. So much had happened between them that the time before they had come together had started to seem irrelevant to her. She had never before thought it significant, but now, as they lay together, so as one, she realised she had been foolish: that she may have denied him something he clearly thought important.

"I know I have never really spoken to you about that time. It has always been very private to me. I never thought you would want to know. In any case, what happened did not seem significant."

For a time he was completely still and silent, and Hermione thought he would not persist. But his chest was rising and falling rapidly beneath her and she detected a distinct quickening of his heartbeat.

Then at last he spoke, so low as to be almost inaudible. "What happened?" His voice had taken on an otherworldly quality, but his insistence was still present. She looked up and saw anxious determination on his face.

Hermione spoke. "I came to see you, when they brought your body back to Hogwarts and after Harry had told me about your ... memories. I came to see you. It was a long time after you had been bitten, a long time after you had been examined. No-one detected any life in you, Severus. And ... I came to see you, that's all." She shrugged slightly, as if trying to dismiss the relevance of her statement.

"Why?"

And with that she was struck with a realisation for the first time. Her eyes instantly filled with tears, and she gasped her truth out. "To apologise."

He studied her face intently. "Tell me."

She looked at him blankly for a moment. He reiterated it firmly. "Tell me what you did."

"I ... I ... just told you: I was wrong. I was wrong about you ... and I said sorry."

He was still staring at her fixedly. "Go on."

"What do you mean? That's all."

"No. What else?"

"I don't understand. That is why I was there ... to say sorry."

"You did something. What did you do?" His voice was so insistent it almost scared her.

She thought back, her mind struggling at first to recall the detail. But she did. She shut her eyes tight and saw it; saw herself standing over his prone, lifeless body, so cold and pale in the harsh light of the white room they had set up as a morgue. She saw herself, close to him, looking down with such remorse and shame and sorrow. She was standing, and then she remembered – she remembered the surprise of her next actions. It surprised her still, but she saw herself clearly moving down towards him ...

"I ... I kissed you. I brushed your hair back with my hand, leant down to you ... and ... I kissed your forehead."

All tension and anxiety suddenly vanished from Severus' face as the epiphany struck.

"Yes," he breathed out in awed revelation.

Hermione was utterly bewildered. He looked intently at her as before, but his face was now open and giving.

"It was you," he looked at her in wonder. "You gave me meaning."

Now it was her turn to be silent as the nature of their mutual realisation sank in. She lay back onto him and breathed in. He felt his chest grow wet with her tears. Silence wrapped around them both, pushing all else away.

Then she heard herself speaking, recalling something he had said during a prior moment of what she thought was pleasured delirium. "You have said that before; 'It was you.' Is that what you meant? I gave you meaning?"

He continued in hushed reverence. "I knew it. I knew it somehow, although I did not understand how, and did not want to admit it. I felt your presence even in the darkness, even in the depths, but I needed something to cling onto, to pull me out. De profundis. Your apology, your faith in me, manifesting itself through physical contact ... through a kiss ... I grabbed onto that."

All she could do was stare at him, tears brimming from her eyes. "Promise me you won't let go."

He stared back, his brows furrowed in wonder, a mist washing over his eyes too. "How can I? How can I ever?"

He spun her over and kissed her desperately, possessing her, encompassing her. He kissed away her tears almost painfully then returned to her mouth, tearing it open, plundering it with his tongue. She felt him between her legs, harder than ever, seeking his release. Immediately he thrust fully with a deep grunt of urgency. She was jolted up the bed with her own cry of satisfaction. Never had she felt so full. He moved rapidly, as if time was limited, as if he would somehow lose her if he did not hurry. He held her gaze, his black eyes burning into hers.

Her body and her soul felt complete as never before and she relinquished her pleasure faster than ever, crying out with wonder as it heaved its way through her. He paused in his movements.

He had not taken his eyes from hers and they sought within her like never before. His mouth moved and words came to her. But they were transmitted, not from his lips alone, but through his eyes, through his body, his very soul.

"I love you."

She absorbed them, let them sink through her, deep inside. But it was almost too much for her own fragile body and soul to comprehend. She swallowed hard. More tears fell, and it was only when he started moving again that she remembered to breathe. He came only a few moments later with a heaving groan of complete fulfilment, his pleasure coming in long bursts, his eyes still fixed into hers.

They lay afterwards, not speaking, just being.

When the time was right, he murmured, "I have never said that to anyone in my entire life."

Hermione planted a tender kiss on his chest. "In that case, you had better practise."

He chuckled softly. She was doing to him as he had done to her, although he sensed it was just as much for reassurance on her part as it had been on his.

"I love you." He enjoyed the sound of it as much as she and could not help a broad smile breaking out over his face. "Your turn."

She grinned. "I love you too."

"So be it," he said, reaching down for another kiss, before drawling deep, "How very convenient, Miss Granger."

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At last.

More soon. x