Chapter 7: Acclimatization

Chapter 7: Acclimatization

Severus lay in his bed, sated, with an eighteen-year-old curse-induced nymphomaniac in his arms, and felt like a condemned man.

He had been lying to himself, in the beginning. There was a part of him that had been sure he would be able to handle Hermione's needs in an efficient, detached way, somehow managing to balance his dignity against her emotional and physical needs. He was in a position of authority over this girl; it behoved him to keep the unequal nature of their relative positions in the world in mind when dealing with her. An honourable man would see to the woman's needs without allowing himself to become personally involved.

Wouldn't he?

But then he had come face-to-face with the reality of her passion – her extremity, all focussed on him – and with the failure of his carefully-brewed impotence potion to provide any refuge, he had been burdened with the exact knowledge of how it felt to be fully desired by Hermione Granger.

Still, he had been resolute in his determination to care for the needs of the curse victim without losing himself in the necessary acts – or losing himself in her.

Her. Hermione Granger: Harry-bleeding-Potter's best friend; student extraordinaire; female, blessed with all the appropriate accoutrements for said sexual designation. Had he ever, in all his time of knowing her, thought of her as a female?

He stared down at the impossible corona of bushy brown hair and considered the question. Her know-it-all behaviour reminded him all too keenly of himself in his early student years at Hogwarts. But her meticulous attention to detail in her written and her practical work was worthy of note; her fierce defence of the defenceless was admirable – and her wondrous intellect had always earned a silent nod of approval from him.

Take those qualities and place them inside a female who was lovely in form and stunning in passion, whose sole cynosure was him, and you had a formidable recipe for ruin.

Dear Merlin, he was well and truly buggered.

Even so, he had done a good job of holding her at arm's length until she had advanced on him in her righteous fury and demanded to know why he was denying her. He had had no answer to give. He had truly not viewed it before from that perspective – from her perspective. Perhaps the ultimate objective of this endeavour was not to preserve his nobility at all costs, but to, as she had phrased it, do what needed to be done – to meet her needs fully and to buy her as much respite as possible from the exigencies of the curse – and to hell with the personal consequences for either of them. She certainly had been granted no choice in the matter, and he had, under duress, agreed to provide that surcease for her, knowing full well what it would entail.

Filled with the discomfort of unaccustomed remorse and unwilling to suffer more of the bitter regret he held in place of the only love he had ever felt for another human being, Severus had given himself permission to let down his guard with the girl. The suffering she had endured for the last twenty-four hours was not precisely his fault – he had not been the one to curse her, after all – but her relief was certainly, and quite literally, in his hands. He had withheld what she needed most in an attempt to shield himself from the things he most feared: emotional entanglement and the loss of dignity – not necessarily in that order.

He glanced to his right and spied the old-fashioned Nexus, forged in silver and heavily ornamented, as had been the fashion in the nineteenth century. This one was almost certainly an antique. He had summoned the house-elf and requested the device to be fetched from Prince House. The employment of such gadgets had fallen into disuse after the war with Grindelwald, but Severus had a certain reverence for the Old Ways. This was one gift he could preserve for Hermione, in spite of the sordid way she had lost her virginity.

At last, he felt sleep come to him, and he slipped into slumber by the side of his enticing encumbrance.

Feather-light touches upon his skin brought him to near-consciousness; a hand closed about his shaft, investigative in its approach. Rejecting that nonsensical technique, his hand closed over the smaller one, and he encouraged that hand to stroke him properly. If one were going to bother to give a hand job, it might as well be done correctly. How odd that now, fleeting touches from a slightly damp pair of lips peppered the hand with which he guided his benefactor – Sweet Merlin, now the lips were on his cock.

His eyes opened, and he saw the girl nuzzling his bollocks, her little hand obediently maintaining the pressure and pace his larger hand had set for her on his erection.

'What are you doing?' he croaked, pulling her hand off him.

She answered, and the exhalation which accompanied her words danced over his privates like the promise of a blow-job; his cock jerked as the thought flashed through his mind. What in the name of Nimüe did the girl think she was doing? Decent women didn't perform such acts – although indecent ones did, if they were suitably paid.

'Stop it,' he commanded, reaching down to drag her up his body.

'I was investigating,' she said, her eyes alight with lust. 'I wanted to wake you nicely, so you would do that to me again.'

'I was sleeping,' he pointed out unnecessarily. 'I'm shattered right now – but feel free to amuse yourself,' he added, noting with some amusement how she had experimentally straddled him and begun to move her hot wetness over him.

She shocked him when she rose up, lifted his erection, and slid onto it with a shuddering sigh. Before his amazed eyes, Hermione rode him with great enjoyment, finding the pace and the angle which pleased her most. She leant forward, the rigid nipples of her breasts grazing his chest, and caught his lips in a mouth-plundering kiss which ignited his slumbering libido with a suddenness which took him by surprise – the girl was seducing him.

He tangled his hand in her hair, holding her in the kiss, his tongue dancing into her mouth, exploring; at the same time, he snapped his hips, driving himself deeper into her body. Her gasp of pleasure was answered by his growl; he needed more, and he needed it now.

Tumbling her unceremoniously onto her back he moved over and into her with a smirk, his hands grasping her arms and sliding them above her head, where he held her wrists and ravished her. He thrust quickly, deeply, and repeatedly, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, his ears only dimly hearing her murmurs of appreciation, which accelerated quickly into cries of completion; his driving need was to bury himself within her tight warmth.

His climax brought from his throat a sound which became a roar; as the jets of hot semen left him, seeking her dark, secret places, he felt as if the world lay conquered at his feet. He remained where he was as his breathing returned to normal, and he realised he had rewarded his partner's generous effort to bring him pleasure with a wild, primitive fuck. Slipping to the side, he smoothed the tangle of hair from her face, only to find her sleeping, a smile of utter hubris upon her lips.

He fell back onto his own pillow again with a chuckle; evidently, that had been Hermione's hope when she began nuzzling his bits. Sleep overtook him as he inventoried in his mind the ingredients he would need for a potency potion.

The potion base was bubbling in his cauldron, and he was chopping Liriosma ovata root when Hermione wandered into his private brewing room the next morning. She was apparently fresh from his bathroom, for her crazy hair was damp, her face was shiny and well-scrubbed, and she smelled faintly of the bar soap from the shower. She wore his rather loosely-belted dressing gown, and her eyes had the strangely unfocussed glaze he had come to associate with the effects of the curse.

'Good morning,' she said, walking up to him, not to peer into the cauldron, as he had expected, but to gaze up at him with a misty smile.

'I sincerely doubt it,' he grumbled, continuing his chopping.

Her smile faltered somewhat, although she reached up, her fingertips skimming his stubble-darkened cheek. 'I missed you,' she said simply.

Clamping down on an epithet, he caught her wrist and placed the hilt of a heavy marble pestle in her hand. 'Pulverize those ginkgo leaves,' he commanded acidly.

Hermione grasped the pestle hilt and automatically reached for the leaves. As he watched her through the curtain of his morning-greasy hair, she bit her lip and gave her head a shake, as if to remove cobwebs. 'I had hoped you'd come back to bed,' she said, beginning to carry out her assigned job as a NEWT-level student would, with the correct angle and pressure on the pestle to grind the ginkgo leaves to powder.

'I know,' he said, his snit mollified by her ready acceptance of his authority. 'However, if you are hoping for my full participation in the day's activities, this potion must be brewed.'

She frowned but kept her eyes on the mortar and pestle. 'Don't you keep it on hand?'

'Don't be impertinent!' he snarled, and she subsided.

Hermione toiled steadily, her work ethic kicking in and focussing her attention on the task at hand. Severus worked with one eye on her, wondering if he could keep her diverted long enough to get the potion to its thickening stage. After half-an-hour, he left her with the glass stirring rod and strict instructions to stir thirty-six times every five minutes, with one anti-clockwise stir added in after every sixth rotation.

He showered, shaved, and put on clean clothes all in fifteen minutes; by the time he was back in the brewing room, Hermione was glaring at the potion, her hands shaking on the stirring rod. She looked up when he entered the room, and her face reflected her relief.

'What colour is the mixture?' he asked in clipped tones, fully in his teaching persona, in spite of his casual dress.

'Canary yellow,' she replied, responding as best she could to the teacher's authority in his bearing. 'Please, sir ....'

'The potion will sit now for thirty-nine minutes to thicken,' he said repressively. 'Set the timer.'

Obediently, Hermione placed the rod on the surface and set the timer; when she had done so, she looked at him beseechingly. 'I'm sorry; I've put it off as long as I can ...' she whispered.

He stepped up to her, goaded by the desperation of her tone. 'You've done well,' he said quietly. Standing this near to her, he could smell the musky sweet arousal from her slick quim. He was surprised when his cock stirred; in spite of the exertions he had endured in the last several hours, he found he was up to it once again – even without the potion. Stilling the urge to push the dressing gown from her shoulders, he let his hands hang at his sides. 'How can I help?'

As if she had heard his earlier thought, she shrugged out of the garment and let it fall to the floor, stepping up and pressing her body to his, her arms slipping around his waist. 'Touch me,' she said, sliding her hands down and deliberately caressing his arse.

Feeling a trace of her insanity touch his mind, he buried one hand in her damp hair and kissed her eager mouth, sliding the other hand from her shoulder to her breast, caressing its incredibly soft underside and passing the ball of his thumb over her furled nipple. She moaned around his tongue and suckled it with such vigour that his passion flared like a flame touched to petrol. Urgently, he stroked down her abdomen to delve into her wetness with two fingers, finding and lightly teasing her clitoris. In her zeal, she bit at his lips, her hot little tongue invading his mouth insistently. With a low rumble deep in his throat, he grasped her buttocks and lifted; she wrapped her legs about his hips. In one smooth movement, he swung her around from the work surface and sat her upon the facing table which he usually used for his reference books.

As soon as her bum touched the table surface, she released his shoulders and her hands went to his fly, her fingers inexpertly seeking to set him free. Batting her hands away, he bent his head to capture a nipple in his mouth and she braced her hands on the table behind her, arching her back to provide him clear access to her breasts.

He suckled first one breast, then the other, his cock growing harder with each pass of his tongue over her achingly crinkled nipples. When she was whimpering from pleasure, he dipped the two fingers still smelling of her back into her quim, stroking her centre. With half-lidded eyes, he watched the naked young woman on his work table; he had never seen a sight more arousing. Her slender neck curved back until her unruly hair touched the table top. Her breasts, like coral-tipped porcelain, sat high on her chest, calling to his hands, to his mouth, for attention. Her hips moved steadily against the pressure of his hand, pleasuring herself. Her legs hung over the table's edge, splayed as widely as she could manage to give him unimpeded access to her sweetness – but he well remembered them wrapped about him as he fucked her – dear Merlin, did he remember.

Without further ado he unfastened his trousers and freed his erection, replacing the two fingers with his cock, stroking her clitoris with its moisture-weeping, rounded, satin-over-iron-textured head.

'Oh, yes,' she purred, raising her hips until he was positioned at her entrance.

'Yes,' he responded, accepting the invitation and thrusting into her heat.

In a tit-for-tat retaliation for the etching of fingernail shapes on his shoulders, she bore for the next two weeks the clear impression of his fingers upon either side of her waist, just above her hips, where he grasped her as he drove into her body, torn between the way she eagerly received his every stroke over her needy little clit and the way her eyes seemed to drink up the sight of his face as he fucked her.

She climaxed twice in quick succession, and still he moved between her thighs, outside of himself now, almost as if he was watching himself nailing a student in his private lab upon the work surface set at such a perfectly convenient height. When at last he flooded her with his seed and stood over her, panting, she clamped her surprisingly strong legs about his arse, holding him inside of her, and pulled herself up by the front of his shirt to give him a very wet, very thorough kiss.

When at last she released him, and he stepped away from her, she cast a cleansing charm upon him and upon his come-stained trousers before she picked up the dressing gown and sashayed out of his workroom in the all-together, her sassy little arse swaying.

He stared for several seconds at the door which closed behind her, wondering just what sort of monster the Dark Lord had created with his damned lust-compulsion curse.

When he came into the sitting room from his brewing room through the hidden door, he was pleased to find that she had taken it upon herself to order breakfast; she even poured his tea before going back to the arcane Ancient Runes text book she was reading. Three hours passed before he looked up from the journal he was perusing to find her standing before him minus the dressing gown, with a dose of the Potency Potion in her hand.

He took the phial and swallowed the liquid, relieved to find that the flavour was not offensive.

'How long before it's effective?' she asked him, watching his face.

'Within fifteen minutes,' he replied, wondering what she would do next. It seemed incredible to him that his body might respond to her again after so many orgasms in the last twelve hours.

Wordlessly, she straddled him in the wingchair, her knees snug between his hips and the chair arms. He tilted his head back, his face carefully blank, and looked up at her face; she settled her bum on his legs and twined her fingers in his hair, leaning in to give him an open-mouthed kiss. He allowed her to take the lead, feeling a lazy gratification at her efforts to arouse him. Without being bidden, she took his hands from their resting place upon the chair arms and drew them to her breasts, her knees tightening on either side of his hips as she ground herself against him. Idly, he touched her breasts, hefting them in his hands, squeezing gently, and then capturing her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, applying analogous pressure to each, much to her apparent approval, if one were to judge by her soft moan.

The potion kicked in abruptly, tumbling him from interested observer to fully involved participant in a space of seconds. Hermione registered the change in him with a satisfied sibilation. Their hands met at his fly, each fumbling to release him, and she slid onto his unclothed erection with a deep sigh. She then proceeded to amaze him, sliding up and down with a competence which belied her inexperience. Driven by her hunger, her efforts caused her first completion to trill through her within seconds. Severus, dumbstruck by the novelty of having sex whilst sitting in his reading chair in his sitting room, was astounded when her continuing exertions brought him to a shuddering climax, an occurrence which pleased the girl so much that she fastened her mouth to his and inhaled his thunderstruck exhalations of pleasure.

When at last she lay sagging upon his chest, panting, he allowed her to remain as she was for too long, for she fell asleep upon him, their mixed secretions mucky-slick between them. Unmindful of the mess, he put a Weightlessness Charm upon her and stood, carrying her into the bedroom and depositing her upon his bed, casting a Cleansing Charm upon her before drawing the counterpane over her body and leaving her to nap in peace.

They spent a surprisingly pleasant Sunday in his quarters, ordering food from the kitchens when they were hungry, and having sex when the compulsion demanded it. The Potency Potion, an ancient recipe Severus had found in a Dark Arts text, was very nearly a miracle drug, and would undoubtedly make his fortune if ever he had the freedom to set up his own Apothecary shop.

In the quiet time between the storms of lust, he caught up on his marking, and she did her homework, her schoolbooks spread out around her as she frowned over her notes. He wondered why she didn't change into her own clothing, but her fairly frequent desire to entwine her naked body about his made that a bit impractical, he supposed.

For the main, she was quiet, rather than chatty, and seemed disinclined to question him ceaselessly, which surprised him.

Was she up to something?

In the early evening, when he lay spooned up behind her on his bed, slowly rocking in and out of her body, the fingers of his right hand rubbing her clitoris in the ceaseless rhythm she favoured, he dimly heard the headmaster's voice issuing from the Floo – but the old man could wait. The girl, lost in her bliss, was unaware of the interruption, and Severus, so close once again to emptying his essence within the vessel of her womb, did not care. In less than forty-eight hours, the woman, her needs, her desires, her preferences, the catalogue of her vocal responses to his touches, had become his entire world. He had her undivided attention to himself until morning, and he was damned if anyone would take it from him prematurely.

Mundane reality was coming – that which he had sorely mourned less than two days ago had now become his new Boggart. Come sunrise, his own personal Nimüe became again his student, and their usual routine would reign. For now, he existed in a satiety-soaked universe permeated with Hermione Granger, and there he would remain until forced to depart.

A/N: Love and thanks to DeeMichelle, who beta reads, MagicAlly, who Brit-picks, and Sshg316, who alpha reads and cheerleads. MUAH!