The Common Whipping Knot

A/N - So. My new betas - magicalpresence, Gattina, and Adrianne, whose net handle I can't find right now (FAIL ON ME) - probably think I'm dead with the amount of time that has gone by since I contacted them to beta these chapters. I'm not, ladies, I swear! You were great, and I hope to have more for you to look at soon! Please feel free to give my new betas a round of applause because, despite my tardiness, they were FANTASTIC - prompt, enthusiastic, but critical in the best possible way. Thanks a ton, ladies. Hope you stick with me even when I take forever.

I won't waste everyone's time blah-blah-blahing about the craptasticness that is being unemployed/full-time-job-searcher and just say that I feel like I'm starting to get out of that funk where I want to do nothing but sit on my couch and wallow in misery, so let's hope that this wave of creativity is the first of many. As ever, thanks for sticking with me.

Enjoy.

~~ ** Lady Tuesday ** ~~

Chapter 23 – The Common Whipping Knot

Common Whipping – The Common Whipping Knot is the simplest type of whipping knot, a series of knots intended to stop a rope from unraveling. ... The benefit of a Common Whipping is that no tools are necessary and the rope does not need to be unlayed." From Wikipedia's List of Knots

For the first few moments after she woke up, Hermione was annoyed and baffled by the nagging ache between her thighs. She had just finished her monthly, so the fact that she felt as if she had stinging bruises in places she thought impossible to bruise alarmed her ... until she remembered.

Hermione sat up with a gasp and dropped her head into her upturned hands as snatches of memories dashed in front of her eyes. Snippets of the previous evening raced through her brain like a film strip on too high a speed – Harry's lips against hers, his mouth at her neck, her hands yanking his shirt tails free from his trousers – she shook her head to stop the images. Hermione took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and tried to summon a deep well of calm; remembering what she'd read about Occlumency back in their fifth year, back when she thought she might be able to help Harry learn, she breathed deeply and pictured an endless, vast lake under a starry sky. The Black Lake opened before her in her mind's eye, deep and still, with a sky full of winking points of light, and the warm glow of golden triangles of lamp light from Hogwarts' windows reflected in its surface. Calm and numbness came after a moment. It was the only thing that allowed her to rise, don a dressing gown over her rumpled skirt and blouse, and pick up her sponge bag to head to the prefects' bathroom.

*****

As the water sluiced over Hermione's curls, plastering them to her face, her hard-won calm seemed to lift away with the steam. Her hands running over her body felt alien as she remembered that less than twelve hours ago, they had been replaced by someone else's.

Harry's hands, she remembered, were not much bigger than her own. Small but strong, his fingers had clasped at her tightly, excitedly, once his brain caught up with her intention and he realized where it was all taking them. Not five steps inside the door of the Room of Requirement, Hermione had torn her mouth away from Harry's to yelp in pain as she barked the back of her calf against one of the running boards of a large four-poster that dominated the small room. Harry took the opportunity to grip her beneath her buttocks and lift Hermione onto the bed. Despite her whirring thoughts, a helpless laugh escaped her at the mischievous look on Harry's face; it burbled up into heady chuckles when he pulled back a step or two before "winding up" theatrically and diving on top of her. Their knees crashed together, feet still dangling off the side of the bed, as he levered himself up on his elbows to look down at her. Their smiles faded a bit, Harry's eyebrows pulling together.

"Are you sure about this, Hermione?" he had asked.

"Yes," she said quickly, leaning up to try to kiss him.

He turned his head so that her lips grazed his jaw instead. "Are you sure you want this with me?"

A little hiccup of surprise squeaked out of his throat as Hermione's lips had traveled from his jaw to a tender spot behind his ear lobe; the squeak turned to a groan as she clamped her lips over the spot and sucked his skin into her mouth. He hesitated for another moment, so Hermione brought up her right leg and used her knee and the length of her shin to gently chafe along the front of Harry's trousers. When she felt the concentrated heat and weight of his erection on the top of her instep, she flexed her foot, hooking in behind the rise of his testicles and pulling him forward into the triangle of her thighs. After that, they hadn't spoken again.

Hermione scrubbed at her face more harshly than her cleanser really called for as she remembered. Flashes of skin, mumbled words of encouragement, the stinging sensation of being opened and stretched when Harry thrust into her body for the first time. She heard in her head the hiccupping gasps of surprised pleasure in his voice, warm and moist on her ear as he hovered over her body. Her hands clutching at his shoulders as she tried not to let the pain show on her face. But he'd seen it; she'd been foolish to think he wouldn't.

Her cheeks heated in embarrassment as she lathered soap onto her skin, her hands running across her breasts and body as if trying to recreate Harry's gentle, determined motions when he pleaded for her to show him "how to make it better". Unable to stop herself from glancing around – and then chiding herself mentally; had she really believed her shower had onlookers?! – Hermione slowly slid her damp hands between her thighs, her fingers taking the same path that she'd shown Harry. She gasped a bit as her middle finger grazed her clitoris, remembering how it had felt to have someone else's touch on that sensitive place. Now, her face warmed for an entirely different reason.

She stroked gently, then faster, remembering the hitching gasps of Harry's breaths as he began to thrust in and out of her. The tingling began again, just as it had last night. She'd been overwhelmed by the heady surge of excitement at the idea of her thin, meager body giving someone else so much pleasure. His thrusts within her had gone erratic as his climaxed thundered down upon him. Her arousal had been chased away a bit in the stinging slaps of his lack of control, but Hermione remembered that she had smiled when he had lost himself within her. She'd taken proper precautions against pregnancy, she knew, so there was no need to worry on that score, and the whispered professions of love and satisfaction that had tumbled from Harry's lips, turned up in a small smile as she'd rolled to her side and pushed the sweaty tendrils of dark hair from his pale forehead, had convinced her in that moment that she'd done the right thing.

But as she stood in the shower, stroking between her thighs and biting her bottom lip to keep in a gasp of bliss, it wasn't Harry's round face and green eyes that she pictured above her in her mind. She shouted aloud – in shock as much as completion – when her mind had taken an unplanned diversion to show her thin, long-limbed fiancé plunging into her body with reckless abandon, his hair an ebony curtain than brushed her throat as it wavered from the force of his thrusts. Hermione had dived across the shower cubicle, tremors of her climax still causing her hands to shake as she glared at them, as if they were the ones who had betrayed her.

And that was when she knew how thoughtless, how unforgivably thoughtless, she'd been to think that sleeping with Harry was a good idea.

*****

She had skipped dinner Monday night and breakfast that morning, holing herself up in her office and burying herself in more texts about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in an effort to chase away her memories and, if she were to be completely honest, to avoid Harry. Shame filled her throat every time she thought about it, and while Hermione knew that she'd have to have a talk with him about 'the incident' – and soon – she just couldn't bring herself to want to do it over lamb chops. Or, for that matter, oatmeal and chipolatas. But time was going to run out soon. She had just finished up her appointment with Neville and that meant she'd be seeing Harry in Defense Against the Dark Arts soon.

Hermione sighed heavily and looked at the brass and enamel clock on her mantel. Almost time for class, she thought. How in the world was she going to break this to him? It was going to be ghastly; she had no doubts about that.

When she knew that she could delay no more, Hermione snapped shut her research book, stowed her wand in an inner pocket of her robes, and swung her school bag over a shoulder. Once more, into the breach, she thought as her office door clicked shut behind her.

*****

This was going to be even more difficult than she thought. Harry had taken the desk next to her in Defense Against the Dark Arts, just as he always had, but it seemed suddenly and unfortunately clear how close together the desks were when Harry brushed a hand over hers every time Tonks turned her back to the class. Trying not to be rude or throw up any unnecessary red flags, Hermione would allow the contact for a moment before gently pulling away. When he lifted a brow at her, Hermione was temporarily saved as she noticed that Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson were both attempting to appear as if they weren't watching everything Hermione and Harry were doing. She gave her best eyebrow semaphore to convey that they were being watched and tried to push her desk away from his as inconspicuously as possible.

"What's the matter with you?" Harry said under his breath as they packed up their bags and headed out the doors with the rest of the class.

Hermione cast her eyes in every direction she could without raising too much suspicion. "We have to be more careful, you know. There are..."

"Eyes everywhere?" Harry finished with a cheeky grin. "Taking a leaf out of Mad Eye's book, are we?"

"Well, yes, a bit!" Hermione said, a bit more stridently than she'd intended. She lowered her voice to a low mutter. "Pansy and Draco weren't the only ones watching us, you know. Lavender nudged Neville when you pushed my hair off my face. Even Tonks seemed to be inspecting us as we left!"

"So?" he rejoined, his frustration beginning to show in his voice. He attempted to take Hermione's hand with his and scowled at her when she shook him off. "What does it matter if they were looking at us? People look at me all the time!"

"Because Ron's just died!" she practically shouted.

Hermione dodged a few students, wending her way through crowds of students congregating around the top of the main staircase. Again, she dropped her voice to a hush.

"What conclusions do you think people will come to if they think we're shacking up just weeks after our best friend's death?!"

Harry's mouth dropped open in a moue of surprise; clearly, he had not even considered that particular interpretation. Hermione's throat nearly closed on her, so great was her shame. She'd barely considered it either. The excuse, such as it was, had just leapt into her mind that moment, and it made her even more mortified of her actions.

Hitching up her bag as they descended the last staircase into the main entrance hall, Hermione sniffed a bit haughtily and said, "I'm going down to the dungeons. I have to talk to Professor Snape about my Independent Study in Potions."

She had planned to do nothing of the sort, but she needed an escape. They were inching nearer and nearer to the talking to that she would have to give him, and she just didn't think she had the strength right now. Turning away from Harry, Hermione started down the staircase that led to the Potions dungeon and her fiancé's office.

"I'll come with you."

Hermione started to bite off a refusal, but the determined look on Harry's face stopped her. Well, she thought to herself, at least if we have 'the talk' down in the dungeons, there will be less people to see the scene. She sighed heavily and nodded as he caught up to her.

*****

A long sigh left Severus's mouth as he navigated the back set of stairs down to the dungeons. The Dark Lord had 'requested' – as much as a burning tattoo on the arm can be called a 'request' – a most unusual daylight meeting and he had just finished relaying the contents to Dumbledore. He pinched the bridge of his nose as his feet traveled the well-known path, trying to relieve the tension headache he could already feel blooming behind his eyes.

The meeting, however, had been much more innocuous than he had planned. The Dark Lord had grilled him for thirty or forty minutes about the 'truth' behind his betrothal to Miss Granger, but had seemed satisfied with Severus's answers. You-Know-Who had certainly not cared for the information that Severus was to be subjected to a wand-binding – a permanent bond to a Mudblood being unthinkable in his eyes – but Severus had felt that the tidbit of the wedding ceremony that would garner his anger was much better (and safer) shared by Severus than being heard second-hand from another Death Eater. If the Dark Lord thought that Severus had concealed the detail purposefully, he would have been made to suffer. Greatly. Well, more than he already had.

As if triggered by the thought, a twinge in the muscles of Severus's shoulder blades made him stop and bite down over a groan. The Cruciatus never really became easier to bear, but at least he had a large pot of the muscle relaxant ointment in constant supply in both his office and his chambers. He would need to make time to rub some of it in before his next class or the never-ending onslaught of teenagers would be unbearable by the end of the day. Thinking of unbearable teenagers cast his thoughts inevitably towards his young fiancée, bringing an even heavier scowl to his face. That little chit had no idea the things he'd gone through just for her little fit of pique and insistence on the damned Binding Charm, and yet, she still saw fit to berate him for his interpretation. The self-righteous little harpy.

As Severus neared his office, his footsteps slowed to a halt. He heard curiously familiar voices speaking in harsh, obviously agitated whispers in the seldom-used, dead-end hallway off to his left side. His interest piqued, Severus slipped into the shadowed corner of the crossing hallway and, from his secluded vantage point, sneered as he listened to the bickering.

"...don't see why you're making such a big deal about this, Hermione..."

"Because it is a big deal, Harry," he heard his fiancée say, her voice strained and weary. "It should be, anyhow."

"Yeah, and we've already done it once before, and you didn't have any objections then. In fact, you're the one who insisted on it. You..." Potter's voice broke and betrayed his insecurity. "You seemed to like it. Really like it."

Severus raised an eyebrow and leaned out from the shadows. They couldn't be referring to what seemed the obvious interpretation of that remark, and yet.... He had to see her face to confirm it.

He pushed away from the wall and crept towards the corner, just far enough to see their profiles; he immediately regretted it. Granger had her back to the cold stones, standing within the loose circle of Potter's arms around her waist. Despite the slight stiffness of her posture that spoke of her emotional state, there was a new and different timbre to their touch on one another that Severus had seen a thousand times. Feeling an abrupt squeeze of hot jealousy, Severus was forced to admit it: they reeked of a physical familiarity that was far more intimate than 'best mates.' Hermione reached out a hand to cradle Potter's cheek and Severus felt that squeeze of jealousy turn into a sharp jab.

"I did enjoy it, Harry," she said gently, "but I did it for all the wrong reasons. I did it because I was lonely and confused and upset and angry at Sev...Snape. And that's not fair to you, me, or Snape. You most of all."

"Fair to Snape?" Harry said incredulously. "With all he's put you through, you're worried about being fair to Snape?!"

"Yes," Hermione insisted. "Regardless of how he's treated me, he's still my future husband. I cheated on him once; I can't let it happen again."

"And you actually think he'll care?"

"That's not the point."

Hermione pushed away and paced the small hallway, oblivious to the fact that her fiancé lingered in the shadows, seething and resisting the urge to shout that he did care. It was hypocritical of him, he knew, because of the previous path of his thoughts. Despite all his better judgment, he cared very much; the stab of jealousy turned very quickly into livid anger. Once again, he'd been beaten to what was rightfully his by a damned Potter. Severus ground his teeth trying to keep his silence and listened on as Hermione worked herself into frustration.

"The only way this marriage will work between Snape and me is if we treat it with the same respect that anyone else would do when getting married. I can't control him, but I can control me. When you agree to marry someone, you promise them fidelity, among other things. I won't take that promise lightly any longer. More than that, Harry, it's incredibly unfair to you. Losing your virginity should be full of joy and tenderness..."

"It was..." Harry interjected, reaching for her. She skirted around him and paced on.

"But both parties should be doing it for the right reasons, and I wasn't. I never meant this to be a standing offer, Harry. It wasn't meant to... carry on," she finished lamely, looking at him with sorrowful, pleading eyes. "I decided that I wanted some control over who I gave this to, so I acted without considering how it would affect you."

"But I wanted to..."

"I know. And I abused that knowledge because I knew that it meant you wouldn't refuse me." Hermione pulled at her hair until her eyes watered, stung with her own disappointment and guilt. "For such a clever girl, I don't seem to understand my own actions until I'm faced with the consequences, do I? And that's why I can't let it happen again. Because in eleven days, I am going to be Mrs. Severus Snape. I can't continue to bash around pretending like that doesn't matter because it does. In so many different ways, it does."

Harry stared silently at the floor for a few long moments as he digested her words. Eventually, he moved away from the wall, his body rigid as his green eyes blazed with rage and pain.

"So what you're saying is that being allowed to make love with the girl I love is wrong because she's sort of, almost married to a man who will never like her, let alone respect or – Merlin forbid – love her."

"Harry, if I were engaged to any other person but him, you wouldn't even be questioning the need for fidelity. We wouldn't even be having this conv..."

"And even though we could be seizing these few short moments we have to be together in the time we have left," Harry steamrolled on as if he hadn't heard, "you can only sleep with me once, just long enough to scratch an itch, and then realize in hindsight that it was a bad idea. Maybe Ginny was right about you bouncing between me and Ron and Snape."

Hermione recoiled as if he'd slapped her face.

"Because you didn't really love Ron either, did you? Not romantically, anyhow, and I know you said you didn't know how you felt about me. But you would have told yourself it was marginally more acceptable to whore yourself out to Ron than Snape because Ron would have made up for it by loving i, even if you didn't love him back; so you would have told yourself it was okay to marry him, wouldn't you?"

Hermione bit her lip until it bled and tried to sniff back the flood of tears poised against her lashes. She knew that he was just angry and hurt – he had every right to be so – and that she deserved most of this backlash, but it didn't stop the words from stinging. Harry was her best mate and she loved him dearly; he didn't deserve the treatment she'd given him. Then again, she didn't deserve her situation either, but that didn't change it. Never would change it. So despite her instinct to rail against the accusations, she simply sniffled and swiped at her nose.

"I'm sorry, Harry," she managed eventually, her voice breaking with sobs. "I really am. I never meant to hurt you. I hope that you believe that, when you've had time to think about it."

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but seemed to think better of it. His jaw shut with an audible click before he spun on his heels and marched away from her. Severus thanked providence that Potter had chosen to leave the opposite direction, as there would have been no opportunity to hide, and he was certain that having his presence known to Potter would only have aggravated the situation. Scoffing to himself, Severus wasn't quite sure why he should care, but suspected it might have something to do with the miserable sniffling just ahead in the hallway.

Further confusing him, something in his throat constricted at the site that met his eye as he rounded the corner towards his office. Hermione slumped against the junction between the wall and the floor, huddled around her knees and sobbing as if the very last piece of her heart was irrevocably broken. By all accounts, Severus knew that he should be furious. Jealous and furious. Unleashing a tower of temper upon this pitiful creature who had the nerve to weep over a situation that she, herself, created.

He couldn't make himself do it.

Perhaps it was weakness, but he couldn't bring himself to point out that she had done it to herself. His pride – and something else he loathed to examine – still smarted at being so handily disregarded when her sentiment could rationalize away the ring he had put on her finger, but he was surprised as he felt his anger towards her dissipate. Severus had been struck by the fact that, despite her spectacularly foolish mental pyrotechnics that had led to her decision to shag Potter, she had immediately leapt to his defense and to the defense of a marriage that she neither wanted nor looked forward to in the slightest. She had defended his, Snape's, honor (such as it was) to her best friend and had been willing to risk the only major friendship she had left to set things right. Severus found himself struck dumb (and most unusually kind) by her gesture. So he decided not to whip her with the stupidity of her folly. Unfortunately, that left him completely adrift as to how to deal with the current situation.

He had come several steps into the hallway, so it was quite literally too late to turn back now. But as he picked his way closer to his weeping fiancée, he knew that he had no idea what to say to her. Years of being a reclusive and acerbic bastard had not equipped him for dealing with a hysterically sobbing female. Even a decade of being Head of Slytherin House left him a bit bereft on that score, as the younger ones that came to him in tears had problems that were far less awkward to discuss and much easier to solve, and the older ones had long since learned that Slytherins didn't weep over their problems but swallowed them until they found a way to turn the situation to their advantage. So the handful of steps he took towards her left him with no greater knowledge of what to say; being socially graceless had always seemed like an inconsequential detail before.

Still unsure that even approaching her would be a good idea, Severus felt that he may as well simply act on instinct than try to plan some flowery speech. She was a Gryffindor, after all; he would leave the effusive nonsense to her and her ilk. He opened his mouth, praying that whatever came out would be the right thing to say.

"Been diddling Mr. Potter then, have we? Unsurprising that it ended in tears."

Her head rocketed up from her knees and she glared daggers at him.

... Perhaps not, then, Severus thought to himself with a wince. He tried again.

"How fickle is woman."

Really not any better, old man.

"Don't," she hissed. "Don't. I really can't stomach your particular brand of bollocks right now, so if you can't say anything nice, then just turn around, stalk away like the great ugly bat you are, and leave me to be a broken whore in peace."

The word "ugly" skewered him; hers were the last set of lips that he'd ever expected to hear it from. But he took a deep breath, tamped down his inherent anger, and listened to the rest of the sentence. Then sighed and lowered himself to the ground next to her. A long moment passed as he leaned his back against the cold stones and her sobs trailed off to intermittent sniffling.

"You are not a whore," he said quietly.

" 'Course I am," she said, drawing the back of her sleeve across her nose, snorting loudly enough to make Severus cringe. "Didn't you hear him? And he's right: I've thrown myself at every man I thought could make my situation better and never thought of anyone's welfare but my own. And now, sleeping with Harry was just the last str..."

"You are not a whore," he said again, this time forcefully enough to still her tongue and have her gazing at him in wonder.

The sight of the pale, heart-shaped face splotched with red and cut with tear tracks squeezed at him so much that he looked away from her. He found himself almost nauseous with it, an emotion that made him feel inexcusably weak. But he indulged it, indulged her, for a moment. Because she needed it so desperately.

"You are a very good person who has made a series of admittedly very poor choices." She huffed indignantly, which made him smile. "But you are not a whore. While I cannot say that what you did was right, or that anyone else would do the same as you have, you did the best you could with a situation that offered you not a single positive outcome. Some of your choices were poorer than others – this most recent being a stunning example..."

Severus felt his own smile appear as the corner of her lips turned up in a rueful grin.

"...but that does not negate the fact that you are still a very good person." He waited a bit, smiled at the wall across from them. "Even for a Gryffindor."

She chuckled this time, outright, blinking harder against the still-leaking tears. After another long stretch of silence, she said, "You said I was a good person. 'A very good person.' That's what you said."

He turned back to regard her, an eyebrow raised practically to his hairline. "Have I been misinformed?"

She gazed down at her knees for a moment, picking at the stitches on her robes, then shook her head. "No, but ... well, that could almost sound like a compliment, sir."

"Imagine that," he answered.

He barely noticed when she scooted her bottom across the floor, closing the distance between them.

Granger's face turned back towards him and, in a raspy and hushed voice, asked, "Why are you being so nice to me?"

His lips quirked up again. "Well, you know. Shouldn't even kick a whore when she's down. It's not sporting."

She couldn't help it. She laughed. Loudly. Hermione knew that she probably should have been miffed at being called a whore so soon after his insistence to the contrary, but the tone of impish mischief in his voice and the lopsided quirk of his grin had her laughing out loud and leaning in to roughly bump her shoulder against his. With a few deep rumbles of laughter in his chest, he looped an arm around her shoulders, patting her arm with a long-fingered hand.

"You'll get through it all right," he said eventually.

"I hope so."

"And frankly," he said, with a tone of someone not quite considering what they were saying, "I wouldn't have wanted you to waste that on me anyway."

Hermione sat up very straight and watched him fixedly. "What do you mean? Wasted what on you?"

Severus stiffened. He hadn't meant to blurt that out; certainly, the thought had occurred inside his head, but he'd never had any intention of releasing it, and most definitely not to someone he still doubted he could trust.

"Wasted what on you, Severus?" she persisted.

It was the unprompted use of his given name that had him looking towards and then away from her, confessing his thoughts.

"Your virginity, of course."

Her intent gaze fixed on him convinced him that the short explanation would not do, so he clenched his jaw and forced out the words.

"I'm sure you can imagine how females must have responded to me in my youth," he started in a harsh, stilted voice. She nodded sadly but said nothing, so he continued. "Being that I've always had a resentful nature, you can also imagine my reaction, I'm sure. When I was a tad older, freshly out of school, and..." he stopped short, trying to think how to word the situation, "my loyalties were different than they are now..."

He looked at her briefly, watching as her brows furrowed and she nodded her comprehension. Severus couldn't help the discomfort that crept into his voice, being forced to admit this, one of his guiltiest secrets, to his soon-to-be wife.

"...I was suddenly flooded with rank and power, something I'd never enjoyed before. And enjoy it, I did. Unfortunately," he stopped again to clear his throat, "unfortunately, I used – or more rightly, misused – those first few months of heady power against those young girls who were now young women. I used the fact that I was now powerful and fearsome and vengeful to ram their snide comments right back down their throats. Often literally, and with more than just my fist or wand."

He couldn't look at her now, wouldn't admit to himself that he was afraid. He couldn't admit that he feared seeing a look of disgust on the face he could see just out of the corner of his eye, melting into surprise at his declaration.

"I...." he stumbled. "I ... forcibly separated more than one young woman from something which I can never give back. I would not have you fall into the same trap," he spat harshly. "No more women will unwillingly lose their innocence to me."

The silence in the hallway seemed complete, despite the bangs and shuffles and rumble of life in the main part of the school, several floors above their heads. Listening to her deep, even breaths was enough; he couldn't watch her expression slowly slide into disgust and hatred.

"How many?" she said in time. "How many women?"

Of course she would want to know. The Gryffindor needed to vindicate the abused.

"Twenty-two," he admitted stonily. Then, "The novelty of brutality and vengeance became hollow quite quickly, and I soon came to have a renowned distaste for it. But I can't..."

His voice broke, and he swore under his breath. When he regained himself, he stated, "I cannot have my wife occupy the same category as a year of teenaged, hated-filled revenge crusade."

She just nodded. How could she sit through that declaration and just fucking nod?! his mind screamed.

Eventually, she spoke again. "Have you ever had sex with someone that you cared about? Or even ... I mean ... someone that didn't...wasn't..."

"Someone who consented, you mean?" he sneered.

"Someone you cared about," she repeated.

He stared at the wall across from them. "Once."

Another nod. Another long pause. "Then I guess we're even."

His training in Occlumency was all that allowed him to cover his shock at that statement with a single raised eyebrow. Even? He could spend the rest of his life as a saint, sacrificing himself every day to save idiots like Potter, and they would still never be even. The girl had probably never done a genuinely unpleasant thing in her life, and likely never would. And yet, she had just wiped away the second greatest failing of his life with a single swoop and declared them "even". She was either the most benevolent person he'd ever met or the simplest.

He just scoffed.

"Well," she said at length, but made no move to finish the sentence.

With a jolt, Severus realized that he had his arm around her. Not just looped in a casual gesture around her shoulders anymore, but somewhere between their bantered jokes and the confession of his sin, he had somehow managed to drape it across her back and underneath her right arm, his hand spread out over the robes at her stomach. If she leaned a few inches to her left, her head could have rested in the crook of his shoulder. It felt too ... familiar, all of a sudden. Too comfortable.

Jerkily, he removed the offending appendage and levered himself up from the floor. Severus started to extend a hand to help her off the floor as well, but felt a stroke of something strange lance through him when she reached up to take the proffered fingers, so he made to pull his hand back. Her cinnamon eyes fixed on his dark ones, Hermione clasped the hand just starting to disappear back into the folds of his robe and pulled herself up. She was standing close to him now. Too close.

Walk away, Severus. Walk away now.

He bent his face down to hover only mere inches from hers. He watched as her pupils dilated and her breathing sped up. Her lips dropped open.

"Your indiscretion is forgiven, Granger," he said smoothly, "but understand one thing: I am neither a generous man nor a particularly altruistic one."

She looked surprised, then disappointed, then raised an eyebrow in question. He leaned so close to her that he could feel her exhaled breath on his lips.

"If Potter ever again touches you on any part of your body between your knees and your armpits – I don't care if it's covered by seven layers of wool and steel – understand that he will lose the offending body part that touched you. And to you, I won't be half so kind. I. Do not. Share."

Feeling finally righted, Severus spun on his heel and begun to walk back to his office, his face settling into familiar lines as his heartbeat returned to normal. Just before he turned the corner, he heard her answer him.

"Jealous, are we?"

"Greedy," he called back with a smirk, then shut his office door with a decisive snap.

A/N - Okay, so I know that my choice Harry/Hermione sex probably wasn't super popular and that she seems to have "gotten off easy" where Sev is concerned, but have faith. It's not the last you'll see of that issue. Also, did anyone else *snerk* when they read the knot description about being "unlayed"? I totally did. And some of you probably are now that I've mentioned it. ^_^

As always, thanks for following along.