Sticking Together, and Ain't We Got Fun

A/N - You asked for it; you got it! I wanted to post this chapter at lightning speed (or, as 'lightning' a speed as 50 stories in the queue permits) because 1) it was already done and I can't WAIT for you to see what happens, and 2) I thought everyone might just kill me if I didn't. That cliffie really was evil; I fully admit it . I've been a bad, bad author, and may potentially need to be spanked. ^_^

Anyway, I can't possibly express all my thanks for your many reviews. You guys are the BEST. First of all, the fact that there have been over 100 reviews for the previous chapter in just over a week boggles my mind. This piece started out to be a little fluffy bit of nothing that I did just for fun, but it's become probably my favorite piece for me to work on. I'm thrilled and touched more than you can imagine that everyone has loved it so much. Again, my most humble and grateful thanks for your reviews, your praise, and most of all, your dedication to my story.

*wipes eyes* Okay, now that I'm done gushing ... on with the show!

~~ ** Lady Tuesday ** ~~

PS - Moderate naughtiness ahead in this chapter. And the word "penis." *snickers* Penis penis penis. *ahem* Yes. Chapter.

Chapter Eight – Sticking Together, and Ain’t We Got Fun

“Oh, my God. I just can’t … Oh, my God.”

“If I—”

“—I never thought—I mean, I suppose I might have considered—but I didn’t really think it was possible that—with all the magical people in Britain—”

“Would you—?”

“—and it seemed absolutely preposterous that you, of all people, would be—”

Severus sighed and massaged his temples with his fingertips as Granger stood next to him, looking anywhere except at him, and gesticulating wildly with her fluttering hands. “If you would just—” he began, but she was still careening along at full tilt autowitter.

“—retrospect, it should have been completely obvious, but I never—”

“For God’s sake, Granger,” he boomed. “Get a hold of yourself!”

Hermione jolted ramrod straight and, after a moment to take a deep breath, backed away from him a few steps to drop unceremoniously into the vacant seat across the table.

“You were babbling,” Severus said in a much quieter, calmer voice.

Hermione brought one hand to her mouth and unconsciously started chewing on her right thumbnail. “I do that when I’m nervous,” she said weakly.

“So I’ve noticed,” Snape answered dryly.

Eyes darting to and from his face, Hermione fidgeted first with her nails, then her robes, then her nails again before settling on rearranging her silverware. Strangely, suddenly, she laughed.

“I can’t believe that shouting business still works.” A small smile worked its way onto her lips without her even realizing it.

One corner of Severus’s mouth quirked up just the slightest bit. “It’s been working for over thirty years, Miss Granger. I highly doubt one bout of surprise, however dramatic, would change that. Besides, you’ve been preconditioned to respond.”

With uncomfortable speed, the student-teacher dynamic rushed at the two of them, making both Hermione and Severus shift uncomfortably in their seats and avoid each other’s gaze.

Nearly stifled by the unnerving silence, Hermione broke the tension in the only way she knew: talking. “I just can’t believe it’s you. I mean, it’s dreadfully obvious now; I should have realized, but ….”

She trailed into silence when he looked up at her. Hermione never really realized that her former professor’s eyes were so expressive. So sad. Maybe they hadn’t always been, though. Perhaps this was a development of thirteen years of emotional disguise being unnecessary coupled with recovery, piled on top of seventeen years of sorrow and hardship, piled on top of a difficult and unloving childhood. An uncomfortable tightness seized Hermione’s throat.

“It should have connected,” she said. Her voice gained speed as she continued, nervously twisting her cloth napkin. “It should have registered. I mean, on a level, I suppose it did, but it should have been incontrovertible: the knowledge of potions, the position in the war, the acidic wit, the underlying melancholy.” She looked down at her hands when his gazed hardened. “You referred to Voldemort as ‘the Dark Lord’ in your first letter, now that I think about it. Only Death Eaters ever used that term. Hell, I even thought I recognized your handwriting, though I couldn’t put my finger on to whom exactly it belonged. But I just didn’t think it would be someone I knew. All I knew for a fact was your age, but I never really troubled myself to do the math. I didn’t really want to, I think. I just can’t believe that Tobias is you. That you’re him. I just—”

“Miss Granger, calm yourself,” he said. His voice was firm, but there wasn’t any of his trademark venom in it.

Hermione cocked her head to one side and regarded him thoughtfully. “Why aren’t you more surprised? Aren’t you surprised at all?”

Severus let his face slip into the familiar lines of a sneer. “Far more than I should be,” he said. Before he spoke again, he sighed, and his face relaxed. “You say you didn’t do the math? I did. I knew how old ‘Joy’ was; I knew that she was from that all important year.” A self-depreciating laugh fell from him, strangely loud above the background din from the restaurant below. “I knew that Joy was the same age as Harry Bloody Potter. I even think that a very large part of me knew it was you.” Hermione looked up at him in shock; this time it was Severus who looked away. “I just didn’t want to admit to myself that Joy was none other than the Insufferable Know-It-All because of what Joy became to me.”

Unable to stop herself, Hermione pulled her chair in closer, leaned over the table, and angled her head to catch his gaze. “What?” she whispered. “What did Joy become?”

Severus turned his head from the view out the bay window. The bright moonlight illuminated the right half of his face, making his pale skin glimmer with the silvery tones, a stark contrast to the warming golden hue that the restaurant’s candle sconces gave the other half. His dark eyes, now liquid pools of onyx, seemed almost pleading.

“Redemption,” he said quietly, spreading his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Joy was a fresh start. A horrible cliché, I know,” he added brusquely, “but a truth, nonetheless. She was the first keenly intelligent, compassionate, and strong woman who wouldn’t criticize, didn’t try to change me. She didn’t balk at my gruffness, didn’t condemn me for being an elitist or a hermit. She wouldn’t judge me for the shadow over my past because she didn’t know it existed. Tobias didn’t exist before that first letter, so he could be anything I wanted him to be. He could become everything I wanted to be but couldn’t quite manage.”

Hermione had to turn away and bat her eyelashes several times to keep the tears that had welled in her eyes from falling. When she looked back, Snape had turned his face towards the window again, gazing out into the night and seeming not to see.

She had just opened her mouth to respond when he said, “Miss Granger, if my identity has changed your mind about this … arrangement, you are free to leave.”

Shaking her head as if to clear cobwebs from her ears, Hermione only managed to say, “What?”

He turned back to her. “Knowing Tobias’s true identity must have altered your stance in this situation. I can’t say that it hasn’t startled me, but my desire to continue is unchanged. If, however, you do not wish to stay, you may leave now and we will never speak of this again. I will not hold it against you.”

Stunned, Hermione allowed her mouth to drop open, and she could only stare at him stupidly for a few seconds. A part of her – small, but present – did want to run. That tiny, uncertain part of her that superimposed her unforgiving, cruel, judgmental professor overtop of this quiet, stoic man in front of her said that he would only measure her and find her wanting from the rosy ideal he’d gained of ‘Joy.’ But that voice couldn’t make Hermione believe it. The past had come and gone; Hermione couldn’t bring herself to lash him with it or punish him for it, not after most of the world had already done so for the vast majority of his pre-war life. Not now that she’d had thirteen years of adulthood to reflect on it. On him. Tobias Reynard or Severus Snape, the man inside was still the same: the man who had risked his life time and time again just to honor a woman he loved unconditionally for over twenty years. The man who had called her his redemption.

“You know,” she started unsteadily, “I felt the same way about Tobias.” When he looked at her with anxious curiosity, she gave him a watery smile and clarified. “He was a clean slate. Someone who wouldn’t tell me that I was insane for wanting to have a child on my own, that I was too independent for my own good, that I am too bossy to have friends. He wasn’t someone who’d say I was too plain to attract a fellow or too smart to make a man feel good enough.” Snape grumbled something at that last comment, and though she didn’t hear what he said, she smiled at the innate defensiveness on her behalf. “Tobias never pigeon-holed me as just ‘Harry Potter’s best friend’ or ‘the female half of the Gryffindor trio’ or ‘the swotty, insufferable know-it-all’. In fact, I think that Tobias is the first person who’s ever enjoyed that aspect of me. Severus Snape included.”

His lopsided smirk resurfaced for a moment, a familiar expression etched into the deep lines of his sharply angular face. Far from the bat that most people likened him to, Hermione had always thought he looked like a bird of prey: sharply analytical, brutally keen, predatory. A hawk on the wing.

“Hawk-like,” Hermione whispered in awe as the thought occurred to her. “All those years ago, I called your face ‘hawk-like.’ When Harry and Ron were picking on you, that’s what I said. You quoted me in one of your letters. You remembered that from all those years ago.”

Discomfort replaced amusement. “It was an uncommonly kind description of my features,” he said. “It stayed with me.”

“I’m glad,” Hermione said.

When she spoke, the tentative grin grew into a smile that bloomed across her crimson lips and pinkened cheeks, setting a light dancing in her eyes. Strangely, under her smile, Severus felt the damning importance he’d placed on his identity wash away. Despite the confused muddle of emotions constricting his chest, a tiny spark of hope struck in the depths of his heart.

“Then you do not wish to leave?” he asked.

Hermione’s stomach fluttered oddly, as if something was trying to escape. Taking a breath to steady her, she sat up straighter in her chair and looked down at her lap. “No,” she said, blushing. “No, I don’t want to leave. Do you?”

A long breath pulled in through his nostrils, Severus closed his eyes and let calm move through him. Joy wouldn’t leave, not yet. Joy would stay. Hermione would stay.

“No,” he answered. “I would like to stay and have dinner with you.”

She didn’t miss the fact that he hadn’t mentioned what would happen afterwards, but that was something they would deal with in an hour or two. “I would like that.”

An intriguing mixture of discomfort and something almost like politeness crossed his face, and she couldn’t help but quirk a questioning grin at him.

“I,” he started, but paused to clear his throat before continuing. “I took the liberty of ordering a bottle of the wine that you mentioned was your favorite. I hope that is not too forward of me.”

Hermione smiled. It seemed that he was trying to make an effort at chivalry for ‘Joy.’ Whether that was a façade for her benefit or he simply found it uncomfortable to be ‘outed’ as a gentleman in front of someone formerly terrified of him, she wasn’t sure, but whatever the reason, Hermione found it incurably funny.

“How lovely!” she said, trying not to giggle. “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

A thin paint of blush stole across his sallow cheeks, and his face twisted as he fought a scowl. Tapping his wand against the empty ice bucket set in the alcove next to their table, Severus nodded as the chilled bottle appeared. Another tap and the cork popped away, allowing him to pour a glass of the light white wine for each.

As Hermione accepted the glass, she leaned towards him with an eager smile. “So you have to tell me,” she said in a rush. “What did you think of Rondat’s findings on the dragon blood infusion?”

A helpless laugh left Severus before he breathed a shaky sigh of relief. A little of the tension slipped away as he leaned in as well, offering her a mischievous smirk. “Absolute bloody rubbish,” he said, pointing his wine glass at her for emphasis. “And let me tell you why …”

“Do you think she knows that it’s him?”

Harry looked at his watch, then back up at his wife. “If she didn’t before, she must by now.”

Ginny’s brows pulled together, creating a ripple in the pale skin of her forehead. “Poor Hermione.”

“What do you mean, ‘poor Hermione’?” Harry asked, unable to help the hint of indignance in his voice.

In the back of his mind, a dim recognition of the juxtaposition of attitudes occurred to him: what a strange progress life had taken, when he saw himself defending the man that he’d have sworn bloodlust against for most of his younger life. He and Ginny had gone round in a hell of a row when she’d finally told him the whole story about Hermione and ‘Joy’ and the artificial insemination. Harry hadn’t been able to decide whom he was more livid with: Hermione, for concealing such a momentous decision in her life from him, or Ginny, for willfully abetting his exclusion without consideration of his feelings on the subject. When they’d finally had all their shouting out and Ginny pointed out that this reaction was exactly why Hermione hadn’t told him, Harry had taken a good long time out on his broom to clear his anger and rearrange his thoughts. Like a Bludger hurtling from nowhere, he made the connection between Hermione’s letter writing and Snape’s mention of ‘Tobias’ on Valentine ’s Day. He’d nearly killed himself in his hurry to get back to Godric’s Hollow and tell Ginny about his revelation. The two of them had been on tenterhooks since dinner, wondering what would become of the pair and their tenuous relationship this evening.

Ginny’s face pinched as she tried to gauge her husband’s reaction. “Well, it’s Snape, isn’t it? I mean, I know that he did lots of very heroic and selfless things during the war, but—”

“But what?” Harry spat. “The man is a hero, and he deserves some happiness!”

Waiting patiently for Harry’s angry sputtering to die out, Ginny folded her hands in her lap and watched her husband. Mature and grow as he had over the course of thirteen years, Harry still had moments where the boy she’d fallen in love with popped his head back up, as short-tempered and indignant and maddening and wonderful as he’d been when she’d met him twenty years ago.

“Has it ever occurred to you that he mightn’t want to be a hero?” Ginny asked quietly. “And besides, sacrificing himself for the war and for your mum doesn’t change the fact that he was absolutely beastly to us in school.”

“Yes, but he—”

“It doesn’t change it, Harry,” she repeated in a firm voice. “Yes, he did lots of wonderful things, yes, he suffered a great deal … but he did lots of horrible things too, and he could have behaved far better towards us than he did. And before you rush to his defense again,” Ginny added, raising her hand to stem the flow of his words, “you should stop to consider that I’m only thinking of Hermione. I don’t want her to get hurt.”

Harry digested this for a moment. “And you’re so sure he’s going to hurt her?”

“Isn’t he?”

Again, Harry pondered his wife’s response carefully before forming his own. “I don’t think so, Gin. I know that he was horrid to us – if anybody knows, it’s me; you should realize that – but you didn’t see him on Valentine’s Day, love.” Harry sighed heavily. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen a man out of his head over a woman. It’s not even the first time I’ve seen him out of his head over a woman. And to be honest, Ginny, I really think that what he feels for her is ….”

Harry had to stop and plant himself on the sofa next to his wife. Searching his mind for the words, he picked up Ginny’s small hand, so much less fragile than it seemed, and stroked his thumb over the back before looking up into her warm brown eyes, fixed on his face with a wary cast to them.

“I can’t say that it’s stronger than what I saw in him for my mum,” Harry said slowly. “But it’s … more. I don’t know how to say it better than that. There’s more there. Maybe because of who Hermione is, maybe because she returns his feelings,” Harry had guessed on this, but the look of surprise on Ginny’s face told him that his instincts were good, “but there’s definitely more. And he was suffering like hell, thinking he’d lost her.”

They were silent for a long time. Ginny leaned against Harry and let him pull her further up onto the sofa and into his lap, cradling her head in the hollow of his throat as she listened to the heavy, steady thudding of his heart.

“You think he loves her?” she asked, her voice muffled by his robes.

“I really do,” Harry answered. Ginny murmured a hum of acknowledgement and pressed a kiss into Harry’s chest. After a long moment, Harry couldn’t help the smirk that tugged at his lips. “He loves her, God help him. Poor Snape.”

Ginny’s hand slapped out a stinging little smack against his shoulder, but she chuckled and shook her head.

“Poor Snape,” she chortled before pressing her lips to Harry’s.

The evening had been slow to start. For a half hour or so, the long pauses and strange tension between the blocks of conversation felt stifling, but the longer they had talked, the more the feeling of a teacher-pupil relationship fizzled and faded away. Over the progress of the three courses they enjoyed, they had talked about everything from potions experiments and theoretical study to current advancements in protective spells to a societal shift toward mixed blood marriages. With a rueful smile as she sipped her wine, Hermione believed that all they would need to cover would be literature, the fine arts, and religion. After that, they’d have nothing to talk about.

Though, if she were honest with herself, that was completely untrue. Even after all their letters, no matter what subject had been brought up, the two of them seemed to have more than enough fodder for discussion, especially when their opinions diverged, which was fairly often. Snape seemed to always fall to the practical side of an argument on ethics, whereas Hermione nearly always took the emotional. In an odd juxtaposition, he seemed to favor instinct and intuition in real-life application of knowledge, where Hermione fell back on age-old knowledge learned in a book or classroom. Those sorts of differences had always caused endless chafing between Ron and Hermione, but strangely, they seemed to amuse and intrigue Snape. He was a much changed man, these twelve years since she’d spoken to him last. He no longer seemed ruthless and cruel, but a man tempered by experience and sadness. And, oddly, it seemed that freedom from the life of a spy had shackled him with even more loneliness and detachment. Having cultivated such distance from everyone in his life over the vast majority of his adulthood, he seemed completely adrift even now that he no longer survived on such detachment. The smiles he favored her with over the course of the evening seemed rusty, as if unused for a great period of time, and Hermione felt herself curiously warmed at being bestowed such a rare gift.

As they picked at the remains of a lovely dessert (hers was a delicate cheesecake), Hermione found herself nearly tingling with anticipation every time he gave her one of those lopsided grins. At one point, he’d brushed the length of her calf when stretching out his long legs, and Hermione felt the contact zing through her with an electric charge. Blushing, she dropped her gaze to her plate and tried to refocus on the conversation. She blurted out some question about something vaguely related to the war. If she came up with something controversial enough, it would focus her attention and stop her from dwelling on the casual touches with which he’d favored her in the last few minutes. It would stop her imagining what might come after dessert. With a jolt, Hermione realized that she’d been drifting and that Snape had stopped talking to gaze at her quizzically.

“What are you smiling at?” he asked, his heavy brows pulling together.

“Nothing,” she hastily replied. “I’m sorry. Go ahead. What were you saying?”

His lips pursed, distinct unhappiness and suspicion etched in his features. “You had asked about the physical therapy for the nerve damage done during Nagini’s attack.”

“And you were avoiding the answer,” Hermione stated, regarding him with an assessing eye.

Severus cleared his throat and just barely resisted the urge to tug up his collar. The large, jagged scars from where Nagini’s fangs had torn his neck open had faded over time, but when his collar was lowered, they were still a vicious and ever-present reminder of everything he’d brought upon himself in his rash teenage years. As was the faded grey Dark Mark forever burned on his forearm. Moody had been right all those years ago: some marks never come off.

“It’s not something I talk about,” Severus said in a clipped voice. “For obvious reasons.”

“Not ever?” Hermione asked. When he shook his head, she regarded him thoughtfully. “You don’t find that odd?”

“Odd?” Snape parroted. “You find it odd that I wouldn’t want to talk about the method of my own death?”

Hermione scowled. “You didn’t die.”

“Au contraire,” he said with a familiar sneer. “My body was so weakened by blood loss that the first spell Healer Levy used on me actually stopped my heart. For approximately thirty-six seconds, I was legally dead.”

“But you’re alive now,” Hermione said. “You have been for thirteen years.”

“A technicality,” Severus answered in a whip-quick response. She made to continue the discussion, but he tilted his head to one side and narrowed his eyes, assessing her face. Before she could get more than a word out, he anticipated her.

“Granger—” he started.

“Hermione.”

He actually blinked at the interruption. “What?”

“Hermione,” she said. “My name is Hermione.”

“Of course it is,” he growled in response.

“You’ve called me ‘Miss Granger’ all night. I give you a measure of leeway, as you and I didn’t talk for the six years that I was Mrs. Weasley, but I can only assume that you keep calling me Miss Granger because it’s more personal, and therefore more uncomfortable, if you call me by my first name.”

She smirked, but he wasn’t going to allow her to beat him at this game.

“Don’t try that ploy on me, Hermione.” He said her name very deliberately. “I invented it. I know that you’re trying to distract either me or yourself from the 800-pound hippogriff in the room. It won’t work.”

Hermione blushed, dropping her eyes to her empty wine glass.

“I know that you're not actually interested in the exact antivenin that Levy used on me or why I don’t talk about the attack,” she tried to refute him, but he continued smoothly, “so I must assume that you're simply avoiding the underlying topic. I will reiterate my statement from earlier this evening: if you have changed your mind about completing the arrangement,” he cleared his throat momentarily, “don't bother with this nonsense. Just get up now and leave; we won't speak of it again and you can go about this process in whatever fashion you see fit.”

The moment of silence between them stretched out long and tense. Feeling the anxious tension change to exhilaration, Hermione pulled her chair around the table in front of the windows. She needed to be near him. Her breathing sped just feeling the touch of his robes against her knees. Eventually, Severus screwed up his courage to lay his cards on the table.

“I know how Tobias feels about Joy,” he said softly. “The man sitting at this table is the very same man from those letters, but what you see before you, I’m sure, is not at all what you pictured. His—” Severus stopped, gulped hard before continuing. “—my feelings and desires are unchanged, but if my identity has changed your mind—”

She reached across the scant distance between them to put a hand to his lips and said, "You're right. You're not what I pictured when I imagined Tobias. You're more."

Raising the Eyebrow of Skepticism (as she'd mentally dubbed it in her school days), Severus stared at her in disbelief. She wasn't dissuaded.

“I know how Joy feels about Tobias.” Puzzled, he didn’t try to respond, but Hermione found that she couldn’t remove her fingers from his lips. Instead, they seemed to have grown a will independent of her own, her fingertips sweeping across his lips in a caress.

“My agreement to be here was based on my feelings for him, not on the face he wears."

At these words, Severus grimaced and started to pull away, but she held him still with a hand on his other cheek.

"After all you know about Joy, the real me that appeared in those letters, did you really think that the addition of this face—” She ran a finger down his nose, causing his features to drop in surprise. “—to the mind and heart of the man she knows would actually change her mind?”

Snape sneered. "This face isn't—”

Possessed of a sudden need to convince him, Hermione took her chance without stopping for second guesses. Lurching up out of her chair, she leaned across the table and crushed her lips to his. Stunned, Severus merely sat still as Hermione’s warm, satin skin caressed his. His head spun. He was as giddy and nervous as a teenager. He barely knew what to do. Suddenly, Hermione rocketed back away from him, seemingly realizing herself with an abrupt joggle. Her hand flew to her mouth, covering her lips as they dropped into a moue of surprise.

“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, her voice raspy. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

Her voice died off as Severus raised a hand from its position on the white table cloth. He moved slowly, as if wading through warm honey, raising the long, slender hand and moving it toward her with excruciating care. He gave her plenty of time to back away in fear. When she did not, he laced his slim fingers around the back of her neck and drew her towards him once more. Abandoning the jumps of nerves in her stomach, Hermione let herself be reeled into his embrace, relishing the feel of the stiff robes as they scratched against her bare shoulders and throat. His face hovered over hers for a moment, and she was certain that he’d be able to see the way her pulse hammered in her throat, his breath coming in warm puffs against her cheek. The ebony eyes locked onto her brown ones before he touched his lips to hers.

The caress was so soft for the first few moments that she was barely sure he had kissed her at all. As the moment of contact lengthened, Hermione sighed against his lips, sliding her hands up his arms to where they came to rest at his broad shoulders. This seemed to be all the encouragement Severus needed, for when she clutched at the stiff wool there, he laced his other arm around her back and pressed Hermione against his chest, a low rumble of voice rolling through the lean planes of muscle. Severus’s stern face turned to one side as he changed the angle of the kiss, drawing Hermione’s mouth open so that his tongue slipped effortlessly between her lips to deepen the kiss. Hermione’s heart thudded wildly within her, seemingly vibrating with excitement as she slid her tongue against his. Her head spinning, she could only barely grasp how surreal the whole situation was: here she sat, in a restaurant owned by one of her grammar school friends, snogging her most unpleasant teacher after finding out he’d anonymously agreed to make her pregnant. It was like the plot of a badly written romance novel. And yet, as strong fingertips kneaded at her neck and tripped lightly up the skin of her bare back, making her shiver, she couldn’t think of a single moment since the war ended that she felt so alive and aroused and utterly, utterly correct.

Severus reminded himself over and over again not to hold her too tightly. Far too many years of misery and insecurity and celibacy (dear God, it had been so many years) made him want to crush her against him and cover every last centimeter of her body with his mouth. The warm, slippery slide of her tongue inside his mouth, so gloriously enthusiastic and searching, electrified him, making him fight to control tremors of exhilaration. And in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help musing on how strange this situation was. He was snogging Hermione Granger, for pity’s sake. Hermione Fucking Granger. The formerly swotty, bossy, impertinent Know-It-All who couldn’t help but foist her self-importance on everyone within a fifty kilometer radius writhed in his arms, little moans and groans of pleasure humming in her throat. The deeper he angled the kiss, the more she pressed against him, seemingly unable to control herself, and Severus couldn’t help but think that his own vaunted self-control wouldn’t last all that very much longer. Hermione shivered in pleasure as he drew the tips of his fingers up the satiny skin of her back, enchantingly bare, and he found that he had to pull his mouth away from hers and bury his face in the curls dangling at the side of her neck, unable to stifle a groan of mingled frustration and pleasure. Emboldened by the relative privacy of their location, Severus brought his hand up and ran the knuckle of his index finger down into the valley of the V neckline, curling the tip of his finger into her robes to stroke at the sensitive skin not covered by the floaty green material where her chest began to swell with the curve of her breast. Her breath caught and then rushed in loudly as she gasped at the feel of his lips tugging at the tender skin behind her ear.

Unable to help herself, Hermione dug her fingernails into the heavy robes at his shoulders. She’d swear on any holy book someone offered her that she could feel the vibrations of his muffled groan all the way from the patch of her neck he was currently kissing to her nipples, peaked and prominent now, straight to the scorching electricity surging through her belly at the apex of her thighs.

“Severus,” she mumbled against the dark curtain of his hair. “Severus…”

A jump of excitement shot through him; it was the first time she’d used his given name. Instead of answering, he chased the line of her slender throat with his tongue.

“Do you believe me now?” she asked.

He’d obviously lost his head with swift and dizzying arousal because the face he turned up to meet hers was puzzled.

“Do you believe me that Hermione Granger wants Severus Snape just as much as Joy wanted Tobias?”

Before he could open his mouth to speak, Severus felt Hermione’s hand alight high upon his thigh, squeezing down against the hard muscle beneath until the backs of her fingers brushed against his straining erection. She leaned in so close that her breath was hot and moist upon his ear.

“Because you could take me somewhere private if you need more convincing,” she murmured in a throaty, sultry whisper.

Being a man who could never be mistaken for a fool, Severus immediately dug a pouch of money from his robe pockets, deposited nearly twice the required amount of Galleons on the table and left his chair before Hermione could even rise from hers. The instant she was armed with her winter cloak against the cold of the settling evening dampness, Severus’s fingers were around her wrist, tugging her from the crow’s nest and down the staircase, into the crowded din of the restaurant below. Hermione dimly realized that a few people had acknowledged their presence, calling out their names or muttering about either of them, but Severus had not slowed his pace a jaunt. The determined look on his face as he navigated a winding path between tables towards the exit was so reminiscent of his familiar scowl as a teacher that Hermione was left with no doubt that his expression was the reason they were able to leave so expediently.

The chill of the early spring evening shot through the folds of her semi-open cloak, making her gasp in shock as it set her skin humming and tickled at her already sensitized breasts. She found herself overwhelmed with sensation and didn’t fight instinct: she tugged at the wrist still in Snape’s grasp, yanking him back to face her so that she could mold herself against his hard chest again. Taken completely by surprise, Severus didn’t even have a chance to protest when Hermione’s mouth pressed against his, heedless of the publicity of their location or the amused cheers and applause around them. Her tongue threaded between his lips and he allowed her to drink of him momentarily, but pulled away to pant out breaths.

“Are you mad?” he said brokenly, his hands weaving their way beneath her cloak to play against her skin. “We’re in the middle of a public street populated by people who all know who we are.” Despite his words, he couldn’t stop touching her.

“I don’t care,” she said quickly, a heady and mischievous smile leaping to her lips. She quivered against his cool fingertips. “I don’t give one good God damn who sees us. I don’t have anything to hide; I’m not ashamed.”

As if to prove it, she grinned up into his startled face and moved closer to him, lacing a hand in between them, camouflaged by the heavy drape of their cloaks. When Severus felt her fingers smooth across the front of his robes, seeking out and gently squeezing the hot, hard rising of his erection, he couldn’t help a harsh inhalation of surprise.

“Horrible, brazen woman,” he muttered, but his thin lips quirked upwards at the end. Charged with energy, Severus caught her in his arms and strode forward a few steps, pinning Hermione with her back against the stone façade of the restaurant.

His lips were on her again, and Hermione felt as if she were being drunk down in slow, agonizingly patient gulps, as if she were an exquisite wine that would drug his senses but never quite quench his thirst. Winding her arms around the broad planes of his shoulders, Hermione couldn’t keep from wriggling against him, the thrumming energy inside her refusing to remain still. She brought up one leg and threaded it in between his long limbs, allowing her to stroke at the hard rising of his erection as well as pressing the aching core of her body against his thigh. Her hands clutched at the long tail of his hair and pulled him closer, closer.

Severus felt as if he may actually combust. The heat of her body against him seemed overwhelming, and oh God, it had been so long since a willing woman had been in his arms. And this was not just any willing woman; this woman stood here kissing and clawing at him because she wanted him. Not his social position within the Death Eaters, not the strength of his magic, not his protection or his coin. Him. She wanted him. And that was the sexiest bit of all. Feeling the ache of restraint acutely as she rubbed her knee back and forth against his engorged penis, Severus pulled away from her suddenly and tried to clamp down on whatever self-control he had left. Looking down at the hard glint of lust in her warm, cinnamon eyes and the crimson plumpness of kiss-swollen lips, it wasn’t easy. Again, he grasped her wrist and tugged her away.

“We need to get out of here,” he managed in a gravelly voice. “Now. We need to leave now.”

This time, she didn’t fight him as he pulled her away from the restaurant. “Where are we going?”

The look he gave her lasted only mere moments, but the force of the heat in it caused her heart to stumble over itself as it thumped in her chest.

“Somewhere I can ravish you so thoroughly that you won’t want to let me out of bed for a month,” he answered before speeding along down High Street and towards a familiar path leading away from the village.

After a moment, it occurred to her where the path led; she yanked at his wrist as he pulled her along. “Severus,” she asked, panic beginning to slip into her voice. “Severus, where are you taking me?”

“My chambers, naturally,” he answered without slowing.

Now, the anxiety was evident. She tugged at his grip with both hands. “No. Please, no,” she said, her voice breaking at the end. “Not Hogwarts. We can’t go to Hogwarts.”

Severus stopped abruptly, and turned to look her in the face. Hermione looked so discomfited, he half expected her to turn and run or shatter into a thousand pieces. “Why not?”

“I just couldn’t … you know,” she said nervously. “Not there. It would be too strange. Being back at Hogwarts would be like being a pupil again and going to your chambers in the dungeon … I’d feel like I was being called down for a very strange, very inappropriate detention. I just don’t think I could—” She broke off and gazed around her, looking anywhere but at his face.

He eliminated the distance between them quickly and picked up her hand. Closing his long fingers around her smaller ones, he squeezed her palm gently. “Very well, then,” he said in a steady voice. She exhaled almost immediately, her relief plain on her face. “Apparate us anywhere you like. The location is of little matter to me, as long as there is at least one comfortable surface to be had.”

A bright blush painted her cheeks but she smiled, a tad unsteadily, and dropped her eyes. “My house will do then?” she asked shyly.

He nodded. “I would very much like to see it.”

Raising her eyes to his and shivering as his free hand stroked the hollow of her neck, Hermione took a deep breath then turned on the spot, Disapparating them away towards home.

A/N - for those of you with weak constitutions for smut, be warned: graphic naughtiness ensues in chapter nine. *ponders* You know, given my penchant for smut, I'm surprised I restrained myself this long. In any case, the next chapter will earn an NC-17 rating. Consider yourself warned! ^_^