Indulgence

Disclaimer I'm not JKR.

Thanks to Ladyinthecloak for beta-ing!!

*LEMONS AHEAD!!*

Chapter Fifteen: Indulgence

--

"Hermione..." A hand shook her shoulder to wake her. She stirred, but did not lift her head from her folded arms.

She had been having a very pleasant dream, it seemed, for she was a bit warm, her stomach seemed to have blossomed a colony of butterflies overnight, and it did not do to be woken up right in the middle...

"Her-Mi-Nee!!"

"Wha...?" she murmured, turning her head to look at a ginger-haired girl kneeling next to her.

"You've been here all night, 'Mione." The befuddled Hermione sprang up, rubbing her eyes and catching her bearings. She was in the cupboard; her pillow had been the same tome she had been clinging to over the past couple of months.

"What time is it?"

Ginny paused, inhaling. "Eight-ten."

"Merlin's left..."

"Hermione, you need to stop doing this to yourself!" Ginny looked her companion over and noticed a bit of rib showing through the girl's silk nightgown. "When was the last time you ate something?"

"I need to get to class, Ginny." Hermione entered the common room and paced around, trying to sort out her brain. She had woken up all hot and bothered, and it irritated her that she could not go back to sleep. This was odd, because... Well, because Hermione had learned to hate sleep. Her dreams were always plagued with nightmares and humiliating memories...so she tended to waste the night away poring over her books, searching for that one damned ingredient.

This train of thought had Hermione even more miffed as Ginny followed her around attentively.

"I agree, but you need food to live, Hermione. Not. Potions."

"I beg to differ," she mumbled as she looked for her books. Shoving her school things into her knapsack, she Summoned her uniform. Ginny stood with her arms folded in a corner of the room, a scowl on her face...Hermione was certainly stubborn. "Have a free period?"

"Yes, and you have Transfiguration. Harry told me he hadn't seen you at breakfast when we passed in the hall. I thought you would be here."

"Well, thanks, Gin... Gods, I am so bloody late!" She straightened her skirt and leapt to the door, flinging it open and disappearing through the porthole. "She's going to kill me!"

--

Severus scanned over the room of students currently hovering over their appalling mixtures. He made sure not to look at her, but every little while he would catch her eye, and she would dart her head down. He was worried. Not because she was not paying attention to her potion, no...she had mastered this level of potion-making long ago. No, he was worried because she looked as if she had not slept in days, despite the many warnings he had given her during the holidays. He observed her for a while as she quickly cut some roots and then tossed the sections into the smoking pot.

She seemed to be thinking very hard about something.

He desperately wanted to take a peek, but decided against it, pushing the spy in him to the back of his mind as he clenched his fist around his quill. She looked so distressed, and he knew there was something wrong...Minerva had told him about the girl's tardiness that morning. She was never tardy, at least without meaning to be. Deciding it would be best to look away before he did something completely irrational...not that he knew what that could be... maybe get caught staring at her like a lovesick pup...he took his eyes off of her and pretended to write a bit on his parchment. He pondered the enigma that was Hermione and then pondered the fact that she called him an enigma (the night of the ball) and that she admired him, and that she was in awe of him.

Hardly able to keep himself from laughing, he coughed loudly. A couple of students jumped as he did so, haphazardly throwing their ingredients into their cauldrons. He narrowed his eyes as he again swept the room for any misbehaviour or absent-mindedness and spotted Weasley, sitting with Potter, glaring at him.

"What do you want?" he growled at the boy, who promptly lost his recent bravery and looked back down at his ingredients. Severus did not take his eyes off the dolt until the boy glanced over at Hermione, who was staring into her cauldron as if it had suddenly gone transparent. Weasley shifted his gaze back to Severus, who had been looking at Hermione, and then leered again. Severus, rolling his eyes in response, turned to the board and wrote instructions for a foot-long essay on the properties of the potions that they made. Several students sighed defeatedly, and Severus smiled as he sat back in his chair and folded his arms.

--

She was tired. So. Damned. Tired. And she was sitting in Potions Class, doing what she loved best, but she could not enjoy it. Although drained, she felt a certain fluttery feeling in the pit of her stomach that usually accompanied kissing boys.

"What is wrong with me?" she mumbled as she violently bashed a sydney sprout, an ingredient for a potion that only she worked on this afternoon. It was a darker, wound-healing potion, and she had taken specific precautions for her own health...and stealth, for that matter. She did not want people to know that she was receiving special treatment from her Potions professor, an uncharacteristic favour.

"You are looking a little peaky, Hermione," Neville answered.

"And apparently talking out loud to myself." She smiled at her table partner, handing him her silver knife and turning away in case he decided to spray her with a healthy amount of that pod he was about to stab.

She went back to her potion and stirred it anti-clockwise, counting silently as the liquid turned the correct colour: chartreuse. She mock-gagged and turned to Neville who sniggered into his own fumes. Finishing and bottling her potion, she stood, only to become dizzy and fall back into her chair, the glass phial shattering as it came in contact with the countertop.

"Ten points from Gryffindor, for clumsiness," Snape's voice rang out, although she could catch a hint of amusement in his voice...it was subtle, though, and it had taken many months of constant observation to differentiate his intonations. She sighed and looked at him, frowning. He gazed pointedly back at her cauldron and Hermione quickly repaired the phial to ladle another helping into the good-as-new container. She corked it and walked briskly to the front table feeling eyes boring into her as she approached his desk. She watched her feet move beneath her to avoid eye contact.

Damn, I'm wearing a sock inside out.

When she reached the table, her eyes shot up only to notice, disappointedly, that he was not watching her. He was writing comments for the semester. She peered over his stack of papers to get a better look, but his eyes shot up and he smirked.

Nosy twit, never keep your eyes to yourself do you? she reprimanded herself.

He looked back down as she thought and continued writing Susan Bones' comment. She could catch the words "adequate listener" and "dismal potioneer" as he scribbled wildly and the words behind him morphed into neat manuscript. She then watched his face...his brow furrowed in concentration and his eyes for once unguardedly tired. He apparently had not slept much either over the past couple of weeks. She hadn't seen him much since their last encounter, but she often found herself wishing to run into him on his own...just to talk. She missed talking. She didn't do it much because Harry and Ginny had long ago given up talking with her about important things. They always brought up bad memories.

She was forced out of her reverie when his hand drifted up off the desk and opened to her. She looked into his eyes, which were now looking directly at her with an inquisitive, raised eyebrow. She shook her head and held out the phial in the palm of her hand. He, annoyed with her reluctance, rolled his eyes and reached forward.

Everything seemed to move in slow motion as his fingers lightly brushed her wrist and curled around the small bottle. Nails grazed against her palm and a jolt of electricity...or something...seemed to generate from their brief touch, causing Hermione to jump nearly a foot in the air from surprise. Snape withdrew his hand quickly and looked at her, scowling.

"Sorry," she whispered. So he didn't feel that? He shook his head in dismissal and pointed with his eyes for her to return to her desk.

Hermione turned around, checking for anyone who might've seen, and...thank Merlin...not even Ron, who had taken to watching their every interaction, had lifted his head. As she walked slowly back up the elevated levels, she replayed that scene in her mind over and over again.

She halted immediately, a flush rising in her cheeks as the agitating feeling from earlier finally became clear. She turned around and looked, wide-eyed, at Snape, who had returned to his papers. Her knees knocked a bit as she gradually gained momentum.

"I have to go," Hermione croaked, more loudly than she had meant to.

"What?" He frowned at her again, but only to see her walking briskly to the doorway. "Miss Granger, where do you think you are going?"

"I-I-I'm going to be sick!" she squeaked shakily as she willed herself not to look the man in the eye. With that she ran from the doorway and down the corridor, as far away from the dungeons as she could get without collapsing.

-o-

Hardly able to hold herself up, the flushed girl leapt into the nearest bathroom and threw herself at the sink. Hermione stared up into her own face, breathing hard and gripping the marble with white knuckles. Turning on the cool water, she cupped it to her face and let the liquid wash over her. Hermione sighed with her face in her hands, utterly embarrassed and yet completely intrigued. She remembered it vividly...her dream.

"Bloody hell, Hermione!" she spat at herself as one particular image swam to the surface of her mind. She inhaled loudly and dove into the image, too weak to control her curiosity.

-o-

She stood in the middle of a small living room...well, she knew it was a living room, but dreams were always so hazy in her opinion...and their surroundings were lit with an eerie green light. Obviously, it was deep in the dungeons, under the lake. Harry had told Hermione about the Slytherin common room once before. She suddenly felt nervous and turned around, reaching in her back pocket where her wand should have been. But, it was not there. It was rather silly of her to assume that it would be because there certainly was no pocket to pull a weapon from. She was wearing a silky celadon-tinted nightgown... in the dungeons. Suddenly, the Potions master appeared out of a door in some unknown direction and walked smoothly to her. It was then that she was in a doorway, and he pushed her up against the jamb and kissed her forcefully. She whimpered as her arms slowly linked around his neck and she relished the feel of his soft lips on hers. Gods, he was an amazing kisser...nothing like Ron or Viktor. His lips were unyielding, and he took from her everything she could give, causing her stomach to tighten with want.

He slowed for a moment, startled...his obsidian eyes darkening, and then he lifted one of her dainty legs to rest in the crook of his elbow. Soon she could feel him losing control but she responded to his movements, accommodating every thrust he made. Desperately she clung to him as his thrusts became even more erratic. Hermione gave a guttural groan as she felt her orgasm surge through her body, from her belly to the tips of her toes and fingers and the roots of her hair. Through her own bliss she could feel Severus fall over the edge with her, crying her name as he spilled into her.

-o-

Hermione was knocked out of her reverie when her bum came in contact with the hard surface of the floor. Shuddering from the very real reaction she just had, she had to take several breaths before getting up and dusting herself off. Her knees buckled a second time, but she caught herself on the edge of the sink, pushing herself up cautiously and looking in the mirror.

"Sweet Nimüe, I am sick," she murmured to her very flushed reflection and then decided another cold splash of water would do her good, even if she had to return to the dungeons for her books... and maybe a trip into the stall beforehand. Yes, maybe.

I think a batch of Dreamless Sleep would do better than my experiment at the moment.

She could not help that although it was utterly embarrassing, it was entirely satisfying. Hermione had never, ever been in a situation like that before, and she marvelled at her overdeveloped imagination. Nothing had ever come close to anything that graphically amazing...not Ron, who had fumbled his way through sex like a blind fish; not even Krum, who had never managed to get his professional Quidditch-playing self into her skivvies. She'd only ever seen a man hook his elbow under a woman's knee while she had been flipping through channels late at night, two summers ago.

Why had that even happened? She never had dreams like that! They were always extremely surreal, punctuated by singing rhinoceroses and people with vegetable appendages...noses and ears, not... that. Had Hermione even realized that she had... those kinds of feelings for her professor?

Well, she did have regular feelings, at least. Hell, she had even bought him a Christmas present! If you could call these... feelings... for a man twenty years her senior 'regular.'

She calmly gathered her resolve and made her way down to the dungeons for another, hopefully 'non-confrontational', altercation. The two ideas certainly did do a right good job of contradicting one another.

--

Severus was not surprised when the girl arrived, nearly fifteen minutes after class had ended. She looked quite pale...not that she hadn't been before, as he had noticed. The currently flustered know-it-all walked slowly up to him, her eyes never leaving the floor as she made her way to the desk.

"I apologize, Professor, for my unexcused absence." She swallowed and continued, wringing her hands absentmindedly in her lap, "I... don't know what came over me."

"Yes you do. But no matter." He tried to appear disinterested and returned to writing his comments for the trimester. "You do realize I must give you detention."

"You give detentions for untimely sneezes in class, Professor. Why would I expect anything less for something much more inexcusable?" She half smiled, but there was a distinct flush in her cheeks that had not been there when she entered his classroom.

Back to the old Hermione, I see. Although... she is still extremely unnerved. About what, I wonder. "Yes, well..." He smiled, despite himself. "I suppose your logic is... undeniable."

"Eight o'clock tomorrow, then?" she sighed shakily, but Severus could not determine why. He wanted to find out what was behind those large, brown, tired eyes of hers and fix whatever bothered her. But it was not that kind of problem. She seemed... nervous. Perhaps it was just her clear lack of sleep.

"As always, Miss Granger." He nodded and excused her. She swung her knapsack over her shoulder and toted it out of the door hurriedly. He admired her shapely, shaking legs as she exited. Forcing himself to look away when she turned to close the door behind her, he growled at his consistent fascination with that girl. Though undoubtedly she is a woman. "Merlin, Severus!"

I cannot punish her in this condition! She's probably using every ounce of energy not to collapse. What good would it do to have her scrub the walls or bottle caustic ingredients? Doubtless she'd blow herself up, the little chit. There is something that is causing her to lose sleep...to act out of character.

"Something must be done," he stated aloud, dropping his quill in the inkpot, and then standing to find a certain portrait of a man who had what some may call an affinity... for lemon drops.

A/N: Okay... Longer chapter than normal...and worth it, I hope! I'm not amazing at lemons, and I apologize to those who were looking for a good T-rated story. T'was not to be. Blame the muse, but also, try to figure out what caused it...and no, it's not JUST her subconscious.

Happy reviewing!