Reciprocation

Disclaimer haiku:

It is hers to profit from...

Never mine, my dears.

* * * * * * * * *

The dream was unlike any Severus had ever experienced.

He could see nothing but a pattern of clear red and pink light swirling behind his eyelids. No images resolved themselves; no story unfolded. There were just these gentle, slow caresses and the cascades of sensation they sent through his skin.

The touching felt remarkably real.

The first sensation that drew him out of the depths of Dreamless Sleep was a tickle on his lip that made him huff out a breath. In his dream, it manifested itself as the brush of a bird's wing. A skylark, he decided with dream-certainty, swooping past him and away.

The next touch couldn't be anything but a hand gently cradling his chin and pressing at his bottom lip to open his mouth. Fingers moved to his ears and threaded through his hair, stroked his neck and shoulders, swept down his arms.

He relaxed, luxuriating in the feeling of being caressed. Different sort of dream... but... nice.

Then his right hand was clasped between two other hands and placed on what felt like a cheek, soft and firm and warm to the touch.

And his finger was being sucked; he could feel the wetness on his flesh, and the suction. Never felt that in a dream before... Wait... why am I dreaming? Didn't I take... potion...?

And hands were on his face again, drawing him into a kiss. Many kisses, actually...slow kisses across the width of his lower lip. And the mouth kissing him seemed to be whispering his name right into his own mouth.

She's here, he thought, and was wholly glad...and instantly impatient. Kiss me like you mean it, girl, he demanded.

The dream kisses continued as before...gentle and maddeningly chaste. Again she whispered his name.

Hermione, he said sharply. Hermione!

Her touch was gone in an instant. He called her again, peremptorily. There was nothing now but the shimmering red and pink, with deep blue beginning to swirl out from the centre of his vision.

This dream was all wrong...alien, blind, disobedient to his will.

Not a dream...

He began fighting his way out of sleep. If this was a spell...if someone had somehow penetrated his very sophisticated wards, he was in considerable danger.

With a supreme effort, Severus broke free of the grip of the potion he'd taken and his eyes snapped open.

'Vestigium!' he panted and thrust out both hands. They brushed against a soft cheek, tangled in thick curly hair, wrapped around the back of a head. He swept his thumb in a wide arc that touched the corner of a mouth, and then he was grasping at formless air. He caught a faint scent of burnt sugar and lemon verbena.

He leapt from the bed and, seizing his wand, strode into his sitting room. It was empty; so were his laboratory and bathroom. When he had ascertained that his wards had not been breached, he stood, naked and furious, in the centre of his darkened sitting room.

Aside from the house-elves, there were only two creatures in the castle...in the world, actually...whom his wards would automatically allow into his rooms. Albus Dumbledore, his Headmaster, was one. Hermione Granger, his teaching assistant, was the other.

That was not Albus he had touched as he awoke. And he doubted the Headmaster had set an actual succubus upon him.

Which meant that Hermione Granger had abused his trust and invaded his privacy with a shockingly ill-considered and mean-spirited prank. Not her style, he thought.

No. It has Potter written all over it.

Severus squeezed his eyes shut, but couldn't block out the image of Potter and Hermione embracing deliriously in the courtyard not eight hours earlier.

He saw he had been telling himself a story about Hermione...that she respected him, enjoyed his company, even liked him. But clearly, any respect she had for him was nothing compared to her loyal subservience to her 'dearest friends.'

How could he have been such an utter, fawning fool?

His rage, coiled up in a dense little ball inside his chest, exploded outward. It was a good thing he was holding his wand and could direct the shockwave into a single, floor-cracking blast. Otherwise his whole sitting room would have been destroyed.

'Reparo,' he hissed, pointing his wand at the smoking chasm at his feet. He reset his wards to exclude her and stalked back to his bedchamber.

For several pitiless hours, he worked to set himself to rights. He analysed every interaction he'd had with Hermione Granger over the months since his injury. In every case he was able to find an explanation for her words and deeds that had nothing to do with connection, friendship, liking, or respect. Instead, on examination he discovered blind ambition, duplicity, bootlicking, and emotional instability.

Whenever a protest arose in his own breast, he smothered it with vicious efficiency.

By morning, he vowed, he would be untouchable again.

* * *

Meanwhile...

Oh god, oh god, oh god, what was that? What have I done?

Hermione lay rigid with terror in her bed. Those hands...someone or something else had been awakened by her spell. Her mind raced through the possibilities.

Were they Severus's astral hands? If so, what did it mean that they reached out to her? Was it a hallucination, or some unexplained side effect of the spell? Or had she perhaps invoked an incubus?

She began weeping in anger and fear. How could she have done this? Just yesterday she had been judging Harry harshly for casting an unknown spell he'd found scrawled in the margin of a book page.

Mine was actually printed in a book...that should make it reliable, shouldn't it? Even as she thought this, though, she remembered her first impression of Magic for Modern Lovers: sloppy, ill organised, poorly edited. And this was her authority. She'd done no research to confirm the details of the spell...she'd never seriously thought she'd use it. It was just an idea, a prop for her fantasy life. Until last night.

I am never, ever, ever drinking alcohol again, ever. Ever.

It was all she could do to not leap from her bed, sneak into the boys' dormitory, steal Harry's cloak, and break into the library.

I can't. I can't take more risks and break more rules. Not tonight.

Instead, she made a list of subject areas to search in the morning, when she could legitimately use the library, writing down book and journal titles when she could remember them.

Astral plane studies was a branch of metaphysics that overlapped with some fields of divination, especially chaomancy and astrology. Hermione had always had about as much respect for the field as she had for divination as a whole. She'd thought of it as a soft subject, a debased form of which was popular among Witch Weekly readers.

In the morning, however, she proposed to make herself into an expert...too late, but still. She had to find out what on earth she'd just done.

* * *

Sunday morning, 9 o'clock

Irma Pince found Hermione Granger slumped on the floor beside the library door, waiting for Irma to open it. The girl looked exhausted, even a little ill.

'Good morning, Miss Granger,' said Irma, pursing her lips. 'You're here very early, are you not?' She so disliked it when the students came into her library and handled her books, and Hermione Granger was one of the very worst. The girl had touched the great majority of books in Hogwarts' collection, some of them repeatedly and for extended periods of time. She was trouble, that one.

'Good morning, Madam Pince.' The girl scrambled to her feet and smiled wanly. 'I have a big, um, big project I'm having difficulty with, and I, er, thought of a new approach last night that I'm eager to research.'

Irma pushed open the heavy oak door and ushered Granger in. 'Mmmff. Very well,' she replied. 'You know where to find me if you need help with anything.' She turned and walked into her windowless office.

Hermione trawled the journals section of the library, finding relevant back issues of International Metaphysics Review, Theoretical Transdimensional Studies Quarterly, and Journal of Practical Celestial Magick. She was heading into the book stacks when the owl arrived.

It was a school owl, and it held out its leg with a very bored expression as she untied the parchment scroll, hands trembling.

Her stomach clenched when she saw the familiar handwriting:

Hermione had to sit on the floor to avoid falling.

Of all the possible scenarios she'd come up with the night before, this augured worst: that Severus knew, somehow, what she'd done. Why else would he demand her presence on a Sunday morning?

She checked her watch: it was 9:25. Desperate as she was to find some answers to her questions before she had to face him, there would not be time for that now.

The next hour or so would be better spent settling her mind so that she was not in a complete panic when she reported to his office.

She tapped the stacks of journals she'd gathered, and they flew back to their shelves. Already on the move, she Transfigured her jeans, jumper, and shoes into track suit and trainers.

She would run part of the lakeside path. That would calm her if anything could.

* * *

Sunday morning, 11 o'clock

She knocked.

'Enter,' he called, and she felt the wards go down. Which meant he had reset them against her.

With an effort, she kept her spine straight and shoulders square as she walked into his office.

Snape was standing behind his desk, arms crossed. His expression could not have been colder.

Hermione walked forward to stand opposite him. 'Good morning, sir,' she said weakly. Shoulders UP, Hermione.

He didn't deign to reply. He just held out his hand, palm up.

'Give me your wand.'

'My wha... my w-wand?'

'Your. Wand. Now.'

She handed it over, grip first, as though she were surrendering a sword. He would be casting Prior Incantato. Of course. She was caught.

He touched her wand's tip with his own, and out flowed a ghostly image of hands sweeping through the air. The image disappeared almost instantly.

'Let's try the penultimate one, shall we?' he murmured. The hands reappeared again, and around the hands, pink and red lights flickered over expanses of skin.

'Deletrius,' Snape muttered, and the images disappeared. He laid both wands, side by side, on his desktop. He bowed his head and was silent for a moment. When he looked up at her, his eyes were hot with anger.

'Miss Granger,' he growled. 'What possessed you to use an illegal reciprocating charm on a teacher in this school? A fourth-year student would have no difficulty tracing that spell. Are you going to tell me that you cast it by mistake, or are you actually insane?'

Reciprocating. Traceable. Hermione closed her eyes. Her ears were roaring, and she felt she might vomit, or faint, or both. She had used a reciprocating love spell on Professor Snape. Everything she had done with her hands and mouth last night, he had felt on his own body.

He's going to kill me now. I'm going to be expelled. He'll kill me and the Headmaster will expel me and then I'll kill myself.

For a minute or two it took everything she had to keep from bolting, but slowly she breathed her racing heart into a slower rhythm. Running away would solve nothing.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. 'I think... now that you mention it... I might not be altogether sane, actually.' She stifled a hysterical giggle. 'But it was deliberate, what I did. You were the... I wanted... I didn't make a mistake.'

His scowl deepened, and two spots of colour appeared high on his cheeks. 'Is that what you think? Shall I begin to list the mistakes that have brought you here this morning?'

Hermione shook her head. 'That's not what I meant. Of course... my judgement... I mean, I've been stupid, reckless, thoughtless...'

She paused to try to collect herself. 'I wanted to know how it felt to, to... touch you. I had no idea the spell was reciprocating. I would never have dreamt of invading your privacy and your, your...' she trailed off miserably.

'"Body" is, I believe, the word you are looking for,' he hissed with hot fury. 'My body, Miss Granger, mine. One of the few things I am not obliged to share or compromise in this asylum for adolescents. I am not a prop for your games, and I do not relish being the butt of this sort of... joke.'

She was aghast. He thought she had been trying to make a fool of him, or torment him, or worse. Of course that's what he would think...that last night was some sort of crude, baiting joke. This was a nightmare.

'Oh, Professor S-snape, no. Please...' she turned a horrified look on him. 'I have...' How to say this? 'I have, have fancied you for months. Since the end of my fifth year.'

She babbled on in anguish. 'I know it's a crush, and nothing but... but fantasy and imagination. When I let it begin it seemed harmless; but it's become so strong and now...' Again she ran out of words.

His eyes were narrowed and his jaws clenched. 'Really, Miss Granger,' he ground out. 'You fancy me? Your prevaricative skills are truly impressive, but my patience has run out. You will accompany me to Gryffindor Tower, where you can answer to Professor McGonagall in the Headmaster's absence.'

'Oh, no, please!' How could this possibly be getting even worse? 'If you don't believe what I say, I'll, I'll take Veritaserum. Or...or look at my thoughts. Use Legilimency. I... I give you my permission,' she faltered.

'Your permission,' he sneered. 'Such niceties, Miss Granger. I need hardly point out the irony. Legilimens!'

And he was inside her head. She stared into his angry black eyes as he pushed around impatiently, finding conversations she'd had with Harry about him...Harry usually hostile, she often defending Snape on principle.

He brushed past memories from her fourth year, when she, Ron, and Harry had learned of Snape's Dark past, and Ron had become convinced he was still a Death Eater. He flicked across memories of the many arguments the three of them had had ever since about why Dumbledore still trusted him.

Then... she felt his mind slow down when he reached the memory of that particular day in fifth year when she'd first noticed the loveliness of his hands. She gulped and braced herself for what he would see next, trying to keep her gaze as steady as possible.

He seemed to linger over each vivid fantasy, as though he were slowly pulling petals off a flower and rubbing them between his fingers before he let them fall.

In scene after scene, Fantasy Snape kissed, licked, sucked, touched her, entering her with fingers, tongue, and cock, stroking his beautiful scarred hands over her flesh and tangling them in her hair.

He saw Lavender lending her the great pink book; he saw her reading it and copying out Percipio Corium. He moved through her anguish when he was hurt; her terror and joy when she realised how she felt about him; her pride in helping him with the Iecur Fortis potion and her pleasure in his company; her constant yearning.

Snape broke the connection and wheeled away from his desk, breathing audibly but saying nothing.

Hermione dropped her eyes to the desk, and she clutched at its edge. She was nearly stunned with shame. How could this be any better than being dragged up to McGonagall's office?

She was also, unbelievably, almost overwhelmingly aroused. The collective force of her fantasies had hit her like a Bludger. Blood pounded between her legs, feverish shivers rippled over her skin, the tiny hairs all along her spine stood up. Her underwear was soaked.

Oh, really, Hermione!

Tears flooded her eyes (again) and she squeezed them shut and wept in earnest, shoulders shaking, knuckles white as she gripped the edge of his desk. After a while...she didn't know how long...her sobs abated. She shuddered out a breath and opened her eyes to stare wretchedly down at the desk.

'I'm so sorry, sir. You must think very b-badly of me, but I never meant to hurt you.' She snuffled. 'I have worked s-so hard to keep my th-thoughts to myself, to make sure n-no one suspected. I know my feelings are my own, and don't involve you. I thought, I thought, that stupid spell would be private. I thought it was safe.' She dug into her pocket for her handkerchief and used it to swipe at her dripping chin before balling it up in her fist.

Then his arms were curled around her.

He had come up behind her quite soundlessly. One forearm pressed her, from breast to collarbone, back into his body. Long cool fingers cupped her jaw, grazing her mouth, which had fallen open on a sharp shallow intake of breath. The pad of his thumb stroked the wetness from the corner of her left eye. The other arm wrapped around her belly and hips. He pulled her back another inch or two, crushing her into the front of his body, and oh sweet Merlin she could feel, through at least five layers of cloth, that he was hard.

She let her head fall back against him, and the skin of her temple grazed his neck, where a pulse pounded. He breathed in deeply, burying his nose and mouth in the top of her head, and with that breath he tightened his grip on her.

His mouth moved down so that his lips were brushing the outer curve of her ear. He growled very softly, 'Does this feel safe to you?'

Reaching up, he moved aside her hair and mouthed her neck, lips closing delicately on her flesh, whispering, 'Or this?'

'N-no,' she finally managed.

He nestled an inch further down her neck and this time she felt the touch of teeth and tongue.

Elation flamed out along every nerve in her body, blossoming darkly in her belly and shooting white fire through her brain.

He wanted her. He was kissing her neck and holding her body against his racing heart and hard cock.

She slumped against him, limbs momentarily undone by a wave of obliterating lust. Her damp handkerchief fell, forgotten, from her hand to the floor.

'Shall I stop now? I should stop. But shall I?' He bit the spot where her pulse beat strongest.

Gasping, she froze for a moment, stupefied by another surge of desire.

Then she wrenched herself around in his embrace and seized the front of his robes, pouring into his black eyes a look of dazed appetite. 'Yes, you stop,' she croaked. 'My turn.'

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A/N: Spells used in this chapter include Vestigium, a spell to trace the origins of another spell (noncanon spell; i.e., I made it up); and Deletrius, which dispels the images evoked by Prior Incantato (both canon spells).

Note illustration by QalaChaki; larger size can be seen at her DA page at http://qalachaki.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2e7c1l.

What? Oh, was that an evil cliffie? Hmmm, yes, I suppose it was. *cackles and runs about in an ecstasy of evilness*