Exploration

Disclaimer: She owns it.

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The library was clotted with fifth-years and seventh-years cramming for OWLs and NEWTs, respectively. Of course.

Severus glared at the twitchy little blighters as he passed among them, looking for Hermione.

There she was, at one of the small tables against the outer wall, her books spread out over the entire surface, her bag occupying the chair next to her.

Everything in him surged towards her. It was extremely trying to have to stop a yard away from her table. Rather than, say, pulling her out of her chair and pressing her against the wall...

Future assignations would not be taking place in the damned library in front of an audience of dozens.

'Miss Granger,' he said, and she looked up. Her features were set in a neutral expression, but her eyes were molten and her cheeks flushed.

'Oh, hello, Professor Snape,' she said crisply. 'I made a list for you.' And she pulled a parchment from her bag and handed it to him. On it she had written:

I have spelled two Galleons that will allow us to communicate with each other any time without detection. Yours is under that copy of Advanced Principles of Arithmancy.

He raised an eyebrow. 'This is a good start, but I can think of two or three more sources you should check. May I?' He gestured at the chair.

'Certainly,' she said, and moved her bag to the floor. 'Here.' She handed him a quill.

He sat down and wrote:

I need to see you alone, now. Meet me upstairs in the Dark Charms aisle in ten minutes. I'll arrange the pass with Pince.

He pushed the parchment back over to her and, while she read it, he slid the Galleon from under her Arithmancy book.

She rolled the parchment and stuck it in the pocket of her robes, then pulled a Galleon out of the same pocket. Under cover of a stack of books, she touched her wand to her coin.

He felt the coin in his hand flash hot, and he looked at it.

Yes was inscribed around the edge of the coin, circling the rampant Hippogriff on its reverse.

I'm mad about you, he thought.

'May I have that list again?' he asked. 'I've thought of one more source. A crucial one.'

She handed it back to him and he wrote:

Destroy this.

Her face was crimson now. 'Thank you, sir,' she said. 'I will, um, look into that one right away.' She began to gather her things and shove them into her bag. The parchment had gone back into her pocket.

'Fine. That should be enough for you to be going on with.' He rose and nodded curtly to her, then stalked over to the door of Madam Pince's office.

'Irma. My TA, Miss Granger, needs access to the Restricted Section this evening. Dark Charms. Will you please set the wards to let her in?'

'Very well, Professor,' said Irma tightly. 'You're fortunate to have caught me, I'm just on my way to my rooms.'

'Really? And who will be locking up for you tonight?'

'Argus will. He sometimes does. I thought you knew that.' She sniffed. 'I can't be here all the time, you know. I do have a life of my own to live.'

'Yes, of course,' Severus said absently, letting the notion of Irma Pince's private life go unexamined. 'Good night.'

This is going to be easier than I'd imagined, he thought as he waited in the corridor, concealed by a tapestry, for Irma to leave the library.

Back inside, he took the narrow stairs to the Restricted Section two at a time. At the top, he paused. These stacks were a warren. It would be nearly impossible to secure the entire section...and really, too risky to try. He would have to settle for securing the Dark Charms aisle. It was at the very back of the stacks, and had only one opening.

He walked towards it, readying the spells he'd need.

She was already there, halfway down the row, studying the tattered dragonhide spine of Krakauer's The Uses of Pestilence in Warfare: Spells and Stratagems by wand light.

Muffliato. Repello Sulum Alio. Confundo Quislibet. He cast the spells at the entrance to the aisle and strode towards her. She turned at his approach and stepped forward to meet him.

He grabbed her shoulders, pulled her roughly in to his body, and covered her mouth with his. She moaned and opened to his kiss. Her hands swooped up his back underneath his robes, fingers digging into the muscles of his shoulders. Her wand clattered to the floor.

Gods, the RELIEF! Severus had found much of the time since he'd left her in his rooms quite tolerable, even pleasant, as it was passing. But nothing...nothing...could compare to the warming, dizzying spill of sensation that flowed through him at her touch.

She was up against the bookshelves, one of his legs wedged between hers. He bent his knee to lift her up a little, bringing her face closer to his.

He grunted, surprised, when he felt her grinding herself against his leg. He brought his hands down to hold her hips and cup her jeans-clad arse and shifted to press his leg more firmly into her groin. He broke the kiss and pulled back to look at her face, rapt and flushed with desire in the white glow of wand light.

Ah, god. Here, now, in the library stacks? Really? He bent to kiss her again.

One of her hands fluttered down against the shelves, and it started a small cascade of brittle leather fragments from the bindings of the rare and precious books she was leaning against.

'Oh, the books!' she squeaked, stopping all forms of kissing, clutching, and trouser-riding she'd been engaged in.

Hardly missing a beat, he seized her hand and pulled her to the very back of the aisle, where it ended in a blank stone wall. He whirled her around so her back was against the wall, and dropped her hand. 'Here, then,' he growled.

Wordlessly, he Summoned her lit wand and inserted it between two books to his right, just above his head. He lit his own wand and placed it to his left. The effect was of two glowing torches bathing them both in pale light.

For a moment, they just looked at each other.

Then he reached out a hand, slipped it between her legs, and gently squeezed.

'Aaaahhh,' she whimpered and stared at him wide-eyed. She stood, frozen, for several long seconds; then, keeping her eyes on his, she pressed herself into his hand. She was tentative at first. But soon she'd braced her own hands against the wall and begun pulsing her hips out to meet him as he rhythmically pressed his fingers and palm into the seam of her jeans just... there.

Severus had been with a number of women over the past two decades, some of them skilled and uninhibited lovers. Never had he experienced anything so stirring as the look, sound, and feel of the virginal and fully clothed Hermione Granger riding his hand.

He was overwhelmingly aroused, his cock aching to bury itself in her. But she needed something more than a quick fuck in the stacks for her first time. Deserves it, he thought, his gaze fixed on her luminous eyes.

Still, he could give her something they were both hungry for.

'Hermione,' he growled, giving her a squeeze that made her moan, then pulling his hand away. 'Do you trust me?'

* * *

'Do you trust me?'

Not if you take your hand away NOW. She moaned again, this time in protest.

'Do you?'

'Yes,' she breathed. 'Yes, of course.'

She made to close the gap between them and Severus stopped her with two fingers on her shoulder. 'No. Stay there. Keep still.'

He stepped up so he was just inches away from her, and put one hand lightly on her thigh. He tipped her chin up with the other hand and began kissing her softly. Her eyes fluttered closed, then jolted open when she felt her jeans Transfigure into a skirt.

Severus trailed languorous kisses to her ear while his hands began to move...one down from her chin to cradle her neck, the other sliding under her skirt up and up her bare thigh, caressing her skin with the lightest strokes of his long, rough fingers.

Dizzy now, heart pounding, she had to put her hands on his shoulders for support. Hanging on him a little, she widened her stance.

Then his hand was back where it had been, but this time only a little bit of thin cotton separated his fingers from her... from there. And then he moved the cotton aside, and two fingers dragged through the wetness between her legs, from the hot centre up to oh GODGODGOD.

'Is this how you are when you sit in my classroom?' he whispered in her ear. 'When you pass me in the corridor?' He stroked and pressed. 'Is it?'

'Aaaahh... yes,' she managed. 'Yes.'

'That's good, Hermione. I want you this way. I want to think of you wet... and aching... When I look at you I want to remember... how you smell... ' He breathed in. Pulling back to look in her eyes, he brought his fingers up to his lips. 'And how you taste.' He put them in his mouth and pulled them out again, then brought them back down to stroke and press more, to tease at the opening of her sex. His eyes never left hers. 'How you feel.' And a finger was ohgod inside her. She gasped and pushed against him, wanting deeper wanting more. 'How you sound,' he murmured in her ear. And now uuuuuhh was that... another finger and... doing something with his thumb...

'Do you want this, Hermione?' His voice is SO... she didn't have the word for it. He interspersed his words with tiny kisses, his breath hot on her skin, his hand doing godohgod things to her.

'Mmmmahh, yes, god, please. Severus.' Yes, I want this, want you, want you to, to, to take me... Even unvoiced, the thought made her insides churn with fear and desire. Is this really going to happen now, in the library?

But suddenly, he dropped to his knees before her and his hands slid up the outsides of her thighs, rucking her skirt up to her hips. 'Diffindo,' he hissed. One hand yanked at her knickers and they came away. She felt utterly exposed. Shocked, she stared down at the top of his head.

'Beautiful,' he said. He kissed the tops of her thighs, one after the other. 'So beautiful.' And then his mouth was on her, his tongue tracing and retracing the path his fingers had forged.

Oh... God...

Now he was, um, mouth there... so warm and soft and rough and OHYESTHAT, oh gods fingers again, one and... two inside.

She was full of him, covered by him but more, more, there has to be more I need it now.

Her hands went to his head, steering him stop there yes that yes yes 'Oh god yes, just, oh, there, ahhmmm, ohhhhh GOD...'

When she came, it felt like her whole body was being swept out to sea between her own legs; like she was drowning, wrapped in a shroud made of silk and honey.

Severus kept his mouth on her, drinking in her ecstasy the whole time she shuddered and bucked and pulled at his head...

When she was still at last, her hands making gentle, random little strokes on his head and shoulders, he kissed her thighs again, twice each. She trembled. In four silent seconds, he cleaned her and restored her clothing to its original state, rose to his feet, and folded her into his arms. She gave a wild little sob and nestled in to him.

Severus stiffened a bit. Was that a happy noise or an unhappy one?

He circled one hand over her back and murmured, 'You are entirely lovely, do you know it?'

He tightened his arms around her briefly, then bent to kiss her on forehead, nose, mouth. She responded hesitantly at first, then clutched at his waistcoat and kissed him fervently.

When her hands started sliding down his body, he captured them in his and pulled away from her with a groan. 'Ah, Hermione. We need to stop or we will still be here when Mr Filch comes to lock up.'

He kissed the backs of her hands, one at a time, then kissed the insides of her wrists, then dropped her hands.

'You go first, I think,' he said. 'I will follow after a few minutes. Here.' He plucked both their wands from among the books and used his to spell smooth her hair and clothes. 'Better. Tomorrow I'll get you a potion to conceal, shall we say, signs of emotion? Your blush when you looked at me in the Great Hall this evening was very becoming, but perhaps a little suspicious.'

She blushed again. 'You saw that? Well, I suppose you would. I, um, I was wearing a glamour that will conceal... that sort of thing... from anyone who doesn't know how I feel about you.' She smiled at him a little shakily. 'So that would mean...everyone but you.'

He looked at her appraisingly. 'That's good. I suppose the glamour will do for now. And the parchment from earlier?'

'I Incendio'd it in the toilet before I came up here,' she said, looking rather satisfied at her own aptitude for secret doings.

'Well then,' he murmured. 'I think we have no other business to discuss here.' He cupped her cheek and jaw in one hand; she leaned into it.

'Good night, Miss Granger. Until tomorrow.'

'Good night, Professor Snape.'

He narrowed his eyes and smiled his phantom smile as she walked down the row of bookshelves, turned the corner, and was gone.

* * *

Dazed.

That's what she was. At the head of the stairs leading down to the main library rooms, Hermione stopped and held out her hand in front of her. It was trembling, just like the rest of her body.

Where was she going now? Where could she go? The public parts of the library were unthinkable; so was the common room, even if she was just passing through on her way to bed. There was no way she could act normally around anyone at all just yet. She wanted to still be with him. Not out here trying to decide how to hide from the world.

Suddenly she knew where to go. She looked at her watch. Thirty-eight minutes until curfew. Not much time, but it would have to do.

* * *

Hermione hoisted herself up onto the ledge and leaned back.

At least here she could be alone and also, in a way, close to him.

The double windows showed a sky still aglow above the castle battlements; sunset had been a bare quarter of an hour ago. The days were growing very long, this far north.

Hermione gave a little snort. A long day indeed.

Twenty-four hours ago, she had been on her way to the kitchens on a tide of butterbeer and frustrated lust. Twenty-four minutes ago, she had been half-naked in the Restricted Section with her teacher's face between her legs. Doing... god... delicious, amazing things.

She'd never been able to make herself come like that. It had been deeper but somehow softer than the usual sharp, bright lightening. Voluptuous, was what it had been.

And that had been a scene straight out of her own fantasy life...the secrecy, the stolenness, the inappropriateness of it. And the heat of it. Though the real thing was approximately one million times more intense than the fantasy. That was really him doing those things. Real Snape...Real Severus. That was her taste in his mouth when they kissed...tangy, briny. His voice telling her she was lovely...no, entirely lovely.

And that was just... we didn't even... HOW was she going to live through what they would do next...whatever it would be? How would she survive until then, buttoned down and pretending everything was just normal?

Another thought occurred to her. Had he planned tonight to be an enactment of her fantasies? She tried to imagine asking him that, but couldn't. She could share... that ... with him but she shied away from talking about it. Just eleven hours ago she would never have dreamed...

... And again, it's been a long, strange, life-changing day, she thought, a little impatient with the way she kept circling back to the same thought, as though her brain had short-circuited. And I wish I had time and space to get used to all this. And I wish I were with him somewhere, alone together, instead of sitting here hiding from everyone, alone by myself. But that is not how it is. It's ten minutes to curfew and I have to go be normal now.

She hopped down from the ledge and ran up the stairs to the fourth floor door.

Halfway down the corridor that led to the main staircase, she stopped and smacked her forehead. She'd forgotten to show him how the Galleons were used. Her whole pretext for asking him to meet her in the library in the first place, and she'd muffed it.

She ducked into an empty classroom and pulled out her Galleon. Gathering her intention, she touched her wand to the coin. Professor, she inscribed on it. Then, This uses a Protean Charm. Incantation Reor est ut inscribe.

In seconds her Galleon flashed hot and she read, Full marks, Miss Granger. That message faded, then I can still taste you flared around the Hippogriff.

Hermione sagged into a chair in the darkened room, the Galleon clutched in her lap. She could not think of a single thing to say in reply to that. She had to say something. She settled for Good night, Severus.

With two minutes to spare before curfew, she stood before the Fat Lady and took a deep, calming breath, then another. 'Springtime,' she said.

'Isn't it, though, my dear?' sighed the Fat Lady, casting her eyes coyly up at the Merry Monk on the adjoining wall.

The Monk winked and raised his glass to the Lady, who blushed and tittered as she swung open to admit that nice Granger girl to the Gryffindor common room. 'Sleep well, love.'

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A/N: Spells and incantations in this chapter are all essentially canon spells, but I made them specific to my needs:

Repello Sulum Alio: repel everyone

Confundo Quislibet: confuse anyone

Reor est ut inscribe: to think is to inscribe

(Again with the Internet Latin. Not a Latin scholar. *g*)

There is a wonderful illustration connected with this chapter, but it's a gif and I can't embed it here. It's an illustration of the Galleon coin with Severus's message to Hermione, it's by the phenomenal QalaChaki, and it's at http://qalachaki.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2el8sr.

Did I ever mention how great my beta and Brit-picking team is? Once or twice? Well, I'll say it again. They are the bestest.