Preparations

Disclaimer: I own many things. These characters and settings are not among them.

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

Hermione woke up when the common room clock chimed one. She was curled up on the sofa that faced the hearth, and she was cold.

A few dull orange embers glowed in the ashy grate. Had she missed him? No, she was sure she'd just nodded off a few minutes ago. Professor Lupin had not made an appearance.

Hermione wasn't sure whether she was more relieved or disappointed.

On one hand, the idea of lying to Lupin made her feel queasy.

On the other hand, the Marauders' Map was a problem. Harry, obsessed with Draco Malfoy's doings, looked at the Map every day. It made any rendezvous with Severus that much riskier.

She huddled into herself and thought, for the twentieth time, of their meeting yesterday.

He'd pulled her up into his arms and kissed her hair, her face, and her mouth, taking his own taste into his mouth...

She remembered holding his gaze, leaning forward shamelessly into his hand...

The clock chimed the quarter hour and the embers in the grate suddenly blazed up. Professor Lupin's face flickered into view.

'Hallo, Hermione' he said. 'Sorry I'm late. I was detained but thought I'd pop in and see if I'd missed you. I'm glad you're still there.'

Hermione swallowed her surprise and smiled at him. 'Thank you for coming, Professor,' she said, sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace so they could talk quietly.

'Happy to help,' he said. 'You're sure everything is okay? Harry's fine? You're all okay?'

She blushed. 'Yes, we're all perfectly fine.' Just sitting here thinking filthy thoughts, Professor, nothing out of the ordinary.

'Good, good. So...the Map.' Floo-Lupin grinned. 'One of my favourite pieces of Charms work, I must say.'

'You made it yourself?' Hermione asked, impressed.

'I did. Fifth year. I got the idea in History of Magic when Binns, er, when Professor Binns set an essay on the Third Goblin War. I chose the Siege of Dunsbury to write about, and while I was researching I found it.'

'Found what, exactly, sir?'

'Aha, well! Didn't Hooke's account of how the assassin finally got through to the inner court and actually found Queen Mab strike you as rather thin?'

'Well, treason... and, luck, really, wasn't it?'

'Yes, treason got the assassin into the castle and gave him the tool he needed, but luck had little to do with the rest. That place was a labyrinth, and the queen kept her animal form nearly all the time after the first two assassination attempts. No, the assassin had a map that was keyed to the castle and its occupants. Made it really easy for him to find her spider's web, bide his time until she was alone, and then just...pfft.'

'That's...I've never heard any of that before.' Hermione frowned, thinking of her HoM O.W.L. She'd got full marks on her account of the Siege of Dunsbury and the assassination of the goblin Queen Mab IV. 'Where did you read about that?'

'Right in the Hogwarts library. Look for Lawrence Larrabee's Whose Treasure? Its subtitle is Revisiting, Revising, and Revisioning the History of Britain's Goblins and Faerie Folk or something horrible like that. Most British historians think it's boll...um, rubbish, because Larrabee's a goblin sympathiser and also an American. But he was right about the map.'

At any other time, Hermione would have loved to hear more. Just now she wanted Lupin to come to the point.

'So how does it work?'

'It's actually a goblin version of a Protean Charm...more complex, obviously, but the principle's the same. Then a Fidelius Charm to hide the Map's true markings...and a few other little charms for fun.' Lupin chuckled fondly to himself.

'But how could the anchoring object be a whole castle and everyone in it?' This was far beyond the scope of any Protean Charm Hermione had ever heard of.

'As I said, it's goblin magic. An unjustly neglected field of study, as it happens. You know Hogwarts was built by goblins, yes? The Map is anchored on the castle's cornerstone, which is just thick with goblin magic. It's quite a story, how we located the cornerstone. You see, James...'

'I'd love to hear it sometime,' Hermione cut in. 'I'm sure it was very, um, very exciting.'

'Yes, well, to cut a long one short, then,' Lupin said, 'I'm quite confident the Map is safe. You can double-check the spell...Larrabee has a translation in one of his appendices...but I think the only way it could be broken or corrupted would be if the castle's cornerstone were somehow compromised. And if that were the case...well, we'd know because Hogwarts would be uninhabitable.'

'How so?'

'Flooded by lake water, for one thing. Visible to Muggles, for another. Merlin knows what else.'

'Well,' said Hermione. 'That's a relief, then. The Map's safe. Good. Okay.' Damn it.

'Hermione, really, are you all right? You seem, I don't know... rather down.'

She summoned a smile. 'Just tired, I think. It's late. Thank you so much for putting my mind at ease about the Map. I'll check Larrabee, of course, if you don't mind.'

'Why would I mind, my dear girl? It eases my mind to know you are being so forward-looking about Harry's safety. He's lucky to have you on his side...as are we all. Good night.' And Lupin was gone.

'Good night,' Hermione said dully to the grate. Plan A...somehow altering the Marauder's Map to conceal her whereabouts as needed...seemed rather hopeless. Plan B, a handful of stopgap measures, hardly merited the name. And she'd had to endure Lupin's affectionate praise, when she was being a self-serving sneak. Just lovely.

Stumbling with exhaustion and leaking guilty tears, she left the common room for the sanctuary of her own bed.

* * *

Tuesday morning, Severus noticed that he had begun avoiding mirrors. This made him wonder what he thought he was playing at.

Was it easier for him to justify his actions if he didn't look at himself? Or...ridiculously...if he confirmed with his own eyes just how unlovely he was, would she somehow realise it too?

So he forced himself to take a good long look after he shaved.

Apparently, this is love's young dream, he thought sardonically. Not sinister, repulsive, and old, but... Graceful? Beautiful?

He snorted. Right, well. I don't have to subscribe to her opinion of me.

As to whether or not his actions were justified, well, of course they weren't. And of course they were. Take your pick. Regardless, for a moment she would be his, and when that moment had passed he had plans A and B to protect her from the damage to come.

Speaking of protection, he turned with a grimace to the shelf behind him.

The potion was as foul as he remembered, thick and goopy and tasting of rusted metal and rotten vegetation. And there was a nasty burning in his testicles as it took effect.

Contraceptive potions for women, though, tasted even worse...he knew: he'd tried one once out of curiosity. There was an ancient joke (doubtless with a kernel of truth) that the potions were so effective not because they prevented fertilisation but because they made women too nauseated and resentful to want sex after all.

This was not, at present, a result Severus was willing to risk.

* * *

Tuesday morning, Hermione's guilt receded in the face of necessity.

'I just don't understand why you feel like you need to check on it, Hermione. It's always been completely reliable.'

Hermione sighed. 'I know, Harry. It's probably not necessary, especially after what Lupin told me about it. But I'm curious. And it can't hurt to be sure it's still working the way it should. I promise I'll look at it whenever I can and let you know if I see Crabbe and Goyle lurking outside the Room of Requirement. Wouldn't you rather have the day off of Malfoy-watch, anyway? To concentrate on Ginny?'

Low, Hermione, so low.

'But it's Tuesday. You'll be closeted with the gr...with Snape tonight, won't you? What if he sees it?'

She rolled her eyes. 'Of course I won't let him see it, Harry. He probably won't even be in his sitting room for most of the evening. I don't expect we'll be lounging around the fire chatting.'

Three true statements. Two of them also utterly deceitful. I am going straight to hell.

'All right, Mione. I'll get it to you before lunch.' Harry smiled at her. 'Thanks.'

She smiled back out of sheer relief. 'Don't thank me, Harry. Please. I just want all of us to be safe.' To hell. On the fast train.

'And I'm really very curious about this spell. How is it we don't have a single practical lesson on goblin magic at Hogwarts? Dumbledore's curriculum choices are so baffling sometimes.'

Harry opened the classroom door and followed her in, mumbling something noncommittal. Each lost in private thoughts, they settled into seats across the aisle from each other and waited for McGonagall to start the lesson.

* * *

He'd had the bed made freshly. He'd had a wank and a wash. He'd Obscured the windows in his rooms. He'd brushed his teeth and given himself a long, sour stare in his shaving mirror.

What the fuck was there to do now but wait, and try not to think too much?

The last thing Severus had ever wanted was to bed one of the young girls who flowed through his classroom over the years. He'd always found it easy (and prudent) to resist their charms...especially in the earlier years when his grief over Lily, and his guilt, had darkened everything.

Yet here he was, rattling about his own rooms, waiting for the teenage virgin he was in thrall to. He'd seen her four times today...at meals and once in the fourth-floor corridor between lessons. Each time a dizzying gut-punch, even when he was expecting to see her.

This was nearly intolerable.

He sat down and reached for a book.

There was, as it happened, no section on 'deflowering a virgin' in 101 Ways to Drive a Witch Wild by the editors of WQ Magazine. Indeed, five minutes' paging through the 'Seductions' chapter prompted Severus to throw the book into the fireplace and jab it with a poker into the hottest part of the fire.

Apparently he was supposed to give special attention to his clothing. Plan some smooth compliment he'd pay her once she entered the room. Think about lighting and scents and wine and all sorts of clichéd fucking nonsense.

He was irritated at himself for looking at the idiotic book. But nearly all of his sexual experience had been with older women, married women, divorced women, prostitutes...people for whom fucking was a matter of course. Even his own first time had had nothing to do with love or tenderness. (How could it?)

He fled into his laboratory, tied his long apron, pulled on his protective gloves, and began weighing and measuring ingredients from a new delivery.

The clock struck the half hour. She wasn't there yet. She was never late. Why was she late?

He pulled out a knife and split open a sack of dried Amorphophallus titanum spadices on the middle workbench. The flowers' faint reek filled his nostrils, and he began to pick the tangle of wizened spadices apart into piles according to their size and condition.

He was crouching in front of a low cabinet feeling around in the back for a box of pint jars (he could have sworn the fucking jars were there) when he felt her come in. Didn't hear her, see her, or smell her...he felt her: that strange surge of magic he'd begun to experience in her presence, but much stronger this time. Like a chord scored for the full orchestra.

He rose to find her standing in the doorway of his laboratory. In the time it took him to get to her, he pulled off and flung aside his gloves and apron.

'You're late,' he growled, glaring down at her.

'Six minutes, only,' she protested, a little breathless. She reached a hand up to his cheek.

'Don't be late,' he said. I needed you six minutes ago.

Up came her other hand, pulling his face down to hers. 'Here now,' she murmured, then put her mouth on his. She kissed him, pulling his lower lip into her mouth, sucking and gently biting it.

Fuck it, I needed you hours ago. He bracketed her head with his hands and began kissing her with long, hard, demanding kisses, crushing, sucking, biting, his tongue thrusting into her mouth.

Kissing ravenously along her jaw to her ear, he muttered, 'Never... be... late.'

'No,' she gasped, hands fisted in his hair, pulling him in to that one spot on her throat.

Some minutes later, she was leaning in to him, face against his frock coat. They hadn't yet moved from the doorway, but had finally paused to breathe.

Holding her, Severus was aware of the sense of vivid well-being she brought with her. He could feel his own heartbeat, strong and even.

He spoke into her hair. 'Now we've re-established the value of punctuality, come with me. Please.' And he led her by the hand to the sitting room sofa.

Nestled into the crook of his arm, legs tucked up beside her, she glanced over at his desk, at her usual chair. 'Are we going to go over the lesson plans, um, tonight?'

He looked down at her through narrowed eyes. 'No. We are not. We will not have time for that. I mean to have you properly tonight. Do you understand?'

She sagged against him a little, then pulled herself up and twisted round to look him in the face. 'Yes,' she said. 'That, um... yes. That was my plan, too. I'm glad you agree. I just didn't want to take anything, you know, for granted.' She blushed.

Heat washed through him, melting his last doubts.

'No, it wouldn't do to take anything for granted.' He picked up her hand and raised it to his mouth, curling her fingers into her palm and kissing the inside of her wrist. He cast a silent spell. 'Better to be explicit.'

He opened her fingers, revealing a spray of tiny white flowers in the hollow of her hand. As she watched, he pinched them up, crushing them between thumb and forefinger and bringing the bruised little blossoms to his nose, then to hers.

He pushed his fingers into her hair, leaving the broken flowers tangled there. She made a little strangled noise.

Pulling away from her enough that they were no longer touching at all, he looked straight into her wide, dark eyes.

'Let me be explicit about my own plans,' he said. 'We can then decide if we're in agreement on the important points.'

He pitched his voice low, lapping her with the sound of it.

'In a moment I'm going to lead you into my bedroom. There, I will take off your clothes as though I were unwrapping a sweet. Slowly, I think, this time. I'll lay you on my bed, with your hair spread out on my pillow.' Her hand drifted up to her hair, dislodging a single verbena blossom, which fell to her lap.

'Then I'll look at you. And I'll touch you, everywhere, with my hands and my mouth. I'll learn what you like and where you like it, and I'll give it to you.

'When you tell me to fuck you because you can't stand the aching for another second I'll work my cock into your cunt.'

Hermione blushed furiously at the word.

'Yes, your cunt. It'll hurt...a little or a lot. I'll wait, and soon it'll stop hurting and start aching again and you'll beg me to get on with it and I will. Maybe I'll make love to you slowly. Maybe I'll fuck you hard and fast. Or maybe my mouth won't ever leave your cunt and we'll leave the fucking for another time. We'll see how we go.' By now her eyes were glazed and her mouth was hanging open between quick, noisy breaths.

He moved in to breathe a few more words into her ear. 'But. I will have you in my bed and afterwards I'll spend the night surrounded by the smell of you, plotting how and when I can have you again.'

He brushed his lips across her hairline. 'Would you like to tell me your plans, or do mine seem workable?'

She closed her eyes and gulped. 'G-good plans. Seems, seems, uhn, good. Let's go with, um, with yours.' She opened her eyes but seemed unable to meet his at the moment.

He loved being able to befuddle her like this, without laying a finger on her.

'Oh!' she said, and stood suddenly. 'My plan; it had these in it.' She walked over to the doorway of the laboratory and bent down to rummage in her bag, forgotten there since he'd knocked it off her shoulder while kissing her.

She pulled out a handful of wrapped condoms. 'I thought, um, I planned that we'd need these at some point.'

'Ah. I'm glad you raised the subject. We can use those if you like, but I have also taken a contraceptive potion.'

She stood, considering, for a moment before tucking the condoms back in her bag. 'That should be better, shouldn't it? It all seems quite a lot to think about, and I was worrying how it would all work and just really, feeling very glad that at least one of us has done this before.' She stopped mid-babble and her cheeks flamed. 'I mean, I mean... you, you have...'

Severus wondered if he could ever tire of watching the play of emotions across her face. He enjoyed it so much. Just now, though, he'd prefer to see desire there, rather than embarrassment.

He rose and strode to her. 'I have.' He held out his hand. 'I've done it often enough to know when it's time to stop talking and start doing. That's now.'

She slipped her hand into his and said something he didn't quite catch.

'What was that?'

'Just... I like it when you talk to me. Will you? Talk like you were talking before?'

He stroked her cheek with his forefinger and filled his voice with smoke and velvet. 'Leave that to me.'

And he led her into his bedroom.

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

A/N: Thanks and love to G, H, and L for they know what and they know why.

Amorphophallus titanum is a species of flowering plant that looks kind of like a huge purply-greeny calla lily and smells like a rotting corpse. It has a great big sort-of-phallus-shaped structure, called a spadix, rising from the centre of the plant. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

But you don't actually care about botany right now, do you? Go on, click over to the next chapter. :D