Chapter 6

Disclaimer: You know what I like about JKR? Pretty much everything. Have you seen her hair these days? So shiny! (Oh, yeah, and all this Potterverse stuff belongs to her. This fan fiction is written and published for the nonremunerative amusement of myself and others.)

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'Hufflepuff, class of 1981. Or I would have been. I dropped out after fifth year.' He taps his cigarette over an ashtray.

'Why?'

He snorts. 'I'm half-blood but grew up Muggle. Five years at Hogwarts, I decided wizards are fucking barking.'

He gestures towards Snape. 'He and I used to play together, here and home in Manchester. We were mates, even though I was younger. We'd practice upstairs at the Hog's Head, cause we could plug in there. Aberforth sat in sometimes. That was before Severus turned into a complete shithead.'

'When he took the Mark.'

'Yeah.' Johnny shrugs. 'In those days it was "choose sides, you have to choose sides." I just wanted to play music. So I left.'

'Mmmm.' She glances over at Snape. He's still in Horace's toils, and Septima and Alfrid are talking at him too. She longs for him to come and talk to her and she dreads it. 'And you came back to play Smiths songs with your old mates because... why, exactly?'

'We keep in touch. He asked it as a favour. And Little Malfoy told me the man needed help with a bird.' He blows smoke and looks at her amusedly. 'I'm guessing that would be you.'

He stubs out his cigarette. 'Got to run; I have a one o'clock Portkey back to the States. Good luck.'

He walks over to Snape and to her shock they exchange some sort of matey hug, complete with back pounding. He says something in Snape's ear and jerks his head in her direction, claps him on the shoulder again, and leaves.

She looks hastily away. Oh god, I should just leave now. Go to bed. Why am I hanging around here like some groupie?

Too late. He's walking towards her with two glasses of wine, one of which he hands her.

'Thanks, um, thank you.'

'My pleasure.'

Damn it! I don't know how to do this.

'So,' she says. 'How many famous rock-star friends do you have?'

'Just the one. Those aren't really my circles. Johnny and I knew each other when we were kids.'

'And played together, he told me. You are a surprising person, Severus Snape. I begin to think I don't know you at all.' She takes a hasty sip of wine and wipes one sweaty hand surreptitiously on her robes.

'I think you probably know me well enough to be getting on with. There will always be more to... discover. In the course of events.' His thumb moves slightly across the surface of his glass and, helpless, she imagines it on her skin. Shit.

She gulps wine, and soldiers on.

'That set was amazing. I, um, I knew most of the songs; I have an aunt who was really into that music and I'd hear it at her house, so... ' So that anecdote has nowhere to go. 'You sounded fantastic together. Sybill really surprised me tonight. And Aberforth! And Draco...all the young hearts will be breaking for him next term.'

Silence.

Oh to hell with it. She turns towards him just a little more, uncrosses her arms, says slowly in a considering voice, 'I really don't know, though, how wise it is for staff members to appear quite so... sexy... in front of the students.'

'It's a problem, I agree.' His eyes never leave her face. 'Draco is very appealing.'

'I wasn't referring to Draco, just then.'

'Neither was I, actually.'

Surely the air between them is no longer just air.

She takes a deep breath. Looking out over Horace's sitting room, she says, quietly, 'I want to thank you for getting so brilliantly into the spirit of the talent show. Muggle music, expertly played. Perfect. And you played across houses...with a Hufflepuff and a... what's Sybill's house?'

'Gryffindor.'

'Oh! Hmmm. Well. Anyway. I did not expect it, and I found it... wonderful.'

'Good. Because I did it entirely for you.'

Now there's simply not enough air. She glues her gaze to the flowers on Horace's mantelpiece as if they can steady or inspire her.

'For me?' she squeaks. 'What, um, what do you... um... '

'What I mean is this. I hope to demonstrate that I do not hate Muggle culture and that I do not hate you. And to tell you I have not been warring with you out of either principle or spite.'

She looks back up at him, confused. 'Then what...?'

Now it's his turn to look away. 'I may have started in spite. But soon enough I was fighting simply... for you. To get that spark out of you. You're magnificent in battle. I thought... you were enjoying it, too. I was wrong.'

She's utterly flummoxed. 'Severus! That's insane! That's just...who would enjoy being constantly, constantly embattled?'

He takes a step away from her to deposit his glass on a small table, and folds his arms over his chest. 'You'd be surprised. Listen. Hermione. You should know this about me...I was in effect raised by wolves in human form: I call them Mum and Da. Beneath this debonair exterior,' he sweeps a hand up and down to indicate himself, 'I am really rather poorly socialised, in patches.'

She laughs at this, steps nearer, and reaches across him to put her own glass on the table. 'And already I begin to discover things about you.' She's very near him now, inside his space. She feels like she's standing with him at the summit of a very tall mountain.

'I can't stop thinking about kissing you,' she murmurs.

He's very still. 'What about David?'

She's silent for just a few heartbeats, savouring the moment before she tumbles, exhilarated, down the other side of the mountain.

'David and I broke up two weeks ago.'

One deep breath later he says, 'Would you care to continue this conversation elsewhere?'

'Please.'

'Follow me to my rooms in five minutes.'

'Mine are closer.'

'Done. You go first.'

'Do you think we'll fool a single person by leaving separately?'

'No.'

She takes his hand. 'Together, then.'

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'I thought... going... rooms.' She gasps out the words between kisses.

'Shhh.' He pushes her back against the wall outside Horace's door. 'Taste you first.'

'Yes,' she says, and lets him pin her wrists to the wall beside her head while he kisses her open mouth and her ear and neck.

But now he needs to hold her face and bury his fingers in her hair and she apparently needs to work one hand inside his robes and up to his shoulder blades while the other wraps around his neck.

After the first desperate, humid clinch they stare at each other. Half her face is aglow in the dim torchlight; the other half is in shadow. He lays one hand along her jaw, touching her soft fresh skin. At last. His thumb brushes her lip and she kisses it, feather light, then bites it, rather hard.

'My rooms, Professor Snape. Now, please.'

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The first time he wakes in her bed, it's because she has hold of his cock, which has apparently woken before the rest of him.

She slings a leg over his and guides him closer to his new favourite place. 'Hi,' she whispers. 'You don't mind, do you?'

He doesn't mind.

The second time, he threads his way in near darkness to her bathroom. When he comes back into her bedroom, he stops beside the bed. The duvet's up around her waist but her breasts are bare, her arm flung up next to her head like a child's. She's so beautiful.

He flicks the duvet off of her and begins kissing her from her toes up. By the time he's reached her inner thigh, her hands are in his hair, and he sucks on the flesh to mark it, and she gasps.

Afterward, he moves to get off of her. She says, 'No, stay,' and shifts a little, and they fall asleep with their legs entwined.

The third time, he's actually dreaming of a hundred jangling alarm clocks, and the dream wakes him up. The room is silent and daylight is glowing through the curtains. Hermione is a lump under the bedclothes and a riot of hair on her pillow.

He rolls out of the bed as stealthily as he can and pulls on his trousers, then finds his watch. Nine-forty. Breakfast is over. The students are on their way to Hogsmeade Station to catch the Hogwarts Express. Bugger.

He's half-naked and it's cold. 'Incendio,' he says to the logs in her sitting-room hearth. He Floos Filius.

'Oh, not to worry, Horace and Rubeus and I handled the send-off. All's well.' Filius looks almost jubilant. 'You just have a lie-in, and we'll see you... um, when we see you.'

Severus scowls and stumbles back to the bedroom.

She's sitting up in the bed, the sheet held up to her chin. Her hair looks like she's just fought free of a bramble. Her mouth would make roses look like chaff.

This is as far as he's been from her in the last nine hours. It feels very far, just now. His hand, hanging loose by his side, twitches.

He is at a loss.

Because she's awake, and watching him, he can neither crawl back into her bed nor reach for his shirt without either gesture communicating something different than what he intends. So he just stands there and twitches very slightly, awaiting his fate.

'Good morning,' she says. She's impossible to read.

'Good morning.'

'Headmasterly duties sorted?'

'Of necessity, since I seem to have slept through them.'

She lets the sheet drop just a little, so that the banquet that is her shoulder is bared. 'Lovely. Care for a lie-in?'

He leaves his trousers puddled on the floor where they fall.

* * *

'Here you are, Filius. Pool and wager, all made good. Congratulations.' Rolanda pushes a marvellously plump, clinking bag over to him.

The staff table is sparsely attended at lunchtime, and the four stalwarts are clustered at one end, out of their usual places.

Horace grumbles. 'Missed it by a day. Really, I ought to have guessed. The talent show...these sorts of things just breed liaisons.'

Septima shakes her head. 'I was off by a whole week, and I ran calculations on over a dozen scenarios. Method, logic, analysis...all failed me. Gives me pause, you know? Just how valuable is my field?' She sighs, and stabs a chop with her fork.

'So,' says Rolanda, pouring herself another coffee. 'What are you going to do with all that gold?'

Filius's smile widens into a grin.

'I confess I have been giving it some thought. Just daydreaming, as it were. I rather fancy a beach somewhere warm, with good night life, where I could meet new people and maybe have a bit of fun.' He has a look of nearly boyish eagerness as he leans in towards his colleagues. 'What do any of you know about... Ibiza?'

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A/N: Yes, that was Johnny Marr, guitarist of the Smiths, making a cameo in chapters 5 and 6. Severus chose the set list that his cover band, the Joneses, played, and it was as follows:

*squishes all round*