Heart Asks Pleasure First

I will meet you in some place

Where the light lends itself to soft repose

I will let you undress me

But I warn you, I have thorns like any rose

And you could hurt me with your bare hands

You could hurt me using the sharp end of what you say

But I'm lost to you now

~ Jewel, Break Me

Hermione raised her head from the sink and watched the rivulets of water streaking down her face in the mirror. Her fringe and the strands of hair closest to her temples had got wet as well while she washed her face. They would surely turn even more frizzy once dry.

She looked closer at her reflection. Minuscule lines were visible on her brow and around her eyes, the only sign that time had passed for her, too. By any means, she looked younger than her age, and people would believe her without second thoughts if she said she was still twenty-three or twenty-four.

She didn't take a towel to wipe her face. The bathroom window was open and the night breeze quickly dried her wet skin.

Did she look different from the day before? No. The lines hadn't increased, nor had any pimple showed up overnight.

Had her face changed? No. Her eyes kept their usual, placid brown colour while her eyebrows – as usual – needed to be plucked. Her nose was still little and straight. Her lips looked a bit pale – as usual. Everything was as usual.

Yet there had to be some differences somewhere, or maybe they were just growing under her skin, for the world had gone through a remarkable change in the last hours.

She had made love with Severus.

It was three in the morning, and he was sleeping when she had decided to go to the toilet to freshen herself up.

She had made love with her former teacher, a man who had once corrected her homework, covering it with red, spiky marginalia!

And the world didn't stop spinning and no divine lightning descended to punish her.

A man with a terrible past, who had performed horrendous deeds, who had killed and watched killing, whose near death had tormented her for months.

She could still feel the trail of his kisses down her spine, resting in the valley between her kidney dimples.

She had gone to bed with a man who had infuriated her and had never properly apologised since, though she had been so forgiving to speak with him graciously afterwards.

He had kissed her wrists, her eyes, her neck, had sucked her lobe, gently, softly, slowly, oh.

She had had sex with a man she didn't even love!

He had leaned lightly on her, chest against chest, skin on skin, and her breathing had slowed down in a sensation of expansion. It was such an elementary contact, that of a breast to another breast, so simple, that there was really no reason, each time, to feel so marvelled; yet inevitably, whenever it happened, she was thankful that a man's skin could feel so warm and properly placed against hers.

She didn't even like him, she was sure of that. He was decidedly unattractive and, in any case, he wasn't her type.

Ron was her type – bright eyes, bright smile, tall, athletic. He had grown up nice, with his broad shoulders and the marvellous blending of the red of his hair with the peach of his skin – like a golden autumn that shined lusciously before her. It certainly wasn't his looks that had pushed them apart.

Chris was more than her type; he was her ideal man come true. Or maybe he was simply a mirror image of herself, turned into a man and potentiated to its utmost degree: brown hair, brown eyes – with golden straws flickering inside them, if you looked attentively – soft pink on his cheeks, all beloved colours that spoke to her of intimacy and tenderness. He was tall – maybe not as tall as Ron, but still tall – and she refused to think of his body now.

And no, Viktor Krum didn't count as a precedent. It was utterly ridiculous to make a comparison between him and Severus.

She could remember Ron, in a distant past, criticising her for appreciating handsome men like Lockhart or Cedric Diggory – blessed be his memory, the poor soul. She had replied to him that she didn't like people only because of their aspect, but that had been a pretext. In fact, she liked handsome men. She might be plain, but that wasn't an excuse not to seek outward beauty.

Severus Snape did not fall within that category. In truth, he didn't fall into any of her many categories. What they had done didn't fit any of her patterns.

If Hermione looked younger, Severus looked older than his forty-nine years, would that depend on the crease his perpetual frown had left between his eyebrows, visible even when he wasn't frowning, or maybe the lines marking his jaw.

When he smiled, the thin skin of his cheek would fold in a double wrinkle at the corners of his mouth. You could almost catch that fold between your fingers, as thin as the skin edging the navel. Hermione's cheeks wouldn't fold like that; her skin was thicker, plumper. Severus' little wrinkle made her happy.

Severus' shoulders were narrow, and when he lay on his back, his prominent ribs would stretch his skin. Only a certain relaxation around his waist, not enough to be called love handles, gave account to the ten years the man had spent in almost sedentary peace.

His sparsely haired chest was covered with moles, and his nipples stood out burgundy against the pale background.

Yet his skin was soft to the touch and comfortable to press against, and his arms had welcomed her in an embrace as soft as ploughed earth.

His face was angular, his features irregular, with all those projections and recesses: his oversized nose, his sharp cheekbones, and his pronounced chin. It wasn't a face light would bathe unimpeded; it gave birth to shadows and not to a uniform shade.

She had tried to curl herself into that shadow, between his jaw and his shoulder, to became little, little, and dive into the pillow, at the side of his head, following the coil of his scent down to a place where she could inhale it deeper.

As Hannah Abbott had said, his neck presented no scar whatever. The skin there was perfect, without any wrinkle, as smooth as a child's was. Like a newborn child, it gave the promise of a new life. It was the skin that Severus' own magic had created, the last gift his old self had given to the present one. Beneath that tenuous, fragile peel laid his breath, his voice, the beat of his heart pumping his blood up. All signs of the bite that had shocked her were gone, erased, as if maybe, one day, even the memory of what had happened that night wouldn't hurt them anymore. She had pressed her lips on his throat, as if that snowy skin bore the assurance of replacing her memories with some new, pure ones.

His hair was oily, too long for her tastes, uninviting even as she ran her fingers through it.

But who was she to judge other people's hair? Her locks had twisted into a messy fuzz, spreading everywhere but in a definite shape as they dried.

Possibly, the only appealing feature in Severus' appearance were his eyes – jet-black, resplendent, luring her to be absorbed into their depths. She enjoyed being able to gaze freely into them, finally, without having to look away. Their polished surface drew her closer, like the stars appealing to mortals to look up at them in the summer night sky. She had the right to look, after all, once she had found herself in his house first into his room second, and then on his mattress. Severus had left the lights on, albeit softened. She had the right to watch, this time, and she did watch.

He was silent throughout their lovemaking, and she was thankful for that, because she loved silence and the room it left for wishes. She was also grateful that he was light-weighted and delicate in his movements.

A distant barking of a dog came from the open window. Hermione collected her glasses from the sink shelf and returned to the bedroom, where she nestled at Severus' side and fell asleep.

The cottage was single-storey, with a dormer attic topped by a thatched roof. The rough walls were painted white, both inside and outside the house. The ceiling was low, suitable for two not-very-tall people. A stony fireplace dominated the main room, darkened by a hundred years of soot. A few photographs stood on the mantelshelf, depicting some stern-looking people in late XIX century dresses, in front of a stamping tools shop, or around a well.

All the furniture looked very old and made of dark wood, occasionally worm-eaten. Even the dishes were plain, in baked clay, without frills.

In a corner of the main room, under the window, stood a solid desk covered with notebooks, loose sheets, and stationery. A pendulum clock hung over it from the wall on its left, ticking rhythmically.

Books were scattered all around, sometimes gracelessly, sometimes piled up in unsafe stacks. None of them was about magic.

Afternoon. A yellow light filtered in through the curtains. It was her favourite light of the year, and maybe she should urge Severus to go outside and enjoy it. The garden that surrounded the cottage was lovely, even if the grass was a little too long (as the hair of the cottage owner), and it would be good to be outside, enjoying the good weather. However, she was lying lazily at Severus' side on his bed, and she didn't really want to leave her place, after all. With a finger, she was tracing spirals on Severus' chest, connecting mole to mole like in a game of connect the dots. He was stroking her arm, distractedly, and the yellow light could wait another day.

They were talking with the same idleness.

"Why me?" she asked.

"You look nice with a library around you, Granger."

"Tell it again with more conviction, if you want me to believe it."

"You are a tremendous pain in the arse, and I don't know what you are doing here."

"Now I recognise you." She pressed closer on him.

"You are a self-complacent and irritating bluestocking."

"Try again. You can do better."

"You are stubborn, thankless and with too many intolerable defects to counter-balance your few good points."

"And which are these few points?" she teased.

He brushed her chin with his thumb and then lifted it so she would look him in his eyes. "For all your mania to change the world, Hermione, you didn't try to change me, and I appreciate it. You didn't follow the current stream of pitying me, squeaking 'poor Severus!' all the time, as other people took the habit of doing. You didn't start a campaign to help me recover my magic, or some bullshit like that. You kept your mouth shut about how I'm leading my life, and that is of no little importance for me, you ever-chirping dove."

He took her hand and kissed her knuckles, as her lips curved into a proud smile.

"Apart from that, what heart of stone do you believe I really am not to worry when you fainted in front of me? That was an old women's trick, if there's one! Confess!" he said, shaking her wrist.

She put on a stark expression. "I did not faint," she specified, "and I never attempted at using ruses with you, Severus! It was you, who played covertly, as usual. I bet you schemed to escort me home just to take me to bed in the end."

"Uhm. This sounds like a good plan, forsooth. Unfortunately, I was just trying to be helpful, little ingrate. There was a time when to feel attachment for a lady in distress was a sign of chivalry. Women longed to be saved by a charming prince. Then it came, the movement for witches' liberation, and to show care for a suffering woman turned out to be the patronizing designs of a miserable bastard. Prince I may be, but charming I am not; therefore, I must be the miserable bastard, as I always happened to be."

"I am so thankful you accompanied me home," she said, with a slightly mocking tone. "I bow to your chivalry, Mr. Prince. But I'd preferred," and she started tickling him, "if you had told me fewer lies."

"That – ah!" he replied, trying to grasp her hands and eventually catching one, "would have made things less funny." And he tickled her in return with his free hand.

"No, no! Stop!" begged Hermione, collapsing in giggles.

He kept hovering over her, propped up on all fours. "I may have told you many lies, Hermione, but I've been sincere about this: I'm a vindictive man," he said, his hair falling down to curtain his face.

"I know it!" she puffed, still panting for the laugh.

"No. I'm talking seriously now." His voice turned grave and steely. "You must know this."

"What?" she asked, suddenly worried by his tone.

He pierced her with his gaze, his eyes turning larger and possibly darker. "I killed Albus out of vengeance, Granger," he hissed. "Now that you came here, you should know this. It was not an act of mercy or a strategy. It was ruddy, filthy, disgusting vengeance."

"He asked that of you," she murmured.

His fingers skimmed her side as he straightened up on his knees and backed off to lean against the wooden headboard. "You didn't seem of this opinion the last time you brought up the subject. It was the only time you really threw something in my face."

Hermione propped on her elbows to look at him. "You made me furious, that time, and I said something I shouldn't have. I know you were trapped in a dead end – a deathly end. You were left no choice."

"And I would probably never have done it hadn't he pushed me in that stinking mess. But when I found myself before him, on the Tower, I hadn't to look that far to find the reasons to curse."

"I remember when you came out of your office, that night, and asked me and Luna to take care of Professor Flitwick," Hermione recalled softly. "You were protecting us. And I remember the way you stared at us when you told us to get in. It promised us that everything would set back to normality soon."

He dismissed her words with a gesture. "I said vengeful, not violent. What I meant was revenge, not a slaughter."

"I also remember another episode," she continued. "When you followed us through the Whomping Willow. You threatened to kill Sirius Black, should he give a reason to do it. Yet, you didn't even touch him."

"Because you prevented me, you snoopers. Had I had my way, maybe Potter would still have his godfather. In Azkaban, yes, but alive."

"This only leads me to conclude that, as hard as it may be for me to say it, Dumbledore had to provide you an inescapable reason, after all," she whispered.

"He was our general." Severus sat up straight. "And he kept on betraying and betraying us. We followed him like sheep, deceived by his assertiveness and his fame as the wizard who had defeated Grindelwald. But he was jealous of us; he wanted to clip our wings. He didn't allow us to plot against the Dark Lord's life when it would still be feasible, with the excuse that it would be too dangerous. He seemed to care for us – ah! Frank Longbottom – a fine man, unlike his son – volunteered to lead the plot, but Dumbledore discouraged him. He stopped us from chasing the Horcruxes, once it was too late to kill the Dark Lord directly. Too risky, he said, we couldn't expose ourselves so much. And we all baaed behind him." Snape shook his head. "But he wasn't a trustworthy shepherd. For all his words, he failed to protect us all. Some of us were disposable, in the end."

He threw the sheet away and got up, setting off for the window, thin and bony against the light.

"Dumbledore wilfully let the Potters to be put in peril until the very last moment, so that the Dark Lord would smell out the prey and pick them as sacrificial victims. He was so in love with that pet project of his, the Prophecy! He wrote it, he made me report it to the Dark Lord, and I was such a fool to play a part in that act."

He twisted the curtain's border under his fingers, turning his back to Hermione. She crouched on her heels and hitched up the sheet to cover her goose bumps.

"He didn't save the boy's parents," continued Snape. "And he would have gladly disposed of Potter's life, at sixteen, more than he would of us, the old guard, when we were twenty-something. We were useless, for his plan. Because Potter was raised as his brainless weapon, the one who would function in place of him in the fight against the Dark Lord. Because Albus Dumbledore, who had once vanquished Gellert Grindelwald, wasn't now able to make the Dark Lord sneeze."

His shoulders cringed.

"We thought he was a just lord. Instead, he asked Potter's sacrifice as Moloch requested children to be offered at his statue. That or Draco's death. So I killed him, for it is written, 'Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death'. Potter might dispatch the Dark Lord, I did of Dumbledore; I don't know, now, who was the most dangerous between them."

He turned to her. "You told me that my magic burnt out to save me. It may be, though I doubt it. I see it as a representation of departing Albus from his body: I kicked it out of me, false idol and false god, as I expelled Nagini's venom. Venom, magic, Dumbledore and the Dark Lord: I was freed of all of them at the same time, for maybe they were the same." His eyes glittered fiercely from the shadow.

Hermione blinked back her tears. The sheet slipped down her shoulder and she pulled it up again. "Theirs was a twisted love," she whispered. "I began to suspect it when I read the biography by Rita Skeeter. I suppose that Voldemort would appear like a replica of Grindelwald for Dumbledore. Scorched by what had happened with Gellert, Dumbledore didn't allow himself to love Tom Riddle. And to think that Voldemort modelled his title upon Dumbledore's surname... I can see that the Voldemort's rise to power sparked off as some kind of private challenge set by the pupil to his master.

"Nevertheless, it's strange to think of Dumbledore like that. For a part of me, he will always be a benevolent grandfather who loved us all. In my own memories, he's always wise, kind, and skilful. It pains me to think of him as ruthless. But love can turn into hate sometimes," she said quietly.

"Bah. Their private matters grew a little too large for my tastes. He asked a disgusting favour of me and died in an accordingly disgusting fashion." Snape's protruding rib cage rose and went down in a deep breath. "You must understand this. For me, in the end, it was justice. Sharp and old-fashioned, if you will, but still justice. Now that you've heard this, you have to make up your mind. You can walk away." His nostrils flared. "Or stay. Your choice. If you stay, we'll put the question aside forever."

Silence fell as Hermione stared at him with wide eyes, furrowing her brow. At that moment, the pendulum clock in the main room stroke half past five. Hermione started at the sound, and the sheet slid completely down her back. With a sudden inspiration, she laid one bare foot on the floor, then the other one, and slowly stood up. She put her hands on her hips and walked toward Snape.

"So, this is how it works, then," she said menacingly. "Now that you took your pleasure with me, and that your yearning was satisfied, you ask me to walk away. Men." She shook her head and continued, without waiting for a reply. "Make yourself useful, instead of talking of things that happened twelve years ago: go prepare dinner."

Then she noticed that Snape had clenched his fists while she was speaking, and that his knuckles had turned white. They scowled at each other for a while.

"There's only meat in the freezer, now," he spat eventually, looking away. "Saturday is usually the day when I go shopping, but today you prevented me from going to buy provisions. And now it's late."

"There will be a grocery around here," she pouted. "Won't there?"

"We have to go back to York to find a shop still open," he replied. "I didn't foresee you would stay for dinner."

"So, you really intended to throw me out of your house, sooner or later." She snorted. "You know, you can also invite me to dine somewhere else."

"I have to buy butter and Marmite in any case."

"Marmite? Do you like Marmite? Urgh."

"Had I had any of it at home, still, it would have been your breakfast this morning." He picked his shirt from the back of a chair. "C'mon, get dressed if you want to go anywhere."

Some time later, they were walking along Stockton Lane, heading back to the cottage. Snape was carrying a bag of supplies while Hermione held, in a small backpack, a change of clothes she had quickly collected from her home. A light rain was falling upon them as the sky light turned dim.

"You didn't even correct me when I said that I wasn't charming," he said. "I expected you to come up with some compliments, just like I did lavishly with you. Don't you find me handsome?"

"No, in truth."

He lifted an eyebrow in a mocked scoffing. "No?"

"No, I... 'I find you rather alarming, when I examine you close at hand: you talk of my being a fairy, but I am sure, you are more like a brownie.'"

"Who spoke of fairies? Wait – Are you quoting from a book?"

"Yes, from Jane Eyre." Hermione smiled.

"Little bluestocking."

"Why, I paid you an enormous praise in comparing you with Mr. Rochester! It's more than you may ever deserve!"

"That's chick lit."

"How do you dare to speak like that of an absolute masterpiece? With all the detective trash you have at home."

"That's serious literature. Crime, punishment, and someone clever enough to catch the murderer. Consistency between cause and effect. And you still haven't said anything nice about me, in any case."

"Well, then... 'For he had great, dark eyes, and very fine eyes, too...not without a certain change in their depths sometimes, which, if it was not softness, reminded you, at least, of that feeling.' "

"Another quote."

"Yes."

"You know that book by heart, Hermione."

"It may be." She giggled.

"So – that's it? My eyes won me your favour?" He sounded surprised.

"No, actually," she paused, embarrassed, "it was your blue shirt that had me. The one you were wearing when we went to Jorvik. Why haven't you worn it again?"

"It got stained," he stated simply. "Besides, I don't like blue that much."

"It suits you. You should wear blue more often if you want to charm me."

"Uhm." He searched her from top to toe, rubbing his chin with his free hand. "Too much effort for too little reward."

"In this case, you'll sleep alone this night," she threatened him, pretending to leave.

He smirked. "Excellent. I can eat all your rice salad and your artichokes by myself."

"Go eat all your meat, instead, you greedy man," she said, trying to steal the food bag from him, but Severus clutched it closer, pushing it away from her.

"Keep still or you'll make me throw it down," he warned her. "We'll resume our tickle fight later."

Later, much later, Hermione whispered to him, "Don't even think about waking me tomorrow, Severus. Once, I lost three hours of sleep because of you, and you still have to repay me them."

A/N: Chapter title obviously by someone mightier than me.

Ron and Hermione talking about Lockhart and Cedric from GoF 15 (British paperback p. 207).

'Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death': Leviticus 20:2.

"I find you rather alarming..." and "For he had great, dark eyes..." evidently from Jane Eyre, chapter XXXVII and XIV respectively. "Intolerable defects to counter-balance your few good points" is also from ch. XIV, but don't tell it to Snape.

I thank RobisonRocket, Valady, Pink Raccoon, Alfavia de Montsegùr, readers and reviewers on bended knee.