Part Three

Anti-Litigation Charm: I do not own these characters, nor do I make any money from them, nor do I own any stock in the manufacture, promotion or distribution of Murtlap Essence.

Garden Days, 1. Night and Day - A Child's Garden of Verses - RL Stevenson

"I take it back." He managed to purr and grimace at the same time. "No Slytherin worth her wand would be that blunt." His voice was brittle, but there was an underlying sweetness, as if it pleased him. He snaked his arms under her skirt and pulled her closer. "Now, Miss Subtle-as-a-Hippogriff, if you are attempting to seduce me, I feel compelled to tell you I don't like games."

"I'm not playing," Hermione retorted through gritted teeth. Really, his erection felt as if she were attempting to ride a wool-draped broom.

Severus narrowed his eyes and leaned closer. His voice was slightly uneven, like an orchestra tuning up for a symphony. "Then enlighten me, Miss Granger. Why is Hogwarts' most illustrious student straddling me with the wettest set of knickers I've ever encountered?"

"I - I'm trying to understand you." Hermione was relieved to hear her own voice sounded steady and in control. His long fingers were sliding under the leg bands of her knickers and drawing light little circles over her flesh, making her squirm.

"Ever thirsting for knowledge," he drawled. "Ask your questions, Miss Granger. I'm hardly in a position to deny you." He pulled her closer until her belly brushed against his chest. His eyes were spitefully bright. "I'm also under no obligation to answer."

Breathing hard against him, she caressed his face and quietly asked, "Alright. First question. How long has it been since ...?"

He leaned against her palm, breathing hard. The bright, malicious joy left his eyes. Her question had been a shot in the dark, but it must have landed true. "Since before you came to Hogwarts. The first time," he replied, shame and irony mixed in equal draughts.

Hermione nodded, recollecting the look in his eyes when he'd watched her comfort Norton, how he held onto her hand in his post-battle delirium, how he kissed her with more pent-up passion than any man should have to carry.

She put her arms around him and held him close, and waited, until finally, hesitantly, he returned her embrace. "Do you still want to curse me?" she asked, and he pulled away from her and looked into her eyes searchingly. "Because if you do, at least wait until we rectify that situation." She smiled and leaned forward and kissed his cool forehead. "Actually, I think you and I could be very good for one another."

He regarded her for a moment. With a slight stretch, he placed his hand almost carelessly on her bottom and pinched it, making her hiss. "Doing what, pray tell, Miss Granger? I have not, even in my youth, been into students, literally or figuratively. And I haven't indulged in casual sex since, well, since I was your age."

She gave him a look she fucking well hoped he recognised - it was his signature raised eyebrow/smirk combination. She had practiced it often enough in the bathroom mirror. "I can't imagine anything casual about having sex with you, Severus Snape. Case in point..."

She leaned over and placed a soft kiss on his jaw. There was the slightest tremour in his body as she moved to his ear, and his breath caught as she licked against his throat. He smelled lovely, and even as she slid her fingers through his less-than-clean hair, she could feel his hands tightening around her waist, pulling her down on his erection. How could something that unyielding be flesh?

"I have a few short months before my exams," she whispered into his ear. She sat back, and looked carefully into his unreadable eyes. "Why do you think I came back, Severus Snape? For the N.E.W.T.s?" She rolled her eyes. "I've studied until it all feels like so much cotton wool in my head. I'm not eleven. I can live with myself not being first in class. After the last year, maybe those things just aren't enough anymore."

"I somehow doubt your grades will suffer because of it, Miss Granger. I'm much more interested in why you seem so determined to bring me up to date."

She toyed with the buttons on his waistcoat. "I think you and I can rediscover how to live again."

He opened his mouth, and closed it again. An anguished look passed over his face. "And what, exactly, am I supposed to live for, Miss Granger?"

Suddenly Hermione was tired of the playful banter. He was stalling, pure and simple. "If you don't know the answer to that by now, I'd suggest asking him," she looked pointedly down at his crotch and back up to his troubled eyes. "He certainly knows what's worth living for. Happiness. Pleasure, joy." She cast about her mind frantically, trying to engage him. She'd awoken the sleeping giant; she'd be damned if she blew her chance and he just yawned, rolled over and went back to sleep again.

"I really didn't think I'd survive that night," she began, and they both knew what she meant. "We've both had our close brushes with death. Let's have a close brush with life!"

His breath caught, as if snagged on her words. His hands caressed her thighs, back and forth, from hip to knee, as if rubbing some sort of balm into her skin. He looked down at her parted legs, and pulled up her skirt until he could see her white knickers. With something like wonder in his beautiful, silken voice, he said, "I missed you, Hermione Granger. I told myself I didn't, but today seems to be a day of admitting truths. Yes, I think I have things to teach you." He actually gave her a half-smile. "Things you won't need on your N.E.W.T.s."

His well-honed self-disgust reared its head again. "Though I honestly can't say you're getting much of a bargain in me."

Hermione waited until he pooled the courage to raise his dark eyes to hers. "I beg to differ." Silently, she removed her tie and unbuttoned her blouse. He watched her intently, his breathing growing more rapid as she opened her blouse and pointed to a little clasp nestled in the cleavage of her bra. She smiled at him. "I bought this especially for you," she said. His eyes widened, and his eyebrows shot to his hairline. A wicked little sneer played about his lips.

There was something of the old, snarky drawl in his lovely voice when he replied, "Well, I can't say I'm not flattered, but red simply isn't my colour."

Hermione laughed, and felt his cock twitch against her crotch. "I bought it for you, because I wanted you to remove it. That's why it snaps in the front. Of course, if you're feeling particularly alpha male, you're more than welcome to rip it to shreds."

"That could be arranged." His hands were steady as he unclasped the small button-like closure of the bra, and he peeled the cups away from her breasts. His breath left him as he looked at her."Fuck me, you have pretty tits," he murmured, with a laugh that could only be described as filthy. Her knickers got just that little bit wetter. He looked like a starving man being given his first real meal. "You're so lovely," he said, simply. His eyes grew cool. "And I'm... I'm not." He looked at her searchingly a faint, impatient annoyance in his eyes. "Is this really what you want, Hermione? Fire and lust and desperation?"

Hermione could not bear to see his uncertainty. "I want your fire, your lust, your desperation," she replied, her face solemn. She stroked his hair, brushing it away from his large, dark eyes. "I've wanted this for a long time."

He looked at her small, peachy nipples, and licked his pale lips. "I, too, have..." he hesitated, and spat, "Merlin, witch, I've thought of you so many times since the night you stole the Murtlap from me. I saw you steal it, you know. Did you honestly think you could walk into my stores, bold as brass, and I wouldn't know about it?"

To his secret delight, she blushed. "I wasn't really thinking along those lines at the time."

Severus nodded. "I followed you back to the boy and watched you. How you petted and held him. He was looking at you as if you were an angel, and all I could think was how much I... I wanted to be him. How much I wanted to be held and comforted and healed, and what a pitiful excuse of a man I was that I could watch a neglected, abused boy and actually envy him.

"And I was hard, too. Not because of the boy," he added hastily, "lest you think me even more of a degenerate, but because for the first time in my life, I realised how erotic the idea of being comforted could be."

He cupped her breasts in his warm, large hands, and slid his thumbs over her nipples, watching her eyes grow dark and heavy-lidded. "The night of the battle, walking to the Shack, I kept thinking, 'I should have taken her that night, while I had the chance. I'm going to die being envious of that Filcher boy'."

What he didn't tell her was that he'd gone to her the night she and Potter and the others had returned from that foolish Children's Crusade to the Department of Mysteries to save Sirius Black's worthless hide. They'd brought her to the Hogwarts Infirmary, weak from blood loss and Dolohov's cursework, and in the dark hours of the morning, he'd gone to her. She was propped up on pillows, drugged and frighteningly still. The white sheets had more colour than her face.

Without hesitation, the boy sat beside the girl and took her hand. Hours later, just as dawn was breaking, Severus escorted Norton back to the Ravenclaw Common Room. He extracted no promise of silence from the boy; none was needed. He knew this boy too well. He had been this boy, and served as another reminder of the compassion of one Hermione Granger.

Sitting astride Severus Snape's lap, Hermione had half-expected him to ravish her exposed breasts upon revealing them, but he merely gazed at them with a mixture of longing innocence and knowing anticipation. Softly, hypnotically, he stroked her sides, his fingertips brushing the underside of her breasts, unveiling new erogenous zones Hermione never knew she owned. If possible, her nipples tightened even more, and the combination of his whispering touches and her own crinkling flesh made it hard to concentrate.

As he watched her grow increasingly restless, he chewed on the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. Quietly, as if the thought had just occurred to him, he said, "I've lost count of the nights I've lain in bed, wishing I had. Taken you, that is. I have a thousand times, in my dreams."

He gave her a look she felt down in her already-soaked knickers. "Come here, Hermione," he purred, and pulled her mouth to his in a slow, suckling kiss.

For a moment, she felt as if her entire body resided in her mouth, being pleasured by the sweet and merciless tongue of Severus Snape. Humming his appreciation, he sensuously cupped her breasts in his large, pale hands. He squeezed them slowly, making her whimper. He pulled away from her kiss and drawled, "I can see you've applied yourself to the art of kissing. That is a very promising talent. There is also the not inconsiderable matter of these luscious tits." He smirked and kneaded them together lewdly. "Merlin, Hermione Granger, I'm glad I never saw you naked before. I would have locked you away in my dungeon and told everyone Tom Riddle had kidnapped you."

The shock Hermione felt must have been reflected in her face; when Severus looked up at her he paused for a second, then laughed, really laughed. It was the most amazing laugh she had ever heard. It was musical and low and so fucking sexy she found herself wishing he had locked her away. It had dirty, sinister tones, and bright notes of mirth, and the all but forgotten shimmer of boyishness in it. Oh, he could do a lot of damage with that laugh. It was a laugh that made a good girl want to sin very badly.

And he still had her breasts cradled in his large hands.

His laughter gradually spent itself, and he looked up at her with an almost charming little smile. Uh oh, she thought. I think I may be officially out of my league here.

"Oh, Hermione, I'm going to have to spend some of my study hours thinking up new ways to stun that expression back on your face. You know, you're right." His expression softened. "Maybe coming back to life isn't as painful as I anticipated." He bit his bottom lip, and his eyes swept down to her breasts and back up to meet hers. "I'm thinking I may stop talking about your gorgeous tits and start playing with them." He jiggled them a bit, making her blush again. "They are astonishingly fun to play with."

He caught her tender nipples between his thumb and forefinger and gave them the gentlest of squeezes, then rolled them with equal delicacy. She almost swooned. She took a deep, excited breath. "Why tell me? Why not just do it?" He could hear the shaking desire in her voice. Merlin, a deaf man could have heard it.

He looked up at her with the full battery of those large, liquid eyes. Solemnly, he said, "BecauseI feel compelled to warn you: when I stop playing with these sweet little tits and start sucking them, I may never stop."

Panting with arousal, Hermione bit her lip and, working on intuition, gently took his head in her hands. "Let's just test your theory about eroticism and comfort," she murmured, and gently guided his mouth to her nipple with a low croon. She shivered as she felt his warm breath ghost over her sensitive flesh. She whispered, "There you go. All for you." When he hesitated, she moaned, "Oh, do it, Severus, do it..."

Finally, his mouth plunged over her nipple, ravenous, greedy, utterly absorbed in his own pleasure. His hands spasmed and squeezed against her breasts, and he nipped and bit and sucked, hard, moaning, scouring over the tight areola with his wicked tongue, before returning to his soft suckling. Hermione's eyes rolled back as his hot mouth engulfed her flesh. Shuddering in pleasure, she moaned brokenly, "That's it, oh, fuck yes, that's it..."

With each word, he became more urgent. He cradled her nipple in the curl of his tongue as his lips pursed over the flesh and milked it; his teeth chewed her and he grasped her breast with both hands, as if holding a bottle, leaving no inch of it untouched, unworshipped. He pressed biting kisses of boundless gratitude on the soft mound, marking her, soothing her with his lips and tongue.

She pulled him away, and he released her with a soft hiss of disappointment until she guided him to the other. With a moan of sheer bliss, he latched on again, rubbing his hands over her body, his nails scoring long, tingling ribbons of sensation down her back. She looked down at him and marveled at his indecently long lashes, like black inkstrokes against his pale skin. There was a faint line between his arched and almost delicately shaped brows, as if he was concentrating, even as he took his pleasure and comfort.

Hermione was only dimly aware when he stiffened; he sucked at her nipple almost painfully as gave a startled shudder, and cried out against her skin. He had ejaculated in his pants. Gradually, the madness that had overtaken them both lessened, and he looked down at his lap with a mixture of shame and relief that moved her.

Something like his well-trained mask slid back in place, and his familiar sneer reasserted itself. "As I said, not much of a package." He looked mortified and disgusted with himself. His voice was brittle. "This should no doubt make an entertaining tale for your fellow Gryffindors," he drawled, refusing to meet her eyes.

Hermione stroked his cheek. "Actually, I'm surprised you lasted as long as you did." She performed a quick cleansing spell. "You've gone too long without human contact, love. I want you to get used to pleasure again. You've had far too little of it in your life in contrast to what you deserve." She leaned over and kissed his lips, swollen and rosy from sucking at her breasts. He returned the kiss slowly.

Against his mouth, she purred, "Besides, do you not realise how flattering it is as a woman to make a man come like that? Why not spoil yourself a little with a witch smart enough and horny enough to keep you amongst the living for a few more depraved years?"

He shook his head. "But why me?" he demanded, still reluctant to leave his armour of defensive insecurity behind.

She placed a tender, perfect kiss on his lips. To his surprise, tears filled her eyes. "Because I'm enthralled with you, Severus Snape." She picked up the vial of Murtlap, which, in their frenzy, had fallen into her lap. She held it up to his large nose. "Besides, you owe me, remember? A thousand times, you said."