3/7: Experiments

A/N: These characters are the property of JK Rowling and Warner Bros. I make no money from this story and claim no rights. Nothing you recognise belongs to me.

Great thanks to Voxangelus, who graciously stepped in as a fresh pair of eyes, and took a lot of pressure off, just because she liked the story.

Over the next five nights, she and Snape fell into a perverse sort of routine. He would dose her with whatever lust potion he had on hand and use her body richly, teasing her up to a straining peak, then suddenly denying her any pleasure or completion. During the day, he ordered her about with an absent air, his tone almost civil. Then he would stop her in the middle of whatever she was doing, either cooking dinner, or cleaning, or washing clothes, and grab her arm, dispassionately dragging her up the stairs.

He always took her from behind; he never looked her in the eye. He would plunge into her body, his silken, menacingly sinister voice hinting at all manner of horror if she allowed herself to orgasm, while Hermione would try to block the sensations from her drugged mind. She would mentally recite old nursery rhymes, song lyrics, poems, potions ingredients; anything to deaden the irresistible urge to give into the potion. Anything to shut down this new, dangerous need he'd awoken.

It would have been much easier to deal with if he were raping her. What he did was much more complex, insidious. He tormented her with pleasure, and he did it with skill and knowledge. He learned her body, so that each touch, each thrust, each word was calculated to make her respond to him. His hands were often very gentle and skilled, then he would viciously change; he would pinch a nipple or petulantly yank her hair. Always taking her to the edge, always with careful expertise, making sure she was responding. Then he would react with a cutting remark, a sharp smack, and Hermione would come back to herself, to his name calling and taunts.

On the fourth day, after complimenting her on a particularly good lunch, he ordered her to clean the floor in the front room while he read a book. As she sat back on her haunches to catch her breath, she felt Snape slide the toe of his boot between her thighs, pushing upwards until it parted her labia. She gasped, and her treacherous body responded almost immediately. He nudged her clit with the very edge of his toe, and before she could stop herself, a soft exhalation of breath puffed from her lips, and she opened her legs wider to assist him.

"You like that, don't you?" His voice sounded shaky, almost as if he spoke against his will. "You don't want to, because it's so dirty, isn't it? But you do."

Her face flaming with humiliation, Hermione bit her lip. He angled his toe higher, sliding it back and forth, and she mewled helplessly.

"Tell me you like it. Say it." Hermione had never heard such raw, breathless emotion in his voice. He truly sounded like he was the one being pleasured, not her.

She looked back over her shoulder at him, and was shocked at the lust blazing in his eyes. He was like a dark flame, seductive and incendiary, and in that moment, Hermione felt the tiniest bit of power over him. It exhilarated and frightened her. She had never seen him like this, not really. In all of their encounters there had been a modicum of control, of surety of his dominance over her. Now, he was just a man; a man with flashing eyes looking down at her in a way she'd never been looked at before. A man who wanted her - Hermione Granger. She risked a smile.

"I like it, sir," she moaned, and pushed back against his foot. His eyes blazed, and his face slackened with pure desire. It was breathtaking and terrifying to see him like this. Again, she felt a frisson of power over him. He licked his thin lips, and as their eyes met, the raw desire in his face made Hermione's cunt clench. In that moment, she admitted to herself that she physically wanted him, almost as much as she emotionally feared him. She shivered and closed her eyes. "I like it very much, sir."

"Good girl," he whispered. His breathing grew quicker, as she pressed against his foot. For a sick moment, Hermione shamelessly rubbed against the leather, helpless to stop herself now that she had his permission. She licked her lips, and arched her back with a soft, unmistakable moan of arousal. She was so close...

Suddenly, he removed his boot and gave her a gentle push on her backside. "Is this the way you always shine a man's shoes, Cinderella?" His voice had changed and grown cold again. "You've missed a spot there, beside the table. Pay attention!" He jumped from the sofa and quickly left the room, and shortly Hermione heard his tread on the stairs, as he descended to his lab in the basement below.

Trembling, she meekly crawled over to the offending dirt on the floor. Her tears of humiliation, mixed liberally with frustration, helped to wash the floor clean.

On the fifth night, he gave her an overdose of the potion, and had to force a bezoar down her throat before she turned blue.

On the sixth night, she orgasmed without his permission. In order to avoid another overdose, he gave her a much smaller dose of the potion, but it took effect almost immediately. He placed a caressing hand on her back in readiness, and swiped down, from her shoulder blades to the cleft of her bottom, and she felt each calloused finger whisper down her body like the silken strands of a whip.

She was gasping, thinking of the vile water she'd slopped around, cleaning the floor. She thought of the smell of Thestral shit, and how it made her gag. The toe of his boot, teasing the underside of her clit...

Then his mouth, his tongue, followed the reverse path of his fingers, sliding from between her arse cheeks, up her spine; his lips sucking at her flesh, his tongue running circles in its wake with erotic languor. His hand reversed its journey and wrapped around a length of her hair and pulled gently. He traveled up her body, until his chest, hot and scratchy with sparse black hair, was pressed against her back. His large hands cupped her breasts, plucking her nipples, and his mouth was at her ear, licking against the shell, his breath hot and moist against her throat as he moved, commanding, "Don't."

Warning, "Don't." His breath was humid in her ear, panting in time with his thrusts.

Beseeching, "Don't." He was close, so close. She felt his grip tighten on her breasts, her hair; his movements were lightening fast.

Begging, "Don't. Please, oh, Hermione, don't!"

Her back arched of its own accord, and she pushed back toward him instinctively, even as he pleaded, "Please, don't. Please, don't." The words, hissed through his gritted teeth, coiled around her and mocked her shattered self-control. It was no longer a matter of 'Don't'. There was nothing, short of death, that could stop it.

A feeling of being sucked inward started clenching at her from her core, and as her orgasm blasted from her, Hermione felt as if she'd been flung into space. She couldn't prevent or hide it. A low cry tore from her lips and rose to a howling wail; her entire body flushed and she shuddered helplessly. The sensation was beyond anything she'd ever felt, and even as wave after wave of intense sensation crashed over her, she was sobbing, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry – "

He roughly pushed her onto the bed, his own lust forgotten, and spanked her arse until his hand grew tired. Still fuming, he bound her to the bed and conjured a birch rod, striping her bottom until the cane broke. He then produced a large, wooden-backed hairbrush, paddling her until she was voiceless from her screams and tears, and he was too tired to continue. By then, the skin of her backside was broken in a few places and he was panting as if he'd run a race. "I told you not to! I warned you! Could you not obey me just this once?"

With an impotent grunt of rage, he threw the hairbrush across the room, breaking it into pieces, then strode out the door, slamming it so hard the transom window above cracked. He left her for almost fifteen minutes before returning. Hermione sobbed uncontrollably, uncaring if he punished her for it; her arse was on fire and she was so sick with humiliation and pain, a part of her hoped he would come back and finish her. Dying was starting to sound easier than living with herself and her complete submission to his unpredictably seductive cruelty.

He finally returned. He walked back into the room, and hovered over her. Hermione didn't dare look at him. "You probably didn't deserve that," he said, cryptically. Broken, Hermione keened into the room, unable to stop crying, but he didn't remonstrate.

He sat down on the bed beside her. "Shush, Hermione," he said, quietly, absently. He placed a large jar on the bed beside her head, and uncapped it. He dipped his fingers into the jar, and tenderly rubbed the contents into her burning, stinging flesh. The salve not only healed the marks, but removed all traces of the pain. His hands were gentle as he rubbed the ointment into her skin, but Hermione felt them shake.

"Shush. Calm, Hermione," he said, although she had already quieted. "Shh, please stop," he said, over and over, as if she still cried and pleaded for mercy. He continued to move his hands over her skin long after the pain had subsided, his fingers finally ghosting over her shivering form. "Shh," he crooned into the silent room. "Shh."

Hermione began to fear that Snape was not sane. The incident was never mentioned again, although the dosage of the lust potion was still diminishing each day, and he continued to forbid her to climax with or without him.

By the end of the week, Hermione's nerve endings were on fire; she whimpered if touched. Her body was so needy and over-stimulated she finally got down on her knees and begged to be allowed to gain some relief. Snape looked down at her, his expression stony, uncertain. In the end, he refused her. "I can't," he said, mysteriously, walking away. "I won't."

On the sixth night she had a seizure. He calmly administered the antidote and held her while her body seized, explaining that repeated use of the potion often caused this sort of reaction. He made her clean his lab the next day, as a punishment for not being able to tolerate the dosage.

That night, he came to her late, and woke her, pulling her from the sofa up to his room. He silently handed her the potion, and as she drank it, Hermione realized with a jolt that the potion was so watered down as to almost qualify as a placebo. There was almost nothing in this potion but flavouring.

He waited several minutes, watching her silently, then reached for her. "You know what to do," he said, quietly, as if instructing her on how to cast a simple spell. Wordlessly, she nodded, and turned away from him, on her hands and knees.

He was gentle. He stimulated her, and found her wet enough and ready enough, and entered her slowly, as if this was a task he must accomplish. He took none of the wild pleasure that he'd taken on previous nights, but he was slow and gentle, until near the end, when his own passion took him. Then she felt his body tense, his grip on her waist tighten, his thrusts quicken. He came with a quiet little sob, as if he had either not wanted it to end, or had not wanted to come in the first place.

For several long minutes, after his own needs had been met, he stood behind her, his shuddering breaths the only sound in the room. Hermione heard him take a deep breath as his flaccid cock slid from her body, and he rolled her over onto her back and sat beside her on the bed.

Stroking her breasts, he said, "Are you still aroused?" He wore a distracted look that bordered on drugged; a faint smile played about his lips that had nothing to do with any post-coital relief. It was a expression of a man faintly stoned on power.

Hermione writhed, even as he warned, "Don't. Don't." His voice sounded perfectly reasonable, as if he were telling her not to go out into the rain without an umbrella. He caressed her face, her throat, her limbs; he rolled her nipples between his long fingers, all the while crooning, "Don't. Don't."

Finally, he parted her thighs, smiling at her flushed, swollen vulva. She began to plead.

"Please sir, please don't touch me there! Please sir, please!" Her voice rose to a screech as his hand drifted languidly down her belly. He chuckled darkly as a single, gentle fingertip teased the seam of her labia. His touch was feather-light and felt like torture.

He watched her face, his fingers knowing and skilled. In a chastising voice, he sing-songed, "Don't. Don't. Don't."

He knew she would not be able to stop it. He knew it, even as his finger slipped between the lips of her pussy and touched a clitoris so engorged and stiff it felt like a little cock.

She grasped his arms in an effort to stop him, but she could not make herself push him away. He knew she was trying to obey him, but he so wanted to see her come. Why was he telling her not to? And still he smiled as he rubbed and teased her hard clit and whispered in her ear, "You're not going to come, are you? Surely you're not going to come?"

Her scream was a terrible thing. She cried out over and over, eyes open wide, unseeing, her mouth contorted with pleasure so intense it registered as pain. Rape had not felt this horrible. Sodomy had not been this brutal. This was a violation of her soul, her psyche, her pride and her discipline, and he watched, fascinated, as she shook and shuddered in dreadful ecstasy, her voice hoarse and exhausted. She was asleep almost before the last pulsing tremours of her body ceased, her tears of relief drying on her face.

She lay on the bed, drenched in sweat, twitching, even in sleep, her hands still clasping his arms. Relief and sadness marred her features.

Severus watched her, and thought, not for the first time since the Night of Screams, that he was going mad. No sane man would treat a young woman like this. He had chosen her, knowing she was marked for certain death, and even as he sought to protect her, the voice in his head would hiss that death was too good for her. He admitted to himself he desired her.

He would be standing in the kitchen, finishing lunch, and his heart would flood with an overwhelming, affectionate protectiveness for her. It would suddenly, inexplicably change to raging, gut-clenching lust, so demanding and uncontrollable he would seek her out and take her, even going so far as to give her a potion so that she would enjoy sex with him. And when she responded – oh, gods, when she responded! A killing anger would sweep across him, and he would say and do the most vile and abusive things to her. He had always known how to make those he cared for suffer, whether by accident or by design.

For the better part of the week, she had tried to please him, to give him what he wanted. He rubbed his jaw, feeling the rasp of stubble. What did he want? Didn't he want her? Didn't she feel good? He thought he knew, but whatever it was always danced just beyond his ability to comprehend. Even the lust potion idea waned on him.

It had seemed so easy to sort out his feelings during the time the now-defunct 'Golden Trio' had been on the run. Severus wanted to blame the young girl lying helpless in his bed, his leavings trickling from between her thighs.

For the first time since the Night of Screams, Severus allowed himself to think of those last days. After almost six months on the run, she should have known better. They had a Wizarding Wireless, for Merlin's sake – they knew the Death Eaters were one step behind them. Why had she allowed them to go to Canterbury in the first place?

Severus had known from the start that Granger would be the only reason the trio survived. Potter and Weasley wouldn't be able to find their wands with both hands except that she showed them. That was her weakness. That arrogant need to be the best, to show off her skills, overlaid with a sincere desire to help them. She'd written their essays, allowed them to copy her assignments, rely on her to get them through classes they'd rather snore through, and she let them.

Severus had been so tired. He had gotten to the point where he no longer believed Potter would win. Between the running of the school, keeping the Carrows from cursing every student except the Slytherins, the DA running vigilante raids, his faculty's near mutinous state, and the Dark Lord's increasing impatience and paranoia, Severus had been close to collapse, and felt it.

He had slept less than two hours a night. He looked like a wraith, deathly pale, shadow-thin, his obsidian eyes and large nose prominent on his thin face. He had gotten to the point where caring about the future took almost too much effort. Severus found he no longer thought about Lily, or Dumbledore and his machinations, or anything more than just keeping all the untidy messes of the school slopping together and moving onto their appointed course. He had almost reached the end of his string. Then Lucius had appeared and told him the Snatchers had spotted the Granger girl in Canterbury.

Hermione twitched in her sleep; Snape stroked her calf, gentling her, remembering those days before the Night of Screams.

He had been stunned when Headmaster Black had informed them that the Granger girl had taken his portrait with them, ostensibly to spy on Severus! His could not help but be impressed by the girl. Black was being transported around in a small handbag the girl had charmed to be infinitely extendable; it held everything from reference books to tents and food. She had her own traveling apothecary in there as well. Black, for all his pureblood drivel about her being inferior to either boy because of their blood status, was secretly impressed with her steely resolve and cunning.

By late October, Severus realised that learning about her from her life on the run had an unexpected and altogether unwelcomed side effect. It had created an infatuation with Hermione Granger. He had always been a covetous sinner, but he'd never thought he'd wish to be on the run for his life, just to be with her.

He didn't still want her, did he? He didn't like, or need, or have any real use for her, now that Potter had gotten himself killed, did he? She was a grim reminder of all he'd lost. He had stopped loving her the day she destroyed the Light.

Perhaps she could help him regain it. He smiled to himself. Perhaps he was going about this completely backwards.

The next night, he was afraid to give her any Lust Potion again. As he watched her making dinner, a desire to fuck her overcame him and he could barely cross the floor to her.

"Come with me," he commanded, and she meekly followed him. She looked like she would cry when she saw the vial of potion, and the anger rose again. Warring against the anger was his genuine fear that she would have another seizure. He didn't want to see that again. She looked at him, as he had taught her to do, and in her imploring eyes, Snape saw his own reflected fear.

But he wanted her. He wanted her to be wet and ready for him, and the Potion was the only answer. He tipped a few drops of the potion on his finger and intoned, "Open."

Obediently, Hermione opened her mouth, and to her surprise, Snape rubbed the Potion onto her gums. She watched him, her expression mildly confused, as he removed his finger, then watched her carefully.

The eyes, he had once written in a long-forgotten essay on Veritaserum, cannot deceive a Potioneer who is confident of his abilities and his results. With the right potion, he proselytized, the eyes will tell you a thousand secrets. They can make a thousand promises, and break a thousand hearts. Sometimes, with the right potion, they can do all those things at once.

Snape's Potions professor, Master Highbutton, wrote in the margins that Snape should stop waxing poetic; that his declarations were, in Highbutton's immortal words, a load of Skrewt shit.

But Highbutton had never looked into Hermione Granger's eyes. She was trying to fight it, and the more she fought, the more her amber eyes blazed with heat and want. She was grasping the side of the bed, her only means of preventing herself from flying at him. Gods, he wanted her. Merlin save him, he wanted her to touch him.

"On your knees," he demanded, his tone unsteady and desperate. He was frantically trying to free his aching cock from his trousers, and she obeyed him like a slave. She was already reaching, already licking her lips as he pulled her to him, so needy and frantic he felt as if he had been the one to take the potion. "Suck me," he said, and his voice sounded foreign to his own ears. There was nothing of the cool, menacing Headmaster about him anymore. He was not commanding her. He was begging her.

He cried out as her mouth enclosed on him, and she watched his body arching up to her mouth as she sucked him, her hands moving in rhythm with his thrusts. It felt like heaven to him.

"This is wrong," he moaned, pulling her closer, his hips moving faster, his climax imminent. "You are my student; you shouldn't be doing this," he whimpered.

Her reply was to swirl her tongue around the head of his cock, her eyes locked with his. "Don't make me want this," he gasped, feeling the delicious, forbidden tingling that told him he was coming.

"Don't make me want you!" He roared as he climaxed into her mouth. His seed spurted hot and bitter down her throat, and he felt dirty and angry even as she licked him clean. "I wouldn't expect you have any shame, after what you've done," he moaned. She looked up at him uncomprehendingly, her mouth swollen and lush from sucking his dick.

He managed to stumble onto his feet, buttoning his trousers. He walked unsteadily toward the stairs, and said, "I want some ice cream. Bring me a bowl."

He flung himself into his chair, fighting tears. He was furious and afraid and so upset he felt as if he were about to jump out of his skin. He ran a shaking hand through his greasy hair. He had to stop this.

He had to do something to make her stop him.

On the following night, he took her up the stairs with a different potion. "I think you are ready for something new, Miss Granger," he said, taking her into the loo.

From a secret cupboard, he withdrew a small iron box and opened it with his wand. From the lovely little box he took a long, stoppered glass tube. Uncorking it, he slowly withdrew a single, reddish-brown hair, the tube's only contents. He meticulously returned the glass to the box, and the box to its cupboard.

He took his potion and dropped the hair into the vial, and the potion within turned a light tan colour. He thrust the vial under Hermione's nose. "Drink this, then wait until the change." He strode from the room. "I'll be waiting for you."

Hermione sighed. She had no choice but to take the potion, and so drank it. The sickening taste and feel of the Polyjuice Potion coated her insides, making them morph and shift. She shuddered, and struggled to keep the contents of her stomach down, forcing herself to calm. Whoever she was now, she was the woman Snape wanted.

Hermione looked up into the mirror. She was now a few inches taller, with gorgeous straight, auburn hair and sparkling green eyes. "Oh, gods," she whispered. The woman looking back at her was too familiar not to recognise. She was Harry's mother, Lily Potter.