4/7: Revelations

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.

Hermione stared at her reflection, and something like hysteria threatened to take over her sanity. If Snape's master plan had been to destroy any sense of self-worth or esteem, he had finally succeeded. This was the humiliation from which Hermione was fairly sure she would never recover. Bravo, Professor, she thought. You've done it this time. You've only managed to kill me and keep me alive at the same time. Your Master would be so proud.

Like a sleepwalker, Hermione walked from the bathroom into Snape's bedroom, feeling clumsy and off-balance in this too thin, too tall frame. She approached him as he sat on the bed, staring at her like a starving man surveying a banquet.

Slowly, he stood and approached her. He too was naked, and even as she crossed the room to meet him, he stopped in his tracks, gaping in wonder. His eyes glowed with pleasure, his face relaxed, and he looked pleased and content. Hermione was struck with the thought that, when he smiled and released the tension in his face, Severus Snape was a handsome man.

His voice was light and boyish. "Oh, gods, you're perfect." He rewarded her with a glorious smile that seemed foreign on his stern face and all the more alluring for it. Hermione's heart cramped with a yearning for him that made her feel like the worst, self-deluded masochist on the planet. It was almost as powerful as the humiliation that closely followed it.

Snape took her in his arms and pulled her close, looking down at her with shining eyes. "You're so beautiful." He reverently sank to his knees, wrapping his arms around her. He hugged her tightly, pressing his face against her abdomen. Hermione stroked his raven hair, her unfamiliar hands moving of their own accord. "Oh, Lily," he moaned, ecstatically, leaning into her touch. "My beautiful, sweet Lily."

He rose and lifted her into his arms as if she were a delicate ribbon of light. He laid her gently down on the bed, murmuring soft words in a voice that poured over Hermione like molten silver. He looked deeply into her eyes, smiling, covering her face with gentle kisses, his fingertips trailing over her cheek. It was not an unpleasant sensation, only a frustrating one; Hermione could feel the pressure of his lips, but not a real touch; it was like wearing a thin suit of latex over her entire body.

Snape did not notice her confusion; he was no longer the sadistic, cruel master of her new unlife. He was tender, considerate, and when he parted her lips with his tongue, his kiss felt perfect and rare, even in this dead woman's mouth. Hermione had never been kissed like this before. You still haven't, she told herself, and felt a keen, swift jealously that he could be so loving with her, as long as she wore the skin of another woman. She put her arms around him and drew him closer, trying anything to feel him. He moaned deep in his throat, and kissed her until she was breathless.

He was caressing her, trying to arouse her, to give her pleasure, so that she would respond. Hermione watched him, almost at a distance, hidden behind this foreign body, remembering the capriciousness and instability of Polyjuice. Any other potion used in conjunction with it would negate it. Snape's lust potion could not be used; it would tamper with the results of the change.

Hermione was cast into new, treacherous waters – Snape was making love to her, without benefit of potion-manufactured desire, and her traitorous body couldn't tell the difference. It was devastating to realise that she wanted him as much as he wanted Lily.

Hermione wanted to respond to his kind caresses; he was skilled, practiced. His hands were sure and experienced and generous, and she wanted to enjoy the feel of his lips on her nipples, the knowledge that he could be a giving, talented lover. She wanted to revel in his rare smile, his soft mouth that bestowed pleasure with each touch. She wanted to enjoy his hypnotic, beautiful voice, which called her beautiful, precious and beloved – and Lily.

And when he entered her, so slow, deep and sweet, and their dance began, it felt like love. It was not for her, though, and even though she wanted to ignore the lie and pretend he was making love to her, inside this shell she could not feel him properly. The friction between them increased with each long, slow, sensuous plunge. This was the vilest, unkindest cut of all. Hermione felt tears slide from her eyes into hair that didn't belong to her, receiving this long, slow beautiful lovemaking that didn't belong to her, and being denied pleasure, trapped as she was in a body that didn't belong to her.

As his passion took him over, Snape quickened his pace, his body labouring to please her. Hermione opened her eyes and saw his strained face as he loomed over her, trying to fulfill his fantasy, trying to make love to this ghost, and Hermione tried to enable him, knowing that soon she would be Hermione again. Hermione, the despised. Hermione, the scapegoat.

Snape soon grew frustrated. "Come," he urged, moving faster, trying to find his own pleasure. "You must come for me. Come on my cock," he moaned, and drove harder into her borrowed body. She could sense his dissatisfaction, his puzzlement. Pleadingly, he said, "You have my permission. Come for me, now." He continued to thrust harder, but he, too, could not be lubricated by this unbody. His own arousal began to wane.

When he realised he couldn't orgasm either, he became perplexed, then angry. "Why are you doing this, Granger? After a week of leaving a slime trail all over my house, is it too much to ask?" When she did not reply, he raged, "Is that the only way you can allow yourself to fuck me? A Potion?"

Stunned, she felt as if he'd thrown a bucket of her dirty mop water over her. Then a hot, lava-heavy rage flooded Hermione, shocking her from her grief-numbed subservience. Her mind finally cleared of its fog of trauma, sadness, and unrelieved lust. Gone was the groveling, sniveling slave.

Grabbing his arms, she snapped back, "And is this the only way you can to allow yourself to be kind to me, Severus Snape? A Potion?"

Furious, with a rage that matched hers, Snape grabbed the vial on the bedside table and tried to force its contents down her throat. "Take it then! Take it if that's what you need to give me what I want!"

She fought him, knocking the potion out of his hands, adrenaline and arousal speeding up the effects of the Polyjuice, ruining its stability, making her change back too early.

Snape froze as her face transformed. Gone were the sleek tresses; Hermione's wild hair shone auburn as she partially morphed, and green eyes stared out of her own face. As Severus looked down at Hermione, he felt her body change, and his cock was now sheathed in a passage that was slick and hot and familiar, and he looked at her face. Hermione's face!

She looked up at him with eyes that were snapping with fury and challenge. Then with an aggressive strength he honestly didn't know she possessed, she pushed him off her body with a roar worthy of her House's mascot.

She rolled him over, until she sat astride him, his cock still buried in her tight heat. She pinned his arms to the mattress and bore down on him, fearful and fearless.

For what seemed like an eternity they glared at each other, their breathing in unison, panting at one another. Fire and lust reignited between them, and Hermione was suddenly, amazingly aware that she was astride a fully grown wizard, with a very large cock between her legs and enough anger for both of them. She grinned down at him mirthlessly, and his eyes widened, first in shock, then in submission. That alone filled her with power, and she leaned close to his face.

"No one else in this bed, Snape," she hissed. "No potion, no other woman, nothing else - just you and me, now. And you'll give me what I want."

And then she was fucking him, riding him with every bit of the same fury as he had ridden her, with a body that was real, with skin that lay against her own nerve endings. A body that needed no potion, no Polyjuice, no need to pretend. She used him, devoured him like a rich confection so long denied that manners and propriety and decency no longer held any place in consuming him.

Snape felt an overwhelming, exquisite, forbidden pleasure roll over him with every movement, and his balls tightened in anticipation. He was helpless, pinned beneath her, the fight in him spent and tamed. He felt his orgasm lifting him off the bed, and moaned loudly. Hermione felt it, too, and snarled down at him.

"Don't you dare come," she growled, pistoning on him furiously. "Don't you fucking dare come until I do!" He gasped as her eyes faded from green to amber, and she rode him as true desire took her over, and before his mind could accept what his heart already knew, his hands were on her waist, and he was helping her, thrusting up to meet her driving, pumping hips, moaning with each breath something that sounded like her name – something that felt like surrender.

Their eyes were locked on one another's, each completely enthralled. Her firm breasts moved in rhythm to her thrusts, and when he blindly reached for them, they fit into his hands perfectly, and her nipples dug into his palms like nails from the cross.

Her eyes grew glassy and unfocused, and her climax slammed into her, as sure as an Avada and as cruel as a Crucio. She threw back her head and screamed, her nails digging into his chest. He felt her orgasm reverberate down the back of his own spine as she keened her pleasure in the room and her muscles contracted and clamped down, milking his cock. He had never had a woman climax like this; he had pushed her away the first time, before he could truly feel her body. If he had known, he would have never denied her this – he would have never denied himself this.

Now, she was taking everything from him, pulling her lust and pain and need from him and it finished him completely. He was coming harder than he could ever remember, crying out what certainly was her name, over and over; driving his cock up hard into her shuddering body in complete submission.

His lust and passion-drugged mind slowly cleared, and he felt warm and cloistered in her wet, trembling flesh. She was a real living, passionate woman with a real body; a real woman that he could have for the rest of his life, that he could accept if he allowed himself, could cherish if he chose, and could revere if he could ever forgive her. Hermione, Hermione...

"Oh gods!" he cried, realizing what had happened, what had shifted, and how he was lost. Lost to the darkness and to the Dark Lord, lost to himself and his own self-hatred; lost to the girl he wanted to punish every single day of her life for the unpardonable sin of living when everyone else had died. He had once cared for her, but when he had to watch her used by his brother Death Eaters, something had broken in him, and he had sat in numbed silence as Potter and the rest of the Light was snuffed out, leaving her behind.

Then, he had been given his choice of slaves. Just like that, he'd looked out over the harem of girls and she had stood out, as calm as a martyr, as sad as a siren. So, he had claimed her, fucked her, punished her and done unspeakable things. She deserved it, but he couldn't remember why. Why had she deserved to be ruined so?

From the day his world ended, the only proof that Severus Snape had embraced what was good and pure was her. His release, his knowledge, gave him no pleasure; it merely served as a bitter reminder that he was trying his best to destroy the one small beam of light left in his life. What he could not explain was, why? Why had she deserved it?

For one exhausted moment, he fell back, his arms flung outward on the bed. Since the Night of Screams, he had taken her daily. Now, she had fucked him, and he felt as if he'd never truly understood anything until this moment. Not sex, nor life, nor death, nor himself – certainly not her. He heard a small helpless sound, and knew it was coming from his own lips.

Hermione collapsed against his chest, panting, her sweaty body sliding against his own damp skin. It would have been so easy, so unforgivable, to put his arms around her and hold her to his heaving chest.

Instead, he quietly, almost respectfully, removed her from his body and rose from the bed. In three strides, he was out of the room, and Hermione could hear his swift footsteps down the stairs. She curled up in a ball, waiting for him to return, to inflict something truly heinous on her. She had lost her temper. She had defied him. She had shouted at him. She would pay for it. She'd suffered greatly for a lot less.

On the next day, Snape treated her as if nothing untoward had happened the night before. He instructed her to clean his bookshelves, and left her to her work. He spoke very little, but she felt his eyes following her everywhere she went, but he kept his silence – and his distance.

Lucius Malfoy came to visit that afternoon. The wards shimmered, and Snape looked up at her, cleaning the tallest shelves. He looked alarmed. "It's Lucius. Get upstairs. Quickly!" he hissed.

Hermione, still naked, leapt down from the ladder and took the stairs two at a time, her heart pounding so hard she could barely breathe. Dashing into his bedroom, she slammed the door to let Snape know she was hidden.

"Well, I must say, Brother, your little house-elf has been working very hard," Lucius was saying, his voice jovial. "Where is your little Mudblood, Severus? All shagged out? I must say, you look as if you've been receiving a little spit and polish as well."

With the slightest of hesitations, Snape replied, "I imagine she's still on her knees, scrubbing the loo. With her tongue," he added, his tone louche and diffident.

Lucius chuckled. "My, how the mighty have fallen," he said with mock sadness. "I'm sure she's pining for the loss of her old status – from the Gryffindor princess to the spy's whore."

Suddenly, their voices became muffled, and Hermione recognised a Desilenciato spell, one that enabled the caster to speak with another, while reducing their voices to an unrecognizable mumble. Malfoy's voice sounded jolly next to Snape's deeper, mellifluous tone, and although Hermione could not decipher their words, Malfoy seemed to be enjoying the subject of their conversation. Snape, less so; his voice was more sombre, less animated.

As the minutes ticked by, Hermione strained to hear what was actually being said, but it was impossible until the spell was cancelled.

Suddenly Malfoy's voice was clear again. "I'll inform the Dark Lord that you'll be ready in a week's time."

"Yes. Tell our Lord I am most humbled and grateful for his confidence in my abilities. I will not disappoint him." Snape sounded less than pleased at this pronouncement, and then Malfoy said something that made Hermione's heart stutter.

"Yes. Well, I suppose you could say that thanks are in order, Severus. After all, if not for me, we would still be stumbling around, trying to locate Potter and his ilk, instead of celebrating our victory." He sounded positively ebullient, but there was an undertone to his statement that troubled Hermione.

Snape simply started at Malfoy, his expression more unreadable than ever. Lucius regarded the dark man for a moment.

Malfoy's jovial, smug demeanor changed, and his voice darkened. "Yes, a great debt of thanks, Brother. The question of your loyalty to the Dark Lord has ever been a hotly debated one in the inner circle, Severus. Isn't it lucky for you that I have been able to vouchsafe for your integrity?"

He leaned in to Severus' ear, and he growled, "One might say you owe me, Brother." It made Hermione shiver that Malfoy could make the sentence sound so intimate and ominous at once.

Hermione heard the sharp crack of Disapparation, and quickly descended the staircase. Snape was in the front room, staring ahead, as still and pale as a marble statue. He hadn't moved.

Hermione swallowed once, twice, trying to get up the courage to speak. "Sir?"

Snape whirled around and stared at her, his eyes wide, almost fearful, as if he'd forgotten she was there.

He cleared this throat, his adams apple bobbing nervously. "Get – get back to work," he whispered. His voice was hoarse and strained, and carried none of its usual commanding bark.

Hermione crossed to him to climb the ladder. Her curiosity won over her trepidation, and she turned back to him. "Sir, would you like a drink or something?"

Snape looked back at the spot where Malfoy had Disapparated. He looked stunned, and on his face was an expression of puzzled unease. "I – I don't know." He looked up at her again. "Well, go on. Get back to work." He whirled and left her, standing on a ladder, her polishing rag in her hand. She heard his tread on the stairs, descending into the basement laboratory. She had learned that he sequestered himself there often, usually when troubled or needing to be alone.

Hours later, it occurred to both of them that Snape had protected her from the very thing with which he'd originally threatened – forcing Hermione to receive his guests without being allowed to wear clothing. It also occurred to both of them to question why Malfoy was acting as the Dark Lord's message boy, instead of summoning Severus outright.