Chapter 6

Chapter 6

You give your hand to me, and then you say, "Hello."

And I can hardly speak, my heart is beating so.

And anyone can tell

You think you know me well.

Well, you don't know me.

You Don't Know Me - by Don McLean

4 July, 1998

Hermione lay in a near-stupor, her eyes blinking, trying to acclimate to the dark stillness after the bright, burning furor of the preceding minutes. Her body hummed in sharp contrast to her confused mental state. Had he made love to her with unemotional precision, brought her off, and then turned away and doused the light?

Really?

Ought she to touch his shoulder and offer a similar service? Not that she had much...Any! her unhelpful mind insisted...expertise, but shouldn't she make the effort? She rolled her head upon her pillow, trying to make out his shape in the darkness. Simple contact, her fingertips upon his naked flesh...and who knew what the gesture might start between them? He wasn't completely indifferent to her...'No wife of mine, Hermione Snape'...those words had been spoken with some feeling, hadn't they?

She stared hard at his indistinct bulk, as if her gaze alone might brush the well-remembered outline of his shoulder blade, initiating an exchange between them. But seconds ticked past, and still her hand did not reach for him. Who was she kidding? If he had wanted her, he would have done or said something to show it, wouldn't he? And besides, he had long ago expressed himself on the subject, and quite clearly, at that: Don't be ridiculous!

And besides, she wasn't thinking too clearly now; her mind was wandering off-topic as the languorous inertia of post-orgasmic bliss overwhelmed her. Relinquishing the silly idea of offering sexual relief to her husband, she slept, deeply and well.

The attic room was flooded with sunlight when she woke, and the other pillow was empty. For the veriest instant, she relished her physical well-being...when had she last slept so soundly?...but then the memory of what had transpired between her and Snape the night before rolled over her like an ocean wave, and she was flattened by it.

How could she ever look him in the face again?

Disconsolate, she rolled out of bed and pulled on her dressing gown, gathering her shower supplies and creeping down the stairs. If her husband had conjured a private shower this morning, it was long gone. Thankfully, she found the communal bathroom empty, and she locked herself in for a therapeutic shower.

She wielded her soap and face flannel, forcing herself to be reasonable. She had nothing to be ashamed of. She had not initiated the ... incident. She had not asked to be ... had not asked for his ... assistance. And besides, they were married. Married couples had sex all the time, didn't they?

Not us, her troublesome mind reminded her. Just the once.

She raised her head to allow the stinging spray to hit her face, closing her eyes against the pulsing heat. She shied away from thinking about her one-time, required-by-law-to-make-her-marriage-legal sexual intercourse with her husband. She knew only that it had happened, and until last night, nothing of a remotely intimate nature had passed between them since. They had no desire for one another...it was an established fact that they didn't. He had all but laughed in her face at the mere suggestion of it, and she had cringed from the very idea of such an embarrassing, world-changing thing as having sex with her teacher-turned-husband.

What right-thinking teenage girl wouldn't?

But now there are the dreams, she reminded herself.

Stepping from the shower, she dried herself and then wrapped the same towel about her sodden hair. The mirror was steamed up, but still she stared at it, as if she might receive some words of wisdom from a clear look at her own reflexion. Words came to her lips unbidden, and she spoke them aloud to her mist-shrouded image. 'It didn't begin with the dreams. Tell the truth. It began after the battle...after the Death Eaters in the dungeons.'

And with those words echoing in her mind, she retreated again to the bedroom she shared with Snape to dress for another dreaded day.

Cho and Luna were at one end of the kitchen table, their heads bent over a parchment, and they murmured a greeting when Hermione entered. Fleur sat at the other end, flipping idly through an old issue of Witch Weekly. Molly was spreading something that smelled like egg mayonnaise on slices of bread, but she spared a distracted smile for Hermione.

'Good morning, sleepyhead!' she said. 'Severus said we should let you have your lie-in. I hope you're rested.'

Hermione froze in the act of pouring tepid tea from the pot into a cup. 'He said that?' she asked.

'He said you were "dead to the world", and he didn't know when you would be up,' Fleur supplied helpfully, sounding marginally less distant than she had done the day before.

Hermione nodded her thanks and took a cold scone from a plate near the oven. Molly placed the last sandwich on top of the pile and turned away to wash up. She was vigorously drying her hands as she spoke again to Hermione.

'You look less peaky today,' Molly said, studying her. 'Still, a nice walk outside would do you good. I'll pack up these sandwiches, and you can carry them out to Arthur and Severus.'

A bite of scone stuck in Hermione's throat, and she had to drain her teacup to dislodge it. 'All right,' she agreed belatedly.

She didn't want to face Snape, but she was going to have to see him sooner or later...she might as well get it out of the way.

As she emerged into the bright summer day, she saw a group of fliers playing at Quidditch, their shouts indistinct as they battled before one of the make-shift goal hoops. She almost wished she liked flying. There was precious little to keep her occupied here, in hiding at Forest Haven. With any luck...if there were any mercy in the world...Dumbledore would send for them to return to Hogwarts soon, and she would no longer have to spend her days avoiding constant meetings with Severus Snape.

The farther she walked into the trees, the less she could hear the others at their Quidditch, until finally, she heard nothing but occasional birdsong or the scamper of small animals through the brush. Molly had given her directions to where Arthur and Snape were settled in, near the perimeter of their hiding place. Hermione trekked through the woods, the sunlight steaming through the trees, dappling the ground. The basket filled with sandwiches, tin mugs, and a sealed jug of pumpkin juice, dangled from her hand as she walked along, breathing freely of the fresh air. Deep breaths also helped to calm her nerves, for she did not want to look Snape in the eye.

When she neared them, it was their voices that pinpointed their location. Arthur Weasley gave a mighty shout, and Hermione stopped where she was, her eyes darting everywhere, looking for the threat, her wand-hand feeling naked and useless without her weapon.

It was quickly evident that Arthur's shout had been one of laughter, though it had been loud enough to frighten all the small creatures away from their immediate vicinity, and perhaps that was why Hermione could hear their conversation so clearly.

'... been meaning to say to you, Severus...about Hermione.'

She pressed her back to the trunk of the nearest tree, unsure if she wanted to remain hidden so she could hear what they would say or to be seen, so she would never have to know what Arthur's next words would be.

'You needn't, Arthur.' Hermione would have expected her husband to sound angry...forbidding, even...but instead, he sounded resigned.

'I know you don't like to talk about your private life, and I don't blame you,' Arthur continued doggedly. 'But I also know something about wives, and it's easy to see that she's not very ...'

He paused, as if unsure how much he could safely say to the least approachable wizard in Great Britain. There was a heavy sigh, and the professor spoke in a long-suffering tone.

'All right, Arthur. I can see you are not going to let it go. Spit it out, and let's be done with it.'

Hermione, unmoving, now felt she ought to stop breathing as well...she wanted nothing to interfere with her ability to hear what Arthur would say next. Would he speak up on her behalf, castigating the professor for being cold and unfeeling? Her very stillness, accompanied as it was by the odour of fresh food, lured the bravest animals back towards her; a squirrel here, on its haunches, its nose wriggling, and a bright-eyed crow. Perhaps they, too, were consumed with curiosity about what the men would say to one another.

'Well,' Arthur said, sounding as if he were choosing his words very carefully, 'it just seems that Hermione is having some ... difficulty coming to terms with her new role in life. I won't attempt to guess why, but after thirty years of marriage, I think I've seen it all. So if there's anything Molly or I can do to help the two of you, just say the word.'

Hermione felt her mouth fall open at these unexpected words. SHE who had a problem? How could anyone see the two of them together and think that SHE was the one at fault?

Snape spoke then, his tone unlike any she had heard from him before, neither pedantic nor biting, but somehow thoughtful. 'Is it any wonder that she may appear to be as skittish as a nervous filly, Arthur, considering what she's been through? And now, being thrust under the glaring light of our claustrophobic circumstances here, with the household watching her every move ...'

There was a moment of silence, and Hermione was simultaneously desperate to hear what else he would say and frightened that he would leave it there. He was not, however, finished, and his next words confused her mightily.

'Let us say that I find Hermione to be satisfactory in every way, shall we?'

And there was a finality to his words, a tone that said the subject was covered and closed. Arthur's response was almost immediate.

'I am happy to hear you say so, Severus. We want only the best for you both.'

'We thank you, Arthur...don't we, Hermione?'

She closed her eyes miserably. Bugger. What had made her think she could sneak up on Dumbledore's spy?

'Come out...I imagine you are bearing food from Molly.'

Did he think she would shrivel in embarrassment? Well, she would have to prove him wrong about that, wouldn't she?

She stepped from her hiding place to find the two wizards on their feet, faces turned expectantly towards her. There was a sardonic expression about the professor's lips, and Arthur seemed to be having a bit of a struggle not to grin outright at her discomfiture. Hermione tilted her chin defiantly and strode up to them with the basket of food.

'Here's your lunch,' she said airily, avoiding Snape's eyes.

The professor removed a sandwich from the plentiful supply and extended it to her, saying in a provocative undertone, 'Did your mother never tell you that an eavesdropper seldom hears good of themselves?'

She ignored the food...although she was hungry...and hunched a shoulder at her amused husband. She was desperately determined not to appear childish and ridiculous in front of Arthur Weasley, and that somehow trumped any shyness about seeing her husband so soon after their last ... encounter.

'I didn't want to interrupt your conversation,' she informed the top button of his broadcloth shirt.

'... particularly when the subject was so fascinating?' Snape suggested snidely.

Hermione snatched the sandwich from him and whirled away. 'I'm needed back at the house,' she tossed over her shoulder and marched off, her back ramrod straight and her emotions strangely disturbed.

She saw him again at dinner, where they sat side by side sharing a meal of spag bol with the others. Hermione felt more conscious of him than ever, the solidity of his presence at her side, the clicking of his silverware upon his plate, his quiet, measured contributions to the conversation.

Had she been filled with this awareness before, sitting with him at the Hogwarts High Table each night for dinner? It did not seem so, in her memory. He had ever been distant, sharp, irritable...but who wouldn't be, given the existence he endured, walking an impossibly thin line between the Light and the Dark, with so much at stake? And hadn't she been withdrawn, her mind full of her duties as Prefect, her position at the top of her form, her role as Harry Potter's friend and confidante?

They had both been too taken up with the grim, undeclared war between the Order and the Death Eaters to have thought or energy to spare for cobbling together some sort of relationship. It wasn't until after the battle...the one brutal, violent clash between Harry and Lord Voldemort and all of their supporters, which raged through the castle from the dungeons to the tower tops...that there had been leisure for such minor details as becoming acquainted with one's spouse.

'Hermione.'

He spoke her name rather sharply, and her fork clattered noisily to her plate, still quite full of the saucy pasta that she had been mounding into interesting shapes. Just now, she had been creating a tower, but she needed to be in the present, for everyone was looking at her, as if awaiting her response to a question.

'Pudding,' her husband prodded. 'Do you want pudding?'

Hermione looked up at Molly, who stood at her shoulder, hand outstretched to receive her plate. 'You're not eating enough to keep a bird alive,' Molly scolded, continuing down the table, collecting dishes.

Hermione slipped from her seat. 'I'll begin the washing up,' she said, cravenly fleeing from the cause of her confusion as she never had done...never would do...in the face of enemy fire.

I'm not a coward, she thought, casting a surreptitious glance behind her...but the eyes of Severus Snape, tracking her progress with glittering intensity, challenged her conviction.

She was a coward where he was concerned.

The telescope was taken outside again after dinner, and most of the inhabitants of the house were lured out beneath the stars. Hermione followed Harry and Ron from the house, but they quickly paired up with their girlfriends and melted into the dark, and she was left alone on her boulder perch, thoughts in a quandary.

It was time for her to make definite, serious plans. This bizarre, dream-like life, closed up in this tiny house with so many people and Severus Snape as her roommate would not...could not!...go on for much longer. As soon as they were away from this place and back at Hogwarts, she would tell Snape of her plans. In mid-August, she would pack up and depart for Salem. He could have his space back then...could expunge her presence from his rooms and regain his solitude after the little half-year of their pretend marriage. And after another six months, the entire experience would seem like nothing but a bad dream ... to both of them.

She was distracted as a bright, ghostly shape appeared in the darkness, approaching swiftly along the course of the stream. Hermione reached instinctively for her wand...not there!...and with her hand empty, she glanced to the small group about the telescope, seeing that she was not the only one to feel naked without her weapon. Percy stepped closer to Cho, and their hands clasped together, comfort given and support shared. Lupin, though, was smiling.

'It's a Patronus,' he said. 'Look...a phoenix.'

The large bird glided through the clearing and into the open window of the sitting room, where the elder Weasleys sat with Snape. The professor and Arthur dropped their newspapers, their attention riveted upon the words of the messenger, indistinct to those outside. Harry emerged from the murk on the opposite stream bank, Ginny's hand clasped in his.

'What does the headmaster say?' he asked excitedly. 'Is it safe? Can we go back?'

And another figure emerged from the woods, small and spiky-haired, a knapsack hung over one shoulder. Molly hurried from the house and down the steps, her hands outstretched.

'Tonks,' Lupin said, and Hermione watched him rush forward, reaching the newcomer before Molly could do so and catching her up in his arms.

Hermione felt a pang as Tonks wrapped her arms about Lupin's neck, apparently deaf to Molly's greeting from within the comfort of her man's arms. What was it like, to be so sure of your welcome in a man's embrace? What must it be like to find such comfort and completion in the presence of another person?

Now Tonks, on her own feet again, had turned to accept Molly's welcome, and Hermione joined the group converging on the newcomer.

'What news?' Harry asked, giving the pink-haired Auror a one-armed hug. 'Can we leave here?'

'Not yet,' Tonks said. 'The headmaster sent me because he said it wasn't safe for me to stay on duty. He's got some ideas about who's behind it all, but he's keeping it to himself, so far.'

A chorus of muttered grumbling began, but Tonks didn't seem very disconsolate about it all: She wrapped her arms about the waist of her greying paramour and gazed up at him with her heart in her large, dark eyes. Lupin seemed slightly embarrassed by her overt display, but he held her close by his side, even as he spoke with Arthur and Molly in low undertones. Hermione stood to one side, forgotten, surveying her companions. Even Percy and Cho had paired up, Cho seeming almost bemused to discover a male other than Harry with the power to engage her interest.

Hermione tarried for a while outside, sitting quietly upon her boulder, listening to the murmurs of conversation all around her, but she felt out of place. Slipping unnoticed into the sitting room, she was confronted with the sight of Bill and Fleur in a clinch upon the sofa, as if the momentary privacy of an empty room was more inducement than they could bear to resist. With nowhere else to go, she headed up the steps to her...their...room. Even if Snape were still awake, she would be no more uncomfortable in their bedroom than she had been in the midst of a group of hormone-driven, lovesick friends.

At the very least, she could be confident of the company of someone as disgusted as she was by the atmosphere so thick with sexual tension.

Thank Merlin she was past that phase of constant arousal, herself.

She noticed the light beneath the door, but she steeled her nerves and pushed into the attic bedroom. So what if Snape was her roommate? He was no more interested in her than her school dormitory mates had been, so she need give no more or less thought to him than she had ever done to Parvati or to Lavender Brown.

He lay upon the bed beneath the covers, his head and bare shoulders propped up on the brass headboard with his pillow behind him. Open in his hands was a leather-bound book, but his glittering black eyes were on her face the instant she opened the door, rather than upon the written word.

He did not speak as he tracked her progress across the room, and she felt compelled to offer some explanation. 'Tonks is here,' she said, pulling her nightdress over her head, her back to him.

From beneath the nightdress, she removed her shirt and bra, dropping them to the floor, then unfastened her jeans, pushing them from her hips and allowing them to puddle about her ankles before stepping from them and putting her arms through the sleeve-holes of her nightie. Only then did she turn again to face him.

'Tonks said the headmaster may have some new information, but he's not telling what he suspects, yet,' she told him.

'Yes, I heard his Patronus,' the professor said dryly, his tone heavy with irony. 'How uncharacteristic of him! Just imagine...Dumbledore, keeping a secret.'

Hermione slipped between the bed and the wall and clambered onto the high mattress. There! She was on the bed with him, now beneath the covers, now lying at his side with her head upon her pillow, and the world was not ending...she was going to be fine. She could do this. It was just like sharing a bed with Lavender, really.

Lavender never put her hand in my quim, her mind argued, and she blanched a bit. No. No. She would not think about that.

'So, did Lupin's girlfriend show up and cut you out?'

Hermione's mouth dropped open in indignation, and she pushed up on her elbows, turning her head to him. 'What are you talking about?' she cried.

Snape gave her a narrow-eyed stare. 'You've been content to hang around with Lupin, but now his girlfriend's arrived, and here you are with me.'

Hermione was flabbergasted with the injustice of this attack. Had she thought this room and this man were her safe haven? Was she raving?

'Lupin is nothing but my friend,' she flung at him angrily. 'He's always been my friend, ever since the year he taught us. Of course I would rather spend time with a friend than ...'

She trailed off, realising her words were infelicitous at best...perhaps even inappropriate...and if the thin, angry line of her husband's tightly-pressed lips were any indication of his opinion of the matter, she would be better off sleeping in the forest than remaining here with an angry Snape.

'Never mind!' she said, flinging the covers from her and beginning to rise. 'I'll find someplace else to be.'

But Snape popped her bubble of indignation with a sneer. 'Try not to be such a child,' he advised, placing his book on the bedside table and flattening his pillow before sliding down onto it and extinguishing the candles with the flick of his fingers. 'You will remain where you are and go to sleep. Good night, Hermione.'

A hot, angry denial leapt to her lips, but proclaiming her lack of childishness at this point seemed rather counterproductive. Had there ever been a person more difficult and annoying than Severus Snape? If so, she could not imagine who it would be. Pulling the covers up to her chin again, she rolled onto her side away from him, punching her pillow into shape and wishing it were his face.

He spooned behind her, a hand stroking over the curve of her hip to the dip of her waist, then sliding slowly downward until it lay upon the flat of her lower abdomen, just above the thatch of dark curls below. She opened her eyes to the glow of candles staggered about a murky room, halos of golden light punctuating the darkness in which so much love had been made. She rolled to face him, eager for his touch, for the stirring of the embers which lay between them like cities sacked and burned to ash by the conflagration of flesh against flesh. Only this would prolong the night and stave off the all-conquering opposing army whose drums, though distant yet, were like thunder in her consciousness, approaching with superior force of numbers and weapons: the dreaded dawn.

Her lips sought his, hungry and insistent, her hands stroking a stubbled cheek, running swiftly down a too-prominent ribcage, gliding along the blade of a sharp hipbone, until she cupped the heavy sac of his scrotum, finally finding and grasping the erection already stirring, stiffening, readying to pierce and possess her. Her lips trailed her hand, tongue laving the pebbled disc of a flat nipple, teeth nipping at the oval of his navel, until her hand guided the prize betwixt her lips, and she tasted the salty emulsion, slick beneath her tongue as she encased his cock in the wet warmth of her mouth. The gasp of his breath was as music to her ears, the muttered, indistinct imprecation...fuck me!...far more an expression of surprise than a directive for action.

Then she was gripped, dragged upward, and flipped onto her back so smoothly that she was pinned by the hands gasping her hips and holding her down before she knew what had happened. Next, her pants were dragged off...no, she had been naked, hadn't she?...and his face was plunged into her nether regions, his prominent nose first through the outer lips, to nuzzle her, swiftly followed by his mouth, lips pulling her nub inside, to be circled and flattened by his tongue.

Sweet Circe! Dear Nimüe! Pleasure shot through her body, leaving no nerve ending untouched. She writhed against him, whimpering and mewling sounds forming in her throat and passing her parted lips as if no power of thought or speech were required upon her part to produce them. His grip upon her hips lessened, and his fingertips spread her open to his marauding mouth, driving her passion through her chest and into her mind at the speed of sex...too fast, too much, too soon, not yet!...until she came undone.

Head thrown back, back bowed, feet flat upon the mattress, her body seemed to arch off the bed as completion shuddered through her body like silver flame, molten and too bright to look upon with the naked eye. She lay dazed, shattered and spent, her breaths coming in hitching gasps.

Then he rose to his knees between her thighs, his hands busy at his waist. In the ambient light...hadn't there been candles?...she saw him pull his rigid member from his pyjamas...and hadn't he been naked?...and bend over her, one arm braced to support him. For an instant she thought he would enter her...fuck her...but the silken head of his penis thrust through her labia and upward, sliding slickly over her clitoris rather than inside her body. Had she not been overly-sensitive from her orgasm the sensation would have been divine, but as it was, it was all she could do to hold still as he thrust himself once, twice, thrice, through her slick folds, then grasped himself and pumped, his completion a heavy expulsion of air from his lungs and a warm splattering of slickness low upon her belly.

She reached for him when he moved to his pillow again, but he blocked her seeking hands with an unyielding arm. Her eyes were heavy with sleepy satiation, and she was content to lie upon her side, drifting toward slumber. When she slowly migrated onto his pillow, one arm and one leg using him like a body cushion, he did not push her away, and soon, she was sleeping deeply.

Severus lay unmoving in the double bed, both of them crowded onto one side of it, and he tried not to be aware of the weight of Hermione's body against his side, her arm familiarly draped over his chest, her face so close to his upon his pillow that her warm breath stirred the hair at his temple. He endured the intimate embrace, staring miserably into the dark, waiting for daybreak.