Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Somewhere in the night we will know

Everything lovers can know

You're my song, music too magic to end

I'll play you over and over again

Somewhere in the Night – Barry Manilow

9 July, 1998

Hermione woke in an empty bed in a room flooded with bright sunlight.  Her lover was gone, and save for the lingering scent of musky sandalwood upon the pillow, the only evidence of his existence was the neatly organised bag of his soiled laundry on the floor by his travelling case and his shower kit on top of the chest.  The presence of the kit meant he had already showered and gone down for the day.  She registered all of these things before looking at her wristwatch and discovering that it was after nine o'clock.  She had slept late but exceedingly well.

Rising naked from her bed, she stood before the dressing table mirror and admired the dark bruise of the love-bite on her breast.  How many times had they made love after dinner?  First there had been the tryst in the shower, then a delicious nap, then coming a bit late to the dinner table and enduring the puzzled, speculative glances of her school mates. Had it been twice?  Thrice?  She giggled, remembering Severus' groan at the last, when he had informed her that he was not a teenager and that she would be the death of him.

But you won't, her ever helpful inner voice informed her.  You'll be in America, and he'll be at Hogwarts, and you may never see him again.

Hermione felt suddenly rather sick at heart.  'That's not true!' she informed her reflection, turning away to find her shower things and shrug into her dressing gown.

She would tell him, and soon.  And they were adults, not squabbling teenagers.  He would accept her decision, and they would work out how they would handle their marriage, going forward.  Going away to school did not equate to leaving him.

Twenty minutes later, she entered the sunny kitchen to find it a hive of industry.  Molly laboured over a bright blue bowl, stirring a thick concoction with a heavy wooden spoon.  Ginny was busy with numerous round cake tins, smearing them with butter and dusting them with flour.  Cho and Luna were in charge of a bowl of a glossy white substance, giggling together as they spooned it into what Hermione recognised as a pastry bag.

'What's going on?' she asked Fleur, who sat at the far end of the kitchen table with her knitting needles and yarn.

'It's Bill and Fleur's first wedding anniversary!' Molly said, answering the question before Fleur could open her mouth.  'We're making a cake the Muggle way, without magic...and I must say it's rather like reinventing the wand!'

All of the girls laughed appreciatively and agreed with Molly.

'There's tea in the pot and a plate in the oven for you, Hermione,' Molly added distractedly.  'You can get it yourself, can't you?'

'Of course, thank you,' Hermione murmured, feeling a bit out of place and uninvolved, as she had done from the beginning at this place.  She had never been so separate from her friends in Dumbledore's Army and the Order...not since before she had married Severus in such a god-awful rush.

'When you've finished eating, you can help Cho and me with the fondant icing flowers for the cake,' Luna said kindly.  'It's rather fun...you get the icing all over!'

Hermione smiled tightly and retrieved her plate of warm breakfast food.

'Are the men outside?' she asked nonchalantly.

'They scattered like cowards when the baking tins came out,' Ginny informed her sourly.  'It's amazing how stupid they become the moment there's a hint of domestic chores to be done.'  She twisted her face into a mask of horror and said, in a fair imitation of Harry's voice, 'Gosh, Gin!  I don't know how to stir batter with a spoon!'

Even Hermione had to laugh, if for no other reason than that she was fully aware of how helplessly Harry and Ron always behaved when confronted by kitchen duties, although she knew the Dursleys had used Harry like slave labour all through his childhood.  He certainly knew how to cook, but if it comforted him to pretend Ron's ignorance was his own, who was she to tell his secrets?

Hermione prepared a cup of tea and carried her breakfast outside, hoping to see her husband, but there was no one in sight.  It appeared that all the men had dispersed as described.  With a sigh, she sat down on the doorstep and began to eat.

Severus sat amongst Weasleys, hearing their conversation on the edge of his consciousness, but largely ignoring them.  The twins and their twin girlfriends had set off together for a stroll through the wood, and Lupin and Tonks had crept away, hand-in-hand, for Merlin only knew what.  Potter and his sidekick were flying their brooms, but Arthur, Bill, and Percy sat with Severus at the periphery of their Secret Kept location, purportedly keeping watch, but mainly keeping out of the way of the party-organising witches.

Severus had left Hermione sleeping in their bed, the tangled sheet revealing one plump breast...the one he had deliberately marred with a strong, suckling kiss, branding her as his.  She had made no protest, and he had considered leaving one on her perfect, creamy skinned throat...one she could not hide from their housemates...but the thin veneer of his adult mind overrode the adolescent impulse to mark her as his where everyone could see.

She was busy being the perfect lover: eager, passionate, adventurous, responsive, and occasionally aggressive.  He had fucked her hard, adorned her inside and out with his seed, tasted every orifice of her dewy-skinned body, internalised every sigh, every gasp, every cry of orgasmic completion...but he had failed to fully penetrate her, for all that.  She was hiding something from him...something essential, deliberately withheld...and the knowledge was tearing him apart.  He was of two tortured minds about his desirable young wife: to immerse himself in her on-going sexual revolution and bask in the glories therein, or to wriggle further into her confidence, work harder on her emotional connexion to him, and somehow convince her to confide the secret she was hiding.  The perfectly understandable masculine desire to do the first had thus far kept him from pursuing the second choice, but the continuing knowledge that she withheld something vital was beginning to gnaw at his mind, to the point that he only stopped thinking about it when he was in extremis...when he was inside her body, penetrating it with his cock as he seemed unable to penetrate her mind with his own.

Or perhaps he was wrong about Hermione...perchance his suspicions were nothing but the product of years of finely honed paranoia...mistrust that had saved his life, time and time again.

He sighed and allowed his head to rest against the tree trunk at his back, his eyes drifting shut, miming sleep in the hope that the Weasleys would leave him out of their dull, tedious conversation. 

10 January, 1998

He woke from his unavoidable nap as the rays of dawn crept into the cottage loft around the edges of the window curtains, the aromas of tea and toast filling his nostrils.  His eyes came into focus, and he saw a womanly shape in a pink dressing gown bent over a tabletop adorned with a teapot, a rack of toast, and a vase of pink and white roses.

'That smells like heaven,' he said, and the figure turned, revealing to him the soft, hopeful countenance of his wife.  At the sight of her his morning erection twitched to full attention, and he wanted her with a hunger far outweighing his transient desire for the sustenance on the tray.  'Come here, little tempest,' he said, throwing the covers back to invite her in...and to reveal the glory of his rapier cock.

'Oh!' she said, her gaze sliding from his face to his rigid member.  'Should I ...'  She put a hand to the belt of her dressing gown.

'Without delay,' he affirmed, and she dropped the garment to the floor, climbing into the bed and slightly dampening his ardour with her cold body.

He quickly covered them both with the bedclothes and held her close, suffusing her with his body heat, covering her mouth with his and kissing her hungrily.  She moulded herself to him with enthusiasm, suckling his tongue as if she were ravenous too, her hands touching his face, his shoulders, his chest, his arse, and his bollocks in quick succession.  He sought and squeezed a full breast, delving into the champagne-sweet taste of her mouth, thrusting into the fist wrapped now about the stiffness of his prick.

'Good morning, Professor,' she teased when he broke their kiss to look into her flushed face.

He gave her a mock professorial glare and burrowed beneath the blankets to wrap his lips around a nipple, his efforts rewarded by her tiny mewl of pleasure.  He suckled her, feeling the ridges forming beneath his tongue as the nipple peaked, and he replaced his wet mouth with a gently pinching hand as he moved to the other breast.

She relaxed beneath his attentions and allowed him to play with her body, yielding to his nipple sucking as if she had all day to indulge him ... as she bloody well did.  The realisation that he had this whole day to enjoy his bride filled him with euphoria, which he celebrated by cupping her vulva, feeling the dampness of her curls.  When had a wizard ever had a witch more receptive to his sexual overtures?  He scraped his teeth lightly over her erect nipple, and as he did so, he slipped a finger through her slick folds, drawing a moan of mindless acquiescence from her.

'Severus,' she breathed, parting her thighs that he might have full access to her warm, wet cunt.

He took full advantage, sliding down her softness like the serpent of his House, trailing open-mouthed kisses down her torso, her belly, until he reached the fragrant promised land of her slick folds.  He'd experimented very little with cunnilingus in his life, but he'd found in the last several hours that he had quite a taste for it ... a taste for her. And she was very accepting of his efforts, neither bossy nor demanding but compliant and appreciative...and sweet Circe, responsive. 

Working as he was in the dark beneath the covers, he could navigate only by smell and touch, and the Siren call of her symphonic sighs drove him to further industry.  He spread her open with his fingers and devoured her like a ripe, succulent peach, all nibbling lips and probing tongue.  She writhed beneath him with abandon, losing herself in the pleasure of his mouth on her clitoris.

When she cried out, he pressed a cheek to her damp curls, breathing deeply of her scent, content to nestle between her thighs in the warm cocoon of their marriage bed.  She allowed him to remain there undisturbed for a short time, but soon she was reaching for him, and he joined her again upon the pillows.  She stared into his eyes as if she were seeing him for the first time, pressing her palms to his cheeks.

'Who are you?' she whispered, but before he could frame an answer, she kissed him, hungrily sucking at his lips and tongue, as if greedy to taste herself in his mouth.

The question gave him pause...what did she mean?...but her tongue against his wiped his consciousness of the words, leaving only the desire behind.  Something in her eagerness inflamed him, made him want to enter her, to hold her down and fuck her.  A distant part of his mind reminded him how he had wanted to take her slowly, to bring her to orgasm again as he moved in and out of her...but the urgency was upon him now, and she was willing, rolling onto her back and wrapping her legs about his upper thighs, pulling him in, tight and deep.

She gasped at the strength of his thrust, and he saw lights behind his eyelids, bright and blinding and true.  He opened his eyes to see her beneath him, her breasts bouncing with every thrust, her lips parted, huffs of pleasure escaping with each impact.  In that moment he saw that she was everything...hazard and harbour in one entity...Siren and sanctuary.  He wanted to give her his soul...to keep her from harm...to fuck her, just like this, for the rest of his life.

And then she opened her eyes, huge, beautifully brown and burning.  He felt her look to the depths of his being, a connexion sparking between them like a link falling perfectly into place with a nearly audible click.  He was stricken, but not unwilling, and he held her gaze, his body continuing its inexorable plunder of hers.  It was as if their minds brushed, one against the other.

Her hands clutched at his back, and she began to strive beneath him.  Their movements were not perfectly in synch, but he was too far committed to his course to be diverted.  Already the coil was tightening, then the overpowering rush of completion began, seeming to come from his very core, a deluge outpouring from him into her. 

His movements were slowing as he endeavoured to catch his breath, but his tempest was still whirling.  She bucked beneath him, her legs clamping over his bum, and she cried out wildly, a raw, wordless shout of ecstasy.

He collapsed, winded and spent, and she trembled beside him, whimpers of emotion succeeding her primal cry.  He turned his head and was horrified to see tears on her lashes, and brushing aside his desire to cool his perspiring flesh with a moment of repose, he gathered her to him just as she began to sob.

'Hermione?' he said holding her against him, one hand soothing her impossible hair.

She cried in his arms, her sweaty face now becoming red and blotched, completely lost in herself.  He rocked her against his torso, petting and murmuring, wondering how on earth he had harmed her and what he could do to atone.

'Why are you crying?  Did I hurt you in some way?' he said, after a moment had passed, when her sobs seemed to be abating.  'I didn't mean to be so rough ...' 

His voice trailed away into uncertainty, but she answered him quickly.

'N-no!' she hiccoughed, lifting her tear-streaked face to look at him.  'I'm n-not hurt, Severus.  I'm ... overcome.'

He expelled a breath he had not realised he was holding, and his muscles relaxed from the panic of fearing he had injured her in some way.  His normal response would have been to remonstrate with her for alarming him, but everything normal was out the window today.  She was his bride, and this was their honeymoon, and he had just brought her to orgasm twice in mere minutes.

Damn, he was good.

'I see,' he murmured, pressing a kiss to her temple.  'Is that ... a good thing?'

Her watery chuckle reassured him immensely, and he fully sagged against his pillow, a stupid, self-satisfied grin pulling at his facial muscles in an entirely unfamiliar way.

She wriggled upward a bit, until she was on the pillow too.

'You don't need to look so proud of yourself,' she told him, fingers moving over his cheek.

'I bloody well do,' he told her, and gently kissed her lips, now salty from sweat and tears.

When he had Summoned a handkerchief and properly dried her face, she attempted to explain.

'When we were ... doing it,' she began, and he nodded his understanding of her meaning, 'I felt as if I were in two places at one time.  On the bed with you on top of me, and at the same time, in some separate sphere, completely ... enmeshed with you.'

She stopped and studied his expression warily, as if fearful that he would laugh or mock her.  Severus merely returned her gaze and lightly stroked her arm, a gesture of reassurance.  He had felt it, too, though he would never have admitted it had she not verbalised it.

She added, 'I don't understand it, quite, but it was ... something very special.'  And she averted her gaze as if she were suddenly shy.

He pulled her against him again, trying to honour her confession with body language, if not with spoken words.  In truth, he was dumbfounded and more than a little shaken.

This was not what he had bargained for.

9 July, 1998

The men returned to the house, predictably, at lunchtime.  Hermione seemed quite removed from the frantic buzzing about the remarkably fancy homemade cake, and she had been coerced into organising a casual lunch on the ground by the stream.  She had spread two large rugs (not including Molly's red, second-best table cloth, Severus was amused to see) on the ground, held down by two sizable hampers of sandwiches and bottles of Butterbeer.

It was not difficult to persuade her to join him upon her favourite boulder perch, and they sat side by side, legs dangling, eating cheese and pickle sandwiches.  He watched her covertly from behind the curtain of his hair, wondering what she was thinking as she stared out over the burbling stream, her brown eyes slightly narrowed against the noonday sun.

He was not to enjoy a tête à tête with his bride, though, for Arthur soon ambled over to stand companionably by the Snapes. 

'I asked her why she was going to such a fuss for a wedding anniversary party,' Arthur confided quietly, 'but you know Molly when she gets a notion.'  He chuckled affectionately, and Severus only nodded as a courtesy. 

Thankfully, Severus had no first-hand knowledge of Molly Weasley with the bit between her teeth, though he'd heard some amusing stories about her butting heads with Sirius Black over the nurturing of that delicate little prince, Harry Potter.

'She says the kids are going stir crazy with nothing to do, all cooped up here,' Arthur added thoughtfully.  'Putting on a party will give them something useful to do ... the girls, at least.'

George Weasley appeared at his father's elbow...or was it Frederick?...with his echo at his heels.  'I object, Father,' the twin said, and Severus was sure then it was George, using his "posh" voice.  'The boys are making themselves useful as well!'

Fred Weasley produced an old-fashioned wireless...not unlike the one Dumbledore kept in his office...that was surely a relic of the war years.  'See what we found in the big cupboard off our room?' Fred said.  'If we can get it working, Bill will be able to have a dance with his bride to celebrate.'

Severus snorted.  'Providing you can find something other than consumer programs and Quidditch scores to listen to,' he said.

George touched a finger to his nose, nodding to Severus.  'Right you are, Professor,' he said.  'But we've fortunately remembered...'

'It's Thursday,' Fred continued.  'Mum's favourite singer has a programme every Thursday night...'

'And who wouldn't want to listen to Celestina Warbeck to commemorate the old nuptials?' George finished triumphantly.

Severus cocked a doubtful brow.  'And you two are experts at manipulating old pre-war Muggle relics?'

George turned to his twin with a tragic sounding sob.  'He ... he doubts us, Fred.'

Fred gave his brother a bracing one-armed hug.  'He'll eat those words, George.  Come along now.'

The two whirled away, both talking at once, and Severus was treated to the sound of Hermione's gurgling laugh...and Arthur's chuckle, but it was Hermione's glee that lifted his heart.  He tilted a glance to her face, and she met his eyes, her lips parted, eyes sparkling with enjoyment.  Something turned over behind his breastbone, and he wondered if some fragment of sandwich was caught in his throat.

'So there'll be dancing,' Arthur said cheerfully.  'The young people will enjoy that...I think we've got more than one new romance brewing on this little enforced holiday.'

Severus thought it would be a miracle if Arthur didn't have a rash of grandchildren come next spring, but he kept the thought to himself.  He had other things to worry about.

Dancing?  In front of all of Dumbledore's Army and half the Order as well?  All of them watching him with Hermione, spying, waiting for some show of husbandly emotion?  Of wedded bliss?

That was bloody well not going to happen.

A/N: This week's song was a popular one in the months of my engagement to SubHub: Somewhere in the Night. More than one artist recorded it, but the one we loved was sung by Barry Manilow: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y15vjqyx_F0