Chapter 18

Chapter 18

If this was our last dance, I'd wait in the rain

Just to see your face.

If this was our last chance, I'd ask you to stay

For one last dance.

Last Dance

9 July, 1998

Severus sat upon the bank of the stream in the fading early evening light, long legs stretched out in the dirt, his hands covering his face as the lacerating memories streamed through him. He was usually adamant with himself to not indulge in such sickly fancies, but this week of living at Forest Haven had slowly chipped away at his defences. The more intimate he became here with Hermione, the more memories of their wedding weekend came to him...plagued him...and he found himself looped in the remembrance, as if he were reliving the same slice of life again. And why not? She was the same shining, clever girl she had been the day he married her, and he was still ... the same man. They had history together this time, yes, but why should the same alchemy not work its magic on them again, transforming the bitter bachelor and the earnest young woman into the lovesick pair they had been by the end of their weekend together?

He did not know what change had come over her, that she would seek physical intimacy with him after the months of shunning his very presence...but he was too deeply bewitched and ensnared to question his good fortune too closely. He had longed for her, and she had turned to him at last, as a woman turns to her husband.

What was to say she wouldn't fall in love with him again, requiting the shattering yearning he'd harboured for her these six long months

Six months ...

He rubbed the slight ache above his eyebrows, then pinched the bridge of his nose, laboriously attempting to work out how many days they'd been cooped up here...what the date was. When his calculations were complete, his next move was clear...and stunning in its perfection. Suddenly filled with renewed energy and purpose, he bounded to his feet and hurried through the darkening wood toward the house, driven as much by the memory of his poignant loss as by the promise of a sweet reward.

Hermione sat disconsolately on a wooden kitchen chair, dragged outside for the wedding anniversary party. Her chair was pulled well back from the festivities in the middle of the circle, where Fleur and Bill Weasley cut the painstakingly assembled cake Molly and her minions had stirred up 'the Muggle way'. Dinner had been a spicy chicken curry, and now the mead poured freely from Arthur's generous hand. Everyone's spirits were high, save for Hermione's. Severus had not been at dinner...had not been seen since midday...when he had walked out on their after-lunch rendezvous.

She sighed, tugging at her thick plait, watching the anniversary pair feed one another cake, as if it were their wedding day again. Severus and she had not fed one another cake on their wedding day. They had eaten a meal in the same room, she remembered, and then he had given her the Lethe Elixir to take. There had been pretty fairy cakes included in her wedding supper...the supper she supposed Professor McGonagall had ordered the house-elves to prepare...but she didn't remember eating them. She'd managed some chicken and sprouts, but she'd never made it to afters...at least, not before Severus had provided the Lethe. She wondered now if she would have been better off not accepting the opportunity to forget her wedding night. Clearly, she was very strongly drawn to her husband, sexually speaking. Perhaps they might have enjoyed physical intimacy with one another in those tense months when Hogwarts had been ruled by Dolores Umbridge, and Voldemort had been planning his invasion of the school. Perhaps sex would have been a comfort to them both.

And perhaps it would have kept Septima Vector away from Severus.

She scowled into the middle distance, no longer aware of her housemates and their jolly repartee. How many times had Vector been his partner at meals, talking animatedly beside him whilst he nodded and made occasional replies? How many times had Hermione come upon the two of them in the corridors, deep in conversation...or in his laboratory, where he brewed the potions for the infirmary: Severus in his shirtsleeves, stirring rod in hand, and Vector perched at his worktable, pretending to mark student papers?

Hermione shook her head, as if to dislodge the bothersome mental images. How could she ever hope to attract and attach a man of Severus' calibre with such a beautiful witch as Vector as her competition? Never mind that the woman was older, more sophisticated, prettier, thinner, taller ... just enumerating her many excellent qualities was depressing. Why, when she and Severus had been no more to one another than flatmates...or ships that passed in the night...had she been so bloody jealous of the Arithmancy teacher, who loomed like a catastrophic iceberg, awaiting the passing of unwary vessels.

Or had Hermione been the iceberg, holding Severus at a distance with her cold politesse?

She shook her head stubbornly. No, he had been the cold one, rigid and unbending, polite but inaccessible. Clearly, the only reason Severus was intimate with her now was because he was bored and had nothing better to do.

The upraised voice of a Weasley twin attracted her attention...though she was not close enough to discern his words...and with the aplomb of a television presenter, George produced the wireless, and Fred turned the knob with a flourish. Music...of a sort...flooded the clearing, and Fleur clapped her hands in delight. Hermione didn't have to be within hearing distance to interpret the courtly sweep of Bill's bow or the perfectly executed curtsy with which his wife answered him. The two began to dance, and after a respectful few moments, other couples joined them, taking the opportunity to hold one another close in the summer twilight.

Hermione watched them sourly, remembering the dutiful dance her husband had accorded her at Valentine's Day...it was a wonder he hadn't found an excuse to dance with Vector, instead.

'Would you like to dance, Hermione?' Lupin asked, his voice warm and concerned.

Hermione twisted to look and found Remus Lupin smiling down at her. Hermione frowned, feeling almost annoyed that he had interrupted her dire musings.

'Where's Tonks?' she demanded. 'Why aren't you dancing with her?'

He nodded towards the house, and Hermione saw Tonks sitting with Arthur and Molly on the veranda, obviously part of an on-going conversation. Tonks caught Hermione's eye and gave her a thumbs-up.

'Nymphadora is chatting with Arthur,' Lupin said unnecessarily. 'She suggested we should have a dance or two. She says she's too clumsy to dance with me.' He waited patiently for Hermione's decision, his presence and person no more interesting to her than a giant Flobberworm.

Hermione turned to look again at her dancing friends, feeling a stirring of her pride. Already she had endured a pair of pitying glances from Padma and Parvati, and she was sure Cho had directed a sympathetic smile towards her as she danced by, closely held in Percy's enveloping arms. There were many things Hermione could endure with equanimity but being pitied was not one of them.

'Right,' she said and stood. Lupin wasn't her wizard, but he was a willing partner, so he would have to do.

Hermione threaded her way amongst the dancers and turned to face Lupin, resigned to allowing him to touch her. But the warbling voice of Celestina Warbeck ended a song, to be replaced by an advert for Patented Daydream Charms, available only from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes.

George turned to Fred, and they exchanged an enthusiastic high five. 'Nice one!' they said in unison, flashing their matching grins.

Molly's voice drifted to them from her ever murkier spot beneath the eaves of the house. 'You're advertising on Celestina Warbeck's programme?'

Fred grinned. 'We're broadening our target market, Mum!'

The opening orchestral strains of the next song were beginning when Hermione spied a tall, dark figure emerging from the trees. Severus had returned. She felt a tumult of emotions; relief, excitement, hope, and when his eyes locked with hers, a rush of euphoria.

'You'll excuse us, won't you Lupin?' the Potions master said smoothly, never sparing a glance for his old schoolmate as he stepped between Hermione and the werewolf, taking her hand in his. 'It's our six month wedding anniversary, you see, and I'm afraid I cannot share my wife.'

Hermione vaguely heard the murmur of Lupin's acquiescence, but she was really only conscious of the blazing black eyes of Severus Snape. He led her into the dance as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and Hermione moved with him, one hand clasped in his, the other resting on his shoulder, riveted by his gaze as surely as if she were under a spell that would not permit her to look away. She was scarcely conscious of the other dancers, and indeed, it seemed as if they all stood aside for a bit, according the same respect to the Snapes' anniversary dance as they had done for the young Weasleys'. In fact, as Severus pulled her closer, burying his nose in the hair at her temple, Hermione heard Padma whisper to her sister, 'I thought you said she never touched him...look at them!'

Hermione felt a triumphant thrill shiver through her body, and she slid her hand from his shoulder up into his hair, allowing her fingertips to graze the sensitive nape of his neck. He had sat beside her at meals in this house, and they had been conspicuously late to dinner once due to amatory activities, but never had he touched her romantically in the presence of another person. And this was no dance of duty, with eighteen inches separating their torsos and rigid discomfort in every line of his slim body. This was a lover's clasp, his face against her hair, lips close enough to whisper sweet nothings...or naughty somethings...in her ear, and everyone could see them and know that things had changed between Severus and Hermione Snape.

She felt as proud as she'd done looking at her final marks, knowing her teachers (including her Potions master) had respected her schoolwork enough to award her a plethora of Outstandings. Being acknowledged as his witch...shown amongst her peers as being capable of attracting a wizard as powerful and compelling as Severus Snape...filled her with a joyous glee beyond mere intellectual superiority. Perhaps it was puerile for her to care for such a thing, but she could not help herself. She was woman enough to feel validated by the public attentions of this man, for his return and public acknowledgement had completely wiped her mind of her earlier grievances and jealousies.

As he held her closer still, she experienced a great, expansive ache in her chest, emotion too intense to express with words. So she pressed her cheek to his chest and slipped an arm tightly about his waist. He gently turned the hand he held until it was clasped to his heart, resting near her face. Hermione released a great sigh of contentment and closed her eyes, relying on him to lead her safely through the summer evening.

When she was in his arms, she never doubted her rightful place there.

Severus did not pause to feel anger or jealousy when he saw Hermione preparing to dance with Lupin. He had no time for that. This was his darling tempest, the girl he'd loved and lost to the Lethe Elixir. Cradling her in his arms as she fell asleep at the end of their wedding weekend, he would have given anything he possessed to have her wake up with her memories of their love intact. How could he ever quibble over the opportunity to hold her in his arms and dance with her? What did it matter what anyone else thought of him? If she was willing to have him hold her and proclaim her as his in the company of her closest friends, he was the luckiest wizard in all the United Kingdom.

Fuck that. He was the luckiest man in the world, Muggle or magical.

He closed his eyes against the horrified faces of Potter and Ronald, the indulgent faces of Arthur and Molly, and the speculative faces of the young witches of the Order. Instead, he buried his face in the familiar, achingly beloved scent of her hair, heard her sigh of trust and contentment, and wished for the night to go on ad infinitum.

The overwhelming emotion Hermione experienced dancing with Severus beneath the stars did not dissipate, but grew importunate...demanding and all-encompassing...an immense weight that seemed to deprive her of breath and strength. She did not speak of it, and yet it seemed that Severus understood her debility, for they soon made their excuses and went into the house.

They climbed the stairs to their attic room in silence, he leading the way with her hand in his.

Hermione had no doubt that every person they had left below knew precisely what would go on in the attic bedroom this night...her six month wedding anniversary, a concept so alien to her that it only added to the aura of unreality saturating the night...but she found that she was indifferent to their knowledge. She felt no apprehension or shame, for those people mattered very little to her in comparison to the feeling that filled her now, at once oppressive and strangely liberating.

In their room, he flicked his fingers at the candelabra on the chest, the power flowing from him in a casual ripple of magic, an act as erotic as if she'd found him with a fist wrapped about his erect manhood. She wanted him to penetrate her, inhabit her, possess her utterly...and even then, she was not sure she would be sated.

They stood for a moment in the golden candlelight, hands still clasped, and the charged air between them permeated their skin, enveloping them in a unique blend of urgency and utter peace.

Hermione led her husband to the bed and guided him to a seated position, then she knelt and removed his boots, twisting to place them neatly aside. Next were his socks. When his feet were bare, she quickly removed her trainers and socks, aware of his eyes watching her every move. She pushed to her feet and took his hands to pull him up, backing to the open space between the foot of the bed and the little writing desk. The rhythm of the dance still beat in her (One-two-three, one-two-three), and she was not through with it...not nearly.

She moved in to wrap his torso with one arm and capture his hand with the other, urging him to join her again in the circling, repetitive dance. There was a faint sound of the wireless from the on-going party outside, but Hermione danced to the music in her mind, and Severus moved with her, seeming to understand without words what she wanted.

Her chin came up, her head tilting back, and she found his hooded eyes watching her intently. His compliance...almost a form of complicity in a secret, intimate act...was further fuel to the ever intensifying inferno in the core of her. His arm about her, the flux and flow of their movement, and the thrumming energy between them gave her a slick ache between her thighs, already slightly damp with the secretions of her desire for him...and he had yet to touch her sexually.

Without halting their circling dance, Hermione tugged his shirt from his trousers and sent a riffle of wandless magic to free the buttons. She drank in the torso now bare to her eyes, hands, and lips: his defined pectoral muscles sparsely dusted with dark hair, his abdominals lightly rippled above a stomach still too concave from his years of living at constant risk...and below his navel, a thicker, darkly defined line of hair disappeared into his trousers.

Wrapping her arm about his naked back, she tongued the flat dark coin of his nipple, relishing the pebbling hardness between her lips, and she nipped it lightly, feeling the provocation as if it were his mouth between the lips of her labia. A sharp exhalation of breath was his response...that and his hands at the hem of her tee-shirt, pulling it up and over her head.

She stopped then, pushing his shirt from his shoulders so that it fell to the floor, but he would not permit the dance to end. He encircled her bare back with a naked arm as unyielding as an oak branch, and deftly popped the front clasp of her bra. She waited for his hands to grip her breasts...for his lips to seek a nipple...but he was still dancing with her, seemingly content with the hardening of her nipples in the cool night air and the friction of those protrusions against his naked abdomen.

His hand touched the scrunchie holding her plait and it fell away, the sections unwinding until her heavy hair hung down her back, his fingers buried in it. For a time, Hermione ceased her efforts to direct matters, relishing instead this half-naked dance of foreplay with her lover, allowing her internal fire to mount, the vaginal ache to increase, and the viscous atmosphere surrounding them to cradle and caress their circling bodies

When at last she reached for his belt, the ambiance shifted, then changed. He became still, until she had him completely nude, and then he pulled her jeans and knickers from her hips. With one accord, they moved onto the bed, but still the dance did not end...could not...until it had been completed in the only way possible.

He lowered his face to kiss her, and she opened to him, twining her fingers in his long hair, absorbing the taste and feel of him through her very pores. He shifted atop her, and she shifted to accommodate his presence. She felt the slick tip of his penis slide along her thigh and wanted it inside her without delay. It seemed he wanted the same thing, for he rose over her, weight supported on his arms, and positioned himself to enter her. She lifted her hips to meet him, and as he slid into place where he belonged, deep inside her, she sighed aloud, the first sound between them since they'd mounted the stairs.

It felt as if her orgasm began at the very centre of her with his first stroke: a slow and devastating burn. She moved with him, their bodies newly accomplished at matching one another's rhythm, and each time they came together again, his rigid cock sliding surely and deeply into her cunt, the whisper of her pleasure built a tad higher. In some elemental way, they were still dancing, more fluidly and perfectly than they had done in the clearing, and with each repetition of movement, the hint of pleasure grew, her very skin growing hot with the conflagration they created together, their bodies moving in concert. Inexorably, as the roaring in her body built to its towering crescendo, they moved faster, unable to quell the driving force of their coupling. As she topped the summit of her pleasure, he began to gasp his completion: a moment of perfect synthesis. And then she was spinning and falling, clinging desperately, and wrapped up in the arms that would always and ever hold her safe.

As she drifted to sleep the music in her mind faded...dance complete.

He held her until she ceased to tremble, and then he pulled the bedclothes up to cover them. She slept first, her breathing soft and even, and for a time, he studied her, absorbing the sheer wonder of the night. Then he sent a breath of magic to extinguish the candles and kissed her sleeping face. 'Dream sweetly, little tempest.'

Then he closed his eyes to sleep, one thought ringing through his mind:

She'll remember this in the morning.

A/N: Today's song is another than I listened to as often and with as much emotional intensity as the song from the last chapter. It's by the group Camera Can't Lie and the song is called Last Dance. I invite you to listen to it and think of our couple and their lovely public (and private) dance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6Yma3Kj5FQ