Chapter 12

A standing ovation for my betas, LariLee & KeladryLupin, as well as virtual coffee (the real thing!) for MagicAlly, who picks with the Brittiest!

A/N: This chapter contains some scenes relating to sexual assault; please do not read if this is not acceptable to you.

These characters and this entire Potterverse are the property of the incomparable JKR.

Thou are not lovelier than lilacs, -- no,

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Hermione inhaled the scent of the musky shaving lotion he favoured as they slowly danced about the Malfoy ballroom. Her hand, clasped in his, felt so small and trembly. Her other hand, resting on his shoulder, was tickled by the constant movement of his hair swaying over her hypersensitive skin. She knew an insane impulse to slide her hand beneath the shoulder-length black hair and cup the nape of his neck, before gliding her fingers through the ebony strands.

She was torn. She desperately wanted to make an impression upon him; she wanted to have an impact in this unprecedented moment she was afforded in the circle of his embrace. At the same time, she feared to alarm him. Not for one moment would she put it past him to startle like a wild thing and to flee her presence, leaving her bereft. How, then, to draw him in without frightening him off? From beneath her lashes, she darted a look up at his impassive countenance; her breath caught in her throat when she found his eyes upon her face.

Had dancing not already become second nature to her, in night after tedious night of repetition, the impact of his implacable gaze locking with her own might have caused Hermione to stumble. As it was, she first stiffened, then slowly melted into closer propinquity, held whole in the power of those obsidian eyes, until eye contact was replaced by body contact and her head came to rest upon his chest. It was as if the meeting of their eyes had plunged her, gasping, into icy water, which swiftly rose over her head. Every instinct screamed for her to fight, to escape a watery grave. Yet, beneath the frigid surface water, there lay a dark stratum of velvety warmth, waters so enticing that she abandoned thoughts of struggle and sliced cleanly through to the dangerously alluring depths that welcomed her in, ever deeper, until the light above was wholly forgotten and the enveloping black was embraced.

Hermione exhaled a pleased sigh and moved her cheek against the fabric of his robes. There was a notion in her mind, a niggling thought, hovering just outside the reach of cognition; it floated through her reality like a mist, and for the length of its duration, she luxuriated beneath the blanket of unknowable certainty. No, it was not a notion; it was a fact. But within the fog, she was far too content to strain after understanding. Here, this moment of harmony with him, was bliss not to be questioned.

Snape held her in his arms as if she were made of spun glass. Emotions warred for precedence in his mind. Uppermost was a prescience of danger ... danger ... like a stubborn candle, which refused to be extinguished, the warning flashed into his mind, over and again. Rationally, he knew there was no danger; the war was over, the Dark Lord was vanquished, the wizarding world in general, and he in particular, was at theoretical peace. There was no threat here. Just a chit of a girl in a flame-coloured gown ...

Snape schooled himself to calm, using the techniques he had perfected so many years before. Steady, rhythmic breathing, in, out, in, with all his focus on slowing his heart rate. When he felt he had himself under control, he looked down his nose into the face of his tormentor. He was steeling himself to the disciplined acceptance of her proximity when those large, limpid brown eyes rose to meet his, and he was irretrievably lost.

She opened her very self to him, offering up her eyes and her mind for penetration. Decision trembled on the precipice as the saxophone trills of the song rippled through the air, then she was subsiding into his arms even as he was gathering her closer. And her scent washed over him, permeating every sense and bringing a firestorm of suppressed images to his beleaguered memory.

Her scent.

Strawberries and essence of almonds. In some cardinal, inexplicable way, she smelled of strawberries and essence of almonds. The underlying, driving rhythm of the song pounded in his blood; Hermione – Hermione – was unreservedly pressed up against his body, and her mind-altering scent deprived him of higher brain function. Only a fool would struggle against such exquisite incarceration.

All throughout the ballroom, both those who danced and those who watched the dancers found their attention repeatedly returning to the witch in the hot coral gown. There was an aura about her that simply drew the eye. Her current progress about the room, in the arms of the stern, unsmiling partner, seemed to the onlookers to be most portentous, in some ineffable way.

Only Minerva McGonagall watched Hermione Granger and Severus Snape in one another's arms with a troubled glimmer in her mind.

Fleur Delacour watched them from the arms of Percy Weasley, and her emotion was rage. She did not speak of it to Percy. She did not want anyone to pay mind to her fiancé dancing so closely to another woman when he had made it abundantly clear that he found such closeness to her, Fleur, to be distasteful in the extreme. In addition, she fully intended to bring about a match between Percy and the calamitous Miss Granger; no need to make him think poorly of the other witch when she wanted him to offer for the girl.

No, Fleur simply had to endure the remainder of this insufferable party, then she could put her own plan into motion.

Pansy twined the fingers of one hand in the hair at Neville's nape. She felt the shudder elicited by the touch of her fingertips upon the bare skin of his neck. She knew he found her attractive and wondered if she might be attracted to him, too – enough to make that part of marriage bearable. Experience made her doubt it.

The burning in Neville's eyes when he looked down into her face and returned the favour of the caress to the bare skin of her neck gave her hope.

"Take me to the rose garden," she whispered to him.

Neville did not wait to be asked twice.

Sirius bent his shaggy head so that his lips almost touched the porcelain shell of her ear.

"'Smooth Operator,' hmm?"

Sophronia tilted her head and treated him to a provocative look from the corner of her eye.

"That's what they call men who leave a trail of broken hearts in their wake," she said.

Sirius held her more tightly, and she moved willingly closer.

"Have you forgotten that summer in London? Who left whom?" he asked huskily.

Sirius watched the flush that rose to her cheeks and simultaneously spread down her throat. Circe, but she was beautiful.

"Papa called me home. I was to be married."

"To some old man in Belgium!"

"To Sandoval Snape, Sirius – Severus' father. I told you it was Belgium so you wouldn't follow me to Hampshire." She added, after a moment, "And there was the little matter of Lily Evans."

"I never fancied Lily!" he protested.

Sophronia gave him a doubtful look.

"I didn't! That was for James! He was crazy for her, and she refused to go out with him. I was just supposed to get her to the Park when James was going to be there!"

Now she looked indignant. "So, you kissed her to keep her there until James Potter arrived?"

"Yes!"

"Three times?"

Grey eyes met blue, and there was a moment when victory hung in the balance. Then Sirius closed his eyes and shook his head, causing the fringe to fall again into his eyes.

"I was an idiot, Sophie."

She stroked the hair away from his face. "You were sixteen, Siri."

He smiled at her crookedly. "I never thought I'd hear that name again."

Sophronia's thoughtful gaze fell upon Shadow and Ronald Weasley; Shadow nestled against the broad chest of her cavalier, while Ron handled her as if she were a china doll. How many dances had the two of them stolen together tonight? Sophronia had been like a teenager herself, completely bound up in her own little world and oblivious to the behaviour of her daughters.

"Two years is a big gap in age, when you're sixteen," she murmured.

"Thirteen months," Sirius responded automatically, falling back into an argument they had thrashed out many times in their school days.

Sophronia placed a finger across his lips. "We were just too young, Siri. It was the wrong time for us."

As they danced on, the look of determination which crossed his face spoke volumes.

Lucius danced mechanically with the pretty Varen Vector; his attention was riveted upon his – his – Sophronia and that Azkaban-bait, Black. It was all he could do to refrain from cursing aloud when Sophronia directed such a coquettish look at the mutt. In all his weeks of carefully plotted courtship, she had never so much as flirted with him. Now, Black was pulling her close, and she was going to him without demur. When she ran a hand through the mangy fur, Lucius snarled; when she pressed a finger across the doggy lips, he audibly ground his teeth.

He was recalled to the presence of his partner when she slid one hand from his shoulder blade to his bum and then back up again.

"You're much too tense, Lucius," Varen said with a wry smile. "I could help you with that."

The long-suppressed libido rushed to take over the management of the brain.

"Could you?" he inquired with an amused quirk of his brow.

"Oh, yes," Varen replied, showing him bedroom eyes.

Snape looked down at Hermione; her eyes were closed, her lips were slightly parted, the swell of her breasts pressed lightly against his chest. Beneath his fingertips, the silk of the flame-coloured gown begged to be stroked. He was entirely unconscious of the motion of his fingers, moving in steady, concentric circles against the fabric on her back. The jazz music, the sultry quality of the contralto voice, wove into the moment, as the strawberry-plus-essence-of-almond scent beguiled him from smell to the point of taste.

All of his senses were fully engaged. The moment was perfect.

Or – could it be? – that Hermione was perfect?

Almost against her will, Hermione let her eyes flutter open as the refrain of the song repeated for the last time. Snape was watching her guardedly. She looked into his face with simple curiosity; in the space of one song, she had moved from wariness to trust. She had forgotten her wish to make a lasting impression on him; she had been too busy enjoying the impact he was having on her. The niggling notion that had been teasing her infused her with a certainty: Severus Snape was her ideal. Intelligent and elegant, lithe and lean, honourable and heroic, disturbingly attractive – he was everything she wanted, all in one man.

As this surety settled like a weight in her heart, the song ended and their dance came to a halt. For a moment, they stood in the attitude of the dance, hands clasped, arms about one another; Snape opened his mouth to speak, and Hermione's heart stopped as she waited to discover what the next moment would bring. Would he push her away with his sneering, wounding words? Would he acknowledge what had occurred between them in the moment past?

Then he jerked his head to one side, his attention suddenly and irrevocably torn from her.

"Val," he spat, as if it were a disgusting swearword.

"Sir?" she said, tentatively.

Snape released her and bowed stiffly. "Thank you for the dance, Miss Granger," he said. Then he turned on his heel and strode off the dance floor, into the crowd near the dais, and out of her sight.

"Now you shall waltz with me!"

Hermione felt as if she were awaking from a fantastical dream to a flat reality; the colours were less sharp, the lines were less distinct, and standing before her was Percy Weasley, rubbing his hands together with a somewhat repellent enthusiasm.

"If I must," she murmured to herself, and Percy gleefully took her slack hand in his and placed his other hand correctly at her waist. Hermione, however, kept looking at the spot where Snape had disappeared from view.

Luna crouched by the side of Val Delacour as he drained the glass of punch in his hand. She had offered to help him, and he had simply asked her to stay with him. She was perfectly happy to help him, since he was feeling sick, but she really did not see how having her kneel at his side could possibly assist him in any way.

"Are you feeling better?" she asked him solicitously.

Val let the punch glass clatter onto the table beside his chair and leered at her. "You're a pretty girl; I'll bet all the blokes are after you."

Luna stood abruptly, a look of involuntary distaste crossing her features. "My partner is waiting for me. I must go back to the ballroom."

Val lurched to his feet and put his hands on the bare skin of Luna's upper arms, as if to steady himself. "Could you help me over to that sofa?" he said, glancing to the opposite side of the small room. The palms of his hands were grasping the backs of her arms; his thumbs were pressing with some force on her outer arms, but his fingers were trapped between her inner arms and her sides. He flexed his fingers against her sides, and with a grunt of hyperextension, the backs of his fingers made contact with her breasts. "Oh, yeah," he groaned, leaning forward and placing a sloppy kiss on the side of her neck. "Yeah, baby, so sweet."

Luna gasped her outrage and attempted to wrench her arms from his clasp, but he was too strong for her.

"Let me go!" she said angrily, reaching for her wand in its ornamental sheath at her waist.

"Oh no, you don't," Val chuckled, jerking the sheath from her waist with a violence that caused the fabric to tear. He cast the wand to the floor and kicked it, sending it skittering into a dark corner. "You know you want it," he breathed, looking her over once again. "Otherwise you wouldn't have come in here, now, would you?"

Without waiting for an answer, Val tightened his grip on her right arm and began to frogmarch her toward the sofa.

"You're one of his, aren't you?" he hissed in her ear as he forced her along.

Luna elbowed him viciously in the side, as panic began to rise. She wasn't afraid to duel with a man twice her size, but if she had to rely on her own physical strength against a man, she was in trouble. The music from the next room was playing so loudly that she knew she would not be heard even if she called out for help. Someone else would surely have asked Draco to dance by now; it was lady's choice, after all, and he would be the choice of all the girls, wouldn't he? So he wouldn't miss her, no one would notice she was gone for a while, and she did not know how long she could hold off a drunken Val Delacour.

Val cursed as Luna's sharp elbow made contact with his ribcage. "Wildcat," he snarled, shoving her from him with such force that she fell onto the sofa in a heap of arms, legs, and disarranged pink satin. He stood over her in a threatening posture and rubbed the sore spot on his side. Her towering beehive hairdo began to topple as pins were dislodged; the disarranged skirt of her dress showed him one of her shapely, slender legs, halfway up the thigh. Her chest rose and fell as she panted, partly from exertion and partly from panic. Her large, protuberant blue eyes were wide with terror. She looked frightened and vulnerable.

Val's need grew in him as he saw her distress and smelled her fear. He began to lower himself to her, insinuating one knee between her thighs.

"You can fight me, baby, I don't mind," he told her as he pinned her wrists in one large hand. "It just makes it better, don't you think?" He pressed a slimy kiss to her mouth.

Luna felt her gorge rise and clenched her teeth, as much against that as against the disgusting, floppy tongue Val Delacour was attempting to thrust into her mouth. She twisted her face away from him, causing his mouth to fall upon her throat, which he promptly began to ravish. One of her legs he had pinned to the cushions with his hip, but the other leg was hanging off the side of the sofa. With a mighty heave, she swivelled her hips and lunged at his groin with her knee.

Val swore again and narrowly avoided the collision of Luna's kneecap with his bits.

"Spitfire!" he said, adjusting his body weight so that she could not move the lower portion of her body. "Tell me you want me. I know Snape doesn't let you get any; he keeps you locked up."

Luna felt tears of fury gathering in her eyes and despised herself for the weakness. Ginny wouldn't cry; she would fight. Hermione wouldn't cry; she would outsmart him. Tonks would never have let him get her wand. Luna had fought against the Death Eaters with all three of her friends, and they had walked away victorious; she would not be beaten by this pathetic excuse for a wizard.

"Where were you in the war, Val?" she panted, going completely slack under his attack.

"What?" Val raised his head from her throat and looked at her face. "I'll show you war, baby." He reached between their bodies, as if for the buttons of his trousers.

"Were you at home with your mum?" she said, imitating Draco's most condescending, venom-laced tone. "Or were you hiding in France?"

Val shoved himself away from her, an ugly expression distorting his face. "What do you mean by that, you little bitch?" he demanded.

A/N: I'm so ashamed! No, really! What a mean place to leave you!