Chapter 22

Disclaimer: I'm just playing with JKR's universe. I don't own it.

Thanks to my beta and reviewers.

Chapter 22

Quite what Hermione had expected from Severus on Valentine's Day, she wasn't sure. His distaste for it had been clearly evident during Lockhart's over the top celebration in her second year, but the circumstances were different now. Surely now that he had her in his life (and bed), he would acknowledge the 'celebration of love' in some way?

'Apparently not. He all but ignored me this morning... I thought men were supposed to appreciate being woken up like that. All I got for my efforts was a strangled grunt and a mouthful of what I'd rather not think about whilst eating my dinner. Did I do it right? Theory can be different than practice, after all.' Hermione moodily chewed at her stew and boiled vegetables as she thought. 'I must have done something right, or I wouldn't have had the salty, bitter mouthful of... Ugh. I can't eat anymore now. Stupid, introspective, analytical twit, Hermione.'

After pushing her plate away and contemplating the remains of her pumpkin juice before deciding against finishing it, she made her way out of the Great Hall. Although preoccupied, she noticed that Harry kept his goblet away from his mouth when she was leaving the table, as he had ever since she froze his tongue to the contents two weeks before.

'Poor, paranoid Potter. Doesn't he know that I try not to use the same trick twice? I hope he's learnt not to insult Severus by now... although after my beloved fiancé has ignored me today, I'd be tempted to let Harry badmouth him.'

Lost in thought, she didn't register the gradual weakening of her body until she'd sunk down onto her knees in the corridor leading to the staircases. Her muscles felt heavy, her eyelids dragging down. Fragmented thoughts containing vague wonderings of what was happening to her danced across her mind, before Hermione slumped to the floor, her eyes closed. Her last recollection was of a soothing drumbeat approaching, before the veils of sleep overtook her.

Hermione drifted awake to find herself clad only in moonlight, lying on a carpet of grass devoid of insects. The full moon met her eyes, bathing her surroundings in ghostly light. A gentle breeze caressed her bare skin, yet the warmth, her idyllic surroundings and lack of the clothes she had been in made a frown cross her face.

'I don't think I'm in Hogwarts anymore... or even in the same week; the moon was supposed to be in the first quarter, not full. What's happened?'

Eyes wide with sudden realisation, Hermione sat bolt upright. "Severus, honestly! From one extreme to the other."

"Let me guess; you heard and recognised my heartbeat." Severus's smooth tones came from behind her.

"You underhanded sneak! You drugged me!"

"My hand with a vial of Sleeping Draught might have slipped over your pumpkin juice. Said draught might have activated when you passed the threshold of the Great Hall."

"What have you done with my clothes? I only have one school robe..." Hermione turned her head to glower at him over her shoulder, only to be struck dumb by the sight of his lean, muscled frame, his completely exposed skin gleaming in the moonlight.

Severus smirked at her, prowling closer and kneeling a hand's breadth from her. He reached out to gently close her open mouth, a deep chuckle escaping him as he did so. "By your reaction, I look sufficiently tempting in this dim light to make you drool... and as for your clothes, I imagine that since the Room of Requirement took them away, it can bring them back as well."

Flushing from her cheeks to her breastbone, Hermione turned to face him, mirroring his position. She noted the slight slackening of his jaw, but considering that he'd obviously been watching her 'sleep' in her naked state, he was unlikely to be as affected as she was. Perhaps she needed to up the ante...

A quick pounce knocked him flat on his back. Hermione looked down at him from her position straddling him, a feral grin on her features. Severus's eyes trailed over the contours of her curves, to be followed by the faint touch of his fingertips. His dazed eyes met hers in a moment of unspoken communication. She leant down to trail a line of open mouthed kisses from his collarbone to his lips as she rocked her hips against his.

"That Sleeping Draught... was also laced with... an aphrodisiac..." Severus murmured against her lips.

"Bastard. As if I need one with you," Hermione hissed, before sinking her teeth into his neck in a playful nip.

"No, but it does mean that we can skip the foreplay and dive straight in..." he growled as he grasped her hips, positioning her against him so that his erection was no longer trapped between them.

Hermione opened her mouth to protest that she preferred making love with foreplay involved, only for the words to die in her throat as he thrust in. The aphrodisiac ensured that she was sufficiently lubricated and also heightened the sensations.

'Ohmygod...' Her capacity for thought was compromised by the second thrust, her head snapping back to stare blankly at the night sky as she was overwhelmed by the sensations. Only a few thrusts later, she was semi-aware of her inner muscles clenching around him as she climaxed once, twice, three times... 'Ngh!' She collapsed on top of him, exhausted.

She wasn't aware of falling asleep, but the next thing she knew, she was in Severus's bed, snuggled up to the smug bastard as he smirked down at her.

"Don't do that again. Not without my knowledge and permission... or I'll bite the next time certain parts of your anatomy are within range." Hermione's voice was ragged, her throat raw; she realised that she must have been pretty vocal.

He winced, shifting his groin away from her. "Understood. You're not... angry are you?"

"No. I'm furious! You let me think that I'd done something wrong or that you were ignoring me out of spite; then you drug me... and shagged me senseless, but that's not the point. In different circumstances and with different people, that would have been a date rape in Muggle terms."

Severus stiffened, drawing away from her. He rolled out of bed, reaching for his robe.

"Severus? I didn't mean..." Hermione turned to face him, only to trail off at the stark look on his white face. She swallowed hard. "It wasn't like that. I did enjoy it, I wanted it... rape is something quite different. I... I didn't mean what just happened between us. I love you, come back to bed."

"I shouldn't have done it. It wasn't far off from rape. That aphrodisiac made you want me. I'm a monster... I'll understand if you want to break off the engagement. I'll be in the spare room." He shrugged on his robe, holding it together as he stumbled away.

"Wait! Severus... oh, fuck."

The door closed behind him. She climbed out of bed, throwing on her own robe before attempting to extract Severus from the spare room. When she failed to talk him out, she slumped down onto the sofa, determined to wait him out. Her eyes lids slipped closed, lulled by the heat given off by the fire she'd lit to keep warm.

"It is time to end this once and for all. We will attack when we have our army... raise the dead, my Necromancer." The high hiss of Voldemort's voice echoed in her ears, coupled with the sense of being watched. A glimpse of masked figures clad in black hooded robes swam before her, arranged in a circle around the skeletal figure of Voldemort himself... and a woman, clad in crimson robes. Her Boggart?

"SEVERUS!"

He awoke from his restless sleep in the lonely spare bed to hear Hermione screaming his name. Snatching up his robe, Severus burst into the sitting room to find her sitting bolt upright, almost hyperventilating as she tried to recover from a nightmare. He hesitated for a moment before pulling her into his arms.

'Monster or not, her nightmare is obviously the greater evil than I am at the moment.'

It took quite a while for Hermione to calm down to a point where she could speak, but even then she refused to talk about what the nightmare had been about.

"It wasn't a flashback to the crash. It was just a bad dream," she insisted.

"A 'bad dream' about what in particular?" No answer was forthcoming, instead she just buried her face in the crook of his neck. "Was it to do with my earlier actions?" He was answered with a distinct shake of her head.

She pulled her head away so that she could meet his eyes. "No, it wasn't. Do me a favour and ditch your guilt over it; in my own opinion there's nothing to forgive."

"My actions were reprehensible..."

Hermione cut him off. "So what? If we both enjoyed it, what's the problem? Look, just drop it, Severus."

She wouldn't let go of him, eventually drifting back to sleep with her arms wrapped tightly around him.

"My monstrous bastard..." she mumbled before her eyes lids slipped closed.

'I can't make her choices for her. If she still wants me, I won't leave her.'

"My insufferable know-it-all," Severus murmured as he dropped a gentle kiss on her lips, before carrying her into the master bedroom, kicking the door shut behind him.

Hermione approached the hospital wing two weeks after her first nightmare about the so-called final battle, intending to ask Madam Pomfrey about possible solutions for chronic nightmares, only to find Harry and Ginny pacing outside.

"Hermione, you heard!" Ginny flung herself at Hermione, who almost collapsed under the sudden weight.

"Heard what?" Hermione demanded, setting Ginny back onto her own feet.

"Ron's been poisoned. It would've been disastrous if I'd given the Prince's book back when you first told me to; it had vital knowledge in it that saved Ron's life. Did you know bezoars can save victims of most poisons if stuffed down their throats soon enough?"

"Severus told us that in our first potions lesson, Harry. Although he didn't say 'stuffed down their throats'."

Harry waved a hand impatiently. "Yeah, and you're the only one who remembers that. Whoever the Prince is, he's my hero." He frowned at the strained expression on Hermione's face as she struggled to keep herself from guffawing. "What's wrong with you?"

"You know who this Prince is?" Ginny asked, perceptive as always.

"Yes. Ah, anyway, is Ron going to be alright?"

"We're waiting for word... and you're not escaping so easily. Come on, 'fess up." Ginny poked her prefect's badge, digging the clasp into her.

"You won't believe me."

"Try us." Harry stepped up to Ginny's side, his arm coming around Hermione's shoulder as she tried to back away.

"He'd call you unappreciative dunderheads. Still don't get it? He's about so tall..." Hermione stretched her arm up above her head, her hand indicating the height of Ron's saviour, "dark hair, lean build, strong features..."

"Snape? The Prince is Snape?" Harry's knees gave out under him. "Oh, no. Ron's as good as dead. Why would stones from a goat's stomach work as a cure against poisons?"

"Potter, Miss Weasley... oh, and you, Miss Granger... Weasley is out of danger. You can come in now."

Hermione gave Harry a superior look as he was forced to rethink his opinions of both Severus and the Prince. They sat beside Ron's bedside until the Weasleys arrived, her own nightmares forgotten in light of the bungled attempt at poisoning Dumbledore with mead. Had the necklace been meant for Dumbledore too? If so, there was a pretty inept would-be murderer about. Was Harry right in his suspicions about Malfoy? Two attempted murders fudged like this should leave a mark on the soul of the attacker, especially if it was one person.

With that in mind, Hermione made her way to Severus's quarters, using the door in his office. She used the Door of Requirement (as she'd dubbed it) to take her to wherever Malfoy was at the moment, to find herself in a room full of junk.

'Hmm, fitting to find old Ferret Face in surroundings like this.' Hermione looked around the room to see everything from damaged library books to hollowed troll feet. She was approaching the anxious sounding heartbeat in the back of the room when she found a floor-to-ceiling mirror, with an engraved gilt frame reading: Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

'The Mirror of Erised... I really shouldn't look... I REALLY shouldn't look... Oh, hell. I'll look just once...'

She stepped close to the mirror, peering at it until her reflection morphed into her deepest desire.

'No. That can't be right. Surely I should see Severus at the very least, maybe us entwined together? Look away, dammit! This is what my nightmares end with. I can't desire it...' When Hermione failed to wrench her eyes away from the mirror, she lashed out. The enchanted mirror resisted any attempts at reducing it to ash, but the violence of her reaction cracked it. Seconds later, it shattered, alerting Malfoy to her presence.

"Who's there?" He appeared from her left, only to come to a jarring halt, his eyes almost crossing as they fixed on the tip of her upraised wand. Hermione herself was surprised to notice that she was holding him at wand point, as she wasn't aware of drawing her wand.

It took only a moment at this close range for Hermione to register that his soul was indeed tainted. Whether Dumbledore knew or not, people were getting hurt. It was time to stop this before someone died. 'Expelliarmus.' Malfoy's wand jumped from his hand to her own.

Malfoy scowled at her, his teeth bared. His anger at being disarmed overruled his sense of survival; he lunged at her with an enraged cry. Hermione dropped the wands in her surprise at his move, but her reflexes were up to the task of sidestepping him. She let one leg drag behind as he tried to recover his balance, and he tripped over it, falling into a pile of tattered textbooks.

"Tut tut, Malfoy. Getting clumsy in your old age? Let me help you up..." Hermione grabbed the back of his collar, swinging him up to throw him against the wreckage of the mirror. Fortunately for him, it was free of the shattered reflective glass. "Wondering how a weak girl like me can do that, huh? I'm using your own strength against you." She twisted one of his arms behind his back, so that any attempt to free himself would risk dislocating it.

Her movements allowed her skin to touch his. It was a simple matter to overcome his Occlumency shields with her contact Legilimency, revealing his nefarious plans. A bit of concentration focussed her thoughts on the broken Vanishing Cabinet. It crumbled, the inanimate parts falling into the newly created dust.

"Oops. I hope you weren't planning to use that," Hermione taunted the squirming boy, whose struggles doubled as he realised what had happened. "I know what you were planning, Malfoy. Now you'll get no backup. Your attempts on the Headmaster's life are endangering the lives of others... Hell, anyone who knows anything about Dumbledore would know to poison his lemon drops, not mead."

Malfoy opened his mouth, most likely to deny everything, but Hermione didn't let him talk, pushing him against the broken mirror more firmly.

"It's time you rethink your path. Even if, by some fluke, you did succeed, Voldemort would just give you another impossible mission. He wants you dead, you stupid boy. Instead of going along with this, why didn't you go to Dumbledore in the first place?"

Malfoy pushed his head away from the mirror to answer her. "My mother's life is in his hands, you moronic Mudblood!"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "I figured as much. Don't you realise that Dumbledore is more than capable of providing a safe house? It doesn't have to be this way!" She took no offence at his typical insult. She'd heard it so many times, it had very little effect on her.

"I am a loyal servant of the Dark Lord! You can't fathom nobility of his cause, pathetic Mudblood."

"Okay, so be it. Seeing as you respond so well when your scrawny hide is at risk, let's try this: you'll give yourself up to Dumbledore's tender mercies... or I kill you, here and now."

A shiver ran down Malfoy's spine at her words. "C-come off it, Granger... you're no killer."

"Wrong!" Hermione said in a singsong voice as she slipped an arm around his throat, pressing firmly enough to cut off his breathing. He choked, flailing around, but was unable to throw her off. After he started to fall slack, she let him drop to his knees, gasping and wheezing. "Well, what'll it be? Death at your precious Dark Lord's hands or my own, or life at Dumbledore's mercy?"

"I don't have a choice. I never did," Malfoy whined, blood trickling from his battered nose.

"You can choose to go to Dumbledore. For some reason, he believes in giving people second chances."

Malfoy consented to be taken (or dragged by his robes in this case) to Dumbledore. While at the time he didn't thank Hermione for interfering, the Malfoy heir was sufficiently grateful to drop the usage of 'Mudblood' when referring to her.

"For such an accomplished witch, Hermione, you sometimes forget all about your encyclopaedic knowledge of spells. Draco is quite afraid of you now; or at least, afraid of your Muggle duelling skills."

"You should've seen his face in my third year after I slapped him silly."

"So today wasn't the first time you've used violence against him? No wonder he's petrified. Those pure-bloods who consider Muggles lower life forms rarely know what to do when confronted with Muggle methods of fighting."

"When you were a student at Hogwarts, did 'Muggle duelling' give you the advantage? Um, Severus? Why are you stroking your nose like that?"

"I'm reminiscing, my dear. My nose wasn't always this shape, you know. If I'd been a pure-blood, it is true that I'd look even worse off, but Potter and Black used fisticuffs themselves. They broke my poor nose no less than three times. Bastards."

"If I didn't know better than to speak ill of the dead, I'd have a few things to say myself... and, once and for all, there's nothing wrong with your nose! It's very, ah, distinctive. I like it." Hermione leant forward and gave Severus a series of soft kisses across his nose.

"You're distracting me from my marking, insufferable girl. If you keep that up, I'll spread you across my desk to mark you."

Hermione grinned wolfishly at him before hopping onto his desk, knocking the stacks of marked and unmarked essays onto the floor. "Give me less than an 'E' and I'll want a remark."

Albus stuck his head through the Floo connection open in his fireplace after calling Severus's name. The castle granted him access to all rooms as Headmaster, with his personal Floo connection automatically taking him to the nearest fireplace of his destination.

"Severus, could you..." Albus's jaw dropped as he squeezed his eyes shut. "Could you both come through to my office. When you are decent." He pulled his head out of the connection, his cheeks hot with embarrassment. He stumbled over to his Pensieve, reaching over it to grab a suitable container.

"Perhaps they would appreciate this as a wedding present. I certainly don't want it in my head; I'd resemble a bearded tomato every time I saw either of them."

After using his wand to extract the memory and seal it inside the small glass bottle, Albus sat down behind his desk, rubbing his temples to ward off the ache that sometimes began after extracting memories. It was a particular problem for those with emotions involved, the predominate one being embarrassment in this case. He suspected that the ache was caused partly by the confusion caused by still feeling the emotion, having a vague idea why yet having the memory missing.

The fireplace flared green after a few minutes as the Floo connection opened. Severus stepped through, Hermione following him. While their clothes were wrinkled, it was just possible for Albus to delude himself that they'd been making potions.

"I have received news from Kingsley and Tonks. There has been a mass breakout from Azkaban."