Passion

A/N: Many thanks to Indigofeathers and Anastasia for beta-reading. This chapter is dedicated to Indigofeathers for reasons that, were I to explain them, would remain, nonetheless, maddeningly obscure.

There was no softness in his gaze, and none in her smile, when she reached her hand across the table to feel, once more, the smooth, cruel sweetness of his skin touching her own.

She had blown it and it had fallen, rent by her breath from its stem, and, as the tear rounded beneath it, it balanced, poised on its end, and a lone, wayward draft lifted its feather to send it, sparkling and salted, adrift in the castle.

-------------------------

"Minerva, I tell you, there's something going on." The librarian's eyes were round as she looked pleadingly at the headmistress.

Minerva's face was sour. "Of that I have no doubt, Madam Abbott, but it need not concern you."

The former prefect was pale, but she insisted, "Forgive me, Headmistress, but they are in the library, which is my responsibility, and strange things are happening, and... I think I... I think I heard..."

"Heard?"

Hannah swallowed as her superior's piercing eyes examined her over the top of her square spectacles. "I think I heard her... the professor, I mean... I think I heard her scream."

"Did you not check? The library is, after all, your responsibility."

"I... I Flooed here at once."

"Your attention to duty is admirable, Madam Abbott." Despite the weighty matters with which her day had begun, Minerva's lips twitched. The child was always so easily flustered...

What little color remained in Hannah's cheeks drained away and she shook her head. "I am no match for..." her voice dropped to a whisper, "... him."

Minerva pursed her lips and summoned her patience. "Yes, yes, I suppose you're right," she said, not unkindly.

She rose and took the librarian by the elbow.

"Where are we going?"

"Why, to the library, of course."

Hannah's feet seemed to want to stay planted firmly in the safety of the Head's office, but she somehow managed to follow the headmistress toward the fireplace.

"I shall go first, of course," Minerva assured her. The child is shaking, she thought. Well, as well she might be.

-----

A few moments later found them peering cautiously out of Hannah's office into the main library. The sun was at its full height, and the entire space was cast in soft midday shadow, and Minerva's eyes took a moment to adjust.

Lifting her eyebrows in query, Minerva tilted her head toward the long bookshelves and study areas.

"The usual place," Hannah mouthed.

Minerva nodded and eased the librarian's door open, careful to keep her fingers clamped firmly together. It would not do to have her ring tick against the wood.

Peering between two very tall bookcases, the headmistress and the librarian inched cautiously toward Hermione's customary table.

And they almost instantly backed up, out of the library, and back to Hannah's office, both clamping their hands firmly over their mouths.

Hannah's face was a fury of scarlet when they closed the door safely behind them, her eyes enormous, and her breath coming in short gasps.

"Madam Abbott, do take hold of yourself," the headmistress snapped, but her tone lacked some of its usual asperity.

"Did you... did you see?" Hannah breathed.

"I did. They were holding hands, Miss Abbott. I believe we may safely conclude that whatever magic is afoot in your library, it is not Dark. Now, if you will excuse me..." The headmistress Flooed back to her own office as quickly as she could. It would not do for Hannah to hear her laughing, and Merlin knew she could do with a laugh.

-----

The noise of the Floo brought Severus and Hermione out of their conversation.

"Come," he said, releasing her hand only briefly to stand.

Hermione quirked an eyebrow at him, but joined him at the end of the table.

"I do wish you would not do that," he murmured, even as he extended his arm to her.

She had been reaching for his hand, and accepted the proffered arm only a little awkwardly. "Rather formal of you," she said blandly, "considering."

"Consider this, Hermione – " he reached up with his free hand and brushed her hair off her neck, his thumb lightly grazing her pulse.

Her eyes fluttered, and her color rose, and his heart tightened in response.

"Given... that," he continued, drawing her close to his side, "I believe it prudent that we maintain a certain distance in public."

"Distance?" she said, bemused, as she felt his solid warmth her through her robes.

He leaned to murmur into her hair. "Leather has many uses. And my touching your skin, Professor, poses something of a risk... in public. It would not do, would it, for me to take you here?"

His voice traveled straight to the base of her spine and curled there. She turned admonishing eyes up to him. "Do please keep talking," she retorted. "I appear to have some use of my knees as of yet."

Her tone was light, if somewhat breathless, but the heaviness of what lay between them seemed to weigh Severus' cloak and her robes as they made their way into the main castle.

The muffled snapping of Severus' cloak rustled through the deserted corridors. Cloak and robes flowed together, catching between their legs at odd moments as they walked, deterring them from the determined efficiency of their usual, individual paces.

The rough liquid sound of his heavy silk cloak whispering in her ears, the chill mustiness of the corridors retreating before the rich, earthen tang of his leathers, and his arm a solid, immediate, warmth against her shoulder, Hermione was barely conscious of their path through the castle until they paused on the landing above the marble stairs in the Entrance Hall.

Only then did she realize that her free hand was shaking. Balling it into a fist in her robes, she murmured, "Where shall we go?"

He had discerned her trembling, the heady fragility of the balance between her growing desire and increasing trepidation, and now, as he heard her fingers clutch her robes, a delicate sheen bloomed on her skin, and he knew, without moving, the taste of her fear.

In violation of his own spoken discretion, he trailed one finger across her brow, brushing over her ear, along her jaw, and down her neck, tracing the line where skin met cloth.

Her eyes wide, her trembling deepened, and, as he raised his finger to her lips, her breath caught.

"Taste."

Hesitating only a moment, she flicked her tongue to his finger, and he groaned, fighting the instinct to turn on her, to spin her off-balance, to pin her roughly between his body and the sharp-hewn stone of the wall.

His eyes rapt by the errant lock of hair, vibrating slightly against her neck, a single hair trapped by the dampness of her skin, he inhaled slowly, then tucked her hand more closely into his arm and headed down the staircase.

"To the dungeons, then?" Hermione murmured.

He shook his head. "The Great Hall."

She glanced up at him, but he said nothing until they stood before the doors.

As the doors swung open before them, he turned and spoke into her hair, his voice low, "You will need all of your strength."

"A challenge?" she murmured, her lips barely moving as the moving doors revealed the high table.

His voice impossibly low: "A promise."

Their faces deadened to masks as the doors creaked to a halt.

Alone, Severus Snape had always had the knack of silencing all conversation merely by entering a room, when he chose. The sight of the two black-clad scourges of Hogwarts standing in iron-clad stillness cast something akin to a Freezing Charm on the high table.

The silence was broken only by Hannah Abbott dropping her fork onto her plate.

Enigmatic smiles grew on Severus' and Hermione's faces as they approached the table, and deepened as the staff watched him hold her chair for her.

Exchanging a look that would have sent even the bravest Gryffindor to the hospital wing, Severus Snape and Hermione Granger started lunch in shared silence.

Not one staff member spoke. Hannah couldn't even bring herself to eat, but she refused to leave as long as doing so meant turning her back to either of... of them.

For so they had become in her mind, and the minds of all the staff, with that one entrance.

Other than Hannah, only Minerva seemed at all troubled, but as the headmistress' periods of distraction had become more frequent in recent years, no one noticed.

Well, then. Minerva thought. Beside her, alive or dead, is it? Very well, Snape. As long as it's out of my castle. Still, something deep within her resolutely insisted on its right to be amused, try as she might to snuff its chuckling.

And its chuckling was very amused, indeed.

----

The seed drifted aimlessly through the castle.

On the third floor, it caught briefly in a swirl of a translucent cloak as one of the ghosts flickered out of a wall.

It spiraled upward briefly, passing through the ghost's hand on its path through a nearby archway.

The ghost winced, then frowned. It paused mid-flight and examined its hand.

A spot of red had appeared in the center of its palm, and was swelling, growing, gathering itself to drip heavily, thickly to the floor.

The ghost's eyebrows flew up and it darted directly toward the hospital wing.

The seed drifted through the archway.

----

Far below, in Slughorn's chambers, the Bloody Baron glanced at the ceiling. "Impossi-"

His words were cut off by the wall.

Poppy's hand smoothed the coverlet at Horace's side. She couldn't bring herself to touch him.

Which was just as well.

Her hand continued its smoothing motion long after she was aware it was doing so.

----

Neither could eat for awareness of the other.

He caught her eye and quirked an eyebrow.

She nodded, and they rose, as silently as they had come in.

Tucking her arm through his, he shortened his stride to match hers, but more than one staff member blinked at the illusion of his boot heels striking sparks from the stone floor.

When they reached the doors, her cloak tangled in his steps and his stride came up short.

The pain in his hip exploded into blinding light, and he reached instinctively for his wand, but his hand found Hermione's, and his impulse would not be denied, and he turned on her.

The darkness in her eyes matched his own, and, as he bent and brushed her lips with his own, his hand tightened on hers and he released his restraint, his whole being resolved into a single thought: I am here.

The doors to the Great Hall exploded outward, slamming into the walls with a resonant clang that shuddered through the stones of Hogwarts and echoed into the rock below.

His hand under her head, the other solid in the curve of her back, drawing her body firmly into his, he deepened the kiss, tasting her moan, demanding entry into her very soul.

The staff stared, unblinking, as they watched his cloak swirl around her robes, surrounding them, tightening around them both until no one could tell they were two people save for the warm glinting contrast of a single lock of Hermione's hair sweeping across the field of black with the unerring rhythm of a heartbeat-driven pendulum.

As one, the staff watched the shock of his pale hands against the black, stroking downward, her robes and hair filling them, spilling between his fingers as he pressed her body into his.

Minerva had frozen with the rest of the teachers, holding a goblet halfway to her mouth.

The strength in her hand failed, and the goblet fell onto her plate, shattering the porcelain into tiny, pointed shards that floated, briefly, on the surface of the dark wine as it pooled and ran off the table.

White specks sank beneath red as Minerva's hand fell.

And her ring flew from her finger to roll crazily toward the edge of the table, spinning through her wasted wine to drop with a dull tinkling onto the dais, again to the floor, the spinning noise loud in the vacuum of silence that threatened to smother them all.

And Severus and Hermione did not move, other than to turn two pale faces toward the source of the sound.

The ring spun faster and faster on the stone floor as though it were fighting to stay upright until, finally, it fell.

Only then did Severus look up to the high table.

The headmistress was dead.

His hands flew to Hermione's face and turned it roughly toward his. His eyes bore into hers as within them he saw a sharp gleam he understood all too well.

"No," he murmured through barely parted lips, too softly for the staff to hear.

She struggled weakly in his hands, and the gleam in her eyes sharpened.

"No, Hermione," he said again, his voice ragged in his closing throat.

Legilimens.

And he was in her mind and she, they, were reaching outward for an ephemeral shape that glowed white – round, whole, and achingly perfect – and Hermione's mind drew his toward its growing light, reaching to –

Imperio.

And Hermione's eyes were instantly calm, instantly soft as she looked up at him, lips parted, relaxed, awaiting his command.

He closed his eyes, hard.

The curtain of his hair hid his face from the staff; only Hermione could see the agony etching ever deeper around his eyes, and a wish grew warm from her heart until it suffused her entire being, awaiting the words that might allow it to grow beyond the limits of her skin.

And he spoke. "Save us," he whispered, his eyes still closed, a refusal against the willing obedience he knew her eyes must hold under his forbidden curse.

Her wish encompassed him, and her mind seized on the only way out.

She didn't know what they were fleeing, or why, but it didn't matter. She dropped the anti-Apparition wards from the castle, and with a crack, they were gone.

Minerva's ring lay glinting, red, gold, and heavy, in a fall of winter sunlight.