Frogs In Winter 01

Author's Notes: Back in the Author's Notes of Chapter 54 of my incredibly long fanfic, "For Someone Special", I wrote a challenge to my readers; the first reader who could correctly identify where the code-phrase "Frogs in Winter" comes from would receive a PWP of their choice of pairing, written by me, as their prize. Kimberly won, and requested a Hermione/Snape pairing for her fanfic, so here it is!

This challenge remained open until October 15th, 2004, and is now CLOSED. (In fact, I've only written out 3 of the dozen or so responding winner's prizes...sigh...) But for those of you who just wanted to know what the challenge was, here's the hints (it's actually 6 hints, not 5, as previously posted) for the origins of the phrase, "frogs in winter": I heard it in my childhood, on American t.v., and it was being used as a codeword--and the parrot knew it!--for a two-part episode, so name that cartoon...

...And here's the answer (since the challenge is long over): "G.I.Joe"! ~Lotm ;-D

P.S. ...I apologize if anyone is offended by the coarse language I chose to use in this short story, but it was necessary for the style of the scenario. The warnings for BDSM and Drug Abuse are for mild bondage, alcohol abuse, and stupidity involving ingestion of wizarding Truth Serum.

(Please heed the following warning, too.)

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WARNING: The author of this story is NOT responsible nor liable for any damages incurred through the reading, perusing, sharing, or studying of this story, in any way, shape or form. She will not replace keyboards, massage sprained rib-muscles, or clean off computer screens.

Please heed the following steps before reading any further, for your own safety: Visit the lavatory, before reading this story. Refrain from eating anything while reading this story. Refrain from drinking anything while reading this story. Remove all breakables from the vicinity of the reading area. Remove all sharp objects from the vicinity of the reading area. Do not operate heavy machinery while reading this story. Do not operate light machinery while reading this story. Do not read this story if you have a heart condition, or have been warned to avoid strenuous activity due to a medical condition. Do not read this story in a public location where people will want to ask you what it's about, especially if there's children present.

You have been warned. Proceed at your own risk. ~Ladyofthemasque

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* * * * * * * * * * *

Firewhiskey spewed from Draco Malfoy's mouth. As soon as he stopped choking, he wiped his face with the back of his hand, looked at his godfather, and blurted out, "--You want to what?!"

Maudlin, slouching in his leather armchair, decidedly in his cups--together, they'd gone through nearly two entire bottles of Ogden's Best--Severus Snape repeated himself to his godson, his words slurring a little. Alright, his words slurring a lot. But it really was good firewhisker... figglewhiskey... shirewhiskle... fuck it, great wizarding Scotch. "I wan' to fuck that little know-it-all. To...you know...show 'er a trick 'r three you can't learn in some...some book. I'd fuck 'er hard...make 'er pay for tormenting me...all these fucking years... Shite, I'm outta whiskey. Pour me 'nother round... You know, you're a good boy, Drac'--a good man... Merlin knows I oughta...I thought I'd hafta strangle you, if you hadn' fucked over your father an' turned spy for th' Order..."

"Well, I'm not stupid. At least, not anymore. You helped cure me of the insanity of thinking I should join those losers. But you, now--fuck Granger? You've lost it, man!" Draco said, tipping the last of the whiskey into Severus' outstretched cup. No matter how many nights he was invited over for these drinking sessions, his godfather still didn't have his level of tolerance for Ogden's finest.

Severus brought the cup back to his mouth, stretching out one finger to cover his lips, hushing the boy with a little tap of that digit against them. A delicate sip of the burning liquid--pinkie finger extended; who said a drunk man couldn't have manners?--and he grimaced as the stuff burned all the way down into the hole it had chewed in his gut. "She's got a really great arse--and those knockers!" Firewhiskey sloshed as he gestured with his hands, making round...round motions, indicating an invisble chest somewhere. "I could hollow 'em out and turn 'em into bloody, soft, succulus...suclule...sweet little cauldrons. An' I'd love t' shut 'er up properly, for once. Preferrabubble...preferrly...all the way to th' balls! Jus' shove right in there... Shite, I've got a hard-on just thinking about fucking her smart-arsed liddle mouth!"

Only the whiskey clouding his own thoughts gave Draco the fortitude--or rather, the dulled wits and lack of wisdom--to stare at his godfather's crotch for confirmation of that singular fact. Contrary to popular, vicious rumor among his enemies, and even some of his allies, he wasn't the slightest bit gay. Sure enough, the Potions Master was tenting his trousers. A lot. And as Draco watched, downing the last of the amber-red liquid in his own shotglass, one of those thin, callused, sallow-pale hands slipped down over the peak in those black pants, and started rubbing it.

He choked again, this time coughing hoarsely. "--God and Voldemort's undershorts! Get your goddamned hand off your crotch!"

Shifting in his seat, Severus didn't bother to comply. He was too wrapped up in a wirebliskey fog of fust and lindless mantasy. "Uhn...gonna tie that liddle witch to my bed...yank those sexy thighs wide open...and...uhnn, god!"

Draco covered his face with his hands. Well, one hand, and one hand clutching an empty shotglass, which left him just enough vision to watch a blurry version of his godfather jerking from the hips in his chair, hand clutching rumpled finespun wool, ejaculating in his pants. Closing his eyes, Draco wondered if he should try a Memory Charm, or just hit himself over the head a few hundred times with the fire poker. Or maybe another boddle of tiskey; enough pliskey could blotch out anything, if one drank it enough...

...Obviously not enough. By the time he'd drunk a third of the next bottle, his godfather had passed out, and Draco had a really, really evil thought running through his head. He looked over at the slightly snoring, long-nosed face of his former professor, and muttered, "...I love you, man--well, not like that--'ts jusss...I'd do anything f' you. Even help you fuck a Mudslut. You...jush like here. Lie. Here. Just like that... I know where th' liddle blitch'll be...uhhnn," he craned his head, looking at the brass-plated clock mounted on the wall, "...at this hour 'f th' fucking morning...oh, god, we've been shrinking this damned driskey a lot...

"Oh, yeah, she's onner way to th' Minisssstry now, prolly...goddamn workaholic, it's a fucking Shunday." Pushing up out of his chair, he wove his way towards one of the glass-fronted cupboards, the one that kept not only the Potions Master's supply of Blodgen's Gest, but some other useful potion-thingies too. "Gonna innercept 'er...gahh, wheredja keep that Shobering...Sobering Shtuff? Three oughta do 'er--Merlin's arse, he wants t' do 'er?...Fuckit, knock'd a buncha 'em over--gotta pickem up...uhn, one bottle should be 'nuff t'Appartate...shite, can't Napparthate on th' dammed school glounds...Floo powder, fuckin' Floo powder...aha! Herminee Gransher, here he cums!"

And with a swallow of the milky white Sobering Potion in one hand--just one, to ensure better, clearer diction, and the ability to focus his wand on only one Granger, not three nightmarishly blurred versions of her, and yet not leave him sobered enough that he'd lose his nerve--and with an unsteady cast of Floo Powder with the other hand-thing, something, the greyish dust causing a flare of bright green in the fire that the unconscious professor's chair faced...history was made.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Severus' head, neck and shoulders felt like Harry bloody Potter, the Prat Who Not Only Lived, But Killed Off That Other Prat, was playing an overly enthusiastic game of Quidditch inside his skin. Either that, or someone had snuck into his rooms, shoved Mrs. Norris into his skull like it was a cauldron, spell-sealed a lid in place, and handed a metal spoon to an overenthusiastic three-year-old to bang away behind his ears. With a sort of intermittent droning sound thrown in for good measure.

Squinting his eyes open, he saw first that the fire was out. Well, it was summer. The slight chill in the air down here in the dungeon level wouldn't kill him. The cat, the kettle, the kid, and those damned Bludgers would, first. Second, that there were at least three bottles of...well, empty former bottles of Ogden's Best Way To Die From Alcohol Poisoning on the little table between the two leather-padded armchairs, which was why his back, neck and shoulders were twinging with pain; he'd slumped down into a highly uncomfortable position at some point during last night's drunk-fest with his godson. Draco Malfoy. They got pissed like this at least once a month, and in the summer, once or twice a week.

The droning noise, his throbbing ears and slitted, dark eyes next identified, if with a wince for the painful, cat-in-kettle hangover it produced with each rasping cacaphony, came from Mr. Draco Malfoy himself. Who had passed out, face down, on his settee across the room. One arm dangled off the edge of the sofa, the other pillowed his cheek--which did nothing to sop up the drool dribbling from the young man's mouth--and his feet dangled up in the air, pushed up at the knees in a, well, a drunken angle by the presence of the settee's arm, which didn't allow his lean frame adequate room to stretch out comfortably. Considering he hadn't deigned to occupy more than two of the three broad sofa cushions, when he'd passed out, it was his own damned fault.

Well. It wouldn't be the first time Draco had come over for a drink, or three, or fourteen, and then passed out. Most people still didn't trust either of them, despite all the damned, dangerous spying they'd done for the Order. To hell with them. And to hell with the overenthusiastic three-year-old playing Muggle rock-star drummer with his skull. Biting back a groan, the Potions Master levered himself out of his chair and staggered slowly, carefully over to his potions cupboard. Wincing at the dried, crusty, chafing evidence in the vicinity of his groin that said he'd cum in his pants at some point last night--he'd Obliviate both himself and his godson, if Draco had witnessed that.

Sagging against the side of the cabinet, he peered through the glazed front. He wondered muzzily where he'd tossed his frock-coat, given that the glass was cool enough to chill him through the material of his white cambric shirt, which he'd rolled up past his elbows at some point during his whiskey-fest last night. This was his private storage cupboard, for alcohol in a reasonably wide selection for the discerning tastes, remedies for hangovers, and several non-lethal but highly restricted draughts that he didn't want his students getting their hands on, by accident or by theft. It occurred to him after a few minutes of tugging fruitlessly on the brass handle that, with his shoulder leaning on the damned, glass-fronted door, he was never going to get it open that way.

Shifting position, he jerked the door open and squinted blearily at the shadowed contents, which formed an untidy jumble. Either it was his eyesight, or in a fit of pique, the three-year-old had rummaged around in here first, before trapping that damned cat in his head. Or there'd been an earthquake. Hogwarts wasn't renowned for those sorts of faults, though. Not the tectonic ones, at least.

He focused what he could of his mind on the task at hand. The damned Sobering Potions and Hangover Remedies should be...there-ish. He was a bit young to start needing reading spectacles, though he'd rather go to a Muggle doctor and get bloody contacts before admitting to any public show of weakness, but then it could also have been the hangover. Still, nothing quite looked right. Grabbing a smallish bottle of approximately the right colour, size and shape, he thumbed out the cork and lifted it to his lips, knocking back a hefty swallow--and choked, recognizing the flavor. Goddammit! That wasn't a Hangover Remedy! That was Truth Serum! He spat it on the carpet, knowing the house-elves would clean it up, and spat some more, too hungover to care that it was not only untidy, but unsanitary, and glared at the misplaced, grey bottle in his hand. Not a blue bottle. Damned shadows, obscuring everything...

Ah, fuck it. That much Truth Serum--even spat out on his floor--would have him telling the truth to all and sundry for the next six or seven hours. He'd have to order a breakfast tray for his room, or give all of his colleagues a very shocking running commentary of whatever bilge dredged itself up out of the bottom of his brain. Corking the bottle, he stuck it back on the shelves, stooped and peered, all but putting his greasy black head in the cabinet, and picked out the correct bottle. A set of the little bottles, actually.

Two blue little bottles for his hangover--he made damned sure they were blue, the right shade of blue, by swaying back and forth so he could eye them in the thin glow of waaaay too bright midmorning light spilling through the high, narrow windows on the fireplace wall, and ducked his head back in for two more white bottles for any lingering drunkenness should leave him completely sober, and completely in control of his reactions and faculties...save for that damned Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Fucking Truth problem, of course. God helped them both if Draco asked him a single thing, before slinking out of here and back to his job at the Ministry of Magic, where--of all possible surprises--he'd managed to become an Auror. Like that Potter Prat. God, he'd heard enough of Auror meetings and the ongoing rivalry between the two--"I've caught more evil-doers than you, this week!"--to have written a book on the subject, and then choked himself to death by trying to swallow it.

Knocking back the first Hangover vial hurt, really hurt, for it not only set off the squalling cat and encouraged the three-year-old to redoubled and even retripled spoon-thumping efforts, it reminded him of just how stiff and pinched his neck and shoulders were. But, blissfully within about thirty nauseated seconds--he had a problem remember the correct numbers that came between nineteen and twenteen-three--the cat stopped yowling, and some of the pain and most of the stiffness faded. Tipping back the second one--it tasted nastily of dandelion juice with a hint of strawberries, sweaty leather and cooked cabbage, making him want to gag--he waited a second time, counting slowly to thirty again. He forgot eight, and went back to recount it, somewhere between seven and nineteen. The three-year-old sulked and stomped off, and someone mercifully let Mrs. Norris out from his head, along with Harry bloody Potter and no less than five Bludgers, three Quaffles--one of which was inexplicably green--and at least half a dozen Snitches.

Clearly, he was still drunk. Flights of fantasy were not his usual stock-in-trade. Save for maybe late at night, when he was feeling depressingly lonely while lying in his bed. Either he fantasized about things that made him shrink from thinking about in the clear light of day, or he stalked through the school corridors. He did a lot of stalking, throughout the school year. Made things easier, if he didn't have to shrink while in the middle of terrorizing his students. God, he was a lonely, sad little man...

God, he really was drunk! Double-checking the Sobering Potion vials in his hand, he popped a cork as he headed towards his bedroom. Not that he had to go far to get there. These little teacher's suites weren't much--a nook of a kitchen and a bit of a table suitable for fixing and drinking a quiet cup of tea, a sitting room, a bedroom, a bathroom off of that, and if you were lucky and had tenure, like he did, a spare room, which he had turned into his overly crowded, personal library. Not that it was large enough to contain his book collection. Books stacked the hallway, making it a good thing he was by nature thin. And drunk. Mustn't forget the drunk bit, Severus reminded himself, knocking back the first of the two Sobering Potions as he pushed open his bedroom door with his other hand.

Sobering Potion spewed out onto the floor, wasted. Choking, swallowing quickly as the door swung shut of its own weight behind him, he stared at the hallucination lying on his bed. It had woken up at the sound of the door thumping shut, and... It. Was. Naked. Naked naked naked naked.

Part of his brain--the part responsible for the three-year-old--started gibbering and chanting that shocking, startling, alarming, utterly enthralling word. Naked naked naked naked. It really liked that word. Naked naked naked naked. Oh, yes. Part of his brain--the teeny, tiny part that occasionally, rarely, once in a fucking blue moon actually admired Potter the Prat and his various, terrifying friends--screamed--Good God, Granger!!

Naked naked naked naked.

Good Good, Granger!!

Naked naked naked naked! Granger!! Naked naked naked naked--Granger!!

"--Shite, you're naked!" he blurted, staring so hard at her, he feared his eyes would pop out of his head, like that damned magical eye of Moody's.

"No ffite, Ferlock!" the furious hallucination on his bed spat through the gag dividing her mouth and half-smothering her lips. "Unfie fee!"

Naked naked naked naked, chanted the three-year-old dancing through his skull, with all the glee of learning a new, forbidden word, the kind of word one really didn't want to have the parson hear when he was invited over for tea. Severus covered his face with his hands. They were lumpy; he was holding onto vials, for some reason. There was something important about those vials--oh, yes, he was drunk, and one of them still had some Sobering Potion in it. He hoped. Dragging his hands down, he yanked the cork free and swallowed the icy draught. Shuddering, he waited for it to take effect, and for the fantasy on his bed to disappear.

He was clearly very drunk, still; he was hallucinating that a naked Hermione Granger was strapped spreadeagled to his bed, that her long, white, curvy legs weren't parted and tied ruthlessly to the two posts at the end of his bed, showing off that luscious patch of dark curls where they joined together, nor that there existed a feminine heaven shaped exactly like the juicy, rosy slit covered by those curls that begged for him to bury his face in for a long, loving taste. He was gripped in a mindless, fruitless fantasy that the soft mounds of her creamy breasts weren't jiggling enticingly as she struggled to free the hands also splayed wide and roped to the two posts and the head of his bed. He was getting a hard-on from how sexy her long, chestnut ringlets--no longer a short, bushy mop--looked, sprawled over the crisp white cotton of his pillows, nor the dark hunter green of his bedspread.

His ultimate fantasy-hallucination didn't go away. Most of his inebriation did, but she didn't. Not those legs, not those breasts, not those dark-thatched lips...not those glaring, furious brown eyes.

Now, mostly sobered, it was his own mind...entirely his own mind, and backed by the full force of the damned Truth Serum he'd taken...that shouted, Naked naked naked naked--Hermione!!

Oh, shite.

Vials clattered from his numbed hands, clattering and crashing on the floor. "--How the fuck did you get in here?"

Her eyes rolled with expressive, angry impatience. "How the helf fhould I know? Unfie fee, righf fow!!"

"Of course, of course...though, god, I could shag you for hours like this, right here, right now," he muttered, moving forward to release her. Then froze, face flaming with embarrassment, as she shrieked, eyes snapping wide,

"--WHAFF??"

Oh. Shite.

Naked naked naked naked--Hermione!!

They stared at each other, equally mortified by his confession. Groaning, he covered his face with his hands again, this time successfully blocking out all sight of her. The lack of vials--which the house-elves would just have to clean up--certainly helped. Her pale, perfect flesh still jiggled and writhed in his mind, sexily struggling to get free. Naked naked naked naked...

"...I took, by accident, a whole fucking mouthful...of bloody Veritaserum, Miss Granger," he finally managed to say, his voice a little muffled behind the heels of his palms as he listened to her panting and tugging on the ropes binding her to his bed. "I was trying to drink a hangover remedy. And a sobering solution. I don't know how you got here--divine providence, I pray--shite!--but I'm obviously going to be saying whatever vile, foul, lustful, honest, utterly humilating thing that runs screaming through my mind like a bratty little three-year-old. For the next six or seven goddamned hours."

Silence, save for her unsteady breathing. He heard her draw in a deep breath--god, don't think about those breasts heaving!--and spoke carefully through the gag smothering her words.

"...Did you kidnaff me?"

"No." He clamped his thin lips together, determined to keep anything else from spilling out.

"...Do you know who kidnaffed me?"

"No." Memory spilled through his aching brain, and he groaned, bowing his whole body in horror. Remembering. "Oh, god...I said I wanted to tie you to my bed and fuck you silly, last night--my buggering godson must've taken me seriously! Not that I was kidding, because I really do--oh, shite--"

He broke off, wishing lightning was capable of striking his quarters through several floors of solid castle overhead, hidden as they were through a secret entrance in his dungeon-level office, which was tucked next to his dungeon-level classroom. A hidden entrance he rued the day he'd ever showed the prat now drooling on his sofa, out in the other room. A hidden entrance he'd kick the platinum wanker out through, as soon as he got this little disaster--sorry, this HUGE fucking disaster--solved. Somehow. Unfortunately, he had no idea how.

Naked naked naked naked...

"...Unfie fee--fow!" the naked naked naked naked woman tied sexily to his bed growled unsexily.

"Right...right..." He dragged his hands down, and resolutely kept his eyes on the floor. Unfortunately, mostly sobered though he was, he could walk over to the side of the bed, and he could keep his eyes on the floor, avoiding views of jiggling, angry, pallid flesh...but he just didn't have a braincell to spare to keep his goddamn mouth shut. "God, I've dreamt of you like this, and now that you're here, I know the right thing to do is to cover you up, untie you, and hand you a knife to slit my throat...but all I can think of is how fucking sexy you are, and how much I want to suck on your toes, and lick your knees, and swallow your juices, and bite your nipples, and shove my tongue down your throat, shutting up that sexy, know-it-all mouth for once."

He could just see, out of the corner of his vision, one slender, curvy leg, and her nicely shaped foot, and the rope binding her ankle in the perfect, open-for-sucking position. But it wasn't her legs that were the sexiest thing, though they were damned well up there. Worse things spilled out of his mouth as he stared at her leg, at her pelvis, at her breasts. Trying not to look her in the face, in the eyes.

"Intelligence is my greatest bloody turn-on," Severus found himself saying as he stared into those gorgeous toffee-brown eyes, feeling like his face was redder than an apple frying in an overheated cauldron, naked naked naked naked. "That makes you the bloody sexiest woman I know, and I've had fantasies about you tied to my bed like this...and a part of me is horrified to find you tied to my bed, and a part of me is trying to rip a hole in my trousers, and a part of me knows that if I don't untie you, no matter how far or fast I run screaming, you're going to make those bloody friends of yours hunt me down and castrate me with a bloody, fucking filleting knife for having lustful thoughts about you...and I am having a really hard time not chewing on...dammit! Not looking at your caramel-cream breasts!

"And the worst thing of all... The bloody, fucking worst thing," he found himself emphasising, "is that the universe isn't going to conveniently implode in the next five seconds, sparing me the utter humiliation of my babbling off at the mouth like this. Because I want to crawl all over you, licking and sucking and making love to you--shite! I can't handle this!" He'd covered his face again; he couldn't look at himself, and he didn't dare continue looking at her. "Goddamned Truth Serum! It's turned me into a bloody lunatic, and you're going to be laughing at me, and pitying me, for the rest of my fucking, bugger-arsed life! God--please, if you've ever been inclined to grant miracles, kill me, now!"

Silence reigned at that heartfelt plea, broken only by the faint ticking of his bedside clock. The Supreme Being didn't rework the laws of meteorology. No convenient lightning bolts seared down through the whitewashed ceiling to mercifully strike him dead.

"...Feveruf floody Fape. Eiffer unfie fis gag, righf fow, or I will see fo if ferfoffally fat you gef a bif, faf, Fefeftor's Fiss!"

He wasn't sure what, exactly, she had just said, but he recognized Furious Female speech when he heard it. Prying one hand from his face, he shifted closer to the head of the bed, and--squinting through the fingers of the other hand--gingerly reached over and fumbled next to her soft, silky, warm cheek, searching for the knot holding the gag in place. One hand, unfortunately, wouldn't cut it. Especially as he had no knife in that hand. Wincing, trying not to stare to much at the breasts he'd fantasized about for years, he leaned over the bed and picked at the knot with both sets of fingers. Thank god she had to turn her face away so that he could pick at it. He really didn't want to have to look in her eyes and see revulsion lurking there.

Unfortunately, she was breathing, and breathing, period, meant moving those luscious breats. Keeping his attention focused on untying the knot meant that he didn't have any attention to spare for guarding his thoughts, and with it, his mouth. Like a damned Muggle car, his mouth engaged without first putting in the clutch of his mind, and out lurched another horrid spew of Absolute Honesty.

"God, I remember the day I first noticed you had breasts... It was late in your sixth year. You'd already turned sixteen and then some; you were technically legal; I hadn't seen anything but that bushy hair--which looks absolutely horrid when short by the way, but a living wet-dream when long--and that damned, upraised hand for umpteen long years...and, my god, there they suddenly were...! Luscious, ripe young mounds, perfect puddings of deliciousness. It wasn't in class, thank god; those damned school uniforms muffled everything, which was a really good thing, because I am not a man to shag a student, because that's bloody disgusting, and an absolute abuse of one's authority, and I hated myself for feeling that way--god, I loathed myself! More than I do right now, even, though right now is fast becoming a very close second."

He tried not to pull on her hair, as he picked out the blasted, tight knot at the back of her head.

"...But it was a late spring day just before you were to get on the bloody train and leave the bloody school, and being a Saturday, you'd put on Muggle clothes, some thin-strapped, sleeveless pink thing and a pair of Muggle jeans, and there they were, nipples poking through the ribbed material, a tiny tease of rounded mounds at the neckline, the swell of perfect, full slopes I wanted to clutch and caress--you needed a brassiere in a bad way, and I wanted to be Transfigured into the cups! I was going to castigate you and your friends for whatever infraction I could find, but instead I merely watched from the doorway as you laughed and chatted, out there in the sunshine, making them jiggle and sway with your animated presence, your youthful beauty, and then I retreated back to my rooms.

"And, once safely there, I loathed myself all the way to my very first masturbated orgasm over you, imagining what your breasts would look like bared to the sun, bared to my lips...bared to clasped around my...prick... Goddamned bastard whoreson tied these bloody knots too tight," he swore, blushing furiously as he pulled on her hair anyway, making her wince.

At least, he hoped she was wincing from that. She'd probably have him up on on charges for...for...well, he wasn't sure if he could be arrested for just talking about keeping her bound for non-consentual sex. Or talking about sex nonstop. He really was trying to untie her, and keep his mouth shut; he'd settle for freeing her, so she could punch him in the mouth or something. As much of a fantasy of his as it would be to ravish her screamingly senseless while bound to his bed, he really, really wanted it to be her idea, first, and he knew damned well that it wasn't going to happen.

"...I'm going to be short a godson, and covered in blood, when this is all over. I might kill him, slowly and painfully--lots and lots of pain--or I might just castrate and blind him, for daring to see this particular sight. Devils shouldn't ever get to look at heaven, and that's all I can say. Which doesn't explain how I got the chance to look at you, today. God knows I'm probably the black-hearted devil everyone paints me to be, and you're as close to heaven on earth, in my eyes, as a man could possibly get...

"Except the longer I spend looking at you, the more I want to leave you tied up here, and do every rotten, vile, erotic, sexy, loving, sensual thing I've imagined doing to you for the last seven bloody long years, in the darkest, fucking-loneliest hours of my unbearable, empty, celibate nights. If one doesn't count lots and lots of wanking over the years, thinking about you--shite!" he swore, wincing again as she strained to look at him out of the corner of her eye. "Goddamned Veritaserum! Why the bloody fuck did I have to put it in the same bloody cabinet as the rest of my bloody, fucking bottles?

"There--! Castigate and scream and shout at me all you like--well, don't scream," he warned her as he gingerly extracted the handkerchief used to gag her, his gentle touch at odds with the self-aimed harshness of his words. Wary that she might try to bite his fingers out of spite. "You might wake up the Platinum Imbecile passed out in the sitting room and drooling right now all over my settee just now, and I really don't want him to see you naked when he's the slightest bit sober. He's the only close damned friend I have, young, brainless brat though he clearly is, and I'd really rather hate to have to kill him.

"I'll have to kill him anyway, of course, for daring to touch your succulent flesh," he babbled nervously as she slowly worked her mouth, her jaw and those luscious lips. "I probably shouldn't inform you that the sight of you working your mouth like that makes me want you to fellate me for about an hour or so...but I just can't bloody help myself, right now. Or at least, I'd fuck that pretty little mouth of yours until I had a literal fucking heart attack. Or just die of embarrassment, because I'm spewing this vomitous stream-of-truthful-consciousness all over you with absolutely no regard for my own dignity, the sanctity of my innermost, deepest secrets, or any regard whatsoever for your tender sensibilities," he muttered, anxiously waiting for the executioner's axe to fall, and for her to face him.

Slowly, her head turned toward him. Those milk-chocolate-toffee eyes narrowed, pinning him in place. Those beautiful, rose-red lips pursed.

"...Or you could just kill me right now, and that would very nicely put me out of both our misery," he offered, trying very hard not to say anything else under that laser-like glare. Anything revealing. Anything further demeaning. Anything abso-fucking-lutely humiliating that might emerge under the pressure of her horrid, obvious hatred, like, oh... "--I am so bloody fucking sorry for all of this, Hermione! And for every single other shite-like, arse-headed, bastardy thing I ever did to you. I'm not sure I can make myself apologize to their faces for all the nasty things I said to your friends, but I am apologizing to you for that, too.

"And, er...hell, I have no fucking dignity left," he muttered, running a hand through the lank, greasy strands of his black hair, "I can't seem to stop swearing like a drunken sailor, and I'm sorry you're being forced to listen to all this." Severus closed his mouth. He really tried to leave it at that, he did. But she wasn't glaring at him any more. She was frowning at him softly. More overdosed veritaserum vomit spilled from his traitorous lips. "--And I can't help but hope and pray that the reason why you're not trying to castrate me verbally right now is because you actually, just possibly might think I haven't made myself an utter, hopeless, lovesick--shite!"

His hands slapped over his face again, nearly breaking his long, pointed nose from the impact. Humiliation burned like salamander-fire through his forty-seven-year-old body. Utter, abject humiliation. He'd just been about to confess The Secret. The reason why he wanked so much, alone in his rooms at night. The reason why he spent his Saturday nights getting utterly, stinkingly, plasteredly drunk instead of trying to date someone, now that she'd left her old school--and him--firmly in the dust of her escape to adulthood. The reason why he was so fucking, bloody lonely...

Her voice, cool, edged, and dry, caressed his auditory nerves and sent a shiver of pleasure and fear down his spine, scaring him with the dread of what she would say. He almost didn't register the meaning of her words, he was so busy silently castigating himself.

"Severus...untie me. Right now."

That did not sound the least bit friendly. Or kindly. Or sexy. Well, it did sound sexy; hell, she could recite the proverbial Muggle phonebook from A to Zed, and he'd get a ruddy hard-on from just listening to her. He turned away from her, lowering his hands, misery so much a part of him, he let his mouth run off without him, again. "Of course, immediately; I'll just start with your feet, because I'm sure you'd want to close those sexy white legs of yours, and keep me from looking at the sweetest dish a starving man could ever gaze upon, and I--ruddy hell, you called me Severus..."

"You called me Hermione, first."

Severus stared at the far wall, blinking. Shocked. She had never called him anything less than Professor Snape, full, formal, and respectful, in all the time he'd known her. He frowned, indignant for some reason--and IT came out, as he scowled at the wall, too much of his attention focused on not looking at her, and too little on not saying IT. "Well, of course, I bloody well called you Hermione! I'm fucking in love with you!"

Oh. God.

He thought nothing was worse than the previous excrement that had escaped his subconscious without any censoring brakes between his mind and his mouth. No, the worst thing was that there was no convenient earthquake to rip open a hole straight to Hell, swallowing him alive. Though Hell could have been considered standing there in his shirtsleeves, his goddamned erection still trying to rip a humiliating hole through the black finespun of his trouser-placket, The Secret ringing in his ears like a death-knell, and the love of his life naked and angry and inches away from either killing him in outrage or puking in utter, disgusted revulsion at his Truth Serum'd confession. He had to be dead and in Hell, that was all there was to it. Definitely dead; his heart certainly wasn't beating, anymore.

"...I, erm, think you're still...really, really drunk, Professor. You'd, er, better untie me while you can still stand and, erm, see semi-straight," her voice offered delicately. Almost pityingly. That killed him, or at least stabbed him right through the heart. It was about the most graceful way out of this whole, humiliating mess that anyone could have offered, but he didn't want her fucking pity.

A graceful way of saving face, save for one thing. Drunk or not, he'd swallowed too much of that traitorous Truth Serum. No amount of inebriation, short of being passed out cold, could possibly alter the Absolute Truth, nor keep it from dribbling out of his out-of-control brain like that ruddy, famous Canadian waterfall, Niagara.

Clearing his throat roughly--somewhere in her cautious offering, his heart had thankfully started working again--he eased himself down onto the side of the bed, picked at the knots binding her left leg to the bedpost, and tried not to think about sucking on those pretty little toes until they both yelled in ecstasy from the sudden acquiring of an orgasmic foot-fetish. He cleared his throat again, and quickly rued making even that tiny sound, for it started his voice functioning again. Damned serum!

"That's...very kind of you, Miss Granger. But there's nothing in the universe, save for maybe unconsciousness, Obliviation, or the sweet silence of death, that could stop me from saying the full, unexpurgated, humiliating truth of whatever is on my mind, right now. And I'm going to shut up, now, because I'm going to try cataloging which lethal poisons I can brew up in just a few minutes from now, for a quick, painless suicide, once you're free and gone from my miserable excuse for a life, once again--god, I must be a little left-over drunk. I usually try to not allow myself to wallow in such humiliating self-pity, as it's highly counter-productive, and utterly depressing. I'd rather think about sucking on each of these pretty little toes until you're so wet with desire, you feel like you're peeing on my bed...oh, god, I'm too fucking, bloody truthful right now..."

Closing his eyes from the pain of what he'd just said wasn't very helpful for untying her leg. Sighing roughly, he opened them again, and bent his attention firmly to his task. Save that it would leave his mouth free to natter on and on needlessly, so he begged, quietly,

"Please, goddess, just say something, anything--recite the bloody boring history of the bloody boring Goblin Wars--anything to help me shut up, and stay silent, for once! At least, if I were listening to your prissy little know-it-all voice reciting dry, boring facts and figures, giving me a ruddy hard-on, I could at least pretend I'm in Heaven, before being consigned eternally to Hell."

"I think you're saying more than enough for both of us," she muttered, flexing her muscles and testing the bonds he was working on. Her toes curled, and he fought the overwhelming urge to bend over and suck them straight again with his lips. Averting his head so he wouldn't be tempted, Severus looked the other direction. Which just happened to be up the length of the leg he was attempting to free.

He froze, his eyes widening slightly. She...was... "--Wet!"

Naked naked naked naked...

"...What?" Hermione frowned at him, lifting her head slightly from the pillow his godson had considerately placed under her. "What did you say?"

He blinked and stared. Naked naked naked naked! "You're...wet! And not just naturally wet. I can see a tiny, dark smear on my bedspread! Those gorgeous nether-curls of yours are glistening with your own dew--you're fucking well turned on!"

Looking up at her at that soft exclamation, he discovered an interesting phenomenon. When Hermione Granger blushed, she not only turned reddish-pink in her cheeks, the slope of her breasts and the sternum between them reddened as well.

"I am not!" she protested.

"I saw you earlier, Miss Granger, and you were not as sopping wet as you are, now!" His nostrils flared with a deep breath. "--I can even smell your musk, in the air--god, it's making me hungry!"

"I am not turned on! Now untie me, immediately!" she snapped, kicking her left leg impatiently. He'd loosened the bonds enough to give her a tiny amount of leeway, but not enough room yet to kick herself free. Severus turned back to comply, then frowned and stared again over his shoulder at her crotch, at her blushing face, breasts...and the pinkish patch now blotching all the way down onto her belly.

Realization--tinged with hope--struck him, and opened his mouth to spew accusatorially, "...You're lying!"

"I am not! In fact, I am not the least bit attracted to you! You're--you're hallucinating! Are you sure you didn't take some sort of...of psychedelic drug, along with that Truth Serum?"

Truth Serum. Truth Serum! Severus thrust up from the bed, scowling down at her. "I have never taken a psychedelic drug, Miss Granger! At least, not since my wasted, pathetic, Dork-Eater'd youth!"

"What?--Where are you going? Come back here and untie me!" she ordered, voice and volume rising as he turned and headed for the door.

"Raise your voice a little louder, and you'll not only wake up my godson, Hermione, you'll probably bring him in here to drool all over you," he warned her over his shoulder. "You may be a mere Muggle-born to him, but he is decidedly not gay, and you are the hottest piece of totty in all of christendom."

That piece of Absolute Truth shut her up. Though the killer glare she gave him spoke volumes of its own. Angry, female-kill-male volumes. Dammit, didn't she know he just couldn't help himself, right now?!

Stomping out of the bedroom, he stormed down the short, crowded, book-lined hall, and stalked up to the glass-fronted storage case. Snatching up the little grey bottle, he spun on his heel and strode for his bedroom again. On the couch, Draco snorked, licked his lips with a faint smacking sound, and sighed back into deep sleep once more. Drunken platinum bastard.

Entering his bedroom, he shut the door, faced it, then fished his wand out of his trouser pocket. A mutter and a pass of the walnut shaft locked the door against intrusion. A second mutter and flick sealed it one-way againt the external passage of sound. He'd still be able to hear if any old, escaped, uncaught Death Eaters tried storming their way into his rooms for a little revenge against the greasy-haired traitor of their cause, but nothing the two of them did within this room would ever be heard beyond these walls until that charm was broken, not even by the brainless brat sleeping out there on his settee, like a drooling little angel.

Stuffing his wand back into his pocket, he returned to the bed. Hermione eyed him warily. "Are you going to let me go?"

"Not quite yet. Open your mouth." Thank god only that much came out of him.

She frowned as he sat on the edge of the bed beside her. "Why?"

"Because you're going to drink a mouthful of this." He pressed his lips tightly together to keep from saying more.

That made her eye the little grey vial warily. As quickly as she could, without opening her lips very far, she demanded, "What is it?"

"Veritaserum. I figure," he rambled as he pulled out the cork, seizing her jaw and turning her head firmly towards him again as she tried to avert her face, "since it would take me about a week to brew up a potion capable of making both of us forget the last hour, a potion which has to be administered right after the hour to be forgotten--open up, woman--and I'm just not that good at Memory Charms, there is only one logical way of salvaging what tattered shreds remain of my dignity and pride. And that is to make you suffer from truthful vomit-of-consciousness, too--open up those sexy lips of yours, Granger, or I'll end up leaving bruises on your pretty little face, and I don't want to harm you."

"--Mm-mm!" It was all she could say, with her lips tightly compressed, trying to shake her head in negation.

"If you don't cooperate, I'll be forced to take much more drastic measures," he warned her.

The glare in her eyes told him he could go to hell.

He debated being more forceful, but the truth was--dammit--that he wanted to be persuasive instead. It would certainly be a lot more fun. So, corking the bottle with the pressure of the pad of one long, callused finger, he released her chin, waited to make sure he had her full attention, and when her glittering, angry gaze was fastened on his face, dipped his head and did what he'd been longing to do for quite some time.

He licked the pebbled peak of her breast. A strangled yell escaped her throat, though a quick glance showed her lips still firmly meshed. But the taut peaks of those breasts told their own form of truth. Smiling, feeling like for the first time he'd seen her naked naked naked naked gorgeous body like he finally was in control of the moment, Severus did it again. Then nipped the rosy, swollen tip with his lip-covered teeth, gently teasing and twisting the turgid little peak.

A sound not too distantly related to a whimper escaped her throat. He smiled happily at her breast, and gently kissed his way down to the curve of the underside. And licked that warm, sweet, soft seam. Definitely a whimper, this time. His right hand and its waiting philter hovered near her face; not exactly over it, more in a position to hopefully be forgotten by her, until he could strike. To distract her, he licked a path up her sternum, her broken little whimper and her slight, upward, greedy squirm of her torso the most heady response she could've possibly made. Oh, yes, occupying his mouth with things other than speech was definitely a better way to go.

He licked the underside of her other breast, tickling her belly with the strands of his shoulderlength black hair as he kept his gaze on her face, and nuzzled the rounded globe of flesh, before suckling the whole, broad areola at its center into his mouth. Making her arch her back up high with a sharp, pleasure-riddled cry.

His hand whipped over her parted lips, his finger moving just far enough from the opening so that a splashing dribble of Serum landed in her mouth. She choked, spluttered, blinked, and turned her head, quickly spitting the excess liquid onto his pillow. Ah, well. Something else for the industrious Hogwarts house-elves to clean, later. But her efforts as she spat again were for naught. Satisfied, Severus righted the bottle and suckled her nipple again in reward for her inadvertent suffering.

"--Bastard!" she coughed, and yanked at her bonds. "Untie me, dammit! Or I'll have you arrested for kidnapping, wrongful imprisonment, and...and...dammit!"

Lifting his head from her breast, Severus studied her flushed, furious, uncertain glare, and pushed himself upright. Corking and setting the little grey bottle on the nightstand, he twisted around and started untying her ankle again.

"Hey--you've still got your wand in your pocket!" she snapped. "I saw you put it in there! Why didn't you whip it out, like that prick of yours, and zap me free? ...Oh, bloody hell! You utter, devious, Slytherinesque bastard! I am going to make the rest of your life miserable, for this--do you hear me? Miserable!" the termigant tied to his bed asserted, jerking at her bonds again. "I'm going to get my revenge on you for years and decades to come, for this! I'm going to tie you to this bed, and lick your sexy little nipples, and...oh, shite..."

The chuckle that escaped him as he finished freeing her left leg was pure, truthful amusement. Now all he had to do, to level the humiliated playing field, was to ask her plenty of questions. "So, you think my nipples are sexy, do you?"

"I...I...I've never even seen your nipples!" she asserted with a blushing stammer as he rose from that side of the bed and moved around to the other. "Though I've imagined them plenty of times in my--dammit! How dare you make me spill my secrets to you! I am not going to lie here, tied to your bed, horny as hell, wanting you to shut up and fu--dammit, dammit, dammit!" she swore, scowling. "And stop laughing at me! God, I've never been so humiliated... Tied up, naked, on your bed, at your utter lack of mercy--I could bloody scream!"

He smiled at her, feeling an unaccustomed warmth of happiness bubbling up inside of him. "Do you want me to keep you tied to my bed, until I do make you scream, from my utter lack of...sexual...mercy?"

Hermione stared at him, wild-eyed and dismayed. And whimpered. It was, after all, the Absolute Truth. "Oh, dear heaven..."

The knots slipped away more easily from her right leg, and he turned around to reach for her right wrist. Sliding her a look as he worked, he asked, his voice a husky drawl, "I asked you a question, Hermione; do you want to be tied to my bed, writhing in the throes of ecstasy, experiencing orgasmic bliss under my hands, applied all over your heavenly, goddess-like body? Do you need me to make love to you, right now? Without mercy?"

She whimpered, biting her lower lip. "...Mercy! Mother of God, yes, I want you to make love to me! I've wanted you to do that for ages--shite!"

"Thank god!" The exclamation left him in a fervent prayer of relief. At her shocked glare, Severus closed his eyes for a moment, flushing. Mastering himself, at least as much as the damned potion would allow, he continued somewhat more calmly, "However humiliated you're now feeling, you still have at least sixteen or seventeen more mortifying revelations to spew forth, before you'll be even halfway close to matching my plateau of mortification."

Freeing her right hand, Severus scrambled fully onto the bed, swinging his leg over her body so that he straddled her hips. Pinning her in place, since she was only tethered now by her left wrist. He looked down at her, at the sight of her breasts just inches from his thighs, at the sight of those lips less than two feet from his tented, rampant, wool-covered groin, and bit back a groan of truth-filled lust.

"Tell me, Hermione. Tell me the truth. Do you want to touch me? Do you want to unfasten my trousers, peel back the wool, and rub your hands all over my prick?"

She gritted her teeth, then moaned and swore. "Yes--yes, damn you!" But that wasn't all, to his shocked surprise. "I want you to strip off all those damned clothes, and suck my breasts, and I want you to shag me right through this bloody, fucking mattress, until my nails are permanently embedded in your back and my scream embedded in your ears, and your prick embedded in my cunt, you bastard! How long have you loved me, anyway?"

Her demand caught him off guard. His hand slapped over his mouth, a last instinct for self-preservation. She squirmed under him, trying to heave him off, and demanded it again.

"How long have you fucking, bloody loved me?!" And her hand, her gloriously free right hand, fluttered down onto the prick tenting his pants.

A groan escaped him, and his hand fisted and dragged itself down to hers, encouraging her to cup him more firmly through the cloth. "Ah, god--divine--! Seven long years!" he gasped, rocking his thighs, driving forward into her grip. His hand fumbled into his pocket, dragging out his wand. He had no concentration left, now, to untie the final, complicated knot. "Solveric!"

The last bond slithered out of its knot in an eyeblink, freeing her left hand. She squeezed his prick through the placket of his pants, making him groan and keel over, falling to one side of her, trying hard not to cum in his trousers like an untried youth. But, the touch of her hand...! He'd longed for the willing, sexually explicit touch of her hand for so long--

"Bastard!" she growled, and yanked herself free of the bed. He whimpered at the loss, the horrible, horrid loss of that perfect, heavenly touch, but she whirled to face him only to snarl, "I was still in school!"

Severus covered his face with his hands once again, pain stabbing through his chest at that all-too-true accusation. There were names for teachers who seduced their students, nasty names, and though he hadn't shown her by a single hint or sign how strongly he'd fallen for her over that summer and that final, heart-stoppingly terrifying, final school year, he'd lusted after her with an intensity that had driven him to be even more sour and cruel and heartless towards her and her friends, just to hide his aberrant emotions. He deserved her Truth Serum'd condemnation. Hundredfold.

The door rattled. Prying his fingers apart, he peered through his hands as she tugged and thumped fruitlessly on the handle. Whirling around, she cast around, saw what had to be the pile of her clothing on top of an old trunk of his in the corner, and pounced on the stack. Fetching her wand, she pointed it at the door. "Alohomora!"

A grasp of the knob proved it to be jiggled just as fruitlessly as before. She scowled and tried another unlocking charm, and another, and another. All of which failed. Spinning to face him, she levelled her wand at him, magnificent in her naked naked naked naked rage.

"Unlock this door, this instant!" Hermione demanded.

Severus lowered his palms from his face, staring down the length of his body at her. "No."

"Goddammit, Severus! Let me go!"

"Not on your life, you brainless twit!" he snapped back, bluntly truthful, since she was indeed acting like one, in that minute. "You're still bloody naked, woman! You've also got six or seven hours' worth of veritaserum to work through, just like me, and there's no way in Heaven or Hell I'm turning your true opinions loose on the world--good god! Haven't you been paying any attention to what it's been doing to me?"

She stared at him, wide-eyed. Rolling off the bed, Severus stalked toward her, his hands working their way down the buttons of his shirt, tugging the tails free of his trousers. Those gorgeous eyes widened even further, until she almost looked like a chestnut-haired, brown-eyed version of that dotty-looking Ravenclaw...what was her name? Moony? Loony something? It didn't matter, so long as it was the one with those bulging eyes. He hadn't really paid much attention to any young female, back then. Except for maybe her. It hurt him to see her shrink back against the door at his approach, but he stripped the opened shirt from his shoulders and held it out to her.

"Here. Put it on. I'm not going to ravish you without your consent. And you might as well have a free gawk at my nipples, in case it entices you to give your consent to a wild, animalistic bout of rabid lovemaking."

She didn't reach for the shirt. She was too busy staring at his pale, sallow chest, with its sparse mat of dark hairs that formed a triangle over his lean pectorals, sheltering those nipples at its fringes, then trailed down in a line to circle his navel and disappear into his waistband. Severus felt the nipples in question tighten and tingle with unrequited lust as she unconsciously licked her lips, and reflexively licked his own. That, unfortunately, started the Babble Machine of his mouth, though the words that emerged next surprised him with their honesty . Yes, that was an oxymoron, considering he knew damned well he'd taken veritaserum, but there they were.

"Hermione...please, put on the shirt. Button it up. Cover yourself. I want to have an intelligent conversation with you, and every time I look at your divine bits and bobbles, nearly every last braincell in my head shuts down, because all of the blood in my whole, damned body drains straight to my prick, and I can't think straight, for want of making love to you until the universe implodes. Save me from myself, please, and let me see you in my shirt, because it's been a longstanding fantasy of mine...and there goes the last of my dignity again," he muttered, closing his eyes with a wince.

He felt the brush of her hand against his, taking the shirt from his fingers. Opening his eyes, he watched as she shrugged into the material and wrapped it around her luscious curves. Her fingers trembled a little, as she worked the buttons from the bottom to the top. It seemed that the distracton of the effort weakened her own ability to keep her Truth Serum'd mouth shut, for she started muttering, "Wearing your shirt has always been a secret fantasy of mine, too--dammit! How could you do this to me? Every last little secret I have is going to come spilling out onto your floor, and the absolute last thing I ever wanted you to know was how long I've had a bloody crush on--shite!"

Somehow, he kept from actually touching her, as his hands instinctively grabbed for her shoulders. Somehow, he slammed his palms instead on the silence-enspelled door. Dark eyes stared into lighter brown as she blushed and looked up at him, fumbling to close the button just below the curves of her breasts, gorgeous, creamy, mouth-wateringly ripe breasts that were making his shirt gape just enough to ensure his erection would never, ever deflate again from the sheer memory of it.

"Do...you...love me?" He demanded as she shrank back against the door, uncertain what he meant to do to her. That was the only Truth, Whole Truth, and Nothing But the Truth that he wanted to know. It hurt him, to see her looking so miserable, trying to avoid his penetrating gaze, but there was no way to avoid the effects of what she'd drunk. Not when he demanded again, insistently, "Tell me the truth!"

"--Oh, god yes! I've loved you for ages!" she blurted out, flushing red down to her breasts again. And babbled out more as he leaned closer and closer by incremental fractions, muscles straining against the fierce urge to say fuckitall to any more confessions and just kiss her, and kiss her, and kiss her some more, because he wanted her confessions. And, thank god, she gave them. "...I had a crush on you that very first day in school, with that low, sexy voice of yours, and I always thought your sardonic, sarcastic humor was really funny, but you were so awful to me and there were days and months where I hated you, or I tried to hate you, even when you were at your cruelest to me.

"And I'd hoped and prayed there was some goodness inside of you, because I despised myself for loving such a seeming bastard, and then there was your work in the Order, and I just kept loving and longing and wanting you more, and I knew when I was miserably depressed in that first summer--dammit, the last six years, too!--and I just kept feeling lonely and miserable after I left the school, and I knew I couldn't ever look forward to seeing you in the autumn, nor try to even see you again, because I just knew you'd pity me, and deride me, and humiliate me if I ever confessed even the slightest fraction of my overriding love for you!"

"I would...would have done that--bloody hell, yes," Severus confessed with a grimace, unable to say the utter lie of wouldn't. "But only because I'm so goddamned used to protecting myself, and believing that everyone hates me, and that I'm an utterly unlovable bastard who doesn't deserve even the slightest bit of happiness, because of all the stupid and evil, foul things I did in my foolish, wasted youth. I just...I just wouldn't have believed it, without this utterly miraculous Truth Serum'd moment between us..."

He dropped slowly to his knees, and gently, carefully pressed his cheek into her stomach, gratified when she wrapped her arms around him, cradling him to her. Hesitantly, carefully, still suffering from too many long, damned years of being afraid to risk offending her--though the veritaserum had clearly tried, today--he wrapped his arms gently around her backside. Cupping that luscious, ripe arse as a groan of Absolute Truth escaped his chest.

"Hermione, sweet goddess...I just want you to love me, forgive me, live with me and keep me from being a miserable, lonely, pathetic old bastard for the rest of my life, even though I know I don't deserve you. I don't deserve any happiness, and I'd resigned myself to that cruel fate long ago, but now I've got this fucking hope in my chest, and it hurts so much, and it hurts so good! And I'm having the hardest damned time believing that you do love me, that it's not some ephemeral crush--"

She choked on a laugh, cradling his head and shoulders closer to her body. Smothering him against the heaven of her warmth radiating through the cotton of his shirt. "--Ephemeral? Fleeting? Transitory? God, if it were only that, you'd have killed it the time you told me you didn't like a bloody know-it-all, or when you mocked my teeth, or god knows all the other insults you slung at me and my best friends over the years. It'd have died when I was trying to date Ron and the others, in the vain attempt to forget you and lead a normal life. It'd have gone away the one time I tried to make love to someone else, instead of revolting me that I was trying to be with anyone else out of some pathetic little attempt at curing myself of my secret obsession with you, and breaking up what was supposed to be my very first time, leaving me a very frustrated virgin at the way too old age of twenty-four--shite! How many bloody, damned secrets am I going to spill, this morning?!"

"Just the one where you love me," he promised her, turning his head so that he could kiss her stomach through the cambric of his shirt. "That's the most important one...god, taken from Hell to Heaven in three little words--you love me! Tell me again!" he begged shamelessly, looking up at her, though his vision was a little blurred with tear-prickled need. "Tell me, please!"

"I love you--god, I love you! Now, tell me!" she ordered him breathlessly.

"I love you! I love you, I love you, love you, love you, love you," he mumbled, pressing his face into her stomach again. There. Finally, something to take away that damned naked naked naked naked chant that was still running through his brain. It had mashed itself into a much more complicated three-year-old's babble of, She's naked under my shirt--how I love you--naked naked naked love! But that didn't chant very well. And there was something about the grammar, or tense, or point-of-view that just sounded too awkward for his finicky, professorial tastes. Inhaling the warm, feminine scent of her, mingling with the musky, masculine scents clinging to his shirt, he tried a different chant.

Naked naked love you love you... Yes, that one worked much better in his Truth Serum'd, still slightly firewhiskey-addled brain.

"Thank god I was too drunk to know which bottle I was drinking. I swear, I am never touching another drop of firewhiskey again," he promised her fervently, nuzzling her belly. That made him aware of the feel of the muscles of her thighs brushing the hairs of his chest, just below the edge of his shirt. "God, how I want to shove up that shirt and lick your dripping slit until you scream...you realize we can't kill my godson, now, because if it weren't for the little shite kidnapping you like this, we'd never have gotten together, or confessed our love--thanks to our damnable, self-defensive pride--and I'd never be kneeling here like this before you, begging to do anything to please and pleasure you for eternity, if you'll swear to be my bride..."

Her whimper was heaven in his ears, and the slight, outward flexing of her knees was heaven to his eyes. It was, rather clearly, an invitation for him to do exactly that. But he needed the words. Lots and lots of Truth Serum'd words.

"Please, Hermione, my love--tell me you want me to fuck you, to make love to you, to shag you into that mattress until your fingernails are embedded in my back, and you can't feel anything but my prick in your cunt, and my tongue in your mouth, and my love in your heart, until the day we should die!"

"--Oh, god, yes!" she shouted, scratching those very nails along his back. And then squeaked in shock as he wrapped his arms firmly under her arse and shoved to his feet, lifting her into the air. Spinning them around--too happy, too fiercely, fearfully happy not to express his dizzying joy--Severus whirled her in his arms until he hit the side of the bed and collapsed both of them onto the mattress. She laughed as she bounced a little on the soft bedding.

He devoured her laughter with a needy, hungry kiss, pressing her back into the pillows. She moaned and equally greedily dragged him down on top of her body, the finespun of his trousers rubbing against her legs as they parted for him, the crisp material of his shirt rumpling under the sliding movements of his chest. Caught up in the fiery lust that had kept him hard and throbbing since he'd first seen her naked naked love you love you on his bed, Severus thrust himself against her, rubbing his placket-covered prick against her feminine mound with a groan of need that reverberated against her dancing tongue and nipping teeth.

She shivered and clutched at him, tearing her mouth from his with a cry as her body quivered under his. "--Oh my god! Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod! I've never cum so fast! Oh, god, Severus--do it again! Do it again, now!"

He complied, grinding his groin into hers again, watching in heated wonder as she arched her head back and gasped again. Blinking a little in wonder, he let his hips do whatever they liked, just like his lips, and rocked himself into her, over and over. "Merlin's sweet little arse, you're so bloody sexy! If I could've given an angel an orgasm, she wouldn't even begin to compare with you!"

"Ohhh, god, that voice! Haunting me in my dreams and my memories, making me want to frig myself in my bed, in my shower, in your class--I could cum from the sound of it alone! Remind me to order you to lecture me, after we're done!"

Oh, dear god. Somehow, Severus stilled the rhythmic pumping of his hips. He really didn't want to cum in his trousers, again. It was really, really good he hadn't ever known that while she'd been his student, because he knew that would've been his breaking point. He would have used his lectures to sexually torment her each day she was in his class. The thought of role-playing Professor and Student raced through his mind, bringing him right to the edge of his control...and he was still wearing his pants, dammit! Digging out his wand, he flicked it impatiently. "Divestus!"

Their clothing vanished from their bodies, snapping into the air beside the bed and dropping with a soft rustle to the carpeted floor. A groan dragged out of his throat as he almost--almost!--thrust into her without any skill, patience or finesse. But that word, that one, outstanding word was ringing in his head, punctuating the naked naked love you love you chant with naked naked love you virgin. So he kissed her lips, and he kissed her eyes, and kissed her nose, her lips, her cheeks and her lips again--they were deliciously sweet, a siren-song for his senses--then nuzzled his way down her throat as her hands caressed his shoulders and tunneled through his hair. He worked his way down, lipping and nipping and suckling her breasts as her knees splayed and her loins pressed up hungrily into his stomach. He crawled down her body, using his mouth for traction, for locomotion, and discovered that not only did she blush all the way down to her soft, silky belly when he kissed it, she also giggled ticklishly when he licked and suckled her navel.

And then--then!--he was at the Gates of Paradise, and praying fervently to Saint Hermione to let him in, to give him forgiveness for all his sins, to be his personal, private absolution. He licked, he suckled, he lapped, he bit, teased with his thumb, probed with his fingers, listening to her moans and squeaks, her giggles and squeals to guide his efforts as he feasted on her flesh--and the flavor of her! Who fucking needed Odgen's Best, when they could get thoroughly, gloriously drunk on Hermione Granger's Finest, instead? He had to hunch himself up onto his knees to just keep from cumming rudely, prematurely by rubbing and thrusting against the bed. No, no, there was going to be no fucking rushing to this moment of glory. Severus was bound and determined to fulfil his every midnight fantasy, every deepest, secret pledge, just to make her cum a million times in his arms before he did.

But, to be honest--as if either of them had a blessed, miraculous choice--there was only so much of her quivering muscles and clasping thighs, her writhing gyrations and throaty cries of his name that he could take and still remain a sane male. Licking a quick, fervent path up her body, nipping briefly at the peaks of those caramel-cream breasts, he nudged himself into her slick opening. Gritting his teeth, he rocked slowly, gently, glacially into her furnace-hot body, doing his damnedest to breach her hymen gently.

It did not help that she moaned and ate his mouth, and clutched at his shoulders, digging those promised fingernails into his skin. But it was done, and done gently. And though her nails tightened painfully when the shred of last resistance gave way, enveloping him in warm, wet heat, Severus continued to rock the last few inches into her flesh with a gentle patience that bordered on insanity.

And when it was done, when he was buried in her as deep and far as he humanly could go, he knew in that moment that he could live with himself, with his breaching of her innocence, with the humiliations he had suffered, all to get to this miraculous, marvelous, phenomenal point. For she sighed, then whimpered, and clenched her inner muscles around him with a needy, breathy moan.

"...Oh, god, Severus--I've never felt anything so beautiful! Move, dammit!"

The tears of agreement prickling unmanfully in his eyes gave way to a started laugh. "'Move, dammit?' You want me to move in you, woman? I'll bloody well show you 'move, dammit!'"

Naked naked love you love you move dammit! Oh, yes, he could agree wholehearted with that chanted combination! With a pressuring, rippling need that started with the curling of his toes--which he would really have to get her to suckle experimentally, at some later point in this wonderful, blissful insanity, dear god, may he never wake up if it was dream--he thrust and thrust, and indeed moved, dammit, until the pressure reached his heart and his chest, as she cried out in ecstasy under him, scratching and scrabbling and clawing deliciously at his back. Until the pressure of his love for her centered itself in his scrotum, and shot out of his manhood, and--ah, goddess!--Heaven swallowed him blind!

* * * * * * * * * * *

The urge to pee dragged him out of his drunken dreams, in which he was flying around on his old Nimbus 2001. Only this time he was chasing a Snitch shaped like a pair of breasts. Which might explain the embarrassing amount of drool sliming the hand he'd used for a pillow. Groaning at having the bizarre but enticing little interlude interrupted, smacking his mouth sleepily to try and get the fuzzy scum off his tongue, Draco crawled off the settee, stumbled to his feet, and peered blearily around the vaguely familiar, book-cluttered livingroom, trying to orient himself.

Books. Lots and lots of bloody books. Ah, yes. His godfather's underground bachelor's pad, which had never seen anything remotely like a pair of breasts, save whatever a female house-elf might've brought into the place with her when there was dusting to be done. Revolting thought, that; house-elves shouldn't have breasts, or sex-lives...

...Bathroom in the back. That's where it was; he remembered that, now. Pointing that way assertively, he followed after his finger, stumbling a little on the carpeting. Reaching the door, he grabbed the handle. It didn't open. He jiggled it a little, then frowned and stooped over, nearly braining himself on the doorknob as it tried to collide rudely with his forehead. Fuckit. Squinting, Draco peered at the keyhole, trying to remember if there was a way to remove the ruddy key without risking blowing himself up like that youngest Weasley prat with a drunkenly misaimed wand.

There wasn't a key in the hole. There wasn't anything at all that could block his view of his godfather, Severus Snape, dreaded Potions Master of Hogwarts, kneeling on his four-poster bed and pounding that trouser-tenting prick of his into the hot, sweet cunt of Hermione Granger, Department of Mysteries researcher, who knelt on all fours, limbs splayed enticingly like a feline in heat, biting her lip in absolute, silent ecstasy as the older man shagged her without a single sound. Inexplicably having the hottest sex of their lives, when for all he knew, they'd never seen each other since that graduation trip home on the Hogwarts Express, six years ago.

Oh. Holy. Shite!

Memory crashed through his brain, embarrassment at what he'd done clashing with the lust that stabbed through him at the sight of the two of them fucking like rabid weasels, Granger's luscious, beautiful titties swaying and jiggling with each tight-gripped thrust. Thumping to his knees, Draco moaned softly, eye pressed to the keyhole as closely as the doorknob denting his forehead would allow, and hand to his crotch, rubbing as fiercely as the wool of his trousers would let. Without conscious--or sober--thought, he unzipped his trousers, yanked his shirttail out of the way, pulled his rod'n'tackle out of his boxers, and started stroking himself, wanking to the glorious sight of those two naked bodies shagging the hell out of each other in full, silent, glorious colour.

It didn't take long for him to cum, they were so bloody fucking hot. Groaning loudly, Draco closed his eyes and bit his lip, catching some of the spurting liquid to further lubricate his shaft, pumping it hard, drawing out the ecstasy. He shouted again, head thrown back, as that last little bit of pleasure wrung its way up out of his bollocks.

And felt a draft as the door in front of him whipped open, along with a shout of, "--Impedimenta!"

Locked in place, dread turning his veins to ice, Draco couldn't even open his eyes to see what was going to happen to him. He could only hear their voices, Severus' and Granger's.

"I hate to knock out all of his memories, since we'll have to rebuild our relationship all over again...but I'm going to Obliviate the fucking little son of a bitch for everything he's...well, not everything he's done, dammit, but for every little bit of you he's seen, that's for fucking bloody sure!"

The harsh growl belonged to his godfather. It was the sort of ultra-furious growl he'd reserved for those really angry moments when facing down the Potter Prat. If he could've moved, Draco would've shivered in fear under the threat of all that fury now aimed at him.

"Actually, my love, I have something better in mind," he heard Granger drawl. "Something that will keep most of his memories intact, and yet allow us to torture him endlessly with what he'll never remember. It's something we've been working on in the Department of Mysteries, actually. An Oblivion spell that only removes the last twenty-four hours out of someone's memory."

"--You can do that, now? But then why didn't you use it on me, while I was blithering like a bloody idiot, earlier?"

Granger chuckled sexily. Draco would've vomited, if he could move, sobered out of his lust and mind gibbering for oblivion, short or long, for having wanked himself to the sight of the ugly little witch's naked bobbles and bits. She purred, too, saying, "Well...I really liked the way you were debasing yourself with all those sexy thoughts you kept revealing to me."

"Thank god for the veritaserum, then!" he heard his godfather exclaim roughly, oddly. His comment made very little sense. It was also followed by what sounded--urgh!--like a very hot bit of wet-tongued snogging. If he could've moved, he'd have gagged with the very thought.

It broke off, and he heard Granger ask in a puzzled tone, "Why was the locking spell's password 'frogs in winter'?"

"Oh, it's a very long story. I'll tell it to you later; I don't want the Impedimenta to wear off my godson before we're finished dealing with him."

"Right. Well, if it's an entertaining story, I'll reward you with..." And the thing she said made Draco wish and pray, fervently to Heaven--dear god, save him!--to erase it from his memory, because he wasn't even sure that was physically possible, and the thought of Granger being willing and able--god, the Potions Master was groaning like a bull in heat at the suggestion, oh please please please don't let them shag each other right there in the doorway, inches away from him--please, someone, anyone kill or Obliviate him, now!

And then, mercifully,

"--Dialo Obliviscum!"

He blacked out.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Draco woke with the taste of Ogden's Worst Firewhiskey slimed all over the inner surfaces of his mouth, scumming his teeth and fuzzing his tongue. His left forearm and cheek were wet with drool, and someone had shoved Harry bloody Potter--playing a bizarre, green-Quaffled, multi-Snitched game of Quidditch, no less--into his head, along with a very unhappy Mrs. Norris, trapped both of them under a spell-sealed lid, and that same sadistic soul had cruelly perched a three-year-old on the back of his stiff and sore neck, who was enthusiastically banging a spoon against his skull.

Accompanied by a noise which sounded strangly like an alto, feminine voice giggling, and a baritone, masculine voice chuckling, and both of them--voices that were disturbingly familiar--whispering and muttering snatches of syrupy sweet-nothings, in between smacky, kissy, snogging sounds. Prying his sleep-gummed, pale blond eyelashes open, Draco stared across the living room floor at the sight of two sets of legs occupying the leather-bound armchair facing the fire.

One set was familiar, clad in black finespun wool, patent-shod feet set levelly on the floor. The other set draped at an angle over them, one crossed over the other, utterly bare from the toes to the lower thighs, where the rest was thankfully obscured by the hem of a smart little burgundy wool skirt. Above that skirt rested a pink silk blouse and a white cambric shirt, and above those...urgh! The kissing, grinning faces of Hermione Granger and Severus Snape!

"...Oh, god," he groaned, shutting his eyes and praying it would all go away. The murmurings and snoggings stopped, only to be replaced after a brief pause by his godfather saying,

"Well. About time you woke up, you lazy little sod. Are you going to stop drooling on my couch, now?"

Wincing, Draco levered himself upright, wishing the three-year-old couldn't cling so free of the rightful laws of gravity. He shut his eyes, trying to convince the yowling cat in his head to bloody shut up. Three-year-olds, in his admittedly limited experience, didn't listen to anyone, and neither did Harry bloody Potter. "Only if you give me a Hangover Remedy. Or three."

There was a brief murmur at that from Granger, which sounded like, "...Should we let him suffer?"

His godfather, bless his black-hearted soul--where the fuck had Granger come from?--thankfully muttered back, "No. I think we'll take pity on him, this time around."

Rustling sounds, footsteps, and the soft click of the cupboard door opening and closing again were followed by the approach of those footsteps in his direction. Putting out his hand, Draco blindly accepted the vial, fumbled out the cork, and knocked the vile, dandelion-like contents back. That vial was taken out of his hand and replaced with a second, which Draco chugged as quickly as he could, and then a third one as well. By the time he'd repeatedly swallowed about thirty or forty times, the three-year-old had left, taking Mrs. Norris with her, and chased out by Potter and all of his ruddy, ugly, flying balls.

Rubbing at his eyes to get them pried open, he squinted and blinked, and rubbed at his eyes again. It wasn't the pain-induced hallucinations of the hangover. Granger really was here, in his godfather's apartment, sitting on his lap once again...snogging with him. He could actually see tongue movement. "Oh my god..."

She giggled. The Muggle-born prat dared to giggle and find humor in his befuddled horror. Severus shushed her with a finger delicately laid across her lips, and smiled at his godson. Or maybe it was a smirk. "Feeling better?"

"Uh...nothing personal, but what the bloody hell is she doing here? In your lap? And...and...kissing, for godsake!" Draco choked as they did it again. He was unable to tear his eyes from the cuddling pair, as if they were some sort of bloody Muggle train-wreck.

"Oh, well, Severus here got together with me last night, after you passed out drunk on his couch. One thing led to another, we confessed our undying love, and so here we are!" Granger smiled at him, as she hugged his godfather around the neck. "Snuggling by the fire!"

"...I think I'm going to be sick," Draco muttered, tearing his gaze away.

"Need another Hangover Remedy?" his godfather--the Granger-snogging bastard--enquired solicitously.

"I don't think there's a potion to cure what I'm suffering. How the hell could the two of you get together in just a few hours?" he demanded, glaring at them again. Indignation and...and just plain wrongness was better than nausea, after all.

"We finally got smart, and told each other the truth about how we felt," Severus told him coolly. "And it hasn't been 'just a few hours'. It's late Sunday night. You've been sleeping off a hellacious drunk for nearly twenty-four hours straight. I really think you should pull yourself together, Draco."

"Especially if you expect to show up at work on time, tomorrow," Granger supplied unhelpfully.

"...Right. Well, I'll be going, then," Draco muttered distractedly as the pair kissed--urgh!--again. He stood, cast about, picked up his summerweight cloak from where he'd draped it over an ottoman...well, he couldn't really remember draping it there yesterday, not even actually arriving here, though he remembered that had been his intent sometime yesterday morning...and turned toward the door. Then glanced back at the two of them, trying not to flinch at the sight of Granger twidling her fingers intimately through a lock of his godfather's greasy black hair, while his godfather's hand cupped and stroked the rounded, burgundy-clad curve of her derriere. "Er...same time next Saturday, then?"

"Certainly. My fiance and I would love to have you over for tea."

"--Tea?" God, it was embarrassing, utterly humiliating, how his voice broke with a squeak in mid-syllable like some gawky, spotty-faced teenager's.

Granger, damn her hide, had the temerity to laugh again. "Oh, yes! We're going to have a lovely tea, next Saturday. Scones, clotted cream, little sandwiches and biscuits--the full Monty!"

"But...but the firewhiskey!" he blurted out, staring at his godfather, unable to believe his ears.

Severus, damn his hide, shrugged dismissively. "I've given it up. The only thing I'll ever get drunk on again...is love."

And he smiled at the woman sitting on his lap. Sick to his stomach with bachelor-rooted, pure-blooded horror, Draco staggered quickly for the door. Wondering which hellish, alternate universe he'd woken up in--tea with Severus' fiance!

Their intertwining laughter chased him out the door.