Potion

Bouquets and kudos tossed to JK Rowling who started it all and allows us to keep it going.

Finally, a dreaded A/N: In this chapter you will see reference to the wedding vows they made. In Chapter 5, Mea Culpa, their wedding is described as it was experienced...rushed and confusing. The vows are not spelled out, but they were definitely taken. So don't worry if you don't recall the exact words because the words were not given in detail. Also to American and non-Anglican readers, the specific vow mentioned here may not be familiar. But it is very much a part of the traditional Church of England marriage rite and has been since the time of Thomas Cranmer, to whom we owe deep gratitude. And now, on with the story.

32. POTION

Skin on skin.

Oh god oh god oh god.

Why had she never imagined, even considered, how this...skin on skin...would feel?

When he'd unwrapped the towel, she had shrugged her arms free and started to sit up.

He had placed his palms on her shoulders, gently and firmly, and pushed her back into the pile of pillows and onto her soft, red sheets.

She sank back into the bliss of them and for a few moments gave herself over to his desires. She could do this. She wanted to do this....

He'd eased onto the bed beside her and had meticulously dried her right hand, then her left, taking care between her fingers, tickling her palms without seeming to notice.

But he noticed. Surely, he noticed. His very noticing and pretending not to notice suddenly frustrated her.

She had jerked her hand away and reached for her wand. "I think I'd prefer a drying spell."

He had caught her wrist in his strong fingers. "There are some things, Miss Granger, that are not improved upon by magic."

Her words, her very own words! Only, she'd been talking about tea, not drying one's bum after a bath!

But if his hands hadn't stopped her from casting the spell anyway, his black eyes would have. She'd fallen back against the pillows, helpless to do anything else under the intensity of those eyes, even as her heart fluttered within her like a panicked bird.

He had continued with the slow, meticulous process of drying every fold and crevice...underarms, navel, toes, the feminine folds that made her flush with embarrassment. And he'd continued with his velvet-voiced nonsense, warning her not to interfere with the Potions master when he's preparing a cauldron, until she could have screamed with frustration.

She wanted to kick him, to twist away, because she just wanted to do it and get it over with. He'd taken away her desire to participate and had replaced it with a teeth-grinding necessity to just get on with it.

Maybe she could fake it.

She didn't want to fail.

What was worse, she didn't want fail for him, she didn't want him to care, she didn't want him to care so much.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she was laughing with near hysteria because the one thing she'd never dreamed when she'd approached him was that Professor Snape of all men would care whether or not she had an orgasm.

What had started as a tingling what if this time it's different? had become a desire to simply endure until he'd finally played out this frustrating attempt to make her feel things she simply didn't feel.

But finally, finally, the drying had come to an end, and she'd looked into his eyes and had seen the dilation, the need...

And something within her flared in reaction.

And she'd offered her arms, and her voice had been raspy...she hadn't even recognized it as her own...and she'd begged, "Please... kiss me."

Because his kisses were heaven.

And now, here he was, stretched over her, kissing her, and she'd had no idea how it would feel...

Skin on skin.

--to have her breasts pressed against his hard chest. To feel their long legs entwined and sliding as she luxuriated under him, and god oh god she simply hadn't dreamed it would feel like this, to be naked with him, to have every square centimeter of her flesh bared to his, to feel...

Oh, god, the heat and weight of his erection pressed between them.

She felt a brief spasm of remembered pain, but surely it wouldn't hurt this time, not this time, after all, it would be the third time, and surely she wouldn't be too tender or tight...

She spread her legs, then, and thrust up, straining. It was there, and she wanted it in her, she wanted to get on with it...

And oh, the kiss, the kiss, the kisses...first her mouth, then her eyelids, then her throat; she never knew where he was going to kiss her next, and she shivered with anticipation and chills and...

He was sliding down her body.

She grabbed at his arms to stop him, to bring him back.

"Please," she rasped, "don't stop."

The cold dungeon air assaulted her as he left her vulnerable to it, and looking down, she saw his head between her legs and...surely not. Surely not that. Oh, god, how could he possibly want to do that?

XX

He nuzzled between her legs and inhaled.

There was no scent, no aroma of arousal.

She bucked, almost kicked at him, would have truly kicked him if he hadn't grabbed her thighs and pinned them down.

She jerked upright, panic-stricken, her hair in flight around her head. "What do you think you're doing?"

She thrust a hand between them, covering herself, and started to fold her other arm across her bare breasts, but he caught it and stopped her. "Are you really that uncomfortable?"

She flushed under his scrutiny.

"I want you to be comfortable," he sighed, and Summoned...

The white shirt.

She reached for it with obvious relief, shrugged it on, pulled her hair free, and reached for the top button...

"No, Miss Granger. We will not be doing buttons tonight."

She let it hang, not quite meeting.

Oh, if she only knew that the tantalizing game of peekaboo the shirt played with her breasts did more to arouse him than the bare flesh had.

He climbed up her body and gently, but brooking no resistance, pushed her down again.

"Miss Granger, I gather that you're distressed..."

"Yes," she hissed, her eyes sullen slits.

He couldn't help it. He had to do it. He had to kiss her. Again. To tease those unhappy lips and absorb her frustration, and oh, Merlin, it was more than that. It was always more than that. He covered her again, this time with the shirt between them, but it did little to cool his blood as he cradled her face in his hands and captured her lips...captured her sighs...Even she couldn't deny the pleasure of their kisses.

But these kisses were dangerous for his control, and he had to stop while he could, stop while he could still...

Her hand slid between them and she reached for him...

He broke away before she could touch him and held her wrists at her sides.

"Minx." He Summoned the bottle of oil from the bathroom and caught it in his hand. "First, the cauldron is cleansed. Then it is dried. You almost distracted me, but we aren't finished."

He turned her over and straddled her arse and reached to brush her hair aside...

And stopped.

"Will you please move your hair?"

He held his breath.

Her body was stiff under him.

"Please," he repeated softly.

And dared not breathe as she reached up with one hand and pulled it aside, baring her neck.

He released his breath in a long sigh of relief and thanksgiving.

He slid his hands up her back, taking the shirt with it.

The sight of her back, long and slender, was nearly his undoing.

He dripped the warm oil down her spine. "And now," he said, "the cauldron must be oiled."

"You're really annoying me," she said, her voice muffled by pillows.

And he laughed. "Is that what you call this? Annoying?"

She clearly had no intention of responding to that, so he smoothed one palm from the crack of her arse all the way up her spine to her neck, spreading the fragrant oil in its path. Then with the heels of both hands, he began gently spreading it outward, each push of his hands releasing more fragrance into the air.

He felt her inhale, shudder, and relax despite herself.

He introduced his fingers into the exercise, and it became a gentle kneading of flesh as he massaged the cheeks of her arse, feeling the muscles tense and quiver and fighting the reaction of his cock as it did the same.

He climbed her spine, worked across her upper back, and then...

Leaned forward and nibbled along the side of her neck that had been bared when she pulled her hair aside....

And felt her shiver.

Then he noticed beneath the overlong sleeves, her hands, her lovely hands, her lovely, long-fingered hands.

And the rings.

The old Snape family ring seemed so shabby beside the smooth, new Ministry ring, yet she'd said she wanted to wear it for a very long time. She was such a foolish, foolish girl, filled with sentiment and romantic notions, and he felt a pang of pity for her, which was more than he allowed for himself.

There would be no "very long time" for them.

She was destined to be a very young widow.

He felt a clutch at his middle, but ignored it. He wouldn't survive the war, but he was determined to leave her safe and strong and ready for what followed.

And, wasn't this a very Slytherin gift?

He was determined to leave her with knowledge of her self. Her complete self. Especially the self that she had denied, had decided was unimportant and unnecessary.

He pressed his lips to her rings, both of them, the one that trapped them and the one that tormented and tantalized with romantic notions...and then he forced his attention back to her hands.

They started stiff but became limp in his as he smoothed the oil between her fingers, kneaded the base of her thumb, and then, when she seemed turned to liquid...suckled her fingers and watched her back, her lovely back arch in response.

And then, retreating again, he slid down her body again and bared her thighs to his ministrations, dragging his thumbs up her inner thighs, but stopping short of the new growth of curls and all that they hid.

Warm oil, firm fingers, smooth motions as he worked his way down, giving special attention to the creases behind her knees, her firm calves, and finally massaged his thumbs into the tender arches of her feet and heard her soft exhalation of air, a moan in the semi-darkness as the light from the bathroom spilled over them in the dark of the quarters.

He rolled her over on her back, and kneeling at her feet, drew her toes between his warm, wet lips.

She cried out at that...flinched, then gave over to the sensation, and her moan went straight through him. He placed his mouth on the sole of her foot and suckled, and felt her reaction ripple through her body.

And then, more oil. Never too much, just enough.

And the reverse trip back up her body, over the tops of her feet, her calves, her legs, her thighs...

And then, sliding his oil-drenched fingers between her folds, into and out of the slickness, while one hand held her firmly in place, and then before she could buck or arch or kick or beg, he'd kept going over the flat of her stomach, the dip of her waist, until he dragged his thumbs under the perimeter of her breasts, then spiraled his fingers around and up until...just until...he reached the peaks...

And skipped them and went up further to the delicate hollows and angles of her shoulders and throat and neck.

Her eyes were half-closed as she watched him, limpid and dark. She'd long since stopped fighting, stopped protesting, but he wouldn't be rushed again. Not this time. This time, he wouldn't hurt her. This time, she'd feel the passion, too.

He couldn't tell her...wouldn't tell her...because she would take the words like labels and turn them back on him in rage, and they weren't labels, not for her, god, no, not for her.

But this taking from her without even a scent of her response, this knowledge that she was so willing to accept a one-sided passion, chilled him.

Because sex with a willing partner who wasn't aroused was too much like sex with a whore.

Or a child.

And he'd break his wand before he'd settle for a lifetime of that, even a very short lifetime between the delectable and surprisingly talented Miss Granger's thighs.

He straddled her legs, his cock urging him to completion, his heart pounding its urging, and braced himself.

"Miss Granger, in your reading, surely you've come across these instructions. Surely you know what comes after the oiling...."

She merely shook her head helplessly and then sighed. "You're determined to make me feel something, whether I want to or not."

Wasn't that what had been happening to him since the day she'd exploded into his classroom in a billow robes and a slamming of door?

Feeling things, whether he fucking wanted to or not?

"Miss Granger, welcome to my hell."

Her eyes flared at that. Perhaps in latent anger. Perhaps in recognition.

"You didn't answer my question. What comes next?"

And she didn't fail him. She recited, "Cleanse, dry, oil ... heat."

"Yes," he whispered as he lowered his mouth to her right nipple and took the left between his fingers. "Heat...."

He tickled her nipple with the tip of his tongue...felt it draw up to a stiff alertness that caught him off guard, it happened so quickly...and felt her hands clutch his shoulders, her fingernails digging in, and he raised up to stare at her half-lidded, moist-lipped expression and saw (and smelled, yes, this time there was no mistaking it) arousal.

"Well," he purred. And seemed unable to find another word, so repeated it. "Well."

He took the turgid nipple in his fingers and worked it as he transferred his mouth to the other one and found it already stiff and yearning and her body undulated beneath him.

This was it.

This was what he'd desired.

"And now, Miss Granger, the potion...." He dragged his thumb across the soft flesh beneath her breast. "It's brewing... do you feel it?"

She stiffened, but he placed a finger over her lips. "Shhh... just lie still and close your eyes." And that nipple, that perfect, wet nipple tantalized him. He blew across it and watched it tighten even more. "You feel it," he said softly. "Describe the potion, Miss Granger."

He watched as she started to grimace, her eyes flying open accusingly at him, but he gently covered them with his hand. "I said, eyes closed. Feel it, Miss Granger. We are brewing together, and I can't continue unless I know what the potion needs."

He felt her resistance, but he also smelled her arousal. Her body was strung tight as a bowstring as he felt her warring within herself. He cupped her breast in one hand and squeezed gently as he placed his lips on her soft, flat abdomen and kissed it. "Describe the potion," he repeated. "What does it feel like?"

"It... it tingles."

"Good," he responded. "What does it look like?"

Again, she stiffened; again, he used his hand over her eyes to keep her gently focused.

"Don't you see the cauldron?" he asked, his words silk. "Don't you see the potion?"

Her hips arched beneath him. "It's... light. Light and... liquid. And it has bubbles, tiny bubbles, popping on the surface.... Thousands of little bubbles popping...oh, god...inside of me." Again, the arch of hips, slow and languid. "Like champagne," she whispered, "down there...."

"Do you like champagne?"

An extended silence while he watched her cheeks flush, and then, "Yessss."

It was a confession, more than she wanted to reveal, and he felt a small victory. He rolled her tight nipple between his fingers, and this time, it was his tongue that stroked the skin beneath her breast. "Tell me when the potion is ready for a new ingredient," he murmured into her flesh, as she shifted beneath him and let out a soft moan.

Simmering... She was simmering.

Slowly, he explored the contours of her body with his lips, with soft exhalations of warm, moist air, with strokes of his tongue, constantly attentive to every reaction of her body, whether it was to grow still or to quiver beneath him. Quick glances at her face, at her lips, at the tongue that sometimes darted out to wet them, or the teeth that nibbled her plump lower lip as she slowly rolled her head to the side, her eyes squinted closed....

He slid a hand down her stomach until his fingertips scraped through the short, tight frizz of curls that were already growing back. Slowly, he slid his fingers lower until he cupped her mound and gave it a soft squeeze. "Describe the potion," he said, taking his voice to dark velvet. "Tell me what it needs."

Her hips twitched restlessly under his hand, and she gave her head a hard toss. "I don't know," she said. Her restlessness was fast becoming frustration, and that was something he couldn't allow. Not this time. Not when she didn't anticipate, didn't trust herself or him or even know what was ahead of her.

He slid one finger over her clitoris...she gasped...and down to part the labia and seek the slick quim where he stroked her lightly, up... and then back down. Up... and then back down. Up... He let his finger hover. "Describe the potion," he urged.

"Don't stop," she gasped.

He continued. He dragged his finger up the moist slit, slid it around her clit in a circular path, then back down, and finally, he dipped it inside, where he found her heat and her moisture, and bit back his own response.

She arched to meet him.

"Describe..." he said again.

"Sss..." She broke off, caught her breath. But ever the obedient Miss Granger, she tried again, her voice a bare whisper. "Sweet..."

"Very good," he whispered, entranced by the expression on her face, the sight of her breasts quivering with each breath, and the hot, wet feel of her.

"Thick," she added, "like.... like treacle."

He continued the gentle rhythm dragging her moisture up... around... then dipping inside.

Stroke up...

Circle...

Slip in...

Stroke.

Circle.

Slide.

"And...so warm..." She arched her neck and upper body, and he knew he'd carry that vision of skin and flat stomach and pert breasts and awakening desire to his grave and felt the heavy throb of his erection demanding its own satisfaction. "Slow and sweet and warm..." Like her voice, lazy with slow-building desire. "The bubbles on the surface are bigger...when they pop, it's like..."

Her voice drifted.

His fingers...now he used two...continued their slow rhythm.

Stroke.

Circle.

Enter.

"A pulse...when they pop, it's like..." she finally said, concentrating fiercely. "The potion has a pulse," she said breathlessly. "It's..." He plunged two fingers in more firmly, allowing them to slide over her clitoris and they found their way down to the opening, and she contracted around him with a gasp. "Oh, god!"

He increased the rhythm, the pressure, felt her quivering around him...

She sat up, her eyes dilated and wild and reached for his hand. "No, no, no...stop!"

He froze for a moment. Finally forced the words, "Miss Granger, what's wrong?"

Gasping, she tried to cover herself and grab his hand and roll away from him, all at the same time.

And with a flash, he remembered the fear of coming with someone watching him, with someone to taunt or laugh, and feeling more vulnerable than he had in his entire life, and no matter that he would never laugh, that he was about to die with the wanting of it, the wanting of her completion...he remembered.

"Nox," he gasped, and the bathroom light was out, and they were plunged into total darkness.

"I'm...I'm going to..." She couldn't choke the words out, but he forced her back on the mattress with gentle force, never removing his fingers, keeping a gentle but persistent pressure until she was on her back, panting.

"It's all right," he said, his own voice little more than a hoarse whisper.

"I'm going to shatter," she sobbed.

"I'll catch you," he answered.

And before she could protest again, he used his thumbs to part her labia, and this time, it was his tongue that searched in the dark, that found slickness and finally the hard, quivering nub, and as he stroked and flicked with the hardened tip of his tongue, he had the most absurd thought...that she tasted like strong, unsweetened tea...and that it wasn't a bad taste at all...and then her thighs were trembling, her hands reaching, clawing...He gave her his hands to hold, to squeeze, and buried his face deeper and stroked and flicked until he felt the tremors, the quakes, that sent triumph into that tight place in his chest. Her entire body undulated against the bed as her thighs clamped closed on him, and through it all, choked, almost-silent gasps, and then, a whimper, and he realized that his tongue had slowed with her until, when she finally lay quivering in the aftermath, only his lips made contact, gentle contact with the center of her sex.

A gentle kiss against her swollen flesh.

She jerked.

Another kiss, in her curls.

She whimpered.

Breathless, he finally rested his head against her thigh and gasped for air and held onto her hands as if he were the one who had shattered.

He didn't know how long they remained like that in the cloak of darkness and wondered if she'd fallen asleep when her small voice broke the silence.

"Professor...I'm sorry."

What the bloody fuck?

He climbed up on the bed and slid alongside her. "For what?"

He felt her cover her face with her hands.

"For...for taking so long. You had to work so hard!"

"Miss Granger," he growled. "I will personally yank your tongue out of your throat by the roots if you ever apologize for such a thing again." He pulled her to him, heedless of his erection, simply needing to feel her in his arms. "Foolish girl," he soothed, kissing her forehead.

And then she was pulling his face down so that her lips met his...

"No," he said, "you don't want to..." But she must not have heard, or understood, or remembered where his mouth had been, because she kissed him, a hungry, devouring kiss, and this time, when her tongue probed his lips, he allowed her entrance, and suddenly the kiss was an inferno of heat and wet and passion and a blend of the taste of potion and of her, and the sweet tang was like a drug.

She reached between them, and this time when she reached for his cock he let her take it in her inexperienced but oh-so-determined hand, and he groaned into her mouth, and her fingers stroked down to the base and back up again.

"I want you inside of me," she said.

"Not tonight...Don't want to hurt you...again."

He felt her push his shoulders until he allowed her to put him flat on his back "We can do it this way," she said, "and it won't be so bad." She smiled against his lips. "I read it in a book."

"Fucking books," he groaned, but without venom, as she was already straddling him, trying to...

He grabbed his cock in his hand and helped her guide it and groaned when she lowered herself until he was pressed into her quim, but just barely. She lowered herself further and gasped, and he could have snarled his frustration, but instead said, "Stop. I don't want to hurt you..."

But she pushed a little farther, her voice choked, and said, "Professor, I don't think..." She twitched around him, squeezed, jerked up then down farther with absolutely no rhythm but fierce determination, "I don't think it's going to take as long this time!"

And he realized that the exquisite tightness he felt was stretching her sensitized nerves, that her jerky movements were her attempts to scratch that sumptuous itch, and that the gasps and the contractions meant she'd done it, and fuck fuck fuck he needed more, but she was collapsing on his chest, and he couldn't speak, his hands gripping the sheets like a lifeline.

He stared into the blackness, her hair enveloping him, her body draped over him, her breath tickling him, and knew total and absolute despair, the kind that made him want to laugh helplessly until he cried, but all he could do was hold her and cup her arse and bury his face in her hair and glory in the absurd magnificence that was his Miss Granger.

His.

And wonder if she was asleep and whether he'd wake her if he used his hand to bring himself relief.

But her next deep, shuddering breath dispelled that notion, for she placed her hands on his chest and pushed herself back up and after giving him one more devouring kiss...

She lowered herself slowly, ever so slowly, onto his erection until he was sheathed to the hilt.

He couldn't breathe.

He heard her murmurs, what sounded like the softest and sweetest of incantations, but was too far gone to grasp the words because he needed her to move, to fucking move...

And then, she did.

So fucking slowly.

He swallowed his groan, braced himself against the need to thrust, to plunge--

And gripping the sheets by the fistful, he arched against the bed in sweet, silent agony as she slowly...

Exquisitely...

Excruciatingly...

Milked him dry.

XX

She lay in his arms, unable to speak, barely able to breathe as aftershocks of his lovemaking gently quivered through her.

And the tightness that was always in her chest, in her heart, released and bloomed.

So.

This was what it was all about.

This is what all those couples she'd roused out of dark corners when she'd done rounds had been seeking.

She felt wet on her face and realized that silent tears coursed down her cheeks.

Silent because she couldn't say the words, couldn't tell him of her astounding realization, not because she thought he would laugh, but because she knew he would scorn.

But on this night, he'd made love.

He'd created love in her as surely as if he'd truly conjured a potion.

She opened her eyes in the darkness and was surprised not to find herself glowing with it, burning with it, this terrifying and beautiful thing that threatened to devour her from the inside out.

How could this be? How could this man, this horrible man that she'd never thought of with anything but wary respect have become everything to her? Everything?

She wanted to take his passion inside of her, keep it for always, and his tenderness, oh, god, his tenderness, who would have guessed that he had such tenderness in him?

She pressed more tightly against his body, reveled in the feel of his arms pulling her even closer, in the feel of his chest rising and falling, slowly easing back to normal as he, too, recovered.

And she was afraid to hear his words, just as she was afraid for him to hear hers.

Maybe they were both afraid.

Maybe that's why this silence spun between them.

Maybe...he felt it, too?

When the silence stretched to the breaking point, his voice finally rumbled in her ear, low and silken. "What were you saying?"

Oh, god, had she said it aloud?

"At the end, the incantation."

The end...she didn't remember saying anything at all...

"Oh," she said softly, surprising herself with a yawn. She stretched against him and nestled in for more of this totally magical yet totally human sensation of skin on skin. "It wasn't an incantation. It was just our vows."

He wasn't nestling. His hand at her back stilled. "What vows?"

"When we married. At the cathedral. You know, the marriage vows." And with that, she tilted her face up to his and found his lips in the darkness and whispered, "The part that came after 'With this ring, I thee wed...' Don't you remember?" And smiled against his lips, and repeated the words, letting them warm her and strengthen her all over again, "With my body, I thee worship...."

She arched into him, giving him her body, heart and soul.

His arms closed around her reflexively, but he pulled away from her kiss. "Vows. What does that mean, vows? That was as much an incantation as I've ever heard."

And then, his voice harsh, he grabbed her by the shoulders and demanded...

"Miss Granger, what have you done?"