Shattered

As always, thanks to JKR.

And, as always, thanks to the fabulous betas, Leigh-Anne and GinnyW!

34. SHATTERED

Obey.

His mother had made that fucking Muggle oath to obey.

The wind whipped around him as he braced his hands on the parapet of the Astronomy Tower and stared blindly down at the castle. There were no windows lighted in these dark hours before dawn.

He shoved away and ground his fists into his eyes. So much made sense. So many things from his childhood snapped into place with a sickening click.

Had she known? Had she known when she tempted the Muggle Tobias Snape into matrimony that doing so would end her life as a witch?

Oh, how she'd begged and pleaded her husband to allow her to use her magic. And the bastard had refused.

His anger at being tricked into marrying a pregnant girl was nothing compared to his rage at discovering she was a witch.

Tobias had discovered it when her son had first manifested his magic in the crib, Levitating a toy from the floor so he could reach it.

Severus could even take on that guilt, that his mother had kept her magic hidden until he'd made it impossible to hide.

Now, he looked back on his father with pity.

Heaven help the man who puts his heart in the hands of a teenaged witch. And Tobias had done that...unwittingly...and his life turned into hell.

He saw his mother with equal pity. Desperate, she'd taken a coward's way out with Tobias. But she was so young, and the Prince family had disowned her for bringing shame to them.

By the time he got his Hogwarts letter, he was relieved to leave that dismal, loveless home. When he'd been sorted into Slytherin, his mother had been euphoric. The Sorting Hat had recognized the truth. Or, as she would have seen it, The Truth.

Despite his name, he was pureblood.

Oh, the fucking irony that he was now as trapped by Muggle vows as she'd ever been.

And...he felt the ragged pain in his breast...Miss Granger had taken the same oath his mother had.

He wanted to raise his face into the fierce wind and roar his rage.

XX

Hermione sped down the dark corridor, led by instinct rather than thought. Only when she found herself in front of the Fat Lady without a password did she realize where she'd gone.

She backed away silently, not wanting to disturb the Fat Lady's snores.

She whirled and went the other direction, blood pulsing through her body. Yes, even there, she realized, each step she took pulling a subtle but genuine reaction from her swollen nether regions.

She thrust a fist to her lips and swore she would not cry.

She had no place of her own.

She walked blindly through the dark corridors, no longer speeding, just putting one foot in front of the other, blocking out her thoughts, tamping down her feelings.

Walking was good. It eased the tight place in her heart, just a little....

And so, she walked.

There were worse things, after all.

And eventually there were no tingles between her legs, only numbness. Her feet were cold...she had neglected to put on socks...and her calves cramping.

But one step at a time was easy enough.

If she didn't allow herself to think.

Or feel.

And eventually...it seemed like hours passed but surely not...she found herself outside the Room of Requirement.

How fitting.

She paced back and forth three times, and then the door manifested itself for her.

She paused, almost afraid of what she'd find, and then entered.

Oh, how fitting, indeed.

She'd half expected to find herself at Winchester Cathedral again.

Instead, she was in an eerily reasonable facsimile of the dungeon bedchamber.

But not quite.

It looked the same, only the bed covers weren't tangled.

The air wasn't infused with the heady scents of eucalyptus and spearmint and sex.

He wasn't here.

Instead of giving her what she required, it only reminded her of what it couldn't give her.

Or was that its intent?

She was too confused, almost dizzy with confusion, and didn't even try to understand.

And so, quietly, she entered the actual bedchamber a short time later, to find it dark except for firelight. Quietly, she eased herself forward toward the bed. If only he would be asleep.

But the bed was empty.

Suddenly she found herself flipped against the wall, a wand pressed to her throat.

"It's me," she said hoarsely, and hoped that actually meant something to him.

"Indeed." He dropped the wand but didn't step away.

She felt emotion radiating from him but all she could muster in response was despair. "I'll use a Time-Turner," she blurted. "I'll go back and..."

"How easily that suggestion trips off your tongue, Miss Granger," he hissed. He stepped away from her and she found it easier to breathe, if more difficult to remain standing. She sank into the nearest chair, which happened to be his. The warmth of his body still clung to it, and she pressed more deeply into it seeking his unwitting comfort.

But that was not to be.

He snagged her arm and yanked her to her feet. His face pressed close to hers, his eyes (oh, his eyes) close enough to swallow her whole. He continued through gritted teeth, "There are things you need to understand, Miss Granger. And this is one of them. There will be no Time-Turners. There will be no going back."

"You're hurting me," she whispered.

He immediately relaxed his grip on her arm, and something flickered through his eyes as he rubbed it gently instead, but then, the tension was back, and he pulled her to the fireplace, to the mantle above it.

"Lumos." The sconces on either side flared, and she saw...with a clenching of her stomach and an ache in her heart...the photographs she'd lovingly placed there.

Him. Alone. Against the wall. Scowling at something she couldn't see. But still, it was he. She no longer saw the movement, the dancers, the girl in blue and the Quidditch star that held her. She only saw the man who would become her husband, and it made her ache.

And then, the picture of their wedding. She caught her breath. Their kiss. The magical bonds twisting around them.

"Do you see the bonds?" he asked. "Silver."

She nodded mutely.

"Silver would never be used at a binding. If we needed evidence, there it is."

She dared to slide a sideways look at him and gulped when she saw the fierce scowl, which, sensing her movement, he quickly forced on her. "Do you realize the danger of an unknown binding, unknown magic, working in us?"

"Of course I do. I'm not stupid! It's why I suggested..."

"Let's go back to that day, shall we? The day you exploded into my classroom and announced to me that I have some responsibility for protecting you. Protecting you! You. The princess of Gryffindor. You. Minerva's favorite. You. The girl who only had to receive a single offer from a Death Eater to have half the Order and most of the Weasleys spring forward for the honor of protecting you!"

She cringed away from him, her heart pounding.

"The entire Order shifting into gear to find a way to protect you, to protect Potter," he sneered. And then, he stepped away from her, walked into the shadows, braced his arms against the wall and ground out, "But who was jumping forward to protect my Slytherins?" He whirled and faced her, the anger on his features blazing. "No one."

"I'm sure..." she fumbled, "I'm certain Professor Dumbledore would have..."

"He views them as victims beyond his reach," he hissed. "If their own parents wanted to rush them to the Dark Lord before they had to go, to watch them get their marks...how was he to stop them?"

"But you burst into my classroom with your righteous indignation, your childish panic, and handed me exactly the salvation I was looking for."

How silently he moved. How quickly he had closed the space between them and, not touching, still brushed her with his heat.

And then, almost lovingly, he whispered into her ear, "I didn't marry you to save you, Miss Granger. I married you to save Draco."

She clutched the mantle to keep from falling.

His lips curled in a sneer. "Because if I could stop Draco from taking the Dark Mark, I could stop the others. As the Malfoys go, so go Slytherin."

To save his Slytherins.

To save Draco.

Of course.

She burned with humiliation.

How stupid. How selfish. How childish she must have seemed to him.

How stupid, selfish and childish she had been.

He'd never wanted her; she knew that, but this...this made it worse.

"You could have told me," she whispered. "I would have done it anyway. It saved both of us."

"And eliminate your guilt?" he asked, his voice satin, teasing the tender skin just below her ear. "Why would I want to do that?"

She turned away from him then, turned her face to the darkness, hid her eyes from him, hid her soul.

"We could still use a Time-Turner. We could go back and have a wizarding marriage and forget..." She couldn't continue. The words broke in her throat and she couldn't find them again.

She squeezed her eyes closed.

"How easy it is for you to speak of eliminating what is inconvenient. Of forgetting."

"But it's worse than inconvenient," she choked. "It's dangerous. If it scares you and Professor Dumbledore, it has to be terrifying!"

"Indeed." He closed his long fingers over her upper arms with firm pressure. He spun her to face him. His black eyes glittered into hers and she knew, if he chose to, he could dive in and see the pain, and the fear, and the anguish that quaked through her. And she knew that she couldn't stop him.

But, he didn't even bother to try.

He was more focused on his own fierce emotion as he leaned over her until her head bent back.

"It would be easy for you, wouldn't it? You, who have a bevy of friends just waiting for you to come to your senses and despise me again. You, who are never alone. You, who live in the golden tower...a tower you never wanted to give up, I might remind you. How easily you talk of erasing the past two weeks, and perhaps I could forgive you that, if I didn't realize that you know full well what you're suggesting. You know that it isn't truly erased. That we'd remember. We'd know. Whether you chose to return to Gryffindor or continue this sham of a marriage and lie beside me at night in my cold bed, we'd know what had been. How easily you give this up, my devoted little wife!"

He dug his fingers into her hair, bracing her face until they were nose to nose, his eyes now squeezed shut as the heels of his hands pressed in at her temples. "Here is how much you have destroyed me, Miss Granger. Here is how far you've driven me, and how little honor I have left."

He dragged her shirt off her shoulder and nipped at the skin there. "Now that I know what I have in my bed every night, you could go back as far as you like and I would do everything in my power to bring you back."

His words sizzled against her skin, moist and heated. The words vibrated with something dark and dangerous. "Had I known, had I tasted..." He broke away from that shoulder and bared the other. "If I had this knowledge on the night you were sorted into Gryffindor, how would I have born it? How many nights could I have suffered with you in my classroom, in these halls, dancing around the edges of my fucking life?"

He peeled the shirt from her skin and bared her breasts to the air and to his hungry black gaze.

She wanted to twist away and out of his arms.

She wanted to arch up, tempt his lips to torment her breasts and set her on fire.

She did neither. She lay frozen under that ebony serpent's gaze.

"How long before I would have seduced you?" he pushed, his voice harsh. "Would I wait until you were of age? Would it have been last year?"

And there it was...the lick across her right nipple, followed by her own hissed intake of air.

"Or would I have plucked you sooner?"

Leaning over her, pinning her to the mattress.

He touched her left nipple.

Plucked it.

Blew across it.

All as tenderly and meticulously as he had before.

Only his voice wasn't tender. His touch trembled with suppressed rage.

She should be terrified of him.

Maybe... she was.

"At what point would the agony have been too much?" he pressed, growling against her throat. "At what point would I have destroyed you for my own relief?"

His hands trembled, his voice shook.

And she slid her fingers into his greasy hair and held his face still, her heart pounding.

"You don't have to," she said. "I'm here."

And she kissed him.

She felt his face freeze beneath her lips, and still she tenderly nipped at his lower lip, bathed it in moisture, and teased.

Hands trembling, she reached for her jeans...

He grabbed her wrists, flung them away. "What are you doing?" And before she could answer, he hissed, "After all that I've told you? After all that I've said?"

She felt the blood singing in her veins, and the pulse was back, the pulse between her legs, the pulse that he had discovered and fanned to flame.

Never breaking his gaze, she flicked her fingers and felt her jeans disappear.

And when she was naked beneath him, when she could no longer stand the pain in his eyes, she slid one arm around his neck, and took one of his hands and pulled it between them, to the pulse that begged for his touch. "Professor, I need you." She kissed the base of his throat, dragged her tongue sweetly along the indentation of bone and sinew.

"And I think you need me."

It was as if something within him broke. One hand climbed her back and raised her head to his in a fierce kiss. The other finally slid down to part her arousal-plumped labia and over her wet clitoris...she gasped with pleasure...to plumb her vaginal core and seek the moisture that waited there.

He groaned, slid his fingers out and then back in. Again she gasped and opened her legs wider to him to give him better access. The next time he withdrew his hand it was to leave her quaking and quivering with need.

She clutched his shoulders and tried to hold him against her, but it was his turn to remove clothes, and there was no art or artifice in the way he jerked them off. Nor was there grace in the way he pushed her farther up onto the bed and spread her legs. But she only needed the weight of his cock against her core, the pressure as he shifted and adjusted until he was at her entrance, and then the blissful agony as he pushed in...imbedding the mushroom head of his penis within her.

She was stretched tight...her nerve-endings tingling and taut with his presence...and when he pulled out she almost cried with dismay. But then he shoved in and filled her to completeness, and all she could do was gasp with the glory of it.

And again, he withdrew, and this time she clenched around him, as if to keep him part of her forever. The very act of that attempt sent sensations coiling more tightly, concentrated at that spot that he was hitting with each stroke...oh god oh god oh god...how could he do this, make her feel these things?

The strokes started long and smooth and controlled, but they couldn't stay that way, not with her writhing under him, clutching him with her arms, her legs, anything to give her better traction to hold him in her, to keep him in her, to never let him leave, oh god oh god oh god....

His hair fell into his face, shadowing his eyes so she couldn't see them, couldn't see their beautiful black depths. But she could find his mouth and taste his lips and force her tongue between them until she tasted all that was him. And when his tongue followed hers back into her mouth, she suckled it with the rhythm of his strokes, trying to take every bit of him within her.

But his hips plunged so fiercely and her nerve endings swelled so sweetly, she could feel and taste and smell the tension as she gasped and all of her awareness focused on that one small spot, that sweetly anguished spot, and the thick, vein-wrapped cock that stroked it...

Until she cried out with the ecstasy of it, the reaction that went beyond mere pleasure, and jerked with the overload of sensations....

And still he drove into her, losing control, losing rhythm, but never losing his hold on her as he shattered...

And she caught him.

Slowly, so slowly, he continued to stroke, even though they were both spent and quivering. And still, he clung to her, moved within her, as if afraid to stop...as if afraid to let her go...as if afraid to let it end.

But it had to end, and it did end, and he collapsed beside her, rolled away from her, and left her cold in the night.

She stared at his back, his angel white skin stretched taut over shoulders too wide for his thin body. At the scars that could only barely be seen in the shadowy darkness. At the tension still there, despite what they'd just shared.

She closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to his spine, curled her hands over his shoulders, arched into the curve of his back.

And after one long, frozen moment...

He rolled back to face her, to pull her into his arms, to kiss her.

And finally, to curl around her as they slept.