Birthday

My thanks, as always, to JK Rowling.

And kudos and kisses to the fabulous GinnyW!

46. BIRTHDAY

And so it had come to this.

After serving two masters for almost twenty years, he lay staring into the darkness weighted down by a heaviness that left him ill at ease and uncertain. Nothing had prepared him for this. His tasks for both sides had been both onerous and dangerous and he had followed through with deliberation.

But this, this left him feeling...

Inadequate.

Lacking.

Deficient.

Incapable.

And desperately unworthy.

She'd nestled in his arms and offered it up to him like a gift.

"Thursday is my birthday."

She'd flounced away and tossed it over her shoulder with a saucy flip of her hair.

"Thursday is my birthday."

And beneath it all...expectations.

Expectations.

And he was supposed to fulfil them.

She hadn't had enough birthdays to get jaded. In fact, she'd clearly had the kinds of birthdays that led someone to expect some pleasant surprise, some gift of delight, something thoughtful or lovely or...

Something beyond his ken.

And now he listened to her deep, steady breathing...felt her hot breath fan across his chest...and waited for her to awaken and look at him with those eyes, those warm brown eyes filled with expectation.

He'd done his best to assure that the Dark Lord would leave them undisturbed on this day and night by pretending he wanted the opposite.

Now he wished he'd done the reverse.

But wasn't this day simply a compression of every day? Wasn't this yet another fucking day when she looked at him with such longing, such affection, that it was clear she looked at him for her happiness?

He'd served two masters for almost twenty years, but this was the weight of responsibility that staggered him.

This insufferable yet precious weight in his arms.

And all he had to offer her was a dubious potion and an even more dubious set of robes and...

His lips twisted in a wince.

Sex with penetration.

As if it were a bloody fucking gift to be parcelled out like a child's sweet instead of her due.

Maybe he was wrong to let doubts guide his judgment. Maybe he should accept the Dark Lord's stated blessing and forget about the Ministry watchdog and Lucius fucking Malfoy.

Maybe he should drop every fucking instinct that had kept him alive for twenty years?

Not bloody likely.

Tension climbed up his spine, through his shoulders, up his neck and over the top of his head to dig into the sockets of his eyes.

Suddenly he couldn't wait any longer, couldn't wait for her to invite him but needed to taste her...

He buried his face in her neck and began a slow assault of licking, suckling, nipping from the tender hollow at the base of her throat up to the smooth line of her jaw.

She rolled in his arms, immediately responsive. "Professor..." She opened her mouth to his and sought him, matched him, arching her body against his and rubbing his erection with her pelvis. "Today..."

He shut her up with his fingers across her lips and growled, "Is your birthday, yes," and then slid his hand down her abdomen to find the tight curls, the moist folds...

"Now," she said. "I want you in me now."

He probed with one long finger, testing, but she wrenched away and grabbed his hand. "Now," she insisted. "Now." She closed her hand around him...her hot, smooth palm sparking a reaction that shot up his spine...and pulled, and he could do nothing but go with her, let her direct him until the head of his cock rested at her slit, and he hesitated...

"Now."

She opened her thighs wider and dug her fingers into the muscles of his arse, and he did it, he drove in...the sweet, moist friction as he slid into a quim that wasn't quite ready, that wasn't quite wet enough...the lush tug of skin against skin accompanied by her choked gasp, and he froze, he froze in her and tried to slow but again, those fingers dug into his flesh and she demanded, "Now, let me feel you, let me feel you in me."

He tried to go slowly, tried to give her a chance to catch up with him but she jerked beneath him, drove herself up to meet him, and he was barely aware of moisture going wet, of her soft whimpers as he followed her lead...no, wrenched the lead from her, wrenched control from her and drove into her again and again until there was no control, there was no measured response but only a driving need to move, to move faster, to move harder...

To capture her lips with his and invade her mouth the way he invaded her body. To enter her and possess her and be captured by her and trapped within her until there was no her, no him, only them, two become one.

And then, he was swallowing her cries, and she was grinding against his cock, quivering and clutching, and still he drove into her, stroke after stroke, until nothing existed but the burning incandescence of their sex, and he arched into her with a sound that was half-shout, half-groan. With arms and legs and mouth and quim, she clung to him, she clung to him and he clung back, willing her to take him in, to swallow him alive, to never let him go.

XX

"Too fast..." he muttered into her hair, her neck, her breast, finally lingering at her nipple. "Too fast," he muttered again, lipping it with only the occasional touch of his tongue to remind him of the sweet salty taste of her skin and the slow, measured assault he'd planned.

"No," she whispered, "not too fast. I was starving for you. I needed you in me. For today... I just want to pretend."

"Pretend?"

"Pretend that there's no one watching. That we're like real marriages, the ones where..." She sighed against him. "The ones where nobody is watching."

He was startled by her sniff, by the realization that she wept, and he pulled her down with him and tried to wipe away her tears, to kiss them away, to find the cause and drive it away, to bring back the saucy smile, the impudence. "Don't," he said. "Don't cry."

And he was reminded of his first inadequate gift and sighed. "Maybe," he said carefully, "maybe they aren't watching."

"Why wouldn't they be?" she asked, rubbing her cheek against his.

"It depends on the thoroughness of your research, on the conclusions you've drawn and assumptions you've made, which I admit after careful study I'm inclined to think might be tolerably sound," he said, using his thumb to stroke her cheek. "And of course, it depends on my brewing skills, which I'm inclined to think are not the weak link in this experiment."

She suddenly was alert and he knew she remembered. "What was that noxious stuff, anyway? A more vile, more nasty concoction I've never had the misfortune to drink."

"It was your cloaking potion."

"I have no..." She broke off with a gasp and grabbed his left hand. "Our rings? To cloak us from the Ministry?"

"It was, of course, the first attempt, and we have no way of knowing that it worked, yet..."

But she was on top of him, pressing kisses across his face, into his hair, even on the bridge of his nose.

"I drank it, too, by the way, and if it's noxious, you have only yourself to blame." But he revelled in the enthusiasm of her gratitude for what was, at best, a dubious potion.

Yet, if a mere attempt to please her was sufficient to bring this effusion of affection, what in Merlin's name could he expect if he ever managed to find her an appropriate gift?

"What did you say?" she stopped in mid-kiss and asked. "The incantation."

He simply glared at her.

"What?" she insisted. "I know you said something. I heard you."

"Incantations not being my area of expertise, I went with what seemed most relevant at the moment." He rolled his eyes up and had he not been flat on his back, he would have (ironically enough) been looking heavenward. Despite his clenched jaw he managed to say, "I merely repeated your Muggle vows."

"You didn't."

He refused to look at her, to see that pleased-with-herself, know-it-all smile on her face, but he felt it.

When she slid her hand down his body and began stroking his cock as she purred against his chest, he groaned. "Miss Granger, if you truly wanted to spend your days rutting, you knew you were supposed to choose an 18-year-old boy and not a wizard too old to..."

She cut him off with a kiss, and it became quickly obvious that at least some part of him still considered itself up to the challenge of satiating a teenaged witch who in her youthful ignorance claimed to be starving for him, thought she needed him, and for some absurd reason believed that having his cock in her body somehow made them more real.

And despite her youthful ignorance and her absurd thinking, she made it easier for him to breathe. The tension that constricted him earlier was gone like morning mist burnt away by the sun. And this time it was a slow, sweet heat that consumed him.

XX

She had dragged him into the scented tub with her and forced him to wash her back, her front, and, as she'd put it, "everything between."

In fact, she hadn't allowed him more than a few moments privacy since awakening. It didn't seem enough for her to be within a few meters of him.

They had to be touching.

She'd even leaned against him and watched him apply wizarding shaving cream to his face, running her fingers down his chest, around his nipples and through his hair, distracting him in every way possible. He was bloody lucky he didn't use a razor.

And now she was shrugging into her class robes in preparation to go to breakfast that she insisted they take in the Great Hall. That surprised him. She usually welcomed any opportunity to eat in their quarters, and he'd offered, but no, this morning she wanted to dine in the Great Hall.

She grabbed his hand and pressed his fingers to her lips, and then pressed another kiss on his jaw. "I have to get my fill before we go into public," she said. "We wouldn't want the children to see what goes on between the wicked old bat and his wicked, wicked wife, now, would we?"

Fucking hell, if she wasn't making her bloody birthday feel more like his own, though if warned in advance he would have insisted that her non-stop caresses and kisses and teasing glances would have driven him to distraction.

But they weren't driving him to distraction, not unless the desire to reciprocate in full measure could be deemed "distraction."

She pulled him toward the door. "My stomach is growling," she said. "Surely you've heard it."

"I couldn't miss it, could I?" he retorted, but then gave a carefully dismissive shrug and said, "I have something else for you, if you want it before breakfast."

"Something else?" She seemed astonished. "But you've already given me..."

"A potion that may not work and..." he broke off, finding it difficult to verbalize his other "gift."

"Splendid sex." Her grin was radiant. "What else could I possibly want?"

"I'll remember that next time," he said dryly. He flicked his wand at the bed and a package wrapped in silver and black pinstriped paper slid from under it.

"Gift wrapped! I'm impressed." She plopped down on the edge of the bed to open it.

He braced himself, watching every flicker of her face for the disappointment he knew was coming.

She lifted aside the tissue paper to find the expanse of dark green silk. She drew in her breath in a soft gasp. She stroked the silk, then finally lifted it free and let it unfold.

"Robes," she breathed.

"You said you like green," he offered lamely, wincing as he watched her examine them more closely, her brows meeting in a frown. Then she slipped them on her shoulders and smoothed them, looking down at them. Finally she rushed into the bathroom and the mirror there, which was too small and too high...

Ah, well, she knew how to handle that. Transfixed by her every movement, her every expression, he watched the elegant swish of her wand that created a cheval mirror out of the wall hung one. Slowly, with her lips gently parted, she turned in a circle, her head snapping to the other side when she could no longer see herself, and then continuing the intense study until she'd completed the circuit. The robes hung straight down her body, their lines crisp and severe without a hint of ruffle or lace. But they didn't need any of the folderol, he told himself. Just look at her, with her horrid hair and her delicate features...by contrast they made her seem even more feminine, more delicate. In fact, they seemed to frame her perfectly....

Or at least, that's what he thought. But what did he know?

Fuck it all. He should have never left Madam Malkin's. He should have known better than to buy her clothes, of all things. He should have stuck to bloody potions and sex and not pushed his luck.

She raised her eyes to his. "They're beautiful!"

"I hardly think beautiful is the word," he snapped, knowing now that she had to be lying. Even he had known they weren't beautiful when he'd left instruction for their form.

"I've never seen any like them." She twirled and they billowed around her. She twirled again, and billowed again, and laughter...crystal clear and bubbling...spilled out of her. She flew across the room and flung herself into his arms. Her kiss was fast and full and he wrapped his arms around her to steady them both, and he returned her kiss because how could he not?

And then she pulled away, her eyes bright, and said, "I billow!"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," he insisted placidly.

"I billow." She twirled again, then stopped, struck by something else. She took off for the wardrobe and pulled it open, and curse it all, headed unerringly to his own green robe. She pulled it out and held it up to herself. "It's the same silk!"

"Indeed," he agreed. "You said you liked green, and if I hadn't gotten you your own I'm sure I would have found mine transfigured to fit you before long." He gave a long-suffering sniff.

She stood in front of the cheval mirror holding his robe high beside her for comparison. "No wonder I haven't seen one like it. It's...it's tailored. It's like yours, almost identical."

"That's what tailors do. They tailor."

"This didn't come from Madam Malkin's, did it?"

"I believe we've already covered that. I had my tailor create it for you."

Again, she flung herself into his arms, which he decided to tolerate despite the fact that his own robe was being crushed between them as she ran her fingers up the back of his head and pulled him down to meet her kiss.

If wizards would pay more attention to their witches... the old harpy had said.

Which was exactly what he'd done.

She stole his clothes whenever she got the chance.

She fretted over silly potions of doubtful merit.

She wanted, though it still astonished him, non-stop sex.

It wasn't as if giving Miss Granger gifts was that complicated at all.

XX

"You're not wearing that to breakfast," he said.

"Of course I am." She stroked her hands down her sides, luxuriating in the feel of silk against her palms.

"Don't you think they're a bit much?"

"It's my birthday," she retorted with a grin. But then it hit her. "Unless we can't let the Slytherins know you bought me something so nice." She forced herself to slip the robes from her shoulders, but felt his hands close over hers and raise them back in place.

"I think my Slytherins will fully appreciate...in a way that even you did not, I might add...the fact that I found a way to get my Gryffindor wife out of her house robes and into Slytherin green.

She smirked up at him. "Arse."

"Would that be a plain arse or a horse's arse?"

Her stomach growled, and that ended all discussion.

XX

She swept into the Great Hall ahead of him and it took the utmost control not to give a twirl and billow as she crossed in front of the House tables to find her own seat.

Upon taking her place she waited for her breakfast to appear before her, and let out a happy little sigh of surprise when the plate of hot, steaming croissants, the small cup of espresso and the goblet of fresh squeezed orange juice materialized.

She sipped the orange juice, and couldn't stifle her grin. She cast aside caution and drank deeply.

This was the best birthday breakfast she'd ever had.

Professor Snape scowled and without apology, lifted her goblet and sniffed.

"Yes, it's Bucks Fizz," Madam Hooch smirked from his other side. "A woman deserves pampering on her birthday."

Hermione grinned at her. "Thank you...it's perfect!"

"Enjoy it, my dear," Madam Hooch replied. "I figured you for the croissant and espresso type.

"This is why you had to eat breakfast in the madhouse?" he demanded. "So Hooch could ply you with spirits?"

"Champagne," Hermione corrected happily. "And you can give it back now. It's not your birthday."

Quite aware that Professor Snape's mood had shifted to surly, Hermione nibbled her croissant and scanned her schedule for the day. She shifted her shoulder to give him a clearer view when she realized he was checking it out, as well.

"It would appear," he said, "that you have an open window between eleven and two."

"How interesting," she replied. "If I'm not mistaken, you do, as well."

"Lunch in our quarters?" he asked placidly.

"That could be arranged," she replied, with a leisurely rub of her calf against his.

She realized when she glanced at him from the corner of her eye that they were sporting matching smirks.

XX

She lingered in the hallway outside Professor Flitwick's classroom, waiting for the room to empty so she could enter for her first Charms tutorial. It was odd watching her former classmates file out, busily gossiping and complaining about their Charms homework.

Last out the door were Lavender and Parvati.

Hermione gave them a brisk nod and was prepared to enter when Lavender grabbed her elbow.

"Wait...let me see your robes. They're new, right?"

Hermione stiffened. She didn't think she could bear it if they mocked her, or worse, mocked her robes, this wonderful gift that made her feel so special.

Parvati fingered the silk. "Chinese," she said, clearly impressed. "Hermione, this is a very expensive robe. And you wear it to classes?"

"It's my birthday," she replied defensively, remembering Professor Snape's questioning the same fact. She hadn't thought about them being expensive, just lovely.

"Oh, a gift!" Lavender backed away and scanned her top to bottom with a critical eye. "They're certainly different. Not from Madam Malkin's, I'm sure."

Hermione shook her head.

Parvati's eyes widened. "Not Monsieur Worth's!"

"I don't think so," Hermione responded, but not having heard of Monsieur Worth's, she couldn't be sure that he wasn't the professor's tailor.

"They're rather odd, you know," Lavender said critically, "but in a sort of flattering way. They're quite androgynous which isn't a look you find in wizarding robes. Gender specific fashion is the norm, but..."

"They suit you beautifully," Parvati said, seeming to have come to a conclusion that surprised her. "They're really quite stunning."

Hermione's cheeks suffused with warmth. "Thank you," she managed to mumble. "I'm going to be late to my tutorial."

As she ducked through the door, Lavender called, "But you didn't tell me where you got them!"

She stopped, turned back, and said with all the wide-eyed innocence she could muster, "You'll have to ask Professor Snape."

She beamed at their horrified expressions and turned back into the classroom, quite cognizant that in doing so, she graced them with a full billow.

XX

The Charms tutorial did not go well.

Professor Flitwick hadn't met her gaze in class since she'd married, and now he seemed determined to teach her one-on-one without making eye contact, as well. Not to mention, he seemed as nervous as if Professor Snape were standing there glaring over his shoulder at him. Was it that he was afraid of Professor Snape? There was that ridiculous Slytherin honour thing.

But getting out of the tutorial early could only be viewed as a good thing on this particular day.

Alone in their quarters, she undressed down to her knickers, transformed them into the much-hated but long-promised thong, and slipped her robe back on.

She thought it would be a nice surprise if her professor had a gift to unwrap at lunch.

XX

Severus entered their quarters to find her humming.

Humming!

He didn't recall ever hearing her hum before.

It was a bit off-key, if one considered "a bit" to include "impossible to determine tune of ditty being hummed."

But he paused in his office doorway to simply watch her humming as she lay on her stomach, propped up on pillows, scratching away with her quill and parchment, with one bare foot and leg waving back and forth in the air.

Birthdays became her.

And in an action so totally out of character that it made him question his own mental wellbeing, he silently closed the distance between them, took hold of her foot and before her squeal was even half-formed, had slipped one of her delectable toes into his mouth. Not a toe fresh from the bath, but a toe that beckoned him with its sheen of pearl varnish anyway, and the suckling of which brought forth a sumptuous moan from her equally delectable lips.

He moved from her toe to the delicate sole of her foot and pressed kisses against its most tender spots as one hand smoothed down her calf and up her thigh...and when had Miss Granger removed her jeans and slipped her new robes back on, he wondered incongruously...until he finally deemed it too dangerous to continue his attempt to control her twitching foot and leg so close to his face, and released her to roll over on her back and open her arms to him.

Merlin. Fuck. Shite.

She'd somehow cinched it at the waist, but the gaping neckline exposed a swell of cleavage he'd never seen before, evidently the result of the black silk Muggle bra she wore. And beneath the cinched waist...bloody fucking hell...those slender but perfectly shaped legs framed only a scrap of black fabric guarding her quim.

She smiled up at him, her eyes heavy-lidded and lips moist and horrid hair a disreputable yet sexy mop, and there was no doubt the effort that had gone into this look of totally fuckable seduction.

He curled his fingers under one thigh and rolled her half over, and with a flip of her robes exposed her bum. "What in Merlin's name is that?"

"A thong," she said. "No knicker lines."

"And you wore that to Malfoy Manor," he muttered, his cock swelling and uncomfortably trapped in his trousers.

"Indeed..." she purred.

That was all it took. He started to unbutton his robes, but she flicked her fingers at him and smirked as his robe and shirt hung loose over his exposed chest. He shrugged them off and let them hit the floor. Before his hands reached his fly she'd flicked her fingers again and it gaped open. He watched her eyes as he slowly dragged them down his hips until he sprang free.

"These are only good for one thing," she said as she hooked her thumbs in the side of the thong and slid it down her hips and legs then tossed it over his shoulder.

"No knicker lines?" he asked.

"This," she corrected him. She reached for him, and with her long, delicate fingers, stroked him, soft as spring rain dancing down the surface of tight skin, and a reaction rippled through him. "I like the effect they have on you."

"You had that effect on me without the thong." He spread the robes completely open and analysed the way the bra pushed her flesh up and in to create that pretty swell, then released her from its confines and watched her sigh of relief.

"Miss Granger, what am I going to do with you?"

"I hope it involves sex."

"Oh, it definitely involves sex."

But as he sank down to her, sank into her...her eyes... those eyes...

Her eyes offered so much more than physical slaking.

They trapped him, held him, and what started as a throb and ache and need between his legs turned into a throb and ache and need in his chest. His thrusts were slow and her sighs were sweet and the clutch at his heart was a pain unlike any he'd ever known.

Her hands explored his body with languid wonder even as her eyes never left his. A certain angle, a certain twist of his hips, and her lashes would flutter on a soft intake of air, but then open wide again, and her hands would roam again...a delicate, tickling skim across his ribs (that brought a snap of his hips in reflex), a gentle knead of biceps (that caused a deeper rocking between her thighs), a sharp dig of nails into his arse as her lips opened wide in a gasp (that simply inspired him to more, to more, to more...).

But it was those eyes, her eyes that captured him and held him taut and aching beyond the limits of endurance.

It took no Legilimency to read her eyes.

They begged.

They begged him for more than he could give.

They offered.

They offered more than decency allowed him to take without giving...

If he were a decent man.

And was he?

This was a question he couldn't answer, dared not answer, and so, instead, he drove harder, drove her relentlessly until she climbed beneath him, climbed to a slow, pulsing surrender. She arched beneath him and into him, and drew his own from him in spasm after spasm of release.

And as they lay together, sweaty and entwined, he was grateful that for once she didn't speak, didn't feel the need to verbalize and dissect and explore, because he had no words for what was happening, no words at all.

And then, the reprieve.

Soft words spoken into his ear. Words that released them both from the need to say more. Softly whispered, but words that brought laughter from deep inside him, a place that needed to laugh, it seemed, because he laughed longer and harder than those three words merited...

"What's for lunch?"

What was for lunch, indeed, except for her giggles and his fierce scowls as they fed each other morsels and bits, stretched out on a picnic blanket of green silk spread over the most welcoming of beds.

"Eyes closed," he ordered, his hand behind his back. When she obeyed, he produced the small, brown olive and popped it between her lips.

"Mmm..." she said. "Niçoise." And then, opening one eye she smirked. "I need to cleanse my palate."

"My bride is turning into a lush," he grumbled as he offered her the flute of champagne.

But after a careful sip, she leaned back on her elbows again, closed her eyes and announced, "Next." Her mouth popped open expectantly.

This time he touched the olive to her lower lip but held it until she was forced to suck it from his fingers and into her mouth. Eyes still closed, cheeks sucked in, she appeared deep in thought. "Kalamata." Then slowly chewed, savouring.

"Hold that pose," he demanded, and as she swallowed he held the next bite at the ready. Her mouth opened, and he placed the small square on her tongue.

Her expression turned to pure bliss. "Oh, god, oh, god...Cadbury Fruit and Nut." She chewed and moaned and he felt himself stirring quite impossibly, as there was no way in fucking Hades he was up for another round of "splendid sex."

"Have some champagne."

She sat up, and he handed her the flute and bit into his second roasted chicken leg.

"How did you know?" she asked. "All my favourites."

"After Hooch's performance at breakfast, I realized I might need help producing your favourite picnic lunch."

She frowned. "Harry and Ron would never have known..."

"Please. I'm digesting," he said with a grimace. "I owled your mother."

"You didn't!"

"I did. She's a highly efficient woman. Not satisfied merely to send a list, she sent delicacies, or at least the Hermione Granger Snape version of delicacies." He slid her a sideways glance. "I, however, provided the entertainment."

"For which you get full marks." She leaned across and kissed him, and he got a whiff full of olives, and he didn't particularly care for olives, but found himself suddenly wanting a taste. And decided after due consideration that their flavour was greatly improved by the presence of champagne and Miss Granger's tongue. "But," she added, "you needn't be jealous of Madam Hooch. She has assured me that even though I'm her type, I'm not her type."

A statement for which he had no response that he was willing to share.

She leaned over him, a strawberry held high. "Open up."

He opened obediently and when she lowered the fruit to his mouth he lunged, managing to capture her fingers with it. An action that didn't have the effect he'd expected, as she simply pulled them free, her eyes unfocussed, as she appeared lost in thought.

"You make me nervous when you think that way," he said.

She gave her head a little shake and then laughed ruefully. "It's nothing. It's just that I realized that I'm not her type. I'm not your type. I'm beginning to feel as if I'm not a type at all."

"You say that as if it's a bad thing." But she didn't smile. "What do you mean, you're not my type?"

She waved her hand lightly. "Don't worry. I'm not going to be a ninny over it. But you said it yourself--hair. And, well, you clearly were drawn to beauty. And in fact, it's what Draco said when he found out. 'You're not Severus's type.'" She did grimace a little at that. "It was disconcerting. He knew you well enough to call you by your name and to know your type...and here I was, married to you, and not knowing you at all. It was a rather telling moment."

"I hope you didn't take it too seriously. Draco has no more idea what my type is than...well, than what we're having for lunch at this moment. And as for him calling me by my name, he does it to show off. He lords it over the Slytherins and has since his first year. Don't give him more power than he has."

"I didn't," she said, but he was suddenly aware that, oh, yes, she certainly had.

"Why don't you call me by my name?"

She blushed. Oh, those blushes. "You won't understand."

"Still," he said, unrelenting.

"Because, at that moment, when Draco called you Severus..." She closed her eyes, as if reaching for words. "I felt cold. I thought, they are his friends and they call him that, and..."

She broke off, her eyes large and forlorn, and he wanted to hold her, to soothe her, but more, he wanted to understand her. "Go on," he urged.

"I don't like your friends. I don't like the people who call you Severus. And you didn't tell me to, so I decided I wasn't going to until you told me to. It's that simple." She gave a half-shrug.

"Many people call me Severus." Although how many of them did he really consider friends? Which of them spoke to him with affection? And how odd of her to pick this as something that bothered her. "You can call me whatever you want." He watched her face, her body, relax. "As a matter of fact, I do believe you already call me whatever you want to, whenever you want to, and in ways that nobody else gets away with."

That, at least, drew a small smile.

"Close your eyes," he said.

It took a moment, but she finally leaned back again and closed her eyes, and her chest...her small breasts and tight nipples and gently-defined ribs...rose as she inhaled a calming breath, and gently settled back as she exhaled.

She had no idea. No fucking idea that her total lack of awareness of the effect she had on him carried more power than any calculated display of flesh framed in silken frillies. She had no idea that in her total assurance that she wasn't beautiful, that her body wasn't seductive, she moved around their quarters in total abandon, half-dressed or even undressed, oblivious to him and totally irresistible to him. Had she any understanding, she would be embarrassed and cautious.

But no, except for brief forays into flirtation and cheek, she flopped here and sprawled there and behaved as if any excess of clothing was an encumbrance that she gladly did without, and in her total absence of awareness offered temptation after temptation.

She opened her mouth expectantly.

And he covered it with his own.

She surged up, wrapping her arms around him and pulling herself up against him as he braced his arms on either side of her. A swirl of wet heat and sensation that coursed from that joining of lips and tongues spread throughout his body and, he was certain, hers as well, and deeper, yes deeper, and if this is what she called a soul, then his was swelling at the contact and soaring high above on a current of emotion that no words in his vocabulary could define.

No words.

Just the air they shared, the touch they shared, the taste they shared, and the current of sensation they shared.

All stemming from the kiss.

And if ever, if ever there existed something so beyond reason as souls kissing....

Well.

If such a thing could possibly exist...

Surely, it must be something like this.

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A/N:

I'm delighted and honoured and flattered to be able to share a couple of artfics with you, both made of the wedding scene. If you're interested, you can see them be scrolling to the bottom of Chapter Five for the first one:

Chapter Five

And Chapter Twenty-One for the second:

Chapter Twenty-One