Chapter Two: In Which Hermione Learns of an Unexpected Guest

Chapter Two: In Which Hermione Learns of an Unexpected Guest

Severus paused on the first landing to peruse the schedule he had lifted from the front desk. Curling his lip in distaste at the sickly pink of the parchment...did Longbottom have no control over the girl?...he was appalled to see the number of events arranged for this charade of a wedding. Who in thunder was paying for this farce?

On the agenda for the week were a bridesmaid luncheon, a bridal brunch, a lingerie party...that might be only worthwhile pastime listed...a hen party, and a stag party. Interspersed were cocktail parties, shopping expeditions, trips to the nearest wizarding spa...and what the devil was karaoke?

Stuffing the parchment into his pocket, he consulted the number on the key the pathetic, Confunded desk clerk had given him...Room 222. Taking a moment to Disillusion himself, he climbed the stairs to the second floor and paused in the doorway to peek up and down the corridor. Thank Merlin, the silly sods were still in their rooms dressing for the formal tea. He moved silently down the carpeted hallway and stood outside the door for an instant. He closed his eyes, seeing in his mind's eye her face the day he had sent her away, then he slipped the key into the lock and entered Hermione Granger's Bridal Suite.

Hermione stood before the mirror in the dressing room, admiring the long, loose corkscrew curls the hairdresser had wrought in her brown hair. Idly, she touched her soft, shiny hair...it was staggeringly expensive to pay to have it done, but it wasn't every day that a girl got married, so for just this once, it was all right to spend gold like a Malfoy.

Grinning at the comparison of her Muggle-born self to the pure-blood prat, she stepped into her new crimson knickers, appreciating the sheen of the satin-like fabric. Ginny Potter had steadfastly refused to allow Hermione to leave the shop where she had bought her nightdresses without also buying several sets of fancy knicker-and-bra sets. Slipping into the matching bra, she thought she really had to give Ginny credit; wearing pretty underwear really did give a girl a lift!

She seated herself at the marble-topped dressing table and looked through her newly acquired make-up from the smartest wizarding shop in Diagon Alley. Did she want a demure pink lipstick, or a cheeky red to match her knickers? She giggled at the thought; it wasn't as if Neville...or anyone else, for that matter!...would see her in her knickers today.

She popped the top off the colour called Scarlet Siren, and she heard the door to her room open. Had she left it unlocked?

'Neville? Is that you?' She stood and reached for her dressing gown, which hung on a hook beside the bathroom door. 'Just a minute...let me get decent.'

'But I prefer you indecent,' a silky voice responded.

Hermione froze. No! That voice had no place in her bedroom...no place in her memory...no place in her life. In fact, as far as she was concerned, that voice had ceased to exist!

'I see that Longbottom rates saucy knickers...why was it that I never got anything but Muggle discount shop white cotton, six-to-the-pack pants?'

Hermione shoved her arms into her Gryffindor gold dressing gown and whirled on the spot as she belted it tightly about her waist. 'When one never, ever leaves home, it's hardly worth the bother of putting on saucy knickers!' she spat at the apparition leaning insolently against the door. Nimüe, Circe, and all the Graces! she thought, feeling her mouth go dry at the sight of him. When the hell had he got so fit?

When Hermione had seen him on a daily basis, Snape had been fairly unsavoury-looking, most of the time. He had showered every other day, whether he needed it or not, washed his hair once a week, shaved about as often, seldom thought to launder his robes, and often reeked of drink.

Now, his black eyes flicked down her body once before settling on her face.

The Snape of her memory bore almost no relation to the one at whom she now stared. He was pristine in his cleanliness, hair shining, face smooth, clothes immaculate, and all she could smell on him was bergamot and sage, with a touch of lemon. Without thinking, she inhaled deeply, trying to catch his scent again.

'That's all I need to know,' he said, and he pushed off the door and crossed the floor to her in three long strides.

Hermione watched his approach as if it were in slow motion, like in a movie. His jaw was set, his shoulders were tense, and his eyes were smouldering with all-too-recognisable passion. Too late, she tried to jump back from him, her hands raised defensively, but he grasped her by her upper arms and jerked her against his hard body with a violence which overbore her feeble attempts to ward him off.

Insanely, she felt her muscles relax in response to his actions; it was certainly not the first time Severus Snape had embraced her as if she were the enemy ... and the results were always well worth it, she thought as the austere, thin-lipped mouth descended to capture hers in an overpowering kiss.

He held her to him in an iron grip, one large hand pressed to the small of her back whilst the other was firmly planted betwixt her shoulder blades. The cologne which she had so longed to smell again now overwhelmed her, seeming to caress all of her senses in the same way his clever tongue was now overtaking her mouth and claiming it for his own.

Interrupted in the act of pushing him away from her, her hands fisted in the front of his robes, neither pulling him closer nor pushing him away, simply enabling her to keep her feet under the assault of his mouth on her own. She was all but unaware of responding to his kiss, her tongue stroking languidly against his, until his grip on her loosened and the hand at her waist stroked down to her bum. She might have stood for that...particularly when he pressed himself more firmly against her, revealing his obvious interest in continuing with their activities...until the other hand began travelling up to find its favourite place, nestled in the hair at her nape. She sighed into his mouth, recalling how he would use that bit of leverage to control her head, allowing him to deepen his kisses even further...until she remembered the expensive hair-do ... for the week of parties ... oh, bugger, she was engaged to Neville!

With a mighty wrench, she broke from him and backed up to the dressing table in the alcove to retrieve her wand, which she turned on him. He stood as she had left him, his eyes smouldering with unfulfilled passion, his lips reddened by her lipstick and slightly swollen from the desperation of their kissing, his trousers front unabashedly tented with the evidence of his desire for her. He started towards her, clearly intent upon finishing what they had begun, but she raised the wand in a threatening gesture.

'I don't know how you got in here, but if you're not out in five seconds, I'm calling for help!'

He paused, eyeing her wand speculatively. 'You weren't calling for help when you were sucking my tongue halfway down your throat,' he pointed out. He caught sight of himself in the mirror, then, and ignoring her, he removed a snowy white handkerchief from his pocket and began fastidiously wiping the traces of Scarlet Siren from his face. 'I got in with this,' he added, shoving the handkerchief back into his pocket with one hand and tossing the key with the other.

She caught the key and promptly regretted taking her eyes from him, for he held her wand arm down and looped his free arm about her waist. 'What's this nonsense I hear about your wedding?' he murmured, leaning in to feather kisses along her temple.

She twisted out of his grasp. 'How dare you show up in my bedroom after five years of silence and paw me?'

A sneer touched his mouth as his erection began to visibly diminish. 'I thought it was six years...unless you're not counting the year when you sent owls, and I ignored them?'

Insensibly enraged, she struck him with a Stinging Hex, watching with perverse satisfaction as he swore and rubbed at his wand hand. 'Get out now, Snape, or my next target is your bollocks,' she promised.

Unperturbed, he advanced on her again, and she backed away from him until the edge of the dressing table pressed into her bum. 'You used to be quite fond of my bollocks,' he murmured, placing the flats of his hands on the dressing table top and bending down to kiss the corner of her mouth. 'I've missed you, Parker.'

Hermione closed her eyes as he breathed his name for her against her lips and then lightly touched the tip of his tongue to the opposite corner of her mouth until her lips parted, and he was kissing her again. She twined her free arm about his neck, and he effortlessly lifted her onto the table, surely parting the dressing gown over her bare legs and insinuating himself between her thighs, never breaking their kiss.

Seven years before, when they had both lived at Grimmauld Place, following the end of the war, he had angrily called her a 'Nosy Parker' for expressing interest in his daily life. Over the year of their uneasy non-relationship, 'Parker' had become his private name for her, seldom uttered if he did not have his hands upon her body. In the presence of other people, she had been 'Granger'. No one had ever known that she spent most of her nights rutting with him in his bed, and as they had never gone out on a date, their affair had never become common knowledge.

She chose to view his tenderness to her in the throes of passion and his sarcastic version of pillow talk as representative of his deepest feelings for her, and in spite of his many faults and detracting traits, she had allowed herself to care for him much more than she ought to have done. He had finally got a job...in Ireland, and when she had tentatively broached the subject of weekend visits with him, he had laughed in her face.

'Why would I want to see you on weekends, Granger?' he had drawled, throwing the last of his sad, dingy pants into his trunk and slamming the lid closed. 'I'll have gold...I can pay for a proper shag.'

Remembering his cruelty now, she slapped the hand inching up her thigh and propelled herself forward, pushing him away and gaining her feet again. Turning away from him, she marched to the wardrobe and removed the dress she was wearing to tea.

'I don't know what you're doing here, Snape,' she said, stepping into her little black dress and magicking the zip up the back. 'After all, you look like you're making good money...why don't you go buy a proper shag?'

She bent to slip on her black sling-backs, and Snape chuckled, the warm intimacy of the sound rousing memories she did not wish to deal with now.

'Does that still sting?' he said.

Hermione walked past him to the door, steeling herself not to look at him. 'Don't forget to lock up when you go,' she said over her shoulder.

'I'll come with you now,' he said as he approached her. 'You'll want an escort to this function, won't you?'

Hermione turned a cold glare on him. 'I have no need of your services, Snape...my fiancé will be there.'

Snape reached past her and opened the door. 'I wouldn't count on that, Parker,' he said, amusement evident in his tone.

Hermione whirled, and catching him unaware, she stomped down on his instep with the heel of her shoe and pressed the tip of her wand into his throat. 'What have you done with Neville?' she demanded furiously.

A/N: DeeMichelle betaed and LettyBird Brit-picked this chapter.

This story was written as a birthday gift for Sshg316.

More to come soon!