Twenty-Four

Disclaimer: They're not mine.

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For the first couple of weeks, self-loathing had prevented her from indulging in any hope. No happiness whatsoever had been allowed by Hermione to penetrate the fog of shame and doubt she'd carried on her shoulders as she trod through the castle hallways. It felt like she'd existed in a void, with only the memory of the illicit fantasies that had acted as a form of necessary subsistence for her previously.

In truth, Hermione had no idea how she'd been capable of shutting them out, given the degree to which the heady dreams of him had begun to pervade her life. After discovering the book, though, everything had changed. One simple thought of his fingers on her skin had brought every desire rushing back to her; the sting of his rejection no longer kept them at bay. She lay in her bed that evening feeling pensive and restless, inexplicably so, and when she dreamed that night, she blamed it wholly on the lingerie.

There had really been no call to wear it, of course, but for some reason she'd been unable to resist. She'd toyed with the need for it while washing her face, brushing her teeth, and plaiting her hair into a manageable braid down her back. A few wisps escaped and swung before her face, which she blew out of the way as she walked back to her room, consumed with thought. The portraits regarded her smugly, and she knew that the gossip of what had passed two weeks before must have spread like wildfire. She doubted Ginny had been the one to talk about it at school given how remorseful Ron and Lavender claimed her to be, but there had been the odd student or two present at the Three Broomsticks. Plenty of gleeful recollections were to be had, Hermione was sure.

Stepping into her room, she realized that the lingerie was calling her name. It beckoned her from the chest of clothes in which she'd hidden it, and suddenly the thought of trying it on while she had a private weekend evening to herself was unbearably tantalizing.

After Snape's sound rejection of her, Hermione had been unable to imagine putting the fabric against her skin without crying uncontrollably with desiring him. It was curiosity more than anything else that had prompted her to think about it, born of Lavender's surprisingly nonjudgmental view of her feelings for Snape. The disgusted pronouncement she'd half expected from the other girl...that he wouldn't ever want someone like her...hadn't been voiced aloud. Instead, Lavender had been all the more vocal in her insistence that Hermione should indulge in, and enjoy, the bolstering of her confidence that lingerie could bring. It had warmed her to have another girl's opinion proffered in a way that felt very genuine, if a little teasing, and her confused feelings over Ginny's absence had resurfaced.

Upon returning to her room, she'd rummaged around in her clothes chest until she unearthed the sensuous dark garments. She held them loosely between her fingers, one in each hand, almost expecting them to become animate and voice their strenuous objection to being placed on her body. She'd therefore firmly refused to look in the mirror, instead proceeding with haste before her unexpected levels of courage evaporated. Shedding her clothes, almost trembling with the anticipation of the fabric against her skin, Hermione drew on the bra and panties. In the chill air of the room, she could practically see her breath creating clouds that blurred the dim light.

She rubbed at her arms to discourage gooseflesh while drawing them on, first biting her lip at the whisper-light glide of the panties, then gasping at the unabashed and overt way the bra cradled and lifted her chest. It presented for view and admiration the sort of seductive figure she'd never dreamed she could achieve. She'd thought at first that Lavender's assertion that wearing lingerie could actually increase confidence was a bit farfetched, but as she mentally drew on clothes over her body, she found that she liked the feeling it could produce. The lingerie would be invisible under her clothing but very much noticeable to her. She stood a little taller, jutted out her hips a little farther, and found that she could somehow feel the valley between her breasts and the dip of her waist even without drawing a finger across them.

Walking across the plush carpet, Hermione discovered that the natural sway the garments induced was very different from her usual walk. Yet it was hard not to walk more slowly and with a slight glide that served to enhance their silky feel against her skin.

Resolved not to be embarrassed by her fascination with her own body, Hermione crossed the room and slid beneath the warm covers of her bed. She extinguished the light and lay back, staring at the ceiling while taking inventory of the feedback from her nerve endings. The sensation was strange but not unwelcome; the fabric still seemed to hug and caress her without hemming her in at all. The juxtaposition of showing off and feeling naked was an odd thing to which to grow accustomed, she thought, but it was definitely not unpleasant.

It wasn't long before her thoughts headed inexorably in his direction. In the dark, the edges of her imagination had always been prone to blurring, but while the rest of the world slipped away and lost definition, he would become crystalline and beautiful. A vivid picture would spring into existence, capable of assuming physical substance and seeming to radiate the heat, intelligence and sheer power she associated with the real man himself. She could envision the exact angles carved into his face, the shape of his lips with their mere hint of sensuality, and the precise tone of his skin. His strong eyebrows and the fine web of lines that encircled them, lines of years and experiences she couldn't even begin to fathom, were somehow just as achingly handsome to her.

Her mind wandered from the physical dimensions of him to the way she felt in her garments, the irrepressible desire she had to press herself against him and thrill in the hard planes of his chest against the soft curves of her own. It was impossible not to feel as though she would self-combust with the need to know what he wanted and fantasized about in a woman. Would he have seen the heat in the images she called to mind? She thought breathlessly of running her fingers slowly down his abdomen, driving him half mad by playing with the buttons of his shirt before wrapping herself around him and opening her body up to his touch.

Though it made her fantasies all the more inappropriate, Hermione had been incapable from the very beginning of envisioning their most heated trysts occurring anywhere but his laboratory. Of that she ought very well to be ashamed, she knew, for it was the very symbol of his authority over her; yet somehow it was so representative of him as a person, of what he'd loved and relied on during his profoundly unhappy life, science and art in a delicate balance, that she couldn't shake it from her mind. Gradually, she'd learned simply to embrace it, and now it took no effort whatsoever to fall back into her habitual pattern of imagining herself perched precariously on the edge of his desk, papers scattered with abandon as she wrapped her legs around his waist and gasped while he ran his hands and lips along the petal-like skin of her throat.

In her mind's eye his hands presented a contrast against her garments that was incredibly, almost gut-wrenchingly arousing. The deep green made his skin appear burnished, darkly masculine against the porcelain of her arms. He would trace the straps of her bra and dip his fingers and lips into the hollow between her collar bones. Then, slowly removing the bra, he would run his fingers lightly along her inner thigh, awaiting her ultimate permission while murmuring into her ear the places in which he would touch her when he no longer had to restrain himself...

Hermione arched in bed, the verisimilitude of her wild imaginings becoming too much to resist. There had been very few occasions when she'd allowed herself to seek climax to the thought of him, but once the need had been planted, nothing else would suffice. She ran her hands desperately over her body, the muscles of her stomach tightening with anticipation. Engaged fully, she moaned softly and gave herself up to the images such that they were no longer a hypothetical desire but the very fabric of reality.

She encircled his neck and shoulders with her arms, feeling the sinewy strength cording his upper back, tracing the tips of her fingers along the borders of his shoulder blades. He loved that, growling lightly as wrapped his hands around her waist and lifted her in place, tugging insistently at the waistband of her panties. Feeling terribly coquettish, Hermione pressed her chest to his and wiggled against his pelvis as he drew the fabric over her legs. She could feel him surge toward her and grinned when he almost glowered at her in frustration.

He was a fascinating study; she wondered if all men were the same. While on, her lingerie was a source of deep arousal. One look was enough, at times, to make him forget the remainder of the world and teeter precipitously on the edge of losing control. Once off, however, her garments were tossed aside with total disregard as he raked his eyes over her body. Before him she was totally unself-conscious, secure in the knowledge that they wanted one another despite what the rest of the Wizarding populace might have thought of their looks, their comportment, or their respective stations.

She cherished the moments he first entered her as though each one were their initial fevered coupling, the landmark of their first discovery of the other's body. It was horrendously clichéd, she knew, but there it remained, the thrill and the need, alive and well despite the many times he'd had her and the various isolated, dusty places they'd secreted themselves be alone and satiated.

He rocked her back against the desk, gently at first but with rapidly increasing insistence. Hermione squeezed her legs tightly around his waist, urging him on with no real verbalization but the almost incessant moaning she could never seem to suppress when with him. Reclined against the papers scattered across its surface, her mind a fuzzy struggle of arousal, approaching ecstasy and the niggling worry of whether the inkwell was inching too close to bare skin, she closed her eyes and bared her chest to him.

He had an almost voracious need to lick and kiss and touch her skin, and she never ceased to thrill in indulging him. More than any other body part, more than the affectionate way he caressed her neck, cupped her waist, and grasped with evident delight at the swell of her hips, he looked on her skin with that purely male reverence for softness and femininity.

She leaned back until her spine protested, but the pain hardly registered. The delicious, low thrum of pleasure was multiplying, spreading its heat through her center and along her welcoming nerves to her fingers, toes and lips. She leaned forward to kiss him impulsively, sinking her teeth lightly and tantalizingly into his lower lip before removing her hands from his shoulders and placing them behind her, bracing herself to collapse, spread across his desk with her back flush against the cool wood. Thus positioned, the angle at which he could drive into her made her scream as her orgasm came on suddenly and demandingly.

He was never long to follow. She watched hungrily, unable to discern anything but his silhouette with the breadth of his body eclipsing the faint light of the room. Much of the time he kept his eyes closed, and she loved that, but when she came, he would watch the way she writhed as though memorizing the minutest of her movements. Hermione couldn't imagine her life without these moments when they locked eyes, riding out her orgasm together and prolonging that somehow wonderfully agonizing instant before the stroking of her muscles brought on his own.

The two Hermiones surged upward together, one to embrace her lover and the other to dolefully gasp his name as she lay alone in bed.

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After a poor night's sleep, Hermione had formulated a tentative plan. She lingered in the shower, knowing full well that she was procrastinating but unable to prevent anxiety from hindering her movements. Finally, after pulling back her hair and drawing on her clothes, she felt the remotest sense of calm. She hadn't spoken with Professor Vector on a personal level since the incident; they'd only crossed paths in class, and briefly afterwards, when the other woman kept her apprised of the progress their article was making in the world of academic peer review. Hermione was proud of herself for her accomplishment; the mere fact that an article with a student's name had been accepted for review was tremendously rare.

But she mourned the easy camaraderie she and her Arithmancy professor had begun to develop over the months in which they'd worked together. Septima Vector was an unusual woman, one who could teach effectively and console even more so, and Hermione had never thought to become so comfortable with one of her instructors. McGonagall could be a pleasant sort of person on the whole, but she was prickly where personal matters were concerned and was much older than Hermione besides. Poppy Pomfrey was amicable enough as well, but Hermione had avoided her judiciously, afraid that the mediwitch would berate her for betraying the professionalism and spirit of her task.

Breakfast did not appeal to her in the slightest. She sensed that introducing food into her roiling stomach would have been unwise. Instead she traipsed along to Professor Vector's office, hoping that she might be there grading papers. It was a slow Sunday morning, after all, and the castle remained tranquil while most students slept, showered, or lounged lazily in their common rooms.

She was not in luck, it seemed. The door to Professor Vector's office was closed and warded, and she hadn't posted any note stating that she would be returning soon. Dismayed, Hermione tucked the vial of potion into the pocket of her robes and allowed her feet to carry her around for another half an hour while she debated.

She had to get the potion to Snape. What he thought of her wasn't likely to change, irrespective of her declaration of devotion, and winning his sexual attentions hadn't been the objective of her project anyhow. She might spend the remainder of her long life craving him with the intensity of a drug, but she had to know that she'd succeeded in what she'd sought to do, and that was to heal him, finally and entirely.

Resolutely, she located the nearest staircase and began descending through the levels of the castle. Ignoring the curious whispers and disdainful expressions of the inhabitants of the portraits she passed, Hermione strode through the dungeon halls with confidence...until, that is, she drew near to Snape's private laboratory and heard voices carrying rather too far.

"Your personal life is of no concern to me, Miss Weasley," he was saying. She didn't need to see his face to know that he was sneering imperiously; his voice dripped with enough condescension to convey that all too clearly. What left her paralyzed in a small side hallway, seeking solace in the shadows, was the fact that Ginny was not only there but speaking to him in a rapid-fire tirade.

"How many times do I have to tell you, Professor? I couldn't care less what you think of me. If I choose to call out my ex-fiancé in front of an entire restaurant, it's my damn decision!"

Hermione envisioned Ginny's hair swinging back and forth emphatically with the tempestuous movements of her hands and head. She never had learned to control her temper. Hermione had learned that the hard way.

"But what I did to Harry is bad enough without having to find out from one of my friends that you accused Hermione of selling your secrets around the castle like some cheap gossip!"

Hermione was thunderstruck. She'd thought Ginny would be understandably oblivious to any consequences of her actions but the immediate ruination of their friendship. How could she even have known what Snape had said that night if she hadn't been present to witness it? No one had.

Lavender, Hermione thought suddenly, pressing the palm of her hand against her lips to silence the reflexive gasp that rose in her throat. Lavender must have told Ginny about their conversation the previous evening. She'd have owled her, most likely after Hermione had bolted down her dinner and rushed back to the castle, and told Ginny about Hermione's heartrending guilt over Snape's accusations.

"It is not my wish to discuss with you what Miss Granger and I said," Snape snapped at her. "The fault lies with her improper conduct..."

"You just can't stand to have someone call you out on your constant martyr act, can you?" Ginny spewed hatefully. "Merlin knows I can't see whatever it is Hermione sees in you, but you're the luckiest man alive, Severus Snape, and you're too damn proud and stupid to see it. But I don't want to give you the satisfaction of walking around thinking that you can court sympathy because Hermione told me everything about you. You can't. Hermione expressed reservations about telling me your history, and you know what? She didn't have to. Madam Pomfrey did enough of that with my mum, and that's how I know.

"So if you want to place blame somewhere," Ginny concluded waspishly, "talk to your beloved mediwitch who can't keep her mouth shut. But even she doesn't truly deserve blame. You expect too much of people, and then you have the gall to act all self-righteously disappointed when they fail you. You're even more blind than I thought if you imagine that anyone else in this world can lock themselves up so fully that they don't need to discuss the terrible things that happened to you and find the comfort of another human being. You're the only one cold and inhuman enough to do that."

"One hundred points from Gryffindor," Snape hissed, his composure stripped. Hermione had never heard him so desperate, not even in the worst throes of pain. "Care to go for two hundred?"

"Go to hell." Hermione heard the approaching click of heels and knew that Ginny had walked out on him. His door slammed a moment later as he retreated to his laboratory, and Hermione shrank back into the shadows, praying Ginny wouldn't notice her.

It was the potion that gave her away. Hermione hadn't anticipated that Ginny would need further illumination, but the other girl whispered, "Lumos," and passed by shortly thereafter. The incandescence from her wand struck the vial of potion and was refracted in its depths, sending a telltale bluish-purple ray across the hallway to strike the mossy surface of the opposite wall.

"Who's there?" Ginny demanded, turning her light in Hermione's direction. She looked terrible: her eyes were baggy and bloodshot, and her clothes were rumpled. She looked, in fact, as though she hadn't slept or showered in days, and her usually beautiful hair was pulled into a stringy ponytail and tucked into the collar of her overlarge robes.

"Hi, Gin," Hermione said softly, caught in her light beam. Ginny's eyes widened as she took in the sight of Hermione, caught in her light like a terrified animal, clutching the vial of potion to her chest as one would a talisman. Her lip quivered for the briefest moment as she opened her mouth to reply, and then both girls burst into tears.