Powder and Paint

Powder and Paint

Severus turned back from the table with his wand in one hand and a small mirror in the other. He placed the mirror on the floor and magically enlarged it to stand full length, on its own before Hermione's stool. She let out an involuntary gasp when she saw her hair.

Black, glossy waves framed her face and shoulders to fall halfway down her back in place of her brown, frizzy curls. She felt the difference keenly as she shook her head from side to side. The swish of soft waves was distinctly alien from the normal bounce of tight ringlets; she could feel every nuance in the follicles of her scalp. This was real--the color, permanent. The shape of each strand irreversible by magic. She was herself, but not: the difference between Hermione Granger and Olivia Prince becoming etched deeply into her awareness in the way that her Transfiguration into Jessica Rabbit could never be.

Snape allowed her the moment she needed to mentally adjust before sweeping his tall self and black robes between the mirror and his charge. He instantly drew her attention to the compact he held in his hand. If he could have postponed revealing the changes he was making until they were all complete, he would have. This was a work of art wrought over human flesh and deserved the moment of revelation due to it. Unfortunately, they needed every spare moment to ensure she could do much of it on her own. The intricate nature of her disguise was complicated by the fact that she'd never done her own makeup before, a skill she would need to learn. He needed to be able to show her, step by step, the techniques he would use to create another's face out of the bone structure of her own. He would use paints and powders to hide certain physical traits, accentuate those which he could use, and imply those which he required to be there if they did not before exist. He needed her to be able to duplicate every effect perfectly before she returned to Wizard society.

"This," he intoned, "is foundation. It does exactly that: it provides the foundation for the rest of the layers we will apply to it. It evens out the complexion, and can hide certain imperfections and marks. For what it does not hide, we will use concealer. It is also aptly named." He fell silent and studied her face with intense concentration. He took stock of every mark, crease, dimple and shape that made her recognizable as herself. She tried her best not to fidget under his scrutiny, but it was disconcerting in the extreme. He seemed to strip her bare under his gaze. Thank goodness he was keeping his eyes corralled to her face!

He continued without wavering for even a moment, ignoring all else but what task lay before him. That mole, there, that crease, that hollow, the dark circles beneath her eyes, the web of veins under the delicate skin of her eyelids that tint the skin blue, the slant of her brows, the dip on either side of her upper lips... and so on until he had a complete picture of what he would do to change the landscape of her visage to the naked eye. He turned back to the table and selected all that he would need to affect the transformation from the stock of makeup he kept for disguise. "Hold these," he instructed, naming each item he placed in her hands in turn. "Eyeliner, eye-shadow (we'll stick with earth-tone shades for now), lip liner, lipstick, lip gloss, blusher, mascara. Watch what I do, carefully. I will ask you to repeat it later." He stepped to the side so that she could watch herself in the mirror and took a tiny sponge out of the bottom compartment of the foundation compact. He applied the slightly sticky stuff in broad swipes, blurred and blended the edges together with the sponge with deft little strokes until her skin disappeared under a fine layer of what felt like a marriage of a liquid and a solid. She opened her mouth, wiggled her face around, and tested the bend and stretch of her skin beneath the new weight. Her face had become virtually spotless. She hadn't realized there were sprinklings of freckles across her cheeks and nose until they were gone. Her skin tone evened out, he inspected his work before continuing on. The stick of concealer, he applied in half-moon shapes beneath her eyes to hide the dark circles she'd gained from sleepless nights studying Horcruxes, dabbed over the small scar on her forehead she'd gotten when a neighboring boy hit her with a flung rock when she was six, smeared over darker moles the foundation couldn't combat. He evened out the color with the same rubberized sponge he'd used applying the foundation. "Now, we have a blank canvas to work with," he mused, almost forgetting her presence entirely while he worked.

He selected the black and silver tube he'd dubbed 'eyeliner' from the pile in her clutches. His touch on her thumb was brief, but sent tingles up her arm. He didn't seem to notice, or chose not to acknowledge it. He also took a tiny brush, pristine in its absence of tint. Palming the liner, he leaned in from the side, indicating where the liner was to be applied so she could watch in the mirror. "Like this," he muttered, "looking upward, and here, with your finger pulling the lid so you can get to the lip. Then close your eyes one at a time, with a broad stroke over the edge of the lid, and an up-curve at the edges. Be very careful with this, make sure your brush is not overloaded as it tends to drip." He explained all of it without actually touching any paint to her eyes. The execution of the application went just as he said it would. He instructed her to look up, then down as he held each lid in turn with a single finger. Once it was done, she gazed back into the mirror to gauge the result.

Her eyes burned from the unfamiliar substance mingling with her tears on sensitive tissues. She blinked rapidly to try to clear them. "You'll get used to it," he assured her. Once the stinging became less, she attempted a perusal again. The liner gave her eyes an exotic, almost oriental cast. Coupled with her black hair, it looked right, somehow, but not at all Hermione.

He changed tools again and awaited her signal that she was done. His palette consisted of tiny squares of pigmented pressed powder in an array of shades and colors. As he had mentioned, they were all earth tones. She never knew there were so many shades of brown! They ranged from light as cream to deepest sienna, chocolates and golds, greens and roses. All of them a different shade of brown. Suddenly, it seemed impossible to differentiate between the lot of them and her courage failed to make up for just how out of her depth she felt. Some shimmered, some were matte, and yet he began choosing them seemingly at random and using the tiny planes of skin around her eyes as his canvas.

With just those shades and just that space, artistically he began to change her perception of the shape of her eyes. Every now and again, he snapped her out of her bewildered daze with a question. "Do you see what I did there? How that shade made that hollow?" Or, "This green disperses the red in that shade there, do you mark it?" All of his questions were absolutely rhetorical. He continued on as he was, absorbed, whether she hummed a response or not. Speech was beyond her, and she knew that any motion of her head was simply not acceptable. A nod would carry dire consequences, she could well believe. It did not pass her notice that she was normally a loquacious individual. In most cases, she would babble on as if there was no stopping her inner monologue. He seemed to have quieted that, too, with his confusing world of cosmetology and disguise. For the first time in her life, Hermione Granger was struck dumb, and there was no one around to notice it. Snape was off in his own little world, playing about with colors and shapes. Who was she in the face of that grand pursuit? She knew she was going to be a hopeless failure the first time she attempted a reproduction of his mastery over illusion, so she permitted her mind to go find something else to do and lost herself in the glide of the brush or the little triangular swab over the sensitive skin just north of her cheeks. Being a canvas had a sort of sensual appeal when it got down to the painting of it, more than it had any right to. The experience was far too compelling not to savor.

The next step was simpler and easier for her to follow. He lined her lips, very carefully mind you, with a dark lip pencil. He filled the space inside with a red lipstick so deep, it was almost like blood. He held a tissue between her lips and told her to clamp down on it, even stretched his lips over his teeth and demonstrated it for her. The tissue took away some of the dark of the red, leaving a suitably scandalous color behind and drying out her lips. "This," he said, indicating the tube he named "lip gloss" with the words plumping gloss scrawled across the side in silver, "is a new technology. Three guesses as to what it does, and the first two don't count."

It tingled, was what it did! Her lips swelled in size, like that time she ate too much chicken teriyaki and the salt in the sauce caused her lips to react violently and inflame. The effect was slightly more natural looking, and the tingling was more akin to a cool sensation than a burning, irritated one. The surface of her lips maintained their smoothness instead of raising little moisture-starved ridges. The feeling of glossy, pouty, tingly lips drew her awareness to them and kept it there. The glossy red, coupled with her smoky, exotic eyes made her feel sexy, alluring. All at once she felt invincible, bold. No wonder Lav and Parvati were always messing about with the stuff. It felt good, made one feel feminine and wild. Hermione was giddy with it.

Several swipes of the mascara tinted her lashes the same shade of black as her hair and brows, made them seem longer. Severus applied three different shades of blush, mixing and layering as he went along with another of his sponges. Her face began changing its shape before her very eyes. Her cheeks became thinner, the bone structure sharper and better defined. Her eyes were smoky and almond-shaped, made smaller and more penetrating all at once.

"Amazing," she whispered in awe.

"That is why they call people who do this for a living 'makeup artists'," he said with barely concealed pride.

"I have a new face," she giggled merrily.

A ghost of a smile passed over his carefully maintained mild countenance. He had not allowed a shred of interest past his defenses, although he failed to stifle the spark of intense involvement during his more artistic moments.

"Now, we clean it off and you will repeat it until I am satisfied that you have grasped the basic concepts of what I did here today. Eventually, you will have it perfected before I let you step foot outside of this house." She didn't doubt that he meant it. She would not see proper daylight again until she could fashion herself new eyes around the structure of her own. "Aufero planto", he intoned with a swish of his wand, and a good few layers of the makeup were gone. He then gathered up all that he had used and placed it into a pile on the table. Turning back to her, he had two bottles in his hands. "Read the directions and clean off the rest. I can't remove it all with magic, and if I tried, I'd probably end up exfoliating the top two layers of skin. Never sleep in your makeup; it will clog your pores and cause blemishes. You'll need to do all of what I have done for yourself every morning upon waking. I'll teach you a stasis spell to keep it fresh throughout the day."

She went into the bathroom to wash her face, first with a purple solution dubbed 'makeup remover' on a clean rag. "Honestly, where do they come up with these names?" she wondered facetiously. She heard Snape snicker in the next room. The Neutrogena face wash was something she was familiar with, as she used it often when she feared zits. The smell made her think of happier times, made her think of home.

Fresh faced, she returned to the mirror in the kitchen and went about the painstaking process of a novice imitating a master. Just as she had feared, her replication of his techniques regarding her eye-shadow was an abysmal failure. He made her redo that part three times before even he decided to call it a night. He merely grunted when she reproduced the things he did with blush, and was satisfied with how she lined and colored her lips. "Save the plumper for when we're actually in need of it, don't waste it on practice," he admonished. "It's expensive and hard to come by."

All in all, she felt that the day was eventful and not the least unpleasant. She crawled under the coverlet in the generic smoke-tone guest room with a sense of accomplishment. Not only had she learned something new about which she knew nothing before, but she had survived a day alone with Severus Snape: the most feared professor in Hogwarts memory. She had invaded his home, used his given name with impunity, and held several conversations with him and he never once hexed her into oblivion. She was beginning to think that maybe her childhood memories of the man were just a little skewed. No doubt, it was the immature little brats he taught that put him in his dark moods, along with the fact that he served a madman who often displayed sadistic tendencies. She smiled. Voldemort was bad in his own right, but save me from meddling, senile old wizards!

@ @ @

Hermione drifted in a world without gravity or light. She saw herself as if from a point outside her own body. Her skin was white, lit from within to her perception. Her hair reverted back to her springy mass of curls, at points shifting to red, then black, becoming a convoluted mix between cartoon blobs and lank tresses. Her face became a blank mask, showing no features but smoldering eyes and red lips in a formless plane of white. Her naked body spun slowly in the void, every muscle shifting beneath skin, tensing, waiting.

She came to inhabit her body again, every sense stretched outward to find nothing but the sound of her own heartbeat, the throb of her pulse. Even the space she floated through had neither temperature nor anything to indicate whether she moved at all. Yet, she waited and spun slowly. She knew she spun as one knows impossible things in dreams. She hardly knew what she was waiting for before he appeared.

Out of the darkness, he came, his features hidden behind a black curtain of his own hair, dark robes covering almost every inch of his skin from his neck down. Only the gleam of his hands at his sides gave him away. His skin was lit from within, like hers. He seemed to move slowly through the darkness, but he was upon her in an instant. She couldn't think how to escape, but she never wanted to. She knew this man, though she could not recall his face. She recognized him akin to her though here he was a stranger. The primal part of her thoughts cared nothing for familiarity or strangeness, it only hungered, but forgot to tell her what it hungered for. It grumbled at her as she waited, unknowing, not understanding herself at all.

There was no speech in this place, she came to know. Only actions and feeling. Her pulse was echoing in the strength of her glow, his pulse was in time. His hands reached out to caress, to hold. She fitted herself to his broad chest. His height and the width of his shoulders made her feel small and fragile, and his fingers did exquisite things to her scalp and back with maddening dexterity. She tilted her face up to meet his, and she knew they kissed, but would never be able to describe it, nor was she any closer to identifying who he might have been. His face was a mask, like hers. Her fingers tangled in the silk that spilled freely down his shoulders. His fingers stopped caressing and started molding her flesh, changing her shape into something she couldn't name. Her blaze burned brighter than a flame, becoming a wild creature of sensual beauty. Her every pore was coming alive! There was power in his eyes, which appeared before her and pierced her to her soul. Black, fathomless, like the world, like the ache in her.

His robes parted at his toes, and darkness lay within. Out from the panels came the tendrils, binding and stroking her newly forming and re-forming body. When the part came to the level of his groin, a slumbering python stirred; its massive slitted eyes opened and regarded her. She feared it, though she couldn't say why it was so, and she yearned for it as her primal self remembered it and sent a cry through her being. The python moved like water, wound itself around one of her thighs and sought entrance between her legs. She knew it could not enter unless she willed it so, as she was a being of light and this was her world. Her primal self demanded it.

With fierce pressure and heat, the python pressed its way inside, molding and stretching her in its own way, altering her as He was altering her. It invaded her until there was no more room to go.

A bright flash of light overtook her form in the void, and in that instant, the stranger's face was revealed. She jerked awake with a cry, her body still shuddering with guilty release. She sent a questing hand down between her legs and found her nether lips to be wet and pulsing. Her finger slid about and found the nub that made her jolt when she touched it. Her quivering flesh lurched pleasurably in response. With slow circles, she brought about another crashing release with the echoes of her dream still present in her mind. The face, she forgot. But the dream was heavy enough with symbolism that she could well guess who the dark man was.

With a huff, she turned her face into her pillow. Great. She wasn't absolutely sure, but she suspected that her dream and subsequent orgasms were about one snaky professor who had made it quite clear that he wanted nothing of the sort to do with her. Damn her idiot subconscious!

@ @ @

Severus was jolted awake by some unknown commotion. He lay absolutely still in bed as he listened for the cause of his rude awakening. Before long, his finely tuned ears heard something that he quite wished they didn't. Feminine moans, small and muffled arose from the floor beneath his bedroom. The guest room. Her room. Within moments, he heard what he identified as the sound that woke him once again: her throaty shout of completion. Damn the paper-thin walls!

When he was absolutely certain that she would have drifted off again, he made his way to the shower to take a cold one. Yes, he decided, it was definitely going to be a long three weeks. If Herm--OLIVIA was a multiple-orgasm masturbator, he was in for a lot of nights like this one.

How it would have galled him to know that those were her first. How it would have given him a brain aneurysm to know that they were because of him!

-------------------------------------------------

A/N: (please, no hurling rocks!) I will try to update it soon!

Aufero planto- means remove makeup. Because I also have the imagination of whoever named that stuff.