Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Weasley's Wizard Wheezes	By : CryingCinderella Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 131977 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 30
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor do I make any money from writing these stories.

Chapter List
- 16
- 17
- 18
A/N: I do apologize for the delay— hoping 27,000 words makes up for it! Thank you all for your continual feedback. It’s fascinating to see the analysis that some of you put into what’s happening! Happy Birthday, dear lemonade8! This chapter does get us back to the workshop— we’re long overdue, especially with that pesky Joke Convention looming in the near future— but worry not, Hermione nor Severus will be forgetting what’s happened at Spinner’s End any time soon. Children at the playground, indeed.             This chapter may bend us around a bit, but I am certain that things are far from settled. And just remember not everything is as it appears to be even when it is. What’s the phrase? Calm before the tempest?
“I am not being listed as Vixxxy.” Hermione pushed the page back into George’s hand.
                “I don’t know that I can get it changed, Hermione.” George frowned.
                “I don’t care, George. It’s bad enough I have to be listed at all!” she huffed.
                “Hermione, you agreed to the convention and this a part of—”
                Severus’ voice silenced George. “Ms. Granger is aware of that, Mr. Weasley. Her protest is not in her agreement but over what you’ve listed in the program.”
                “I can speak for myself, Severus.” Hermione narrowed her eyes across the work table at him. He returned her gaze but remained quiet.
                “Are you two going to be like this all night?” George asked, exchanging wary glances between them. “What’s the matter?”
                “Nothing.” They spat in unison.
                It was far from the truth, but Hermione was not interested in the least in discussing it with George Weasley. Two days had passed since she’d been rushed from the workshop back to Spinner’s End with Flinge. She’d scribbled a note saying she’d been taken down with a particularly nasty cold and that she wasn’t fit to test anything. Whether or not Severus had gone in on his own she didn’t know, and she didn’t care. George hadn’t made mention of it when they’d arrived that evening and she was determined not ask. She’d spent two entire days avoiding him, which had been more difficult than she had imagined.
                For someone who was never around to be noticed she seemed to pass him at almost every conceivable point in the house. Whether she was leaving and he was coming in, or when she was headed to and from the bathroom, he was there. They passed one another in the hallway, and in the kitchen. She refused to speak with him. He hadn’t tried to initiate conversation either, but Hermione had a feeling that these run-ins were not coincidental. She had been living in that house with him without ever truly encountering him for several days and suddenly she couldn’t escape him. There had been no signs of Nigel since he’d appeared in her doorway that morning either. If Severus was carrying on with the boy, he was doing so outside of the house.
                She’d locked herself in the shower that morning for over an hour. She’d washed her hair three times because she was so frustrated. Doing as he pleased was one thing. Casually sluffing her off in front of the boy was another. It shouldn’t have bothered her. He had made no illusions about their lack of relationship, even if he had never come out and directly said the words. Hearing them as she had that morning had pushed her over the edge. What had been a blissful waking had transformed into a soured moment in the blink of an eye. Part of her blamed the boy. But a part of her couldn’t help but wonder what would have happened had Nigel not shown up. Would she have been content to lie there in his arms, resting on his chest? It wasn’t as if they could have had sex, and it would have been the first real opportunity presented to them where they could be intimate without sexual pressure. Yet another part of her wondered what would have happened if he’d left Hermione in bed and gone to coffee with Nigel.
                And perhaps he had. When she’d emerged from the shower that morning Severus was gone, at least from her bedroom, though she did not go poking about to see if he’d left the house. He had called it a meeting. The boy had clearly been under the impression that it was a casual date. She’d reprimanded herself for thinking so heavily on it. Hermione did not have the mental energy to waste on trying to figure out Severus’ relationship, or lack thereof, with Nigel when her own inveiglement with the man was undefinable. He’d whispered words to her before putting her to bed. Two damaged people do not one whole person make. Of all the things that had been said that night it was the thing that stuck in her mind the most. That phrase had even trumped his utterance about not loving anyone.
                Her mind had turned over every possible intimation of those words. He clearly believed himself not to be a whole person, damaged and broken from his years serving two masters and making the sacrifices he had made. And it was obvious he deemed her not to be a full person, and though she loathed to admit it, she was damaged in her own right. Did he see Nigel as someone whole? An innocent who because he was not magical and had not suffered the torments of war was more suitable for such intimate things? But he’d reprimanded the boy as well, and had told her that night that he loved no one. He could have been lying but she suspected that he was incapable of love, not because he couldn’t actually love one of them or someone else entirely, but because he denied himself the ability. Everyone was capable of love, except those that were truly evil, and Severus was not evil. Misguided and a right pain in the arse, damaged like she was, but certainly not evil.
                Every time she passed him she made a point not to make eye contact. It had been bad enough that she’d found her mind obsessing over him, she didn’t need to add fuel to the fire by trying to see what silent messages he would attempt to convey to her with his unreadable emotions and brooding looks. Hermione had known that she wouldn’t be able to avoid him forever. Work was going to start up eventually and she would be forced to face him. Determined to treat it like the very first night she’d started on the job, Hermione had been standoffish and cold. Unfortunately this had not gone unnoticed by George. She blamed it on still not being 100% after her illness, and then when he’d started in on the Joke Convention, she’d all but lost her cool.
                “I’ll do what I can to get it changed, if it makes you feel better,” George offered. “Though to what I couldn’t begin to imagine,” he muttered.
                “Something classy, please. I’m not a street-walking strumpet. This may be a sex show as far as you’re concerned, but I’d like to keep as much of my dignity as possible. Even if we will be using enchanted masks.” Hermione crossed her arms over her chest and then walked over to the bed. Good to his word, George had a proper four-poster bed installed in the workshop just near the marble table. It was large and the mattress sank deep with her weight as she sat on the edge of it.
                “I’ll give it a think,” he said and then looked at Severus. “No objections from you?”
                Severus shook his head. Hermione rolled her eyes. Naturally he wouldn’t object. His name hadn’t been half so ridiculous. Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes: Sexxxploration with The Serpent Master and Vixxxy. She’d nearly incinerated the itinerary when she’d read it. She waited for George to start them off for the evening. The sooner they started, the sooner they could finish, the sooner they could leave. She wanted nothing more than to be away from him. She was still frustrated and her emotions hadn’t begun to settle.
                “Okay, well, like I said, I’ll try, Hermione. Now, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. There are some things I want to get tested specifically for the convention. We’ve got three show slots for demonstration on the main stage and I think for the Saturday afternoon slot I want to showcase the Wonder Water and another one or two of the bath products. Friday night needs to be something racy. Haven’t decided if we should use the Week of Whips and maybe get into some more of the fetish-geared products— I know, I know, what fetish-geared products, but that’s part of what I’m hoping to work through tonight. And I think I want to feature the Lover’s Picnic on Sunday.”
                “The what?” Hermione asked.
                George seemed to forget the quarrels they’d been having a moment previous as he leaped with glee over to the hovering shelf and pulled what appeared to be an ordinary picnic hamper down from it. Hermione knew better than to assume it was ordinary or that it would contain ordinary things. The name alone had her skin crawling. She and Severus were not lovers, he had made that perfectly clear. But she couldn’t deny that she was a bit eager to feel him again. Two full days without so much as a breath of hello between them and the prospect of feeling his touch, even if it was strictly for the purpose of work, had her on edge. She supposed a part of those feelings was also anxiety, he had said there might be discomfort on her first round of intercourse after having contracted Flinge. She’d done as much research as the tome had allowed, even going so far as to pester Ginny about it, saying that she was casually interested so as to not let on that she’d picked it up from Charlie.
                It was a strange sensation. Knowing that the man she wanted, with whom she was currently and perpetually at odds, would be the first person to touch her after she’d been infected. She should have been nervous. The situation should have put her off entirely given how frustrated she was with him. But there was something about the fact that it would be him that put her mind at ease. Never in her life had she thought she would have contracted an SMI, and even if it had been a simple one with an even simpler fix, it was still an unsettling experience. She had blindly taken to working with Severus in the workshop, though she supposed George would have screened him, he had asked her as much when she’d first shown up with the flyer before shooting her down a dozen times and then finally caving in. It had never crossed her mind that cautions were something that she would have to be taking. Naturally she hadn’t thought about sleeping with anyone but Severus since their work had begun.
                Hermione was torn. She desperately wanted him. She missed his touch, even though he was stingy with it. And she missed the way his glorious cock filled her. She missed his lips and the taste of his tongue. She had purposely not returned his shirt to him, though she’d left his pajama bottoms in the bathroom after her shower. It smelled of him. And although she hadn’t worn it, she’d taken to sleeping with it tucked just beside her pillow. She had taken to charming her bedroom door as it simply wouldn’t do to have him enter, without knocking as he so often did, and find her curled up with his favorite shirt like some demented ex-girlfriend incapable of moving on. It was the limbo of their situation that kept her mind churning. His rejections were not traditional; they were not finite or conclusive. It gave her no closure to work with and that was what kept her contemplating.
                George drew her from her thoughts by calling her over to where he stood. “We won’t need the bed or the table for this one, as you might imagine, we’ll be working on the floor.”
                Hermione frowned. “The floor?”
                “Just have a sit, Severus, you too,” George gestured for them to join him where he knelt in front of the picnic hamper. “It came with a few things, but I think I’m going to put that grape Fantasy Panty spray can in here as well…and a LustiPop or two.”
                Hermione knelt down beside George and peered into the picnic hamper. She was determined not to look at Severus more than was necessary. If he’d been trying to catch her eye, she hadn’t noticed, though she doubted that he had. It actually seemed that he didn’t care one way or the other that they hadn’t spoken. It bothered her, but she couldn’t place way. A part of her wanted him to make the effort, but she knew based on his comment alone about following her to Tunis that he was not the type to go about apologizing or making gestures of the like. A part of her wondered if he was encountering her and purposely remaining silent just to see how long she could take it, and that enraged her. Her attention was once more caught up by George’s voice.
                “Are you sure you’re alright, Hermione? You seem like you’re in space,” he waved his hand in front of her face and grinned. Hermione noted that although George was grinning, his bright blue eyes were concerned.
                She sighed. “I’m fine, George. Honest. Just testy is all. I hate being sick, and I hate that it’s put us so far behind,” she said with the most exasperation she could muster. She hoped it was convincing. It did the trick well enough as she received a pat on the shoulder from George. “I am sorry,” she added and then leaned her head against the top of his shoulder. “I’ve just been out of sorts, you know what colds do to me.” She muttered.
                George laughed. “Ron and Harry used to say you were a nightmare about studying when you’d come down with the sniffles,” he teased. “I can get some more heat in here if you think that will help,” he offered.
                Hermione shook her head. “No, no, really. I’m alright, George. Now, tell me about this picnic thing…the sooner we get to testing it, the sooner we can figure out if it’s ready for the convention.”
                “Right!” with renewed enthusiasm, George pulled a bottle from the picnic hamper. It was nothing special to behold. To Hermione it looked like an ordinary bottle of wine, stoppered with a cork. “So this,” he said handing the bottle to Severus. “Is Lusty Wine.”
                “Lusty Wine?” Hermione asked with a frown.
                George had hopped up, dashed over to his work station, and returned with his ledger and quill. “Fred’s notes say that it’s an aphrodisiacal wine, about 75% aphrodisiac and 25% wine, to help get a romantic couple in the mood. Safer than your average lust potion, and apparently strawberry flavored.”
                Severus had set the bottle down on the floor of the workshop. He took the ledger from George, skimming it over. “What exactly makes it safer than your average lust potion, Mr. Weasley?”
                George and Severus were quick to debate the formulaic properties of Fred’s notes. Hermione found herself eyeing the bottle with suspicion. She had never taken an aphrodisiac in her life, at least not one that had been extracted, concentrated, and formulated for those exact purposes. They were frowned upon in the magical world because of their potency; a person could administer one to an unsuspecting individual and said individual would find themselves uncontrollably attracted to the person who had given them the potion. She supposed that it wouldn’t hurt them, she was already sexually attracted to Severus— and to a degree he to her— even if at the moment they were not speaking with one another. She caught the tail end of their conversation.
                “—untested, yes. But if he’s right, then it could put other such products out of business!” George’s face was red. Had they gotten into an argument while Hermione’s mind had been idling?
                “It’s still not guaranteed to—”
                “Bullocks, Severus. That formula is practically perfect. And if it’s targeting natural attraction for enhancement purposes, then it’s not even like your basic lust potion making it a dozen times safer and more marketable.” George tapped his finger hard on the ledger.
                “How about we just drink it and see?” Hermione offered. “If you two are going to sit around bickering all day, I’m going to put my clothes back on.” She had kept her robes drawn around her up to that point. She was content to get dressed and call it a night if Severus and George wanted to go to blows over potion ingredients.
                “Thank you, Hermione,” George said in triumph and picked up the bottle. “I suppose I ought to consider putting two goblets in here, but for now you can each just have a swig from the bottle.” He handed the bottle to Hermione first.
                She tugged on the cork, surprised that it popped out so easily. Her nostrils were overwhelmed with the scent of strawberries. “This is potent,” she said bringing it to her lips. She closed her eyes, poured the bottle back and swallowed a large mouthful of the Lusty Wine. It was sweet and bitter and tart and tangy all at once. Her eyes scrunched and her lips puckered and she coughed. “Merlin that’s— ugh. It’s like fruit juice gone foul.” She stuck her tongue out of her mouth, but kept her eyes closed.
                George had taken the bottle back from her and sniffed it. “It’s a little strong, but I think it’s alright.” He handed it to Severus. Hermione refused to open her eyes to watch him swallow the wine. She did, however, open her eyes and stare pointedly at the floor, waiting to feel the effects of the potion. Already her throat felt warm from swallowing it. Having never taken a lust potion, she wasn’t sure what to expect. The warming sensation of the aphrodisiacal chocolate in the bursting bath bubbles had seemed only to release her inhibitions when it came to making advances at Severus, and she wondered if this wine would do the same.
                “Alright, well, I suppose we’ll see soon enough if it’s actually working. You two can’t seem to stand each other today,” George said.
                “That’s not true!” Hermione protested. “I can’t stand him ever.” The moment she’d said it she clapped her hand over her mouth, blushing furiously. “Sorry,” she muttered. She wondered for a fleeting instant if the Lusty Wine had also been laced with Veritaserum.
                George looked embarrassed, but also as if he were trying not to laugh. “Right,” he said and shook his head. He pulled out a tiny green cube from the basket. “Massage grass blanket,” he said with a grin.
                “That looks like a green cube,” Hermione said.
                Picking up the cube, George gave it a squeeze. Hermione marveled at the way it began to melt into itself and spread out across the floor. Despite having a full magical education and having been exposed to the fullest extent of magic for both the forces of light and dark during the war, there were still so many things that amazed her about the magical world in which she lived. Watching a green blob de-transfigure itself down into a large grassy blanket was such a thing. It reminded her of the first time she’d walked into a magically enchanted tent, discovering that it was far more spacious than the outside had let on. She reached her hand out cautiously, stroking her fingers over the grass. It felt like actual grass. The blanket was large enough for two people to comfortably lay across it in either direction.
                “Feels like grass,” she said.
                “I think Fred had the notion that you should be able to take a picnic with you wherever you go. It’s supposed to have a massaging effect but I imagine you’ll feel that as you have a bit of a play on it.” For a moment she had forgotten that she was meant to be discovering a sexually charged picnic hamper with Severus. “Off with your robes, then. And get comfy. I think we’ll give the Wicked Wildflower a try first.”
                Hermione did as she was told, slipping out of her robe, before scooting over onto the grass blanket. She was kneeling with her back facing slightly toward George, keeping her head down as Severus slipped out of his robe and joined her, though he kept his distance.
                “Blimey, Hermione!” George cried.
                At once she blushed, knowing exactly what he was reacting to. She had never taken her robe fully off two evenings prior when she’d tested the Nifty Nipples. And she’d fallen ill and been swept from the workshop after that. Though most of the bruises and marks had begun to heal, they had reached the stage of grotesque yellowish brown. She bit her lower lip. There hadn’t been much thought put into hiding the marks. Charlie hadn’t seen them as her nightgown had never been pulled all the way off her body the night she’d laid with him. Severus had put them there so there had been no need to hide them from his eyes. She bowed and tried to think on how to handle the decision. Choosing to feign ignorance, she turned her head back over her shoulder and looked at George with a puzzled glance. “What?”
                “Your shoulders! Bloody hell, Hermione, it looks like you were attacked by a savage beast!” He looked stricken. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
                Hermione rolled her eyes. Leave it to George to take that approach. “Oh, honestly, George,” she muttered. “They’re hickeys not battle wounds.”
                “They’re— oh. Oh!” he sputtered. She tried not to smile as his face flushed a furious shade of red. “Merlin, ‘Mione…they look…” George blushed even harder if such a thing were possible.
                “Just ignore them,” she huffed. She hadn’t anticipated him making quite such a fuss over them. She also hadn’t taken to lingering in the mirror to see just how hideous they looked in their yellow-browned state. If she closed her eyes just so, she could still picture the way his lips had sank into her, with his finger through that vibrating ring, teasing her until he spilled himself on her back. She forced the thought from her mind, it would do no good to dwell on such a thing while trying to focus on their work.
                “Right.” George looked nervously at Severus, who said nothing. “So if you lie back, Hermione, I’m going to have Severus start with the Wicked Wildflower.”
                “What’s it meant to do?” she asked as she shifted more fully onto the grassy blanket and eased herself down onto her back. It felt exactly like lying naked in a field, or at least how she imagined such a thing would feel as Hermione had never gone to relax in a field of grass in the buff. It was just a bit ticklish as she shifted her hips and eased her legs down so that she was flat. She rested her arms at her side and turned her head to George. She did not want to look Severus in the eye. She was on display, though that was nothing new for their line of work.
                She watched as George drew up what looked like a white daisy from inside the picnic hamper. Only it wasn’t a daisy so much as a daisy head on an elongated red and white checkered stem. It almost looked like someone had folded the stem out of a picnic kerchief or blanket. George tugged on the stem and at once it broke away from the flower head, leaving only a little handle in its wake. The long checkered stem began to length, swiveling about around George’s hand until it split itself into four slender coils. Hermione’s eyes were wide as they began to snake their way down George’s hand, across the grass blanket and onto her body. She flinched and gasped as they wound themselves around her wrists and ankles, one coil at each, pulling her limbs apart from her body. She was stretched, but not uncomfortably, into an ‘X’ and the ends of checkered coils disappeared down into the blades of the grass blanket.
                Hermione gave a sturdy tug on her new restraints, trying to free first her wrists and then her ankles. “Oh my goodness,” she whispered, feeling her full body blush. She’d just been bound to the ground. The dawning realization that this was her first bondage experience crept into her mind and she blushed harder. Severus had been bound during the work; he’d succumbed to various positions at the handiwork of the Sexy Silks. But she had not yet been restrained. This was a shocking feeling, and a great lot for her to absorb as she realized that this put her completely at Severus’ mercy. Despite trying to keep a handle on her feelings, there was a surge of pleasure that shot straight to her core. She imagined she would have felt it even if things hadn’t been so on edge with him. The notion of being restrained and letting him have his way with her made her giddy, though in her current predicament she loathed to admit it.
                “Fred’s notes said that it’s meant to be a bit of an enchanted tickler,” he handed the daisy to Severus. “Start where you like, I suppose.”
                Hermione froze hearing George’s words. Not even thinking about the enchanted bit, she could already feel her body squirming in agony over the notion of being tickled, even if it was by the flower rather than his fingers. Her mind flashed back to before he’d put her out. They’d been lying in her bed, his arm draped over her and he’d tickled her. The first time it had been his fingers idly brushing a ticklish spot on her tummy, but he’d done it again out of some attempt to make her laugh or to unbalance her, she hadn’t been sure. She despised being tickled. She wasn’t sure that she knew a single soul that enjoyed it. And then her mind jumped tracks. When they’d tested the whips the Wednesday Wonker, or whatever it had been called as she couldn’t properly remember, had delivered a series of ticklish feathers. She may not have remembered the name of the whip, but she did remember Severus’ reaction to that particular enchantment. He had seemed wildly ticklish. Perhaps that would come in handy, knowing that he too was susceptible to being tickled he would not push the product to its full-intended limit.
                She drew in a trembling breath and closed her eyes. She was too nervous to stare at him and she didn’t trust herself to keep her eyes open and look off to the side. The first stroke of delicate flower petals had her squeaking as she hadn’t even noticed Severus leaning over her. Hermione’s eyes flew open and she gazed up at him. He was rested on his knees, leaning over her, the daisy in his hands. It felt like a fleeting kiss of feather petals, airy yet smooth and very ticklish as he had swept it up under her left arm. There was a languid stroke of his hand and the daisy-head tickle swept down her other arm and she shivered, biting her lower lip to keep from shouting out again. He lingered a moment, eyes on her torso, before sweeping the petals back and forth in her armpit.
                Hermione thrashed about trying to pull her arm back to her body. She squealed unable to help herself as she struggled against the checkered restraints. A fit of giggles threatened to break forth from her chest and she tried in vain to twist away from him as the tickler roamed up over her breasts, across her chest and down into her left armpit. Her eyes grew wider still. She was jerking trying to flee the tickler, now under her left arm, but could still feel the sweep of the daisy petals under her right arm as if they’d never stopped. “Oh-no-no-no-stop!” she cried, giggles punctuating her words. “Please!” her upper body jolted and she shrieked a peel of unstoppable giggles.
                Severus swept the daisy head down alongside her ribs and she began to jerk about almost violently against the grassy blanket, the blades underneath her back tickling her as well. Or perhaps it was an extenuation of the daisy’s enchantment. Her body was tingling with tickles as he swirled the flower around her navel and then down between her legs, stroking the flower between her thighs. Hermione’s shrill shrieks of laughter filled the workshop, her cheeks glowing red as she thrashed and tossed about, restrained at the ankles and wrists. “Merlin! Please! Please, Severus! Stop!” she cried, laughing so hard she could feel tears coming to her eyes.
                There was something else; the little zips and zings of pleasure were dancing up and down her spine as the tickling grew more intense. It was like a dozen little flower-petal fingers wriggling all over her body in any place that he had touched her with the flower head. Hermione’s eyes rolled back in her head as she squealed, the flowery tickler brushing across the bottom of her left foot. Her toes curled and she kicked hard, desperately trying to escape the sensation that was consuming her body. She was warm, her whole body heated from thrashing against her restraints, unable to chase the tickling sensation away from her skin. She felt it most keenly now against her right foot, her words utter gibberish as she pleaded with Severus to pull the flower back from her. She was begging for mercy, string after string of unintelligible words flying from her lips strangled by giggles.
                And she was wet. Tickling was causing quite the friction between her thighs despite them being drawn apart from one another and she could feel his hand between her lips. She cried out, arching her back up off the grass as much as the checkered restraints would allow. Her muscles were still tensing, her body still twitching as the flower petal tickling continued. Two long fingers slipped into her and she was screaming. She shook with a sudden and unexpected climax, her body torn between the two sensations, unable to help herself as she writhed about, bucking wildly against the restraints and his fingers as they curled inside of her, his thumb pressing firmly against her clit.
                Hermione was gasping for breath. She wasn’t sure if it qualified as the best orgasm she’d ever experienced, but it was by far the most intense simply because of the tickling. The insistent wriggling flower petals had ceased and she felt the slow tug of his fingers sliding back from her quivering core. She whimpered at the loss of contact, trying to curl her knees up to her chest to bring her body into a fetal position but she was still restrained. Her eyelids were fluttering and it took her a moment before she could draw her focus. Her eyes landed on him as he leaned back onto his legs, gazing down at her with a blank expression.
                “Wow, Hermione,” George was grinning and she noticed him looming over her as well. “Ticklish much?”
                She huffed. “If I wasn’t restrained I’d hex you.”
                George laughed. “Take it easy,” he teased. “The next little goody in this hamper is something for Severus.”
                This did not entice her in the least. She was cross with herself for enjoying the bizarrely pleasurable experience so thoroughly. Hermione had never once thought to associate tickling with arousal or pleasure. The fact that she had been so easily able to achieve climax with the enchanted novelty put her on edge. Was it because she was riled up from the Lusty Wine? Or were her pent-up frustrations of trying to avoid him the last two days coming to an explosive head in the form of an orgasm? The fact that he was the one tickling her, even if it had been by way of flower-petal toy, only made it worse. She’d convinced herself that she could suffer through the night, that she could push through the work and not give him a second thought. But she’d screamed his name just as easily as she had when he’d fucked her ruthlessly in his bed at Spinner’s End.
                Furious with herself she growled and tugged her wrists up as hard as she could. “Is someone going to untie me?” she barked.
                George snorted. But Severus moved to kneel over her. She turned her head to the side, refusing to look at him as he undid the checkered restraints around her arms. She half expected him to leave her to her own vices to untie her feet, but was surprised when he shifted down the length of the grass blanket and unbound her ankles. She caught his eye, unable to help herself, as she sat up, and her face filled with another blush. He was gazing at her with a mild curiosity, no doubt appraising her childish outbursts. She really needed to get a handle on her temper. She could easily understand why he had been so coarse when he’d been restrained to the bed when they had tested the paddles. It wasn’t that it was unpleasant, it was the humiliation of being helpless. Something that she had never wanted to experience, but in her time spent in the war, had come to know a great deal about. This thought paralyzed her mind for a moment as she thought about Severus might have experienced the same. She quickly pushed it from her mind, not wanting to apply empathy to the bastard kneeling across from her.
                “Carrying on with our little romantic picnic,” George said. In his hand he held what looked like an ordinary pie tin, albeit small, with a single slice of oozing apple pie. “Glovely Pie,” he beamed. “Hermione,” he nodded at her. “I want you to sit behind Severus,” he instructed. “And, Severus, you lean back into her arms a bit.”
                Already she didn’t like where it was going. At least for the moment she’d be situated behind him and wouldn’t have to try to hide her expressions. And she wouldn’t have to force herself to look away from his eyes. If he’d been wearing his robe but moments ago when he’d applied the tickler to her, she couldn’t recall but as he situated himself on the plush grass blanket and eased his body back into her arms, it was impossible to ignore the fact that he was naked. Even in the slight chill of the workshop, a fact that she had meant to address George about several times, his body radiated heat. His skin was warm as if intent on melting straight through her body on a beeline directly to her core. She closed her eyes and forced herself to think about Molly and Arthur Weasley, or the bat boogey hex that Ginny was so proud of, but despite her best distracting efforts could not stop feeling the delicious way his body felt situated back against hers. Hermione was intent on blaming the Lusty Wine.
                George’s voice stirred her as he placed the little pie tin into her hands. “If I’ve read Fred’s notes right, and Merlin only knows, but if so then you’re meant to share this bit of edible goodness with Severus. He makes an important note about your hands his mouth and your mouth. Something to do with the enchantment and the way it’s meant to transfer sensation. It’s a masturbatory and fellatio geared product, so once its effects start to— to take effect— I’ll reckon you need to have a go with both.”
                Hermione nodded her head, not trusting her own voice to have a flippant response. She was still pondering the chance that the Lusty Wine was laced with truth serum and didn’t want to find herself spouting off at the mouth any more than she had already done. The apple pie slice, despite the fact that the filling was oozing slightly out of the sides, did not look entirely unappealing. She decided he could be the Guinea pig and test it first. With fingers that trembled more than she cared to admit, she eased the pie out of its tin and held it in her hand. She tossed the tin aside and it rolled across the grass blanket and over to the floor near where George sat. For all intents and purposes it felt like an ordinary slice of pie, sticky and slightly warmed.
                It was only slightly difficult to bring the pie up to his lips from where she sat with him leaned back in her lap. Doing so caused her body to press more firmly into his, her breasts now mashed against his back. But she would not deny that the warmth was pleasant on her front. She felt his lips press against the heel of her palm as he maneuvered his lips to take a bite of the pie. There was a groan and it startled her. Even more so because he seemed to delight in the taste of the treat somewhat emphatically. It made her nervous to think that if she too tasted it that her own inhibitions would sidle their way out the window and she’d be thrown once more into the lust-consumed inferno of passionate ecstasy with him. But she could hardly deny that she secretly hoped it would. There was something about him in the raw throes of pleasure that drove her wild, even if she had only experienced them in their time spent at Spinner’s End. And although she was meant to be keeping herself from such encounters, there was certainly nothing wrong if those sorts of moments were product-induced while they found themselves testing things in the workshop.
                When Severus tilted his head to the side and turned back against her shoulder she drew in a sharp breath. The gesture was unexpected but hardly unwelcomed. His mouth was quick to find hers, the sticky remnants of a too sweetly spiced apple pie lingering on his lips. The kiss was as startling as the groan had been but all too quickly she found herself absorbed in it. The heat of the gooey apple pie filled her mouth though she was certain that she hadn’t eaten it. The pie itself had vanished from her hand but her hands felt full and sticky. Pulling back with a labored effort and heavily panted breath, Hermione stared first at his lips and then at her hands. Everything looked normal. Touching her fingers against her palm she bit her lower lip. “Oh my,” she whispered, her voice heady and deep with lust.
                It was clear that the enchantment was mimicking the texture and essence of the pie, her hand now heated and sticky with the velvety innards of the apple pie slice. Her lips and mouth held a similar weight and she wondered if they felt the same, or would feel the same once wrapped around his cock. It made Hermione smile and shiver with a hint of undeniable delight. Closing her eyes she placed her hand firmly on his chest, dragging it down his skin. It felt as if she were trailing the sticky sweet topping of the pie along his flesh in a trail from his pectoral muscles directly down to his groin though there was no visual evidence or physical residual to prove that she had done so.
                Severus arched into her touch as if her palm was melding into his skin and heating him through. She couldn’t help herself as she grinned. Hermione inched her fingers painstakingly slowly down to his crotch and made a deliberate process out of her curling them around the base of his cock. It took only a moment for his organ to twitch and stiffen against her ministrations; the heat and velvet ooze of the pie glided with ease over his growing erection. She almost squealed when he moaned, bucking his hips up into her hand. Whether or not the Lusty Wine was laced with Veritaserum or not remained to be discovered but she was certain it was doing its job as an enchanted aphrodisiac. Hermione curled her fingers around him firmly and stroked the length of his cock, now quite hard, until her pam curved up and around his tip.
                “Merlin,” he hissed. The sound was glorious. Unrestrained, unfettered, and deliciously tantalizing to her ear, he was a man giving into his urges. She stroked him in earnest, leaning hard into his back as she worked her hand up and down his shaft, gliding along as if she were masturbating over him with the pie trapped between her fingers. Only there was nothing to be seen, save her hand and his shaft, and no sticky residue to be felt as she swirled her thumb around his leaking tip.
                “Hermione, slide around front and give him a blow,” said George.
                She was too lost in the heated sensation of the way her hand stroke him to be properly bothered by George’s casual command. That did not, however, stop her from slipping beneath his arm, sliding onto her hip and leaning her head down into his laps. Hermione licked her lips, daring to give him a wicked flicker of her eyes before lowering her head just over his shaft. If he’d seen the glimmer in her eyes she hadn’t noticed but in that moment she was drawn inexplicably to have his cock fill her mouth. His glorious, turgid, weighty cock stuffed as far as she could manage into her hot, tight little mouth. These thoughts should have paralyzed her with embarrassment but in that moment all she could see was his delicious erection glistening with precum.
                She pressed her lips to the tip of his weeping shaft and swirled her tongue around it. Hermione couldn’t help herself as she moaned in the back of her throat. He tasted like warmed apple pie. There was a thickness to him as she slid her lips back over her teeth and sucked him slowly into her mouth. It felt as if he were covered in the oozing heated center of the pie, warm and velvety, as she slid her lips down nearly to the base of his cock. A violently shaking hand clutched at her hair and she heard him groan in the back of his throat. Hermione pulled her lips back up his length, twirling her tongue in circles around his pulsating shaft and was rewarded with another heady groan. She could hardly contain her excitement at hearing him fall apart even though in the recesses of her mind she knew she should not be so pleased by such a prospect.
                Hermione was knelt over him, the soft blades of the grass blanket pressed firm against her knees as she continued to bob her head into his lap. The tug in her hair was firm but it did not stop her from continuing to slide her lips up and down his shaft. He smelled of the apple pie; it was as if one had been baking just beside them and her mouth was full of it and also him. It was an incredible sensation. Both of his hands were pressed suddenly and firmly at the side of her head, holding her in place and she took this as her cue to ease her tongue, though it did not prevent her from tickling the underside of his head in a spot where she knew him to be quite sensitive. Hot bursts of seed shuddered forth from his tip as Severus came, moaning and shuddering as he held her against his lap.
                She had expected it to taste like apple pie, and although the smell of the pastry was still quite prevalent, the taste in her mouth was solely his, a taste she had come to enjoy the handful of times she’d been fortunate enough to savor it untainted by product. Hermione swallowed, feeling the sticky warmth of his release slide down her throat before she slowly lifted her head, panting and eyes fluttering. She was out of breath, her chest rising and falling just as hard as his and she found this to be astonishing.
                Severus had released her head and was leaning back on his hands, using his arms to keep his body upright. He was still gasping for breath those his eyes were closed. She took the moment to study his body, though she should have turned away and fetched her robe. The angular planes of his torso that were covered with tautly draped stretches of pale skin made her weak in the knees. Her core was already burning from having serviced him. She was certain that even though it was only product testing that she derived a great deal of ecstatic pleasure from blowing him. It was something she couldn’t comprehend but chose in that moment not to question it.
                “Well blimey I know it did something,” George grinned.
                Hermione rolled her eyes and reached for her robe. “Ask him,” she said.
                Severus, who did not seem to be in the least bothered by his current state of undress, drew in several deep and steadying breaths before addressing George. “There is a transference charm in effect, designed to mimic the apple pie and the way it feels without leaving a residue or actually needing the physical substance of the stuff to do so.”
                “And it feels good?” George asked, slightly puzzled.
                “Sensational, Mr. Weasley.” Severus nodded and then eased himself up onto his knees. He made no move to find his robe and Hermione noted this to be peculiar. Either he was so exhausted from the experience that he had lost sight of the fact that he was still naked, or he was goading her. She chose to believe that he was still playing their wayward head game. Being with him in the workshop that evening had been difficult enough but if he was going to insist on playing games, she was going to have special order a thicker skin.
                “What’s next?” she asked, hoping that she didn’t sound as anxious and annoyed as she was afraid she had. But she wanted to be done with testing. Not that she was in any particular rush to return back to Spinner’s End, which would only result in awkward silent run-ins as she settled in for the evening, but she wanted to be done with his delicious naked body. It would have been easier if he’d been unattractive, or perhaps unskilled. But Severus Snape was neither of those things. While she knew that he was not every witch’s fantasy, though his cock alone if witnessed in action might change a great number of minds regarding the matter, he was handsome in his own right. His figure was not carved nor were his muscles defined the way one might hope, but she knew him to be strong. His skin was terribly pale but it was comforting to the eyes. She shook her head trying not to think about just how she was justifying his attractiveness.
                “Let’s see…” George was thumbing through the ledger which had appeared from nowhere in particular. “We’ve seen the Wicked Wildflower, and now the Glovely Pie…you’ve had the Lusty Wine— I think the only thing left is the Heavenly Honey,” he said with a shrug. “Of course, the blanket, which I still don’t think it’s meant to just lay there, but even so it’s a nice color.”
                “Mr. Weasley, it replicates grass flawlessly. The fact that such a thing is so readily captured given your late brother’s penchant for charms and enchantments should be satisfactory,” Severus admonished. Hermione found that it was pleasant for once to hear someone being reprimanded that wasn’t her.
                “Right.” George reached into the hamper. “I’m not so sure that I need to put the other things in here that I thought I was going to— at least not for marketing purposes. I may still sneak them in for the Sunday brunch demo slot at the convention. But so far I like this working order, it seems to build up nicely to a grand finale of sorts, which is exactly what this Heavenly Honey is made for.”
                As he spoke he drew a jar from within the picnic hamper. It appeared, as many things had that evening, to be ordinary. A simple glass jar with a cloth top drawn over its opening and a fine piece of brown string holding the top in place. Slung to the side of the jar and looped through the string was an old wooden honey dipper. Hermione pursed her lips. “And what exactly is this Heavenly Honey meant to do?” she asked, her suspicions raised.
                “It’s for you— well— both of you, but Fred’s notes make it seem targeted toward women, as in it’s going to work better if Severus is using it on you.”
                “Right,” she sighed. Hermione rolled her eyes. Of course it was a product designed to be used on her. She hadn’t been able to really concentrate when he had been using the Wicked Wildflower on her because the tickling had disoriented her senses so severely. Or perhaps the Lusty Wine had helped with that, either way she’d found herself unable to stick to her guns of being reserved and restrained. She realized, with frustration, that she had hardly followed her self-imposed rule when it had come to working with the Glovely Pie either. While she’d vowed to keep away from him at home, she’d also told herself that she wouldn’t rise to his bait or tempt fate with him in the workshop either. They were there to do a job, as he had said numerous times before and she was not going to try to spark up anything between them while they worked. Even if she’d been so inclined to do so in the past, she’d vowed to herself that she would defy temptation and work through without incident. So far she’d been failing miserably.
                “Shall I lie back then?” she asked, waiting for George’s response. But he only nodded, handing the honey jar to Severus. Hermione did not bring her eyes to meet his. She did not want to stare into the fathomless black depths of broodingly enigmatic and impossible to read emotions. She did not want to catch a glimpse of something only to have it flit away and further frustrate her.
                “Hold up a minute, wait. It says here that it works best if you have a second go with the Lusty Wine,” George traced his finger over scribbles in the ledger. For all she knew it could have said works well with poo, given the atrocity that was his dead twin’s handwriting, but for the moment she chose to trust him.
                With a heavily audible sigh, Hermione reached for the bottle, surprised to have Severus hand it to her with a nod. Not wishing to make an awkward situation worse, she nodded her thanks and took a long deep quaff straight from its opening. It shook through her soundly and suddenly, the warming in her belly and her loins striking her without warning. She blushed with a smile as she handed the bottle back to him, their fingers brushing for a moment. Hermione bit her lower lip and tried not to giggle as she watched a droplet of the wine dribble down the corner of his mouth and slide down his chin. She closed her eyes and inhaled, too tempted to lean forward and lick it from his face if she kept staring at him.
                The moment passed and although she was now thoroughly heated and all but gushing between her legs, the dizzying ditziness of the moment had passed and she felt a modicum of control return over her inhibitions. It would not do to suddenly start romanticizing with Severus Snape just there in the workshop, even if it felt counterintuitive to resist the urges that were suddenly present inside of her, augmented exponentially by the liberal swallow of Lusty Wine she’d just consumed.
                “Hermione, if you lie back, Severus, it looks like you just dip the wand into the honey, and drag it across her— it doesn’t really say where it just says one or two strokes will do…” George gestured at Severus, indicating the ledger. Hermione sighed and moved to lay on her back against the grass blanket. Whatever they were talking about, she didn’t care to hear. Yet again she found herself on her back for him, her body exposed to his eyes. But what did it matter? He’d seen every inch of her, as he’d so crassly stated— he’d sucked and fucked and touched every inch of her as well. That much was true, and while she was presently so perturbed with him that she could slap herself silly for wanting him, his touch was exquisite. Even when it was idle or so subtle she wasn’t sure she was really feeling it, like the way his fingers stroked through her hair, he felt sensational against her.
                Her pleasant reverie was chased away as he knelt beside her, the now opened honey jar in one hand and the wand in the other. She kept her head turned to the side so that she could watch him without having to make eye contact. Hermione felt the warmth of his body as he leaned over her, slowly dipping the wand into the honey. There was a faint smell of sugary sweetness, much like the way one would expect honey to smell. And she shivered despite herself when he let the syrupy liquid drizzle and drip down from the wand onto her shoulder. With as slow sweeping motion of his hand, Severus drew the honey-coated wand across the length of her collarbone, coating her skin liberally with the sticky stuff from the jar.
                Severus put the wand back into the honey jar and set off to the side of the grass blanket. “And just…” he nodded at Hermione’s body.
                There was no way to prepare herself for the sensation that followed once George had nodded his head to encourage Severus to continue. She had thought that it would be simple. He would lick the honey across her skin, though the collarbone seemed a strange place to spread it, it would tingle or it would tickle, he’d have commentary on the taste and texture and that would be that. She couldn’t have been more wrong. As he lowered his lips she felt her body tense. There was something sensual about the way he gazed at her, through lids half-hooded with his lips pursed as if to taste her for the very first time. She closed her eyes and desperately fought back the image of the way he’d taken her so abruptly upon his kitchen countertop. The memory, though no older than a few weeks, felt as if it had happened just hours before they’d come to the workshop.
                Severus’ lips pressed against her collarbone, his tongue sweeping slowly along the line of honey that coated her skin. Hermione shivered, unable to help herself as a tingle of pleasure sizzled through her body. His lips moved along her collarbone to the edge of her shoulder, his tongue dipping down to tickle the tender flesh of her armpit. Hot, wet kisses were mouthed along her arm, trailing languidly down the length of her appendage until he was suckling at the pulse of her wrist. Hermione curled her toes, feeling as though he were drawing her heartbeat out through her skin with his lips. He nipped her wrist and she squealed, but her squeal quickly grew into a deep and lusty groan as she felt his tongue lave against her skin once more. His silky hair dragged along over her arm as he kissed and mouthed his way back up her limb to where her shoulder joined her neck.
                “Oh…” she moaned, his lips now assailing the tender flesh at the juncture of where her neck dipped into her collarbone. The hollow of her throat was tongued and she shivered once more, as if he could lick her skin away to directly expose the nerve to his delicious ministrations. There was a tender suckling and his heated breath against her skin and she was squirming beneath him, fingers restless as they pulled at the blades of the grass blanket. Hermione found her fingers suddenly inching up over his figure, pulling on his shoulders to bring him over her body and while a tiny voice in the back of her mind was screaming to stop giving in to the temptations of the product, it was drowned out by the moans of her mouth as he trailed his lips up alongside her neck and started to kiss and caress the underside of her jaw.
                Severus had brought one hand up to her head and was threading his fingers into her curls when she felt his lips suckle her earlobe into the heated cavern of his mouth. She moaned, her eyelids fluttering. Hermione braced one hand on his back, raking her nails up and down his skin as if encouraging him to suckle more of her. Her body was ablaze with pleasure, every stroke of his tongue, kiss of his lips, and brush of his warmed breath had her squirming in delight, desperately trying to feel more of him. He had not stopped to reapply the honey, though she could still smell its floral sweetness quite strongly as his lips descended the column of her neck and began to trace large lazy circles around her left breast.
                Hermione arched her back up from the grass blanket, desperate to feel her nipple in the heat of his mouth. There were other sensations that she longed to feel, his fingers having left her hair and now circling the nipple of her right breast. “Severus,” she panted, her voice little more than a breathy whimper as she pressed her chest up against his lips.
                Whether it was her cry of his name or simply an enchantment of the honey, his lips closed around her left nipple and suckled her firmly, flicking the pebbled tip with his tongue. She squealed, both hands now threaded in his hair, tugging his head closer to her chest. It was agony; a delicious agony the likes of which she had never felt as he eased his lips back from one breast and moved to the other. Every caress of his tongue sent a tingle shooting up her spine, every press of his lips made her skin burn with need. Hermione was rolling her hips beneath him, his body now aligned over hers as if he could penetrate her at any moment.
                But instead his lips trailed down below her breasts, sweeping his tongue against the skin beneath her swells before gliding down in swooping circles around her navel. Severus dipped the tip of his tongue into her navel and she whimpered, feeling strangely excited as he tongued her belly button. But his attentions did not linger long, his lips ever moving in broad wet kisses further down the plane of her stomach until he was feathering kisses against her naked mound. Hermione cried when she felt his tongue slither between her legs, gliding the outer trek of her thigh and tracing the joint of her limb down around the curve of her flesh.
                Severus’ hair was brushing against her sensitive bits as he pressed hot wet kisses against her inner thigh and she grabbed at his head, desperate to move his mouth to her core. She was dripping, and pulsing, and needed to feel his tongue and his glorious lips against her clit. Hermione whimpered when he denied her, his lips lingering a moment longer at the apex of her thigh before gliding back up over her mound and down to her right leg. It was torture and she was not certain she could take any more of it. “Severus, please!” she panted. It did not register to her at all how very wanton she sounded, begging him to lick her slit and suckle her clit. But so wildly possessed with need was she that she simply didn’t care.
                The kiss was slow, an intimate gesture that pressed his lips fully against her core. He mouthed against her lips once, twice, and a third time, each stroke of his tongue tantalizing and teasing against her slit. He traced her lips with the tip of his tongue, her thighs clenching and squirming as he drew lazy wide circles around her nether region, all while refusing to press his velvety tongue to her clit. Hermione all but screamed her frustrations and for a moment she swore she heard him chuckle. Her chest was heaving and she was desperate to feel him, and she cried. “Please…oh please…just— aaah!” she shrieked feeling his tongue suddenly attacking her clit. It was a jolt of pleasure, an onslaught of pressure, and Hermione trembled and shook, her body quaking with spasms as he pulled his lips tightly around her swollen nub.
                Ecstasy broke through her body like a wave crashing violently against the shore. Hermione’s nails raked down through his hair, and she heard him growl but she was too caught up in the pleasures of her sudden release to notice or care. His tongue and lips did not relent and she squirmed, practically thrashing as he tongued her slit and nipped her lips as she rode through her climax. Hermione was all but a puddle of fleshy goo melted back into the grass blanket when she felt his lips gliding up her body. Much more rapidly was he moving now, his lips barely brushing her breasts before they were devouring her mouth, his tongue slithering against hers before she could catch her breath.
                She tasted herself on his tongue, and she moaned, her legs still trembling as she felt his body fully over top of her. The heat that radiated through her core was like a magnet, drawing his thick straining cock forward. Hermione whimpered, breaking their kiss when she felt his erection nudging hard against her core. Her eyes searched his as her hands scrambled to find purchase against his shoulder blades. He was going to fuck her, she needed him to fuck her. She didn’t care if that hadn’t been a part of the product’s intent. Whether it was the Lusty Wine or the Heavenly Honey that had them both so wound up, or the tension of refusing to so much as look at him over the last day, it all came boiling to a head as he kissed her once more, and pressed the weeping head of his cock at her entrance.
                A harsh and pressurized blast of chilled water caused Hermione to scream. Surprised and now soaked and shivering, she pitched onto her side, unceremoniously taking Severus with her. They were sprawled in a tangle of uncomfortable limbs, both of their bodies now half off the grass blanket. She jerked her head upright to see dribbles of water dripping from George’s wand tip. “What in the literal fuck, George?” she panted.
                “Sorry!” he cried. “You two were—” his face was beet red and he looked horrified. “That honey must have one hell of an aphrodisiac,” he said in a sheepish whisper. “I’ve been calling both your names…” he turned around. “Really, sorry,” he muttered. “But I wanted to get you to test the last thing in the basket before you spent yourselves,” he added.
                Hermione huffed indignantly. She wasn’t sure what was worse, the fact that she’d been so caught up in sexual pleasures with Severus Snape that she hadn’t heard George calling her name, or the fact that they’d been so heated with their sexual pursuits that George had literally had to hose them down. She sat up, surprised to see Severus looking cross. He was glaring at George and she couldn’t help but wonder if he was upset because the redhead had ruined their moment or because the lust-tainted product had overcome his pristine reserve and rigid control. Either way, the image of him looking furious while still sporting a raging hard-on was amusing and she had to close her eyes and bow her head to keep from laughing.
                “Erm, if you’re both alright to keep going,” George hadn’t stopped blushing. “There’s one more little delight in this picnic hamper.” He tried to look very interested in the inside of the picnic hamper as he fished out a small box. Hermione was worked up. The titular experience she’d felt at the mercy of Severus’ tongue and lips had brought her through an orgasm but left her desperately craving more, and she’d nearly had it until George had blasted them apart with a burst of water from his wand tip.
                She was waiting for Severus to speak, though what he would say she hadn’t the slightest idea. Obviously he was still hard and would be good to go, and although she’d been put off by the interruption, it wasn’t as if she’d instantly dried up because of it. The lusty haze that had doused her senses, however, had seemed to dissipate with the hosing and she found herself a bit more clear-minded. Her eyes looked Severus over. He had leaned up on his knees and was now facing George, his erection still hard but no longer raging. She bit her lower lip, not giving a damn if he would turn round and pluck it from her teeth.
                “Here,” George said and handed Severus the box.
                Severus frowned as he fiddled with the box lid, eventually opening it to reveal a singular foil pouch, much like the ones used in the Hogwarts Condom Assortment. “Another condom, Mr. Weasley?”
                Hermione noted his voice was terse. She wondered if his frustrations were directed at the product or at being interrupted, or both. But she wasn’t given the chance to ruminate on such notions as George launched into a reading from the ledger.
                “No picnic is complete without the ants, and you’ll love the way they come marching home with this novelty rubber.” He read.
                She frowned, her brow furrowing just slightly. Picnics and pleasantries were one thing. Ants were quite another. There was nothing sexually intriguing about insects, regardless if they were marching, and she was suddenly not keen to find out exactly what the ambiguous description meant. But already Severus was tearing a notch into the foil pouch, sliding the seemingly harmless and rather ordinary rubber from its sleeve. It was a clear rubber in so far as she could tell and she watched him roll it with practiced ease down over his cock, leaving just a bit of room in the tip. The wizarding world was mostly ignorant to condoms as potions and spells often took the place of needing such a device. That did not stop Severus from seeming familiar with them as if he’d used them all his life. She chased the thought from her mind before it could traipse into dangerous territory involving her housemate and the twit boy from the sex shop.
                Hermione frowned when Severus turned to face her, still leaning up on his knees. Her eyes were drawn to his cock, now leaning slightly to one side, but more so to the little black dots that appeared up and down its length. With a tentative stroke of her hand, she could feel virtually no difference between the dotted condom and his erection, which she supposed was a good thing. When he’d worn the Hogwarts house condoms he’d felt a bit like vinyl. With a sigh that she tried to suppress so as not to sound bored or irritated, she leaned back onto the grass blanket fully, brought her knees up into a tented position and parted her thighs.
                “Finish the erm— the rest of the Lusty Wine, I don’t think it keeps after one use,” George said absently, thumbing through the ledger pages, quill in hand.
                With an audible sigh, she sat up and nodded her head in the general direction of the nearly empty bottle. “Would you?” she asked and waited for Severus to hand it to her.
                He presented her with the bottle. She refused to acknowledge the way his fingers lingered against hers as they passed the glass between their hands. And she certainly refused to acknowledge that she’d let her fingers rest there as his touch had lingered. Taking a heavy quaff of the Lusty Wine, she drank all but a swig and handed the bottle back to him. He finished the liquid and set the bottle aside. For all the world she wished she hadn’t drank the Lusty Wine again because already her body was pleading for him. She vaguely remembered George stating that the formula was designed to augment and enhance preexisting attraction, and she cursed herself for being so drawn to him.
                Severus placed a firm hand on her hip. “Get up on your knees,” he said.
                It was a command, but it was different somehow. She could no more refuse it than anything else she’d ever heard him utter, but he had not demanded it of her. This was strange, but she found herself doing exactly as he had said without question. At first she’d expected him to take her from behind, but when she realized he was sliding beneath her body she stared at him with a puzzle look upon her face. She caught his eyes as his hands guided her hips down over him, his own legs now tented upward to act like the backing of a chair for her to lean against.
                There was a fathomless depth in his swirling black orbs. He rested flat on his back save for his legs, and she sank easily down onto his length, gasping as he hardened inside of her. “Why like this?” she asked, her voice husky and low.
                “I like watching your breasts bounce,” he said.
                Hermione gaped at him. He smirked at her. If George had heard any of their exchange he hadn’t uttered a word of commentary. She was half tempted to unseat herself from atop him but his hands held her firmly in place. Determined not to let him get the better of her, regardless of what twisted mind game he was playing, she rocked her hips slightly pulling up and settling down once more. It was impossible to deny how full he felt inside of her. It was also difficult to fight the effects of her augmented lust, knowing full well that once she found a rhythm it would be impossible to keep herself from enjoying the sex.
                Severus rolled his hips beneath her and she shuddered. He felt exquisite, there was no way to deny it. Even when he was being cheeky, even when she was nervous, even when he didn’t, he felt like divinity incarnate. The grip of his hands eased on her hips as she began to bounce up and down astride him. At first Hermione tried her damnedest to keep the column of her back perfectly still to prevent her breasts from jiggling as they fucked, but the effort became tiresome and uncomfortable after just a few moments. Giving up, she let her head tilt back, her long hair currently unstrained, falling down her back. Her breasts bounced hard as she rode him then, and his subtle groan did not go unnoticed.
                She was about to glance down at him, just to see if he was smirking or too caught up in the pleasure of watching her tits to be effected when she felt the strangest and rather unsettling sensation. Severus seemed to have felt it too as their rhythm was abruptly disrupted, his hands clinging tightly to her hips, stilling her in place atop him. “What was that?” she panted, already lacking breath from their engagement.
                Their eyes met and he looked as puzzled as she felt. The normal grasp he held on his unrelenting control seemed to have vanished with the strange feeling that they had shared. Hermione frowned. Perhaps it had been her imagination but he seemed to have felt it as well. She was about to dismiss it entirely when she felt it again, this time practically squirming up from atop him. “What the hell?” she cried. Severus released her hips and allowed her down. She looked more than startled and he shared a similar look across her face.
                “What’s wrong?” George asked, staring at them as if they’d both gone mad.
                “It feels like…” Hermione shook her head, unwilling or unable to describe what she’d just felt.
                “Feels like what, Hermione?”
                “Ants,” Severus spat.
                She turned her head to look at him, following his gaze down to where he was staring at his cock. Hermione shuddered, scrambling back off the grass blanket. A dozen or so tiny black dots were crawling up and down the novelty condom. She hadn’t been mistaken in thinking that she’d felt something crawling along his length, brushing the inside of her as she’d rode astride his erection. Hermione felt her stomach flipping over itself. “That’s revolting!” she cried.
                “I don’t think they’re actual ants,” George blushed, scooting over to the edge of the blanket to have a closer look.
                “Regardless, Weasley,” Severus said through gritted teeth. It was obvious he was trying to refrain from biting George’s head off. “Not exactly something that screams romantic.”
                “Oh gods, ugh!” Hermione shuddered. Just watching them squirm up and down the condom made her skin crawl. “Why on earth would you think that was a good idea?” she shouted, her face red. One moment she’d been pleasantly shagging herself silly atop Severus Snape, a fact that she was none too pleased with for her own emotionally steeped reasons, but it had been pleasant. Right up until she’d felt the enchantment of the condom crawling against her vaginal walls.
                “I didn’t say it was!” George protested, though his voice still contained a hint of sheepish embarrassment. “I can’t say it’s the right execution— bugs in your yoohoo and all…” he shook his head. “But the enchantment, once tinkered with, might be genius for other purposes.”
                Hermione glared at George. She hadn’t noticed that Severus was glaring too. When they spoke in unison it startled her. “What are you, twelve?” they had said together.
                She whipped her head over her shoulder to look at Severus as if disbelieving that they’d chosen the same turn of phrase to chastise George. Her heart skipped a beat and she felt her cheeks filling with blush. Quickly looking away, she sighed and then caught George’s eye. “Even so, George. A wriggling squirming condom…even with the best of marketing I don’t know that I’d fancy such a thing.”
                He sighed. “Yeah, well, I suppose not, but I’m sure there are other ways to tinker with that enchantment.” He was once more nose down in his ledger. “I suppose the idea of having you two finish with that particular product is out of the question then?”
                She was afraid to look back at Severus. Finishing with him was one thing, something that despite her better judgement she was more than willing to do. But she didn’t think she could do it with the buggy condom sprouting little crawling critters, even if they were only enchanted to mimic the movement of marching ants. She spoke before Severus had a chance to contradict George. “Is there something else we could test while he’s up? I’m all for being practical, but that’s a rubbish product as it is and I don’t see any need to prolong our exposure to it.”
                “Not that goes with the lover’s picnic,” he muttered.
                “It doesn’t have to go with the picnic hamper, George, just something else that we could make use of given the current circumstances,” she reminded him, hoping that he would find something that would enable her to finish shagging Severus. The voice in her mind was all but drowned, its protestations lost to her tightly wound core, which despite the antsy interruption, was still begging to be plundered by his turgid cock. “Maybe a different condom if you have any? Or something designed to— well I don’t know, something from the ‘for both’ bin maybe?”
                She would not turn her eyes back to Severus. If he had protestations or suggestions she didn’t need to see his facial expressions to hear them. But as was his fashion, he remained quiet. Hermione didn’t know if she liked this or not. They hadn’t been at it terribly long, or perhaps they had, time often seemed to slip away from her in the workshop. They hadn’t stopped for a break, but there had been nights before where they’d worked straight through, so she really wasn’t sure how late it was getting to be. When George stood up and moved over to the purple bin she sighed silently. Her body tensed tremendously when she felt Severus’ hand upon her shoulder. It was a familiar touch, concerned but somehow comforting and she both hated and loved it at the same time. It was no wonder that he often told her she should be less familiar with him. Did he feel the way she felt in that moment whenever she laid her hand on him?
                Hermione closed her eyes and drew in a steady breath, trying to calm her nerves. She was fully prepared to shrug her bare shoulder out from beneath his touch but couldn’t bring herself to do so. Perhaps he had experienced the same thing. So many times before when she had touched him she had expected him to push her hand away but he had instead let it linger. She was starting to glimpse the inner workings of his mind through her own experience being foisted upon her, even if she didn’t understand what it meant. George’s return to the grass blanket ended the moment and the subtle presence of his hand on her shoulder. It was a bittersweet moment.
                “This should do the trick,” he said and handed Hermione a shimmering silver cloth. “InvisiDick,” he beamed.
                Hermione stared at him blankly as if waiting for him to be serious. Then she snorted. “Merlin help us,” she muttered. “Alright, I’ll bite. What is it meant to do?” she asked, her voice thick with annoyance. She was afraid she knew exactly what George was going to say. She forced herself to think of the idiotic product that had been foisted into her hand lest her mind start wondering over why he’d touched her just then. He had never been the one to initiate the awkward touches that had so often come between them. A caress of his fingers against her cheek or a press of those same digits against her lip to silence her, but never in their inveigled intimacies had it been him who had reached for her. Grabbing at her to stop her from storming off, he’d done that plenty. And settling into a touch once she’d forced her hands to some place on his body had occurred before too. But what had happened just a moment ago was new and she couldn’t wrap her head around it, especially given the way she’d been avoiding him.
                Or perhaps therein was her answer. He was trying to get a rise out of her, yet again. Or maybe it was the truthish effects of the Lusty Wine or some derivative thereof. It was making her head spin. Perhaps he was being genuine or maybe it was because it pleased him to do so. Hermione forced her mind to a shutdown, which lasted all of three seconds before she was once again turning plausible theories over in her brain as to why he would lay such a comforting and well-intended gesture upon her. Thankfully George had begun to read from the ledger and immediately she forced her attentions to his every word, even if they were exactly as she had expected them to be.
                “Simply wipe the cloth over your lover’s erection for an amusing bout of invisibility,” he read, tracing his finger in the ledger. “Looks like it has the properties of the cleansing serum we’ve been using only instead of cleansing it coats with invisibility.” George shrugged. “Why the hell not, give it a go, Hermione. And if he stays up, maybe it’ll be fun to watch you fuck the air.”
                Hermione rolled her eyes. “Just what I’ve always wanted,” she muttered and turned around. She hadn’t meant to draw her eyes directly to Severus, who was now sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him. She noticed that while he was still somewhat hard that he no longer sported a fully raging erection. The offending ant-covered condom had vanished and she smirked just the slightest bit thinking that perhaps he’d wandlessly and wordlessly incinerated it while George had fetched the absurd cloth that she now held in her hand. Her eyes met his and lingered in his gaze for a moment. Something unspoken passed between them, though she refused to acknowledge it. She shifted over and knelt beside him on the grass blanket. “Here,” she said and handed him the cloth.
                Their fingers brushed, skin lingering on skin just a second longer than it should have. She couldn’t be certain if it was him who lingered or her own hand, or perhaps they had both hesitated before drawing their hands away. But like all things that involved Severus, the moment was a fleeting ethereal wisp that was there and gone before she could blink. Hermione watched as he held the cloth in his palm and drew it down over his cock. A few quick tugs seemed to do the trick because when he pulled his hand back it revealed a horrifically curious sight. Seeing him with nothing between his legs was dreadfully off-putting not only because it was unpleasant but because it made her want to laugh.
                Severus arched an eyebrow up onto his forehead and this made her want to laugh all the more. She could feel her lips pressing hard together to keep from bursting into a fit of giggles. There was something ridiculously amusing about seeing him look for all intents and purposes to be a eunuch. Hermione tried not to think about how displeasing that would be to live life without sexual organs. But her thoughts drifted away from her and for a moment a feral grin crossed her lips, which she quickly disguised by biting her lower lip. How fitting it would be for the soppy twit from the sex shop to see his beloved instructor without his manhood. She licked her lips and then blushed terribly.
                While she was certain that he wasn’t reading her mind, she knew in a moment that he must have followed her very expressive facial features because his look of curious intrigue narrowed into one of silent chastisement. She sighed. There were whole words spoken between them in the silent exchange that had taken all of two seconds and a subtle shift in eyebrows, but that did not deter Hermione in the least as she shifted her legs to climb over his lap. She frowned. “Where— how should I—”
                It was his hand on her wrist that made her words falter. His fingers curled around her skin as if he were accustomed to doing so and she supposed with as often as he touched her that he was used to it. Again their eyes met, this time their faces were much closer together and for a moment she felt that all too familiar temptation to lean in and press her lips to his. She was intent on blaming the Lusty Wine for her sudden inability to fight her baser urges in regards to his person. She was both relieved and irritated when he spoke, halting any hope she might have had for kissing him.
                “Here,” he said. Severus pulled her hand down to nudge against his erection. Hermione had to close her eyes. She could feel his cock pulsating against her palm as she curled her fingers around it, as if it were not currently invisible. She had never been one to feel something that she couldn’t see, she’d often chastised Harry Potter about helping him when he’d fiddled with his invisibility cloak. There was something about the sensory disorientation of the experience that set her nerves to a world of confusion. With her eyes closed she shifted her hips, surprised at how quickly he aided in lifting her body to align her core over his shaft.
                There were no more wriggling crawling ant-condoms to dispel her from his cock and Hermione sank with a moaned ease down his length until he was buried fully up inside of her. He filled her. He had always filled her from the very first time he’d pressed his cock into her slick heated cavern. There was no denying he stretched her and pressed against every internal nerve ending that she had. It was even more impossible to deny how delicious it felt and how much she craved it. Who in their right mind would blame her for wanting him the way that she did? She exhaled sharply and unintentionally when he braced one hand against the small of her back, her eyes flying open to meet his. She hadn’t even realized she’d closed her eyes.
                “Are you two alright?” George asked.
                Hermione nodded her head, eyes never leaving Severus’.
                “Fine, Mr. Weasley,” Severus grunted.
                “Right, well, go on then,” he said.
                Hermione eased her hips up and then settled them down, pulling her core up and down his length. Lips brushed hers and she gasped in surprise, but the sound was swallowed as his mouth engulfed hers, claiming her in a deep kiss. She couldn’t help herself. She gave in. Her fingers tangled in his hair, her hips began to rock heavily up and down in his lap. All the while he kept one hand braced against the small of her back, the other slithered its way between their bodies and began to caress her chest. It was madness. Never before in the workshop had he dared to be so forward or intimate with her. She could no more explain it than she could stop him. But she didn't want to stop him. This was different. It was not the brutal and violent sex that had shook through her core or the delicate instructional touches he’d used to teach her. This was something else.
                Panting with a whimper she broke the kiss and gazed hard into his eyes. She felt his hips rolling up beneath her and she could feel her walls clenching against him though she was not quite so close to a climax. His hands were on her shoulders, at least one hand was, the other had slid from her back to the side of her hip and was gripping her firmly, bouncing her up and down. He wasn’t leaned back or staring at her breasts and she found his eyes to be searching hers. That was more unnerving than riding astride his invisible prick. But her mind was quickly giving way to the sensations of pleasure that were coursing through her body. Sex was wonderful, even when it was with someone that wasn’t him— or so her bout in Tunis with Charlie had proved— but even more so when it was with him. She could yell at herself later for it.
                “It really does look like you’re bouncing on nothing,” said George, though his voice sounded far away. “Could you get off him for a minute? I’d like to see him have you from behind, just to see the angling better.”
                Hermione groaned. And Severus chuckled as he stilled her hips and effectively lifted her from his cock. She gaped at him and then without thinking smacked him across the chest. Had they been two different people the gesture might have been misconstrued as playful or perhaps horribly violent. But she was Hermione Granger and he was Severus Snape and in that moment his amusement did not trump her frustrations and she’d forgotten herself. Both of his hand shot forth and grabbed her wrists, pinning them up over her head as he drew her upright onto her feet. “Severus!” she cried as she was spun around and roughly pushed over at her hips.
                “You heard Mr. Weasley,” he snapped and then forced his hand between her cheeks, spreading her thighs.
                If George thought it was anything other than the two of them doing as he’d asked, he didn’t speak. Hermione cried out when he thrust himself suddenly into her. One of his hands gripped her hip, keeping her bent forward, the other wrapped around her waist, his fingers dangling dangerously close with intent to her mound. “So help me— ooh!” she cried, being pulled upright against his chest. It was an impossible position but her surprise did not keep her from pondering over how he was managing to fuck her from behind with her spine upright as it was. It presented a new angle, one that she had never felt and it was difficult not to sob outright as he thrust his invisible erection upward into her.
                “Merlin…” she heard George pant. “That’s— well that’s impressive.” She could tell from his tone that his face was as red as his hair.
                But Hermione wasn’t given another moment to think on it before she felt him withdraw from her body entirely. Her lips were posed to protest but she squealed as he grabbed her and pulled her down onto the grass blanket, rolling her until she was on her back and he was hovering over her. Her eyes were wide, half in shock and half with rage as he situated his throbbing cock between her legs. She struggled beneath him for a moment but this only seemed to assist him in his mission to penetrate her once more. She moaned. Hermione raked her fingers down his back wishing for all the world that she had claws instead of nails. He hissed and she bucked her hips, which only caused him to slam into her harder.
                They were practically feral. Fucking and growling, his lips assailing hers, nipping at her flesh. She in turn took to biting at his neck, nails digging as deep into his skin as she could manage. So carried away in their tussle were they that neither of them heard George clearing his throat several times. The icy blast of water, which hadn’t felt as cold the first time, only upended them somewhat but it was enough to knock her back from him as they’d managed to tumble into a position somewhat on their sides with her half atop him. She was panting as was he, but he seemed to compose himself first.
                “Severus I think you ought to take a look at the formulaic notes of that Lusty Wine, it must be tainted,” George said in haste. He was silent, but was on his feet and draped in his robe before another word could be uttered. He’d snatched up George’s ledger and strode to the far side of the workshop near the wash basin. George leaned over Hermione and offered her his hand. She rolled her eyes and sighed but took it anyway, allowing herself to be pulled up until she was resting back on her knees. “Are you alright?” he asked, his eyebrows narrowed suspiciously.
                “I’m fine, George,” she muttered, drawing her own robe around her figure.
                “Are you sure, Hermione? I bloody well know it’s not the Lusty Wine. What the hell has gotten into you?” he whispered.
                “Me?” she cried. “What do you mean what’s gotten into me?”
                George rolled his eyes. “Look I know he gets under your skin and all, but honestly! I’ve never seen you act like this—”
                “George, are you mad?” she barked, standing up in a huff.
He stood with her and tried not to look cowed at the way she fussed. “Hermione, don’t go flying off the handle, you were just ripping his backside up like he killed your Pygmy Puff and shredding his skin while shagging him was the only way you could see fit to make him pay.”
“Don’t be absurd!” she growled.
                “I swear to Merlin if I didn’t know better I’d say you fancied him.”
                “I do not fancy Severus Snape!” she spat rather loudly.
                “Shall we have that put in writing, Miss Granger, in case any of the neighboring shops didn’t hear you shouting?” Severus had slipped up behind her and was standing but a breath back from her.
                “Severus, don’t antagonize her,” George reprimanded. “I don’t know what’s gotten into her— or you— you’ve been a bit too— I don’t know— warm? Friendly? It’s weird,” he confessed.
                Hermione snorted. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she threw her hands up in the air. “Are we done?” she asked.
                “It would see so,” Severus said coolly.
                “I wasn’t talking to you, you great big bat!” she spat.
                “Hermione!” George gazed wide-eyed at her. “What on earth is the matter with you?”
                “Nothing!” she cried and stalked toward the coat hook.
                “Where are you going?” he called after her.
                “For a bleeding walk!” she shouted. Hermione was furious. Her emotions were raging. Her mind was racing. She couldn’t seem to handle her own body or her brain in that moment and she wanted to be as far away from the both of them as possible. She tore a hole in her jumper as she flung it wildly over her head, cursing and muttering under her breath as she kicked hard into her trainers and stalked out of the workshop. Down through the shop, stairs two at a time, she almost ran until she burst through the door and found herself standing out in the cool air of the night. The street was mostly empty, the lone wizard who had been idling across the way having scurried into the darkness of a nearby alley when he’d seen her appear like a frazzled madwoman from within the shop.
                Hermione tugged hard at the ends of hair. She glanced skyward, she squeezed her eyes shut and then forced herself to swallow the scream that was threatening to erupt from within her. She felt as if she were going to explode. She wanted to scream and cry and punch things. She’d never been a violent person, the war had taught her that, and although she’d managed to check most of those impulses with assured control over time she was slowly losing control on that facet of her personality as well. Surely one man was not meant to drive one person so utterly and blindly mad. It was chilly outside but not chilly enough to soothe the burning inferno inside of her. Without even realizing it she’d stalked off down the street, her feet carrying her faster than she ever could have imagined away from the front of George Weasley’s joke shop.
                Her stomach turned in hard knots. She was revolted by her behavior. She’d taken to brutalizing him and in front of George no less, though like he’d once said to her, he was by no means a victim in that scenario. She had never attacked another human being who hadn’t first attacked her and it made her sick just to think on it. But hadn’t he attacked her? Perhaps not in so many words, at least not physically in the workshop, but the mental barrage had been an assault. It had penetrated her better judgement and knocked her senseless, sending her into a fight or flight response of epically unbalanced proportions. Her body had chosen to fight and in their sick twisted war of inexplicable emotions she’d used her sexuality and her own body as her weapon. She all but collapsed down into the cobblestone as she rounded the corner into Knockturn Alley.
                Realizing quickly that she’d found herself in a less than savory part of town, Hermione tried to gather her wits about her but found that she could not. Severus Snape had upended her so thoroughly that all she longed to do was dissolve into the puddle in which she currently stood. She gazed down at her trainer and grimaced realizing she was standing in a puddle of a foul-smelling unidentifiable liquid. With a groan she drew her wand, cleansed her shoe and side-stepped the puddle. This brought her to stand in front of the door of Markus Scarrs Indelible Tattoos. She shuddered. Just off to the side she noticed the staircase that seemed to descend from nowhere and against her better judgement climbed it until she was standing under the faded wooden sign that rea The White Wyvern. The noise echoing from inside led her to believe that it was a pub.
                Pressing her hand against the doorknob she cursed feeling the metal heat and singe her palm. A dark laughter chuckled and she frantically stepped back, almost tumbling back down the stairs in the process as she drew her wand. The chuckle echoed again and this time Hermione saw that it was coming from the sign itself hanging over the tavern. “Sssilly little ssstrumpetsss don’t belong here,” the enchanted creature hissed. It looked a bit like an upright snake with wings, all white though faded with splinters.
                “I’m not a silly strumpet,” she snapped and stowed her wand.
                “Perhaps not a strumpet, though given your recent choice of companions it’s hard to say, but certainly silly,” said Severus. Hermione bit her tongue to keep from screaming as she rounded completely and crashed just into his chest. She hadn’t expected him to appear just behind her. It seemed logical that he would follow her out into the street and down away from the shop, if for nothing else to make himself look normal in front of George Weasley, further proving her to be doolally round the twist. She narrowed her eyes at him and made to shove past him but he stepped off to the right, effectively blocking her with his body. “Get out of my way, Severus,” she hissed.
                The sign above her snickered with its elongated hissing sound. She drew her wand and rounded on the sign, prepared to blast the Wyvern clean off its board. “Hey!” she cried when Severus snatched up her wand.
                “Unwise,” he cautioned. “It’s an enchanted tavern sign, Hermione, not a person, don’t go blasting about like a loose cannon lest you have a death wish this evening.”
                Despite his arrogance, or his concern that she chose to interpret as such in that moment, she headed his warning. She snatched her wand back from him and stuffed it into the sleeve of her jumper. “Are you going to get out of my way?” she snapped, though her voice was far less hostile than it had been a moment ago.
                “Are you calm enough to return to work?” he held her gaze hard.
                “I ought to shove you down these steps,” she spat. “You’ve got George thinking—” his finger fell over her lips and she bit at him. But Severus was quick, pulling his hand back though he made no move to let her down the staircase. “Don’t keep doing that to me! I’m not your student, I’m not your pet, I’m not your anything!”
                There was a heavy silence that fell between them buffeted by the dull din of the pub noises that could not fully penetrate the heavy wooden door. When a moment had passed he spoke, which surprised her. “Mr. Weasley is under the impressive that you are having an adverse reaction to the potion you’ve taken to help expedite your recovery from your cold,” he said tersely. “And that I am being my typical bastard self,” he added. “An aphrodisiac designed to enhance the attractions of two lovers can cause a dreadful reaction when the persons involved have a natural born hate toward one another,” he said, though she noted that it sounded more like a fabricated suggestion than a statement.
                Hermione had to close her eyes to keep from unleashing herself on him. In that moment she was just as likely to start pounding her fists against his chest— though she knew he would stop that before she could get so much as one good whack in— as she was to break down sobbing against him. Neither of those options were appealing and so she kept her eyes closed trying to count her breaths until she was certain she would not blast him with her fists or her tears. When she opened her eyes she was met with his gaze. He had not moved but he seemed closer somehow. Perhaps it was a trick of the light or maybe the moon had shifted in the clouds, but his face seemed softer. It broke her and she hung her head.
                “Please get out of my way,” she whispered. “I want to go and apologize to George and go—” She faltered. She wasn’t certain she could bring herself to say it much less actually go back there. She had been so hasty to have a place that she could call her own, even if it was under a shared roof with him that she loathed the idea of giving it up. It had been the first stable bed she’d had since she’d lost her flat. And it hadn’t seemed so taxing to put him out, something she could never have done to Molly Weasley despite the matriarch’s more than generous offer.
                “Home?” he finished her sentence.
                Hermione felt her mind flying apart. It was inconceivable and everything in her world was inside out and upside down. She closed her eyes and nodded dumbly. When she opened her eyes she noticed that he had stepped back. Not enough to let her fully by, but enough that if she wanted to pass by him, she could do so, though not without brushing his body in the process. She sighed. “You win,” she said with a heavy sob that eased from her chest.
                “Win what?” he asked, eyes wide. It was the first time she could ever recall seeing genuine confusion on his face, though at the moment it looked a bit more like surprise. “Do tell me, Miss Granger, what is it that I’ve won?”
                “Here we go again,” she muttered. “Miss Granger. Always Miss Granger when you’ve lost your nerve or you’re playing this head game or just wish to torment me or because it tickles you! My name is—”
                “Hermione Jean Granger born 19 of September 1979 under a moon in Leo to parents Wendell and Monica Wilkins— nee Albert Carl and Emma Jane Granger prior to the modification of their memories to erase said daughter from their minds during the Second Great Wizarding War. Enrolled at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as a first year student 1 of September 1991 at the age of 11, sorted into Gryffindor House where she earned the role of Prefect 1 of September 1995 and was marked to take the role of Head Girl 1 of September 1997 had she bothered to return for her seventh year of classes. Captured by Snatchers from the Forest of Dean 10 of April 1998 and imprisoned at Malfoy Manor wherein a relentless application of the Cruciatus Curse at the hand of known Death Eater Bellatrix LeStrange was administered. Yielding in no pertinent information, a Dark Arts dagger was used to permanently carve the words mudblood into the forearm and a secondary round of the Cruciatus Curse was administered until Hermione Jean Granger blacked out from inconceivable pain— I know your blasted name, Hermione!” he shouted.
                Hermione was stricken dumb. It was the first time she could ever recall Severus raising his voice with words. Not only had his volume startled her but his succinct recitation of her life summed up in those sentences had shocked her to the core. She stood staring at him, eyes wide, mouth gaping, unable to do anything in that moment. Her heart was racing. It was frightening, having heard him, not because she was frightened by him or even the way he’d shouted at her, but it was what he had said. The familiarity with which he’d rattled off her details, as if between every spoken word there rested a thousand unspoken words that he knew about her. His mind somehow knew every detail there was to know about her life and that terrified her. The only facts that were relevant had been what he’d shouted— her age, her life as a student, and what she’d endured. It killed her inside.
                She took a tremulous step back, then another, and another until her back was pressed against the grimy wall of the pub. He did not advance. He did not speak. Severus stood still like a statue, eyes never leaving hers. Hermione drew in a breath but was too startled to inhale it deeply. She couldn’t shake the chill that now raced down her spine. Biting her bottom lip from habit, she pressed her teeth so hard into her flesh that a blossom of warm copper burst into her mouth and she sobbed. Hermione sank down into her knees, drawing her arms around herself as her body shook. Two strong arms pulled her upright and at first she struggled but after only a moment she gave in, collapsing against his chest. “You will not do this here,” he said, his voice hard as if he hadn’t just shouted his lungs out at her.
                Overcome with emotions that she could not explain, she allowed him to guide her down the stairs and back to the cobbles of the alley. When her trainers made contact with the stones she felt the trickles of rain starting in and she all but fell into his arms. A blur of sensations surrounded her. His cloak drawn around her, the rain on her head, the heat of his body, the chill of the night air, everything crashed down on her at once and she felt dizzy. And then her eyes went dark.
                When she woke she jolted upright. Hermione searched frantically around the room, panic seizing her chest until her eyes settled on him. He was seated as he had been when she’d first woken from her exhaustion after contracting Flinge. His arms were crossed over his chest, his eyes trained on her face. She was in her bed in her room at Spinner’s End, though she noted that she still donned her jumper and joggers, everything that she’d worn when she’d stormed out of the workshop except for her trainers. Hermione closed her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
                “For what?” he asked. “You had a panic attack and fainted,” he said with a casual shrug.
                “Please don’t do that,” she muttered. “Don’t dismiss me.”
                “I am not dismissing you, Hermione. I am being factual. It is more than apparent that our emotional entanglement has given you enough grief, I do not wish to further complicate it at this time.”
                She shook her head, closing her eyes but then she snapped them open, staring hard at him. “You said our,” she said sharply.
                Severus sighed. Slowly he stood from the chair. “Yes,” he said and came to stand beside her, though he did not move to sit down. He searched her eyes and held her gaze until he was certain she was not going to speak. Only then did he summon her desk chair over to the side of the bed and sink down into it. His eyes never left hers. “We have quite the problem,” he said, starting slowly.
                “I love you and you don’t love anyone. You’re not in a relationship with anyone but we’ve found ourselves in this inadvertent relationship,” she said, realizing just how hot her voice sounded as the words spat from her lips.
                “You don’t fancy me,” he said with a sneer.
                Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. “I’d smother you right now if I thought that were an option.”
                “As if you aren’t already,” he muttered.
                “With a pillow, you arse!” she snapped. “I’d smother you with a bloody pillow!”
                “Be my guest,” he said with a bit of a ghoulish smirk. “Put one if not both of us out of our misery.”
                Hermione shook her head, a mirthful laugh leaving her lips. “You don’t get out so easily,” she muttered.
                “I’m all too aware,” he said and then crossed his arms over his chest.
                Silence fell between them. She was tucked carefully beneath her duvet, no doubt his doing, as her last conscious memory had been falling as a sobbing wreck into his arms outside the pub in Knockturn Alley. And she hadn’t even been able to pop inside for a pint in which to drown her troubles. Hermione had never been one for the drink, finding that all too often a simple glass of wine disoriented her, but when she’d stormed out of the workshop she would have downed a Hemmingway tower of whiskey if it meant being rid of him in that moment. But now, sometime later though she had no idea how long later as she was rubbish with keeping time and hadn’t the foggiest idea for how long she’d been unconscious, all she longed for was the comfort she knew that he could provide. It was quite the contradiction.
                “You can’t—” she began but was cut off.
                “I cannot give you what you want.” He said.
                She shook her head. “You can’t know that. Especially since I don’t even know what I want.” This seemed to sit uneasily with him but he did not make to protest it. Hermione pressed her advantage. “I know what I don’t want,” she said cautiously. “I don’t want these head games. And I know— before you start in on that— I’m no victim or innocent, but I don’t wish to play them anymore. It’s too much,” she confessed. Though once a puzzle and a challenge to crack the ridiculous games they’d insisted on playing they now served only to plague her mind and question what few shreds of remaining sanity she had.
                Severus said nothing. He leaned slightly forward in the chair, resting his elbows atop his knees. This brought him closer to her but not close enough to touch her. She wasn’t so bold in that moment as to lean up fully and place her hand on him. The last time she had done so, he’d leaned against her shoulder in silence for an hour crying his silent tears. She hadn’t been able to prove that he’d cried that night, but it had been something of the like. And it had resulted in their current predicament. Or it hadn’t. She no longer knew up from down left from right or front from back as far as he was concerned. She exhaled slowly and mustered up her Gryffindor courage.
                “Whatever reasons you keep for using my surname are your own,” she said and then quickly continued on before he could address her on the matter. “Call me what you like in the workshop, I’d expect no different there because of how you address George, but when we’re away from there—” she faltered for only a moment but quickly regained her words. “When where’ here— here at home in your house— regardless in what capacity— friends, not friends, lovers, enemies— you will address me as Hermione.” She swallowed hard. “Am I being clear?”
                “It is not so simple—”
                “Damnit, Severus!” she shouted and then quickly cursed herself for raising her voice. “Sorry,” she muttered. She gazed hard into his eyes. “It is simple. It’s really quite simple. Hermione. Her-mi-o-nee,” she said, stretching out the syllables of her name. “Merlin, Viktor Krum didn’t have this much trouble with it and it was his second language,” she said with a huff. For a moment she thought she saw the fourth cousin of a smirk playing at his lips but she dismissed it. Despite her own self-mocking reference she was being serious. “Hermione. Say it.”
                Severus glared at her.
                “Severus,” she warned and then leaned up until she was perched up on her knees teetering on the edge of her mattress, hovering just a few inches in front of his face. “Say. My. Name.” she punctuated each word with a solitary prod of her finger against his chest.
                “Don’t be asinine,” he muttered and then with an effortless push of his hand against her shoulder sent her toppling backward into her mattress. She cried out in surprise and threw her arms out, which caused him to roll his eyes. “Don’t be melodramatic,” he added with a sigh.
                “Don’t be an ass,” she quipped. Hermione righted herself and then situated herself on the edge of the bed, legs hanging over the edge brushing his. She tugged quickly at her jumper, grumbling when it got stuck as she pulled it up over her head.
                “What the hell are you doing?” he growled.
                Hermione flung the jumper from her body. She glared hard at him, wearing only her bra and trainers. “Keep your pants on, Severus, you’ve seen it all before,” she said and then thrust her arm out in front of him. She lowered her limb across his lap and he flinched. Hermione braced her hand on his leg to keep him from pushing her back though if he had any intention of doing he did not follow through with such actions. She closed her eyes, drew in a shaky breath and muttered. Her skin began to shimmer and the pale creamy complexion of her right arm dissolved, revealing the garish red markings that were forever carved into her skin.
                Trembling fingers took his hand and pulled it over her arm. At first he tugged his arm back but she did not relent in pulling on his hand until his fingers covered the word. She grabbed his other hand and brought it to her neck, cupping his palm around her throat. She wondered for a moment if he’d ever seen the scar across her neck where Bellatrix LeStrange had nearly slit her throat with her twisted silver knife. It was a scar, much like the words on her arm and the tattoo on her arse, that was hidden at all times by a glamour. She said nothing but when she was sure he would not release his hands from where she had placed them, Hermione drew back her hands. Again her fingers shook as she drew them first to his collar, undoing the buttons at his throat and then to his left arm, rolling up his sleeve to reveal his forearm.
                Though he had not undone his own glamour she knew exactly where to place her hand, one just over the invisible dark mark and the other over the puncture wounds on his throat. He flinched at her touch at first but she did not pull away. Hermione’s eyes stared hard into his, forcing him to meet her gaze. “Two damaged people do not one whole person make,” she whispered. “I know that,” she added. “But—”
                “But what?” he whispered. Hermione closed her eyes but his words forced them open. “But what, Hermione?”
                “I don’t know,” she confessed. She did not look away from him in that moment. She was frightened. She was uncertain. She didn’t know what she felt, only that she felt less uncertain with him.
                There was a stillness in the air. A quiet that permeated her mind and her heart and it was something she had never experienced before. The utterance of his spell was so soft that church mice might have mistaken it for the wind but she felt his skin shift subtly beneath her palms. His glamour was gone. Tears welled up in her eyes but she forced herself to keep them from falling. She blinked through them, not letting her gaze waver from his. When she could hold back the water in her eyes no longer, she sniffled slightly before speaking. “I feel for you,” she whispered.
                She would not taint the moment by saying she loved him. She wasn’t certain she knew what love was or how to love or that what she had thought was love was actually what she felt for him. How could anyone who had been through what she had been through love another human being? She didn’t love herself and she knew that attempting to love another without loving one’s self was a pretty painted lie at best. But she did know that she felt for him. Even if she couldn’t articulate all of those emotions, even if they drew her to him inexplicably while simultaneously pushing her away from him. She had feelings for him.
                “I do not need you to feel for me,” he whispered. She felt his hand slide back from her arm but she squeezed her grip on his forearm and it held his hand at bay. “Hermione—”
                “No,” she whispered. “Not pity, Severus, not that kind of feel,” she could feel the tears leaking down her cheeks though she did her best to keep them from her voice. “I have feelings for you. I can’t say I love you— you refuse to be loved and to love— and I’m not even sure I’m capable of love— but I feel things for you— with you— when I’m with you.” It was the least articulate she could ever recall being. Mentally she cursed her mind for not organizing her words before speaking, she hated sounding like a jibbering idiot. “I wish that I could explain it better, but it’s not so simple.”
                The half-hearted scoff that left his lips amused her but in a sad way. When he released his hands from her throat and her arm, she did not make to keep him there, though she did not pull her own hands away from where she covered his scars. When Severus swept his hand up the sides of her face and into her hair her breath caught in her throat. He pulled her hair back from her face, raking his fingers through her unruly curls for a moment before pulling back from her entirely. Doing so pulled his throat back from her hand and she eased her arm down, letting both hands now rest over his left forearm. She trembled when he placed his hands over hers, feeling her chest tighten when he lifted her hands from his arms.
                Severus clutched her hands together, both of her smaller ones fitting into just one of his, but he encased her hands with both of his palms. He remained in her desk chair and she perched on the edge of the bed. There were words to be had, more things to be said, though she could not bring herself to say them. When a considerable amount of time had passed and she’d stifled more than a yawn or two, Hermione flexed her fingers in his palms, which caused him to immediately release her hands. She looked into his eyes, though she hadn’t really stopped staring into them from the moment she’d touched him, and the tiniest of smiles crossed her lips. He looked as he always did, pensive and stern, aloof and calculating, but there was something more even if it was there only just so. She saw the tiniest hint of vulnerability in him; the humanity of a scared and scarred individual that she all too often wore on her sleeve. It made her heart swell and without thinking she flung herself forward and hugged him tight.
                The gesture had caught him off guard and practically knocked the wind out of him. With a great huffed exhale, Severus collapsed back into the chair with the added weight of her arms now flung around his figure. He sat motionless for several moments before prying her back from him. She frowned but he shook his head. “That chair is not suited for that,” he said.
                Hermione rolled her eyes. “Then bloody stand up,” she muttered and stood upright. She waited to see if he would stand. When he did she waited a moment longer before closing the distance between them and wrapping her arms firmly around him. Embracing Severus Snape was something that felt entirely too good to be true. She bit her lower lip to keep from sobbing when he slowly drew his arms around her figure and rested them against the small of her back. She had been held in his arms before, she’d woken in his arms, but this was different. This was not just an embrace, it was something more complex and yet far simpler. This was a hug.
                It tickled her heart to think on it and before she could help herself she was giggling against his chest. When he tensed at her chuckling, she exhaled deeply trying to chase the laughter from her chest. “Sorry,” she whispered though she couldn’t help but grin. In that moment she was particularly glad that her face was hidden against his dark shirt.
                Severus pulled her back and for a moment appeared to search her eyes. “This does not change anything,” he said.
                Hermione shook her head and again rolled her eyes. “This changes everything, even if you can’t see it that way. Or won’t see it that way,” she said. She leaned her forehead forward and let it rest against his chest. There was silence between them. She noted the way he held her back just slightly, arms still around her but not clutching to her as they had been a moment ago. Whether he was trying to distance her intentionally or because he was now uncertain of himself she didn’t know. She didn’t care. She was right about it changing things.
                “Severus,” she whispered after another long indeterminate silence.
                “What?” he asked, waiting a full minute before answering her.
                “Tonight was awful,” she said against the fabric of his shirt.
                “Indeed,” he said.
                “I didn’t mean what I said.” Her words had him pushing her back from his arms. “I am sorry, I didn’t—”
                “Don’t,” he said and then pushed her gently back toward her bed. When she didn’t budge he pushed her more firmly until she yielded beneath his touch and sank back down until she was once more sitting on the mattress. “I don’t want to hear what you’re sorry for or what you think you’re sorry for,” he admitted. “It’s tasking and tiresome and often unnecessary.”
                “But I feel—”
                When he sat down beside her she shut her mouth. “You feel a lot of things, Hermione.” He said. Severus sat with his outer thigh pressed against her outer thigh but otherwise did not touch her. It was strange but not unpleasant. A long silence followed wherein they sat side by side, legs touching while she chewed over what he had said and exactly how he had said it. His words stirred her attention. “You should apologize to Mr. Weasley tomorrow evening,” he said and then turned his head to the side to gaze at her. She noted the wariness in his eyes. “I made an excuse, but an apology would not go amiss.”
                She wanted to be angry or at the very least flippant with him but she knew he was right. Hermione nodded her head, slowly at first, but then more assuredly. “I don’t like falling apart like that,” she confessed.
                “I imagine not.” Severus did not turn away from him but rather twisted his torso to stare at her more directly. She in turn shifted her body, bringing their knees together. She resisted the urge to place her hands on his lap or to lean in and rest her head against his shoulder. It was a difficult temptation. “What?” he asked her when he noticed the way she had begun fidgeting with her fingers.
                “I’m sorry—” his piercing glare silenced her words on her tongue. “Right,” she tried again. “It’s just— the other morning— how did he—” Hermione tripped over her words. “Gods, I know I shouldn’t be obsessed but I am and I can hardly help myself, though I think if you could get inside my head you’d understand it, even though I don’t and I live inside my thoughts half the time.”
                “Seldom do we fully understand our own thoughts, Hermione,” he said.
                This struck her as strange but it did not go unnoted that it was a deflection. Hermione realized, however, that she had not fully asked her question. Pausing to gather her words first in her mind and then in her mouth before speaking, she looked him squarely in the eye and nodded her head. “How did you meet him?” she asked. She knew it was a gamble. She knew that it was likely to set him off and after all the progress, or what she presumed to be progress, they had just made it was likely to ruin the whole thing. But she couldn’t help herself. “I know it’s none of my business, but I can’t help it.”
                “Indeed it is not,” he said. Severus did not make to move back from her nor did he break her gaze. This boded well as far as Hermione could discern though it was several more long minutes in painstaking silence before he spoke his vague answer. “In the same shop you did.”
                Hermione wished for all the world that she had thought to be more specific. She had wanted to know when he’d met the boy, what he’d been doing in the shop, and why he’d plucked up with the fellow in the first place. She knew those questions were definitely none of her business and asking him to elaborate and share such details was likely to get her a scowl and a reprimand. “But you don’t love him,” she said. It was a questionable statement. She’d done the best she could to make her voice sound sure as if it was a fact and not a wavering question that had left her lips.
                Silence followed. Hermione’s heart dropped into her stomach and her stomach fell down to her toes. Had he lied? Did he love Nigel? Had he only been trying to prevent the messy aftermath of her broken heart by saying that he loved no one? She had asked the question before, the question of Severus loving the blonde boy. Now it seemed to haunt her, her mind frantically attempting to recollect anything that would have given her cause to doubt his statement on the matter from the first time. When he spoke she hung on his every word, listening with every fiber of her being.
                “Nigel is the closest thing I have allowed myself to have in regards to what you label as love.” It was a simple statement, one that begged for further explanation. “I do not love,” he said. Those words she’d heard before. “But I do have a fondness for him.”
                Hermione felt a tremendous ache in her heart though she supposed it was ridiculous to feel such a thing. She had only recently entangled herself in his life, though with her preexisting knowledge and relationship with the man it felt like far longer. It felt like decades. She hadn’t been smitten with him when she was under his tutelage that honor had only ever once befallen a professor, and regrettably it had been the pompous ass Gilderoy Lockhart. She hadn’t even thought about him once he’d been exonerated. Most of the days after Voldemort had been vanquished had been a blur. If truth be told most of the days leading up to his vanquishing had been an even bigger blur. About the time she’d been captured in the Forest of Dean with Ron and Harry was about the time her memory refused to cooperate. But she knew that even if her memory had been crystalline that it would find no such longings for the man there.
                These reconciled notions of how recently she’d insinuated herself into his life did nothing to quell the pain she felt for not being the one for which he was fond. About as much must have been printed on her face because he was shaking his head with a most audible sigh. “What?” she asked. “You answered my question.” She watched the diehard habit of his fingers clutching and pinching the bridge of his nose. It was something that she herself had mimicked not so long ago but hadn’t seen him do in ages, perhaps not since before he’d become their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor in sixth year. She marveled at this small wonder, her eyes lingering on his lips as he spoke.
                “You are something entirely different, Hermione,” he started and then seemed to think better of it. “I have history with you,” he added. “Whether you like it or not, it is a fact that cannot be so easily overlooked.” To what in particular he was referring she couldn’t be sure, and perhaps he simply meant being her professor when she was a student at Hogwarts, but either way it seemed to register with him enough for him to continue along in his forthcoming mood. “I will not deny what you and I both already seem to know from first-hand experience,” he gestured between them. “I’ve said that before. But if you wish me to be honest, and I am certain you do…” here he paused but only to draw in a breath. “You are not someone that I ever would have chosen for a bedfellow. You are not someone with whom I would readily or willingly find myself coupling. You are not someone with whom I would have thought that I might someday have a fondness for.”
                Hermione looked as if she were about to burst into tears. Severus seemed to sense this. “You are, however, someone who is going to have to grow a thicker skin. Your bloody salt bath is going to ruin every blessed stitch of clothing in this house otherwise,” he said rather sternly. This seemed to snap her from her need to cry but he quickly followed it with more words which kept her head spinning. “That said— things have changed, whether I want them to or not. You are here. And do not mistake me— this is not a case of ‘whichever witch or wizard it could have been’,” he paused and gazed deep into her eyes. “I am not so foolish as to take on a mess of this proportion with just anyone.” Again there was a pause. “It is because of my pre-existing history with you that I let myself falter.”
                “What does that mean?” she asked, quick to question. Hermione’s head was once more swimming and she needed answers.
                Severus sighed and for the first time since she’d found herself at his door that night dreadfully afraid that without proper knowledge of a man’s tongue between her legs that she would get the sack, Hermione saw honest confusion in his eyes. “Hermione, contrary to your belief, I don’t have everything calculated and planned out to the letter. I am only a man, a fact that I am certain I have mentioned before at the very least in regards to my physical restraint when it comes to you.” He blinked several times before continuing. “I am a calculating person and I do not take risks unless I am mostly certain of the outcome, but I am not perfect, far from it. I am flawed and I make mistakes. I ask myself a dozen times a day if bringing you into this house was a mistake.”
                “And?” Hermione was almost afraid to hear the answer.
                “Often the answer is yes,” he said simply. “But it is also often no.”
                “Severus—”
                He shook his head. “I cannot be any clearer, Hermione. That is the truth. I never should have brought you in but at the same time I do not regret doing so and certain things have arisen because of my actions for both the better and the worse.”
                For Hermione he might as well have been speaking in Ancient Runes. It made no sense whatsoever but he seemed to take solace in his confession. It was her turn to sigh. “I still don’t understand what you mean when you say our history made you falter,” she said. She supposed that she could follow his fractured logic about his chances and mistakes, even if she was a bit insulted by his phrasing of the whole ordeal.
                Severus pursed his lips. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
                “To you, perhaps, but I’m not omniscient,” she muttered.
                “Despite the working conditions which had been constructed for us at Weasley’s, I imagined that having you in the house would be only slightly different from cohabitating with you at Hogwarts. Though the castle was enormous and populated with an extra thousand individuals, I did not see avoiding you while here to be the issue.”
                Hermione’s eyes widened and she stared at him in disbelief. “Are you joking?” she said. When he shook his head she let her mouth hang agape. Had he seriously thought that taking her in under his roof in a house that hadn’t even started out with a spare bedroom for her to sleep in was going to be anything like living in a boarding school that took up residence in a castle the size of London with grounds that put the Pembrokeshire Coast to shame? Had she not been so flabbergasted at his statement she would have laughed.
                Her look of astonishment prompted his words. “If you recall I was rarely about in the house save for when I wanted to be seen,” he said.
                This caused her jaw to drop further open. “Damnit,” she hissed. “I knew you were making yourself purposefully scarce—” she froze mid-sentence and then scowled. “And have been making yourself purposefully present ever since I stormed out of my bed to the shower that morning Nigel saw us together.”
                Severus allowed the ghost of a smirk to cross his lips. “I did tell you that I—”
                “—am very good at not being noticed or detected when you do not wish to be,” she said tersely.
                Severus snorted. “Don’t be cross, it’s not worth having a row over. You were fussed and I was giving you every opportunity to confront me on the matter. But in a surprising move on your behalf you chose silence,” he shrugged as if they were discussing the simple errors in a chess game stratagem.
                Hermione held her tongue. She was learning the hard way to pick and choose her battles with him. She was still flustered with the notion that he thought their attempt at cohabitation would somehow be as simple as it was during their days at Hogwarts. She could not fathom how he thought a castle— wherein his chambers were located in any number of discreet places away from her dormitory in Gryffindor Tower— would have been even remotely close to the situation that they now found themselves in at Spinner’s End where her bedroom was literally across the hall and they shared a bathroom. She realized in that moment that she had never even given a second’s thought to the fact that he— or any— of the faculty had resided in the castle. McGonagall she supposed, and Dumbledore as well, but it was honestly not something she’d ever thought of, outside of Hagrid, whose hut she had visited often during her school days.
                After another moment’s contemplation she sighed. “Right,” she said and then stood from her bed. Hermione had never been one to pace but she felt restless in that moment trying to take everything in. “So now what?” she asked after only a moment’s turning about alongside of her bed. She stood facing him, just in front of him with her knees pressed against his as he remained seated at the edge of her mattress.
                Severus quirked an eyebrow up on his forehead. “Now what, what?” he asked, his voice gentle but not without intent.
                “Don’t be so thick, Severus,” she snapped, her feelings surging through her once more. “I’m asking—”
                He shook his head, and she swore for a moment that he laughed. “Don’t ask me, Hermione. You are the one with the feelings,” he said.
                “I should smack you for that,” she quipped. She leaned forward slightly but noted the way he straightened when she did.
                “Defensive,” he said and then narrowed his eyes at her. “And I believe I have also said I won’t have any of that,” he added.
                Hermione searched his eyes and sighed. She nodded her head and then quickly sat down beside him. “I don’t ever recall feeling so violent,” she confessed. “I can’t say it’s you— I mean that’s foolish, even if there is a correlation, I can’t blame you for suddenly feeling the urge to act out physically, I mean I can, but that’s not very responsible of me,” she realized after a moment that she was rambling and she blushed. “But it worries me,” she confessed.
                Severus nodded slowly. “It is something to be addressed,” he said after a moment’s consideration. “Though not tonight.”
                Hermione sighed. “I suppose that’s it then?” she asked, titling her body to the side so that she could face him without straining her neck.
                “What’s it?” he asked.
                “You said ‘not tonight’ and that’s usually when you start to take your leave,” Hermione frowned.
                “Usually,” he shrugged. “And then you fight with me, or beg me to stay, or pin me to your mattress for a shag.”
                “That’s unfair,” she said. “I have never pinned you to any mattress for a shag,” she muttered, though she did feel rather embarrassed that he was right about the other two things. Severus said nothing. He did not make to stand from her bed. When she noticed that he wasn’t leaving, she slowly crept her fingers over to the top of his thigh. “Maybe just skip the fighting and the begging?” she offered quietly.
                “And go straight to pinning me to the mattress for a shag?” he asked.
                Hermione grunted. “Contrary to your popular belief, Severus, I do find things other than your dangly bits to be interested in when it comes to you.” He snorted. “I’m serious!” she protested.
                “Though I am inclined to disbelieve you,” he started. “My derision was not at your confession but your phrasing.” Severus let both of his eyebrows ease up a bit onto his forehead. “Dangly bits?” he repeated.
                Hermione flushed fully, the sting of red claiming her cheeks. She bit her lower lip but could not keep herself from laughing. “I don’t know!” she could not bring herself to look into his eyes in that moment. “It seems so crass to say…well…other things,” she shrugged.
                “Indeed,” he said. “Says the woman who has no trouble…” he shook his head, seeming to think better of it. “But no matter.”
                She sighed. “Look— I didn’t think this was going to be easy—”
                “Congratulations on that astute thought,” he said. For a moment he sounded almost exactly as if nothing had never occurred between them. Not sex, not Nigel, not the insane living situation in which they found themselves, not the bizarre job which they were both holding down. For one blissed utterance he was the man that had relentlessly made her Potions class an intolerable hell. That made her smile. But the smile faded when she realized it was that intolerable hell that he’d been referring to, their past, however uninvolved, was what had been the catalyst for the predicament in which they currently found themselves.
                “Will you see him again?” her mouth seemed to jump thought trains faster than her mind could keep up with.
                “Nigel?” he asked. Severus frowned. “I don’t suppose telling you that I do not wish to discuss it will sit well with you.” She shook her head. “Very well,” he said. “I imagine so.”
                Hermione nodded. She had expected as much, even if for the moment they’d shared something frivolous and amusing. She tried not to linger on the disturbing thoughts of the young boy that was apparently going to be sticking around in his life, regardless of where she stood with him. “Indeed,” she took his word and forced it between her lips.
                Severus sighed. It was a heavy sigh that sounded heavy with frustration and annoyance. “I will tell you as I’ve told him, Hermione. This is not so easy as ‘pick a partner.’ There is no competition between the two of you and I am not interested in entertaining one of you over the other. Truth be told I’d be just as happy not entertaining either of you, my life was less complicated serving two masters.”
                Hermione gasped. “You don’t mean that!”
                Severus chuckled. It was a dark and mirthful sound. “You are right, I don’t. But some days it feels like it.” He paused and stretched his arms up over his head, yawning. This seemed to startle Hermione and he rolled his eyes. “It’s a yawn, Hermione, not the 13^th use for dragon’s blood.”
                She glared at him. “It’s just not something that I’ve seen you do. It seems oddly human,” she said with a hint of snipe in her voice.
                “Just like when I caught you spying on me shaving,” he said and then slowly stood from her bed.
                “I wasn’t spying!”
                “This is true. You were blatantly staring. A spy would have at the very least tried to look as if they were interested in something else when caught,” he said.         Hermione was up on her feet with her arms crossed over her chest. This caused him to chuckle. “Sit down, Hermione.” He quirked an eyebrow up at her when she remained rooted to her spot, arms tugged tightly around her figure. “No?” he asked. “Fine, don’t sit down, it matters very little to me.” When he turned to walk out of her bedroom he froze feeling her hand clutch at his arm. “I thought we were skipping the fighting and the begging?”
                “In exchange for a shag pinned to the mattress,” she said with a hint of humor in her voice. “All you pinned to the mattress was a list of complications and flippancies,” she added, her voice ripe with bite.
                Severus rounded on her. “You are insatiable,” he said gripping both of her shoulders suddenly.
                Her eyes grew wide. “I was only teasing, Severus,” she said and then bit her lower lip. It was hard to deny that when he’d grabbed her she’d felt a thrill shoot through her body. Even more so that she’d lied to him outright just then. She had mostly been teasing but a part of her had hoped that he might make good on the good-natured banter they had started. While things had gotten out of hand in the workshop she had not been so quick to forget how very close he’d brought her to a climax in their sexual tussle and how very frustrating it had been not to achieve it.
                Severus narrowed his eyes, searching her eyes for several moments. “My instincts tell me not trust a word you are saying,” he said. “That you wouldn’t be fussed in the least if I tossed you down onto that mattress, tore off your clothing, and ravished you until you begged me to stop.”
                Hermione felt her breath catch in her throat. “That’s awfully—” she cleared her throat, the hoarse and scratchy vibrations sounding far too lusty for her own good. “That’s awfully detailed for someone who seems so fussed by my insatiable tendencies.”
                “You are dreadful,” he whispered, leaning his lips close to her ear. She shivered. He chuckled, more darkly this time as he traced two fingers up her jawline. “If I tossed you down right now your knickers would be sopping.” He let his lips hover just at the shell of her ear, his tongue tracing the faintest line against her. “Don’t think I don’t know what I do to your body, Hermione.”
                At first she made to jerk back from him, but instead she pushed herself forward, wrapping both arms around his neck. He grunted as she ground her hips against him. “Don’t think I don’t know what I do to your body, Severus.”
                He growled and then dropped his hands to her hips, pushing her back at first only to draw her hard up against his body. “Not tonight,” he grumbled but ground his hips against hers as she had done but a moment before.
                Hermione pulled back from him but did not release her hold on his shoulders. She knew she was not strong enough to pull him down onto the mattress, just like she knew she had not been strong enough to hold him down on the toilet seat the night they’d shagged in the bathroom, but in that moment she tugged him and they tumbled backward and down onto her bed. It was not graceful, though there was seldom much as far as grace was concerned when it came to her body and movement, and how he’d managed to keep from crushing her outright she hadn’t the faintest idea. “Never pinned me to a mattress?” he asked.
                “Technically you’re pinning me,” she panted from beneath him, the tumble having stolen her breath.
                “I can fix that,” he growled and with a greatly hefted effort he pulled himself off of her body and yanked her atop him.
                Hermione was sprawled over him, mostly straddling his torso though a simple shift of her legs could have easily aligned her core over his cock, which she’d felt pressing into her the moment she’d brought their bodies together. Maybe he was right. Maybe she was insatiable. She couldn’t deny the effect he had on her body. And while her mind was asunder, she was not about to deny that mentally she wanted what he could offer her physically. Her heart was thrumming, she was warm, and she realized that for the first time since the night she’d come to him to be guided through her first bout with anal sex, that she was completely exposed. Though she was still dressed, her glamours, all of them, were undone. He hadn’t noticed anything but the tattoo on her arse the night he’d taken her anal virginity. But things were different now. He was free of his glamours and she of hers and there was something dangerous and exciting in that prospect. They were exposed to one another and she wondered if he realized it.
                “I thought you said not tonight,” she whispered, sliding her body down his just slightly so that her core rested over his cock. He was hard, straining up through his trousers and it took all the self-control she had not to grind her hips hard down into him.
                “I did,” he growled. “And then you pinned me to the mattress.”
                “You’re an asrse,” she groused but leaned down over him and pressed her lips to his. No sooner had she kissed him then she found herself being pushed off him. “Oh!” she cried as she was dumped onto her side. Hermione was prepared to fuss, prepared to fight, but she was not prepared for the way he grabbed the side of her hip and pulled her body against his, mashing their pelvises together. She hissed but ground her hips against him as he moved his hand down over her arse and squeezed her cheek.
                “I said not tonight,” he panted against her lips.
                Hermione gave up trying to rationalize the situation. She gave up trying to understand it. In that moment even though he was saying one thing and doing another, she gave in. Lips met lips, hers to his or his to hers she didn’t know and she didn’t care. There was a struggle between their bodies as they tugged and pulled at one another, his hands fumbling with her bra, which was the only remaining vestment that had kept her chest from view after she’d removed her jumper to bare her scars to his eyes. Her fingers slipped more than once trying to undo his trousers and between the two of them they were both grunting trying to pull down her joggers.
                Severus captured her hands and for a moment they both held completely still. She heard him muttering though couldn’t make out the words. A stiff breeze swept over her body and she squeaked. Some wandless spell had left her naked and at first she looked stricken but when she realized it had done the same for him she grinned, albeit sheepishly. “How did you do that?” she asked.
                She had been expecting him to torment her and give the sarcastic answer of magic, and when he didn’t she found herself all the more endeared to him. “I’ve always wanted to,” he shrugged. “Never had the opportunity.” Their lips meant once more, but what he hadn’t spoken didn’t go unnoticed in her mind. Never had the opportunity meant that he had never performed such a spell in front of Nigel, which was the proof she had sought when trying to discern if the boy was a muggle. But she chased the thought from her mind, storing it away for later. The last thing she wanted to think about while he was heating her body with his pleasures was the other person in his life for who he felt a fondness. She was certain that it was bold of her to assume that he felt fondness for her, especially when he had not expressed as much in so many words, but in that moment she didn’t care.
                She would care in the morning, and perhaps immediately once they’d finished having sex, particularly if he did not wait until she was sleeping to depart her bed, but in that present moment all she cared about was his body. Hermione was restless, her limbs stretching out over every inch of him and Severus seemed to share her frenetic energy, tracing and touching her everywhere. She could no more explain this strange desire to feel every bit of him than she could keep herself from doing so. Hermione was pleased that he seemed to be in a reflecting mood, copying her desires in that moment.
                There was an urgency that drove their movements and yet their combined exploration of each other’s bodies was thorough and somehow more intimate than anything she’d ever felt. Her lips roamed the planes of his skin, and for once she was rather pleased that the light in her bedroom had been on. It allowed her a view of him that had stolen any words she would have had. He was naked, she had seen him without his clothes on many times. But this was different. In releasing the glamour that so carefully hid his dark mark and his puncture wounds, he had exposed a myriad of other scars that littered his body. Scorch marks and burns that looked as if lit wand tips had been blazed into his skin smattered through his chest and over his ribs and carved markings that looked angry ran up and down his legs.
                It was impossible not to drink him in and she felt her heart swell even though she knew it was against her better judgement to do so. He had not simply forgotten to recover himself, he had chosen to remain exposed, showing her everything that he had. A particularly wicked scar curved around joint of his thigh where his leg met his torso and it caught her eye the minute her lips had trailed down his chest. She’d been absently stroking his cock with one hand, a bead of precum lubricating her palm as she did when she pressed her lips to the length of the scar that had fascinated her.
                His sharp intake of breath stilled her for only a moment and when she gazed up the length of his body he was staring down at her. Eyes met eyes and she felt her face fill with coloring, though it was not so much of a blush as a warmth that radiated from his gaze into her face. There was something forbidden about seeing him in this way and although she knew it was absurd to attach meaning to it as he would late say it was complicated and a whole host of other nonsensical things, she couldn’t help but feel as if he were showing a fondness to her in that moment by doing so.
                Hermione traced her tongue around the curve of the scar before she snaked her lips down over his pubic bone and began to lick a tender trail of kisses up the length of his glistening shaft. She yelped when he pulled her up away from him, her eyes blurry with confusion. He spoke not a word and for a moment she wasn’t sure what was happening as he pushed her away from him, guiding her head toward the foot of the bed. She was about to turn around and protest when he grabbed her hips and pulled her body back over him. “Oh!” she cried, falling awkwardly onto his chest.
                She was facing down the length of his body, resting over him so that her head now hovered just above his cock. If he’d wanted her to crawl atop him surely he could have just said so. But before she could process his strange gesture she squealed at the sensation of his tongue parting her slick folds. “Oh fuck…” she moaned, her thighs trembling. It was a position that she vaguely remembered reading about in the tome he’d given her though she was buggered if she could remember the name of it. Her spine seized with pleasure as he licked her folds once more, his tongue waggling at her slit. Heated breath caressed her netherlips and she shuddered, her body tingling on edge.
                It was difficult to concentrate but she attempted to do so anyhow, lowering her head to suckle the tip of his cock into her mouth. She was rewarded with a hiss and a groan from Severus and another slow firm lick of her womanhood. He would drive her mad if he kept up his ministrations. Hermione took several moments to find a rhythm that allowed her to bob down the length of his shaft without choking herself or being startled by his erratic licking tongue. It was a curious sensation, pleasuring him while being pleasured, but not without its merits. When she felt his cock tensing in her mouth she braced herself as best she could, prepared to swallow what she knew was coming.
                Severus pulled her back with surprising fluidity and she whimpered at the sudden loss of his tongue. But then she was flipped onto her side, much as she had been the night he’d claimed her ass and for a moment she wondered if he were going to take her there again. He hauled her leg up and back over his hip but she felt the tip of his weeping shaft pressing at her core. With a moan he pushed into her, his lips assailing her neck and shoulder, though not in the brutal fashion that they had the morning he’d staked his claim on her flesh in the shower.
                Hermione whimpered and moaned, rocking her hips back against him. The angle was deep and penetrating and yet shallow and teasing at the same time. It drove her ma. It was more than fitting for the man that was delivering it to her. She craned her neck back trying to capture his lips in a kiss and succeeded for a moment before she was sobbing out her release as he slammed her hard enough to make her come. She shuddered and convulsed against his body, panting as she felt him quicken his thrusts. A moment later he burst within her, groaning and letting his teeth sink down into the supple flesh of the side of her neck.
                She was spent. How long they’d switched positions and explored each other’s bodies before he’d pulled her up onto him to tease her with his tongue while she blew him she couldn’t say. And then he’d shagged her senseless in a spooning position that was difficult to untangle from. When her breath finally eased into something normal she turned slowly onto her back, staring up at him as he laid on his side over her. “Not…tonight?” she whispered.
                Severus shook his head. “Not tonight,” he repeated.
                She longed to kiss him. She longed to pull him down into her arms or to push him onto his back and rest her head atop him. How she’d come to use him as a pillow a few nights ago she hadn’t the slightest idea but such a notion was tempting to her now. They laid that way for a long while in silence but the room was chilly with no blankets or clothes to cover her sweat-slicked post-coital body. She shivered after a time and then bit her lower lip. “Will you stay?” she asked.
                Severus was silent. She wanted him to stay. Even if it meant nothing to him. Even if it meant heartache for her in the long run. There was something comforting about his presence. She was reminded briefly of how he did not cuddle but in that moment she didn’t care if he slept curled up at the foot of the mattress, she just didn’t want him to leave the bed.
                “It’s not wise,” he said after a moment, though she noted that he made no move to get up from her bed.
                “I know,” she said. “But you said not tonight,” she leaned her forehead against his chest. “Maybe you meant that about leaving my bed?” she offered. It was a stupid stretch but she was nothing if not a clever witch.
                Severus scoffed. “You are pushing it,” he said but then heaved a tremendous sigh. “It so happens that I find myself inclined not to move,” he groaned when she made a giddy sound akin to a delighted giggling squeal. “Take that for what it’s worth, Hermione, and nothing more,” he added and then turned onto his back.
                Hermione knew he meant what he said. If he was staying in her bed it was more than likely simply because it was easier not to get up. And that was probably true. His bed was all the way across the hall and it would mean listening to her fuss and possibly argue with him some more. She realized with a great sadness that she did often make it very difficult for him and that perhaps giving in to her was really the lesser of two evils. But she refused to acknowledge that realization for the moment, choosing instead to snuggle herself quite closely to his body. “Will you get the duvet?” she asked. Somewhere between removing their clothes with his spell and tossing about on the bed, her duvet had slid completely to the floor.
                “Hermione,” he warned.
                “I’m cold. And you’re already about to fuss at me for snuggling close to you,” she snapped. “So get the bloody duvet and I’ll back off.” It was audacious of her, she knew. But if he wanted to disconnect or play things for face value she was going to do the same. When he did not move she opened her eyes wide. A small smile graced her lips as she pulled back from his figure. His eyes were closed, though she could tell by the way his chest rose and fell that he was not sleeping. “Oh you’re ornery,” she muttered. Though she hadn’t wanted to get up at all, she would freeze even if she’d pressed herself to him all through the night. Retrieving the duvet, she flipped the light switch down and closed her bedroom door. The room was dark save for the trickle of moonlight that danced through the window.
                Hermione slid back into bed and plopped the duvet down mostly over her own body. There was a shuffling and a rustling and a kicking of limbs, though not entirely her own as Severus tugged at the oversized comforter and straightened it out properly over them. He had remained on his back after fixing the duvet, though his head was on its side facing her. She stared into his eyes, what could be seen of them in the darkness of the room, and waited. After several long moments in silence he rolled his eyes. “Go on,” he muttered. Without a word Hermione nuzzled her head under his arm and up onto his chest. At first his arm was casually draped over her back but as she adjusted herself to be comfortable she noticed the way he slid his hand down to cup her figure more closely to him. She smiled. It wasn’t the answer, it wasn’t much at all but it was a start.
                “Goodnight, Severus,” she said. He grunted. “Oh go on,” she muttered.
                Severus swatted her backside. “You will be the death of me yet.”
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