Flame of Existence

--> See Introduction for warnings/disclaimer.

FLAME OF EXISTENCE
/ by Bella


Chapter Eleven

Hermione quietly shut the door behind her as she left the dungeon classroom, and she smiled. She hadn’t necessarily meant to kiss him. It just happened, as do most anonymous things like that.

When he had told her that she wouldn’t be serving detention with him anymore, she could have sworn all the air had left her lungs. She could only imagine what her face had looked like when he said it.

Then she had kissed him... twice. And the second time he let her.

Hermione couldn’t figure out that man. He was an arrogant sonofabitch, but she knew there was so more. She knew that he harbored far more knowledge that extended way beyond potions, and she wanted nothing more than to express to him that she did. He would probably take it as well as the first few kisses had gone.

The smile that was playing at the corners of her mouth faded when she saw Harry and Ron up ahead in the hall, waiting for her. The last thing Hermione wanted was to have to entertain ‘the boy who lived to drive her mad’ and ‘the boy who didn’t give a shit about anything’. She sighed and walked over to them.

Ron smiled at her, not noticing the sudden tension between the other two people standing across from one another. He missed the fact that both Harry and Hermione’s eyes averted everywhere else besides each other.

“Defense Against the Dark Arts next, guys. What do you think Lupin will– whoa.” Hermione looked to where Ron was staring, bemused. Projected onto the wall was an image of Professor Snape hopping around in an unusually tight bunny suit.

While both Harry and Ron started clutching their sides in laughter, Hermione’s face reddened and she angrily made her way to Professor Lupin’s classroom after, of course, taking the spell off.

Harry straightened up soon after, staring at Hermione’s receding back, with a look of surprise and bewilder overriding his fine features.

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Everything within him screamed ‘no’. The blood that ran through his veins, his heart, his mind... it all told him to stop giving in. His conscience was losing the battle, and he didn’t know how much more he could take.

It was hard for him to grip the idea of having relations with a student of his. No, not relations. Sex. She lusted after him. Why, he did not know, but it was evident when she kept telling him that she wanted to kiss him.

It was wrong. Everything about it was wrong. He couldn’t be feeling this way. Hell, she couldn’t be feeling this way. Dumbledore would execute both of them. But then again, maybe not. Severus hadn’t missed the twinkling in the Headmaster’s eyes when he had agreed to keep giving the distressed witch the Dreamless Draught.

The young woman couldn’t have feelings for him. There were no grounds for it. He was old and quite unattractive. Sure, he was smart as a whip, but he was also an arrogant, heartless fuck and everyone knew it– even himself. She couldn’t have seen more. There was absolutely no way.

Severus rubbed the spot between his eyebrows that harbored the tension from deep thinking, and sighed. He was at a crossroad and he didn’t know which way to go.

A mere twenty-four hours ago he had been so sure that what he was feeling was immoral. But was it really? And on top of that, what was he really feeling?

The last thing she had told him before she left his classroom that morning still lingered on his restless mind. She had told him, in a nutshell, that Potter would never be her boyfriend because she liked him.

Suddenly, Snape felt like he was back in sixth-year drooling over Lily Evans. It was almost the same situation, except this time it didn’t involve a witch his own age. Hermione Granger was, well, a lot younger than him.

Her lips had been so soft, though... So enticing, inviting. He had wanted nothing more than to kiss her back that moment, but he knew he couldn’t.

Snape’s chest swelled a little at the fact that Hermione had said that Potter would never measure up to himself. He could have kissed the bright, little muggle-born witch right then, but he didn’t.

Though, he did wish he could have.

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The rest of the day passed unbearably slow for Hermione. It seemed like Professor Vector was talking monotonously on purpose. Peeves had pelted her with ink bombs every time she had passed the second hallway past the library. On top of all of that, she had started detention with Filch.

Her tasks hadn’t been too bad, seeing as Filch had left Mrs. Norris in charge so that he could run the halls catching out-of-line students. Argus Filch, the head caretaker of Hogwarts, had given her lines. LINES. Filch never made bad students do that.

By the end of the fourth hour, Hermione genuinely thought that her hand was going to fall off of her wrist. She had looked towards the door more times that not for a trace of Filch. At ten past midnight, he entered the room and mumbled dismissal to Hermione, who jumped up quickly and headed out of the door.

Presently sitting her room staring out at the night sky, which was as cloudless as it had been that morning, Hermione thought over the day’s events again carefully.

She was now doubting herself on the whole Snape situation. She didn’t know if she was moving too quickly, and if she had to slow down. Or she could be moving too slowly and should speed things up a bit.

An obnoxious yawn escaped her lips, sending her mouth open wide and her eyes clenched shut. Hermione walked over to the table where the vials of the Dreamless Sleep Draught resided, and picked up a container of the blue potion.

Unstopping it, she lifted it to her lips and paused, and thought for a moment.

Uncertainty had forced its way into her bones throughout the day, and maybe by not taking the potion, she would be able to see if she was truly getting better. If worse came to worse, she could always take the potion if she had a nightmare, and then fall into a peaceful slumber.

Should I risk it, she silently asked herself. Deciding that maybe she should see if she could sleep on her own, Hermione re-stopped the vial and put it back into the holder.

Her bed was warm and ready when she entered it. She snuggled down into the large comforter and fluffy pillows and closed her eyes. Within minutes, she was asleep.

Sometime during the night, the light dreams vanished and a more terrifying one replaced them.

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Draco Malfoy’s pointed face unblurred, and he slid his fingers under the hem of her shirt and then up her stomach. When his cold fingers reached her breasts, he latched on a squeezed tightly, leaving fingerprints in the sensitive flesh.

Hermione, still sleeping, through the blanket off of her as if she were being seared by it.

Hermione yelled out, but nobody would come.

Incoherently, she clutched the sheets beneath her hard enough that her knuckles turned a ghostly shade of white.

Draco undid her pants and pushed them down to her ankles– far enough to allow her legs to spread as much as he needed.

A groan of frustration left her lips. Why couldn’t she wake up?

He crept between her legs, probing her softly at first in search for the entrance into her core. Finding it, he dropped all mercy aside and pushed into her quickly. Buried to the hilt, he moaned slightly, ignoring persistent tears from the witch beneath him.

The tears rolling down her cheeks mirrored those in her nightmare. She let out a loud sob which echoed throughout her quiet rooms.

The lighting in the dream changed a bit, and the wizard standing over her was no longer Draco Malfoy. It was the greasy-haired potions master that she had kissed earlier that day.

His features were tense as he moved himself in and out of her. His fingers curled in her hair gripped tightly at the back of her head. He pushed into her as far as he could, violently, and Hermione let out another blood-curdling scream.

In her large bed, Hermione was disturbingly twisting her body and her Head swung from side-to-side as the dream continued.

His eyes, always cold and black, were staring down at the writhing witch in amusement.

He picked up the speed again and jerked her head back with the handful of hair he was currently holding, and smiled as her breasts lifted and fell with each connection of male-to-female.

Hermione felt as if she were being burned, literally, by his large cock, and she fought off the urge to vomit while her head was still being held back.

Finally, his movements started to waiver from consistency to sporadic thrusts, and then with one final movement, he spilled his seed into her unwilling cunt. He let go of her hair as he yanked his cock from out of her, sneering down at her as usual.

She adjusted herself and stared up at her professor.

“Miss Granger,” he said, bringing his hand up and slapping her hard against the cheek. “As oblivious as you truly seem to be, your actions lately have been unacceptable.”

Hermione bit her lip, looking up at him with wide, teary eyes.

“You are a whore, and nothing less.”

She gasped loudly in her sleep, the intake of breath hanging in her throat.

Whore.

Whore.

Whore.

Hermione, you are a whore.

Whore.

Abruptly sitting up, Hermione clutched at her tightening chest as she choked out a sob. That was probably her worst nightmare to date, and she knew it. Her tired eyes still filled to the brim with tears, shut as the panic attack swept through her sleepless body.

Grabbing the post for support, Hermione jumped out of the bed and attempted to hold back the whole new wave of nausea that passed through her body like a wave. She bolted for the bathroom door and made it to the toilet just in time.

Once the contents of her stomach were emptied completely into the loo, she tiredly and sorely dragged herself to the couch where she sat down abruptly and put her head into her hands.

So, the nightmares had come back, and worst of all, it had switched from Draco being the raper to Snape. Snape. The man and wizard she... liked. On top of that, he had called her a whore. The last time Hermione Granger was called a whore, the speaker got a mouthful of her fist.

It was just a dream, she told herself. However, in the back of her mind, she remembered in her fifth year how Harry had recurring nightmares that gave him information on Voldemort’s progresses.

So, did Snape really think she was a whore, or was that some cock and bull story she pulled from her sub-conscience? Either way, it made her sit down and think about how she had been acting over the past couple of days.

The time line in Hermione’s mind showed herself that she had been acting a bit out-of-order, and not only because she was his student.

Groaning loudly at the thought of haven actually done something wrong, Hermione choked back a fresh set of tears. She honestly hadn’t meant to come off of as a whore. She wasn’t, really. In all actuality, she was everything but. She had never had a serious boyfriend, save for the correspondence between herself and Viktor Krum, which ended quickly. She had never set out to flirt with any wizard her age, yet now with Professor Snape, she realized that she had been doing wrong, and all too quickly.

Her mind shut itself down again as the familiar angsty fingers of depression sunk into her bones again. Her eyelids drooped and she stared out across the room at the sleeping paintings hanging on the walls.

She didn’t even consider taking the potion, for she knew that either way she wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. As the hours continued to roll by, Hermione couldn’t get out of her head the image of Snape panting solo above her.

The sun started to rise, and as the shimmering rays leaked out over the school grounds and into Hermione’s window, the still-awake witch mumbled, “whore” repeatedly, her eyes still focused on an unfixed object.

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She was the last to enter double potions that day, and in result, was the first to be scowled at.

“Fifteen points from Gryffindor,” Snape said shortly as he glanced at Hermione as she entered the room. His breath caught at the sight of her. She looked like she had when she had entered his classroom that Monday after she had been raped. Her eyes were swollen; Her hair laid in limp waves down her back; and her face bore an apathetic pose that didn’t move.

Class went on as usual. Snape took many points from Gryffindor, and awarded as many to Slytherin. The soft simmering of the potion the seventh years were attempting to brew was especially difficult. Hermione, running on no food and practically no sleep, felt faint sat down, allowing her potion to turn a dull shade of green.

Snape cleared her cauldron almost immediately and asked her to stay after class again. Harry bottled his potion and walked it to the front of the classroom, where Snape sat watching his every move. He handed the vial to the teacher and went back to his seat. The other seventh years followed in suit, and by the time the last vial was handed in for a grade, the bell rang.

Hermione grabbed her light bag, and walked quickly out of the door along with the rest of the students, ignoring the calls from Snape behind her.

End of Chapter Eleven / To Be Continued

A/N: Yes, I am aware that this chapter isn’t all that exciting, but it’s really important considering the development in the story. You might think it’s a step backwards for Hermione, and that probably is true. But then again, wouldn’t that just give room for Snape to take a step forward? Hm... we’ll see. *evil grin* :D

Your reviews this past week have rocked... Some of you are so demanding. I love it – please don’t stop.

;)