A Rock and a Hard Place

After dinner in the Great Hall, everyone returned to their respective dormitories. Snape made certain he stayed in his rooms until after 10, when he could reasonably expect most of the Slytherin House plotting and gossip to have died down. Then he turned out of his rooms and headed toward the library, eyes alert for rule-breaking students in the corridors. Luckily, he didn’t run into anyone but Mrs. Norris on his circuitous route to the hospital wing.

He knocked on the door and checked the wall clock. Ten thirty.

“Yes?” hissed Madam Pomfrey, barely opening the door.

“It’s I,” Snape said in a low voice.

She paused, then retreated a step to let him in. “Frankly, Severus, I’m surprised to see you,” she said.

Snape let that comment hang in the air. He was certain Madam Pomfrey had a small fear of him and was happy to use it to his advantage. When he spoke, he leaned down a bit too close to her and was gratified to see her draw involuntarily back. “How is my patient?”

“She could be released tomorrow,” Madam Pomfrey admitted reluctantly

“And, er,” Snape did not quite know how to approach the topic of Trudy’s mental state, post miscarriage. “How is she feeling?”

At that, Madam Pomfrey gave him a searching look. Snape had insisted that there was no personal relationship between himself and Trudy and had professed ignorance that there might be even the merest chance of her being with child. Seeing Madam Pomfrey’s expression, he Occluded carefully, but he could tell that she was not much fooled. “If you mean, is she upset about what has transpired, then the answer is no,” she said crisply. “But you should ask her yourself.”

She led him to Trudy’s private room and opened the door. Trudy was reading a first year spellbook. At his entrance, she gave a little start and set the book down. Madam Pomfrey discreetly backed out and shut the door.

“Madam Pomfrey says you’re feeling better?” he said, more statement than question.

“Yes.”

Snape had a sudden thought that she would make a good student at Occlusion. “Then you’re not, er, bothered by what’s transpired?”

“I told you, no.”

This wouldn’t do.

Snape sat down on a chair by her cot and leaned toward her. “It’s no good, Trudy. If you aren’t happy about it, you must say something. You aren’t the kind of woman who can live with such secrets.”

“Seems like you know more about me than I do,” she said pettishly, then she blushed. After a second, she said, “I’m not really bothered by it. I have Elizabeth. You don’t like children.” The blush darkened to crimson. “I didn’t mean to suggest that you’d want—" The blush had carried to her hairline and what he could see of her ears.

“Trudy.”

She would not look up.

“Are you unhappy? Do you wish it were otherwise?”

“You know I do,” she whispered at the thin coverlet.

“What do you wish?” he said, his voice equally low.

“I wish—wish I knew whose man you really are. Wish I knew I could trust you.” The blush was still flaming. “Wish this whole business had gone dif—“ She halted the tumble of words for a second, then said brutally, “All the usual soppy crap. Why bother to ask?”

“It shall go differently now. But you must trust me.”

She gave a bark of laughter. “I have to. Dumbledore said so.”

“Ye-es.”

At his calculating tone, she looked up. “Why are you pushing it with me? You’ve been upfront about not liking me, from my looks to my personality. Why blow hot and cold with me? What is it? That you can’t make up your mind?”

He felt her words go straight through him. She had put her finger on it. “You aren’t,” he ground out, “the kind of woman I ever imagined I’d want.” His harsh assessment hung in the air.

“You thought you’d be with some pretty witch with green eyes, someone strong and brave,” she said. Snape couldn’t bring himself to answer. “And here I am, kind of…weak and timid, not even a witch, some kind of barely magical…pariah, I guess.” He still didn’t trust himself to answer. She hadn’t said anything false. “So what’s to like?” she pressed on with false cheer. “Why blow hot at all?”

Yes, why? He had asked himself that question from the beginning. He had to admit the truth. “I find,” he said, leaning close and speaking quietly, “that in spite of what I might once have thought, that I like you, even admire you. You are not a powerful witch and never will be. But I work well with you.” He fumbled for the right words. “We are not great beauties, but we get on well.”

“Why not hold out for someone smarter, prettier, more powerful? You can get interns to ‘work well’ with you.”

That had been the sticking point up till now. Her Wanderer perceptivity was ever sharp. But Snape was beginning to think he was done chasing a green-eyed chimera. He had debts to pay on that score, but perhaps some dreams ought to be let go…

“Do you have need of me?” he asked, meeting her eye.

At that her confidence crumbled before his eyes. “Maybe the time for that is over,” she said in a rusty tone. She wrapped her arms around herself and looked away. “I’m tired. You should go.”

“I think not.” He stood and loomed over her in the bed.

“D-don’t do that.”

He leaned down, scant inches from her face, so close he could see that amber chip in her right eye, the amber edging toward gold and green and finally violet blue, a universe in her iris. “I shall never tire of your eyes,” he found himself saying.

For once, she couldn’t answer, her gaze locked fearfully with his.

“I know you need me,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper, holding a faint hint of menace.

“You have all the power--!”

“Yes.” He leaned down and pressed his mouth gently on hers, feeling her lips tremble. Then his hands were on her, sliding under the thin blanket, feeling her surprisingly full breasts. She was wearing the granniest of granny pajamas, an obvious choice, given her surroundings. In frustration, Snape unbuttoned the top few buttons, enough to allow him to plump up her breasts and set his thin lips on her skin. He heard her intake of breath and felt her hands jerkily run over his hair and shoulders. Her heart was hammering under his mouth.

He turned and waved his wand at the door to bar it against Poppy’s intrusions. “Muffliato,” he muttered. Then he pulled off his cloak. “I haven’t come up here at this hour to trade obfuscations with you,” he said, hanging over her again. “You need me…and I’m going to help you.”

She swallowed, keeping her gaze averted.

“Look at me,” he said.

“I’m afraid to.” Her voice was small.

“Why?”

“Your eyes are so black…. Seems like I can’t see anything in them, but they see everything in me.”

It was the best description of them he had heard yet. He settled himself on the narrow cot, balanced over her body, his weight supported on his forearms on either side of her head. He threaded his fingers in her hair, nearly brown but glinting dark red, so like the other one...but different. Now he could gently but firmly tip her head up.

The dark blue eyes fell on him with a pleading expression, and when he saw that, he allowed his weight to rest more fully on her, pressing her thighs slightly apart, letting her feel him.

“Severus...”

He lowered his mouth to hers, swallowing whatever she might say. Then he pressed his pelvis more firmly into hers. The coverlet and their clothing stood between them, but he knew she could feel him grinding into her softness. She opened her mouth on a moan and he pushed her breasts together with his hands before lowering his lips to them, biting and sucking her through her pajamas while he slowly drove his erection into her barely parted thighs.

“Open for me,” he grated. He reached down with one hand, feeling under the blanket until he found her waistband, then sliding his hand deep inside to the sticky wetness—ah, so much! For him!

She tried to clamp her thighs together and roll away, but he had his knees inside of hers and used his hip to keep her pinned beneath him.

He reached inside her knickers again, probing her slick, plump lips then sliding a knowing finger down to her heated entrance. Even in the uncertain light, he could tell she blushed furiously at that, and then she shifted her weight suddenly, trying to unbalance him with her hip. Snape quickly grabbed her wrists and pinned them over her head while he rested as much of his weight as he dared on her fragile frame. “Why fight me?” he said, his face hovering over hers. “Poppy’s just outside…and I know you want me. I can feel it.”

Her mouth twisted. “You—you only want me because I’m available a-and—"

A tear ran down her cheek, and she couldn’t wipe it away. Her indignant words choked into silence. Snape couldn’t help himself. He leaned down and ran his lips lightly over her tear-stained cheek. He could feel her body shudder under his with each suppressed sob. At last he said, “I won’t have you shut me out. You need me, and I will help you. I will not disappoint you.”

She tensed. “What did you say?” she whispered.

“I swear; I won’t disappoint you.”

He felt a great tension ooze from her body. “A promise from you must be very valuable.”

Cautiously, he let go of her wrists and ran his hands over her half-exposed breasts again. “Some think so.” He took a nipple into his mouth through the thin cotton of her top and began working the garment off her. For long moments, all he heard was her guttural noises of pleasure as he moved from one breast to the other. At last, he began pulling up yard after yard of nightgown. When he raised it over her head, he got a glimpse of her rosy, full breasts, and his cock thickened.

Trudy tensed again. She was still sore and didn’t trust anyone, even the oddly considerate yet eternally prickly Professor, to have full control. He seemed to sense her mood. With a smooth motion, he slid under her, putting her atop him on the narrow cot. His hands were around her waist, a strangely exhilarating sensation, and he was pressing her down on his cock.

At that, Trudy’s pussy became plumper and oozed out fresh wetness. Wordlessly, she eased herself down on him, letting her knickers slide on her slick flesh.

His long fingers insinuated themselves inside her knickers and firmly opened her pussy lips. Trudy cried out softly, unable to move. She heard his breath alter. It was such a strange sound coming from so contained a man that she opened her eyes. His own were glittering blackly at her in the gloom. He could not seem to speak. He raised her hips and tugged at her knickers.

They fumbled with their clothes, both expert and novice at the task. At last Snape pulled Trudy’s thin body over his again, and she hesitantly threw a thigh over his hip. He seemed unable to tear his eyes from her face, watching her every expression. It unnerved her at first, as she felt strange and a little frightened to be mounting him so soon after what should have been a devastating loss to her, but which somehow seemed more a relief. Snape’s clever fingers were again spreading open her pussy, which she imagined as being as pouty and glistening as a fresh-bitten peach. She slid her fist down the shaft of his cock, marveling again at its thickness and length. She positioned him, pulling his shaft off his stomach. Then she slid her pussy over the bulbous cock head, already wet with pre-come. Oddly, the sensation didn’t hurt. Instead, she felt a pleasurable fullness.

One of his hands was curved around her breast, plumping it up. Trudy took a breath, then slid all the way down his broad cock. Now his cock head was rubbing and stretching open the very sensitive spot deep down inside her. She gave a startled cry and bounced on top of him. The ridge of cock head stroked her special spot as surely as a thick finger. A wave of lust swept over Trudy. She felt starved for him, her pussy ravenous. She rode him with single-minded intensity, feeling that prominent cock ridge sliding authoritatively over her pulsing pussy walls while Snape’s long fingers held her pussy lips firmly open and back, so that her tumescent clitoris slid along his cock shaft.

She was panting now, close to orgasm but somehow not reaching it. She longed to speak, but lust was obliterating language. Dimly, she heard his own ragged breathing. One of her breasts was bouncing with each of her bobs on his cock, while her other breast was being gently squeezed, the nipple free in the air. Just then, Snape worked his fingertip halfway inside her already engorged pussy, and Trudy froze. A solid, powerful orgasm gathered deep in her pussy, then rolled over her like a tsunami. She thrust her hips forward, getting his hard cock shaft flush with her clit, and grunted with each wave of her climax.

Just as she was coming down, she felt his cock swell enormously inside her. The feeling twitched her pussy walls open wider, and Trudy helplessly came again on a harsh moan, while Snape gripped her hips and thrust up into her, spraying the entrance of her womb with his seed.

He began rubbing her clitoris almost absently with his thumb as Trudy continued to come around him in small spasms. It felt to her as if she had come through the Arctic and had finally found a pool of hot, swirling water.

At last she pulled herself off his cock and sank to the bed in the curve of his body. Snape's whip-like arm snaked over her breasts and held her arm. “You shall resume with me tomorrow,” he said in a low, commanding voice. “I shall take you to Hogsmeade. You will stay at the Hog’s Head—"

“The what?” Trudy murmured.

“I can’t have you stay here. The students will suspect, if they don’t already. You shall stay at the Hog’s Head. And then we’ll get you a wand.”

“I’m not magical. You said so,” she said on a yawn. “Abracadabra, right?”

“A wand,” he said evenly. He stood up and began dressing. “I don’t care if it’s all for show. I want you to have a wand.”

Trudy made a mew of assent and passed into pleasant, dreamless sleep.

Snape pulled his cloak around himself and let himself out.