A Dish Served Cold

Chapter 15 – Consummation

Hermione was terrified but at the same time an odd sort of intellectual curiosity was stirring. As horrible as the idea of sleeping with Snape was, there was sense of heading out into the unknown as well, resulting in a strange mixture of dread and anticipation.

She followed him out of the library back into the living room and saw that the House Elves had cleaned while they had been occupied. Slippers and clutter were gone and it looked more austere and less homey.

Severus escorted her through another door that opened onto a short hallway. One door on the left stood ajar revealing an office, tidy and cozy, with desk, chair, parchment and stacks of books. The other two doors were shut and he hesitated fractionally before opening the right-hand door. A single glance had her blushing to the roots of her hair.

It was the bedroom.

Severus was still a little shaken by her response to his kiss. He’d kissed her mostly to see if she would flinch from him. He’d had no conception that she would kiss him back, convinced that the most he would get would be quiet tolerance. However, he had once more underestimated Hermione.

This would be far easier on him than he had thought. Oh dear. He only hoped she would find it less unpleasant than she was afraid it would be.
He opened the bedroom door and had a moment of panicked horror as he realized the time was come. What the hell was he supposed to do now?

Entering the bedroom behind her new husband, and wasn’t that a weird thought, Hermione tried to slow her heartbeat by sheer willpower. This was ever so much worse than exam time. At least when she was taking a test she was reviewing something that she was already thoroughly familiar with. This was like taking the practical when all you had ever done was read the text. It occurred to her that she was gibbering a bit, even if it was just inside her head.

She took slow deep breaths and felt the Maiden’s Ease potion working its magic on her. It wasn’t an aphrodisiac but it was designed to calm the jitters as well as dissolve the hymen. Her first time wouldn’t be painful the way it was for Muggle girls, but it would probably still be embarrassing and awkward.

Especially in this room.

Obviously, Salazar Slytherin had been a sensualist and probably a total pervert. The bed was big enough for an army to stage maneuvers on and it had four posters in the shape of, good God, more snakes. The emerald green velvet drapery and comforter were lovely however, and the snake motif was picked out in silver thread, making it glint and glitter in the candlelight. It had a canopy of sheer green silk that draped over the top and then fell in elegant folds.

The nightstands were mahogany with ebony inlay that matched the huge wardrobe that ran across the entire side of one wall and it wasn’t a small room. Hermione had been in smaller ballrooms before.

“Wow, this place is…” She trailed off not wanting to insult the Slytherin founder to the current Head of House.

“So appallingly horrific that it makes your eyes want to crawl out of your head and writhe on the ground in agony?” Her husband finished her sentence with a tone that dripped with disapproval of the room, the furnishings, and everything it stood for.

“Well, I wouldn’t have put it quite that way, but yes,” she agreed.

“How would you have put it?” he asked with apparent genuine curiosity.

“I was going to say that it is the kind of room that would put a bordello to shame,” she answered with a shrug. He gave a bark of laughter and then smothered it with his hand.

“A comparison that I have made several times myself.”

“Do you really sleep in here?” She was horrified at the thought.

“Sadly, it is a requirement. All of the House monitoring devices are keyed to this room and despite my best efforts, I have been unable to shift them,” he grimaced as he eyed the room with distaste.

Hermione was deeply amused by the thought of Severus doggedly trying to escape this monstrous temple to decadence. His meticulous nature must revolt at the obscene amount of space given over to luxuries.

“Um, is that a swimming pool?” she enquired as she moved around the bed to peer at the rocky grotto that took up another corner of the room.

“Hot springs.” He frowned in censure.

“Well, that I can deal with,” she admitted and gave the tub a yearning look.

“Yes, well, I’d prefer if it were in another room; the mermaids are very annoying.” His lips were pursed and in his stark black robes he looked like the local vicar come to chastise the heathen.

She found the whole situation suddenly ludicrous and collapsed on the end of the bed as the laughter just bubbled up and out of her. She couldn’t catch her breath, she was laughing so hard and Severus stared at her as though she’d lost her mind.

“I-I’m sorry, S-Severus,” she gasped out between peals of laughter. “But there is a war on, we just got married and here we are, discussing room décor.” She collapsed again giggling and he favored her with a sympathetic look.

“The mind finds ways to cope.” He spoke the words gently but she sobered instantly. He reached out a hand to her and all of a sudden she was terrified.

“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted, her voice trembling as hard as her hands were.

He said nothing, merely drew her against him. There was a cautious exploration in his movements and she tried not to flinch as he tilted her head back. He placed a kiss on her lips and she could feel the warmth of him. She had always imagined him as being cold but he wasn’t at all. She was the one who felt cold, her dread turning her to ice.

He kissed her again, lingering over her mouth, his breath tickling her face. He didn’t have bad breath, she realized; in fact there was an herbal scent to it that she couldn’t place. His silk robes were soft to the touch, though the embroidery was scratchy against her exposed flesh. He smelled good, better than she had ever imagined that he could.

The kiss was not unpleasant and she was finding that responding to it wasn’t a chore. She moved a little closer and returned the kiss as best she could. Her experience in this area was limited to the clumsy groping she and Ron had experimented with years before. That had ended in both of them giggling madly, it had caused a deepening of their friendship, but they had never gone past the kissing stage. Ron had felt too much like a brother.

Severus was definitely not kissing her in a brotherly manner. In fact, there was a quality to it that was making her breathing ragged and her body tingle. No one had said anything to her about that. It most certainly wasn’t in any of the books, either. Nor was the way his hand was tracing circles along her back and how it was hypnotizing her, tricking her body into relaxing against him.

His other hand brushed her hair away, setting the charms to tinkling, and then his mouth was trailing across her jaw down to her throat. She had a sudden flash of concern as his lips grazed her neck – stories of Snape the Vampire rising in her mind – but it was his tongue, not his teeth, that was drawing little noises out of her. She was gasping and short of breath and scared and exhilarated and Oh My!

His hand was dropping down to touch her breast now; she wondered if she was supposed to touch him back. He hadn’t said so but it only seemed fair somehow. She raised her hand and rested it on his shoulder then realized she hadn’t a clue what to do next. She simply stood letting his long clever fingers work the bodice laces and then slip down to stroke one hardening nipple. It was as though a fire was being ignited in her breast but it was actually burning much lower and she arched her back in pleasure.

She’d had no clue that the sensations could be so heightened when it was someone else’s hand doing the caressing. He muttered something and she found herself floating upwards, feet dangling above the floor. She was levitated until her breast was the proper height to be taken in his mouth and she moaned and twisted in his grip, the combination of weightless suspension and the hot wetness of his mouth drawing pleasure out of her, leaving her inarticulately whimpering.

The other breast was freed and he turned his attention to it, and again she was shifting restlessly, seeking something to hold onto as she burned. Her hands were tangled in his hair. Yes, it was a little greasy but she was far beyond caring. The texture was very fine and like corn silk under her fingers.

Somehow her dress had slid down as his hand dipped lower and she had tilted her pelvis towards him in supplication. She was throbbing and ablaze and some primal part of her knew the cure was in his hands. His fingers slipped past the silk of her panties to touch her, making her gasp and cry out, needing whatever he was doing to her to continue rather urgently.

She had never properly appreciated his hands before, she realized. The nimble fingers that chopped and measured also held hidden skills that were nearly as miraculous as his potions. She was spiraling upwards towards something she had only experienced privately in her own bed and then he was pulling clothing off of her and himself with quick movements of his wand, as if the fabric was attached to the end of the ebony stick.

She was being laid across the bed but she was so close that she wasn’t thinking about anything but the impending explosion and then he was between her legs and there was a moment of horrified realization as sanity hit her. He pushed into her and she cried out at how she was being stretched. She thought she would split apart or break and then there was an awkward thought as the face above her came into focus and she really remembered who was doing this to her.

He began to move and it was strange and it felt good and he was so deep inside her and oh my God, Oh My God, OH MY GOD! The explosion rocked through her, blinding her to anything but stars and the incredible pleasure and wow, it was different with a person than with her fingers, better and yet not as good, but oh, she’d never known it could feel like this afterwards.

It was like melting into another person, being so open and full of lazy, hazy contentment and how could it be Snape who had made her feel like this? She fell asleep in baffled wonderment and dreamed of loving.

Severus fell back against the bed, breathless and surprised. He hadn’t expected it to go anywhere near as well as that. He never expected that the innocent bookworm could transform into a passionate houri with the right stimulus. She lay curled on her side asleep, looking like the child she still was but her responses had been anything but childish. Inexperienced, yes, but willing and eager and he wanted more.

He was shocked by his reaction. She was a child in his care. His wife, yes, but still seventeen and in a situation not of her making. He had absolutely no right to force her to do anything repugnant to her.

Not that she had seemed repulsed. If anything… No, even so, she was asleep it was nearly midnight and the day had been both long and tiring for her. He lay down beside her and thinking that maybe he would read for a while, fell asleep.

Hermione woke to sun filtering through branches and was puzzled. Staring at the dappled pattern, she soon came to realize it was an illusion. Slytherin must have cast it in the room to give it the look of a forest glade. The pool was bubbling quietly and Severus was snoring. She turned to look at him and found that in sleep, the lines of pain and anger were smoothed away by Lethe’s hand and he was left looking younger and far more vulnerable.

She had a moment where she wanted to wake him and do it all again but then sanity returned and she found herself blushing from head to toe. She didn’t, she hadn’t – oh, what he must think of her! What was she to think of herself? Was she a slut? She had certainly given herself over to the whole thing rather easily.

She was working herself up into a pother when her mother’s cool sensible voice drifted across her mind.

“Of course, the first time your father touched me I just went mad. I had been hungry for so long and never even known it.” The amused wonderment in her mother’s voice had lingered. Hermione took a deep breath and then let it go. It was perfectly normal to feel that way. After all, she’d been innocent and now she knew what to expect.

There was a strange feeling of change in her now, as though she wasn’t the same person today as she had been yesterday. It was as though all the jokes and innuendos she had never quite gotten before became clear. She felt powerful remembering his gasp and the way his face had looked as he came. She was blushing again, but even more she wanted to repeat the experience. She had so much to learn.

What if he didn’t want to? The thought sobered her. After all, he didn’t like her very much and she wasn’t very knowledgeable. What if he found her dull? That dispiriting thought was almost crushing. Still, this new avenue of study was one she wished to master and Hermione had always found ways to learn the things she most wanted to know. Right now, she wanted to learn more about sex and the only teacher available was snoring away and not perhaps as cute as Orlando Bloom, but far more available.

She leaned down and kissed him lightly and his eyes fluttered open in confusion. He was peering at her and she leaned in to kiss him again.

“Hermione?” he asked and there was such vulnerability in his eyes that she had never seen before. Those black depths were far more expressive than she had realized.

“It was an interesting lesson, but I don’t think I’ve mastered the finer points,” she choked out, shocked by her own daring and still blushing furiously. To her great relief he smirked back at her and pulled her down on top of him.

“We shall have to remedy your deficiencies.” He was using that velvety voice to arouse her and she responded quite eagerly to her second lesson.

Severus was disconcerted by the fierce intensity that she brought to the bedroom. He wasn’t as young as he used to be and he had gone from being afraid that his new bride would be disgusted by their intimacy to being afraid his heart would give out before her libido did.

Seventeen was a long time ago for him and he had forgotten just how energetic that age could be. Damn, the little minx was going to be the death of him. He’d also forgotten about how horny seventeen was.

He had no idea how he would deal with her in public. She kept looking at him like he was a brand new toy and he was feeling a trifle taken aback by the whole thing. What if she looked at him like that in front of the other teachers, or gods, even worse, in front of the Malfoy twit?
He’d have to warn her about that. Later, though, much later. For now he was simply going to enjoy having an adventurous young nymph in his bed who was most intrigued by the idea of working her way through the entire Kama Sutra – though she kept turning the illustrations around and upside down as she tried to figure out how any of it was anatomically possible. Thank you, Salazar Slytherin, for your extensive library, he thought to himself.

“That can’t possibly be comfortable,” she murmured and frowned at one particularly athletic position.

“I will need a fortifying potion before I attempt anything that complex,” he informed her rather wearily and she turned very earnest eyes towards him.

“Thank you for being so patient with me.” It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that he was the grateful one but he remembered at the last moment that he was a Slytherin.

“Well, your education is my responsibility,” he told her in martyred tones. She nodded and he was left to wonder if she had actually bought that. “Besides, Poppy has been telling me to get more exercise.”

Watching her dissolve into giggles was curiously gratifying. He wasn’t sure that in the long term he wouldn’t grow weary of having so very young a girl about. However, at the moment she was far less annoying than he had expected. In fact, he could see her being almost tolerable in small doses.

Breakfast was far less awkward than she had expected. They sat on the bed in green satin dressing gowns, eating off of a tray that the House Elves had brought them and though she had felt a residual twinge of SPEW rising up in her, she had squelched it firmly. She didn’t need to have another humiliating lecture from Professor Dumbledore on the history and magical obligations of House Elves.

“So we have how many days off?” she asked him, realizing that in all her research about marriage customs, she’d never thought about the honeymoon.

“Three days, which is rather short, I know.” She wondered if he was thinking about wanting to get to know her better but his next words reminded her who she was dealing with. “I had hoped that the time off would give me time to pursue a few experiments but it just isn’t a sufficient time frame for any serous work.” There might have been a time when she would have bristled at the thought that he had planned to use the honeymoon to work on potions but the warm afterglow had yet to fade and she was feeling quite benign towards his foibles.

“Well, I have to study for the NEWTS, so maybe you could catch up on your reading?” she offered with a feeling of virtuous sacrifice.

“What about figure 22, I thought you said that you wanted to learn that one?” he asked her with a bland expression. She blushed furiously and nodded.

“Well, if you have the time,” Hermione squeaked.

“I suppose I could fit it into my schedule,” he retorted with an air of one conferring a large favor. She grinned into her breakfast plate. She was really beginning to think he liked the sex as well.