Needfire

Chapter 19 – A Match Made in Earth


\"I see you altering history.
I see you abusing the land.
I see you, your selective amnesia,
And I love you still.
And I love you still.\"

-- Still. Alanis Morissette.


A strong, forceful blow of wandless magic hurled her against the wall, knocking the air out of her lungs. Harry was damn powerful, and he knew it. Both of them knew it. In fact, it was Hermione who urged him to use his powers against her: Hermione who would tease him into fury, until he could master enough strength to summon the needed power to hurl her against the wall. Fury. Love. Hate. All strong emotions.

For Harry Potter to be able to summon his magic without a wand meant he had to be worked up into the brightest, most eye-scalding feeling on his emotional scale. Anger was easy to be probed out of him: he had so much anger in him that Hermione was sometimes overwhelmed. Anger at the world, for stealing his parents at such young age. Anger at the Dursleys for abusing and mistreating him. For locking him in the cupboard. Anger at Dumbledore, for using a seventeen-year-old boy to fight the Wizarding World\'s war: sharpening and polishing him for years without ever asking for his consent. Anger for never being allowed to have a normal life.

Hate was rarer. Harry hated only three people: Bellatrix Lestrange, who killed the one man Harry viewed as a parental figure. Peter Pettigrew, who gave Harry\'s parents to the Dark Lord. And Voldemort himself, who, in his maddened obsession, chased one child from the cradle and into a future, bloodied battlefield, in which Harry had every intention of erasing Voldemort off the face of the earth.

But then, neither anger, nor hate, would bring Harry\'s power into its outmost materialization. When she wanted him to produce a lethal stroke, when she wanted his magic to appear in its cleanest, strongest form, she\'d ask him to think about his mystery lover, and being outside of the cupboard. With his love.

At that, she could practically see Harry\'s power stream from his bowels; his blood; his guts. It seemed to gather at the tips of his fingers, and glow from the upper layer of his dermis until he was sizzling with it. Sometimes he would close his eyes, which would literally burn with his love, so vivid she thought she might burn with it herself, and channel his magic – without his wand, but through his bare hands and with the power of his mind alone – to do his bidding.

For Hermione, however, summoning her magic was an act of sheer will. Always an outstanding student, her power was in her razor sharp intellect and her ability to put it into full use at time of need. She might never be as strong as Harry, but having a thorough knowledge of herself – physically and mentally – and having achieved a considerable mastery of her body and mind through meticulous training, she knew exactly from which points to draw power. Her stroke, therefore, was of considerable force.

Looking at her opponent, who was observing her from a safe distance, Hermione breathed deeply. Combat with either of her friends – especially Harry – was never easy. Today was no exception. Bloody Merlin. In front of her, Harry was already summoning the power for another spell. She had to move quickly.

Basking in the power of the universe, the same power which would wake Snape\'s Stones to life, she reached into the marrow of her being and the wide, ever becoming entity of the universe, to call on the power she needed.

Gasping, sweat dripping from her forehead and into her strongly defined eyebrows, she launched a forceful blow at Harry- who threw himself aside, rolled over, and landed on his feet at the other side of the room.

She groaned, waving her hands. \"No no no! Just how many times do I have to tell you? You\'re not doing it right, Harry! Imagine we\'re on the field of battle; I\'m on your right, Ron at your left, and some black clad figure is launching a Killing Curse at you! Which side would you throw yourself? Toward me, busy casting a protection shield? Or toward Ron, who would be guarding your left side?\"

Harry wiped the shiny film of sweat congealing on his forehead. \"Yeah, you\'re right. I\'m sorry, Hermione. Another try?\"

She blinked tiredly. \"I think I need some rest. Ron?\"

The tall redhead, who had been watching them from his place on a comfortable looking pouf in front of the fire, rose up. He was stretching lazily as he moved toward Harry. \"Just wait a couple of minutes while I warm up.\"

Hermione sighed. Some of their argument from the previous night still reflected in the two boys\' strained voices. Nevertheless, they were doing their best to be polite to each other.

Harry shrugged his shoulders. \"No problem with me.\"

Ron\'s magic, she mused, watching her ex-boyfriend stretching his long limbs, had stemmed from his loyalty. From his earth deep sense of belonging and protectiveness. If Godric Gryffindor was alive, she thought once, that would be the source of his magic. Good old, teddy-bear Ron. No abusive relatives for him. Ron never knew how deep and dark was the cupboard, or what lurked in Father\'s embrace. Ron\'s sense of belonging, she knew, was utter and complete. And Weasleys defended their own, even if it meant dying in the process. Too many people had mistaken the Weasleys for a bunch of harmless, penniless do-gooders, never realizing their strength was in their unity. Hermione, knowing Ron probably better than anyone else, was careful never to mistake his absentminded sweetness for powerlessness.

Both Ron and Harry, she thought, were worthy opponents.

A little sore from the combat with Harry, she joined in Ron\'s stretching. An acid buildup was only to be expected and some exercise might prevent the muscle cramps which followed. Several minutes later, with her body more limber, Hermione made her way to the pouf Ron had occupied until only a while ago. Sighing, she sank into the soft seat.

Immediately, she found herself surrounded by Ron\'s scent: beeswax and wool, along with the sharp sweetness of the sugar-quills he liked to suck on; always making the point just bellow his ear sticky and smelling of molten sugar, as he forgot it was a sweet he was holding and began to play with it. This, and the deeper, masculine scent wafting from his skin; his armpits, his pulse points, his scrotum: an undercurrent of sexual awareness that never existed between her and Harry. Nevertheless, Hermione was delighted to find out that when she lifted the collar of her shirt, burying her nose inside and sniffing, she could still detect Snape\'s fragrance clinging to her body.

They had spent the night together, in his room, after a long tiring lesson about power and its abuse. Yes, she thought. He wouldn\'t talk to her about her father until she agreed, but he would do everything to make her face the subject. Sometimes she would call him a lousy Slytherin, claiming he was subtle as any Gryffindor attempting to cheat on an exam. Sometimes she recognized it for determination, and would be compelled by his resolve.

\"Feel this,\" his words would swirl in and out of focus in her mind. \"That beat, that pounding, is for you.\"

She wished she could fight him; perhaps like she did with Harry and Ron. To crawl into his embrace, the way she once crawled into Lester\'s hug, and find comfort in those arms which inflicted both pleasure and pain. She needed Snape to ruin her so he could save her, but he refused to do either, only hold her when she clung to him, as if he was her one true north in a foggy sea of milky twilight.

How long, she wondered, would it take her to break him? How long until he became her pawn or her king – or until he would yell at her to get the hell out of his life? What is wrong with me that I can\'t stand this equilibrium, she thought desperately. What is wrong with me that it makes me shivery and afraid; fighting to breathe? Yes, he had been right- in a sense; she wanted another daddy, another Lester – or another Donna. But not because she thought her relationship with each of her parents formed an archetype that had translated into the kind of relationship she wanted to have. Merely because, alongside the tarot card from which she and her father would look at her forever, entangled in a sickly, sweaty mass of limbs (with Lester raising Godric Gryffindor\'s sword to decapitate his daughter\'s bent head) she would always come across the Hermit. The rims of the Hermit\'s white, feathered clock would be swirling around their body, and their face would be the face of Hermione\'s eleven year old self.

This was the thing Snape refused to understand: that where there was Hermione, there were always her archetypes, following her like a herd of black lambs.

\"It is just the same with you,\" she said heatedly, angry that she couldn\'t drag him into the violent, heated sex the she wanted. That she could not force him to hurt her.

Snape lifted a brow, slowly laying her down on his bed, his clever, skilled fingers skimming down the angle of her jaw, to the hollow at the base of her neck, gentle as butterfly wings.

\"Use your head for a moment,\" she demanded, forcing herself to ignore the tip of his index finger which settled into her supra sternal notch. It was a battle of wills, and she knew it – which would be first, to distract the other: she, in her sharpened rage, or he, seducing her into momentary bliss. Too gentle, laddie. You can\'t win me. Not this way.

\"Just think of it, Snape,\" she continued. \"Why me? Why me of all people?\"

\"Why you?\" he asked, leaning to close his lips around a painfully erected nipple, all of a sudden biting the hardened tip, in a move so unexpected and so correlated with her own wishes that she cried. \"Please tell me, as you seem to know me so well.\"

Gasping, she leaned to look at him. Playing dirty, she realized. Should have known to expect no better from a Slytherin. Reaching out, she curled her fingers in his hair, bending his head backward. At this angle, Snape\'s long, slender neck was suddenly exposed, as if begging her to bite on the lactic, delicate skin. Until – along with the sour-sweet tang of blood – she could taste his pulse on her tongue. It made him look vulnerable, and not a bit weaker for his vulnerability. Lovely, she thought. He is lovely.

Snape growled. \"Out with it.\"

She nodded. \"Good. Now that you know your place, we can move along. Why me, you asked, and I\'ll tell you. Me- because I\'m clingy. Because I\'m vulnerable and brittle. Me, because I am so easily snapped. I remember everything you told me about your parents, the almost nothing you did tell- while demanding I tell you everything, not very egalitarian of you, wouldn\'t you agree? Me, Snape, because I am so willing to be beaten: because I won\'t protect myself. Because I want another Daddy,\" she spat the words venomously, \"and you want another Mummy. Can\'t you see? That\'s why we are suited so perfectly: our parents defected us exactly to fit each other. A match made in earth.\"

To her surprise, he wasn\'t poisonous, nor was he furious, only weary and sad. Slowly, he reached to untangle her fingers from his hair, gently removing himself from her body and coming to lie beside her. \"It might have been that way, once,\" he said after some thought. \"I would hurt people because that was all I knew: because it granted me a sensation of momentary calmn. Momentary strength over my opponent. I\'d feel secure in my power and my ability to inflict some emotion – whatever kind of emotion – where there was none before. It would somehow make me feel alive. Potent. It is false, Hermione,\" he said, the fatigue of years making his eyelids heavy and his voice husky. \"Just like the sense of calmness the razor induces is false.\"

She closed her eyes, feeling the tears burning the rim of her cognition, just on the point of becoming substance: almost touching the edge of the real world. \"I\'m sorry. I shouldn\'t have said what I said.\"

\"Think nothing of it.\"

\"No, no,\" Hermione shook her head, reaching to touch his face- the angular curve of his cheekbone, his lips, his chin. \"I hurt you,\" she mumbled, attempting to stifle a sob. \"I\'m so sorry; I can be so stupid sometimes-\"

Snape, at her side, was looking into space, a lost child in a world of changing textures and interesting objects.

At last, she simply gave up, retreating into the safety of the warm quilt and the gathering shadows underneath. No words were said between them when he joined her – a while later – under the covers, but she could feel his face pressing between her shoulder blades; a strong, sinewy arm coiling around her body, and she knew things were righted, at least for a while.

At 5AM, stimulated into awakening by an inner sense of urgency – telling about things to be done and commitments to be fulfilled – she found him staring at her. Blinking away the last hazy mists of sleep she crawled out of bed, sneaking her legs into his slippers and wrapping herself in one of his flannel robes.

\"You should go back to sleep,\" she muttered, still drowsy before having washed her face and brushed her teeth. She had managed most forms of self grooming using magic when staying overnight in his rooms, but had recently been considering picking up several basic items at Hogsmeade, to be left in Snape\'s bedroom for her regular use. He would probably protest, but it was only logical for her to keep a toothbrush and a hairbrush in his bathroom. Magic might do the trick, but she needed the acidic tang of toothpaste in her mouth; the sharp scorch of the toothbrush\'s bristles against her teeth; the floss curving its way between her teeth to her gums, in order to feel clean.

Lumbering to the bathroom, she washed her face, skillfully applying a Scourgify, along with some of Snape\'s toothpaste – smeared on her teeth and gums to get rid of her night\'s breath – as a substitute for her toothbrush and floss. A Scourgify was applied to Snape\'s hairbrush as well, before it was allowed to touch her mane.

Snape, fully clothed, was standing beside the dead fireplace when she returned to the bedroom.

\"What is it with you?\" she asked impatiently, reaching for her clothes which where neatly folded on a small armoire not far from the bed. \"I apologized to you yesterday,\" she added, quickly clasping her bra and pulling her t-shirt over her head. \"What do you want me to do? Crawl on my knees? Beg? Offer you sexual favo- Fuck!\" In her frenzy, she forgot she already inserted one foot into the worn-out denim, and leaping forward, had immediately tumbled and lost her balance.

Swearing and cursing, Hermione was now fighting to regain her equilibrium. \"Shit! Shit! Come and help me, you dolt- oh, the hell with it!\" she cried at last, giving up and dropping to the floor.

Breathing deeply, she felt a strange sensation of relief bubbling inside her; delicate ivy tendrils weaving around her heart, releasing small molecules of tension and somehow making it easier for oxygen to flow inside. It wasn\'t happiness, nor was it self-pity. Just relief, for the fact she was no longer fighting with the bloody garment. And at that, Hermione threw back her head, and laughed her heart out. \"The hell with you, Snape,\" she called. \"Tell me what it is you want or I can\'t help you.\"

Lifting her eyes, she could see him still watching from his position at the fireplace. He is like an ancient relic, the thought had struck her still bubbling self; a piece of canvas torn from an old family portrait: my love is both the cold, forbidding father, and the estranged, lonely boy.

His face cleared from expression under her scrutiny. \"We are going to the Circle.\"

She nodded, sighing. \"Sometimes I wish I could understand you.\"

\"It\'s the same for me.\"

\"I\'m practically an open book,\" she said. \"Either you would tamper with me to get whatever answers you\'re looking for.\"

\"Is this indignation I\'m hearing?\"

She finally scrambled to her feet and pulled the jeans up properly. \"What else would you expect to hear? You treat me like a child and I\'m sick of being treated like a child.\"

He tilted his head; the old, familiar gleam of devious amusement back in his eyes. \"Yes, yes. But unfortunately, Hermione, you are a child – a teenager, if you\'d like me to be accurate – and you behave as one. Sometimes I am amazed at how mature you are. Other times, I\'d like to bend you over my knee and spank you.\"

She rolled her eyes, allowing her bored, contemptuous expression to show Snape exactly what she thought of his latter idea.

\"Now is one of them,\" he added darkly.

\"Oh, really?\"

He turned to look at her, bringing his index finger under her chin and forcing her head up. \"Tell me, apprentice, are you so short of words that you would react like a boorish teenager, screwing your face at me, swearing and cursing, when you are displeased with something I have told you?\"

She greeted her teeth. \"If you weren\'t such a fucking-\"

\"Language!\" he roared.

Sighing, she forced herself to calm down. \"As I was trying to say, if you weren\'t such a tease, I would have never… I am never…\" she wasn\'t sure what she sought to say, and her head swam from his nearness. \"I am never like that with anybody else,\" she struggled for the right words. \"You just rub me the wrong way.\"

\"That is hardly an excuse,\" he said quietly. \"How can you ever expect to harness the power of the Circle when you can\'t even hold your own tongue?\"

Hermione nodded, her face flushed with shame. \"You are right, of course. I will try harder. Are we going now?\"

\"Yes. I\'ll lend you a warm cloak.\"

* * *

Snow, white and gleaming, covered Hogwarts grounds, from the edge of the Forbidden Forest in the west – where bluish mists crept from the frost-encrusted trees – to the low, rounded hills on the east: like the fur cloak of Narnia\'s Queen, trapped in the bushy boughs of heather, and fallen to cover the earth.

Two polar researchers, they were making their way in the mirage light of pre-dawn, treading in the ankle-deep snow. The Stones, lean and graceful, were observing them from afar; the rich blood of sunlight already pulsing over their ancient veins.

Weary from hopping in the snow, Hermione made her way toward a bulky, fallen Stone – a sleeping mother bear, she always thought – and climbed to settle onto the curves of the hibernating animal. \"Come,\" she tapped on the female bear\'s hip. \"Join me.

He shook his head, refusing her invitation. Sharp, frosty wind was disheveling his hair, reddening the tip of his long, hooked nose. Clad in his black winter cloak, arm-length locks of raven hair framing his face in a wild, gushing mass, he was like a pink stain on Sally and Conrad\'s Snow.

\"A penny for your thoughts?\" she offered.

Snape lifted his eyes to look at her. \"You, Potter and Weasley. I know you are preparing yourself for whatever the end of this year may hold.\"

She nodded. \"You probably know more than I about the matter. Care to share some information?\"

To say he was less than enthusiastic to share whatever it was he knew about the subject with his young lover would have been an understatement. Nevertheless, for some reason, she noted he was attempting to cooperate. \"I hardly know more than you do. The Dark Lord is impatient. He wants the Wizarding World at his feet, and he wants it now. This – and Potter dead, of course – he means to achieve with one fatal blow, sometime towards your graduation. But you hardly need a spy to tell you that.\"

\"You are still spying on him? Still going there?\" she asked, angry that she had to force the air to pronounce the words up her throat, and that doing it felt like dissolving layers of soft tissue off her windpipe.

Snape appeared amused at her sudden anger. \"Why, Hermione, you make it sound as if I ever stopped.\"

She clenched her fists, nails digging into soft flesh. \"Don’t screw with me, Snape-\"

\"Language,\" he lashed at her. \"Is that what \'I\'ll try harder\' means in your lexicon, Miss Granger?\"

\"I don\'t care!\" she burst out. \"You supercilious, pretentious, impossible bastard! I don\'t fucking care about my damn language! Not when your life is at risk! If something ever happens to you- if something ever happens to you-\" she stuttered.

\"If something ever happens to me you can have my library,\" he completed sarcastically.

Tears were stinging her eyes. \"I don\'t care about your stupid library.\"

He blinked. \"I thought you loved my library.\"

\"I love you more.\"

She wondered whether it could ever be different between them: heated arguments, replaced by fragments of crystalline silence. She wondered whether anything she could ever offer him would count as proper compensation for turning his sacred, crystal-clear solitude into this shattered-glass embodiment of what they had together. She wondered if he could ever love her, even one fourth of how she loved him, and knew it hardly mattered. If anything, longing was easy. The Hermit longed for knowledge; young Hermione longed for her father\'s approval. Adult Hermione could therefore long for her snow and ebony lover; she could long for him and impale herself on his cock, on the double-pointed stiletto that was his intellect; she could long for him and impale herself on the razor-sharp edge of his solitude. I will be the human sacrifice on the center-piece of your Circle, and be I will be happy with it, she thought quietly, looking for his eyes, but you must keep your end of the bargain and spare me a shred of your deific approval.

\"Hermione,\" he began at last, face strained into an expression of anguish. Poor St. Snape, she mused viciously, fending off in-love, teenaged dragon.

\"Oh, just shut up,\" she muttered, leaning to grab a fistful of snow and throwing it angrily in his general direction. \"I don\'t need you to love me! I don\'t need you to care for me! I just need you to watch your own arse and come back alive.\" She stopped, panting, swallowing back her tears. \"Then I can be the one to kill you. And now do us both a favour and tell me why you dragged us here when it\'s practically freezing, and what it has to do with me and my friends\' training.\"

Snape sighed, apparently relieved that no more declarations of love or dealing with such were in order. \"You have already witnessed the power-shield the Stones create when activated,\" he said. \"I taught you some of the things a wizard can do with the Stones when casting a circle among them. Some of the ways in which their power can be drawn, channeled and used. You also know they would enhance a wizard\'s power- when they are activated; when a wizard knows how to ask. The Stones are a form of wandless magic,\" Snape stated. \"I trust it did occur to you, at least once or twice in the past. Am I correct, Hermione?\"

Frowning, she looked for his eyes in the aquatic dawn-light. \"It had, once, or twice, or several times,\" she answered, irritated that he would assume such an obvious fact would escape her.

Realizing where was it Snape had been attempting to lead her, Hermione went on; \"I thought we might draw Voldemort into the Circle-\" – she saw him flinch at the explicit name, but continued nonetheless – \"draw him into the Circle, where you and I raise the Needfire. Make sure he is isolated from his Death Eaters, then let Harry finish the job.\"

Snape, gathered in his warm winter cloak – like a child wrapped in a garment two times their size – angled an eyebrow. \"How, exactly, would you do that?\"

She moistened her lips. \"We still haven\'t figured that out. Ron claims the Killing Curse should finish him. Harry argues that there is not enough mortality in Voldemort for the Killing Curse to actually work.\"

\"And what do you say?\"

\"That even the gorgon would fall to the ground once you cut off her neck.\"

The Potions Master seemed pensive. \"You\'re all looking for the answer in the wrong place,\" he determined, cool and detached as usual.

Hermione tightened her lips. How easily you would put off my notions. And not even with a pat on the cheek, telling me I did my best. You bastard.

\"Are we?\" she asked him, her voice dripping poisoned sugar. \"Oh ye mighty Snape, you flowing fountain of wisdom, please, I beseech you, share thy knowledge with thy-\"

\"Shut up,\" he hissed. \"You foolish child. Now tell me, do you know what is behind the heavily warded door in the Department of Mystery?\"

She blinked. \"Love.\"

He nodded. \"Good. And what is it Voldemort cannot stand?\"

\"Love,\" she replied. Or perhaps I should ask you, what is it Snape cannot stand?

\"Tell me- can you perform wandless magic?\"

Her brow furrowed at the sudden change of subject. \"Why do you ask?\"

\"Wandless magic, as you might have realized if you paid more attention,\" he snapped, \"is an unintrusive form of magic wherever things concern the Stones; it correlates the Stones\' power: working with the Stones, and not against them. Can you see where I\'m heading, or should I abandon every trace of subtlety on your behalf?\"

She jumped off the stone at once, so angry she thought her blood might shriek with it. \"You,\" she told him, sticking her index finger in his chest, \"are a first class prick. Don\'t you ever again tell me that the razor is false, or that hurting your opponents or the people who might try to reach for you, is false either. Don\'t you ever give me that bullshit if you can\'t prove me that you have outgrown pushing away everyone who might dare to love you.\"

She was breathing heavily; smoky clouds of frozen breath curling in front of her eyes like the larva Nragileh\'s rings – and disappearing into thin air. The wind, harsh and biting, was disheveling her honey coloured locks, slapping them against her exposed face.

Snape, less than a yard away, was looking at her with a strange hunger in his eyes. So close, yet unreachable. Perhaps I need rocky shores to break onto, she mused. Perhaps I\'m but the salty, whispery foam of waves. But then, one can either romanticize Severus Snape, or wither of frustration.

Sighing, determined that she would not snap, not now, of all times, she raised her head to look at him. \"Don\'t answer me,\" she said. \"Just think very carefully about what I told you. And in the meanwhile, seeing how fond you are of Harry, I am very curious to find out how exactly did you conclude Harry\'s source of power is love?\"

* * *

Snape, intolerable bastard that he was, remained uncooperative for the rest of the time they spent in the circle. When, at some point, he asked her to show him what she knew of wandless magic, she was hurt enough to focus her power into a forceful blow that knocked him off his feet and sent him flying into the untouched snow.

Cursing, he rose to his feet, daring her to show him some real magic, and not, as he put it, \"a childish wizarding imitation of a fist fight.\"

Even noticing her distinct ability to master this extremely complex form of sorcery, he offered no praise – no acknowledgment of her achievement. Not a word to indicate he was impressed at her ability to do wandless magic without ever being taught how, without ever receiving proper guidance, at such a young age. Which stung. Immensely.

Enraged, knowing she had to think quickly, Hermione launched a curse that would temporarily amplify the skin\'s reaction to chill; this, given current weather conditions, would cause her opponent immense damage.

She was unsurprised to see Snape repelling the curse with a powerful Protego – just like I was trying to teach Harry for ages – then casting a spell of his own. Which she diverted with a counter curse.

They dueled until he had enough: she was too stubborn and too much of a Gryffindor to admit she was no match for him. With Harry, who was stronger than both of them, she could compete, but only because he was as inexperienced as she. An hour later, dismissed, Hermione tumbled, exhausted, into the mother bear\'s lap. Her eyes shut as she rested her heated forehead against the cold, frosty Stone.

Snape, whom she didn\'t notice approaching, seemed to stand right over her. \"You did well,\" he uttered quietly.

She snorted, turning to lie with her back against the Stone, so that the fresh, chilly sunlight could wash the sweat off her face.

Meanwhile, Snape sat down beside her on the Stone, arms wrapped around his legs and chin rested on top of his knee caps. Many times before, watching him assume this position, she thought this is how the child Severus must have looked like: limbs drawn to his body, curled into a little ball of fatal silence, much like an embryo. As little as possible, so as not to be noticed: as little as possible of himself to be seen; as little as possible of himself to be hit and broken. Again, he was staring into space, at the Stones – almost milky white with the fresh new day – and behind them, on the misty horizon, where the last traces of the night were finally diminishing, dissolved by the sun\'s saline light.

She tilted her head to look at him. \"Tell me what it is.\"

Snape frowned. Still, he would not look at her. \"It\'s not- not-\" a flicker of emotion wavered on his angular, fey face, and was gone almost as quickly as it came. It was wrenching to see him lost for words, and Hermione was suddenly selfishly afraid – that this man, this autistic child – might actually need her.

\"You are pushing too close, is all,\" he said at last. \"I love my solitude. I need my solitude. I never pretended to be a perfect man- I am harsh and angry and if you offered me your tender feelings I would probably throw them back in your face for not knowing what else to do with them. And you are so damn young- younger even than your peers-\" he shook his head. \"I should be damned for merely wanting you, never mind touching you. And I am the last thing you need- your aging, sarcastic, brooding professor-\"

\"You are everything I need!\" she cut across his words, unwilling to take any more of this nonsense.

He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. \"Will you, for once, just shut up and listen?\"

\"Will you stop being a git!\" she cried.

Snape turned to face her. With the low morning sun at his back and his disheveled mane framing his pale features in wild, untamed ropes, he looked like something out of time and place – the elf king reincarnated: the Morrigan in a male form. \"You preposterous, presumptuous little child,\" he growled. \"Either you think with your hormones, or you think with your heart, but hardly have you ever thought with your head. Can\'t you see this is wrong?\"

She wanted to slap him, but seeing the pain in his eyes, Hermione took a steadying breath, ignoring the sense of entrapment. \"I-don\'t-care,\" she said as calmly as possible, foreclosing her lips around each syllable. \"I love you, and I don\'t care if it\'s wrong.\"

The iciness of the Stone lap at her back seemed to soak through the many layers of wool she had worn this morning, just like the consuming quality of his gaze was singeing cigarette-holes through her heart. \"Oh, to the hell with it,\" she muttered. \"And you, too!\"

Crying in frustration, she reached for the collar of his robe, pulling him onto her and fastening her lips to his mouth. At first it was cold, snowy and unyielding like the barren winter-land that surrounded them. Then his lips suddenly parted, mellow, tepid heat pouring into her mouth – sharp contrast to the violent kiss that spoke of ownership and dominance and mine, mine- yes, yours…

Suddenly urgent, his fingers were unbuttoning her winter cloak, fumbling with the heavy cloth and fervently pushing it aside. The sharp bite of cold, claiming these areas the cloak had been covering, made her shiver. Prying into the cloth of her robe, he was pulling it upward, over her hips. Arching, she helped him roll it over her midriff. At that, she could feel his cold, roughened fingertips tagging the edge of her jumper. They were sending her into tremors of pleasure whenever a new patch of naked skin was touched and explored.

She was trembling – whether it was from cold or excitement, Hermione could not say for sure. The world was white and grey around her, Snape\'s lips leaving a trail of quickly frosting warmth along her neck. Burying his face in her hair, he breathed deeply, then kissed his way back to Hermione\'s already swollen lips.

Still kissing, a cold hand made its way under her jumper and t-shirt, rolling up her bra in order to cup a warm, rounded breast. She cried – her dry sob of pleasure muffled by his lips – thrusting her breast into his palm. Perfect- they were perfect together, the way her warm skin drank the electrifying cold of his fingers; the way his bitter lips melted against her mouth. Perfect was the way his pallor and raven-black hair fit her peach and honey complexion, and how they moved against and with each other when they were making love. Like now.

\"Cold…\" she heard herself murmuring, reaching for her wand. \"Not like this, turn us… yes-\"

His lips never leaving hers, he brought her to sit in his lap. Then to her annoyance, Snape has gently released her hold of her wand. \"Wandless magic,\" he whispered, teasingly biting on her lower lip.

\"Oh, oh…!\"Concentrating, she closed her eyes, making herself ignore the sensations washing through her body. \"I can\'t- not while you…\"

\"Try harder,\" he demanded; opening the fly of her jeans and sneaking his hand into her pants.

She clenched her jaws, cursing the man for being able to think of such things even in the throes of passion. However, just when she seemed to find the power to cast a sphere of heat, a skilled finger flicked on her clitoris. Losing her concentration, she collapsed, wriggling with pleasure against Snape\'s chest.

\"That\'s it!\" she cried, moving to take her wand and quickly casting warming spell. \"Either you don\'t want us to fuck; or you want me to freeze around your cock.\"

Rising to her feet, basking in the sudden sensation of heat, she kicked her jeans aside, and in seconds, was back in his lap, releasing his erection. Sliding down his legs, she leaned forward to give it a quick lick, from the pulsing vein at the base of the cock to the purplish, already dripping head, then took it in her hand, watching Snape gape as she squeezed it lightly. Good.

Positioning herself over his hips, she placed the glistening head of her lover\'s cock at her opening, and slowly impaled herself on his erection. The slowness of the act was maddening, the way she could feel him stretching and filling her, then finally being sheathed inside her wet, slobbery heat.

She was reminded of an old, Brazilian myth, of cocks rising from the ground for women to ride them; so different from the western pagan myths where the woman was the earth, the anchor, the provider. She thought that perhaps Snape was an anchor of sorts, which she could cling onto, while fucking: that his semen might consist of reviving qualities, just like ancient Mother Earth birth\'s fluids which became rivers in the European pagan myth.

Closing her eyes, she coaxed Snape into the rhythm that pleased her best, thrusting onto him to a mindless beat. Then, with his hands playing their magic over her body, undulating around and over and with him, she threw back her head, and let her orgasm ignite. The pleasure that had so far been gathering in her lower abdomen was lit with one, beautiful thrust, and burnt from her clitoris and vagina to her womb, belly, pelvis, and perhaps even marrow and soul.

Hermione could not tell.

* * *

Back from the snow, knowing she was still expected for a training session with Harry and Ron, Hermione chose to delay her shower. Instead, she ran a quick cleansing charm over her body. Still, she thought lazily, it would not completely charm away Snape\'s scent. It probably meant the spell was no good and that she was still dirty, but then, having strengthened over the last few weeks, she could deal with a temporary sense of uncleanness. Not to mention that knowing exactly what body fluids were involved in the act and knowing their chemical breakdown had helped immensely.

Snape might have laughed at her, but the reason she could swallow his cum – aside from wanting to – was knowing precisely what it consisted of. And knowing it was not vile. Knowing her own body, her own desire, was not vile, although she might have felt this way. And often enough, she did.

Perhaps, she mused, putting on a new t-shirt and faded blue jeans, his scent is simply a part of me now: like his cock, like his lips, like his hands on my breasts.

Approaching the mirror, Hermione arranged her hair into a neat plait, then turned to pay a hasty pat to Crookshanks. The ginger tom – angry to be scratched at the wrong place in the wrong time – bit her in exchange for her lousy endeavors.

\"Berk!\"

\'Git,\' the cat murmured in return, never bothering to open his yellowish eyes.

She arrived at the Room of Requirement short time afterwards, surprised to have Ron already waiting for her inside.

\"Oy! Hermione!\"

Smiling, she quickly disposed of her cloak – useless now that she was inside a room where a well-fed fire was burning cheerfully in the fireplace. \"Hello, Ron. Why isn\'t Harry with you?\"

Ron\'s shoulders slumped in a sure sign of defeat. \"He and his mystery lady found some empty room to spend the night together. One of the deserted rooms in the Northern Tower or something. He won\'t tell me more than that, and I suppose I should be happy that he told me even this…\"

Moistening her lips, she approached Ron, who sat on a low pouf near the fireplace. \"And you tried to talk him out of this?\"

\"Yes, well,\" Ron said, rolling his eyes. \"It\'s crystal clear this girl is doing him no good.\"

Hermione frowned, sinking to the thick carpet at Ron\'s feet. \"I think,\" she began slowly, \"that perhaps there is more than Harry might tell us to this relationship.\"

\"What more can there be?\" Ron cried out. \"Just look at him, \'Mione! My best friend wasting away front of my eyes, do you want me to sit by and do nothing about it?\"

\"This is his life,\" she sighed, wondering, for a moment, what Ron might say if he ever learned who his other friend is seeing. \"Those are his choices. Attempting to interfere, you\'ll only push him away, and then there\'ll be nothing you can do, at all.\"

Ron shook his head, running his hands through his wild red mane. \"I can\'t. I can\'t sit on the sideline and watch him hurt himself.\"

\"Ron,\" she tried once again. \"Sometimes the best thing we can do is be the good friends we are, and remain apart. You cannot prevent Harry from making the mistakes to which he is due. You can only help him once he realizes his mistake. And until then, take care you are still in a position to help him when he is in a condition to receive your help.\"

He clenched his teeth. \"It\'s so fucking hard, \'Mione. I don\'t know if I can.\"

Hesitating, unsure of her actions, she reached her fingers to touch his hand: his strong, sun-scorched, freckled hand, which once knew her body so well. Fleetingly, almost as if she was afraid this simple act of friendly affection might singe her – or him, or both of them – Hermione covered Ron\'s hand with hers.

She saw him giving her a quizzical look, remembering that physical displays of affection were a rarity for her. Excited or elated, she might rise to the soles of her feet and give him a quick peck on the cheek: hug him, even, when he came back to her after a long, nasty fight. Being Harry Potter\'s friend, she mused; one could never tell what would come up next. No wonder he\'s looking whimsically at me. He remembers that when I touched him it would automatically mean sex. Which was obviously not the case now. Nonetheless, Hermione didn\'t blame Ron for thinking so. Where it concerned her, occasionally touch was bestowed on a whim. Otherwise touch meant sex, and she would only willingly touch Snape, whom she was sleeping with. Whom she loved.

However, she knew Ron needed this physical reassurance. She might not understand his need for haphazard physical contact, but nonetheless respected it, and was willing to offer some, knowing that she could. For her, though, things were different. People brushing against her in the hallways; the occasional pat on the shoulder; a friendly hug – would all make her shudder in repulsion, reminding her of another kind of touch she would rather not remember. All would summon the old sensations up to the surface of her skin: they would make her sick. They would make her dirty.

She suppose the ability to enjoy this form of communication was lost on her: it simply didn\'t feel right. She didn\'t think it would ever feel right, with Harry; Ron, or with anyone else. That night, in Snape\'s arms, which was merely touch and not sex at all, might have kindled something similar to curiosity – similar to hope, inside her, but even so, she did not look to him for salvation. Grace, maybe, for my lover is graceful in his own crude, harsh way, but not salvation.

So yes, she reflected, full access to this certain kind of touch was denied from her, but nonetheless, Hermione knew she could give it.

\"If you love Harry,\" she said at last, pressing Ron\'s hand gently, \"if you care for Harry, you ought to try.\"

He nodded.

Harry\'s arrival, a few minutes later, put an end to their conversation. Harry, Hermione noted, looked uncharacteristically tranquil; green eyes shimmering behind his ugly, ridiculous spectacles. The same perpetual love-bite was glowing from his neck.

\"Hello,\" he greeted them, \"Hermione ….Ron. Good morning. So what is it you said we practice today, pet?\" he turned to Hermione. \"Protection shields? Triangular formations for repelling and casting?\"

She growled. \"Call me \'pet\' one more time Harry, and next time you make out, your mystery lover will have to look for your little friend with a magnifying glass. Is that clear?\"

Harry paled at once. \"Crystal.\"

She smirked. \"I\'m glad to see you\'re catching on. And to your question: no, Harry, we won\'t be practicing protection shields today, nor will we be practicing triangular formations for repelling and casting. Today we are going to practice some wandless magic,\" she told him. \"And later, perhaps, we\'ll be taking a short trip on Hogwarts\' grounds.\"