Six Days and Seven Nights

NIGHT 1

“Impossible,” Snape spat at my declaration that I was willing to sacrifice my virginity to save his magic. “Your friends are no doubt looking for you even as we speak.”

“No,” I insisted with surprising fervor. “Everyone in the wizarding world thinks I’m on holiday with my parents for the week. My parents think I got called back to the fight.”

Only after the words had flown from my mouth did I realize that perhaps I had given away too much. If all this went terribly wrong, Snape now knew there would be no one to come find me. Sometimes I think my mouth is as big as my hair.

Snape arched his eyebrow to this, no doubt cataloguing that bit of information. But then he seemed to catch himself and said dangerously, “You don’t want to make a martyr of yourself, Miss Granger.”

“You’re one to talk,” I shot back, angry that he should dismiss my offer so easily. “I don’t know what happened between you and the Headmaster, but obviously there’s something that nobody knows. But here you are, hiding from the Aurors and maybe from the Death Eaters too, all while you’re still trying to help Harry—a boy you despise—from the shadows. If that’s not a martyr, I don’t know what is.”

“Fine,” he declared. “Martyr I might be, but,” he added with his most cutting sneer, “I’m not such a martyr to sleep with an obnoxious, frizzy-haired know-it-all.”

I felt my face going crimson. Did he think I was so desperate that I wanted to sleep with a foul-tempered, greasy git? Not caring that Snape still had my wand and that I hadn’t a clue where in Britain we were, I stomped to the door and prepared to leave him in his non-magical misery.

Then Fawkes fluttered over to Snape and landed on his shoulder. I couldn’t help but notice the unusual coo the phoenix gave to him. Something hard in Snape’s face fell away, revealing a look of reined-in desperation. He nodded to the bird.

“Wait,” he called to me. He pursed his lips like there was something unsavory trying to escape from them. “I’m sorry.” He shuddered to hear those words coming out of his mouth. “But this is simply more than I can ask of anyone.”

I should have just left then and there, but the shock of hearing Severus Snape apologize for anything made me stop. “If it weren’t for me, you never would have gotten caught in that booby trap. I want to do this.”

Snape passed a hand down his face, making him look drawn and haggard. He sighed with resignation but declared in his most incontestable tone, “If we do this, we do it according to my rules. If you do not like those rules, you will be free to leave at any time, but we will do this by my rules. Is that understood?”

Severus Snape’s rules? I wondered what those might be, but I was emboldened by his promise that I could leave whenever I chose. I steeled myself to his proposal and agreed.

All Snape did was nod, and then he began to silently ascend the narrow passage leading upstairs. I paused and wondered if I should follow. Fawkes gave me a reassuring blink. ‘Best to get this over, Hermione,’ I told myself and followed Snape up the stairs.

There were only two rooms on the second level. I don’t know what I had been expecting from Severus Snape’s home—gothic velvet curtains, a coffin, maybe some whips and chains…I had certainly overheard the Slytherin girls’ whispered fantasies—but the humble furnishings in this little house were nothing like I had pictured. But then I remembered the Professor’s vulnerable pride, and I thought it best not to let my surprise at his domicile show.

I stepped into what must have been the master bedroom, small though it was. Snape was standing in front of a little cupboard full of black robes. When he turned back around, he was holding a black cotton nightgown he had transfigured from his own things.

“Wear this,” he said and thrust the item of clothing into my arms.

I stood there awkwardly for a moment. I had just agreed to have sex with his man, yet I was afraid to undress in front of him. ‘Hermione, you need to get your priorities straight.’ Hadn’t Ron told me that once?

To my surprise, however, Snape averted his eyes and retreated from the room. I studied the nightgown. Except for the color, it was surprisingly simple—certainly not the sort of thing one expected to lose one’s virginity in. For that matter, I wondered over the fact that he wanted me wearing anything at all.

Then again, I thought ruefully, what did I know about what men wanted? Aside from my brief relationship with Viktor and those unwanted advances from Cormac under the mistletoe at Slughorn’s Christmas party, I haven’t had much experience with men. Lavender would tell me that this is why I don’t normally keep a diary. I’m too busy learning about the magic locked away in books to learn about the magical chemistry between a man and a woman. For the most part, it’s not a choice I regret. I figure there will be plenty of time for such things in the future once Voldemort has been defeated and I get my N.E.W.T.S. and I choose an apprenticeship and I get my career underway. Yet I can’t deny that Snape hit me in a tender spot when he suggested he would rather lose his magic than sleep with me. Sometimes I do wonder if the reason I haven’t had more boyfriends is because I’ve been choosing to focus on my studies or whether it’s actually because I’m simply unappealing to the opposite sex. It seems that since leaving Hogwarts Snape hasn’t forgotten his talent for knowing how to hurt people most.

I started changing out of the Muggle clothes I had been wearing for my journey and into the black nightgown. I’ve always hated undressing. Ginny says I should study the Muggle feminist movement instead of house-elf liberation—love your body and all that—but there simply seems something absurd about all that naked skin. Animals at least have fur or feathers or scales. Even though I was alone, I did the little trick where I slipped my arms out of their sleeves and shimmied out of my T-shirt while I was putting on the nightgown. With the length of cotton there to cover me, I took off my bra, jeans, shoes, and socks—the underwear could wait for now—and left everything carefully folded on a chair. (Whatever else Snape’s house was, it was immaculately neat, and I didn’t want to irk him by leaving my things strewn about.)

What next?

I stared at the narrow bed in the middle of the room. This was what I had come here for, wasn’t it? I wondered which side was ‘his.’ No doubt he would tell me if I stole his spot. I took a deep breath and chose the left. The sheets were thin, and even with them pulled up to my chin I shivered a little.

Snape was a long time coming, and I began to wonder if he was going to back out altogether. Then finally the door opened and he showed up in a worn satin dressing gown—black of course. I wondered if he’d had the same anxieties about changing in front of me.

I looked up at him standing at the foot of the bed. This tall, dark-eyed wizard was the same one who towered over his students, intimidating everyone with a single glare. I did my best to meet his gaze and show him I was not afraid. His eyebrow twitched and then he climbed into bed. He slipped his long, narrow feet under the covers and lay on his back with his hands folded over his stomach. The bed was small, and I could feel his body heat radiating from his side of the bed.

I waited for something more. Inexperienced though I was, I was pretty certain that undoing the curse was going to require more than just us lying in the same bed. I stared up at the ceiling, wondering what to do. Was I supposed to start? How exactly was I supposed to do that? What if I did something wrong? Yes, even with this, I wanted to perform well. I chewed my lip. “Um…Professor…?”

“I am not your professor anymore, Miss Granger,” he said with his characteristically belittling bite.

I frowned. What was I supposed to call him? Mr. Snape?

“For the purpose of this…affair, you may call me Severus,” he said as if reading my mind.

I tried to imagine myself calling him Severus. The idea of calling any teacher by his or her first name was beyond my comprehension, and part of me still could not imagine that Snape actually had a first name. For the time being, I thought, I would just avoid calling him anything altogether. “Well, if I’m not your student, then you should call me Hermione,” I countered.

I caught a growl of protest from the back of his throat. “Very well.” (I noticed he didn’t use my name either.) “What was it that you wished to ask me?”

I screwed up my face again. All of a sudden, I thought I’d rather sing out “Severus” in front of the entire Great Hall. “Yes…well, I was just wondering how you would like to start.”

“We have started, Miss...” he cut himself short. “We have started.”

Huh? “I’m sorry”—I almost said “sir”—“how exactly do you figure?”

I expected him to launch into a tirade about my virginal ignorance, but instead he explained with carefully measured words, “Contrary to popular Hogwarts rumors, I have never solicited my students for sexual favors. I have never locked a woman in the dungeons to do my bidding. If you participate in this affair, you do this by your own choice…because you get this choice only once. You said your friends expect you to be gone for the week?”

“Yes.”

“Then there is plenty of time. If we do this, we will not rush in. I will not have that too on my conscience.” He spoke as if a great deal already weighed upon his shoulders. “Those are my rules. You are still free to take them or leave them.”

His speech was perhaps the most shocking thing of the night. Here he was about to lose his magic at any moment but with a solution right in front of him. Here was a wizard with a witch in his bed who had agreed to sleep with him. Here he was, the most know-it-all-hating person I knew, willing to suffer my presence for a week. The world really had gone mad. “Alright,” I said.

“Good,” he declared with finality. “Then tonight we sleep.”

And so I nestled under the covers with Severus Snape as my unlikely bedfellow.