Breeding Lilacs out of Dead Land.

Chapter 21 – What God Cannot Promise Us.


\"He who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.\"
-- Matthew.


Soft, feathery kisses, trailing down his quickly exposed torso had woken Snape out of his light sleep. Having Hermione Granger in his bed was something that he could only accurately describe as painful – Snape had held her for a long hour after sell ell asleep and simply listened to her breathing, but it certainly brought no improvement in his own troubled sleep. Not wanting to wake Hermione after already rousing her from sleepiness to wakefulness for the better part of the night, shagging each other senseless, he slipped out of bed and into the living room, and settled in front of the fire with a heavy volume of Poe\'s work. Snape had fallen asleep with the book open his lap, Poe still brilliantly narrating the fall of House of Usher and the flames dancing upon his face.

That was how, he supposed, Granger had found him. She had apparently put the book aside, sticking a temporary bookmark in-between the thick, rim-gilded pages, then was free to attend the man who was recumbent on the armchair in front of the fireplace. Slowly opening his eyes, he saw Hermione was crouching between his legs, her small, childish hands busily untying the loose tie of his robe. Her head was bent forward, and her hair, all this untamed, honey colored mass, still wild from sleep, pouring down her naked shoulders. She was something made of honey, caramel and maple – lush, fluid, and unbearably sweet. She left sticky, perfumed residues on one\'s fingers. He could still taste her on her tongue after last night.

Exposing his groin, Hermione bent over, covering the sensitive skin of his inner thighs, and then the sac of his balls with soft, open mouthed kisses. She was slow and thorough, deliberately evading his already erect cock. Teasingly, Hermione took his balls sac into her mouth, simply cradling Snape\'s testicles by her warm, wet tongue, then began caressing them softly, using her tongue and her inner cheeks.

She was good, Snape reflected, probably not Anna\'s standard, who would swallow him whole, then tease and bite, and leech his orgasm in a way that was almost excruciating- but there was hardly anyone who could compete with Anna\'s skill when it came to giving a good blow-job. The thought had reminded Snape of something Kolya had once said- about having many ways to do one thing, and wanting to explore them all, but in the end, Kolya added, you discover it was always this first, initial fantasy you always come back too, that this is the way that pleases you the most. Then perhaps Anna\'s style would always be the way he\'d like to be sucked off, Snape mused- he didn\'t think Hermione would mind some guidance, always being such an eager student. Making love, on the other hand – fuck the term to eternal damnation –, doing whatever he did last night, wasn\'t something that could be repeated with a woman who wasn\'t Hermione.

She had probably seen that thought in his eyes when she lifted her gaze, that very moment, with the intention of taking his cock in her mouth. Had probably seen it, because she smiled, a wide, tender, stupid, beautiful smile, just a second before she bent forward again and swallowed him all the way down her throat.

Shutting his eyes close, Snape ignored the urge to bury his hands in Hermione\'s hair and fuck her mouth. Tempting as this wild mane of hers was, looking as if was created for such purpose, he didn\'t know how Granger was going to react to such move on his side. Grateful for the pleasure she was giving him, he wanted to enable her to derive as much pleasure as possible from the act. It was hard and intense, but somehow mellow and blurry, focusing as the suction around his cock grew more intense; Hermione\'s tongue flicking up and down its hard length.

Snape was panting, gasping, fucking her mouth with short, hard strokes, when she suddenly rose up, and thus allowing a sharp blast of cold air to caress his moistened, bereft erection. Without further ado, Hermione sat in his lap, her pupils widening until they almost reached the golden rim at the edge of her brown pupils as she impaled herself on his cock. Tight, sleek, hot, elastic- so fucking tight that all coherent thoughts flew out of his brain.

Hermione was so small, that even when sat in his lap, she didn\'t rise over him. All Snape had to do in order to kiss her was cup her face and take her lips with his. So he kissed her, molesting her mouth, hardly keeping himself from bruising Hermione\'s full, soft lips. He felt a compelling urge to tell her what having her like that made him feel- to let her know how good it was fucking her; how good was possessing her; how damn good it was waking beside her, and waking again with her crouching between his legs. \"Yet the tulips were too red in the first place,\" he remembered Plath\'s words through the piercing pleasuf orf orgasm. \"Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathing.\" The sensation along with the words, accompanied by Granger\'s plump, delicate fingers, wandering upon his breathing, petal-like exposed flesh, was enough to devastate him.

So he buried his fingers in Hermione\'s wiry, bis-nes-nest hair, resting her head against his shoulder. Her breaths, humid and shallow, were licking the curve of Snape\'s left collarbone as Hermione slowly climbed down from her climax.

She yawned. \"Good morning, Severus.\"

He chuckled. \"Good morning, Miss Granger.\"

Short, childish fingers, curled in the fine, thin hair covering his chest. Leaning, she kissed a small, taut nipple, then returned to her absentminded play. \"Did I disturb your sleep?\"

Snape shook his head. \"It was nothing out of the usual and has nothing to do with your presence.\"

\"Oh.\"

\"Hermione…\" His brow furrowed, and he breathed deeply, feeling the weight of her head rising and falling under his chest. \"There\'s something I need to tell you.\"

She became very attentive. \"I\'m listening.\"

\"I received a letter the other day- I have no doubt you have already managed to identify the letter\'s sender thanks to our daughter\'s keen eye. Perhaps you are even aware of its content – I was in a great hurry and Aubrey is very difficult to distract.\"

Hermione nodded. \"She told me Rodolphus Lestrange wrote you, asking your advice concerning a long-Latin-named article. Having received this letter, she said, you automatically sent her to Anne Rivers and went to consult with Dumbledore.\"

Snape confirmed. \"Aubrey might make a valuable Unspeakable one day unless she decides to turn her talents to research,\" he noted amusedly. \"Lestrange had indeed written to me asking my help producing a water combination suitable for one of his orchids. It was an odd request, knowing the full extent of Lestrange\'s expertise. It might not have seemed so strange considering his shipment instructions, but then, why he should wish to alert me as to the Dark Lord\'s intentions concerning my fate is not much more comprehensible.\"

Hermione sat frozen in his arms for long moment of silence. \"Does that mean you\'re going to terminate your spying?\" she asked at last, her voice weak and frail.

\"Apparently so.\"

He could hear her swallow. \"Oh God,\" Hermione whispered, her voice leaking into his Supra-Sternal-Notch. \"Oh God. Thank you very much for everything,\" she quoted. \"I have no complaints whatsoever.\"

Frowning, Snape was vaguely aware of warm, soluble wetness, gluing the tear-salted skin of Hermione\'s cheek to the curve of his neck. \"This is not the end of it.\"

She raised her head a little. \"What else could there be?\" she asked him, her big, expressive eyes now bloodshot and swollen with tears. \"You\'re safe. You\'re not going there anymore…\" Hermione mumbled. \"You are safe now. That\'s all that matters.\"

Looking at her, he continued in a dry, emotionless tone. \"Voldemort, or so I suspect, has been suspicious of my loyalties for quite some time. Knowing that, and expecting to be summoned later this week, I brought the issue in front of our side’s Council of War. This information is, of course, highly classified, and you should realize that I\'m not supposed to be sharing it with you under any circumstances. After some consultation, Cou Council has decided I should continue my spying, momentarily satisfying Voldemort\'s hunger and assuring my position in his inner circle by providing him with some very sought-after information. According the Council\'s decision, I was to reveal Kingsley Shacklebolt\'s and his family\'s hiding place. Two of Shacklebolt\'s children are attending Hogwarts these days,\" Snape told the woman in his arms. \"A younger son, Aubrey\'s age, is living with him and his wife. I was about to deliver this boy to his death. If Lestrange hadn\'t stopped me, this boy would have been murdered by the end of the week.\"

Hermione was quiet, just the way he expected her to be. Soon enough, Snape knew, she would collect herself, and terrified, draw away from him, shocked that she had just let this kind of monster into her body. But she just moistened her lips, a characteristic motion, and raised her gaze to meet his eyes. \"If this is highly classified information, why are you telling this to me?\"

He swallowed. \"I thought you needed to know.\"

\"I know now.\"

\"What do you want me to do, then, now that I know?\"

He glared at her. \"You should run away, you fool.\"

Hermione cocked her head. \"You don\'t want me to run away, so stop giving me stupid answers.\"

Snape let his head drop forward. \"It could have been Aubrey.\"

She thought of all the other children, all of her un-christened demon babies, who kept waiting for her, their silvery laughter forever echoing in the green valley, forever trying to breach the walls of her heart. The war had made her blunt and empty; she was incapable of saving all of them, and grateful, oh so grateful, to have her little piece of the world safe and secure. At least for now. \"It could have been Aubrey,\" Hermione said at last, \"but it isn\'t Aubrey. I think… that many times, we humans tell ourselves, that there was nothing we could have done to prevent the disaster coming. Nothing we could have done to avoid the earthquake or prevent the war; we surely couldn\'t disobey our commander\'s order and prevent the slaughter. All of this,\" she continued. \"It isn\'t true. We always saw the animals run when they felt the movement of the earth below them and we could have made peace with our enemy and disobeyed our commander and be thrown in jail. Fact is, we didn\'t. We only pretend not to understand our part in this great mechanism called living or nature or God. We can, however, take responsibility over our own actions. Over our own choices, whether they are right or wrong, or both. And those actions don\'t have to be only right or only wrong- I\'ve learned that over the years. So I cannot even say I did everything in my power to secure the safety of my child- had I wanted to do that, I would have stayed in the US, where it\'s safe for us. But I decided to come back, knowing that I\'m needver ver here. That is why…\" Hermione breathed deeply. \"That is probably the only reason I am in some way capable of overlooking the Shacklebolt boy. Because some decisions aren\'t only good and aren\'t only right. Because we\'re in war, and war demands victims, and the Shacklebolt boy is not our Aubrey.\"

\"I know.\"

\"If you need me to forgive you, all you have to do is say.\"

\"I can\'t. And it\'s foolish, however I put it.\"

Hermione shrugged. \"Then I\'ll forgive youway.way.\" Rising a little, she pressed her lips to his forehead. \"If God was not full of mercy, mercy would have been in the world, not just in Him,\" she quoted Amichai. \"So that\'s what I\'m here for, Severus Snape. And I forgive you. I forgave you a long, long time ago.\"

* * *

Time had passed in a different manner now that both Hermione and Aubrey Granger had become a major part of his life, while spying was no longer a part of it. Sometimes Snape had found himself wondering whether this was normality: hiding ancient tomes concerning the Dark Arts from the reach of a curious eight-year-old; reading poetry to a sleepy woman, her head rested in his lap, both of them sitting in front of a roaring fire on a dark, snowy night; to find her in his bed when he returned from another endless night of fruitless, insomniac wandering – roaming Hogwarts corri lik like a blind mole, chewing on his worries until his limbs were cut off from his body, only to come back and find her there, serene and peaceful in her sleep. To stroll by the lake with Hermione at his side, feeling the soft squeak of the new grass under his feet, watching the child run several meters in front of them, and the chilly wind of early spring messing his lover\'s hair.

It could have been happiness. It might have been the right term in other circumstances. But words were like boomerangs. The demon on the other side of the wall heard you, gathering the words you uttered so freely, then playing them in your ears at these moments when you felt there was nothing good left in the world, in order to increase your torment. So Snape called it serenity, and ignoring his frustration at being locked in the castle – unable to serve the cause the way he had once been used too – hoped it would last, if only one more day, one more hour, one more minute of bliss.

Going public was a peculiar, uncomfortable affair, yet even amusing to some degree in Snape\'s eyes. If it depended on him, they would have never gone public- he and Anna had kept their relationship a secret for about thirty years – whoever knew, knew, whoever didn\'t knew, didn\'t, and that was the end of it. However, things were not going to be that way with Hermione. Snape never expected their involvement with each other to remain a secret, but nevertheless, being a calculated, cautious creature, he did expect Hermione to consult with him before making their affair publicly known. With Hermione being the Gryffindor she was, Snape decided retrospectively, it had been probably too much to expect. It had taken Hermione no more than several hours after they had first parted from each other – following the night they spent in his rooms – before she approached him in the Great Hall at dinner, and ignoring the Hogwarts staff, the student body, and the rest of the castle\'s inhabitants, climbed to the soles of her toes and unabashedly pressed her lips to his mouth.

Following shortly afterwards, was the Valentine day annual ball; an event Dumbledore was keen on holding in defiance of the war, which was escalating each year. His lover, as Snape expected, joined the decoration team, dragging himself and their always-eager child along with her, to the Great Hall. This time, probably due to Hermione\'s insistent flow of creative ideas, some of the nauseating broken-heart red and strawberry-lipstick pink was replaced by a ninety-sixties’ style décor. He helped Hermione levitate a giant blinker ball to the transparent ceiling, for which he was rewarded with an adoring gaze. When he dryly offered distributing some of Martha Sprout\'s finer leafs\' mixtures, however, an idea also inspired by the spirits of these times, Snape received nothing but a sharp glare.

The ball itself was rather amusing- the first Valentine ball ever Snape could be tortured into admitting he enjoyed. Hermione was a vivacious, jumpy ball of life and energy, lovely and completely silly in her evening gown of green silk. Aubrey, too, had insisted on seeing what everything was all about, and was literally ecstatic to be levitated three feet in the air, so she could dance her first waltz with her father. Legs kicking in mid-air; wavering, multicolored lights reflecting in her silver-blond mane; held carefully in his arms and levitated by her mother in the same time, Aubrey was beaming at him, her face lit up with joy.

They had taken the child to Anne Rivers\' quarters shortly after that and had quickly returned to the ball. Nevertheless, the way the girl had looked at him, kept haunting Snape. No child had ever looked at him like that before.

February was followed by gloomy March and with March, came the Easter holiday. The Christian festival had usually found him reading Celan in front of a dying fire, spitefully lighting up Sabbath candles and watching the wax melting on those occasions when his eyes finally failed him and he could no longer read.

\"You have been drinking again.\" It was Hermione, and she was becoming mixed up with the shadows. Only her voice was high, sweet and distinguishable. It was frigging Easter. Easter was his time of the year to drink and mourn. One of these times, at least. The stupid woman should have left him alone.

Snape gulped his vodka. \"I always drink. What do you want?\"

\"It\'s the holidays,\" she said quietly. \"At these times of the year people should be together with their loved ones. I thought you should come to our place. Aubrey and I have boiled some eggs. You can help us paint them.\"

\"It\'s not a fucking holiday for me,\" he snarled.

Hermione seemed confused. \"I know it\'s not a cheerful occasion, but-\"

\"Hermione,\" he cut across her. \"Has it even occurred to you for a moment I\'m not even a Christian?\"

She shook her head.

\"Two-thousand years ago,\" he drawled icily, \"a fellow named Yeshuah died a very painful, public, and celebrated death. A death so celebrated, that one third of the known world is still celebrating it. A death so fucking celebrated, that one thousand, nine hundred and forty years afterward, six-million people were murdered in the most brutal, abominable, despicable way, and all because of this fellow\'s death. So no, I hereby decline your kind invitation, Hermione. I have nothing to celebrate. So please do me a favour and fuck off.\"

She did. That is why, probably, Snape was incredibly surprised to see Aubrey on the morrow, carrying Furball, a box with some chocolate rabbits, and a book about the holocaust she had found only God knows where, entering his rooms, and sitting herself comfortably on the carpet in front of the fire. That weekend, Hermione had cooked dinner on Saturday, and blushing, asked him to light up two white candles she put in an old, silver candlestick. She had found it, Snape assumed, somewhere in the castle. Aubrey, from across the table, was smiling at him out of Aniko\'s face. But while Aniko\'s smile was stained with sorrow, Aubrey\'s face was bright with happiness. It seemed like getting to know a happy child was almost enough to know what happy childhood meant.

In April, when the snows had finally melted and the first blooms sprouted from the thick earth, Hermione took him to visit Remus Lupin\'s grave. The small, modest grave was located under a cherry-tree, not far from the greying cottage of the Lupin family, where an older, squib brother, named Romulus Lupin and his Muggle wife and children had now lived. Greater-stitchworts, their long, willowy stems softly trembling in the breeze, were sparsely carpeting the fresh grass near the moss-covered tombstone. Wrapping himself in his cloak as if wishing to hide away from the world behind an impenetrable shell, Snape watched his ashen haired Margaret sit at the foot of the grave of a man he once had almost called a friend.

\"Only the dead have seen the end of the war.\"

\"What did you say?\" Hermione raised her eyes; the early spring sun shining in their brown, sorrowful depth, as if it was shining upon a bright new day of golden promises. What a cruel oxymoron.

\"Nothing,\" he told her. \"I said nothing.\"

Hermione shook her head. \"The frigging war... You know, Severus- it now occurs to me I never actually knew Remus Lupin very well, but then –he was one of my favourite teachers, one of my favourite men, and I appreciated him a great deal. If I\'d been here at the time he committed suicide I\'d probably have condemned his action as cowardly- but then, I wouldn\'t have Aubrey and you to teach me what love is; to make even the imaginary prospect of losing a beloved one possible. I thought I had loved before. Now I know I\'ve been deluding myself.\"

Hermione went quiet for a while, as if to allow the shock of her subtle and unintentional declaration to tear a hole through his heart. Yet this was impossible, noting she was unaware of actually having said that she loved him. Then she continued. \"Now that I know, I can only think how foolish and hasty I would have been for thinking such a thing. And how utterly devastated Remus Lupin must have been. Plato was right- only the dead have seen the end of the war. It is not Remus that I come here to grieve, but also Remus. And it\'s not only grieving I came here to do, but also to show gratitude for what I have been lucky enough to keep, lucky enough to get, and to pray. In a graveyard, you see. I\'m a strange creature.\" She smiled sadly, softly.

\"I borrowed one of your books...\" Hermione told him. \"There, wait a moment...\" She pulled a thin volume out of the folds of her cloak. Dusting it carefully, Hermione opened the book, and handed it over to Snape, who was standing about a foot from her. \"Would you please read it to me?\"

He nodded. The cool wind was biting his exposed hands, scorching the irritated skin, already inflamed due to his spring allergy. He sniffed, inclining his head to shift a straying lock that penetrated his left eye, and focused on the yellowing, worn page.

\"My child wafts peace.
When I lean over him,
It is not just the smell of soap.

All the people were children wafting peace.
(And in the whole land, not even one
Millstone remained that stilrnedrned).

Oh, the land torn like clothes
That can\'t be mended.
Hard, lonely fathers even in the cave of the Makhpela*
Childless silence.

My child wafts peace.
His mother\'s womb promised him
What God cannot
Promise us.\"

* The chapter\'s title is taken from Yehuda Amichai\'s poem \"My Child Wafts Peace\". This is also the poem Snape is reading at Hermione\'s request.

* Thank you very much for everything, I have no complaints whatsoever.\" – Hugh Redmond.

* \"Yet the tulips were too red in the first place, even through the gift paper I could hear them breathing.\" – Sylvia Plath, Tulips.

A/N

Some of you have complained about typos/grammatical, and word usage problems in \"Breeding Lilacs\" and I\'m sure that if some have complained, the rest have noticed. Official answer is that I\'m working on it and the situation will be rectified. However, it might take a while and so I\'ve decided to go on posting, with the intention of reposting in the near future, and so, posting the final chapters after they have been proof-read. Objections, complaints, ideas etc- this is the place.

Just to make things clear: I have no problem whatsoever to be informed about typos/grammatical mistakes and the likes. On the contrary: if you see an error, you\'re more than welcome to alert me, and I\'ll correct it. My note is intended to tell those of you who are very much bothered by those mistakes, that the story will be corrected, it would only take a little time, since I don\'t want to delay the posting :-).