Beneath the Surface

Beneath the Surface

Chapter the Twenty-firste: Heartstrings in Twain, Re-sewn Again


“…Grind the thistlewig into a fine powder. After doing this, you must immediately add the essence of neurosalve to the mixture, or it will…” Snape was droning to his Third Year Potions class, almost more bored with what he was saying than they were.

However, one person in the room was hanging onto his every word, but it was the speaker himself who was the object of her fascination, and not the instructions that he was giving. Though she did not fail to faithfully take down every word he uttered, Hermione Granger was at the same time worshipfully staring up at her Professor from where she was sitting, three rows back and just left of the center of the classroom.

Staring at his lips, more accurately. To be perfectly precise, she was completely fixated upon them.

Try as she might (though, in truth, she hadn’t tried very hard), Hermione hadn’t been able to think about anything else since he had kissed her the night before. The memory of his kiss had left her lips tingling with her every breath, and waves of pleasure had been running up and down her spine every time she thought about it.

Her heart had been thudding heavily in her chest since she’d stepped foot in his classroom that day, its tempcreacreasing every time his eyes happened to wander her way.

Last night, she had lain in her bed for a long time before exhaustion had finally forced her body to succumb to its much needed slumber. Though the kiss had been a very fulfilling experience in many ways, she’d wanted, craved, for more, and such was impossible after she had left him. She knew that if she had dared to venture back to the reading room that night, he would not be pleased to see her, however much she knew he had enjoyed kissing her.

Severus Snape was odd that way.

Hermione knew that she was currently too young for him where legality was concerned but, in her naïveté, she couldn’t understand why an allowance couldn’t be made for true love. Or at least sincere feelings. Deep affection?

Hermione’s mind was still far too fuzzy to possibly come to a coherent resolution on the issue, so she allowed the logical part of her mind to be pushed aside in favor of more pleasurable thoughts.

Back to Snape’s lips. A wistful sigh escaped her own.

~*~

‘If she doesn’t stop gawking at me like that, I’m going to go insane.’

Snape was trying his best to go on with his lecture in a calm tone and with a dispassionate demeanor, but it was all he could do not to just dismiss the class, grab Miss Granger, and…. And what?

‘I can’t kiss her again. Not yet, anyway… Oh, why does who whole thing have to be so damnably difficult?! We’re just two people…. But I know it’s not that simple. I’m the adult here, and I must behave accordingly. Oh, but I HATE having to be the adult…’

Snape was standing beside the blackboard, underlining the instructions he’d written upon it with a pointer stick as he read them aloud. After a half an hour or so of painstakingly reiterating the direction’s to today’s potion, (the creating of a potion could be fatal if made incorrectly, and he’d been blessed with a multitude of dunderheads in each class to supervise; he was lucky no one under his charge had died yet, or so he kept telling himself) he placed the pointer beside the board and fixed the class with a stony glare.

“Very well, you may begin; but if one of you makes even the tiniest mistake, thirty points will be subtracted from your House.” The students groaned collectively, but after Snape shot them a warning look, they silenced immediately. “It would serve you right after all the time I’ve wasted in practically spelling your tasks out for you. Third Years, indeed. …Well? Get to work!”

The class in its entirety leapt to obey him, and the previously silent room erupted with the sounds of the stirring of simmering cauldrons, the clinking of various metal implements and glass vials, and the occasional hushed murmuring of the students.

Snape had slid into his seat behind his desk and was making a valiant attempt at creating the syllabi for next month’s classes, but he found he could not concentrate on the task. The girl was still watching him from the corners of her eyes as she worked, he could feel it as if she were physically running her fingertips up and down his body.

He was very thankful that the desk concealed the greater portion of his body, for her wandering eyes raking over what little of him she could see served to make him acutely uncomfortable. If he didn’t know better, he would think that she was mentally undressing him with her eyes. But that would be too mature of an action for one so young.

He made a show of adjusting his position and putting a hand to his forehead, shielding his face from her view, but he could still feel her scrutinizing him despite his silent efforts to make her avert her eyes.

When the pressure of her intense gaze crossed the thin line of his patience, he snapped his head up in her direction and stared unmercifully into her eyes. Just as he’d thought (known, more like), the girl’s eyes were positively glued to him; her expression was like that of ‘a deer caught in the headlights’ (a Muggle expression he knew the meaning of but not the derivation) when she met his eyes.

He raised a stark, warning eyebrow at her and she bowed her head, flushing in embarrassment. Snape returned his attention to his papers as well, an amused smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. Really was was as if he were this girl’s first boyfriend, what with the silly way she was behaving towards him. He frowned suddenly.

‘I should not have kissed her. How could I have been so stupid? There can be no turning back now…’

The faintly purple-tinged rings under his eyes were evidence that Snape had not slept at all last night; but how could he have? He had been far too busy striving to ignore the natural sensations that kissing the girl had wrought within his body to be able to relax and go to sleep.

He had practically cemented his hands to either side of the sofa on which he’d lain awake so that they could not wander towards the part of him that needed to be tended to the most; that part of his body that had never once before been stirred by the child. He had done his best to will away images of the girl’s sweet, upturned face and wide, innocent eyes, and then of the way she had so willingly given in to him as he had plundered her mouth with his own, but they had come to him anyway, sneaking up on his tired mind in lightning-quick flashes.

The entire night had been pure torture.

The fearful knowledge that, had he still been Severus the Death Eater, Snape would have thought nothing of charming the young girl into his arms and then throwing her away like yesterday’s newspaper, was what had kept him from going any further with her that night. The knowledge that a secret, hidden part of him still wanted to rip her innocence to pieces was harrowing, and so were his body’s new and unbidden responses to her. He would do almost anything to stop himself from going back to who he was, to that dark and desolate place in his heart, and he often did.

But he was a changed man now; or, he was starting to rediscover the person he had once been. He was the resurrection of a boy who possessed a sense of deep sensitivity and honor, who was quiet and thoughtful---just plain Severus L. Snape.

This man did not lust after the girl’s purity, but truly admired her for possessing it; he did not crave the stimulus that the use of her body could offer his, but was proud of the fierce intelligence which lay behind her eyes that was so like his own.

Hermione Granger was very important to him, and Severus would not give her up just because the Death Eater in him was threatening---begging---to take her over, and was even willing to bring his own self down in the process. He would not allow that to happen, and it was as simple as that.

As simple as the compassion that he always saw in her eyes when she looked into his. As clear as the truth of emotion that shined brightly from within them.

No, he could not, would not, let her go; to do so would be to lose a part of him that he was beginning to cherish, and he could not remember the last time he had loved something about himself. Possibly, he never had.

He really needed to speak to her again. It wasn’t too soon.

~*~

“Miss Granger,” Snape barked suddenly, causing Hermione to start rather violently. “This is Potions, not Divination; you are not here to stare into space and daydream, you are here to work. See me after class.”

Hermione stared back at him in confusion before understanding dawned in her eyes, and she nodded mutely. A brief smile touched the corners of her mouth, and she lowered her head once again to focus on brewing her potion. Snape forced his features to remain stolid, and returned to his work as well.

Her two best friends had been watching this brief exchange between her and their Professor, and were more than a little confused about it. They couldn’t fathom why she didn’t seem at all angry about having been publicly reprimanded by Snape, and then made to see him after class ended. Normally, she would have appeared defiant, or at the very least, peeved. Why was she acting so docile now? Ron leaned towards her furtively.

“Hey, ‘Mione,” he whispered, causing her to jump slightly and look back at him as if he were a ghost (specifically, the Bloody Baron); it seemed as though her mind had been occupied far elsewhere. He and Harry exchanged dubious looks, Ron then furrowing his brows at her.

“Aren’t you angry? The bastard’s probably going to give you detention! And for what?! No—”

“Ron, don’t call him that!” she hissed back angrily, surprising even herself with her fervid outburst. After an awkward pause, she smiled at her friend apologetically, her cheeks flushing. “I’m actually glad he did it; I really wasn’t paying attention, and in a moment my potion would have exploded. I’d hate to be like Ne---well, you know.”

She jerked her head towards Neville Longbottom, whose cauldron was situated behind hers and to the left. Ron nodded knowingly and offered her a grin before turning back to his own cauldron; he still thought she was acting oddly, but didn’t wish to press her further on the issue at the moment.
Not with Professor Snape eyeing him so very suspiciously, anyway.

The rest of the class passed by quickly for all but Hermione and Snape, who were eagerly awaiting and dreading their after-class meeting, respectively. When the clock above the teacher’s entrance to Snape’s right signaled the hour, he rose in preparation to dismiss his students, however reluctant he was to do so (it was the first time in his memory of being a teacher that he’d ever wished for the class to go on for longer than it’s appointed time; life seemed overly filled with twisted ironies lately).

“Time’s up. If any of you haven’t finished by now, you will freeze your potions and complete them during our next class. Now, get out of here, you’re all dismissed,” Snape snapped at his students, who rushed to comply with his command.

All but Hermione, of course. She had finished her potion fifteen minutes before class had ended, and had spent that time carefully cleaning up her work area and putting away her surplus ingredients and tools, all the while surreptitiously watching her Professor. Time had crawled for her while she waited for the class to finally end so that she could be alone with him.

She now stood calmly beside her desk, waiting for her peers to leave before approaching Snape. Though she appeared completely composed, as always, her nerves were fairly alight with excitement, and it was all she could do to keep from hopping up and down on the balls of her feet.

As Harry and Ron left the room, they favored their friend with looks of deep sympathy, but she only smiled at them in return, as if to say ‘don’t worry, I’ll be alright’.

She’d be more than alright, once they finally got out of there!

~*~

Snape gulped down a ragged breath, imagining that it was his fear he was swallowing down rather than his saliva. He watched helplessly as his classroom emptied completely of people, save for himself and Miss Granger. And the gleam in her eyes as she looked at him was positively feral.

‘Gods, if any of you still look upon me with favor, save me from the perverse clutches of this child NOW!’

“Hello again, Professor,” Hermione greeted him softly, the timbre of her voice caught between that of a child’s and that of a woman’s. It frightened him and aroused him at the same time; an almost intolerable combination of emotions, like a hastily made potion gone awry. So much for the favor of the gods.

“Hello, Miss Granger,” he replied, his voice terse and his eyes hooded. He dared not to steal a glance at her as she continued to speak in that new, strange tone.

“I…You…You’re the only thing I could think about since…” She could force herself to speak no longer and, with a rapturous glimmer illuminating her dark eyes, she began to rush towards him, her thin arms eagerly outstretched.

He shot up a firm hand, stopping her dead in her tracks about a foot or so before she reached him.

“No, Miss Granger, please,” he implored her with all the dignity he could muster. “Stay where you are.”

Hermione’s arms lowered slowly back to her sides, her bones deflating along with her enthusiasm, and she looked up at him with large, confused brown eyes. She couldn’t understand why he was pushing her away now when it had been he who had initiated their kiss the night before.

“I don’t understand, Severus---”

“Don’t call me that,” he interrupted her, his voice shaking with emotion. He turned away from her and faced the wall, for he could not bring himself to face her. She made him feel like he was an adolescent boy once again, not equipped with the experience necessary to deal with the conflicting thoughts that were bombarding his mind. He didn’t like this feeling at all.

‘Get a hold of yourself, Severus, she’s just a child!’

Glancing at her from the corners of his eyes, he saw that she was staring at her shoes, her fingers twisting into the folds of her robes, illustrating her nervousness.

Snape sighed and walked over to her, one of his hands moving as if of its own volition to cup her chin and gently raise her face to meet his. She appeared shaken, and her slightly oversized eyes were gleaming with tears that had frozen in her surprise at his sudden movements. Snape stroked the curve of her jaw with his thumb; such a gentle touch from hands that were capable of such violence.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said, his deep voice fraught with meaning.

Believing that he meant to kiss her again, a jolt of excitement raced through her small body and Hermione rose herself on her tiptoes and tilted her head back. Her eyelids fluttered closed and her lips relaxed, parting slightly. She knew what to do this time.

Snape’s heart skipped a beat at the way she was offering herself so willingly to him, the inner sadist within him thrilling at the chance to engage in acts of debauchery. But Severus swiftly regained his composure before the images could consume him, and pulled back from his student both physically and mentally.

Hermione felt a cold breeze wrap itself around her body as Snape swiftly withdrew from her, and she shivered from the sudden physical loss of him. She watched his elegant, black-clad form as he fairly glided towards his desk, the folds of his cape gently undulating as he walked. He stood with his head bowed and his white, spidery fingers bracing his body against the desk for what seemed a very long period of time.

The thick, bleak silence of the room was broken by a long, hopeless sigh being expelled from the depths of Hermione’s gut. Once again, the cold hand of reality had struck her.

“So, is this over before it even began?”

Her voice caused Snape to start slightly; it had completely reverted to that of a small child’s, yet---possibly because of this---it cut through to the very core of his soul. He winced as if in pain at her words, his features contorting for the briefest of seconds before relaxing back into a pensive expression.

He may not fully understand his feelings for this girl yet, but if there was one feeling Severus Snape did understand and was all too familiar with, it was anger, and at this moment, he was experiencing it in full-force. His body practically shook with it, reacquainting itself with this old, ferocious friend. The desire he’d cultivated, and later strove to quell, throughout his life to rebel against whoever was in charge of him rose in his throat now like liquid hot bile.

‘To Hades with their rules and regulations, with the iron fences they have the self-righteous gall to erect over other people’s minds! I’ve had to give up far too much of myself when I came back here… I’m not going to give up her.’

Snape abruptly turned to face the dejected Hermione, his jaw set determinably. Upon taking in her form and emotional state, he willed himself to calm down and his body, along with his mind, steadily stilled as he focused upon his student.

Slowly, Hermione raised her eyes to meet her professor’s, sure that she would read rejection in them. Her breath caught sharply in her throat when she found the last thing she ever expected to see in his fathomless black eyes, something she’d never seen within them before: hope.

Snape smiled lightly at her, reading her slightest movement like a book. He knew what she saw, and how it made her feel, and that knowledge alone gave him great joy. He felt physically lighter.

“I don’t want it to be over,” he whispered, his voice barely audible. But Hermione heard him, and that painfully wide, ecstatic grin that he was beginning to crave came over her face.

“Oh, thank you, Professor, thank you.”

Snape smiled coyly at her, stretching out a graceful hand with which to tenderly engulf one of hers.

“Please, call me Severus.”