Tension in the Laboratory

sheherazade: Thanks for the wording advice. Yes, there will be a jealous Snape!

aliciana: I really appreciate your comments! Someday I hope to see the north of England sometime...

And thanks, Marauding Lady!

This is the last installment of this fic. Things will pick up three ways from here. (There's three ways that lo-ove can go. That's good, bad, and mediocre...) This relationship with Hermione and Snape will continue, but on another level. In an alternate, alternate universe, Hermione breaks it off with Snape and takes up again with a different kind of Ron. And in a third fic, already underway called "Beauty and Sadness," teenage Severus courts Lily.

*

“I ran into someone in the hall,” Hermione said calmly, avoiding his gaze under the pretext of straightening her robes.

“Hm,” Snape said, as though investigating the lunch menu. “Have a drink.”

“No, thank you.”

“Have a drink,” he cut in. He was already pouring something from one of his many flasks into a thimble-sized glass shaped like a human skull. “So. Who’s got you creaming your knickers? It can’t have been Potter. He’s decamped. It must be Weasley.”

His insight shook her. “Sever—"

“Professor, I rather think,” he interrupted silkily. “Traitorous mouths have to earn the right to say my name.”

“I didn’t kiss anyone!” Hermione protested. “It was just—"

“—a meaningless conversation, with everything meaningful between the lines. Maybe you need a lesson in whom you’re engaged to. Drink up. And if I were you, I’d take it in one swallow.”

The innuendo was plain. Hemione glared at him before tossing back the clear liquor. She began coughing at once.

“Have another,” Snape said remorselessly. The liquid in her glass refilled itself.

In full view of her, Snape downed two shots himself, to no visible effect. Then he crossed his arms. “Strip.”

Hermione didn’t think she had heard him right. The beginnings of fear stirred inside her. In spite of being unofficially engaged to Snape, she had very little real experience with him. She had never seen him like this.

“You heard me,” his voice lashed out. “Drink it and strip.”

Hermione drank down most of the liquor as quickly as she dared and put her hands behind her back, concealing her wand. “Why don’t we talk?” she said, trying to sound composed.

Snape lifted an eyebrow and flicked his wand. An invisible knife cut a huge tear in Hermione’s robes, causing them to sag from one of her shoulders. She whipped out her wand.

“Protego!” they both said at the same time. To her horror, Hermione watched her wand fly up in the air straight to Snape’s hand. He smiled at her triumphantly.

Hermione turned to the door, only to see it slam shut and the heavy bolt shoot home. She spun back around.

“Well?” he said.

“You’ll have to tear them off me because I won’t make it easy for you!”

Snape licked his thin lips. “Oh, good. Something to look forward to, then.” His wand moved again, and a matching rip appeared over Hermione’s other shoulder. Now her robes were hanging off her, exposing her upper arms.

She steeled herself. She would not beg. She would not plead. She had done nothing wrong. He was being unreasonable, and she would make him see—- A violent ripping noise filled the air. Hermione found herself standing in a puddle of cloth, her robes now truncated somewhere slightly above mid-thigh. Now her schoolgirl shoes and anklet socks were exposed, as well as the pretty legs she took pains to hide. Hermione might have had a plain face, with her oversized teeth and frizzy hair, but her body was nothing to be ashamed of.

She gulped, struggling to keep her expression neutral.

“Come here,” he commanded.

She lifted her chin, defying him by not moving.

Snape laughed. “Always boldest when you’re cornered. But this isn’t like an Unforgivable Curse. I could compel you. But free will is much more interesting.”

“This isn’t free will!” Hermione snapped.

“Well, no,” Snape said, clearly enjoying himself. “You like to be in control, don’t you?” She remained mutinously silent. “That’s problematic,” Snape continued. “Because, you see, so do I.” Ripping sounds tore through the air again, and Hermione’s robes and underclothes fell from her in a jagged heap. Snape smiled. Hermione stood, unwillingly naked before him, trying to conceal as much as possible with her arms in the chilly air.

She hardly knew which way to turn. He wouldn’t seriously hurt her, this much she knew. But she shuddered to think about how hard he might push things and how ugly the resulting scene might be. “Oh, for an Imperius Curse now,” he said softly, his eyes everywhere on her but her face. “But I want you to really mean it.”

Hermione’s heart hammered. She should tell him it was finished, right now. She should break it off cleanly, get it over with. But that soft voice blunted her resolve. His eyes were moving over her hungrily. She felt herself begin to get wet. Thoughts of Ron spiraled away.

“Come here,” he said again, not so harshly.

Nothing in life had prepared her for this. She had been treated like a grown-up since she was very small. Her academic achievements and natural talent had only encouraged her parents to view her as a miniature adult. At the same time, she had been a lonely child. Not only had she lacked brothers or sisters. She also had grown up not knowing any other magical people and having to keep her own powers secret. She had become used to giving orders and feeling sympathy for the less-gifted. Now she found herself in the sexual thrall of a man both much more powerful and much more vulnerable than she was.

Slowly, she put one foot in front of the other until she stood an arm’s length from him. She halted.

“Oh, what to do with you,” Snape said, walking around her. His wand was raised. Hermione did her best to look unafraid and kept her eyes forward. “How to rid your mind of the enthusiastic but hopelessly dull Weasley? I could Obliviate you. …Again. You really should take more care around me, Miss Granger.”

A shiver went up her spine. “Severus—"

“Professor!” he barked at her, just behind her right ear. Hermione jumped.

“Professor,” she repeated, keeping her voice submissive. She was quaking. She had no wand. He could do anything. “It won’t—“

“I could try the old methods,” Snape continued as if he hadn’t heard her. “Just crush the thoughts out of you.” She felt his hands gather up the heavy weight of her hair and pull, slowly and inexorably, overpowering her and forcing her to look straight into his snapping black eyes. She did not like being manhandled, and anger galvanized her.

“Let go, you jealous git!”

To her surprise, he let go of her hair and gave her a wintry smile. “Right as usual. But you always were a know-it-all.”

The insult stung. Hermione tried not to let it show.

Snape began flicking open the buttons of his robes. “W-what are you doing?” she said, trying not to let her voice quaver.

No need to ask. His robes continued to come off. Panic was starting to bubble into her brain. Turning, she sprinted toward the door. (Stupid, stupid! she berated herself. It’s already bolted.) In alarm, she turned toward the first door she saw and started toward it. (Worse! That’s the bedroom!)

She threw herself against the door, and his body crashed against her back, pinning her there. He was breathing hard. She could feel the hard wall of his bare chest against her back. She saw his wand tap the door, and it swung open. She would have fallen, but he pulled her against him even harder and began marching toward the bed. Hermione tried to get her feet firmly on the ground, but he had her half-raised in the air and she couldn’t get traction. He slung her over the bed face-first, her rump in the air, her legs over the side.

“You know what happens to fiancées who cross me?”

Hermione didn’t answer, fearing that any response was worse than none. In the next moment, his hands were running over the cheeks of her ass, kneading gently and probing toward her entrance. Desire began to curl low inside her. She felt herself getting wetter. The finger probed a bit deeper, then retreated. He pulled her pussy lips apart, and Hermione sucked in her breath. Then he released her and stroked her rump some more. His gentleness, after his words, surprised her. But not as much as what was to come.

All at once, a crack resounded through the room, and Hermione realized he had just smacked her sharply across her buttocks. The sensation was more tingly than painful, but outrage flooded through her. With an incoherent noise, she tried to rise, but Snape pinned her to the bed with one sure hand.

“You—you—hit me!”

The next smack came down lightly, more tingle than tang. To her mortification, Hermione felt her arousal heighten. She squirmed. He pinned her more firmly. More light, stinging blows jiggled her rear. She began to kick her legs, keeping her back arched. Oh, this was good! (No, it’s bad!) Oh, more! (No, what are you thinking?) Oh, Merlin! Fuck me! Fuck me now!

Her ass was tingling madly, and her pussy was wet and throbbing. Snape spread open her pussy lips with knowing fingers and in the next moment, she felt his engorged member spreading her walls open. He pushed inside her with her a grunt. Two strokes took him in to the root, and Hermione without warning hurtled into the darkness of her first orgasm of the night...

He kept at her all night, giving her almost no rest. As soon as she reached the pinnacle of one climax, he rode her until she reached another. She thought he might never come, but at one point, his penis swelled incredibly thickly inside her (oh, Merlin, she thought, coming again), and his grunts and thrusts told her he had reached completion. But fifteen minutes later, he was riding her again, always on top of or behind her. Sometime near 4 a.m. they collapsed on the bed. Hermione noted, even in her exhaustion, that he kept a firm hold of her breast while they dozed. At 5:30 he woke her up, straddled her face and watched her while she pleasured him with her mouth. After a long time he put her on top of him, facing away, and said, “Ride me.” She knew he could see his own tool going in and out of her, and the thought propelled her into yet another climax.

She left his rooms at 6:30, feeling sore in every muscle. Her buttocks throbbed.

I should hate this, she thought. This is wrong. What’s happening to me? I need to break it off with him—-oh, I can’t!

She was in a much worse muddle than ever before as she headed for Dumbledore’s office.

*

“Sir, how is your, er, hand?”

“Oh, fine,” Dumbledore said genially. He produced it and flexed it for her. “It’s a fake, you know. Severus helped find the right spell for it. It doesn’t really function. It’s a decoy. An illusion.”

Hermione’s face fell. She had really thought it was genuine.

“Not all things can be replaced, Hermione,” Dumbledore said gently. “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Hermione said distractedly.

“I have a confession to make.”

Confession, confession. Hermione’s mind was a million miles away, on Snape’s black counterpane, her thoughts spinning around madly.

“You may have noticed yourself under a spell some years ago. A lenttempus curse.”

Hermione’s slow brain finally snapped into the moment. “How do you know about that? Sir?”

“It was—It was I who cast it.”

Hermione could only stare at him.

“Don’t think too badly of me. I thought it might put you more in Severus’ path. I thought you could help one another, to combat the growing threat from Voldemort. I had no idea things would go as far as they have.”

Hermione could not answer for some moments. At last she said, “It’s all right, sir. It’s worked out. I mean, it’s worked out for the best.” A surge of panic rose in her as she said the words.

Dumbledore regarded her over his half-moon spectacles. “Very well,” he said. “Aren’t your classes about to begin?”

Hermione left his office feeling more torn than ever.

*

Fin