One Hundred And One Ways To Brew Lust

Chapter Three

***

Harry looked glum next day at breakfast. He’d just received an owl from Lupin at Grimmauld Place, explaining that he’d have to go home to Privet Drive for Christmas. Ron was trying to cheer him up with a box of Seven Surprises he’d just received from Fred and George. It was their latest in a line of candy surprise boxes. Hermione eyed it cautiously, choosing a fuzzy pink candy with a smiley face on top. With any luck, it was a Skiving Box candy and might get her out of Potions class.

“I don’t understand it!” he complained to Hermione. “As long as I go home once a year, the protection spell will work. How can it possibly help to also spend Christmas with the Dursleys?”

Hermione and Ron pondered this. “Maybe they’ve got plans for you to spend the summer somewhere else?” Ron suggested.

“But that doesn’t make sense! If Harry isn’t going to be at home, and that’s the only place the protection spell will work, then there’s no use strengthening the spell, is there?” Hermione thought out loud. “Unless… Maybe your aunt isn’t going to be at Privet Drive all summer”.

“What do you mean?” Harry asked.

“Well, Dumbledore said that as long as you were where your blood relation was, you’d be safe, provided you return to them once a year. If your aunt goes off for the summer, but you have to be at Privet drive with your uncle, that won’t count, since he’s not a blood relation” Hermione finished.

Ron and Harry stared at her in admiration. “Now that you mention it, Aunt Petunia did mention something about going off to a retreat next summer” Harry said.

“There you go,” she concluded.

Ron openly ogled Hermione. She felt a little uncomfortable under his stare. Fortunately, Harry saved the day by continuing the conversation. “So, how was detention with Professor Snake last night?”

Hermione practically spat out her pumpkin juice. “Fine,” she mumbled as she mopped herself up.

“Well? What did he make you do? What was it like in his chambers? Did you have to do lines? Does he hang dead bats and troll heads from the ceiling fompshmpshades, like Lavender said?” Ron gushed.

“Honestly Ron! No, he does not! It wasn’t too bad. I… I had to clear out his closet,” she finished lamely.

This was not what Harry and Ron would have expected. “He made you clean his closet? THAT’S IT?” exclaimed Harry.

“Well, there was a Boggart in it. And… and… I don’t want to talk about it!” Hermione got up briskly and stormed away from the breakfast table. No way would she ever mention the meter stick. To anyone. Ever.

***

As the last period drew near, Hermione became restless and agitated. They had double Potions with the Slytherins to cap the day off, and the smiley face candy had done nothing to her whatsoever. She took her seat between Neville and Harry, all the while carefully avoiding eye contact with Snape. Snape, however, was going about business as usual, not remotely interested in anything the Gryffindors might be doing.

“Today,” Snape began with a faint air of disgust, “I will be teaching you about Love Potions. Though this is not something I would personally have included in the Seventh Year curriculum, the Ministry, in its infinite wisdom - ” Malfoy was stifling a snicker “- feels that this is useful. Now pay attention. This potion is complex, and if a single ingredient is measured wrongly or omitted, can produce disastrous consequences. Longbottom, you might as well leave now and collect a zero. Save us all a lot of grief”.

Slytherin snickers filled the room.

“Insufferable man,” Hermione muttered to herself.

As the room instantly fell silent, she realised to her chagrin that she had spoken too loudly, and Snape had heard her. His already-thin lips drew together to form a narrow line, and he glared at her with such loathing, Harry felt sure that he was hexing her in his head.

“Fifteen points from Gryffindor for your contemptible behaviour, Miss Granger. And deton eon every night, for the rest of the week. Let’s see if we can’t wash out that foul mouth of yours with a lithardhard labour” Snape turned his back on her, and ignored the Gryffindors for the rest of the period.

Harry stared at Hermione in awe. He’d never known her to be this defiant in class, not even during the days of Dolores Umbridge.

***

That evening at dinner, Hermione brought her Arithmancy homework to the table, and finished it by candlelight. She wasn’t going to give Snape the satisfaction of making her fall behind in her studies.

Reporting to his chambers at eight o’clock, she rapped on the door and was greeted with a furious Snape. “You’re late” he sneered at her.

“But I’m here at eight, just like last night!” she cried.

“Well, detentions start at seven henceforth. It’s your problem if you didn’t enquire what time to show up. Another ten points from Gryffindor for tardiness and insubordination” he added triumphantly.

“Insubordination!?” Hermione realised too late that she should not have answered back.

“Miss Granger, for one who is supposedly as bright as you are, you don’t seem to learn very fast, do you?” Snape was giving her a lethal glare. “Come here, now!” he said coldly, as he pulled the meter stick from behind his desk. Hermione felt her stomach give a small lurch at the sight of it. Somewhere below it, the tingling returned, and, to her utter mortification, she felt herself grow moist. Images from her dream slammed into her like a train. She was sure her cheeks were flaming red; she could feel the blush lighting up her face.

“Hah!” she heard herself shout, for she was now quite sure she was having an out of body experience and didn’t seem to be in control of her own actions. “If you think that thing can hurt me, you’re dead wrong! Nothing you do or say can hurt me,” she yelled defiantly.

Snape was livid. Words seemed to fail him as he grabbed her by her hair and pushed her facedown against des desk, just like the night before. However, unlike the night before, he decided that he’d show her the true meaning of discipline.

“Doesn’t hurt at all, you say? We’ll see about that!” he answered her in his deadly calm voice.

And now, Hermione was sure she was having hallucinations as she felt him reach for the hem of her robes. He pulled them up with a harsh move, and, just as in her dream, she felt the sudden cold of the evening air against her skin. Unlike her dream, however, she wasn’t wearing Parvati’s smiling pumpkin underpants. She remembered she had put on a rather lacy black pair of panties her sister had sent her from a Muggle lingerie shop. H&M, it was called, or something like that. Snape seemed hardly to notice them as he exclaimed “Hmph”, before bringing down the meter stick in swift, angry strokes.

What began as a stinging sensation for the first few strokes of the stick became something different as he counted “five, six…” Hermione’s cries of pain seemed, inexplicably to Snape’s mind, to be lessening. “Ten” he counted triumphantly, though his smile wavered a bit as he heard her distinct groan of… pleasure?

But his train of thought was interrupted, for when he looked down to contemplate his work, he realised with a pang of guilt that he’d left deep red marks on her. She was panting from shock and pain, he felt sure of it, and would no doubt be collapsing in tears any moment now. In a rare moment of weakness, Snape felt guilty about the way he had treated this student.

“I’ve gone too far” he chastised himself silently. He reached over to his desk drawer, and poured a small amount of Healing Potion onto his hands. Without much forethought, he proceeded to rub the potion into the angry red marks on Hermione’s thighs and bottom.

“This will lessen the pain,” he said stiffly. “Though why I should bother doing that, I’m not sure. Miss Granger, you’re an unruly, naughty girl. And that’s what happens to naughty girls” he added.

Hermione, who had frozen the minute Snape had started to caress her, was jerked out of her stupor as the words of last night’s dream tumbled from his mouth. She felt her breathing hitch and the world began to spin. The tingling in her groin had returned and she felt sure that, if he continued to rub the ointment into her wounds, he’d feel it. She struggled to get up against the desk. The hateful man still had one hand preg dog down on her neck. As he methodically rubbed the ointment further down, his hand brushed lightly over her upper, inner thigh. Only then did he realise what a terribly inappropriate thing he was doing.

He jerked his hand back as though scalded by her thighs, and as his hand withdrew at the speed of light, he touched moistness there. Not just moistness. Her panties were soaked through. Then he caught the distinct a ofa of female arousal. For a split second, it overpowered him, and he felt the primal urge to rip off her underpants and plunge himself into her. “Let’s see you wriggle out of this one” he heard himself say. The next minute, the impulse was gone, replaced by the need to wretch. Such self-loathing as he had never felt overcame him, and he released his hold on her body as though it was spontaneously combusting under his nose.

Trembling, he backed away from her. “You… you may go now, Miss Granger”.

Hermione straightened herself up, and awkwardly pulled her robes back down. She couldn’t turn around to face Snape. Her face was livid red from fury, humiliation, and an inexplicable lust that had overpowered her the minute the stick struck her. “It must be that stupid dream from last night,” she thought to herself furiously.

She left his chambers without a backward glance and stormed back to her room.

That night, she dreamed once more of Snape. Only this time, he wasn’t disciplining her with a meter stick. He was caressing her again. Not just on her backside, but her stomach too. His hands found their way up to her breasts and gently caressed the undersides of them. He didn’t kiss her, though. He just stared into her eyes, watching her through hooded lids. When he finally tugged on her nipples, she felt another rush of moisture to her panties and he bent down to take the nipple into his mouth….

“Ngrrrugh”. Lavender grunted in her sleep, and Hermione was woken from her dream of Snape. This time, it wasn’t fever that had her in a cold sweat.

“Merlin’s beard!” she muttered to herself. “What’s happening to me?”

“Ngrrugh” came Lavender’s answer.