An Easy Job

A/N - Okay, as I read this last chapter over it is obvious that eventually I will have to write more, if only to keep you all from tearing me apart in an angry mob. :) Howerver, with Terible Temptation and EPU still going, I don\'t have enough blood to transfuse them all. A sequel will have to wait. Sorry. Thank Kate for working th ekinks out of this and giving me her heatwave rating!

thnakk: si: sinj, campy, tandy, shteffi, Alison, Deeble, IrishRaven (Multi-tasking ability added to ADD, that\'s how LOL), Leigh!, Halcyon (The prunes and prisms line is from Regency slang). Deb, Greek Goddess, Helen, Andrian adn Sherrafina.


Chapter 4 – Dance of Discovery

Dinner was agonizing for Hermione. Professor Dumbledore had seated her between Minerva and Snape and her conflicting emotions were eating her alive. She decided to try again with Snape, his first reaction had been so fleeting that she hadn’t been sure if she had imagined the look of hope that had leapt into his eyes before he had stared at her with cruel contempt.

“Professor Snape…” she began.

“Severus.” He retorted sharply, correcting her and she blinked in surprise. Was he giving her permission to use his first name?

“Severus, then.” She replied, feeling totally off-balance. Saying his name, something that she had avoided even in her own mind, sent a shaft of pain to her heart. “I was wondering if we had sufficient stores of Gillyweed, since the supplies form the Mediterranean have been growing scarcer.” His eyes widened and he inhaled sharply. She hadn’t been mistaken, he did remember and it wasn’t an unpleasant memory.

“If you would like I will escort you to the storeroom and you may ascertain that information for yourself.” He snarled the words, as though it were a great imposition, but she had seen for the briefest of moments a glint in his eyes and she merely nodded her agreement, thinking that no sweet poetical words could ever have been as romantic and enticing as his abrupt speech.

With a feeling of happiness bubbling up inside of her, she finished her desert and then turned to him expectantly. He frowned and rose with reluctance, as though he had rethought the entire thing and was now unsure.

“I was also curious if you had dried nettles, crushed snake fangs, stewed horned slugs and porcupine quills for the Boil Cure Potion, so critical for first years to learn” She prompted him and a fleeting smile crossed his lips, again gone so quickly that if she had blinked in that moment she would surely have missed it.

“Of course I do, Professor Granger, even though most of the students are too clumsy to prepare it correctly.” Still a disconnect between the harshness of his words and voice and the faint glimpses of something else moving beneath the surface of his face. It was as though there were another person inside him, hiding behind the walls and only occasionally pee out out where she could see him.

She flashed him a smile and he extended an arm to her with a pained courtesy that made it clear to anyone watching that he was not pleased to have her touch him, he was merely too polite to allow her to walk unaided.

She wrapped her arm around his and the warmth of him made her heart speed up. He escorted her as though she were some fragile treasure, despite his sneering countenance.

“I always enjoyed learning from you, Severus.” She murmured with a slightly seductive timbre. He drew her infinitesimally closer and turned those pure black eyes on her. The brooding intensity of his gaze nearly stopped her breathing as a rush of pure need jolted her.

“You were slightly less stupid than the rest. Despite your irritating habit of raising your hand every other second.” His words were harsh, but his eyes had turned molten and she wasn’t sure she could make it to wherever he was taking her before the need to rip off his clothes and have him inside of her again overwhelmed her common sense.

He paused at a door and then stopped and looked at her; his nearness was playing havoc with her ability to think, but she could see the indecision returning to his eyes.

“Dragon’s Blood.” She murmured and to her surprise and delight the portal opened at her words. He pulled her swiftly inside and shut the door behind them in one swift motion. She found hef puf pushed against a wall and being thoroughly kissed. His mouth was hot, his body was pressed against her, and she was drowning in sensation.

“It was you, wasn’t it?” He asked between panting breaths as he pulled her clothes off with desperate hands.

“Yes, Severus. It was me.” She answered him and then words seemed superfluous after that. He was tugging his own clothes off and there he was again, the passionate madman she had fallen in love with. The clothes were like layers of deception, one on top of the other, hiding the vulnerable man from the prying eyes of the world. As each tier of defense was stripped away, he was slowly revealed to her ravenous gaze

Buttons popped and the frock coat fell to one side, small black shapes scattering across the flagstone floors. The pure white linen of his shirt was almost shocking after always seeing him clothed in dark colors. Even the muggle clothes he had worn that night had been black.

He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around himfusifusing to break the kiss that was closing the gap of two years, making them melt away as though they never were. There was a table in the center of the room and he laid her on it, his hardness pressed against her.

“Oh, Severus, please!” She begged him and he unbuttoned his pants and pulled his cock free. He ripped her panties off and plunged into her with a groan. She cried out in deepest pleasure, pushing hard against him, impaling herself more deeply on his shaft. He grabbed her hips and thrust hard into her, neither one of them caring about the lack of preliminaries.

He was fierce and wild in his love-making and she was driven to the heights all too quickly. Her screams were quickly joined by his own cry of release and then he sagged against the table and stared at her in disbelief.

“It was you!” He seemed both relieved and confused and she smiled, pushed herself into a sitting position and wrapped herself around him, nuzzling him contentedly.

“I told you that.” She purred against his throat and kissed her way along his jaw. He pulled back slightly to look her in the eyes, but his arms were around her and his grasp was deeply possessive.

“Why?” He was obviously having as much trouble reconciling the prim Miss Granger with the wild woman he had just fucked senseless on his laboratory table as she had had reconciling the teacher and the lover.

“I was penniless and Oxford costs a lot. I brokered a deal with the goblins.” She shrugged and wondered if he would despise her for her choice. To her amazement, he threw back his head and laughed.

“What an incredibly…Slytherin solution, Hermione.” His voice went husky at her name. “I have wanted to know who you were for two years.” It was a question, but his pride was too stiff to actually phrase it as one.

“I love you, I’ve loved you for two years, but I had signed a magical contract and I didn’t want to come to you while I still had a job to do.” While she was still contracted to sleep with other men, she meant and he grasped her dilemma immediately.

“I am not a man who shares easily, no.” He answered her question as well. She had been right to stay away. Severus cupped her face in his hands and kissed her, feather light, on her mouth and she wondered if it were possible to die from the longing and joy that were consuming every part of her.

“I also wasn’t sure that you felt anything for me anyway.” Now it was her turn to beg for answers while pretending not to care about the reply.

“Allow me to put your mind at rest.” His voice rolled over her and his hands and his mouth began working to assure her that he did indeed feel something for her. She was wrapped around him like a vine and he stepped back from the table and carried her into the bedroom.

He lowered them both to the bed and pulled the covers up. Entwined together on the bed, he stroked her hair and kissed her face. He was watching her with a look of disbelief, as though she might vanish at any moment if he didn’t keep her under constant scrutiny.

“I’m not going anywhere, Severus.” She murmured returning his kisses.

“Well, I suppose you will have to go to Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley occasionally for supplies.” He retorted and she laughed.

“Well, except for that.” She grinned, amused by the combination of his high-handed assumptions and the little boy look on his face. He was nowhere near as sure of her as he let on. “Does that mean you want me to stay?”

“After the mess you made of my laboratory, it’s the least you can do.” He grumbled and had soon fallen asleep in her arms. Hermione chuckled and kissed his head, feeling like a girl-shaped teddy bear as he clutched her to him in his sleep.

Looking at him, she could feel the pieces sliding together; the passionate lover and the sarcastic teacher of her school days were not the two sides of his personality, they were merely facets of the amazingly complex and irritable man she had fallen in love with. She could spend the rest of her life learning about him and she fully intended to.