Needfire

>b>Chapter 5 -- The Knife


\"How long can a girl be tortured by you
How long before my dignity is reclaimed
How long can a girl be haunted by you
Soon I\'ll grow up and I won\'t even flinch at your name
Soon I\'ll grow up and I won\'t even flinch at your name
...
What are you my god? You touch me like you are my god
What are you my twin? You affect me like you are my twin\"

-- Flinch. Alanis Morissette.


\"You have a love bite on your neck, Harry.\"

\"Oh, that,\" he mumbled, automatically reaching with his hand to cover the place. \"It\'s nothing.\"

Hermione lifted her gaze from the Ancient Runes manuscript she had been reading. \"Is it?\"

\"Yeah.\"

\"Who is it you\'re dating? I thought you broke up with Ginny over the summer.\"

\"Yes, I did. I told you, Hermione, it\'s nothing. Just drop it.\"

\"Well,\" Hermione contemplated her words. \"I\'d hardly call it nothing when your sex life prevents you from arriving on time to two DA meetings or puts those bluish circles under your eyes.\"

\"And I,\" Harry retorted coolly, \"hardly call it nothing when you become suddenly cranky overnight and leave my best friend with a continuing hard-on for the following couple of weeks.\"

She conquered the desire to slam the book she had been holding, and instead, closed it carefully and put it aside. \"Go to hell, Harry.\"

\"Would love to.\" He yawned lazily, stretching his doll-like, delicate limbs -- now defined by an elegant layer of muscles -- in a way that made his school robes cling to his small figure. \"Won\'t you invite me to sit down?\"

Hermione pursed her lips. \"I\'m not in the mood for company.\"

Harry rolled his eyes and sat down on the worn out couch beside her. It was five o\'clock, some time before sunset, and the students were utilizing what time was left of daylight to be hanging around the castle\'s grounds. The common room was relatively empty, and the Gryffindors\' cheery rumble ascended to the low ceiling, clinging to the fire-warmed stonewalls.

Hermione\'s carefully brewed tea was meticulously placed on the small coffee table before her, the china mug located exactly at the center of the china saucer, half-way drunk as she slowly went through her Ancient Runes text. Truth was she\'d rather read it in her private Head Girl\'s room, but being a Head Girl, she also had responsibilities towards the Gryffindor student body. Therefore, she felt obligated to spend as much of her free time (which was sparse anyhow) as possible, in the Gryffindor common room.

Harry\'s arrival at this hour was quite unexpected. The quiet, bespectacled boy seemed to grow almost as busy as Hermione these last couple of months. And only a little of it, Hermione suspected, had to do with the person with whom he was sleeping. His tardiness to the DA\'s meetings was only a weapon she used to bait him, even though he did arrive at one meeting -- only a month ago -- reeking of sex. No, she thought, Harry was driving towards his own ends, privately contemplating his moves, to finally determine from which point he\'d be allowed to reach the chessboard at the moment of truth.

\"So,\" he said.

\"I told you,\" Hermione repeated, \"I\'m not in the mood for company.\"

\"Not company. Being with someone as fucked up as you doesn\'t count for company.\"

\"You watch your language, Harry!\" she scolded him. \"And I\'m not... like that.\"

\"Like what?\" the messy-haired boy mocked her. \"Like me?\"

\"That\'s not what I meant and you know it.\"

\"That\'s exactly what you meant, Hermione. You know, it takes one to know one.\"

\"I am perfectly normal, thank you.\"

Harry rolled his eyes. \"You\'re talking as if being normal is a good thing.\"

\"And so should you.\"

\"Oh, really?\"

\"Well, what is so good about being... about having,\" the fingers of her right hand began tapping a nervous rhythm on her thigh. \"About having... certain reactions to... given situations?\"

\"What\'s so good about being normal and blind and sensing the world through a dozen extra layers of skin? I didn\'t say having the reactions you do is good either, but nothing is ever just good or bad. Why, look at me, IÕm beginning to sound like some magazine\'s agony aunt.\"

\"YouÕre beginning to sound mature.\"

\"Yeah? Then I suppose I\'ll use the opportunity to ask you to give some to Ron.\"

She glared at him. \"My private affairs are none of your business, Harr-\"

\"Oh, come on, Hermione! The guy is dying from a lack of blood above pelvis level!\"

\"If, in your opinion, Ron\'s condition is that severe, you may see to his sexual urges yourself.\"

\"I hardly think he\'ll care,\" Harry noted, giggling. \"You should have heard him the morning after you two were caught by Snape. He had totally freaked out. Swore to me his hard-on went off on the spot the moment he realised the greasy git was there watching you.\"

\"Shame he couldn\'t keep it that way.\"

\"He\'s seventeen, love. What do you expect of him?\"

\"To masturbate.\"

The Boy-Who-Lived to be Hermione\'s Granger\'s closest thing to a gal pal chuckled. \"Such an understanding of the hormonal nature of the seventeen year old male, Hermione. No wonder you make such a wonderful girlfriend. Well, I\'ve had enough not-company for the evening. Being seventeen myself, I think I\'ll go get me some more love bites,\" he bantered viciously. \"And you, on the other hand, please give improving Ron\'s sex life some thought, okay? For all our sakes.\"

\"Go get yourself laid, Harry,\" she dismissed him. \"And leave me alone.\"

He smirked, and leaping gracefully to his feet, swept out of the Gryffindor common room. Sighing, she watched Harry disappear behind the Fat Lady\'s swiveling portrait, and sank deeper into the overstuffed armchair. Marvelous. The exact thing she needed being served to her like St John\'s head on a silver platter, in the form of Harry\'s fractured-crystal giggles and his not-so-innocent remark about Ron\'s reaction to the incident, two weeks ago in the Gryffindor corridor.

The incident was burnt unskillfully and therefore brutally on her brain\'s temporal lobe -- like a thirteen year old girl\'s first attempts at self-mutilations, using the blade she had disconnected from her single-use shaving razor. It left scars -- long and ugly, swollen with a thin, sugary filling of yellowish pus -- that hurt and itched like hell, drawing her mind each time to the exact spot where the fabric of her school shirt brushed against her forearm.

She was sickeningly nervous that day after the almost-encounter in the forest, sizzling with the newfound knowledge of him. Advanced Potions was spent staring at her Potions Master. The poisonous clouds ascending from her bubbling caldron, allowed her the relative safety of being protected from Snape\'s piercing gaze, as she imagined him fucking her from behind. In her fantasy, he was whispering instructions in her ear while she stirred the complex concoction. The moment the lesson was over, Hermione faltered to the Prefects\' bathroom. Warding the door behind her, she lifted her skirt and without much ado, found her engorged clitoris, bringing herself to orgasm within two minutes. Her right hand sticky with her own juices, she then stumbled to the huge bathtub. Crouching in front of it, she had shakily opened the brass taps. Boiling water hissed and churned as they splashed against the porcelain, and Hermione brought her hands under the stream. The scalding hot water burnt the bertholine off her hands together with a fresh layer of pink dermis.

Nevertheless, the quick orgasm in the Prefects\' bathroom was only momentarily enough to satiate her. That climax had felt as if she had to wring it out of her body: long minutes after, Hermione was still leaning against the heavy wooden door, heaving painfully with the same kind of exhaustion one experiences after having sneezed three or four times in row.

She spent the hours preceding her coming meeting with Harry and Ron attempting to tell her Id to shut the fuck up. Sublimation through intellectual endeavors proved to be useful only up to a certain point, at which Hermione threw aside her research in favour of some anaerobic exercise. After an hour of push ups, pull ups and stomach crunches -- her muscles screaming from lack of oxygen -- Hermione had once again made her way to the Prefects\' bathroom, this time, to let the hot water melt away the lactic acid buildup.

At ten minutes past eight, she put her Arithmancy homework -- with one more theorem to go -- aside, replaced her school uniform with some worn out jeans and a t- shirt she felt most comfortable practicing hexes with, and at eight twenty-five, was first to arrive at the Room of Requirement. Harry and Ron, attached at the hip like in the good old days, arrived together precisely nine minutes later.

Ron, affectionate as ever, kissed her noisily on her lips. A public display of affection she didn\'t appreciate. Hermione pursed her lips, but said nothing. Even with the former exercise having somewhat numbed her senses, she had yet been sensitive enough to have something inside her ignite in response to the touch of his mouth on hers.

Ron smiled. \"Been waiting for us?\"

She glared at him. \"Apparently I have.\"

Harry, behind Ron\'s back, was imitating her. Like Hermione, he stood frozen in his place, wearing his best mien of \'I\'m a frigid bitch\'; the one he usually used in order to mock those of the girl he dated who wouldn\'t let him fondle their breasts. He always did it out of Hermione\'s eye-sight, of course, but then, the boys never gave her as much credit as they should have.

Hermione crossed her arms across her chest. \"Stop it, Harry!\"

\"What\'s he doing?\" Ron asked, turning to look at his best friend.

\"Making an ass of himself,\" she replied. \"Now stop fooling around --yes Harry, I meant you. We have some counter hexes to practice.\"

And so they did, casting complicated hexes on each other and attempting to throw them off. First in pairs, with the third person watching, then -- after some practice, when the three of them felt secure enough in their abilities -- in the form of open combat. The Room of Requirement became a battle zone, one in which their overgrown five-year-old selves could conduct an extremely wide scale pillow fight.

At last, they found themselves sprawled, panting on the floor. Ron\'s head was resting in Hermione\'s lap; vivid, outspoken red against the yawning, mumbled cotton of her t-shirt. Harry was lying beside her, his chest rising and falling in short, strenuous breaths: trying to pump in as much oxygen as possible. His left hand was thrown backward -- in a sweet, marionette-like carelessness -- his little finger unintentionally brushing the curve of her right breast.

The accidental touch scratched the match of her desire alight. Hermione leaned away from Harry\'s touch, and her hand shot out, hurriedly closing her fingers around Ron\'s wrist. \"We\'re late. It\'s almost an hour past curfew.\"

The redheaded boy groaned. His pulse underneath the tips of her fingers was still a little hastened: wide-eyed vessels adapting mirthfully, to endow Ron\'s freckled skin with a sweet, rosy hue. She moistened her lips, her vagina throbbing and clenching around a painfully missing cock. The quickened, rhythmic heart beats of the male whose head rested in her lap -- pulsing onto her palm -- were like sweet, clear water to the lust-crazed Lillith lurking inside her.

Pulling Ron to his feet, she gave Harry an apologetic smile. \"I think we really should be-\"

\"Making up in a darkened corner by now?\" Harry yawned in feigned nonchalance. \"Yeah, I can definitely see what you\'re talking about.\" He arched his brow, glancing suggestively at Hermione\'s erect nipples, stabbing the fabric of her t-shirt.

\"Oh. Oh!\" Ron cried out, his face turning the same colour as his hair when he suddenly understood why he was being dragged out of the room. Fiercely blushing, he turned to look at Hermione. \"W-why didn\'t you just say you wanted us to-\"

Another minute of this total humiliation and she\'d be jumping off the Astronomy Tower. Hermione glowered at her thick-as-usual boyfriend. \"Shut up and follow me,\" she ordered him.

Harry, still lying on the mattress, winked at her. \"Don\'t you worry, mates, I\'ll take care of things here. You go and have some fun. And watch out for Filch and Mrs. Norris! Gin and I ran into them once- that was an experience I wouldn\'t like to repeat.\"

\"Hey!\" Ron protested at the mentioning of his younger sister, \"I didn\'t know you and Ginny went-\"

Hermione cleared her throat loud enough to wake Professor Sprout\'s sleeping baby mandrakes in greenhouse number four. \"Goodnight Harry! See you tomorrow at breakfast!\"

With Ron stumbling behind her, they rushed into the Gryffindor corridor. Too needy to wait for them to arrive to her Head Girl\'s room and not a little aroused by the thought of snogging in the shadowy hallway, latent with the echoes of footsteps, Hermione located a safe spot for them to make out. Having caught plenty of snogging Gryffindors hiding in the darkened niches of the very same corridors, she had a very clear idea of the hallway\'s faults and advantages. It suddenly seemed so rational that her hunger for sex would be fulfilled by her bat-like hunger for the dark, satiated in a small corner; hidden by blood-thick velvet (the new God said the blood was forbidden, an ancient voice inside her sang an elegy); sheltered behind a statue of a satyr. Yes, she thought hazily, amusedly; crushing her mouth to Ron\'s lips; I may be an animal in my desires. The Romans\' new God may think I am.

She laughed at her imagery, the soft sound dying against the redheaded boy\'s mouth. Her teeth pressed into his lower lip, and she bit it none too gently, then sucked it in. Ron uttered a throaty moan, allowing Hermione\'s tongue to part his lips and sneak in to explore his mouth. Taking advantage, she trailed her tongue along his milky white teeth, prodding the soft flesh of his inner cheeks and the arched, concaved palate, moaning too as their tongues met, and the sweet wetness was realized as an encounter, a battle. Two objects clashing at a meeting point, fighting for domination. Her hands coiled around his waist, tugging and pulling the worn out fabric of his jumper: fingers digging into warm, taut skin. Inside her, the pressure, the need for friction was only increasing.

She once heard Patil saying that one good kiss was worth a thousand orgasms, and silently rolled her eyes at the empty-headed girl\'s sentimentalities. Practical to a fault, Hermione Granger could not keep a measure of cynicism from tainting her expression when encountering this sort of banality. In her opinion, sex, as well as every other aspect of life, consisted of a certain set of intensities. Having the practical nature with which she had been endowed, Hermione was keen on producing maximum results and had little patience for what she considered as \'fooling around\'. It seemed to explain why she refrained from being occasionally touched, as well as her avoidance of public displays of affection: any she had managed over the years were bursts of true emotion, and it usually left her a little shaken. At other times she wondered whether she was actually numb- remembering the girl with the razor and the sudden, shaking sense of aliveness. With Ron pounding into her, she sometimes felt alive.

\"Lift me up,\" she murmured, lips still moving against his mouth. \"I want to feel you against me.\"

Ron laughed softly, and cupping her buttocks -- long fingers delightfully brushing her cleft through the jeans -- had easily lifted her up and pinned her to the wall. His cock was throbbing against her own pulsing center.

Hermione closed her eyes, savoring the friction, her legs wrapping around Ron\'s hips and pulling him closer. His lips, still on hers, were devouring her mouth, applying a counteraction to contrast and intensify the slow, excruciating grinding of the hips. Crying out, she buried her hands in Ron\'s mane of red hair, arching her back as Ron\'s one free hand roamed under her shirt to cup a rounded breast, crushing one taut nipple the way she taught him to do long ago. With the contra of Ron\'s slightly roughened fingers on her nipples, the friction was finally maximized and the shock to her system most intense: mouth, nipples, and clitoris stimulated all at once. Time to open her eyes and ride the electric current.

And oh, fuck fuck fuck- who was she fooling to think she was ever alive before, with the bloody razor and her pitiable orgasms. Hermione was resurrected, shaken out of the numbness of her being by one look of recognition from those black, ominous eyes that met hers from across the hallway.

So this is how the moth felt when it flew nearer and nearer to its incandescent death; how those few merciful drops of vinegar tasted on Christ\'s split lips, or Edmund, the second he had his first taste of the Turkish Delight: the Queen of NarniaÕs winter frost gaze scanning him, his face naked at this moment of revelation. Professor Snape. Her White Goddess. Colour of all colours. Colour of no colours at all. He would kill her at winter when the land was dead, and resurrect her at spring, hands buried in her hair; riding her like an animal until the land was fertile again, until summer came and the earth was ready to be enfolded into itself once more- for another, lengthy winter. She, Hermione knew, would be killed again by her lover, so that her blood would soak into the ground and fertilize it.

A shame, that she had become too controlled to be startled out of her skin: a shame that she had grown too vain to fake such reaction. She experienced a sense of unreality, of disassociation: in one universe Ron\'s mouth was on hers, her tongue teasingly caressing his tongue, flicking on teeth and wet, lush flesh. In the other universe was the whiteness of Snape\'s burn-like face, scalded against the opaque darkness. Snape, whose unwavering gaze was tearing her apart from the wavering shadows. But no longer. It took only a second for those two realities to merge- for the worldly stimulation she derived from the physical encounter with Ron to shift and turn into the clean, razor-sharp pleasure -- both sexual and intellectual -- she felt upon realizing this man of violent controversy had kept standing still, even though Merlin only knew he should not, watching her with a hunger to match the one that had consumed her for long, long weeks.

Encouraged by the Potions Master\'s dumbstruck stillness, she found herself distancing her lips from Ron\'s, pushing his head down: down to her breast -- the one he\'d been fondling and tweaking only seconds before -- watching closely for Snape\'s reaction. Faceless, expressionless; I wonder... I wonder... who took your expressions away from you and painted that amused mien on your face; am I your Aphrodite and are you my Hephaestus, she thought, reaching her hand, fingers twisting and fumbling with the hem of her shirt- have you just caught me making love to Ares: beautiful, sun-tanned Ares, so unlike you, my disfigured, ugly Hephaestus-... Panting, she uncovered a rounded, small breast, feeling Ron\'s lips close around its sensitive tip.

The unexpected sense of nudity, brought by those dark eyes skimming over her naked skin was making her shiver. There was something freakish about Snape\'s stare: offering no approval, exposing no secret, a new kind of nakedness? Hermione hypothesized when she saw him clenching his fists. And woke up, as Professor Snape cleared his throat, scaring Ron shitless. It broke their eye connection into a thousand crystal shards -- with which, much later, she might try to cut herself into a dreaming sense of aliveness once again, but hopelessly, because he wouldn\'t be there to watch her.

Pathetically craving for every bit of recognition, like an alley cat that is diligently collecting small bits of affection, she clung to her Professor\'s eyes even as they shut off. Pitiable, she was pitiable, a fucking tease, painted with Donna\'s lipstick, an \'O\' shaped gape, designed for men to come and stick their cocks into: Hermione Granger, Head Girl, her year\'s top student, an exhibitionist, a slut. Dirtied. Not only by her own thoughts and actions, but also by those of the people who touched her. Like a whore, letting all those people into her intimate space. Now Ron wasn\'t clean, or was he? God only knew where he put his hands before touching her, and his mouth, and Harry too- they were lying side by side, he was breathing on her... NO, you\'re so not getting into this, Granger, she ordered herself. You\'re going to indulge in a nice, long, steamy, scraping shower -- which you should not be allowed, by the way -- then you\'ll go to sleep, and tomorrow, tomorrow is another day.

In the end, Hermione had actually followed her own advice. Tired and scraped red, she sunk into the white linens, curling into her father\'s lap when he came to visit her in her dream. Lester rocked her gently, stroking her wild mane of honey curls, telling her that no matter what, she\'d always be Daddy\'s little girl. Hermione believed him.

Nevertheless, nothing of the calmness she felt in her father\'s arms lasted into the morning. The bluish mists that crept from the forest to stain Hogwarts\' lawns had slowly dissolved under the sun\'s insistent pressure, and if anything, the world held this terrifying wrongness about it, of being cornered into the darkest alcove of yourself and not surviving the experience whole. She wanted out. She wanted to be left alone. She wanted to strangle her boyfriend, who approached her first thing in the morning, asking if she was all right and admitting he himself was scared shitless by the creepy bastard. By the creepy bastard, indeed. Not by himself. Above all, she wanted, for the first time in her life, to miss a lesson. Advanced Potions, to be more accurate. And she dreaded the moment when she would have to face the Hogwarts Potions Master once again.

On Wednesday afternoon, descending the stone staircase leading to the dungeons, Hermione still could not contain all her clashing emotions. Facing him was not the problem. The actual encounter, she knew well, was never the problem -- the body was only the conductor of the soul; it went where you told it to go. Were you trained enough, your facial muscles would obey you, and you wouldn\'t be betrayed by your expression. She\'d be able to answer his gaze if she was forced to: she would sit in his class and brew whatever potion he might order her to brew. Inside, she would fall apart piece by piece; an insomniac mole would dig its way inside her body, gnawing the delicate strings attaching Hermione\'s psyche to reality, slowly but thoroughly disconnecting her from the real world; until she turned hysterical and rushed out of the classroom.

She was careful to make sure Ron and Harry were standing at her sides -- guarding her -- as she entered the cold, musty dungeon room. Persephone\'s watch-dogs, she mused, daring herself to look at her capturer. Stern, greasy, Professor Snape answered her with a blank gaze. Good, good. I\'ve got the hint. We\'re both pretending nothing had ever happened. It\'s going to make it much easier. Why, then, do I want to cry? So now I\'m nothing to you? Just like she was yesterday. And the day before. And the moment he looked at her and wanted her. I was nothing then, as well. You, of all people, Granger, have to know wanting doesn\'t make it \'a thing\'.

Using the same even, deep breathing she practiced when doing Yoga or meditating, Hermione subdued herself into forced calmness. It was hardly enough -- it was the thin slice of butter you could manage on the blade of a knife quantity of enough -- but it was as much as she could expect. That was all she could cling to, to keep herself from bursting into tears, and so she did. All sort of slimy, disgusting, dirty things had somehow appeared on the table in front of her, and Hermione turned sick at the thought that until very recently, she would have touched these without even having flinched.

She made it some way into the potion, her hand shaking with revulsion as she reached for the first nasty ingredient; fresh bat\'s wings, its ends where it was removed from the body still dripping blood -- and put it on the cutting board.

\"Hermione, is everything all right?\" Ron -- who already finished chopping the damn wings and adding them to his potion -- leaned to check over on his girlfriend.

\"Everything is fine,\" Hermione whispered. \"Go back to your -\"

\"Miss Granger! Do I need to remind you this class is intended for making potions and not for idle chatter?\"

Damn the man. Startled, Hermione dropped the knife she was holding, her guts clenching in disgust as some of the blood clots still tainting the bat wings clung to the knife\'s wooden hilt.

Snape watched her reactions with narrow eyes, obviously repulsed, it seemed, by her childish withdrawal. \"Silly girl,\" he spat. \"Come on, pick up that knife.\"

Hermione swallowed. The hilt was dirty. \"I can\'t.\"

The classroom turned silent at once. She heard a soft, crystalline chuckle Hermione had learned to identify with Draco Malfoy, which died out at once the moment the Potions Professor\'s black eyes shifted to look at him. Those eyes were instantly back on her, scrutinizing her, dissecting her the way he might do with one of his potions ingredients: impersonally, coolly, precisely --but no, the anger was not impersonal. And she didn\'t want his anger, either. She wanted him to desire her. I\'m pathetic.

Snape\'s voice, a rich, lucid baritone, rang through the class. \"Pick-up-that-knife, Miss Granger.\"

A muscle in her jaw shrunk. \"I told you, I can\'t.\"

\"Three points from Gryffindor. Pick up that knife. Now.\"

Hermione\'s lower lip trembled. \"I\'m sorry, Sir, but I can\'t.\"

Professor Snape clenched his jaw. Without further words, he reached for the knife, long, bluish-white fingers closing around the blood stained hilt -- and brutally taking her hand, stuffed the soiled object into it. Unable to control herself, Hermione uttered a cry as her Professor\'s palm closed around the raw flesh of the back of her hand. Snape\'s eyes were drawn instantly to the red, angry skin, flashing with something almost like indignation. Standing so close to him, Hermione was suddenly able to notice his eyes werenÕt the monochromatic black she always thought they were, but a wild, bewitching grey: so dark it could cut darkness. Foolish, now wasn\'t she, standing there, romanticizing this hideous, terrible man, when at every moment-

\"To the infirmary, this instant,\" he ordered, dropping her hand and retreating at once -- as if the touch had in some way stung him. \"Have Madam Pomfrey look at your hands.\"

Hermione ignored the sharp stab of pain and humiliation. \"Yes, sir.\"

There was no way she was going to the infirmary, but the slimy bastard didn\'t have to know that. Either way, she didn\'t think he would bother to confirm whether she did or did not visit the infirmary with Madam Pomfrey. Dress me slowly because I\'m in a hurry, she contemplated the phrase as she picked up her things. No point in stumbling out of the classroom like a hunted animal. Yes- oh yes, the wire was slowly fastening around her leg -- like the orgasm\'s relentless grip on the body -- the wire was lurking in the darkened corners of the rabbit hutch; drowsing, like the white-blindness, like the plague, asleep until it cropped its next victim.

Hermione felt the wire cutting into the tender skin of her throat when later that week, Ron came to her Head Girl\'s room -- showered and shaved after a Quidditch practice -- and she couldn\'t possibly endure his soft caresses.

\"What is it, Mio-sorry, what is it, sweet?\" A look of confusion and misunderstanding stained Ron\'s open, easily read face.

She breathed deeply, hurriedly closing the row of buttons at the front of her shirt. \"I\'m sorry, Ron- I just-\" Hermione fought the trap of tears materializing at the back of her throat. \"I simply can\'t.\"

\"It\'s okay, I understand, after that greasy-\"

\"No, you don\'t understand!\" she barked at him. \"You can\'t possibly understand!\"

Ron stared at her, openly hurt. The hell with him. She hated, hated and hated that mien. This childish, puppy-eyed look, like a kneaded, spread lump of dough, as if inviting her to vengefully perforate it with her fork -- never imagining for a moment this might be the exact thing she wanted to do. That she might just love to plant her foot in this exposed belly of his, if only for him being so innocent and trusting. If only because she fucking could. \"So why... why don\'t you tell me,\" Ron asked, \"so I\'ll understand...?\"

Her nostrils flared. \"I don\'t want to talk about that,\" she heard herself saying. \"Please leave me alone.\"

She watched him leave, careful to hold back her tears until the door had quietly closed behind Ron\'s back. Only then did Hermione bury her face in the pillow and weep miserably.

Ever since, her life had only seemed to be deteriorating. Ron was understandably cross with her, not hostile, but with all his attempts to reach for her being fenced off, he had eventually become remote. Harry, on the other hand, was his usual, moody self; at one moment melancholic and brooding, and on the other, cheerful and teasing -- often teasing enough to annoy her. Advanced Potions kept being a torment, which was only to be expected: Hermione made the lesson easier by sitting in the back of the class; which seemed to help, pulling the sleeves of her shirt to cover up the back of her hands in case Professor Snape passed by; only that he didn\'t. She should have probably been grateful. She wasn\'t. Snape was ignoring her intentionally and his attitude was driving her crazy.

Like any good exhibitionist, the only thing that affects me more than being watched, is being ignored. I wonder if he knows that, Hermione mused after she had finally put the Ancient Runes volume aside. Except she didn\'t actually think so. After all, what else, in fact, should Professor Snape have done? Hand her the kind of detention to see the two of them expelled from Hogwarts? What would she have done anyway, had he approached her? Freaked out, probably. Fucked him, or let him fuck her -- Professor Snape never appeared to Hermione like the type to be fucked by a woman- by a man, maybe, but not by a woman -- then soaped herself out of her skin? Rather like Eustace, clawed from under his Dragon hide, only that there would be no alternative Hermione under her current shell, only panting, bleeding marrow. Well, that was enough Narnian imagery for one month, she decided. Doubt Snape ever heard of the series, pureblood bastard that he is. Time to get some fresh air.

Some physical exercise should agree with her at this point- running perhaps. It had been a while, three or four days, in fact, since she had been to the Stones. Hermione had missed their fey, ethereal or perhaps, utterly worldly -- that of an ancient world, long gone -- quality. Much like the students, she thought, she would utilize this last hour of daylight and would be back just in time for dinner.

Without further hesitation, she turned to her room where she changed for running. She had quickly exited the castle; easily jogging down the mild slope leading down the cliff on top of which Hogwarts was located. Hermione was almost surprised to feel how the chilly October air penetrated her lungs. The biting, sharpened-teeth cold, it seemed, collapsed and ruined delicate layers of soft tissues, which stopped oxygen from filling her lungs properly.

Taking her time, she made it to the Stones in about five minutes, smiling at their long, curvy shadows that fell beautifully unto the grass: like closed-eyed women waiting to fall trustingly into the arms of their lovers. They were soft and welcoming, especially once she finally managed to counter the nasty ward that had been cast on them -- probably by a possessive, small-hearted Hogsmeader who had a hard time grasping the concept of sharing.

From afar, the place seemed deserted; the way Hermione found it every time she visited the Stones. She slowed her pace, not wishing to stop at once, the soft, gentle swish of cloth brushing against the grass suddenly reaching her ears. She frowned. Who else would be visiting the Stones at such an hour, a little before sunset?

Then she heard his voice: that low, rich, beautiful baritone seemed to echo from the grass, and shine clear and lucid from the Stones- she knew he was saying words, or better said: knew he must be speaking words, but she was too confused to unknot them from the thick, honeyed mess that was his voice and didn\'t leave even one place in her body untouched. He is the blood that runs in my blood, Hermione thought hazily. Dumbstruck -- like a mongoose caught in the flashlight of a car in the middle of the night -- she ordered herself to move. Right away, before he\'d caught her.

This was total foolhardiness....! She should not be romanticizing Professor Snape, or act like the heroine of a silly paperback. There was no bloody wire, only a narrative running in her head like rope: one she would coil around her neck, very likely to condemn herself to be hanged with if she\'s to continue to behave in this manner. Get the fuck out of here, Granger, she ordered herself- come on, on your feet, that\'s a good girl. Now donÕt look, I said DONÕT LOOK. But she did. And she was lost.

Bad for you, Granger.

A/N:

* Dress me slowly because I\'m in a hurry -- Napoleon Bonaparte.

* \"She is the blood that runs in my blood\" -- a rather free translation of a line from Rachel Bluwstein\'s, \"Rachel\".