To Save A Serpent

The ghost like figure seemed to shimmer in the pale light of the room, his sad frown etched firmly across his transparent face. “Do not cry, Hermione, there was little you could have done.”

“You promised,” she whispered, coming to her feet, abandoning his body on the bed. Reaching her hand out, she recoiled at how cold his ghostly fingers were against her own. “You promised you’d be alright, I could have saved you— I could have—” she broke into a round of hysterics, sobbing and collapsing to her knees.

“There was nothing you could have done,” he repeated.

“Why haven’t you— haven’t you—”

“I could hardly move on with simpering like a ninny over my body.” Death had hardly changed his mannerisms and despite the tears she coughed a chuckle. “Now, sit up, back on the bed, Hermione,” he whispered not wanting to float to close to her and give her a further chill.

With a hiccough, she moved from her knees back to the bed, carefully brushing her fingers over his forehead. She watched him sigh, leaning his head forward as if he could feel her hands. “You can feel me!” she whimpered and pressed her lips to his. “Severus! You can feel me!”

His ghostly figure began to fade, hardly visible. “No, Hermione, just the longing to…” he whispered and dissolved completely. Tears once more flooded her eyes and she collapsed against his lifeless figure, her head on his chest, waiting to hear the rhythm of his heart, waiting to feel it rising and falling as it had so many nights before under her head, but he remained still and silent.

~*~

She was standing in front of a mirror at the burrow, pinning back her hair as Ginny walked in. “Hey you,” she teased, swaying a bit from the wine they’d snuck from the kitchen. The younger girl wrapped her arms around her friend and their lips met, Hermione’s face flushing. “Mm, Mione,” the younger muttered.

“How gushingly sentimental…” Severus said, appearing behind her in the mirror, and Hermione pulled back from her friend at once, gasping.

“Get out! That’s—”

“Everything in your mind, that innocent little girly kiss included, is mine for the taking, Miss Granger if you don’t control your mind.” He spat.

Hermione sat up from the chair and crossed her arms over her chest. She’d been trying her best to keep him from her thoughts especially her personal thoughts, but had hardly been successful. Her face was flushed, and her legs were trembling, despite having them under her the whole time.

“How lovely, have a fling for her when her brother couldn’t satisfy you?” he sneered.

“That is none of your business!” she spat.

“Ashamed of your true colors, Miss Granger, liking women should be nothing to be ashamed of.”

“We were drunk!” she spat, suddenly unsure as to why she was divulging such information to the man before her. Hermione quickly shut her mouth and closed her eyes tight.

“Squinching your eyes shut is not going to block me from your mind, Miss Granger,” his voice carried like a lost melody to her ear and she could not help but shudder. And then she heard him chuckle. “Little Miss Granger isn’t Gryffindor’s little angel after all…”

“Stop it! Just stop! We can’t all be bloody brilliant at Occlumency like you, Professor,” she spat, feeling her tongue practically taunting her. “We just can’t. I’m having trouble with it. Just accept that, quit gloating over it and help me!”

For a moment he felt himself stunned into silence. He had been harsh on the girl but no harsher than perhaps he would have been on Potter. And all of the daunting and jeering he’d done at her expense was only to keep himself from rounding thoughts on how lovely her bottom would look poised up in the air waiting for him to come from behind and enter her in a most primal way. He wouldn’t apologize, but rather gave her a curt nod. “Don’t think. The less you think about the easier it is to close your mind.”

Hermione was quiet, trying to churn over in her head how exactly she could apply the gibberish he just spoke. Clearly he was making an attempted effort to at least be tolerable, though it was a far stretch from civil, let alone pleasant. “Don’t think…” she repeated and found herself thinking on his words. She hardly heard him shout.

“Legillimens!” again he blasted his wand forward to her, and for a moment found that he had nothing from her that he could grasp. But the instant she realized he’d done it, her mind began whirling over all the things she didn’t want him to see and suddenly a host of images came before his eyes. “Finite,” he hissed and pulled back. “You almost had it! You can’t think, Miss Granger, when you think it opens your mind up for any willing individual to have a go!”

She was quick to shoot a stinging barb back but held her tongue, proud that she was able to do so. She had noticed the difference, the moment she had started thinking how easy it was for him to drift through her mind verses when she hadn’t been thinking how she had seen him looming on the distance in darkness. The phenomena astounded her.

Severus leaned back and drew his wand once more. “Legil—” but she was faster.

“Legillimens!” she had shouted and he hadn’t even seen her draw her wand. The image she had been hoping for, sitting right there as she entered his mind, had changed only slightly. It was no longer her bed, but his, and she was on her back, nipples hardened and exposed, panting for him, who stood naked at the edge of the bed, smirking over her. She was about to moved forward for a better look at his body when she felt a cold blackness close around her and suddenly was yanked back from his mind.

“Miss Granger!” he growled.

“I needed to see.” She panted, trying to steady herself, it was always a bit much on her person being forced from someone else’s thoughts without warning, or so she had discovered in her works with Snape. “I’m— sorry…well, I’m not, but…” her voice trailed off and she looked away. “Why me, sir?”

That was the one question he had not expected to come from her mouth. And try as he might to formulate a quick answer to snap her off and send her packing, none came to his lips. It was not the first time in his life that he had been rendered speechless, but the first time, perhaps, that he had been done such by such a young and impertinent girl.

“I’m of age,” she said, as if somehow filter feeding on his thoughts. “Though only just technically, I’m eighteen now…” she said, and then shook her head. Why was she telling him this? Surely she hadn’t any intentions of allowing him to follow through on that idea that he kept locked up in his mind, that idea that he’d written off as a foolish fantasy.

“I believe I am going to ask Professor Dumbledore to continue these lessons with you personally,” he said.

She looked almost hurt, but would not let a tear slip from her eye. “Indeed,” she said and stood, grabbing her bag. Hermione was quick to move to the door, ready to burst into a full speed run the moment she would burst through it. As she pulled the handle back, swinging the door open, she did not expect the heavy pressure of his hand to force it closed, nor the weight of his other hand on her shoulder, turning her back to look at him.

Frozen to her spot, eyes wide like a doe in the headlights, she gazed at him. “I am a dangerous man, Miss Granger,” he said eyes gazing into hers, as if trying to read her mind without performing Occlumency on her. “I am not capable of love…” he said. There was a vulnerability there in his voice, something she’d never seen in the man. “I will give you one chance, one decision,” he said and the door clicked itself fully back into place. “Leave now,” he said, a finality to his tone like no other.

Hermione stood very still for a moment, her eyes captured in his. There was an understanding that passed between them. She felt almost touched by an implication that was not fully there. He was a dark and dangerous man whom she trusted on instinct alone, but that didn’t seem to matter. “I think I’ll stay, thank you very much, sir.” She said trying her best to keep the quiver from her voice.

“I’ll ask you one more time, witch, to leave…”

Her lips parted to speak, but she closed them and shook her head. But before she could comment again on how she was going to stay, his lips were upon hers, crushing hers almost demandingly and she whimpered. His hands came around her figure, almost scooping her up away from the door and his tongue was in her mouth, possessing her, claiming her.

He pulled back, only for a second to inhale her scent and breath of air before he pressed his lips to hers once more, but she turned away, panting, face flushed, lips swollen. “Please,” she murmured.

“I warned you—”

“No, it’s not that,” she insisted. “Just somewhere a little less…open,” she nodded her head, trying to keep the room from swimming around her. “P-professor?” her voice was timid and almost tiny as she spoke. “I’ve never—”

But his lips captured hers once more, drawing her this time completely off the door, up onto her toes and into his arms, almost lifting her completely off her feet. “Hush,” he muttered against her and began to move slowly backward through his office to a large tapestry. Leaning back against it, it fell away and he pulled her through it down into a corridor that led to another tapestry and once through it they were in a fancy sitting room, though he hardly stopped to let her take notice.

“Dear Merlin,” she whispered.

“My name is not Merlin,” he growled near her ear and dragged her forward into his bedroom. The bed was not unlike the one from the second round of images she had seen. And he seemed all the more eager to put her upon it. “There are rules, Miss Granger,” he said, licking his lips as if eying a rather sumptuous steak. “You must never speak of this, any of this…”

“Like anyone would ever believe me,” she said almost breathlessly as he pushed her back onto the bed.

“Rule two,” he pressed his lips to hers once more. “When I’m explaining the rules you don’t talk.” But before she could protest his hands were at her collar undoing her school tie and slipping the button through the button holes. “Rule three, this is discreet, and secretive, and if I say no, no means no.”

“And what about if I say—”

Again his lips swallowed hers. “Rule four, when you say no it’s over, completely.” He whispered at her ear. “I’m a very difficult man to please, Miss Granger, but should you find you need one, a safe word will provided and furthermore—”

“Rule five, you’ll address me as Hermione, you’re practically buggering me through your trousers…” her face flushed. “I can’t be having that Miss Granger nonsense while you’re buggering me without trousers….”

“Touché, Hermione, touché,” he whispered and then kissed her properly.