The Seven Year Sleep

Chapter Five
I Know You, Though I Don't Know How


She had seen it. Everything.

The evening had started out fine.

She had Floo-ed over to Harry's, and veritably dragged him along to Hogsmeade, though he didn't seem to mind too much. He was used to it, after all, and only gave a few necessary grumbles and glares before acquiescing gracefully.

He had looked at Ginny with his heart in his eyes, looking from the revealing shirt to the tight skirt and heels, and visibly gulped.

Hermione had grinned broadly at Ginny. She had dolled herself up for Harry.

"I thought you didn't care for the dating scene," Hermione had whispered low into her friend's ear. She was gratified when the famous Weasley blush spread across her friend's entire face.

"Shush."

The three had walked in, chatting about their work, funny things that had happened to them, and their lives in general. Hermione kept to the good things only, and quenched any sadness that might ruin the easygoing, content feeling between the friends.

Harry, Ginny, and she had just ordered her meal and had lifted the bottle of butterbeer to her lips when she saw someone enter the bar from the corner of her eye. The figure was tall, dark, and menacing... it could only be Severus. She choked slightly on her drink, and Ginny patted her on the back until she was breathing again.

"Are you all right?" she had asked, looking concerned.

"Yes, it's just that I saw Severus come in," Hermione murmured, taking a swig of butterbeer.

Ginny's eyes widened. "Really... I mean it's not that it's uncommon. You should go say hi."

"Should I?"

But Harry, who had been watching Snape with narrowed green eyes, muttered tightly. "Perhaps you shouldn't waste your time."

Her heart clenching in fear of what she was to see, Hermione turned slowly. Her eyes followed Harry's line of sight.

She saw the loveliest woman she had ever had the grace to see, fairer than a veela, laying her hand against her husband's cheek.

She saw her beautiful smile, the way she looked up at the man above with a look of pure adoration.

She saw Severus look back with an expression of pure seduction.

She couldn't stop looking, though her insides were being pierced by so many dark emotions as the two exchanged a furious kiss through a curtain of silvery blonde hair.

Then the woman left, and Hermione breathed.

And sat still as a statue, unmoving. She couldn't move. She couldn't think. She couldn't even cry.

But Ginny could.

The witch looked like Fury itself, her red-gold hair dashing after her like a river of molten flames, her eyes flashing like beacons as she stalked over to Severus Snape. She didn't care about making a scene. Weasleys, after all, were famous for them.

He didn't see it coming, and was shocked when a gobletful of ice-cold pumpkin juice was poured over his head.

"You. Fucking. Bastard!" Ginny shrieked, grabbing him by the collar of his robes. She was quite a strong witch. Everyone in the bar stopped what they were doing, and their eyes riveted interestedly to the pumpkin-covered wizard and the fiery witch.

"Unhand me," Severus said dangerously, his hiss low as a snake's.

"How dare you cheat on Hermione?" she yelled.

He did not say a word, but his eyes fell on the stricken face of Hermione Granger and his heart stopped. Just for a moment.

Then, Severus turned back calmly to the witch who had him by the throat. "Unhand me," he repeated smoothly. His wand was suddenly in Ginny's face. Harry moved convulsively towards her, looking as though he was ready to kill. "If you do not proceed to move back from me, I will not stop myself from hexing you."


Ginny turned red with rage, and would have retorted but for the hand that rested on her wrist.

"Ginny, stop." Hermione's face was pale and drawn. "Just let him be."

"Hermione..." Ginny said exasperatedly, but she did as her friend asked. Severus lowered his wand, his eyes fixed on his wife.

She did not look at him. "I think I'll go back home now, if you don't mind." Without another word, Hermione left.

Before Harry and Ginny could restrain him, Severus had taken after her. As he had expected, Hermione had not apparated home. She was walking as if in a daze.

He caught up to her quickly enough, and grabbed her arm. She didn't react with alarm, but he did. Hermione's face was so pale, unnaturally so for her.

"You certainly aren't the typical English rose, are you?" Severus said softly, his lips trailing down her soft skin.

"Is that bad?" Hermione asked anxiously. He had looked at her, at her worried amber eyes and chuckled.

"No, don't move, I didn't mean to laugh... it's only that you have nothing to be ashamed of. Who would want to be pale and sickly looking? Your skin is like the finest mixture of milk and rose and just a light layer of honey," he murmured, and Hermione had laughed then. The sound was like tiny golden bells.

"Severus Snape, you are a flatterer."

He was shaken for a moment. It was a memory. Then Hermione's voice rang out in the present.

"How could you, Severus Snape? How could you?"

"Hermione, you didn't see what you think you saw."

Hermione laughed in an awful way. "Right," she snapped. "I didn't see you just flirting with the most beautiful woman in the world, I didn't see you kissing her as though you.. oh what does it matter?"

"It matters," Severus said. "It matters a lot."

"Why are you suddenly acting as if you care about me?" Hermione said despairingly. "Unless you had your memory all along and it was all just some big GAME to you."

He turned so menacing so swiftly that Hermione didn't have time to breathe as he grasped her hard by the shoulders, pushed her hard against the stone wall of a store. His face was an inch away from hers, and she could see the pain, the fury, the confusion glittering in the stormy black eyes.

"Listen to me, Hermione Granger, and listen well. I do not play games," he said in his silkiest tones. "Firstly, that woman was nothing to me. I do not know who she is, but all she did was give me a warning. It may not have seemed like it at the time, but there were reasons for the whole play-acting that even I do not understand. Secondly," when Hermione fidgeted angrily, he held her tighter against him to stop it. "Stop interrupting me, or we'll be at it all night." She stilled, her brown eyes alive again. Angrier than a hornet, but alive.

"Secondly," he repeated, "I have been plagued by thoughts of you. Something about you makes me feel things I have never experienced before. When you are upset, when you cry... I feel it." He unconsciously touched his heart, and shook his head slightly.

Hermione had been silent, her mind whirring over what he had said. Severus did not seem to be lying... she was good at detecting that sort of thing. There was an expression of waiting on his face, a kind of expectation and yet a hopelessness. As if he thought she would not believe him.

"All right," she said softly. "All right."

His arms loosened around her and Hermione was free. She looked up at him, he looked down at her.

When he spoke again, his voice was quiet. "I remembered something."

Her eyes widened. "What? What did you remember?"

"You," he said simply. "A memory of you." He traipsed a finger over her cheek, the touch as light as a feather, but she felt warmth pervade her. "My unusual English rose."

She remembered. How could she forget? It had been their first time...


She wasn't the type for a one-night stand.

She was the good girl, the rule follower.

The typical Sandra Dee. Or had been.

What happened on that Friday night was a mystery to her.

His kiss had ignited all the feelings within her, the untouched feminine side. It wasn't that Hermione wasn't feminine, or lovely. It was simply that most men did not see her in that light. She was either the best friend, or a sister-like figure, or one of the Golden Trio. But Severus seemed to see her in a completely different way, to peel away all the layers as he had done her clothes, leaving only the essence of her. A woman.

His dark eyes were warm on her, and Hermione had blushed at being naked in front of a man for the first time.

She was lying on a bed- his bed- and he was sampling her flesh as if it were covered with sweets.


"You certainly aren't the typical English rose, are you?" Severus said softly, his lips trailing down her soft skin.

"Is that bad?" Hermione asked anxiously. He had looked at her, at her worried amber eyes and chuckled.

"No, don't move, I didn't mean to laugh... it's only that you have nothing to be ashamed of. Who would want to be pale and sickly looking? Your skin is like the finest mixture of milk and rose and just a light layer of honey," he murmured, and Hermione had laughed then. The sound was like tiny golden bells.

"Severus Snape, you are a flatterer."

Then, she had gasped as his slender fingers clasped her breast. Stroked somewhere else.

"You, Hermione Granger, are beautiful and nothing else."

She had moaned then. Sighed, as his tongue laved her body, as his hands flew over it with the careful joy of an explorer on a new land.

His clothes had somehow come off, and Hermione had felt that familiar heat pool at her thighs at the sight of him, all that hard male body for her to devour.

His inky hair falling around his face, the obsidian eyes so lust-filled, for her and her alone... the moonlight color of his skin, spread over surprisingly broad shoulders, the toned stomach, the well muscled legs and thighs, the throbbing blood engorged male member . All for her.

He had crept over her body, his mouth tasting her, filling her with sensation as his cock pulsed between her thighs, probing and pressing gently against the soft curls there. She pinkened as the pressure, the movement made her wetter and stickier, moaning unwillingly.

"Sweet," he breathed, his chest falling and rising hard, the black eyes nearly crazed with desire, his cock nearly exploding from the need to come. She mewled, kittenlike, as the huge mushroom head of his penis just barely fit into the snug cove of her, teasing her tiny entrance until she wrapped tight about it.

"Minx," he groaned. "Are you ready?"

She had nodded, closing her eyes.

Gods, he had thought. So damned beautiful.

The slippery wetness of her desire eased the way for Severus, but it was still slow proceeding. He thrust with all of his strength inside of her tight velvety canal, and she screamed at the pain. He had expected that and he kissed her with all the languor and passion he could muster. She was so tight that it took much of his well taught willpower not to come immediately when he had finally embedded his entire length insider her, as he was thrusting lightly, slowly into her, an inch at a time, until she began to moan again, until her hips rose and fell in the ages-old rhythm.

"Severus, " she said afterward when they were at rest, her eyes wide and dreamy. "I didn't know it could feel like that."

"Neither did I."h


"Hermione," Severus said. "What are you thinking of?" He had been watching her, lost in her thoughts. She looked entirely too lovely in the moonlight, her hair curling about her tantalizing shoulders, her face a touch dreamy, her raspberry pink lips looking so delectable. When exactly had his mind replaced the student Miss. Granger with the woman Hermione? It had only been a few days, but Severus felt almost as if he knew her.

She turned to look at him, her eyes misty. "I was thinking of the Severus I knew." And loved, she added silently.

He came to her then, closer. Tilted her chin up. "You may find him yet," he said, low.

"I hope so," she said in the same tone. She did not look up at him. She felt that if she did, something would happen. Something that would change the world forever. Or perhaps just them.

"Hermione." She knew what was coming. It happened.

He kissed her.

He kissed her as he had done for the first time seven years ago.

Under the stars, under the moonlight.

In the silence, he tried to tell her what he did not know yet.

In the silence, she tried to believe.

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Me: Relatively short chapter, but I thought I'd end it there instead of continuing. I'll probably post another chapter soon, maybe today or tomorrow. Thank you for all your kind reviews! I appreciate it.