One Hundred And One Ways To Brew Lust

Chapter Six

***

For the first night in a while, Hermione didn’t have to wait for her dreams in order to conjure up delicious sensations. They were all over her, remnant sensations of the evening she’d spent in Snape’s… Severusarmsarms. Like tattoos covering her body… This is where he kissed me. This is where he touched me, pinched me, sucked me… She wanted to burn every instant of it in her memory. She fell asleep eventually, and when Lavender and Parvati came up to bed after a long gossip session, they heard Hermione moaning and writhing in her sleep. Lavender’s eyebrows shot up so high that they disappeared into her fringe. She exchanged a knowing look with Parvati.

“I wonder who she met after her detention tonight?” Lavender wondered aloud.

***

Snape awoke feeling happier and more refreshed than he had in years. Every now and then he stopped to think about how difficult his life was, trying to maintain the appearance of complete contempt for everyone except Slytherins. Pretending to like people like the Malfoys. Playing to people’s fears of him. He knew perfectly well why Dumbledore didn’t want him teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts. He knew perfectly well that, in facing off with a Boggart, for example, Snape’s would have turned into the Dark Lord immediately, just as Hermione’s eventually had. There were many other ways in which his past as a Death Eater would have been revealed if he had been chosen as Dark Arts professor. He accepted this, but Dumbledore and he had dev a p a plan whereby Snape would apply for the position every year, to keep up his façade as a Dark sympathiser. It pained him that students feared him. Though he felt le sye sympathy for a simpering idiot like Harry Potter, who was just as arrogant as his father had been. Gryffindors were an altogether disagreeable lot, with a superiority complex which irked Snape. Most Gryffindors, he amended: his beautiful Miss Granger being a notable exception. Snape got out of bed and made his morning coffee, whistling as he took extra time to shave and groom his hair today before going down to breakfast. He resolutely refused to listen to the little voice at the back of his mind telling him that he was making a colossal mistake by getting involved with Hermione.

***

Hermione awoke feeling refreshed and slightly decadent. When Lavender smirked down at her, she realised she’d been smiling like an idiot.

“So, who did you meet up with last night after detention?” Parvati asked innocently.

Hermione’s brain went into overdrive. If she denied meeting anyone, wouldn’t they suspect that she had a crush oape?ape? But she couldn’t invent a boy, they could easily check on that. If she said, “none of your business”, they’d harass her till she named a name. Denial was the only opti
“
“No one,” she smiled enigmatically and gathered her towel, escaping to her morning shower before they could cross-examine her. She made sure she lingered in the bathroom until five minutes to nine, and only emerged when she had heard them leaving for breakfast.

She joined Ron and Harry in the Great Hall for breakfast, doing her best not to look up at the High Table. When she’d greeted her friends, perused the Daily Prophet (nothing interesting) and downed her glass of pumpkin juice, she dared to steal a glance up at the High Table. Almost as though he’d read her mind, Snape turned his eyes upon her. There was a single flasat bat burned in his eyes, after which his lip curled up into the sneer he usually reserved for Harry. He glared at Hermione and Harry with a look of complete revulsion and turned his attention back to Professor Flitwick, who continued chirping away happily about something.

For a moment it hit Hermione like a pang in the stomach. Her rational brain told her he had to do this. What had she expected? A wink and a smile? A wave, perhaps? But a small, irrational part of her wanted to cry at his coldness. She looked troubled.

“Don’t pay any attention to him, he’s a right old git,” Harry said, trying to be helpful. “I suppose you really ticked him off during detention didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Hermione replied miserably. “I suppose I did.”

***

The day was as grey as Hermione’s thoughts. Torrential rain poured down, but Harry, who was now Captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, could not call off practice so close to the next match against the Slytherins. So Hermione watched from the common room window as they played late into the afternoon. By the time seven o’clock rolled around, she was feeling tired and listless. She’d gone down to visit Dobby, Winky (who was as drunk as ever) and the other House Elves around five-thirty. They had foisted so much food into her arms, despite her protests that she’d only come down to say hello, that she found she had quite enough food to eat, and stayed in the common room for dinner. She told the others as they left for the Great Hall that she was staying behind to watch Ron and Harry play, but the real reason was that she could not stand any more cold looks from Snape.

Lavender, however, finally thought she’d understood Hermione’s behaviour. As she and Parvati left, she whispered furiously, “I reckon Granger’s got it bad for Harry… or maybe Ron. Why else would she pass up dinner to watch them practice Quidditch?”

Parvati giggled heartily about this. They were all a-buzz over it at dinnertime, and by the end of the meal, the word had spread to the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables. Unfortunately, Malfoy overheard Cho Chang whispering about Hermione’s crush, and he gleefully filled-in the Slytherin table as they were leaving, led out of the hall by Snape.

“That old cow Patil told the dimwitted Chang that Granger’s pining away for Potter. Poor old ugly Mudblood. I hope she rots up in her tower!” he snickered and looked up maliciously at Snape, expec him him to smirk as he always did when Malfoy insulted Harry.

Snape’s lips thinned in fury, and he did indeed smirk, for an entirely different reason.

***

By the time Hermione turned up at Snape’s chambers for ‘detention’, she was feeling miserable, convinced that their tryst had been no more than a brief amusement to him, and that he truly did loathe her. But she refused to let him see her cry, and she did her best to dry her tears. She rapped on Snape’s door at seven o’clock sharp.

Snape threw open the door. He took in her swollen, red eyes, and miserable expression, and his face fell. It seemed Malfoy’s story was true after all. His eyes narrowed as he regarded her with disdain, “Well, well, Miss Granger. What could you possibly be so upset about?”

She followed him into the room and slammed the door furiously. “So, it’s ‘Miss Granger’ now, is it? What happened to, ‘Darling’? What happened to ‘my beautiful Hermione’? How dare you use me the way you did last night and then treat me with cold contempt today!”

Snape laughed coldly at her. “Good show, Miss Granger! You almost had me going, but you’ll find that I, unlike Potter and the other snivelling half-wits you call friends, am not so easily put off by your juvenile tantrums. I see right through them, so don’t you try to change the subject! I know all about how you spent dinner, pining away in Gryffindor Tower.”

“So what? So what if I was pining? Don’t you think I have the right to, after the treatment I’ve received at your hands?” she shouted back at him.

“Aha! So you admit it! You admit to pining away! I suppose you think I’m just a doddering old fool, to be trifled with at your leisure?”

Hermione had no idea what the last part of his statement referred to, but at poi point, she felt she certainly agreed with the first part. “Absolutely!” she shouted back at him. Then she laughed hysterically, “Doddering old fool!” She repeated that part over and over.

Snape felt his temper consuming him. Insufferable woman! Playing witm, tm, then running back to Potter, of all people.

“I’ll teach you to toy with people’s affections!” he muttered dangerously e wae walked swiftly to his desk.

But Hermione was still laughing hysterically to herself. “Laughingt tot to keep from crying” a voice in her head sang. What song did that come from? She’d heard it over and over on the Muggle radio. “Doddering old fool!” she repeated with contempt.

Snape turned his eyes upon her with that last statement. “That does it!” he grd.
d.

He swept up the meter stick he’d picked up and turned her over onto the desk. Hermione had just enough time to realise what was happening to her before she felt the first smack fall. It felt more painful than the last time, and she cried out in shock. When the second blow fell she realised why: Snape had pulled down her panties and was spanking her bare bottom. Before letting the third blow fall, some small part of Snape’s brain told him this was very wrong, and he flung the meter stick away in disgust. Shaking with anger, he proceeded to spank her with his bare hand. He was doing it just to make a point, and made sure he didn’t spank her too hard. The fifth smack fell between her legs, and he felt a familiar wetness dripping from there. He stopped and caressed her bum savagely. Then he dragged his fingers across her dripping lips, and pinched her centre, causing her to moan in spite of her anger.

“So, you wanton little harlot! You pine away all day for Potter but my touch still makes you wet, does it? And what does that make you? Hmmm? Tell me!” Snape was seething. “What does that make you?”

“What?” Hermione’s brain was only just processing what she’d heard. She turned around on the desk and lay on her back, for he had let go of her and looked completely deflated as the anger seeped out of him. She propped herself up on her elbows, flinching slightly as she put weight er ber behind. I must look the sight, she thought. Lying back on my elbows on his desk, with my knickers around my ankles. Maybe I am a ‘wanton little harlot’. She giggled to herself. “What do you mean ‘pining for Potter’? Are you mad? I was pining for YOU!” She said indignantly. “Twerp!” she added as an afterthought.

Snapeaw daw dropped. Hermione was quite pleased with herself for rendering him speechless.

“I was pining, because you looked at meh suh such utter contempt this morning at breakfast… I started to believe that you truly hated me. That it was all just a game to you. Last night, I mean,” she finished with a whisper. She couldn’t look at him.

Snape’s next move took her by surprise. He dropped down to his knees, so his eyes were level with her legs, and bowed his head. He placed a hand on each er ker knees, but did not look up. Hermione held her tongue, for once, as she guessed he had something important to say. When he did raise his head, it was with a look of such deep regret and shame that her heart ached for him.

“My darling, beautiful Hermione. I am a sorry excuse for a man. Nothing you have done, do, or will do excuses my behaviour tonight. I raised my hand against you in anger, and for that I am eternally ashamed. I only hope you can forgive me…” he bowed his head, overcome.

Hermione waited a while, but couldn’t hold out too long. She let out a loud snort. “Oh, come on! How can you be so dramatic? You were quite happy to take the stick to my hide when I was being difficult in class!” she laughed good-naturedly

Snape looked shaken. “Surely you can the the difference? You were an insubordinate student then, and I was within my rights as your teacher to reprimand you. This… this was something altogether different. This was a man raising his hand to the woman he… cares for,” he finished hesitantly.

Hermione was too clever not to see the distinction he had drawn. And for the first time, she began to share his misgivings about their situation. “The lines are becoming blurred, aren’t they?” she asked quietly.

“They are indeed,” Snape said. He rose from where he was kneeling, gingerly pulling up her panties as he did so, and held out his hand to her. “Please come and sit with me,” he led her to the sofa and put the kettle on for tea. “We need to talk.”