Dusk and Her Embrace

All characters are trademark JK Rowling, I just put them in strange situtations.

*all characters are of age*

I\'m finally beginning to make use of this story rating, so if you don\'t like adult situations, then don\'t read it. Simple, right?

Anyhow, I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for the reviews, keep them coming ;-) and now onward we go. enjoy

Chapter Six: All Hallows Eve

Severus knew what he had to do… He had to avoid the girl at all costs… His feelings could cost him his job… even his life if some of the purebloods caught wind of the fact that he was in love with a mudblood… yes in love… Severus Snape was in love with Hermione Granger… Luckily avoiding her proved to be much easier then he would have anticipated because Potter and Weasley kept her as far from him as possible. He did catch her eye darting in his direction every so often but it was just as easy for him to dart away and pretend to be over involved with a pile of essays or Neville Longbottom’s twelfth melted cauldron and his pepper up potion which was turning a delicate shade of green, the same green as a frog’s liver instead of the peppermint colored red the potion should have been.
Ignoring her wasn’t a pleasant thing for Severus… He found himself longing to be near her, longing to touch her and wrap her in his embrace. To keep his mind off of her, he reverted to his usual pastime… taking many points from Gryffindor…
“ Longbottom, did you not add the peppermint root to your potion? Your potion should be a red color, not that sickly green color… ten points from Gryffindor for you stupidity.” Severus saw Longbottom’s round face puff up, his eyes squint as if tears might come falling out any second…
“ I… I can help him set it right, sir,” Hermione said.
“ That’s another ten points from Gryffindor, Miss Granger for talking out of term, and it will be twenty-five points if you even try to help Mr. Longbottom with his potion. Understand?”
Hermione’s lips quivered, she bit her lip and nodded in understanding. Her brown eyes were filled to the brim with tears… she looked like she was about to cry… Severus began to meander through his mind and think about that for a few minutes…
“ Look sir, the mudbloods about to cry,” Malfoy said… Next to Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson let out a hideous hyena like laugh.
“ Five points from Slytherin, Malfoy, for your discontent,” Severus heard himself saying…
“ Sir?” asked Malfoy obviously confused, Severus never deducted points from Slytherin ever… In face Severus looked over at the rest of the class and noticed Lavender Brown whispering to Pavarati Patil, her violet eyes wide and wondering…Weasley was whispering to Potter, a grin spread out on his dopey-looking face… Yet Hermione still looked lost, her eyes staring down at her desk, tears trickling out… He knew what she was thinking… How could he be so cruel to her after she risked her own life to save him? If he could only tell her how she felt… she’d probably be disgusted… who could love a man like him? Nobody that was who… Lily Evans had never loved him, and Hermione would never love him… Nobody would ever love him…
Severus chose to ignore Malfoy. He flicked his wand and his ingredients cabinet closed. “Locomotor Potions,” Severus said as beakers filled with potions flew towards his desk. Hermione’s was the only one he could see that was correct; her potion was the right shade of red… Malfoy’s was more orange then red, Weasley’s was a smoking mess, and Potter’s had the consistency of chowder. Hermione was the only student he had ever had who managed to get O’s in all her potions. “ Class dismissed… I want a scroll on the used of the pepper up potion due next class.”
With that Severus gathered up his cloak, and headed towards his quarters where he sat in the darkness… just thinking and anticipating….

It was Halloween. The great hall was decorated with huge pumpkins that Hagrid had grown in his garden. Flitwick had charmed fairies who twinkled around the hall in patterns of orange, red, and yellow. The ghosts rode through the great hall around the tables, and the students sat with their houses and drank pumpkin juice… But Severus chose to ignore the festivities. Instead he sat alone in his office.
His office wasn’t the most cheery place on the planet. It was a shadowy room lined with shelves filled with hundreds of glass containers. In those containers floated slimy bits of animals and plants, which were all suspended in different colored potions. In one corner was a cupboard filled with ingredients of his personal supply, ingredients the students could not have access to, dangerous ingredients. In one corner sat a silvery pensieve. His office was in one of the deepest dungeons in Hogwarts, also one of the coldest that was something he made up for by lighting a fire in a huge fireplace that covered one wall. He picked this location for the office because he liked his privacy; he liked to be away from everyone else.
He was staring over a pile of parchments from a bunch of first year students on a simple potion to cure boils. The papers were absolute rubbish… He was in the midst of going over one from a Leonard, Bethany when there was a knock on the door. He felt himself grow alert and began wondering who it was… He guessed it was probably the headmaster asking why he wasn’t at the banquet… the answer was simple enough, he didn’t want to see Hermione unless he absolutely had too which was why he had taken to having the majority of his meals alone in his office… but this wasn’t something he could easily confess. “ Come in,” he said.
The door crept open, Severus expected to see the silver-haired silhouette of Dumbledore overlooking him from the door… but instead it was…. Hermione… She wasn’t wearing her usual outfit of black robes and the gray Gryffindor sweater with the yellow and gold tie, the gray skirt, knee high gray socks, and black shoes… She was wearing a dark red sweater over a pale of faded muggle jeans… Her face was pale and she looked like she had lost a lot of weight, she seemed so skinny that he could see right through her; dark circles sat under her honey brown colored eyes.
“ Why aren’t you at the Halloween Dinner, Miss Granger?”
“ I haven’t been feeling very well lately… I haven’t had much of an appetite and I’ve been feeling weak… Harry and Ron been begging me to go to the hospital wing, but I don’t want to be there anymore… I have so much work to catch up on and…”
“ You don’t look well, Miss Granger, perhaps you should take your friends advice.” Indeed she didn’t look well. He couldn’t imagine how overburdened she was with her head girl duties as well as the fifteen hundred classes the girl was probably taking. “ But what has brought you here?”
“ I’m… I’m worried about catching up with my work, sir. I know I missed the polyjuice potion and that’s a really important potion that I’m sure will come up on my newts… Plus Harry and Ron told me that you had already done the wolfsbane potion, and that’s another one I don’t want to miss…”
“ Miss Granger, I’ve already assured you that you have as much time to make up the work you missed as you need. You’re a very bright student, I’m sure it won’t be a challenge for you…” Severus felt almost vulnerable being alone in his office with the girl who had saved his life, and the girl who he had poured his soul out to… but at the same time it was almost refreshing to be alone with her in a room and not have to worry about being judged by Malfoy, his fellow slytherins, or even the rest of the Hogwarts staff.
“ Can I talk to you, sir?” Hermione asked. Severus gulped and started to silently panic. What if she recalled everything he had confessed to her? What if she remembered the kisses he had planted on her head? “I… I wanted to talk to you sooner, but Professor Dumbledore said you were quite preoccupied with Order things, so I didn’t want to intrude on that…” Leave it to the good ole headmaster to cover for him, Severus thought; sometimes he felt he didn’t deserve Dumbledore’s respect or even his trust.
“ I’ve been a very busy man, Miss Granger.”
“ I also skipped the festival hoping to find you.”
“ Well what is it you would like to talk about, Miss Granger?”
“ I want to talk about what happened.” Her words stabbed at him like a dagger, he felt them cutting through his skin, piercing his heart, and a nervous pounding persisted in his stomach. “ That night with the death eaters… I don’t remember anything about it.” He began to feel a little better, but still quite jilted… what if she regretted saving his life? After all it’s not like he had been treating her with the respect she deserved. “ Please sir, be honest with me, and tell me what happened… Ron and Harry won’t tell me anything, and Professor Dumbledore says you’re the one I should talk too…”
“ What I tell you, you may really not like to hear,” Severus professed.
“ Good or bad, sir, I need to know what happened… I can’t live with these holes in my head forever.”
“ Well… what happened…” Severus fidgeted around in his seat… Hermione moved over to and sat in one of the black leather chairs he had in front of his desk. Her eyes were drilling heated holes through his head. Severus flicked his wand and a teakettle, two cups, a small pitcher of cream, and a small box of sugar appeared in front of them. “ Would you like a cup of tea, Miss Granger?”
“ Yes please sir, that would be nice.” He was stalling but he couldn’t help it… He poured some steaming tea into the cup and looked at her.
“ Cream and sugar?”
“ Yes please.” He added some cream and sugar into the cup and handed it to her, and made another motion with his wand and a box of biscuits appeared.
“ Please help yourself.”
“ Thank you, sir.” Severus shivered. He was worried, he wondered what would happen if one of his own students came down… particularly Malfoy, Malfoy would dart back to the slytherin dungeon and send an own to his father right away that he, Severus Snape was having tea with a mudblood… and then what if they attacked her? Or attacked him again, and what if once more Hermione risked her life for him… He didn’t want to take a chance; he waved his wand, and locked the door. Hermione looked at him in curiosity.
“ I just don’t want any interruptions,” he explained.
“ Now please sir, tell me what happened.”
“ Are you sure, you want to know? It’s not pleasant… nor will it be easy for me to tell or for you to hear.”
“ I need to know, sir…”
“ What happened is…” he never realized it would be this hard… “ My dark mark had been burning, and you know my role for the Order of the Phoenix is as a double-agent. I go to the meetings of the death eaters and take note of what the dark lord says and report it to the Order. In return, the dark lord expects me to give him some form of information about Dumbledore’s doings at Hogwarts and Dumbledore’s Army and such. I knew the meeting was taking place in Hogsmeade, so I started walking towards Hogsmeade since, as you know, you cannot apparate in Hogwarts. I got to Hogsmeade and a few of the death eaters were there, and they started attacking me for betraying their lord… putting curse after curse on me…”
“ That sounds awful, sir,” Hermione said in a whispered voice, her sympathy sounded genuine and that meant a lot to him… but he wasn’t sure her sympathy would last after what he said next…
“ They were about to use another round of curses on me when I heard someone scream and then I blacked out… when I came to be I was in the hospital wing and Dumbledore told me what happened… Apparently, you, and your two friends, Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley had seen me leave Hogwarts and had followed me under Mr. Potter’s invisibility cloak, and after you had watched the death eaters attack me, you had ran in front of the line of wands, and the curses meant for me, hit you… I’m… I’m so sorry Hermione.”
“ Don’t be sorry, sir,” Hermione said, “ I… I remember it all now… And I’m not sorry… I… I couldn’t watch them torture you like that…” her eyes filled with tears. “ Good or bad, you were still a person and no matter what horrible things you did to Harry, Ron, or Me… or anyone… You… You didn’t deserve that…” She was really crying now… Silver dewed tears were trickling out of her warm brown eyes and she was having trouble speaking in between her sobs… He didn’t know what to do. Do something, Severus, he told himself. He pulled himself off of his chair and walked over to her. He wrapped his arms around her… she had gotten skinny; he could feel her ribs through her sweater… She wrapped her bony arms around him, and buried her face in the crock of his shoulder. He ran one of his hands through her silky brown curls.
“ I’m… I’m sorry you had to go through everything you went through, Hermione,” he whispered. “ I watched you in the hospital wing every night… Just lying in your bed, silent, unmoving… like a statue… and you were sooo cold… and it killed me, Hermione, to know that it was my fault that you were there in the first place…” He felt her body responding to his. Her arms were pressing against him. Her hands were digging up his cloak, and he felt her warm hands against his back.
“ Please don’t say your sorry, sir,” she whispered, “ I’m not sorry that I did what I did.” He looked into her tear-filled eyes; finally he couldn’t take it anymore… The emotions he felt were killing him… Heat surrounded his body, he could feel himself about ready to grow erect, it was painful for him, he couldn’t take it anymore… Finally he just started kissing her. Her lips were warm, he felt her responding back, pressing her lips against his. Her hands started exploring his body; she ran her hands over his back towards his legs… He felt his hands doing the same thing. His hands started running up her sweater front. He started running circles over her bra, around her nipples with his fingers. She moaned in ecstasy. Her hands started moving lower and lower towards his swollen member…. He broke off contact…
“ Hermione, stop, we… we can’t do this!” He withdrew his arms from her, and straightened out his cloak… he back away towards the door, and unlocked it… “ I’m so sorry, Hermione,” he said, and then he fled from the room, leaving the bewildered and confused girl on her own.