Still The One

Chapter 6 – The Angst Song

A/N: This isn’t a fluffy chapter, but I felt we needed to understand Hermione better. Also – I lost my Beta *sniffle* She was “Britting-up” my story. Also mistakes you see are mine. Any offers for re-beta-ing? I’m open and I can get the whole story to you in multi-chapter bits =) -KE


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Hermione woke on her plush gold toned sofa – alone, and sadness swept through her. He hadn’t come. He had said the right words and sent her off to her rooms to shower and prepare herself. A sigh bubbled up from her soul - a world wearied sigh that had been building up for the past five years. During college she had heard a song – the words had resounded within her heart at the time, and they haunted her this morning. She was in love with a ghost. The man she thought he was, the man she wanted… Well, anyway. She wasn’t the one he wanted.

There's a letter on the desktop that I dug out of a drawer;
The last truce we ever came to in our adolescent war.
And I start to feel the fever from the warm air through the screen.
You come regular like seasons - shadowing my dreams.

He had come into her thoughts so much during her graduate studies.

The Mississippi's mighty, but it starts in Minnesota
at a place where you could walk across with five steps down.

At first, she would think she’d seen him. A tall dark haired figure across the grounds, but as the man had turned, she’d realize her mistake. And then, in the darkness of her dorm at night, a smell drifting in her room would take her back to the dungeons and she would startle herself fully awake. By the end of her first year, she would hear a voice in a crowd and search to find him. But he was never there.

And I guess that's how you started--like a pinprick to my heart,
but at this point you rush right through me and I start to drown.

By her the summer break before her second year at University, she realized she was in love with him. It wasn’t a crush, because with distance, crushes become less… crushing. But her heart contracted at every thought of him.

And there's not enough room in this world for my pain.
Signals cross and love gets lost and time past makes it plain
Of all my demon spirits I need you the most.
I'm in love with your ghost

And so it started. She would wake up at night, her panties soaked with her juices, and her hips aching for contact. She found out that term how to really pleasure herself. It was just a release to be able to think of Severus and feel the rush of an orgasm. In her dreams, he did wicked things to her body, and when she woke up, she tried her best to relive them with her fingers, with the occasional help from her wand.


Dark and dangerous like a secret, it's whispered in a hush.
When I wake the things I dreamt about you last night make me blush.


It must have been during the spring of that second year when she’d written to him. In the letter, written on parchment with heavy scrolls on the heading, she had asked him how things were continuing at Hogwarts. She asked after his health, the health of all the teachers, and even after the well being of Mrs. Norris. His reply, when it had come several weeks later had informed her very formally of his health – well enough -, the health of the staff – ask them herself, please -, and Mrs. Morris – was she really so bored as to waste his time with this nonsense? But the end of that barely controlled exercise in sarcasm, he had asked after her health, the health of her friends, and more importantly, he asked if her choice in pursuing potions at the graduate level was making her happy. She had cherished that stiff letter for weeks, and her friends had thought her mysterious boyfriend had finally written her. Severus had asked about her happiness. He cared – at least some part of him cared a little bit about something pertaining to her. It was enough.


And you kiss me like a lover, and you sting me like a viper,
I go follow to the river, play your memory like the piper.


All her feelings came to a head late one night in April while on a date with a friends’ friends’ brother. It was a blind date, so of course it was awful. And he reached over and kissed her at the end of a perfectly dull date. She said goodnight and tried her hardest to hold in the tears until she got to her room. It was her first kiss since Severus’s lips had touched hers. It felt like a betrayal. In her minds eye, he was watching the shameful pressing of lips and walking away from her in disgust. She didn’t even enjoy the date, so why had she lowered herself to kissing him? And if she allowed that dullard to kiss her and mean nothing, what did that say about the kiss she had shared with Severus. A river of tears was cried on her bed that night.


And I feel it like a sickness how this love is killing me.
But I'd walk into the fingers of your fire willingly.
And dance the edge of sanity--I've never been this close.
I'm in love with your ghost


So, in order to atone for her self proclaimed misdeed, as she had come to think of it, she’d thrown herself further into her studies. She wrote to Severus twice a month after that first reply. She only received a reply from him once a month or so, but she stuck with her schedule. Part of her writing was in order to help sort through her thoughts. She told him about the date, and the kiss – he replied that her personal life was none of his business. She told him about how awful she had felt, because she hadn’t wanted that kiss – he replied with a sharp retort that young women such as herself rarely knew what they wanted. She asked him how he could be dismissive of her feelings. How could he presume to think he understood how deeply her feelings for… some people could go? He hadn’t replied.


Oh, unknowing captor, you'll never know how much you - pierce my spirit
I can't touch you--can you hear it?
A cry to be free, or I'm forever under lock and key as you pass through me


The only way she had kept her sanity during the next two years was to pay Collin Creavy and his younger brother to send her an occasional picture of Severus. The two pictures she kept in silver frames around her room frowned at her and swept out the frame as she sorted through them. A small smirk would play over her mouth as she loving watched a picture taken of Severus while teaching. The look of – it could only he described as passion – while he taught reminded her so much of the desire she wanted to see in his eyes for her when she next saw him. That picture she kept next to her bed in a frame of silver with emerald colored stones encircling the border.


Now I see your face before me; I would launch a thousand ships
to bring your heart back to my island as the sand beneath me slips.


One would think that her dreams would have been left alone by the middle of her third year. She was almost three full years removed from Hogwarts, and over a hundred miles. But nearly every night, she sought out the pleasure with her fingers and called his name. He would whisper in her ear, asking for different things. One night he wanted to bring her to climax by only rubbing and massaging her breasts and nipples. And yet another night, he murmured his desire to watch her orgasm while he watched her from inside the picture frame where he taught. Once, he spoke to her during class about how he dreamt about her kneeling before him under his desk and sucking him off while he graded papers. She had gathered her paper and books and barely managed to Apparate into her dorm before shedding her clothes and succumbing to the most intense orgasm of her life to that point.


As I burn up in your presence and I know now how it feels
to be weakened like Achilles with you always at my heels.


But it was all in her mind, and she knew that. There was more than a little obsession in her feelings towards her old teacher, and she knew that, too. She tried to read things into letters that probably weren’t intended, or she gave inflection to words to suit her purposes. She knew her feelings towards him were more than a little unhealthy. She had even thought briefly about talking to a therapist working him the same building as her father, but eventually dismissed the idea. She didn’t feel like stalking him, and the only contact she sought out from him were letters. She never crossed the line from love sick fool into creepy psychopath.

Towards the middle of her final year at University, Severus had replied to one of her letters with an unusually light reply. He told her about a new assistance teaching position that would be opening up soon. He hinted that she should apply. The elation that sang through her blood was silenced with the next paragraph. She could still remember the words: Miss. Granger – if you consider this, please be aware that it is not my preference that you accept such a position. Albus asked me to pass the message on to you of the opening, but I feel you should consider other options. Your letters have led me to the conclusion that your studies would be better to use in fields other than those offered at Hogwarts.


And my bitter pill to swallow is this silence that I keep
that poisons me, I can't swim free, the river is too deep.


Though she had burned that awful letter in a flick of her wrist and charm mutter so savagely that a rosette of scorch marks had to be cleaned off the wall behind her desk, the words had sent her into a mild depression. He didn’t want to work with her. No amount of spin could make those words anything but a wholesale rejection of her. It didn’t matter, because she had already spoken with the Headmaster a week before Severus had sent that damned letter, but still…

A week before Graduation, a letter came attached to a now familiar black raven. After untying the scroll from the shimmering black bird, and offering a treat, she sat down to open the familiar seal. She had not written to Severus in over four months, and she had cried herself to sleep over her broken heart several nights a week since. She read:


Miss Granger –
Due to your complete discontinuance of correspondence, I can only assume you have taken offence at my previous letter. Please allow me to clarify my position regarding your application for employment at Hogwarts. Professionally, your talents will be wasted as a mere assistant. I feel you would be better in a position which would allow you to research medical potions for healing, as that appears to be your forte. I hate to see waste in any measure where strong talent such as yours in involved.
On a personal note, we have been writing for many years now, and though we have never spoken of a certain incident, I wish to inform you that if you decide to come to Hogwarts, I will be unable to follow any path which would return us to that place. Be advised you will be my colleague, and nothing more, as I have no time for person attachments or endearments.
I felt this should be brought to your attention before you accepted the position on the possible hopes for a more – personal relationship with myself, however unlike that idea may in fact be.
S.S.

The letter had enraged her. She did NOT live in a fairytale world. She knew he didn’t want her. A shiver ran over her shoulders as she thought about her other Severus… The one who caressed her body at night and whispered endearments in her ear while she fell asleep, sated by her own touch. While that Severus might want her, she knew the real one did not.


Though I'm baptized by your touch, I am no worse at most.
I'm in love with your ghost


His Ghost – her dream lover. It was one and the same. Hermione turned over in her large four poster bed. Even though he had held her bare breast in the palm of his hand and tasted her lips and skin just hours before, he still didn’t want her. Perhaps it was for the best. She drug herself up and went about her morning routine. He probably thought she some sex starved masturbation obsessed witch. She looked at herself closely in the mirror as a wry smile played at the corners of her mouth.
He wouldn’t be far off.

A/N: 20 house points if you guess the artist and song title in this chapter.

Thanks for all the reviews – and please drop another in the bucket ;)