The Training of Hermione

TRUST


DISCLAIMER:

This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Reviews are welcome.

~

Once again, she wakes up screaming, bathed in a cold sweat, fumbling in panic at the sheets which she seems to believe are tying her down.

“The Dream again?” whispers Snape by her side.

She nods in the dark, trembling still. He slides closer to her, and holds her in his arms.

“This just can’t go on like this, Hermione. You’ve got to get help. You need to get those repressed memories out of your system.”

“We already talked about this. I can’t go and see a muggle psychologist – they would have me hospitalized straight away if I started talking about being raped in a witches’ coven. And who can I speak with in the wizarding world? Dumbledore? I don’t think being force-fed lemon drops would make very good therapy.”

He sighs. She is right, of course. So there is only one possible course of action.

He’ll have to do it himself.

He grimaces in the darkness at the irony of the situation – the very person who figures so prominently in her traumatic memories will have to help her to get rid of them. Therapist is the rapist. Merlin, what a hideous pun. Moreover, he is highly skilled in psychological manipulation, but his emphasis doesn’t quite lie in the more healing aspects of it.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

He leans his chin on the softness of her hair, wondering. This woman – the woman he loves and who, surprisingly, seems to love him back – needs his help, however inadequate he might feel himself to be. He knows what he has to do, to begin with.

He has to get her to trust him. Absolutely.


~~~~~


She has finally decided to return to Oxford and take up again her Ph.D. thesis at Amergin College. Which means that they meet on weekends, or even less often, depending on the amount of work they both have. The arrangement suits them both – they are both highly independent beings, used to being alone for long periods of time, and sure enough of the strength of their relationship. Moreover, they have soon found that the prolonged absences only whet their desire for each other even more.

They usually meet either in S’s q’s quarters at Hogwarts or in Hermione’s Oxford rooms. This week, it is Hermione’s turn to floo to Hogwarts, as the school is in the middle of an exam period and Snape’s presence is required.

She steps out of the chimney place only to find his house elves laying the table for dinner. “Already?” she questions, glancing at her watch. “It’s only half past seven.”

“I wanted to make it an early dinner,” he says, shooing the elves away. “I have plans for the night.”

“Oh?” she raises an eyebrow and leaves her heavy bookbag on a chair. “Are you taking me to the opera?”

“Not exactly,” he smiles. “I don’t think you will feel very inclined to sing.”

The dinner – boiled eggs and asparagus with a green salad – is so meagre, even for Snape’s frugal habits, that Hermione is tempted to go the elves’ kitchens, dish in hand, and ask for more, à la Oliver Twist. But Snape is already eyeing her with a speculative look.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing. A cat may well look at his king, may he not?”

“You’re not a cat, you’re a Slytherin snake, and I must be very fat if this is all you intend to feed me tonight.”

“Believe me, my dear, it will be better if you don’t have too much too eat. You won’t lose those delicious curves of yours for one night’s fast.”

She looks at him suspiciously, but says nothing. She’s already learnt better than trying to get answers from Snape when they don’t seem to be forthcoming.

“May I ask you a personal question, Miss Granger?”

“But of course, Professor Snape.” What’s he playing at tonight?

“Do you trust me?”

She blinks. “Why, yes, I think so.”

“You think so. But you don’t know?”

Hm. Sweetly. “Yes, Professor Snape. I do know that I trust you.”

“Really? Now that’s most interesting. And most gratifying, I’d say.” He gets up to fill his empty glass with some liquor from a nearby flagon. “But, I wonder, what is the extent of your trust in me? Would you trust me, say, with your pet fish?”

“I have no pets. But if I did, then no, I most definitely wouldn’t. You would probably forget to feed them. Or starve them deliberately, as you seem to be doing with me tonight. Anything else – except plants too, perhaps – I would trust you with, yes. He He smirks. “Anything? Your home?”

“Yes.”

“Your money?”

“Yes.”

“Your life?”

She pauses, startled. Ah. Then says softly: “I do believe I would, yes.”

He smiles at this, places his glass on the table and takes her by the hand. “Come then.”

He leads her into the bedroom, where the lights have been dimmed, as usual. He comes in after her, shuts the door, and silently grasps her from behind, circling her waist with his arm. She leans back into him and turnsher her face, searching his kiss. However, he only chuckles and starts kneading her right breast with his free hand. She moans slightly in frustration, and then not so slightly as his other hand leaves her waist and wanders down towards her crotch.

“Take your clothes off,” he whispers, and suddenly steps back and leans against the door, his eyes never leaving her.

She does so, holding his gaze with a certain defiance. Shoes, socks trousers, blouse, and underwear all fall to the ground in a small heap around her, and she stands naked before him.

“Now turn around.” Again she obeys him. She feels him approach her from behind, the roughness of his coarse woollen gown brushing against her bare back. He brushes her shoulders lightly, then trails a finger down her back. She shivers.

And then he raises his hands to her head, and something very black and sleek falls before her eyes. He steadies her recoiling reaction with a strong hand on her shoulder. “Shhh. Allow me. Don’t move.”

A blindfold. He smooths it over her eyes, then ties it firmly at the back of her head, over her hair, and secures it with a quick spell.

He leads her carefully towards his tall bed, helping her to climb on. Then goes away.

“Severus?”

There comes no answer. She raises her hands to her head and tries to loosen the blindfold so that she can peep out but, as she had suspected, he has made it impossible to remove until he lifted the spell. She turns about on the huge bed, trying to make herself comfortable on the soft velvet surface until he returns.

Which is soon enough. She hears his soft steps, the creak of the bed and his weight as he sits on it, his body moving across towards her. “Sit up now, please. Not like that – on your knees, that’s it.” He positions her so that she is facing the bedstead, with her back to the door, and he kneels in front of her. He is undressed now, it seems.

He runs his hands up her arms, lightly grazing her nipples with his thumbs, but touching her no more than that. Sending shivers all over her skin. The room is cold – she can feel the warmth radiating from his body, the musky smell of him so close. She wants him to touch her. She wants to touch him, so very badly.

His hands descend down her sides, raising a trail of goosebumps along their way. Then over her hips, her thighs. His fingers idly roam over her pubis, skirting maddeningly close, but never quite there, never qu Qui Quietly she begins to drip onto the bedcover.

She raises her hand tentatively, but he gently grasps both her wrists and pins her arms to her sides. “Shhh. Be still.” He leans closer and whispers: “Do you really trust me?”

She nods. And involuntarily swallows in anticipation.

She can hear him smile gently as he strokes her cheek. “Very good. Good girl, Hermione.”

He brings a thick roll of fabric out of one of his many pockets and proceeds to unroll it – a long, long band of soft white silk. He drapes one end of it over each of her shoulders, as if it were a scarf, loops it once around her neck, then moves around her, takes both dangling ends and gently pulls, so that the silk runs over her shoulders, tightening around her throat. “Severus – ”, she calls, failing to conceal the anguish in her voice.

He says nothing, but loops each of the scarf ends around a bedpost, and returns to his position in front of her with both ends in his hands. He examines the setup with a critical eye, then gives a tentative tug.

The silk runs around the bedposts, over her shoulders, and pulls at her throat. Strangling her. She gasps, startled, and seeking breath.

He loosens the scarf.

“Hermione,” he says carefully, “it is very important now that you trust me now, completely. I cannot do this if you don’t have trust in me. Will you trust me?”

He sees her hesitate for a moment, fear anve sve struggling across her lovely, blind features. Then she swallows again, and nods. “Yes,” she says in a very low voice. “Yes, Severus. I trust you.”

He moves closer to her, close enough for his engorged penis to brush against her already drenched cunt. Very gently, he lifts her up by the haunches and places her on his lap, so that she sits directly on his erection. “Put your arms on my shoulders,” he murmurs.

She does so, and he shifts slightly onto his knees, so that his penis slides into her with extreme ease, and she groans in delight.

He starts moving inside her moistness, setting a lazy rhythm which she joins at once, moving her hips in slow, delicious circles. She leans on his shoulders for support as both their bodies rocks sensuously back and forth in the oldest dance.

Gradually he increases the tempo, and she pushes harder and harder, gripping his flesh, riding him, getting ever so closer with every new rotation – it is so close, so close now…

And then he pulls on the scarf.

The silk runs and tightens abruptly across her throat, cutting her breath off. She stiffens over his rigid penis, caught in the frozen moment of utter panic. All her instincts are screaming and flailing for her to stop this right now, go away, run away. She steels herself, and wills her body to perfect stillness.

He loosens the scarf again, but only enough for her to draw very shallow breaths now. And again he renews the rhythm, only now he punctuates her climbing arousal with regular jerks at her throat – every time she approaches climax, he tugs at the silk as at a leash, holding her back, claiming her as his own.

Tug –
and go – and
tug –
and go....


Over and over and over. Arousing her even further through the lack of oxygen, through his mastery of her. Which is complete and absolute.

He is utterly in control of her now, quite literally holding her life at the end of a tether. He has only to pull hard enough, long enough. He gives her life, he withdraws it with every pull at the tether. And she willingly gives herself to him, completely, in perfect trust.

And the knowledge of it is driving him crazy. He increases their rhythm, faster and faster, two bodies sliding frantically in sweat and lust, yet keeps always the iron grasp over her. He looks at her blind face, ecstatic in its submission, and knows he has become addicted. He is hers as much as she is utterly his now. The tether runs both ways.

Which can’t hold any longer. Their bodies grip at each other, desperately, convulsing for release. He feels her teeter on the edge of consciousness, both from the lack of oxygen and her own overwhelming lust. And reaches that edge too.

Frantically, he tenses the scarf one last time, then hisses, “Come for me now”. Then lets go of the scarf and crashes with her into orgasm.

~~~~~


AUTHOR’S NOTE

The trick with the white silk scarf is taken from Killing Me Softly, an otherwise absolutely awful film with Joseph Fiennes and Heather Graham, based on the Nicci French thriller (which, if not wonderful either, is at least much better).