| Last Tango in Paris A predatory thought, to be sure. But, he reminded himself, this Hermione wasn't the damaged piece of Dresden he'd been coddling back into sanity one trans-Atlantic night at a time, and she wasn't the blank-eyed cipher of a girl he'd found crumpled like used-up tissue paper at the banks of the Seine. This was the real Hermione, Hermione magnificently returned to her lovely, clever, bad-tempered self. And she'd just thrown butter at him. The way he saw it, all bets were off. “Petrificus Totalis,” he said lazily to her retreating back, and watched it stiffen in outrage even before the curse hit it. She thudded to the floor face-up (Petrificus victims always landed face-up for some unknown reason; back in the days when he'd had frequent occasion to use it, he'd often wondered about that), her legs still extending into the kitchen. Add a pair of shiny red shoes, Severus thought, and you'd have the makings of some very fine literary irony indeed. He pocketed his wand again, crossed the room to the paper-towel dispenser, and took his time wiping the butter off his forehead. She was glaring daggers at him. He let her do it. “Excuse me,” he said now, leaning over her, and managed to extract her wand from her pocket without really touching her. There were wizards in the world who wouldn't have hesitated to cop a feel, given the same circumstances, but he didn't want to put himself in that category, even accidentally. Obviously, Hermione had already figured this out; she looked angry beyond the telling of it, but not the least bit frightened. Severus pocketed her wand, picked up the nearest of the fallen chairs, turned it to face her, and straddled it casually. It was odd, but he wasn't the least bit angry anymore. “Finite Incantatem,” he said, and watched her surge to her feet like a small, furious wave. “You sick fuck. You bastard. You … you flobberworm. You disgust me.” Flobberworm? Severus grinned. “Oh, you can do better than that, can't you?” Hermione bared her teeth at him. “Give me my wand back, you dragon dung,” she promised him, “and you'll see how much better I can do. You worthless, spineless, gutless, dickless—“ “—Hermione—“ “—bastard son of a Jarvey hairball—“ “—I've changed my mind,” he interrupted, and she paused, mid-tirade, to look at him as if he'd gone mad. “What are you talking about?” “You,” he said. Things were suddenly very clear. “You're even more of a shrew than I remember you as – and you were rather impressive even then. We're better-suited than I thought.” She gaped at him. “A shrew? You throw the Full-Body-Bind at me when my back is turned, take away my wand, and suddenly I'm a shrew? You bloody, buggery stoat of a human being.” “—And to set the record straight,” he continued, “I do not like you better when you're out of your mind; I found your post-Obliviate self an irritating milksop—“ here, Hermione's mouth dropped open, then shut again with a snap—“with precious little to say for herself.” He let his eyes flick up to her face – half-baffled, half-furious – then down again. “Even considering your present state of utter raving lunacy, you vicious little harpy, I prefer you with your memory intact; it means I don't have to be careful of you anymore.” “Careful? You've never been careful of me,” she shot back. “Ever.” Severus sighed, pushed away his chair, and stood up. “I've never been anything but,” he said. “But that's all going to stop. Right now.” ** Halfway around the world, a file cabinet opened and spat out a folder. In the folder was a form, and on the form an address, neatly written in a clear round hand. The form passed from one hand to another, and was duly studied by the owners of both. “She's not there any longer,” one of them said. The other shrugged. “Let's look anyway.” ** Somehow, they'd ended up kissing. Hermione figured this was weak-willed of her, considering that he was a soap-scum bastard who didn't have a shred of human decency to be found anywhere within a three-meter radius of his cold black heart. On the other hand, hadn't this whole argument started because she'd wanted to kiss him in the first place? The ends justified the means sometimes, even if you were a Gryffindor. She sighed against his mouth, not bothering to conceal the shudder of pure female satisfaction that ripped through her when his tongue touched hers. “Well, go on then,” she gasped when they finally came up for air. “Don't be careful. I want to see if I can tell the difference.” “Be careful what you wish for,” he growled, and then kissed her again – harder this time, as if to prove his point. Hermione, entering into the spirit of things, nipped his lower lip – perhaps a bit harder than she'd intended – and was mildly gratified to hear him hiss in reaction. “That,” he said against her mouth, “was uncalled for.” “Oh, yeah?” His hands had found their way under her jumper, which was making sentient thought difficult. On the one hand, Hermione thought fuzzily, using the term wandless magic in this context was a bit of a timeworn cliché. On the other – who cared? “What are you planning to do about it?” Tradition, of course, dictated that the banter of Act One should pay off with horizontal calisthenics in Act Two, and this encounter was no exception; how they managed to manouevre out of the doorway and down the hall to the bedroom was a mystery, but there they were regardless, tumbling across and down into softness and immediately reentangling themselves again, like two extension cords left alone in a dark desk drawer. “Divestio,” Hermione gasped, and then frowned and opened her eyes when nothing happened. Snape was looming over her, looking amused. “In a hurry, Miss Granger?” “Give me back my wand,” she panted, and he shook his head. “I don't think so.” She'd rucked his hair into an untidy nimbus around his head, and he had that self-satisfied look that she'd only seen him wear in situations identical to this one. It made her weak in the knees. “As I recall,” he purred now – good to know that the Voice of Pain has an occasional positive connotation, Hermione thought – “this works the best when you don't even have the use of your hands.” She made a wild grab for his wand hand. When that didn't work out, she settled for both sides of his collar. “Don't do that,” she said into his ear. “Not this time, anyway.” A considering look. “Why shouldn't I?” “Because,” Hermione said, and heaved him over onto his back. “I want to be able to touch you.” ** “Draco? It's Joséphine. Guess what?” Draco blinked. “Already?” he said. “I thought it'd take them at least two hours. They're better connected than I'd thought.” “You bet, sweet cheeks. Wards are going off like a four-alarm fire; Slick and I are about to go investigate.” Joséphine popped her gum. “Thought you'd want to know.” “Thanks. I'll tell Sal,” Draco said. “If they've already tracked down the apartment, I don't imagine it'll take them long to act on the Longbottom angle. We need to move fast.” “I'd thought of that,” Joséphine said. “We've already been on the Floo with Albus; if you don't have a better place in mind, he's offering us the secured wing of the Hogwarts infirmary as Testing Headquarters. You have any objections to that?” Draco chewed on his upper lip. “No,” he said, “that's fine. We'll go ahead and move them, then.” He frowned, struck by a new thought. “Should someone let Snape and Hermione know?” “We'll fill them in,” Joséphine promised, “and meet you there – just as soon as we've taken a peek at the apartment. Half an hour, tops.” “Sounds good. I'll see you then.” ** He was like the horse from Jingle Bells, Hermione thought: lean, lank, and doomed to misfortune. As such, the black robes suited him – if you were into that sort of thing, that is, which she figured she was merely by default for sleeping with him and then coming back for more. He shouldn't have looked like much of anything naked – just a scrawny, forty-something Ichabod Crane of a man, fish-belly pale and not getting any younger. Certainly after six years of snuggling up to Sex-On-Fins Weasley, Hermione thought, Severus Snape should have suffered by comparison. From a strictly aesthetic angle, she supposed he did. None of that mattered, because the old fascination was still there – strong and eager enough, in fact, to make Hermione wonder if it had ever left. She put her mouth on his shoulder and drew hard, delighted to raise a strawberry birthmark on that white skin … and half-haunted by yet another old memory: Snape holding her curls away from her neck and banishing his fingerprints from her skin, one by one. The recollection of it sent a liquid shudder reeling through her, and she fought it by picking another pristine patch of torso and sinking in her teeth. We like to leave marks, both of us. I'm not sure that's such a good thing. But it felt good – he felt good, sinewy and tense and deceptively strong, a cauldronful of banked coals shifting and hissing under her fingertips. When she touched his cock, it felt hot enough to burn her hands, leaping like flame in a velvet slipcover. She kissed him there, wanting to feel that heat sear her lips, then closed her eyes and sank down on him without preamble – oh God, it had been so long since she'd done this, all those years and lives ago in a moonlit dungeon, cold stone on her knees and heated, shuddering man closing her in everyplace else. Gobbets of dragon's-breath in the chilly room, frosting the air above her. Hands on her head like a frantic benediction. It felt good to do it another way, to hold him down on the bed with elbows and knees and the weight of her body across his legs and to lose track of the passage of time. Somewhere above her head, he was starting to make noise – yes, she thought, exultant, yes, go right ahead and do it, say it, amazing the sounds we make against our will, when pleasure drags them from us. Amazing that I can do that to you. “Hermione,” he gasped, and she flicked her eyes up his body to meet his gaze. “You made me a declaration,” she said, and felt him tremble under her hands. “Do you want to know if I meant it?” A thread of laughter in his voice. “If so, I congratulate you on your excellent sense of timing.” Hermione's lips twitched. “That's a ‘yes', then.” “You undo me,” he said simply, and Hermione felt her throat clog. “I have a declaration of my own,” she whispered. Snape shook his head. “Not now,” he said. “Tragedy's never far. And too much happiness tempts the Fates.” Typical of him, Hermione thought, to rain on my drama parade. “What, then?” she queried tartly, and he grinned at her – had she ever seen him smile like that? she wondered, full out, with all those teeth showing? If she had, she couldn't remember it. “Finish what you started,” he said, and took her by the shoulders to haul her up. “That's good enough for now.” ** “Well?” Neville wanted to know. “Everything okay?” Joséphine grinned at him. “Peachy,” she said. “How about you?” “Did you tell them?” She shook her head. “Left a note.” “Oh.” “Come on,” she said, smiling to herself, and took his arm. “Let's go. I want to meet your Mum.” They went. ** |