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MetroVampire & Rhosymedre

Part 8 - Surrender To The Rapture

Snape let the door of his room slam shut behind him and leant back against it, eyes shut tightly as he let his bag fall to the floor. He winced at the sound of the books crashing from it and shook his head wearily.

If he had thought the day had dragged, the evening had seemed interminable. Firstly his meeting with Miss Granger had required the inevitable discussion of the likely length of time he was - they were, he corrected himself - going to have to spend keeping up this farce.

Six months. He groaned and was surprised - as he still was occasionally - by the sounds that he now made. Six months of evenings in the Gryffindor Common Room. The thought of a study project with Miss Granger suddenly became profoundly appealing; peace and quiet in the Potions rooms. In his own rooms, he thought suddenly, his gaze sweeping round the room. Rooms where he knew where everything was, where orange pincushions didn't usurp his bed - he glared at Crookshanks, who was oblivious to the malice being directed at him.

The malice vanished and Snape laughed at the cat's complete indifference to him; indifference was bliss, he thought, exhausted by the effort of pretending to be an eighteen-year-old girl. Not even a normal eighteen-year-old girl at that; he had been listening to some of the Gryffindor girls and had tried to join in. Whatever it was that he had said, it obviously had not quite sounded right - thankfully, the others just thought it was one of the Head Girl's periodic attempts to join in conversation and it seemed that Miss Granger was no better at it than he was.

Snape rubbed his head, still leaning against the door. He should have made up some of the valerian and willowbark infusion for himself; it would appear that, no matter what body he inhabited or what life he tried to lead, he was destined always to finish Friday with a headache.

Perhaps Miss Granger would have something he could take.

Leaving the books in an untidy heap - tomorrow was Saturday, he would worry about it then - he headed for the bathroom. Again. He seemed destined to spend his time as Miss Granger in her bathroom, he thought idly. Rooting through the various bottles and packages in the cupboard - Tampax? Looked vaguely like cotton wool or something - he found a blue package claiming to provide pain relief. He opened it, expecting perhaps a powder that he could take. A metallic strip fell out of the box; he turned it over, curious, to find a series of tablets on the other side.

Snape frowned, confused, and then caught sight of his expression in the mirror. Thirty-six hours ago, he had been possessed of a frown that would send children scurrying for cover and into silence. Now ... well, now the best that could be said was that he looked just ... confused. He shook his head, turning his attention back to the pain relief tablets.

In his experience, tablets - if you had to use them - came in bottles. Still, Muggle creations could not be so much harder to deal with. In fact, he worked it out quite rapidly and soon had two tablets in his hand. He put them in his mouth, intending to swallow them, and grimaced. The taste was revolting; and his headache abruptly got worst as he screwed up his face in distaste.

He made a mental note to retrieve some valerian and willowbark from the Potions rooms the next day, after his meeting with Miss Granger. Harry and Ron had been determined this evening to drag 'Hermione' out to Hogsmeade tomorrow, giving him some insight into just how much time the girl spent in the library in the process. He had finally managed to stop their tiresome insistence by snapping at them; fortunately, his response was clearly not unexpected. If anything, Harry had seemed to think he had held his temper for longer than usual. Most of his headache came from this mental juggling act, trying to predict the sort of behaviour Miss Granger was likely to indulge in - and when she would do so. He was starting to find that she was not, perhaps, as different from himself as he might have expected ... which was disconcerting. He really wasn't convinced that he wanted to find things in common with a young girl.

Even her bookcases reminded him of his own - in minature, and lacking both the finances and a couple of decades yet to catch up with his collection, but the potential was there. He made himself leave the bathroom to go and have a closer look - he had only given them a cursory glance last night, too preoccupied with the situation to pay attention to such details.

All this thought was very well and proper, but it did nothing more than delay the inevitable.

He eyed the bed with dislike again; insomnia brought its own problems but he would have welcomed it now. Even his headache was ebbing away - whatever was in the tablets was clearly effective. Little surprise that Miss Granger kept such supplies in stock, if they worked this quickly.

The cat had clearly decided that discretion was the better part of co-existing with this odd incarnation that looked and smelt like his mistress but behaved like something completely different - whilst Snape had been in the bathroom, the furball had moved from the bed to the chair. When Snape finally noticed, he almost smiled. One small victory, but things were suddenly so much easier.

He followed the same routine as the previous night; bedclothes stripped back - the house-elves here in Gryffindor were as fond of precision bedmaking as those who serviced the dungeons - and the nightclothes pulled from under the pillow with a minimum of inspection. A quiet murmur doused the lights; the heavy curtains across the windows blocked out all light so that he worked rapidly and carefully, relying on a sense of touch - and minimal touch at that - to exchange his clothes and slide under the sheets.

He stared into the unending darkness, feeling sleep tug at him. Thoughts churned through his head - the Potions lesson this afternoon, in particular, replayed over and over in his mind. He had indulged in some petty revenge, raising his hand and asking questions incessantly, wanting to make sure that Miss Granger understood exactly what her teachers had had to deal with over the years - she had shown surprisingly little sympathy; either she was getting closer to the role than he might had expected at this stage, or she was unimpressed by his actions. She had been competent - almost alarmingly so - for someone who had never had to teach before; his fears about her mollycoddling his classes seemed to be misplaced. At lunch he had heard one small Hufflepuff in floods of tears about "mean old Snape"s behaviour in class that morning.

He was, reluctantly, impressed. She could be almost as unpleasant as he was.

Sleep pulled more insistently at him, but he was unable to give in to it - something kept him awake, tugging at the back of his mind and fleeing all attempts to bring it to light. Snape twisted and turned in the bed as he sought either clarification or sleep, the sheets gathering around him until he growled - an odd sound, now - and sat up, pushing the sheets away.

This was why he never wore nightclothes; any attempt at sleep was inevitably restless and the clothes and sheets were caught up with friction, wound around each other. At least without clothes the sheets simply slid over his skin and didn't attempt to throttle him.

Could he?

Should he?

It was dark, no light to breach privacy, and no-one would know; he needed the sleep, he rationalised. A small voice that he could have deemed his conscience had he believed he possessed one spoke up, reminding him that these were just excuses.

Another growl, this time to himself, sending all thoughts into the darkness as he pulled the nightdress over his head.

It was done.

And the world hadn't ended.

More particularly, McGonagall hadn't burst into the room, demanding to know why he was undressing her favourite student.

Snape released a breath he hadn't been aware of holding and sank back on the bed, relieved now to feel cool sheets against his skin, while carefully ensuring that his hands were spread out to either side of him.

He pulled the sheets up, then froze. Certain parts of his new anatomy were clearly reacting to the night chill in the room - good grief, how did Hermione manage to sleep with this sort of sensitivity!? The sheets felt as though they were scraping across his breasts, catching on the nipples ... Snape wondered whether the bed would fold in on itself, or the earth open up and swallow him, at the thought of Hermione's ... he didn't even notice he was referring to her by her first name in his mind now.

He gritted his teeth and gingerly pulled the sheet up, holding it well away from his body, until it reached his chin and then let it drop onto him. He was still acutely aware of the material but, without movement, the sensation was more bearable.

Much more bearable.

Rather pleasant really.

Snape almost howled with mingled frustration and ... arousal. At least, that's what he thought it was. An odd feeling, heavy in the pit of his stomach and seemingly wired directly to his nipples; if this was the effect of merely the sheet, he began to understand why it was that women protested if men were in too much of a hurry to pay proper attention and respect before heading lower. When he returned to his own body he would make sure ...

Snape laughed alound, the sound ringing and grating. When was he going to get that opportunity? Which of his harem would he pick first? Another laugh. The only beneficiary of this information would be his imagination, as it had always been.

He turned over abruptly, trying to distance himself from self-pity and the unwanted but welcome sensations. He succeeded in the first but not the second, suddenly finding the sensations tripled as he rubbed against the bed in turning.

His mouth went dry, and he turned back over immediately.

He squeezed his eyes shut, counting off potion ingredients and recipes. When he realised his hand had strayed to what were now his own breasts, tentatively touching and rubbing, he gave up. He needed to sleep after all, and this was as good a form of exercise to induce sleep as any other. Or so he had often rationalised to himself before.

The prototype conscience - perhaps it was Hermione's, left behind in her mind? - howled with indignation at the idea of violating a student.

But she would never know.

And he really did need to sleep.

The voice in his mind subsided, smothered by the sensations that shot through him as he moved his other hand down to his stomach and then further ... he would pay for this in the morning. Nothing that felt this good came without a price of some sort; and he was already paying off karma at a vastly accelerated rate.

His fingers eased through the soft curls, damp with the warmth in the room and ... oh please. Pleasepleaseplease ... Snape gave up all attempts to rationalise or justify what he was doing and simply surrendered to it. His fingers, still slightly awkward and unpractised, slid between the folds he encountered and dipped between them. His body certainly knew what he was doing, even if this was rather new to him; his legs spread and he drew his left knee up to allow his right hand more access.

Snape was, at least peripherally, aware that he was in charge of what was going on - but, somewhere along the line, he had handed over control to his subconscious; or Hermione's subsconscious. Whosever it was, it was doing a fine job now.

He felt himself slide one finger into the deeper opening he found between his swollen folds, and felt it gliding through the wet heat to be clenched by muscles he felt tighten inside himself. The heaviness in his stomach moved lower, tightening still. This felt ... entirely new. Nothing like masturbation usually did for him; the quick, hard stroking and equally quick release in the shower was nothing like this almost luxurious heightening of senses as awareness pooled in the dampness.

He had long suppressed his tendency towards hedonism; after tonight, he wondered whether he would ever be able to suppress it again. Or whether he would even let Hermione have her body back.

Two fingers thrust now, slipping and pushing into and against his heat, as Snape grimaced. He was pathetic, almost willing to condemn a child to the hell of his life so that he could simply maintain access to this rapture. He was not, though, noble enough to refuse the rapture now.

Then all thought was lost in a haze of red and the concentration of all awareness in the tightening spiral around his fingers; the heaviness grewer impossibly denser and then exploded.

Snape saw stars - literally. Small shots of light arced across the muted colours of his closed eyes, spiralling and fading, like mercury spilt on a slate floor.

A long shuddering sigh broke the silence; Snape didn't think he'd cried out - certainly the cat didn't seem to have moved. Then again, all of Gryffindor House could have traipsed through here in the last few minutes and he wouldn't have noticed. There was no-one around to hear, even if he had made any noise. The perks of the Head Girl's room. He was starting to appreciate them even more.

Snape tentatively brought his fingers up his body, releasing the hand still clenched on his breast, and became aware of his scent - hot and musky, signalling without doubt what he had been doing. He would need to shower in the morning ...