Neville and Pansy were seated at a table at the Snape/Granger reception, chatting with Draco and Luna about their honeymoon. Draco had been unable to take Luna away for a wedding trip, due to business matters following the death of his father, but he had promised to take her away the next summer, after she finished at Hogwarts.
“I’ve heard Professor Snape isn’t taking Hermione away,” Neville said. “They’re just going to go to his country house.”
“I think they’re more interested in each other than in sightseeing,” Luna said, watching the bride and groom as they danced together.
“I saw him smile,” Neville said, sounding somewhat alarmed.
Draco and Pansy laughed. “He smiles, silly,” Pansy told her husband.
“I never saw him smile before he loved Hermione,” Luna said.
“Well, he never smiled except amongst the Slytherins at school,” Draco said fairly. “But he smiled plenty when he beat my dad at chess.”
“And if he took lots of points from Gryffindor,” Neville muttered. “But that was more like a shark baring his teeth at you.”
Hermione waltzed with her husband, who could not cease to finger the fabric of the faerie silk dress when he was in her vicinity. She smiled at him, watching his eyes darken with promise as he looked into her face. “I remember how you drew tiny circles on my back with your finger when we danced at the Malfoy Ball,” she said.
“Faerie silk gowns should be illegal. They lure the unsuspecting male into impropriety entirely against his better judgement,” her spouse responded.
“You weren’t improper, Severus.”
“I was betrothed to another woman “ I ought not to have touched you in that way.”
Hermione pressed her lips together, determined not to retort, and Severus pulled her closer to him, until she came to rest with her cheek upon his chest. She considered Fleur for a moment. She had no ill feelings towards the Frenchwoman. Hermione had the man she wanted, and she honestly thought that both Fleur and Percy would be happier together than they would have been with the partners they had first chosen for themselves.
Mr. and Mrs. Percy Weasley had apparently returned to London from their honeymoon, for their pictures had appeared in the Daily Prophet in attendance at social functions. Now that Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall had successfully settled the marital plans of each of the Order’s young people, headquarters and Phoenix House had been closed up, the furniture shrouded in Holland covers. Relieved of the necessity, Hermione and Severus had no longer attended the Ministry events, which continued unabated into the autumn days of September. Instead, they had spent their free time in the usual pursuits of betrothed pairs; they made plans for their wedding, they made plans for their removal to Hogwarts after their honeymoon, and they tantalised one another to distraction with their kisses and caresses.
One afternoon they had been packing books in Hermione’s bedroom, deciding which ones to send to the Estuary, and which she would need in their quarters at Hogwarts, when Carol had called up to them. “When are you going to open these wedding gifts, Hermione? You’ll get behind with your thank-you notes if you don’t get busy!”
Hermione had rolled her eyes at Severus. “Mums,” she muttered.
He had raised an eyebrow at her. “Be thankful you still have your mum to nag you,” he said. “I will finish this packing; you go down and attend to business.”
Hermione had run down the stairs and settled on the sofa in the front sitting room, dutifully opening the wedding gifts which had been delivered to the house. Her parents had become quite used to the owls and had even learned to keep a tray of owl treats handy, after a nasty pecking incident. There were four new packages, and Hermione was unwrapping one of them as Severus strolled into the room. She put the pretty silver paper to one side and opened the gift box, bearing the gold foil seal of a gift shop in Diagon Alley. She lifted out the tissue paper, then put both hands into the box, bringing them out with the square, heavy object within.
Severus froze in the doorway when he saw Hermione with the large, ornate doorknob in her hands. It was encased in a solid, clear material, forever suspended in space. His mind began to mull through what he would say to the inevitable questions to come.
“How bizarre,” he said. “Whom must we thank for this … gesture?”
Hermione, with a puzzled frown on her face, placed the object on the coffee table and rummaged about in the box until she emerged with a small white envelope. Opening the gilt-edged parchment, she withdrew a calling card, also edged in gilt, reading Mrs. Percy Ignatius Weasley.
“It’s from Fleur and Percy!” she said, mystified.
“Is it?” Severus said, endeavouring to sound surprised. “How quaint.”
Turning the card over in her hands, Hermione read aloud the words inscribed there in Fleur’s handwriting. “May the communicating door always be open, Percy and Fleur Weasley. I suppose she meant ‘door of communication,’” Hermione added thoughtfully, hefting the object again. “I think it is meant to be a paperweight.”
Severus seated himself beside her on the couch and withdrew his wand, murmuring a string of spells over the doorknob.
Hermione watched him patiently until he was finished. “What are you looking for?”
Severus gave her a sardonic look. “Curses, of course “ what else?”
“Percy wouldn’t send us a curse!”
One eyebrow rose. “Would you care to make the same assurances on Fleur’s behalf?”
Hermione smiled ruefully before putting the doorknob back in its box and leaning invitingly into his arms. “Fleur is quite bereft, you know,” she said as she curled against him, pressing her lips to the pulse in his throat.
Severus enfolded her, closing his eyes and suppressing the groan which would no doubt alarm the Grangers, who were busy watching the telly in the next room. “Bereft how?” he managed.
“She lost you, silly.”
Severus tilted Hermione’s chin and looked directly into her eyes. “Fleur was to be my partner in a traditional pure-blood arranged marriage, Hermione. She neverhad me in any sense.” He smirked at his beloved’s look of extreme self-satisfaction. “Do you particularly like this … ornament?”
Hermione shrugged. “I have the feeling that she is mocking me, in some fashion, but I can’t work out how.”
Severus had not enlightened her. “I will find a place for it, shall I?”
Hermione had willingly agreed and he had borne the box away with him; she had not seen it again.
Hermione opened her eyes as the dance ended and her gaze fell upon a young man standing at the side of the room, watching her with a smile on his face. "Look, Severus!" she said, returning the smile. "It's Healer Howser!"
Severus followed her line of sight and a faint sneer touched his face, even as he placed a possessive hand at her waist. "So it is," he agreed, beginning to walk with her toward the Healer.
"I wonder why he has come?"
"I invited him," Severus said.
The couple reached the Healer, who shook their hands and congratulated them with great sincerity, assuring them that he had been sure of their love from the time of Severus' hospital stay. Severus allowed Hermione to conduct the conversation, his black gaze travelling through the crowd. Catching the eye of the orchestra conductor, he nodded once.
"I was surprised to receive the invitation, considering the tone of my last conversation with Professor Snape," Howser commented wryly to Hermione.
Severus returned his attention to his companions. "Never let it be said that Slytherins are poor winners, Howser," Severus said repressively. "A man can afford to be generous on his wedding day." His gaze sought, and found, Varen Vector on the opposite side of the room, in laughing conversation with her teaching colleagues from Hogwarts. Varen looked much better now than she had at the Longbottoms' wedding. She had taken Lucius' death as a sad blow, but her naturally ebullient spirits were reasserting themselves, now. Varen glanced up and saw Severus; her wave and warm smile brought a quirk to his lip.
"What was the tone of your last conversation with Professor Snape, Douglas?" Hermione asked, pressing Severus' arm to gain his attention.
"The tone was reassuring," Severus said smoothly, before Healer Howser could answer. "Douglas was concerned, and I assured him that all was well."
Hermione watched Severus' face critically. "I'm getting much better at reading him," she confided to the Healer, "but I still cannot always tell when he's teasing me."
Howser smiled, though he wisely did not comment. The dancers on the floor came to a halt as another song ended; almost immediately, the rock and roll medley began.
Severus noted with satisfaction that Varen was headed in their direction; he quickly moved his eyes to Hermione and Douglas and listened to their light-hearted banter.
"Hermione!" Varen said, joining them. "May I borrow your husband for the rock and roll medley?"
"I'm sorry, Varen," Severus told her, pre-empting Hermione's answer. "I'm promised to Hermione for this dance." He took Hermione's hand, as if to walk onto the dance floor; as he tugged her gently away, Hermione performed an impromptu introduction.
"Healer Douglas Howser, please meet Professor Varen Vector “ excuse me!"
Severus twirled her once and she passed smoothly beneath his arm. "That was rather rude," she complained.
Severus watched Howser and Vector hit the dance floor, both of them laughing with enthusiasm. "Yes, dear," he said with exaggerated penance, which earned him the reward of Hermione's laugh.
Some time later, Hermione was standing between her parents, chatting with them and watching at Severus completed the last of his duty dances, gently steering a beaming Stormy about the dance floor. Moments later, after delivering Stormy back to Sophronia and Sirius, Severus joined the Grangers, slipping an arm about his wife.
“It’s nearly nine o’clock,” he murmured to her.
Carol glanced at him. “Are you leaving?”
Severus nodded. “We’ll have one more dance, then she will toss her posy, and we will be gone.”
Mike extended his hand, which Severus took in a firm, reassuring grip. “She will come to no harm, Mike. I would give my life to keep her safe.”
Hermione kissed her parents good-bye, then she and Severus strolled a few paces away, arm-in-arm.
“Have you enjoyed your wedding day, Mrs. Snape?” Severus asked her, reaching out to lift one of her curls from her face and to brush it back.
Hermione nodded. “More than I ever thought I would. I had always thought spending so much gold on a party was silly, but it really is an opportunity to mark a turning point, isn’t it? Our lives are completely changed, from this day forward.”
A twisted smile touched Severus’ lips. “I hope you find it to be a change for the better.”
The shining look which preceded the gentle kiss to his cheek was enough to make him wish to grab her and Disapparate on the spot.
“How many times a day am I to tell you how much I love you?” she asked him, unaware of the danger in which she stood.
“We’ll begin with fifty times a day, I think, and re-evaluate on our fiftieth wedding anniversary,” he told her, thinking his words were actually rather closer to the truth the he was willing to admit.
There was a stir in the vicinity of the orchestra, and Hermione turned to see Draco Malfoy stepping up to smile at the assembled wedding guests.
“At the request of the groom, I am asked to reprise a little talk I gave at a fairly recent party. This next song was a special one for the bride and groom, as well as for a few other couples, so let’s see if we can continue our run of good luck in regards to couples coming together for this dance. Now ladies,” Draco continued, “each of you knows a wizard like this. Find the one you would call a Smooth Operator, and ask him to dance.”
A ripple of laughter ran through the crowd. The beginning strains of the song began and the witches took that cue to seek out their partners.
Hermione gazed into Severus’ eyes, her heart so full of emotion that she felt her body was not large enough to encompass it all. Without looking away from him, she swept into a full curtsey, as she had done in the Malfoy ballroom. As he had done there, Severus took her hand and constrained her to rise, then took her into his arms and entered into the dance.
“Will history repeat itself?” she murmured to him.
“Not in the least,” he answered, permitting himself to look at her as he had not done when first they danced to this song, his heated gaze resting for an instant upon the extremely low neckline of her gown. “This time, I will do as I only wished to do then. When the song is at an end, I will take you in my arms and whisk you away to a private place, where I may partake of your loveliness in every way you can imagine “ as well as in some ways you have not yet learned.”
Hermione was all too aware of the blush that began in her cheeks and travelled to her hairline and down into her throat “ just as she was aware of the man who watched the flush in her skin with half-lidded eyes whilst his fingers, resting correctly upon her waist, circled endlessly over the faerie silk gown.
Douglas Howser was watching the bride and groom on the dance floor, smiling to himself, when he felt a hand upon his arm.
“Won’t you dance with me, Healer?” Varen Vector said, smiling prettily.
“I would be honoured, Professor,” he responded, charmed by the funny, self-deprecating witch.
Sophronia did not give any of his former flames a chance to approach Sirius for the ladies’ choice; she claimed him with a wicked gleam in her eye.
“My God, but you’re beautiful,” Sirius told his wife as she melted into his arms. “I should have given you a wedding like this.”
Sophronia placed a finger over his lips. “I’m very happy with the wedding I had, Siri. I’ve never been happier, in all my life.” Leaning up to press her lips to his ear, she reminded him, “We’re going to have a baby.”
He tightened his arms around her. “I love you, Sophie.”
Pansy Longbottom took her husband’s hand and pulled him onto the dance floor.
“Do you still think you’re not smooth?” she asked him as she slid both arms around his neck.
Neville smiled at her in a way which would have shocked his closest friends, so manly and self-assured did he seem. “I must be, love “ I convinced you to marry me, didn’t I?”
Pansy purred her agreement in his ear.
Tonks Lupin leaned over to smile at her husband as they sat at their table on the side of the dance floor. “Dance with me?” she asked.
Remus stood and tugged her insistently to her feet. “You asked me then, too,” he said, pulling her against his body.
“Yes, but I wasn’t sure that you cared for me, then,” she said, tilting her heart-shaped face up to gaze into his eyes.
“I’ll keep showing you until there can be no doubt,” he promised with a wolfish grin.
All of the assembled guests cheered when Hermione’s posy floated into the outstretched hands of Varen Vector, who was congratulated by the other unengaged women “ and by Douglas Howser, who swiftly sought her out again.
“You did that,” Hermione accused her husband.
“Nonsense,” Severus replied, taking her by the hand. “When I have done something, you will be in no doubt of the fact, wife, I promise you.”
The bride and groom obligingly ran the gamut of their well-wishers, being showered in multi-coloured, twinkling confetti before reaching the Disapparition point in the foyer of the wedding hall. Without another glance at their family and friends, Severus wrapped Hermione in his arms, and turning them upon the spot, they were gone.
Severus Apparated with such grace, and he held to Hermione with such firm determination, that she did not even stumble when they arrived at their destination. Hermione immediately saw that she was in an unfamiliar space; she glanced first right, then left, noting the elegant appointments of the large room in which they stood, yet still frowning in confusion. She had expected to arrive in Severus’ bedroom at the Estuary.
“Where are we?” she asked, beginning to feel the butterflies fluttering in her abdomen.
“Welcome to our bedroom at the Estuary,” he said, watching her face for her reaction.
Hermione stepped away from him, taking in the spacious apartment, noting the apparently new carpets, draperies and wall coverings; her eyes settled on the enormous four-poster bed, on its dais on the left wall. The duvet and the bed curtains were the colour of flame. The duvet had been folded down and the white sheets were scattered with coral rose petals. Near the foot of the bed, over the fabric of the duvet, the deep coral negligee she had found in his pocket in the limousine was laid out, as if waiting for her to don it. On the opposite side of the bed, black pyjamas and a matching dressing gown awaited Severus.
The sitting area included a low table which held a covered tray, as well as iced wine and glasses.
“Oh, Severus!” she breathed. “It’s perfect.”
He stepped up behind her, one arm pulling her against him whilst the other hand moved her hair to one side, so that her neck was bare to him. “I am happy to hear you say so,” he purred, kissing the back of her neck.
Hermione immediately responded to the touch of his lips upon her flesh, leaning back into his chest, feeling his hands move from her shoulders to stroke down her arms, raising goose bumps over her entire body.
“What about the house-elves?” she asked.
“They will come only if specifically called. We are alone and will have all the privacy we wish,” he promised, allowing her to feel his teeth upon her skin, and thrilling to her soft cry as he did so. “Tonight, Hermione, there will be no stopping me.” He turned her so that she stood facing him, his bride, so very beautiful in his eyes. “I will make you mine.”
Hermione nodded, wide-eyed. “I “ I know.” She swallowed. “I’m a little nervous.”
He smiled a genuine smile. “That is because you have been in the middle of a large group of people and you have not adjusted to being alone with me.” He drew her into his arms, bending his head to her. “It is also because I am talking about it, instead of doing it.” He kissed her, holding back nothing, invading the sweetness of her mouth with his tongue even as he cradled her head in one hand, and used the other to pull her flush against his body. In seconds, he had wiped her hesitancy from her mind, and she was sucking at his tongue, twining her hands in his hair, pressing herself urgently into him. He placed his large hand flat on the small of her back and allowed himself for the first time to thrust his hips against her much smaller frame, his arousal butting against her stomach in such a way that they groaned with one voice.
“Our night things are laid out, Hermione, but I want to undress you with my own hands “ may I do so?”
Instead of answering him, Hermione turned her back to him, lifting her hair out of the way so that he could unfasten the faerie silk gown. Slowly, with hands that trembled slightly, Severus began to unfasten the dress, pressing kisses to her bared flesh as he proceeded down her back, and she stood compliantly under his unaccustomed ministrations. When he had completed the unfastening, he pushed the dress down to her waist, sliding her arms from it, and over her rounded hips, until the fabric puddled at her feet.
“Step out of it,” he murmured, and with reverent hands he picked up the rare fabric and disposed it carefully over the back of an armchair. When he turned back to Hermione, she was facing him in her undergarments and fighting the urge to cover herself. Knowing he had left her too long without his touch, he put his arms around her again, burying his nose in the strawberry-almond fragrance of her curls. “I have dreamt of you, like this,” he whispered before he kissed her again. His hands could not get enough of her skin; he had stroked her back and her stomach beneath her shirts, but now he could clearly see, as well as feel her, and it was swiftly overwhelming his senses.
Here was his prize, which he had dreamt, against his better judgment, of possessing since the night he first held her body and smelt her scent. Now he could kiss her, taste her, touch her, mark her, take her, make her his own, over and over again. The sooner the better.
He plundered the inside of her mouth with his tongue, his hands having moved to the front clasp of her bra, which he successfully opened. Immediately, his palms cupped her naked breasts and he finished the kiss, sucking her lower lip between his teeth and nipping it lightly as he released her mouth. He moved back and looked down at the uncovered swells, which he had longed to touch and taste for far too long. Without asking her assent, he picked her up bodily and deposited her amidst the fragrant rose petals upon their bed, burying his face in her throat as his hands teased her, soon to be replaced by his lips, and tongue, and teeth, until she was insensate with desire.
“Severus,” she whimpered, striving to move her hips into contact with some part of his anatomy.
With a growl, he grasped the long petticoat and slid the stretching waistband under her bum and down the line of her legs, uncovering the lacy white knickers and her beautifully smooth limbs. As the petticoat travelled down her legs, Hermione’s torso rose from the bed, her unbound breasts bouncing in a way which she would quickly learn could dumbfound her sarcastic, articulate husband to insensibility. She reached for the fabric of the white shirt he wore, tugging at it insistently, if ineffectively.
Abandoning the petticoat at the foot of the bed, he rose to his knees beside her, his eyes dilating at the vision of the nearly-naked woman struggling to rid him of his clothing.
“What do you want, wife?” he asked her, reaching to caress the peaks of her breasts.
“Undress,” she said, striving for coherence before surrendering her power of intelligible speech again to his hands upon her heated flesh.
Severus watched Hermione as she arched into his touch, begging to be possessed, finally giving himself permission to unleash his desire for her. Relinquishing her for a moment, he sat back on his haunches, stripping the shirt from his chest, then the trousers from his legs, until he was kneeling beside her, entirely unclothed. Her dark eyes, clearly slumberous with desire, drank in the sight of him, and he felt himself swell with further pleasure at the acceptance he read in her face. This wondrous woman did not only respond to his hands and lips and tongue upon her body; she inexplicably desired what she saw when she looked upon his body.
He hooked the elastic in the top of her knickers and stripped them from her, allowing them to fall upon the abandoned petticoat as he drank in the sight of his bride upon their wedding bed, naked for him and wanton in her need.
“Severus “ please “ love me,” she said, reaching her arms to him.
Severus covered her body with his own, gently urging her to part her legs and to allow him to lie between them as he thrust his tongue into her mouth, both of them now desperate for completion. He kissed down the line of her throat, suckling the tender skin and deliberately marking it, free now to do so, as she moved and whimpered beneath him.
Hermione snarled one hand in his hair and tugged until he looked up into her impassioned face. “Don’t be afraid of hurting me,” she said, deliberately tilting her hips. “We talked about this.”
He moaned as she ground against him.
“Make me yours,” she urged.
And with great tenderness, followed by echoing cries of fulfilment, he did so.
The bath attached to her crimson and gold dressing room was large enough for entertaining, if one were inclined that way. It was fabulously comfortable for lovers who desired nothing so much as a place to drink champagne, nibble on a tray of cold delicacies, and to cleanse themselves of the evidence of one round of lovemaking, in order to indulge in another.
Utterly lost in one another, Hermione and Severus each washed the other in the warm, scented water, inundated with herbs designed to sooth irritated tissue and to relax muscles strained by unaccustomed activity.
Severus lovingly bathed each cavern and crevasse of Hermione’s body, as she had done for him. Then, as she floated by his side in the warmth, he made amends for the inescapable discomfort of her first time by showing her what he could do with his hand between her thighs and his lips upon her breast; she splashed water all over the bathroom floor in her vocal appreciation of his cleverness.
They left the bath and he used one of the crimson towels to dry her thoroughly, rubbing some body parts more attentively than others. When accused of base treachery, he lowered his wife to the plush carpeting in her dressing room and atoned for his perfidy by demonstrating how clever he could be with his mouth, much to the detriment of his scalp, considering how she wound her fingers in his hair in her enthusiasm. When that act was complete, he was overwrought enough to attempt a second, and much more successful, demonstration of how he could move her from within. The entire ordeal required a second bath, after which they subsided into their marital bed and slept, curled into one another’s bodies like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle properly united, at last.
Hermione opened her eyes to her first morning as a married woman and looked over at the sleeping countenance of her husband. In sleep, the lines of care upon his face were all but erased, and she looked at him, seeing in him for the first time the young man he had once been.
“I love you, Severus Snape,” she murmured, and watched as he slept on.
Slipping from their bed, she bent to retrieve the negligee from where it had fallen on the carpeted floor, and she went back into the bathroom, where she washed and then sat at her dressing table to make herself beautiful for her husband.
When he paused in the doorway between the bedroom and the dressing room, she was finished with her toilette. The flame-coloured negligee suited her perfectly, he was pleased to note. She had tamed her hair again, so that it fell in charmingly arranged curls past her shoulders. She was holding the mirror of her vanity set in her hands, admiring the delicate monogram, which had been inscribed in rubies, the large “S” in the middle, flanked by the “H” and the “G.”
“Only rubies for my Gryffindor lioness,” he said, drawing her gaze to him.
Hermione feasted her eyes upon her beloved as he stood in the doorway in his black pyjamas and dressing gown, his black hair freshly washed and brushed straight back from his forehead.
“These rooms and furnishings are beautiful, Severus,” she said, rising to go to him and to wrap her arms about him. “Did you select all these things yourself?”
“No, Hermione “ you are beautiful; these are just belongings. I ordered the vanity set for you. I hired a designer to do the room, with some instructions regarding colours and style.”
“I haven’t even looked all through the room yet “ I think one of the doors must be for your bath, and I can’t imagine what the last one is.”
Severus claimed a very thorough kiss before he gratified her curiosity. “Come, and I will show you what the last one is,” he offered. Hermione happily laced her fingers with his, and followed him through the door at the end of the room.
Hermione stopped just inside the room, staring with unconcealed incredulity at the most exquisite miniature library she has ever seen, perfect in every detail. If she has been asked to design the ideal personal library, this room would have been what she would have imagined. There was a skylight built into the ceiling, providing natural lighting. The walls were covered with towering bookcases. The furnishings consisted of a loveseat, a chaise lounge, an enormous armchair, and two desks, pushed together so that the occupants would face one another over their research.
Hermione turned to face Severus. “Did you make this room for us?”
Without speaking, Severus nodded, waiting for her verdict.
“This is Utopia, Severus. If we can induce Nanny to fetch our food here, I don’t know why we should ever have to leave.”
Moving forward with sudden relief, he jerked her against him and kissed her. “Then it’s a good thing Dumbledore has agreed to grant me sabbatical until the winter term,” he growled into her hair.
“What?”
Severus lifted her into his arms and settled into the huge armchair with her in his lap. “We don’t have to be at Hogwarts until January,” he said with great satisfaction.
“Who will take your classes?”
“Dumbledore will. He owes me, believe me.”
“Well, good,” Hermione said, suddenly vastly interested in the collar of his dressing gown, which she began to trace with one finger. “You can help me search out a good job.”
“You know you do not have to work,” he said gruffly, looking down at her dark curls.
“But you don’t object?” she asked, peeking up at him from beneath her lashes.
“I have told you I do not object,” he reminded her, aroused by her coquettish behaviour.
“And you don’t mind not having babies right away?”
This time he waited until she looked up to answer her. “I will allow you to decide when you wish to begin our family,” he said, feeling his heart begin to beat faster, knowing that he had never imagined begin able to say those words aloud.
She nodded and lowered her eyes again, fidgeting with his dressing gown collar again. At last, he said, “What kind of work would interest you?”
She assayed another peek at him from beneath her lashes. “I had thought, perhaps, an apprenticeship …”
Severus snorted. “I do not object to you working, Hermione, but I will not permit you to live away from me. That is out of the question. And I do not know of a master to whom you could apprentice yourself without being required to live on site.”
Her lower lip protruded. “You said I could be a Potions master’s apprentice!”
“I said it, and I meant it.”
She looked up again, now full of indignation. “Well, Severus, you’re the only Potions master to whom I would ever consider apprenticing myself!”
“I am the only Potions master to whom I would permit you to apprentice yourself,” he agreed.
“Well, why can’t I be your apprentice?” she demanded hotly.
“Because you have not asked me,” he responded patiently.
She sat staring at him. “I’ve been waiting for you to offer it to me!”
“I would no doubt have been obliged to do so if you had not finally broken down and asked me,” he said blandly.
She pulled back her fist and he caught her wrist in his hand. “I think we should be able to make it through at least twenty-four hours of our honeymoon before you are driven to strike me, don’t you?”
“Will you have me as your apprentice?” she asked him.
“In every way you can imagine,” he agreed with a devilish quirk of his lips, loosening the belt on the robe of her ensemble and looking at her body in the negligee he had bought for her.
Hermione lifted her hand to his face. “I love you, Severus,” she said, suddenly overcome with emotion.
He turned his face into her palm, pressing a kiss to her skin. “May I read something to you?” he asked, reaching for the one unshelved book sitting upon the table beside their chair.
Hermione nodded, settling with her cheek against his shoulder.
“I have always loved this poem, because it references potion-making, even if only in the abstract. I thought of it before we ever left the cabin, and, in time, it became our poem, in my mind.”
Hermione listened intently as the iambic pentameter rolled off his tongue, the deep, vibrancy of his tones reaching into her very marrow. When he finished, she said, “You recited a bit of it to me on the night you first kissed me, before you left Grimmauld Place,” she said. “‘Nor here, nor there, find any refuge from thee.’”
He only nodded, moving her hair back from her face, not trusting his voice to speak. In some ways, the sharing of these words was the baring of his most private thoughts.
Suddenly, she shifted in his lap, straddling his thighs with her knees pressed to either side of his hips on the cushion of the seat. “Have you built up your resistance?” she asked, her tongue darting out to lightly trace the contours of his lower lip. “Can you ‘drink unharmed the death of ten?’”
His seeking hand ascertained that she wore no knickers; with a sudden move of his own, he was freed from the confines of his pyjama bottoms and she was guided to engulf him, so that they gasped with one voice, foreheads pressed together.
“I fully mean to drink of your fountain,” he promised her, holding her hips in place as he thrust up, “at every opportunity, and in every way.” He watched in feral appreciation as she grabbed his shoulders, seeking to anchor herself as he thrust again. “And, my God, Hermione, you may be the death of me,” he said, fastening his lips to her throat and suckling there as he continued to move within her, “but if I am destroyed, I am taking you with me.”
Her shouted, “Yes,” may have been the cry of a woman reaching her violent completion, but as he followed her over that glorious precipice, he chose to hear it as an affirmation “ her agreement that their love would not destroy them, but would sustain them “ as long as they both should live.
Please see my live journal for the delightful little details in this chapter, courtesy of the online shopping skills of MollysSister.
http://subvers.livejournal.com/
His Draught of Delicate Poison by Subversa
Chapter Notes: This is the second part of Chapter 29