I, Snape - Chapter Fourteen

by April Grey

A Tiger by the Tail

Hermione was trying to enjoy herself. Shouldn’t she be feeling some sort of triumph? She was sitting across from Prof. Snape at the Hog’s Head Inn and they were having dinner together. But no, Prof. Snape’s current attitude left her profoundly disconcerted.

He kept shooting sidelong glances at her and his manner was most certainly different from the other meals they had shared or at any other time she’d been with him. He seemed ill at ease and his discomfort had spread to her, making her feel uncomfortable as well. They were sharing a bottle of wine with their meal and it helped her work up the courage to ask him if he’d read the latest copy of Alchemical Arts Weekly. Snape sighed.

“You assume that I read such periodicals?” He looked directly at her for the first time since the meal began.

“You don’t?” She fussed with the tattered and stained napkin in her lap.

“I hate potions. I’m sick of it all. I’ve been teaching potions for too many years, and I’m going to be forced to teach it for another five years. And then…”

“Yes?”

“I shall leave this bloody place and never make another potion again for the rest of my life!” He spoke through gritted teeth and his obsidian eyes sparked with fire.

“Well, that’s good I suppose.” Hermione was taken aback, but decided to continue anyway. “May I ask then, how did you come to teach it here?”

Snape leaned back in his chair and lifted his glass, contemplating its blood red contents. “The Dark Lord killed my predecessor so the teaching slot became available. What did you think, that I walked into Headmaster’s office hat in hand and said ‘Please sir, I’d like to teach Potions.” Snape used a high, whining voice that Hermione found quite delightfully silly. Snape snorted. “Not bloody likely.”

Hermione’s eye’s opened wide. “But that beautiful speech you made my first year?”

He smirked. “Cribbed it from the Daily Prophet. They usually print a lot of doggerel as filler, but it was a rather good one. It certainly had all of you convinced.” He returned to eating his steak and kidney pie.

She picked at her food. Normally, the food at Hog’s Head was quite appalling. This time they had outdone themselves. She was quite certain she’d seen something moving amid the overcooked carrots of her chicken stew. She took another slice of bread and slathered it with butter. Nothing was moving there.

She noted that he’d shot her yet another sly glance.

“Anyway, about the only requirement for teaching was, “Can you keep it in your pants?”

Hermione choked on her wine. She raised her napkin to her mouth and then sponged up where she’d sprayed wine on the oilcloth of the table.

“Of course with Lockhart, he had to agree to be put under a chastity spell.” Snape finished the glass and poured himself some more. Hermione was wondering if he was pulling her leg. “The thing is,” he said expansively, “it’s more for the protection of the teachers than the students.” He stopped to fish something out of his teeth. “Bunch of hormonally crazed morons. Once puberty hits, we’re nothing more than a bag of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.”

Hermione waited for the other shoe to drop. It didn’t. She sipped some more wine, trying to figure out what was going on. His moods were rapidly changing and she felt unprepared for this capriciousness.

“Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans?”

He nailed her with a look and mournfully nodded. “You are all so curious about sex that you go around trying it out with as many other students as possible. However, there are always one or two more ambitious ones. They set their caps for adults. Of course, it we didn’t have rules here at Hogwarts, you’d be ripping our robes off every chance you’d get just to see what we wear underneath.” He smiled, pushed away his plate and had some more wine.

Hermione gave a small, uncomfortable laugh. “And what flavor would you be, Professor?”

“Ear wax, Miss Granger. I’d be ear wax.”

Albus came out of the shower drying his fluffy silver hair on a fluffy blue towel; its twin was wrapped around his hips. The glamour did a good job of toning his pectorals and tummy, but he didn’t overdo it like some wizards his age, he didn’t bother with a six-pack for abs. It was with some concern that he spotted Althea wiping away a few tears.

“My dear heart! You are sad?” he asked with some alarm.

“I’m sorry,” Althea put her head on his shoulder and the tears returned. “I’ve never been good at hiding my feelings from you.”

“Tut, tut, and I wouldn’t want you to do so now.” He held her tight and kissed her gently. “You aren’t having second thoughts are you?”

Althea pulled away and looked up into his bright blue eyes. Her much darker blue eyes were still swimming in tears. “It’s not that. It’s just-- Oh, Albus, I miss him.”

“Your son?” his voice took on a bit of an edge.

“Do you think he’d come to the wedding? Then my happiness would be complete.” Her face lit up at the thought of his attendance.

Dumbledore shook his head for a moment, lost in thought. Then he began to circle around the room and Althea followed, expectantly. She bumped into him when he suddenly stopped, stooped down and removed a copy of the Daily Prophet from the dustbin.

“Here we are.”

Althea peeked around his shoulder. “Hmm. Magical bungee jumping: ‘Have More Fun Without The Bungee.’ ” She read out loud.

“No, no my dear. This one: International Magical Potions Exposition. It will be perfect. I shall owl Severus and Hermione to go to the event, for their own edification of course, and we can meet them there.”

“It’s in the States!”

“To be more exact—Las Vegas.”

“Darling, this is all going over my head. Is there something special about Las Vegas, US of A?”

“Why it’s the marriage capital of the world!” Dumbledore beamed.

“I thought Machu Picchu was,” Althea was perplexed.

“I meant to say the marriage capital of the Muggle world!”

Althea threw her arms around Dumbledore. “Darling, you mean… we are going SLUMMING! Oh what fun!” She hopped up and down with excitement.

“Exactly my dear. You are going to experience the delights of Wayne Newton and singing Elvis Impersonators. Why we could even be married by the King himself.”

“Oh, I thought the States didn’t allow Kings?”

“That’s why I love you Althea, you are not just beautiful, but brilliant as well. Nothing gets by my little sugarplum.” He kissed her and his towel slipped.

“Oh Albus,” said Althea as her hand snaked downwards, “You are the King!”

Hermione had always assumed that Professor Snape would be someone who could hold his liquor. Well, life was full of little surprises. The bottle was close to gone and Snape’s nose was red, in vivid contrast to his pale, sallow face.

“So, then the papers start printing all the lies about Death Eaters. To the victor goes the publication rights, as they say.” He shook his head sadly.

Hermione shook her head as well. He was defending Death Eaters, this was worse than when he was accusing poor, sweet Prof. Flitwick of being a pervie, Snape’s words not hers. In fact, he didn’t have a kind word to say for anyone, except his beloved Death Eaters.

“There were no Dark Revels. They made it up to sell more newspapers. Sex and violence always sells. I mean, if there had been Dark Revels, I would have known about it. Right? I would have been invited, right? Right. They couldn’t have all kept it a secret from me.” Hermione wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince her or himself of this fact.

“So the Death Eaters weren’t all that bad.” Hermione worked very hard to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

“It was a war, Miss Granger. A war.” He wagged his finger at her. “People die in wars. You see, you don’t know what it was like being a pure blood. Oh, some like the Malfoys still had money, but the rest of us were quite broke. Families were selling off estates, left and right. The Wizarding community was being swallowed up whole by the mud… er .. Muggle born who had all this Muggle born savvy and were ruining, simply ruining all that the Wizarding world stood for. And along comes the Dark Lord. And he gives us a meaning to our lives and he gives us hope. The people who were Death Eaters were just normal people who wanted their own families to have a chance to prosper again. We are hopelessly outnumbered by ‘them’ don’t you know? We needed a level playing field, but no one was offering that, except the Dark Lord. He made a lot of promises, all right, empty promises. It wasn’t until too late that I realized…” Snape stopped and looked chagrinned.

“What is it, Professor?”

“Have to go use the litter tray. Ummm. Men’s room.” Snape staggered a bit as he got out of his chair.

Hermione sat and waited. And waited a bit more. Finally he came out. He had used a freshen up spell. She immediately smelled it. A bit too strong, but then again, he was rather tipsy. And then there was the long, trailing piece of bog paper attached to the heel of his boot.

Hermione was wondering how she could make her escape. She thought she’d solved the puzzle of Snape and was willing to put paid to the whole enterprise. Very simply put, the sly little looks and the wine all added up to a man who was no more or less than a git: A socially inept git… A very horny, lonely, socially inept git who happened to be quite good in bed. Which was perhaps his only talent with women. She felt rather depressed and drank off the last of her wine. Well, she’d hear him out and then, somehow, extricate herself. Odd. The first time they’d had sex it had been pure lust. But after interrogating him while he was under the influence of the Lavender Haze, (and she really wished she had asked a few more important questions than what’s your favorite food) she thought she’d fallen in love with him.

But now that he was trying to talk to her. Maybe even relate to her. Well, he was buggering it up royally.

He sat down. And focused on her. It took a few seconds. “So where was I? Oh yes. Someone had to put those Uppity Mudbloods in their place and the Dark Lord was the only one willing to do it. The problem was that he was only using us to achieve his own ends of immortality. He didn’t want to set things right at all.”

Hermione forced herself to smile and not to hex him. After all he was drunk. Funny, now she understood. He’d left the Death Eaters not because of Lily, but because he’d seen through Voldemort’s lies. He was a very horny, lonely, socially inept git-- and bigot. Any love she might have felt for him that afternoon was searching for the nearest bolthole.

“Well, Professor, that’s very interesting. And I think it’s time for this Uppity Mudblood to leave. Please excuse me.”

She got up and he reached over and grabbed her sleeve. “No, no, I didn’t mean you.”

“Didn’t you? Oh, I get it. Well, I guess some of your best friends are Uppity Mudbloods, is that it? Especially if you fuck ‘em, then they must be all right. Like Lily.”

Snape went pale. “How did you?”

Suddenly the anger Hermione had been trying to quell took over. “Interesting thing about the main ingredient of Lavender Haze.” She said no more, but only raised an eyebrow and waited for the bomb to hit. And it did go off with a very satisfying ka-boom. She saw him mentally go through the list. And then a look of shock, and then panic and then…

“Miss Granger, you didn’t?

“You wouldn’t. It’s unethical, immoral.”

Hermione gave a cold little smile. “No worse than singing the praises of the bastards who have been trying to kill Harry since our Fifth year.”

She watched as Snape processed what she said. He went a very nasty shade of green, “Excuse me,” he said as he made a speedy retreat to the loo. Hermione took the opportunity to walk out from the Hog’s Head, ignoring the “Oy, who’s gonna pay?” of the barkeep.

It took Snape a while to finish losing his dinner. Really, the shock of realizing that the little Mu-Muggleborn had not only taken sexual advantage but had also interrogated him, made him quite literally sick to his stomach. Oddly enough, he wasn’t feeling anger. He was feeling something else. Something strange, alien, like a fluttering in his stomach which wasn’t dinner coming back on him but… something wonderful.

Performing yet a second clean-up spell, and smelling a little too strong of balsam and sandalwood, he exited the loo to discover a very angry barkeep. He looked around the room, but there was no sign of Hermione.

“Ooh’s gonna pay? Yer floozy done walked out on yer.”

“Oh dry up, Aberforth, how much?”

“Two Galleon!”

Snape threw a 2 Galleon piece on the table. Aberforth immediately started whining, “Where’s me tip?”

“Here’s a tip: your bathroom needs cleaning,” said Snape, rapidly exiting the establishment.

Being in Scotland during the summer had one benefit: it was still light out and he could see Hermione up ahead about halfway to the castle gates. Snape was grateful that the dinner was gone from his stomach, as he would have probably thrown it up if he kept running. But he did keep running until he caught up with her just outside the gates. He twirled her around to face him, roughly holding her wrists so she couldn’t throw any hexes.

“Don’t EVER do that to me again!” He yelled at her with eyes flashing and spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth.

“Do what? Leave?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll leave when I’m being insulted,” her brown eyes were wide with rage.

“I wasn’t insulting you, I was--”

“Well, what? Spit it out why don’t you?”

“I was, I was trying to explain. But Miss Know it all probably does know it all since you’ve yet again violated my rights and my privacy.”

“You gave up those rights when you tried to off yourself. Oh, go to bloody—“ her words were cut off by his mouth closing over hers. She struggled futilely against him for a few minutes before he released her. “You have some damn—“ she started again only to have him again kiss her, harder and longer than the last time.

When he released her again, she put up her hands. “No, it won’t work.” He stared at her for a few seconds and then stiffly walked through the gates of Hogwarts. She followed at a very respectful distance behind him. She saw him take off his robes, then his undershirt, he reached the edge of the lake and kicked off his boots and peeled off his socks.

“One last thing, Miss Granger.” He yelled at her.

“What’s that?” she yelled back as she walked as quickly as she could, without seeming like she cared.

“I can’t swim.” And he leapt into the water. Hermione ran up to the place where he had gone under. She knew that the water was quite deep there. With a feeling of unreality, she watched bubbles coming up. Her mind was racing. She couldn’t believe that he’d resort to emotional blackmail like this. And then the bubbles ceased.

“Oh Hell!” She took off her robes, and then had a better idea, raising her wand. “Mobilicorpus” she said, praying that she’d be able to resuscitate him. His body rose up and out of the water to her side. He was ashen and not breathing. She tried a resuscitation spell; however, she was either too nervous or maybe just said it wrong because nothing happened.

She knelt over him and tried mouth to mouth. He immediately started hacking up lake water and breathing. Hermione then did a drying spell.

He started to come around. Looking up at her, he gave a savage smile. She slapped him and his smile grew even broader.

“Don’t ever try to kill yourself again. It’s getting stale.” She said with no little annoyance.

“So don’t walk away from me.” He whispered. “And stop judging me, and stop violating me, and maybe I won’t.”

“No, no, no. Don’t make this my problem.”

“You drove me to it. You are driving me mad with your games. I try and get you to leave and you choose to stay. You want to go to dinner with me and then you up and leave. Which is it, Miss Granger? What do you want from me?”

She looked at him sitting in his underwear and a mad rush of desire for him surged through her again. “I don’t know. Maybe you’re right about the beans.” She felt young and insecure for the first time since the War ended. She didn’t know how to handle him as well as she thought she did. He was too much for her. Tears began to sting her eyes. “Why can’t you just be the way I like you all the time?”

“How’s that?” He sneered and then, quite consciously, stopped himself. He knelt a bit closer to her. And took her into a big hug. “Like this? Is this how you like me?” And he brought her legs to either side of him where he was sitting. Then he began to touch her between her legs. His voice was smooth as he whispered into her ear, “Is this what you want? Tell me Miss Granger, or I’ll stop. She moaned as his fingers rubbing against her melted her backbone along with her determination to be angry. She wiggled her way closer to him until she was resting against the hardness in his underwear.

“Yes. It’s what I want.”

She kissed him, not caring about the flavor of lake water in his mouth. And his tongue stole into her mouth. His hands were roaming around her back and finally, up into her shirt. She felt her bra release. He removed both it and her shirt. Her naked breasts rubbed up against his chest. She experienced the shock of her flesh exposed to the mild evening air.

He bent her back to lie flat against the grass there on the lake’s bank. Leaning over her, he took one nipple in his mouth and suckled it lovingly, while his other hand massaged her other breast. She allowed herself to enjoy the pulsing of her sex as he continued for quite sometime to suckle her, until she came close to orgasm.

Suddenly she wanted more. She pushed him away and down onto his back. He looked mildly surprised, but then she removed his underwear and her hand touched his cock. He closed his eyes and sighed. When her mouth came softly down on the tip of his penis, he then gave a small, strangled cry. He reached down to rest his hand on her head. Snape couldn’t believe that his fantasy was coming true. Well, it was worth drowning. And he was getting rather used to near death experiences.

Her mouth was sucking and then licking him. She steadied herself with one hand while her other held his cock straight up for her. She worked the shaft in time with her lips, pulling up and pushing down on him. And just when he thought he couldn’t take one more moment of her blowing him, she removed both her hand and her mouth!

He opened his eyes in disappointment only to be rewarded with the sight of her placing herself over him and his erect cock. He caught his breath and watched her spread open her lips in order to press him deep into her. He wanted to grab her hips to gain better control over her movements, but she slapped his hands away. He took hold of the grass on either side of him and pushed his arse upwards in an attempt to enter her deeper.

Then she clamped onto him with her internal muscles and he started to feel the first tingling of an orgasm. He whimpered as she ground herself onto him. His whimpers eventually grew to sobs as she stopped all movement, somehow sensing that he was about to come. Several times she did this, stopping his orgasm from happening while continuing to thrust hard down and onto him.

Finally she threw her head back and screamed, as her hips thrust relentlessly down on him. Clearly she was fucking him and not the other way around. She went into a climax that went on for minutes as she continued to hump him. And then as she was almost certainly done, she reached behind her and not very gently grabbed his sac.

He moaned out “Oh Gods,” and shot into her. His hips plunged upwards as she continued to caress his balls.

Eventually it was over and he stretched up his arms to gather her in to him. He kissed her mouth and cheeks, her forehead and down to her nose. He felt so very close to her, in spite of his desperate act of less than a half hour ago. He knew, or at least thought he knew, that she wouldn’t leave him again. Because, quite simply put, he couldn’t take that. And she had to know now; she had to be aware that his life belonged to her. He didn’t want it, so she could have it. And it was her choice what would happen to him. Tears streamed down his face as he kissed his tormentor and his savior.

It was growing dark around them and they pulled closer into each other’s arms. He pulled a robe over them and they fell asleep in the balmy night air.

On to Chapter Fifteen
Back to Chapter Thirteen