A/N: Thanks for the comments and favs. I really appreciate them. Let me know if you enjoyed this one and I'll look to post some more. DSx

She hadn't spoken. Not since toppling out of his mind. Instead, she leaned against the headboard, staring at the far wall. He waited. He couldn't break the silence—it wasn't his to break.

"Why me?" Her voice was small.

He knew what she was asking but needed more detail to answer her properly.

"Tell me what you saw. Maybe then I can answer."

She tilted her head slightly to look at him.

"You don't know the contents of your own mind?"

"What I know of my mind and what you may have seen are vastly different. Legilimens is a blunt tool. It can be as easily manufactured as misinterpreted."

She knew what she saw. It was either there or it wasn't. She didn't understand how those images could be defended.

"Let's start with the fact that you were stalking me throughout my final year at Hogwarts."

He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't actively seek you out. Although, equally, I never averted my gaze. What you saw are the memories that my brain thought significant enough to hold on to. Everything else has washed away with the tide of passing years. And it turns out that you were worthwhile remembering. Significant at the time."

"Why?"

He sighed, resting his wrist on his bent knee. "Life was pretty miserable. There was very little light to be found. And you brought something . . . vibrant. You laughed a lot. I wasn't surrounded by much happiness. Your energy felt . . . soothing."

"But you watched me."

"Yes. I was intrigued. Throughout the chaos, you retained an . . . honesty . . . that I admired."

"Honesty?" She'd never been described that way before.

"You were kind but fiery, courageous but vulnerable. And smart—brilliant really."

Brilliant? A small smile played on her lips.

He cleared his throat. "Are we done with this?"

"No." Her smile disappeared. "You were looking down my cleavage."

He had a vague memory. "And how did you interpret that?"

"I thought that would be pretty obvious. You were trying to see my breasts."

He gave a brief nod. "Entirely possible, but there is also the chance that I was surprised to see them, since, according to Hogwarts' uniform policy, there should have been no chance of your cleavage being visible at all."

Hermione thought back. She had gone through a phase in her final year of leaving the top button or two of her shirt undone—a small act of defiance against the school rules, an expression of her burgeoning sexuality and an attempt to catch the eye of someone she couldn't even remember. There hadn't been any similar images. Perhaps he was telling the truth.

"So what about the intervening years? When I wasn't even here?"

He absently gestured with the hand resting on his knee.

"You'd made an impression. I could either accept that the banality of my existence here was infinite. Or I could imagine something a little better. A fantasy of hope, perhaps. You were a symbol of . . . potential. Not for me, necessarily, but in general. And, again, hope, even if it is fantastical, is often all we have."

She remembered there hadn't been a lot of sex through that period—mainly scenarios, meetings, talking together, walking together. "What were you imagining?"

He shrugged. "As a legilimens you see images but context and emotion are, often, absent. In effect, they can be interpreted however you like. I was imagining myself in a life that recognised me as a person beyond the asexual, student-owned entity that a Professorship endows."

It was a good point. The responsibility of being a full-time teacher, especially at Hogwarts where there was no reprieve from the role, took a lot from you, including large chunks of your identity.

"So you didn't find me attractive at all?"

"What do you think?"

"I want to hear you say it." Her eyes flicked to him.

His eyebrows sighed as he looked, unseeingly, at his mind's image of her. "You grew into a beautiful woman. Not just physically . . . I thought you were a genuinely lovely person."

Hermione blushed. She hadn't bargained on him being so honest. However, there persisted the matter of recent events—something she didn't think he would be explaining away so easily.

"So that just brings us to the most recent fanfare of fucking."

He snorted and shrugged. "What can I say? I'm a man. And one that hasn't been fucked in an inordinately long period of time."

He could have fooled her. She'd never known anyone so adept. She wouldn't have been surprised to discover that he'd been appointed Professor of Fucking.

"And," he continued, "suddenly the person I've been thinking about for years is, literally, stuck to me. I can feel her rubbing against me, every microsecond of the day. Then I discover that she doesn't seem to completely despise me. In fact, she tolerates me. And, inexplicably . . . she proceeds to give me the best blow-job of my life."

Hermione smiled to herself. So she hadn't lost her touch.

"I admit that my penis has been doing the vast majority of my thinking over the past three days. I've been a wreck. Totally out of my mind. Most of what you saw weren't even fantasies. Just unbidden images floating through of their own accord."

She thought about her own mind and how it seemed to have a mind of its own. If he'd legilimensed her in the past hour, he would have seen himself in at least ten different action poses, hauling or snatching her onto his shoulders and in varying states of eating her pussy. In fact, it was her wayward thoughts that had gotten them into this mess in the first place. It was hard for her to take the moral high-ground.

He turned to face her, his unwavering gaze locked on hers. "But I will understand if, after this, I have lost your trust."

That jolted her. Jabbed her straight in the heart. Was it intuition? Coincidence? Fate? Whatever it was, his words turned her stomach to lead.

It was time. She'd already decided what she would do.

Propping herself on the book, she pushed up onto her hands and knees before crawling over to him and climbing onto his lap. She straddled him with her thighs and looked down into his face.

His expression was a mixture of intrigue and confusion. She wished he understood. It would make this easier. But there was likely no way for him to understand until it happened.

She looked into those black orbs. Darker than any eyes she'd ever encountered and yet far brighter for their depth of feeling. A depth she was now going to plumb, with no sense of its limits.

Holding up their bound hands, she gazed at him, into him, and spoke.

"I trust you."

The book suddenly fell from between them. Liberated. Now, strangely innocuous in its resting place on the bedcovers.

His face registered shock and then something else. A dawning realisation crawling over his skin, consuming his features with an understanding long buried. And she had been right to position herself securely close. He needed her. Burying his face in her stomach, he wrapped his arms around her waist, as she held his head to her, stifling the sobs that wracked his body.

Her words had opened something in him, had fractured and fissured the wall that had protected but also deceived him all these years. She knew what he would be seeing now. The same images that had played out before her.

A young woman, baby on hip, cherubic fingers interwoven in her auburn hair.

His voice, deeply earnest, tight with emotion. "I won't let anything happen to you. To any of you."

And hers in response, fearful but strong, "I know Severus. I trust you."

Those three words "I trust you." Lily Potter's last words to him and the words he had punished himself with ever since. Perhaps he'd chosen them for the book bind as they were the words he considered least likely to be uttered by accident. To him in particular. The words he was least deserving of hearing.

She gently stroked his head as he clutched her tightly, continuing to weep quietly into the hollow below her breasts. And as he wept, she found herself gently rocking him, like a child—an ancient instinct of comfort and solace. It seemed to bring relief, as he gradually stopped shuddering and simply clung to her.

They sat, connected, for what seemed like hours. His head was slack against her but his arms remained tight. Hanging on as if fearful of letting go.

Finally, he pulled back, tentatively, stiff from the prolonged union, and looked up at her. His eyes were red rimmed and his face flushed. He looked so unsure of himself that she didn't want to prolong the torture, but she needed him to know.

"I do trust you, Severus," she whispered.

He interlocked his fingers with hers—those hands that had been bound but touching, and used the other to pull her face down to his.

His soft lips captured hers in a kiss of such gentle sweetness that her throat tightened. His was a sensitive soul. So horribly exposed. And yet still willing to show vulnerability. She rested her forehead against his, their breathing synchronised, infinitely reflected in one another's eyes.

And then her mind—her wonderful, wayward, whimsical mind intervened. They were separated. The bind was countered. But, more importantly, the sex suspension was lifted.

"You're going to be busy," she murmured.

She felt his eyebrow quirk up against her forehead.

"You have ten potions of passion to brew."

He tipped his head back from hers as a full and genuine smile captured his features—the first she'd ever seen.

"Which would you like to sample first?" His voice was low and sensuous.

"Let's just start with clitoral enhancement and go from there." She knew her grin was ravenous but she couldn't help it. She was desperate for him.

A mischievous glint sparked his eyes as he gently leaned into her, pushing her sideways and sliding on top of her.

"I don't need a potion for that." His creamy voice, liquid sex, slid through her.

Don't I know it! Her clitoris was already swollen and throbbing. And as he continued his low lusty rumblings in her ear, Mesmer-ising her, she felt herself floating, being carried away. She intertwined her hands with his, but this time she had no intention of letting go. She was free. And with her freedom, she chose him.