This is a spur of the moment story that just came out when I was meant to be writing coursework for my Master's degree! I hope you all enjoy it :) I love reviews! Now hopefully I'll be able to concentrate on my actual work...

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Hermione was a woman of superior intellect. She had a wide variety of interests and in depth knowledge of many subject areas. It was unusual and highly disturbing therefore, that her mind was currently so consumed with two facts of a decidedly non-academic nature.

Fact Number One. She was in love with Severus Snape.

Fact Number Two. He didn't return her interest. In fact, his interests, and quite possibly his heart, were engaged elsewhere.

She had been aware of the first fact for a while. A few years after the end of the war, she had enrolled herself in an apprenticeship programme at Hogwarts. The programme offered apprenticeships to two muggleborns per Hogwarts professor, a scheme aimed at increasing equal opportunities in the academic field. Hermione had chosen to study potions under Professor Snape. She hadn't expected to fall for him.

However, she hadn't factored in the changes he had undergone since the fall of Voldemort, or her own only recently awakened sexuality.

Snape had changed. Perhaps not fundamentally, but his mean temper had become mere causticness and even that was now tempered with a lively, if dark, sense of humour. He looked different too. Cleaner, younger. It was like he had shed the dark cloud of anger, dirt, and hatred along with the chains binding him during the war.

It had only taken half an hour of their first meeting for Hermione to feel physically attracted to him. Without his billowing cloak, wearing only well-fitting black trousers and a white shirt, his height and strength seemed to radiate from him in waves. When he'd rolled up his sleeves, Hermione had almost squirmed at the sight of his muscular forearms which flexed as he demonstrated the right way to scale ring-eyed beetles, before crushing them with the blunt edge of a silver knife.

Another half hour and she was head-over-heels. When they had finished the difficult part of the brewing process, Snape had asked her and the other apprentice what their research ideas were. Hermione had tentatively proposed her idea of developing a cauldron capable of preventing explosions from occurring and Snape had been genuine in his quiet enthusiasm. And then she had made a joke about future Neville Longbottoms not being able to blow up his classroom, and Snape had laughed.

She had never seen him laugh before. It was fascinating and beautiful and it made her belly pull into a tight knot and sent a shock of lust darting through her body. His eyes had creased and glinted, the lines on his forehead had smoothed out and he had flashed his attractively crooked teeth.

It only lasted a moment, but it had been enough. Snape was stuck in her head and he wouldn't leave. Hermione had never experienced anything like it – her teenage crushes and brief adult flings had been nothing in comparison. She was unable to think of anything else for any significant amount of time, he was constantly there in her thoughts. Her heart beat faster when she thought of him, let alone saw him. She replayed their encounters constantly. When he made eye contact with her, it felt like a punch in the gut, so extreme was her physical reaction. Concentrating in sessions was nearly impossible, even holding her brewing rod became a challenge when her skin was so highly sensitised. She would look for him when she was walking down corridors, when she entered the dining hall, when she went for a walk in the grounds. She would masturbate herself into senselessness at night to thoughts of Severus Snape. She had never felt so alive.

It was highly inconvenient.

Especially considering Fact Number Two. He didn't return her interest. In fact, he appeared to prefer her fellow apprentice, Roxanne. Hermione couldn't stand to think about Roxanne as a result, although they were technically friends.

They had known each other vaguely before, having attended the same university and shared some classes. Roxanne was lovely. She was lively, friendly, warm-hearted and had a great sense of humour and adventure. She had been known at university as being promiscuous, but no one had thought any less of her for it. Roxanne was someone who knew what she wanted and generally got it. She was tall and curvy with long black hair, gorgeous dark eyes, and a smile that could stop men's hearts.

It wasn't that Hermione thought she was unattractive, but she lacked Roxanne's overt sexuality, her easy-goingness, her confidence, her presence. Hermione was more self-conscious around strangers, tended to wear more conservative clothing and often felt lost in situations requiring small-talk.

Roxanne and Hermione were the two potions apprentices that year, lived in adjoining rooms, and spent a lot of time together as a result. Hermione enjoyed debating with her, they often had different opinions, both enjoyed a challenge and sometimes ended up debating the same topic for days on end.

This would even continue into their sessions with Snape, and he had joined in more than once. Sometimes he would take Hermione's side, sometimes Roxanne's, and sometimes he would give his own opinion which would then be loudly contested by the other two. Those sessions would leave Hermione feeling giddy and inspired and warm.

At least until she had noticed that Snape paid more attention to Roxanne than to her. That he would look at her more often, that he was more likely to engage her in conversation or respond to the points she made, that he even occasionally touched her to correct her movements when stirring. He had never touched Hermione. Not once.

Hermione had even seen the two of them walking in the grounds outside of class hours, engaged in conversation. The sight had literally made her heart ache, and ridiculing herself for engaging in such ridiculous sentimentality didn't make her feel any better.

A few weeks into the programme, Hermione started to get the distinct feeling that Snape had started avoiding eye contact with her. It was devastating. What had happened? Had he noticed her reaction to him? Did he know about her crush (it was more than a crush, she knew) and wanted to make it clear her feelings were not reciprocated?

Well, either way, Hermione had gotten the message. He wasn't interested. She should get over him. But she couldn't.

Things came to a head just after the Christmas break when they were brewing the amortentia potion. Hermione had steeled herself beforehand, knowing that she would be smelling sandalwood and spices along with her usual freshly-mown grass and new parchment. Her preparation hadn't been enough. Standing over the cauldron, she was hit with a wave of his scent so intense it made her knees weak. She stumbled and knocked over the cauldron, spilling the contents all over the work table.

The aroma of the potion filled the room, no longer contained by the cauldron, and Hermione felt arrested by the smell. Her cunt pulsed and her nipples hardened, and she couldn't move other than to look up at her teacher, who must surely be furious.

But he wasn't. He seemed to have been locked in his position, too, a faint flush gracing his high cheekbones. But he wasn't looking at her. No. He was looking at Roxanne who had just moved to clean up Hermione's mess, as the only one apparently unaffected.

Seeing Snape's feelings for Roxanne confirmed felt like a blow to her chest. Hermione's eyes filled with tears against her will and, finally feeling her legs responding again, she ran from the room and from the dungeons as fast as she could. Away from him.

…

"Hermione!" Roxanne was knocking on her door and Hermione knew she would have to open soon. She reluctantly got up and let her friend in.

"Honey, what's going on?" Roxanne asked, plonking herself on the sofa.

They began to talk.

…

An hour later a determined Hermione marched down to the dungeons. Her heart was pounding and her face was flushed and nothing was going to stop her.

She entered Snape's classroom without knocking. He looked up in surprise, his mouth hanging very slightly open.

"Miss Granger," he eventually said, his gravelly voice shivering along her skin, "would you care to explain?" He leant back in his high-backed chair, crossed his arms, and raised one, very sexy, eyebrow.

"Professor Snape," Hermione replied, walking slowly towards him. "I've just had a very interesting talk with Roxanne."

"Oh?" was all he managed to say. He looked slightly unsettled, perhaps even unsure. Hermione smirked and continued forward.

"You see," she said, "I've been feeling quite unhappy lately. Thinking I meant nothing to you. Thinking you had feelings for my friend. You have, after all, been paying her a lot more attention than me."

Snape just looked at her, startled, unmoving. Hermione continued stalking toward him until she was at his desk.

"The thing is," she continued, rounding the desk and leaning against it, mere inches from him, "you hurt my feelings. You've been acting all this time as if I don't exist."

Snape sat still. His face had become rather expressionless, and Hermione didn't like that. She decided to rectify it immediately and promptly straddled his lap in one swift move. Snape's head reared back in shock, and yet he didn't lift his hands to push her off or hold on to her, either way.

"And now I find out," Hermione continued, as if she hadn't just sat down in her teacher's lap, as if she couldn't feel his heat scorching her own body, "that you've been attracted to me this whole time, that you've wanted me, me, not Roxanne. And that you decided to confide these feelings to her and not to me!"

Hermione leaned close, brushing her lips against his ear, and whispered "that hardly seems fair now, does it?"

Snape suddenly moved, apparently shaken out of his daze, his hands moving up to grip her hips and his head moving forward as if to kiss her.

Hermione held herself back from him, tutting playfully. "Now now," she said, "I'm not done speaking yet". Her hands moved down to his hips and started undoing his belt, to his surprise, revealed by a sharp intake of breath.

Hermione pulled him from his trousers and held him in her hand as she continued, "the fact is, Severus", she said, speaking his first name aloud for the first time, "I think I'm rather in love with you."

His mouth dropped open and his erection throbbed in her hand, but he held himself still. His eyes bored into hers and they suddenly appeared aflame, chasing a wave of heat through Hermione's body. She felt her knickers become even more soaked than they already were, and her eyes fluttered closed for a moment.

She drew in a shuddering breath and continued. "Considering this fact, you can imagine it wasn't very nice for me to think you didn't care about me at all."

Snape opened his mouth as if to speak, but forgot anything he might have said when Hermione lifted her hips and her skirt, revealing she was bare beneath, positioned herself over him, and plunged her heat down onto him.

She cried out in relief and joy and pleasure at the perfection of him inside her as Severus bowed forward in pleasure, burying his face in her neck and clutching her back with his hands as she held his head to her.

Hermione settled herself onto him, and stopped moving for a moment, gasping for breath. She pulled his head up again and saw that his eyes were dilated and verging on wild with desire, something she noted with glee.

Holding eye contact, she slowly raised herself up again, feeling every contour of his beautiful, large cock drag against her swollen inner walls, before plunging herself back down, her breath bursting from her chest in a silent rush.

Severus groaned deeply, his hands clutching at her hips tightly as his eyes closed in bliss.

Hermione leaned forward again and suckled at his earlobe before continuing, "but I've decided to give you another chance."

As if those words finally released him from the spell he was under, Severus sprang into action. He gripped Hermione's face between his large, warm palms and kissed her wildly, passionately, biting at her lips and cheeks and chin, plunging his tongue into her mouth, holding her close against him, his length deeply embedded in her tight heat.

Hermione moaned, loudly, kissing him back as fiercely as he kissed her. One of his hands found her covered breast and held onto it tightly, as hers found a way into the back of his shirt to feel the soft skin of his back.

Suddenly Severus was standing up and bending her over, laying her on his large desk, on top of the papers he had been working on. Somehow, he managed to stay inside her, and once he had found his balance, he started thrusting.

It was better than magic. It was better than anything. It was rough and fast in their mutual desperation, Hermione's legs hooked around the back of his thighs, Severus' legs apart on the ground for maximum stability as his buttocks clenched with each powerful thrust into her. They were both still mostly clothed, but it was the most intimate, glorious moment of Hermione's life. His hands had threaded together with hers and they held on tightly to the other as they moved against each other, rolling and bucking and moaning.

He bent down to kiss her briefly, then pulled back to look into her eyes. Hermione could feel her pleasure building and she whined out his name as she twisted her hips against his, grinding her clit against him with every down thrust. Severus suddenly pulled open the buttons of her shirt and found her nipple through her bra, pinching her as his thrusts became faster and harder. Hermione felt the world narrow and every muscle in her body tighten, and all she could see was Severus' hot eyes and she heard him groan out her name, loudly, desperately, and that was all it took for her entire body to convulse as she came harder than she knew possible. Her eyes shuttered closed as her back arched and her toes clenched and her hands gripped onto his, desperate for an anchor, and she screamed his name which felt perfect, perfect, on her lips. She was only vaguely aware when he stiffened and spurted his seed inside her, moaning her name, still lost as she was in her own pleasure.

He was still gently thrusting when she came to, and Hermione felt another jolt of pleasure when she looked at him, his hair hanging around his face, sweat glistening on his neck, his cheeks flushed, his mouth hanging open as he tried to regain his breath.

She smiled victoriously up at him as he pulled out, slowly. He sat back in his chair and pulled her off the desk, back into his lap. He held her tightly to him and looked at her with such a wonderful expression in his eyes that Hermione couldn't help but kiss him again, taking time to slowly explore his mouth and his tongue and his lips.

Eventually they pulled apart and she smiled.

"I'm glad we got that sorted," she said and laughed.

"Indeed," Severus growled, playfully, before pulling her mouth back to his.

Just before she lost herself in their bliss again, Hermione rearranged the facts in her head.

Fact Number One. She was in love with Severus Snape.

Fact Number Two. She was pretty sure he loved her back.