Severus stays at the edge of the bedroom on the chesterfield, fiddling with the hem of his placket, as Hermione prepares on the spool bed. The nervous energy inside the room was thick enough to mount on a spoon, and with one word of redundancy she knew that Severus would flee with a bruised ego, and likely never return to her.

She had to play this carefully, too much force and he would scare, too little and he would grow frustrated. This was dancing with the devil in the pale moonlight, a dance of veils and skin and crashing bones. The dark and cold of the room brings relief, to be supped in with measured sips like chilled champagne. Their rattling nerves would do no good than to knock against each other.

Hermione needed to remind herself that she was the experienced one, that she was to be Severus's first and to hold her head under the weight of that honor. To respect his wishes, to let go of her analytical mind, to vanquish the rigidness at the edges of her flesh, to let him get over it. Just this once to let natural thoughts drive his body, however foolishly. He already had apologized in advanced for what he considered this night to play out into.

Hermione could not give up on him, not even if tomorrow brought failure. She wanted to please him, and show him vivacity in the sweetest nothings of life. If she tried to lecture him like her mind begged of her to do, he would shrivel in with unaroused consternation and boredom. She would have to do this differently. She would have to seduce him, not simply embrace the attentions other men had once brought to her. This was for Severus—In her minds eyes she threw a slash of sword in his name, how different could the wielding of a weapon be to the offering of her body and mind.

She honed on a memory, of her grandfather teaching how to approach the Shire Horses on the Grange. She sat on the bed in a dark shift, mounted above the pillows like a siren on searocks. She held out her hand to him—the moonlight cascading a cool light at the foot of the spool bed. Just beyond his shaking form. "I'm ready, come here."

Severus approached, his face plain with confoundness, his eyes deep black with struggling emotions. He was loosely dressed, his shirt untucked and buttoned down, his slacks bearing ripples like the shedding skin of a snake—his waist tie unraveled a knot or two.

His hands—no doubt trembling, were tucked behind him.

Should she get him to undress in front of her? Either answer, if she asked him to remove his clothes he could become too embarrassed to do so. If she turned away, he could take that as an offence. Cutting her losses, and deeming Severus' capable enough to tell her if he would be comfortable or not in the act of divesting, she made her decision.

"Show me."

He paled, standing stock-still, before the light returned to his face with a healthy blush. And he silently nodded, steeling himself and lifting out of his shirt. Her heart surged. Scars marble his body, crisscrossing lines of pale old pain.

He was brave, her Severus.

He revealed himself, showing long crafted bone, and lean splayed skin. The way he held under her gaze, proved the same way a stone felt to being overturned by the wind. She would have all night to kiss the fear out of him, to cast out this hatred for his own body. In the lucent light, of beryl and hoary cat eye, he was lean and rippled with vanes of shadow, like a phantom inky from film noir.

His clothing was falling, harsh like a stag clawing velvet from his crown come the autumn to fight. His hipbones, sharp as glass scones brought water under her tongue, those delicious bones quartered a long, flat stomach that rose to his reeded chest. Long, thewy arms came from cusped shoulders, and sucked in collarbones that angled to be sills to his crystal cut jugular and that silvery gossamer of scars.

Nagini's work, a delicate canvas of hardstone carving. Voldemort's pet carved him with her needled fangs, etching some of the finest artwork into his alabaster skin. It was hard to clench her bursting heart, to see and know that he carried a masterpiece under his silken ascot. Always. His eyes the pools of burning smoke, sable as crystals found inside coal mines. The wheyfaced moon was sleepy, watching them with weary light from inside their sexual loom.

Her eyes investigate all of him greedily. Down to where the light should have been cowed. Down to where his scars opened a path of covertness. But he was beautiful. She lifted her shift to show him herself, to bare likewise.

His tone was low, nearly guttural, "No. A moment please." She knew then that he was on razor edge of his control, from in between his spindling legs there was sweetmeat pulled taunt as a fisherman's line taken.

Severus has come to the flannel skirt of the bed. He was beading in suffering. Hermione takes a small mercy on him and leaves her dress on, curling her finger with a sultry 'come hither' gesture.

His eyes swim with thousand turfs of confusion threatening to pull him under. He slinks onto the bed with her, claiming the foot inside the moonlight. If he only knew, how the white wash of that lumen moon simonized his whipcord flesh, how it made her eyes play on the thinnest lines of shade, pretty, little divisions that tracked every mold of his body.

She tires to push him down onto his back, but he fights her, spreading on his knees, holding her hand tenderly away from him. Her Severus is smart, for he also keeps her hand away from herself.

His voice is husky, full of trepidation. "No…"

"Do you want to stop for now?"

He shakes his head, freeing his curtaining hair into his eyes. His hand girding his manhood, that bundle of birch. His eyes pinch at the corners, chastising himself for being frightened, for forty years of torment leading his hand to this.

For being so fucking broken. He exclaims low, "I'm a bloody fool."

She threads her fingers around the ridges of his neck, mussing his earlobe with her cupids bow. "Then just be a bit more foolish."

She kisses him, pulping her lovely sighs to his teeth, playing tumbles with the swollen sweet of his rosy mouth. He kisses roughly back, burying deep into the den of her kiss, curling in the warmth, fighting with the zest, moaning bumbles and hissing sough at her gums. She finds with her fingertips the crests of many scars along his narrow body, trailing a path along every sharp cut, fingernails like a comet skipping on stars.

He moans into her.

Her fingers finding one such blaze of scarring low on his back, that once-belonging pain coiled along his spine, she touches and tarnishes that memory of agony with a spell of shivering comfort. She glissades the torments away, feathery fingers venturing up his spine, curving his abused neck, sliding down his piercing bones, swirling his navel with anticipation, then cupping neglected flesh.

That one holding touch—turns him mad with want. But his fear rises with the slick sounds of his skin sliding with her mad, nymphet, she-demon fingers. He whimpers, "Gods, I'm going to die."

She nestles to his neck, little eyelashes tickling his jaw. "Ease around it." Blood builds behind his eyes, crushing his thoughts, gorging down onto his groin with a fierceness that could have blinded him with the pressure.

"It's like fire, let it build around you, let it devour you whole." Dear Merlin…He wasn't going to survive Granger and her illicit words, much less the desired ploughing.

He exhales, and that slippery hand feels too-fucking intense, he nearly shrieks. "Let it pass. Let it pass," She croons, swirling her grip along his weeping temple. "Try to feel it."

He shakes, but desperately tries to search for what she is describing, ducking under the overwhelming sensations of her God-given hand, trying to find—

"It's warm… It moves…" He shuts his eyes tight—and yes, warm and molasses, there in his belly underneath that almighty cold grip of terror.

It fizzes and burbles, clenching and worming a fragile path that leads most certainly, most excruciatingly…lower.

"You have it?"

He could have sobbed with relief, moaning, "Yes…"

Hermione consoles with a tender squeeze, "Remember it, hold onto it." Then her hand is gone and it fucking aches now.

He could have told her countless contraceptive spells, could have told her of his disdain for primitive muggle inventions, but her hand returns and sheaths him with a French letter and it helps with the violent aching.

Her touching finally helps that sluggish, pissing feeling inside him get a move on. She faces away from him, bending into a dog pose, her hand traveling under to her…

His eyes widened in heat, mouth parched, "Dear gods…"

Her fingers were in her quim, but by the power invested in some forgiving omnipotence, they saw Severus kneeling behind this chit as a sodding virgin and offered him a small, blessed mercy.

Granger still wore her grand-mother's nightshirt, dollies lacework stitched along the hem that settled just below her knickers. The thought of old precious Agatha was enough to cool the inferno in his belly and stop him from making an embarrassing mess. That of course was until Granger the Succubus, pulled down her knickers with glistening fingers and declared herself ready. She tossed him a cheeky smile, and concluded. "It shouldn't take long."

Christ alive…She wanted to give him a heart attack. His member gave a hearty jump, and he glances down to his wrapped member and notices the obnoxious color of the condom.

Pink…? He felt heat begin to eat away at the coldness of dread inside him, mirth and agitation bubbling and suffice it to say, relaxing his tightly wound muscles from entering shock.

She was clever, his Hermione.

He edges closer much more to Grangers beck and call, than to that of his own readiness. She moves to lift her shift once again and he snatches it back in place, "I won't…I won't last if you…" He pants, fingers wound tight in the fabric.

He is tremendously glad that Granger had decided on this position, if he saw her face, her quivering breasts, or her heaving stomach, he would be painfully undone all too soon.

Though he had heard other wizards speak of this position as…tighter. He could not remunerate that thought before Hermione presents herself more desirably, feet curling against his thighs.

Her voice gentle, and soothing, "Move however you like. It won't hurt me." He breathes in the room, building his courage, then lifts his hand under her skirt to probe.

He feels the sleek wetness at first, then the pleats and creases of her womanhood—Hermione flinches here and if it wasn't for her constant, hushed encouragements he would have recoiled. He circles a formation of puckered plica, following it deeper into the gash, until he touches her cinched entrance.

He slides in one finger, his boldness rewarded with a vibrating, pleased moan from Hermione. He feels her clamp on his digit and his brain shuts off, his cock knocking against his navel—

And that alien warmth inside him nearly surging, nearly sneaking out from him. Devilish pleasure flickered its tongue briefly inside him, tempting and fully ensnaring his senses.

He removes his hand. It was to be now or never… If that happened once more he would be finished.

He aligns himself behind her, and nearly, ipainfully/i looses it again. It is only Hermione murmuring ungodly words of her desire for him, that allows him to guide himself to her opening, he very careful not to dishevel her skirt and reveal her arse.

That sight would cause him too much of a complication to clean himself of. He eases inside, practicing on the very tip a few dozen times when she feels far too, too tight.

He realizes at the dozenth failed lunge that it wasn't poor lubrication that was the source of her stricture, but to the result of Hermione being naturally narrow. He whimpers, and forcefully pushes the rest of the way in, until fully encompassed.

Thank the muggles—

The rubber dulls the sensation—

Blood rushes behind his eyes, brilliant colors bursting in his vision, like beads in a slingshot shooting for the whites of his eyes. Hermione stiffens and clenches before letting out a low cry into the darkness of the room.

Accepting him... Her cries are like a little death.

She moves timidly and he reciprocates with a few clumsy strokes—

His hips move slowly after he finds an easy pattern that doesn't cause his eyes to shoot out completely from his skull. The sensation builds and that strenuous fire roars alive in his gut.

Hermione begins gripping fistfuls of the blankets—grunting with his measured thrusts. It felt good—toofuckinggood.

Snakes alive—He grinds when the pulsing gets to be too much, gyrating his hips into the spongy channel of her. His hands holding her steady when she squirms against his milling strikes a bit too eagerly.

"Severus…" She whimpers, hands gripping her legs and her hips throwing themselves around him in complete abandon when she grows impatient of his sinking claws and puttering thrusts.

"Oh." Is all he can articulate, his spine snapped clean from his brain.

Her talented hips and craning head and-oh, the way she glances back.

He is moaning like a fool- digging into her-straightening his spine.

Doing his dammed best to impersonate a pumpjack.

It's suspended time- slippery noises and beating flashes of white-numbing thrill, napalm bone-soaking delight.

In her oscillating movements, her grandmother's shift is carried to the dimples of her swooning back. And Severus is struck by the sight in more than one place.

By some last-stitch boldness- some feral desire, he gropes her revealed flesh tightly.

It sears.

Watches the hilt of cyclamen disappear into her. His feelings a pussyfoot around the glass edge, deep warm rum of an orgasm sloshing, imminent descent arriving.

And comes.

His fingers unravel from her skin, working the blessed flesh of her waist, slipping up her back to her many small ribs, cherishing the delicate pitting of a woman's back. They are still locked together, not even the flames of utopia consuming up from the undoing below could break the connection.

They slumber into a restful state, yet time and overt nature are fully conscience. He had never dreamed nor slept while awake before, his thumb tracing imaginary runes along the brow of his Hermione, dragging the calloused pad past her rheumy, hangdog eyes, down to her parted lips and letting her nibble the salt there.

He kisses her with his slender fingers still inside her pink mouth, capture of easy love. The night pulsing like a swift song above, curling around like cat paws to cat toes. A dark warm coat smelling of early cigarettes smoke, crisp morning wet refusing the dry light of dawn. Below they can hear the commotion of dance, uncorking bottles of wassail, cheery and jubilant voices of strangers that bring odd comfort with their effervescent presence.

Floating all the while in a womb above the hostel where no one knew of their companionship together, only the yellow light under the door giving them mind to the threat of discovery.

Hermione shifts one shapely leg around his ankle, hooking him with a petite affection deeper into the drawers of the bed sheets. Her sharp, little fingers, nimble enough to breeze through brittle papers of ancient tomes, pet the hairpin bones of his hips lovingly. There is no desire nor bid to leave like all others before.

The Valkyrie could charge in for all they cared, hell hath no fury than that of disturbed lovers. He memorizes the scent behind her ear, kissing the thready pulse he finds. His nose nuzzling down her tumbling shoulders naming the scents of femme perspiration, venturing curled lip to her breasts and reveling the odor of arousal there. The scent of the sea, musky as shelling for mussels and cockles. He rolls his feet together, dispelling the theory of having shrimp stuck inbetween his toes.

He suckles an unattended breast, letting her pleat a small braid from his mussed nape, awfully done in her state of bliss. But he basks in the wonder of her weaving, scratchy attentions.

He rumbles pleased and quietly, there is no question in his voice, "Do you wish for me to leave?"

Her pelvis rolls into his stomach, fingers threading into his undone hair, thumbs fiddling his ears sensually. He fears that she must have peeled back his face of its old mask, for she kisses against a crooked smile. There are little denotations of nerve, sparkling like plum pudding under the match, when her thighs cleave between his and entice flesh into a series of aroused increments.

"Leave now and I'll hex you..." She mulls with a tongue at the filiform blue of his inner wrist, her lips sucking samples of white skin on her travels to his drawn bicep. "The alma mater party can wait..."

Severus dances his fingers on her forearm, mapping the beauty marks and freckles, murmuring coastal cities of Italy to almighty constellations of the night sky. "I have no intention of returning to those bores."

He draws the June constellation, the herdsman tending his flock above her navel.

She laughs, pearly teeth gleaming and the luscious scent of ink and spiced wine accosting the next adventures of her mouth, trembling she sighs, "Besides the party, I was working on the relations of Syltherin and Gryffindor. They'd do well together."

He kisses her chin to mouth hungrily, entering her once again and lifting her to the headboard. Fingers skimming her neck and all talk of dealings silenced.

He taunts her lightly, kissing assuredly, "That you were."