Special delivery for shiv5468 - Part 2 Title Witch's Sabbatical, pt. 2 Authorleni_jess Recipientshiv5468 Rating NC17 Pairing Snape/Hermione (and non-specific references to previous Ron/Hermione and Harry/Ginny) Summary Hermione has a year off work to do research in Britain's best libraries. Heaven, yes? Not so much, after Snape comes out of the woodwork: trouble is still his business. And hers. Word Count 16,734 Warnings Post-epilogue. Canon-compliant, epilogue-complaint (in the letter if not the spirit), with one great honking exception (see pairing). Author's notes I have enjoyed so many of shiv5468's stories; I hope this provides her with some enjoyment too. Thanks to R1 for helping me inject some plot into this, to B, R2 and E who beta-read it, and made most helpful comments in spite of the last-minute rush, and to the wizard_love mods, especially ragdoll, who exhibited extraordinary patience and faith in my intention and ability to produce.
That turned out to be an unfortunate choice of words. The lift car started vibrating at unpredictable intervals.
Hermione whimpered, and pressed herself into Snape, not caring a bit that he was standoffish and hated people and had never liked his students and was a very private person.
He said in her ear, "If there's any doubt, if you're in any danger, I'll Apparate us out of here and Obliviate those Muggles afterwards, understand me? So don't let go of me."
"Yes," she whispered, "but we should wait, if we can. I don't like Obliviating people."
"Not even Muggles?"
"They don't even know it's possible. At least a witch or a wizard might guess what's happened, if there's a gap in their memory. They might be annoyed, or frightened, but they won't be afraid they're going mad."
He said nothing to that, but he might well agree with her. Snape didn't subscribe publicly to pity, or even compassion, but she had noticed long ago that he was relatively careful with people's lives and sanity, if not their feelings or self-esteem.
The car trembled on its cables again, then dropped a short way, sharply.
Hermione shut her eyes tight and pressed closer, even as the man behind the telephone said, "It's all right! He says there's a bit of a snarl in one of the cables. He'll have it fixed soon." Rather more dubiously the man went on, "Fairly soon, anyway."
Hermione muttered feverishly, "Oh God, a snarl in one of the cables, he says. I wouldn't think that's possible. I wonder what's really wrong?"
Snape demanded, "Do you know anything about the construction and operation of these things?"
"No."
"No more do I. So stop imagining things that are probably impossible, and wait patiently."
She couldn't stop shaking, though, remembering that broken cable in the hospital lift, and the second one that had nearly broken from the sudden imposition of double the weight it was meant to carry. She managed to tell him about that, that she did know at least one kind of disaster that could strike.
"You need something else to think about. Try this."
Then he was shifting her about so that she straddled his thighs instead of sitting on them, fitting their bodies close indeed, gripping the hair at the back of her head and tilting her head up, and kissing her. His mouth was open, his tongue flicking at her lips. In spite of his firm grip and his not seeking permission, he wasn't forcing her, wasn't even rushing her. But he was warm and close and it had been too long and she needed this.
She lifted a little, so that their bodies were pressed closer, and her lips were against his, and opened her mouth to him. They kissed with silent concentration, lips moulding together, tongues entering each other's mouths, flicking together, twining, exploring, enjoying each others' taste and breath and texture.
Hermione shifted forward a little more, so that her crotch was pressed tightly against him. She rubbed herself deliberately against the rigid length of him and with satisfaction heard him hiss softly. That was good. She slipped her hand between their bodies and folded her fingers over him, then brought in her other hand and began working his trousers open. He didn't object; instead he moved back fractionally, and unfastened his belt and waistband and ran his zip down with the necessary caution. Her hand moved into his clothing and found the warm, hard flesh, easing it out, stroking it, admiring its dark colour and its dampened tip peeking from the folds of skin.
She teased her fingertips over it, and he gulped and thrust against them.
She heard, in a slightly uneven voice, "Silencio!"
Privacy was good, but being able to do this, to look at him, even if she couldn't explore him in detail, was better. Best would be mounted on that eager cock, driving for oblivion, escaping from everything.
She tried to curl forward to get her mouth to it, but he held her back.
"If you do that, I'll never last. Let me get your skirt up..."
He pushed the hem of her straight skirt up, from her knees, up her thighs, and lifted her into an upright kneeling position so he could forcefully shove it above her waist. She reached for her panties' waist hem, but he must have used his wand: suddenly they were gone. Not too far, she vaguely hoped, but couldn't care, especially as they were too damp to be worn again comfortably.
Snape gripped her hip with one long-fingered hand while the other moved between her thighs, quickly, but not roughly. One finger stroked up between her lips, confirming how moist she was already. She had been watching that hand, but a soft noise made her look up at his face. Several expressions flitted over it: pleasure that she was wet for him already, and a sort of tightly reined-in hope that made her swallow, almost as if she was going to cry. Then determination wiped everything else away from his face.
He shouldn't have to feel like that.
"Not a competition," she murmured, and moved to kiss him again, biting delicately at his lower lip, worrying the new fullness of it.
He went quite still, and she slid her hands up his body, flattening them against his chest, then tugging at his shirt buttons, impatiently pulling the shirt open. His skin was very pale, just like the skin of his face and hands, the only parts of his body ever visible. There were marks on his chest as well as the silver scars on his neck from Nagini's bite; some looked like hex marks, others knife-wounds. All healed, but all evidence of past pain. The only marks on her body were from Bellatrix's knife and from bearing her children.
She smoothed her palms over him, lingering over the tiny pink nipples, not so flat when she did move on, and fingered the scars as much as the unmarred skin. He shivered, but said nothing. Willing her to continue, perhaps. She had found a deep well of curiosity about him, and meant to satisfy it, wanting to experience his body as for some time she had experienced his mind. She pushed his shirt off his shoulders, stroking down his arms that showed the lean muscles of years of cauldron-stirring (and maybe Death Eater rumbles, too), until she had him naked above the waist. Then she leaned in to kiss the pulse in his throat.
That ended his passivity. His arms tightened around her, his hands dealt quickly with her blouse, more complex though its fastenings were, and his hands came up to cup and squeeze her breasts. There was more to them that when she had been a schoolgirl; breast-feeding had given her bigger breasts, even after she stopped nursing. As if in echo of that thought Snape moved to suckle on one nipple, teasing, then harder, a strong drawing suction that sent the lightnings through her body, tickling her deep inside, making her shift impatiently and press herself in growing need against his cock, hard between their bellies.
His mouth moved to her other breast, and dealt with it as thoroughly. When his head lifted she rubbed against him, muttering, "Now! Want you now!"
"Yes," he answered fiercely. His hands supported her buttocks, lifting her so that she was high enough to seize his cock in greedy, tender hands and guide it into her. He let her lower herself onto him at her own pace, and shuddered as she did so. She tightened around him, a welcoming hold, before she lifted again, and began to move. Placed as she was, partly supported on his thighs as he knelt on the hard marble, her weight meant he couldn't make large movements, but his responses were convincing. They moved together, faster, harder, their hands gripping, her head thrown back, his bent over her, the sharp teeth nipping at her shoulders, her breasts, and her throat, until she was thrown off the cliff, over the edge, falling and soaring together, freed to take flight, crying out her triumph. She felt him follow her almost at once. Dragons might mate like that, so fierce, so free, so intertwined.
The persistent thumping of the lift ceased to be mere background noise and became communication, but it was an effort to make herself care. Hermione didn't want to come back from that warm, peaceful air where she was afraid of nothing and had everything. She let her head drift to Snape's shoulder and her hands move caressingly up and down his narrow back, searching out the ridge of the spine, and sliding down to the cleft in his arse.
He said huskily, "So small, and so ferocious, burning me alive!" Maybe he had seen dragons too. But no. "Another phoenix," he whispered, "a magical creature."
She would take that. She stretched sinuously, more like a cat than a dragon, and kissed him one last time, before she would let the Muggle world end this.
The Silencing Charm only went one way, so they heard when the speaker announced, "It's fixed! Stand by for the lift to start again, nothing to worry about. Bringing you down to the second floor – that's where you were going, weren't you?"
"Oh God," Hermione gulped, dragon and phoenix no more, but a woman fearful of embarrassment. She pulled herself out of Snape's loose hold, bolting to her feet, jerking her bra into place and fastening it, pulling down her skirt, buttoning up her blouse, wondering what he had done with her panties.
Snape stood too, and let his wand drop down into his hand and waved it at himself. His clothes immediately sorted themselves into impeccable neatness: buttons, zip, belt, tie, shirt collar and cuffs and tails. He made an impatient sound and flicked the wand at her, too, and she felt the voiceless Tergeo clean the slick fluids from her thighs. Then another charm fastened the floppy bow of her collar, slid her suit jacket back onto her body, and restored her panties. A quick Scourgify rendered them comfortable. Her clothes seemed to shimmy into tidiness, a very odd sensation. Then another charm soothed the sting of her swollen and bitten lips and the tender places on her throat and breasts. She felt rather sorry about that, but reached for her shoes and stepped into them before Snape put them back on her too.
He said critically, "You are incorrigibly Muggle when you panic. A good thing you've never had to go undercover."
She couldn't be bothered snarling at him. She was too relieved, and indeed still too relaxed, despite her desire for the Library staff not to know how they had been keeping her fears at bay.
She used her own wand to restore her hair to its customary style, the chignon at the back of her head that was her compromise between neatness and elegance. Then, smiling a little, as the lift jerked very slightly and started to move down, she waved her wand at Snape and tidied his hair. She had clawed it into more tangles than he ordinarily achieved.
Softly she said, "Thank you."
His eyes came to meet hers briefly, then flinched away. "Perhaps I shouldn't have done that."
"Ordinarily I prefer to be asked, but it was most welcome. Having great sex with you certainly beats panicking myself into exhaustion."
He looked at her again, uncertainty lingering, but worry removed.
"Most welcome," she repeated. "And not just because I haven't been getting any, either."
She moved across the foot or so that separated them and leaned up, setting one hand on his shoulder to steady herself. Then she stood on tiptoe, pulled his head down, and kissed his mouth, gently but not casually. She felt the tension flow out of him, and his hands brushed down her back for a moment.
"It was good." His voice was almost inaudible, but the pat on her bottom was evidence that he wasn't feeling shy.
Then the lift slid to a stop, the door opened, and they were out, to anxious enquiries and offers of cups of tea or coffee, or a couch to lie down on, if she felt the need. No one seemed to feel that Snape needed to lie down. They must have been listening to the sound pickup from the lift, waiting with apprehension for her anxiety to turn to full-blown hysteria. Bless silencing charms.
Hermione thanked everyone, and assured them she felt fine now she was no longer trapped.
Then Snape said, "I think I should take you home. However," turning to one of the librarians, "I had a request in for a book from the Rare Printed Books collection. In the circumstances, could it be held for a day or two?"
He was assured that there was no problem, and once his pass had been scanned was able to see the 'hold until' date extended.
Neither of them was anxious to stay in the atmosphere of concern and guilt, and the certainty that they would be closely observed.
Snape murmured, once they had a little privacy, "Are you still interested in Castor's book?"
"Yes, but thank you for not wanting me to look it over today! And S – Severus, can we find somewhere we can just quietly Apparate in without being noticed? I can't face that lift again!"
"We could probably talk Security into letting us walk up – and down, after today. Why don't we ask about that now? Shall I?"
Hermione thought she should do her own asking; Severus Snape had been propping her up long enough. Time to show she could get back to normal without having to be further coddled.
The librarian who had secured Snape's book reservation for him was quite willing to request Security to note her identity and allow her to use the stairs, both now and later.
So after a few more minutes, and more politenesses exchanged, they walked down the miles of staircase to the ground floor, where Snape pulled on his coat again and Hermione took her own charm-reinforced wool coat and pashmina from her briefcase and wrapped up well. It wasn't shock making her cold now. The wind was blowing hard, as it often did in the entrance to Senate House, in the wind tunnel the architect had managed to create. The dull late afternoon sky was full of ominous towering clouds that promised rain, as snow so seldom fell in London. She wanted a cup of tea, since Firewhisky would probably be a mistake. And perhaps she wanted to see how she and Snape got on when they had an adequate horizontal surface, preferably a well-padded one.
~~SSHG~~~SSHG~~
She looked at Castor Nigellus's case record book, and watched while Snape carefully created two copies, giving her one to satisfy her ever-lively appetite for information.
A week later she said to him, "Once the children are home from Hogwarts I shan't be doing much, or at least little that I can plan for ahead of time. I meant to get up to Oxford earlier, but if I do it now, while it's still term time, I can stay in the Bodleian until ten. Once vacation starts, it's get out by seven. I'll stay two or three days; I shouldn't need longer."
"Can you consult the catalogue and run your Arithmantic calculations on it before you go, or must you do it there?"
"Before I go, fortunately, since book delivery can take up to two hours. I've identified a couple of dozen books I want to look at – both bound manuscripts and a handful of early printed books, and'll place requests online tonight. That's just the first cast this year, of course. There'll be more to find later, I'm sure."
"If there's something you want my opinion on, or think I might wish to examine, owl me." He smiled very faintly. "I'd say send me your Patronus from somewhere private, but I still associate seeing someone's Patronus wit
h wartime."
"I know that feeling," she agreed.
She was pleased when he bent and kissed her in farewell. Severus Snape was slowly becoming more comfortable with being her lover, though it was not something they had discussed yet. Hermione was quite willing to wait for him to get used to it. She had already decided that she herself very much wished to get used to it. One of the things she liked about the relationship was that Snape was unlikely to be wanting a housekeeper, or a wife, or a mother of children, but simply a lover who was also a friend and companion. Yet that combination was so rare for him that he treated her – at least in bed – with delightful care. Out of it he was almost as abrasive as ever, which now she thought of as recognition of an equal rather than contempt for an inferior.
~~SSHG~~~SSHG~~
In Oxford, unlike London, it was snowing. Lightly, but persistently. When she left her lodgings Hermione cursed the weather, and Apparated to an obscure corner of the exterior of the Radcliffe Camera, before walking the short distance to the Bodleian Library itself. Something that looked like a baroque birdcage built in stone had plenty of corners convenient for witches and wizards to appear in.
She walked from Radcliffe Square along Catte Street, then through the entryway tunnel under the noble tower, and across the courtyard to the entrance to the Old Bodleian, past the statue of the Earl of Pembroke, who fortunately felt neither the snow nor the isolation of the courtyard he had to himself, and up the staircase to Duke Humfrey's Library, above the Divinity School. A charm had kept her boots dry, and the walk in the open was short enough that shaking snow off her coat and floppy beret ensured they went into the cloakroom dry, along with her briefcase. She thought there wasn't now a library in the world that one entered without arms full of papers and computer and such personal comforts as were allowed in. Her lip salve and hand cream, like her Muggle biro, stayed in her briefcase: pencils only, here, and thank heaven for the power sockets at all the desks.
She always liked to read in Duke Humfrey's, if that was possible. She liked the long room with its coffered painted ceiling, its walls of books (not to be touched save by librarians, except at Selden End), its arcades holding up the gallery with the second storey of bookshelves, and its full-height round-topped windows that let in plenty of daylight, even in winter. By exerting a little undue influence with her wand she was able to settle at a table by herself. A short time after she had her notebook plugged into the Library's power and the online catalogue opened, the books she had requested arrived. She settled in happily to browse. A quick look at each suggested all were relevant to her search, so she immersed herself.
Two evenings later she sent Severus Snape an owl from the local Owl Post office. She had taken a little break and prowled through part of the catalogue of rare, though modern, books, and turned up a bound manuscript that was only about eighty years old, called Nurmengard Tage, written by a Felix Aschenfeld, bequeathed to the Library by one Adalbert Aschenfeld, with a number of books on alchemy. The book was classified as allegorical fiction, which sounded like a librarian making the best of a bad job, bewildered by a peculiar little book that had somehow crept into a specialist collection. The use of the word Nurmengard awoke Hermione's curiosity, and she requested it. She was interested to find, once the memoir was delivered to her desk, that it was written on high-quality paper (not parchment), in the beautiful but difficult-to-read Gothic script still in use in Germany much later than the late 1930s.
Hermione's reading German was very good, by now, and it was not her first encounter with Gothic script; indeed, Felix Aschenfeld had a commendably regular hand. She quickly established he was a follower of Grindelwald, just as the title suggested. A follower who had fled to England, not from his master, but from the National Socialists who persecuted Jews, indifferent to whether they were wizards or not. Grindelwald must have found that inconvenient; Felix found it horrifying, that mere Muggles could so successfully attack wizards, and more horrifying, that a few wizards helped them. Several pages bound in at the start of the manuscript covered that personal history, and his desolation at the loss of his wife near the start of his difficult journey.
Muggles would not have been able to read those pages: they appeared to be blank, but Hermione found it curious that as many as a dozen such unused sheets should be bound in. Some experiments with revelatory charms brought up the hidden text. Those extra pages made it clear to the witch reading them that this was history, not fiction. It was history worth preserving, especially since Felix appeared to be of a moderate disposition; she decided to make a copy of the book tomorrow, reading it today.
There was a letter, too, addressed to his brother and the brother's wife, urging them to leave Oxford and their scholarly pursuits, to go to Nurmengard in his place, to go direct, as he no longer could, to serve Grindelwald. That was an odd thing to ask. If he was persecuted for his ethnic origins, so would the brother have been, and his sister-in-law too, whether she was Jewish or not. And 'go direct'? Hermione puzzled over that letter, obscure in its wording, obviously meant to be a private communication, and finally decided that it might be worth asking Snape what he thought of it. Snape's mind was much more convoluted than hers, and she thought both of them might be interested in something that purported to be an account of ten years in service to that charismatic wizard's version of the greater good. Felix Aschenfeld's memoir was much clearer than his letter, and much calmer than his description of his escape from Germany.
The next morning Snape met her at her lodgings, and shortly they were bent over the book. He didn't need a translation charm either.
All he had to say at first was, "It seems Grindelwald didn't care enough to help a follower in such difficulty. Wasteful of him."
Later, after reading the introduction and then the letter, more than once, Snape commented, "Felix fled from near the border with Switzerland – he might not have escaped, otherwise, hexed as he had been. A long way from Nurmengard. I don't see why 'direct' might not simply mean Apparating in to a point known to Grindelwald's people."
"Then why didn't Felix and his wife go there from where the Nazis caught up with them? Or why didn't he go from Switzerland, after her death?"
"The death of a beloved wife might have left him unable to do any such thing, even if he felt like returning to duty at once, given the grief he clearly felt."
Hermione bit her lip and nodded, remembering how discomposed she had been by her encounter with a disobliging lift: nothing in comparison with being pursued by the men who meant to imprison Felix, and who had, whether they meant to or not, injured his wife so badly that she died in Switzerland.
"Grindelwald might have been as indifferent to personal issues as Voldemort ever was. A grieving man, however devoted to his service, might have been safer staying away."
"For a time, yes, but to say to his brother he couldn't now return... 'Let two who are one join to come and go, to serve and to aid our master' – what does he mean by that? It's not as if he wasted space on flowery language; it's all pretty straightforward, except for those few sentences." She sighed. "He'd hidden the letter, so it just looked like blank paper; he might have been less obscure in his directions."
"So those directions were the most secret part of the letter, the details that it was essential to conceal except from those who knew the meaning already, or could guess at it."
That made sense, but was little help to them.
"Ah well. Whatever he meant by it, the most interesting thing is his years with Grindelwald. I don't need to unravel his private messages, though it would be good to know exactly what he meant, for completeness."
Hermione went to turn the page, but Snape put his hand over hers to prevent her.
Then she felt the familiar hook in her navel and the unmistakable whirling of a Portkey journey. She landed hard on her bottom on unforgiving stone, and Snape landed beside her, successfully twisting to keep erect. Death Eater training school was more effective than Auror training, it seemed. The stone she lay on was freezing cold, and Hermione scrambled hastily to her feet.
Snape had his wand out, and she found hers was in her hand too, so she still had some Auror reflexes.
Automatically they moved so that they were back to back, guarding each other, and turned slowly, examining the place.
A large room built of nearly black stone, with two doorways and a single narrow window naked to the air. It was empty, save for a wooden table that looked too big to go through even the larger of the two doors to the room. It was also exceedingly dusty, and the only marks in the dust were those made by her body and Snape's feet. Felix's book lay open on the floor. She picked it up and stuffed it in the back pocket of her long skirt.
Snape muttered, annoyance mingling with respect, "A Portkey, initiated by something in addition to touch. Clever bastard, Felix Aschenfeld, if he devised that. This will be Nurmengard."
"Are you sure?"
Snape's look was withering, before he asked, "Why would a Portkey to return to Grindelwald go anywhere else? This may be a secure Apparition point rather than the tower of the fortress itself, of course."
"We activated the Portkey by touching the book – or the letter – at the same time."
"Our hands touched, also," he pointed out. Then he shrugged. "We can Apparate out, though perhaps not direct to Oxford – less fatiguing to go to, say, Munich and take the international Portkey to London, then Apparate."
"Yes, but can't we look around first? If this is Nurmengard? I'd like to see it. Who's been here since Dumbledore imprisoned Grindelwald?"
"Voldemort, who murdered Grindelwald for the Elder Wand, uselessly? Whoever fed the prisoner, but did not or could not release him, for fifty years and more?"
Hermione hated the way Severus Snape could make her feel stupid, but he seldom managed it unless she had not thought before she spoke.
"Go cautiously. I don't want you out of my sight."
"No, sir," she muttered, trying for sarcasm that didn't seem to take.
Whether the room they arrived in was, or had been, a regular Apparition point, stairs outside it rose upward into the tower that loomed high above the curtain walls. Beyond the covered space from which the stairs led was a courtyard, the dark stones underfoot heaved about by weeds and even trees that had taken root, though none looked healthy. Not a lot, Hermione thought, for about seventy years free run of the place. Maybe Grindelwald's caretakers had kept the place in order, until he died. The stairs, too, were overgrown. Or had been. Someone seemed to have burned a path upward. Nothing grew between those blackened stones.
"How does it feel," Snape enquired, "treading in Voldemort's footsteps?"
Hermione shivered a little. "Creepy," she admitted. "But he can't hurt us now. And whoever slagged these stairs, it wasn't him: Harry said he flew, and got in the window at the top."
"You realise there may be a desiccated corpse around somewhere? I doubt he bothered to bury Grindelwald, or burn his body, either."
Hermione stood still for a moment, before she recollected that bodies twenty years dead were likely to be less offensive than more recent corpses. She had seen a good many of those, and not just in the last battle.
"Stop that, Severus! If you think we shouldn't explore, say so, but stop trying to creep me out."
"There probably won't be much to see, but I suppose we can make a note of what there is, if only for the records in London."
They mounted the stairs. At the first level there were two large rooms, empty now, save for large sinks and benches built at house elf height into the back wall of one room, and a fireplace. The next floor had four smaller rooms, with twinned fireplaces between each pair. When they reached the second highest level, with only the roof remaining, most of the space was a single room. Two doors stood in the far wall, but there wasn't much floor space available for them.
The left-hand room was empty, like everything else, though it had a narrow window: maybe that was the room where Grindelwald had been imprisoned, where he had died. The other room was also small and square, and had something on a shelf made in the wall by removing a stone, or part of one. Hermione started towards it, wondering what had been left that could have been carried away.
Snape said quickly, "Don't touch it! Whatever it is."
"I won't!"
He stepped into the room after her.
The wooden door slammed behind him.
Hermione spun round, wand in hand, seeing the horrified look on his face. The movement of the door had disturbed the dust a little.
Snape grabbed the iron door handle, and was thrown back. As Hermione knelt over him, relieved to discover he appeared to be all right after having been tossed several feet back from the door, a grinding rumble started outside, and the floor trembled.
Snape got to his feet, rubbing his elbow briefly, and took out his own wand before he said, "That sounds as if the stairs are going."
"And the tower with them; it must go, if they're falling in. We'd better leave."
She glanced towards the little stone shelf, but escape was more important.
"Apparate just outside the walls! Don't go further, we shouldn't get separated."
Mentally she gave the command. Nothing happened. She frowned. She had been Apparating successfully for over twenty years. She glanced at Snape: he was blank faced, rather than scowling; not a good sign.
"Warded against Apparition," he said flatly.
"Wards and door impassable, no window – send a Patronus for aid, then."
"Both of us, together if we can."
After a moment he slashed his hand down. Hermione summoned up the memory of her children playing, and saw her otter leap forward, bouncing gaily for a moment before it headed for the outside wall. And fell back, to vanish abruptly. She saw Snape's Patronus do the same thing, only vaguely aware that it wasn't the doe Harry had described. It looked, in that brief glimpse, like a phoenix.
"That's something I've not seen before," Snape said.
"I've been stupid again, haven’t I."
"I made no attempt to stop you, and am as much to blame. Never mind that. Try again. You alone. Aim for the doorway this time; it might be easier to pass through, being intended for entrance and exit."
Her silver otter propped at the door, touched it, fell back, set its nose to the crack, and faded. This time she had a good view of Snape's phoenix, before it fell back from the crack between wooden door and stone lintel and likewise disappeared.
"Well, rats," Hermione said crossly, to hide her apprehension.
There was a louder rumble, as more of the stone staircase fell away.
Snape crossed the room quickly, to examine, without touching, the object on the shelf. She went to join him. A tarnished goblet, black from neglect, but probably silver.
Snape used his wand to investigate it, then shrugged. "Nothing special that I can detect, just some dried wine lees staining the bowl. Nothing in the wine. Not likely to help us."
"A silver goblet, that no one's taken, though everything else that's moveable has been stripped away."
"Just so. Not as harmless as it looks. Don't touch it."
Hermione had no intention of touching it, and said so. Besides, her curiosity had been replaced by an urgent desire to get out of here. She was tired of being trapped in small spaces with Snape.
She turned to face the door. As he had said, in the nature of magic, it ought to be the easiest way out, barred though it was.
"Go through all the opening charms in turn. But no violent spells, yes?"
The tower shook as the last of the stairs went, but though there was dust everywhere and the ominous grumbling of stone continued, their prison remained intact.
"Indeed," he agreed, letting out his held breath. "You first. Speak the spells aloud."
Hermione started with Alohomorafor completeness, and worked through the fifteen or so spells she knew. Snape contributed another four. Automatically she fixed the words and wand movements for those spells in her memory, not willing to admit yet that this was anything other than a temporary problem.
"Incendio? Reducto? Diffindo?"
Before she could add Defodio, as a way of blasting the rock wall, rather than the door, Snape turned sharply. She heard his softly indrawn breath, before he put his hand on her arm.
"The back wall is moving. Inwards."
She stared at it, but couldn't see any difference. Then she pointed her wand at the outside wall, pronouncing the measuring charm aloud so Snape would know what she was doing. Half a minute later she tried again. She hadn't moved, but the distance was less. Very little less, but Snape was right.
This was too serious to allow time for panic, so she fought it back.
Indignantly she said, "Someone cursed this place very thoroughly. Who, and why, for heaven's sake?"
"Voldemort, if it matters, if I had to bet. As for why, perhaps there is yet something useful here that he wanted to protect. Or simply didn't want anyone carrying word of whatever it was he had left behind him. I'll start on the door, rather than the walls: safer."
She nodded, even as he said, "Diffindo!"
No result, not even a scar on the iron-hard wood.
It didn't take long before Snape was trying Incendio. The flames sprang from his wand, but vanished as they struck the door. At least none of these spells had backfired.
Without much hope Snape tried Sectumsempra.
The door looked back at them, untouched, and blank-faced as ever. Malicious sod.
Hermione stuffed her wand down its tube pocket along her skirt side seam and shoved her hands in her pockets to hide the slight tremor they had developed. She didn't want to look at the back wall advancing on them.
Snape took half a minute out to swear creatively. Then he started trying more spells, most of which Hermione had never heard. The room must be buzzing with frustrated magic.
Hermione muttered, "This is so bad cinema."
"What?"
She shrugged. "It was okay the first time, scary but clever: the walls moving in on the heroes on the Death Star, but of course they worked out a way to escape. Copycat is cheap, though."
"Cheap or not –"
She knew Snape was going to say, "It will kill us," and closed her eyes tightly, gesturing his words away. He didn't say them. Nice of him. She took a deep breath to steady herself and wiped her sweat-damp palms on the back of her denim skirt. Her fingers brushed over the shape of Felix's damned book in the rear pocket.
"Severus." Slowly she said, when he looked at her, "'Let two who are one join to come andgo'..."
"Smart aleck," Snape growled. "But what is joining? Put the damned thing on the floor and we'll try; we might as well."
Their hands on the same page as before, whether touching or not, didn't make anything happen.
Snape got to his feet and spoke the measuring charm again; the wall was several inches closer. Hermione tried not to panic, but to think. Felix had meant there to be a way out, or rather, away; what was it?
"How were we joined?" she asked. Then, suddenly excited, "Severus! Felix couldn’t go back, he said – and his wife was dead. But his brother was married! And he asked them to go together!"
Disgustedly Snape said, "Bloody fucking sex magic? All we need."
He had a mouth on him in bad moments.
She looked up at him and invited breathlessly, "Fuck me, Severus. We can't think of any more spells to get us out of here. If nothing else, it'll take our minds off the Wall of Death."
"Don’t you believe it," he said grimly.
He wrenched off his coat, all the same, and flung it to the floor. "Don't take off too much," he warned. "If this works, we'll be back in Duke Humfrey, and you don't want to show up naked. Even with a wand to use a Don't-notice-me charm."
Hermione started to pull off her boots, but Snape said, "No."
She shrugged, and hauled up the relatively narrow-fitting skirt that reached to mid-calf, bundling it at her waist. As she skinned out of her panties the skirt crept partway down again. She shoved them in a spare pocket and took hold of her skirt once more.
Snape opened his Muggle trousers and pushed down his wizard–style underpants, then sank down on his coat. "We should make this as quick as we can," he said coolly, "but it may be important that you as well as I come to orgasm. Come here, Hermione."
He pushed her skirt back up again and nudged her thighs apart, then opened her with his thumbs. She hadn't noticed, in the stress of mounting fear, but she wasn't dry, even though she wasn't ready, either. Snape bent his head and licked her, all the way up. His long hair shifted on his shoulders as his head moved, and she rolled her skirt tightly and stuffed the wad of cloth into the waistband so she could watch him.
He began licking her thoroughly, repeatedly, her inner lips and the sensitive flesh between, thrusting his tongue a little way into her slit, while his fingers toyed with her outer labia and then pressed in to brush over her clit. She gasped softly, feeling the sudden jolt. One of his hands slid around to grip her naked bottom underneath the skirt, pulling her close, holding her positioned exactly for his tongue and right hand to work on. Hermione forgot, almost, about the wall, and felt herself softening, becoming moist and plump, eager to be filled by more than his tongue, now. She put her hands on his shoulders and held on tightly, her fingers flexing in time with the movements of his tongue.
When he started licking her clit she whimpered softly, and the hand on her arse dug in for a moment, before it spidered around so that he could run his fingers down her cleft. Then he began to work one finger inside her. After a moment his finger retreated, and his hand fell away; she made a wordless, agitated protest, but his hand went no further than his wand, in its sheath along his trouser leg, gripping the end only, with just his fingertips. She didn't hear him voice the spell, but suddenly her cleft and her arsehole were moist, slick, and easy of access. His finger returned, pressing insistently but not roughly, and finger and tongue alternated, his tongue tip stabbing her, shocking the stiff bud each time, and his finger stroking inside her. She clawed at his shoulders.
"I'm ready now," she said, her voice shaking.
"Come, then." His voice was unsteady too, but his hands were firm on her body as he drew her down to kneel before him, and encouraged her head down to the cock that rose from its nest of coarse black hair.
She set her hands on his thighs to hold herself in place and licked once, generously, up his length, then took the head in her mouth and licked around that repeatedly, her lips moving on it too, like someone working on a lollipop. An all-day sucker. She didn't smile, even internally, at the image. Instead she swallowed him down, and began a teasingly slow rise and fall, so that his cock was alternately sucked into the wet warmth of her mouth, and exposed to the chill air of the tower room.
Snape gasped, "We're both ready. Lie down, Hermione, lie down!"
He twisted his fingers in her hair, lifting her head away from him. She swallowed the saliva in her mouth, then forced her head down again to lick at the pearl already forming once more on his tip, the foreskin folded back to expose the tender red head.
"I want in you now, you want me in you. Merlin, woman, lie down with me now!"
She liked it when Snape was so open about what he wanted.
She wriggled around so that she could lie on his coat, keeping her back from the cold hard stone, and spread her legs wide, lifting her knees, offering herself as a cradle for him. He knelt between her legs and moved forward, supporting himself so that all his weight didn't bear down on her. She felt the tip of his cock at her entrance and pushed up impatiently, then swallowed him once more as he moved down and in. Once fully in he paused for a moment, so she flexed around him, to force him on. He made a guttural noise, then pulled back part way and drove in again. There were no more pauses. He thrust in and she pushed up, gripping him as tightly inside her as she gripped his buttocks in her hands, her legs wrapping hard around his, moving with him as he moved with her, breathing hoarsely in unison.
He bent his head and bit at the side of her neck, clenching his teeth around her flesh as he pumped harder into her. She dug her fingernails into him through his shirt, and her whole body tightened, her inner muscles clamping hard for a long moment, until she gasped, and gasped again, and collapsed onto her back, her hands relaxing. He thrust into her a few more times, then he was pumping furiously, the blood-warm seed flooding her. She managed to tighten around him once more, using her muscles to milk the last of his climax out of him, though all she wanted was to lie in a boneless puddle of satiety.
His teeth released her and his head fell to her shoulder, his breath hot and irregular against her neck, slowly easing, as hers did, even as his body relaxed onto hers. She moved her hands up until she could embrace him, arms around his shoulders, suddenly warmer, suddenly missing the feel of his coat buttons under her bottom, missing the coat itself. Suddenly not in a malevolent tower in Germany any more, but on a parquet floor, lying between desk chairs and the bookshelf in their study bay.
"Oh God," she whispered, "it worked."
Snape grunted something indecipherable, but she felt him relaxing fully, for just a few moments.
Then his body tensed, his head came up, and there was alarm in the black eyes meeting hers.
He didn't say, "Get up."
Instead he fumbled out his wand and cast an Imperturbable charm aloud, so that she should know he had done so, shielding them from anyone outside the bay they had previously had to themselves.
Hermione closed her eyes and let herself get her breath back, let herself enjoy the feel of him, warm and moist against her despite the layers of clothing that separated them except at the loins.
When she was thinking that it might be nice to go to sleep, except that the floor was rather hard and Snape was definitely too heavy, he muttered, "If I ever go to a library with you again..."
She smothered a laugh against his shoulder.
"We haven’t had much luck lately. We'll have to stop looking at each other's toys, that's all."
After another silence he said, "My coat's still in Nurmengard tower. And so's Felix's damned treacherous book."
Hermione sighed and pushed gently at him. They got up and set themselves to rights, thankful for the ability to use wands to clean away sticky fluids and soothe her abraded back and buttocks and his scraped knees.
Snape would have healed the bitemark on the side of her neck but she murmured, "My collar will cover it, won't it?" and flushed.
He seemed to like that.
She lifted one hand to his head and finger-combed his hair, not very effectively, but gently. He bent his head into her hand, like a cat seeking to intensify the power of a stroke.
"That was good," she said, "but I'd rather just have sex, not sex magic. Where possible."
"Yes," he agreed, with unmistakable force.
Soon enough they were sitting at the desk again and Hermione was wondering what to do about the missing Nurmengard Tage.
Hermione muttered, "'I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library ... any volume, document or other object belonging to it or in its custody'... Joy. How am I going to get out of that promise that I solemnly swore to when they gave me a library card? How am I going to get out without handing over the book, but be able to come back here again?"
"You worry too much. Obliviate the librarian who gave you the book."
"And Obliviate the catalogue?" she asked sarcastically.
"Whatever works. Having found out what that book could be used to do, Hermione, you couldn't have left it here. It would have had to be confiscated. I feel no need to fetch it back from wherever it is now, Nurmengard or some other plane of existence. In fact – what time is it?"
Hermione glanced at her watch. "Just after two."
"Very well. I'll Apparate to London, report to Kingsley, and he can send people to do it officially. You have a few hours before you need to leave. We can get it dealt with well before closing time."
That sounded a lot better than trying to clean up the matter herself. Hermione was not a professional Obliviator, and wished not to damage either the librarian or the catalogue.
"Best would be to convince the librarian to record an explanation for its disappearance that no one could quarrel with."
"You work on what that might be, while I go to London. Not forgetting that the catalogue you're so concerned for will have a record of the book being delivered here, to you."
"Catalogues are like holy writ," Hermione said firmly. "They shouldn't tell lies. But that's the borrowing system, not the catalogue, I think."
Snape shrugged.
"If the librarian records that I returned the book... and is encouraged to record its loss in some other way, later on..."
"Up to you, Madam Granger. Face it, you're the only one who'll care."
"I also care – and so should you – that whoever comes to attend to it should be discreet, quiet, and make as little disturbance as possible – either in the library or in the librarian." She spoke very firmly.
Snape nodded in evident agreement. Of course an ex-spy would want things done quietly.
"Take the copy with you. I want the record safe."
"Before you get too intimate with it, some Unspeakable should examine it carefully to make quite sure that in reproducing it you didn't also reproduce Felix's Portkey."
That was a thought and a half. Hermione nodded, and drew the miniaturised copy out of the pocket of the knitted sleeveless jerkin that had been draped over the back of her chair all day. Snape tucked it into his breast pocket.
"Please do not examine anything else at all controversial in my absence," he requested.
Oh, that was sweet, despite the acerbic tone.
"No, Severus," she said, and smiled at him. "I'll stick with Eric Underhill's book on wizarding space," she promised. "I can't imagine what happened to the other copies of that, that we don't have it either at Hogwarts or in one of the Ministry libraries."
Snape ignored that, and demanded, "No spells."
"No experimental spells, no charms, no jinxes, and I won't leave the library," she agreed. "Except that I want some coffee, and something to eat now, not in half a dozen hours' time. I'll come downstairs with you."
There would be time, later, for all the things they hadn't had yet, like a bed with plenty of room, peace with no chance of interruption, and all night long to explore and enjoy each other. They had only just started. They would want many nights, Hermione thought, and then they might like to start all over again. The first thing she meant to do was get his clothes off, so she could see and touch all of him again. And her own, of course. She might never get out of bed again, at least until it was time to go back to Platform 9 and ¾.
~~SSHG~The End~SSHG~~
End note The libraries are real, the books (surprise) are not. Also, the last time I was in them, when I worked there, the lifts of Senate House operated just fine, and I am sure they are as safe and reliable now.