Hermione's fingers caught hold of his silk waistcoat as her lips met his narrow mouth.

She was certain he'd shove her away at any moment. She made no move to break off the kiss. She pressed closer instead, moving her lips slowly, memorising the shape of his mouth against hers.

He didn't move at all. He didn't jerk back or tear her hands off.

He sat frozen.

She wasn't sure if that was better or worse than being pushed away.

Hermione pressed her lips against his just a second longer and then slowly uncurled her fingers wistfully, drawing back, her apology already halfway out of her mouth.

As their lips parted, he shifted.

One of his hands closed over hers, and he leaned towards her, deepening the kiss.

Hermione's heart skipped a beat, her lips parting in surprise, and Snape's tongue moved forward into her mouth, caressing her lips and sliding between her teeth. His other hand captured her shoulder, drawing her nearer.

Her hand reached up to touch his face. To touch him. The tips of her fingers just barely grazed his skin, tracing along the narrow arching bone of his cheek before gliding further and tangling in his hair. She moved closer, her nose bumping against his, her breathing quick and nervous. His hair was fine. Silken. She twisted her fingers in it.

Her arm was throbbing in time with her nervous heartbeat, a painful, racing tempo she ignored, because this—this was what being alive felt like.

She'd forgotten what it felt like to be alive. The thrill and the rush of living that wasn't punctuated or underlaid with terror or dread.

His hand slipped up her shoulder to her throat, his thin fingers sliding along the curve of her jaw, seeking out the flutter of her pulse and the dip near her ear.

Snape kissed in the same precise and meticulous manner that he brewed potions. There was an exactitude in it that almost felt like detachment, but she could feel his intensity in the way he drew her closer. His hand ghosted down her body to her waist. His arm slid around her, and he shifted her until she was on her back beneath him.

He leaned over her, and his hair fell forward, brushing against her face. His thin lips played against her mouth as though he were tasting her. He didn't grope her; his slender fingers skimmed lightly along the fabric of her robes, trailing over the dips and rises of her body. The lightest, barest touch that sent her pulse racing dizzily. His hand slid tantalisingly across her abdomen.

This wasn't like kissing a boy.

Her entire brain was alight. She had never been so vividly aware of her body in a context that wasn't agonising.

This wasn't painful. It was—bright. Heady.

Shimmering.

A rush in her veins. Her chest was pounding. Her breath caught in her throat as she tried to guess where his fingers might alight next. When his hand barely brushed over her clothed breast, her entire body trembled. She felt her nipples harden as a shiver laced through her.

She was only dimly aware of the persistent pain in her arm, because there was a pulse of excitement rushing through her veins. A pleasurable heat was coiling between her legs, and every nerve in her body was attuned and waiting to feel him touch her. She reached up and grasped his waistcoat, dipping her fingers between the buttons and drawing him down closer.

He drew his mouth away from hers, and the tip of his tongue traced along her jaw, and his teeth lightly caught her earlobe.

She gave a breathy whimper, and her fingers tightened where they were gripping his clothes.

It was like being submerged by a wave. Crashing and tumbling and weightless, he was air.

His fingers slid under her back and along the length of her spine and she arched, gasping.

Her hands brushed against his neck and over the long, pale scars that sliced across his throat. She kissed him again and again. Her leg slid up and hooked over his.

The weight of his body bore down on her as he continued to kiss her. There was a burning coil of want nearly vibrating in her centre. She squirmed and arched against him, trying to urge him on.

More. She wanted more. She wanted it to keep growing until she forgot about dying entirely.

She could feel him hard at her hip.

She aroused him. He wanted her. She was someone desirable to him sexually.

The length of his body was pressed against hers. She moaned and rolled her hips and felt him between her legs.

Yes...

His mouth was on her neck. His hand on her breast. She wasn't sure when he'd unbuttoned her shirt, but she could feel the silk of his waistcoat and its buttons against her bare skin as he slid his thumb across her nipple. She gave a shuddering gasp and arched into his hands.

His fingers had closed around her right wrist, pinning it above her head. She awkwardly tried to unbutton his robes with her left hand. His clothes had so many damned buttons. She made it past his robes to his waistcoat and then finally began on his shirt. Her fingers had made it halfway down his torso when he shifted. His chest bore down, pinning her left arm between their ribs.

She screamed as his weight crushed the throbbing injury on her forearm.

She quickly bit off the sound, but it was too late.

He froze and jerked away. Staring at her, his black eyes wide, as though he'd only just remembered the identity of the person he'd been on the verge of copulating with.

His pale chest was heaving as he looked her up and down, lying under him on her bed, her shirt open, her bra pulled down, and her skirts at her waist. Her chest was rising and falling raggedly as she tried to catch her breath. He stared blankly at her for several seconds before abruptly collecting himself, pulling his robes closed and standing. He left without a word.

Hermione lay on her bed trying to recover herself. Her skirts were rucked up uncomfortably around her hips. She shifted and straightened before pulling her bra back up and and rebuttoning her shirt.

She sat on the edge of the bed trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she had gone suddenly from fantasising about having sex with her professor to very nearly doing so.

If she hadn't nearly screamed in his ear, they might be having sex right then and there.

The idea made her tingle all over.

She should regret it. She should at least be grateful for the interruption that had derailed them, but instead she was seething with frustration over being thwarted.

She had spent her entire life endeavoring to make good choices, and now she was dying and looking at narrow, rapidly shrinking window of time in which she even had the capacity to enjoy living.

She didn't really care if there were ethical and or vaguely moral reasons why she shouldn't want to sleep with her professor, a man who was twenty years her senior, who had bullied her in childhood, and who was in love with the dead mother of her best friend.

She didn't want to think about those things. She'd just had the most pleasurable and alive-feeling experience in—possibly her entire life; and she was probably going to be dead or barely lucid in a hospital or the Burrow within the next year.

It was time she did what she wanted. Now was the only opportunity for it that she had left. If anyone wanted to object, they could save it and take it up with her corpse.

If she and Snape had had sex right then, she wouldn't have regretted it. In fact, she wanted to have sex with him even more now than she had before. Now she knew what it felt like to have him touch her, the way he'd kiss her. She knew that it swept away everything else and let her feel alive.

He'd tasted her skin and ran his fingers along her body. She'd felt his physical response to her. Despite his abrupt departure, considering how far he'd gone, it hinted that wanting her was something he may have given some prior thought to.

Her toes curled.

Severus Snape didn't give the impression of being someone who did things without any previous consideration.

She drew a shivery breath and noticed she'd buttoned her shirt crookedly. When she was fixing it, she realised she'd begun bleeding through the bandages on her arm.

She sighed and went into the kitchen. While she was placing fresh gauze over it, Snape emerged from his room.

She didn't immediately look up at him. The last D on Mudblood has been cut deeper than the other letters. If she didn't press the gauze down carefully, it would pull the incision open when she moved her arm, causing it to hurt and bleed more.

Once the gauze was in place, she started wrapping it carefully by hand.

Snape finally spoke. "That was a mistake."

"No," Hermione said firmly, shaking her head as she kept wrapping her arm. She looked up and met his eyes. "I'd been thinking about it for a while."

He'd redressed. In fact, it appeared he'd showered and changed entirely. His hair was still damp.

His nostrils flared, and he stared at her with an unreadable expression.

"That—" he said at length, "is not the point. I'm your professor."

"I could drop out of Potions," Hermione said in a bland voice as she tucked the bandage neatly under itself and fastened it in place.

"I would still be your professor."

"You know, having sex with me would hardly the most unethical thing you've done. You did let the Carrows teach here last year," Hermione said, crossing her arms. "I'm an adult. I'm nearly twenty; I would have graduated a year ago if I hadn't been busy helping Harry save the world."

"That—" the word was sharply clipped, " is also not the point."

You're being childish.

You are a child.

The unspoken words hung in the air.

"This was a mistake. You're one of my students," he said in a final tone although he was not actually looking at her as he said it. "It will not happen again."

Hermione tried not scowl or do anything else that might be construed as 'childish.' She still rolled her eyes, despite her best efforts.

"You've been teaching here since you were twenty-one. Almost anyone in the British wizarding world who's more than four years younger than you has been your student," she said.

Snape was scathingly silent. She could feel him glaring at her.

Hermione looked up at him.

"I want to have sex with you," she said, meeting his eyes.

His expression grew black, and his eyes narrowed dangerously.

She continued uncowed. "I've been thinking about it for a while. That's why I kissed you. I've been wanting to have sex with you. I didn't intend to stop you—I wouldn't have stopped you. I don't think our kiss was a mistake, and I'm not going to regret it."

He scoffed low in his throat. "We'll see."

Snape continued to work in the kitchen every evening until late into the night. Hermione still sat at the end of the worktop grading essays and keeping up with homework.

He had begun endeavouring to craft potions that he'd previously dismissed as unworkable or not worth the potential side effects.

However he was cold again.

Vicious in all the ways he used to be.

He touched her brusquely and as little as possible.

He failed her in Potions class with a mocking sneer when she wasn't able to break the skin of the sopophorous beans on her own and deducted thirty points from Gryffindor.

Hermione had expected he'd go out of his way to antagonise her, but she found it affected her more than she'd anticipated. She'd known and reminded herself that his sexual interest didn't necessitate or indicate any emotional investment or concern for her whatsoever. She understood that in theory.

Yet the effortless cruelty he casually barraged her with buried itself like a weight in her chest, a little harder to carry with each successive day.

She was so tired. All the potions he'd begun testing on her were worse. They made her feel worse.

He poured them down her throat as though she were a lab rat, his interest in the results and side effects purely theory-based, with no expression of concern over the fact that she was actually enduring all of them.

One potion caused her blood to move so sluggishly that her heart would pound until there was a stabbing sensation in her chest when she had to walk down a hallway. She collapsed after climbing a flight of stairs and had to be taken to the hospital for an afternoon. He didn't even bother to visit her there. The next potion made her drowsy and dried her skin so that it cracked and split painfully at all her joints; as though she wasn't already bleeding enough.

She had always imagined that if she were dying that she would be the patient and long-suffering type. She found that she was not.

She snapped at everyone, or just fled in order to keep from having an emotional breakdown every time someone said something idiotically unhelpful or she felt as though she were being handled delicately. She was angry or on the verge of tears at all times, often simultaneously. She didn't have any reserves of patience as she was using up all her strength in her feeble attempts to maintain a sense of normalcy.

Each successive callous interaction with Snape felt as though it were stake he were driving into her, blow by blow.

When she had to undergo the next firecrab treatment, he gripped her jaw, digging his fingers in against her teeth until they parted, and pushed the gag between her teeth with such indifference she could have been horse he was bridling.

He didn't touch her or utter a word of comfort as she lay slumped and sobbing afterward.

He levitated her into her room and stood beside her bed briefly while he checked a few diagnostics.

When he turned to leave, she spoke up.

"You win," she said, her voice low and exhausted.

He froze without looking back.

She closed her eyes. "I regret it now…"

Hermione sat at her desk, staring at her timetable for nearly an hour. There were eight weeks until term ended, and she needed to drop a class, possibly two. Or three.

She'd gotten so close. Graduation was just around the corner, and she'd almost managed to reach it with her academic record intact.

She kept trying to rally for the final haul, but she had nothing left to rally.

She fainted twice in as many days, both times in the library. The first time, she'd ended up in the hospital for nearly an entire day. The second time, she'd been in such a rarely visited aisle in the Restriction Section, she woke hours later and found herself where she'd collapsed on the floor.

If she was feeling well enough at the end of June, she would still try to sit for the NEWT exams of her dropped classes. That was her hope.

She wasn't sure what the point would be beyond her obstinate attachment to the idea, but she was doggedly determined to do it in direct refusal to the pleas of Harry and the Weasleys that she leave Hogwarts. It wasn't as though curse-breaking clinics or hospitals had NEWTs requirements for patients. Or that anyone cared about Hermione graduating except Hermione herself. It wasn't as though anyone was going to say, "well, at least she graduated before she died."

Were they going to put it on her tombstone as her crowning achievement? Hermione Granger, Graduated Hogwarts with Eleven NEWTS.

She wanted to graduate. She'd always told herself she'd graduate.

She dipped her quill into the inkwell and hesitated. Taking a deep breath, she drew an X over Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts. After another moment's hesitation, she crossed out History of Magic; she could review all the material without Binns.

She dropped off a copy of her revised schedule with the Headmistress on her way to Charms.

She no longer had Advanced Double Potions, leaving her with a long, empty afternoon. She went back to her room and napped. She had reading, she had several reports nearly due in Herbology, two Runic translations, and an equation for Arithmancy a day overdue because she'd been in the hospital ward when she was supposed to turn it in.

She had no energy for any of it.

She slept instead.

It was late evening when she woke. The quarters smelled oppressively of nauseating potions, accentuated with the sharp tickling scent of freshly bruised leaves exposed to heat.

Without a word, she went and sat at the far end of the worktop, as far from the heat of the bubbling potions as possible.

"You were absent today," Snape said in a cold voice after several minutes. "It was a twenty point deduction."

Hermione looked up and was quiet for a moment. "I've withdrawn from Potions class," she finally said, watching him carefully to see his response.

His expression didn't so much as ripple, but his hand stilled briefly before he continued brewing.

"I can't manage the practical aspects of Potions, so it seemed like a poor use of my physical resources to continue attending," she said in a steady, matter-of-fact voice. "I've also withdrawn from DADA and History of Magic. I informed Headmistress McGonagall this morning that my workload was too much. I'm hoping to sit for the theory portion of the NEWT exams if I'm stable enough."

He was silent.

She inhaled slowly, staring at the steady blue flame beneath the silver cauldron. "I would like to continue the firecrab treatment, but I believe it's in my best interest to stop pursuing any further experimental treatment. I'd like to reach the end of term without withdrawing from any further classes."

She lifted her eyes and looked at him.

He was standing before the cauldron, the stirring rod in his fingers, frozen as though she'd petrified him.

She swallowed. "I hope you won't take offense."

He abruptly roused himself. He made a quick slashing movement with his wand, and the flame guttered out. He dropped the stirring rod into the cauldron.

"Hardly," he said in a quick rasping voice, his lip curling.

He turned on his heel and swept into his rooms, slamming the door.

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