Caveat Lector

'He who has put a good finish to his undertaking is said to have placed a golden crown to the whole.' –Eustathius from a commentary on Homer's 'Iliad'

"Where's Chapter Forty-One?"

I glared at her from my place hunched over my writing desk. She sat in a Conjured chaise lounge underneath one of the casement windows near my desk. From my vantage point, all I could see was the top of her head. When she shifted, I could see her skin glowing in the summer sunlight, her smooth legs stretching over the velvety nap of the couch, pages of handwritten text stacked on her thighs.

"I'm rewriting it," I grumbled, my eyes lingering on the swell of her bare breasts.

I was nearly finished, bar revisions, and I knew Chapter Forty-One would be the most difficult to rewrite. I did not want distractions, but it seemed inevitable with her sitting so near and in an extreme state of undress.

"And Chapter Thirty-Nine was considerably longer than the others…"

Dropping my quill onto the parchment pages, splattering ink over my words, I snarled. "Does it matter? Is there a rule that they must be uniform, Granger?"

She stretched, her head tipping back on the couch to look at me upside down. "No, I don't think so…"

"Then be quiet!"

She smiled to herself and let her head and eyes move down to the pages on her lap. I had given her a red pencil to proofread, and so far, after forty chapters, she had done a moderate amount of grammatical marking. However, on the very last page, she wrote something…

I took my quill up again and continued. Pausing occasionally to swipe the eagle feather over my thin lips or pulling my lounging robe closed again, I started reworking 'Chapter Forty-One: Introspections.' I knew I needed a better chapter title, but I also knew it would come with time.

She sighed, shuffling the hundreds of pages. I watched out of the corner of my eye, my head in my hand as I leaned over the desk. She sat up, folding her bare legs to stack the pages of my autobiography at the end of the couch.

"Well?" I ventured, half afraid of what she might say, but this fear did not come through my voice. I sounded irritated, as per usual.

I could not admit to her that I was anxious to hear her opinion on what I had so far. She had taken her time reading, which translated into two weeks worth of reading and correcting. Those two weeks had been as stressful as my time trying to decide whom to serve in my youth.

She turned on the couch, pressing her breasts into her arm, her eyes narrowed, a smirk on her lips.

"It is shit, and I am not saying that because you wrote me to be so pathetic, Severus," she said calmly.

I turned my eyes away and scribbled another word, the nib of the quill tearing into the parchment.

"To your credit, you are much better writer than Skeeter. You will make readers identify with you, no matter how insane you paint yourself in your own work."

I grumbled an indistinct curse and she smiled wider. I had almost considered not showing it to her, but Hermione Granger, being the creature she was, demanded to be my editor when she found the manuscript on my writing desk. I had been debating for some time whether to erase her memory of the discovery or take my manuscript somewhere secure to finish. I knew I could trust in her editorial revisions of the mechanics in the very least. All the same, I was afraid of what remarks she made in the margins about overall style. I could still remember her penciled words in the margins of Skeeter's still best selling travesty of a book.

It seemed that the content was 'shit.' That alone stung me more than I would ever let her know. However, I counted on her no-nonsense opinion.

"The first half is fantastic. You might make someone actually believe you are a pitiable man," she sighed. "You have a comic wit, especially in your analysis of the 'Dark Lord' and Albus. That alone could constitute another book. However… The descriptions of the 'love scenes' were compelling, but a bit…oh, how should I put it? I really don't care for the word 'cunt.'"

I grumbled again.

"What was that?"

I lifted my head from my hand and met her eyes again. "Are you truly a feminist, or does the word repulse you for its harshness on the tongue?" I snapped, but calmed myself instantly. I truly hate becoming so irritable when I need to concentrate on writing.

Continuing, I drawled silkily: "Did you want me to describe it differently? Your 'sex,' your 'honey pot,' your 'vulva' if you want to get technical, your 'tender trap?' I could go on and on, my dear."

She only laughed, delightedly. I was half tempted to join in, but was still slightly irritated. I still had to rewrite Chapter Forty-One, and I had to do it before the succinct recollections grew stale.

When her hands slipped down the front of my robe, I paused in writing the word 'aberration.' She leaned into my back, her fingers sliding down my chest to my belly, under the belt that held the robe closed to the thatch of black, wiry hair at the top of my hips.

"Do. Do go on and on," she whispered into my hair.

I dropped the quill, splattering ink onto my right hand and the parchment again. Her fingertips brushed against my semi-erect cock and I inhaled slowly.

The combination of her proximity, her undress, and my irritation made me rigid in more ways than one.

"I want you to show me…"

Her voice was seductive, bewitching to me, but I frowned.

If she wanted to play, I would indulge her for the time being. Chapter Forty-One be damned.

"Show you what, Granger?"

Her lips found my left ear lobe through my long black hair. She bit gently, soothing the bite with the tip of her tongue.

"Show me how brutal you can be, like you were in your pages."

I turned slowly in the chair, allowing her hands to slip out of my robe as she stood up straight behind me. Her lean, golden skin attracted my eyes, as did the scent of recent activities. Earlier that morning, just before she took up the pages to edit again, I had had her in my bed, renting cries of faithfulness and loyalty from her throat.

"As compared to how it really is?" I asked, standing, my robe falling open.

She nodded, taking a step back toward the bed.

"And you think I am gentle with you, my dear?"

She smirked. "You never mentioned that you call me 'my dear' in your memoirs."

I shrugged, a mere trifle, and began stalking her slowly back toward the bed. "Obviously there are some minor details omitted for the sake of style."

"Or details that are blatant lies?"

I grinned predatorily as her back knocked into the foot post of my bed. "Such as?" I purred.

"We do share a bed, we do have tenderness, and we do get along much better than how it seemed on the page…"

I was against her, chest to chest, my arms moving to grasp the post above her head. I stared down into her eyes, my crooked and yellowed teeth bared in my slowly shifting leer.

"Perhaps an addendum?"

She shook her head, her messy curls of chestnut hair falling about her face. "As you said…for the sake of style."

I bucked my hips against hers, my weeping cock smearing the sticky pearl of pre-come into her belly.

"And my work is 'shit,' you say?"

She smirked. "It needs work, 'my dear.'"

My hands slid down the bedpost along her arms to her hips. "A caveat?"

She sighed, her hands moving under my robe to pull my hips toward her, impossibly closer, pressing my cock between us.

"Perhaps…"

We kissed, mouths battling, tongues dueling. My hands moved to her hair, holding her face to mine. I relished the taste of her, even the faint trace of my come still on her tongue from the morning. She was mine, my personal addiction.

The bed was forgotten as I lifted her up, legs wrapping about my waist. I lowered her to the warm floor, in a patch of sunlight.

No brutality. Brutality took planning and forethought, and though I was a master at both, simply indulging myself in uncomplicated sex was enough. There was nothing mundane or boring about slipping my cock into Hermione Granger. Every union was bliss to me.

As I had written, there was no romance to the way we moved. And as I had written, Hermione Granger was my possession.

We slid across the floor with every thrust, bodies, and flesh slapping together in hard, poignant kisses of skin against skin. The sunlight warmed us, yet the hard floor made everything uncomfortable, her bony hips bruising me, and my bony knees stinging. It would not matter; of course, it was a small price to pay for something far greater.

Sometimes I thought of the small discomforts as something that would solidify the moments with her more permanently in my memory—a reality that would make me believe in something other than the darkness that had filled so much of my life.

Love, lust, amusement, that was the truth of the matter, of our relationship. Of course, I did not write about the more tender moments, for it had not always been tender. I did not write about the mornings waking up with her curled in my arms. I did not write about the games we played when we were inspired.

Her favourite was 'detention in the dungeons with the lecherous Potions Master.'

I did not write about the time we swam under a full moon in the loch, and I did not write about the time Longbottom caught us in a niche behind a tapestry when we were supposed to be doing nightly rounds. I also did not write about the last time I had gotten drunk and went to one knee to serenade her in the Hog's Head on a dare from Horace. In fact, I wish I could Obliviate that memory from our minds.

It was too silly, too adolescent, too fluffy, and almost too sweet.

However, most of my written words were true. I was the master. She was the student. That did not mean she was not impertinent. There were times when she shocked me into momentary submission, but not often.

"Severus…" she whispered.

I grunted, feeling her pulse around me, and then groaned as she came. I held the backs of her knees, pressing them toward her head to penetrate her deeper, smoother. She was gone, her eyes closed, her mouth open to gasp at every thrust. Her body shook, shivers in the warm sunlight.

Hermione Granger was mine; there was no caveat for that fact. She was mine and mine alone. If I could use my quill to write my name on every inch of her skin, I would. I would take her to the edge of reality with every touch, every stroke, and every breath. She was mine to mould to every whim. She was my slave, my toy, my saviour, my darkest desire.

I was no saint.

I was a bitter old man who had somehow been lucky to live on. I was very much a scoundrel, by the very evil I incurred on the woman under me. I had been mentally debating, however, if it was evil when I flogged her and sweet juices flowed from her. Was I evil when I bound her arms behind her back and forced my cock into her mouth?

Her hands found my face, and she lifted her body to kiss me.

No, I was not a scoundrel. Her desires matched my own, and I did not pour evil into her body.

When I came, it was sudden and unexpected. Her name was on my lips. She cleaved to me in the sunlight as I gasped against her shoulder.

Perhaps I was a Byronic-hero after all. Outside of Hermione Granger, the world saw me as such. To her, I was a chore, albeit an amusing one. She was such a hero, or heroine, in her own right. She was Hippolyta and Boudica. Her passion for battle, whether physical or mental, was unnatural.

I finally pulled away with a final kiss to her swollen lips, leaving her laying on the floor, in the sunlight. She looked as if she could sleep, and I closed my robe, knotting the belt about my waist. Moving back to the writing desk, I sat down, staring at the bloom of valerian from the pot on the back of the desk. Quill began scratching into parchment again.

In climax, I had found inspiration.

I heard her rise slowly, finding her wand on the fainting couch and casting Cleansing Charms over her skin. When the tip of her wand tapped into the top of my head, I scowled. I knew I could do without her compulsion to keep me clean. I rather liked the sensation of her juices drying in my pubic hair and belly. I preferred to be able to see my semen oozing down the insides of her thighs.

She sat again, taking up the manuscript and marking pencil, flipping through pages to a later chapter. I watched her out of the corner of my eye, my head in my hand again, my elbow resting on the desktop as I bent over the surface to write. She seemed to write an editorial note, a long one.

It was not until she had gone from the room moments later, dressing hastily, muttering that Minerva wanted to meet her for tea, that I Summoned the manuscript and began searching for her note.

I found it toward the beginning of Chapter Forty. Tiny words were written next to one sentence.

'Hermione Granger was the rock on which my soul broke.'

It started with a Latin inscription: 'amor et melle et felle est fecundissmismus' or 'love is rich with both honey and venom.'

The words sunk deep into my brain, the symbolism poignant.

Then: 'There is no such thing as a true romance or a 'happy ending,' Severus. But for these elegant words, do, at least, try for a better ending.'

I snorted, and then began barking with laughter.

She was the rock on which my soul broke in millions of pieces, and she ate those pieces every time our bodies met. I did not mind. In dying, my words to her had saved my life, or perhaps it was not my words at all but something she had kept hidden so deep that I would never find it, and I suppose I might never truly know. Perhaps it is better that way. All the same, I no longer have any regrets about speaking what, to me, was a simple truth about Hermione Granger. She was the best student I ever had, she is my best student.

My soul belongs to her by right.

~Fin.