Conquest Is Easy, Control Is Not, by Florence W. Snape

Chapter 13:

Being inside Hermione was fantastic, Severus thought as he kissed her tear-stained cheeks. He had been created to love this woman. It amazed him how long it had taken him to figure it out. He liked everything about her. He liked the way her hair always got in the way, the way her teeth always left marks on his skin, the way her alabaster skin turned a wonderful shade of pink underneath him. She was beautiful. Merlin, she was so beautiful moaning his name again and again and her mouth seemed to have been designed for this purpose alone. He had been kidding himself before: it was impossible for Hermione to leave him now. He would never be able to accept the fact that another man could elicit the same kinds of reactions from her.

"I've missed you," she said, wrapping his arms around her neck and pulling him forward to kiss his lips, "I've missed this so much…,"

Severus said nothing as he kissed her cheeks and her forehead and even the little spot underneath her ear that always made her shiver in anticipation. He wanted to say something- anything- about the conclusions he had reached, about the terrible mistake he had made that awful night… but he didn't trust himself to speak. Having Hermione move underneath him in such a wanton way was fantastic but it could never rival the fact that she had accepted him, that she had asked him to be a part of her life, that this woman- this slip of a girl with her feelings so exposed he didn't need Leglimancy to tell what she was feeling- had changed everything about him. It was so overwhelming, in fact, that instead of building up walls like he had done since before he could remember- even before Lilly, even before Hogwarts- he just let go of all pretences and felt.

And it felt wonderful. Doing it the Muggle way was certainly different. It is one thing to vanish clothes non-verbally but it's another thing entirely to take them off one by one, slowly increasing the already palpable anticipation they were feeling. It hadn't been long since they had last been together but all those times had been about the sex, about the naughtiness of their coupling. This time their kisses were so fierce and their caresses so desperate, it seemed they were sending a non-verbal message with their bodies.

Severus tried to take the lead, like he had always done before, and unclasped her bra. Her tits weren't really bigger, he thought as he cupped her bare breasts with his hands, but it was too early in her pregnancy to see a real difference. Slowly his hands explored down her ribs, where she was most ticklish, and then they slowly stroked her still flat stomach. Inside, he knew, there was her baby, their baby. It felt odd to even think about it but when he looked up at Hermione, she was smiling sweetly at him and the words "their baby" didn't seem so foreign anymore. Hugging her, he pressed his cheek on her belly and stayed there, trying to take it all in. He was going to be a father and, suddenly, the immensity of it all filled him up like a balloon and for a second there he felt like his heart and his lungs were going to explode. And then the unthinkable happened: he started crying.

It was not a cry worthy of Moaning Myrtle by any means. It was more of a chocking sound, to be honest, that started in his stomach and ended in his throat. There were no thick tears like Hermione's but his eyes were teary and red and a single tear had travelled all the way down to his long nose, where it hung precariously. Hermione was shocked, so much so because she had little experience with Severus Snape behaving like a human being, but stroked his hair all the same.

She wanted to ask him if he was alright, wanted to investigate the reasons behind his sudden breakdown but she knew it was hardly the time to ask such questions. He would snap, get up and leave her half naked without ever looking back. So instead she did the only thing she knew how to do: she made love to him.

She placed both her palms on his jaw and made him look up. The image of an overwhelmed Severus Snape almost made her choke herself. His skin looked sickly pale under the moonlight, even more so than usual, and she caressed the cheeks of this man she had grown to love so much. She loved his hard features, loved his hooked nose and his strong cheek bones but most of all she was in love with the small lines in his forehead and between his eyes. They were the evidence that this was a man who was used to scowling and she fancied herself capable of changing that, if only he let her.

"You scowl too much," she whispered as she changed positions and pinned him to the bed, straddling him, "You have wrinkles between your eyes,"

He said nothing as she kissed those wrinkles he had grown to hate. He remained silent mainly because her hips were moving deliciously over his already erect cock but also because for the first time he was allowing her to take control over their coupling. And it aroused him and shocked him at the same time.

"Just let it go," Hermione said as she ripped open his shirt. She explored his chest and his stomach very much in the same way he had done to her before breaking down. He was a skinny man, no doubts about it, but he was always remarkable insecure about his stomach. She wondered briefly if he felt the same way about other parts of his body. Briefly because Severus' cock was pressing wonderful parts of Hermione's anatomy, parts she had neglected to touch for a long time, parts that hadn't been touched since he had almost… no. It was no use thinking about that now.

Kissing her way down his bare chest and stomach, she unzipped his parts and pulled down his underwear. His cock was as fantastically erect as she had assumed it would be and it stood there, stiff and soft, at her mercy. She touched it once softly, and she was rewarded with a moan that suggested his anguish was over. This was better, this Severus she could handle.

She lightly kissed the end of his cock and let her tongue playfully lick the tiny hole. She had been here before, she had enjoyed doing this in the Restricted Section of the library but this was another thing entirely. Back then he had grabbed her hair and fiercely shagged her mouth, making her gag. This time she was the one in control of her movements and he was the one adjusting to her actions. He was the submissive one this time around and she rather liked it.

As she continued licking the tip, his member began to spasm a little and she decided to move her tongue a bit. Slowly running her tongue down his shaft she started teasing the underside to his testicles, leaving a slight trail of saliva on her way down. Her tongue, then, started to dance around the sensitive skin, sucking briefly on each ball in turn as she kept taunting him, leading him to a state of complete arousal. Meanwhile, Severus was moaning louder and louder, bucking his hips, seeking more.

Hermione, however, was in a teasing mood. She went all the way up to the tip and blew on it, making him grunt in desperation. He wanted more, she could tell, and frankly so did she but first she wanted to make him crazy with need.

Wrapping her lips around his erection, she took him in her mouth as far as it would go. She remembered all to well what Severus Snape was capable of doing when given a blow job so she used her hands this time as she bobbed her head up and down.

And sure enough, in no time, he was grabbing her hair and pushing up, trying to reach the very end of her throat. Expertly, Hermione started stroking it with both her hands. She could feel his cock pulsing under her palms and one look at his face told her that his need for stimulation was over.

Straddling his hips, she positioned herself near his shaft. It was almost begging her to sink lower, to impale herself on it and she was most happy to oblige. And as she did, Severus closed his eyes and remembered a passage he had read from a Muggle book not long before Hermione had come back into his life: "I went into the desert to forget about you. But the sand was the colour of your hair. The desert sky was the colour of your eyes. There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you". He hadn't understood the need, the longing, back then… but he did now.

"This is verging on the criminal," said Professor McGonagall as Dumbledore placed the tiny snow globe back on his desk.

"Don't be absurd," the old man said with a smile, "I wasn't spying on their coupling…I was just making sure their fight had ended all right,"

"Whatever you say, Headmaster," she said sternly while walking to one of the armchairs next to Poppy who was snoring loudly. "I suppose we should wake her and tell her the good news…"

"Leave her," said Dumbledore. He reached inside one of his pockets and took a pack of cards and offered them to McGonagall, "Fancy a game?" he asked her.

"I might as well stay. Severus and Hermione may request to be sent back in any minute," she told him while adjusting her spectacles.

"I wouldn't count on it, Professor…. I wouldn't count on it,"

They took a few more days off to relax on their snow globe cottage. Severus feared he was being watched but he enjoyed this new found intimacy too much to deny Hermione the chance of some quiet and alone time. If she wanted to stay, he wasn't going to complain. Granted, fighting sometimes ends in the best kind of sex but they were skating on thin ice still and he didn't want to ruin it. Not this, not now.

She was reading at his feet, in front of the fire. She told him her back ached on soft surfaces but he suspected she enjoyed resting against his knees- they went back, his knees and her. He couldn't help but suppress a smile at the memory of Hermione wantonly rubbing herself on them, trying to reach her own climax. That was the first time they had fucked. How was it possible for things to change so much in only two months? He never thought of himself as the kind of man who would want to settle down and have children… and yet circumstances had proved him wrong.

"A Sickle for your thoughts," she said, looking up at him from the floor with a big honest smile. It always killed him when she smiled like that.

"I think the current rate is a Knut," he answered, caressing the top of her head.

"Be honest," Hermione said, standing up and sitting on his lap, resting her head on his chest.

"You are getting heavier," he whispered into her ear. He was joking but knew, as soon as the words had come out of his mouth, that he would live to regret them. And so he did when she elbowed him right on the ribs.

"Thank you very much, Severus Snape! Let me tell you that I already know I look hideous without your stupid remarks about my weight," she answered, offended. Severus chuckled at this. She was beautiful when she got mad.

"Beauty unaware of itself is the most beautiful," he told her.

"Yes, stretch marks are all the rage these days…," she replied, cynical. He had rubbed off on her.

"Come on, Hermione," he said, putting both arms around her waist and pulling her up so that her head rested next to his chin, "You should know that beauty is skin deep and that the world is full of thin skinned people,"

She smiled at that.

"I love you," she whispered quietly, as the gentle rocking of his body lulled her to sleep.

And when he thought she couldn't hear him, he whispered back: "I love you too,"

A/N: I know….I almost completely abandoned this fic but I've set myself a goal: to finish it. The story may have progressed a bit faster than I would have hoped originally… but such the life of the WIP author. I think you won't be disappointed with the next chapter, though…which may be the last one + an epilogue of sorts.

Thank to everyone who've read the story and reviewed! I'm making this extra effort to give an ending to a story I've loved writing.

See you, hopefully, as soon as possible ;)

Oh! And this story is filled with famous quotes! See if you can find them!