This chapter rated teen for mild brutality and sexuality.In a Temple By the Sea: Chapter Four: Six Months and a Dark Mark
He demanded she fire curses with rapid accuracy and deadly force. “Any curse can kill, when delivered with enough strength can kill. There are curses to freeze blood, stop hearts, remove hearts, boil the blood, and peel skin off the bone. You will learn them all,” he breathed threateningly down her neck and Hermione stood up straighter. Instead of buckling beneath the pressure she stood stronger.
Severus Snape will not intimidate me. She growled to herself. Her years of cultured dislike and grudging respect fueled her desire to prove herself to him.
Why? She had no idea, but if they were going to work side by side she wanted him to at least respect her. He didn’t need to like her, but once and a while she would enjoy it if she saw something other than distaste in his eyes.
He looks at me like I’m a parasite. She mused one night as she lay wide awake staring at the ceiling. He’d been beating lesson after lesson into her for a month... sometimes quite literally. She winced when she remembered the duel where a curse had snapped her arm, and he’d kept firing curses. She’d fired her first wandless curse and summoned her wand to her other hand. She had missed the look of grim satisfaction on Severus’ face while she rolled to her feet.
“Very good, Hermione,” he’d said softly. “let me see that arm,” in languid, confident strides he made his way over to where she stood uneasily, blood pounding in her ears, he body asking angrily what the hell she’d been thinking to get into this, her brain aware only of pain and sudden exhaustion. He looked into her eyes quietly, “Hermione, can you hear me?” He asked warily. She looked at him in confusion, cinnamon eyes wide with alarm. His alluring lips were moving, but no sound could be heard other than the rushing of blood in her ears. She tipped precariously to a side and his sinewy arms caught her. “Pain tolerance is abysmally low,” he noted with a sigh.
Hermione smiled at the ceiling in her room delightedly.
Maybe I’m a step up from parasite, she thought with a school-girlish smile. Then she berated herself, no more school-girl fantasies
Hermione, you’re about to enter the war on the frontlines. You’ll be lucky if you emerge alive and with a sense of normalcy. She sighed and turned over in her bed, determined to sleep.
Downstairs Severus sat in front of the fire in the living room, a tumbler of scotch in his hand. He stared into the dancing flames moodily.
I cannot believe I’m doing this, he mused.
Tearing the innocence from another young lady. Throwing her into a den of heathens with only a stick of wood and her wits. He shook his head angrily.
Dumbledore thinks she can do it… He tried to justify his actions.
Dumbledore also thought Anastazia could do it, but she died didn’t she? Another beautiful lady, volunteering for a job she had only the vaguest inclinations of what it held in store for her… This is round two of the war, and we’re still loosing. Sending young men out to the front to run and die for a cause, an ideal… His face hardened as he thought.
I will do my duty. Life will go on. And at some point, the ideal of right may win. He stood, once more tall and imposing. Once more a man of strength. His moment by the fire had passed, he was himself again.
He dropped a dog that had been urinating on his roses in front of her. “Kill it,” he commanded, his voice like quiet steel. Hermione hardly looked away from her book. She glanced at the dog,
“
Avada Kedavra,” she said before returning to her book, a muggle novel, Pride and Prejudice. Outwardly she was eerily calm. Inwardly and was biting her lip and her stomach was rolling.
I must do this, she’d thought before waving her wand. She had poured her anger at Voldemort into the curse, the pain of her parents death, the righteous anger she felt every time another muggle girl was humiliated and raped by a horde of men. The fear she felt for Harry and Ron. The recently discovered anger for all Severus had gone through. He banished the remains and looked at her for several long moments.
“You’re coming to the revel with me tonight,” He said finally, and that statement got her full attention.
“Severus you were discovered. You can’t go back. I’ll just tell Bella-“She sat up quickly, book forgotten on the wicker table on the porch. Her eyes were large and fearful for a few moments before she schooled her face smooth and blank again.
“If I bring you into the circle all old debts will be repaid. I can beg my way back into Voldemorts good graces,” he said with confidence. “Dumbledore and I have already discussed it.”
Hermione settled it, “well if Dumbledore agreed it must be the right course of action.” She said dully, returning to her book. Severus snickered,
so, someone else is intelligent enough to have deduced that for all his good intentions, the old man could be wrong. “Just know that if he kills you I won’t have it on my conscience,” she threatened calmly, turning the page and looking like she was commenting on the weather.
She didn’t remember much of the revel when she awoke the next afternoon. She knew parts of her ached with a vengeance, her forearm throbbed and the dark mark twisted under her skin. Dirt, blood and cum stained her body and clothes. She sat up slowly, put her feet underneath her body and leant on her knees, rejoicing in the ability to breathe and be alive. Severus walked into the room and his presence was immediately noticed by a sense she’d never encountered before. Hermione looked at him in surprise.
“When you joined the death eaters you became part of a network. When you’re within fifty kilometers of one of us you will know who they are, and where they are,” Severus explained, uncorking a potions bottled. “Drink,” he commanded. Hermione responded automatically, in a slight daze. “What hurts?” he asked after a minute. Hermione pinned him with an incredulous glare.
“I believe the better question would be what doesn’t hurt? And the answer is my pinky toe,” she said wryly. Severus grinned at her for a brief moment.
“You’re correct. Rest, relax. I’m sure he’ll call within the next few days with your first assignment.” He left the room quickly, albeit dramatically and Hermione was left to ponder his smile.
A few days later Hermione was back in her old flat in London. She roamed through the few rooms aimlessly, tracing fingers over old keepsakes, noting that for once they gave her no comfort; she missed Severus’ rooms with the endless supply of books. She missed the smell of roses, oranges and herbs depending on which was the wind was blowing. She missed the tang of salt in the air. With a startled pang she noted that she missed the way his hands roamed her body at night, surprisingly tender and worshipful. At night he was a different man and she’d never figured out why. She shook her head, curls tumbling around her face. “Silly girl… what were you thinking?” She chided herself, even though she knew exactly what she’d been thinking. The mark on her arm twisted and Hermione ran to the front door grabbing the black cloak that hung there and pulled the mask from the inside pocket. Without thinking twice Hermione apparated and let the mark pull her away.
