A Winters Tale

Chapter 8 Fights and Friendship

Somewhere, far away, a clock chimed - not very loud a sound, but in its gravity enough to knock Hermione out of the light sleep she was sleeping on the bed next to Albus'. She wasn't too unhappy about it because the dream she had had was disturbing. She'd seen Albus - not the old one in the bed next to her, but the strong, young Albus of the night before - laying at her feet in a pool of blood and the blood had floated over her naked feet and a part of her had wished to run away while another, stronger part had commanded her to stay and to protect the pale body of her lover against the dark shadows which where around him, coming closer and gripping with hands like claws to him. She'd threw herself over him, crying and kissing his cold mouth and at this moment he'd opened his eyes and they had been his old eyes, pale with age and endlessly tired and sad and then he'd spoken - and he hadn't sounded like Albus, but like Severus, silken and forbidding in the same time: "Don't love me for I am ..."

Just this moment the clock had chimed and now Hermione sat on her small bed, sweating and her heart hammering hard and fast in her breast. Taking a deep breath, she looked over to the bed and the sleeping form of her husband. The enchanted candle on the nightstand lightened only over his head and the heavily plastered chest and shoulder, the sight under it was dark. But there was a dark shadow on Albus' chest and looking up to it Hermione saw that she wasn't alone at her husband's bedside.

Opposite of her on the other side, almost melting into the darkness behind him, sat Severus Snape on a high backed chair, his head resting sideward, his black hair falling over his face as a curtain. But what touched Hermione most about the potion master's posture was that his left hand laid on the bed, the tips of his fingers just touching - almost shyly as if they wouldn't dare making closer contact - a strand of Albus' long hair. Hermione felt a rush of affection to the dark man opposite her she'd never thought she'd be capable of - especially not about a man who had been the incarnation of an unfair, arrogant and injustice bastard to her. Even in defending him against Ron and Harry, she'd often doubt his ability in feeling something other than hatred, anger and dismay. But now she was sure she'd never doubt his humanity again.

"He loves Albus," Hermione thought. "He loves him as much as I do."

Huuh? What had this been? Hermione sat straight on the bed, swallowing hard. Had she really just thought of loving the headmaster? Shaking her head, she tried thinking it again: "I love Albus." It felt odd - odd because it didn't feel wrong! Hermione, analytic girl she was, tried again, but this time with "I care for the headmaster". Yes, this felt better. So to the next tray: "I admire Albus Dumbledore." Right again, but there was still something more to it as 'adoring'. Or did admiration include a flattering stomach by thinking of the adored? Hermione didn't think so and closed her eyes again for looking deeper in herself and to this flattering. An image sprang to mind - the image of a man with auburn hair and azure blue eyes, smiling down on her and laying his head back then, moaning. And with this image memories of touches, on a mouth on her breast, of fingers stroking her, of being filled - memories she'd tried to avoid thinking of all day long - suddenly popped up and played havoc with her entire body. Despite being cramped and exhausted and feeling sticky and dirty Hermione suddenly felt a shot of arousing running through her. It made her body hum with desire, her nipples came to live, prickling and pressing against the fabric of the school uniform she still wore. "This," thought Hermione with distant amusement, "probably answers the question at least partly: I lust after Albus - my Albus, the young one."

But did this desire make for loving him? Hermione wasn't sure about it. She'd watched her former dormitory mates so often falling in and out with what they called 'love', she simply couldn't believe in things like 'I want sex with him, so I must be in love with him' anymore. Passion - so much Hermione, through hardly 18 years old, had already understood, didn't come automatically with love. But what when the passion for a man was connected with caring for him, with respecting and adoring him?