Overactive Imagination

You've come to almost believe that it's all a result of your overactive imagination.

It begins accidentally and without warning one morning as your eyes sweep the classroom, filled with heads bowed in concentration. Having finished your written exam first, naturally, you are allowed the luxury of leisurely glancing at unnoticed fixtures and counting the number of dents and holes in the old, dank classroom's ceiling, no doubt the product of years of incompetent students.

It's then, as you sigh and shift once more in your seat, crossing one ankle daintily over the other, that it happens. Your gaze casually falls on his and you nearly fall off the rigid and aged stool you've used for all of your seven years in this classroom.

He's watching you.

There's no room for mistakes or misgivings or misapprehensions. It's there, plain as day, as his unrelenting steady stare remains for a few long seconds. Then, as though remembering himself, his upper lip curls into a sneer that he's no doubt spent years perfecting and he returns his attention to the stack of essays in front of him, waiting to be graded.

You then spend the remainder of time until the practical portion of the exam trying to convince yourself that it was nothing but a chance collision of gazes, nothing more, and that there is no logical reason for your heart to pound the way it insists. Despite your efforts, the sounds of the world around you are still drowned out by the frantic pounding in your ears and your gaze is inexplicably drawn back to the large desk at the front of the room. His gaze doesn't meet yours again, and the trembling in your hands seems to temporarily subside.

It begins as a brief moment of a locked stare and it turns into a race; a challenge to see how quickly you can steal forbidden glances at him without earning his notice. Over dinner, you find your gaze shifting toward the head table, edging toward the end where the menacing figure in black looms. He catches your gaze twice during dinner, and you feel your cheeks warm at being caught and a heat pooling within you at knowing he was watching.

Being caught, it seems, pulls you more.

In class, you try your best to keep your eyes on your cauldron and your attention on your work. It's a valiant effort, though it remains in vain. He sweeps through the classroom, barking instructions at inattentive students and taking points away with the greatest of ease. Instead of being motivated to work, however, you find your eyes sliding closed, listening to the deep, velvety reverberations of his voice. A tingle twitches at the base of your stomach and he sweeps past to inspect your progress. You find yourself feeling lightheaded, as though you've suddenly forgotten how to breathe. Before you have a chance to mumble out some trembled response to any question or instruction he's sure to order, he sweeps away again. The edge of his robe brushes against your bare leg and you shudder there in your seat, willing yourself to return your attention to the project that you've suddenly forgotten how to complete.

You think he hasn't noticed and you find yourself immeasurably relieved.

It's difficult to explain away your long, ignored glances to the head table over meals to your irritatingly observant friends, but you find yourself becoming used to the easy white lies you tell to cover the newfound fluttering in the pit of your stomach and your apparent obsession over the dark figure that the majority of the school fears and despises. It's difficult enough to attempt to minimize your obsession with the comforting use of logic and reasoning without the knowledge that the very man whose eyes you long to meet again has noticed your fascination.

But then, suddenly, he has noticed.

You think it's your imagination. He can't possibly be returning your gaze across the Great Hall over breakfast, yet you find yourself blushing and turning away under the heat of his stare. You feel his eyes on you as you enter his classroom with your friends, and your quick glance toward his desk confirms your suspicion. You make a quick dive for your stool, careful not to fall under the sudden weakness of your knees.

His class becomes a long-suffering battle of will, and no longer is it because of spiteful contempt or malicious remarks. Instead, it becomes a battle to stay focused on the task at hand, rather than the way his gaze seems to find yours across the room and, for a fleeting second, the rest of the world becomes nothing but a blur in the background.

His fingers become a new subject of observation as you try to pay attention during class. His long fingers, schooled in precision and diligence, are calloused, scarred, and burnt with years of arduous potion making and battles with the enemies the night used to shelter. They seem knowledgeable, somehow, and you find yourself longing to know what it'd be like to touch those fingers, just once-- to feel their years of knowledge and ability along the creases of knuckles and the embossed lines of scars. You squirm in your seat at the thought.

It is then, as your mind carelessly wanders over these thoughts, that he appears beside your desk, glaring down at you with an eyebrow raised challengingly. You nearly fall off your chair at the surprise, and suddenly you realize that you've been neglecting your potion and, instead of a clear blue hue to the liquid, it stands as a stale greenish mixture with the consistency of mud--a failure indeed.

"It seems the Gryffindor know-it-all has forgotten how to follow simple written instructions," he states derisively in that deep, velvety voice that seems to slide right over your skin. He leans forward, placing those exquisite hands merely inches from yours. "I will not stand for daydreaming in my class, Ms. Granger," he says, his deep voice rumbling just above a whisper and only centimeters away; closer than he would be to any other student, you realize as you try desperately to control your erratic breathing. His warm breath drifts over your ear and past your throat and you uncontrollably shiver. In a vain attempt at self control, you clamp down on your lower lip, silencing the sigh that threatens to escape your throat. "Ten points from Gryffindor," he says silkily, and your eyes slide shut as he walks away.

Over dinner, you catch his eye again; yet this time, however, it's different.

His gaze locks on yours, unflinchingly, and his eyes darken into an unmistakably smoldering gaze. You gasp, taken aback by this sudden new intrusion on your ability to breathe, but by the time you return your gaze to meet his, he's gone. A whimper of frustration leaves your lips and you begin to wonder whether or not you imagined him, imagined it, and you begin to wonder what, exactly, it all means. If you've imagined it, you've officially gone mad with obsession, and if you haven't, well... you don't dare think that far, as you're still seated in the middle of the Great Hall, surrounded by your friends and peers.

But you do think about it later that night. Alone in your Head Girl's dormitory, your mind is free to wander to his gaze at you over dinner. That gaze, filled with a hint of awe and fire, intermingled with unbridled forbidden lust. You whimper again, but this time it is as your hand slips to more intimate regions, drawn by the image of his gaze locked in your mind. Here, alone in your bedroom, you have free reign over fantasies and images of his heated stare--it is your only safe haven for these forbidden thoughts.

And it is there, as you reach your own height that first night by your own hand with his name breathlessly on your lips that you wonder if it will ever be him bringing you to the climax of your passion. It is that thought that fuels yet another fantasy.

You find yourself becoming obsessed with his presence, looking for him wherever you go. In class you are rewarded with the image of his rapidly averting eyes whenever you look in his direction, and you can't help but smile wickedly to yourself at the thought of him observing you unnoticed.

You find yourself changing your usual routine of nightly patrols to include the lower floors, including the dungeons. It's a part of your duty, you assure yourself and anyone who asks. But you can't help the pounding of your heart as you turn every corner, silently hoping to run into him while he is patrolling the corridors on his own.

One night, just after Easter break, your diligence is rewarded.

You turn a corner rather carelessly and find yourself in an unceremonious heap on the ground. Dazedly you look up and see his eyes sweeping over you with a mixture of worry, surprise, and pleasure. With those hands that you admire from afar, he lifts you to your feet, glancing over you carefully.

"Are you injured, Ms. Granger?" he asks, his voice edged with a tone of stateliness and formality, but underlined with a thin, almost unperceivable layer of want.

Your breath hitches in your chest and you find you are almost unable to formulate words with his fingers still wrapped tightly around your arms, your chest pressed against his, and his lips a mere stretch away.

His eyes sweep over you again, this time slower, in a deliberately sensual wave. "If you are injured, I will escort you to the hospital wing." His eyebrow rises.

This time, you're able to speak. "No thank you, Professor, I'll be fine."

His hands loosen their grip on you and you feel a wave of regret at having to be let go and separated from him so quickly. Surprisingly, you see the same look of regret mirrored in his eyes.

His eyes lock with yours for a long minute. The tickling in your stomach resumes and you wonder just how many house points you would lose for pushing him against a wall and pressing your lips and body against his right then and there in the darkened corridor of the second floor.

As though reading your mind, he abruptly steps away from you, releasing you. "Do try to be more careful, Ms. Granger. Five points for carelessness," he spits out before hastily turning around and sweeping down the corridor, his black robes billowing behind him and your body left trembling. With a sigh you fall against the nearest wall, trying to steady your heartbeat and regain some modicum of the composure you're famous for.

The torture continues for the rest of the term, to the point where you're certain you're going to go mad with obsession.

The ever-logical part of you knows it's futile to pine over a teacher, especially the likes of him. You understand that, as a student, you are forbidden territory. It is nothing but an impossible fantasy to imagine those fingers dragging along the bare skin of your lower back, or that voice whispering into your ear as those lips tug on the soft flesh of your earlobe. It's impossible, and your ever-logical mind knows that the only thing you can do is distract yourself.

You try to distract yourself by studying for your N.E.W.T. exams. Instead, you find him in the library near the restricted section, perusing a selection of books, thus successfully ending any attempt at revising on your part. He looks up, meeting your gaze with one of his own, starting with surprise and fire and ending with panic. You watch him hurriedly rush away and you're left to stare blankly at your texts, unable to absorb a thing.

You attempt to distract yourself with your friends, but with Harry's defeat of Voldemort the year before, there is little but talk of Quidditch and idle games of wizard's chess to keep you sufficiently distracted from any thought of your forbidden Professor. Instead, you find yourself sneaking off to your quarters, solitarily reliving his gazes and imagining with your own fingers what he, himself, could do.

You find yourself longing for meals and for class, if only to be held in the same room as him. You continue catching his side glances and you feel his presence around you in class. You almost wish for clumsy fingers to make a mess and earn a detention, but the moment you "accidentally" slip a bottle off the edge of your table, he catches it with deft fingers, both startling you with his skill and surprising you with his sudden presence.

You wriggle unnervingly in your chair as you take the bottle back from his open hand. The tips of your fingers brush against his palm, and you almost believe that you imagined that shudder that pulsed through his body. You look up at him to find a half-lidded gaze fixed on you. You dare a small smile, but that seems to be enough to startle him back to a normal state. He sweeps away, taking away five points for clumsiness.

It's graduation time before you finally decide to do something about it.

It was as you breathlessly cried his name out the night before under your sheets that it hit you: after graduation, you would no longer be his student. The possibility that he could think the same thoughts about you as you do about him late at night when you are alone and under your sheets becomes a point of further obsession, and one you're determined to resolve.

With that thought in mind, combined with a firm determination (or perhaps madness) driven by months of unfulfilled wanting, that you march down to the dungeons as soon as you can afford to get away after the graduation ceremony. You pound on the door, surprised at your own tenacity to get what you want. The door opens with a sweep, and you see him across the room, sitting at his desk with his wand raised lazily in the air, having used it to open the door.

He seems to freeze on the spot. A warmth pools within you and your heart pounds in your ears as you steadily walk toward his desk. You watch as his chest rises and falls with ragged, shallow breaths. His wand flicks again, and you realize he's warding the door.

He rises slowly, his eyes locked on you. He eyes your graduation robes as he walks around to the front of the desk. His gaze meets yours once more, this time filled with an unceasing fire that nearly melts you on the spot.

"May I help you with something, Ms. Granger?" he whispers in that velvety low voice.

It is then that you lose all the self control you've maintained for months.

You rush toward one another, closing the gap. Your lips press hungrily against his and you're slightly surprised to feel his hands gripping your hips and pulling you against him with the passion that you thought you were fighting alone for all these months. You gasp against his mouth as he presses you against the desk, and the groan you hear escape his lips nearly sends you over the edge.

Those deft fingers you've come to fantasize about find their way over fasteners and buttons, and soon you are a product of your own fantasy. You feel his hot skin bare against yours and you desperately claw at him. His fingers trail the small of your back, his ragged pantings curl in your ears, and his lips gently nibble against the soft flesh of your earlobe, just before he lets out a primal growl of pleasure. Your hips rock and buck against his and you cry out his name amidst his low groans and breathless whispering of your name in your ear.

And it is there, as his eyes lock with yours once again, that you realize with a certain satisfying pleasure that it wasn't all a product of your overactive imagination after all.