Snape In Love

Chapter 20

Let Me Always Be With You

It was snowing again. The meeting with the Minister obviously wasn´t over yet, since Severus hadn´t come looking for me. Hermione had gone back to Gryffindor Tower, so I was alone. Edgy now, and nervously anticipating being alone with him again, knowing what I knew, I couldn´t settle to do anything, so I went up to the Astronomy Tower. Now, as I looked out across the fields, everything was cloaked in white, apart from the trees. Hogsmeade´s lights twinkled, and the scene should have looked as quaint as a Christmas card to me. But my ordeal had left me raw and emotional, and the scene simply served as a reminder of past Christmases, long ago, when I had still lived at home.

We had been happy. I had wanted for nothing, having parents who loved both one another and me, and Christmas had always been a joyous time for us. I leaned against the cold stone wall of the tower as I remembered the very last Christmas I had spent with my family. Phoebe had been nearly two years old, and I had showered her with toys that year, delighting in her newly learnt conversational skills as she played. I was to leave home the following month, to take up a research position at a Muggle university several hours´ drive south of our home, and I knew how much we would miss each other. As I remembered her shining face, covered in chocolate from a tree decoration, and my mother laughing as she wiped it clean, I began to cry and slumped down to the floor, inconsolable.

It was cold, and the winter wind howled around the parapets, but I buried my face in my hands and was oblivious to it. I had always believed that I should have been there when they died, to try to save them, or have died in the attempt along with them, and now Voldemort had given me an image of their deaths which was even worse than the mental picture I had tortured myself with for the last sixteen years. I had run and run, but the guilt I felt for being the sole survivor had always caught up with me in the end. Then I had met Severus, and the irony so cruelly pointed out by Voldemort was that the man whose love was helping to heal me was part of the cause of that guilt.

Severus. I sighed heavily. I needed to see him. Only he could save me from myself, in spite of what he had done all those years ago. I got to my feet, noticing now the light sheet of snow that covered me, and the chill wind. I stepped up to the crenellated wall and looked out again at the darkening sky, but I didn´t linger up there, since all I could see was endless white, and it reminded me of my ordeal and that unnatural sky.

I descended the spiral staircase slowly, looking through a narrow window across to the tower in which Dumbledore´s office was housed. The lights were on, and I could discern shapes moving around inside. I willed the meeting to be over. I wanted to be with Severus again, in spite of the secret I needed to keep. I ached for him. Each minute I spent away from him now was a minute wasted.

By the time I´d reached the corridor that led to the Great Hall it was full of students on their way to dinner. The last dinner before the Christmas holidays, I remembered. I saw Severus then, in the distance, striding towards me, and my heart skipped a beat. Upon reaching me, he guided me into an empty classroom, closing the door behind us.

"Fudge is an imbecile!" he exclaimed. "I don´t trust him, I never have! He questioned everything we said, Ella, can you believe it? It was as if he didn´t want to believe us! Pettigrew´s off to Azkaban at last, Fudge can´t live up to his name on that one, at least, but as for Malfoy," - he spat out the name distastefully- "I wouldn´t be surprised if Fudge didn´t even bring him to trial for what he did! And oh, Ella," he continued, his voice softening as he put his hands on my shoulders, "he had us go over and over the same ground when all I wanted to do was come and find you!"

He took my face in his hands then and drew me to him. He kissed me deeply, passionately, taking my breath away, then stopped and said,

"And what were you doing up the Astronomy Tower in the snow? You must have been freezing!"

"How do you know I was up there?"

"I saw you, of course! I couldn´t bear to look at that self-important little man, so I spent most of the time standing at the window. Listen, Albus wants us all in the Great Hall for dinner. Will you be okay? Are you up to it?"

I nodded, and after another, more lingering, kiss we re-entered the corridor, joining the throng making its way to dinner.

Dinner that night was something to be tolerated rather than enjoyed. Severus and I were so aware of one another´s proximity that invisible sparks flew whenever our hands touched, or our eyes met. He kept leaning over to whisper in my ear, his comments ever more irritable, and the heat of his breath in my hair sent shivers down my spine.

"Why aren´t you eating, Ella? Aren´t you hungry?" and "You look pale, what´s the matter with you?"

Then it was,

"Will this meal never end? I wish we were alone," and "This is ridiculous. Do you think we could slip away now?"

Followed by a sarcastic

"Oh, great. Another of Albus´s speeches. Just what we need!"

By the time dinner was over I felt sick with nervous anticipation, and my desire to be alone with Severus, to be held by him, comforted, made love to, was overwhelming. The walk down to his rooms in the dungeon had never seemed so long, and his grip on my hand never so tight, but at last we were there, and I sat down in the armchair in Severus´ bedroom to catch my breath, calm myself.

"You´re still not well," he said worriedly, squatting before me and pushing my hair back from my forehead. "You´re so pale. Is there something you´re not telling me? What did Voldemort do to you?"

"I´m fine, really. Just hold me, Severus."

He stood, and muttered a charm that elongated the old armchair until it was the size of a sofa. He shrugged off his robes and long buttoned jacket and undid the top buttons of his high-collared white shirt, then, sitting down next to me, he took me in his arms and kissed me tenderly. I let my head rest against the back of the sofa, and he traced my cheek and neck with his long, gentle fingers, pulling me closer to him and sighing my name.

"I´ve missed you..." he whispered as I slipped my hand inside his shirt, enjoying the silky warmth of his bare skin against my fingers.

"I thought I´d lost you, Severus. I did lose you. It felt- I can´t describe it, I was- desolate, bereft, going through it all again- I couldn´t bear it, I couldn´t, I just wanted to die!"

"Shh, no don´t say that, it´s over, I´m here..."

"If it hadn´t been for Harry, and Hermione..."

"I know, love. When I heard Hagrid shouting for Albus - I ran directly to the entrance hall and there he was, in a blind panic. I´d heard him from my classroom, and I knew something must have happened to you- I was worried for you. I know only too well what Voldemort can do. Thank the Fates the others were there, because I was beyond reason."

"I can´t get it out of my head, Severus. Seeing you lying there, you were dead, I can´t bear it!" I sobbed, and buried my face in his chest while he stroked my hair. "And the things he showed me...my family...he told me it was your fault, Severus, he was trying to break me, trying to make us hate you and Remus, but he couldn´t, he couldn´t ever..."

Severus lifted my face in his hands and kissed away my tears, one by one, crying bitter tears of his own now.

"But Ella, he was right, it was my fault. And I´m so sorry," he said, the dark pools of his eyes overflowing with regret. "I don´t deserve you."

I kissed his words away, our lips trembling, our hearts too full for any more words. We had never been so naked before, and when our tears finally stopped, we knew it.

Our lovemaking had never been so sweet. So aware of what we had almost lost, we rediscovered one another´s bodies with a wonderment that bordered on reverence.

I ran my hand under his hair, stroking the nape of his neck while my other hand unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it from his trousers so that I could stroke his bare back. Meanwhile he was doing the same, sliding my blouse from my shoulders and kissing the flesh underneath. Pushing me back on to the sofa, he stretched out over me and I wrapped my legs around him, drawing him closer. We kissed with more passion now, abandoning ourselves to the moment and letting go of the past, at least for a little while.

Soon we grew impatient for more, and stood, still stealing kisses, so that we could undress and move over to the bed.

Severus lay down beside me on his side, gently stroking my body with the flat of his hand, all the time gazing hungrily into my eyes. After a while he leant over me and began to follow with kisses the trail blazed by his hand. He stroked my stomach, and then kissed it tenderly, dipping his tongue in and out of my navel, and I tangled my fingers in his hair and shivered as I imagined him doing the same when my belly was full and distended with his child. He looked up at me questioningly, his eyes clouded with smoky passion, then moved lower until I thought I would reach my climax right then unless he stopped, but oh, no, I didn´t want him ever to stop...

"Love me..." I whispered.

"Forever," he replied, and entered me slowly, crying out softly "Ah!" as I arched my back to accommodate him. Rocking gently, our rhythm slow and steady, our lips were reunited and I ran my hands down his smooth back to his buttocks which tensed underneath them with each of his thrusts. I was too much in love to last long, and soon a familiar, longed for heat began to spread through me and my body was on its inexorable route to fulfilment. I cried out his name,

"Severus! Oh, Severus, I love you!" and soon afterwards he too reached his climax, holding me so tightly in his ecstasy that I couldn´t catch my breath. When it was over, he lay on me, spent, and his tears of joy mingled with our sweat as they trickled down my chest.

I wanted to tell him about his baby then, but something stopped me. The moment was so perfect, I felt so safe and secure in his love. If only I had trusted in that feeling, and told him the one and only secret I had kept from him, things might have been so different. But as it was, I caused us even more pain than we had already endured, and I almost destroyed Severus in the process.