(Originally written November 2001; expanded and weblished April, 2004)

Refer to:  Author's Notes

Rated R, but only to be on the safe side. It is explicit, but I think of it as near PG-13 because the 'erotica' (or rather porn) doing the rounds of my generation, at that age, controlled female sexuality rather than liberated it. This is a riposte to all that. If you are under 17 -- you know yourself best; you decide and take the responsibility for your reading.

WARNING: Muggle substitutes for magical equipment can be a serious danger to the health. Don't try it at home.

Disclaimer: Based on JK Rowlings characters, story and settings etc -- but she REALLY wouldn't want to claim any of this as hers. In honour of the late, great Angela Carter, whose works inspire this kind of thinking.

The scene takes place about six weeks after the events of Letter From Exile One Merciful Morning. Hermione has returned to London, but not to her parents, who do not approve of her marrying, let alone marrying Snape. They have adopted a laissez-faire attitude to Hermione's going to live with Severus in his Clerkenwell flat - part of a converted warehouse - he still likes minimalist decor. The Grangers are hoping that this way, the whole thing will fizzle out. The only non-minimalist item in the flat is McGonagall's wedding present - sent early to encourage the couple to stick it out in the face of parental opposition.

It was the small hours of an unusually cool summer Saturday. Hermione and Severus were reading in bed. It was their second favourite activity in that particular location.

Rather, Severus was reading to Hermione, in bed. The combination of his unique vocal skills and the transgressive evocation of a childhood ritual was a no-fail turn-on for her.

«It was my mother who always read to me, not my father,» Hermione had protested, when he ventured to analyse this interesting phenomenon. He had already piqued her anger just enough by asking whether she wanted fucking-in for the night -- to her embarrassment, bad puns had an equally no-fail effect.

«Same difference,» he observed, un-phased. «All the more flattering, in fact. Instead of identifying me with your father in that tired old family romance, you find in me your original sin -- the sensual connection with the mother, and by extension, every object in your world.»

He seemed quite happy to be polymorphously perverse.

«That's only a phase though, isn't it?» (They were on bedtime readings of Freud -- Severus insisted she catch up on Muggle thinkers.)

«Overlaps with learning your Mmm-»(he kissed her) «-other tongue.»

«Then what?»

«It isn't a linear progression. At some point, however, the oral phase gives way to the genital -- or was it the anal?»

«No, the genital,» insisted Hermione - whereupon he slithered under the voluminous bedclothes and managed the transition very thoroughly.

At this particular hour, Severus, having just finished The Case of Dora (which roused his beloved's righteous indignation, alongside other feelings, quite predictably) asked Hermione to choose a new book.

She raked her eyes over the coverlet. It was a rich confection of gilded indigoes, burgundies and ochres that glimmered and glowered in the candlelight. The centrepiece, of course, was a huge, deluxe edition of Hogwarts, a History, but a few volumes along nestled a lesser-known mage classic. It had shifted slightly proud of its neighbours - thanks to the position of Severus's kneecap.

«I thought you'd read A Discourse.»

«I had my exams, remember? Cut straight to the Appendix.»

The Appendix of A Discours on Luvve's Expresciown contained a glossary of sexual gestures with the writer's unique notation system for them. Severus smiled at the memory. A certain scroll had passed between him and Hermione (concealed in her Potions homework) through the last months of her final year. Practice had been preceded by plenty of clandestine theory.

«So, you've no idea what it contains?»

«I remember the chapter headings. There was the Tiresias charm - that must be experimenting with gender switching. Then there were three sections on the use of Levitation, and that first chapter about virgins - bit late for that though.»

«Don't be so sure. I think you'd find that chapter very, very interesting.»

Hermione looked at him expectantly. He did nothing.

«Aren't you going to read it to me?»

Severus assumed a pedagogical expression. Hermione might not be excited by the father-daughter scenario, but he was certain she loved him because he was a professor, not in spite of it. Quite aside from any transgressive thrill, she devoured him the way she devoured the bulkiest tomes. His job was to cram her and cram her with knowledge.

«I could almost recite it to you - but some things are better shown, not told. A few points to begin with, though.»

Hermione lay back - all ears (no, really). Severus shifted onto his side to look at her.

«We go back to Freud - or rather, Slytherin theory got there first. A virgin, in socio-economic, terms, was highly prized. Thanks to Godrick Gryffindor's openness to Muggle Christianity -- did I tell you his great-great-great grandsons took part in those bloody Crusades?»

«Three times,» Hermione reproached him. «And you still look smug when you say it.»

«Well, thanks to this adoption of Christian values, witches were much more concerned about chastity by the end of the eleventh century than in the pre-history of Hogwarts. However, they couldn't quite let go of their pagan right to pleasure. They were caught between being objects of desire and kinship exchange and being subjects of their own desires. Christianity - at least as Mages crudely absorbed it - polarised the status of female virgin and not-virgin. Slytherin witches sought a way of subverting the problem. Not just economically, but psychologically. The new thinking made sex a violation, especially with the loss of sophistication in sexual practices: older traditions were repressed, seen as decadent. The transition between virgin and non-virgin became abrupt.»

«So what did they do?»

Hermione's nipples were looking impatient. Severus let them wait.

«It wasn't easy. Your average phallus is a very blunt instrument -»

«This is average is it?»

Hermione butted Severus's nose with her rather more fetching snub.

«That's rather beside the point. I'm talking about something your great, upstanding Gryffindors (whose only contribution to the arts of love is the basic engorgement charm) could never conceive of.»

Severus traced a delicate line around Hermione's face with a tapering finger. At precisely the same time, she felt an even finer point (or was it two?) delineate the area around her clitoris.

«You have wonderful hands,» (pause). «Explain some more.»

Severus smiled, and continued his caresses.

HANDS.

He was stroking her face with his left hand whilst, propped up on his elbow, he leaned the side of his head on the other; so what the hell -

Hermione made to lift the bedclothes, but Severus was too quick. She was instantly pinned down between The Pilgrim's Progress and Middlemarch.

«Best not to look.»

He was hovering over her, shrugging the coverlet around his shoulders. Both elbows were now deployed for support, but the movements much further down continued.

Hermione shrieked.

«Severus - you PROMISED you wouldn't buy a snake!»

«SShh. It's quite alright. It's only me.»

'It' was certainly hotter than any snake.

Comprehension dawned. Hermione tensed up.

«I'm not sure I like this idea.»

«No-one likes the idea - but they love the experience.»

Persistence, with Severus, usually paid off. Hermione began to relax.

«Run this past me again -- I mean in words.»

«A partial transfiguration,» he explained, «in every sense. No poison, no fangs. Just the ability to adapt, perfectly, to the contours of your - therein.»

The extended flicker of a forked tongue located her cervix.

Hermione raised her theoretical defences. (She still didn't like the idea.)

«Did you have to register?»

«If only.» Snape looked up dreamily. «There'd have been queues.»

«Isn't it a bit clichéd? The serpent – alright, it's sometimes androgynous or feminine in Western thought, but mostly it's the obvious phallic symbol.»

«I daresay,» murmured Snape, busying himself with the obvious phallic object. «Are you complaining?»

Well, not exactly.

«Here, the symbol's just reversed and rendered -» Her voice broke off as the snake's head slipped inside -«literally.»

It took a good half-minute for her to complete the simile - which she did, however, with a rather wide smile.

«But the serpent,» Severus continued, «unlike the phallus, can touch the inside of you and the outside of you at the same time.»

At least half of the snake had indeed remained outside, applying swirls of pressure in all the right places.

«Rather a big 'just', don't you think?» He wore a very slight grimace from the effort. It was a long time since he'd practiced this.

Hermione didn't answer for a while.

«There is the further advantage - that critical shifts in direction, angle and depth of movement are independent of the partners' bodies. Disparities of height, awkward athleticism, cramp-inducing 'positions' - no longer figure. The instrument is fine enough to take care of things on its own.»

Hermione could feel what he meant. All kinds of possibilities were opening up.

«Wh - why is it called the Gift to Vir-irg-ins?»

«Because the snake can make itself slender enough to enter the body without rupturing the hymen - or, many would say, a woman's sense of self-contained-ness. The virgin gets the full pleasure, with none of the sense of loss. There is no 'deflowering'.»

«So why didn't you do this our fir-irh-st time?»

«Because,» (he said it with a trace of sorrow) «you'd have run away in disgust.»

Hermione couldn't deny it. Not for the first time, Severus sensed her hunger for his sadness -- he had plenty in reserve for a Dementor girl to feed on, and turn to joy.

«And because you have to feel very confident - at ease with yourself - to do it. The last time - the certainty was, I was going to die. I felt I could do anything.»

Again that sunken cadence in the voice, and Hermione caught the film of melancholy that would settle on his face whenever he remembered his past. She dispelled it with a kiss, and as usual in such moments, they continued the conversation by other means.

It was, so to speak, the most intricate they'd ever had. Once therein, the serpent could equally swell to considerable thickness by opening its mouth, rippling its movements or even doubling itself up. By the same token, its length seemed infinitely - extendable. Severus' strategy (he always had a strategy, even when making love) was to make a play between the ever-searching threads of the tongue and the heavier-flowing scrape of the snake's body. Hermione's internal organs and pathways, articulated by dozens of ticklish lines, itched with desire as soon as they were defined - until the snake's underbelly rubbed out the infernal drawing just as it became unbearable. She lost the sense of where her own body stopped and his - its? - began, and could have sworn, at one point, she'd extended a forked tongue herself. She lost count of her climaxes, whilst the intervals between delineation and gratification became shorter and shorter until -

«Hermione? Are you all right? Hermione?»

She opened her eyes.

«That's a very Snape-ish smirk you're wearing.»

«Sorry.»

The smirk stayed in place.

«Did I really shout what I think I shouted?»

Hermione was uneasily aware of having comported herself with less decorum than usual.

«Yes, but I'm the only one who heard.»

(The ability to cast soundproofing spells is surely one of the greatest aids to conjugal bliss mages possess.)

They settled back on the pillows.

«So that creep of a Salazar Slytherin did some good in the world after all.»

«Only indirectly. People assume from the name that he invented it, but it was his sister. She did more than write things down in the book.»

«Salomé?»

«The same.»

«So what was his indirect contribution?»

«Bastard locked her up.»

«Why?»

«She was much too fond of Muggles. Especially fanatically religious ones who were asking to be Undone.»

Hermione could understand that - even in bed, Severus managed to resemble a Puritan-about-to-melt.

«What did locking her up have to do with the Gift?»

«It gave her time to think. She invented it all in prison - or rather, the convent. Actually, it was worse than a convent. She became an anchorite.»

«What did they do?»

«Cut themselves off from the world in the most radical way possible. Walled up in solitary confinement, fed through a chink in the stones. Salazar's idea of the punishment fitting the crime.»

«Did she ever get out?»

«No, but her ideas did. One of the Nuns slipped her writing materials, and chipped a tiny hole where it would let in daylight. She hid the papers Salomé passed on to her, and when Salomé died, she got copies scribed and circulated them - especially to the aristocracy and the courts.»

«A Nun did that?»

«Nunneries were complicated places - refuges for women who didn't fit, where you could be educated and literate. A better career choice than marriage at the time.»

«I really must read it -- not that I mind the personal instruction.»

Severus reached for his wand and rummaged around the bedcover. A quick transfiguration spell turned the embroidered image of A Discours on Luvve's Expresciown into reality - Professor Vector's contribution to their wedding present.

«It's the 1871 edition - that's really generous of her you know. There's a first edition in the restricted Restricted section of Hogwart's Library. One of Caxton's apprentices found it was a nice little earner. Muggles didn't believe it was for real.»

Hermione opened it carefully, and read the dedication.

'To She who bringeth me Light:

Cast by my kin unto darknesse,

Yet doth my spirit glowe.

O hearken, my unseen sisters,

To all that my heart doth know.'

«Not quite Early English.»

«It's translated from medieval French. The Anglo-Saxon manuscripts are lost, so the closest thing to the original text we have are three of the happily identical manuscripts that circulated the French-speaking English courts after the invasion of William the Conqueror. No one knows who did the Caxton translation back into English. The 1871 edition's by an unknown female Pre-Raphaelite. She tried to write in the style of Christina Rossetti and her ilk - fake medieval.»

Hermione turned to the first chapter.

«Read that now and you'll never get to sleep.»

«Tired are you? -- Wait a minute.»

Hermione sat up.

«What about you. You didn't - what happens to the nerve-endings and everything when you transform?»

Severus considered this.

«It's a question of the extent and timing of the transfiguration. The critical area shifts down the shaft, away from the tip, or rather mouth, to the point where if the wizard ejaculates, he does so well outside of the witch's body. Very convenient for the virgin; not to mention its advantage as a delaying tactic. Of course, he could choose to slide the transfiguration back so that they finish together in the usual way – well usual for some.» (He smirked – no doubt thinking of Gryffindor men.) «That's considered bad manners, though. It lessens the woman's pleasure, and it's supposed to be for her. It's a Gift.»

Hermione replaced the book carefully, turning it back to cloth.

«You could read me more tomorrow morning.»

«I think you should read it to me. It's the closest anyone's got to a woman speaking her desire.»

«But I'm terrible at reading aloud.»

Severus smiled slowly.

«Ve haf vays of making you - expressif.»

Quite what he meant wasn't revealed until Sunday morning. Hermione awoke, typically, with a question.

«Severus?»

«Mmm?»

«What kind was it?»

«What kind was what?»

«Your snake. Was it a general form of a snake - or a specific type of snake?»

Severus thought for a moment.

«That one was meant to be an asp.»

Hermione thought for a moment.

«Can you do any others?»

Their eyes met.

«What others do you - want?»

Hermione frowned.

«I don't know much about serpents.»

There was a remedy for that. Severus extracted An Encyclopædia of Snakes from the bedspread for Hermione's perusal (/arousal) and, being Hermione, she made him work right through it, starting with the hooded cobra. She'd said nothing, but on seeing the picture pointed, and before long, panted - for Severus obliged at once. Sophisticated he might be, but he understood the need for instant gratification.

The summer was long, their blood was high and Snape fucked Hermione with all manner of serpents from A to Z.

They didn't let up for weeks.

It was an irony, he said, that this most elegant of Slytherin techniques found out her core of rough Gryffindor grit. He'd meant it quite literally when he said there were ways of making Hermione expressive - of enabling her to speak her desire. He applied the spell some two hours after the experiment with the cobra-and-its-expandable-hood, sliding his wand (actual wand, not any metaphorical equivalent) up her vagina and muttering the complex instructions to her clitoris.

The red light flared between Hermione's legs. Her cunt sprang into a life of its own -- and began to speak.

That was putting it politely. Speech was not exactly the first phase of its development. It growled and howled, and was quieted into contented gurgling only by hearty helpings of snake. It wasn't as if it had to worry about its hymen. The cunt's appetite grew, but its palate did not refine. It was as if animating it, dragging it into language, had enlarged its needs rather than just expressed what was already there.

The spell was hard-coded - only the caster could undo it. Severus was good enough to lift it when Hermione went out, but wickedly arranged matters so that her re-entry into the flat after work always re-activated it - which meant she'd dash to the concrete column (the bedroom being, like, too far away) and backing against its sleek, chill support, hurriedly scrape skirt up and knickers down. Perpendicular writhing up, up the pillar polished it dark with her sweat. (Disparity in their heights no longer mattered - oh fabulous flexibility.) Whilst trying to discuss the intricate implications of her day's studies with her head, Hermione's lower mouth (as she'd come to think of it) smacked its lips and opened wide, her clitoris the tongue that rarely stopped tingling. Speech, when it developed, never evolved as far as syntax.

«Cunt - cobra - now.»

Severus said he always knew she was an imperious little madam. Hermione denied this but -

«Gimme Fuck-snake (urh urh)! Snake-fuck now.»

Its vocabulary was colourful but limited - interested in only one thing (albeit with variations). Imperative case aside, the lower gob never bothered with grammar, and most damningly, its one concession to linguistic effort was that execrable taste for alliteration.

«Baby boa, ah ah,» it breathed. «Hump hhard. Bonk bhaby boahh.»

By the end of July, Cunt had been well serviced with the assiduous attentions of an asp, the grinding of overlarge grass-snakes and the vigorous thrusts of a viper. Severus did draw the line at rutting with rattlesnake, on the entirely reasonable grounds that he could hardly keep it up if he felt his whole member was about to shake off. (It would have been different if the rattlesnake's distinguishing feature had been on its head, not its tail.)

True to the original intention of the Gift, Severus always delayed his own pleasure, or even dispensed with it. He enjoyed Hermione's raw craving for him, as if it created solid ground for all their dreams.

She, on the other hand, began to feel uneasy.

'Began' is an exaggeration. For at least a month, it was exhilarating. Self-possession had claimed Hermione in her cradle; the discovery of something so unlikely, so other in herself was liberating. This foreign land she entered was not a hostile one - to her relief, the cunt never asked to be hurt, never locked the serpent in that second great cliché of Slytherin sexuality, sadism. It was, as Severus put it, a thoroughly wholesome cunt. They couldn't help laughing at it - and it was the first time in her life that she'd really been able to laugh at herself, and feel safe doing so.

Something shifted. The addictive pleasures became, literally, urgent.

Cunt clearly had access to some unconscious pornography in her brain, but it seemed to bypass her heart. When she was away from the flat, in the library, tenderness - feelings - returned; but each rude awakening of her cunt shouted them down. She wondered if she – it - had much more of a vocal range than the deep 'urh urh urh' and the high-pitched 'ah ah ah' (which of these predominated being determined by Severus's choice of angle, direction and movement.) The voracious gob was not speaking her desire so much as (in the common phrase) just gagging for it. This other voice was alien and familiar, an unmanageable yet indolent child.

What more could a girl want than high-precision fucking on tap?

She felt soulless. She experienced herself in pieces and indeed, the regular gratifications grew mechanical with repetition. If you had looked through their enchanted ceiling one sweltering August afternoon (Hermione's contribution to couplish décor was less sublime than its Hogwarts counterpart - Clerkenwell's pigeons, to Snape's amusement and her dismay, turned the glassy plane into a post-modern Pollock of birdshit) you would have seen the following:

Hermione: horizontal on Perriand, head back, upper tongue hanging out, grunts emitted in metronome time; well-apart knees (98 degrees), feet pressing chrome, lower tongue peeking, proffered cunt strong on suction, filling up. Snape: eyes half-closed, lazing back on his heels, loins extending, arse a-quiver, pumping her and pumping her with firm, plump python-lengths to coloratura climax.

(Urh. Urh. Urhh. Urhh hhruh hrhhua hrhhah hhah ah ah-ah-ah Ahh AHHH etc.)

Satisfaction. Gods the Sssatisssfaction; but it would not do.

Hermione asked Severus to remove the 'expression' spell permanently.

«I thought you liked it.»

He was alarmed to see her eyes liquid-bright before she curled away from him.

«I do -- but it's not me. Not all of me,» she corrected.

'Or you,' she thought - for she had caught the faintest trace of a sneer (shading in from his well-earned smirk) as he witnessed the climax of an especially fuck-filled day.

The next night, she turned to him.

«Which shall it be?» he whispered, about to enumerate ever more exotic sub-species of serpent.

«You,» she said. «Just you.»

She set about rediscovering him, and with exquisite subtlety, manipulated his every millimetre into letting go.

The thing about a gift, Hermione explained, is that it was not for every day.

(Not that she didn't plan to read the Discours's chapter 2 some time soon.)

«The experience proves,» said Severus, «that openness and honesty aren't always the best thing.»

Hermione whistled slowly.

«So that was my penance for letting everyone hear your letter.»

«It was.»

«I wondered why you weren't the least angry! You planned this.»

«I did.»

«Cunning bastard.»

«There are colder revenges.»

«Perhaps.»

«And worse penances.»

«Maybe.»

She sat up, self-possessed.

«Why didn't you just say?»

«I couldn't bear to get angry with you.»

Silence.

«Besides, you would have defended yourself admirably, given me rational justifications about ends and means I couldn't deny. That wouldn't have absorbed my - resentment.»

«But screwing my brains out did?»

«The sound of you coming - basic, absolute pleasure - did.»

She said nothing.

«You could call it transfiguring a grudge to the best possible effect.»

Hermione relented.

«Here endeth the lesson.»

«Experience is the best teacher.»

«You got perfect marks.»

«What do I do for a well-planned reward?»

«Forgive me, if you can.»

That wasn't too difficult. He looked desperate to please her.

Severus cast a cooling charm so that he could hold her all night. He lay marvelling at his own happiness. The ring glowed in the dark - proof that he was loved and had a soul - casting its clear light on their skin. He was awake, eyes feasting on it, long after Hermione had fallen asleep.

Reviews please! Hem hem -- one does not post such things lightly. Blushes and runs to hide under -