Becoming Familiar with a Man of Misery

Chapter 1 ~ Total Rejection

“Miss Granger, I do not believe you. Even if I did, I would not want you. Now, leave me before you force me to do something you’ll regret,” Professor Snape snarled at the witch seated in front of his desk.

“But Professor, you don’t have to be alone,” the chestnut-haired witch said to him, not rising, “that’s all I want you to know. I admire and respect you so much…and…well, I can’t help what I feel.”

This was too much.

Severus rose from behind his desk, walked up to the seated witch and grasped her by the chin so hard his fingers dug into her flesh. He lifted her from the chair painfully by her face.

“Listen you idiot woman. I don’t care how you feel about me. I am a wizard that has NO interest in in any relationship with witches. They are not to be trusted, no matter how innocent the package they come wrapped in. Eventually the ribbon drops off and the ugly truth pours out. I have enough pain to deal with, Miss Granger. You will not come to me with your youth and innocence, dangling your virginity in front of me like a lure, offering love and sex to add my misery.”

He still held her chin tight in his fingers, his black eyes flashing at her in derision.

“Plus, you were my student. How did you ever think I would be interested in a relationship with a former student? Miss Granger, your know-it-allness has failed you in this instance. You have no idea of the kind of man I am if you think that offering yourself to me like a living martyr would make me happy, or better my condition. I am not, nor have I ever been attracted to you, though I’ve been aware of your obsession for me since your seventh year for quite a while. And I’ve noticed you at Headquarters watching me with those big amber eyes, trying to draw me into conversation…trying to arrange ‘alone time’ with me in the library by pretending to be looking for books. You are stalking me, Miss Granger, invading my space and my privacy. Other wizards might be drawn to your charms, but you hold no charm for me.”

He stared into her wide amber eyes. They were confused and frightened. This seemed to infuriate the dark wizard even more. He snarled at her, almost ravening at her like a beast in pain.

“Get out of my classroom, Miss Granger! Get out now!” he gasped, throwing her backwards, making the witch stumble and almost fall.

Hermione stumbled back, stunned at the rage in the Potions Master’s black eyes as he stalked toward her menacingly as if ready to beat her within an inch of her life. The witch had thought honest confession would be the answer. It had taken her months to get up the courage to approach him. She believed telling the Professor how she truly felt would move him to accept her. She thought…she thought he would not be able to resist her gift. Wasn’t a sexual relationship with a young, pretty witch what all men wanted? That was what she had been led to believe. Obviously the Professor wasn’t all men.

“I’m…I’m sorry Professor. I just thought…” she began as she backed toward the door, the wizard still advancing on her.

“You just thought I’d fuck you and be grateful,” he seethed, “Unlike most wizards Miss Granger, bedding women who’ve barely reached maturity is not my goal in life…and bedding you has never crossed my mind…your willingness doesn’t change that at all. I have enough trial in my life, I don’t need you to add to it. Now go! Before I hex you!”

He pulled out his wand and pointed it at her.

Hermione turned and bolted out the classroom door, leaving it wide open in her haste. The Professor slammed it shut behind her, panting heavily. He had been close to actually hexing the witch. He replaced his wand in his robes pocket, stalked back to his desk and sat down, rubbing his hand over his face as he tried to calm himself. When he heard Hermione was coming back to Hogwarts for a year to earn credit as a rotating teacher’s assistant for her Liberal Magical Arts degree, he knew it would mean trouble for him. The witch wouldn’t leave him alone as it was.

Now she comes to his classroom declaring she loved him? That was preposterous. What did the girl, yes the ‘girl’ despite her being twenty years old, know about love? Being willing to let a man twice her age stick his cock in her because she thought him some kind of hero and in need of female companionship was not love. It was ignorance. It was stupidity. And saving herself for him? Whatever for? The witch was out of her mind if she thought that he would fall on her just because she hadn’t been touched yet, though he had suspected either Ron or Harry or maybe both had popped her cherry years ago.

Severus had sworn off women and relationships long ago after he began his second service to the Dark Lord, and had an affair with a woman who was leading him on and was in fact quite promiscuous. She had seemed sweet, innocent and worthy of his love. Actually, Hermione reminded him of her somewhat. He caught the witch fucking not one, but two men in the bed they had shared. One of the men was Lucius Malfoy, the most twisted sexual deviant he knew. The other was Theodore Knotts. The wizards had her in a truly compromising position, both cocks shoved firmly in her pussy and ass. She hadn’t let the Potions Master anywhere near her ass.

The Professor couldn’t kill the pair, since they were fellow deatheaters. So he joined them, and together they brutalized his love mercilessly. She survived the encounter, but his heart was a complete casualty as he walked away from her sobbing, battered and bruised body. Yes, his heart died that night, though it didn’t cease to beat. From that day forward, women were all but dead to him, the exception being the prostitutes in Knockturn alley who were, in his opinion, the most honest women on earth. They admitted they were whores who would fuck anybody. They didn’t pretend to love him, and he didn’t need to be loved beyond getting his cock sucked on occasion.

Now here this silly chit comes, offering herself, thinking she could end his bitterness and give his life meaning. It already had meaning. He was a spy whose job was to be tortured and beaten for the sake of a thankless wizarding world. He would probably die for it in the end, and his death be celebrated by those who didn’t know his role in the war against Voldemort. Hermione had no idea how deep his bitterness ran, how deeply rooted it was in the bedrock of his soul, and how those roots branched out into every aspect of his life, filling him with a cold dislike of those who had the balm of blissful ignorance to sustain them, who didn’t know just how ugly and twisted the world really was. Those idealistic bubbleheads like Hermione Granger who believed a few kisses and a night of sex could cure the ills of a wizard who had absorbed the world’s sickness into his very bones.

Albus tried to convince him of the same thing.

“For gods sake, Severus, go get laid!” the Headmaster had exclaimed to him in a fit of exasperation at the Potions Master’s crabby attitude. “Find some sweet, young thing to bring you a little joy, and balance out the evil you live with day to day. There are quite a few witches that find your darkness attractive.”

The Professor scowled. He wouldn’t be surprised if the old coot had encouraged Hermione to come to him, thinking he would find the brilliant girl irresistible, thinking his dark side would come out and he would take what she offered if only to find release. Hermione Granger was considered quite a prize, and the male members of the Order could often be heard discussing her in hushed tones. They cared little about the witch’s brain, the curmudgeons. It was her physical attributes that got their brooms running. But his own broom remained grounded when it came to the witch. Her beauty didn’t move him at all. There was no real beauty in the world.

Severus knew beauty was only a mask nature granted women to attract men, like the colors of the Venus Flytrap attracted hapless insects to be trapped in its jaws. It was no coincidence that the treacherous carnivorous plant was named for the Goddess of Love.

Beauty had nothing to do what was inside. Women could not be trusted. They weakened men physically, mentally and emotionally. He had seen the strongest men reduced to sniveling, simpering shells of themselves behind loving women. He had also seen a trusted deatheater betrayed and put to death on the word of a female deatheater, who, seeking to move up in the ranks, revealed pillow talk they shared after sex in which the doomed deatheater stated he was unsure if Voldemort’s plans for the wizarding world was in their best interest. He died horribly.

And the bitches in service to the Dark Lord wondered why he never indulged them. His life might not be much, but he still clung to it. There was already enough treachery in his life between Dumbledore and Voldemort. He needed no female to add to an already heavy load of problems. If Hermione Granger knew what was good for her, she would leave him alone completely. Now that he knew her agenda for certain, his tolerance level for the witch had dropped to zero. She’d be wise to stay out of his way. Just as everyone else did. Let him live his life of misery in peace.

The Potions Master returned to marking his students’ parchments, his head lowered, his lank black hair falling forward, and a scowl plastered on his angular pale face.

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Hermione Granger returned to her rooms, located just down the dungeon hallway below the Potions Master’s private quarters. Her rooms were smaller, just a sitting area, a bedroom and a bathroom. She had no library and a regular tub and shower. Hermione was an intern, so she had none of the perks of a full staff member.

Hermione was so embarrassed and hurt by the Potions Master’s reaction to her feelings toward him, her entire body was flushed red. She entered her rooms and sat down in the armchair, curling her legs under her, thinking about what had just transpired between herself and Professor Snape.

He was so full of anger and bitterness. Hermione could see it in his eyes as he walked toward her…and it wasn’t as if he were seeing her as who she was, but what she represented to him as a woman. Betrayal, dishonesty, empty temptation. But she was none of those things. She was loyal, honest and would never offer anything she had no intention of following through on. If was as if the Professor couldn’t see her because he was looking at her through the color of his personal pain. And it painted her as ugly as the rest of his world.

Hermione sighed, and her eyes became a bit wet. It wasn’t because the Potions Master had rejected her so harshly, but because she felt no one should have to live a life like he lived…one that was so hurtful and hateful that it made him turn away anything that hinted of good.

The Professor was such a courageous, selfless man…yes he was dark, sarcastic, cruel and cold, but there had to be something else, something that could be connected to, something that could bring him closer to the light. He was so immersed in darkness. His work as a spy, his life in the dungeons, his role as a deatheater, all took him out of the light. He was like a pale, dark sun, radiating a black light of his own over those who came in contact with him, dulling their light, their happiness. No wonder people drew away from him, fled his presence…he sucked joy out of others like a vampire sucked blood.

He had shunned her. Ran her out of his presence with a cold, hard bitterness that she felt shoot straight to her heart. Hermione ached for the wizard, and it wasn’t all desire. Mostly, it was empathy for his aloneness, for his unwillingness to even try to find a bit of happiness for himself. He lived as if he were dead. Sequestered beneath the earth in his dungeons, pale as a corpse, radiating no warmth, no spirit, simply existing. Yes, he interacted with his students, a forced interaction that consisted of teaching, browbeating, punishing and dressing down. He seemed to find a perverse joy in taking points and assigning detentions, taking his students out of the carefree cycle of youth and curtailing them with his bitterness under the guise of authority.

Hermione dabbed at her eyes with the corner of her robes sleeve. Surely there was something she could do to make his life less dark, even if he refused her. Albus had been right. He had told her he doubted the Professor would return her feelings, or give her a chance to show him how she felt about him. The dark wizard found comfort in his misery. It was his pain and his balm. It was as if bitterness was the only thing that sustained him. It was familiar. It was the guiding force of his dark, lonely life. He wanted nothing to disrupt it.

Hermione sat in the armchair deep in thought. There had to be some way to open him up. The key was to give him an interest in something other than his own miserable state of affairs. Her eyebrows rose.

Familiar. His bitterness was familiar.

She had an idea. Tomorrow she would head out to Diagon Alley. Once there, she would find the perfect gift for the snarky, cold Professor. Something that might open a crack in his stony exterior.

If she could make a crack, maybe she could slip inside too.

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A/N: Well, here I go again. And this time I really have no idea how Hermione is going to bring Severus around. I started this story with him rejecting the witch in no uncertain terms. He is not even considering indulging himself with her. But she is determined. Well, we’ll see how this goes. Please review.

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The Burning Pen

Becoming Familiar with a Man of Misery
by Ruth Solomon

The story content is adult in nature and can contain graphic sex and violence. Those under the age of 18 are asked to leave this site immediately. You are not welcome here. The author is not responsible for those under-aged who view these works.

CHAPTER 2

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters belong to JKR. All situations are mine. No $$$ is being made from this fanfic.
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