AFTER THE FIRE
Author's Note: This story takes place after the events of 7th year in my Harry Potter AU. So, if you haven't fully read Harry Potter and the Naked Lunch for Two, and you intend to, there will be spoilers.
Chapter One: She's So Cold
Merlin School, Cambridge, England, 2000
I: Granger
With an absent look on her face, buttoned into her Master Magus of the Third Degree in the Arts frock coat, her old Gryffindor scarf wound around her neck, Hermione Granger made her way quickly through the hallways of the Merlin School, en-route to her room.
She paused only to brace herself against the wall, and cough, quite unhealthily, spitting something nasty into a disreputable wad of tattered Kleenexes, which she jammed back into her pocket.
The room which Hermione had occupied since she began classes five years before was utterly abysmal.
It was tiny, damp, sparse and cheerless.
Not to mention, grey, mouldy, dismal and smelly.
The bed was too small, and it was uncomfortable.
The hearth was too small, so that even with a fire blazing you were too cold in the damp winters, and the windows were so tiny that you sweltered through hot weather.
The chair at the table was uncomfortable, there was never enough light, and in the bathroom there was no tub, only a tiny closet of a shower stall.
The room was damp and cold in winter and fall, and hot and humid in spring and summer, and it wasn't so much that Hermione's hatred of it had faded with the years, she just got used to it.
In her first 2 and a half years at the Merlin School, Hermione completed her degree in DADA, and now, in the dead of winter, she was one semester away from completing her education as a Potions Mistress.
She already had a position lined up at Hogwarts, apprentice to Snape.
Snape.
It had been awhile since she had seen him, but mot since she had thought about him.
She thought about him every night, and he had a tendency to haunt her dreams, but in the best possible way.
Actually, it had been awhile since she had seen anybody, she just somehow couldn't get the time.
She hadn't been home to see her parents in four months, and she hadn't seen Ron for six. Ginny attended the Merlin School with her, but for the past two years they had few classes together and she only saw Ginny maybe once a week, and on occasion Harry was with her.
Not like Hermione went places with them.
She'd seen them for a hurried lunch, absently, gobbling down whatever, nodding absently at her friends' words, her mind already on her next class.
Commonly, her only company was Crookshanks, and the Granger family house-elf, Winky, who did her best to make Hermione's Spartan life of studying, working, despairing, cursing existence, studying, bitterness, working, anxiety, and more studying liveable.
Hermione shuddered in the cold dampness, and decided she had better owl Snape, just so he knew she was still alive.
Snape,
Thanks for the apprenticeship. Been working very hard for so long, looking forward
to graduation and returning to Hogwarts. Have another horrible cold, the latest in a succession of horrible colds since the end of September. Scourgify yourself after you read this. Bloody damp, here. Probably chronic sinusitis or bronchitis brought on by this awful place. So glad to be returning to Hogwarts.
Granger.
She started thinking about the last time she and Sev had been together.
They were at his house, in West Derby, and he was in a foul mood, because Liverpool had lost to Glasgow in Quidditch.
She hadn't cared, because the only thing she had to really look forward to, slaving away at the Merlin School, and living in her horrid little dorm room was coming home for weekends, and spending Friday and Saturday nights with him.
She never had him over to her dorm room; it would be too distracting.
It was wintertime, and the house was old and it was a little chilly in the bedroom, so Sev had the hearth going, and after they had made love, they were sitting up in bed, eating Mallowmars, and he was complaining about how being a war hero had only brought him closer to the world full of naff punters, morons, idiots, fucking morons and idiots, and other people he never wanted to meet.
Hermione complained about how much work she had to do, and how awful her rooms were, and how she sometimes wished she had gone to Merseyside Magical with Harry and Ron, and how even though she and Ginny went to the same school, they hardly ever saw each other.
That was it; they had fallen asleep, and Hermione went to her parents' house in Woolton on Sunday, and then back to the Merlin School on Monday morning.
But she had been home, in Liverpool, and warm, and happy, and with Snape, manky old Scouser git that he was.
Now, it seemed like she'd been in heaven.
She couldn't get home for a month, she had so much work to do, and then she wanted to get a jump on the next projects that were due, and before she knew it, six months had gone by, and she was offered a summer position to travel to the Himalayas with one of her professors, and then it was back to school.
This last year of college, gods, she worked like a demon.
The only person she saw with any regularity was a surly, unpopular brute of a wizard who was in all of her classes.
Roger was older than her by about ten years, he was a Slytherin and a reformed Death Eater, a wiry, tall, thin, sandy-haired Cockney from East London.
He was a bit of a drunk, and he had been to Azkaban, where he had collected a number of freakish jailhouse tattoos, but he was sharp, and had a very sick sense of humour, and he wasn't the sloshy type or the marrying kind.
Living just down the hall, Roger was both expedient and convenient, as an occasionally study partner or for the odd shag, and as long as his perennial drunkenness and his Jack-the-Lad personality didn't bother her, Hermione's Everlasting-Know-It-All bit and her constant sneezing, coughing, and honking didn't bother him.
Thinking about it, Hermione realised just how depressing, squalid and horrid her life had become, and she decided that the end of her days at the Merlin School couldn't come too soon.
West Darby, Liverpool, Home of Severus Snape, 2000
II: Snape
Snape hadn't expected to hear from Hermione while she was in Tibet, but when he didn't hear from her for another three months, he became puzzled.
When he heard that she had been running around with Roger Davies, one of his Slytherins, at the Merlin School, he was furious.
They had agreed to have an open relationship, but not to have any secret partners.
Well, if that was the way Granger wanted it, let her have the Cockney lout.
Then, after the passing of another three months, he got a weighty owl from Hermione, formally requesting that he accept her as his apprentice, both in Potions and DADA.
At the end of the voluminous parchment was a hastily scribbled personal note.
Snape,
Sorry we haven't spoken lately. Very busy. Been sick for a long time. Still best to scourgify your hands after touching this. Haven't even seen parents. Tell Mum and Da I'm still alive. Harry and Ginny, too. Have her talk to Ron. So miserable and sick and tired. Missing everybody. You especially.
Granger
Coming from Granger, that was a cross between a tender love letter and a cry for help.
Upon returning home from Hogwarts that night, Snape went to Woolton, and found that John and Olive Granger were beside themselves with worry.
Snape promised them he'd do something, but he wasn't sure what that was, yet.
Hermione hadn't been behaving a bit oddly since she started college.
For example, after his 7th year at Hogwarts, Harry immediately moved in with Snape at the latter's new house on the same block as the Snape-Prince house in West Darby.
He had become a born-again Scouser, enrolled in Merseyside Magical, and was determined to make up for as much lost time as he could with his father.
Even though Ginny was at the Merlin School, she decided she didn't like their rules about underclass students living in austerity, so she often apparated to Snape's, and spent her evenings and nights with Harry.
If anybody didn't like it, they sure as hell weren't going to remonstrate with the Killer Quuen over it.
Hermione, always by the book, came around on Fridays and Saturdays and went home to her parents on Sundays.
Then, she quit showing up at all.
Snape decided to talk to his son's girl and his former lieutenant Ginny Weasley, one night over dinner.
He discovered them snickering over some romance novel that some dizzy witch had written about him.
Harry was reading aloud.
"…Snape was a supernaturally handsome man, with fine, pale skin, and lustrous black hair. His lips were full, in the shape of a Cupid's bow, but stern and manly underneath the straight nose that lorded over them. He was tall, and well-formed, with long, smooth limbs and a smooth, white chest, a handsome man, delicate, yet somehow strong..."
At the entrance into the room of actual Snape, a fairly hairy, raw-boned, heavily- tattooed bruiser of a Scouser, scowling down his great beaklike neb with shark-black eyes, some stubble on his pointy-chinned long jaw, they both began to laugh.
Scowling even more mightily, Snape drew his wand and zapped the book into ashes.
"Miss Weasley, if you really want to know what it's like to have me, I'll oblige you. And you, you little bastard, I'll stupefy you and make you watch!" Snape snapped.
"Oooo, there's a kick I ain't tried." Ginny joked.
Harry looked somewhat dismayed.
"Don't give me that look, Potter. What you have, you got from me, didn't you? Now, Weasley, let's discuss the fucking elephant in the living room we've been throwing a doily over. Tell me about Granger."
"I thought you were off her, Snape." Ginny replied.
"Oh, Da's never off our Hermione for long." Harry quipped.
"Well, it would do her good, wouldn't it? Maybe that's' what she needs to get her mind working again, a good hard shag, and don't spare the 'orses. You'll need to set her right, somehow, Snape, because I've tried and Harry has, and she just owls Ron. Because she's gone potty. Maybe the war's catching up to her at last, or maybe the mould and the damp have seeped into her brains this past year, because she's right round the twist. I mean it. She's never bothered to do any of the magical alterations to her room that students were permitted after their austere first year; she probably doesn't even know that they're possible. Worse for her, the rooms are made so that they get nastier and nastier as time goes on, to remind you that you can change' em. That fuckin' 'ole she moulders in must be a nightmare by now. But, at any rate, that wouldn't help Hermione. She lives in that fucking lab and in the library. That little shit'ole of a room she occasionally crouches in, like some damned thing, in a dismal, damp, dreary prison is just the place she goes for the odd hour or three of sleep every night before she wakes up, beats herself about the head wif a hammer, or somethin', and lashes herself to the ship's wheel, again."
"What about Roger Davies?" Snape asked.
Harry looked shocked.
"Roger Davies? You mean Rog the Dodger? That sad bastard, he used to live at the Horntail's Nest. He became a Death Eater on a drunken whim and spent the whole war glued to a barstool. Or shagging some or the other disreputable bints and laughing about how he didn't remember it happening and even Voldemort didn't want him. Loved to fight. A real Jack-the-Lad type. Every once in awahile, he'd take a side-trip to Azkaban for some petty crime, but when he was out, he was back on his barstool. We called him Rog the Dodger because he managed to always duck out of everything. How did he get into the Merlin School?" Harry asked.
"Probably that Death Eater rehabilitation thing. Rog was never dumb, just drunk and irresponsible. I wouldn't worry about him, Snape. He's just Hermione's room-temperature dildo. I mean, even in the state she's in, she still fancies her chances, sometimes. And Rog's room is close by hers, they're in most of the same classes, and he's just a convenience for when she needs a shag or a moment of human companionship. It's really pathetic, you know. She hardy even speaks to me. I see her running up and down the stairs, gearing up for her 19th Nervous Breakdown, and every time she looks a little tireder, and a littler thinner. Looks right through me, sometimes."
With that, Ginny continued to shovel her dinner into her mouth.
Snape and Harry both gave her incredulous looks.
"What?" Ginny asked
"What do you mean, what?" Harry insisted, furious.
"What Harry means, Weasley, is that it really should have occurred to you to, oh, let me think, fucking DO something about one of your best friends since you were Tom Riddle's little Lolita jailbait girlfriend degenerating into a state of mental and physical exhaustion! Have you got rocks in your head, Weasley? Or maybe you've taken a few too many Bludgers to it! Or perhaps having your tank topped off by no less than three wizards a week, which, I admit, is conservative for you, has addled your mind, completely!" Snape roared.
"What he said!" Harry found himself adding, even though he was one of the wizards in question.
Ginny just laughed.
"I'm not her keeper, am I? And you know Hermione. You can't talk to her once she's made up her mind. Well, you can, but good luck for any of the rest of us. She's a big girl, she's been through worse, she'll come through this, and there's not a fucking thing anyone can do about it, is there? And you lot haven't got much room to talk when it comes to virtue. Harry's fucked every witch of our age, and Snape, you've fucked all their Mums. And I dare say there's been some overlap. Not to mention I must add, at least I'm not some fucking junkie gutter drunk who goes to bed at night dreaming of his last drink and his last fix. Snape, I don't know if you yell out for Hell's Horntail and Purple Doom when you blow your load, but sometimes Harry does. Pass the potatoes, then." She replied.
Snape arched his eyebrow.
"It's a fair cop." He said, and resumed eating.
Harry passed Ginny the potatoes.
After dinner, Snape went down to his lab, which was constructed in a special concrete bunker he'd had installed through Wizarding methods and at great expense.
It helped him to work as he thought.
On one hand, it was only another month until the end of the fall semester, and Hermione's graduation. Snape knew that Hermione would never forgive him if he did anything that would result in her missing her matriculation.
On the other hand, she could be seriously ill.
The book that Snape had atomised was hardly the only piece of Snapean fiction that Harry and Ginny had amassed, and as soon as they heard his footfalls on the stairs approaching breakfast, Ginny began to read from a book that had quite a different tone.
"…Lorelei was very aware of the fact that Snape was an ugly man, ugly and ruthless, but there was something in the Potions' Master's smooth cold-bloodedness that was compelling and manly. She had never been with a grown man, before, only boys, and in such close proximity to the old sinner as he loosed the front of his robe, showing a broad but thin chest marred with black hair and scars, even his brusquely spoken suggestion that she lift her skirt was oddly arousing. Lorelei hadn't moved fast enough for him, so he pushed her skirt over her thighs with a large, sure, long-fingered hand, which he then dipped down the front of her panties. The old sinner knew just where to press and insinuate his callused fingertips, and Lorelei gasped, for which she was rewarded by an evil, lusty smile…"
"Well, that's slightly less insulting." Snape quipped.
Ginny looked up from the book, and she and Harry couldn't help but notice that he wasn't just dressed in his teaching robes, but in his scariest possible set of teaching robes, the formal ones that stopped at the elbow and dipped in the front to show his Master Magus tattoos, and otherwise swooped and hung in such a way that they made him look like a bat or a demon, a Dark Wizard of ill-repute that you'd have to be mad to run afoul of.
Almost instinctively, they quieted down, and looked into their cereal bowls as if points were about to be taken from Gryffindor.
"You look as though you're about to call me Professor. Good. Because I am going to the Merlin School today. To sort Granger out." Snape said curtly.
He didn't have to add that he was going to sort Rog the Dodger out, too, that went without saying.
Merlin School, Cambridge, England, 2000
III: Hermione
Hermione woke up in the morning with her eyes glued together by a headache so crushing it felt like there was a troll jumping up and down inside her sinus cavities, yanking on the tendons behind her eyes.
She was cold, and miserable, and shuffled as stiffly across her room to the sink and toilet in the closet of a bathroom as if she was a hundred and had arthritis in every joint.
Another half hour or so of coughing, blowing her nose, and sneezing went past, and then she shuffled back out to get dressed.
Hermione made her way to her morning lab, only to discover it was cancelled.
She would have stayed in the lab, anything to not have to go back to her room, but it was locked.
The other students passed by Hermione, chattering.
Their words made no sense to her; they looked like wraiths, even the slimy stone walls of the forbidding old castle were beginning to look unreal.
Everything seemed remote, unreal, nonexistent.
Shuffling aimlessly down the hall, Hermione felt warmth around her feet, and saw the cheeriest shaft of light she'd seen in months coming out from under the door she was passing.
She looked up at the writing in the door.
"Druids of the Vows Unbreakable, Hogsmeade Chapter, Students and Veterans Ministry."
Underneath it, a smaller sign.
"No appointment necessary. No witch or wizard refused. We are always here to help."
Hermione opened the door.
The office was very large, and very cheerful.
There were banners from all four houses of Hogwarts and one for the Order of the Phoenix hanging behind the charming old desk, and there was a great hearth with a roaring fire, and a very large window, with ornate purple velvet curtains.
The wizard behind the desk, whose face looked familiar, but Hermione couldn't remember the former Death Eater's name, looked up at her with a happy smile on his face, which turned to a look of concern.
"Erm, I'm Hermione Granger. And I need all the help I can get."
"The Hermione Granger? Please, sit down. I'll get the Druid."
It was hard to believe that the tall, distinguished-looking wizard with the neat goatee and benevolent face, in his purple Druid's robes had once been the evil Lord Voldemort.
"I never thought I'd be glad to see you." Hermione quipped.
"By the Gods, Miss Granger, you look terrible! Brother Demetrius, get me an Emergency kit. And make a bed ready."
"Yes, Druid."
The "emergency kit" turned out to be a rather fluffy blanket, a cup of hot chocolate, and a bowl of chicken soup.
"There's some vitamin potions in the soup, and a draught of Prince's Rejuvenating Tonic. Now, if you don't mind, Miss Granger, after you eat, right behind that curtain, you can have a good sleep in a nice warm bed, in a little room of your own. I think you should stay there for the rest of the day."
Hermione was slurping up the soup; it tasted really good.
"Am I that sick?"
"You don't look well. I think you just need a little rest."
Hermione yawned, the soup had made her sleepy.
"I could use a little rest." She agreed.
Druid Thomas ushered her towards the curtain.
"We'll send your house elf along, soon."
"Okay." Hermione just agreed.
It was a nice warm bed, and a bright, cheery room, and Hermione wasn't even coherent enough to discern the magic that created the little rooms beyond the curtains, she just curled right up and went to sleep.
Later, when she woke up to go to her afternoon classes, she was feeling a little better, but it only made it all the worse when she had to return to her miserable hole in the evening, after she was done studying.
Had she the emotional and physical strength to do so, Hermione would have cried, but seeing as how she didn't, she just got undressed for bed.
It was early, yet, only 8, but Hermione didn't care.
Time sleeping was time dreaming, time away from this place.
Then she put on the heavy thermal nightshirt she had bought several of for winters in this frozen-over hellhole, and crawled into her uncomfortable bed, shivering under her inadequate blanket, the damp from the slimy walls crawling into bed with her, in spite of the sad little fire that burned, dimly, in the crumbling hearth.
Hermione coughed, and swore under her breath until she fell into an exhausted sleep.
IV: Snape
Around the time that Hermione was falling into a shallow and fitful sleep, grown men and women in their twenties were sitting straighter in their chairs, diving out of the hallways into whatever room was open, or simply standing stiffly and unmanned, frozen with terror, like frightened children.
Because the malign spectre that had haunted their dreams since they were children at Hogwarts had returned, big as life and twice as nasty, looking more malign than ever.
Indeed, Snape looked quite like there might be blood and mayhem on his mind as he stalked briskly through the halls of one of the Merlin School's dormitory wings, his robes billowing dramatically behind him.
Most of the faces looked familiar, and he remembered all the names, but he didn't want to accost any idiot who might get scared enough to faint if he spoke to them.
As he ascended a winding stone staircase leading up to a large tower, Draco Malfoy fell into step behind him.
"She's up there, you know. Granger, I mean. You don't want to go in there, Uncle. I mean it. She's gone right out of her mind."
"She's been out of her mind for years, Draco. Where's Davies? Roger Davies?"
"He's at that end of the hallway. Granger's at this end."
Draco's rooms were in the middle, and he ducked into them, locked his door, went into his bedroom, locked that door, and after insisting that Pansy do the same, he hid under the bed.
Just to be sure.
Rog Davies was drunk again, so drunk that only something like the ancient oak door of his room splintering off it's iron hinges like balsa wood and crashing to the ground could have awakened him.
Many faces looked out from cracks in doors and windowsills and dark corners where they had taken refuge as Severus Snape strode over the door he had just obliterated, and dragged Rog the Dodger from his bed.
On first thoughts, he slammed the son of a bitch of a Southerner against the wall, and on second thoughts, picked him up by the front of his shirt and hoisted him into the air.
"I'm sorry, Professor Snape."
"Davies, you 'aven't begun to learn the meaning of the word! But you will."
Dark thoughts crowded Snape's mind.
Spells.
Hexes.
Potions.
Or, the sheer animal joy of leisurely beating Davies about the room until his blood and teeth were all over the walls, and he was reduced to a screaming, crying, tootlhless bloody pulp with several broken bones and some ruptured internal organs.
But, war hero or no, that would cost him his job and land him in Azkaban, so he contented himself to shake Davies until his teeth champed together, slap him around a touch, and then jack him up against the wall, again, one arm across the Cockney lout's throat.
"D'you know why I've come so close to splattering you all over this room?" Snape asked, almost conversationally.
"Because I shagged your bird?"
"No, you moron! Because I got your lazy Southern arse out of the gutter, tried to shove you into WAND, and wrote you a recommendation for this school, and you couldn't even stay sober enough to do what I asked you, and let me know if Granger was in trouble! You berk! You can consider yourself out of my service, and I hope you've been feathering your nest with more than empty bottles of Hell's Horntail ant St. George's Dragon!"
Snape tossed Davies back onto his bed.
"So, I'm sacked, sir?" he asked.
Snape mustered up all the willpower he had not to commence the beating this berk deserved.
"Sacked? When your exams are over, Davies, you might want to take a trip. For your health. Next time I see your face, I'll beat you like I own you. Because I do."
He left his former student with that parting shot, and walked on down the hall.
Hermione's door was not locked, which surprised Snape, but, a more unpleasant surprise was the creaking of the great oak door as he opened it.
The very sound, accompanied by a damp chill and the overwhelming stink of mildew and rot was enough to put a chill on your soul.
The room had certainly done it's damndest to make Hermione uncomfortable enough to want to change it; Snape had occasion to visit the solitary cells at Azkaban, and they weren't as damp, dreary, dismal, and depressing.
The walls of the room were wet with a disgusting slime, and there was the constant sound of dripping. Every wooden surface in the room was half-rotten with the damp and mildew, and Snape, who had grown up in the most squalid of conditions on the Spinner's End estate clapped his hand over his mouth before he could cast a protective spell, and keep the noxious air out of his lungs.
Hermione had nothing, quite literally.
Her mouldy table, piled high with parchments, books and papers, a rotting armoire with some long, greyish, lumpy thermal nightshirts, her Magus coat, and some nasty collections of threadbare things that smelled like the room that passed for robes.
And a small, narrow bed that she had moved as close as possible to the crumbling hearth with it's wan, pathetic flame.
All he could see of her was a mass of brown curls; she was curled tightly into a ball under the damp, rough blanket, and the thin mattress sagged so that she was very nearly sleeping on the freezing stone floor.
He still wasn't angry with her; he imagined that would come later, after he had her sorted out.
Snape got out his wand.
"Alright, room, time to get your shit together, then."
IV: Hermione
When she woke up, Hermione thought she was still dreaming, because she was not freezing, and the first breath of air she took didn't gag her.
She opened her eyes and saw a large window, hung with green and black curtains, that showed her a crisp, cold, but sunny winter day.
The sun had all sorts of surprises for her.
The room had gotten bigger, much bigger; there was a new door in it, altogether, and some nice furniture.
A couch, and a chair, green, sitting on a black rug, and a new desk in the corner.
By the hearth, which was now large, well made and cheery, with a huge roaring fire, a table and chairs with a tea set on the table, and in a little corner nook, a pot bellied stove where she could make said tea, which was warming the other half of the room, nicely.
And the bed was now comfortably large, queen sized, with four posters, like the beds at Hogwarts, its bedcurtains Gryffindor gold and red.
On the side of the bed where she slept there was another rug, so that her feet wouldn't touch the stone floor, also in Gryffindor colours, and Crookshanks was asleep on it, purring contentedly.
Still half-asleep, Hermione yawned, luxiourously, and snuggled into her nice, new bed happily nestling herself against the familiar warmth of the man who snored beside her.
Then, her eyelids flew open like they were on springs, and she sat up, like a shot, holding the green and black blankets against her chest like the heroine of a Victorian melodrama.
"Snape!" she cried.
"Lie down, Granger. You're stealing all the fucking blankets."
"What are you doing here? What's happened to me room? Why am I naked? What the fuck is going on?"
She got no answer, so Hermione shook him until he sat up with her.
"You are naked because there was an entire fucking ecosystem of moulds and mildew living in everything in this place, including those filthy grey sacks you were using for nightshirts. I had to scourgify you three times just to get the smell of mildew out of your hair. The room only got in that state because it's been trying to get you to change it for the past two and a half years. I sorted that out for you, as well. That's what I'm doing here. Sorting you out. As for what the fuck is going on, why don't you tell me? I've no fuckin' idea, I'm sure, you haven't so much as owled me in a year."
Hermione frowned.
"Snape, you know how I hate to talk about things. Can't we just leave it out?"
Snape hated to talk about things, too.
They had let all sorts of things that most people would have killed each other over just slide by, because of it.
"Granger, don't think you can rub your tits on me and slide out of this one, nice as you please! I mean, a man my age, an ugly old bastard like me, he spends half his life in mourning, then he meets a bird he really gives a shit about, and she just ups and makes herself scarce for a whole year. Then, I come here an' find you've been polishing Rog Davies plonker for him, and that you're barely living in conditions that the law forbids us to keep condemned prisoners in Azkaban under. It's not something you can sweep under the bloody rug!" Snape snapped.
"Well I don't know what happened, do I? Why are you asking me? Rog wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but he was expedient, willing and didn't mind it being no strings. I never mentioned it to you because it was beneath notice. As for the rest, I'm fucked if I know how it's all happened! I'm pursuing two Masters at once, here, and the work just, well, it sucked me in, didn't it? I sort of went away , if you want to know the truth; and the work was all there was. Oh sure, I had enough presence of mind to be bitter, angry, anxious, and depressed, but I never thought about it. I never thought of anything but the work. I know it sounds odd, Snape, but it's true, I swear it is."
Snape sighed, resignedly.
"If it was anybody else, I'd think they were full of shit. But not you. I was your professor for seven years, and I've been the unfortunate fool in your bed since you were 16. I know how you drive yourself. And I know how important it is to you, to be the biggest, the brightest, and the best, don't I? Still, I imagine I'll fly into a few rages over it, with you, here and there, and I'm likely to take it out on you and be a complete arse'ole for the next six months, but, fuck it. These things, they happen, don't they? But, for fuck's sake Granger, next time you feel yourself going off the deep end, at least owl your parents, will you. Now, I don't want to talk about it anymore. I'm going back to sleep. I've been up for two nights over you."
"Me parents! Gods, they must be frantic? And what about Ginny and Harry? And Ron? They must be furious with me!"
"They're not. They think you've gone potty. Right round the fucking twist. They'll be happy you're sane, or, as sane as you get." Snape said to the pillow.
Hermione started shaking him again.
"Goddamnit, Granger if you fucking do that once more, I'll give you back your Bucky the Beaver teeth!"
"But I have to get up! I have to…"
"Granger, what you have to do is take a little break. Sleep in. Smell the roses. Eat something. You've lost too much weight, and you've got bags under your eyes. Everyone's been waiting on you a year, they can wait a little longer until you don't look so much like death on a biscuit."
"Do I look that bad?"
"Yes."
He rolled over, and Hermione planted her foot in the small of his back, and kicked Snape out of bed.
"Well, then, Mr. Universe, you'll be wanting to go sleep on the couch, won't you, you manky, ugly, greasy old git!" she shouted.
"That's you, Granger, innit it? First thing you want to do is fight? You don't thank me, you won't let me sleep, you take it for granted I'll make you my apprentice, you're not sorry for the piss poor way you've treated me, no, you want to fight! Well, you do look like death on a biscuit, don't you, because you've driven yourself into the ground! It's not my fault! And I would suggest you don't go kicking this ugly old git out of your bed, the way you've shaped up, there aren't going to be a great whopping load of wizards knocking down your door!" Snape shouted back.
Hermione got out of bed and looked in the green and black mirror on the back of the door to the new room.
She looked a little thin, for her, although not much, and her nose was a bit red, and her eyes were a little bloodshot and she had some dark circles, but death on a biscuit?
Not half!
"You fucking wanker, I just look like I've had flu for awhile, or something! You scared me, I thought I looked like death, or something!"
"Well, excuse me for being worried about you! Someone has to be, you're not!"
Snape got back in the bed, and pulled up the covers.
So did Hermione.
There was always one thing a good scrap with the old git put her in the mood for.
"C'mon, now, Sev, I'm sorry. You know I'm also the craziest witch in my year. You haven't really given me a chance to thank you, 'ave you, now?"
The golden thing about Severus Snape wasn't that he came barging into the school like an angry demon, or that he had probably frightened Rog Davies back into rehab, or even that he had spent the whole night sorting out her room for her.
The absolutely fucking golden thing was the way he rolled right over, grinning his crooked smile at her with his mouthful of gold pirate teeth, and hauled her close to his hairy, scarred, tattooed chest without a second thought about all the time that had gone by, and everything she'd done.
He didn't care a monkey's, he really didn't, not at all.
"Do you know how long it's going to be before I let you out of my sight, again, you crazy witch?"
"All morning?"
"At least."
"Wake up, Granger. Let's go. You have work to do. Then, you're going to your parents for dinner."
Hermione sat up, yawning.
Snape was dressed, and looking over her schedule.
"I see you have two more weeks of class. And then finals. Not looking forward to those, are you, then?"
Hermione got up, walked over to her new armoire, and began shrugging herself into some of her new robes.
"Bath, Granger. You smell like a ten-person orgy and you've got come in your hair. Now, about those finals. Albus and I have spoken to the Headmaster, here, and he thinks that you are far above and beyond any exams that your teachers could arrange for you, and that two weeks more of class isn't going to do much for you. So, I've arranged with him to supervise your finals at Hogwarts. You'll have four weeks to prepare instead of two. Of course, it's two weeks before Chrimble, and I'm not an ogre, so we'll do it after Christmas vacation."
"What?"
"I know how smart you really are, Granger. If you're going to be a Potions Mistress, and my apprentice, then you're going to have to earn it. Do you like this room?"
"Erm…yes?"
"Then move it all to the South Apprentice Tower at Hogwarts. Magically. I will be there in…twenty minutes. I'm sure you can sort it all out my then. At least I hope you can. Or I'll have to start deducting points from your final grade."
Hermione just stood there, staring at him.
"I said I was going to be a real bastard for six months, didn't I?" he asked, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
"I can pass any test you can think of with my hands tied behind my back! And, as for this lot, you and me and the whole fucking works are going to be there one bleedin' hell of a lot sooner than twenty minutes."
Hermione grabbed her wand from the table, and, waving her arms grandly, beagn to recite in Old Elvish.
She was suffused in purple light, and began to levitate into the air.
Snape was beside himself
"You daft sod, not the bloody Elvish Transmigration spell!" Snape shouted.
Hermione gave him the two finger salute, and finished the spell.
Snape flattened himself on the floor as if Artie "Tommy Boy" Evans had come in and started blasting the place with his trademark machine gun.
There was a great bang, and the last thing Snape sww before putting his head down and covering his hands with it was a thin plume of purple extending from Hermione's wand out into the sky, where a rather sizeable vortex in space time was opening.
With a large continuous whoosh, an and extremely bright purplish flash of light that began to shine out of every conceivable crevice of the entire Merlin School, they were off.
He became aware that either he left the floor, or the floor left him, and amid the less than gentle motion of the room, it's enchantment, it's contents and himself and Hermione, Snape grabbed onto one of the rugs as it flew by, and latched onto it.
Soon enough, he was aware of the fading of the purple light, and that under him and the rug, there was a floor under him, again.
He waited a few moments, and then took his arms from over his head.
He, and Hermione, and everything from her room, including the enchantment that allowed you to magically re-arrange and re-create the layout of the room had been transported to the South Apprentice Tower at Hogwarts.
"Well, I think I'll have that bath." She said, slipping on the furry red and gold bathrobe that she found in her new furniture.
"Nice touch, Sev." She told him.
Snape got to his feet, and was about to flop into Herminone's chair when he heard pounding on the door, and opened it.
There was Albus Dumbledore, and Professor McGonagall bringing up the rear.
"Severus, did you do the Elvish Transmogrification spell? I've had an astonished floo from Headmaster MacCrundle at the Merlin School! He's not sure whether to be horrified or impressed. Neither are we."
"No, that was Granger."
"Hermione? Our Hermione? Minerva, ring up the Daily Prophet! Miss Granger is the youngest witch ever to master Old Elvish spellcraft! She's tied your record again, Severus. Is the alright?"
"She's having a bath."
"A bath?" Dumbledore asked.
"Yes. A bath. That's what you do after you create and travel through an Elvish wormhole in space time, innit it? Have a bath. Then she's going to do see Poppy. And them she's going to have dinner with her parents." Snape replied, archly.
"Has she hurt herself?" McGonagall asked.
"No, but you wouldn't believe the state her room was in. The solitary cells at Azkaban are more sanitary. I should have checked up on her, earlier."
"Severus, you're not her keeper." Albus reminded him.
"The Hell I'm not. Her, and my son, and his crazy red-haired girlfriend and that idiot brother of hers. I've been their keeper since they were ten. Why stop now? Excuse me. I have to make sure she hasn't fallen asleep in the bath."
After Snape shut the door, Albus could hear him hollering at Hermione, and her saying something snarky, back.
"…might have fuckin' well killed us, what were you tryin' to prove, then?"
"That you're a great greasy git, you old Scouser bastard…"
"It's good to have her home, and everything back to normal." He pronounced.
"Albus, you have a very strange idea of what normal is." Minerva replied.
(Author's Note: If you like my Potter stories, and you also like comics, go to my profile and check out the stories I wrote for X-Men, Ironman, and Watchmen. Am pondering a Watchmen/Potter crossover? Shall I? Maybe. Thanks for all you support!)