All's Fair in Love and War
A/N: For those who are looking for steamy, unadulterated, one-shot smut, you've come to the wrong place. Yes, there will eventually be smut, but this fic DOES have a storyline, and I refuse to believe that Hermione would simply have lain down and let Professor Snape lead her by the nose into sexual misadventure.
ALSO—this is a re-write (by my original story of the same name). I read it again and decided that it was all crap and very outdated, and didn't comply with my view of the characters now that I'm a few years older. SO. Incidentally, both the re-write and the original were in response to a challenge in which Severus gets Hermione pregnant, they (eventually) fall in love and, after many hardships and solution, live happy ever after, etc., etc. So, that's what this is.
I. Prologue
Although the air was hot and stuffy, the atmosphere within the halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry couldn't have been more cheerful. With two days left until the end of term and the successful graduation of another year of students poised to burst enthusiastically into the world of magic, the mood was unmistakably one of general contentment and optimism. In their last class of the day, lazy students were strewn haphazardly in their seats, some sprawled, sluggish and inattentive, across their desks. Some were chatting animatedly with their closest neighbors, while still others stared blankly in the general direction of the front of the classroom; but only one seemed to be paying any attention, and that one was Hermione Granger.
Hermione sat bolt-upright in her seat, prone and stuff, eyes trained on the dungeon floor. Voices buzzed all around her but for all her usual attentiveness, she couldn't hear a word that was being said. Her body responded with a heart throb when she daringly allowed her eyes to dart over some distant part of the classroom, then nervously glanced over at the person closest to her, who happened to be Ron. Hermione sighed inwardly, relieved – he was snoozing peacefully with his forehead resting on the table. Good. He hadn't seen. Ron Weasley was downright doglike in the way he pursued rumors about her love life, and this was certainly one bone she didn't want him digging up.
"Miss Granger," called a remarkably controlled voice. The witch started, dragged reluctantly out of her reverie by one of the only people on Earth who could affect her—
"Yes, Professor Snape?" she murmured, wondering grimly how her usual fiery strength of character had drained from her so quickly. He swooped across the classroom to where she was seated, his black robe billowing as though it had been charmed to do so, and stood over her wordlessly. His gaze was so intense at times, whether he be looking at her, yelling at attention-deficit and accident-prone students, or brewing a potion, that she couldn't help but fantasize. And his voice – it was a wonder that she had managed to pass her Potions final at all, let alone managing to scrape by with a sound 'Exceeds Expectations' (by no means an easy feat, as she had not only to contend with her blossoming crush on her Potions professor, but also had to find a way to keep this information from Harry and Ron).
Hermione's fixation with her Potions professor had been haunting her thoughts for the better part of her seventh year. She wasn't sure exactly why, but she thought it may have something to do with her newly awakening and ill-received sexual desires. Hermione had always felt a little out of touch with her sexuality – as they had grown together, sharing classes, experiences and the pangs of adolescence, her fellow Gryffindors began to outstrip her when it came to matters of sexual maturity. She listened as, one by one, rumors of sexual conquests amongst her peers became common-place gossip (choosing to ignore stories of Harry and Ron), and studied even harder for it. Even Ginny Weasley, who was a year her junior, had lost her virginity, all before Hermione had even discovered that she could pleasure herself without a partner (the thought of which mortified her).
"There's nothing wrong with it, really," Ginny said bluntly one evening just before the start of term, as the two watched the Weasley boys and Harry playing Quidditch through her bedroom window. "Sex doesn't have to be personal unless you want it to be. Just choose a guy and snog him and before long you'll be flat on your back with your legs in the air. Why?" she'd added coolly, trying to pass off her tone as disinterested. "Do you like someone, 'Mione?"
"No," she'd answered, and it was truthful at the time: the boys in her year were immature and simple-minded. What appealed to her was intelligence, logic, maturity, and it was in this area that they sorely lacked. They had only one thing on their minds, and it wasn't books, classes, or having intellectual conversations on the effects of the Pepper-up potion in children.
And that was what led to her infatuation with Severus Snape.
While other students paid just enough attention in Potions to be classified as conscious, Hermione listened attentively, hanging on to every word ushered from his lips and carving them into her memory. It became more and more obvious to her that Professor Snape was a wizard who embodied all the qualities she found attractive in a mate: intelligence, logic, shrewdness and (after discovering his roll in the Order of the Phoenix and the downfall of Lord Voldemort), integrity. She began to notice other things about him, too – the deep, silky, often-sarcasm timbre of his voice; the dark intensity with which he examined potions and prey alike; the way in which he commanded the attention of a room simply by walking through the door. He was the alpha male in his classroom and there was no other option.
Slowly but surely, Professor Severus Snape began to both dominate Hermione's thoughts and eradicate the negative way she had seen him since she was eleven years old, just as surely as he dominated his classroom, his art. Feelings of respect and admiration merged with fantasies of him driving into her over and over, completely and wholly obliterating whatever virginal qualities she had left inside her. Through her crush on the professor, she began to see herself not as the clean and immaculate vestal virgin that represented her adolescence, but as a sexually mature young woman who was just beginning to come into her own sense of self. Many of her evenings were spent in the privacy of her Head Girl chambers, moaning and writhing as fantasies of her Potions professor plagued her sleeping and waking dreams ("Well, it's not like I can help it when I sleep!" she huffed to a giggling Ginny). His love wasn't gentle, and that's the way she preferred it. She bled and screamed and begged—
"Just as I expect the rest of these dunderheads to afford me no thought on their last day of class whatsoever," he said sharply, "I expect you to be doing no less than recording your final lesson. And though I don't wish to bore you," he added with a sneer, "my lectures are substantially more important than whatever is going on in your head. So straighten up and pay attention, Miss Granger, and ten points from Gryffindor." He turned and strode back to the head of the class, where a piece of chalk was racing hurriedly across the blackboard as though it were attempting to cram as much last-minute information into their heads as possible. Slightly shaken, she ignored the jeers and quiet cat-calls issuing from the Slytherin side of the room, but couldn't ignore the cutting glares from her fellow Gryffindors for having points taken so late in the running towards the House Cup. That hadn't been so bad, although she couldn't deny the effect that his verbal abuse had had on her knickers. She had to find a way to end this.
There's only one way to do that, she thought grimly as the bell rang and she Scourgified her cauldron clean, although the chances of that happening are about as slim as Malfoy being gay.
A/N: Tell me what I'm missing. I feel like there's something I'm not describing enough – surroundings, emotions… or maybe that's just another symptom of being a writer.
