Brain Chemistry
By: The Crimson Eagle
A/N: To be honest, I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THIS IS. This is my very first HG/SS Fic-to be honest this isn't anywhere close to my normal fandoms, hell I don't even write anything other than Yaoi. But, as part of a fic exchange with yellowJsquid, I was commisshed to write this for her. I had a hard time with this like, rewrote this like FOUR TIMES. Each time it got shorter and shorter, and now I feel bad because the first chapter of the fic I commissioned is almost twice as long as this. I hope you fangirls won't chase me with torches and pitchforks because I'm doing it wrong or something. :/
Prologue.
Living in wartimes was not unlike taking that first step down a dark staircase. Were you to reach out too far you find yourself plummeting, no blurs of vivid colours passing you by-only darkness, and a million sensations of falling at once, but if you plant your feet firmly on that first stair you can keep calm and carry on bravely down the staircase.
That being said Hermione had quite clearly missed the first stair, everyone at Hogwarts had. The last months were a blur of rampant emotionalism and fear, which had spread far beyond the wizarding world and began to darken the muggle world with an almost tangible sense of panic. Harry's short fuse and martyr complex had darkened him into someone Hermione no longer recognized. And Ron, once the breath of life into the ever darkening world, had lost his boyish charm and playfulness with the loss of his brothers.
It was in this torrent of blackness, that Hermione reached out to grasp hold of something strong, something solid, something tangible; a refuge from the emotions tossing her to a fro like a rag doll being torn apart by rabid dogs. She sought out logic; she sought out the whiteness to the proverbial blackness. During the nights where sleep eluded her (which were occurring more and more often) she would sneak off to the Library, grab a stack of old potions textbooks that teetered dangerously over her head, and cloister herself in a far off corner, reading until dawn broke.
She would read for hours, finding solace in the black and white pages; here there was no ambivalence. There was simple right and wrong, the potion worked or it didn't, there was no grey area, simple logic and facts, free from emotion. Hermione had always like potions class, there was a meticulousness and attention to detail that suited her control-oriented nature. There was just something so intriguing how elements bonded and transformed, there was an entrancing alchemy to it. It was fire and ice, earth and steel, it was flesh, bone, blood, life, death and love. Basic brain chemistry told her several things; dopamine, Fenylethylamine and either Vasopressin for men, or Oxytocin for women, are all released when you are experiencing love.
Dopamine is the hormone responsible for the blinding addictiveness of love, that indescribable urge that drives a girl in love to keep coming back, even when the world is denying her what she rightfully deserves.
Fenylethylamine is the hormone responsible for the breathlessness, the heart hammering in her chest and the red heat spreading across her face. Love was responsible for making her feel like she was going to faint whenever he tilted his head in vague acknowledgement.
And Oxytocin was to blame for the pleasant tingling after an accidental touch, or an accidental brush of shoulders in the hallways.
Everything, every hitched breath, every pupil dilatation, every fluffy romantic scenario she could come up with was a simple equation of brain chemistry. Everything she felt could be controlled with the right potions or the right pills. All those feelings were just in her head. Literally. Only, deep down, she didn't want to control it, she wanted to be wrapped in it, suffocated in it, blinded by it, frozen by it and ultimately; burned by it. Something deep down wanted to break free from the cage of science and logic she had built, it howled and clawed endlessly at her control, and demanded endless indulgence. But with the war raging, she refused to bow to the river of emotions, and allow the dam to break. Not now. Not now, when her feelings could me cast aside or dismissed as hysteria, fear or distress.
She would not allow him to take her so lightly, she was not a smitten girl emoting all over the place, she was a young woman in love-and a young woman smart enough to know the difference between the two. There was a time and a place for everything, and War was not the time for love confessions. The dopamine would cause the blindness-a tunnel vision of love, and her judgment would cloud and all she would see would be him. Her decisions would start to be less and less about protecting everyone and more about protecting him, and would inevitably leading her to foolish choices and deaths of her friends that she would label casualties of war. But she knew better. She would know better. She would wait until the war ended, that cloudless dawn was soon on the horizon, and then she would tell him. And promptly afterward she would do one of two things; kiss him absolutely senseless, till the world tilted off it's axis, or she would cry from the sheer relief of finally admitting to being a rampantly emotional being out loud. Or at least, that was the plan.
Only, nothing ever went according to plan. She really hadn't counted on him all but hacking into her mind and methodically dismantling every bit of control she had. In a horrendous way, it was kind of laughable, kind of funny. Except that it really wasn't. Still, she couldn't help but laugh a little bit inside at the sheer weirdness of the situation. She really should have come up with a plan B, or strengthened her mental defenses, because she could have sworn that she had scared him with her tight-leashed intensity. Sure, he was as much of a snarky git as ever but there was less of an edge to it, almost…timid? Utterly laughable. It almost seemed as if he was trying to woo her.
And Severus Snape wooed nobody.
A/N 2: …In my defense, the last two paragraphs were written when 'Bootylicious' by Destiny's Child was playing. So I really don't even know what I have to say for myself. I'm kind of…embarrassed that I even wrote this? IDK.