Author's Note: Obviously AU, a tad bit crack!y in delivery, and...I had to. Because reasons.
It was madness.
Utter, astronomical madness, the most foolish flight of fancy Hermione Granger had ever possessed, and if it wasn't the eve of her nineteenth birthday and she wasn't more than a bit tipsy off the bottle of Ogden's Old that Harry had sent her, she never would have considered it.
Unfortunately, it was the eve of her nineteenth birthday, and she'd been quaffing down glasses of the aforementioned Ogden's Old since four in the afternoon. It was a miracle she was still upright.
She was almost nineteen years old, the War had been over for two, and yet she still couldn't tell one Professor Severus Snape that she had a crush on him the size of Hogwarts.
"I'm pathetic," she hiccuped to herself, having another long swallow and waving the bottle around in an admittedly alarming and haphazard manner.
"You are not," Ginny replied, not for the first time, eyeing the amber bottle in her older friend's hand. "Hermione, I think you've had enough..."
"No!" Hermione declared, hugging it to her and hiccuping once more, her eyes brimming with fresh tears. "I need it to give me courage!"
"Right," Ginny snorted. "Or you're addicted to the bloody aftertaste already. Hermione Granger? Needing firewhiskey for a pick-me-up? As if."
Hermione's cheeks coloured, but she said nothing, finally reluctantly holding out the half-empty bottle. Ginny retrieved it with a sniff of distaste and turned to her own butterbeer.
"If you still like the...greasy git," Ginny shuddered despite herself, she refused to even attempt to understand Hermione's feelings for the hook-nosed, greasy-haired arse who still taught Potions at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. "You might as well tell him so. Worst he can do is say no."
"No, worst he can do is look at me with those cutting dark eyes, sneer at me with those thin lips, and somehow take points from Gryffindor for being a bloody know-it-all child," Hermione sulked, more than a bit maudlin.
"And then you hex his bollocks off," Ginny answered promptly. "Oh, come on, Hermione, what's the harm? Maybe it will get you over him so you can find someone more, you know. Your age. And not greasy." Her nose crinkled again.
"You're right!" Hermione declared, voice still rather sloppy, as she leaped enthusiastically to her feet, her fingers reaching for and managing to yank her wand out of her belt loops. "I'll do it right now!"
"Not now, Hermione, you're bloody-" Ginny reached for her, but it was too late. With a shaky-sounding Crack!, the girl was gone.
...Oh well, Ginny shrugged and reached for the bottle of firewhiskey to take a generous swig. She had a feeling she was going to need it by the time Hermione came back.
The sound of his classroom door banging open jolted Severus from a semi-restless doze in front of his first years' essays (he saw, with not the slightest bit of shame, he'd upended the bottle of red ink on a stack of them with his elbow), but at the sight of the wild-haired Hermione Granger stalking up the middle aisle, he was positive he must still be dreaming.
"Miss Granger?" he asked, his hand casually on his wand. The girl's eyes were too bright, her cheeks too rosy, and the scent of Ogden's rose off her like an alcohol-soaked midden. "Are you...drunk?"
"No!" she scowled. "Yes. I don't know. That's not the point right now, Severus Snape!"
"That's Professor to you," he glowered, his brows drawing together quite fiercely. "And what, pray tell me, is the point then, Miss Granger?"
"Good question," she stopped in the middle of the aisle, just by the front tables, and pondered. "I think I love you," she finally said, a declaration that sent him sputtering into a coughing fit and now certain he was still dreaming. Or rather, having a nightmare.
"You are very drunk, Miss Granger," Severus announced crisply. "You should go home at once to sleep it off. Leave." He sneered at her again, but she just turned up her nose at him and clambered up onto the front table.
"No," she said. "And call me Hermione. My name's Hermione."
"I am well aware of that fact, Miss Granger," the emphasis on her formal title was perhaps a bit much, but he relished it all the same. "And of the fact that you have apparently decided to break into Hogwarts in the middle of the night to tell me you love me."
"I do," she nodded to herself, swaying a bit from side to side. Her face looked pale all of a sudden, and he hoped she wouldn't heave all over his desk. What a mess that would be to clean up, even if he would make her do it. "For years, Severus Snape. I know you're a cruel, sodding bastard, but you have intelligence...and a snark that makes students cringe in their boots...and honour. More honour than I've ever known how to deal with or likely will ever again.
"Also, you've got a really nice arse," she added with a grin, and to Severus's eternal dismay, he felt his face heat up.
"That is enough, Miss Granger," he said, in a near-snarl, standing up and slamming his hands firmly on his desk. A quill rattled and rolled off, and even Hermione bloody Granger looked a bit cowed. "You are clearly indulging a schoolgirl's fancy and you are absolutely drunken. Go home. Perhaps I'll even pretend, in my merciful wisdom, that this night never occurred."
Slowly, she slid off the table, shoulders bowed, head down, staring at the floor. He felt his own shoulders tense. So he was right then. A passing fancy, if that, and now she was realisng the gravity of her ill judgment.
Until he realised she was walking forward, not away, and her eyes were no longer clouded with alcohol, but their own amber-washed colour that now glinted with...he squinted. Was that anger?
"I don't think so, Severus Snape," she hissed, more obstinate than he'd ever seen her, even in the Final Battle. "I've felt like this for years and I'm nineteen now and I am tired of pretending I don't feel like this and for Merlin's sake, you can tell me you feel nothing, and never will, and I will go away saddened but all the wiser for the experience, or so I've heard. But I won't pretend that I've only found this at the bottom of an Ogden's bottle, and I won't let you send me away like a petulant child!"
He wisely refrained from pointing out she was certainly acting like a petulant child, and leaned back a little, trying to get away from the overbearing miasma of firewhiskey (had she bathed in the stuff?).
"All right, Miss Gran-Hermione," he replied, testing the way her name felt on his tongue. "I cannot say I feel the same for you..." he watched her face fall and smirked. "Precisely," he added, and watched hope light the depths of her eyes again. "You certainly have grown up rather nicely," he attempted a leer, and enjoyed the blush that suffused her cheeks. "Even if you are still an insufferable swot. So. If you wish to pursue this...dalliance, then we'll do it properly. Come to my office tomorrow after dinner, dressed in whatever you like. Only please, for the love of all that is holy, bathe first!"
She bent forward, shaking in peals of laughter, before a smile spread across her face and she leaned forward, pecking the corner of his mouth with her lips before he had time to register she'd done it.
"Of course, sir," Hermione said airily and sauntered out of his classroom, giving him ample time to notice that she possessed her own rather remarkable arse.
"Well?" Ginny demanded as soon as Hermione popped back into her flat, looking more satiated than Ginny had seen in months. "Don't tell me-you didn't!" Ginny gasped, turning a bit green.
"Of course not," Hermione snapped, tucking her wand through her hair and scowling. "What kind of woman do you take me for? I'm meeting him tomorrow. After dinner."
"Ooooh," Ginny raised both eyebrows and waggled them up and down, only stopping when Hermione threatened to curse her seven ways to Sunday. "What happened then?"
"I bared my soul like a tipsy ninny and told him he had a nice arse," Hermione said nonchalantly, flopping back into her comfortable chair and propping her feet up. "To which he replied I've grown up nicely, I'm still a swot, be there tomorrow. And er..." Hermione blushed. "Bathe first."
Ginny's giggles filled the room until there was a loud thump from the upstairs, making both girls giggle harder, albeit quieter.
"I can't believe that worked," Hermione sighed finally, staring up at the ceiling fan and watching it twirl. "I mean...I thought for sure he'd kick me out on my arse."
"You know what it means, don't you," Ginny said, eyes widening. "He must like you, too."
"...Yeah," Hermione whispered, a rather dreamy smile spreading across her face. "I guess so."
"Eww," Ginny summarised, wrinkling her nose yet again.
"I know," Hermione said. "Shut up."