Author's Note: Due to her use of the Time Turner in 3rd , 4th and 5th year, in November of her 5th year, Hermione is turning 17, not 16, a fact that becomes salient to Professor Snape and all of us in the course of this story.
THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING SEVERUS SNAPE
Snape hated mornings.
Not that he had actually slept through the night for the past sixteen years or so, any more than an hour here and an hour there and the nightmares awaited him.
Still, he always managed to catch those few precious hours of the deep and dreamless around dawn, and then too soon the alarm spell was shaking the entire room.
Actually, Snape loathed mornings.
He thought it might be a holdover from his past.
Up all night shooting dragon's fire, and drinking Jack Daniels, perhaps cavorting with whoever witch or witches that seemed amiable and made him forget Lily for awhile.
Lily, oh Lily…
What did he have to lose in those days? It wasn't as if he paid for the heroin, or the Purple Doom he used to mix his dragon's fires. He made them himself. And death seemed so certain. Spying for Albus Dumbledore against the Dark Lord, wasn't that asking for death? Begging for it.
Even the old bastard himself expressed worry about his fine, fair-haired boy.
"Severus, you are wasting yourself on this persistent debauchery. I can afford to have my rent boy, Malfoy , permanently narcotised, but I need your brilliant mind."
we all could have had a nice life if you hadn't ruined it you cunt
Snape shook the sound of Tom Riddle's voice those many years ago from his head.
He'd be hearing it again, in person, soon enough.
"Severus, you really must cast a quieter alarm spell. My ears are still ringing."
Snape had awoken alone in his bed, he thought that Arabella had already left.
"Shouldn't you be home with your husband, Arabella?"
Arabella laughed.
They both knew her husband was a wholly fictional creature, a beard for her many and like Snape, secret lovers. She had a very unmusical laugh, like the cackle of a proverbial witch, but she, a fellow Slytherin and a member of Snape's graduating class, was one of the few women to lie with him who actually showed him some regard afterwards.
In turn, Snape was one of the few men who ever showed the biggest whore at Hogwarts some respect, and did not snicker behind her back when she formed Witches Against Pornography as an adult.
"I was thinking of going and visiting my son before I leave. And besides, I never leave a man alone I his bed in the night. I know how that feels." She said.
Arabella's son was a Hufflepuff in his third year, Arathorn McMasters. He looked very much like Connor McMasters, the Muggle Scotsman with whom she lived, so it was a fair bet that was his father.
Snape was fond of Arabella, and he envied the Muggle his arrangement, sometimes. He would not have minded her many lovers and he often wondered, had his life been different, if that third year might have been Arathorn Snape, and he the beard for her many adventures.
He stayed in bed, smoking and brooding while Arabella got dressed and bid him goodbye.
Alone again, he had the feeling he was late for Potter's Occlumency lesson, so, so he didn't bother to shower, just pulled on something, anything to wear under his robes.
He yawned as he laced up his boots.
I need a fucking drink. He thought.
Harry was later than Snape, either hung over or still drunk when he came to the Potions Master's office which both angered and depressed Snape. He hated to see Harry Potter going down the same road he'd gone down.
And he'd started when he was around Harry's age, as well.
But he could scream himself hoarse at Albus Dumbledore and all he heard about was the prophecy and Harry's destiny, and the fate of the Wizarding World. All fine words and from a fine man who was like a father to Snape, but from a man who did not have to look Tom Riddle in what was left of his face. From a man who didn't see the price young Potter had had to pay.
Or the price Snape himself had to pay, for that matter.
Bitter and cynical and drunk and high already, Potter? Each day may be your last because no one gives a damn about you as long as you save their arse. Cold comfort from a hot witch who's cold in the morning. Never mind where's the next one and I need another fucking drink. I know the name of that tune, Potter. I fucking wrote it.
Meanwhile, Potter was openly nodding out on his desk.
"Potter! Wake up! If I have to be up at this ungodly hour teaching you, then you have to be awake to learn!" Snape snapped.
The look of lazy hate Harry gave him, as Potter casually took a packet of English Ovals from his robe and lit one managed to wound Snape's cracked and bleeding heart of stone. It seeped into the cracks in the rock where the blood poured from his flesh and stabbed him there deeply.
Lily's son.
Exploited, misused, abandoned, and left to drift into boozy, drug-fuelled oblivion.
a nice life he could have had a decent life
Snape drew his wand.
Somebody had to take responsibility for Potter.
"Put that fag out before I blast it out of your mouth! Do it!"
Harry extinguished his cigarette in Snape's overflowing ashtray.
"This is not the smoking lounge in Gryffindor Tower! And you are technically not even old enough to smoke! Of course you're also not old enough to be blind, stinking drunk, either, so the point seems moot! Mind you, if you want a fag, you'll ask my permission in my office! Also, I would ask you, in the future, to be so kind as to try and limit your nightly activities to one witch and one bottle of firewhiskey when you have Occlumency lessons. These may just save your life, after all, although I realise you no longer care a monkey's if you live or you die!" Snape snapped at his student.
The boy looked shocked.
"How did you know?"
"Because it wasn't so long ago I was a teenager and there was a war going on, Potter. You didn't invent sex, dope and cheap thrills, did you? Here. Take this potion. Drink one spoonful, go back to bed, sleep it off. If you are hung over tomorrow morning, do the same and come back. You're not getting out of Occlumency that easily."
Harry gave the flask a fishy-eyed look.
"Oh, fuck me! You think I'd poison you? If I was going to kill you, Potter, I'd strangle you with me own hands, all the bother you've been to me!" Snape exclaimed.
Harry tried not to grin.
He enjoyed getting Snape mad enough to start cursing.
He drank a swallow of the potion.
"Satisfied, Potter?" he asked.
Harry didn't say anything.
He just put the flask in his pocket.
"Thanks. Aren't you going to turn me in, Professor?" Harry finally asked
"To Dumbledore? In a minute. To Cornelius Fudge's cretinous old cow Umbridge? Never."
The surprised teenager got up to go.
"And one more thing, Potter. Don't think I'm your mate because I've given you something to combat your hangovers. Everyone else in this castle may be willing to let you slide on that Boy Who Lived bollocks, but not me! You will toe the line, Potter, I will make you! There will be not slipping into an alcoholic twilight for you on my watch! If you're late for Potions I'll give you a week of detention. Twenty points from Griffindor. Five points from Gryffindor for you showing up here drunk and unshaven! And five points for smoking without my permission! Don't give me that look!"
"Why shouldn't I?" Harry asked.
Deliberately, he lit another fag.
Snape became furious.
"You little fuck!" the Potions Master exploded.
He blasted the cigarette out of Harry's mouth using wandless magic, grabbed Harry by the front of his robes, and hauled him over the desk.
"Let me go! Professor!" Harry cried.
He was shocked and even a little frightened.
Snape was absolutely furious
"Now you listen to me, Potter! You want to go at this man to man? Fine, then! You had fucking well better get your shit together! This is war! A war that killed your parents! Remember them, you arrogant little prick? I do! Just what do you think Voldemort will do to you if he gets his hands on you? Serve you tea and cakes? You barely escaped with your life the last time. I've seen what he does to his allies, let alone his enemies! If Tom Riddle takes you alive, you'd better turn your wand on yourself and curse your arse into eternity! Because what he's done to you already is only a mere taste of what he will do! You'll be tortured and violated in ways you can't imagine, repeatedly, for days, weeks more likely. You won't be able to pray to God for death, you'll have to ask the Devil, because you will already be in Hell! I know what I am talking about. Is that very, very, crystal fucking clear, Potter?"
Snape almost laughed at the shock in his pupil's bleary eyes.
"Yes, sir. When you say violated do you mean…" Harry asked.
"Yes, Potter. I mean rape and torture and unspeakable perversion. I don't think you'te his type, but all the trouble you've caused him, he'll make you his bum chum just to humiliate you, utterly. Then he'll turn you out to the rest of his minions, and make a nice chunk of change, pimping off your celebrated arse! Now, I hate to scare you with the truth, but I have seen Dark Revels with my own eyes, and they have degenerated into Doomed-out orgies of torture and perversion, and you do not want to be the guest of honour! Now, you will go shower and shave and drink that potion. I had goddam well better see you later, or I'll apparate in Gryffindor tower and drag you by the hair to the Potions room! You're 15, and where I come from, that means you're a man now. Act like one! It's time I stopped mollycoddling you. Now get out of my sight, you snivelling little shit, and start trying to be worthy of the sacrifice your parents made for you!"
Snape let him go with a shove that propelled Harry back into his chair, and the chair back a few feet.
Harry was shocked.
He'd never seen the wicked old screw so angry, not in five years of detentions.
"Okay, Professor. I'll…I'll take my lessons more seriously." Harry promised.
"You had fucking well better. Remember, it's your arse. Literally." Snape replied.
Harry looked a little dumbfounded as he left the office.
Bitterness flowered in Snape after Harry left.
It almost tasted like wormwood.
Like the Doom.
A little Doom, a shot of Jack, an armful of smack, what good it would do him now!
But Snape had been sober for as long as Harry had been alive, he was the chairman of the local chapter of WAND (Wizards Against Narcotics & Drinking ).
He took a packet of English Ovals out of his robes, and lit one.
"I loathe life." He said, to no one in particular.
As if his morning hadn't been bad enough, there were three of them, two fifth years and a sixth year, lurking outside his office.
Devotees of the Grand High Church of Severus Snape, Sex God.
They seemed, some of these young witches, to think that he was a relentlessly priapic, and depending on their preference, kinky Sex God. A sort of porny Lord Byron who lived only to service and ravage flocks of young witches like them.
For the life of him, Snape couldn't figure out why.
Maybe it was that because he dressed all in black, or because he was tall and pale and so on and so on, or because he lived in a dungeon and had been or perhaps still was a Death Eater to whom all sorts of rumours, some real and some not were attached.
Did they really think he was good-looking? He recalled being ugly as a boy, all nose and knees and elbows, but he supposed he wasn't completely repulsive as a man. He was tall and thin like his mother, who was a very beautiful woman, willowy and black-haired, but broad-shouldered, strong and raw-boned and wiry, like his, gruff , hairy Scottish Muggle father, who was short but built like a cement lorry. Snape had his father's long, angular, heavy-jawed face with his mother's black eyes set over grandfather Severus Prince's hawklike neb and pointy chin.
His body was heavily tattooed with both magical tattoos and personal ones, and also heavily scarred from the life he had led. On the rare occasions when he smiled, he showed a mouthful of gold crowns; too many years of neglect, booze and heroin had destroyed his teeth, and Snape was never a believer in Wizarding dentistry.
He supposed the overall effect made him look either like a pirate or the drummer in a rock band, which, coupled with his reputation, might explain why the silly little cows went so potty over him.
But, women had loved Tobias Snape, too, but then again, and men were crazy over Eileen Prince. It was no different with their son. Even as a scrawny young junkie with the black, glassy eyes of a shark, witches were drawn to him. He was bad, and they liked it, but only furtively and secretly, never to be civil to him in public, or talk to him, or refrain from making fun of him along with their popular boyfriends who didn't satisfy them.
But, as Tobias was fond of saying, steady pussy is steady pussy, and a man's a fool who complains about how he gets it.
Just one of many pearls of wisdom he learned from dear old Mum and Da, back home on the Spinner's End estate in Kensington, Liverpool.
They were always drunk and broke and either cheating on one another and fighting, sometimes with wands and fists, or going at it all over the place.
Snape didn't consider them bad parents, even though he knew they were.
They loved him, and they loved each other, but they were just unbelievable wrecks of human beings, so that it made it impossible for them to show it.
Mum was a drunk and a junkie. She'd once been the brightest witch in her year, but something had happened to make her leave the Wizarding World forver at 14, and end up with Toby Snape.
She'd take what little money Da made from odd jobs when he was on the dole, and his work on the docks when he was sober enough to keep his job, and score while Da was off on a bender and leave him alone in the house with no food.
Then Da would come home with a black eye and broken knuckles and a case of Newcastle brown, and find the house empty, and his son dirty and starving.
His solution to that was to beat Ma up, but she was fast with her fists and her want and they usually ended up knocking each other bloody before anyone could get it together to do the laundry and buy some food.
But Mum did teach him more magic before he was ten than most 5th years knew. Advanced hexes, potions, and spells. She was kind to him then, and in her few moments when she was drunk and high enough to be normal.
The old man, once a sailor, was a degenerate alcoholic. He was on the dole when he was too drunk for his job down at the docks. He was much more predictable. He wouldn't start belting Snape around unless he was on one of his week-long benders.
He wasn't a half bad father, actually, and Mum wasn't a half-bad mother.
They tried as hard as they could, but as dysfunctional as they were, they couldn't manage much.
Generally Tobias beat up on Eileen when he found out she wasn't taking care of their son while he was off getting loaded, and Eileen hexed and cursed and beat up on Tobias, and beat up on Severus for getting her into trouble with Tobias and when Tobias was on a tear he beat up on everybody in the neighbourhood, including Severus and Eileen.
As for Snape, he started punching them back as soon as he could make his hands into fists, tried to set the house on fire a few times as a child, turned his mother's hexes against her, and when he was older he had quite a few punch-ups with the old man.
The Old Man was right proud of those; the only one who can get the better of a snape is another Snape, he used to say.
He'd learned Defence Against the Dark Arts trying to keep a few steps ahead of his drunken mother's magic, and how to fight battling his father.
What would they think, these girls, if they knew about his past? His childhood and youth was like something out of Dickens by way of William Burroughs, with a little Lovecraft thrown in for good measure. What would these silly young things think if they knew he was born penniless on the Spinner's End estate in Kensington, one of the worst bits of Liverpool, in a ramshackle hovel with the dirtiest part of the Mersey running past the windows? That he used to wade through the mud at low tide and pick junk from the riverbed, anything that looked like he could sell it or drink it or eat it, just to stay alive? Or that his parents had been two debauched drunks on the dole, and that he came to Hogwarts in rags, and was soon made a ward of the Ministry? What would they think if they knew his arm was scared not just by the Dark Mark, but by tattoos, and tracks, that the he bore the scars of beatings and hexings and wizard's duels and knife fights and punch-ups and broken bones here and there all over his body?
Would they have found him romantic if they could see him the way Albus Dumbledore had on the day he lost Lily, curled up in a foetal position in a puddle of spilt firewhiskey and piss, half-conscious and freezing to death on the cold flagstones of the courtyard with a broken needle in his bloody arm, smelling overpoweringly of wormwood?
But would it matter if they knew of his birth and his torments, his addictions and degeneracies and moments of ultraviolence? In the end, Snape knew he was actually quite a boring man, whose favourite pastimes were smoking, reading old books, inventing potions and watching Monty Python.
It was only an accident of genetics and nature that he had an immense libido and was hung like a centaur.
A satyr, technically.
An accident of genetics and nature. Snape had long since decided that's what he was, considering the unpleasant cocktail of defective DNA that constituted his genome.
Mum, was a brilliant witch, but quite deranged. She was definitely a nymphomaniac, and possibly manic depressive.
Dad was just a big, stupid, sort of bloke, perhaps a touch psychopathic; but his heart was in the right place. He wasn't a bad man, just a horny, drunken Scotsman with a mean temper who had no idea what he was in for when he became the unfortunate one of a cast of thousands to take the bait and say "I Do" To Eileen Prince.
Sober, though, they weren't so bad, and family was family, after all. They had taken him in when he was a filthier and more pathetic and degenerate junkie and alcoholic than either of them had been, and his mother had put him back together many times when he was beaten up or bottomed out. Like most working-class Scouers, they were a close family, whether for good or for ill. The past seemed obscenely funny to all three of them now; they could have a laugh on their awful past even if no one else could.
And yet, they still expected him to marry, and spread his diseased genetic defects into a new generation.
Idly, looking at the young witches, Snape wondered if their mothers had been among the witches who'd had a go at him.
do you girls know I could have been johnny holmes stunt double come to my office all three of you i'll show you a sex god I'll line you up bent over the desk and fuck the lot of you one after the other and wipe my dick on your robes and toss yer out the door like my old dad used to say sev if you get yourself a woman just to fuck her there's nothing worse than having her hang around after you've done don't make the same mistake I did and now see how i'm fucking stuck with your mother the woman is literally a crazy fucking witch how'd that be for a cold hard dose of reality for you then
"Don't you have somewhere better to be than here?" Snape growled, sardonically in his thick Scouse accent.
They melted in the face of his brutality.
"We were wondering..."
"I know exactly what you were wondering. The answer is no! I like me job and I don't want to go to Azkaban. I'm not attracted to silly little girls with nothing but air between their ears! Now go, before I take ten points from Hufflepuff and twenty from Ravenclaw!"
The three witches scattered, giggling to each other.
Snape watched them go, shaking his head with dismay.
He looked both ways to make sure he was unobserved, and got his packet of English Ovals out of his robe. He lit another cigarette with the end of his wand and took a long drag on the fag.
Snape had been smoking in the hallways at Hogwarts since he was ten, and he wasn't about to stop, now.
"No smoking in the hallways, eh? Fuck you, you cow, I'll smoke wherever the fuck I want to." He muttered.
Snape's next port of call was Hagrid's cabin, where his godson, Draco Malfoy, was having coffee with the Care of Magical Creatures professor.
"Well, I s'pose I'll be goin' to, ah, write out me lesson plans for a bit." Hagrid announced, making himself scarce.
After he was gone, Snape poured himself a cup of coffee.
Draco pulled a folder out of his robes and passed it to his godfather.
Snape read through it.
"How's your father?"
"Worse. He's well and truly back on the Doom. Mother says he went on a binge, lately and hasn't hardly got out of bed for a week. He doesn't eat, he won't sleep, he hasn't bathed. On occasion he gets it together enough to go to the Ministry and pretend to work, but we're worried about him."
Snape committed all the information his spy in the pureblood, wealthy, Death Eater community had taken down, and burnt the folder and its contents.
When he was a fourth year, and falling wholeheartedly under Voldemort's spell, Snape told his godson what a coincidence it was that he should want to become a Death Eater at 15, because that was when his father had joined the ranks.
Snape also told Draco that Lord Voldemort had found young Lucius a handsome boy, handsome enough to pimp off to his associates in exchange for money, support, or favours, and certainly handsome enough to be used to satisfy the Dark Lord's own twisted needs.
Some of which Snape explained to Draco in grotesque Sadean detail.
After that, Draco was as much an enemy of Lord Voldemort as Snape was, and he became Snape's eyes and ears in the day-to-day workings of Voldemort's operations.
"Maybe you should come visit Dad. You might be able to get him to start going to WAND, again. Give him some bullshit about how Riddle needs him to be at his sharpest, or something. Anything."
"We'll go this weekend, Draco." Snape assured him.
"Thanks."
"You don't think I'd let your old man go off into a Doom Trance forever, then, do you? You go back to the school first. Don't look for me. I've work to do."
On the plus side of the day, Potter was on time for Potions class, and also clean-shaven and alert.
His little band of Merry Pranksters were all in evidence.
Longbottom spilling things all over himself.
Weasley fumbling about like an idiot who was better off with his cock in his hand than his wand.
The only one with half a brain was Granger.
Why a brilliant witch like her spent so much time breastfeeding pigeons like those two escaped him.
Granger. He had to speak to her after class. She and Potter were getting a little guerrilla force together and she was trying to train them herself.
It was a bravura effort, but to be a spy, she needed the instruction of the spymaster.
She had excellent potential.
With a little tutelage, why she could be the Severus Snape of her generation.
Or something like it.
Not to mention his father knew her father.
There was something to what they said about Northerners sticking together.
"All right, class, you'll all be happy to know you're going to pack up your cauldrons a little early today, because the administration wanted me to give you a little talk on drugs."
Typical fucking teenagers, they all looked interested.
Even the ones who were probably dying to get out of class to score something.
Snape went over to his desk and picked up a clear flask full of a viscous, pearlescent purple liquid.
Some of the students sucked their breath in, sharply.
"This is Purple Doom. Yes, the infamous Purple Doom, scourge of the Wizarding World. I will uncork the cap so you can all become familiar with the smell of wormwood. Those of you, that is who are not already familiar with same. If you are strung out, please do not rush the desk, I will not hesitate to blast you. Now, in small doses it's used for recreational purposes, in large doses Purple Doom will kill you in the most agonising manner you can imagine, or drive you into a permanent state of psychosis to which the best comparison is being trapped in a nightmare from which, no matter how loudly you scream, you will not wake up. If anyone gives you something to drink or eat that smells like this, do not eat or drink, and escape as fast as you can. Even in its recreational use, coming down from Purple Doom can be extremely painful. Some wizards and witches use it with narcotics, like heroin or morphine, because it extends the effects and negates the agony of crashing. When you combine the two and inject them intravenously, the mixture is called Dragon's Fire. If you'd like to start chasing the dragon, go and sit on top of a cannon and fire it. You;ll die a lot faster, with your dignity intact. Of every fifty wizards that start breathing the fire, forty of them will overdose and die the aforementioned unspeakable and agonising death."
Snape paused and looked around the room, sacking for frightened doomheads.
"Doom is every bit as addictive as heroin; junkies and doomheads share the common worldview that nothing is more important than the drug they have fallen in love with. If you use either substance, regularly, you will become addicted. No exceptions. Should you become addicted to this stuff you will sell everything you own, including all of the orifices of your body, and very likely rob, steal and kill if you have to in order to get more of either substance, and especially both. Why? Because both heroin, and Purple Doom, and especially both together, will make you feel very, very, very good. They will take away all your problems, your worries, your past, your future, your ever ache, your secret pain. Purple Doom will give you visions of your fondest desires that are so real that you experience them as the reality, and the world from which you are attempting to escape as the dream. Unfortunately, both Doom and narcotics will also take your sanity, your dignity, your livelihood, your manhood, gentlemen, and finally, your life."
He let that one sink in awhile, before he delivered the coup de gras.
"Also, Purple Doom was synthesised and invented by Mr. Tom Riddle, otherwise known as Lord Voldemort, and he and his control the market. Every vial you buy, he tips his hat to you for being a good customer and putting money in his pocket. All Death Eaters are required to use Purple Doom as part of their rituals, and most are regular users or outright addicts. He uses it to control them, and it will be no different with any of you. You can, of course, if you are extremely skilled at potions, make it yourself. I made this batch myself, as part of a project I am working on. I am trying to find an antidote to Purple Doom, something that will reverse its effects in case of poisoning or overdose and that may be used, rather like methadone is, to wean addicts off the stuff. Any questions?"
"Yeah, professor? How do you know so much about it?"
Potter, of course.
"Potter, it is common knowledge that I am the chairman of the local chapter of WAND. D'you think I've been going to meetings for as long as you have been alive for the free butterbeer and stale biscuits?"
Some of the students, including Harry, actually laughed
"I would also like to take this opportunity to appoint a special student assistant to help me with this project. I need a witch or wizard who is literate, level-headed, intelligent, skilled at potions and a confirmed non-used of drugs. This project will take care of that student's Potions credits for the remainder of the term, and may be used for university credit, depending on how long research continues. Miss Granger, do you accept?"
Snape got another laugh.
Who else?
Hermione stood up.
"Yes, professor." She said, trying not to look unruffled.
"Thank you. You can sit down now, Miss Granger."
Harry and Ron were both looking at Hermione like she was insane.
"Are you mad? Do you know how much free time you're going to have to spend with Snape?" Ron hissed.
"Do you know how much university tuition is, Ron? I'm not from money, me parents are the first in their families to go to university. I can get an apprenticeship with Snape, I can get grants, scholarships, everything. It's worth it."
"Good. Now if you are a user of Purple Doom, and still a casual user, stop now, please. If you are a regular user, or an addict, I urge you to come to the next WAND meeting. We meet every night at nine, sharp, in the Shrieking Shack. You can obtain a special pass from Madame Pomfrey to attend, and I assure you that your identity will be protected. Now, you're all dismissed. Miss Granger, stay in your seat." Snape continued.
Harry had just been looking at her the whole time.
"You want him to shag you, don't you?" he asked her, as everyone was getting up to leave.
"What? No! I'm not in love with Professor Snape."
"I didn't say anything about love. And neither will Snape. And he probably won't blab about it, either. I see the wheels in your mind turning, Hermione. All you Northerners, especially you Scousers, you stick together." Harry teased.
"I'm not even going to dignify that preposterous bullshit with an answer!" Hermione sniffed.
"Don't feel too bad, mate. We all have to get a nut, somehow." Harry replied.
He sailed out of the room before Hermione could protest any further.
She turned around, and there was Snape, standing closer to her than she could remember him having done so before.
"I know about your little guerrilla organisation, Miss Granger." He told her.
"What organisation?" Hermione bluffed.
"Dumbledore's Army." Snape clarified
As Snape watched her, fear flitted across her face, then excitement, and finally, resolve.
She had been an intensely unpleasant know-it-all of a child, but she was showing signs of growing up to be an interesting woman.
She was a good soldier and a fellow Liverpudlian, a Scouser of sorts.
They may have moved to Woolton, but her parents hailed from Vauxhall, and John Granger was Tobias and Eileen Snape's dentist.
Not that any of that mattered, but when you were as paranoid as Snape was, every little but helped.
He continued to fix her with an intractable stare.
She continued to meet him, in kind.
"So? What d'you want to do about it?" Hermione asked, defiantly.
Snape raised his eyebrow.
For a moment he thought she was suggesting a juvenile sexual fantasy straight out of the Unholy Bible of the Church of Severus Snape, Sex God, but then he realised it was pure defiance.
She didn't care what he said, or what he did, she would not be dissuaded from her duty.
A very good soldier.
"Keep your wand in your robes, Granger. You know where my loyalties lie. I admire your efforts. But if you want to play in my end of the field, you can't do so without me. Be my eyes and ears, and I'll be yours. You may need training. You may need an inside man. Or at least someone over the age of 18. Of course, this conversation never happened. I have told Potter I'm going to get involved. He and I are members of the Order. Do you understand what I'm talking about?" Snape asked.
"Yes, Professor. I understand."
Excitement lit her eyes, again. Snape recalled what it was to be 15 or 16 and smarter than everyone, bored with all his classes.
A little war did liven things up, didn't it?
"The Purple Doom project is not merely a cover. It is a real project and you will be assisting me, for credit as I said in class. And I did choose you for all of the reasons I cited. Also because you're not a fucking Southerner. You will report to my laboratory, not my office every Wednesday, sharp at six. I want briefings, detailed, documented briefings, mind, and I will give you instructions. You have promise, Granger. If you do well, I may select you as my apprentice when you have graduated. But you must be trained. Beginning tomorrow. Bring your cauldron." He told her.
"Yes, Professor."
He unlocked the door.
"Is that all, Professor?" she asked.
"For now, Miss Granger."
Hermione Granger opened the door and beat a hasty retreat from the Potions lab.
Snape smiled to himself.
This could get interesting.
It didn't seem fair to Hermione.
She knew that in times like this, sex should be the last thing she was worrying about. Voldemort was back, the Ministry was denying it, and Dumbledore was in exile. Harry was in torment, the whole Wizarding World was in ferment.
She found herself the General in Dumbledore's Army, the secret head of a guerrilla organisation, taking her marching orders from Severus Snape, a man she had once viewed as her enemy, if not to the degree that Harry and Ron did.
And it was no wonder. Snape cleverly manipulated his fearsome reputation into a part of his cover. The man was such a master spy that no one was really sure if he was a spy, a double agent, or a double apostate. He had instructed her not to trust anyone, and she wondered if that included him, because there were times when she didn't.
And with everything that was going on, she was worried about having had an unsatisfactory sex life.
Hermione was usually pretty cool, calm and collected, when it came to sex. For one thing, there was a war going on, and for another, she didn't think a sensible witch should go around harbouring a lot of bullshit notions about love. After all, Harry ravaged them in flocks, and none of them were the wiser that they were just a speedbump on his way to the next one.
She didn't get sentimental over the end of her romance with Viktor Krum, or during it, for that matter, but he hadn't been what she expected and his efforts in the sack had left her feeling cheated and frustrated.
"Harry, don't you think you should settle for one girl? Or even just a couple of girlfriends?' Ron had asked him.
"Oh what's the point, Ron? Voldemort's back. We could all be dead tomorrow. Why not have a little fun while we still can?" Harry had replied.
Hermione couldn't have agreed more. It was a terrible thing, being 16, secretly 17, and having the spectre of death suddenly looming over you. Quite a shock when you're a teenager thinking you've got your whole life ahead of you. But at the end of 4th year everything changed. Hermione stopped thinking about what university she wanted to attend and where she would live when she was older and what job she would do and so on.
None of that seemed to matter, survival was the only thing that mattered and she was, like Harry, prepared to do what she had to in order to survive.
And if there was anything she really wanted to do in life, Hermione had realised, now was the time. That was certainly Harry's attitude. Not many people outside her and Ron knew that the change in Harry's' demeanour wasn't just war and death and the certainty of more to come.
He was often drunk, sometimes high, and usually in a bad mood if he was sober . He was commonly up most of the night, doing the old wine, women and song bit. He snuck out of Hogwarts to dives in Knockturn Alley.
After hours places where anyone with money could buy whatever poison they desired.
As for Hermione, she had been drunk once on Merlin's lager, and it was a terrible experience.
She'd smoked a little dope with Harry and it had made her laugh like an idiot and gorge herself on junk food. Hermione didn't like anything that dulled her mind and clouded her judgement.
No, what she was interested in was sex.
Not love. Not having a boyfriend and going steady and all that Lavender Brown kind of shit. No, she wanted someone who was experienced, tactful, trustworthy and above all, discreet, for a damn good shag on a regular basis.
That ruled out every boy she knew, other than Harry. He would likely have been glad to be her friend with benefits. She certainly trusted him, he had a lot of experience, and she could trust him to keep his gob shut about it while he was sober. But Harry was only sober about three days out of a week.
No, what she needed was a grown man. Hermione had never been much attracted to boys; they seemed silly and preoccupied with childish things and Hermione couldn't imagine having even a casual sexual relationship with someone who wasn't at least close to being her intellectual equal.
The number of adult male wizards who were unattached and in Hermione's social circle was rather paltry. Narrow that down to those who were reasonably attractive and intellegent, and it was scant, indeed. The way Hermione saw it she had her choice between Remus Lupin, Sirius Black, and Severus Snape.
Her ex-Defence Against the Dark Arts professor was right out. Lupin was a good-looking fellow and certainly intelligent and considering his own secret, capable of discretion. But Hermione did not relish the idea of being involved with a werewolf. They were horny as all hell, but also infamously emotional and mercurial.
Hermione knew she couldn't deal with that.
Sirius was a much better candidate. He was very handsome, she knew she could trust him and count on him to be discreet, but he was a bit of a romantic. He'd be likely to fall in love with her, or at least convince himself he was. And, like Remus, he wasn't someone who was readily accessible to Hermione; she'd have to regularly break school rules to see him. Also, he was Harry's godfather.
Hermione couldn't think of any reason off the top of her head why Harry would object to her having a bit of fun with Sirius, but there was no predicting Harry's moods or whims, anymore and she didn't want to upset him.
Which left her, by logical process of elimination, with Snape.
Hermione found him reasonably attractive although he wasn't conventionally handsome at all. He was on the ugly side, but in a Bon Scott sort of way. Snape had a big nose, and Hermione liked men with big noses. He had that sort of tall, wiry raw-boned look, and big hands, which she also found attractive.
And he was an intelligent man, brilliant even.
Hermione had learned from her romance with Viktor that she couldn't be attracted to idiots.
More importantly, she knew she could trust him because, other than him being a master spy used to keeping secrets, opening his mouth about it wouldn't get him kicked out of his job, but it wouldn't look good, at all. Also, her father knew his father and her grandfather knew his grandfather.
Dad always said you should stick with your own kind, after all.
Not to mention that Snape was definitely her intellectual equal and likely her better. As for accessibility, they lived in the same castle and had a legitimate reason to be together after hours.
The Potions project that was the cover for their covert operations would also be an excellent cover for a little comradely affair.
The only trick was, how could she attract his attention without having him lump her in with those stupid witches who seemed to think he was The God of Fuck, and mooned over him like nifflers snuffling for gold? The very thought both disgusted and appalled her. These dumb bitches who saw him as their secretly tender lover, or their slightly sadistic master, what did they know?
Hermione worked with the man; she was his student and he was her commanding officer.
The Professor was a cold man, sardonic and witty at his best and cruel and brutal at his worst. He was also a reasonable man, an intelligent man, a man devoted to his scholarship and his duties without the slightest thought of repulsive, maudlin sentiment, or notions of anything as silly as love. He could be a right arsehole, but when he was being an arsehole to other people, Hermione found it no end of funny and she could be just as much of a nasty cunt as he was when he was being an arsehole to her.
Hermione liked a bloke with a bit of an edge to him; she considered cynicism to be a sign of intelligence and didn't see much point in pretty boys and nice guys.
Yes, all in all, reasonably and logically, Snape was the man for the job.
Now how the hell was she going to let him know that, without making an arse of herself?
Time passes...
"Six on the spot. On time as usual, Miss Granger."
"Here is the dossier containing this week's briefing, Professor Snape. I have run the corps through their paces in basic Occlumency, and their duelling scores are improving. Also, the dragon's blood you gave me became crystallised, so I have filled out the requisite forms to petition you for a replacement ounce, sir."
Snape looked over the form.
"Throw away the old bottle of dragon's blood and take your ounce from the new bottle, Miss Granger."
"Yes sir." She said, and got to work.
As he read her detailed dossier, inscribed in her firm, clear hand, Snape noted that Granger was, as usual all business. No make-up. No dye-job, no fluffing her hair and giggling. First there was the briefing and then she went right to work.
She was well-read, clear–eyed and conscientious, and her mind engaged no silly romantic thoughts or notions.
He looked over top of the folder than contained the dossier.
She bent over the cauldron, frowning, and pulled her very long, and wildly curly and bushy unadorned hair into two sloppy, lopsisded ponytails on either side of her head. She had odd socks on, one which was pulled up around her knee and the other sagged down around her ankle. and one shoe was untied and when she bent over, her skirt flipped up in the back.
Her knickers looked just as ancient, badly-laundered and disreputable as his y-fronts.
She pulled it down, and it flipped up again.
Snape suppressed a laugh.
It had been at least ten years since he found himself attracted to a student, but Granger was nothing like the horde of brainless idiot witches who lay in their beds at night diddling themselves and drooling on their pillows wondering what their hated Potions Master had under his wrinkled robes, or alternatively, his ancient Levis.
Granger was brilliant and bookish, cold and analytical, almost robotic, and ruthlessly unsentimental.
A thinking man's Lolita.
He put the dossier down and walked over to see how she was doing.
She flinched in the proximity.
you are looking at her fucking knickers stop looking at her fucking knickers you stupid old perv.
It was war again, and Snape was getting that old feeling.
That feeling that he could be dead tomorrow, so why not enjoy life while he could?
He knew he could not indulge his addictions, but…
Mr. Maybe I Can began to hiss temptations in his ear
You've been a good boy, Sevreus. No booze. No grass. No smack. No Purple Doom? When did you become a eunuch? You went back to Riddle when Albus asked you to, didn't you? You risk your life every day, don't you? The girl wants you. She's young, and she's pretty. And she doesn't love you. She probably doesn't even like you. Which is good. Less complications. But she wants it, doesn't she? So give it to her. We have to have a little fun, don't we Severus?
He was shocked out of his reverie by an abnormal pinkish tint to the potion Hermione was mixing.
"Professor, something's wrong with this potion." Hermione observed.
The red potion turned pink, then rapidly black.
Snape's eyes widened in horror.
"Cover you face, Granger! Move back!" he shouted, and grabbed her shoulders to pull her away.
Hermione threw her hands up in front of her face only seconds before the contents of the cauldron emitted a great bang and a white flash of flame. Snape kicked the table over, threw himself on the ground behind it and pulled her down with him.
"Stay down!" he cried.
The Professor covered his student with his laboratory robes and his body.
A second flash from the potion and both potion and cauldron exploded like a bomb. Fragments of metal blasted about the room, like shrapnel. The large, heavy table absorbed most of it, but a piece whizzed passed Snape's arm, the wooden handle struck his face, one of the larger pieces thumped off of his back.
His cheekbone was broken, his arm slashed and his back bruised, but he was relatively unharmed, considering that exploding potions and cauldrons often cased serious injury or death.
He pulled away from his student.
She was curled up in a ball, and she had her hands over her face.
"Are you hurt, Miss Granger? Miss Granger? Granger, report!"
She sat up, her reddened hands still covering her face.
There was blood on her hands.
"It exploded in my face, Professor! I'm all bloody!"
"Let me see your face, Granger."
My god you fool you see what you've done you fool you arsehole distracting her when she's working with compounds like that not watching the potion thinking those disgusting thoughts what right have you to her she's only sixteen and now she's blown her face off because of you goddamn sick fuck that you are just like your parents you fucking degenerate pervert arsehole
Hermione slowly lowered her hands.
Her nose was broken in two places and it had bled all over her face, but the rest of her features were intact.
"Let me see your face. Does this hurt?"
He pressed on her jaw.
"No."
"Can you see me, clearly?"
"Yes, Professor."
She had regained her composure, quickly.
So had he.
Snape drew his wand and pointed it at her.
"Your nose is badly broken, Miss Granger. Other than that, your face is unharmed. But I think I can fix that. Episkey!"
Hermione touched her nose.
"It's fine! What was that spell?"
"E-piss-key. It repairs minor broken bones and sprains. Point your wand at my cheek, the injured one, and use it."
"Episkey!"
Snape felt his face; it was back to normal.
"Go in the bathroom and clean yourself up. I'll take care of this mess."
"But Professor, your arm is bleeding."
"I've had worse."
Hermione shuffled off to the bathroom.
"Treacher! Treacher, where are you?"
Treacher had been in the Prince family for generations. Snape, always so ill-used himself, never liked the idea of having any being as a slave. He had freed Treacher years before, but the loyal house elf who had never been mistreated by the Princes, simply refused to go.
Treacher apparated, wearing his customary "Hogwarts Faculty" tee shirt and mismatched striped knee socks that Snape had given him years ago.
"Master is hurt!"
"Not badly, Treacher. I'd clean this up myself, but I'm bleeding all over everything. Could you do something about all this shit everywhere while I patch meself up?"
"Yes, Master Severus. Treacher will get a new lab robe for you. Yours is ruined."
Snape looked at himself. His lab robe was torn by shrapnel fragments and besmirched with blood and ash.
"Thank, you, Treacher."
Snape knocked on the bathroom door, but Granger wasn't in there.
He took off his robe and threw it in the trash, and his shirt as well. He cleaned the spilt chemical, ash and blood off of his chest and arms and bandaged his painful, swelling arm.
A pair of his black Levis were sitting on top of the hamper, and he put them on.
The shirts in the hamper were all very dirty, so Snape went into his bedroom to get a fresh shirt.
As he passed through the library he saw her there, reading a book.
"Go home for tonight, Granger. You may be excused from classes tomorrow, if you find it necessary. I'll write you a pass."
Hermione looked up.
Out of his robes and in a pair of Levis that were carelessly washed and faded until they were Mick Jagger tight, Snape didn't look at all the way she thought he would.
For one thing, he had hair on his chest.
For another, besides the Dark Mark, he was tattooed on his biceps, forearms, chest, torso and thigh. There must have been a glamour over his Dark Mark, because it only looked like a Slytherin emblem on his firearm.
The tattoos were all mystical symbols, runes and icons and emblems in configurations whose significance even Hermione knew related to his various degrees of Mastery in what looked from the tattooing to be at least Four of the Five Disciplines.
The crook of both his arms was heavily scarred with faded tracks.
The dragon tattooed just under his navel was covering up a nasty scar that went diagonal across his belly.
Another nasty scar, thin and white, started right under his collarbone and went all the way across his chest, cutting a swath through his chest hair.
She expected him to have a sunken chest, but he didn't. Though he was thin, his shoulders were broad, and he was very wiry and lithe, giving the impression of the kind of coiled tensile strength of a steel cable.
It wasn't that he was good-looking, oh no, he was scarred and hard and tattooed amd ugly.
Ugly as sin.
Fabulously ugly.
"You should go have yourself checked in the infirmary. Quit staring at me like that. I'm not displaying myself for you, I'm just going into me bedroom to get a clean shirt."
"Then you shouldn't wear your pants so tight, Professor." Hermione quipped.
As soon as the words came out of her mouth, Hermione's hand flew to her lips as if to trap them back in.
Snape was suddenly embarrassed.
He looked at his favourite old pair of jeans that he'd had since about 1978.
He'd never really thought of them as being tight.
And he did wear Muggle clothes to detention, on occasion.
Hmmmm.
Perhaps that was where these girls were getting their ideas.
But what were they doing looking at an ugly old git like him?
"And you should invest in a size larger uniform skirt. I am your professor, I should not know that you have little blue turtles on your faded orange cotton knickers with holes in the elastic."
Now Hermione looked embarrassed.
"Erm, I was just thinking you look a lot stronger than I thought you would, considering your build." Hermione covered.
Maybe if she flattered him...
Snape was oblivious to flattery.
"You can thank my father for that. I may be thin, but I'm not a weeping willow, like my mother. The old man's a Scotsman. Big ginger bastard. Chest like a barrel, hairy like an ape. Much hairier than me. Like a gorilla, he was. I always thought he was repulsive looking, but women loved him."
Hermione laughed.
"Sorry. I wasn't laughing at your family. It's odd to think of you as just a man, a person, just like me, with parents and all. You don't think of your teachers like that."
"Oh I assure you, Miss Granger, though I am just a man, my parents were nothing like yours. Nothing like any student's here, I should hope. Can I go and finish dressing, now? Or would you like me to open a couple of butterbeers and tell you about my tattoos?"
Hermione was about to say that would be nice, she was curious about the dragon covering the scar, and the magical significance of the rest, but then she realised he was being sarcastic.
"Yes. Sorry, professor."
"When I'm dressed, I am taking you to the infirmary. I should probably be seen, as well."
Hermione drew her breath in sharply went he turned around.
His back was crisscrossed with scars from what had likely been a horribly severe beating.
"Did you get those from…from Voldemort?' Hermione asked.
"No. Tom Riddle never laid a hand on me. If he had I would have killed him long ago. I don't stand for being slapped around. I don't like anyone laying their hands on me. Mind, I've had my share of Cruciatus Curses when he was feeling suspicious, or in foul moods, but no, I was not whipped half to death by the Dark Lord. That was Mum and Da. Over the Christmas holidays in my first year at Hogwarts. Me father slugged me in the gob, me mother threw several appalling hexes at me and then beat me with an extension cord until I was lying in a pool of blood on the floor of me bedroom. To their credit, though, I did try to burn the house down while they were sleeping. It was the worst, but still just one of many beatings. When I became a man, I swore no one would ever beat me again. Quite Dickensian, I suppose." Snape explained.
Hermione was shocked. She had read his biography in "Hogwarts, A History" and her father was his father's dentist and their grandfathers had lived in the same street in Vauxhall, so she knew he came from humble beginnings, and wasn't a lord like some of the students thought. Hermione had heard whispers around the house about the way things "used to be" with the Snapes, but never as much as a whisper that her professor had come from such an abusive home.
"But what about…about Harry's father? And his friends? Didn't they used to.."?"
"Pick on me? Humiliate me when I was boy? So what? I became a man when I was 15, Granger. Potter left me alone after that. Everyone did." Snape replied.
Hermione's mind reeled as he sat and waited for him to change his clothes. It certainly explained a lot about him. Her heart suddenly went out to him. An abused child who became an addict, a drunk and a Death Eater as an adult, he still managed to reach a position of respect , regardless, and even if it was secretly, he was possibly the bravest man in the Wizarding Wold, loyal to Dumbledore, and a sworn enemy of Voldemort. But still he was an outcast, mistrusted and by some even reviled and hated.
What kind of life was that for a man to lead?
"Don't pity me, Granger. I despise being pitied."
"It's not that, Professor. I don't feel sorry for you. I'm mad. Doesn't it make you angry? The hypocrisy? The ingratitude?"
"No. Because, you must remember, my bold Griffindor, I am a Slytherin. We never do anything unless there's something in it for us. I'm doing this for me. I hate Tom Riddle. I hate everything he does and everything he stands for, yes, but I hate him, single-mindedly and intensely. I don't care a monkey's if the people I risk my life to protect wouldn't even have me to tea. It's not about them. Their safety is a pleasant by-product of my task, which is to watch Tom Riddle die, and laugh as he takes his last breath."
Snape's eyes narrowed into two black slits and glinted with malevolence, like those of a pitiless killer shark.
She couldn't help but wonder what it was the Dark Lord had done to him to engender such hatred, but she didn't think he was going to tell her.
What's more, she wasn't sure that she wanted to know.
"Enough of that. I'm sure you here such things quite often enough from Potter. Off to the infirmary with us."
They both turned out to be a little more injured than they had thought.
Professor Snape had an actual piece of the cauldron embedded in his arm, and Hermione 's hands began to blister and swell up with burns. Minor injuries for Madame Pomfrey to treat, but she kept Hermione overnight in the infirmary, just in case.
She insisted they both take the next day off.
When she left the infirmary in the morning, Hermione really did feel like taking the day off. Though her injuries were healed her hand itched and her nose hurt and her ears were still ringing occasionally fro the blast. She assumed, however, that Snape would want to use the day off to work.
Dressed in jeans, trainers, and a Gryffindor Quidditch tee shirt, Hermione used the floo network to get from the Gryffindor common room to Snape's lab. Except she did something wrong, because she ended up in the Potions master's bedroom.
Granger had heard stories and whispers and rumours about goings-on in Snape's bedroom, and she was now in a position to see what it was all really like.
It looked like a regular Hogwarts bedroom, with a standard 4-poster bed, in Slytherin colours. It was also rather untidy, with a pile of black clothes in the corner and books piled up everywhere. The closet door hung open and most of the drawers in the wardrobe seemed jammed shut.
She was surprised to discover he had a television and a stereo, but he had grown up with a Muggle father, so she supposed he'd become used to such things.
The telly was on, showing an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
As for Snape, he was slouched in his unmade bed, wearing his tatty Hogwarts gym shorts that he wore for his midnight swims and runs around the school.
Hermione was often up late enough at night to see him do same, she was usually studying, and she's always thought it odd that the despite the weather he was always out there in a tee shirt and shorts and his battered canvas trainers, even when it was freezing.
Not to mention exercising at midnight.
He was focused on the telly and on the large bag of potato crisps that was parked in his lap. There was also an open book beside him which he was reading as he watched telly. He didn't notice Hermione standing awkwardly in the hearth at all.
"Treacher! Wherever you are, more snacks, if you please!" He bawled to his house elf.
She shook her head, feeling silly.
So this was the private Professor Snape? A man who enjoyed lounging in bed in his gym shorts surrounded by books and papers watching Monty Python on telly and yelling for his house elf to get him some more snacks?
Maybe he wouldn't want her to know that about him.
But how to escape?
"Granger, why are you hiding in the hearth? What are you doing here today, anyway?'"
Crunch, cronch, crunch.
"I'm sorry Professor-"
"When you're in me private rooms, call me Snape, Granger."
Crunch, cronch, crunch.
"I thought you would want to do some more work."
"What do you think I am, Granger, your slave driver? Crunch, cronch, crunch Do you like Monty Python?"
"I've seen every episode at least four times, Snape."
"A sign of good character. Have some crisps. Don't look at me like that, I'm not going to fling myself on you."
So much for that, Hermione thought.
Treacher apparated in the bedroom, his arms full of food.
"Treacher has Doritos for master. And chocolate biscuits, pretzels, soda pop, candy bars…"
Hermione found herself climbing into the big bed, eyes wide as the house elf continued his recitation, and stocked an empty cabinet by the bed.
"…cheesy curls, licorice, peanuts, Twinkies, Ho-Ho's, creamy filling cupcakes, chocolate chip cookie oatmeal cream pies, and little chocolate donuts. If Master wants the Treacher can being pizza or sandwiches."
Could it be that Snape was a junk food junkie? She'd heard it went with the territory of being an actual junkie, so it wasn't too surprising, Hermione supposed.
"Both, Treacher. Around lunchtime."
"Professor, how can you eat like this and not get fat as a pig?"
Snape shrugged.
"I never gain weight no matter what I eat. For you, Granger, there are spells and potions to the same effect."
Hermione climbed into bed beside him.
"Pass the peanut butter, will you, Snape? I can't stand celery without peanut butter."
Records and movies with junk food in bed became a regular occurrence for professor and student, as regular as late nights in the library or in the lab over pizza. Occasionally even a fry-up over the cook-top in Snape's rooms.
Hermione didn't know if they were friends, but they had become more like colleagues or comrades than just student and teacher.
After all, he was a little piece of home, and never made fun of her accent, his was ever so much thicker.
As the end of term neared Hermione began to get a now or never sort of feeling, and over tea and biscuits in the lab after classes one day, she decided to make her proposal.
"Snape, I have to ask you something and I don't want you to make fun of me because I have thought this all out very well."
"I would not dream of mocking you, Granger." Snape said, mockingly already.
He really was a fucking snarky bastard.
"You probably know that I don't have a boyfriend. I despise sentiment, there is nothing I despise more than sentiment, and with a war going on and the prospect of at least four years of university if I live to graduate, I am not interested in love, or marriage. Quite frankly though, I am interested in sex."
"Who isn't? I'm sorry, Granger. This is fascinating."
Hermione ignored the sarcasm that Snape's words dripped with.
"I am looking for someone who is experienced, and will be tactful, trustworthy and above all, discreet, for sex on a regular basis. Which rules out all the boys at this school. I find myself generally uninterested in boys, anyway. Which means I am looking for a man. Logically, and after considering my options, I decided that if you were agreeable, you and I might as well make an arrangement."
Hermione managed to say it all in a cool, detached, businesslike fashion.
Snape raised an eyebrow.
"Well stated, Granger. Remarkable. That is the least titillating and undeniably the most un-erotic indecent proposal I have ever had in my life. You might as well be buying lab equipment. Very frosty, indeed." Snape replied, archly.
"You said you wouldn't make fun of me." Hermione reminded him.
"No, Granger, you said I wouldn't make fun of you. Your proposal is sound, and so is your reasoning., I couldn't agree more with your feelings on love and marriage, and especially sentiment. Sex, however has nothing to do with logic or reason. To be perfectly blunt with you, Granger, you can't logically reason out who it is you want to fuck. If love, romance, and sentiment aren't gong to be involved, then you must at least have lust and physical attraction."
"Who says I don't?"
"Well if you've selected me out of the process of elimination and by default, pardon me if I don't start tearing your clothes off. I'm not especially titillated by your being a teenager or a virgin, and I'm not desperate for it." Snape told her.
"I'm not a virgin."
"I could care less. But don't get me wrong, Granger. Considering I'm such am ugly, mean, cynical old junkie bastard, I'm so pleased and honoured you've selected me from your lottery of available cocks upon which to hop. I regret, however, that despite your generous offer of the use of what you must suppose is your endlessly titillating teenage body, I will be regretfully unavailable to be your room-temperature dildo. I suggest you look up Remus Lupin. He's so desperate for a woman who won't run screaming when she finds out he's a werewolf, he'll take anything with a pussy and a pulse. He'll be ever so grateful, and treat you like the goddess you obviously think you are. Myself, however, having had, despite my ugliness and deplorable personality, me fair share of birds, I'm not interested, thanks." Snape replied, sharply.
He looked angry.
He was probably insulted.
On second thoughts Hermione realised that, in effect she had pretty much said "I'm randy and you'll do, but don't get attached, mate.", which wasn't what she had meant at all.
"I think I'm going about this all wrong. I didn't mean to be insulting. And I haven't picked you out of default. I just didn't want you to think I was like those silly witches who think you're some kind of porny lord Byron, the God of Fuck, or something. Oh, that didn't come out right, either. Snape, you must know what it is I'm trying to say?"
"Not really."
Hermione narrowed her eyes at him.
"I won't say it."
Snape put his feet casually up on the table.
"If you won't say it, I won't do it." He told her.
He looked so smug and satisfied with himself she wanted to punch him right in the gob.
"Why should I say it? Why don't you? Don't get all high and mighty with me, Snape! I see the way you almost fall out of your chair to look up me skirt! You're a right dirty old bastard! I know about you. I know you're a Sex Magus in the Third Degree and when you were our age you started a cabal for degenerate Sex Magi and that your grandfather is half-satyr. He's even got the horns. Not to mention your dad being a Scotsman. I've seen how you hide Bad Witch behind a book during detention, and I've heard about your adventures with the divorcee mothers of some of the students in your house. You think you're so smart! Just because you've figured out that if you have a scar or two and you're not a pretty boy and you wear tight pants and you've got a past you can get a certain kind of witch to go mad for you, you really do think you're some kind of Sex God. Well, you want it more than I do! Or you wouldn't be so fucking rotten to me, would you, then? I said you could have me. But you want to be childish. You want it? You say it!" Hermione defied him.
Snape didn't say anything.
Granger had him dead to rights.
He did not, in fact, think he was some kind of Sex God.
Indeed, he was not.
He was however, a Sex Magus of the Third Degree, like his grandfather before him.
Who was the grandson of a half-satryr who married a half-veela.
And then his mother went and married a Scottish sailor.
An accident of nature and genetics.
What could Snape do?
He was born that way.
It was in his thoroughly bad blood.
He stood up, pushed in his chair, lifted Hermione out of hers, and sat her down on the table.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
That was a good question.
He had forgotten something.
"How old are you, Granger? Don't lie to me if you're not 16. I can check . And I have no desire to lose my job and get thrown into Azkaban for being a chicken hawk."
Hermione produced her birth certificate from her robes, showing that she was, indeed, of the age of consent.
"Actually, professor, I'm not only just 16, I'm only just 17, if you count in all the extra time from my use of the Time Turner over the past three years. A fact which is known to the Headmaster and the authorities. So, OI am well over the requisite age of consent. Also, the school rules say nothing about teachers being prohibited from having affairs with students and apprentices over the age of consent. I do think it would be best, though, if we were discreet." she said, archly.
Snape looked at it, handed it back to her and raised an eyebrow.
"That's what I like about you, Granger. You're always cool, unemotional, and well-prepared. Still, even if this is all legally permissible, it still seems morally reprehensible." Snape mused.
He wasn't sure if he minded being morally reprehensible, it wouldn't be the first time in his life.
In fact, he was commonly morally reprehensible, generally, if you wanted to get right down to it.
"I should think morally reprehensible would be right up your street." Hermione sniffed.
Snape locked his doors and warded them.
He took off his shirt.
"It's about to be right up your street as well, Granger. Divesto!"
Hermione felt a sudden draft, and she looked down and realised she was naked.
"Very nice." Snape said, appreciatively.
"Did you have to do it like that? Divesto, yourself!" Hermione retorted
Snape smirked at her, and she dropped her wand .
For once in her life, she was at a total loss for words.
So, THAT was it.
Ugly, snarky, scarred, tattooed, a regular fucking arsehole, and hung like a centaur.
A satyr, technically.
What more could a witch want?
"Son of a bitch, Snape! Fucking look at it! You could be John Holmes bleedin' stunt double! Is this some kind of spell?" Hermione exclaimed.
"No. I told you my father was a Scotsman. Granger, how do you know who John Holmes is, you filthy thing?"
Hermione blushed.
She had a poster for The Jade Pussycat hanging on her wall between The Who and Led Zeppelin.
"Erm, I watch his movies for the cop subplots. I'm very much into 70's cop shows." Hermione hedged.
"Yes. And I subscribe to Bad Witch for the articles." Snape replied.
They both had a good laugh, which broke the tension.
"Should we be laughing right now, Snape?" she giggled.
"Why not? And if I were you I'd get myself into the bedroom, unless you'd like it here on the table."
"Oh, I'd like it very much right here on the table! Viktor was so boring. We never did anything interesting, let alone in any interesting places. On the table? Why not? It's a kick I haven't tried." Hermione told him
"I accept your proposal, Granger. You're definitely my kind of witch." Snape observed.
They did make their way to the bedroom, eventually. While Treacher saw to tidying up the lab and arranging dinner, Snape and Hermione saw to one another. They poured out their lusts all over each other, in a carnal concerto of combustive copulation, a furiously frenzied fulmination of wanking and spanking and fucking and sucking, culminating in a munificent multiplicity of mind-shattering, mountain moving, thermonuclear orgasms.
Afterward, they both felt much better, and greatly relieved.
Now they could get some work done without all this tension and innuendo getting in the way.
Hermione fell asleep, and while she slept, Snape crept into his sitting room and sat before the fire.
The face of Tom Riddle, a good-looking, professiorail face, aloft and pepper hair with a widow's peak and a neat, pointy Van Dyke goatee, a rather composed and pleasant face.
Not the nauseous, nose-less face of Lord Voldemort that he put on for his credulous dupes appeared in the flames.
The man himself, with his banal, aristocratic appearance and his true plans for the Wizarding World were far more frightening than his comic opera villainy and Neo-Nazi red herrings.
"Good evening, Tom."
"Good evening, Severus. How's my Heir this evening?"
"I've had quite a night, actually, Tom."
"I see. What about Eileen? Is she still sober?"
"Mum is."
"Good. I am sorry we haven't spoken for so long, but I've had to really ramp up my tomfoolery, as it were, of late. So, how goes the war against Dumbledore? Are you worming your way into Potter's confidence?"
Snape could feel Riddle's greedy, searching tentacles entering his mind.
"Tom, you know you can't read me."
"Yes. But I have to try."
It was a repulsive, sickening feeling, a truly loathsome sensation. He often wondered if this was what Lucius had felt when Voldemort, or whomever Voldemort had sold him to, entered his body.
Snape knew the Dark Lord could not see his thoughts, but he could get impressions of what his heir was feeling.
The Potions Master gave full vent to his single-minded, devoted, passionate hatred of the creature that had seduced him into evil, deprived him of Lily, and her friendship, and her love, and everything else they had together. And deprived Lily of her life, and of James, and of Harry.
Snape saw Potter from that morning again, dazed and unshaven and bereft, the fag dangling from lips that trembled.
He flexed his hate like a muscle, and pounded the Dark Lord's presence with it, like a fist.
Tom Riddle sensed only the hatred somehow connected with Harry Potter, and was both fooled and pleased.
"He is becoming bitter and cynical. He is loyal to Dumbledore, but he feels that Albus had let him down. He is beginning to trust me."
All truths, and yet all lies.
"Good, Severus. Very good. Everything is going in accordance with our plans. Keep up the good work."
Voldemort continued his loathsome penetration into Snape's mind.
Snape thought of the day he would see Tom Riddle die in torment. He thought of seeing his blood on the ground, savoured the sound of his cries of pain, the faint rattle as his last diseased breath left his broken body.
i'll pick what's left of your charred bones out of the fire and i will make them into charms for my children at hogwarts to wear
The Dark Lord could sense only his Heir's pure, animal joy at the doom and ruination of another.
He sensed, however another feeling in his protégé, and chuckled, evilly.
"I won't keep you from your bed any longer, Severus. After all, a man must have his amusements."
"Am I so transparent, Tom?"
"Not usually. I must have disturbed you at your work. Very well, I'll leave you to it. I will expect to hear from you next week, Severus."
"You will, Tom."
The face vanished from the fire.
Feeling drained, Snape went back to his bedroom.
Granger was awake.
"I heard you talking to someone. Was it…him?"
Snape lay down.
He was tired.
Leave it to Tom Riddle to suck all the joy out of such a pleasant day.
"Yes."
"You're so convincing, Snape."
"It's my job. And before I knew better, I used to hold him in high regard. He was almost like a father to me."
The cold was beginning to overtake him.
Then, he felt her hand, small and resolute, diving between his legs.
Snape smiled at her.
"Are you comforting me, Granger?"
"Yes. I knew holding your hand would be no comfort at all."
"…there's a layyyyydeeee whooozzzzz shoooor….awllll that gli-terzzzzzz izzz gooold. An' sheezzzzz buyyiying uh stayiryairwaaaay to heah-vuuuuuuuun…"
Falling over his own feet, Harry Potter stumbled down the corridor of the wrong floor in the wrong tower, late at night.
He was drunk, he was baked, he was coked up, and he was returning from the embraces of three witches in their twenties who had bought him the means to his intoxication at the Horntail's Nest in Knockturn Alley, a favourite haunt of his of late.
yesssir you all wanna ride on Harry Potter's personal firebolt that's right ladies its twice the size of most guys who are twice my age its all the rage what do I care I could be dead tomorrow that old bastard voldemort and dumbledore leaving me like this I'm gonna have a good time while I can cos tomorrow I could be worm's meat
Harry sort of slipped and sort of tripped and kind of fell insensate in the hallway. He lay there for awhile, half a bottle of firewhiskey soaking into his robes and the flagstones.
He wanted someone to help him, but he was dazed beyond speech.
When someone came and picked him up he was crying soundlessly, just whiskey stinking tears rolling out of his eyes and down his cheeks.
Someone carried him to Gryffindor Tower, and then quietly into the loo and held him up while he took a piss and put a towel in his hands to dry the whiskey off of himself, someone who helped him into his pyjama bottoms and then helped him into bed and covered him up and made sure his glasses were waiting for him on his nightstand come the morning.
Harry couldn't remember who it was in the morning as he swilled a bit of the hangover-dispelling potion.
He just remembered they were quiet and patient and that their presence was reassuring.
They seemed to understand.
In the dead of night, Severus Snape left Gryffindor Tower.
It was dark outside and dark in the corridor, but he liked the dark, and the night.
He stopped long enough to light a cigarette and then continued back on his way down the corridor.
"Ah, Lily, I loathe life." He said.
"Snape?"
Snape turned around, sharply.
"Yes, Granger?"
"I was just going to the library. I don't sleep much, anymore, and my homework, save Potions, is usually incredibly fucking easy. So I spend a lot of time in the Library. Down on the bottom floor, where the ancient books are. I'm teaching myself to read Old Elvish."
"An excellent pastime, Granger. I haven't slept for more than three hours a night since 1980. Think I'll come with you. I know how to read Old Elvish. Perhaps I can help."
"Thank you, Snape. Then, maybe we could watch a movie. Monty Python and the Holy Grail, possibly?"
"And a midnight snack?" Snape added.
"And who knows what else? I do have a Time Turner, you know."
"True, Granger. We'll let's be off, then."
With Snape smoking all the way, in contravention of Umbridge's rules, they leisurely made their way to their destination.