LAST MAN STANDING
Chapter One: All's Fair In Love and War
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Headmaster's Office, 1998
I: Snape
To the Wizarding World,
Fuck you.
I, Severus Tobias Snape, being of sound mind and body, hereby declare it.
Fuck you.
Whether I am dead or not, I have given my life for you, you ungrateful sons of bitches.
Whilst you have sat sitting on your ponderous, and for the most part, Southern, lily-white arses and, depending on what you read in the papers, cringed, howled in indignation, laughed derisively, or simply clucked your tongues and shook your heads, I have been doing your job.
I took care of your children while you either denied Voldemort's existence or cowered in fear of him. When it was necessary for me to teach them to kill, I did it. I was the parent none of you ever were, and they all hated me for it.
That's how I know I was doing a good job.
I gave you everything, you ungrateful bastards.
I gave you the woman I loved and the life I might have had with her, I threw her son under the wheels of your hideous machine in the face of your disgusting cowardice. With my own body, my own soul, my own life, I protected him and the brave soldiers like him, your brave and broken children whom you let fight and die while you ran and hid.
I gave you the life of the man who raised me, who adopted me as his son. Albus Dumbledore asked me to sacrifice him for your good and I did it.
His blood is on your hands, not mine.
I gave you my life, every bit of it, every minute of every hour of every day.
You will never know what I gave up for you, for your lovely world of clean shirts and regular mornings. Your world that I have never been part of, and never will be.
If I am dead, then with my dying breath I curse you, that the blood of this war's greatest heroes will be on your hands. I curse you that the stain of their blood will never wash off your clothes, the smell of it will never leave your nostrils. You have murdered children, you've taken their youth and their promise and squandered it on blood and war and death.
If it was in my power I would sentence you and your sick, diseased society to suffer, all of you, what they have suffered, but I know that I have no power, that I will die the miserable Scouser fuck born in the muck of the muddy Mersey, no better off than he ought to have been.
But, you had better hold onto your sanctimonious bums, you had best raise your faces to the gods and beg them that this old Scouser has not breathed his last.
I would have the last laugh, knowing that your fuckers can't make it without me, that your whole world will collapse into shit if I'm gone.
But I can't even be allowed that triumph.
Because if I am dead, neither Hermione Granger, or Ronald Weasley will live to be the age I am as I write this.
And Harry Potter, poor shattered Harry Potter, from whom this war has taken everyone he has ever loved, not to mention his childhood, his sanity, and maybe even his soul, he will not live to see 21.
You killed him.
You killed all three of them, and every warrior that died before them, with your cowardice and indifference.
Now, if I am not dead, and you have read the other papers in this packet, and discovered what a hero I am, well, then, that changes things.
Fuck you.
Fuck you, fuck your gratitude, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
This is what I want from you.
First, I would like all of Voldemort's monies and holdings. I am his heir, after all, and I deserve every motherfucking penny, I have paid for it, in blood.
Second, I want you to leave me the fuck alone and let me do what I have to in order to rebuild Hogwarts and make sure that the generation raised during this war do not grow up to be a pack of rabid psychopaths.
After the class that were first years during this miserable year have graduated, I intend to retire.
Third, leave your precious heroes the fuck alone.
They are children. Harry Potter and Ron Weasley are only 17, and Potter has no family. None whatsoever. Hermione Granger is 18, Ginny Weasley is 16.
They need to get on with the business of growing up and becoming something other than shell-shocked trained killers. Let them be and leave them to me.
Don't worry, I will fix them.
I will fix them, and all your children, and your school, and your world, and I will do it in seven years, if you will do just one thing for me.
LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE, SHUT THE FUCK UP, SIT THE FUCK DOWN, AND LET ME DO MY FUCKING JOB.
Then, I shall retire from public life, move home to Liverpool and you can all fuck yourselves for all I care.
Oh, and once more, this time with feeling.
Fuck you.
Sincerely,
Master Severus Tobias Snape, Master Magus
Of All Five Disciplines
Headmaster of Hogwarts
Order of the Phoenix
Head of Slytherin House
Heir to Master Tom Marvolo Riddle
Greasy, manky, snarky old Scouser git.
Snape looked at what he had just written.
His affairs were now in order.
He slipped that piece of parchment onto the bottom of the thick leather folio of parchments, papers and documents that he had finally finished compiling, in anticipation of his death.
There was only one more thing to do.
Entrust the folio to a competent, intelligent, reasonable person who would surely see to it that the documents within were delivered to the Minister of Magic and other interested parties at the war's end.
That person would be Hermione Jean Granger.
Snape smirked through the bluish veil of translucent cigarette smoke as he lit one English Oval on the butt end of another.
His affairs were in order, but he had one more to conduct.
If I am going to die, then I am resigned to it, but this old boy is definitely going out with a bang.
"Come in, Miss Granger."
II: Hermione
Unlike Ron and Harry, Hermione Granger still could not be sure that Headmaster Snape was on Voldemort's side.
He was many things, many of them unpleasant, but surely, not a Death Eater.
Surely.
Was it because she knew him, slightly, out of class?
Severus Snape and his family were from Hermione's home town of Liverpool. The summer after 5th year, Hermione began working a summer job in Wizarding Liverpool at the Potions shop owned by his mother, Eileen Snape and his grandfather, Severus Prince, Prince's Potions.
Snape was a regular visitor; he had his own lab, and she had worked with him in it on several occasions.
Snape out of class wasn't much different from Snape in class, except, as he did at Hogwarts when not teaching, he chain-smoked incessantly, and had a fondness for Muggle clothes, most of which were about as old as she was.
However, in the family lab, his true brilliance shined through the blue veil of smoke like the beacon of a lighthouse through a thick fog; Hermione came to realize that Snape was not just her intellectual equal, he was her superior, and whatever her opinions of him, she made it her business, in the summer, to learn as much from him, and his equally brilliant mother and grandfather as she could.
There were more personal connections.
The former Potions Master, due to his checkered past as an addict to injectable opiates both Wizarding and Muggle had disastrous teeth; he was a regular visitor to her father, Dr. John Granger, and so was his father, Tobias Snape.
Tobias and John had known each other for years, and were quite good friends, being around the same age. Although the Grangers made their home in suburban middle class Woolton, they were Scousers to the core; John Granger, like his school friend Toby Snape, was from working-class Vauxhall, and his much younger second wife, Olive, hailed from working-class Kensington, where the Snapes, Eileen, Tobias and their son, Severus, eventually landed, after Eileen and Tobias were ejected from the council house in Vauxhall where Tobias had grown up.
So there was always something about the occasionally terrifying Snape that was comfortable, even familiar.
His thick, lilting Scouse accent and his stern ways, even the swaggering roll of his walk; he was, at heart, just a Scouser hard nut from the now defunct Spinners End in Kensington, a legendary place in Liverpool, for a more wretched hive of scum and villainy did not exist anywhere else; it was the toughest part of a tough town and turned out the hardest nuts of all.
Snape was a little piece of home at Hogwarts, a place that was in some ways as far from home as if it was on the moon.
For, during his first, childless and disastrous marriage, young John Granger, a student dentist at the University of Liverpool , often went drinking with his old friend Toby Snape. As the years rolled on, being the closest thing to a doctor the Snapes knew and trusted, he was often called upon not only for broken teeth, but for all the injuries that Eileen and Tobias inflicted on one another, and their son Severus, and the illnesses wrought by their lives of poverty, misery and addiction.
As Hermione put her hand on the door she recalled what her father had said when she asked him why he had never reported the Snape family.
"What, to the rozzers? To the ministry? What would they have done but break up the family? At least that Dumbledore did it in a gentle way, where Toby and Ellie could still see the boy, but couldn't get at him. They were all they had, weren't they, the three of them, and what business was it of the ministry that moored them out in that hellhole without lifting a finger to help them, to take them away from each other. That's their way, with us, Hermione. Never forget you're a Scouser. And one of us don't go betrayin' another, not without good reason or just cause. "
Never forget you're a Scouser.
Never betray one of your own.
Not without good reason
Or just cause.
Hermione had always felt safe at Hogwarts, but no longer.
She hadn't dared to set foot in the school all year, but, preparing for battle in Hogsmeade village, when she received the secret summons from Snape, there was no question in her mind that she would go.
Right into the lion's mouth.
Hermione had entered the school in disguise, and ,even now, with the enemy all around her, called to Snape's office, the office of the Death Eater who had murdered Albus Dumbledore in cold blood and acceded to his position, Hermione felt the fear for her life that she had travelled with for so long leave her.
With Snape, she felt safe.
"Sit down, Granger."
He had addressed her as such since she began working for his family.
She did as she was told.
"We are at war, so I'll come right to the point. Do you believe I'm evil?"
Hermione remembered her father's words.
"No, Headmaster."
"Oh? Why?"
"Well, for one reason, I know all about you and Lily Evans, being close to your people, and that, and I know about what Voldemort did to your mother. So I know you've more reasons to hate than love him. I trusted Albus, and Albus trusted you, for another. And, besides, I know you too well. And your people. I know what kind of man you really are."
"Spoken like the most brilliant witch at Hogwarts. But also like a true Scouser, Granger. I knew I could trust you. Now, this is very important. Take this folio of parchments. Hide them. Guard them with your life. Open them at the end of the war, and follow the instructions inside. To the letter. No questions, no fucking about, and don't take no for an answer."
Hermione immediately secreted the parchments immediately in the magical security pocket of her heavy Alchemist's frock coat.
Eileen Snape had been her Mentor Magus in her study of Alchemy, and Hermine Granger was the youngest Third Degree Master of Alchemy in the history of Wizarding England, beating Severus Snape, the previous record-holder, by one week and four days.
"You can be sure I will. ls that all, Headmaster?"
Snape grinned at her, with his crooked teeth and his mouthful of gold crowns, just like a pirate.
He blew a few smoke rings at her
"No. It's not. Have you ever found yourself fancying me, Granger?"
WHAT?
"See here, you! What the fuck are you on about, then? " Hermione squawked, completely losing her formal dignity.
"I'm sorry, Granger. But we could all be dead in a fortnight, I haven't the time to fuck about. I think you're a beautiful girl, and you've got a brilliant mind. And a brilliant future ahead of you. If you don't marry that idiot Weasley and start pumping out little ginger Southerners, immediately after graduation. You were an annoying liitle git of a know it all when you were a child and half the time I wanted to strangle you. But, and especially since you began working for Prince's, you've grown on me. I think you're the most brilliant witch in your generation. If we both live, I'd like you to be my apprentice, actually. But, that will take care of itself, in time. This won't. Naturally, since I'm an ugly, manky, greasy old git of a scarred, tattooed Scouser hard nut, I never said anything to you. I would like to court you a bit more formally, Granger, take you to the flicks, invite you to the house in West Darby for dinner, scour the ancient libraries of Europe with you, something like that. But, there's no time. So I'm just going to ask you to come to the dungeon, tonight. Don't be followed, if you do. And don't be offended by my asking. I'm just asking. I'm not telling you, mind."
Hermione's mind reeled.
He was everything he said he was, of course, plus mean, moody, and mercurial, but Hermione had gone from getting used to him, to having respect for him, to thinking he was, as a human being, a bit of alright.
As a man?
Well, as a man, The Old Snape, he was dead sexy, wasn't he?
With his magical tattoos and his battle scars, and his crooked smile on his long face with a mouthful of gold teeth like an old pirate.
That's what he reminded Hermione of, a wily old pirate, he was a rotten son of a bitch of a hard nut of a Scouser who'd kill you as soon as look at you twice, but he was one fucking hell of a man.
He was just the kind of man she wasn't supposed to be attracted to, but Hermione didn't know if it was because Northerners, especially Scousers really do stick together, or because she, preferring the likes of a Bon Scott to a Robert Plant, had a thing about blokes who were rough and ugly-looking in a certain way, or because he was so very brilliant, or just out of some sheer rebellious perversity against everything she was supposed to stand for.
For whatever reason, Hermione had nursed a massive crush on The Old Snape since she had been about fourteen.
Massive, and completely unthinkable.
Why, she would never even have admitted it to herself had the man not just invited her to stop by for a shag.
And she never would have considered his offer, without the possibility that she might not live to see the end of the month.
Hermione wondered if her face was red.
"Come to the dungeon for what?"
Snape looked at her almost with disbelief.
"Do I have to spell it out for you, Granger, or would you just like me to say it?"
"Oooo, fucking hell, Headmaster, I think I would very much like you to say it." Hermione confessed.
He allowed himself one of those pirate smiles.
"Because I want to fuck you, that's why."
The world became slightly swirly for a moment.
Hermione's stomach turned over, and her heart lurched monstrously against her ribs.
She held onto the desk, for a moment.
"Could I have a glass of water, Snape?"
Outside the classroom, she was permitted to call him Snape.
The Headmaster poured a glass of water from the pitcher on Albus Dumbledore's desk.
"I never thought you'd swoon over it, Granger."
"It's the shock of it. What time?"
"The witching hour, of course."
"I'll be there."
Hermione Granger, at 18, had already foundered upon the craggy rock of sex.
Although she never told Ron, she had lost her virginity, quite young, to Viktor Krum, and lost it posthaste.
Viktor had a limited command of English, and he was, intellectually, a midget, but he was a decent enough bloke, and good for it.
That was enough for Hermione, who tore into the Bulgarian like a starving man at a free feast.
Hermione cultivated a persona as cool, intellectual and dispassionate, and she poured all of her passions into her work and her sex drive.
Which was more of a sex overdrive.
Viktor had told her a few times that his Quidditch coach was complaining that his performance on the field was suffering, because she was wearing him in.
She had a tendency to do that.
Hermione was actually quite ashamed about this thing between her and Ron.
She saw it as Friendship with Benefits, but Ron was in love, or at least he thought he was, and no matter how many times she tried to straighten him out about it, he never listened.
Often, she thought she should have picked Harry, but Harry was with Ginny, and even though fidelity was neither Harry nor Ginny's strong suit, Hermione hadn't wanted to further complicate Harry's life.
Harry's life was very complicated.
Nobody really knew what a two-tone son of a bitch of a hard-living marauder Harry really was, because had a squeaky clean image in the press, protected as he was by brassy blonde Rita Skeeter, the eldest of his endless carousel of female companions.
Rita had introduced him, at about 14 and a half or thereabouts, a shockingly young age, but old enough for Harry, to fucking and booze, and from there on, Harry proved to be a natural at both, picking up additional bad habits along his merry way.
Rita and Hermione, and Ginny who fared a bit less well with the apt sobriquet Killer Queen, did their best to keep Harry in line, but he played as hard as he worked, chiefly enjoying enjoying Hell's Horntail firewhiskey, cigarettes and weed, but had the occasional dalliance with morphine, heroin, and purple doom.
Harry's idea of a fun evening was to go to Knockturn Alley half-drunk, pick a fistfight and a duel or three, get drunker, pop, snort, or shoot up something, pick up a witch or two, and take them and whatever illicit substances he could find to someplace with a bed in it and a door that would lock and have a grand debauch.
Hermione didn't want to get into the middle of all that.
Still, Harry never would have fallen for her, and if the reputation that preceded him was anything close to accurate, she would have been quite a bit more satisfied.
Ron was ginger, and handsome, and ardent enough, randy as the average teenager, and she supposed, as he got older and more experienced he had the makings of a great lover, but, as things stood, there were many nights when Ron stumbled back to his bed to sleep, and she lay awake.
Asking herself questions like,
"Is this all?"
Not to mention;
"There must be something wrong with me. Am I a nympho, or something?"
Hermione also knew that Ginny, who, although didn't drink or use drugs, was every bit as wildly degenerate as Harry, because she was having, wait for it, a wildly degenerate forbidden affair with the Prince of Fucking Darkness himself.
The improbably good-looking and, yes, wildly degenerate Lucius Malfoy.
He was dark, he was evil, he was their hated and sworn enemy, but he was a dandy, randy Elvish Lord with the music of Pan's flute throbbing in his veins, especially the ones in the leg in the middle.
Somewhere in the process of her hating him and wanting to kill him for putting her feet on the path to becoming the Killer Queen, the two mortal enemies had fallen madly in lust, and Hermione was insanely jealous.
Ginny has Harry Potter, whom every witch in Wizarding Britain knows is sex on a stick, and Lucius Malfoy, the male variety of the words "blonde bombshell", and cavorts with them in wild Dionsyian abandon as death draws ever closer.
Harry has a legion of groupies clamouring after him and his reportedly unbelievably gargantuan cock, and, in the grand tradition of most warrior-heroes, he passes his nights leading up until his dance with death in the pleasures of wine, women, song and manly duels with the desperate enemy.
And what, pray tell, do I have.
Quills, parchments, headaches, panic attacks, a spastic colon, and Ron.
But wait!
Stop the presses.
I am about to outdo them all.
Where am I going?
As the great guitar wizard John Lennon, my fellow Livepudlian once said, to the toppermost of the poppermost!
I am rushing to Snape's dungeon in a white hot fury of fulminating forbidden lust, and I am going to, yes, no, wait for it, fuck the everloving snot out of him!
Up one leg and down the other, sideways and frontways and backways and any other ways except up my arsehole ways that I can think of, oh yes I am.
Severus Snape, Death Eater, Voldemort's Heir, Dumbledore's murderer, super-spy and double agent extraordinaire, the most hated man in Wizarding Britain.
That trumps everyone, it tops everything.
It is the only bad, dirty, awful, unspeakable thing I have ever done in my fine, upstanding good girl life, and I can hardly wait to wallow in the upcoming unspeakable debauch.
And hope that Snape is one hell of a dirty talker, because I can never get Ron to do it.
III: Snape
When Snape opened the huge, creaking old door, Hermione rushed and tumbled into the room, her eyes bright as a madwoman's.
"Great God Pan, Granger, you look completely fucking deranged. You're not going to tear me cock off by the roots and put it in a box, are you?"
Hermione grabbed the Headmaster by his lapels.
"Have you any idea how completely fucked my entire life is, Snape?" she demanded.
The poor girl was in a state of absolute derangement.
It made sense.
If there was anyone who had got as raw of a deal from the Wizarding War as he had, it was Hermione Granger.
"Almost as fucked as mine? Let me guess. All your life you've had your nose in a book. Granger the Nerd, Granger the Grind. All the idiot girls you know, they have flocks of idiot boyfriends. Not that you'd want them, but it would be nice to have somebody. Anybody. A warm mouth in the dark, even. Sometimes, in Potions lab, you think about something you could brew up and pour into their food. Boys don't interest you, but neither boys nor men really look at you. There's a war going on, and everyone's having a good time but you, because nobody thinks you want anything more than a book and a beaker."
"Exactly. How did you know?" Granger asked.
"Because that was my life. After I blew my chances with the girl I loved, I lost my mind. I became a Death Eater, and I started drinking, shooting, snorting, popping and smoking everything I could get my hands on. I met flocks of the wrong kind of witches, and burned through them like fire in a hayloft. My family tried to get me on the right path, as opposed to the path my parents had both gone down, and I became an acolyte in Sex Magick, where I gravitated to a few like-minded souls who wanted to use the discipline as an excuse to get high and screw. By the time I finally sobered up, the Wizarding World was in a shambles, and I was a hopeless drunk and a junkie raddled with every imaginable form of loathsome social disease, on the wrong side of the war and sinking fast. Sex is a spoiler, Granger. It spoils everything, especially your best efforts to do something brilliant and extraordinary. But, if I had to pick between losing me cock or me brilliant mind, I think I'd just kill meself, because the gods only know they both mean the same thing to me."
Rather than make any reply, Granger threw herself on him, and Snape threw himself back.
It was dirty and desperate and wonderful.
She was cursing, volubly, and tearing at his clothes, and he was snarling and swearing and tearing at hers, and, throwing both their garments and caution to the wind, they paused only for a contraceptive spell before falling into The Old Snape's bed.
"Snape, this is the only dirty, awful, unspeakable thing I have ever done in my fine, upstanding good girl life. Please, please make it as filthy and nasty and degenerate as possible." Hermione panted.
Snape couldn't help but laugh.
Putting all of his experience as a Master Magus in the Third Degree of Sex Magick, as well as his hot blood that contained elements of veela, satyr, and Muggle Scotsman, not to mention his considerable natural inclinations towards having and giving a good, hot, dirty fuck, he proved to be the utterly degenerate and masterfully priapic satyriacal old pirate that she had hoped he would be.
And, when he noticed the effect that saying dirty things had on her, he proceeded to spit, snarl, growl, gasp and groan them to her throughout the night.
Dawn found Hermione Granger awash in a blissful sea of complete and utter satisfaction, for the first time in her entire furtive, desperate, and sexually frustrated life.
And it found Severus Snape smoking a cigarette, and thoughfully musing that perhaps, just perhaps, if the war didn't kill him, that there was some sweetness left for even the likes of him in this sour and miserable shit-heap of a life.
"Erm, Sev?" Hermione asked, calling him hesitantly by the nickname his family used.
"Yes, Hermione?"
She had no nickname.
"If neither one of us dies, and it turns out you really aren't a loathsome Death Eater bastard, can we do this again, sometime?"
"Granger, should that be the case, we can do this again whenever you'd like."