Night eight was perfect.
Night nine was wonderful.
Night ten was delicious until second-year Tamara Keppel knocked on his real door and therefore also on the small model door in his back pocket at 2:45am, because Peeves had peeped over the top of the cubicle when she went for a night-time toilet trip.
Waking in his own bed on the morning of day eleven instead of wrapped around Hagrid due to the interruption, Snape consoled himself with the thought of being a mere seventeen hours away from more stolen hugs. By the evening, he was checking his watch every five minutes in the hope that more time had passed and it was almost midnight. Sadly, the precious hour was still far off and before he could slip away to the hut, there was an evening meeting of the Order of the Phoenix to be endured.
"Order" was a misnomer, Snape decided as he surveyed the kitchen. The idea of re-christening the group as the "Disorder of the Phoenix" amused and sustained him through the tedious early stages where members arrived in dribs and drabs (didn't any of them have understand the concept of punctuality?), greeted each other with exclamations and clichés or drank endless cups of tea. Black was lying face down on a corner of the table, dead drunk, tactfully ignored by everyone. Mundungus had something in a cardboard box under the table and kept opening the top flap to check on it. Tonks had the back of her robe accidentally tucked in her knickers. Moody was glaring at Snape with his habitual ferocity.
Lupin looked like hell, his face almost as grey as his moustache and the Weasley woman was fussing over him with hot broth and a knitted scarf.
"…really, not as bad as I seem, Molly. Thanks anyway. I'm just not sleeping."
"I've got some Dreamless Sleep at home, dear, I'll bring you some round after the meeting."
"That's awfully kind of you to offer, but I'm allergic to Dreamless Sleep."
Snape snorted. No one was allergic to a potion, only to the ingredients in it. Trust the foul beast to be so ignorant. Anyway, there was no need to waste good potions when a hearty smack round the head with a silver mallet would be the perfect remedy for his insomnia. Snape was sure he could locate one without too much effort.
"Are you really?" asked Mrs Weasley in disbelief. "Goodness me. Well, how about the other one. Oh, what's it called? The old-fashioned stuff my granny used to take. You know, the weeping heroines are always sipping draughts of it in historical novels. Knockout? No, er…Out-Cold! That's it! I'm sure I can get you some…"
"Thanks, Molly. It's really jolly decent of you to take so much trouble over me. I've tried Out-Cold. Apparently it only works on humans."
Snape smirked at her consternation.
"Oh, but…but you're human most of the time, dear. Aren't you?"
"Not biologically, I'm afraid. I tried it when I was small and there was no effect, so Mum dug out some of granddad's old potions books and apparently you have to be fully, completely 100% human for it to work. Not werewolf, or half-veela, or quarter-goblin or anything else. It won't harm a part-human, it just won't make them sleep…"
The smirk evaporated from Snape's face and a sensation of sick dread settled over him.
It couldn't be true. Could it?
How was it possible for that nauseating drip of a dark creature to know more about potions than Severus Snape? Surely the beast's mother had stumbled on an old wives' tale all those years ago. It was out of the question. Pure nonsense. Because if he was right then Hagrid, the half-giant, proven impervious to some spells as was only proper given his heredity, had been unaffected by the Out-Cold potion in his cocoa.
And if this was the case, then he must have been awake all along.
Dumbledore arrived at that moment, prompting a chorus of greetings and then a general settling down to business, not that Snape could comprehend much beyond his own alarm. He stared blankly at the table in front of him, mind racing in two opposite directions at once. Lupin was either wrong and an idiot, or he wasn't and Snape was. He had to know.
"…I'm afraid this might take a long time, ladies and gentlemen," Albus smiled apologetically. "If we are to fully understand this troubling development, we will need at least two hours…"
Two hours! The trauma of not knowing would have killed Snape long before then. There was no point in staying to listen to the fools guzzle more tea and drone on about nothing, so he deftly prepared his escape. He stiffened suddenly in his seat and subtly, but not too subtly, drew his left forearm against his body protectively. As he had hoped, Albus and Moody noticed. He nodded minutely to Albus, who nodded back with a quick flash of sympathy in his eyes.
Snape was away before any of the others understood and had chance to stare at him with horror or revulsion, disapparating as soon as he was over the threshold of the Black house and then flinging himself through Hogwarts' main gates and down the path. He was tempting fate, he reflected, as he tore through the corridors and up the stairs to the library. The Dark Lord had been more occupied with the others for the last fortnight, allowing him the opportunity to visit Hagrid in peace. He would tell Albus that nothing much had happened at the meeting he was supposed to have been summoned to, just like so many of the Order's.
"Can't you read? The library is closed!" came Pince's disembodied voice from somewhere behind a shelf as he hurried into the room, still going at full speed.
"Good," he replied as smoothly as he could with the limited breath available. "No students to get in the way."
"Oh, Professor! Sorry, I didn't…"
Single-mindedly, he strode past her and down to the dustier areas of the potions section. After an hour of grappling with leather and metal bound volumes weighing more than he did, (Victorian potions masters famously believed that all serious books should be simultaneously heavy of prose and heavy in physical substance), the answer was found in a copy of a very short and flimsily-bound thesis entitled "Sundry Observations on the Metabolic Freakishness of Non-Human Bipeds, with Particular Regard to Potions In Common Domestic Use."
No matter how long he stared at the dreadful sentence, the words remained fixed in damning black and white. The werewolf's mother had been correct. The potion he had used to spike Hagrid's cocoa would have made no difference to a half-giant's sleeping habits.
Snape steadied himself against a shelf as confusion and embarrassment made his knees tremble. All this time he had believed that Hagrid lay innocently sleeping while he was used and, he admitted it, abused, yet this was far from the case. Hagrid had been just as deceitful, not responding when his name was called and pretending to sleep while the other man had entered his room then his bed, even faking snores while Snape did his illicit snuggling.
It beggared belief that a hearty Gryffindor so utterly bereft of the ability to lie or even keep a secret he had been sworn to protect was capable of this sustained charade. What on earth had Hagrid been thinking?!