A/N: I do believe in Global Warming; it is a documented, natural phenomenon that has occurred for hundreds of years naturally, and in this century, the process has been sped up exponentially.
Now that that bit of dreary business has been dealt with, enjoy Chapter Ten. Our three favorite Muggles from down the street are due to make an appearance any time now. ;)
Chapter Ten—Granger Danger
Gray clouds blanketed the sky, as usual. Muggle newscasters blamed the constantly terrible weather on something called global warming, never realizing that magical creatures were the root of the problem.
Hermione Granger knelt among the dying plants in the front lawn.
"Poor things," she crooned. "You need sunlight, don't you?"
Behind her back, Severus Snape gave her a scathing look. The plants can't actually hear you, you know. The wizard had unofficially claimed the front steps as his own. Earlier in the day, Mr. Granger had opened the door, aiming to take a morning constitutional, to find the bat of the dungeons perched on his stoop.
The Muggle immediately turned around and reentered the house.
The Potions Master looked up at the sky. Severus highly doubted the sun would be found today.
"None of those plants are useful," he remarked, perusing his newspaper once more.
Hermione shrugged, not bothering to look at her snarky professor. "Mother thinks they're pretty."
"Granger Danger's so poor she has to trim the front lawn herself!" someone's shrill voice declared.
"That's pitiful! Grangerella has to work to pay off her tuition bill!" Violet, Betty, and Dana, baneful trio of Hermione's existence, had returned.
Dana flipped her long, bleached blonde hair over her shoulder. "Your parents make you slave about the house?"
"I'm too busy to bother with you three just now." Hermione's smile was cold and her voice was colder. She stood up and said, "So kindly go away."
"Who is that?" Violet asked, indicating the black clad stranger seated on the Granger porch.
"Is that your babysitter? Oh my gosh!"
"Granger Danger needs a babysitter! Oh my Gawd, how old are you?"
The three dissolved into laughter. Snape was reminded of banshees. One set of long fingers rubbed his temple while the other clutched the paper.
Red spilled into Granger's fair face. Fingernails dug into her palms. She bit down hard on her tongue so as to keep silent.
"No wonder she hid him, he's hot," Betty giggled behind her hand.
Snape glanced around. No one else was in sight.
Merlin, they're talking about me? Are these girls mentally challenged?
"I wish I had a hot guy babysitting me." Dana draped herself over Violet, attempting to attract Snape's attention.
"He can babysit me all over," Betty gushed.
Severus turned his head slowly and gave the girls a scowl straight from the depths of Hell. Severus Snape had never considered himself attractive and he was not pleased that these three girls were using him to make sport of Miss Granger.
The teenagers reeled back. "Ohmigosh, he looks kind of mean," they whispered.
"But he's got that tall, dark, and mysterious thing going on," Betty insisted, gesturing to their rakish topic of the conversation.
"How scandalous, Granger, hanging out with an older man?" The girl shrugged her shoulders, smirk growing on her face. "I suppose none of the younger ones find your constant blabbering about schoolwork sexually stimulating."
"Get. Off. My. Lawn!" Granger demanded.
"Don't hide your boyfriend in the house so much Granger!" Dana chided. "He's too cute to keep to yourself!"
"I wish I could play with his hair," Betty remarked to Violet.
Severus Tobias Snape, thirty-seven-year-old adult, was appalled to feel his cheeks start to burn. The thought of blushing made his face blush even more. It was just like being a teenager again—certainly a time in his life he never wanted to relive.
Dana twirled her fake-blonde hair around her finger. "When he gets tired of you, Granger Danger, send him my way."
Wind whirled around Granger's tensed form. Brown tendrils whipped about her face. "Any man with half a brain would run away screaming from you vapid harpies! Find your own 'hot babysitter' because I won't be giving you mine!"
In a flick of a unicorn tail the three girls were standing on the other side of the street. They eyed each other bemusedly then shrugged. It seemed to the three Muggles that they had momentarily forgotten why they were walking down the street and nothing more.
Hermione stood rooted to the spot, fists shaking at her sides. "How dare they—evil, vile, little things!"
There was no denying it—Snape's face had flushed all over. He quickly hid himself behind the newspaper.
"Im—impressive wandless magic, Miss Granger," he halfway-stammered.
"Hermione!" Mr. Granger appeared from behind the house. "What has gotten into you lately? You can't yell at the neighbors like that—they're our clients for goodness sakes!"
"Dad, did you not hear them disrespecting me? And Professor Snape?" the girl cried, flinging her arm wildly in the wizard's direction.
"I only heard yelling—try to act your age, won't you?" he scolded. Fatherly disappointment leaked from the man's pores. "And stop stomping all over your mother's garden—go play in the backyard if you can't be trusted in the front yard."
Hermione stomped around the opposite side of the house. Snape stood to follow, still hidden behind the morning paper.
"Aren't you supposed to be watching her?" Dr. Granger admonished.
Snape whipped around with his most vicious glare but the other man had already disappeared through the front door. Coward, Snape thought.
Hermione stood in the paved driveway, bouncing a basketball.
Stupid girls, she thought viciously. Ruining my holiday—ruining my life! Why couldn't Professor McGonagall have been the one to stay? Betty wouldn't accuse me of doing anything untoward with a female teacher!
She screamed in frustration, hurling the ball with all her strength at the ground. It bounced over her head but she didn't hear it land behind her.
Instead the ball had landed in the elegant hands of Severus Snape.
His thin black eyebrow quirked at her.
Hermione swallowed. Circe—what did I say? Bugger—I called him hot—he'll kill me—I disrespected him just as much as those three girls did—but they don't have to live with him—will he use Cruciatus? Or just kill me straight away—
"You need to learn to 'shake it off', Miss Granger," he said, pointing at her with the basketball.
The girl snapped from her panic induced thoughts. "What?"
"Those three girls taunt you because you make it too easy."
Hermione glared furiously and opened her mouth to retort.
"See?" Snape cut her off. "Anyone can easily identify which buttons to push to set you off. You Gryffindors always wear your emotions like a mantle."
She crossed her arms and looked away. "At least I didn't slap any of them in the face."
The trademarked eyebrow went up again. "Do you have a habit of slapping people, Miss Granger?"
Hermione peeked at him sideways. "Well, I did slap Draco Malfoy one time."
"I'll have to ask him about that," he said tossing the ball to Hermione and walking away.
She reeled back as she caught the ball. "Sir—" she asked before she could stop herself (Gryffindor brashness, you see). "Don't you want to play basketball?"
The professor looked back over his shoulder, coldly. "Basket ball?"
"Yes, have you heard of it? I can teach you," she added temptingly, wiggling the ball at him.
He vaguely remembered his Muggle cousins discussing something called basketball in his youth. "Why in Hades would I want to play basket ball?"
"You're my babysitter—you're supposed to play basketball with me."
"Miss Granger, I am not your babysitter."
"You kind of are," she remarked, tossing the ball in the air to herself.
He crossed his arms imperiously. "I have absolutely no desire to learn basket ball, Miss Granger."
"Alright, we can play HORSE," she said happily. "All you have to do is make the basket the same way I do—if you don't, you get a letter. If I miss, I get a letter. Whoever spells HORSE first loses."
Merlin this girl likes to talk—the know-it-all shines through even out of the classroom. "We are wizards—shouldn't we play HIPPOGRIFF?"
Hermione doubled over with laughter. She clutched the ball under her arm and laughed until tears came to her eyes. "Actually, you can spell whatever word you want, but that's a good point—if wizards often played basketball they would indeed prefer hippogriffs to horses—what about THESTRAL?"
"UNICORN."
"BLAST-ENDED SKREWTS if you were really ambitious," she said before she lobbed the ball into the hoop.
The orange ball bounced to a stop at Snape's feet. He silently analyzed the ball before he stooped to pick it up. "If you laugh at me, I will take five hundred points from Gryffindor."
She waved her hand. "I'm not very good either, actually. Besides, you're taller, you have the advantage."
Snape rolled that thought around in his head; he highly doubted he would have the advantage over someone who actually knew the game and was twenty years younger than him to boot.
"You have to shoot it the same way I did," Hermione explained, teaching the teacher. "If you don't make it, you get an H."
He sighed. Why not? he asked himself. He could regale Rolanda Hooch with tales of a new game besides Quidditch and football—the woman loved Manchester United. The self-conscious man glanced around, to make sure no one was watching, then attempted to make his first ever basket.
Hermione watched her teacher's squirrely behavior. He's shy! she finally realized. He's shy and now I'm making him play basketball after those girls teased him—I am a terrible person. The man is shy! How precious! She turned away to hide her grin. She definitely should not be thinking of her greasy, snarky, big, bad Potions Professor as precious.
Then again, she thought, maybe Betty had the right idea. She eyed his hair. It lacked any of its normal greasiness now that he was on holiday and away from the potions lab. In fact, if she thought hard enough, she remembered that it wasn't greasy last year at all.
The ball skirted the rim, torturously slow, then fell in with a swish.
"Alright, now you get to go first."
He picked up the ball again, still eyeing it with trepidation. "This seems like a monumental waste of time."
The girl laughed. "It's the summer holiday, sir—the perfect time to waste time."
Snape looked sideways at the girl. She reminded him of Minerva; both Gryffindors, annoyingly intelligent, always coming up with 'cleverer than thou' things to say.
"If I make this basket, I win," he said.
"What?" she exclaimed. "That's not how it works at all!"
He shrugged. "Like I said, a waste of time. I do not wish to fritter the day away."
"You just don't want to risk losing to a girl," she muttered, looking away sullenly.
"I have no problem losing to a girl," he growled. "I do not wish to lose to anybody."
"Sir," she laughed, "if you displayed that sense of humor in the classroom instead of scaring the pants off everyone, you would become very popular, very quickly."
He turned up his long nose. "Miss Granger, I have no desire to hear you critique my teaching methods."
"I don't have a problem with the teaching," she amended cautiously. "You're a much better Potions teacher than Slughorn," she said bitterly. "It's just that you're very funny, sir. If that isn't too forward of me to say."
"That is too forward, Miss Granger." The ball swished through the hoop and bounced over the concrete. "I win," he said, walking away.
Shy and competitive, she thought as she sat down on the back porch. Interesting.
This summer holiday is making me go crazy—willingly spending time with a student and playing Muggle sports? Severus pushed his hair out of his face and trudged up the stairs. I definitely need more sleep.