Warning: This is rather screwed up.
Disclaimer: Frog Fad merely messes up what JK Rowling creates.
Dramatis Personae
Gone
wrong 2
______________________________by Frog Fad________
"You think he's all right?"
"I don't know, he whocked his head pretty hard."
Voices buzzed over Harry's head, permeating the unconscious haze. He thought about opening his eyes, but was afraid he might discover the room was tumbling end over end.
"Well, it's all your fault, you dumb git."
"My fault? How's him fainting my fault?"
Harry tightened his lids. Who fainted? Had he fainted? That might explain why he was on the floor. Or… no, it wasn't the floor. It wasn't level enough to be floor, but cold enough to be. Rock. That's what it was. Steps. Stairs. He was lying on the stairs.
"You tried to say You-Know-Who's name, you stupid prat! What in heaven's name did you do that for?"
"What?" the voice rang defensively. "Harry says it all the time, Hermione, that's got nothing to do with it. You don't see him fainting every time he goes and says it, do you?"
"That's beside the point. He wasn't expecting you to say it."
Harry chanced opening his eyes. Though his glasses hung askew across his face, the room—or rather, the stairwell—wasn't gyrating. But as he glanced upwards, he felt his head was the thing doing the gyrating. Whether it all was just a dream or delirium, fainting apparently hadn't solved the problem, for standing over him were two young people—students—that may or may not have been Hermione Granger and Severus Snape.
Hermione. He was absolutely sure it was Hermione, but on the other hand, he couldn't be sure. She was too rosy, too… too… well, too pretty! Her usual mane of dirty-brown frizz had been coaxed into dark, luxurious curls of lazy russet, and her cheeks were daintily blushed. There was absolutely no way anybody's lips were that red, and if Harry wasn't seeing things, she was wearing mascara. Not that Hermione normally dressed badly, but now she had robes that hung against her body very fashionably—and attractively—her hands were manicured, she was wearing rings, and lacked that callous she had developed from gripping the quill too hard.
She looked the kind of girl who studied not textbooks, but the Hottie Hotlist column in Witch Weekly. The kind of girl who attended Quidditch matches just to giggle at the Beaters' builds.
But if all that was odd, when Harry switched his eyes to Snape… Well, it was something like swallowing a bizarre assortment of Every Flavor Beans—of flavors like phlegm, feathers, and cheese dip. Professor Snape—who at the moment didn't look a thing like a professor—was no longer tall his tall, intimidating self. He'd shrunk down several inches into his shoes—tennis shoes?—to where he barely stood eye level with Hermione. His face wasn't nearly so pale or sallow, but his goatee had gone on holiday, and for lack of it, he seemed gaunter than before. Or maybe that was just because his wiry shoulders were draped with dirty black students' robes draped that looked a size too big for him. Or maybe it was because his blue jeans were too—
Harry did a double-take. Blue jeans?! And not just blue jeans, either, Harry noted. Vintage Levi 501s. It was just so ridiculous that all he could do was gawk. Snape in blue jeans. Next thing you know, I'll find Filch in a kilt.
At the moment, Snape was angrily dusting off his pointed hat in his hands, and Harry noted that the scraggly mess of greasy, dead-black locks that should have fallen to his shoulders was instead cropped inches from the scalp. It looked a lot like Harry's, actually. And all of it disappeared from view when he jammed the hat back on his head.
"And I wasn't expecting you to throw me down the stairs, but I'm not getting much pity out of you, now am I?" Snape was indignantly informing Hermione.
Harry couldn't help but think that Snape was right, but Hermione didn't seem to be bothered. "Oh, shove it," she scoffed. "You're not even bleeding."
"Then what do you call that? Rouge?" A trail of wet crimson was trickling down Snape's cheek, and he swiped at it with one hand.
"Well, yes. If you keep smearing it across your face like that."
Snape shot her a dirty look. "Just because I haven't bright green eyes," he huffed, "or a position on the Quidditch team, apparently I don't bleed." He rolled his left sleeve inside-out and started mopping the blood from his face.
Hermione twisted up her nose in disgust. Harry thought the expression was actually pretty cute—it made her look like a pixy. "Severus, that's revolting."
"Bugger off, Hermione," Snape said curtly, rubbing the sleeve cuff over his cheek and then holding it against his temple to staunch the bleeding. "You'd rather I just left it?"
Hermione propped her hands on her hips. "It's still disgusting."
He flicked her an annoyed glance. "Nobody asked you."
She ignored him, turning her nose away from Snape and his bloodied sleeve, and changed the subject in an uppity tone. "And I don't just go for Quidditch players, you know."
"Oh yes you do," Snape snorted. "Crabbe, Flitwick, Lupin, Dursley, Pettigrew… all of them Quidditch players. And half of them captains, at that."
"Lupin doesn't play Quidditch."
"Yes he does, he's the Hufflepuff Keeper. "
"No, they kicked him off. Can't catch a quaffle to save his life, I really don't know how he got on the team in the first place," Hermione rolled her eyes to the ceiling. "Honestly, Severus, don't you ever pay attention?"
He took the pressure off his temple and set about rolling the sleeve back down. "Not to the Quidditch careers of your prospective boyfriends, no."
Hermione stomped her foot. "I told you, they're not all Quidditch players."
"Lupin counts. He was one."
"I never said I wanted to go with Remus Lupin."
Snape paused, then lifted his head with a matter-of-fact air. "No, you said you 'wouldn't mind a snog' with 'dreamy R.J.,' if I recall correctly."
Hermione looked insulted. "I did not!"
"You did."
"I didn't, and you know I didn't!"
"What, have I got the wording wrong?" Snape twisted his face into a smirk. "It was something along those lines, anyway. Dreamy Remus and his… what did you and Rita call it? His lovely moon?"
"No. Lupin does not have a lovely moon. He's got one of the scrawniest moons in the whole school, if he's even got one at all." She smirked right back at him. "A lot like you, Severus."
He laughed mirthlessly. "Like I would want you looking."
She laughed right back. "Like you could get anyone to look. Much less myself."
"Oh, right, I forgot," Snape dripped with sarcasm. "Aphrodite, should I kneel?"
"Shove it." Hermione slugged him. "Why don't you get that nose of yours pinched in a book and stop talking?"
"Gladly," he muttered, bending down to pick up a rather soggy textbook from the stairs, "if you hadn't managed to turn my Potions textbook into five-hundred page illustration of a blue ink puddle."
She waved him off. "Oh come off it, you had that entire thing committed to memory, anyway. And it's not my fault you carry that stuff around in your bookbag."
"What, ink or textbooks?" he muttered dryly.
"Don't be a smart-aleck."
"Well, considering you carry neither…"
"I don't need to carry either." Hermione tossed her curls haughtily. "Ludovic is bringing them down."
Snape made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat. "Having Bagman do your homework again?"
Hermione cocked her head and smiled. "Well, I tried, Severus, but I just couldn't talk him out of it. You know how it is."
"Yeah, I know how it is. You'll get failed on the essay because the handwriting isn't yours, and then you'll flunk the exam because you didn't read the chapter."
She gave him a withering look. "Honestly, Severus, you're such a pessimist. Who cares about one little essay? And besides, I'm not trying to impress Professor Evans, unlike some of us here."
"Oh, for the love of… Would you just drop it about Professor Evans?"
"You're sweet on her, everybody knows you are. Why don't you just admit it?"
"Because I have an ounce of self-respect?"
"Oh yeah? Then what were you doing in class last Thursday when Evans was talking about grindy-o's?"
"Grindylows, Hermione," Snape corrected, "and it's called 'paying attention to the lecture.' Something you obviously don't do, seeing as how we were discussing the five Merlinian hexes, not grindylows."
Hermione crossed her arms, undaunted. "That was some pretty rapt attention you were paying."
"It's a fascinating subject," Snape offhandedly replied, now gathering up a bunch of fallen parchments.
"The hexes or Professor Evans?"
Snape blew out his breath and stuffed the parchments in his bookbag. "Get bent, Hermione."
She grinned. "You've got it bad for her, just admit it."
"Didn't I just tell you to get bent?"
"He did," said Harry, sitting up. Snape and Hermione both stopped bantering, as if just now remembering he was there.
"Oh, good, Harry, you're all right," Hermione said, walking up a step or two and taking his arm gently. "Here, let me help you up," she cooed.
"Oh, for the love of Merlin," Snape scoffed as Hermione helped Harry to his feet.
"Wha—" Harry started to say, but a flushing Hermione cut him off.
"Shut up, Severus."
"Oh come on, you've been flirting with him since start of term—"
"I said shut up, Severus!"
"—so why don't you just go find a broom closet and—"
"Severus Snape, say one more word and I'll—"
"—give him a nice, wet, gushy snog?"
Harry gave a snort of laughter. Things were getting more and more ridiculous by the second. He'd have to tell Ron all about it later—this really was one hell of a dream!
But the dream Hermione was positively fuming, her pixy face just short of turning a very unbecoming shade of purple, and Harry hastily tried to smother his laughter with a forced cough. Boy, if looks could kill.
"I'm going with Ludovic, thank you very much," Hermione growled, teeth clenched and hands balled up into fists at her sides.
Ludovic Bagman? Harry had to fight the urge to bust up again. Hermione was dating Ludo Bagman? He had a sudden mental picture of Hermione in a set of bright yellow robes with a big, stretched-out wasp on the stomach, and had to bite his tongue—hard—to keep from sniggering.
"Yup," Snape nodded. "And last week you were going with Peter Pettigrew, and Godric Gryffindor the week before, and poor Ernie Prang and Stan Shunpike at the same time before that."
"I never dated Ernie Prang," Hermione hissed.
Snape spread his hands, a wide grin on his face. "I'm sorry, Hermione, but you can't expect me to keep track of them all."
"Shut up. Just shut up," she bit out. "Just because you couldn't get a girl to save your life." She grabbed Harry's arm—and her grip was rather painful—and began stalking down the stairs, dragging him behind her. "Come on Harry, let's go down to breakfast. Have fun cleaning up your books, Severus."
She stomped deliberately on what looked like a Potions essay, and marched off, Harry in tow.
Snape cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled after them, "Watch she doesn't drag you into a broom closet, Harry!"
Not turning around, Hermione yelled back, "Just because you'd be jealous!"
"In your dreams!"
"In your dreams!"
Apparently in mine, Harry thought with an odd smile.