00Snape – II

Professor Snape the Homecomer

Since you left me, I'm so alone
Now you're coming, you're coming on home
I'll be good like I know I should
You're coming home, you're coming home
So every day we'll be happy I know
Now I know that you won't leave me no more
Extracts from 'Coming Home' the the Beatles

Hermione Granger staggered back to the dungeon rooms late one evening, quite drunk enough to recognise she had not achieved her original aim of forgetting her lover had not returned from the wars with the rest of his platoon and colleagues almost two weeks ago, but not quite drunk enough to block out feelings over this matter. Indeed, she was half crying, half cursing Morganna (whose portrait she had just spat on) for giving her a dead father for her baby. She was crying (and Argus Filch would not be happy to find the damp hallways in the morning) because she had loved him dearly and missed him greatly.

She was also attempting to chat up the wall she found herself face to eh, wall with a few seconds later. It wasn't even a particulary attractive wall, but was in fact the once intimidating, now comforting, dungeon entrance into the extensive quarters of Severus Snape. Or rather the fireplace to floo to his mansion.

"Hello wall," she slurred, grinning, "Howssss it going tonigh-hic-t?" the wall didn't answer, but the stone snake opposite did.

"Sssssssshh. Do you vant to vake all zzzze Sssslytherinssss?" it hissed crossly, and she blew it a kiss. If stone could blush, it did.

"Could you letss me innn?" she tried again. "If I sssay the paffword?" Again the wall didn't answer, and Hermione decided to stop chatting it up, as it was obviously immune to her female traits, and muttered, "My only love doth spring from my only hate."

The wall opened, and later she would hysterically exclaim that it had winked at her, but tonight she just gave it a blank look and sidled through it and into the fireplace with a pinch of floo.

She was probably lucky madame Promfrey had worked out she was going to get sloshed tonight and put charms around the baby, otherwise her partner might have killed her and then mournfully scattered her ashes.

Toppling head forward onto the bed, she slapped the pillow playfully and curled up into a little ball to snooze the night away. Or what remained of the morning.

She woke up the next morning when long fingers gently stroked the side of her face and her slippered feet got too warm from being in the sunlight, with a headache that could have killed a small stick of celery and groped for the hangover cure she had placed by her bed in her carefully planned plan. Swigging it back, she rolled onto her back, and subconcisely tugged down the black silk negligee she was wearing. Before sitting bolt upright and screaming very loudly.

There were three men in the bedroom.

All three were wearing torn black robes, caked in mud and blood, with grass in their hair, and the stale smell only males can produce floating unappeasingly around them. Two of them were grinning broadly, while attempting to stop the escaping chuckles, and the third was watching her with narrowed eyes from benath curtains of black, silky hair. She seized the empty vial and waved it around, clearly attempting to frighten them away. The two men already grinning burst out into guffaws while she clutched her head and moaned slightly.

"Damn man couldn't even brew a damn hangover potion." She muttered.

"Are you drunk?" asked the third man who was sitting on her bed, in the air of one stating the unbelievable.

"Nooo." Said Hermione, pulling the silk covers up and over her slightly exposed body. "I was last night." She said, brightening. "Actually, you know a drink would be good now, if I didn't have men in my room!"

She scrabbled quickly up towards the head board of the bed, suddenly becoming aware she was in an ideal posistion to be ravaged.

"If you don't get out now, I'll, I'll set my, uh, partner on you! No wait, he's dead. Damn man." There was a pause while Hermione thought very hard about wether she might actually still be drunk, and realised she probably was. "I'll set my – accio books!- Ha! That showed you!" she gloated.

The books, obedient to her call, had accioed, and slammed into the side of all three men's heads, knocking them from their perches while Hermione made a rather wobbly beeline for the floo fireplace and fell back into Hogwarts.

 "Professor Dumbeldore! Professor!" she shrieked, running along the corridors on a Saturday morning, while three houses stuck their heads out of their comman rooms, ready to spring to the defence of their headgirl. Gryffindor were all out cold.

"Ah, good morning Hermione." The cheerful old man had interrupted Hermione in the cries, reassured the valiant prefects who had come to her aid and comforted the girl all in one sentence. "I trust you had a, uh, romping good night?"

"Huh? It would have been alright if I hadn't woken up at seven O'clock this morning, a mere half an hour after I returned from the lets-all-get-drunk party at the tower, to find three men in my bedroom!"

"Oh." Was the Headmasters deflated reply.

"I knocked them out with books, I mean, I didn't know what else to do! It was all terribly stressful…" Dumbeldore, looking rather amused and scandalised, placed a firm hand over her mouth, pointed his wand at her and said,

"Detoxinalchbolete!"

Hermione immediantly felt her head clear slightly, and the memories fade to a slightly purple fuzz. Idily she wondered why they'd been purple, until she realised she was standing in front of her headmaster in a black silk skimpy nightgown, one of Severus' silk sheets and had previously been drunk. Clutching the sheet to her bossoum, she gave him a trembling grin while he roared with laughter.

"Now, my dear miss Granger," he began again, "You knocked the three men out with books?"

"Er, I suppose I did." Said the Headgirl awkwardly.

"Ah." He said, realising she was entirely serious. "You see, I truly have no idea what or who they were. You run along to the Gryffindor tower, get something slightly less revealing on and we'll gather some people and see who these men were, eh?"

Hermione promptley bolted, trying deperately to kick herself as she ran. It didn't work very well, so by the time she reached her comman room, persuaded the (drunk) fat lady to open and scrabbled through the long hole, her legs were rather bruised and she was panting.

Various Gryffindors lay around in states of drunkeness, tpsiness and downright intoxiated, draped over each other, chairs, the fireplaces, windows and the rugs, some moaning slightly as she trod on their heads. Quickly she stripped Lavender of her baby blue hoddie, made it stretchy across the bottom and pulled it on, transforming the nightie into underwear and robbed Ron of his jeans, stretched them across the top and shrugged them on. She had had her eye on them for a while now, with their tattered legs and loose fit, and, while she wasn't pilfering from the dead, nicking 'em while he was in a drunken stupour didn't seem honourable. But never mind. Neither was getting her drunk.

She found Dumbeldore with a group of ten students, five Slytherins and three Ravenclaws, two Hufflepuffs. All with their wands out. Cautiosuly they made their way into the dungeons, where they were met with a silky, grumpy voice.

"Well, that was a nice welcome, old man. I had expected some gratification for managing to return home alive with my spys, but no, I return merely to find Hermione intoxiated and ten of my students pointing their wands at me!"

He carried on mumbling even when the two ther men, rubbing their heads, appeared from the dungeon wall (which Hermione was now eyeing uneasily) and Albus Dumbledore went such a shade of icy white, the Ravenclaws began to chant enervate.

It wasn't Dumbledore they needed those spells for, it was Hermione. With shock she screamed out,

"The wall! It winked at me!" and fainted dead away.

She woke up fifteen minutes later with a cracking headache, a small lump on her head, a larger lump on her stomach and what appeared to be a highly angry ghost hovering above her. Severus Snape was displeased.

He had struggled through marshland, forest, mountain and wards to reach his beloved, only to find her completely drunk, unrecognising of his beloved appearance and endangering his child. Maybe displeased was too subtle a word. Furious was better.

There was silence, while she eyed him uneasily.

"Um, I never thought I'd be saying this, ghost-of-Severus, but could you go away? You're scaring me." She babbled rather hurridly, and he stood up straighter.

"I assure you, I am no ghost!" he snapped angrily, was that the best she could say?

"Um, you're d e a d." she pointed out, rather rational.

"PEEVES!" roared Severus, "I do not want my body inhabited by you!"

Cackling sardonically, the mischevious ghost flew away, singing songs quitely to itself and generally being unobtrusive, yeah, right.

"Especially not when I'm about to do this…" purred the now ghost-free man, and bent down to kiss her.

It only took mere milli-seconds for Hermione to realise he was very real, and begin kissing him back. It took a bit longer for her to realise he probably hadn't washed in three weeks, and even longer for it to sink in that she was about to have wild, passionate lova on a rather clinical bed. Having never liked that idea, even when her first boyfriend proposed it, she sat up, smacked heads with him and swung herself off the bed.

Grabbing him by his ear, and twisting, she marched off, him bent double trotting behind her, much to the hilarity of Malfoy and Zabini who they passed. It is rather difficult to give deathglares when one is practically upside down.

"You.." she began, and Draco could hear her the whole way down to the dungeons. "Are dispeakable! How dare you, how dare you leave me! You bloody well promised not to die…I don't give a damn, Severus Snape!…And now you will have a bath, because quite frankly you stink…no, I will not be joining you…And no, I don't care if I was drunk…You deserved that book…Yes, yes I do still love you…Severus! Behave! (mumble as password is applied)"

*ö*

Author's Note: Wow! I got, like, eight reviews in the merest of mere twenty one days! Thankyou! That chapter was rather hard to write because I was feeling really sardonic and sarcastic, so I did some strange things, but re-reading I'm okay with that. Sarcasm is good! So know, without further adu, thankyou's to:

someone28 – Cheerful? All the good stuff? Bloody hell, you surely know how to make all that stuff hard for me! Who says it's going to get good?! Tt-tt good indeed. Pain is the essence of life, remember that. Nah, I'll do something nice for you! Although I really think that allowing him to leave and not having Hermione cheat on him with the wall was exceptionally nice…Thankyou for your review!

Black Crystal Dragon – Well, you gave it another chance! I really don't mind that you didn't review the first time – you reviewed this time and that's all that counts! And ja, it did get confusing! It confused me!

M – What does the M stand for? Wow, I'm intrigued! Don't forget to put more than M on your exams – you get one percent for that! (seriously) don't waste your time trying to hunt me down, I'm most elusive. And even my teachers tell me that! "(insert me here), you are annoyingly ellusive! Can you not understand I want your homework?!" I gave you another chapter anyway, so turn the fanfic off and do some revision (after you reviewed please!)

Tammy C – Thankyou for the review! I can't remember the options, but thanks anyway!

Reader – Excellent – chronic laziness rules! Yay! Up with the lazy people!  Thanks for your review! I hate finding new fics myslef. Pfaf! The Find thing won't show up my bloody story! The nerve!

saturngurl123 – sorry, eventually SS/HG? I was not aware that it wasn't SSHG – but it will get more and more lovey. I will assume from your request for a sequel that you found it acceptable at least! Grins

LadyTiffany – Who told you I was a human?!?! Laughs That was a cool review! Perish peacefully please, without sending your ghost to haunt me…I have quite enough chill in the air in my bedroom without wayward ghosts. I have to type to keep my frickin' fingers warm!

Squiggle – Most of my Snape fics involve Moi, and never get written down! Thanks for your review – I finally finished this chapter!

MadAboutHarry – That sounded dangerous…Suggestions are scary! Stop scaring me! Grins Thankye!

Thanks to everyone who reviewed, it was a really nice treat to open my hotmail account and find over twenty emails waiting for me!  Will Snape survive his bath? Will Hermione manage to graduate? (sorry wrong chapter) Will the sidekicks live?Tune in for the next installation of Dick Barton next week! 

Sorry, that was very, very English. And very historic. Never mind. Just read and review!