Title: The Absinthe of Reason
Author: Mundungus42
Rating: Like any good pirate movie, rated ARR!
Disclaimer: I don't even own a car, for the love of Pete!
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Severus Snape was so focused on his book that he wasn't aware the door to his private chambers had opened silently. To be fair, he didn't expect that anyone, save the Headmaster, had the ability and inclination to open that particular door, and the Headmaster always arrived through the fireplace. Because he was easily the least popular teacher, he had an impressive range of anti-student protections on the door to protect him from petty revenge, and because of his less-than savoury past, he had an equally impressive array of sensitive dark detectors that would alert him silently when someone who intended to harm him entered his room.
None of the spells had gone off.
Hermione breathed a silent sigh of relief.
She had overheard the Headmaster mention a staff meeting that evening from nine to ten, and had waited silently for Snape at the entrance to the dungeons. She followed him down a rarely used corridor and stopped in front of what appeared to be a solid wall, not far from the potions classroom. He looked twice over each shoulder, and muttered his password. She suppressed a snort. She doubted very many people knew the word "borborygmi," much less would guess it as Snape's password.
That obstacle aside, she still had to wait until it was safe to enter. Unfortunately, when she pressed her ear against the cool stone, she heard nothing.
After ten minutes had elapsed, she cast a silencing charm on the hidden door, whispered the password, took a deep breath and pushed the hidden door open a crack.
The room was dark except for a lit fireplace that crackled merrily against the back wall and a reading light that cast the chair's occupant in shadow. His chair was half facing the door, and her heart nearly stopped, but he didn't seem to have noticed her entrance. He was motionless, face bent over a book in his lap. His chest rose and fell slowly, as if he were in a trance. Knowing how difficult it was to get her attention when she was in a similar state, Hermione edged her way into the room, opening the door only enough for her to squeeze through.
Hardly daring to breathe, she closed the door slowly after her. It slid silently shut. She was in!
Stop that, she admonished herself. You can celebrate when you wake up next to him. If you wake up at all.
She examined her surroundings. Professor Snape's outer chamber was a square room with a high ceiling, which was decorated somewhat arbitrarily with neoclassical busts. The walls were lined with dark wood bookshelves, and two leather wing chairs sat next to the fireplace. Directly across the room from her was the entrance to a second room, separated by a set of drawn purple curtains. It appeared to be some kind of private laboratory; a half- obscured bench was piled high with precariously complex glassware. A strong odor of anise emanated from the laboratory.
Odd. Where was his bedroom? His private bathroom? Knowing Snape, those intimate quarters were probably behind another hidden door. Even though the elaborate busts seemed a bit out of character, the hidden doors and copious bookshelves suited him perfectly; equal parts hermit and scholar. As fitting as it was, it made her job of guerrilla seduction all the harder. Typical of Snape to be difficult when he wasn't even trying.
She crept past the purple curtains into his laboratory. The walls were covered with shelves and shelves of brightly coloured bottles, presumably of potions ingredients. Various round-bottomed flasks in the jumble of glassware on the bench bubbled merrily over burners, each connected to an enormous burette by lengths of glass tubing. The burette had to have some sort of cooling charm on it, since the steam from the tubes quickly condensed and dribbled down to the reservoir at the bottom. So he was distilling something. However, this distillation required so many ingredients as to puzzle her. Each amount had been meticulously laid out on small sheets of paper near a large open book on the work bench.
Curiosity aroused, she started toward the book. Not two steps closer to the bench, a soft chime made her jump. Snape had extricated himself from the book and strode into the laboratory. Cursing herself silently, Hermione pressed herself against the wall of the lab, praying that he wouldn't need any of the ingredients behind her.
Snape consulted the book on the bench, then reached a hand toward Hermione. She was justable to dodge out of the way, and his hand connected with a bottle from the wall behind her instead of her head. She let out a silent sigh of relief. He removed the cork, deftly added a jigger to a clean Erlenmeyer flask, lit a new burner, then swirled it gently over the flame. The bitter-smelling draught had to be some form of wormwood, unless her nose deceived her.
She had made some complicated potions with wormwood, but nothing as complex at the one Snape was creating. His entire body was focused on the task at hand- the hand with the flask never stilled or drifted away from the flame, and the other conducted a great symphony of hissing steam, gurgling liquid, and clinking glass. Snape twisted valves and added the powdered ingredients with increasing speed and intensity, when at last he drew the wormwood mixture from the flame, removed the stopcock from the burette, and poured its contents into the flask.
Before the solutions had an opportunity to mix, Snape decanted them into a slender bottle and stuffed a cork down the neck until there. Panting slightly, he held the bottle aloft and began to turn it gently.
The brown, opaque fluid inside began to ripple with light. Soon, it was shimmering with blue-white light, and it nearly hurt Hermione's eyes to look at it. But it quickly peaked and began to fade, leaving in the bottle a crystalline liquid of bright green. When the last of the white light had faded, Snape held the bottle up to the light.
The clear, green liquid brought a satisfied half-smile to his face, and he plunked the bottle into a metal pan filled with ice.
Drawing his wand from his sleeve, he began to clean the glassware, returning the individual components of the impressive structure to wooden drawers beneath the surface of the bench.
Hermione shook her head, at last freeing herself from his hypnotic movements. What iwas/i it? Damn! He was between her and the potions book.
As if sensing her intention, Snape snatched the book and returned quickly returned it to a high shelf in the other room. She stepped out of his way and craned her neck trying to read the tiny gold-stamped print on the spine of the book. When she succeeded, she could have laughed aloud. i Liqueurs de Le Calvez/i. A book that had appeared in nearly every bibliography and works cited page she had come across in her alcohol potion research. Unfortunately, it was in French, and she had discovered that her elementary French was more hindrance than help.
But it certainly narrowed down the possibilities for Snape's mystery distillation. There was only one liqueur she knew that was such a peculiar shade of green and contained wormwood: the infamous iFée Verte/i, known to the English as absinthe.
She spun around at the odd sloshing sound behind her, and found Snape lugging the bottle of absinthe, still in its ice bath, across the room.
With a soft "oof," Snape set the pan down on a low shelf. Crossing to the bookcase to the right of the fireplace, he pulled down a book with a thin black spine. To Hermione's astonishment, the entire bookcase swung gently forward into darkness.
Snape took up the ice bath again, and Hermione seized her chance and entered the room ahead of him. As she had suspected, the door swung shut behind him. The room was much darker than his library and lab. She couldn't make out many of the room's features.
A harsh murmur lit the other lamps in the room, and Hermione found herself in his bed chamber. It was decorated much more simply than his outer chamber in comfortable dark greens and reds. These walls were also covered with bookshelves, but they appeared to be books meant for enjoyment, not for study. The bed was, thankfully, wide enough for more than one. The thought made her shiver. If the man could bring such a pleasant tingle to her lower extremities just by possessing a king sized bed, she feared hyperventilating if he started taking off his clothes.
Snape set his burden down upon a marble-topped wet bar that stood next to a wooden wardrobe and sighed. Unfastening the high collar of his teaching robe, he trudged through a door on the right, which Hermione assumed led to his private bath.
When the door closed and she heard the sound of a tub filling with water, she leaped into action.
Her original plan had been to add her last dose of the Psyche Potion to whatever he was drinking, but thought better of it. The sweet ingredients of the potion would destroy the clarity and colour of the absinthe, and he would know better than to drink it.
Quickly opening and shutting the drawers and cabinets on the bar, she quickly located what she suspected she would find: a slotted absinthe spoon and a bowl of sugar cubes. Good- he was a traditional absinthe drinker.
She removed one of the cubes from the bowl and cast an absorbency spell on it before dropping it into her vial of Psyche Solution. The sugar cube swelled to three times its original size and turned the opaque green of the potion. Her years of transfiguration and charms served her well in returning it to its original size and colour, but retaining the properties of the potion.
Now, to make sure he used the spiked sugar cube. Hoping that he was as precise in preparing his drinks as he was in distilling them, she broke the remaining sugar cubes and placed her cube at the top of the bowl.
She carefully returned the sugar bowl to its place in the cabinet and retreated to the far corner of the room. The stage was set. Now all she had to do was wait.
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He emerged from the bathroom in a billow of steam in a dark bathrobe, long hair in damp disarray. Her eyes greedily drank in the pale triangle of chest that the robe left exposed. He strode purposefully toward the absinthe and rummaged through the cupboards on the bar.
He withdrew a tall glass, the absinthe spoon, and the sugar bowl from a drawer. Hermione found that she was holding her breath.
He unstoppered the bottle of absinthe, which had fogged over, and poured three fingers of absinthe into the glass. He then plucked the whole sugar cube from the bowl- Hermione's heart was thudding- and placed it in the slotted spoon. A well-aimed stream of seltzer water broke apart the cube and dissolved it into his glass of alcohol.
He stirred, and the brilliant green faded into pale opacity. He raised the glass to his lips and took a sip.
How many sips would it take for him to be under the influence of the Psyche Potion? Would his countenance change when it took hold? Hermione couldn't help herself. She moved across the room toward him, stocking feet silent on the plush carpet. When she was about ten feet from him, he startled her by drawing his wand from a hidden pocket and pointing it at her.
"Stop where you are, or I'll kill you where you stand." He lazily took another sip of absinthe, but his wand did not waver.
The terror of suddenly being discovered was quickly replaced by shock. How on earth had he known?
"One would think that someone clever enough to access my quarters would also know better than to walk through a cloud of steam while invisible, but I am quite lucky that you weren't. Show yourself!"
Taking a deep breath, she drew the cloak from herself slowly, exposing inch after inch of flesh. When she had entirely shed the cloak, she stood before him wearing only the impressive undergarments and a defiant expression.
Snape ran his eyes up and down her body, and drew a deep breath. "This is peculiar."
Well, he hadn't hexed her yet. She straightened her shoulders. "Why do you say that?"
His brow was furrowed. "Because I have never suffered hallucinations when drinking absinthe of my own brewing."
Emboldened, she took a step towards him. "What makes you think that I'm a hallucination?"
"Two reasons. First of all, hallucinations often take the form of that which has been on one's mind, and trying to divine the full effect of your, that is to say, the real Miss Granger's enchanted undergarments has been, much to my dismay, insistently in my mind. It has been most trying."
She smiled. The truth potion was at work, all right. Fortunately, he seemed none the wiser. "And the second reason?"
"Simply this. You are, or rather, the real Miss Granger is, a student. If you were in fact here, you would have triggered some very nasty anti- student wards and been expelled before you could say Johann Gambolputty of Ulm."
"And can you think of no other explanation for my presence?"
"Of course I can think of other explanations," he said impatiently. "But this one seems the simplest and the most likely, facts being what they are."
"What facts?"
"Irrefutable ones," he said, easing into a chair and taking another sip of his drink. "First, the most prosaic. Your bustier is of a different design than the one I felt through Miss Granger's shirt yesterday evening. Furthermore, the ensemble you are currently wearing is far more to my taste than anything Miss Bulstrode or Miss Parkinson could ever invent. This leads me to believe that the vision in burgundy before me has been generated not by the girls who put you- pardon, the real Miss Granger- in short skirts and high heels, but by my own imagination."
"Could I not have changed the design without removing it?"
He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I suppose. It would have been very much in character for Granger to do so. But I wasn't finished enumerating my facts."
She smiled and walked slowly to the bar. "I apologise for interrupting, sir. May I?"
He nodded, then returned to his recital. "The second fact supporting your ephemeral nature was given to me by the Headmaster this evening. Miss Granger now knows that I am aware of her participation the Gryffindor Stud competition-"
She nearly dropped the small glass of absinthe she had poured for herself to taste.
"- and will be ceasing her attentions to me forthwith upon threat of expulsion."
What game was the Headmaster playing? "Did he say that?"
He frowned at her. "He implied- in as many words. I believe so. I don't know. Stop interrupting!"
She grinned unrepentantly. "Sorry, Professor."
His scowl could have curdled milk. "The final fact, and the most compelling one: only I would have the dubious honour of being subjected to a crude version of the Socratic method by a scantily clad hallucination."
She laughed. "Then no more questions."
"No, Miss Granger or reasonable facsimile thereof, I would much rather hear from you about why you're here. No doubt to drive me to masturbation. How wholly unoriginal."
She took a tiny sip from the undiluted absinthe in her glass. The bitter herbs exploded on her tongue; wormwood followed by hyssop, mint, coriander, dittany. The oddest part was that the part of her lips and tongue that the liquid touched instantly went numb. She swallowed, the strong alcohol simultaneously searing and numbing her throat. Wow. "Believe me, sir, driving you to masturbation is the furthest thing from my mind."
His eyes narrowed. "Really."
She waved her hand in a conciliatory gesture. "I admit, I did come here with the sole intention of seducing you, sir."
"Just as I suspected. A typical hallucination."
"You didn't let me finish, nor did you note the use of the past tense."
"Ah," he said, absently taking another sip of his drink. "Has the plan to seduce me changed?"
"Yes. In the course of this conversation, I have decided that it would be far more fun for us to seduce one another."
His lips thinned into a smirk. "And what makes you think I would be amenable to sex with an incorporeal student?"
"Do you find me sexually attractive?"
He made an impatient nose. "We've been through this already."
She nodded. "You do. Do you find me interesting?"
"I find the real Miss Granger's optimism and endless curiosity irritating."
She nodded again. "You do. Do you have objections to my age?"
His eyes widened in surprise as the reluctant answer forced itself from his lips. "You show great potential." He stared at her in half-realized outrage.
She acknowledged him with a shrug. "I spiked your sugar cube with Psyche Potion, sir. I'm sorry, but it was necessary. I don't have the luxury of reading your mind to find out if you are sincere about me."
He fury on his face translated itself to action at an alarming rate. He pounced on her roughly, pinning her wrists to the bed and placing one knee between her legs. Her heart jumped into her throat, her blood rushed simultaneously north and south, but she managed to say in a nearly normal, if not breathless, voice, "I've convinced you I'm not a hallucination, then?"
"You listen to me, you impossible, brazen wretch. Never in my life has my privacy been invaded with such reckless disregard for the consequences," his voice was dangerously soft, and his face was inches from hers. "The last person who broke into my chambers is now dead. You may have escaped punishment from the Headmaster, but you will not escape mine."
She stared up at him. His cheeks and lips were flushed, and his dark eyes gleamed. His bathrobe was loose around his shoulders, and his wet hair had fallen on either side of his face. He looked debauched, dishevelled, and completely, indescribably beautiful.
With a quick push, she shoved her pinned wrists outwards, so that her arms were at right angles from her body. Since most of his weight had been resting on his hands, the sudden action caused him to fall forward onto her. She seized this opportunity to twist her hands free and wrap her arms around his torso. She buried her face into the junction of his neck and shoulder, the scent of his clean skin sending her to unprecedented heights of giddiness.
"I'm not trying to escape," she said, then fastened her mouth securely to his neck.
When he realized what she was doing, he struggled to free himself, but she held him tightly with her arms. He managed to drag them both into a sitting position, where he seized her shoulders and push her away. He was breathing almost as hard as she was. She couldn't tell if he was more furious or aroused. Fury seemed to have taken over momentarily.
"Miss Granger-" he began, teeth bared.
"Don't call me that," she cut him off and stood up. "I'm no longer your student. The Headmaster let me graduate early and has no more power over me. You're going to have to deal with me by yourself, here and now."
His bared teeth turned into a feral grin. "You are forgetting something, Miss Granger."
She placed her hands on her hips. "What?"
"You may have graduated from Hogwarts, but I have not yet released you from your independent study."
Something in the tone of his voice made her insides shiver. "Your anti- student wards didn't go off. Besides, I was under the impression that you cancelled it when I gave away the Psyche Potion."
He got to his feet, straightened his robe, and raked his hair back from his face. "Oh no, Miss Granger. The wards were set to prevent Hogwarts students from entering my quaters, but have nothing to do with my private pupils. And the Headmaster convinced me to continue your study by assuring me that he would oversee your punishment."
That was odd. Surely the Headmaster would have known... that sly old codger! He idid/i know! "Did he?"
He nodded with a smirk. He was hovering with his arms crossed, the way he always did if he sensed she was unsure of what she was doing. Furthermore, the bastard wasn't going to offer any hint as to what she could expect.
She cleared her throat, the one concession to nerves she allowed herself. "And what do you intend to do about it?"
He walked over to the bar where their glasses still sat. He glared at the drugged glass of absinthe, and poured two fresh glasses, added the sugar and water, and handed one to her.
"You seem to be under the impression that your graduation somehow makes you my equal and therefore a potential sexual partner. I hope you realize by now that this is not the case."
"I would never presume to think I knew your mind, sir," she replied. "And I hope you would not presume to think that you know mine."
He narrowed his eyes at the evasion. "Impertinent, Miss Granger. Do you not understand that your grade is at stake?"
She tried to keep a straight face, but failed dismally. He scowled at her laughter.
"Severus," she said, putting deliberate emphasis on his given name, "I don't care about my grade, and I asked you a question. What do you intend to do about the fact that I'm still technically your student?"
She took a sip of the absinthe he had given her. The diluted, sweetened version, though less intense than the taste she'd had earlier, was no less impressive. The sugar brought out chamomile and tansy notes that the bitter ingredients had overpowered. Her entire mouth tingled.
He was looking at her with an appraising eye. She raised an eyebrow in return. He cleared his throat and broke eye contact.
"I propose a test. If you pass, I will give you full marks for your independent study. If you fail, I will fail you. Pass or fail. All or nothing, Miss Granger. Do you accept?"
The warm tendrils of absinthe wound their way pleasantly around her abdomen, but the warmth did not reach her eyes. "No, sir."
"No?"
"It does nothing for me."
He laughed harshly. "You call full marks from me for an independent study 'nothing?' I can count the number of independent students I've had on one hand, and none of those has received higher than adequate marks."
She shook her head. "I don't like the stakes, sir. I would like my grade in the independent study to be based on what I've done so far, not an arbitrary test."
"Miss Granger, you came this evening intent on seducing me. I would never allow this to happen while you are still my student. If you wish to terminate your study on your own terms, you may do so, but you will receive no credit for what you have done already. However, if you consent to take my test, you must do so now and on a pass/fail basis."
Her heart was thumping. "I will take your test on one condition."
"Name your terms."
"If I pass, you will allow me to spend the night with you."
She could read nothing in his face as he considered, and she could hardly keep herself from fidgeting. Instead, she focused on his eyes. She nearly jumped when he blinked.
"Very well, Miss Granger. I accept."
He raised his glass of absinthe, and she followed suit. They clinked glasses and drank, sealing their agreement.
He gestured for her to have a seat on the bed.
"Make yourself comfortable, Miss Granger. This test will likely prove to be the hardest you have ever taken."
She swallowed. "What sort of test will this be, sir?"
There was a ghost of a mephistophelean smile at the corners of his mouth. "An oral exam, Miss Granger."
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Author's Notes: I really didn't set out to make this a cliffhanger, honestly! The conversation just got too interesting to cut short. Up next, the oral exam, followed by a rigorous practical. Heh heh.
More thanks than you can shake a stick at to Dana and Jeff, my intrepid betas who keep me from falling on my face any more than necessary!
The e-version of homemade marionberry ice cream to all of those who reviewed! You guys keep me going when lolling in the sun calls to me.
Jan McNeville, I'd only planned for one of the three guesses you made, but the others are too hilarious to leave out! *cackles in witchy style*
Author: Mundungus42
Rating: Like any good pirate movie, rated ARR!
Disclaimer: I don't even own a car, for the love of Pete!
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Severus Snape was so focused on his book that he wasn't aware the door to his private chambers had opened silently. To be fair, he didn't expect that anyone, save the Headmaster, had the ability and inclination to open that particular door, and the Headmaster always arrived through the fireplace. Because he was easily the least popular teacher, he had an impressive range of anti-student protections on the door to protect him from petty revenge, and because of his less-than savoury past, he had an equally impressive array of sensitive dark detectors that would alert him silently when someone who intended to harm him entered his room.
None of the spells had gone off.
Hermione breathed a silent sigh of relief.
She had overheard the Headmaster mention a staff meeting that evening from nine to ten, and had waited silently for Snape at the entrance to the dungeons. She followed him down a rarely used corridor and stopped in front of what appeared to be a solid wall, not far from the potions classroom. He looked twice over each shoulder, and muttered his password. She suppressed a snort. She doubted very many people knew the word "borborygmi," much less would guess it as Snape's password.
That obstacle aside, she still had to wait until it was safe to enter. Unfortunately, when she pressed her ear against the cool stone, she heard nothing.
After ten minutes had elapsed, she cast a silencing charm on the hidden door, whispered the password, took a deep breath and pushed the hidden door open a crack.
The room was dark except for a lit fireplace that crackled merrily against the back wall and a reading light that cast the chair's occupant in shadow. His chair was half facing the door, and her heart nearly stopped, but he didn't seem to have noticed her entrance. He was motionless, face bent over a book in his lap. His chest rose and fell slowly, as if he were in a trance. Knowing how difficult it was to get her attention when she was in a similar state, Hermione edged her way into the room, opening the door only enough for her to squeeze through.
Hardly daring to breathe, she closed the door slowly after her. It slid silently shut. She was in!
Stop that, she admonished herself. You can celebrate when you wake up next to him. If you wake up at all.
She examined her surroundings. Professor Snape's outer chamber was a square room with a high ceiling, which was decorated somewhat arbitrarily with neoclassical busts. The walls were lined with dark wood bookshelves, and two leather wing chairs sat next to the fireplace. Directly across the room from her was the entrance to a second room, separated by a set of drawn purple curtains. It appeared to be some kind of private laboratory; a half- obscured bench was piled high with precariously complex glassware. A strong odor of anise emanated from the laboratory.
Odd. Where was his bedroom? His private bathroom? Knowing Snape, those intimate quarters were probably behind another hidden door. Even though the elaborate busts seemed a bit out of character, the hidden doors and copious bookshelves suited him perfectly; equal parts hermit and scholar. As fitting as it was, it made her job of guerrilla seduction all the harder. Typical of Snape to be difficult when he wasn't even trying.
She crept past the purple curtains into his laboratory. The walls were covered with shelves and shelves of brightly coloured bottles, presumably of potions ingredients. Various round-bottomed flasks in the jumble of glassware on the bench bubbled merrily over burners, each connected to an enormous burette by lengths of glass tubing. The burette had to have some sort of cooling charm on it, since the steam from the tubes quickly condensed and dribbled down to the reservoir at the bottom. So he was distilling something. However, this distillation required so many ingredients as to puzzle her. Each amount had been meticulously laid out on small sheets of paper near a large open book on the work bench.
Curiosity aroused, she started toward the book. Not two steps closer to the bench, a soft chime made her jump. Snape had extricated himself from the book and strode into the laboratory. Cursing herself silently, Hermione pressed herself against the wall of the lab, praying that he wouldn't need any of the ingredients behind her.
Snape consulted the book on the bench, then reached a hand toward Hermione. She was justable to dodge out of the way, and his hand connected with a bottle from the wall behind her instead of her head. She let out a silent sigh of relief. He removed the cork, deftly added a jigger to a clean Erlenmeyer flask, lit a new burner, then swirled it gently over the flame. The bitter-smelling draught had to be some form of wormwood, unless her nose deceived her.
She had made some complicated potions with wormwood, but nothing as complex at the one Snape was creating. His entire body was focused on the task at hand- the hand with the flask never stilled or drifted away from the flame, and the other conducted a great symphony of hissing steam, gurgling liquid, and clinking glass. Snape twisted valves and added the powdered ingredients with increasing speed and intensity, when at last he drew the wormwood mixture from the flame, removed the stopcock from the burette, and poured its contents into the flask.
Before the solutions had an opportunity to mix, Snape decanted them into a slender bottle and stuffed a cork down the neck until there. Panting slightly, he held the bottle aloft and began to turn it gently.
The brown, opaque fluid inside began to ripple with light. Soon, it was shimmering with blue-white light, and it nearly hurt Hermione's eyes to look at it. But it quickly peaked and began to fade, leaving in the bottle a crystalline liquid of bright green. When the last of the white light had faded, Snape held the bottle up to the light.
The clear, green liquid brought a satisfied half-smile to his face, and he plunked the bottle into a metal pan filled with ice.
Drawing his wand from his sleeve, he began to clean the glassware, returning the individual components of the impressive structure to wooden drawers beneath the surface of the bench.
Hermione shook her head, at last freeing herself from his hypnotic movements. What iwas/i it? Damn! He was between her and the potions book.
As if sensing her intention, Snape snatched the book and returned quickly returned it to a high shelf in the other room. She stepped out of his way and craned her neck trying to read the tiny gold-stamped print on the spine of the book. When she succeeded, she could have laughed aloud. i Liqueurs de Le Calvez/i. A book that had appeared in nearly every bibliography and works cited page she had come across in her alcohol potion research. Unfortunately, it was in French, and she had discovered that her elementary French was more hindrance than help.
But it certainly narrowed down the possibilities for Snape's mystery distillation. There was only one liqueur she knew that was such a peculiar shade of green and contained wormwood: the infamous iFée Verte/i, known to the English as absinthe.
She spun around at the odd sloshing sound behind her, and found Snape lugging the bottle of absinthe, still in its ice bath, across the room.
With a soft "oof," Snape set the pan down on a low shelf. Crossing to the bookcase to the right of the fireplace, he pulled down a book with a thin black spine. To Hermione's astonishment, the entire bookcase swung gently forward into darkness.
Snape took up the ice bath again, and Hermione seized her chance and entered the room ahead of him. As she had suspected, the door swung shut behind him. The room was much darker than his library and lab. She couldn't make out many of the room's features.
A harsh murmur lit the other lamps in the room, and Hermione found herself in his bed chamber. It was decorated much more simply than his outer chamber in comfortable dark greens and reds. These walls were also covered with bookshelves, but they appeared to be books meant for enjoyment, not for study. The bed was, thankfully, wide enough for more than one. The thought made her shiver. If the man could bring such a pleasant tingle to her lower extremities just by possessing a king sized bed, she feared hyperventilating if he started taking off his clothes.
Snape set his burden down upon a marble-topped wet bar that stood next to a wooden wardrobe and sighed. Unfastening the high collar of his teaching robe, he trudged through a door on the right, which Hermione assumed led to his private bath.
When the door closed and she heard the sound of a tub filling with water, she leaped into action.
Her original plan had been to add her last dose of the Psyche Potion to whatever he was drinking, but thought better of it. The sweet ingredients of the potion would destroy the clarity and colour of the absinthe, and he would know better than to drink it.
Quickly opening and shutting the drawers and cabinets on the bar, she quickly located what she suspected she would find: a slotted absinthe spoon and a bowl of sugar cubes. Good- he was a traditional absinthe drinker.
She removed one of the cubes from the bowl and cast an absorbency spell on it before dropping it into her vial of Psyche Solution. The sugar cube swelled to three times its original size and turned the opaque green of the potion. Her years of transfiguration and charms served her well in returning it to its original size and colour, but retaining the properties of the potion.
Now, to make sure he used the spiked sugar cube. Hoping that he was as precise in preparing his drinks as he was in distilling them, she broke the remaining sugar cubes and placed her cube at the top of the bowl.
She carefully returned the sugar bowl to its place in the cabinet and retreated to the far corner of the room. The stage was set. Now all she had to do was wait.
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He emerged from the bathroom in a billow of steam in a dark bathrobe, long hair in damp disarray. Her eyes greedily drank in the pale triangle of chest that the robe left exposed. He strode purposefully toward the absinthe and rummaged through the cupboards on the bar.
He withdrew a tall glass, the absinthe spoon, and the sugar bowl from a drawer. Hermione found that she was holding her breath.
He unstoppered the bottle of absinthe, which had fogged over, and poured three fingers of absinthe into the glass. He then plucked the whole sugar cube from the bowl- Hermione's heart was thudding- and placed it in the slotted spoon. A well-aimed stream of seltzer water broke apart the cube and dissolved it into his glass of alcohol.
He stirred, and the brilliant green faded into pale opacity. He raised the glass to his lips and took a sip.
How many sips would it take for him to be under the influence of the Psyche Potion? Would his countenance change when it took hold? Hermione couldn't help herself. She moved across the room toward him, stocking feet silent on the plush carpet. When she was about ten feet from him, he startled her by drawing his wand from a hidden pocket and pointing it at her.
"Stop where you are, or I'll kill you where you stand." He lazily took another sip of absinthe, but his wand did not waver.
The terror of suddenly being discovered was quickly replaced by shock. How on earth had he known?
"One would think that someone clever enough to access my quarters would also know better than to walk through a cloud of steam while invisible, but I am quite lucky that you weren't. Show yourself!"
Taking a deep breath, she drew the cloak from herself slowly, exposing inch after inch of flesh. When she had entirely shed the cloak, she stood before him wearing only the impressive undergarments and a defiant expression.
Snape ran his eyes up and down her body, and drew a deep breath. "This is peculiar."
Well, he hadn't hexed her yet. She straightened her shoulders. "Why do you say that?"
His brow was furrowed. "Because I have never suffered hallucinations when drinking absinthe of my own brewing."
Emboldened, she took a step towards him. "What makes you think that I'm a hallucination?"
"Two reasons. First of all, hallucinations often take the form of that which has been on one's mind, and trying to divine the full effect of your, that is to say, the real Miss Granger's enchanted undergarments has been, much to my dismay, insistently in my mind. It has been most trying."
She smiled. The truth potion was at work, all right. Fortunately, he seemed none the wiser. "And the second reason?"
"Simply this. You are, or rather, the real Miss Granger is, a student. If you were in fact here, you would have triggered some very nasty anti- student wards and been expelled before you could say Johann Gambolputty of Ulm."
"And can you think of no other explanation for my presence?"
"Of course I can think of other explanations," he said impatiently. "But this one seems the simplest and the most likely, facts being what they are."
"What facts?"
"Irrefutable ones," he said, easing into a chair and taking another sip of his drink. "First, the most prosaic. Your bustier is of a different design than the one I felt through Miss Granger's shirt yesterday evening. Furthermore, the ensemble you are currently wearing is far more to my taste than anything Miss Bulstrode or Miss Parkinson could ever invent. This leads me to believe that the vision in burgundy before me has been generated not by the girls who put you- pardon, the real Miss Granger- in short skirts and high heels, but by my own imagination."
"Could I not have changed the design without removing it?"
He looked thoughtful for a moment. "I suppose. It would have been very much in character for Granger to do so. But I wasn't finished enumerating my facts."
She smiled and walked slowly to the bar. "I apologise for interrupting, sir. May I?"
He nodded, then returned to his recital. "The second fact supporting your ephemeral nature was given to me by the Headmaster this evening. Miss Granger now knows that I am aware of her participation the Gryffindor Stud competition-"
She nearly dropped the small glass of absinthe she had poured for herself to taste.
"- and will be ceasing her attentions to me forthwith upon threat of expulsion."
What game was the Headmaster playing? "Did he say that?"
He frowned at her. "He implied- in as many words. I believe so. I don't know. Stop interrupting!"
She grinned unrepentantly. "Sorry, Professor."
His scowl could have curdled milk. "The final fact, and the most compelling one: only I would have the dubious honour of being subjected to a crude version of the Socratic method by a scantily clad hallucination."
She laughed. "Then no more questions."
"No, Miss Granger or reasonable facsimile thereof, I would much rather hear from you about why you're here. No doubt to drive me to masturbation. How wholly unoriginal."
She took a tiny sip from the undiluted absinthe in her glass. The bitter herbs exploded on her tongue; wormwood followed by hyssop, mint, coriander, dittany. The oddest part was that the part of her lips and tongue that the liquid touched instantly went numb. She swallowed, the strong alcohol simultaneously searing and numbing her throat. Wow. "Believe me, sir, driving you to masturbation is the furthest thing from my mind."
His eyes narrowed. "Really."
She waved her hand in a conciliatory gesture. "I admit, I did come here with the sole intention of seducing you, sir."
"Just as I suspected. A typical hallucination."
"You didn't let me finish, nor did you note the use of the past tense."
"Ah," he said, absently taking another sip of his drink. "Has the plan to seduce me changed?"
"Yes. In the course of this conversation, I have decided that it would be far more fun for us to seduce one another."
His lips thinned into a smirk. "And what makes you think I would be amenable to sex with an incorporeal student?"
"Do you find me sexually attractive?"
He made an impatient nose. "We've been through this already."
She nodded. "You do. Do you find me interesting?"
"I find the real Miss Granger's optimism and endless curiosity irritating."
She nodded again. "You do. Do you have objections to my age?"
His eyes widened in surprise as the reluctant answer forced itself from his lips. "You show great potential." He stared at her in half-realized outrage.
She acknowledged him with a shrug. "I spiked your sugar cube with Psyche Potion, sir. I'm sorry, but it was necessary. I don't have the luxury of reading your mind to find out if you are sincere about me."
He fury on his face translated itself to action at an alarming rate. He pounced on her roughly, pinning her wrists to the bed and placing one knee between her legs. Her heart jumped into her throat, her blood rushed simultaneously north and south, but she managed to say in a nearly normal, if not breathless, voice, "I've convinced you I'm not a hallucination, then?"
"You listen to me, you impossible, brazen wretch. Never in my life has my privacy been invaded with such reckless disregard for the consequences," his voice was dangerously soft, and his face was inches from hers. "The last person who broke into my chambers is now dead. You may have escaped punishment from the Headmaster, but you will not escape mine."
She stared up at him. His cheeks and lips were flushed, and his dark eyes gleamed. His bathrobe was loose around his shoulders, and his wet hair had fallen on either side of his face. He looked debauched, dishevelled, and completely, indescribably beautiful.
With a quick push, she shoved her pinned wrists outwards, so that her arms were at right angles from her body. Since most of his weight had been resting on his hands, the sudden action caused him to fall forward onto her. She seized this opportunity to twist her hands free and wrap her arms around his torso. She buried her face into the junction of his neck and shoulder, the scent of his clean skin sending her to unprecedented heights of giddiness.
"I'm not trying to escape," she said, then fastened her mouth securely to his neck.
When he realized what she was doing, he struggled to free himself, but she held him tightly with her arms. He managed to drag them both into a sitting position, where he seized her shoulders and push her away. He was breathing almost as hard as she was. She couldn't tell if he was more furious or aroused. Fury seemed to have taken over momentarily.
"Miss Granger-" he began, teeth bared.
"Don't call me that," she cut him off and stood up. "I'm no longer your student. The Headmaster let me graduate early and has no more power over me. You're going to have to deal with me by yourself, here and now."
His bared teeth turned into a feral grin. "You are forgetting something, Miss Granger."
She placed her hands on her hips. "What?"
"You may have graduated from Hogwarts, but I have not yet released you from your independent study."
Something in the tone of his voice made her insides shiver. "Your anti- student wards didn't go off. Besides, I was under the impression that you cancelled it when I gave away the Psyche Potion."
He got to his feet, straightened his robe, and raked his hair back from his face. "Oh no, Miss Granger. The wards were set to prevent Hogwarts students from entering my quaters, but have nothing to do with my private pupils. And the Headmaster convinced me to continue your study by assuring me that he would oversee your punishment."
That was odd. Surely the Headmaster would have known... that sly old codger! He idid/i know! "Did he?"
He nodded with a smirk. He was hovering with his arms crossed, the way he always did if he sensed she was unsure of what she was doing. Furthermore, the bastard wasn't going to offer any hint as to what she could expect.
She cleared her throat, the one concession to nerves she allowed herself. "And what do you intend to do about it?"
He walked over to the bar where their glasses still sat. He glared at the drugged glass of absinthe, and poured two fresh glasses, added the sugar and water, and handed one to her.
"You seem to be under the impression that your graduation somehow makes you my equal and therefore a potential sexual partner. I hope you realize by now that this is not the case."
"I would never presume to think I knew your mind, sir," she replied. "And I hope you would not presume to think that you know mine."
He narrowed his eyes at the evasion. "Impertinent, Miss Granger. Do you not understand that your grade is at stake?"
She tried to keep a straight face, but failed dismally. He scowled at her laughter.
"Severus," she said, putting deliberate emphasis on his given name, "I don't care about my grade, and I asked you a question. What do you intend to do about the fact that I'm still technically your student?"
She took a sip of the absinthe he had given her. The diluted, sweetened version, though less intense than the taste she'd had earlier, was no less impressive. The sugar brought out chamomile and tansy notes that the bitter ingredients had overpowered. Her entire mouth tingled.
He was looking at her with an appraising eye. She raised an eyebrow in return. He cleared his throat and broke eye contact.
"I propose a test. If you pass, I will give you full marks for your independent study. If you fail, I will fail you. Pass or fail. All or nothing, Miss Granger. Do you accept?"
The warm tendrils of absinthe wound their way pleasantly around her abdomen, but the warmth did not reach her eyes. "No, sir."
"No?"
"It does nothing for me."
He laughed harshly. "You call full marks from me for an independent study 'nothing?' I can count the number of independent students I've had on one hand, and none of those has received higher than adequate marks."
She shook her head. "I don't like the stakes, sir. I would like my grade in the independent study to be based on what I've done so far, not an arbitrary test."
"Miss Granger, you came this evening intent on seducing me. I would never allow this to happen while you are still my student. If you wish to terminate your study on your own terms, you may do so, but you will receive no credit for what you have done already. However, if you consent to take my test, you must do so now and on a pass/fail basis."
Her heart was thumping. "I will take your test on one condition."
"Name your terms."
"If I pass, you will allow me to spend the night with you."
She could read nothing in his face as he considered, and she could hardly keep herself from fidgeting. Instead, she focused on his eyes. She nearly jumped when he blinked.
"Very well, Miss Granger. I accept."
He raised his glass of absinthe, and she followed suit. They clinked glasses and drank, sealing their agreement.
He gestured for her to have a seat on the bed.
"Make yourself comfortable, Miss Granger. This test will likely prove to be the hardest you have ever taken."
She swallowed. "What sort of test will this be, sir?"
There was a ghost of a mephistophelean smile at the corners of his mouth. "An oral exam, Miss Granger."
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Author's Notes: I really didn't set out to make this a cliffhanger, honestly! The conversation just got too interesting to cut short. Up next, the oral exam, followed by a rigorous practical. Heh heh.
More thanks than you can shake a stick at to Dana and Jeff, my intrepid betas who keep me from falling on my face any more than necessary!
The e-version of homemade marionberry ice cream to all of those who reviewed! You guys keep me going when lolling in the sun calls to me.
Jan McNeville, I'd only planned for one of the three guesses you made, but the others are too hilarious to leave out! *cackles in witchy style*