A/N

I realise that some of you are now regarding the last eight chapters as 'a build up to the sex' as one reviewer put it - if I remember correctly. All I can say to justify this is that this is a HGSS fic. No one is ever going to totally agree with/enjoy every fic that ever gets written. All I can hope for is that you nice people who are enjoying this will continue to do so.

This chapter (I think) is slightly longer than previous ones so I hope I am somewhat redeemed for that. Also I hope this is a little funnier than the last couple, which I know were mainly rubbish filler. Apologies for the bit about Draco stuck in the last chapter. I know it was a little random.

I really am trying my best with this, honest! If anyone doesn't agree I can only say they have my permission to use my ideas and write their own ending.

Right, sorry about that long bitchy note but I just needed to clarify before I carry on.

Lots of love n hugs, especially to Pickles my most wonderful reviewer! (I'm sorry I can't thank you all but that would make this note even longer – quite a lot of reviews I have responded to, btw)

slytherinserpent13 xxx

Chapter Nine – Do Memory Charms Work On Parrots?

Hermione blinked. In front of her, Snape frowned.

"Did you just feel that?" she asked, looking around for the source of the disturbance.

"Yes," he said, slightly louder than he'd intended. "That was magic. Dark magic. Someone's cast a spell on you."

Hermione gaped.

"D...dark magic? On me? B...but you felt it too, didn't you? How do you know it wasn't on you?" She got up from the comfort of the professor's lap and began to pace.

Snape sat, frozen, watching her. Something was evidently very wrong here.

"Because the spell was cast on you, Miss... Hermione... I can feel it – it's coming from you. Trust me, I know about these things. I suggest we try and trace the culprit and then we can maybe find out the nature of this incantation."

Hermione had drawn level with the end of the desk by now, however, and found she could go no further.

"Uh," she stuttered, "I don't think that'll be necessary..."

"Why is that?" he asked.

"I already know what it does."

He stared at her.

"What?! I mean... What does it do?"

She took a deep breath.

"Well... I can't walk away from you."

"What?!" Snape's vocabulary suddenly seemed to have shrunk to that one tiny word. Hermione motioned for him to stand.

"Try," she said. "Try and walk away."

He frowned and moved backwards a step or two, then stopped. There was a pause.

"Oh..." said Snape quietly, in a very un-Snapelike way. There was another pause.

"I don't understand," voiced Hermione suddenly. "Why would anyone want me stuck to you?"

Snape looked up, rubbing his temples.

"I can't say for sure at present... though I think that, although the spell is dark, it was not used with malicious intent. More like someone wanting to get revenge on you, I'd say. The fact that it's me you're stuck to will probably please them infinitely – after all, we are supposed to detest each other."

Hermione nodded, thinking. She was a little more comfortable now that there was a halfway logical explanation to some of the problem.

"I may help to know who cast the spell," continued Snape. He produced his wand from his sleeve and whispered a few words. Nothing happened. "Strange," he muttered. "I'll have to try something stronger..." He began chanting words Hermione didn't recognise.

A green light appeared at the end of Snape's wand and wound itself into two words:

'Draco Malfoy'.

"Idiot!" he snarled.

Hermione grinned.

"Well, it could be worse," she observed, "It could be him I'm stuck to."

The grinning was evidently contagious – Snape was doing it too.

"Ah, yes," he said after a while. "How fortunate for me..."

Hermione had barely had time to register what he'd said before he was on top of her, gripping her tightly around the waist. Who would have guessed he was so... huggable...??! "Yes," he repeated, "Not such a bad arrangement after all..."

In the background there was a loud squawk. The parrot, apparently, was rather disturbed. Hermione could almost hear it thinking: Mental images! Mental images! Help! Naked Snape! Nooooo!

"Bloody bird!" Snape shouted, letting off a long string of obscenities the like of which Hermione had never heard before. The twitch in his eye was back with a serious vengeance. "Obliviate!" he yelled. "Silencio!" the rest of his sentence was lost under another wave of imaginative expletives. Hermione giggled. It seemed her professor had really had enough of that bird for the time being – which wasn't surprising; he wasn't known for his patience at the best of times, but when surrounded by a noisy bird he didn't even want...

She noticed the object of her professor's tirade was looking quite badly off after its adventures of the past few days. Its once-colourful feathers were green, silver and... pink??? and lay in clumps between bald patches where it appeared the Potions Master had been having a little fun with inventive hexes.

As she looked closer, she noted the bird had a rather lost look in its eyes. Almost like, say, it couldn't remember what it had been doing for the last few hours.

"I didn't know memory charms worked on parrots?!" she exclaimed, still giggling at Snape's insinuations as to the parrot's relationship with its grandfather. The professor smiled half-heartedly.

"Neither did I. But I suppose he's not a real parrot. We'd better go, anyway. Dumbledore'll have to know. You'll have to come to my chambers tonight I expect – there's no way we'll have found a counter-curse until morning – if there even is one." There was a sparkle in his eye and she smirked.

"Let's go then," she said.

As they exited, the parrot looked up gleefully. Memory charms, as it happened, did not work on parrots. Ernie was going to have a lot of fun telling people of their darling Head Girl's private life come Graduation. Gods, that seemed like years away. Although it was good he would have time to get over the initial shock himself. After all, it isn't everyday you come upon a scene like... well, a scene like that. He was just glad it hadn't got past the kissing stage – otherwise he might've been 'sick as a parrot', and no pun intended.

Hermione sighed. Their search for a cure had been pretty fruitless. The curse seemed to be a mixture of several they had seen. Now it was Monday morning and they had to go to breakfast together.

Dumbledore, much to the couple's chagrin, seemed to think the whole situation was hilariously funny. That ridiculous twinkle was back in his eye – if he knew the status of Severus and Hermione's relationship, he didn't appear to mind.

The headmaster had announced the problem at breakfast the day before (while the Potions Master and Head Girl were absent, they were pleased to note) so no one would ask why they were always together. It had just seemed like a whole lot of hassle for nothing trying to keep it secret.

Severus swept along the corridor in his usual bat-like manner. Hermione struggled to keep up with his long strides, and was half being dragged along by the invisible connection between them.

"Can't you slow down a little, Professor?" she asked, slightly annoyed.

Snape smirked. "Can't you speed up a little, Miss Granger?"

Hermione smiled inwardly. That wasn't what he called me last night... She quickened her steps so she was level with him, but on the other side of the corridor.

The next event happened so fast it took the Head Girl several seconds to process the information.

Hannah Abbot, who was running away from Millicent Bulstrode, crashed into the space between Hermione and Snape. Yes, the space between them. Soon her pursuer was caught too. It was almost like there was a magnetic forcefield there.

Both the Hufflepuff and the Slytherin tripped, caught off guard by the apparent solidness of the air around them. Coming over to investigate (before anyone thought to tell him otherwise) Ron got stuck too.

"Oh, bloody hell!" he said, realising (though he didn't know the science of it) roughly what had occured.

"Indeed," Snape drawled lazily, eyebrow raised. You could see he was trying not to smile at the ridiculousness of it all – though he was definitely not pleased about it, don't get me wrong.

"Aargh!!" Hermione had several reasons to be unhappy at this situation. For all she knew, the others were stuck in the forcefield as indefinitely as she and Snape were. For one thing, it meant she and the Potions Professor had to act like they hated each other until the spell wore off, and for another it meant she had to sleep within three feet of him and try not to touch him. Snape seemed to have noticed this too; the half-grin had been replaced by a vicious glare that even Hermione herself could not escape.

By the time they reached the Great Hall, Colin Creevey and Draco Malfoy had become caught up in the growing mass off attached people. Every so often, one of them would forget they couldn't walk away and would drag the whole group down on top of them by trying to walk in another direction too quickly.

If Dumbledore had found the situation funny before, he was hyperventilating now. Even the usually-stoic McGonagall was suppressing a smile at seeing her foul-tempered colleague seemingly superglued to five 'dunderheads'.

That morning's breakfast had to be the strangest of Hermione's life. They had found it difficult to all manoeuvre onto the usual student benches, and (after falling over a few times) had been forced to eat standing up. All could see it was going to be rather troublesome to sleep.

Synchronised timetables were arranged and other teachers on free lessons were instructed to teach Potions (much to Severus' distaste and every student's joy). By the end of the day, apart from numerous bruises, the 'superglued ones' were leading as normal a life as could be expected at Hogwarts, under the circumstances. Dennis Creevey, never having been separated from his older brother for longer than an hour before, insisted on deliberately getting himself stuck in too. This did not please anyone else present, as it was now proving even harder to fit around corners. Snape could be heard raving about how he would never be able to sneak up on students in the corridors after curfew like this.

Night crawled around, and no one was really sure what to do. There was no way seven people could lie down in four feet of sideways room. Eventually they were forced to arrange their standing forms into a square, turn the Room of Requirement into a diamond shape with backwards-slanting walls and sleep standing up.

Needless to say, nobody got a hell of a lot of sleep that night.

A/N

I'm really so sorry this took ages to write. I just had the most dreadful case of writers' block! I hope it is satisfactory for the time being – I felt I had to get i something /i out for you guys!

slytherinserpent13 xxx