Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated entities are not my property. No money is being made from this. Please don't reproduce without permission.
AN: HG/SS story. Also a story about boobs. If boobs offend you, please stop here.

A Simple Matter of Anatomy

Or: The Cost of Genetics: A Story of Tragedy and Backbreak

Hermione walked into a bar.

It sounded like the beginning of a bad joke, and while it was a joke, it wasn't a joke in the tell-you-a-story-and-make-you-laugh sense. There was no laughing for Hermione; she was having enough trouble breathing as the wind had been knocked out of her when she hit the bar at a full run. Of course, falling on her arse had compounded the indignity. It hurt. It hurt a lot. And it wasn't so much a bar as a broomstick placed across the hallway at a level that the perpetrators of the trick knew she would be unable to see. And though it was only a broomstick in a hallway, it was the final straw.

Hermione Jane Granger was fed up. Completely and utterly fed up. She was tired of the tricks, the way no one would look her directly in the eyes. She was tired of the way they glanced at her from the corner of their eyes when they thought she wasn't looking. She was tired of the way conversations suddenly stopped when she walked into the room. If it had just been the students of the other houses—Slytherin for example—doing this, she was sure she could handle it. But it wasn't just the other houses; Gryffindors were doing it too. Even her best friends, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley were treating her differently. The girls in her year and the two below were constantly giving her nasty looks; most of the professors were treating her differently too.

She mentioned these observations and frustrations one afternoon to the one friend who hadn't changed. He listened with a bored expression, nodded his head a few times at appropriate moments, and had finally, at the end of her whinging speech, sneeringly told her to do what she always did when she had a problem—go to the school library and research it.

And if there wasn't a magical way to fix this problem, there was always the Muggle way. Problem. That was putting it mildly. She had a problem all right. Two problems. Two very large problems to be precise.

Her breasts.

Her never-to-be-cursed-enough breasts.

Looking back, Hermione realized that it all began fairly normally—even humorously. At the beginning of her sixth year, she had begun to despair that puberty would ever happen to her. The other girls of her year had very nice starts on womanly bodies while Hermione Granger resembled nothing so much as a Clean Sweep standing on it's end—straight and featureless until you got to the bushy, wild hair. She had just about completely given up hope when halfway through the year those heretofore missing hormones kicked in. Silently, she rejoiced. No longer would she look like a boy; maybe the boys would even notice that she wasn't one of them. She would finally get to use those bras her mother had bought her two years earlier in anticipation of this much-delayed event. And though she often gave the impression of not caring about appearances, her unchanging adolescent figure had truly worried her. She shouldn't've worried.

By the beginning of spring, she had nicely graceful curves—it was obvious to anyone who happened to look that she actually was a girl. By the middle of spring, she had very womanly curves. Curves that were appreciated by some of the more observant members of the opposite sex. Her best friends still hadn't noticed the changes, but not all of the boys were so oblivious. She basked in the warm glow of masculine appreciation. It wasn't until the start of summer and school was about to let out that she began to get worried. Her breasts had gotten even larger. And they were still growing—almost noticeably. Each weekend, as she went to put on her Muggle t-shirts, she noticed that they were tighter and tighter across the chest. At first, she had thought that someone was transfiguring her T-shirts smaller or that the House Elves were mis-laundering them, but examination of her body in the nude proved that it really was her body that was growing and not the shirts that were shrinking. Those bras her mother had bought were long gone—far too small for the size she now was.

Being slightly suspicious due to previous experience, she worried that one of the boys had slipped her some sort of potion that caused the rapidly increasing biological problem, but quick research showed that there were no such slow-acting or continuous potions. No charms either—she had checked just to be sure. It seemed as though her problems were completely genetic. She had left school, figuring that it would sort itself out in the end. Maybe she would grow a couple more inches to help balance out her increasingly top-heavy figure.

It hadn't happened. Her breasts had just kept growing while the rest of her body stayed still. She was five foot three and "curvy" in the extreme. It was depressing. It was confusing. It was horrible.

Her parents, sensing with their endless perspicacity that something was wrong, arranged for a family vacation to the shore to "help take her mind off things." Normally, Hermione would have loved to go to the beach, but her current physical trials put a damper on that normally pleasant activity. The first day there, she had worn her old bathing suit to work on her tan. She had been flattered when every single person with a Y-chromosome had stopped to talk to her. Her happiness at the attention soon waned when she noticed that not a single one of them was looking at her face. They were all entranced by her breasts which the now far too small swimsuit barely covered. Tugging at the top only seemed to exacerbate the problem and draw attention to it (them)—as evidenced by the scathing looks given her by mothers with young children and wandering-eyed husbands. She even heard one mutter something about common decency and protection of innocents as she walked past.

Deciding that all the ogling and glaring was more attention than she ever wanted again, she spent the next two weeks in an overlarge, hideously flowered cover-up, under a concealing umbrella, reading her books.

More and more, she looked forward to returning to school, and the increasingly desirable concealment the school robes would provide. Unfortunately, her troubles didn't end with the start of school for there wasn't an item of clothing created on the entire planet that could hide the fact that Hermione Granger had very large breasts. Upon seeing her for the first time in months, Harry and Ron's jaws had dropped, their eyes had dropped, and their drool had dropped. This made her angry. It didn't help when it appeared that their IQs had dropped also. They struggled to put together complete sentences. It probably didn't help their cause that all the blood that would normally be in their brains was rapidly gathering at a spot much lower. There must be some primitive instinct that caused males to immediately focus on reproductive urges when faced with breasts.

And the boys were the least of the problem. The girls were unsurprisingly jealous of all the attention she was getting from the boys. Lavender and Parvati could wear low-cut, tight clothes and sit with their legs open until the cows came home, but the second Hermione walked into the room—wearing clothing more suited to a nunnery than a high school, the other girls would be immediately forgotten. And that rankled them immensely. Intellectually they realized that there was nothing Hermione could do about the problem, but that didn't keep them from snubbing her at every opportunity. Even the positioning of her Head Girl badge drew attention that was completely unrelated to the position she held.

And the personal difficulties weren't the worst of it. The physical ones were awful. To begin with, being extremely top-heavy caused her back to ache abominably. She was in the infirmary once a week for potions to help release the strain her back was under; she had to work so hard to stay upright that it would spasm from the stress. And God help her if she forgot and stretched or arched her back when she wasn't completely alone. But it didn't end there either.

She had been politely requested by Professor McGonagall to please refrain from riding broomsticks on school grounds. Apparently, the sight of her already distracting breasts pressed together and bulging out of her robes because of the placement of her arms had caused several boys (and even a girl or two) to fall off their own brooms from considerable heights.

She could no longer duel because standing sideways to present a smaller target actually presented a larger one. Or two. And they were targets that no one failed to notice.

She had to be early to class all the time. The first few times she had been running late and therefore running down the stairs had been extremely painful. And the bounce of her breasts had distracted at least two students to the point where they had missed steps and had to be helped to the hospital wing to take care of the resulting injuries—causing her to be late and losing points from her house.

Classes were no better. She was constantly knocking over potions ingredients with her breasts. Stirring a potion was guaranteed to garner the attention of all the boys. And, as the professor was quick to point out, teen-age boy drool was not an ingredient in any potion ever created. Charms had its trials too. Professor Flitwick had to stand at least three feet away from her or else he would see only female anatomy—or be injured by it if she moved to quickly. Resting her boobs on the library table while studying caused problems too. She knew her breasts were a running joke between all the houses, and it angered her.

But it wasn't the cessation of the attention that she wanted most of all; it was the little things she desired most. She wanted to be able to sleep on her stomach again. To reach the biscuits at mealtime without knocking over her pumpkin juice. To be able to look down and see her feet again.

She just wanted to be normal. Or as normal as a teenage witch ever got.

Since the bar was the final straw, she had decided that a bar was going to be the solution.

Which was why she was currently sitting in the Hogshead Tavern working her way through her third tumbler of some horrid whiskey, telling her life story to the sympathetic ear across the booth.

"They're practically deadly weapons," she complained. "If the Last Battle were to happen today, I could distract the entirety of He-Who-Blah-Blah-Blah's army just by flashing them."

There was no answer from across the table.

She scowled at him and took another drink of the truly, truly horrible whiskey.

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Severus Snape was in hell. Or as close as one could get without actually dying. Though perhaps hell didn't have firewhiskey. Professor Dumbledore had called him up to his office a few hours earlier and informed him that the Head Girl had gone missing. Snape had inferred from this imparting of information that Dumbledore wanted him to go after the wandering student. He had been right. Which is how he had ended up in the Hogshead Tavern across from the little chit.

To say the truth, he had stormed into the bar all set to drag her truant arse back to the castle and a years worth of detentions, but when she had offered to buy, well, he couldn't see the harm in making her skint too as part of her punishment.

Which is why he was in the unenviable position of listening to her whinge about her breasts. He would be lying if he said he hadn't noticed her "problem" (he was a man after all with all the associated instincts and primal programming), but it certainly wasn't something he had dwelt on to the extent she obviously had. And each of her whinges had been punctuated by gestures to the relevant part of her anatomy. He looked at his tumbler and decided that it was time to stop with the alcohol, no matter how finely aged it was—he was thinking far too much about Hermione Granger's breasts. He glanced over to see her scowling at him—had she finally said something that required a response? He couldn't remember; he had really only listened to one word in three she said.

He also had convinced himself that helping the drunken and staggering Head Girl up the long walk to the castle would be much more work than just using the mobilicorpus spell on her when she finally passed out. Which, to all appearances, looked like it was never going to happen.

This really was hell.

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There was finally a response. "Keep practicing that scowl," the Snape suggested, "someday that might actually intimidate someone."

She scowled even harder and stared into the depths of her drink. She actually liked it better when he hadn't been speaking to her. The silence had almost been…companionable. Or it would have had she not monopolized the conversation. She couldn't muster the urge to care.

The man considered her for moment before commenting, "You look like a petulant child with that expression." He took another sip of his much better whiskey and contemplated her.

"Well," she huffed, "I'd cross my arms across my chest to complete the childish picture except that we've already established that they aren't long enough."

He laughed at her. Professor Snape actually laughed at her.

"Quite whinging about it, and go find a solution," he suggested reasonably. "Maybe there's something in Hogwarts: A History."

"Stop making fun of me," she said. "You just don't understand."

"You're quite right about that," he replied, comfortable in the fact that he would never be in the position she was in now. She really was easy to poke fun at.

"Well," she said thoughtfully, "maybe we should put you in my position. You'd have more sympathy then, I am sure. Maybe a little engorging charm on a certain portion of your anatomy…" She pulled out her wand and threatened him with it.

(Now it would not be fair to say that Severus Snape, feared Potions master of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was frightened of the girl, but any red-blooded wizard is extremely cautious when an inebriated, angry witch is pointing a wand none-too-steadily at his family jewels. It is only prudent after all.)

"Put that away," he ordered, shifting his legs and covering that vulnerable area up.

"What?" she asked, pretending to be shocked. "You don't think you would like the attention of every female in the school? You wouldn't adore being their object of lust? The one they fantasize about as they bring themselves—"

"That is quite enough," he interrupted before she could complete the sentence. He knew what she had been going to say and, frankly, it gave him gooseflesh to just think about it. Gooseflesh in the creeped-out way, not in the pleasantly-anticipating-something way. He looked at her critically and said, "You managed to shrink your teeth; couldn't you try something similar with your…" he gestured toward her chest.

She sighed and shook her head. "It doesn't work that way," she slurred. "I looked it up. You can only use that sort of charm on a…rigid object. If you tried it on something like my breasts, I would be more likely to end up lopsided or the tops shrunk more than the bottoms or something equally grotesque." She sighed into her cup, "And, much as I hate to admit it, I am vain enough that I don't want to do that to myself." She looked critically down at her chest and examined it blurrily. "But I think the extra weight of them is stunting my height." She glared at him when he snorted again. "Not that you'd know about that either." Damn man. People at six feet and over simply didn't understand the plight of those who were forever stuck unable to look over crowds, unable to see over clothing racks at the stores, and doomed to be lost in garden mazes. The look he gave her made her wonder if she had spoken that last thought out loud. On closer examination, she didn't give arse.

She sighed again and said, "Harry and Ron have even stopped inviting me on excursions around the castle."

"Dear Merlin, Potter and Weasley still look for trouble after curfew?" The thought was enough to make his forget his vow to leave the rest of the whiskey. Yes, he would need stiff drinks if those two hellions were still breaking the rules. He'd need some fortification before going after them.

"Looks like you are slipping in your patrols," Hermione smirked at him. "But I can't tell you any more than that. They don't want me with them anymore. Not only am I distracting—rubbing up against them—I no longer fit under the invisibility cloak and can't fit through small spaces. I don't compress enough." She gave him a pleading look and said, "Maybe if you deducted points from every student who even looks at me sideways, they would stop."

He snorted. "First of all," he said in a very reasonable tone, "that would very likely put my house behind the Hufflepuffs. Second, it would indicate to the rest of the school and student body that I do not, loathe all Gryffindors. Third, there is a spell that you could perform on yourself that would give anyone who looks too long at your breasts a pair of their own. Fourth and finally, no one will get a chance to look at your chest for a good long time because you are going to be in detention for the rest of your life. Finish your drink."

Used to obeying her professors, she downed the last of the whiskey (which really was horrible) and set the tumbler back on the table. It was at this point that the alcohol she had steadily consumed over the past few hours caught up with her, and she slid boneless to the table.

Snape threw a few Galleons from her pocket onto the table to pay the bill (after first finishing his own drink) and withdrew his wand.

Anyone passing the tavern would have been shocked (or at least somewhat startled) to see Professor Snape walking out of the bar with Hermione Granger and her large rack floating behind him. It had been a truly strange day.

The moral of this story is as follows: Walking into bars is not recommended.

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Final A/N: Much thanks to Shiv for helping me come up with an ending. Before it just trailed off. Now it trails off in a better way. Thanks Shiv.