Hermione fell over. She picked herself up – using the bed for some much needed support – and then proceeded to fall over again. She wasn't drunk. She wasn't having a particularly clumsy day. She was wearing high heels. Hermione had worn heels before – demure silver sling backs for the Yule ball that she'd thought quite fashionable at the time – but she'd never worn seven inch neon pink stilettos before. Lest you thought she was horribly behind in terms of Hogwarts fashion, it was worth pointing out that almost no one wore seven inch stilettos that radiated grotesque pinkness. Hermione had only found them after spending a significant time rummaging through the remains of Mary Anne Tereza Andora Kamikaze Glitterina Katrina Ivanova Sue's belongings.
And she hadn't stopped her search with the neon high heels. No one's attention was ever caught by neon pink stilettos alone. She'd paired them with a leather corset and purple fishnets and a strange, frilly bottom covering with gobs of peacock feathers sticking out of it. To her credit, it could have been worse. Mary's belongings also included a nun habit, a Minnie Mouse costume and a straightjacket (though whether its use was sexual, or just a reminder of a not so distant past was anyone's guess.) Despite her not-as-atrocious-as-it-could-have-been taste Hermione still looked like something out of "Playwizard," that is the costume designer at "Playwizard" were blind, and the reader in the midst of a hallucinogenic breakdown. It was a dreadful sight. She looked like a prostitute – and not a high class courtesan, not the kind of prostitute Lucius Malfoy might have over for Putanesca, but the kind of woman whose firewhisky addiction had driven her to sell her body in Knockturn Alley.
But Hermione knew that in a woman's life there were certain events for which she must look like a drunken prostitute. Seducing your potions master was one of them.
She had the scene all plotted out in her mind. She would slink into the room, and lean casually in the doorway. "Hello... Professor," she'd purr lustily. Then she would drop something – she hadn't figured out just what yet, but surely it would come to her - and lean over to pick it up, allowing the Professor a delicious view of her sumptuous, heaving bosom. If he was playing hard to get, she'd murmur something along the lines of "I'm a woman Professor, a woman," thus clearly establishing her gender, which would lead to sex. Maybe he'd even call her a silly girl, which would be unspeakably arousing! He would be all but forced to ravish her because men are completely unable to moderate lustful desires (in less passionate moments, Hermione would have realized that she was employing the same logic used by date rapists, but at the time it seemed irrelevant.) When that happened, she had a fairly good idea what she'd do, though she did wish she could bring her copy of the Karma Sutra along and consult it for reference notes. Romance novels had told her that actions like these led to undying love, and she had no cause not to believe them.
Ginny – who was in the process of rushing to Hermione's dorm bearing a tube of blue, glittery lipstick, and red acrylic nails - thought Hermione looked wonderful. Ginny had always been hideously shy about her myopia, and never admitted to anyone, even her closest friends, that she was almost blind without her reading glasses. She never wore them in public, as she was well versed enough in the poetry of Dorothy Parker to know that, "men never make passes at girls who wear glasses." So she wasn't quite being cruel, and her tastes didn't run towards slatterns, it was simply that to her, Hermione was a glorious ball of interlocking colors. Blurry, fuzzy colors. To anyone else, she looked like a Jabberwocky. Beauty might well be in the eye of the beholder, but it was best to make sure that your beholder had a fully functioning set of eyeballs before trusting their opinion.
When Ginny swept in, brandishing her accessories before her like a virgin sacrifice to a god of premarital and highly illegal sex, Hermione had fallen once again, and was bent halfway over a chair. It might have been sexy had it not so closely resembled a seizure. Her peacock feathers had also begun to molt, and were spreading across the room.
"You look fabulous!" squealed Ginny.
"I keep falling down," noted Hermione. "'I don't think it's very attractive to fall down this much."
"You obviously know nothing about the male psyche," replied Ginny.
"Oh?" replied Hermione, sitting down on the floor amidst the mounting pile of feathers.
"Falling down. Like a fallen woman! Professor Snape will have his wild, lordly pleasures with you, and you'll never be able to marry and will have to work as a governess, because no respectable man will have you!"
"I suppose that makes sense," noted Hermione, "except that Professor Snape isn't taking advantage of me. Aren't I more of a jumping woman?"
"Don't split hairs. You're falling – falling into a passionate embrace!"
"I still find this whole situation totally and utterly bizarre," declared Hermione. "Don't you think that playing ludicrous games like this goes against any aspects of my character which would cause him to respect me?"
"No," replied Ginny flatly.
"Oh. All right, then. But shouldn't he love me for myself?"
"Isn't there a Yeats poem along those lines?" pondered Ginny, "Doesn't it go 'only God, my dear, could love you for yourself alone and not your neon pink high heels?'"
"Something like that," nodded Hermione.
"So I don't see what you're making such a fuss over."
"I suppose I just thought it would be different. Fewer pretenses. More just an honest admission of our feelings, and some comprehensive talk about what to do about them."
Ginny scoffed, "Have you ever read a romance novel that operated along those lines?"
Hermione had to admit that she hadn't. Not any romance novel with a happy ending, anyway.
"Being calm and honest is no way to begin a relationship," continued Ginny, "now, it would be different if you were being honest because you experienced a moment of passion. For instance, if he called you a silly girl, and then you began to scream uncontrollably, and finally stormed from the room shrieking 'I don't know why I engage in sexual fantasy about you on a daily basis!' He would have to come running after you, and then ravish you on the dungeon floor."
"Why? After I shrieked at him like a crazy person?"
"The matters of love are complicated," sighed Ginny. Hermione attempted to stand up, skidded across the feathers, and then proceeded to fall back to the floor.
"I think this is absolutely hopeless," Hermione remarked.
"Maybe he'll be drunk!" squealed Ginny hopefully. "Maybe he'll have absolutely nothing to do but drink himself into an alcoholic stupor because he's pining for you! Wouldn't that be great? Then his defenses would be down, and you could have your way with him!"
"Isn't that rape?" enquired Hermione.
"Not really. It's still frowned upon, but then, you are planning to sleep with your middle aged Professor, so I imagine the whole matter would be frowned upon."
"Oh," replied Hermione, nibbling on her thumbnail.
"Not that there's anything actually wrong with it," amended Ginny quickly.
"Of course not."
"In any case, there are lots of things that could happen. I mean, he could just leap on top of you when you were just standing in the doorway."
"But he's never shown even the slightest indication of doing anything like that in the past."
"For heaven's sakes," replied Ginny, "just trust me on this. In the past, you were never dressed as beautifully as you are now. Did I, or did I not get Harry and Draco to engage in a passionate love affair?"
"Umm," replied Hermione "Harry and Draco are both heterosexual."
"But with my nudging..."
"They were totally repulsed and horrified. I overheard Pansy saying that Draco thought your brain should be washed out with soap."
"Look, it's not my fault that they're both so touchy about their homosexual identities."
"I think after you trapped them in the closet stocked with chocolate body paint, and opened it three hours later to find them sitting as far apart from each other as possible doing their homework it would be fair to assume that they're definitely heterosexual. Or, at the very least, not attracted to each other."
"That's all that YOU think happened in that closet," replied Ginny, "I'm worldly enough to know that after a vigorous round of chocolate body painted sex, many people like to do their homework. It's like smoking a cigarette."
"I really don't think they're homosexuals."
"They're gay as a lamb in spring. They're just not admitting it yet. But they will, oh, they will."
Hermione nodded and smiled, and began to worry that taking Ginny's advice was the silliest thing she had ever done in her seventeen years.
"Don't be so nervous," chided Ginny, "I have something that will make you feel so much better."
Hermione hoped it was a tranquilizer. She lifted her head and looked at Ginny. "Yes?"
"Violet false eyelashes!"
Ginny waved them about. Hermione thought they looked like tarantulas whose mothers had become inebriated and bred with the local eggplant. She realized with a shudder that she was expected to adhere the illegitimate arachnid/eggplant offspring onto her eyes.
By the time Ginny had completed her ministrations Hermione was almost blind, and almost completely unable to walk. Ginny wished her luck, and sent her down to the dungeons, giving her a pronounced push at Professor Snape's door.
Hermione struggled desperately to support herself. "Hello, Professor," she said. She wanted to purr it lustily, but her voice seemed to catch in her throat.
"Good God, Miss Granger," replied Professor Snape, "You look like a prostitute."
All of a sudden, Hermione felt very foolish. Very foolish, and rather cold. She wished she'd brought a jacket. And she felt, for a moment, as though she might cry. She thought she had looked so insatiably female.
"Have you been at one of Albus's costume parties?" asked Snape. "That seems to be the sort of outfit he'd like."
Hermione could have ended the discussion there simply by nodding her head, and the couple could well have enjoyed a long and lasting friendship spent in political and literary discussions. They would never have had to endure the panicky fluctuations of a romantic relationship, and while each of them might have experienced moments where they thought they felt something more for one another, they would be sensible enough to shake their heads, secure in the knowledge that requited love is much more painful than unrequited love. Professor Snape would have come to feel a deeply paternal affection towards her, and would have been able to sit by her side as she sobbed after experiencing her first real heartbreak (a young pureblooded Wizard with a genius for arithmancy who would justify the breakup by telling her that she simply wasn't very loveable.) The friendship would have featured endless pourings of tea into teacups – and when they discussed Eliot, many years down the road, as it would take some time for Hermione to move from regency romances to Eliot's complete works, they would both pause over the notion of a life measured out by coffee spoons. Later, still, when he died, Hermione would give his eulogy, with her own children in attendance, who, while they felt very sorry for Hermione, would never understand why their mum felt such a curious attachment to that greasy haired old git. She would intend to read all of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" which seemed like something Severus would have liked read at his funeral (she had toyed with the notion of "Funeral Blues" by Auden, but rejected it, as she didn't want people to think that she had been surreptitiously in love with Professor Snape all those years) but would never be able to finish it, and would be overcome by a tumult of tears before those women of Eliot's ever got a chance to come and go, let alone talk of Michelangelo. Her eldest son, Willard, who had a sense of propriety, would pull her away from the podium, and take her place, where he would recite a reasonably amusing story about how Uncle Snape had once taught him how to kill flies with his wand. Hermione would sit in her chair, next to her husband of 32 years, and would try not to think of anything.
It wouldn't have been such a dreadful thing. It would have been, more or less, a lovely little life for both of them. But that is not the way it happened. Because Hermione refused to have spent the last three hours dressing up like a drunken prostitute for nothing.
So much depends upon purple false eyelashes beside a pair of neon pink high heels.
Hermione took a step forward and fell down. Professor Snape looked disgusted. "Have you been drinking, Miss Granger?" he asked.
"No," replied Hermione, though with five layers of lipstick smeared over her mouth it wasn't articulated quite as clearly as she would have liked.
She stood up again. She remembered she was supposed to drop something. But she hadn't brought anything! Hermione scanned the room frantically for a pencil or pen. The closest she could come was an encyclopedia of potion's ingredients, which she grasped from the desk and threw to the ground with terrifying force.
"My word," thought Professor Snape, as he watched her toss his books about with gay abandon, "the poor girl is having a nervous breakdown. It must have been the interview with that Skeeter woman."
Hermione tried to display her assets to their best advantage as she picked up the book, but instead hurtled headfirst to the ground after it.
"Miss Granger," said Professor Snape, "please sit down."
"Yessss, Professor," purred Hermione as she wobbled into his armchair.
"Now," continued Professor Snape, "I think it's possible that someone may have drugged you. Or that you're experiencing a breakdown of some sort. So I'm going to go get Madame Pomfrey."
Hermione looked aghast. "I don't need Madame Pomfrey!" she exclaimed.
"I would contend that you most certainly do," retorted Professor Snape, gazing over at his encyclopedia which was still lying on the floor.
"No, I really don't."
"Miss Granger, you may not think you do, and you may not be aware of this, but you're not acting at all like yourself at the moment. Or, for that matter, any reasonably well adjusted person."
"I'm aware of that, but..."
"But?"
"But I was acting this way for a reason."
"I can't see any reason which would merit your ludicrous attire. Fifty points from Gryffindor for being improperly dressed, incidentally."
"I was... I'm a woman, Professor Snape! A woman!"
"I'm absolutely going to fetch Madame Pomfrey."
"Don't you see?" cried Hermione. "Can't you understand?"
"I understand that you're behaving in a manner that is both unorthodox and improper. And really, it's downright vulgar to treat a book with such indifference. There is a reason quidditch is not played with manuscripts. You're very lucky that I'm not assigning you detention."
"Professor Snape, please let me explain..."
"Explain."
"It's very difficult."
"Well, give it a try."
"You see, in the past weeks I think that our relationship... well, I wouldn't call it a relationship, but our acquaintance has changed from something into something else."
"You're not being terribly clear."
"I think it's grown. I think it's grown in a precise way."
"I have no idea what you're talking about. Believe me, I wish I did."
"You wish you did?"
"Yes."
"I want us to be more than friends."
"Oh, no."
"But you said you wished..."
"I thought you were having a nervous breakdown. I wished you were making a logical statement, I did not, by any stretch of the imagination wish you were making that particular statement."
Hermione felt she really would cry now. The tears were beginning to well up in her eyes, but she knew that if she cried, horrible things might happen with the purple dye, and then she would probably be permanently blinded. So she was trying to be stoic.
"Don't cry you stupid little girl."
"I'm not a stupid girl! You're horrible!"
"I'm perhaps somewhat upset. Understandably so."
"So does that mean that you haven't any feelings for me at all? That you've never even considered it? Willard said...."
"Voldemort lies. He's friendly, and charming, and a pathological liar. He's not the best source to trust on anything. Don't mistake me, I believe in his ideas for reform, but I don't for a moment think that he's confined by the common moral code."
"So you really don't find me even a little bit attractive? I had hoped that you might... even if you couldn't act on it that you might... like me."
"Oh, Miss Granger, I am fond of you. And I'm not fond of many people. And yes, in different circumstances I could consider it. Though, I think to be fair it's worth pointing out that I haven't proved to be an excellent suitor in the past. You could ask Bellatrix about it. I'm cruel, and insulting and about as cuddly as a porcupine. I would never remember an anniversary, and I would invariably forget your birthday."
"I think it would be wonderful to have my birthday forgotten by you."
"Well, it won't happen. You'll find some nice boy who will remember your birthday and all those other milestones, and you'll be very happy."
"Will you be? Happy, that is."
"I think, in one way or another, I'll get by."
"I think I could make you happy. I worked really hard on this stupid outfit just because I thought it might please you."
"Then the relationship would almost certainly be doomed. One ought to consider oneself first. You really must learn to stop wanting to please other people all the time. I don't."
Hermione looked miserable. Professor Snape sighed in a worldly way. "Come along now, Miss Granger. I'd be happy to talk to you about all this, but Albus is sending Susan over for her first assignment as my assistant. It would be best if we continued this another time."
"I can't," remarked Hermione petulantly, "I keep falling down in these shoes."
"I'll help you. Come lean on me." He bent down, and proffered an arm which Hermione took eagerly. She stumbled to her feet, teetering somewhat. He braced her. And then she fell. He lunged out to grab her, and as she stumbled her lips collided with his. More precisely, his lips collided with her teeth. She realized with a sudden thrill of glee that he was kissing her teeth! And then, though Hermione would be hard pressed to tell you exactly how the transition occurred, his tongue was down her throat, and her tongue was in his mouth, and she realized that, while the odds seemed against it, she actually was a fallen woman.
And it was at that most unfortunate moment that Susan Bones walked into the room.