Chaos was raging at Hogwarts – not that anyone was calling it Hogwarts anymore. The media world had picked up and latched onto Shagwarts, the way a parasite might latch onto an intestine. People did find, however, that often when they attempted to be hip by referring to it as such to their less cosmopolitan friends, the friends assumed that they had contracted some sort of venereal disease. Journalists were correspondingly confused, forgot that they originated the term, and began to run articles about how there had been so much sex at Hogwarts that students had picked up a horribly and deadly STD called Shagwarts.
As Hermione and Severus slipped in discretely, they passed Binns, who had recently been suggested to have had inappropriate conduct towards students (a true, but totally meaningless charge, as even McGonagall had been rumored to have behaved inappropriately towards students) desperately trying to avert attention from himself by talking about how sometimes the fat lady got drunk, and pranced naked from painting to painting. It was suggested that she used to model for Titian. McGonagall had tried to do much the same thing by remarking that a student used to caper through the halls in the nude. However, as the student in question's first name was Mary, and her last name was Sue, no one was particularly shocked by her behavior.
Severus and Hermione, true to Rita Skeeter's word, had both been made out to be paragons of virtue, and Susan's tape seemed to be safely in Draco's hands.
Upon entering his chambers, Severus rushed over to the jar of formaldehyde and tapeworm on his desk. "Hello, Trevor," he said politely, for he did not believe in patronizing Trevor, as Trevor had lived inside his body long enough for Severus to feel he was extension of his own personality. "How have you been? I've brought back Hermione, you see."
'I hate you, you callous bastard. How dare you bring that slattern into our home?' Trevor thought, as he gurgled mournfully. The giant squid loved him truly, tenderly and devotedly (because everyone is the love of someone's life, even if they are a tapeworm.) Why, oh why, did Trevor seem condemned to be infatuated only with Byronic heroes?
"Don't you ever consider getting a more normal pet?" enquired Hermione, "I mean really, Professor Snape, an intestinal parasite is most unusual. You know, most people have pets that can do something. Fetch a ball, or roller skate, or something like that."
"Trevor can do things. I have a deep faith that inside the confines of that jar, Trevor contemplates the poetry of William Blake."
In fact, Trevor did not contemplate such things. He was illiterate; Severus had neglected to teach him how to read.
"That may be so," remarked Hermione, gnawing her lip, "but still, isn't he a little... well… creepy?"
'Maybe you're a little creepy, wench!' thought Trevor, with great vehemence.
Hermione knew full well, by the glint in Trevor's nonexistent eye when he wiggled in her general direction, that Trevor was in love with Professor Snape. She was a clever girl that way, and Hagrid had taught her well. She only worried about how deep that love ran. More to the point, she worried about him breaking out of his jar and killing her in her sleep. . While such a feat would be quite impressive, without opposable thumbs – or, hands – or, indeed, limbs of any kind , Hermione she would be able to admire his ingenuity. Her inability might have had something to do with the fact that she would be dead.
"I mean," Hermione continued, "you remember when I talked to you about that feather boa that stops Nietzschean overtoned weirdly feminist message affirming suicides? I'm sure I could dredge one of those up for you."
"Do I really seem like the sort of man who would keep a fuzzy feather boa?"
"Well, I suppose you could be. I don't really know that feather boa keepers are a specific type of people."
"Quite frankly, Miss Granger, I do. And they are not nearly the throbbing specimen of manhood that I am. Manly men keep tapeworms," declared Severus.
"They do?" pondered Hermione incredulously.
"Certainly, Miss Granger. The presence of a tapeworm allows us to hone our virile instincts."
"Well, I do think you're rather virile," said Hermione.
"I was great, wasn't I?" declared Severus, "a sex God, really, when you get right down to it."
"Umm…" replied Hermione.
"Do you think I should consider becoming a gigolo?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Hermione choked down the overwhelming urge to tell him that gigolos tended to be attractive in orthodox ways. Middle aged women looking for a young, sexy piece of meat tended to be disappointed when a man with dubious hygiene arrived at their door, offering them a night of animalistic passion. They tended to close the door, in fact, preferring to do their crossword puzzles and read their romance novels. Nobody wanted to risk getting odd sexually transmitted diseases from a man who hadn't brushed his teeth. It simply didn't seem worth it. Hermione also felt that most gigolos had to be people people. This is to say, the sort of person who didn't make people cry on a routine basis. She smiled up at him sweetly and replied,
"Because you're seeing me. And I don't want to share you, you sexy beast."
Severus puffed up perceptibly within his robes. In a sense, it reminded Hermione of a puffer fish she had once seen vacationing with her family. Puffer fish are not powerful or sensual animals, and it confirmed her suspicion that her lover was a notch short of gigolo material.
"Do you want to do it up against the dungeon wall?" asked Severus.
"Oh," said Hermione, "that seems rather difficult. I mean, I think it would be terribly adventurous, but not all that comfortable."
"To be honest, it would also put a terrible strain on my back," noted Severus, "I really do have a fairly bad back. It goes out a good deal, and I think attempting to support your weight in that position would be trying for it."
"Do you mean to say I'm overweight?" Hermione had genuinely believed that Severus saw her body as more or less perfect. It was very nicely shaped, really, or at least she liked to think so.
"Not at all. I think you're a perfectly normal weight for your height. You're very healthy."
"Perfectly normal weight?" she asked, shocked, "healthy?"
"What the devil is the matter with being healthy?"
"Well, Professor Snape, no woman wants to look healthy. We want to look emaciated. Ethiopian! Now that would be a compliment."
"That would be appalling. And I doubt it would make it any easier to defile you against a dungeon wall. Would you at least agree with me that the dungeon wall dynamics would be exceedingly difficult?"
"I suppose so. I'm not too terribly agile. I really don't think either one of us would be satisfied," Hermione noted.
"Quite right, I think, Miss Granger. Perhaps we could do it in the bed, later."
"Oh dear," Hermione remarked, "You don't think we're getting complacent about things, do you? Playwitch has advice for me about spicing thing up once the sex begins to get stale."
"But Miss Granger, we've only had sex twice."
"Exactly! How dreadful that the spark has gone out of our physical passion so quickly!"
"I hardly think…"
"Oh my Goodness, it has, hasn't it? Our spark is sputtering, after only flaring up brilliantly once! And quite frankly, it was only semi-brilliant! And you think I'm fat. What are we doing, Professor Snape?"
"I never said you were fat…"
"You said I was looking healthy. Healthy means fat! It's like telling someone they look tired, when you really mean that they look God-awful."
"When I tell people they look tired, I generally mean that they look tired. Generally, when they look God-awful I tell them they are a disgusting specimen of humanity, and that they should sit next to me with their back turned so that I don't have to gaze upon their grotesque form."
"That's a little harsh."
"Honesty usually is. I am a man of candor, Miss Granger; if I thought you looked fat I would have no compunction about telling you such."
"Is that supposed to be reassuring?"
"As I have said, it is candor."
"Do you ever think about perhaps doing that a bit less?"
"Being candid?"
"You're candid to the point of insulting."
Severus Snape desperately wondered how a pleasant conversation about ravishing an underage schoolgirl up against a dungeon wall had devolved into this. This wasn't sexy. This didn't make him feel like a gigolo, and lately he'd been reading an inordinate amount of gigolo stories, which he credited to Miss Granger's bad influence. It was she, after all, who had started him reading those inane romances! He cursed her for it. Now he had an overactive libido, and Miss Granger showed no signs of letting him use her as a receptacle for his lust. If he had truly been as candid as he claimed to be, he would have remarked, "Be quiet girl, stand over there, I wish you to be my lust receptacle." But all he said was:
"I am not."
"You make people cry."
"People often seem unable to handle bitter truths that they must resolve themselves to eventually. Like you, for instance."
"Pardon me?"
"You can't handle my love for Trevor."
"What?"
"He's my pet, and you want to get rid of him."
"He's a tapeworm preserved in a jar. If I told you that I kept, I don't know, pubic lice in a box, what would you think of me?"
"That you respected the bond you had shared with a creature that lived on you."
"A disgusting creature! A creature I had a parasitic relationship with!"
Trevor heard her words through the glass and he felt disgusting. It wasn't his fault he survived best in the cushy, womblike environment that is the human intestinal tract. Trevor wept tiny formaldehyde tears. He curled up like a comma and wished that mean, cruel Miss Granger would go away. Tapeworms have deep feelings of inadequacy to begin with, and Hermione only reinforced them. He would have contemplated suicide, if he had any idea at all how to kill himself. He thought it would be really difficult. If he could survive in a jar of formaldehyde he imagined he could survive pretty much anything.
"Just because you personally hate him…"
"I didn't say that."
"Oh, Miss Granger, just admit it. You hate Trevor!"
"I don't hate him!"
Trevor, meanwhile, actually did hate Miss Granger. A lot. He leaned back in his jar and tried to figure out how his favorite philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, would have handled this situation. Trevor had felt a special connection ever since reading one of Nietzsche's works and seeing, in amidst a paragraph about the nature of goodness, a line which ran, "beware, the ice worms come at night." Many scholars took this line as indicative of Nietzsche's descent into madness. Trevor didn't, though. Trevor knew just what it meant. It meant he had to kill Miss Granger in her sleep. At night. And he had to be stealthy, stealthy as an ice worm.
"It's fine, I can deal with it. You hate my pets. That's all right."
"I do not hate your pet."
"I can cope with it Miss Granger, I am not a "love me, love my tapeworm" sort of man."
"Look, I can't interact with Trevor. It's not as though he were a puppy and I could prove my love by playing fetch with him."
"Some people do not have puppies. Some people really dislike them."
"Fine, but the point remains. You can't interact too much with a tapeworm."
"You could tickle him."
"Eew."
"See, that's the kind of bourgeois, mundane attitude I'm describing, Miss Granger. You're not even willing to test your boundaries in the slightest."
"I'm willing to test my boundaries, but tickling a tapeworm?"
"Well, if you don't have any feeling of curiosity, I suppose it is not my place to force you."
"Fine. Do I just..."
"Just put your finger in the jar. He should wrap his little body around it adorably."
Hermione dropped her fingers tentatively in the jar. Trevor lunged, and attempted to bite her hand off. He managed to latch onto her baby finger, and gummed on it frantically with his tiny tapeworm mouth. Hermione squealed, not so much because of the pain but because an attempt was so clearly being made to gnaw off her extremities. Finally, she yanked him off and threw him cursing his angry tapeworm oaths back into his jar.
"I am never touching that evil little creature again!" declared Hermione.
"I'm sorry. I assure you, I really had no idea."
"Surely you've noticed he's in love with you!"
'Yes,' Trevor willed them to understand, 'Oh, all the parasites in Heaven, yes! Yes!"
"That's absurd, Miss Granger."
"It most certainly is not. I've been observing him, and I'm quite sure he's in love with you."
"He is a tapeworm. Tapeworms don't feel love."
"Well now I think you're the one adopting a bourgeois attitude, Professor Snape."
"I'm simply pointing out that…"
While Severus and Hermione were debating, Trevor curled his weirdly distended body into the shape of a heart. It was incredibly painful, but he thought it was the only way he could prove his love. If Severus would only say he loved him in return, he would be willing to go around shaped like a heart forever and ever.
Hermione pointed to Trevor's jar. Trevor wished he could move closer to he could see Severus's reaction, but he was afraid that any movement on his part would destroy the heart shaped position.
"Oh," said Severus.
Trevor noted with dismay that this didn't sound like a happy 'oh.' Nor did it sound like an I-shan't-be-needing-you-now-that-I-have-a-tapeworm-to-love-me oh. If he had been honest with himself, he would have admitted that it sounded like an oh-dear oh. But he couldn't bring himself to believe it, not just then. He really did believe there could be a future for him and Severus. Or if not a future, they could at least go back to the way it was, before that Miss Granger came on the scene, when it was only himself and Severus, and occasionally Voldemort in the ventilation duct. And the intrusion of Voldemort he hadn't minded so much, as they looked so similar that Trevor sometimes harbored the notion that they might be from the same species. Now, it seemed to Trevor, Professor Snape would spend more and more nights away with Miss Granger, and he would be left all alone. He didn't want to be all alone. Trevor felt very sorry for himself.
"If you'll excuse me, Miss Granger, I'm afraid Trevor and I may need a few moments in private," said Snape.
"I'm sorry," mouthed Hermione. She felt awful. That poor tapeworm with that horrible case of unrequited love!
"It's alright," Severus said, and nodded solemnly.
"I'll come to love it," said Hermione, "really, I will."
"I'm sure Trevor will appreciate that. But at the moment, I think we really do need some time alone."
Hermione left, quietly. Severus knelt down, and dipped his index finger into the jar. Trevor curled about it lovingly. "Now, Trevor," Professor Snape began soothingly, "I want you to understand that it's not you, it's me…"
A/N: Ourobouros did win the award for best humor fic. To all those who voted, you get my undying love as well as – depending upon your preference – yellow roses or a tapeworm of your very own.