Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter NOR any of his friends NEITHER any of his enemies. It's hard to admit, but when I'm done with them all, I have to return them to Joanne K. Rowling in an original wrapping and unharmed.
I make no money, I mean no harm.The Bat's Heart
"Oi! Hermione!" Hermione turned to face the young man yelling her name and smiled. It was Ron, grinning wide, clearly having celebrated for some time. She couldn't blame him, it was her own fault to come so late.
"Hi, Ron. Nice to see you," she replied and embraced him. He kissed her on the cheek and led her to the table.
"Have you talked to McGonagall yet?" Ron asked as he poured a goblet of wine for her.
"No, I've just arrived. Had a lot of work. Cheers!" Hermione drank a little and looked around.
The Great Hall was decorated with bright colours. The four tables were moved to the walls and the cleared area in the middle was filled with chattering people. The celebration of the second anniversary of Voldemort's fall and the end of the war was going on from the Friday's noon and wouldn't stop until next Monday. Hermione sighed.
"Hmm?" Ron asked intelligently.
"Nothing, just... it's good to be back at Hogwarts." Hermione smiled and pointed to a group of teachers. "I wanted to have a word with Professor Flitwick, are you coming?"
"Hermione, we're already out of school!" Ron pulled a face and Hermione laughed.
Three hours later Hermione left the Great Hall to have a shower and change. She stopped at the stairs to remember where the Gryffindor Tower was and how to get there. She didn't succeed but tried her best. Unfortunately, her slightly drunken legs betrayed her and led her the wrong way. After half an hour she stopped before the door known among students as "The Gate to the Hell".
Professor Snape's flat.
She had heard in the Great Hall he hadn't felt well and had left the celebration shortly after it had started. She had also heard Madame Pomfrey complaining about Professor Snape's refusal of her latest potion against flu, very invective one enforced with bats' hearts. Hermione had to smile - refusal was a very polite word to describe throwing the innocent potion in the trash without as much as trying it.
Hermione bit her lower lip. A walk helped clear her mind and she was quite sure she could find the tower now. On the other hand, once she was here, she could check whether her beloved Professor was still alive. She chuckled at the thought of announcing Professor Snape's death in the Hall, making half the crowd cheering. Though that wouldn't be funny, of course. She knocked, paused for a second and pushed the door open.
The entrance hall was quiet, dark and empty. On the shelves, there stood jars with slimy and ugly things - that couldn't be animals. Hermione opened the door on the other side of the short hall, entering Snape's living room. It was decorated with black and dark green and she felt rather depressed. What a place to live in! The air was chilly and there was no fire in the fireplace. Hermione reached for her wand and tried to light it on. It took her almost five minutes to manage, nearly blowing up the fireplace.
"Shouldn't have drunk so much of the wine..." she murmured to herself and turned to light few candles. Then she noticed a crumpled heap on the floor and froze.
The thought of annoucing Snape's death to the celebrating crowd wasn't suddenly funny at all.
Hermione knelt next to Snape. He was breathing, weakly and uneven, but breathing. The floor was icy; Hermione realised he needed to warm up as soon as possible. She reached for her wand but stopped. Remembering some of the trouble she had trying to set the fire in the hearth, she decided to use more Muggle way. It wouldn't do to warm Snape up to the point of third degree burns.
She took off her cloak and covered Snape with it. Examining the rest of the flat, she found a bathroom with a tube. She ran a bath. Next door was a bedroom. Hermione lit the fire there too, using a candle and an old Daily Prophet she found on the bedside cabinet. The tube was almost full of hot water and Hermione concentrated on Mobili Corpus.
She was glad she succeeded right away and moved Snape in the bathroom. She threw her own cloak in the corner and began undressing Snape.
"My parents are dentits," she murmured under her breath. "Almost all of their friends are doctors as well and I wanted to become a doctor, too, when I was a kid. Don't be shy, Hermione, it's just first aid." Persuading herself she was a professional, she managed to stop her hands shaking and completed her task. She examined Snape's body calmly. Few scratches and a nasty-looking wound on his head. It wasn't fatal but his hair was all bloodied and Hermione reached for soap and shampoo.
"You're doing well, Hermione," she continued encouraging herself. "Thanks, Dad," she answered as she washed the dirty lather off Snape's hair.
And not only the lather.
After giving him the bath, Hermione combed Snape's hair.
Snape's blonde hair.
Hermione stroke it, fascinated.
She covered the wound on his forehead with a plaster and curiously returned to the bathroom. There it was, in a cabinet beside the tube - The Star Hair Solution, colour black. Hermione read through the instructions.
"Might cause your hair a bit greasy, pah," she rolled her lip. "A bit!" She went through ingredients as well and put the potion back in the cabinet.
Her patient was fast asleep, breathing steadily. Hermione found his wand in one of the pockets of his robes and placed it on his bedside cabinet.
"Time to go, Hermione," she said.
The morning crept in the room through a gap in the curtains. Professor Snape, master of the Hogwarts school, woke up in his bed. His head was spinning and his tongue tasted like a pair of old socks. Or even worse, maybe. He reached to touch a hurting spot on his forehead and felt a plaster. He frowned. Somehow he couldn't remember how exactly...
"Good morning." He turned his head to see who had dared enter his very own bedroom and closed his eyes to stop the world falling on him.
"Dizzy?" the intruder asked cheerfully.
"Miss Granger?" he replied uncertainly.
"Exactly." Hermione stood up from the armchair she had spent the night in and walked to him. "Drink this," she shoved a cup in his hand. "It's just tea," she said in answer to his suspicious look. He tasted cautiously, then gulped all of it at once.
"Content?" There was a sarcastical undertone in his voice which made Hermione sure he was alright. She nodded.
"For a while, I was worried," she said quietly.
"Worried?!" Snape tried to laugh but the throbbing pain inside his skull stopped him. He pressed his palm against his forehead. "I bet half of them would just have another reason to celebrate if I died." Hermione blinked.
"I wouldn't be so sure about it," she said before she could stop herself.
"No?" Another too quick movement of his head made Snape reach for the bedside cabinet. With his free hand, he shoved his hair of his eyes.
"It would be three quarters," she snapped. But Snape wasn't listening. He was frowning at the hair stream in his hand.
"Hey," he said. Hermione tried hard not to smile.
"What?" she asked innocently but her sparkling eyes gave her away.
"You!" Hermione grinned widely.
"I can't understand why you don't let it like it is. It's... nice." She winked.
"That would ruin my image." The coldness of his voice intrigued he really was alright and she had no reason to stay.
"You mean the image of an overgrown bat?" she asked sweetly. He growled something incoherent.
"If it's so important to you, why do you use the cheapest potion possible?" This time he didn't answer at all. Hermione headed for the door.
"Because I am allergic to them," he replied quietly. She turned back, thinking of something to say.
"What?"
"Have you deafened, Miss Granger? I am allergic to bats' hearts." She shook her head. She swallowed a question about why he had never told Madame Pomfrey.
"See you at the dinner, then. Hope you'll be okay by then."
Hermione left the bedroom, collected her cloak from the bathroom and checked she didn't leave anything in the living room. In the entrance hall another idea stroke her. She turned on heel and rushed in the bedroom just in time to see Snape trying to get dressed.
"Miss Granger!" he yelled as he pulled his sheets up to his chin.
"Never mind, I've seen you before," she said airily, waving her hand.
"I thought you'd left!"
"Just realised... Have you ever tried some Muggle colour?"
It was one of those days. Mrs. Granger was cleaning the kitchen, something she had been planning on for a long time, when she heard a loud sound from her daughter's room upstairs. That was strange as Hermione had left for Hogwarts day before and her husband was at a conference in Stockholm.
"Crookshanks?" she cried. Yes, it must have been the cat. Probably chasing his own shadow as there were no mice in the house. Mrs. Granger headed for the stairs.
"Crookshanks!" she repeated. Something orange emerged from the living room. A pair of feline eyes stared at her. Mrs. Granger heard steps from above her head and backed to the wall. Thieves at her house?
"Hello, Mum. This is... a friend of mine, from Hogwarts," Hermione pointed at a tall, blonde and pale man beside her. He smiled but somehow it didn't feel comfortable.
"Hermione, what are you doing here?"
"We came to do some shopping, may I borrow the car?" Hermione reached for the keys. "Thanks, Mum, love you." She kissed her mother's cheek, grabbed the man's hand and rushed out of the door.
Crookshanks disappeared in the living room and Mrs. Granger returned to the kitchen. You have to get used to a lot of unusual things once your daughter becomes a witch. There was a terrible noise from the living room, as if some china fell down on the floor and broke.
"Crookshanks!"
The crowd in the Great Hall was discussing the performance of house elves when there was a wave of silence spreading from the main doors. One after one the witches and wizards stopped talking until there was just one sound to hear - even steps.
Professor Snape (with perfectly black hair again) crossed the floor, reached one of the tables and helped himself to a goblet of wine. He turned to the astonished crowd. Some of them hadn't recognized him before that.
There was a change in the way he walked, Hermione realised. A great change.
"Is there anything on my face?" Snape asked Flitwick who was standing next to him. Flitwick shook his head, speechless. A whisper rose among the crowd.
"Seems that Snape's discovered shampoo at last," Ron uttered to Hermione.
"Five hundred years after Columbus," she answered mindabsently as she remembered a pile of cream colours and colour shampoos in Snape's bathroom.
"Who's Columbus? Hermione!" But she didn't answer.
She knew better.