A/N: Give thanks to my bestie RequiEmily for looking at my work before anyone else, and PomBear007 for being my beta!
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN—The Merciful Dark
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11:00 PM
Rolanda, Pomona, and Septima lay sprawled in the bed, each exhausted from the day's excitement. Luna and Ginny glanced at each other across the little girls, and tried not to laugh.
"This is so weird," Ginny whispered.
"I agree."
The door to the common room creaked open, an inch at a time to stave off the noise.
Ginny and Luna both leaned up on their hands, both sets of blue eyes wide. Rolanda, Septima, and Pomona slept on. Hermione tiptoed into the room, leading Severus by the hand.
Hermione put her finger to her lips. Sevvie kept a firm hold on her wrist.
"Where were you?" Ginny whispered loudly.
"Swinging," Hermione whispered back.
"Lucky," Luna added before plopping back into her pillow.
"Good night!" Hermione hissed.
"G'night," Sev whispered as they crossed the room. Luna and Ginny smiled at him.
"That is still weird," Ginny whispered to Luna. She leaned on her elbow so they could talk over the girls.
"What?"
"Professor Snape telling us good night and thank you."
Rolanda flipped over.
Luna blinked sleepily at the girls. "I wonder how they'll be different when they return to normal."
"How do you mean?"
The Ravenclaw lay on her back. "They grew up once and had a life." She held up one finger. "And now they've grown up, of sorts, again. They can't possibly go through this formative time without being formed differently." She put down her hand. "That's what I think, anyway."
"Huh." Ginny didn't say anything for a while. She looked at Professors Sprout's pudgy cheeks. "Will Aurora and Sybill be any different then?"
"Wouldn't it be fascinating if they could remember their infant-thoughts?"
"Merlin, this is making my brain hurt." She rolled over to her other side. "I'm goin' to sleep."
"Good night."
"G'migh," Rolanda mumbled into her pillow, barely raising one of her hands off the coverlet to wave someone off.
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11:29 PM
Fleur lay on her side, twiddling her wedding band between her finger and thumb. She watched the tiny rise and fall of Aurora's chest, the tiny twitches in her balled fists. The professor wondered if the Defence job was still cursed and then thought of Bill.
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12:00 AM
Filch patted Mrs Norris's head once more before turning down his oil lamp. "G'night, missus," he yawned.
Mrs Norris purred, her belly digesting a fat brown mouse. Her tail curled around her body.
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12:37 AM
Lavender slept with her head resting on Ron's sternum. Ron blinked at Lavender's glowing crystal ball, wondering what woke him.
He heard a series of deep grunts coming from the trundle. Lavender rolled off his arm when he sat up, stealing all the blankets when he got out of bed.
Ron looked in the cot to find Sybill had her eyes wide open, her fat fingers splayed towards the crystal ball. Her round cheeks kept moving and chomping; sometimes a deep grunt or a low sigh came out of her throat.
Ron didn't know what to do. He was halfway turned to Lavender, her name on his tongue, when Sybill started coughing.
Little, dusty coughs, very cute, extremely welcome after that buggered-up snore Ron witnessed. "What the bloody hell was that?" he murmured, picking the baby out of her blanket cocoon. He patted her back.
She was back to sleep, clutching her left forearm with her sausage-y fingers.
"I won't tell Lav about this if you won't," he whispered as he put her back into her blankets. "Okay?"
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12:51 AM
Hermione fell asleep as soon as her head found pillow. Sev looked at the patches of red skin and purple veins beneath her eyes. She never slept on her back, but she did tonight.
Severus curled in on himself. He had made her cry. Making a girl cry was one of the worst things somebody could do. Not the worst, but one of them.
Severus felt a sharp knifing in his chest. He remembered two people who looked like that Harry and Ginny hugging and happy and it made the knifing worse.
He remembered some blonde people and a snake in their house. Severus gasped, clutching his little fists to his aching chest. That snake was coming at him.
He opened his eyes and kept them open, trying to get that awful snake out of his head. He looked at sad Hermione finally falling asleep before he did.
Sev never got to watch her sleep, but he could feel her hair tickling the back of his neck a lot.
'Mione flung her arm up, turning towards Severus—Severus jumped.
He calmed down when he could count the freckles on her nose.
He regretted being so curious. He shouldn't have tried to find out why she was always frowning.
He sighed. Couldn't take it back now. He pulled the pillow closer to his face.
His eyes tried to follow one of 'Mione's curls. One wandered all the way across her bent arm.
Wha's that? There was a lump peeking out from 'Mione's sleeve. Is that a D?
Severus slowly slid Hermione's sleeve up her wrist.
Mudblood.
The amount of knives tripled in Sev's lungs.
Mudblood.
It hurts.
Why did 'Mione have this on her arm? No, Sev thought, she wouldn' do this to herself.
Is 'Mione hurting?
He withdrew his shaking hand.
Why didn' she tell me?
Sev sniffed loudly, trying to jerk the tears back into his head. Hermione stirred; Sev flipped over, hiding his face under the pillow.
"Mm, Sev, are you alright?" Her fingers fumbled through his hair.
"Uh-huh."
"What's wrong? Did you have a nightmare?"
"Y-yeah." He nodded without turning to her.
Hermione hugged him from behind. "It's not real, Sevvie. Don't worry," she yawned.
Sev couldn't close his eyes and he wouldn't go to sleep. Hermione's breathing evened out.
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1:38 AM
Neville sat reading in the bed, as he had done last night, until Minerva stopped doing whatever it was she was doing.
The little girl was asleep but kept fidgeting, rooting around until she was comfortable. Neville wondered if Professor McGonagall preferred to sleep in her cat-form, and that's why she pawed at the bed each night.
It was bloody annoying; but, he reasoned, it wasn't a comment on his couch-transfiguring skills. The bed he made for her was not uncomfortable—he had checked first.
Minerva flipped over again, making the pink covers fly up all around her tiny body. Because their beds had been shoved together, every time she flipped, Neville felt the vibrations.
Neville tossed the textbook to the foot of his bed. He hunkered down before reaching for his wand. "She'll stop eventually," he mumbled as he muted the lamps. Minnie didn't like them all the way off.
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2:11 AM
Severus dreamt of himself but he was older and mean-looking. He stood at the front of a cold stone room, his arms crossed. He had big black robes and was taller than almost everybody else.
All the students had their heads down to scribble the impressive notes he had written on the board.
Hermione was near the back with that Harry, Neville, and Ron. Ginny and Luna sat in the row in front of them. Kids all dressed as Slytherins sat on his right side, not working nearly as hard as the other students.
Sev started getting anxious when the students pulled out cauldrons and knives. He paced the room, watching Neville especially. Hermione kept trying to help Neville and it annoyed him. Luna was trying out a method that was technically correct but not written in the official Potions textbook.
The Slytherins were tossing salamander skins at each other. All the Ravenclaw hands shot up at once. The Hufflepuffs were all muttering instructions to themselves, creating a low hum in between the rest of the classroom noises.
Every way Severus turned he found something to worry about. Candles flickered off and on; Billiwig blood spilled by his feet and made the stones slippery.
Cauldron steam and cedar smoke blurred Sev's vision.
George and his twin brother ran through the room, tossing boxes at everyone's heads: "Skiving Snack Boxes, get your Nosebleed Nougat right here, good sirs and madams!"
Neville's brew exploded all over the back of Sev's robes and hair.
Dream-Severus sighed. He rubbed his temples with long adult fingers.
Hermione and Luna ran in circles around him, flapping their hands and trying to get the muck off of him. Neville fainted; Ron and that Harry started reading Quibblers, ignoring their cauldrons.
The bell rang but nobody left. They worked faster, making more mistakes, trying to finish up before the firsties came in.
Sev sat down in the middle of the sticky floor, Luna and 'Mione trying to clean him up, first-years coming in, Advanced students panicking, and the Weasley twins throwing candy against the walls.
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3:30 AM
Hogwarts House-elves began their usual rounds. They had to clean up the guest rooms on the sixth floor now that they were empty. The students would be coming back soon.
The tiny creatures flitted and skipped through every corner of the castle, scrubbing and sweeping and mopping the dust away.
Winky stoked the eighth-years' common room fire. She let the blaze warm her back to look at the little professors. Was anybody watching Mistress Sprout's plants? Did Master Snape have any potions left out?
She nibbled her fingernails. Little Rolanda, Little Pomona, and Little Septima were all sleeping—one of the bigger witches was snoring.
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7:46 AM
Hermione felt someone's heavy weight grow on her chest and arm; her mind created images of strong hands sliding up her torso, over her breasts, onto her bare neck. One of those white, imagined hands held the back of Hermione's neck so that teeth could bite down on the sensitive muscles of her shoulder.
Hermione couldn't dream a face attached to this man but knew the contrast between his white skin and his black hair was achingly beautiful. A mouth fluttered across her cheek, down to her chin. She gasped when she felt someone else's wet tongue across her lips.
She was warm all over but didn't want to wake up. The man had a hold on her hair. As Hermione dreamt of cold hands sliding over her hip bones and thighs, Severus snuggled closer. His lips parted right on her collarbone, his breath on her skin.
Sleeping Hermione tried to roll away, a niggling in her brain reminding her of the six-year-old in her bed. Dream-Hermione bit and licked at her make-believe paramour, scratching deep welts into his back.
Severus threw his arm over her stomach; Hermione imagined a throb in the middle of her gut, painful but wonderful at the same time. The hurt moved between her legs; she didn't want to breathe in case her rising chest might chase away the blood rushing to her thigh muscles.
The man kissed a line from Hermione's clavicles, bridging the Dolohov scar, down to her belly button. His long nose tickled the peach fuzz skin on her stomach. His hands felt cool, pushing her shirt away from her abdomen, then pulling her trousers from her hips.
Hermione jerked awake. She plopped back into the pillows, shutting her eyes against the barely risen sun. "Ugh," she mumbled. Her left arm felt like a fallen log, a heavy dead-weight attached to her shoulder.
She turned her head on the pillow, reluctant to fully open her eyes and fully wake up. That dream was…nice. Unexpected, certainly. Definitely not something she should be dreaming next to a tiny Severus. She pouted. Yes, I definitely woke up because I didn't want to have such a dirty dream next to him. A smaller part of her mind mumbled about poor timing and maybe a late-afternoon kip wouldn't be such a bad idea.
She snickered then blew her curls away from her nose. That weight from her dream, the arm across her stomach—why could she still feel it now that she was awake?
Hermione cracked open one eye, seeking out the conundrum. There was her stomach, the shirt half-up. And that was an arm. A long, sinewy arm with a Dark Mark on it.
Hermione's heart raced uncontrollably, eyes sucking in the black snake and skull; a pair of lips on her neck; a strange leg tangled around her knees; a mass of long black hair pressing into her cheek.
She lay paralyzed. Sevvie had turned back into Professor Snape. With one of his arms snuggling her breasts.
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7:49 AM
Thump!
Ginny woke up in a panic, hoping one of the kids hadn't fallen out of bed.
"Bloody hell!" someone yelled.
Ginny stared at the girl on the floor—the 28-year-old girl with short grey hair and yellow eyes, rubbing her bum. Luna gave a little yelp when she came face to face with adult Septima Vector—who was blinking, blind without her spectacles.
Pomona stretched on the bed, cramped, now that she was the proper adult-size.
"Oh, dear," Luna said.
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"What the bloody hell is going on?" Aurora Sinistra cried, trapped in a baby crib. Her cheeks flushed as she covered her naked torso. Fleur covered her eyes and jumped up to find a robe for the sixteen-year-old.
"Mon Dieu! You're back to normal! Wait—" Fleur ground to a halt. "Why, you're not very old at all!"
"Who are you? Why am I in this bloody thing? What do you mean, normal?"
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7:50 AM
A disapproving, Scottish voice ripped through Neville's sleep. He opened one bleary eye. "Hmn…?"
"I said wake up!"
A beautiful, pissed-off, twenty-seven-year-old Minerva McGonagall lay in the next bed, black hair cascading down her back and pooling on the sheets beside her.
"Merlin's pants!" Neville sprang away.
"What in Heaven's name is going on here?" The pink t-shirt she had worn as a dress last night had ripped at the shoulder and squeezed her breasts tight. Neville had the suspicion she was not wearing hardly as much clothing beneath the quilt—he turned as red as an apple. And then he screamed.
In the next room, Hermione screamed as well.
Severus toppled over the other side of the bed. "What the bloody hell—" His bedraggled head appeared over the side of the mattress. He stopped at the sight of a breathless, beautiful woman staring at him, clutching the collar of her thin, grey night shirt. The swipe of skin, the strip of midriff left showing, drew Severus's eye for a second—before he looked at her face.
The barest traces of lust were left in those sleepy eyes and her panting—if Severus wanted to walk any time soon, that would have to stop immediately. An explosion of noise from the other room kept the two of them from hyperventilating.
They heard: "What is going on?"
"We're young?"
"We're young!"
"Guys, Professor Trelawney is twelve—oh my gosh! You're all older too!"
"I'll—I'll find you something to wear!" Hermione squeaked as she tore from the room. Ginny and Luna stared at her, then whipped around to Hermione's bedroom door, realizing that she must have awoken to a stranger in her bed—a stranger that looked like the Greasy Git of the Dungeons.
"I bet Hermione had a right scare," Ginny murmured to Luna.
Hermione came back with a pair of trousers from Ron and some shirts from Neville, all grabbed haphazardly. Curls were flying everywhere, and if she stopped for air, she would remember Severus—Professor Snape—half-erect in too tight pyjamas, his long nose jabbing the dip in her shoulder—shut the bloody hell up! she chastised.
She tossed the clothes on the bed, hardly glancing at the man curled up on the floor wrapped up in her quilt. She grabbed an armful of her clothes to take to Minerva.
Luna gave Sybill some mismatched clothes to wear, and the seer was ecstatic about them. Ginny transfigured some clothes to better fit Rolanda and Pomona. Neville walked out into the room, his eyes covered, his hand reaching out to let the furniture be his guide. Hermione grabbed him by the arm and shoved him into Ron's room.
She slammed the door and braced herself against it, her arms ramrod straight and her head dipped low.
Hermione Granger and Neville Longbottom, brave Gryffindors that had fought, and nearly died, in a war, stood blushing. Ron sat on the bed and stared at them.
"What's wrong with you two?" Horror blossomed over his freckled face. "Merlin's pants—you were—and they were—and—in the same bed?"
Neville sat on the carpet, listing off all the flowers in the greenhouse to try to push the image of a blushing, nubile Professor McGonagall out of his mind.
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8:24 AM
The professors and their students gathered in the sitting room after a mad-dash for clothes. Ron kept stealing glances at Minerva, with her long raven hair and even longer legs. Hermione's shirt was too tight across Minerva's chest. The woman was tall and her hips were round. Her green eyes were exquisite, almost as spellbinding as Severus's deep, black eyes, the ones Lavender kept trying to gaze at.
Severus Snape, greasy git of the dungeons, had turned into a dark and mysterious young man. He was thin, with obsidian-polished hair and eyes. The shadows had disappeared from his face, and Hermione had noticed, from her brief glance at his taught abs, that several scars were missing.
Luna was observing each teacher, enthralled and excited to see their changes. Sybill swung Lavender's and Ron's hands. The only clothes that would fit her were some of Luna's jumpers and a polka-dot skirt. Neville kept his eyes on the floor. He had woken up next to a goddess—a goddess that was his sixty-six-year-old Transfiguration teacher. He turned as red as Ron's hair.
Severus was stuck wearing one of Neville's grey t-shirts and a pair of Ron's ratty jeans. He kept his arms crossed to keep his Dark Mark hidden. Little Sybill hid behind Lavender whenever she peeked at the tall, elegant Severus.
Professor Snape glowered at everyone in the room—except for Hermione. He wouldn't even look at her. Hermione was still flushed from the erotic start to the day.
Even Luna was sneaking glances at the young man, as she surveyed everyone else. Ginny's mouth was open—she had been expecting him to look as frightening and angry as he had as Professor Snape—this guy had a long nose, but the rest of him made up for it. He was stick thin and tall, with the darkest eyes and hair Ginny had ever seen— he was all those things as an adult, but nobody dared be caught staring at the Bat of the Dungeons lest they get detention. He had never laughed, or had a decent conversation with anybody, so not many girls had bothered to even daydream about him—they had nothing to go on.
While all the girls were staring at Severus, he was looking at his former teachers and colleagues. The last time he had seen Septima and Minerva with color in their hair, he had been a child. He rubbed his forehead, hiding his grimace. "This is bollocks," he muttered.
"I look amazing!" Rolanda said, flexing her muscles in the wall mirror. A football player wouldn't be more toned than Madam Hooch.
Pomona had not yet gained all of her weight back, but she felt quite inadequate, standing between Fleur, Minerva, and Rolanda. Septima straightened her glasses.
Aurora was the last to arrive. The young woman shuffled into the room, wearing a dress of Fleur's, and a jacket. She stood next to the only other Slytherin in the room, ogling young Professors McGonagall, Vector, and Sprout. Pomona, Rolanda, and Septima were now in their thirties. Professor McGonagall was roughly twenty-seven now, and Severus was even younger.
Severus put his hands in the pockets of his borrowed jeans as he frowned at Aurora.
"You didn't even look this young when you were teaching me," Aurora said, remembering being in one of his first classes.
Severus rolled his eyes and left the room. Minerva left as well, anxious to see if she could remember how to turn into a cat.
Rolanda dragged Pomona outside to the Quidditch pitch. Aurora crumpled into the couch, staring at her thin, sixteen-year-old wrists. Professor Trelawney was as happy as a Niffler in a goldmine. She plopped down to her knees and tried to read Aurora's palm.
Septima's chin trembled. When Professor Wrinkle walked in and gaped at her, the mousy-haired bookworm ran out of the room.
"Wait, Septima!"
Hermione stayed for a bit, making sure her friends weren't as rattled as she was (Neville was still as red as a full-grown phoenix).
She ambled towards the dungeons, wondering what she was going to say to the man who had been her mean professor, a child, and then woke up wrapped around her this morning. A few deep breaths later, the crimson flush left her face—the cold, dank air of the dungeons helped as well. The further down she travelled into the intestines of the castle, the darker it became.
