Special Note, March 6, 2006: This story is currently undergoing massive editing. I have taken down most of its chapters to do this. I WILL be putting them back up, slowly but surely. Thank you to all reviewers, and sorry to all those who were upset by my tearing down of the story. I tried to e-mail everyone who sent me a PM, e-mail, or confused review, but I don't think I succeeded. Again, I'm very sorry. Hopefully the story has improved, however. Anyone who has read it before will probably not need to reread it; the basic plot remains the same.

Chapter One

It Starts

Hermione Granger was having a very strange dream; for some reason, she had broken up with Ron and was lying in bed with Oliver Wood, and neither of them was wearing anything above the waist. She placed her arm across his chest and put her leg around both of his, smiling as she nestled closer, her head resting on one of his arms, both of which were above him with the fingers laced together beneath his head.

Snape, meanwhile, was coming out of his dreams and slowly entering a lighter stage of sleep. As consciousness came closer, he felt what was unmistakably a girl curling around him. Instinctively he put his arm around her, but her hair was tickling his arm, pulling him from oblivion faster.

"Oliver," he heard a voice utter, and his eyes flew open with a start.

He was at first angrily wondering why his girlfriend was calling him "Oliver." It took him a moment to regain his senses and realize that he hadn't had a girlfriend for quite some time.

At which point, he looked down at the girl cradled in his arms and screamed.

Hermione's eyes flew open at the terrified yell. She was not half-clothed in Oliver's arms after a Quidditch game. She was fully naked and cuddling her least favorite professor.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" she screamed in his face.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!" Snape agreed.

"What are you doing here?" Hermione shrieked, clutching the comforter around herself.

"What are you doing here?" he bellowed back. She belatedly realized three things—one, she couldn't remember a thing about the previous night past leaving dinner early; two, she was in Snape's private chambers, a place she didn't even know how to get to; and three, he was fully naked as well. The same terrible thought seemed to strike the both of them at the same time; they stared at each other for a full minute with similar horrified expressions. Snape broke the silence. "No," he muttered, "I wasn't drinking last night…." He climbed off the four-poster bed while clutching his sheet around his waist and dashed over to a cabinet in the corner, looking wild and panicky. Hermione glimpsed dozens of bottles of alcohol, mostly liquor like vodka and gin, before looking away from the cupboard as he mumbled to himself, taking stock of each individual bottle as though they were ingredients for potions.

"This is a nightmare. A really bad one," Hermione chanted, trying to convince herself. "Worse than when I dreamed Voldemort murdered Harry and the Weasleys and my parents. Worse than when I dreamed I married Malfoy."

"You dreamed what?" Snape exclaimed in spite of himself, but Hermione wasn't listening. She pinched herself, hard, and yelped.

"Oh, shit…"

"Watch your m—oh, gods, I know I didn't drink all this! … No, wait, with Minerva before term started… Shit! I only had pumpkin juice, damn it; I haven't—"

"Pumpkin juice!" Hermione yelled suddenly, making Snape jump and almost drop the large, nearly empty bottle of wine. "Pumpkin juice… Malfoy… yes, that's it! Of course!"

"What are you babbling about?" Snape snarled, annoyed at having found his liquor cabinet as full of alcohol as it had been yesterday.

"Professor, Malfoy did this!"

"What?"

"Malfoy knocked over my goblet at dinner, and after I drank it I felt really sleepy! And then he went and talked to you!"

"And I felt extremely exhausted and retired earlier than I have in years." Snape slapped his forehead, realization dawning.

"He put a sleeping potion in our drink and then somehow got us both here… the prank war. That little… I'm going to get him, I don't care if I lose Head Girl status, and I don't care if I get the whole of Gryffindor expelled!"

Snape's wand lay on the bedside table, and she grabbed it, looking as though she was ready to storm off to the Slytherin dormitory and curse Malfoy into next Tuesday immediately. "Accio robes!" she shouted.

No robes came flying at her. "ACCIO ROBES!" she fairly screamed, looking panicked. "Accio clothes! Accio robes! Damn it! Accio pants! Accio robe! ACCIO ANYTHING!"

A book flew at her and hit her between the eyes. "Anything but that," she groaned, rubbing her head.

Snape stared at her for a second, mortified. Then he dove for his wand and snatched it from her. "Accio—" he began, but Hermione stopped him.

"It's no good, Professor. Malfoy stranded me here and took my robes and wand so it wouldn't be easy to get back to the common room."

"Well, you can't go wandering around in my blankets," Snape said listlessly. The shock was getting to be a little too much. What would Albus or Minerva say if they found a naked Gryffindor Head Girl in his chambers? Even if he convinced them that it was a Slytherin prank, he'd never live it down… Minerva would have a field day with this one…

"Tequila," he muttered, and headed back to his cabinet, tying the sheet around his waist securely as he went. "I know I have a bottle of tequila in here…"

"Wait, just transfigure something into a robe and then I can wear it back to the common room!" Hermione said triumphantly.

"Good idea, save I can't transfigure worth a damn… like Flitwick can't brew a complex potion to save his life and Vector doesn't know a thing about Herbology. Where's my shot glass?" Unable to find it, he gave up and took a huge swig from the bottle, then gagged a little.

"Couldn't I just wear one of your robes?" Hermione asked in a small voice.

"I suppose you could, if I wanted to get fired and you wanted the whole of Hogwarts to see you in a professor's clothing… with a Head of House badge that says 'Slytherin' on it," Snape replied conversationally. He held the bottle out to her. "Tequila?"

"You should get drunk before classes, it makes you much more civil," Hermione muttered irritably. She felt trapped and restless, and she certainly didn't like the fact that she was sitting in her least favorite professor's bed with only a comforter for cover, but she didn't necessarily want to stand up and walk around his bedroom wearing a blanket either. And as if things weren't surreal enough, Snape was simply standing there, chugging down a bottle of rather strong tequila like a wino, getting drunk as fast as his gag reflex would allow. Annoyed, she climbed off the bed and carefully wrapped the comforter around her. One never got the best results with another wizard's wand, and she sucked at transfiguration with Harry or Ginny's wand, so she definitely wasn't going to be able to do much with Snape's wand, accustomed as she was to her own. Hoping Malfoy hadn't damaged her wand and that she would find it soon, she gathered up her courage and marched over to Snape's wardrobe.

"Harry! Ron! Have you seen Hermione?" Ginny called worriedly as she came into the Gryffindor common room. Few people were left in the dormitories; the majority of the older students had gone to Hogsmeade for the day and most the younger were having fun wandering around the castle or enjoying the early autumn weather outside, but Harry and Ron were sitting at a table, engaged in a game of wizard chess as they waited for Hermione to show up before they left for Hogsmeade.

"No, why?" Harry asked, wincing as Ron's bishop pummeled his knight.

"She's not in her room, and Parvati said she wasn't in the dorms when they came back from dinner."

Ron frowned. "She must've missed her—Hermione was really tired last night, remember?"

"Yeah, but her clothes and wand are on her bed, and she's gone. She was supposed to meet Lavender two hours ago to study potions, but she never showed. Lavender and Parvati are already starting rumors—you don't think something's happened to her, do you?"

"Nah," Harry said, trying to sound convincing, though he knew perfectly well that Hermione, like the rest of them, never left her bed without her wand, even now that Voldemort was gone. "Hermione's not exactly easy to get the drop on."

"Maybe not if she had her wand, no," Ginny argued. She sighed and collapsed in an armchair. "I can't think of where she'd be—nowhere Parvati and Lavender have dreamed up, but still."

"What are they saying?" Ron demanded.

"Oh, the usual bull," Ginny said in disgust. "Their best story is that she's cheating on you and the whole sleepy thing at dinner was a lie so she could sneak off to some guy's room or something."

Harry rolled his eyes. "They've been coming up with those stupid stories ever since that time everyone swore she was with Fred, remember that?"

Ginny giggled. "Yeah, who doesn't?" Fred had once found Hermione asleep on her books in the common room and carried her up to her bed; Lavender and Parvati had woken up before he left and next morning told everyone that Fred and Hermione were sleeping together. Fred, ever one for a good laugh, told everyone it was true. Lavender and Parvati were quite disappointed when they'd realized they'd been wrong all along, and blamed Hermione for it; they were always started some odd rumor or another about Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Ginny frowned. "But still… with the prank war… what if something's happened to her?"

"Don't worry, I'm sure—" Harry stopped as the portrait hole swung open and Hermione stumbled in.

It took her a moment to get back to her feet. She was swaying unsteadily, and was wearing robes several sizes too big, making movement difficult. "I've got a great idea for the prank war," Hermione slurred, then hiccupped. "We'll all practice doing the Unforgivable curses, and then use them to kill the Slytherins. Sound good?"

The three of them blinked. "Um… are you okay?" Ginny asked, concerned.

"I'm fine," Hermione said, waving her arm dismissively. Then she promptly toppled over.

Harry, Ron, and Ginny ran over and crowded around her as she giggled hysterically. Her eyes were a bit glazed and her friends could detect the strong smell of vodka. "She's drunk," Ron said in disbelief. "Trashed, I tell you! Hermione Granger, Head Girl of Hogwarts, is trashed!"

"After the night I had, I deserve to be," Hermione said defensively, pouting.

"What happened?" Ginny asked as Harry and Ron hauled Hermione over to the couch.

Before she could answer, Harry said, "Um, Hermione? What are you wearing?"

He'd noticed the Head of House crest on the robes, which was much like McGonagall's or Sprout's, only this one said "Slytherin" instead of "Gryffindor" or "Hufflepuff."

"Snape's robe," Hermione said. As their eyes widened in disbelief, she chuckled and quickly told them the whole story, her humor fading after about the third sentence.

"And then," she finished, "Snape let me borrow this thing, which is gross enough without the fact that I don't have any underwear, and by that time he was so smashed he let me fix myself a few glasses of vodka and butterbeer."

"How many is a few?" Harry asked suspiciously.

Hermione began counting on her fingers. When she reached ten she stopped, presented her hands with all her fingers spread, and said, "Three, of course, not more than three."

"Hermione!" Ron exclaimed in exasperation.

"Give her a break, she woke up naked next to Snape," Ginny said, shuddering. "And I thought the Chamber of Secrets was bad."

Hermione nodded. "Though he's not bad to talk to when he's drunk, did you know that? We discussed the theory on a few potions, but neither of us could remember the exact potions very well—"

"Only Hermione could find herself sleeping nude next to a naked Snape and somehow start talking about homework," Ron muttered.

"—and then he told me about how he had a crush on Harry's mother when they were at Hogwarts and that's why he turned spy, because the Potters got dead…"

"EW!" Harry exclaimed. "He liked my mother!"

Hermione nodded. "But that's okay. Because we have to kill all the Slytherins, so I suppose we have to kill Snape, and that means you won't ever have to think about it again. And I can burn his robe when he's dead, even if it was awfully nice of him to lend it to me. Hmm… Snape's a bit of a pod person when drunk."

"You're not making sense, Herm," Ginny said gently. "C'mon, let's go fix you up. And get you out of sight before someone else sees."

"Wait, get her stuff and take her to our dormitory," Harry said. "If Seamus, Dean or Neville come in, they'll keep it quiet. None of the girls will."

"True," Ginny agreed, and they set about getting Hermione to the boys' room to wait until she sobered up.

"What are we going to do?" Ron asked, as he and Harry staggered up the stairs, each with one of Hermione's arms around their shoulders while Ginny followed with Hermione's clothes and wand.

"About what?" Harry said.

"The Slytherins, duh," Ginny said, rolling her eyes.

"I don't know, but whatever it is, it's gonna be big," Harry replied, narrowing his eyes.

"And probably illegal," Hermione added dramatically, and hiccupped again. She pointed her finger like a wand, muttering "Avada Kebavra! Avada Cadabra!"