A/N:Here is another chappie for all you wonderful folks! It's a bit shorter than the first one, but it's either update more often, with shorter chapters, or make y'all wait forever and a day between updates. Being the magnanimous person that I am, well, here you are.

I still don't own Harry Potter, you dunderheaded fools. :)

Thank you to all those who have left reviews, or even who have just followed and favorited the story (and me). It means a whole heck of a lot to me. More than I can tell you. For cereals.

A giant cold has just taken me by the ears and banged my head repeatedly against a nearby box of Kleenex, so I'm going to take my miserable sick butt off to bed. That didn't make sense...but I'm ill, so you're not allowed to judge me.

"You could really stand to do something about that hair, you know."

Snape merely stared defiantly at the full-length mirror he had conjured, and then began to pace.

After the Granger chit's exit, the Headmistress had given him a stern talking to, during which he had zoned out a lot. Because he had long since perfected mental categorization, he only heard bits and pieces, like "the need to be welcoming to our newest staff member", and, "the importance of amicability amongst the teachers". His brain instantly recognized this as drivel, and relegated it accordingly to a dusty corner of his mind. Even "just because her NEWT scores were higher than yours", something which would normally have him grinding his teeth in suppressed rage, (Snape didn't take to teasing well), only drew a grunt from him. He was too busy plotting.

Upon leaving Minerva's office, he had gone straight to his chambers in the dungeon, needing to ascertain for himself just what was going on.

He knew one thing for certain: Hermione Granger was feeling fluttery. About him. Birds and bees fluttery.

Which meant that he now held power over her. Which meant that perhaps, just perhaps, her tenure here at Hogwarts wouldn't be the aggravating experience he'd been expecting it to be. After all, she'd been virtually tongue-tied during much of that poor excuse for a meeting, and a tongue-tied, stammering Hermione was a great improvement over know-it-all, blabbering Hermione, at least in Snape's opinion.

The same Slytherin smirk he had worn earlier crossed his face again.

After gaining the privacy of his chambers, and upon further contemplation of this, he had settled in his favorite armchair with a glass of firewhisky, and indulged in a rather lengthy snickering session. The Princess of Gryffindor was attracted to him.

This begged the question, why?

Or rather, what?

He was Severus Snape. Greasy Dungeon Bat Extraordinaire. It was all very odd. It was so odd that, had he not known Granger to be incapable of any sort of duplicity, he might have suspected her of deliberately planting those thoughts about him in her head just to get his goat. (Baaaaa.)

He had only managed to maintain an inroad into her mind for several seconds at the very most, although it had felt like longer. During that time, he was able to sense her general state of being–fluttery–and see vague flashes of himself. Except, in Granger's mind, he didn't look anything like himself.

Oh, there were some similarities: his height, his hair color, his eye color, and the overall structure of his face, but that was about it.

It was a bizarre sensation, seeing an impersonator of yourself in someone else's mind. He was sure that it had to have been one of the strangest experiences of his life. And he had been around the block. Twice. Maybe even three or four times.

All the pacing was making him dizzy. Besides, one could only traverse the same swath of cold stone floor for so long before one died of boredom, and so he forced himself to look back at the mirror.

He shuddered at the sight. It was quite as awful as it usually was.

A sour looking man stared back at him. His black eyes, perpetually bright with alertness, would have been his best feature, were it not for the deep, shadowy sockets surrounding them.

His skin, less lined now than during the war, was nonetheless still rather dry and ashen, and certainly in need of some sun. (Well, his lab was in the dungeons, after all. As were all his classes. If you asked Snape, it was a wonder he wasn't an albino.)

It all went downhill after the eyes.

The nose was so big you could serve drinks on it. In the past, men of Severus' acquaintance had tried to include him in their circle via tasteless jokes about "men with big noses", but the humor had been lost on him. He had nothing to prove anyway.

The mouth would have been acceptable, were it not for the pinched manner in which his upper lip clung to his lower. Experimentally, he tried parting them. This merely gave him the appearance of an enraged groper fish, and he closed his mouth quickly.

Body-wise, he was passable. He didn't sit on a couch all day and surf though stations on the Wizarding Wireless, but while he lacked the dreaded paunch that tended to attack men of middle age, he was hardly...ripped like the man in Granger's mind. He felt a momentary, senseless spike of irritation towards the cretin.

Which was remarkably silly, seeing as that cretin was himself. Somehow...

He hoped.

His head hurt.

"Are you going to make me reflect you much longer?"

Apparently, the mirror was nearing the end of its tolerance.

"It is your job, you know," he said bitterly, eying the reflective device with no small amount of pique.

"I'm quite sure I've already gone above and beyond the call of duty, honey," said the mirror, somewhat rudely.

"Wait." He wasn't done looking yet.

His hair. What had his doppelganger done with his hair? Oh yes. Tied it back. Severus snorted.

Then he looked at his hair more closely. Perhaps that would be an improvement. Slowly, he gathered the lank, oily strands into a tail at the base of his neck, and held them there with his hand, the better to view the effect.

The mirror shattered.

Well. Perhaps it wasn't a good look after all.

Shards of glass were sodding everywhere.

The disgruntled Potions Master picked his way carefully out of the sea of sharp bits and pieces in order to reach his wand, which he had placed on the small side table next to his armchair. Grumbling about stupid magical objects charmed to insult and degrade, he took care of the mess, banishing the fragments to the rubbish bin next to his bed.

The room then darkened around him as he sat in his armchair, fingertips steepled like Austin Powers, deep in thought.

Was the man in Granger's mind someone else? Maybe it wasn't him at all.

He discarded this possibility, however, after just a few moments of thought. There had simply been far too many similarities between them. He looked exactly like Snape imagined he'd look after intensive sessions with a plastic surgeon, personal trainer, tailor, hairdresser, dentist, and dermatologist.

No, it was definitely him.

Possible explanations for Granger's inexplicable reaction to him marched through his brain, each more unlikely than the last, but much as Snape wished to get to the bottom of all that, he was more focused on working out a strategy for utilizing the new state of affairs to his best advantage.

Snape had never been in a situation where he could exert this kind of influence, but now that the chit apparently thought him the sexiest thing since sliced bread...well, the world was his oyster!

Never mind that she was obviously insane.

His hunger for dinner effectively addressed by the disconcerting juxtaposition of the words "bread" and "oyster", his head drooped off to the right, and he nodded off, drooling just a bit onto his shoulder.

:) That was some fun with the mirror, huh? Snape seemed to take it in stride, though. Perhaps he's used to it...