A/N: Um, yeah. I won't apologize for this chapter. I'm not entirely sure who wrote it, because it definitely wasn't me.
No.
*blinks slowly*
Anyway, I do hope you enjoy it! This story is all about humor, and while I'm not exactly sure where this idea came from, I hope it makes you laugh!
It would have been up yesterday, but I was blocked from uploading for a few days (again) because the same person who reported A Good Spy reported it again. I have no idea...honestly...people sometimes. Anyways. :P
All your base are belong to J. K. Rowling. If all base are belonged to me, I would be wealthier.
Dkajfsdhkeei! Dkjdfsijleai! Hkfdhsaienfe!
Hermione, who had been blissfully, peacefully asleep, thrashed awake instantly at the awful racket. Her elbow collided painfully with the bedside table to the right of the canopied, four-poster monstrosity that was her bed, and she let out a muffled oomph–something between a grunt and a squeal.
Looking around woozily, she blinked sleep from her eyes. She was no morning person as it was, and this horrendous shrieking was most definitely not helping matters. The room was still dark, which meant that whatever had woken her up had a death wish.
Her legs were never at their best this early. She slid out of bed somewhat shakily, cringing as her bare feet met the cold stone of the floor, and proceeded to half-walk, half-stagger around the perimeter of the room, searching for the source of the sound. It was so loud at this point that her ears were beginning to ring.
Qekjhfeiwaehfei! Ieheihfeihd!
"Okay! Okay!" she mumbled irrationally, her frustration mounting. Merlin's polka-dotted underpants, it was loud. If she couldn't silence whatever-it-was, she'd have half the staff outside her door within minutes, gibbering angrily at her for waking them up so early–on a Saturday morning, no less.
Not that it's being Saturday was really that big of a deal, seeing as the school term didn't start for another fortnight.
She spent a brief moment imagining the Dungeon Master – er, Potions Master – wearing nothing but sleeping pants and an irritated snarl.
She shivered.
Heydhidnfejei!
"Accio shrieking object!"
Knowing the identity of the desired item was a prerequisite for the success of any summoning spell. Hermione was well aware of this, and had been since her first year, but she figured it was worth a shot anyway.
Just as she was seriously considering fleeing the room and blaming the ruckus on Peeves, she saw it.
"Got you, you blasted little bugger," she said angrily, readying herself to pounce on the thing she had just noticed moving about under the tastelessly ornate chaise lounge near the window.
Unfortunately, it was fast and she was not. Her reflexes, never top-of-the-line, were exceptionally sluggish at this hour, and she found herself face-down on the dusty floor, the fingertips of both outstretched hands coming together mere inches from the now furiously scuttling item.
It was a magical alarm clock, apparently charmed like nobody's business. The previous occupant of the room must have been a ridiculously heavy sleeper. Hermione couldn't imagine anyone being able to sleep through that kind of pandemonium.
It also appeared to be fairly intelligent, since it was doing its best to escape her all-too-apparent rage. Shrieking madly, it retreated further into the shadows beneath the lounge.
Ears ringing in earnest now, Hermione picked herself off the floor, coughing as dust rose around her in a small cloud. Trying to keep the contact between her feet and the floor to a minimum, she hopped over to the bed to retrieve her wand.
Now she knew what it was, she could, of course, Accio it, but this whole thing was personal now, and she wanted to blast the wretched thing into powdered pieces.
The clock sensed what was coming, and shrieked, if possible, even more loudly than before.
Why is it that things you're trying to attack always know when you're coming after them? she thought briefly.
After all, Hermione doubted very much that the clock was actually sentient. So how did it know?
She had no desire to reduce the lounge to smithereens. That would just make more of a mess for her to clean up, and the room was in a sad enough state already, so she decided to try and trick the little devil-clock.
Forcing herself to stand quietly, she waited. Barely breathing...waiting...waiting...
And there it was. The metallic edges of the clock gave it away, glinting as it looked cautiously out from the supposed safety of one of the chaise legs, and Hermione attacked.
One carefully aimed Reducto! later – she'd modified the spell while at university to allow for minimal collateral damage – and the alarm clock was a smoking pile of screws and tarnished brass.
Hermione subsided weakly onto the floor, her head throbbing. The shrill shrieking echoed in her brain, despite the fact that its source had been destroyed, and she pressed her fingers to her temples. She needed to talk to the Headmistress. Who knew what other surprises this godawful room had in store for her?
It wasn't that she had been expecting the Plaza. She had lived in this castle for years, after all, and therefore knew very well that certain aspects of Hogwarts (the draftiness, the coldness, the dankness) didn't make for the most comfortable living environment, but this was ridiculous.
When she had been shown to her chamber last night after her meeting with Minerva and the Potions Master, the dust had literally risen from the floor to form a smoky haze around her. The air had the acrid, stale quality typical of a long-sealed room, and her lungs had begun to burn almost instantaneously, both from that and from the lack of oxygen.
Of course, she had gone about the room and taken care of the worst of it using magic, but that was really a poor substitute for a good deep clean. Using magic to suck up dirt was like using a Muggle duster; sometimes it just spread things around.
Hermione felt a bit offended that nothing had been done to ready the small suite for her arrival, but then immediately felt guilty for feeling that way. She was no visiting dignitary, after all. Just a new teacher, and the second youngest teacher in the history of Hogwarts at that.
She sighed. Somehow, she still wouldn't have thought she'd be put in a room like this. With the amount of house-elves Hogwarts used, (she couldn't say employed, since they still weren't being paid), she would never have thought it possible that such a dirty room existed anywhere in the castle.
Sunshine began to filter in through the grime-encrusted glass of the two large windows, and Hermione realized she had been sitting on the floor woolgathering like an idiot for far too long. With a groan, she stood up, gingerly rubbing the points of her elbows which had been bruised during her earlier bout of impromptu belly-surfing. She'd have to get some salve for it, or she'd be quite sore.
It being Saturday, she didn't really have any hard and fast plans. She had a few things she needed to get done–unpacking, for one, since she'd opted to use the few hours Minerva had given her between greeting her at the front gate and requesting her presence for the curriculum meeting yesterday to nap. Traveling always took a lot out of her.
And then there was the room. She felt a little overwhelmed at the thought of it. There was no way she'd be able to live in it, even once it was cleaned, without making some serious changes. The previous occupant's tastes appeared to have leant towards the opulent, but the overall effect somehow managed to be tacky rather than resplendent.
Yet another thing on her growing to-do list. Hermione sighed again.
She was fairly certain she wouldn't be able to get back to sleep even if she tried, so she padded over to the little tiled bathroom.
She showered as quickly as she could manage, because she wasn't entirely sure she liked the look of the cracks that ran all along the outer edges of the tub. A strange, slick looking blackness was oozing out of the fissures, like mold with an evil soul.
Not five minutes later, she hopped back out onto the relative safety of the somewhat cleaner looking tiled floor. She hadn't waited for the water to get hot, so she was shivering as she wrapped her tangled hair in a threadbare towel. The towel, like the washcloth and the bath rug, was a particularly wretched shade of green that did nothing for her state of mind.
Slipping on shapeless, nondescript blue robes she liked to think of as wizarding-style loungewear, (the wizarding world, sadly, had yet to catch onto yoga pants), she shoved her feet into matching ballet flats before heading out the door.
She had just made it round the bend into the hallway when...smack. Her progress was impeded by something. Something tall. Something...naked? It was definitely a naked chest. Abs. Like Brad Pitt in Troy. Well, not quite that beefy, but still...exceptional. Pecs. Well-defined. Dusted with a smattering of hair. Shoulders. Broad. Strong. Also like Brad Pitt in Troy.
Oh, there was a face, too.
Sneering mouth. Aquiline nose. Two glittering eyes which were currently looking down at her with something that, on a good day, could probably be called disdain, and on a bad day, could very likely be dubbed rampant dislike.
It was looking like today was a bad day. Or a good day, depending on one's outlook.
He was wearing nothing but sleeping pants and an irritated snarl.
A/N: To be continued...
I really love hearing back from you! Thank you to all those who have reviewed, followed, and favorited both this story and me. It means so much to me! We're at 40 reviews! The 50th reviewer will get a 250 word oneshot written just for them! It can be anything you want!...within reason. I call final say on what "within reason" means. ;)
I'm writing this as I go along, guys. Now, I'm asking you to send me your little plot bunnies-why do you think Hermione has been but into such a crap room? What is Severus doing wandering the hallways on Saturday morning in his pajamas?
Sentence fragments and continued inexcusable abuse of italics, parentheses, AND ellipses are intentional...