Legal Disclaimer: I own my stuff, but not the original source material. That belongs to whoever. Also, the opinions and interpretations I use here may not reflect the same in said whoever that owns the source material. Look, I'm just a poor college librarian. Suing me isn't going to get you anything but tears.
Warning: This work may be offensive to some readers. There's also a lot of various -isms due to a gross narrator with several obsessions. Feel free to back out if need be.
Author's Note: Just a reminder that unreliable narrators cannot be trusted to tell the truth. That's why they're unreliable narrators. Every narrator skews the story a little bit, but unreliable narrators take it to a whole 'nother level. I also had to end this where I did or lose the ability to submit it to a challenge under one of the teams I was planning on using.
Submitting Info:
Stacked with: Hogwarts (Term 14); MC4A (Year 4)
Individual Challenges: La Vie Boheme; Professor MC; Jock MC; Artist MC (x2); Bard MC (x2); Neurodivergent (x5); Rian-Russo Inversion (x2); Ethnic & Present (x2); Hold the Mayo (x2); Lovely Triangle (Y); Ship Sails; Color Galore; Zed Era (Y); Old Shoes (Y); Bucket Listing (Y); Short Jog (Y); Two Cakes (Y); Eating Cake (Y); Green Ribbon
House: Slytherin
Assignment No.: Term 14 – Assignment 10
Subject (Task No.): Hagiology (Task#1: Write about a child prodigy.)
Other Hogwarts Challenges: Fantastic Beasts [59](Someone who hates children); 365 Prompts [224](Musician AU); Scavenger Hunt [31](Professor)
Other MC4A Challenges: SpB [1B](Reading/Writing); TrB [2B](Mooks/Minions); Ship (Potion Master's Apprentice; Desperately Seeking; Finders Seekers; Brilliant Snitch; the Lion of Durmstrang)[Sp Big](Jewelry); Hunt [Sp Set](Plane); Chim [Isopra](Royal Purple; Jewelry)
Representation(s): Severus Snape/Hermione Granger (one-sided); Hermione Granger/Harry Potter/Cedric Diggory/Viktor Krum; Black Hermione & Desi Harry; Multiple Gifted Children
Primary & Secondary Bonus Challenges: Mother Hen; Unwanted Advice; Mouth of Babes; Tomorrow's Shade; Second Verse (Ladylike; Not a Lamp; Persistence Still; Found Family; Nontraditional; Zucchini Bread); Chorus (Odd Feathers; Wabi Sabi; Bee Haven; Fizzy Lemonade; Machismo; Peddling Pots);
Tertiary & Generic Bonus Challenges: T3 (Toad); SN (Rail; Spare); LiCK (Poppy; Narcissus; Yarrow); CM (Brier)
Word Count: 1332 words
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Burnt Ends
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Severus Snape had gone to Hogwarts School for Gifted Children for secondary. His best friend and neighbor, Lily Evans, had gone with him. Both he and Lily had tested high on the standard intelligence tests given at their primary school. That had been how they had ended up at Hogwarts in the first place, both on scholarship and boarding due to the distance of the school from Cokesworth.
While she had always been his best friend back home, Lily made more friends at Hogwarts. She had always been the more gregarious of them whereas people tended to find his intellect level and stoic nature off-putting. More and more as the years went by, Lily tended to study with her new friends while Severus drifted further into his solitude, only admiring her from afar. That didn't mean that he hadn't noticed that she had other admirers, such as the son of some titled lord too far down the line of succession to be of any interest to the papers.
Lily had always been a firebrand, bright and burning for more. She loved numbers, taking to anything computational with the ease of a fish to water. She could write computer code in the same way that some people wrote essays. She was very much in demand as a study partner for both types of subject, but despite how often Severus could have used her help calculating the tweaks necessary for his chemistry experiments, the professors rarely paired her with him after their third year at the school. Instead they would force her to be around people like James Potter and Sirius Black, both heirs to aristrocrats, or Remus Lupin and Alice Diore, both children of high-ranking ministry officials.
He could see that she didn't belong in such company and that she was uncomfortable with them. Yet every time he tried to bring his complaints to any of the professors, they would not listen to him. One of them even forced him to go to weekly sessions with the school therapist! When he had heard that Lily was going on a date with Potter, Severus had been livid. He had confronted Potter immediately, in front of their entire year. When Lily had tried to intervene (clearly suffering from a kind of Stockholm Syndrome), Severus had reacted badly and snapped at her.
Lily had responded by breaking off their friendship and ignoring him as much as possible. Severus would never forgive himself for allowing her to overreact like that, and for not doing more to reconnect with her in the aftermath. He should have forced her to see reason, especially when the papers had announced her marriage to Potter. Severus should have known better than to lose himself in gaining his doctorate in Chemistry before the age of twenty.
He heard about the birth of her son through the papers, too, as well as the car wreck that had killed her and Potter.
Severus struggled to find work within his field. He took what was supposed to be a temporary post teaching science at Hogwarts, just to have something to do that would prevent the county from repossessing his parents' house while he looked for more fitting work. He was still there over a decade later.
That was when he had first spotted her.
Hermione Granger came to Hogwarts the same year Lily's misbegotten son did. Everything about her was like seeing Lily again but through a fun house mirror. Her skin was a similar dark tan as Lily's, but her eyes were a brownish-gold instead of Lily's green and her hair was nut-brown curls instead of Lily's fiery auburn coils. Where Lily had been a computational specialist, Hermione focused more on history and biology.
The girl was outspoken from the start, a rebel in search of a cause. Severus could only shake his head as she argued such pointless things as the menu for meals and the changes to school dress code policy. Like Lily, she seemed to not understand the futility of fighting frivolous battles, and unlike his lost love, the girl did not seem to have even one friend willing to reign her in even a little bit.
She had made friends with Lily's son, naturally. The boy was rather mediocre in most academic areas. He had a knack for languages, and that was about it. Most of the other professors were impressed with it along with the boy's talent for musical instruments, but Severus was not so easily impressed. The boy was even less suited for Hogwarts than his father had been.
Hermione's other friends were not any better as far as influences go. Cedric Diggory had some skill with mechanical engineering but nothing that Severus would consider impressive. Viktor Krumov was only a political statement, in Severus' opinion. The boy's gift appeared to be leaping around like a frog and singing like one as well. Hogwarts may have accepted so-called exceptional talent in the arts, but Severus had always believed that to be one of the school's greatest flaws, and the foreign diplomat's son prancing around the school like he had the right just proved that.
Especially when he was a terrible influence on a student who would have grown into an acceptable replacement for his beloved Lily. Instead the horrible boy kept encouraging Hermione's ridiculous displays of political nonsense, and dragging Diggory and Potter into the mess as well. And just like how Severus' attempts at intercession with the administration for Lily had fallen on deaf ears, none of his complaints to Headmaster Dumbledore or Deputy Headmistress McGonagall were treated as serious as they should have been.
All of that led to the current situation, as nearly unbearable as it was. The little group of overly sensitive fools had been invited to waste the time of the United Nations. Unfortunately, Dumbledore had decided to force Severus to assist him in accompanying the group. It had been horrible in all respects.
Well, not all. Hermione had looked very nice in her royal purple dress suit. Her pearl necklace had been perfectly understated even as it matched her earrings and the twin barrettes that held her curls away from her face. Despite her topic being pointless and her stance misguided, her speech had been delivered well. Her brown eyes had glittered with her passion. The other three had also spoke before the assembly, but Severus had only cared for Hermione's delivery.
Now they were flying back to England on the private plane that the school board had hired for the trip. Severus suspected that either Krumov or Potter had thrown money around to achieve that part. The four teens were playing some elaborate game of cards in the section that had four seats facing each other with a table between them. Dumbledore was in a seat near them, calmly reading a paperback book. Severus was attempting to work on a paper he hoped to submit to an academic journal in a few months, but it was slow-going due to the bursts of laughter coming from the teens.
Severus spotted Hermione leaning across the table to give Krumov a peck on the lips. He frowned in disapproval. He had suspected that she might be attached to her little friends, but he had been certain that she was dating Potter while Diggory was shagging the foreigner. He had not believed that a Potter would have been able to control their ego enough to stand being a cuckold, but the Potter brat didn't look upset by his girlfriend kissing one of their friends right in front of him.
In fact, he copied her in kissing Krumov. Hermione laughed before giving pecks to both Potter and Diggory. Then she slipped away from the area to towards the plane's lavatory. Severus gave her a few minutes before following.
Someone had to talk to the girl about her behavior!
And maybe, since she was giving out kisses like a slut anyway, he might get one of his own.