Getting the Hang of Thursdays

Chapter 13 - Pete and Repeat Went For a Boat Ride...

By Hayseed

Day Two Hundred Seventy-Seven

“Oleander again?” Severus asked, a sour look on his face.

Hermione smiled, but it was weak. “Neville just asks so nicely, you see.”

Shaking his head wordlessly, he slid into the empty seat beside her bed.

“Madam Pomfrey hasn’t told me yet,” she said, still smiling, somewhat conspiratorially now. “That you don’t have an antidote, I mean. She didn’t have to tell me that I’d been bitten by a carnivorous oleander.”

“It’s oddly comforting to know that your Gryffindor powers of observation are in such good working order,” he replied dryly, placing a hand on her coverlet.

“She’ll probably ask you to leave when she tells me,” Hermione continued. Severus noticed that her eyes were rather dilated -- the poison was taking effect overwhelmingly by this point. It would not be long. “But you mustn’t, you know. It’s better when...”

He did not ask her what she was going to say, choosing instead to stare at the white blanket. It was dazzlingly white somehow -- he wondered if the house elves took care of the Infirmary laundry or if Poppy did it herself. Some mediwizards were odd about such things.

Hell... some wizards were odd about such things. Period. Even Severus himself was willing to admit to a few... idiosyncrasies. The most pertinent one at the moment was his tendency to ban the house elves from his private quarters and potions stores and perform all of his own household duties. The idea of what more or less amounted to a stranger handling his belongings was unsettling at best to Severus.

Perhaps Poppy bleached her own blankets and sheets, then. At the end of every today, she would bundle up the sheets that Hermione had... used, and she would wash them. Boil and bleach them, white as the sunlight glinting off fresh snow. Remove all traces of today, over and over.

Looking down, Severus saw that he’d taken Hermione’s hand in his and dimly wondered when that had happened. He saw that her nails were just as ragged as his own, bitten down to the quick. The tips of her fingers had an unhealthy purplish hue.

He tore his eyes away from her ghastly fingers with great effort and focused on her face. She appeared to be saying something, so quietly he could not make it out. Severus leaned in closer.

“...don’t want to be... I can’t...” he caught.

“Hermione?” he asked softly.

She blinked and stared at him. “S-Severus-s,” she said with visible difficulty, drawing the third syllable of his name into an obscene, painful hiss.

His hand tightened around hers. “Hermione,” he repeated, “try and stay awake.”

“Hurts,” she said, a trace of petulance in her voice. Her pupils were so dilated that he could barely make out the color of her irises.

“I know it hurts,” he said. “But you must try, nevertheless.”

Hermione studied him, brow furrowed, and her free hand reached up...

Abruptly, she turned away, pulled her hand out of his. “Can’t,” he heard her whisper. “Can’t, can’t, can’t...”

She exhaled one last time and Severus covered his eyes with one of his hands. As he rose to fetch Poppy, he allowed one finger to rest briefly on Hermione’s cheek, to wipe away one of the tears that had run down her face.

Day Two Hundred Seventy-Eight

He’d spoken with Albus earlier in the morning, feigning illness. Actually canceling classes would require putting on clothing, walking down to the classroom, and possibly interacting with a student or two. None of which, of course, Severus was willing to do today. All in all, it was sometimes simpler to just speak with the headmaster and let matters resolve themselves.

If nothing else, it made it entirely possible for Severus to while away his morning, sitting in his favorite armchair beside the fireplace in his office, wearing his boxers and a dressing gown so tattered it made his grey nightshirt look brand new by comparison, sipping at a cup of coffee that he’d liberally laced with brandy, and reading a novel he had confiscated from a brat in the Slytherin common room some years ago and never looked twice at before.

The cover had shown some promise -- a rather muscular wizard brandishing his wand at an overlarge monster of sorts that appeared to be literally dripping drool -- but the content was approaching that of a romance novel. A manly romance novel, to be sure, as the Muggle girl that the brave wizard had just rescued was, erm, demonstrating her gratitude in ways that Severus was fairly certain most women did not approve of. And there were long, protracted dueling scenes in which the brave wizard defeated seemingly insuperable demons with relative ease, although he was always injured in some minor way, in order for the Muggle woman to offer him ‘comfort’ of a dubious -- and inevitably sexy -- fashion.

Severus had probably read worse books, although none came immediately to mind. But it was a book he’d never read before and that was what counted. Never mind that he’d just actually seen the supposedly hackneyed phrase ‘love tunnel’ in print for the first time in his entire life -- in conjunction with the term ‘spear of flesh’ even, making it impossible to suppress a snort. Was it possible that teenaged boys were actually inspired by such drivel? He thought back to his own adolescence. Even Sirius Black at his most dimwitted would have laughed openly at the sentence, ‘She sheathed his throbbing manhood within the moist cavern of her mouth with an eager smile.’ And honestly, if the wizard in the book was really... all that he claimed to be, it wouldn’t have been possible in any case, given what he knew about the capacity of the average human mouth and throat.

With a sigh, he threw the book into a corner of his office, unwilling to endure it for another second. It would take another bottle of brandy at least for such tripe to even be amusing, and probably the rest of his store for it to approach erotic. Perhaps children really were that unintelligent, although Severus doubted it. Rocks weren’t even that unintelligent.

He drained his coffee cup and stood to put the empty cup on the tray sitting on his desk. As he turned, however, he paused as Hermione came into his line of sight. “Are you never going to learn to knock?” he asked her rhetorically.

She remained oddly quiet, and Severus noticed that she was watching him with wide eyes.

Thinking that perhaps he had spilled something on his robe, he glanced down and saw nothing particularly amiss. Casually, he completed his short journey and placed his coffee cup on his desk. “Is there something in particular that you need, Hermione, or did you simply want to examine my dressing gown in detail?” he asked, growing uncomfortable with her silence.

Still, the girl did not speak. Her face was ashen and as she let out a single, shuddering breath, he saw that her hands had passed beyond trembling into actual shaking.

“Hermione?” he said, mildly concerned by this point. It was awfully early in the morning for her to already be hurt, but then again, she was awfully pale. “Hermione, are you--?”

His breath rushed out of his body with an audible whooshing sound as Severus found himself knocked to the floor by an armful of Hermione Granger. Attempts to restore normal oxygen flow proved futile as his nose was currently somehow buried in her hair and his mouth was currently completely covered by hers.

Hermione’s skin was hot against his -- she was pressed about as tightly against his chest as she could be, her legs tangling with his. One of her hands had wrapped itself around his hip under his dressing gown, and the other was firmly attached to his shoulder. Severus barely had time to register this -- he was entirely too busy struggling with the notion that Hermione Granger was kissing him, and that, in his utter shock, he’d apparently started to respond to her advances, such as they were.

He recollected himself immediately and tried to close his mouth, but to no avail. It appeared as if Hermione was in another world. And, as it also appeared that she had finally given in to raving insanity as Severus had been fearing for many days now, he was loathe to disturb her emotional state further by bodily pushing her away -- he did not know how she would react to such a thing. He turned his mind to determining the best method for pushing her away without... well... pushing her away.

It was, however, not easy to think under these circumstances. Admittedly, there had been moments in his life when Severus had been less aroused, but, to his credit, none of them had included someone’s tongue in his mouth.

A hand pressing firmly on his crotch brought him out of his stupor, in spite of this, and when those fingers curled tentatively around his testicles, Severus snagged her wrist and pulled it away with some effort. “Hermione...” he rasped, tearing his mouth away from her lips and cracking his head on the floor in the process. “No!”

He opened his eyes and saw her staring down at him, a feral sort of fire in her expression. “But--“

With all of his strength, he pushed up, pushed her away, sanity be damned. “Granger!” he shouted. “No!”

The girl thrashed momentarily, and Severus used it to his best advantage, heaving her onto the ground and flipping himself over inexpertly, straddling her hips and placing his hands on her shoulders, effectively pinning her to the floor. Her expression clouded over once again as she realized what he’d done, and a grin started forming on her face. She tipped her head upward in an effort to reach his lips again.

“Granger,” he said huskily, feeling his hair fall into his eyes but not wanting to move for fear of allowing her to escape. “Granger, stop it! What is wrong with you?””

“Please,” she said in the same sort of begging tone that he usually heard right before she died. “Severus... please...”

He closed his eyes again, suddenly afraid of her expression. “Have you been cursed, Hermione? Are you under a spell?”

Abruptly, she stilled her movements. “Is that what you think?” she whispered. “Is that what you think of me?”

What he actually thought of her at the moment was that she was absolutely barking mad, but he wasn’t about to share that information with her. “Well... are you?”

“Of course not,” she muttered.

Reopening his eyes, Severus saw that her face looked agonized. “So you have lost your mind, then,” he said, keeping his expression neutral.

Her struggles renewed, although they were no longer sensual in nature. “Let me go.”

Grimly, he tightened his hands around her shoulders. “No.”

“Let me go!” Hermione cried, beating her fists against his thighs.

“Granger, I have no guarantee that the second I release you, you won’t escalate into full-blown dementia. Or hysteria, at the very least,” he said calmly. “Until you give me that assurance, I’m afraid that you’re going to stay right here.”

“You’re hurting me,” she said in a near-wail.

He eased his grip fractionally. “You sexually assaulted me,” he replied blandly. “I’d say that just about makes us even.”

Her eyes rounded. “I did not,” she protested.

“Only because my quick thinking saved the day,” Severus said with a straight face. “Now, Hermione, you will do me the courtesy of explaining your actions, else I will take you to Madam Pomfrey and explain your multiple neuroses in enough detail that she’ll lock you up without question.”

The girl actually rolled her eyes, a haughty expression settling onto her features. Severus was very nearly incredulous -- she did not have a leg to stand on and here she was, giving him a look that suggested that he wasn’t even worthy to lick her shoe. He almost throttled her then and there on the spot, two thirty-four be damned. “Isn’t it obvious?” she asked, shades of prim little Graham Pritchard in her voice.

“Clearly not, Granger,” he said, smirking slightly. “I would not be asking for clarification otherwise.”

Her expression shifted again -- she now looked as if she would rather be any place but here. If he offered to give her a Portkey heading straight into the Dark Lord’s clutches as an alternative to explaining herself, she probably would take the Portkey without so much as a second thought. “I...” she began hesitantly.

“And no blather about suddenly seeing me in a new light this morning,” he interrupted, a thought abruptly popping into his head. “I’m not nearly the fool you appear to take me for.”

She glared at him. “I wasn’t going to say any such thing, and you’re hateful for even suggesting that I’m capable of... of...”

“Of being quite that wanton?” he completed snidely.

“I was... I was just so lonely, I suppose,” she continued, ignoring him.

“Lonely?” Severus echoed, not sure whether to be confused or offended.

Hermione turned her face away. “No one touches me any more,” she whispered, “except when I die.”

His hands slipped off her shoulders of their own accord -- certainly Severus hadn’t been responsible for such a potentially foolish action.

“And I guess... I guess I just didn’t want to be so alone,” she said, still not meeting his gaze.

Still unwilling to release her, he remained in his kneeling position over her body, leaning back slightly to rest the majority of his weight on his heels. “Why me, then?” he asked in a brisk voice. “Why not Potter, or Longbottom, or even your perennial favorite, Weasley?”

She finally looked up at him again and he drew in a sharp breath as he saw just how close she was to tears. “They don’t know how alone I am,” she whispered.

“You could tell them,” he heard himself say.

“It’s not the same,” she said dismissively. “It’s just... why don’t you tell the headmaster every day, then?” Her voice took on a rather nasty tone as she continued to speak.

His smile was thin. “Well, for one, I’ve never attempted to assault him. Or seduce him, if you’d prefer.”

Severus considered it a great sacrifice on his part that he actually allowed her to punch his arm.

“Eighty points from Gryffindor for a physical attack on a professor, Miss Granger,” he said mildly. “I’m still considering point deductions for... the other.”

“And that’s the other thing,” she said dully.

His eyes narrowed as he looked down at her. “What?”

“You don’t care. I thought that maybe you...”

He fought his urge to get as far away from her as humanly possible. “That maybe I what?”

Again, her gaze was focused anywhere but on him. “That maybe you did care. That maybe you were just as... alone as I was. As I am.”

“I assure you, Granger,” he said sourly, “I care.” Severus spat out the last word as if it were poisonous.

With a roll of the eyes, she shifted under him. “Despite all evidence to the contrary, sir.”

Severus was suddenly tired of this. Tired of her. “You want to get up? Fine,” he said, pushing himself into a crouch and effectively releasing her. “Go on a destructive rampage if you like. I can show you where the more explosive potions are if you’d like to set anything in particular on fire. Oh, no, wait... you’ve got that damned Time Turner, don’t you? You don’t need my help with that.”

Remaining on the floor in what was probably meant to be a show of defiance but looked decidedly more like adolescent contrariness, Hermione just folded her arms over her chest, watching him rise to his feet. “I have a wand, you know. If I’d wanted to set Hogwarts on fire, I could have done that many todays ago.”

“I notice that you’re not standing,” he said, idly tapping a foot and ignoring her childish grousing. “Could it be that you’re unconsciously echoing my heartfelt concern for your mental health?”

“Because I’m so much more sane lying here on the floor,” she said, sounding almost cynical as she pushed herself to a sitting position. “Why, thank you ever so much for your concern, Professor Snape. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to repay you.”

“You really are a stupid little girl sometimes,” he said with no small amount of bitterness.

“I just fail to see how pinning me to the ground and shouting at me constitutes compassion,” she retorted scowlingly.

His hands curled into fists, trembling lightly. “If, Hermione, I did not care,” he spat, “I would have taken you up on your offer. I may not be a seasoned man of Ronald Weasley’s caliber, but neither am I dead.”

Arms akimbo, Hermione’s face registered a mix of shock and outrage. “Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said through gritted teeth, “but wasn’t that what my initial aim was?”

Severus couldn’t believe that he was explaining himself to such an obviously morally confused... child. “There is a phrase, Hermione, that I’m sure you are familiar with. Taking advantage of. You are not yourself, no matter what other issues you may choose to bring up. You are not yourself, and I am not myself, and I refuse to allow you to place me in such a position. And if, indeed, I did not have any concern about you, I would use you -- I would take advantage of you -- and just let you sort it all out tomorrow. Just as you would take advantage of me.”

An unflattering flush was spreading across her cheeks. “I didn’t... I wouldn’t...”

“You would and you did, Hermione, like it or not,” he retorted, not unpleasantly, pulling his dressing gown around his waist and tying the belt firmly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I had other plans for the day. Although I’m sure that Weasley would be more than happy to accommodate you if you are still undeterred.”

He blinked and that was his only excuse. One second, his eyes were open and Hermione was standing five paces away from him, mouth hanging open and eyes threatening to pop out of her head. The next, he’d closed his eyes and stars exploded across his eyelids as a hand connected with his cheek.

She’d hit him.

Hermione Granger had actually slapped him.

Amazed and angered beyond all reason, Severus laid his fingertips across his cheek, almost certainly a bright red now, and felt his own mouth drop open.

Backing up a step, Hermione regarded him with total horror. “Oh, God,” she murmured, so quietly he almost did not hear. “Oh, God, oh God, ohgod, what have I done?”

Frozen in place, Severus watched her back up another step. And another, her hand hanging loosely in the air. Apparently no longer able to bear the sight of him, Hermione simply turned tail and ran out of the room, slamming the door in her wake.

Severus continued to stand in the same place for many beats of silence, wondering just what he had done lately to deserve such a fate. As the tingling in his cheek faded, he shook his head slightly. “Bloody hell,” Severus grumbled, making a beeline for his brandy decanter.