Strange Bedfellows

By Kalina

A scream rent the silent night air, startling the young lady in the Head Girl's room awake. Eyes rapidly scanning the room, she searched for the source of the banshee howl. Seeing nothing moving within the room, she gently nudged her companion. Screams in the night were not unusual at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—what with the large population of ghosts and other fantastical beings, but something about this one made her tremble with fear. The one sharing her bed was still sound asleep. He made a sound very much like a sigh and shifted position but other than that showed no signs of stirring.

"Wake up!" Hermione Granger said, poking more firmly.

His eyes finally opened, and he opened his mouth as if to speak. Instead, he yawned broadly and burrowed back into the pillow.

“Severus! What was that?” She jabbed him again.

“What was what?” he growled.

As if on cue, the sound was repeated – a piercing shriek that split the silence of the castle.

“Oh,” he said. “That.”

“Precisely.” She slid from the bed and caught up her dressing gown. The sound no longer scared her, now she was fully awake, but it still bore investigation. “I’ll go. It’s probably some students playing a prank.”

“Were it not for the fact that I’m not supposed to be here, I would – of course – offer to go in your stead.”

“Of course,” she said dryly. “You’ve always been chivalry personified.”

“And to prove it, I shall keep the bed warm for you.”

She snorted. “To think I ever believed you cruel and heartless.”

“Flatterer.”

She laughed and leaned over the bed to press a kiss to his neck – the only part of him she could see now that he had burrowed back beneath the pillow. She slipped out the door, listening for the sound to be repeated.

She didn’t have long to wait. It came again, louder now that she was in the corridor, a ragged cry of pain or rage – she couldn’t tell which. Other girls were poking their heads out of their rooms, giving her sleepy, quizzical looks. ‘It’s all right,” she murmured to the younger ones. “Go back to your beds. I’ll put a stop to it.”

“Bloody hell,” Parvati yawned, stepping out of the seventh year dormitory. “Whoever that is, if she’s not dying, I’m going to kill her. What time is it?”

“A little after two,” Hermione answered darkly. “And I may beat you to the killing part. Would you do a bed check for me, Parvati? Make sure everyone’s in her room?”

“Yeah.Fine.”Parvati winced as her bare feet hit the stone corridor, and she muttered irritably as she started down the hall.

Hermione listened and determined that the sound was coming from boy’s side of the tower. With a sigh, she headed in that direction.

§ §§§

Snape was confident enough in Dumbledore’s wards that he didn’t fear for Hermione’s safety as long as she was in the castle, and he was asleep again practically before the door closed behind her. Chivalry occasionally had its place, but he preferred to practice it in the daylight hours.

He didn’t hear the door open and someone slip in - didn’t hear anything, in fact, until someone whispered very near his head. “Sorry to sneak in on you, Hermione, but you’ve got to hide me for a bit...Hermione?”

Seldom had Severus Snape been so conflicted.

He was certain that the voice belonged to Harry Potter, and every cell in his body screamed for him to leap from the bed and catch Mr. Potter in whatever act of mischief he was perpetrating. The problem was that if Potter’s crime were anything less than murder, it would fall short of Snape’s own transgression.

“Hermione? You awake?” Harry said, giving Snape’s shoulder a little nudge.

“Mmm?”Snape tried to make his voice as high-pitched as possible while at the same time trying to sound terribly sleepy. The result sounded very little like Hermione and a great deal like house-elf with laryngitis, but apparently the power of suggestion carried him through the awkward moment.

“It’s Myrtle,” Harry said, settling down on the bed next to Snape. “She caught me snogging Constance and now she’s having a fit. Said she was in love with me and thought Voldemort was going to kill me for sure, and then I’d be a ghost like her.” Harry snorted. “Can you imagine? She wanted me to die, and somehow, that’s s’posed to be a compliment? And honestly, I’d have to be a lot worse off than dead to look twice at Myrtle, wouldn’t I? But of course, a fellow can’t say that, even to a ghost, so I tried to make her feel better, and you know how she twists everything around and makes you wish you hadn’t bothered. She started screaming and making all the toilets back up, and then she began calling me names and saying the most awful things about you and Ron, too. You’ll get a laugh out of it – she actually said that you were shagging Snape. Can you imagine? As if you’d let that disgusting git lay a hand on you!  Anyway, Ron told me to get out of there, that he’d take care of it, so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I came in here with you. You don’t mind, do you?”

Snape felt as if the top of his skull might blow off. It seemed impossible that even an insensitive prat like Potter wouldn’t realize that he was sharing a bed with a fully enraged wizard who was coiled and ready to strike. He wanted desperately to hex Potter into next week, but his wand was on the desk across the room, completely useless to him. If he couldn’t hex the ruddy brat, he at least wanted the satisfaction of rising naked from the bed and letting Potter see that the “disgusting git” had put a bit more than a hand on Hermione - and she’d bloody well enjoyed it, too.

But that would mean breaking his promise to Hermione…and to Dumbledore. Those were the two people he preferred not to disappoint, even for the satisfaction that would come of maiming Harry Potter.

“What’s the matter with you tonight?” Harry said. “You’re normally the first one out of bed when something like this is going on, but you’ve barely said a word since I got here. You’re not getting sick are you? You seemed fine at dinner, anyway, but you rushed up here right afterwards. Probably sneaking up here to meet Snape, right?” Harry laughed uproariously. “Now that’s enough to make anyone sick. Wish you could have seen Ron’s face when Myrtle said that. If she hadn’t already been dead, I think he’d have killed her.”

Given the choice between sharing a bed with Harry Potter and experiencing the Cruciatus curse, Snape would choose the curse every time. He’d suspected that falling in love would be inconvenient, but he’d never dreamed he would suffer the utter humiliation of hiding helplessly beneath the bedclothes whilst Potter insulted him. Fortunately, the idiot seemed content tonatter on without a reply. Snape’s only hope was that he would realize that Myrtle had stopped screaming sometime in the last few minutes and would decide to return to his own room, or to the lovely Constance, or to virtually anywhere that wasn’t an invasion of Snape’s personal space.

 “Mr. Potter!” Minerva McGonagall’s voice rang out from the doorway. “Might I ask what you’re doing in the Head Girl’s room?”

“Er…” Harry peeked around the bed curtains, shielding his eyes from the light coming from the hallway. “Nothing, Professor. I mean…I wasn’t doing anything I shouldn’t. I was just hiding. From Myrtle. Did you hear her screaming?”

“People in London heard her screaming, Mr Potter. The entire Tower is in an uproar, and I’m considering asking Professor Dumbledore to banish Myrtle from the castle. And I understand that you are at the centre of the problem.” She didn’t say “as usual,” but it seemed implied.

“Professor! I didn’t…I mean, it’s not my fault if…”

“Silence!” McGonagall snapped. “I’ve discussed this all I intend to tonight. Get back to your dormitory.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Harry swung his legs over the side of the bed and then turned and swiftly pressed a kiss to the ear that peeked over the edge of the duvet. “Thanks,” he whispered, and then he scooted out the door, fleeing the heavy disapproval of his Head of House.

Snape waited until he could no longer hear Potter’s footsteps before he spoke quietly into the darkness. “If you ever tell a soul what just happened here, I’ll kill you…with pain…and make it look like an accident.”

“A fine thanks I get,” McGonagall answered huffily, and then she called down the hall. “He’s gone now, Hermione. You can come out.”

“He didn’t realize…?” Hermione asked.

“Apparently not,” McGonagall answered dryly, her lips twitching slightly.

“Oh, thank goodness!” Hermione said, as she entered the room and closed the door. “I’m so sorry, Severus, but I barely opened the door when I realized Harry was already here and that he thought you were me. I had to go get Professor McGonagall and just hope that you wouldn’t give yourself away.”

Snape sat up in the bed and glared at her. “And how, exactly, did he get in here in the first place?”

“I…er, I’m afraid I forgot to lock the door. I just didn’t think-“

“That is obvious.” An astonishing amount of venom for such a short speech.

Possibly to forestall the argument she felt brewing, or possibly just because she was tired and wanted to go to bed, McGonagall interrupted. “Perhaps both of you should consider the position you put me in tonight and the damage that could have been done had Professor Snape been discovered in this room. This is precisely what I warned the Headmaster about. What he was thinking when he agreed to this arrangement, I’ll never know, but you two made a promise that until Miss Granger…Mrs Snape…has finished school, no one will know about this…this…” she gestured at the bed in frustration.

“The word you’re looking for is marriage, Minerva, and no one will know,” Snape said coldly. “Now, I’ve just shared a bed with Potter for the last thirty minutes. Surely that is punishment enough for my misdeeds – particularly as they consisted of nothing more offensive than sleeping quietly in what these days passes for my own room. You have made your position on this matter clear enough in the past. I see no need to delve back into it at three in the morning.”

“Give me no reason to be here at three in the morning, and you’ll hear nothing further from me, I assure you. But I promise you, young man, if I have to do this again, I’ll tell everyone in this castle that I saw Potter kiss you.”

On that note, she retreated and left Hermione and Severus alone in the room. Hermione watched her husband carefully, wondering if he was still angry with her.

“I really am sorry,” she said, picking up his black silk boxers and putting them on a nearby chair, with the rest of his clothes. “That scream just unnerved me and…”

“Never mind.” He sighed and reached for her, pulling her into the bed and wrapping his arms around her from behind.

 “Um…did he really…kiss you?”

“That was the final insult, yes.”

“Thank you,” she said, relaxing into him. “For not killing him, I mean.”

“I couldn’t reach my wand.”

“Oh.” She paused, glad that he couldn’t see her smile. “So, should I be jealous? Is he a better kisser than I am?”

“It’s not too late to kill him,”S nape pointed out.

“It’s too late to do much of anything,” she answered, yawning and giggling at the same time. “I’m going to feel like I got hit by a hippogriff in the morning.”

“Go to sleep,” he said, easing her down into the bed. “Skip breakfast. I’ll have the house-elves bring something up to you.”

“Are you going to stay a while longer?” She put her arms around him, as if she meant to hold him there by force.

“An hour or so,” he agreed, fitting her more comfortably to his length.

The castle was still and quiet again, andsleep overtook the two in the bed.

§ §§§