Fantasies

By Pigwidgeon37

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. But he merely yawned and belatedly hid it behind a lazily raised hand. Eyelids fluttered over silvery-grey irises. “Not again!” he groaned, “I’m completely spent—please, have mercy!”

She poked his ribs again, a little harder this time. “Didn’t you hear that?”

“Didn’t I hear what?”

“That scream, you… you dormouse!” He snorted and grabbed for her, but she was quicker, scrambled over his legs and got out of bed. “No use,” she mumbled, groping for her wand on the nightstand, “No use at all, except for…”

“Well, you can’t say it was bad.”

“No, it wasn’t, but right now I want… Where the hell is my wand?” Finally, her fingers encountered the smooth piece of wood. “Incandesco!” she pronounced, and instantly the room was lit by the shine of a few strategically-placed candles. “Now what—oh, cover yourself!” she snapped and threw him a pair of black silk boxers.

He merely snorted, put on the undergarment and looked around the room. Suddenly, his eyes went wide. “The door!” he hissed, “Didn’t you close the door?”

“Of course I—oh, shit!” The door was slightly ajar. “I could swear I put a locking spell…” Her wand hand went limp. “No, I didn’t! I forgot! Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Your contrition, dearest,” he said, flicking a strand of platinum hair out of his eye, “is as unnecessary as it is fake. But I have an idea who might have shrieked. Was it a woman’s voice?” Hermione nodded, throwing him a guilty look. “Wonderful. And how long are we going to remain like this?”

“Three more hours. Till five. Look, I’m really sorry—”

“I’d dress if I were you. I think I can hear footsteps.”

Glancing at the door like a frightened rabbit at a rattlesnake, Hermione started a frantic search for her clothes. She had just thrown on a dressing gown of maroon silk, when the door was flung open so violently that it crashed into the wall. A piece of plaster fell to the floor, where it shattered, covering the wood in small shards and flour-like dust.

In the doorframe, visibly shaken but powerful as ever, stood Albus Dumbledore. He was wearing a baby-blue flannel nightgown with a pattern of belly-dancing fairies. This, however, did not make the ancient wizard less awe-inspiring. McGonagall was standing close behind him, wand drawn and her mouth contracted into a fierce, thin line.

“What,” thundered Dumbledore, “are you doing at Hogwarts, when you should both be rotting in Azkaban?”

“I… we…” Hermione stammered, but obviously the Headmaster had meant his question to be merely rhetorical.

“Your wands!” he ordered, holding out his hand in an imperious gesture that brooked no resistance. The scantily-clad couple obeyed without saying a single word. “Follow me!”

Led by Dumbledore and closely watched by McGonagall who brought up the rear, they walked through the hallowed hallways of Hogwarts, their naked feet making soft tapping sounds on the flagstones. Even now, towards the end of July, the floor made Hermione’s toes curl with cold. The dressing gown didn’t warm her either, and she was grateful for the sheet of black hair covering her back almost down to her waist. It took the group about ten minutes to arrive in the dungeons, where they descended to a lower level than that of the Potions classroom. The Headmaster unerringly found his way through the maze of low-ceilinged corridors, and they stopped in front of a heavy iron door. “Inside!” Dumbledore barked.

The two nodded meekly and did as they had been told.

“You—” Dumbledore raised his hand and pointed at them—the flickering light of a torch, sitting in its sconce in the corridor wall behind him, turned his hair into a shimmering aura, so that he resembled the Wrathful God of the Old Testament, “—will stay in here. I shall deal with you in the morning.”

With an echoing clang, like the sound of an enormous gong, the door closed behind him. The bemused couple was encompassed by pitch darkness.

For a while, there was complete silence.

Then, a female giggle bubbled up in the blackness, closely followed by a chuckling baritone voice. “Come to think of it,” he said, “the look on their faces is almost worth spending the night on a cold stone floor.” He sat down gingerly. “Although it’s harder and colder than I thought. We might use your dressing gown as a blanket, what do you think?”

She clucked her tongue. “I’m naked under it.”

“Sounds very promising. Come on, give it to me.” She made no sound. “There’s no point trying to fool me, Hermione, you’re standing nearby. I can smell you.”

“All right,” her voice floated through the darkness, “But only if we use your boxers as a cushion.”

Soon afterwards, the Bloody Baron, who floated through the corridor during his 3 a.m. patrol, blushed a deep charcoal at the sounds he heard behind the iron door.

~~~

At a quarter to six, Albus Dumbledore, accompanied by his deputy, undid the wards, opened the heavy door and stepped into the cell where he had locked the unholy couple four hours ago.

His jaw fell. So did McGonagall’s.

“But… But… Lucius and… and Bellatrix… where are they?”

“Do you think I might have my wand back?” Severus Snape asked, completely ignoring the Headmaster’s crestfallen expression. “These boxers are at least two sizes too big for me and threaten to fall down to my ankles.”

McGonagall stepped forward. “Severus Snape and Hermione Granger Snape! Explain yourselves! Now!”

Her face suffused by a most becoming blush, Hermione fiddled with the sash of her dressing gown. “It was merely a game, Minerva. You know, Polyjuice Potion…Playing out fantasies…” She hung her head.

“Fantasies? Are you completely out of your respective minds? I might have killed you! You foolish, childish—” She broke off abruptly, eyes narrowing. “And why, pray, did you have to indulge your… fantasies in the Head Girl’s room?”

Snape, who was still trying to shorten the waistband of his boxers—without magic—was obviously in no mood for explanations. Hermione threw him a You’ll-Get-What’s-Coming-To-You-Once-This-Is-Over look and stuttered, “Well, it’s summer… I mean, it’s the holidays and… nobody’s here, so… er, we thought that… just for old times’ sake…”

Snape snorted.

Dumbledore giggled.

McGonagall’s eyes were suddenly on full-glare mode.

Hermione cringed.

“For old times’ sake?” McGonagall asked. Her voice was not much more than a whisper but all the more dangerous. “Severus, Hermione, does that mean you had a… a relationship while you were still teacher and student?”

Dumbledore patted her shoulder. “Just once, Minerva. They just did it once, the night before the final battle. Difficult to blame them, isn’t it? None of us thought we’d still be alive afterwards…”

Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, three faces turned towards him.

“Lemon Drop?” he said, offering a slightly crumpled paper bag. “There’s nothing like a Lemon Drop when at a loss for words…” His brows rose. “Nobody? Oh, well. You don’t know what you’re missing.” He popped one fat, yellow ball into his mouth. “I think I shall return to my bed,” he said, or at least that was what everybody thought he said—the Lemon Drop rendered his words quite unintelligible. “Minerva, would you be so kind as to call the Ministry and tell them we don’t need the Aurors after all?”

McGonagall stared at his retreating, now peacock-blue-velvet-covered back and nodded, still incapable of speech.

Snape stifled a huge yawn. “Seeing as how we’re already in the dungeons… A couple of hours in a real bed…”

Hermione, whose eyelids were drooping, nodded. “Absolutely. Should we—” She gestured towards McGonagall.

“Just give her time to get over the shock.” He took her hand and dragged her out of the cell and towards the stairs leading up to Mr. and Mrs. Snape’s quarters. While unlocking the door, he looked over his shoulder at his wife. “Don’t fret,” he said, seeing her worried expression, “she’ll forgive us.”

“Mhmm…” Hermione followed him through the living room into his study and into their bedroom, where she shed her dressing gown and crept into bed, snuggling close to him. “Severus?” she asked tentatively, after a long silence.

“Hmmm?”

“Do you think it would be dreadfully difficult to get some of Gilderoy Lockhart’s hair?”

“Only over my dead body.”

“Oh. Just plain old Severus and Hermione, then?”

“Exactly. No more games.”

“Sounds nice.”

“Indeed. Now be quiet, or I’ll put a Somniferus spell on you.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

Sleep overtook the two in the bed.