Who Do You Want?

Who Do You Want?


This story is in response to the WIKTT \"Celebration, Shyness & Smut\" Challenge issued by fvnesscafe.


Fvnesscafe’s Challenge: It\'s the summer after the Dream Team\'s seventh year. There is a big party at 12 Grimmauld Place because Harry has defeated the Dark Lord at last. Ron, Harry, Ginny, Draco Malfoy, Lupin, Tonks, Dumbledore, and McGonagall have all lived through the war and are among those having fun. There are couples (slash and het welcome at this party) and drinking and dancing going on (music is of your choice)! Hermione and Snape are natural wallflowers and somehow end up having sex with each other while the celebration of Voldemort\'s demise is going on!


Other challenge notables by fvnesscafe: Okay I listed what I\'d like to see the rest is up to you. You can start out right at the party or lead up to it! This can be a comedy, a drama, even have some angst if you want, but NO tragedies! Don\'t care what happens in the story. I like happy endings! You can make this a nice short smut PWP fic or can have a long drawn out story if your muse takes you there. But the beginning of Sev and Mione\'s \"relationship\" doesn\'t start until that night.


A/N: I was going for PWP smut, but my plotless fic ran away with from me, making rude gestures at me as it turned into a soppy romance. So if the plot seems weak, too bad.


Also, Snape goes a bit OOC during the story, but I have my reasons as they are listed at the end of this fic. You\'ve been warned, so no flaming….please.


Besides, I wrote this fic very shortly after I discovered HG/SS, so cliches abound, including Virgin!Hermione, and sexually inexperienced - yet SexGod!Snape who gets a bit soft. This was before I started learning the snarky subtleties of Snape. And I just HAD to get them in the sack as soon as possible. Like I said, this one got away from me…the reigns broke…HONESTLY!!! (Cursed hormones, mumble, mumble, mumble.) But if you are looking for lemony smuttiness, you\'ve come to the right fic.


I must thank Mysteria for her beta work on the first two chapters and June W for beta work on the whole fic. I originally wrote this during the first month of my pregnancy in November 2003 and had no energy or drive to finish cleaning this up until now. And now…FINALLY (after over a year), the beta\'ed version of this fic.


Disclaimer: With this disclaimer, I proclaim that I do not own any of the concepts, ideas or intellectual property related to Harry Potter or anything else created by J.K. Rowling. No money is being made from this endeavor.

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Chapter One
\"One Is The Loneliest Number\"


Diagon Alley was filled with witches and wizards celebrating the end of the war to end all wars. Voldemort had died today. The-Boy-Who-Lived had finally fulfilled his destiny by killing him. People rejoiced that the darkness had finally been lifted from their lives.


In honor of the day, the Weasley twins had given away every last firework they had in stock. Rockets and sparklers in the shape of butterflies, dragons, owls, and hippogriffs reigned down from the skies all over Britain that night. Based on strange reports, Muggle newscasters reported that an experimental fireworks factory had blown up, but that didn\'t explain the sightings all over the country.


With Weasley\'s Wizarding Wheezes closed along with every other shop in Diagon Alley, except those dispensing alcohol, Bill, Charlie, and the twins decided to celebrate by getting drunk off their arses and shouting themselves hoarse, singing bawdy songs and kissing random witches who passed them along the narrow street. They blended in with every other witch and wizard who decided to revel in the same manner as them.


In the years to come, this would be the day wizardkind everywhere would celebrate. The Ministry would eventually declare an official holiday complete with parades and boring public speeches, and shopkeepers would hold “Victory Day sales.” But that night — just hours after the Dark Lord’s death — everyone danced and sang with abandon, flush with genuine relief at being alive.


Harry wanted to celebrate with his friends privately at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. He knew if he ventured out into the wizarding world that night, every witch and wizard would want to shake his hand — or worse, to bow down before him in reverence. He never wanted all the attention, and now that he had defeated Voldemort, he just wanted to be with his closest friends.


In the house that Harry inherited from Sirius Black, some of the surviving members of the Order congregated to throw a party involving a little music and a lot of alcohol.


Draco and Ginny, in a state of partial undress, were already snogging on the couch like two horny Nifflers. Ron, oblivious to his sister being willingly ravaged on the couch, was talking with Harry about his career as a Seeker for some professional Quidditch team. Occasionally, Ron would make wide gestures with his arms and spill some of his Muggle bitters on the floor, while insisting that Harry let the Chudley Cannons get first draft pick of him. Harry’s eyes were already glazed over from some Firewhisky, so he merely nodded at Ron while he and everyone else in the room enjoyed viewing Draco and Ginny’s demonstration on fucking while still wearing trousers. Remus and Tonks were dancing in a clumsy drunken manner to the music coming in over the Wizarding Wireless Network, while Albus and Minerva were in the kitchen playing a drinking game involving bouncing sickles into a shot glass without the use of magic. There were some more people in the house, but they too had gone off as couples.


Hermione surveyed the party from a dim corner of the living room and watched as everyone paired off. Clutching her large tumbler of fizzing alcohol, she stood sullenly as her eyes swept the room once more.


The cleverest witch in a century did not feel like celebrating at all. She could only focus on all those she knew who did not live to see this day — Seamus Finnigan, Dean Thomas, Susan Bones, and the Patel twins, among many others.


What caused Hermione to feel empty and useless was that she felt she had no part in the downfall in Voldemort. She had long dreamed that she would somehow find the answer to bring down the Dark Lord — a complicated potion, a long-forgotten spell, a new spell. In the end, it was an answer so simple that it took Ron to figure it out. Sweet and simple Ron, the redhead who couldn\'t charm his way out of a paper bag if it wasn\'t for Hermione\'s notes he copied back at Hogwarts.


Feeling bitter, thinking that she had wasted her seventh year by constantly worrying over her N.E.W.T.s while Harry and Ron were off figuring out how to kill Voldemort, Hermione slunk upstairs in hope of some solitude.


After drinking four champagne cocktails and now working on her fifth, she wandered around the house until she finally found the upstairs study and slipped in, hoping the rising tide of despair would not wash her away.


What she mostly wanted to get away from was the constant reminder that she was not just alone, but lonely.


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He knew he should feel elated, relieved, or even giddy, but Severus could find nothing to be happy about. The war was finally over, and Harry Potter had saved the day once again. James Potter\'s progeny had now been elevated from The-Boy-Who-Lived into a walking deity.


All those years of working as a spy for the Order and for what? Only to suffer countless doses of the Cruciatus Curse, experience a few brushes with death, and still contribute nothing towards the end of his former master. Severus felt like a useless pawn. He thought that it would have been better if he had just disappeared after the Dark Lord\'s first fall, to have never been a pariah, to be scorned and eyed with constant suspicion.


\'The Snape family name will never burn bright again,\' he thought solemnly.


He had firmly protested against Albus\' request to attend the party, yet somehow the Headmaster finagled him into coming. But instead of sitting downstairs with the exuberant and drunken revelers, Severus sat soberly in the upstairs study, contemplating a future without the shadow of Voldemort looming over him.


What purpose did his life have anymore? He could no longer redeem himself through service to the Order now that Voldemort was vanquished. There was no way for him to continue washing away the sins of his Death Eater life before turning spy. Now he was merely a dour Potions Master, condemned to teach generation after generation of insipid children who seemed to get more obtuse every year.


Wallowing in the doubt of his own self-worth, Severus ignored the sound of the door opening and closing behind him, as he instead continued studying the fire that was burning lazily before his eyes.


\'Probably a pair of overly hormonal teenagers looking for some privacy to shag,\' he guessed. Those teenagers would soon find this room currently inhabited by the “vile greasy bat.” He hoped his mere presence would drive them away.


He was wrong; it was not a pair of would-be shaggers. He heard only a single pair of feet shuffle across the carpeted floor towards the couch positioned between the room’s two wingback chairs, one of which he was occupying. The movements did not sound like a person in full capacity of their functions. His perception was confirmed when there was a soft thump of a body landing on the couch next to him.


Severus turned his head to see who had invaded his private sanctuary of seclusion. There sat Hermione Granger, glassy-eyed and looking about as chipper as he felt. Figuring she was about to pass out, he turned his attentions back to the fire before them. If she fell on the floor, he might consider levitating her back onto the couch, but only if he was feeling generous.


He noted the tumbler containing some alcoholic concoction still clutched in her hand, and he wondered how many more of those she had drunk during the night. Expecting the alcohol to loosen her tongue, he braced himself for the onslaught of questions that would soon tumble forth from her mouth, but none came.


For fifteen minutes he sat there discomfited by her presence, waiting for her to speak.


Over the past two years, Hermione had tempered her know-it-all attitude and began to sit back and watch life and answers unfold before her, drawing the conclusions out slowly like a fishing line from the water. It took the death of Harry\'s godfather to teach her to shut-up, listen, and observe. She felt that she was partially at fault for the fiasco at the Department of Mysteries. Analyzing the situation in her head over and over again that summer afterwards, she realized that perhaps if she stopped trying to prove how smart she was and instead paid attention, she might just notice important things that would keep other people from getting killed. She had since discarded her usual manner of dropping a net in and scooping up everything in one giant catch with her blatant questions. Subtlety through careful observation had become Hermione\'s modus operandi in her sixth and seventh years at Hogwarts.


Conditioned by her first five years of incessant questions and a lone arm waving in the air, Severus had never noticed Hermione\'s slow transformation from annoying student to quiet studious woman. It wasn\'t until he heard a clock chime somewhere in the house, marking the hour, that it dawned on him that it had been over a year since she had asked him a single question. Whether it was with business for the Order or in the classroom, he realized that she had stopped being the bossy, overbearing witch with all the answers; instead, she had become the one who paid attention and absorbed every detail and trivial nuance.


Wishing to be rid of her so he could relax once again in his own pity, he finally spoke. \"Why aren\'t you down with there with everyone else, glorifying Potter?\"


He hoped his terse attitude and acerbic tongue would drive her out of the room. Instead, she continued to sit there, staring at the fire. As he began to wonder if she had passed out, he finally saw out of the corner of his eye some movement. She downed the last of the contents of her glass, then continued to remain still, as the light of the fire flickered over her features in a dance of light and shadow. The silence in the room engulfed them in a cocoon.


\"How do you deal with it?\" Hermione asked in a thick whisper.


\"With what, Miss Granger? I may be skilled in Occlumency, but I am not a mind reader,\" he snapped.


\"Loneliness.\"


With that one word, Severus felt the world shatter about him, falling away in a thousand shards.


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A/N: For a classic champagne cocktail, place a sugar cube at the bottom of a glass, pour a small amount of Angostura bitters over the cube, add a splash of brandy, fill the glass to the top with champagne, and add a curled zest of lemon. As my brother once said to me, \"That\'s a hooker\'s drink.\" Yeah, but they taste so good.