Seven Preposterous Things

The world is crazier and more of it than we think.
Incorrigibly plural.
-Snow
Louis MacNeice


Her faith was unshakable. Hermione knew without question that there were any number of things worse than being caught rifling through her Potions master's private things. Nonetheless, she failed spectacularly to bring any one of them to mind.

It was probably the result of shock. Not only was Snape looming over her giving his best B movie vampire glare but he also appeared to be wearing a shroud.

No.

He was wearing a...

That couldn't be right.

He appeared to be dressed in someone's granddad's old nightgown. The material was so thin she could clearly see his dark nipples through the threadbare material. His knees were decidedly knobbly.

Hermione understood she hadn't taken a breath since she saw he had come into the room, but somehow she couldn't bring her lungs to cooperate.

Then Snape took a strange staggering step towards her, and she realized his fist was clenched round the neck of a bottle of fire whiskey. The label as unmistakable. In his other hand was a fiercely smoking cigarette.

She finally found the wherewithal to draw a breath and nearly retched at the smell of him.

He jolted closer but paid more attention to the yellowing paper in her hand than he did to the fact that this was perhaps the last place a student belonged on a Friday night. Or was it a Saturday morning?

As if determined to shock and ignore her both at the same time, Professor Snape attempted to snatch the aging copy of The Daily Prophet out of her hands. His clearly impaired reflexes couldn't quite manage the logistics, though, and the pages scattered about him in a circle.

If anything, Hermione was at more of a loss than before, watching Professor Snape crawling on his hands and knees gathering the papers. He had let go of neither his whiskey nor his cigarette.

As Hermione saw it she had two choices, she could run or she could sneak away quietly. He hardly seemed to have noticed her. If she ran she might remind him of her presence, he might even see it as provocation. She reasoned it would probably be for the best if she left as discreetly as possible.

She truly intended to get out of the dungeon as quickly as caution allowed. But then, blearily assembling the pages, he spoke, addressing no one in particular.

"Toby was a Teddy," he said and brought the noxious bottle straight to his lips.

"The entry says he was a Muggle, but Toby was a Teddy, dyed in the wool. Which is to say... which is to say..." he seemed to struggle a bit with his thoughts. Apparently the answer to that was two more swallows of whiskey.

Hermione felt as though her legs had been petrified to the spot. She could not leave while he was speaking.

"Toby was a Muggle but not... run-of-the-mill... the mill... the mill. I hate bloody mills. The only thing worse than mills are mill towns." Snape began to laugh and it was not a pleasant sound. "The sanctimonious bastards will tell you the best things in life are free, but I'll wager they never had the pleasure growing up poor. Not even honest working poor either. They get a certain amount of condescending respect... the fools. There is a special sort of poverty reserved for the children of incompetent ne'er do wells. If one is going to... oh bugger," with that Professor Snape began frantically patting the place where an errant spark had fallen into the folds of his night gown.

It was Hermione's chance to escape, but true to form she thumbed her nose at the fates for offering her a way out and stood fast, eager to hear what was coming next.

For a disappointing moment she was afraid it was going to be snoring because her professor stretched out full length on the stone floor leaving his bottle unattended.

"He called her ‘Mad Eileen' when she started to come round to the pub he and his so-called mates used to haunt... she had no idea how Muggles lived. I'm not sure how it began. I imagine she simply saw him one day and followed him in; not unlike the proverbial moth to the flame. She didn't know how to render herself inconspicuous and she was not... exactly... alluring." Snape threw one arm over his eyes and brought the cigarette to his lips with the other.

"I believe she tried to gain his interest using legitimate methods, at first. She was so hopelessly naïve, she transfigured herself the whole Teddy get-up, trousers and everything," Snape said, his words followed by a cough.

Hermione tried to imagine the girl whose picture she had seen obsessing over a Muggle Teddy boy. Meanwhile, Snape blew three heart-shaped smoke rings which somehow broke jaggedly, one after the other.

"Of course, he was quite the lady's man; why else would she want him. The female of the species were drawn to Toby Snape the way flies are drawn to shit. Eileen didn't have a chance in hell. Or she wouldn't have if she wasn't a witch," Snape said.

"Old Toby would shag almost anything, but he drew the line at mad girls who dressed like boys and carried an old stick everywhere they went," Snape said.

"What a stupid cunt," he said and sat up, reaching for his bottle and knocking it over in the process. Undeterred, he drank what little he hadn't managed to spill.

"Love potions may work to bind an unwilling mate, but it doesn't give a bloody fool like Toby Snape a profession. You can't raise a family on the sort of money a second rate thief like my father made. It's the fence who cleans up in the end. And love potions won't keep a man from beating a woman if that's the sort of shit he is. No, a man beats a woman because he wants to rule something he knows he can't. Love is immaterial.

"One hardly need say the Princes were horrified. But Eileen would not leave her Toby. Perhaps she was mad after all. Toby tried to go more than once, but the magic she used bound him to her. The torment was mutual I suppose."

He suddenly seemed to remember the paper before him, half soaked with fire whiskey; he dabbed half heartedly at it with the hem of his gown giving Hermione full view of his lack of under garments. It was an image she was never going to successfully scour from her retinas.

"Still, it wasn't all fists and tears and bowls of cold gruel in the corner. They both loved Elvis." Snape closed his eyes and began, to Hermione's mortification, to sing. With his grotty greying night gown up around his waist and his bits hanging out.

They were too big to be called bits, in her opinion, but if she used a more descriptive term her head was going to explode.

"Love me tender, love me truuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuue," Professor Snape sang, swaying back and forth. He was fairly on key for someone as pissed as he was.

"Who are you?" he asked, as if she had just now entered the room.

"Hermione Granger, sir," she answered keenly aware he had yet to cover himself.

Rather than respond he cocked his head, looking confused, "Why is that name familiar to me?"

"I'm a student, sir. I've had you for five years of Potions and one year of Defense Against the Dark Arts," she said, incredulous. While she wasn't under the delusion Professor Snape liked her at all, she did think he ought to know who she was. He was unquestionably very drunk indeed.

"Oh, Potter's little girlfriend, aren't you?" he asked, his brow knitting.

"I should say not!" Hermione lost all shame at being caught sneaking about the dungeon by a half-naked school master at the accusation. "Harry and I are just good friends!"

"As if I care who you lot shag; Potter can bugger Weasley for all I care," Snape said wincing. "What are you doing here?"

"I believe Harry," perhaps she ought to clarify that in Professor Snape's current state, "Harry Potter, that is, sir. I have reason to believe he is in possession of a book that may have, at one time, belonged to you, sir."

"I know Potter has my old Potions book," Professor Snape said rubbing his temples and looking wobbly. "There's no need to address me as though I were the Queen."

"Students owe their school masters a certain level of respect, sir," Hermione said, trying to avoid looking Snape in the eye while not allowing her gaze to wander below the area where she guessed his navel to be.

"Is that why I found you snooping around in my personal rooms?"

Hermione would have answered that but Snape was on the floor again, and she made her way to the door.

Professor Snape's inimitable voice rang out once more, stopping her just as she was about to slip away.

"Get my fags and a new bottle of whiskey," he called. "I require fags and whiskey."

Against her better judgment, Hermione turned around; clearly, her much trumpeted common sense had been left in her other robes.

"I can't. I have no idea where they are, sir," she said.

"In my bedroom, you silly cow," he sneered.

It wasn't the sort of order Hermione had it in her to resist. Quick calculations told her she was practically being required to look through his things.

"Alcohol," his sonorous voice called out. "Bring me alcohol!"

Hermione called out Lumos in the professor's bedroom and immediately wished she hadn't. The scant illusions she had managed to cling to over the past half an hour were dispelled when she saw what a tip his room was. The floor was covered with piles of black robes reeking of sweat and asphodel, and there were books everywhere: on the floor, on the bed, and three on the dressing table.

A quick survey of the shabby bedclothes showed a third of a bacon sandwich and a smear of mustard across the pillowcase.

Forget a Lumos spell; what Hermione needed was a sherpa guide. Some places were too filthy to enjoy a good snoop.

In the end, the alcohol turned out to be with the cigarettes inside his desk drawer. What sort of person kept loose cigarettes and quills jumbled together?

"Get a move on!" the voice called from the other room.

It took her some time to locate a glass, but Hermione Jane Granger was not going to be complicit in further drinking from the bottle. In the meantime, her professor launched into a medley of skiffle tunes.

"Thank God," Professor Snape sighed when she returned laden with provisions. "I was dying for another smoke. It's the only thing that drives away the stench of failure."

"It can't be that bad, sir," Hermione said gently.

Professor Snape stuck his tongue between his lips and made a noise that Hermione usually associated with either one of the twins' pranks or the hind end of a hippogriff.

"What ever you're imagining, I can confidently assure you it's much worse," he said dourly.

"Really, sir, you know what the Chinese say, they say ‘when we see our troubles coming we say ‘they are unbearable' but when they come, we bear them'. You'll be able to play your part. I'm sure of it, sir," Hermione said.

"Ancient Chinese wisdom, oh goody," the Professor glared at her as spoke. "More philosophy is exactly what I needed, especially from a spotty faced little swot. Now all my problems are solved."

It was true; Hermione did have a rather horrid spot right in the corner of her left nostril, but that was no excuse for him to be nasty. It wasn't her fault she was too concerned with war to spend too much time on her complexion. She'd forgotten he didn't need an excuse; he was Professor Snape.

"Did it ever occur to your brain of great repute that I might be unhappy precisely because I know I will ‘do my part' as you say? Or that I might not even be sure what my bloody part is?" Snape snarled, waving his unlit cigarette wildly.

Hermione knelt closer and lit it carefully with the end of her wand.

Suddenly a strange closed look passed over the Professor's face.

"Are you certain you aren't Potter's girlfriend?" he asked.

"Absolutely, sir," she said "I'm too busy."

"Allow me to rephrase the question. Have you ever observed any signs of sexual or romantic interest on Potter's part?" he asked, sucking hard on his cigarette for punctuation.

"No, sir, never." Hermione was getting rather tired of this line of discussion.

"Has anyone else noted Potter carrying a torch for you?" Snape asked, his eyes slitted.

Really, this had gone on quite long enough.

Hermione looked the drunk man straight in the eye, and the words came out in a torrent.

"No, no one has ever even suggested such a preposterous thing except for Cho Chang, and that's because she's a complete nutter."

Snape was now giving her a hard look indeed. "I have found Miss Chang to be eminently reliable."

It was now Hermione's turn to imitate a gaseous Buckbeak.

The effect was ruined by her smelly, inebriated professor grabbing her and ramming his tongue, rather sloppily she'd like to add, into her mouth.

On the whole, it was not impressive. She hoped the clumsiness could be attributed to drink.

"Well, it doesn't matter now," Professor Snape said, looking utterly pleased with himself. "I've had first crack at you."

Hermione quickly straightened her robes and, rather than grant him the satisfaction of her running, walked briskly out of the dungeons.

Behind her a voice rang out in singsong chant.

"I snogged Potter's girlfriend. I snogged Potter's girlfriend."


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Author's Note: Thanks to Shiv for Beta