Hypnos

Chapter 4


DISCLAIMER:

This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Reviews are welcome.

~

“You fucking bastard!”

The Potions Master, with his preternaturally swift Slytherin reflexes for self-preservation, dodged, but not before Lupin’s fist had already impacted his jaw.

As Snape had expected, Lupin took Hermione’s seeming asphyxia rather badly. Indeed, it was lucky for Snape that he was in the company of several Slytherin sixth year students when Lupin found him in one of Hogwarts\' cloisters. For Remus didn’t need to turn into a wolf, it seemed, to become extremely dangerous. He had already broken three of the Slytherin team’oomsooms (“My new Cumulus!!!” cried Godfrey LeRenard in utter dismay) and broken or sprained roughly the same number of limbs and joints before Snape was able to trip him up and throw him against the wall, twisting Lupin’s arm up his back.

“Lucky I took those aikido lessons in Japan during my sabbatical. Perhaps I should take up wolf baiting too, though…”

“Son of a bitch,” growled Lupin, half his mouth pressed against the stone wall. “You almost killed her! I bet that’s what you’d have liked, eh, Snivellus? So she wouldn’t tell about your weekend escapades with your little Death Eater friends!”

“Better son of a bitch than son of a she-wolf, Remus.” Snape viciously pulled Lupin’s arm further up, until the werewolf furiously managed to to swivel his head around enough to actually bite his captor on the hand. With a yelp, Snape let him go and leapt back.

“Hell!!! Now I’ll get rabies!!! And I suppose you have fleas too, haven’t you, Wolfgang?”

“Severus! Remus! What on earth do you think you are doing?” McGonagall came practically running down the cloister, elbowing her way through the crowd of giggling Slytherins, furious Gryffindors, and bemused Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs who had gathered around the fighting professors.

Snape slapped some dust off his black gown and dignifiedly drew himself up again. “May I remind you, Minerva, that I am not a child anymore and there is no call for you to scold me for fighting in the playground. Of course, Wolfgang here was never really a child at all, so there’s even less reason for your fussing.”

Lupin would have lunged at Snape’s throat before he even finished the sentence, had not Minerva and two robust Slytherin Beaters interposed themselves.

“She almost choked, Minerva!” cried Lupin. ”What the hell was Albus thinking of, to leave her in the hands of this… sadistic maniac?”

“That was no choking, Remus,” said Snape coolly. “It was the wizarding equivalent of a grand mal attack. Heard of it? Didn’t think so. After all, they don’t ask too much of DADA teachers at Hogwarts these days…”

“Severus! That will be enough,” said Minerva. “And Remus, you can go off and wash that spittle out of your jacket. Merlin, as if we didn’t haveugh ugh with the children.”


~~~~~


Dumbledore was standing by Hermione’s bed in the hospital ward, watching her sleep.

“She’s all right, Albus,” said Snape, coming up behind him. “It was just a sort of… extreme acting out of an hysterical blind spot. Plus a reaction to several accumulated spells, probably. She’ll be fine. Really.”

Dumbledore turned, with an extremely worried look on his face. “Is it true what Remus told me, Severus? That she claimed to have seen you at a Dark Revel?”

Snape nodded.

“Well,” said Dumbledore. “Someone must have used polyjuice potion to look like you.”

“Gods know what depraved soul would want to do that,” muttered Snape.

Dumbledore couldn’t help but smile. “You can never plumb the depths of the depravity of a Death Eater.” He paused. “Or an ex-Death Eater.”

“Touché,” said Snape easily. “Though it seems to me that being a headmaster voluntarily is hardly the sanest choice a man can make in his life, at that.” He leoverover the edge of the bed and examined Hermione’s sleeping face intently. “I’ll have another session with her this afternoon, if that’s all right with you – I have Potions with the fourth grade Ravenclaws and Gryffindors, could you…”

“Of course.”

“Good.” Snape picked off a couple of long hairs from his sleeve, grumbling something about oversized dogs, and made his way towards the corridor. “I’ll see you at dinner, then, Albus. And you,” he turned slightly and addressed the bed, “I’ll see in half an hour, in my quarters.”

He left and shut the door behind him, leaving a perplexed Dumbledore staring at an equally disconcerted – and very much awake – Hermione.


~~~~~


“So, Miss Granger,” said Snape, picking up the teapot. “I assume you still like your tea strong. You used to like it so thick that one could stand a spoon in it, as I recall.”

“So, you are not going to put me to sleep straight away this time?” replied Hermione. She was finding herself increasingly tetchy about all this memory-recovering rigmarole. Which was a good sign, she supposed: at least she had energy to spare in getting irritated.

“Not straight away,” smirked Snape, pouring out blacblack almost-fluid into her cup.u dou don’t take sugar, do you?”

“As it happens, I do. Spent some time in Russia after graduating. Caught the habit of sweet tea.”

“Ah, I left my samovar at Snape Watering, more’s the pity. But it really is too large to lug all the way here from Suffolk. Even through the Floo.” He handed her a heavy cut-glass sugar bowl.

“So what is it you want from me, Professor? Surely you don’t intend me to believe that you bear my presence in your dungeon for the pleasure of my company – at least, not while I’m conscious and speaking.”

“Manners, Miss Granger,” chided Snape, but he was decidedly jovial. “I thought you’d outgrown your Gryffindor bluntness by now. Must have been an, alas, temporary effect of your weakness.”

“Well, I haven’t, and let me be even more blunt: what the hell do you want with me?”

“Why are you so angry with me, Miss Granger?” smiled Snape teasingly. “Whatever have I done to you in your short life to make you abme sme so?”

She said nothing, but only glared at him in silence, waiting. So he sighed and resigned himself to seriousness: “I’m keeping you awake for the time being, Miss Granger – and let me emphasize that for the time being –, because there are two things about you that intrigue me and I wish you to illuminate me in these respects. Preferably, while you are conscious. Firstly, I wish to know why on earth you became a double spy. If that is what you really became.”

He overrode Hermione’s heated protest with a sweep of his hand. “Come, come, Miss Granger. A brilliant Oxford scholar in the history of witchcraft at Amergin suddenly decides to leave everything to become a double agent for the Order? Dashing, but not very believable, even taking into account the native Gryffindor stupidity.”

“Gryffindor stupidity, as you call it, reaches further than you can possibly conceive, Professor Snape. Perhaps I realised that spending my life poring over the Malleus Maleficarum and other such fun literature wasn’t exactly what I wanted.”

Snape carefully placed his empty cup and the saucer on the table. “Never would I have guessed that the day would arrive when I would hear know-it-all Granger, the Gryffindor Brains, the Pride of Hogwarts, McGonagall’s Golden Girl, declare that she didn’t want to spend her life poring over books. I will have to mark this day. ” He cleaned his chin with a napkin. “But of course, you realise that I don’t swallow it.”

She shrugged and left her own cup on the table. “That’s your problem, not mine. Your question is answered. Now, can we proceed with whatever it is that you want to do today?”

“Not so quick, Miss Granger. Remember, I had another question for you.”

“Yes?” she said warily.

“This one’s fairly simple, I think.” He placed their cups on a tray, which he left on the ground for the house elves to fetch. Then he stood up and drew closer to her. Too close for her comfort. So close, in fact, that his black hair was getting into her eyes.

“Why, Miss Granger, is it,” he purred, “that you become so aroused when I put you under?”