The Harder They Fall

Neville swooped in for an exciting landing. He tumbled from the broom like a drunken carnival acrobat when he realized the braking charm had failed. The broom continued flying, clattering against the wall before falling quiescent to the floor.

Ginny dismounted a little more gracefully from her brakeless steed, with Neville’s outstretched hand to anchor her. She leapt from the broom and Neville swung her around, like some old-time swing dancer doing one of those flashy aerial moves. Ginny landed upright, practically stepping on Neville’s toes. He looked flushed and happy. The danger had added a bit of sparkle to his eyes. She was close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his body.

“Wow. That was some wild ride.” Neville’s grin was contagious.

Ginny knew she should say something, but wasn’t sure what. “Thanks for the assist.”

“Are you holding up okay? Do you need to sit down?” Neville switched from exhilarated to solicitous, putting his arm around her in case she needed support.

“I’m fine.” Ginny hastened to reassure him. She put her hand on his chest. “You’re such a sweet guy, Neville.”

His face fell. “Oh. Well I’d better help get you to the infirmary now.”

Ginny had never understood why being called sweet or nice was such an insult to boys. She figured it was the equivalent to telling a girl she had a nice personality, but wasn’t sure how it came to be like that. Ginny understood the lure of the bad boy, and had been taken in by it. But she’d been burnt quite badly by the ultimate bad boy, Tom Riddle. After that, sweet and nice moved way up on her list of desirable qualities for a boy to have. She was a little annoyed with Neville’s reaction.

“What’s wrong with being sweet? You’re also nice, helpful, trustworthy and quite good-looking. I hope that we can be friends.” Ginny bit her tongue as every word that escaped her traitorous mouth gave Neville the impression that she was trying to let him down easy. She suddenly realized she did want to let him down easy… she wanted to let him down easy onto the floor and climb on top of him. “What’s wrong with that?”

Neville took it like a man. “Nothing, Ginny. I think you’re sweet too. And I hope we already are friends.”

“Of course we are, Neville!” Ginny wanted to stamp her foot with frustration, but she was standing so close she would have mangled Neville’s toes quite badly by doing so. She settled for pushing against his shoulder. “I wouldn’t want to have sex with someone who wasn’t already a friend.”

“Excuse me?” Neville held himself very, very still. He didn’t want to frighten her away, but didn’t realize she was past frightening.

Ginny sighed and rolled her eyes. “Don’t be so thick. I like sweet boys. You’re sweet. Why do you have a problem with this?”

Neville’s over-stimulated brain revved a couple of times before processing this information. His smile returned.

As Neville leaned in to kiss Ginny, Madame Hooch swerved into view. With a rebel yell, she hauled the broom around and aimed herself at the couple.

“Yeeeee haaaaa!” Hooch screamed in delight as the shuddering Silver Arrow brought her home.

Diving for cover, Ginny and Neville were too busy to notice the delirious look on Hooch’s face. The flying teacher dismounted with the ease of many years’ practice, retaining a tight grip on the broom’s handle.

“Well, that was certainly an experience I will not forget quickly.” Madame Hooch smiled broadly. “Now, to the infirmary with you, young Weasley!”

***

Hermione placed the last vial of anti-lust potion carefully on a high shelf. It was unlikely to be damaged there even if someone suffered another violent outburst.

She turned to face Severus Snape, the man who had just kissed her. He was staring.

Hermione wasn’t sure how best to break the tension, but she couldn’t bear his scrutiny. The silence gave her too much time to think her own unanswerable thoughts. Why was he staring at her? Was she an awful kisser? Was she an irresistible sight? Did he have regrets? What were they? Did he like her maybe just a little bit? Was her crush a lost cause? Was she going to feel this aching without him for the rest of her life? She pushed it all aside for the one question they had a shot at answering. “So. Pumpkin juice or vodka?”

“We’ll continue testing the pumpkin juice.” Snape sighed slightly and turned away from Hermione. “I did not drink any of the vodka, neither did the Headmistress. But, when I checked with her before coming up here, we were both suffering the same symptoms you were.”

Hermione braced herself and nodded. “Those symptoms being?”

She prodded the problem deliberately. If she could reduce this messy set of circumstances to a logic problem maybe she could help solve it. The bookworm in her understood logic problems. Hermione did not really understand anything else about this night, other than she’d been kissed and she wanted it to happen again.

“Arousal.” Snape’s answer startled her. His back was turned and he was pouring more pumpkin juice into a goblet. “Intense physical arousal.”

“Only physical?” Hermione tried not to think about what that must mean. She composed mental notes, trying to maintain her clinical objectivity. Severus Snape’s arousal, physical symptoms include sparkling eyes, slight tremula of the hands, impressively thick and hard arousal tenting trousers, voice drop of half an octave, that growl…

“Physical arousal accompanied by certain emotional longings.”

Hermione gulped. “Describe them, please?”

“I cannot answer for the Headmistress or yourself. My longings included a desire to be in physical proximity to certain people, certain mental images of those people and a slight euphoria when in proximity to yo—these people.” Cold, clinical and calculating: just the response one would expect from Professor Snape. Hermione could see his hands were shaking.

She had one last question. “Can I help with testing the pumpkin juice?”

Snape nodded and handed her a sample of the drink. “Please test this sample for the presence of bladderwort. If negative, continue to test for essence of rosemary.”

The tests were simple, routine. Hermione could do them in her sleep. She tried to ignore the man working next to her, but her mind would drift in his direction every once in a while. She still craved his touch, wanted to be near him, but the raw physical desires were overlaid now with new longings. She wanted to know what he thought, what he felt. She wanted to hear about his childhood, his work, his time as a student, his family, what he liked to read, what he liked to eat, what was important to him.

She snuck a glance back at where Harry and Draco were sitting, curled up ar eac each other. They seemed to alternate kissing and talking with an inordinate amount of affectionate touching. It was rather sweet, actually. Why couldn’t she and Snape do that?

“Quit gawking, Miss Granger. Have you finished the test?”

“Nearly. There.” The pumpkin juice frothed and subsided, testing visibly negative for bladderwort. “That would be a negative response. I’ll test for rosemary now.”

Snape nodded.

“Professor?” Hermione used his title deliberately, prefacing a request for knowledge rather than a comment for him to take out of context. “What if the pumpkin juice tests negative for anything but pumpkin juice?”

“Then my job is complete, having positively proven that this evening’s disaster was not caused by a potion.”

Hermione thought about this. “So, we’d have to call in a cursebreaker?”

“That would be the next most likely course of action.” Snape did not look up from his work.

“Most cursebreakers are awfully high profile. Won’t that bring in a lot of bad press for the school?” Hermione knew what wizard journalists were like, having had more than her fair share of exposure to the public eye, thanks to both her own abilities and her friendship with Harry Potter.

“Word will get out anyway, if we do not have this solved by the time the train leaves in the morning.” Professor Snape turned to regard his former pupil. “You are not stupid, Miss Granger, regardless of what I may have said to you in the past. You should understand the consequences of this better than most.”

Hermione nodded. “Minister Fudge hates that Hogwarts is not his to control. He couldn’t do anything permanent while Dumbledore was still alive, but McGonagall hasn’t even been Headmistress a month. Any trouble now could provide the Minister with more than enough reason to ask the Board of Regents to remove her and put his own creature in the Headmaster’s office.”

She stared at her sample of pumpkin juice, willing it to reveal its secrets.

Snape saw what she was doing and chuckled. “Staring at it won’t help. Test for the presence of myrtle.”

“Moaning Myrtle usually stays in the girl’s bathroom, but if you think it will help!” Hermione followed her joke with a quick wave of the wand and a spoken command to test for non-corporeal presences.

Snape smiled at her moment of whimsy, feeling unaccountably warmed by the attempt to lighten the uneasy discussion. He was going to respond with some offhand comment, something lightheartedly disapproving so they could continue their banter. But the floating sigil above Hermione’s sample of pumpkin juice stopped him cold.

“What is that?” Surprise roughened his voice.

“I don’t know!” Hermione hated to admit a gap in her knowledge. “It came from the pumpkin juice.”

“Do you realize what you’ve done?”

Hermione cringed back. “What did I do wrong?”

“Nothing wrong.” Snape gripped her shoulders and shook her gently. “Very right! Hermione! Now we know where to look!” He wanted to laugh at her confused look. He wanted to kiss her fear away. “It’s probably not a potion, but now we can confidently blame the pumpkin juice.” He smiled, leaning forward, angling his head for the correct approach.

“Blame the pumpkin juice, then.” Hermione’s lips softened and parted slightly as she tilted her face up toward him.

With an impeccable sense of timing, Argus Filch arrived, escorting Headmistress Minerva McGonagall. Mrs. Norris accompanied the pair.

***

A/N:

And the winning answer of “Witch Week” by Diana Wynne Jones was provided first by iccle mousie the potions ingredient, who scores 50 points and a big wet sloppy kiss from Snape.

Runner up is MMiercoles, who scores 25 points and a big wet sloppy kiss from Chrestomanci.

Honorable mention goes to XxphoenixX who gets three points for effort, and a big wet sloppy kiss from Ron.

And friendly egg kisses from me to everyone who has reviewed so far. Thank you! Thank you!