Love is Out to Get Me

-Like the movie we are basing the challenge on, the basic plot should be as follows: Either Hermione or Severus is stuck in a time loop, forced to relive a single day over and over again, until they get it right.

-The story *must* be SS/HG ~ any rating, any length, any genre.

-Groundhog's Day (the movie or the holiday) must be mentioned by at least one character.

-Someone must let go of their inhibitions over one human vice. (Giving into gluttony/greed/etc, for one day or moment)

-The person stuck must die at least three times.

-A dancing Groundhog must appear.

-One of the Characters Should Say:

"I can't believe it's not butter!"

"Im a God. I'm not the God, I dont think..."

"It's not a purse, it's a magical bag!"

and/or

"Okay, Tinky Winky." (Its a Tellytubby reference.)


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Love is Out to Get Me - Part 1/4

My subjects are Severus Snape, Potions Master at Hogwarts, and Hermione Granger, Professor of Arithmancy and Ancient Runes. My accomplices are Ginny Weasley, Professor of Divination and longtime friend of Professor Granger; Remus Lupin, Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, former romantic interest of Professor Granger, and longtime acquaintance of Professor Snape; and Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts and interloper extraordinaire. Our plan is slightly illegal, no point in denying it. We're on the outs with the Ministry anyway, so we're willing to risk it as everyone (everyone meaning Weasley, Lupin, and Dumbledore) is convinced that Professors Snape and Granger are perfectly suited. As for me, Alastor Moody, Auror and friend to Weasley, Lupin, and Dumbledore, I'm here to make sure things don't get out of hand due to anybody's daring nerves and tendency toward grand gestures. They are a bunch of Gryffindors with a Plan, after all.

Maybe I should fill you in on the Plan. Last Saturday was a disaster, a complete and utter disaster in Weasley and Lupin's campaign to unite Snape and Granger. Nobody came off worse than Professor Granger (and that's saying something--Snape was in rough shape at the end of the day.) She won't even look at him anymore, and rightly so, if I may state my opinion frankly.

It all started at the weekly Saturday morning staff meeting. Professor Dumbledore had been receiving complaints from the teachers about the students, and from the prefects, on behalf of the students, about the teachers. It was becoming an epidemic--students not turning in their homework (or being assigned too much homework, depending on whose side you're on.) The prefects had been filing serious complaints that their professors assigned schoolwork like there were no other classes to study for (can't say I don't sympathize with the students in this case), and that there wasn't enough time to finish everything. After a lot of fruitless discussion in the staff room, Professor Dumbledore tried to wrap up the meeting by suggesting that it wouldn't be a bad idea for the professors to tone down the work load a bit, particularly Snape and Granger. Normally Professor Snape is the picture of self-control, but he lost his temper. He sputtered and bellowed at Dumbledore, Granger also sputtered and bellowed at Dumbledore, and since neither of them got any kind of satisfactory response out of him, they turned on each other.

Now, I wasn't even there, but I've heard Lupin and Weasley recount it so many times in the past week that I can tell you it went like this:

"Potions are an essential branch of magic, and this school will have failed the students if they leave here without a competence in the subject. If they are so dunderheaded that it requires all of their free time to do the assigned reading, then so be it! Perhaps if Professor Granger didn't assign so many frivolous Runes, they would have more time to spend on Potions," Snape said.

"For your information, there is nothing frivolous about my classes; they are far more useful than yours. I don't know how anybody could be expected to learn anything with the way you lurk about and insult anyone who dares ask a question. It's no wonder you assign all that extra reading, otherwise they wouldn't know anything!" Granger retorted.

"Because I refuse to mollycoddle students, there is not a fifth year in this school that cannot brew a Mandrake Restorative Draft. There are fully-qualified wizards who could not brew a Restorative Draft if their lives depended on it! Can you say the same about your classes? I seem to recall you telling me last week that your upper level Arithmancy students have no more skill than the third years!"

She glared at him. "I told you that in confidence, it wasn't meant for you to blurt out at a staff meeting! And you know very well that fully-qualified wizards who can't brew Restorative Drafts are idiots. It is not that extraordinary-"

"Runes and Arithmancy are? They are hardly better than Divination. You squander your abilities. Codswallop is codswallop, even when it comes to your precious--"

With that Granger left the room, red-faced and nearly knocking over her chair in the process, and disappeared until the afternoon Quidditch match. She even skipped lunch.

Professor Weasley was positively irate over Snape's assessment of Divination; she looked like Molly Weasley the Younger (which she is, now that I think about it) when she told me the story. "Can you believe he said that? The absolute nerve. At first I hoped Hermione would never forgive him, I mean, he has such an awful way about him, but Hermione has been nothing but miserable. Don't you wish we could go and take it all back?"

That was when Lupin spoke up. Dumbledore tells me that he was quite smitten with Professor Granger when she first started teaching at Hogwarts, but things didn't work out between them. Granger never seemed as enthusiastic as he did about the relationship. Even-tempered, sensible man that he is (for a Gryffindor, anyway), he wants Professor Granger to find romantic bliss elsewhere, if she can (he rather fancies Professor Weasley now, if you want my honest opinion), and (typical Gryffindor) he's always up for a Grand Scheme. "I don't know of any way that we could take the whole day back," his eyes sparkled, "but there might be a way to make Severus go back and fix it." That was it for him; he was now Involved.

The argument in the staff room was nothing compared to what happened at the Quidditch match later in the day. It was Gryffindor versus Slytherin. Madam Hooch had refused to referee anymore Gryffindor-Slytherin matches after a game that ended in a tie when every single member of both teams was injured and couldn't play anymore. Unlike Dumbledore, she did not feel that the injuries themselves and the calling off of the match were proper punishments for the unsportsmanlike conduct that had caused the injuries. Until she saw more Gryffindor and Slytherin Quidditch players in detention, polishing the school's brooms and pulling weeds from the Quidditch pitch, she was having nothing more to do with Gryffindor-Slytherin matches. (If you ask me, she and Filch ought to see more of each other. There's an example of Hogwarts' staff members being perfectly suited.) Professor Snape was the referee of today's match, and Merlin did he look surly. He was like a hawk with his humongous nose and squinted eyes, but instead of looking for small mammals to eat, he was looking for fouls to penalize. I was a bit amused when I heard about the last Gryffindor-Slytherin match, the one with all the injuries, so Professor Dumbledore had invited me to this match to sit in the staff box with him and the other professors, in case there was anything to see. For a while it seemed like there wouldn't be, what with Snape's constant vigilance in the air (good man). Oh, there was some blurting, some blagging, and excessive use of elbows, but nothing like the blatching I'd heard took place in the last match. Of course, that was at first. When the score was 150-30, in favor of Gryffindor, two of the Slytherin chasers made a Keeper Sandwich out of the Gryffindor keeper using their bodies as bread, while the other chaser easily tossed the Quaffle through the hoop. This upset the Gryffindor players, naturally, so the two Gryffindor beaters went after the same Slytherin chaser and knocked both Bludgers at her at the same time. She dodged one of them, but the other hit her square in the stomach and knocked her off her broom. (That's the sort of thing never happens in Hufflepuff matches. We're the only good and sensible ones, let me tell you.) One of her teammates swooped underneath her, caught her before she hit the ground, and flew her back to her broom. Even so, Madam Pomfrey pitched a fit.

"Albus! This is ridiculous! You should call this match off at once! I have never in my days seen such abominable behavior. Students these days, they--"

"Calm down, Poppy. Professor Snape is rebuking them quite enthusiastically, it appears, and the girl is unharmed. Let's give them one more chance to play the game fairly."

(If you want my honest opinion, Professor Dumbledore is all too forgiving at times. There is such a thing as reason. But, Gryffindors, you know how it goes. Constant vigilance is a concept lost on even Dumbledore.)

The girl who was knocked off her broom turned out to be a nasty, vindictive lassie if ever there was one. She pulled her wand out of her sleeve, rode up on the tail of one of the Gryffindor beaters, and cast Incendio. The twigs that made up the tail of the beater's broom burst into flames.

Madam Pomfrey jumped up out of her seat. "Call it off now, Albus! As school nurse I insist!"

"Yes, I quite agree," said Dumbledore. He put the tip of his wand to his throat and cast Sonorus. "Professor Snape, I believe it is now time to end the match. I am deeply ashamed of the behavior of the Quidditch players at this school--"

Madam Hooch looked smug. (Filch would have too, I'd wager, if he ever came to watch the games.)

"--and I will seriously consider appropriate punishments."

But it was too late. The Quidditch pitch was bedlam. The offended Slytherin player set fire to the other Gryffindor beater's broom, and the Gryffindor players wouldn't take it lying down, even though the game had been called off. The chasers and seekers on both sides went at it with curses; they were all eight of them laughing uncontrollably, belching slugs, or sprouting unnaturally large boils while flying about and trying to knock into each other. Professor Snape flew after the two keepers, who were having a violent fistfight in the air near the Gryffindor goal posts. The Gryffindor keeper resorted to using his wand (poor lad, he was receiving a good beating from the Slytherin keeper, a girl at that) and cast Rictusempra on the girl. She obviously wasn't one for being tickled, as she lost her grip on her broom in a fit of pained laughter and fell off. Now, you must keep in mind that there were hexes zinging around in the air, beaters trailing smoke and flames, students screaming in the stands, and other Quidditch players in all sorts of pitiable states, in a full-out team-against-team war. Dumbledore and the rest had assumed that Professor Snape had the keepers under control, and so were occupied calming the spectators and yelling at the Quidditch players to land right away (and when one of them actually did land, after threats on his life and his future school career, casting all the appropriate countercharms to relieve his cursed state.) Myself included.

Snape and the Gryffindor keeper dove for the falling girl at once, and both cast a hovering charm at the same moment they crashed into each other at full speed. One of the curses reached the girl; the other (Snape's, I believe) veered off course and hit the boy, which was lucky for him, as he lost his broom in the collision with Snape. His broom handle was stuck through Snape's chest, and Snape fell off his broom straight to the ground. A horde of students, Professor Dumbledore, Professor Granger, and Madam Pomfrey and I all ran out onto the pitch. Snape was in a bloody, crumpled mess. The blood was coming from where the broom handle had gone through him, as if he were staked. (But as he wasn't turned to dust, the rumors of his vampirism are obviously rubbish.) A lot of his bones seemed to be broken from the fall. He was on his side, and the arm and leg that he had landed on were both sticking out at odd angles. Worst of all, his neck was twisted around, further than a neck should turn.

Madam Pomfrey kneeled down beside him and cast all sorts of charms over him at once. "He's dead," she said to Dumbledore. "His neck is broken and he's lost a lot of blood, but I think I can revive him if we get him to the hospital wing quickly enough."

Now, reviving dead people, as long as they haven't been dead for too long, is not a rare occurrence in the Wizarding world. It's done whenever someone splinches himself in two, for example. Despite this fact, and that she was furious at him, Granger seemed deeply upset. She turned pasty and pale colored, and she yelled at all the students to go to their dormitories immediately. And I do mean all of the students; the rest of the Quidditch players had rescued their hovering teammates and flown down to the ground to see what all the commotion was about. Granger helped Pomfrey levitate Snape's body smoothly onto a stretcher and followed them off of the pitch and into the school. Now that the excitement was inside, I wanted to follow, but of course Dumbledore went to watch and told me to help the professors get the students into their common rooms.

Fortunately for you, I have ways of knowing things and can tell you exactly what happened in the Hospital Wing that day. Granger herself told Weasley, who told Lupin, who told me. Weasley later told me the story, and I heard bits and pieces from Dumbledore, so this account is as good as verbatim:

The first thing Pomfrey did when they reached the infirmary was to mend Snape's neck. She painstakingly said all the charms that reconnected bone and spinal cord and wove the tissue back together. Then she removed the broomstick from his chest and healed his internal injuries. Repairing the skin was not terribly difficult, so to give Granger a task, Pomfrey let her heal the punctured skin and some of Snape's bruising. Repairing broken bones is Pomfrey's specialty (which is no surprise as she works in a school full of rambunctious adolescents) and she easily healed Snape's arm and leg. The part of healing him that could conceivably go wrong was the resuscitation part. Now, I'm told that Muggle doctors can sometimes start hearts beating again after they've stopped, and it's a feat accomplished more consistently with magic, but sometimes it doesn't work, even though everything is done right and it should. I'm just riling you up, though--it worked fine. The problem is that once Snape was alive again, Professors Granger and Dumbledore went straight to his side to tell him what happened and welcome him back to the land of the living.

The first words out of his mouth were to Granger, "What are you doing?" he asked her in that sneering, mean voice of his, and he wrenched his hand out of hers.

"Professor Snape, I don't think you realize what happened," said Dumbledore. "There was an accident during the Quidditch--"

"Yes, yes, I remember," Snape interrupted. "But why is she here?"

It was an echo of that morning. Granger left the room, again understandably angry and upset, and didn't turn up at supper. (She must have been hungry that evening--skipping lunch AND supper.) Pomfrey kept Snape in the infirmary for three days to make sure he took his anti-infection and pain relieving potions. He insisted that Granger not visit him. To me, that suggested that there was no relationship brewing between them, but then I'm not a matchmaker.

When Granger and Snape didn't make their peace after he was let out of the Hospital Wing, we (we meaning Weasley and Lupin) became convinced that they were even more perfect for each other. "Intellectually and emotionally suited." And there was tension, as Weasley put it. That's why he didn't want to see her in the Hospital Wing, he liked her and he was embarrassed about losing his temper at her in the staff meeting. We (meaning Weasley and Lupin, again--I only became involved to prevent a disaster) told this to Dumbledore, and he agreed. (Twisted Gryffindor logic, I know, don't expect to understand it.) The Plan was born and finalized.

-END PART ONE-