Happy Birthday, Hermione

See disclaimers on chapter 1.

I had originally intended for this to be a one-shot, but after reading the reviews (and a big THANK YOU to all who left one!), I decided to satisfy your curiosity as to what happened when Hermione called on Snape later that night.

This is dedicated to those of you who said chapter 1 was too predictable. Let me know if you saw *this* ending coming. Heh.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, HERMIONE

Chapter 2

Hermione was too humiliated and heart sore to stay at her party for long. Not wanting to spoil all the hard work her friends had done, she tried to put on a brave face and act like she was having a good time, but all she could think about was what a fool she had made of herself. The glass of pumpkin juice that Ron gave her tasted like battery acid, and bile rose in her throat when they brought out the cake. She could manage only a bite or two before the rancid taste in her mouth threatened to overflow. After about 45 minutes she couldn’t pretend any longer, and she excused herself to scurry up to her room.

Drawing the curtains on her four poster, she flopped down on the pillow to wallow in her misery. Kissing Snape, of all people! And telling him she had been kissing him in her dreams! It was just too demoralizing. Every time she thought about it, she wanted to die. Why had she told him that preposterous set of lies? And worse yet, he seemed to have some weird idea that he was attracted to her, as well. He was actually expecting her to meet him in the dungeons later!

She couldn’t go. She just couldn’t.

But oh God, she had to go. She had to explain the whole thing to him, tell him it had all been a joke and they had both been the unfortunate victims. It would be the ultimate degradation, but her sense of fair play would not allow her to shirk the responsibility.

Besides, if she was going to be honest with herself, she had to admit it was kind of flattering to know that the unreachable Professor Snape thought of her that way. Most boys were intimidated by her intelligence, and it wasn’t often that anyone even gave her a second look. But Snape wasn’t a boy – far from it – and being brilliant himself, it was probably that very intelligence that made her attractive to him. What a switch!

Too bad he was such a cold, mean-tempered pain in the arse. Still, if she was 20 years older, she might have considered it...

Hermione sat up in bed and drew a roll of parchment into her lap. This was going to be a tricky discussion, and she wanted to make sure she knew exactly what she was going to say ahead of time. It had to be handled in precisely the right manner.

She bowed her head for a moment, deep in thought, and then began to scratch away madly.

****

She skipped dinner that night. Her stomach was far too queasy with the anticipation of her upcoming conversation with Snape to even consider eating a meal. Instead, she took advantage of the opportunity to sneak out of the common room unnoticed after her housemates left for the Great Hall. This whole situation was difficult enough without trying to explain where she was going if anyone saw her leave.

It was common knowledge among the student body that Dumbledore held an informal teachers’ meeting every Saturday night over the dinner hour in the staff room. This usually resulted in a great deal of noise and merrymaking in the Great Hall, as the House prefects tried in vain to rein in the more rambunctious tendencies of a roomful of teenagers. Hermione decided that the conclusion of this meeting would be the best time to catch Snape. She couldn’t possibly face him alone in the dungeons, knowing the way he felt about her, and besides, she didn’t know how he was going to react to what she had to say. He had been a Death Eater, after all, and she felt much safer knowing he could not resort to violence with the whole school seated only a few hundred meters away.

She hid in the shadows behind the statue at the staff room door and waited for the meeting to end. She was only there for a few minutes when the door opened and professors began emerging one by one. McGonagall. Flitwick. Hooch. Sinistra. Vector. Sprout. Lupin… But where was Snape? It was getting late, and the Great Hall would begin emptying out soon, as well. She was running out of time.

Peering around the corner, she saw Snape sitting by the fire holding a teacup and saucer in one hand. He was alone. It’s now or never, she thought, and summoning her courage, she ducked into the room.

Too late, she saw Headmaster Dumbledore seated directly across from Snape in a chair that had been outside her range of vision from her vantage point in the hallway. She froze in place and was about to slip out again when Dumbledore looked up. "Ah, good evening, Miss Granger," he said genially, a smile on his lips. "Is there something you wanted to see me about?"

"Actually, sir, I wanted to talk to Professor Snape," she replied nervously, shifting from foot to foot as Snape glanced up in surprise. "It’s about our… appointment this evening, Professor," she continued quickly as his face molded into a frown.

"Our appointment?" he asked sharply, cutting his eyes toward the Headmaster. Hermione got the message immediately. Snape obviously didn’t want her to say anything about the nature of their meeting in front of Dumbledore.

"Yes, Professor. C-could I talk to you alone for a moment?"

Dumbledore got the hint. "We can continue our discussion later, Severus," he said. "You go along with Miss Granger and I’ll sit here and finish my tea. Come back when you are finished."

Snape nodded curtly at the older wizard and placed his cup and saucer on the table next to his chair. He led Hermione into the hallway and they stepped into an empty classroom a few doors away. Closing the door behind him, he said, "Now, Miss Granger, what –"

"Professor, please," she interrupted, thrusting her palms forward to keep him from saying anything further. "Please, just let me say what I have to say before I forget any of it, OK?"

He crossed his arms and regarded her with what passed for an expression of amusement on his face. "I should have guessed you would have rehearsed whatever little speech it is you plan to give. Very well. Proceed."

"Thank you." She took a deep breath. "I just wanted to let you know that what happened between us this afternoon was… a mistake. Some friends were playing a birthday joke on me and I thought one of them had taken some Polyjuice potion and transformed into you and that’s the only reason I kissed you and acted the way I did, honestly." The words came tumbling out of her mouth in a frenzied rush, madly trying to escape as though being chased by a singing manticore. "I would never have done it if I had known it was actually you, sir."

Snape closed his eyes and sighed in disgust. "Let me guess. Messers Potter and Weasley again?" he asked tightly.

Hermione nodded miserably, looking at the floor. She hadn’t wanted to get her friends into trouble, but it couldn’t be helped. Serves them right, she decided.

"You should have known, Miss Granger. You don’t really think either one of them is capable of brewing a potion as complicated as Polyjuice, do you?"

She looked up sharply, hot words preparing to flow from her tongue, but checked them at the last minute. It would only serve to make a bad situation worse if she let Snape distract her from her goal. "That’s not the point, sir," she said.

"Then what precisely is the point, Miss Granger?" Snape demanded acidly.

Hermione hesitated. This was the hardest part. "The point is, I… I know you wanted to…" – she swallowed hard – "sleep with me tonight… and I’m sorry, sir, but I just… can’t."

The look on Snape’s face did not change, but his dark eyes suddenly grew brighter. My God! she thought wildly. Is he going to *cry*? A pregnant pause passed between them while Snape considered his response, and Hermione grew more and more uncomfortable as the seconds passed.

"I see," he said finally, and to her immense surprise, he dropped his head as if in defeat. "I should have known that a woman such as yourself would never find me… attractive."

Hermione suddenly felt very protective of the hated Potions Master. She imagined he must have suffered all manner of horrible rejections in the past, and had probably never known true love from anyone, perhaps not even from his own parents. His life must have been absolutely awful for him to have turned out the way he did. Her own existence was so comfortable, so filled with friends and family who loved her, that she could not fathom what it must be like to live differently. Her Gryffindor honor felt bruised on his behalf, and she rushed forward and put one hand on his forearm.

"Oh, no, sir!" she protested, cocking her head so she could look up into his downturned face. "That’s not it at all, honestly! You may not be the most beautiful man around" – she cursed herself inwardly for that unnecessarily harsh bit of honesty – "but you do have kind of a… sexy, bad boy thing going on… " Where the hell did *that* come from, Granger?! she thought, but pressed on anyway. "And that is usually a big turn on for me, but… well… I always imagined my first time would be with someone I loved, that’s all." She dropped her hand as she felt her face flushing bright pink. This was something she had never even discussed with Harry and Ron. "I was kind of… saving myself for when I get married."

Snape raised his head slowly and he studied her for a long moment, that strange expression still in his eyes. "I understand, Miss Granger," he said finally. "And I respect your choice." He smiled then, one of the few times she had seen an actual smile on his face, and it both electrified and chilled her. "Thank you for letting me down easy," he said simply.

She returned the smile as relief flooded through her. "You’re welcome, sir," she replied. "And thank you, Professor. Honestly, I took it as a huge compliment."

Snape straightened to his full height. "You’d best be getting back to your dormitory, Miss Granger," he instructed. "I must return to the Headmaster. He and I have time for a rather more lengthy discussion now that I know my… plans… for the evening have been cancelled."

"Yes sir," she whispered, and turned to leave. But she stopped mid-way to the door and pivoted slowly on her heel. "Professor? Would it be terribly forward of me to ask for one more kiss?" she asked, and the color rose in her cheeks again.

He paused, considering the request, then slowly shook his head. "No, I don’t think that would be a good idea, Miss Granger," he replied. "I don’t know that I could trust myself to stop at just a kiss."

She nodded, looking at the floor again. Then she marched toward the door and threw it open, walking through it without looking back.

****

The interview had gone better than she expected, and with her heart considerably lighter, Hermione decided to go for a walk around the grounds before returning to the common room. Hagrid was in his garden when she walked by, and she spent an hour or so chatting happily with him before heading back to Gryffindor Tower.

The common room was uncharacteristically quiet when she got there. Harry and Neville were the only two in sight, and they were sitting together silently, Harry drumming his fingers tensely on the table top. "Hermione!" he said anxiously, jumping to his feet when he saw her. "There you are! Where have you been?!" His face was red as a beet.

"I went for a walk," she replied, taking a few steps toward him. "What’s eating you, Harry?"

She suddenly became aware that there was another person in the room, as well, sitting in one of the armchairs in front of the hearth. The figure was facing the fire, and only the very top of a head of dark hair was visible above the high chair back. Harry and Neville glanced at the chair nervously as she approached.

"Harry, Neville, what’s wrong?" she insisted.

"That," Harry said, pointing to the chair where a tall, thin man was unfolding himself to his full height.

It was Snape.

"Professor," she stammered, "wh-what are you doing here?"

"That’s not Snape, Hermione," Harry replied dully. "It’s Ron."

Her head snapped back and forth from Harry to the Snape-ish apparition and back again, as though she was watching the tennis match from hell. "What are you talking about?" she demanded.

"It’s true," Ron replied. "It’s me." And before her stricken eyes, the dark form began to morph, red hair replacing black, aquiline nose melting into a pug mass of freckles. "It was me all along, even this afternoon."

"What are you talking about?" she said again, panic rising in her throat. "It couldn’t have been you this afternoon! You were here! At the party!"

At this, Neville buried his face in his hands and made a pathetic squeaking sound. "No, Hermione," Harry corrected. "That was Neville. He drank some Polyjuice potion, too."

"I didn’t want to do it!" Neville cried. "They made me do it, Hermione! Please don’t be mad at me!"

Hermione’s knees buckled and she fell back into a chair. "I was going to meet you in the dungeons tonight while Snape was at the staff meeting," Ron explained quickly. "We started feeling pretty badly about the way we ruined your birthday, and I was going to tell you about the whole thing then, before it went any further. And then you didn’t show up and we started to panic…"

"Thank God all you did was go for a walk!" Harry interjected. "We were scared to death you might run into Snape and do something stupid!"

"Oh yes, well, thank heavens I didn’t do anything stupid!" Hermione raged.

"Too bad you and Mr. Weasley can’t say the same thing, Mr. Potter," came a silky voice from the doorway, and for the second time that day, Hermione felt her blood freeze into rivers of icicles in her veins.

"H-Hello, Professor," Harry stammered. "P-Professor, I can explain…"

"Oh, I’m sure you can," Snape replied coolly. "And the two of you will have plenty of time to do so, Mr. Potter, while you serve detention with me for the next week. Now if you and Mr. Weasley would come with me, please, I believe Professor Dumbledore would like to have a word or two with you about the proper use of Polyjuice potion…"

The End