Hey all. This is my first attempt at fanfiction. Current rating is PG-13, but it may move up, it all depends. I obviously own none of this except the plot, they belong to people like JK Rowling and Warner Bros. And people. Anyhow, I love reviews, and all comments including flames can be sent to [email protected] Please do, because although I have most of the enxt bit typed up, I can't post it if no one is reading it. And if anyone has any suggestions for a title...I hate mine. Thanks, and enjoy reading (hopefully)

Hermione smiled as she felt the soft tendrils of light flickering over her face. Light…? Her bed was in the Head Girl's room. In the interior of the castle so that she was easily connected to all areas of the school that she needed to be.

She cracked one eye open, blinking to get the sleep-dust out of it. Then she squeezed it shut, as tightly as she could, so tight that the black underneath her eyelids turned fuzzy and dissolved into a dancing hedgehog. Laughing at her. Mocking her. Please, God, tell her that she hadn't just seen what she thought she had. She was never going to trust her eyes again. That was a horrible, terrible trick to play on her. And this early in the morning. Finally convinced, she opened her eyes, confident that it had all just been a vision. Oh, damn. Oh, damn. Maybe if she said it enough times, it really would be true.

"Hi." Her voice cracked, dry from sleep. "Uh…" she honestly could not think of a single graceful way to say this "what happened last night?"

Her boyfriend looked at her with vestiges of hurt lurking behind the brave front in his eyes.

"You went out after our fight and I think you got drunk because the next thing I know is that you're in here and yelling at me and then you were pulling off your clothing and then…" Hermione's breath caught and her mind jumped out of her skull and ran around in little tiny circles screaming that it hadn't happened, it hadn't happened "then you collapsed. I put you in my bed." Here, he smirked a little bit, as though he knew what waking up had done to her nerves. And the massive hangover that she was just now beginning to feel.

She'd never gotten drunk in her entire life. She doubted that, now, she ever would again. Not with the way that things had shaped up so far. It was so hard, sometimes, being his girlfriend. A lot was expected of her. A lot of assumptions were made about her. And she hated them all. And lately, she'd begun to even hate him.

"You knew how upset that would make me. You knew and you did it anyways. You bastard." She wanted to yell, but her headache wanted to subsume every particle of grey matter that she possessed.

"Oh, come on. Not only is it your fault for getting drunk, but you know how frustrated your decision makes me," he sneered at her, infusing each syllable with heavy scorn.

'Well, excuse me for wanting to be a virgin when I get married. Sue me, why don't you? Or rape me or just…GOD! What's wrong with you lately, Harry? Suddenly you turn 18 and I'm not good enough for you?" She was yelling now, more important things than hangovers on her mind, tears of rage throwing rock salt on her bleeding gash. She knew, two months ago that this was a chance she was taking, but she had assumed that she was different from all the other girls that the famous Harry Potter had dated and thrown aside, no relationship lasting longer than a month. She had assumed that as one of his two best friends she knew him better than anyone. She had quickly found out that she hadn't known him at all and she had been paying harshly for it in the past two weeks. Just yesterday she had discovered that not only had Harry been neglecting her, but that he'd been banging some cute, black-haired Ravenclaw slut when he should have been meeting her in the library. They'd had a massive row, after which Harry had promised that he had already broken things off and she had gone to the Three Broomsticks, using Head Girl privileges to solace herself in a bottle of that delicious sorrow-drowner she had heard Parvati and Lavender surreptitiously gossiping about in the corridor the other day. She had filed it for future reference, and was glad that she had.

A soft knock was heard on the door, a knock that sounded special, like a code. Hermione was almost totally unsurprised to see Harry's golden Quidditch-star tanned face blanch as sickly whiter as the Gryffindor Ghost.

"I'm busy…you'll have to come back later," he shouted, throwing a worried look in her direction. She would have rolled her eyes if the pain in her chest wasn't suddenly requiring all of her attention. He'd never been a decent liar. And, apparently, never a decent person, either.

"No, Harry. I think we're just about done, if you know what I mean. Let her in."

"I'm sure she's just asking about the Quidditch game the other day…oooh," his voice trailed off, realizing he'd been easily trapped.

Hermione just nodded.

"Yes, I'm sure that that is it. Well, I'll leave you two to work it out then. And just for the record, Harry Potter- this would be the first time in your life that you've been broken up with instead of the other way around," Hermione snapped, straightening her clothing and carefully not flinging the door open. She didn't pause for that cliché vengeful look at the doorway, but went through, almost running over the Ravenclaw girl. Harry had obviously given her the password to Gryffindor house, and it was in her rights as Head Girl to exact penalties for this, but she let it slide in all other inter-House relationships and she wasn't so petty as to suddenly change her rules for him.

She knew that she looked like a fright, but she couldn't stay here in the house that saw nothing but good in the famed Harry Potter, a house that would turn against her faster than a pack of rabid dogs if she were to openly voice her hate for him.

"C'n I have a…nuther? Please?" she asked, then turned away from the bar, forgetting that she had just ordered yet another drink. She tried to scan the room, but succeeded only in nearly making herself sick. It was all the room's fault, really. It was spinning way too fast and it had gotten much too hot in the…several hours that she'd been here. She wasn't even sure if she could have answered what had driven her on a bright sunny day into the depths of the Three Broomsticks that students never, or rarely, traversed. It wasn't that she personally felt the loss of Harry all that much. The truth was, she'd been pressured into dating him, pressured into snagging him as a husband. Wouldn't it be just perfect if Harry mimicked his father and married his best friend, the brilliant but slightly outcast muggle-born witch? Everyone had just seen it as a natural conclusion that after what was chucklingly referred to as "Harry's adolescent flings" they would settle down. Naturally, Hermione wasn't even drawn into the equation. Of course she would jump at the chance to marry Wizard Weekly's Most Eligible Bachelor; rich, handsome, and famous Harold James Potter. And with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named running about loose despite the Minister's best efforts to cover it all up, Harry needed someone who had brains at his side permanently.

Hermione was all for the common good and everything, and she had genuinely liked Harry, if in a rather platonic way, before this whole thing, but while she was not one to conform to general pressures, Ron's convincing had pushed her into it. Not that she could blame him. He and Ella, a quiet but very nice Hufflepuff in their year, were going to be wed in June, a few weeks after Graduation. He just wanted the same happiness for his two best friends. Unfortunately, everyone pegged Graduation Day as the prime time for Voldemort (Hermione considered it ridiculous to use a euphemism) to strike, and no amount of wards or protections could block the Dark Lord at his most determined.

She wanted another drink. She was sick of the circular path her thoughts had been following all day. She swiveled her stool back to the bar, feeling inordinately proud when she managed not to fall off. She blearily focused her eyes on the glass and shakily reached out to pick it up. It was very, very heavy.

"Now…why cn't I…pick the damnnnn thingie up?" she muttered, confused.

"Perhaps because I am holding it down?" She knew that voice, silky and threatening and caressing and…she shivered.

"Who…you?"

"My God, Miss Granger. You will immediately stop trying to lift this glass up and accompany me to the dungeons for a massive dose of the Anti-Inebrio potion. And I hope the batch I made the other day tastes as nasty as it possibly can. What on earth has made you into this sniveling, pathetic, drunken creature?" Professor Snape, whom she had now vaguely identified as the voice, pulled her pliant form off the barstool and harshly dragged her down the streets of Hogsmeade.

"NOT Harry," she shouted emphatically, not noticing the strange looks the few people about on the Hogsmeade streets gave the pair. Snape, however did.

"Keep your voice down, you silly girl. All right, if its isn't young Potter, than what has reduced you to this?" Snape snapped.

"NOT HARRY!!" she yelled as loudly as she could, not precisely sure why she was yelling or what she was saying.

"Silencio," the irritated Professor muttered. It seemed to be the only way he was going to get Miss. Granger to shut up, and he took a certain perverse pleasure in hearing her struggle against his charm. Simply because the consummate know-it-all could not, for once, help herself out of this situation.

At long last, Snape got them into the castle and his rooms without anyone seeing him. It wasn't overly difficult as he had had so much practice after Dark Revels and summonings by Lord Voldemort. He set the nearly comatose girl in the solitary, well-sued wingback chair near the fireplace, and enormous monstrosity which he had not in his nearly two decades of teaching, found time to transfigure. He had but to supposed that he had grown some sort of attachment to the thing, with its twining serpents and massive proportions. However, now was not the time for contemplating the furnishings of his room. He knew that he had the potion here somewhere, if he could just remember precisely where…

Ah, of course. It was in the cabinet next to the wall-to-wall bookshelves, along with, ironically, his favorite decanter of brandy and a knife. Whatever he felt like or needed to use after a meeting with the Death Eaters. He quickly summoned the small bottle to his palm along with a small measuring vial. After pouring what he judged to be the correct amount in the vial and returning the potion, he turned back to the young witch whom he'd left for just a few moments. Yet those moments seemed to have made all the difference.

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*Gasp* what happened? I actually didnt mean to write the last bit, looked at my screen, and discovered that my damn muses had taken over and written for me. So, tell me what you think and if I should continue:D