Johnsonese

jon-suh-NEEZ | noun

1: a literary style characterized by rhetorically balanced, often pompous phraseology and an excessively Latinate vocabulary: so called from the style of writing practiced by Samuel Johnson

The wildwood was scrutinizing her every movement. She felt the chill of their gazes upon her sun-kissed skin – a chromism which was attained through incalculable hours beneath the harsh, angry touch of the crimson life-giver in the sky – and yet, uncaring of how quickly she whirled beneath the canopy, she was unable to lay eyes upon the possessor of the gaze which had her chilled to her very bones. A breeze rustled through the leaves, nudging them rudely against their compatriots, whilst the branches themselves leaned as far as their bindings would allow, creaking ominously into the supposedly empty darkness.

"Who goes there?" she called out into the wood. The utterance returned an utterly bizarre echo, completely at odds with her expectations of how a forest should sound. They were perfectly reasonable expectations, she felt, having spent a respectable amount of time cavorting among the trees surrounding her childhood home in Hampstead. Hampstead was a pulchritudinous village, its hills and historic sites having set her on her path toward her lifelong passion for history and the natural world. As such, she felt that she was amply qualified to judge how a shout should sound in a wood. This echo, in particular was more reminiscent of a cave – a vast, empty cavern adorned by the slight, furry bodies of bats within. But how could that be? She clearly occupied a wood just as any other. She reached out her hand, her fingertips brushing the tree before her. The tree was, indeed, sturdy, but the texture apperceived was not what she conjectured that it would be. Rather, the surface beneath her digits was springy. Her hand sunk into the tree, nearly imperceptibly had she not been concentrating fully upon it, though when the appendage was removed from the trunk, a shallow imprint was left behind in what she supposed she should call wood, for lack of a better agnomen. Her delicate brow furrowed, her bewilderment evident to any who should happen upon her. What in heaven's name…?

To her left, a shadow moved in the blackness. She pirouetted toward the aberration, her eyes investigating her surroundings with abandon. "Show yourself," she demanded of the shade, her voice taking on a guttural quality wholly foreign to her. She could not detect it, but she discerned its presence by the chills which were left upon her skin by its gaze.

"Certainly." The voice of the shadow was a deep baritone, one which struck chords of familiarity within her. It had materialized from behind her. She whirled on the heel of her foot, ignoring the twinge of pain left over from an accident involving a horse and a mailbox in the carefree days of her childhood (It really was quite a good story. You see, she had been out and about in the delightful hills of Hampstead upon her aged pony, Martha, minding her business quite well, having thoroughly mastered the techniques of the equestrian, she believed, when a motorbike of considerable volume whirled past, alarming the placid pony. Martha had leaped back, catching Hermione unprepared, and dispatching her quickly forward over the withers of the pony. Lamentably, a poorly placed mailbox had interrupted her fall, awarding her not only a glamorous bruise upon her cheekbone and adorning her left eye, but also a viciously twisted ankle. Having lived nowhere near that particular location and poor, frightened Martha having bolted, she had been left to rest upon the lawn of the mailbox's owner until such a time as a benevolent civilian offered assistance. Martha, incidentally, was recovered later with quite a bit of difficulty and a bumblebee (It's an utterly remarkable tale. When Mr. Howard Granger did manage to locate the pony, Martha, she was grazing cheerfully upon the lawn of an aged woman who had no desire to find the pony upon her property. Mr. Granger – Dr. Granger if one were lucky enough to have attained the man as his dentist. Really, he was quite good at his job. Exceptional, some might argue – endeavored to draw the attention of the rather plump grey mare with a carrot. The pony, for her part, eyed the treat with extreme disinterest and resumed rending the lush green grass out by the roots. Having brought no other enticement, Mr. Granger was quite at a loss until a cooperative bumblebee elected to land upon Martha's snout. Finding the snout to be displeasing to its entomological sensitivities, the bee promptly stung the poor pony, who bolted, incidentally straight for Mr. Granger. The fortunate man was able to snatch the reins as the pony ran by.).), her eyes searching through the darkness.

"Professor?"

"Up here, Miss Granger," he drawled.

Her gaze was drawn upward as she was instructed and at last rested upon his form. He was perched carelessly upon a branch of what she supposed must be a tree, five meters from the ground. Her measurement was perhaps erroneous, but by happy chance there was no other soul excepting the one in question resting upon an incorrect tree branch who could pass judgement upon her. Her shade rested his back against the trunk, conveying the impression of being perfectly at ease. One leg was drawn out before him across the branch while its companion dangled from the side, oscillating through the empty air below. A smirk rested comfortably upon his visage at the sight of her scarcely concealed stupefaction. Observing his posture there above the forest floor, she was taken by how distinctly feline he appeared.

"What are you doing up there?"

"What are you doing down there?" he countered fluidly. Mischief flickered through his normally dark eyes, which, were Hermione not misguided, held a token of a green shine gleaming in the darkness.

She pursed her lips severely, her temper overpowering her intuitive capacity for composure. "Now, really. What is going on?" She waved her hand at the forest at large, indicating the trees with their outlandish texture. Really, she could not emphasize quite enough to satisfy her insecurity how wrong they were. "Where am-" Her gaze returned to the tree, which she found suddenly, exasperatingly to be quite bare of his person. "-I?"

"Where do you think you are?" his voice erupted from behind her. She performed a marvelous capriole at the sensation of his warm breath upon the skin at the back of her neck. From behind her, his arms came around her body, wrapping her stably within their embrace even as they retracted her toward him, cradling her back against his chest and causing her eyes to widen at the sheer unexpectedness of the action.

"I – I'm sure I really don't know," she said breathlessly, her breath having left her behind the very moment that he touched her. "Clearly not anywhere sane."

He huffed a muted laugh into the shell of her ear, and she discerned a rumbling in his chest which she would vow under oath was purring if she were less highly educated than she was. Alas, she was, indeed, a highly educated woman and was cognizant of the fact that men did not purr. "And why not?" he inquired, laughter evident in his succulent voice.

"Well," she started. She was completely unable to prevent the falling open of her mouth in astonishment at the feel of his tongue swiping over her neck. Her knees went weak, and she doubtlessly would have swooned, likely crumbling to the forest floor, had it not been for the strength of his arms still cocooning her. "Well, for one, that. You're Professor Snape… and yet you obviously aren't."

"Am I not?" he rumbled, burying his face into the crook of her neck.

"No," she whispered.

"What else?" he murmured against her velvety skin.

"The trees…" Her focus was wandering from the point at hand, specifically the strangeness of the forest in which she had found herself, converging instead on his face, the short bristles rubbing abrasively against her skin indicating a need to shave, a ritual in which she herself was more than content not to have to partake. Her throat quivered as she swallowed. "The trees aren't right."

He licked her skin once more, leaving a trail of horripilation in the wake of his tongue, and the warmth which had exuded from his person vanished from behind her at the very same moment as his arms evaporated from around her. Madly, she whirled, searching her environs for any sign of the shade. Her eyes settled upon his teeth before she sighted the rest of him, his wide-mouthed, uncharacteristically Snape grin exposing them to the lackluster lighting of the lunar orb in the heavens above. He stood beside a tree to her right, one of his large, masculine hands resting on its trunk.

"Are you sure you aren't thinking of the wrong trees?" he inquired lightly as he strolled casually up the trunk.

She goggled, her mouth hanging open in a manner entirely unbecoming of a lady, more apt for a common trout, yet she found herself unable to muster dismay at her display as he walked up the tree, his body parallel with the ground, as though he defied the laws of gravity, of the universe, of god every day. "I must be mad," she muttered to no one else but her own self.

He stretched out onto a low branch on his stomach, lengthening his body to its full extent. His head hung down in an angle that looked truly disagreeable on the vertebrae while his feet twirled in the air above him. "My dear Miss Granger," he called down, and in this moment, she could hear the purr, "we're all mad here."

She bolted upright in her bed, nearly thwacking her head upon the bunk above her and putting herself in danger of becoming concussed. Her breath was gasping and unsteady, and she stared wildly around herself. Ginny's chamber. The Burrow. Christmas holidays, of course. She drooped, allowing her weary body to recline on the mattress. Merely a dream, a mirage, a fantasy produced by her own mind. She sighed and vowed never to look Professor Snape directly in the eye again.

Many kilometers off, Severus Snape, the professor, the man, the mystery, was brewing a pot of tea, a tranquilizer for the mind of many a good Brit, and making a fruitless endeavor to forget the dream from which he had only just awaken. Just a dream it may have been, but Merlin, her skin had tasted divine.

A/N: I will admit to having laughed when I saw today's word. I do hope that you enjoyed the spin on Willowwacks.