Okay…here goes! This is my first fanfiction ever, so please R&R, okay, I think the computer chat may be a bit much for me, but hey, I try!

Chapter 1. A collision of worlds

Hermione Granger hurtled down the marble staircase outside of the Great Hall. She was late, for potions, again. It was probably about the third time this week, and she knew Professor Snape was not going to pleased, he never was. But it truly wasn't her fault that she always seemed to be late, coming all the way from astronomy tower to the dungeons was not the easy feat to accomplish, much less so with 3 pounds of books on your back. But still, this was her task everyday. Hermione didn't really mind, she sort of embraced it; it was about the only physical exercise she could get in her occupation of being a student.

As she finished her wonderings at the lack of physical stimulation Hogwarts offered, she ran into Harry.

"Watch it," said Harry kindly.

" Oooh, I'm sorry Harry, I was thinking"

"Aren't you always?" asked Harry, grinning. She returned his smile kindly. As she bent down to pick up the books she had dropped she noticed all the other students loitering outside the potions classroom.

"Why isn't anybody going in?" she asked.

"Professor Snape's hasn't shown up yet!" replied Ron happily, coming up behind Harry. Hermione's face faltered for a second. She and Ron had promptly ended whatever they had started during the final battle the summer before their 'official' seventh year. Both of them had concluded that starting anything serious between them would have been stupid and eventually painful, according to the new marriage law, which decreed that purebloods and muggle-borns shouldn't reproduce, or get married for that matter. Hermione was still having a bit of trouble getting over their 'break-up' but she still loved him with all heart as her best friend.

"I wonder why not, it's rather unusual" said Hermione, slightly unnerved. Even now, after the war was over, there were still those held their prejudices. The wizarding world was still unsafe.

"Yeah," Ron agreed, "But it's also bloody brilliant! A day without potions, ahhh simple pleasures, just like when we were kids, "said Ron dreamily. Harry laughed at the look on Ron's face. But Hermione frowned.

"Still…something could have happened to him."

"You worry to much, I bet he's just having one of 'those' conversations with Dumbledore's portrait," said Harry pointedly. After the truth had come out about Dumbledore's murder, his portrait and Snape had been having lots of conversations.

But the truth was that Severous Snape was having one of 'those' conversations with the previous headmaster. He was pacing the room angrily as Dumbledore looked on with a mixed expression of weariness and exasperation, he was used to Severous's mood swings.

"This is utter madness," Snape growled, " Bloody mad! You can't honestly expect. I am a grown man, she is a mere child. Despicable, controlling, mad, blood hell Dumbledore! The war is over, I am no longer your puppet, I am sick of you and you're ramblings and your predictions and your instructions, I need not follow you anymore, you're dead and gone, and I was so close to following you, my life is my own, dumbledore, I am no longer your servant," spit out Snape in under thirty seconds.

"My my Severous, you are getting better and better at expressing your heated opinions to me in less and less time. You do not miss a beat. But that aside Severous, it really is not madness, and the order does not come from me, but from the ministry. And you really can't afford to create problems with them now, that you so barley escaped your sentence to Azkaban. But I believe that many good things can, and will come from this arrangement," said Dumbledore calmly. Severous glowerd at him.

"Arrangement would be the correct word, wouldn't it? But I thought arranged marriages were outlawed in 1934. Obviously they are making an exception for me. So many exceptions, really. I despise this government!"

"Severous…" Dumbledore implored him.

"There really is no way out of this, is there Albus?" asked Snape, sadly, his eyes downcast.

"

No," replied Dumbledore simply.

"Then I really must marry miss Granger," stated Snape, bitterly.

"Yes."