It feels silly to be doing an authors note. I’m no author. In all honesty, I was walking home today when the concept hit me, and by the time I reached my computer I simply had to type it as quickly as possible. I don’t have a beta, nor a clue what im doing. I don’t own the harry potter universe, and I doubt anybody would pay me for my writing even if I did have the right to demand money, money that belongs to j k rowling, not me. I hope you enjoy, though. I really had fun writing it.
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If at first you don’t succeed…


Hermione stopped to take a breath. She was standing outside the potions room thinking she might be acting on a bad idea. Was telling him how she felt this important? Raising her chin up and taking another deep breath- she didn’t realize she hadn’t been breathing before- she pushed on the slightly open door and entered the cold dungeon classroom.

Professor Snape – Severus – was in his office at the far end of the room, giving her an agonizing journey to take when she had hoped to begin her plan right away. She walked through the classroom, her steps echoing in the empty room. She reminded herself that she was a beautiful, intelligent witch (dammit!) and her plan was fool-proof, she hoped. He would be hers tonight.

She had barely finished calling out the word ‘Professor’ when the office door opened entirely. He sat at his desk, not looking up from his parchment, and called out “Enter, if you must, Miss Granger.” She was a little startled until she realized that after six and a half years, he surely recognized her voice, footfalls, and scent – oh she hoped he recognized her scent! – by now. There was no going back. She stepped through the doorway and looked at her professor, who wandlessly charmed the door back to its position – almost shut – without looking at her. By the way his quill was working she assumed that he wasn’t working on teaching duties. The ink wasn’t red, the parchment was simply covered in lines of his spiky handwriting, and there were several books open and scattered on his desk. She found herself wanting to know what this brilliant man was writing so passionately about. And wondering if he could be just as focused on… other… objects. Particularly her.

“What do you want Miss Granger?” he asked, with the usual hint of disdain in his voice. “What could possibly bring you down to bother me during the Christmas holidays – my time off?”

She blushed a slight pink and spoke.

“Well I… I um… you see I… um…” What was she doing? He had completely unnerved her already. But it wasn’t just the ever-present nervousness about what she was about to do that had her at a loss for words. This was already not going as she had planned!

Sometime after the fifteenth time she had said ‘I’ he put down his quill. With a long-suffering sigh – or was that a groan? – he looked up at her. Well. She hadn’t thought that would happen, but all she had wanted was for him to be looking up at her, no matter it was with impatience rather than interest. Eye contact was the key, after all. She sucked in her breath and began her already scripted and rehearsed speech.

“I just wanted to say happy Christmas, sir.” With his look of disbelief – he knew she was up to something – she continued. “Well that’s not all, I suppose. Really I came down here to tell you… well, to tell you how much I admire you. The work you do for the order, your ability to impart knowledge on even the… thickest… of students, your grace, your humour. Don’t snort sir, it’s not becoming. Well I suppose it is a bit becoming, but then again I think everything you do… Anyways, you do have a lovely sense of humour about you, most people simply don’t notice because it’s usually aimed at them, but I’ve noticed. And while I dare not laugh out loud when you insult my best friend, I sometimes have to hold in a chuckle at your words. You are a lovely man, sir. Ok, well maybe lovely is a bad word, although I think it suiting. You are an amazing man, sir. I not only respect you and appreciate all that you do, I’ve… well, I’ve found myself drawn to you. I think you’re handsome and interesting and the kind of person that I would want to… be with. You know, be with. And, well, I came down here to tell you that, and to see if possibly… you might admire me as well, sir. I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend the rest of the Christmas holidays with, in your presence, in your…” she gulped a bit, here was the big part. She had half expected him to interrupt somewhere in the middle of her rant, but he was watching her with a mix of confusion, dislike, and a very unnerving amused look that made her almost want to finish with ‘gotcha!’ and run, but no, she couldn’t stop now even if she tried. “In your bed.” At the quirk of his eyebrow, her words came out in the way that she knew she should stop talking but couldn’t. “Well anywhere really. Your desk might be nice, these walls look comfortable enough to be taken against, maybe the bathtub. Who knows, we could go to my quarters and, well… we don’t just have to, you know. Although I want to, I really do. I also want to talk with you and spend time comfortably silent – and yes I can be silent – with you, but mostly I want you to…”

He gave her a reprieve here and cut in, pitiably stopping her inner dialogue-turned-nervous monologue, which was in danger of become distinctively candid and a bit too descriptive.

“Miss Granger. You can stop right there. Actually you could have stopped quite a while ago. In fact, I’m beginning to wish you’d never started. I suggest that you leave my office at once, maybe go to the hospital wing if you think you need to. Not only am I your teacher and you my student, of age or not, but you are my most annoying student. You are the student that I wish would cut class every once in a while. I have never made it a secret how I feel for your friends and yourself, Miss Granger. You know exactly what I think of you. I would think my refusal to have anything to do with you would have been expected. I suppose I have simply not been obvious or direct enough. I am not interested. I dislike you to an extreme degree. You bother me. And I’m still trying to be nice to your sensitive feelings, which is distinctly not in my nature. Bothersome, irritating, stupid little girl. You should go, now, before I actually become agitated rather than just annoyed.”

Hermione cast her eyes down, more disappointed than embarrassed. She considered arguing, insisting that there was something right here, but couldn’t bring herself to make any more of an arse ouf of herself. She instead hugged her robes tighter around her person and nodded, turning to go.

“Miss Granger!” He startled her out of her self-loathing enough to stop her before she swung open the door. She turned to look at him. “Aren’t you going to try to convince me further?” he stopped himself and then continued again. “Don’t you have a plan B, some other way to try to convince me? I’ll still say no, of course, but I surely didn’t expect you to give up that easily. It’s not very Gryffindor.”

“Sir, coming down here to try to seduce you was me being a Gryffindor. Trying to convince you when you’ve already said no is much more along the lines of a Hufflepuff. And no, I’m not taking the Slytherin route and going back to my chambers to try to figure out how to force you to do anything.”

“Slytherins never force, Miss Granger. We simply… convince. And I am not convinced that you are giving up. I expected you to at least try something. Something that you think is sexy but I’ll do my best not to laugh in your face. But because I am me, the bastard that you knew you were coming down to proposition, I will laugh in your face. Actually I’ll smirk, I don’t laugh, after all. You’re sure to be thinking of something. Come a bit closer, try to speak in a husky sexy voice, remind me that you are a young, healthy, willing witch… kiss me harshly until I relent?”

“No sir. I understood your no. I’m going.”

“Surely, you have something else planned. You couldn’t have decided to just try once. Aren’t you supposed to let that robe fall off your shoulders to reveal your body, clad only in skimpy underclothes, or completely naked, to entice me to reconsider?”

Hermione looked at him with horror and pulled apart her robes, showing her highly un-revealing clothes. She had on a pair of jeans, two shirts and a sweater, a scarf, her warmest socks and boots, and though he couldn’t see, she was wearing substantial underthings as well. “Sir, it is Winter in Scotland out there. This castle, though heated pleasantly enough, is nowhere near the temperature required to go flouncing around in a nightie. And as bad as it is in my room, it’s twice as cold down here! Yes I was offering to remove these at some point, but you can’t honestly expect me to wander around Hogwarts in barely a stitch of clothing!”

“Well, you have a point,” Professor Snape grudgingly admitted. “But you must be planning to do something else. Maybe sidle over to this side of my desk, sit on my lap, wrap your legs around me and whisper in my ear all the things you can think to do in my bed, on my desk, against the wall. Or even be completely insistent and go down on your knees, believing that while my mind might be made up, a bit of… well, to be frank, a blowjob… would have much more chance of convincing me?”

“No sir. I’m not against the idea of-” she hesitated like he had at the blunt statement, “…giving you a blowjob, I just wouldn’t dream of forcing myself on you.”

He looked upset, disconcerted that she wasn’t following the expected procedure. He didn’t know how to react to this.

“Well, you must be planning something else to try to get me into bed. Perhaps you want to simply beg, maybe try to get a pity shag out of me. You weren’t just going to give up?” Hermione couldn’t help but think that Severus – no, Professor Snape – was not handling her defeat very well.

“No sir. You needn’t worry. One No is enough for me, I won’t be bothering you again. Happy Christmas anyway sir. Good night.” And before he could protest that the pushy insistent Gryffindor know-it-all was not the type to abandon hope so easily, she had slipped out of his office and made it through his classroom. She was exiting his dungeons at a rather impressive speed while he sat there in confusion. His brows knit together in anger and bewilderment, more aggravated by the little witch than when she had started.

--

Hermione prepared for bed with a bit of a nagging voice in her head, one that sounded particularly like her Professor. Should she have tried again? Perhaps she could have… her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. She had opened it a crack to see who was there when the man she had just been contemplating swept in. He closed her door and cast a locking and silencing charm on the room. He then turned to her, annoyance glittering in his dark eyes.

“That,” he growled, “was not how this little game was supposed to go.”

Hermione bit back a satisfied smirk. “I’ve gotten you into my bedroom, have I not Severus?” she stepped a bit closer to him, inhaling his scent and once again hoping he recognized and enjoyed her own. The spark in his eyes and flare of his nostril hinted that he did, in fact, appreciate her smell.

“Besides, you weren’t exactly mister approachable, you really did say some nasty things. And before you say anything, I meant every word I said, you silly, useless, lovely man.” Her words cut through his arousal and reminded him why he was annoyed, for real, this time. Severus sputtered indignantly.

“You were supposed to try to seduce me, you wretched little chit.” His tone was only partially agitated, partially amused. “I was not supposed to be trying to convince you.”

“Well, you obnoxious git, you seem convinced enough now.” And she went onto her toes to kiss him, before pulling her lover into bed willingly, confident that he was practically begging for her.

She had succeeded, whether he’d ever admit it or not.