Strange Brew

Strange Brew

She's a witch of trouble in electric blue

In her own mad mind, she's in love with you

Edward swallowed dutifully, leant his head against the wing of the armchair, and gazed up at the ceiling expectantly.

'Do you feel anything yet?' Hermione asked, taking a step backward, whether from caution or fear, she wasn't certain.

He smiled a little. 'Not a thing.'

Relieved and slightly disappointed, Hermione sighed and perched on the end of the sofa. She watched as Edward continued to look around, tapping his foot and chewing on the inside of his lip with the same air that she had seen on people sitting round in waiting rooms. She resisted the urge to fidget herself, not wanting to make him any more anxious than he already must be. His courage was admirable, she considered, unless it was foolhardiness, in which case he eclipsed even Sirius Black in that regard. The full stupidity of drinking a potion whose effects were unknown and whose recipe had been approximated from vague references in a personal journal struck her head-on as she sat, tense and wary, waiting for something to happen. How would Edward behave under the effects of the mescaline? Not even knowing fully how it had affected Snape, she couldn't even begin to guess. And what would his body be like without his soul inside it? The Dementors' Kiss removed the soul from the living body, but she had never seen anyone who had suffered that particular punishment, and now the Dementors were gone. Any second now, she thought; I'm so wound up, I could scream.

But when the potion did take effect, she almost didn't notice, so subtle was Edward's reaction: he twitched slightly in his bindings, and his eyes widened, fastening on her face with great fascination. 'Wow...' he breathed.

'What?' she asked in alarm, rising to her feet. 'What is it?'

He laughed quietly and turned his head to take in the rest of the room. 'Everything is very colourful,' he remarked. 'Calm down, I'm okay.'

'What do you mean, everything is colourful?' she repeated cautiously.

'The sounds,' he answered vaguely. 'Your voice, too – it's all green and red, like Christmas.' Then he laughed again, a sound so flushed with delight that she knew at once he was feeling the effects of the mescaline in the potion.

'Would you say the potion has kicked in?' she enquired impatiently, turning away from him to fetch from the shelf the book she had stolen from Draco Malfoy.

'Most definitely,' he responded cheerfully. 'What do we do now?'

'Well,' she said, hesitating slightly, 'I'm going to request your soul to leave your body. Is that all right?'

'Cool,' said Edward and twitched again in his bindings. At her direction, he grew still and closed his eyes calmly.

Hermione paused – Am I really going to do this? – but, remembering Edward's earlier determination, set her shoulders and swished her wand confidently.

'Proficiscitor a corpore.'

Instantly, Edward's head dropped to his chest, his hands falling limp against the arms of the chair.

'Edward?' She leaned over him, amazed, and poked him on the shoulder. Receiving no reaction, she cupped his chin in her hand, lifted his head, and inspected his eyes curiously, pushing the lids out of the way. She moved her finger in front of them like a doctor, wondering if they would follow the motion, but again, Edward did nothing. 'Lumos,' she whispered and held the tip of her wand near his face. His pupils continued to stare blankly without contracting.

Hermione stepped away again after lowering his head gently back to his chest. Her command certainly appeared to have worked, but the real test would come when she tried the next incantation. Using the spells Voldemort must have used to create his Horcruxes unnerved her more than a little. Even though she knew she was doing nothing evil – after all, she had not killed anybody, nor damaged anyone's soul – the very fact of employing the same magic made her skin shiver a bit in apprehension.

This next step was the line she didn't particularly want to cross; to call to Snape and order his soul to inhabit Edward's body wasn't something she could contemplate without unease. The longer she stood there, her wand dangling from her right hand, regarding Edward's motionless form, the less inclined she felt to do it, and for several minutes, she considered simply ordering Edward's own soul back to its rightful place. Then she remembered his impatience a few moments earlier and his obvious wish to go through with the experiment, and she heaved a great sigh and turned back to the book.

'Severus Snape!' Hermione intoned, hoping that calling his name in his own house was enough to capture his attention. 'Severus Snape, intra in vas ac perficite opus!'

She didn't know what she expected to happen; there was no spark or boom or clap of thunder, however much she might feel, at this moment, like a mad scientist. Instead, there was continued silence. Edward's form remained as still as it had been for the past five or so minutes. When another minute passed, and then another, and still nothing happened, Hermione dropped onto the cushions of the sofa, half-laughing, half-sobbing. Thank God, it didn't work. She put her head between her knees, breathing deeply in her relief – and saw, out of the corner of her eye, Edward's foot begin to tap again on the floor.

Hermione raised her head slowly and pushed her hair out of her face. Edward had sat up straight and was staring at her with a look of frank amazement on his face. Hermione's mouth dropped open slightly in shock.

'Trust you, Miss Granger, to find a use for my potion that I hadn't anticipated,' he said dryly. 'Although it was patent good sense, I agree,' he went on, jerking his arms and legs slightly in the magical restraints, 'you may release me now.'

She came slowly to her feet, speechless, and approached the chair.

'Oh, do close your mouth, Miss Granger.' The voice was sharp, tinged with amusement and contempt, and British.

'Prof-Professor Snape?' Hermione whispered in horror, leaning in closer to look into Edward's face. 'Is that you?'

The brown eyes gazing into her own narrowed into an irritated glare. 'You had better hope it is. Unbind me, if you please.'

'I can't untie you,' she whispered apologetically. 'I promised Edward.'

'How solicitous of you,' he drawled sarcastically. 'Pity you didn't give as much thought to stuffing me into a body that is, to put it mildly, out of its head on drugs.'

'Oh!' Hermione sank onto the cushions of the couch and rubbed her temples. 'I didn't even think of that... But I don't see how I could have avoided it...'

Snape-as-Edward sighed in exasperation and glanced around the room, clearly trying to gather his patience. 'Miss Granger, it is only by the barest thread of self-control that I am speaking to you sensibly,' he said at last. 'So allow me to instruct you in the strongest terms, and do not misunderstand this: since you will not release me, you must destroy the potion and your notes, and burn my journal – right now, before too much time passes.'

'And if I release you?' Hermione asked curiously, ignoring his instruction.

'I do it myself,' he answered simply.

'You know I can't let you do that!' she protested, aghast. 'What would happen to Edward? How would I ever get him back into his body again?'

Edward's brown eyes, so full of a look of Snape now, cut toward her. He was beginning to breathe rapidly, shallow inhalations that made the magical ropes bounce across his chest. 'You,' he said, his tone incredulous, 'did not test the potion on its own first? You... ejected him summarily from his body and stuck me in it...' He interrupted himself by laughing, dissolving into amusement that sounded, to Hermione, slightly hysterical. 'How long has it been?' he gasped between giggles.

Frozen into astonished immobility by the unexpected nature of Snape's behaviour, she stuttered, 'Wh-what? How long has what been?'

'Since you threw him out of his body!' Snape shouted. 'How long, damn it!'

'I don't know!' she said, confused and highly disconcerted by the strange mixture of Snape and Edward, rational and bizarre. 'Ten minutes, perhaps?'

He exhaled weakly. 'Then we have a little longer. Untie me, please, and we will destroy everything together. Edward will be fine, I assure you.' His lips twisted into a derisive smile that contained nothing of Edward but a great deal of Snape. For the first time, Hermione began to believe that she had truly accomplished her aim.

Hermione shook her head. 'I promised...'

'Hermione,' Snape said softly. 'You must trust me.' He shifted in the chair uncomfortably and fixed his eyes on hers.

The intensity of his gaze made her thoughts turn instantly to the last time she had dreamt of him. How strange it was, to see and hear Snape translated through the medium of Edward's body! And yet the effect was not distasteful; her memory of the dream metamorphosed into a stunning fantasy, and she felt her body growing warm. Oh God, I am sick, sick, sick, she thought miserably, even as her hand, independently of her brain, reached into her pocket for her wand. 'It really is you, isn't it,' she whispered wonderingly, extending her other hand to caress his cheek.

'Yes, Hermione,' Snape murmured encouragingly.

His voice, she thought, was like steely silk – connecting that description with another part of him, she blushed hotly. I'm not going to do this, I'm not; don't do it! But she pointed her wand at the silvery ropes around his body and said softly, 'Relashio.'

The ropes slackened and dissolved. He flexed his arms and legs, grimacing as though they had fallen asleep while he sat there and were now tingling with pins and needles, stood unsteadily, and turned toward the laboratory.

'Wait a moment,' Hermione blurted and got to her feet, moving to block his path across the room. 'What are you doing?'

'Destroying the potion,' he said impatiently. 'There isn't much time. Stand aside.' His arm moved to ease her out of the way.

'No!' she exclaimed, dodging his arm and flinging herself against him, holding him in place. 'You can't! Edward...'

'Sod Edward!' he snarled, trying to twist out of her grasp. Hermione clung to him like a limpet, the fingers of one hand fastened around his belt loop, the other hand clutching his silk tie. With a growl of frustration, he buried both hands in her hair close to her scalp and pulled, drawing her head backward.

Hermione's eyes watered in pain; she arched her back awkwardly to ease the sudden tension in her neck. Her movement brought their hips into contact, and she gasped at the heat she felt radiating from the hardness in his trousers.

Snape-as-Edward gasped too; the frustration in his expression changed rapidly to desperation, and his gaze shifted between her face and the laboratory in anguished indecision. 'Hermione, please,' he groaned, but without waiting for an answer, he bent and fastened his lips to hers.

Giddy relief rushed through her body, sending jolts of desire straight to her brain. 'Oh, yes,' she moaned into his mouth, tangling her tongue with his, feeding off the fiery need in his motions and adding to it her own. She slid the knot from his tie in a single stroke and began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt with quick, certain movements.

Snape released his grip on her hair and slid his hands to her shoulders. He pulled her body tighter against him, emitting an agonised groan as he ground his cock roughly into her hip, and jerked her robe down her arms, gathering the cloth into a fist at her back. Pinning her in place, he tore his mouth from hers and looked at her pleadingly. 'You must destroy it all,' he said earnestly. 'I wish there were time to explain – I should have done so immediately, but...' And then he kissed her again, seemingly unable to resist her.

Hermione returned the kiss gratefully and freed her arms from her robe, returning them to his chest where she grasped the edges of his shirt and pulled roughly, popping the remaining buttons from their anchors and practically tearing the cloth from his body. So wrapped up was she in running her hands all over the firm, bronzed chest in front of her that she didn't notice immediately when the quality of his kiss changed. When she did become aware that something was different, she disengaged her lips and said breathlessly, 'Professor Snape? Are you all right?'

He didn't answer. Concerned, she let go of him and stepped back – only to cry out in shock when, released from her hold, he collapsed bonelessly to the floor.

'Professor Snape!' she cried, kneeling hurriedly next to him. He was moving sluggishly. Gasping in relief, she helped him turn onto his back and brushed his hair tenderly out of his face. 'Thank goodness,' she murmured. 'What happened?'

'Oh,' he whispered, opening his eyes. 'Oh, oh, oh...' he repeated, staring at her as if he had no idea what he was saying. Suddenly, recognition blossomed into his face. 'Hermione?' He struggled to sit up and shook his head roughly, like a dog clearing water out of its ears.

The voice was Edward's again, flat and American. She drew back, horrified, and scuttled away, catching her foot clumsily on the edge of the rug. 'Edward?'

He dropped back to the floor and laughed, his handsome face filled with joyful amazement. 'It worked! Oh, Hermione, it worked!' He ran his fingers through his hair and rolled onto his side to look at her, his mirth diminishing when he saw her expression. 'It worked, didn't it?' he repeated doubtfully.

'Yes, it worked. Oh, shit...' And she dropped her head between her knees again, fighting not to be sick, while Edward started to laugh again and did his best to soothe her from his prone position on the concrete floor.

***

Several hours passed before Edward was sober enough to discuss their experiment. His continued exclamations about various sounds, colours, and smells prompted Hermione to look up mescaline again in Snape's reference books where she discovered that it was known for inducing synaesthesia when ingested. She began to understand why Snape had seemed so unbalanced in Edward's body – and to wonder what, exactly, it felt like to kiss someone when one's senses were all cross-wired. She could not imagine tasting sounds, or seeing them in colours as Edward seemed to, or smelling numbers. She certainly could not comprehend how Snape had mastered himself so well in such a state; Edward was unable to do even the simplest things and appeared entirely content to lie on the floor and talk to himself. At one point, he asked her to put on a record, which she reluctantly consented to do, and hummed along in perfect rapture while she paced back and forth and waited impatiently for him to come, literally, to his proper senses.

Eventually, Edward stopped humming and cocked his head to one side. The faint sound of a clock chiming could be heard from the kitchen. He levered himself to his feet and extended his hand to Hermione. 'Come on, you,' he said pleasantly. 'We have to ring in the new year.'

The cold outside seemed to freeze the very moisture on Hermione's eyeballs; wind, frigid with the air of the North Sea and damp from travelling over the sluggish branch of the Ouse that wound its oily way through the scrubland, sliced easily through her wool coat. The walk to the pub felt interminable to her, and she found herself highly irritated with Edward, who seemed not to feel the winter air and observed the squalid neighbourhood in which Spinner's End was situated as though it were the most fascinating sight in the world. In contrast, the inside of the pub had almost the same atmosphere as a sauna: hot, sticky, damp – and smoky. Hermione and Edward threaded their way through the throng of revellers to the bar where Edward shouted their orders for beer over the din of the New Year's celebration. Some minutes later, pints in hand, they shoved a path to the back of the pub and went into the cloistered beer garden, there to hover alone pathetically around one of the patio heaters.

Through one of the pub's windows, Hermione could see, as she sipped her pint pensively, an old television set, its small screen showing the scene in Trafalgar Square.

'Would you rather go there?' Edward's voice, very close to her ear, interrupted her thoughts.

'No,' she said. 'No, I'm fine. Thanks.' She lapsed back into silence.

All evening, as she had waited for Edward to recover from the potion, she had been conscious of a strange feeling taking hold inside of her, a mixture of anger, regret, and resentment that closed her off and emptied her of all enthusiasm. In between swallows of beer, she tried to analyse it: with whom was she angry? What actions did she regret? What was the cause of her resentment, and toward whom was it directed? These questions were difficult to answer; she was more aware of the fact that, in some way, the experiment had not turned out as she had hoped, though she was unsure of what she might have been wishing for. Certainly she had wanted to speak to Snape, and she had done so – why, then, was she suffering these crushing sensations of negativity and disappointment?

'Penny for your thoughts,' whispered Edward.

Hermione rounded on him. 'Tell me,' she demanded. 'Tell me what happened to you. Where did you go? How did you get back into your body?'

He regarded her evenly over the rim of his pint glass. 'Well,' he began thoughtfully, 'nothing much happened for a minute or two, as you know. Then my eyes started to go all funny – for a second, I thought something was wrong with my vision, but it turned out that I was just seeing things that had never been visible to me before. The whole world looked as though it were underwater, but everything made these amazing, iridescent ripples in the water. You were fiddling with your wand, and every time you moved, these waves extended out from your body. Then, when you started to talk, the sounds made the ripples too, in crazy colours – I could see from one colour that it was you speaking, and from another, your mood, and from another, what you were saying. Concentrating, though, was very hard – I almost couldn't respond to your questions, I was so busy watching the world ripple. It was beautiful.'

Hermione snorted and downed an enormous swallow of beer. 'Then what?'

'Then you said you were going to command my soul out of my body, and that sounded great to me – it made me think I would be able to go and swim through all the ripples.'

'And did you?'

'Not exactly.' Edward upended his glass and slurped the last remaining drops of lager. 'Another round?' he asked.

A little later, refreshed with two more pints and huddled once more around the patio heater, Hermione listened as Edward continued:

'When you spoke the incantation, I wasn't sure what was going to happen to me: would I black out? Would I feel my soul being ripped from my body? But nothing like that occurred. Instead, there was this fantastic sensation of release. I think I imagined it in keeping with the aquatic theme; it was as though I had been chained to the bottom of the ocean, and your spell set me free. I was streaming toward the surface of the water with the most incredible buoyancy. And when I reached the surface, if you don't mind my staying with the metaphor, this transformation seemed to take place: I wasn't in the water any longer, I was the water, and I knew everything that was in it and everything that had ever been in it and everything that was going to be in it, and of course, everything knew me. That must be how it feels to be God.'

Midnight was approaching; the din in the pub was practically unbearable. Several people spilled into the beer garden to smoke; Hermione smelt the acrid, seductive odour of marijuana. 'I don't understand,' she said to Edward. 'You knew all the... fish... and – and anemones...?'

Laughing, he elaborated, 'No, Hermione, it's a metaphor! I knew everything. And I could feel things, too, and see things, but not in the normal way. Which makes sense, I suppose,' he went on, 'because I didn't have access to my skin or my eyes. But I knew and understood when you poked me and shone your wand into my face. I comprehended everything you said, even though I didn't hear it with my ears.'

'Are you suggesting you became omniscient?' Hermione asked incredulously.

'It did sort of feel that way,' Edward admitted. 'But there was a lot to know, and no more cognitive space than usual; I think I would have needed an eternity just to explore what I suddenly knew.' He paused to take a drink, then said: 'Actually, I was completely aware of what you and Snape were doing, so you don't have to describe it to me.'

Hermione flushed; she had known she was going to have to explain why Edward had returned to a half-naked body that was lying on the floor, rather than one tied securely in the armchair. Somehow, she was more embarrassed now that she wouldn't have to say anything at all. Trembling a bit in shame, she turned her face away from him to gaze blindly through the window at Trafalgar Square.

'I know you tried to keep your promise,' said Edward in a low voice. 'I saw why you didn't.'

Heartened slightly by these words, Hermione felt able to meet his eyes and apologise. The words refused to come out, however, when she saw the expression on his face; rather than forgiving, his eyes looked oddly calculating. She cleared her throat uncomfortably and said lamely instead, 'Ah. Good.'

'Anyway,' he continued, breaking eye contact, 'things went on for a bit, as you know. And right when you two started to get... er, busy... I felt this gigantic tug. Much more quickly than I had left my body, I was back inside it again, but I couldn't control it right away; it was too loud and too heavy. It was a bit like being Petrified or encased in stone, or so I imagine. I guess that's why I fell down. Obviously, however, my body was still high as a kite – all the ripples and colours were still there and were very intense. And there was something else, too, something really weird: for a little while – maybe an hour – I could still sort of feel Snape in there, too.'

'You could?' Hermione blurted before she could stop herself. Dimly, she noticed the smokers make their way back inside and wondered absently what they had made of her and Edward's conversation.

The cold, knowing look Edward turned on her made her insides shiver. 'I could. There was all this – I don't know how to describe it – emotional residue. He was angry with you – furious, in fact, because you ignored his orders. And he wanted you. He wanted you so badly that I could still feel the burn of it. Do you know what else, Hermione?' Edward asked, although it seemed from his tone that this was a rhetorical question.

'What else?' she whispered.

'He was surprised,' Edward answered, watching her carefully. 'He had not expected to want you as badly as he did. He had only started making love to you to distract you. It worked too well; you were too distracted to destroy the potion like he'd ordered. And he discovered that, suddenly, you were distracting him. He wanted your body more than he wanted that potion destroyed.'

Frozen to the spot, Hermione stared at him in dismay.

'I suppose I should thank you,' Edward added casually. 'If you weren't such a slut, he might have got his way, and then where would I have been? Not in my body, that's for sure. I wonder how you would have made the change permanent – but you're a bright witch, I'm sure you'd have figured something out. I imagine Snape would have enjoyed it – my body's a hell of a lot nicer than his was, if the pictures are anything to go by.'

Pain erupted in Hermione's chest; it took all of her strength to remain calm in the face of this combination of insult and injury. 'You're being unreasonable,' she objected. 'Besides, you went back into your body automatically,' she pointed out, proud that her voice barely shook.

'What a consolation,' he retorted sarcastically. 'I should be grateful the two of you didn't have enough time to figure out how to make the switch permanent. Otherwise, you could have been spending your nights fucking a living person instead of a dead one.' Hermione shrank back as his voice, so calm at first, blossomed into a shout, and his hands clenched into tight fists. 'How did it feel, Hermione?' he raged at her. 'Were you a cock-tease with him, too, or did you like getting off with his cold prick inside you, you sick bitch?'

Stomach wrenching, Hermione cried, 'Don't be disgusting! It wasn't like that!' She backed away from him, ambushed by the violence of his words, and put her hands out as if to ward off the abuse.

'Oh, I bet it wasn't!' Edward spat scathingly, his face contorted with anger. He loomed forward menacingly and pointed into the distance emphatically. 'That's him in your house, isn't it? Your "ghost." And you knew it all along. He's very protective of you, isn't he! What happened on the night he tried to beat me to death with your kitchenware? After you sent me away, did you go back inside, all tarted up and half-naked in your little red dress, and let him fuck you on your dining-room table?'

'No!' she cried, eyes burning with welling tears of frustration. 'I was angry with him! I didn't want him to hurt you. Edward, please,' she pleaded, ' you're not being fair! I swear I would never have let him use your body!'

'Are you listening to yourself?' he exclaimed, regarding her with awed revulsion. He seemed to sag, his anger draining away as suddenly as it had come, and his voice dropped to a whisper. 'You sick little bitch,' he repeated, staring as though he had never seen her before. Then he dropped his pint glass in the gravel and stumbled into the pub, clutching his stomach, his face white. Through the window, she saw him shove his way through the press of people to the front door, which he wrenched open. Then he was gone.

The agony in her chest was overwhelming; Hermione wished she could faint, or vomit – anything to alleviate the anger she felt at Edward's insults and the shame she felt at knowing they were justified. Her disquiet earlier in the night became clear to her: she had been angry at being denied more time with Snape, resentful at Edward for coming back so soon, and she regretted not using the time she had been allowed more effectively. There was so much she had wanted to say to Snape, so much she had wanted to ask him! The ten minutes they'd had seemed like the barest instant. But though Edward might have been right about one thing – she did love making love to Snape; she had always welcomed his advances and had been miserable those months when he had deserted her – he was wrong in thinking she would have allowed Snape to steal Edward's body. The idea was ludicrous; she didn't even know how such a thing could be done. The thought had never crossed her mind, and the manifest injustice of his accusation was the most wounding thing of all.

And so Hermione stood in the biting cold of the beer garden and surrendered to a few tears of disgrace and resentment and indignation while, inside the pub, the clock chimed midnight, and the night air was filled with cheers and screams of celebration, the relief that the old year was ended and the hope of better times yet to come. Her pint of beer forgotten, Hermione sniffled and wiped the half-frozen tears from her eyes and cheeks with her gloved fingers. 1998, she decided, had been the worst year of her life. She was glad it was over.