Dawn of Men

Being something of a night person, Severus did not like getting up in the mornings. In fact, it was a task which caused him a good deal of difficulty, especially during the halcyon days of summer when he had very little incentive to do so. Left to its own devices, his sleep schedule would have him abed until noon and up until four in the morning.

However, Severus was a man of considerable self-discipline, as well as one averse to wasting time, and so when the sun's rays seared holes through his eyelids, he levered himself off the mattress with a groan. He blinked for a minute, focusing on the east-facing window in his bedroom wall and then threw off the sheets and slid out of bed.

Thirty minutes and one hot shower later, Severus was seated at his small kitchen table, drinking a large mug of coffee while, more out of habit than anything, he scanned the Daily Prophet. News was sparse in the new, post-Dark Lord era (though he certainly wasn't complaining), and as a result the paper was slightly less interesting than, say, a Muggle phone book. The front page was comprised of a nasty article by Ms. Skeeter about how tacky Ginevra Weasley-soon-to-be-Potter's wedding dress was, along with a piece about the reopening of Flourish and Blotts. Severus sneered at the oily smile on the face of the new owner and tossed the paper aside. Well, he had other reading material; the book Granger had given him the day before was shortly in his hand, and he read until his coffee was finished.

Severus reflected over that interesting day as he buttoned up the black shirt he had selected. Contrary to what most of his students believed, he did not dress like a bat as a matter of course; those billowing robes were mainly to intimidate his students. In the heat of summer, he had decided that Muggle garb was much more comfortable.

A memory of a round, denim-clad bum appeared in his mind--apparently Miss Granger agreed with him about Muggle clothing, though she had been wearing robes at the pub last night; very well-fitting robes they had been, too. Had she not been falling down drunk, Severus would almost have been tempted to take her home and fuck her until she couldn't answer a single question about Advanced Potions-Making. However, she had been very upset by the actions of her "date" and so may not have been the best candidate for meaningless sex with an ex-professor.

Her date... Merlin! Suddenly remembering something, Severus Summoned the paper. He stared at the front page for a full minute before he started to laugh.

* * *

Black hair, lank from sweat, was hanging around his face as he pounded into her. Hermione was still gasping from her first orgasm and felt a second one coming on with each deep thrust; her hands raked his back, sliding over his slick skin.

"Severus, wait," she gasped, trying to still his movements so she could move away from the end of the bed, but he would not stop, and now her head hurt worse than ever. In addition, their activity must have been straining the bedsprings, for Hermione heard a dim squeaking noise, although it didn't seem to quite match the tempo of his thrusts. It was getting louder, too, and as she cried out both from her orgasm and the pain in her head, it rose to a crescendo--

Hermione awoke as her alarm clock screeched in her ear. Her head was throbbing and felt as though one of the Weasley twins had placed Exploding Bonbons in it.

Of course, it wasn't the only place that was throbbing after that dream. Groaning at the pain in her head and the odd turns her sex drive had taken, Hermione slowly crawled out of bed. On her bedside table lay her wand; she groped for it and performed a silent Summoning Charm, mentally blessing Snape for drilling silent spellcasting into them sixth year. A small vial of Hangover Remedy zoomed into her hand from its place in the bathroom cupboard; she gulped it down happily and sighed as her headache receded.

She automatically went through her morning ritual of shower, coffee, breakfast, clothes, leave, except that she added "wank off" during the shower bit. Hopefully, this newfound sexual overdrive regarding Snape would subside soon. Either that, or be consummated.

A tapping at her window halfway through breakfast proved to be the owl from the Daily Prophet. With a Knut and a crust off her toast, it was gone and she had her paper. She wasn't entirely sure why she still got the Prophet; after all the bollocks from it during the Second War, it seemed pointless to keep reading it. Of course, when the alternative was reading about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks, it didn't look so bad.

Well, normally it didn't look bad. When Hermione unrolled the paper to find Tiburos Flourish grinning up at her like some kind of bad dream, the credibility definitely took a dive. His face was quickly reduced to a pile of ash, along with the rest of the paper, leaving Hermione feeling a bit better, but not entirely satisfied.

Her mood did not improve as she Apparated to Diagon Alley and undid the complex wards that protected her shop. It was necessary to keep strong wards on a store full of valuable and volatile books--a third of the wards were protecting people from the books, rather than the other way around. Mad-Eye Moody himself had tested them and said only a trained Auror could get through them, which was quite a compliment coming from him.

The morning passed uneventfully. The Muggle Studies teacher from Hogwarts showed up, and Hermione happily allowed her to peruse the collection of Muggle Literature for two hours; she walked away with a huge stack of books in her arms. A thin, sweaty man, who addressed every word he spoke to her breasts, asked to see the Sex section. She was reluctant to sell him something really rare or dangerous, as she had the feeling he was either trying to get a date or was simply looking for something to wank off to, and she was relieved when he bought one her simpler, safer books. The thought of that man using some of the more powerful Ensnaring Charms on the unsuspecting female populace made Hermione shiver.

She was just arguing with a wizened little man about the merits of ancient Egyptian curses as opposed to Druidic ones when Mr. Flourish walked in the door. So shocked was she at his nerve that she completely forgot what she was talking about and the little old man began pointing out all the flaws in her arguments with glee. Cutting him off as politely as she could, she rang up the book he was buying and ushered him out the door.

When she turned on Flourish with her hands--one clutching her wand--on her hips, he was looking around the shop with a sort of condescending interest.

"You have a fascinating collection of books here, Miss Granger," he said, looking down his long nose at the titles on a shelf.

"I find it very hard to believe that you care about my inventory, Mr. Flourish," she replied coldly, "given that you're so eager to have me abandon it."

He turned a look of surprise on her, eyes wide with insincere shock. "Abandon, Miss Granger? No, no, I never said that. I said to sell them off and make as much money as you can, followed by a steady, well-paying job in my administration. You wouldn't be working the floor, I assure you."

She had to admit that he had a point. He could see clearly how many customers she got each day; no doubt he was savvy enough to figure out that she was just making ends meet. The practical, logical side of her saw a secure job with Flourish and Blotts and panted with desire. The rest of her, however, objected quite strongly to his attitude and his business dealings.

"What I said last night is still true, Mr. Flourish," she said. "However, as you seem to have difficulty understanding it, let me repeat it: No."

It seemed that she crossed some limit of patience that he had, for suddenly he left off looking over the shelves and focused his entire attention on her, even taking a few steps in her direction. Unfortunately for him, she had been menaced by Snape the previous day; Flourish didn't hold a candle to Snape's glare. They locked eyes for a full minute; his were cold, blue, and annoyed.

He looked away first, holding his hands up in an unconvincing gesture of disappointment. "I'd hoped that you would accept my generous offer after you had a night to think it over, but apparently you're not reasonable enough to see it."

Hermione's wand arm moved before she even realized how angry she was. The sight of his eyes immediately locking on to the tip of her wand was quite satisfying, especially as it made him slightly cross-eyed. "The fact that I don't want to give up the store I worked hard to open so I can work for someone I don't like seems unreasonable to you?" she railed, hearing her voice get shriller with each word. "Well, then, Mr. Flourish, perhaps this will seem more reasonable!" As swiftly as she could, she shoved past him, yanked the door open and trained her wand on him again.

"Leave before I hex you!"

He must have been fighting hard to keep that look of calm on his face, but she noticed that he had gone rather pale. "I am sorry that we could not come to a mutually satisfactory agreement, Miss Granger. Consider yourself my competition." With that, he stalked out, keeping one wary eye on her wand as he did so.

Once Flourish was far enough down the street, Hermione sagged against the doorframe, pinching the bridge of her nose with her free hand. She really didn't need this on top of everything else. Those parting words of his made her nervous: he had already proved to be rather unscrupulous in his business dealings--exactly how did he deal with "competition"? The pattern of wood grains on the other side of the door frame burned itself into her eyes as she stared at it, considering any likely actions Flourish would take and what she could do to be ready for them.

Hm... It's unlikely that he'll try anything overt, at least to start with--more likely, he'll disparage me and try to take away my customers. What could he do, though, to get my clientele to abandon me? He doesn't carry what I do--if they need a rare book, they'll come to me whatever he says.

"Miss Grang--,"

"What the--!" she half-shrieked, whirling and bringing her wand up so fast that she almost poked Snape--for he had appeared magically by her side--in the eye. Black hair swung away from his face as he jerked backwards to avoid the length of wood, hastily shoving her wrist downwards so the wand pointed to his side. They remained in that pose as they both tried to calm down a bit; Hermione felt adrenaline rushing through her veins and she knew without a doubt that her face was flushed, both from anger and close proximity with the man she had been fantasizing about.

"--Fuck!" she cried, completing her surprised ejaculation. "Do you want to get your greasy head blasted off?"

"Do you enjoy allowing people to creep up on you while you're staring at doorframes?" he shot back, releasing her wrist with ill humor and taking a step backwards. "Peace has made you soft, Miss Granger."

"Who are you, Mad-Eye?" she snapped, brushing her hair out of her face so she could glare at him properly.

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked down at her, the inevitable sardonic eyebrow arched for maximum effect. The movement of his arms drew her eyes to his torso for a moment where she was surprised to see that he was wearing a Muggle shirt; black trousers over his usual boots met her eye as she glanced further down. She had never seen him in anything but robes before; Muggle clothes, she decided, were much more flattering on his lean frame--robes just swallowed him up.

"Does my outfit pass muster? I realize it's not Madam Malkin's finest, but I tried." The acid in his voice could have etched glass. Hermione quickly looked back up at his face, trying to think of something to say that didn't involve the words "very fit."

"I'm sorry, Professor. I spent all those years thinking that you wore those robes because you weren't secure enough to actually wear dresses, so this is something of a surprise--," she said, feeling the corners of her lips twitch at the look of shocked outrage on his face. "I'm joking," she added hastily, seeing thunderclouds forming on his brow. It appeared that Snape was one of those men who simply could not stand any jibes at his sexuality, however patently absurd they might be, and she was disinclined to get him really angry. Flourish as an enemy she could handle, but Snape was another story.

The anger seemed to subside a bit; at least, he no longer looked borderline homicidal. "My sense of humor extends only so far, Miss Granger."

"You have a sense of humor?"

"It is clearly superior to your sense of your surroundings," he retorted. "Now," he continued, cutting off the beginnings of her retort, "let us take this conversation indoors. There may be subsequent parts that we don't want all of Diagon Alley to hear." With that, he strode past Hermione into the shop. She stayed outside for a moment, reluctant to obey his orders like a student, but she decided there was little use yelling at him from outside, and in the shop, at least, she would be on her territory.

* * *

Severus had started perusing the shelves as soon as he entered, finding a patch of books that he had not previously inspected. It was a minute before he heard Miss Granger follow him; he had a feeling she had been outside debating whether coming inside was tantamount to obeying him. He surreptitiously glanced at her and smothered a snort at what he saw: shoulders back, steps firm and decided, stiff posture... She was trying to impress upon him that this was her store and he should not forget it.

Territorial Gryffindors, he thought. The display of power was unnecessary; Severus had no intention of forgetting whose shop he was in nor what that shop contained. He had no wish to discover the hard way whether she had read all of the books in her store.

"Well," came the usual crisp voice, as she seated herself on the stool behind the counter, "what was it that you didn't want the world to hear?" She rested her arms on the countertop, leaning forward and looking very curious under that thatch of hair.

Abandoning his pretense of looking at the books, Severus strode over to the counter and casually leaned his knuckles on it, forcing her to draw back a little, before he spoke. "So, I gather that your attempt to liaise with the young Mr. Flourish did not go well?"

The look on her face could not have been more entertaining had he told her that Gryffindor House had been discontinued.

"Liaise?" she asked, a quavering note in her voice. "I did not try to liaise with that... man."

"That is not what you told me last night."

The stool hit the floor about half a second before he found her face two inches from his own. Brown eyes bored into him with power of a hundred wands. But her voice, when she spoke, was dangerously quiet, albeit a bit shrill.

"Many parts of last night were a mistake, Professor. The situation has changed considerably since then. So if you will excuse me," she continued blithely, stepping back from him and turning to a stack of books, "I am shortly to be under siege by a major bookstore. I have things to prepare." With that, she turned and marched off down the aisle to the room where she kept her Muggle books.

Well, that was interesting. Had he really misread her drunken advances so much as to believe she might be attracted to him? Or was she simply so angry that it smothered her sex drive? Remembering how she had looked him up and down when he had surprised her earlier, Severus smirked. No, the desire was still there--she simply had other things on her mind.

And he had to admit to himself, as he made his way down the street, that she was much more attractive when not drunk or on the verge of tears. He almost felt sorry for her the next day when he opened the Daily Prophet and it read, "Eccentric or Evil-centric: Hermione Granger's 'interesting' little bookshop."