Chapter 2

Severus knocked on her door for the second time that day.

He hoped that Hermione wouldn't answer the door.

He would also be happy not to see the sniveling Creevey boy.

Miranda Cavendish opened the door.

He hadn't noticed how much she actually looked like Hermione before. It was as if Hermione Granger had put on makeup, done something about her unruly hair and managed to grow her breasts larger. Not that he paid attention to that sort of thing.

"Hi, Sev," she said. He cringed. He had always hated that particular nickname. "What a pleasant surprise. Won't you come in?"

Severus nodded. "How are you, Miss Cavendish?" he asked.

"Sev, you don't have to be so formal with me. All my friends call me Randi. But you can call me whatever you want."

Severus raised an eyebrow. "Very well, Miss Cavendish."

"Would you like a drink? I promise I won't lace it with Veritaserum," she said with a laugh.

He didn't join in her laughter. "No thanks, I'd prefer not to take that chance."

He picked up an open potions journal on the sofa. Had she been reading it? "Are you interested in potions, Miss Cavendish?"

"Merlin, no! They're so boring! Hermione wastes so much time in that lab of hers. I'd much rather go out dancing and meet new people. Say, Sev, do you like dancing? You can come with me sometime."

Her brown eyes looked up at him expectantly. His heart skipped a beat...the last time he had seen that look was eight years earlier.

"Most certainly not." His eye fell upon a stray hair on her shoulder.

He reached out and grabbed the hair between two fingers, only then realizing his proximity to the girl.

She smelled rather nice, a smell that was reminiscent of the last time he had made Amortentia. He had known the scent was purely Hermione: ginger, belladonna, peppermint, in addition to something else that he guessed was Hermione's shampoo.

The fact that Miranda Cavendish smelled of several common potions ingredients was enough to make him realize how unnecessary the test on her hair would be.

"Miss Cavendish, which I know is not your real name, we will continue this conversation at a later date."

"Gods, Sev, if you weren't interested, you should have just told me."

"Goodbye, Miss Granger." Severus walked out the door and Apparated from the lawn.

He arrived at his own home and stared at the hair between his fingers. In just a few short moments, he would know for sure if his hunch was true.

Severus unwarded the room behind his laboratory. He walked in and looked around at thousands of bottles, flasks, and vials of varying shapes and sizes. With a flick and swish of his wand and a wordless incantation, one of the vials in the far corner began glowing.

The vial had been in stasis for the past eight years. He was lucky that he had never bothered to organize or dispose of the things he no longer needed.

Near the beginning of her apprenticeship, he had asked Hermione Granger for a blood sample, telling her that if one of their experiments ever went wrong and she was poisoned, her blood would aid in the brewing of an antidote for her.

That had been part of the reason. In the year after the war, he had become paranoid about Polyjuice Potion, kidnappings, and other such things. A blood sample was the only way to tell for certain the difference between a person and his or her Polyjuiced form. It could also help with location spells.

Severus took the stasis charm off the old blood sample and poured it into a small cauldron. After a few incantations and a pinch of powdered Bicorn horn, he added the hair he had taken from Miranda Cavendish.

After about a minute, the potion began to turn magenta. Just as he had suspected.

*********************

Severus Snape knew something was up; Hermione was sure of it. She hadn't liked the way he had so nonchalantly shown up at her house demanding answers, and she especially didn't like the way he had treated Miranda. She could only imagine why he had taken a strand of Miranda's hair.

She wondered what Snape would think when he realized that she had created the potion that he had failed at. Would he be jealous? Resentful? Pleased? Indifferent? Or perhaps he would want to claim responsibility for the creation of the potion...he had been her teacher, after all.

Hermione looked at the vial in front of her. It was her last dose of the potion, at least until tomorrow when her next batch would be finished. Hopefully, this would be enough for the night.

Hermione glanced in the mirror as she shrugged out of her robes, drinking in the utter ordinariness of her appearance. It wasn't that she didn't like the way she looked, but being Hermione Jane Granger was nothing compared to the thrill of being a different person. When she was Miranda, nobody thought she was dowdy, bookish, or dull...they just saw her as a fun-loving and beautiful young woman.

Except for Severus Snape. He seemed immune to Miranda's charms...the same way he had remained unaffected by Hermione's attentions so many years earlier.

Not that she was genuinely interested in him anymore. Her reaction to him was nothing more than a byproduct of an extremely long dry spell. Although she felt sexually attracted to him, he was a callous bastard.

Hermione drank the potion in one gulp, then watched herself in the mirror. She would never grow tired of seeing the potion, her potion work its magic. Her hair became less frizzy, her skin much clearer. Her breasts grew larger, her waist smaller. All in all, her body became perfect. She was no longer Hermione Granger; she had become Miranda Cavendish.

She sighed in contentment. She had been waiting for this moment, needing to take the potion, for the past few hours.

Miranda smiled at herself in the mirror, then quickly dressed in a short black dress that emphasized her new body.

Then she grabbed her bag and Apparated to where she knew Draco Malfoy would be waiting.

As she walked through the restaurant, she could feel the appreciative glances of men...and some women...and also some jealous glares. Miranda smiled to herself. Hermione never had this effect on others.

He was sitting alone at the corner table. "Hi, Draco," she said when reached him. She had met him at a club a few nights earlier.

Miranda had considered going home with him that night, but something had stopped her. It had been a voice deep inside that sounded an awful lot like Hermione's nagging. Hermione had been angry at her previous sexual encounters, but she would have been absolutely furious if Miranda had slept with Draco Malfoy.

However, tonight she didn't really care what Hermione thought.

She could feel his eyes raking over her body. "Hi, love," he said, kissing her on the cheek. He waved over a waitress and ordered a martini for her.

"How was your day?" she asked.

"Terrible. I don't know why Father makes me work. Life was much better before I had that horrible job with those terrible people."

She listened to him complain for a few minutes before she finally had enough.

"Draco, let's not talk about work." Miranda put her hand on his leg, then began to slowly move it upward.

"I can't believe you're related to Granger. You're so much different than her."

Miranda smirked. Hermione was a prude and would usually wait until the tenth date before even allowing a man to kiss her. Or the second...whichever one it was, it seemed completely unreasonable.

"Hermione is rather boring, isn't she? Now let's go to your place and have some fun."

Don't do it! Hermione's voice yelled at her. Miranda ignored it.

"I want to eat first; I'm famished," Draco said.

Miranda scowled and removed her hand.

By the time they had finished dinner, she could feel her mind changing back. And as she changed back, she could feel her desire to have sex with Draco Malfoy waning. Suddenly, he just seemed like a whiny little boy. In fact, she found herself wondering what Severus Snape was doing right now.

That was definitely Hermione trying to take over her mind. Miranda would never be interested in someone like Severus Snape.

Unfortunately, she didn't have any more of the potion.

Now she was in the horrible position of having Hermione's desires, Miranda's body, and the two of them fighting for control of her mind.

"All right, love, are you ready for dessert?" Draco asked, taking her arm as she stood up.

She suddenly felt repulsed by him.

"I've changed my mind, Draco. Next time, you shouldn't make me wait," she said. Then she stalked out of the restaurant. He followed her outside.

"What the hell is going on here? You're acting like Pansy Parkinson." The name sounded familiar, but Miranda couldn't think where she'd heard it before. Hermione would know.

"As I said, I've changed my mind," Miranda said, sounding much more like Hermione Granger than Miranda Cavendish.

His grey eyes narrowed. "Is this one of your tricks?"

"No tricks, I'm just no longer interested." Everything in Miranda was screaming to go back to his flat. But in the end, Hermione won out.

"How can you be no longer interested? You were all over me earlier."

"Goodnight, Draco," she said. Then she Apparated away, leaving an outraged Draco Malfoy staring at the empty space that she had vacated.

When she arrived back at the house, Miranda realized that there was a light on. She knew that she had NOT left a light on. Hermione always got irritated when she left lights on...some nonsense about protecting the environment...and Miranda didn't like to deal with an irritable Hermione.

Miranda took out her wand...well, Hermione's wand. She didn't want to deal with an intruder tonight. Her head was beginning to feel fuzzy. Deep inside of Miranda's mind, Hermione made a mental note to add an extra pinch of asphodel to the potion the next time she made it in order to reduce that particular side effect.

"Expelliarmus!" a voice said when she opened the door. Miranda deflected the curse easily.

A low laugh came from the sofa to her left. "I see your reflexes don't change when you're under the influence."

Severus Snape.

"You!" She pointed her wand at him.

"Miss Granger, how nice to see you, too," he said.

A sudden wave of desire washed over her at the sound of his voice. She ignored it, even though she was ready to pounce on him.

"After the way you treated me, how dare you show up here? And it's Miss Cavendish."

"I know you're not going to curse me, so I'd appreciate it if you could lower your wand, Miss Granger," Snape said. He stayed seated and put his own wand back in his pocket.

"I'm not sure why you're so certain I wouldn't curse an intruder in my home." She walked closer to him, her eyes not leaving him.

"Your hair is getting frizzy. The potion is wearing off."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"It's quite remarkable. You've spent the past eight years creating a potion that nobody before you could make, yet you don't want to admit it. What's wrong with you, Granger?"

"I would appreciate it if you would leave."

"Nice dress."

Hermione...her mind was back now...looked down and was herself enough to feel slightly self-conscious about wearing such a suggestive outfit.

Hermione sighed. He was going to keep bothering her if she didn't talk to him. "What do you want, Snape?"

"I want to know how you did it. We discussed a base for the Perfectus Potion, but what did you put into it to make it work?"

Suddenly, a wave of anger washed over her. "I bet you want to know...then you can brew it yourself and pass the potion off as your own."

"I may be a coldhearted bastard, Miss Granger, but I would never steal the work of another and use it as my own. That you would even suggest such a thing is deplorable."

"Snape, this is my potion, not yours." Something inside Hermione told her that she was being irrational, but it was quickly pushed away.

"Hermione, you know that I would never suggest otherwise." Was that concern on his face? Probably not...Severus Snape didn't care about anyone except himself.

"Snape, I've been nice to you up until now. However, if you don't leave immediately, I'll hex you so badly that even Dolores Umbridge won't want to get in the sack with you."

"Hermione..."

She jabbed her wand towards him, and he silently walked towards the door.

After he'd left, her actions of the previous few minutes came back to her, and only one thought echoed through her mind.

What the hell is wrong with me?