A/N: Started on a whim in the summer of 2004 as an answer to a WIKTT challenge. It was always intended to be an inversion of Groundhog Day, not a crossover – in the film, the main character’s moral decisions affect his time loop, but in Thursdays, the time loop is just a horrible consequence of ‘shit happens.’
Summary: A good day goes bad and then gets far worse than Severus could ever have imagined. Again and again and again. Inspired by the WIKTT Time-Loop Challenge.
Rating: This story contains lots and lots of character death, copious amounts of bad language, and enough sexual situations to make Severus extremely uncomfortable with the whole thing. Rate accordingly.
Disclaimer: Nope. Not mine.
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Getting the Hang of Thursdays
by: Hayseed
“This must be Thursday… I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
–Arthur Dent, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Chapter One: Pete and Repeat Went For a Boat Ride…
Day One
Really, Severus should have seen it coming. His day had been far too uneventful — not a single accident in his morning classes, not one inane comment from any of the staff at luncheon. He hadn’t even given a single detention.
And now, his seventh year NEWT class. All in all, he was both surprised and resigned when it happened. While many of the tensions between the seventh year students had eased through the years, a classroom that contained both Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter was simply doomed to eventual conflict.
When Severus had initially looked at his NEWT roster, he’d toyed with the idea of assigned seating. Potter and Malfoy on opposite sides of the room, a handful of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws between them. But he only had a dozen seventh years in his course this term, and it would be suspicious to treat such a small number that way. He’d simply sighed and known that it was going to be a long year. The numbers hadn’t even been terribly split — three from both Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, four Ravenclaws, and two Slytherins.
Unfortunately, with Potter and Malfoy in the same class, it wouldn’t have mattered if they were the only people in the room. Disaster was only a hair-trigger away.
But the method had been rather unexpected — truth be told, Severus had been watching for an impromptu duel, or an exchange of nasty pranks, or even an old-fashioned fistfight.
Malfoy had set up his cauldron at the table behind Potter’s for some unknown reason — Severus hadn’t asked and Malfoy certainly hadn’t explained. About halfway through the class, he’d hissed something to Potter that Severus had not caught. The boy grimaced and didn’t say anything in reply. A few moments later, Malfoy had done it again. Severus had actually been very close to intervening.
But Potter beat him to the punch, so to speak. Spinning around, Potter had just put his hands against Malfoy’s chest and shoved, sending him pinwheeling backwards.
As he regained his balance, Malfoy had grabbed a jar of something off of his workbench and flung it at Potter’s head. Potter had ducked oddly elegantly — Severus blamed the damned Quidditch reflexes — and the jar flew harmlessly over his head, landing in Longbottom’s cauldron with an audible splat.
Severus almost felt sorry for Longbottom — the stupid boy had struggled through Potions for years, had spent the first five years with Granger giving him on-the-spot lectures as he attempted to brew whatever simple draught Severus had assigned for the day and still failed far more often than he succeeded. But after his OWL, the boy had improved somewhat; managed to hang on through the end of his sixth year with respectable marks. And this year, he had kept his head down and more or less succeeded. Granted, Longbottom was no Potions Master, and he took about three times longer than the rest of the class to do anything, but he generally did it correctly and Granger-free, these days. Severus no longer felt the need to hover over his cauldron in an effort to head off the inevitable explosion.
But today was not Longbottom’s day any more than it was shaping up to be Severus’s. Malfoy’s mystery jar fell into Longbottom’s probably-correct-up-to-whatever-point-he-was-at Restorative Draught, and the cauldron gave an ominous belch.
Severus took a hesitant step forward — he would deal with Potter and Malfoy later; this was far more important at the moment. “Longbottom,” he said in a quiet voice, “step back… carefully…”
Wide-eyed, the tall boy did as he was told, sliding away from the cauldron in a motion that spoke of years of practice at evading disaster.
“Malfoy,” Severus began in that same calm voice, watching the contents of the cauldron bubble and turn an odd shade of red, “what was in that jar?”
“What jar, sir?” Malfoy stammered, clearly attempting to save face. “I didn’t–”
“Don’t be a fool, Malfoy,” he snapped. “What was in the jar? Quickly, boy!”
“I, erm…” he began, fumbling around his table. “I’m not…”
The potion burped again and about half of the students in the room — the sensible ones, Severus rather thought — jumped. “Everyone, get out of here,” he said as quietly as he dared, keeping one eye on Longbottom’s rogue cauldron. “As quickly as you can–”
There was a loud rushing noise as the contents of the cauldron exploded.
Several students screamed — Malfoy among them. Potter and Longbottom both hit the ground, covering their heads with their hands; a Hufflepuff and a Ravenclaw followed their example.
But the loudest scream came from Hermione Granger. For whatever reason, she apparently had not had the good sense to move from her station as the cauldron foamed — Severus suspected that she hadn’t been paying attention; Granger had an oddly one-track mind once she started working on something, and very little could distract her — and the majority of the potion now flying through the air hit her in the face.
There was an awful smell in the air as Granger continued to shriek, on the floor now — the force of the scalding potion hitting her combined with probable shock had caused her to fall backward nearly immediately — and Severus could see a strange sort of smoke rising from her chest.
Instinctively, he was at her side, trying to see what was wrong. “Potter!” he bellowed, “get Poppy from the Infirmary, now!”
The boy was gone from the room as if he had a dozen Dementors at his heels.
Severus turned his attention back to Granger. She was completely covered in the stuff that had exploded out of Longbottom’s cauldron — her face and hands were red with burns from the contact. And her chest was still smoking. Severus thought he saw shards of broken glass on her robes but hadn’t the faintest idea where they could have come from.
She coughed. “Pro-f-fessor?” she whispered.
“Help is coming, Granger,” he said, trying to be calm. “Just be still… you’re going into shock.”
“Sh… shock?” she echoed, confusion clear in her expression.
Hesitantly, unwilling to come in contact with the mysterious substance but wanting to do something for the obvious pain in her eyes, Severus laid a hand on her shoulder. She trembled under his touch. “It’ll be okay,” he muttered, knowing it was a lie even as he said it.
“Okay,” she sighed, her eyes sliding closed and her entire body relaxing.
Frozen, Severus moved his hand away from her shoulder. As if in shock himself, he turned away from Granger’s body.
“Severus!” came Poppy Pomfrey’s shout as she burst into the classroom. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He pushed his hair out of his eyes and tried to stay expressionless. “There’s been an accident, Poppy. Hermione Granger is dead.”
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Day Two
Really, Severus should have seen it coming. It was a rare day in his NEWT course that Potter and Malfoy didn’t have an altercation of sorts.
Today, they decided to have a shoving match — it took a great strength of will for Severus not to march over, grab both of them by the scruffs of their miserable necks, and drag them to Filch’s office. He knew exactly where Filch kept his old hanging chains and had been of the opinion for many years that a few hours chained to a ceiling somewhere would do both Malfoy and Potter a whole world of good.
And Merlin only knew what the two idiots were squabbling over. Usually, once the smoke had cleared and body parts had been reattached, it would be revealed that the pair had come to blows over some nonsensical, childish thing. An insult, an insinuation, never anything meaningful. This latest argument was probably equally pointless.
Potter gave Malfoy a hard shove, causing him to stumble into Mandy Brocklehurst’s table. Malfoy made a face and lurched forward, hands outstretched. But Potter sidestepped and Malfoy went tumbling to the ground, this time knocking a jar of something off of his own workbench. Potter’s lips moved inaudibly and then twisted into a wry, mocking grin. The grin disappeared, however, as Malfoy made a motion with his legs that wound up toppling Potter to the floor — the boys began to scuffle around on the ground like common Muggles.
Severus took a single, lazy step forward, ready to intervene and stop the minor fight before hexes were exchanged. He ducked abruptly as the same jar that had fallen to the floor just moments ago went flying past his head — Severus did not know who had thrown it, but whoever it had been was in for a world of hurt. Fifty points should do, he decided. And a detention — he hadn’t given a detention today.
“Potter!” he barked. “Malfoy! On your feet!”
The two boys scrambled to a standing position, Malfoy taking a moment to dig a sharp elbow into Potter’s ribs.
“Now…” he began in his best set of ‘you are in so much trouble’ tones. “You will tell me who threw that and then you will–”
“Erm… Professor?” a quiet voice interrupted.
Severus spun around, furious and ready to dock whomever had intruded into his tirade a thousand points. Longbottom’s worried, pale face stopped him, however.
It appeared as if the errant jar had found its way into Longbottom’s cauldron — Severus paused for a moment to reflect upon the inherent irony there, as Longbottom had not melted a cauldron in the last eighteen months at least — and the contents of said cauldron were now bubbling ominously.
He stilled. “Longbottom, move away,” he hissed.
The nervous boy obeyed without thought, sidling away from his cauldron in a practiced motion.
Emitting a loud burp, the potion turned a bright shade of red.
“Everyone,” Severus began quietly, “get–”
A loud popping noise and the cauldron exploded. A handful of students — Potter and Malfoy, who were not five feet away from the explosion, included — screamed. Longbottom and a couple of Ravenclaws instinctively hit the floor, and even Severus himself crouched over, covering his head in a defensive gesture.
But the loudest scream came from the corner nearest Longbottom’s cauldron, where Hermione Granger had just taken a face full of burning hot potion. She went down flailing and landed half on her workbench and half on the floor. Severus noticed that her robes were smoking oddly.
Not pausing to think, he scooped the moaning girl into his arms and ran out of the classroom.
Must get to the Infirmary, he thought as he ran. Poppy will know what to do.
Granger shifted in his loose embrace and coughed a couple of times. Severus grimaced as he felt the potion remains slithering down his robes and hoped that it wasn’t toxic. That strange odor he’d noticed as her robes started smoking back in the classroom intensified, and nausea suddenly welled up in his gut.
He had to stop walking, however, when Granger went rigid in his arms and then began trembling violently.
Seizure, he told himself dimly.
“Granger…” he said, taking the girl’s face in between his hands and looking into her eyes, which were rolling wildly about. “Granger!”
“Hurts…” she wheezed. “Professor –”
All of the air rushed out of her body in one loud gasp as Hermione Granger stopped breathing.
Cursing, Severus lowered his lips to hers and began to blow air into her mouth, hoping against hope that he could resuscitate her. “Come on, Granger,” he muttered, pressing his clenched hands into her chest.
After a few eternal minutes, Severus lifted his head from her face and sighed. Feeling at the base of her neck for the telltale flutter of life, something twisted in his stomach when he did not find it.
“Professor…?” a small voice asked behind him.
Still on his knees, Severus half-turned to see Harry Potter at the head of the entire seventh year Potions class standing in the middle of the corridor. “Fetch Madam Pomfrey, Potter,” he said heavily, keeping his expression still. “I think that Miss Granger is gone.”
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Day Three
This was not Severus’s day. Panting and cursing, he carried a semi-conscious, groaning Granger through the halls.
There had been an explosion. Stupid Potter and stupid Malfoy had been squabbling over nothing, as usual, and Potter had knocked his cauldron over onto the contents of Malfoy’s workbench. The entire concoction had begun hissing and foaming, and eventually the whole mess blew up, landing mostly on an oblivious Granger, stirring her potion not ten feet away.
And when she fell, there was this awful crunching noise, and her robes began to smoke strangely.
Not wanting to waste any time, Severus had simply picked her up bodily and brought her here.
He pushed his way into the Infirmary, shouting, “Poppy! I need you, now!”
Granger let out a louder moan as he shifted her in his arms. The mediwitch came walking over, eyes widening as she took in the scene. “Goodness, Severus, what happened?”
“An accident,” he said tersely. Granger cried out piteously in his arms and tried to curl up into a protective position.
“Put her here,” Poppy replied, pointing to the nearest bed, all business now. As soon as Granger was out of Severus’s arms, Poppy waved her wand at the girl, divesting her of her sodden robes. “Great Merlin…” she sighed. “Severus, bring me that bottle of burn salve in the cabinet, there.”
Glad for a reason to walk away, Severus retrieved the requested bottle. So he’d been right — Granger was burned. He made a sympathetic face as the girl cried out, in obvious pain.
Poppy made soothing noises. “There, there, child,” she muttered. “We’re going to get you fixed right up, we are. Just a bit of this… see, it’s going down already… wait a minute,” she said slowly.
He’d been attempting to look away — a mostly naked Hermione Granger was not on his list of appropriate viewing material — but there was an odd note in Poppy’s voice that caused his head to jerk back around. “What is it?” And then he saw. “Oh…”
Granger’s body was covered in raw, angry burns. He’d thought that her hands and face were burned from the contact with the boiling potion, but that was nothing to what he was seeing now.
Blisters rose under his eyes as he looked down at her torso — they appeared to be mostly clustered just between her breasts. A blister popped and Granger screamed.
Severus winced and Poppy’s frown deepened.
It was then that he realized that the odd smell he’d noticed emanating from Granger’s smoking robes as he’d carried her here was the smell of burning flesh.
“Poppy, is there –?” he began.
Wordlessly, the mediwitch shook her head. “I have some painkillers,” she whispered. “But there’s nothing that I can…”
Another blister, another scream.
“She’s still burning, Severus,” Poppy said in a low voice, turning away from Granger. “I’ve never seen anything like this. What happened?”
“A standard Restorative Draught,” he replied. “A couple of ingredients from a seventh year Potions kit added in. Nothing that should cause anything like this. I thought Granger was burned from the explosion.”
“No…” Poppy said slowly, eyes wide and expression bleak. “This is something else. The burn creme should be countering the symptoms, but it’s not.”
Another blister began swelling on Granger’s belly. Horrified and transfixed, Severus watched it rise.
“Severus.”
Oh, no. He knew that tone of voice. He knew exactly what it meant. “No, Poppy,” he said automatically.
“Severus,” she said gently. “You know this.”
He turned his face away, lest Granger be able to read the truth in his eyes. “We can fix it,” he said.
“Severus,” Poppy repeated, placing a hand on his arm. “We can’t.”
Granger screamed again — when he looked back at the child, he noticed that the blister on her belly had burst open. Blood trickled lazily down her side and her face contorted in agony.
Feeling a measure of pity that he’d never expected to feel for Hermione Granger — of course, he’d never expected to be in this sort of scenario with her, either — Severus moved to her bedside and took her reddened hand in his as gently as he could manage. Her fingers wiggled a bit and he noticed that more blisters were already forming on her palm. “Granger…” he whispered. “Miss Granger, I –”
She bit her lip and her eyes rolled briefly in her head. “Not your fault,” she muttered, gasping as another blister popped.
The smell. That acrid smell was getting unbearable. For a horrible moment, Severus thought he was going to pass out.
“Professor,” Granger said, her hand tightening in his. “Tell you…”
“What, Granger?” he asked, trying not to be curt. “What is it?”
“The time…” Wheezing, Granger’s lips moved soundlessly as she tried to complete her sentence.
But it never came. One last, awful gasp and Granger’s body went limp, her hand falling out of his. Severus stared down at her unmoving body, not knowing what to do, how to feel.
A loud bang startled him out of his reverie, and an even louder shout made him turn around. “Hermione!” he heard a young man cry. As he spun, he saw Potter — face a thundercloud — held in Poppy’s firm grasp.
“No, Potter,” Poppy told the distraught boy.
“Hermione!” he cried again, a tear running down his cheek.
Severus cleared his throat, ignoring the feeling in the pit of his stomach. “She’s gone, Potter.”
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Day Four
As Severus knelt over Hermione Granger’s freshly deceased body, he could not help feeling that somehow, somewhere… this had happened all before…
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