DRIVE!
Sure wizards can Apparate, use a portkey or the floo, but sometimes it's just so much more fun to get behind the wheel. Not to mention that the fangirls do LOVE to see our favorite powerful wizard in the driver's seat of a really hot car! Or to watch him squirm while learning to drive. Join us for this week's quiz as Severus and Hermione go for a Drive!
Thanks to christev for suggesting this fabulous theme.
Welcome back, my pretties! We missed you during the sshg_exchange hiatus!
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EST. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
The Ice-Cream Man Cometh by clairvoyant12
Drive! by apollinav
Nineteen Days Later by kingpig
Don't Stop Me Now by sunnythirty3
The Master Spy by Aurette
Seven Preposterous Things by Bloodcult of Freud (WIP)
Of Secret Vices by mavidian
Pumblechook by wartcap
Bat Out of Hell by bleddyn_coch
Snape's Mistress by shellsnapeluver
The Long Drive Home by Olethros
Where Your Treasure Is by zeegrindylows
1. Pedal to the floor. Engine gunned to its limit. Brake lights in the far distance. More concrete barriers.
Construction.
Severus cut the enhanced overdrive. The black mini easily sped past them.
"What are you doing?" Granger shouted. "I've almost got the shot."
He braced Granger with one arm.
Clutch. Downshifting. Brakes.
Brakes!
Brakes!
Tires squealed and kicked smoke plumes, the smell of melting rubber rose from the pavement. Severus gasped for breath as they slowed to the pace of traffic. Red tail lights fell into focus as they pulled up behind a merging Muggle car. Granger whipped around and faced him, her chest rising and falling with a pounding heart beat.
"You're crazy!" she hoarsely screamed.
2. Hermione stared at her former professor in utter disbelief. It was the same expression that she had worn for nearly half an hour as they raced through the smaller towns and cities on the outskirts of London.
Professor Snape, Severus Snape, former Death Eater, exalted Potions Master, had just stolen a car. Casually. As though it was an occurrence that happened daily. Hotwired, proficiently, skilfully, as though it was his profession.
Severus Snape, esteemed car thief.
The man who had seemed so two-dimensional in her youth was now flying down the road in excess of one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour, perched as calmly and perfectly at ease in the driver’s seat as he was in his own classroom. And not only this, but in addition to being quite skilled in Muggle criminal activity, he was also apparently something of a zombie expert. Or, at least, of campy B-movie horror films featuring zombies.
And, he was still smirking in that self-satisfied, smug way of his.
3. Do I really want to hurtle down a rock hard concrete thoroughfare in a flimsy metal box at speeds not to exceed seventy miles per hour? Is it too late to change careers?
The low roar of an engine shook him from his musings. A sleek gull-wing door flew open. Snape stared, slack jawed and googly eyed.
"Don't just stand there, get in," Hermione huffed. "We're losing valuable daylight."
His mouth snapped shut and his eyes narrowed, from wonderment to irritation in 3.2 seconds. "What the hell is that supposed to be? It looks like a flying contraption from a bad science fiction film."
She laughed at his unintentionally ironic observation. "It's a DeLorean. Now get in, and I'll tell you all about it while we go and find some less congested roads for you to practice on."
Snape slid his long, lean frame into the passenger seat with some difficulty, his knees pressed into the glove box.
"Oh, if you pull back on the lever under the front of the seat, it will move back to accommodate your legs," she said, making tiny adjustments to the rear-view mirror.
Blindly groping beneath the seat, he found the handle and pulled. The seat lurched back with such unexpected force that Snape's head smacked against the headrest. "Thanks, Granger. My legs are quite comfortable, but I'm suffering from whiplash now. Who was sitting here before me? A house-elf?"
"Must have been Molly, I'd hazard to guess."
His trust in her began to wane, replaced by a gnawing ache in the pit of his stomach, adding to the pain in his neck. "Granger, whose car is this?" he growled.
4. “What the hell is that?”
Snape scowled at Hermione as she held open the car door for him. The early morning air was cold, and the city around them was starting to wake.
“It’s a car. A Jaguar XK to be precise. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it parked out here.”
“Yes, I know it’s a car, and yes, I had noticed it. I just didn’t realise it was yours. It hadn’t occurred to me that a long car journey was one of the tortures I would have to endure this weekend.”
Hermione abandoned her position by the passenger door and threw their bags into the boot instead.
“Just get into the car, now!” she hissed.
Snape glowered again as he lowered his long frame into the sports car. Hermione slid into the driver’s seat and turned to face him.
“Had you forgotten we’re probably being watched?”
“Yes, I had,” he admitted, surprising her. “I was just rather taken aback.
5. And now here he stood, just staring at his new love. He wanted her, but he knew he should go back to Hermione.
But she called to him. Her headlights nearly winked at him to come and play.
And he remembered what it was like to smell her intoxicating scent, to be touching her, to be inside of her. Her skin was always slick-smooth as a pearl. But that wasn’t what turned him on the most. And her scent-clean and fresh, like the smell of new book mixed with a pair of new boots, straight out of the box. It tantalized him. It teased him. But still, that wasn’t his favorite part.
It was when he was fully inside her body. It was the way she conformed to his size and wrapped around him, making him feel snug. And when he pushed her buttons-the way she roared with pleasure, the way she groaned underneath him-begging. Begging that he drive her-to ride her hard and oh! So fucking fast.
He ran his hands over her. Gripping her, knotting his fists around her firm body-handling her. Then, he reached inside his pants, pulled out his vital tool and slowly and deliberately stuck it inside her. And rotated. She loved that. Her thunderous moans vibrated throughout his body.
He tilted his head back and sighed. “Oh. Yes.”
6. She followed him out of a side door into a garage. He slipped the flat bar against the window of the MGB Roadster that was parked there. Hermione started to say something, but Snape pulled up on his bar with a jerk and she heard a distinctive click. He wiggled the bar and pulled it out before opening the door and tossing his bags into the back. He dropped down onto the seat and wiggled his head under the steering wheel, as Hermione finally managed to get herself moving. She heard him curse several times, but then the engine roared to life. She stood on the other side, shaking, until his long arm opened her door, and she threw her bags into the back and scrambled in.
"Buckle up. We're going to move fast." He got out of the car and walked back to open the garage door. Then he came running back and jumped into the car, buckled in, and threw it in reverse. His face looked grim as he shot backwards out of the garage and spun in a circle as soon as he was clear. He shifted and shot off down the drive. Hermione looked wildly around the landscape, but without her glasses, she couldn't make anything out.
Snape drove like a demon.
He drove like the experienced car thief he obviously was.
Hermione stared at him in shock for fifteen straight minutes as he took off north, before circling back south, and finally west. Then she started to giggle. Then she started to laugh. Snape looked like he was worried about her sanity, but then he smiled as well.
"Is this one of your 'hidden reserves?'" she asked with merriment.
"Just one of many," he replied with a wicked smile that curled her belly.
7. Switching the music off, he glared at Lucius. “Are you trying to make my life even more miserable?”
Lucius sighed impatiently. “Don’t take it so personally. It’s just a song. It’s your choice - sit in that dingy place all summer and contemplate your riveting life or join me in a little fun. Remember that? We used to enjoy life once. We can drive somewhere-”
“Where exactly?” Severus still hadn’t forgiven him for his choice of song.
“Doesn’t matter where. It’s a DB5. Who cares where we drive it, just that we do. In style. With Freddie and friends.”
“You have been Crucio’ed once too often, my friend. Narcissa would have your balls if she knew what you were doing. The Ministry would have to re-examine all their files. Hell, I’m considering examining you for Polyjuice use myself.”
“Narcissa divorced me, remember? The Ministry can go and Avada itself. And you know you want this.” Lucius inserted the key and started the engine. The deep rumble of the six cylinder engine, the smell of well cared for leather, the music, all combined to bewitch the reluctant wizard, who found himself strapped into the passenger seat, ready for the complete DB5 experience before his volition caught up with his actions.
“Drive me, you seductive bastard. Drive me.” He switched the stereo back on, leaned back in the luxurious, leather seat, and surrendered to his senses.
8. Severus Snape was feeling smug for a few reasons. First, he was sitting in a sinfully comfortable leather seat behind the wheel of a Jaguar XJ8. Second, as a result, he was feeling remarkably more cheerful about the thought of a holiday in America. And finally, he had stunned Hermione Granger the insufferable know-it-all into silence.
It had taken him exactly 59 seconds to select the best car from the nearby lot, trip the lock with his crowbar and cross the necessary wires to start the V8 engine with a massive roar.
Miss Granger’s mouth had dropped open. He had smirked and opened the passenger door for her with a gentlemanly bow. Tobias Snape had been a mediocre mill worker at best, but he had excelled at stealing cars when honest wages failed to support his family. That had been one skill that Tobias seemed to have no reservations passing on to his son.
Childhood years of skulking trepidation before the law had all been worth it for the look of shock on Miss Granger’s face and the forty minutes of blessed silence that followed.
“Professor?”
He should have known the moment was too perfect to last.
“Professor… where did you learn to hotwi - er, drive a car?”
9. Severus Snape aka Stephen Liston drove on, his magic manifesting itself in a dozen narrowly-missed collisions as he manoeuvred the behemoth of an automobile through back alleys and city streets, frequently avoiding stops by cleverly cutting through parking lots. One would assume he'd learned to drive in Cairo, instead of the north of England. His companion imagined the whole business might have been marginally less nerve-wracking had he shown himself able to refrain from bloody whistling as they careened from near miss to near miss.
"Where are we going?" Hermione asked, her fingers aching from their death grip on the cracked vinyl seat.
"A number of places," Snape said with a mysterious smirk.
"Where?" Hermione asked, keeping none of the annoyance out of her voice.
The look Snape gave her in response slid quickly from the ire of the surprised back to amusement. What a self satisfied shit. In the rear view mirror, Hermione watched as the smirk spread itself into a smile so broad and nasty it deserved some other name. Full of vicious, crooked teeth, it held some secret that allowed for contempt of everything outside itself. It was the smile of an entity complete in itself and content watching the weak fall and flounder within arm's reach. More a warning, more a signal of danger than anything even vaguely like joy. It was the smile of a shark or, somehow more frightening, a crocodile.
"Where are we going?" she repeated, biting the words as though they burnt her lips.
Snape had the utter lack of disregard it took to chuckle at her displeasure.
10. "Seen anyone else?" Hermione asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
"None. No one at all." the elder woman replied.
The three of them made their way to the parking lot. At six thirty am it was still dark enough to require the streetlamps be lit. Hermione noted happily that the other rental cars were still there. Good, we've got a headstart. Hermione was settling herself into the car when a noise to her left made her turn. It was the unmistakeable growl of a motorcycle.
A lone motorcycle came into view and stopped directly in front of her car. The helmetless rider was dressed in a black leather jacket, dark shirt and pants and black boots. Mr. Wright looked straight at her and revved the engine once. Giving Hermione a smart half salute he turned his cycle and roared out of the parking lot.
The whole event had taken mere minutes but it was precious minutes that she had now lost. Hermione was not pleased. "Damn that man!"
"David certainly has style." Emily noted.
"Yeah, style. Plenty to go around I'm sure." Hermione kicked the car into gear with a savage swipe. They drove off following Mr. Wright. She managed to follow him for a while until they neared some hard curves. She watched amazed as Mr. Wright accelerated to a suicidal rate and disappeared around the bend. Knowing the vehicle accident statistics by heart, Hermione took her time around the twisting turns. That man has a death wish!
Thanks to christev for suggesting this fabulous theme.
Welcome back, my pretties! We missed you during the sshg_exchange hiatus!
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EST. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
The Ice-Cream Man Cometh by clairvoyant12
Drive! by apollinav
Nineteen Days Later by kingpig
Don't Stop Me Now by sunnythirty3
The Master Spy by Aurette
Seven Preposterous Things by Bloodcult of Freud (WIP)
Of Secret Vices by mavidian
Pumblechook by wartcap
Bat Out of Hell by bleddyn_coch
Snape's Mistress by shellsnapeluver
The Long Drive Home by Olethros
Where Your Treasure Is by zeegrindylows
1. Pedal to the floor. Engine gunned to its limit. Brake lights in the far distance. More concrete barriers.
Construction.
Severus cut the enhanced overdrive. The black mini easily sped past them.
"What are you doing?" Granger shouted. "I've almost got the shot."
He braced Granger with one arm.
Clutch. Downshifting. Brakes.
Brakes!
Brakes!
Tires squealed and kicked smoke plumes, the smell of melting rubber rose from the pavement. Severus gasped for breath as they slowed to the pace of traffic. Red tail lights fell into focus as they pulled up behind a merging Muggle car. Granger whipped around and faced him, her chest rising and falling with a pounding heart beat.
"You're crazy!" she hoarsely screamed.
2. Hermione stared at her former professor in utter disbelief. It was the same expression that she had worn for nearly half an hour as they raced through the smaller towns and cities on the outskirts of London.
Professor Snape, Severus Snape, former Death Eater, exalted Potions Master, had just stolen a car. Casually. As though it was an occurrence that happened daily. Hotwired, proficiently, skilfully, as though it was his profession.
Severus Snape, esteemed car thief.
The man who had seemed so two-dimensional in her youth was now flying down the road in excess of one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour, perched as calmly and perfectly at ease in the driver’s seat as he was in his own classroom. And not only this, but in addition to being quite skilled in Muggle criminal activity, he was also apparently something of a zombie expert. Or, at least, of campy B-movie horror films featuring zombies.
And, he was still smirking in that self-satisfied, smug way of his.
3. Do I really want to hurtle down a rock hard concrete thoroughfare in a flimsy metal box at speeds not to exceed seventy miles per hour? Is it too late to change careers?
The low roar of an engine shook him from his musings. A sleek gull-wing door flew open. Snape stared, slack jawed and googly eyed.
"Don't just stand there, get in," Hermione huffed. "We're losing valuable daylight."
His mouth snapped shut and his eyes narrowed, from wonderment to irritation in 3.2 seconds. "What the hell is that supposed to be? It looks like a flying contraption from a bad science fiction film."
She laughed at his unintentionally ironic observation. "It's a DeLorean. Now get in, and I'll tell you all about it while we go and find some less congested roads for you to practice on."
Snape slid his long, lean frame into the passenger seat with some difficulty, his knees pressed into the glove box.
"Oh, if you pull back on the lever under the front of the seat, it will move back to accommodate your legs," she said, making tiny adjustments to the rear-view mirror.
Blindly groping beneath the seat, he found the handle and pulled. The seat lurched back with such unexpected force that Snape's head smacked against the headrest. "Thanks, Granger. My legs are quite comfortable, but I'm suffering from whiplash now. Who was sitting here before me? A house-elf?"
"Must have been Molly, I'd hazard to guess."
His trust in her began to wane, replaced by a gnawing ache in the pit of his stomach, adding to the pain in his neck. "Granger, whose car is this?" he growled.
4. “What the hell is that?”
Snape scowled at Hermione as she held open the car door for him. The early morning air was cold, and the city around them was starting to wake.
“It’s a car. A Jaguar XK to be precise. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed it parked out here.”
“Yes, I know it’s a car, and yes, I had noticed it. I just didn’t realise it was yours. It hadn’t occurred to me that a long car journey was one of the tortures I would have to endure this weekend.”
Hermione abandoned her position by the passenger door and threw their bags into the boot instead.
“Just get into the car, now!” she hissed.
Snape glowered again as he lowered his long frame into the sports car. Hermione slid into the driver’s seat and turned to face him.
“Had you forgotten we’re probably being watched?”
“Yes, I had,” he admitted, surprising her. “I was just rather taken aback.
5. And now here he stood, just staring at his new love. He wanted her, but he knew he should go back to Hermione.
But she called to him. Her headlights nearly winked at him to come and play.
And he remembered what it was like to smell her intoxicating scent, to be touching her, to be inside of her. Her skin was always slick-smooth as a pearl. But that wasn’t what turned him on the most. And her scent-clean and fresh, like the smell of new book mixed with a pair of new boots, straight out of the box. It tantalized him. It teased him. But still, that wasn’t his favorite part.
It was when he was fully inside her body. It was the way she conformed to his size and wrapped around him, making him feel snug. And when he pushed her buttons-the way she roared with pleasure, the way she groaned underneath him-begging. Begging that he drive her-to ride her hard and oh! So fucking fast.
He ran his hands over her. Gripping her, knotting his fists around her firm body-handling her. Then, he reached inside his pants, pulled out his vital tool and slowly and deliberately stuck it inside her. And rotated. She loved that. Her thunderous moans vibrated throughout his body.
He tilted his head back and sighed. “Oh. Yes.”
6. She followed him out of a side door into a garage. He slipped the flat bar against the window of the MGB Roadster that was parked there. Hermione started to say something, but Snape pulled up on his bar with a jerk and she heard a distinctive click. He wiggled the bar and pulled it out before opening the door and tossing his bags into the back. He dropped down onto the seat and wiggled his head under the steering wheel, as Hermione finally managed to get herself moving. She heard him curse several times, but then the engine roared to life. She stood on the other side, shaking, until his long arm opened her door, and she threw her bags into the back and scrambled in.
"Buckle up. We're going to move fast." He got out of the car and walked back to open the garage door. Then he came running back and jumped into the car, buckled in, and threw it in reverse. His face looked grim as he shot backwards out of the garage and spun in a circle as soon as he was clear. He shifted and shot off down the drive. Hermione looked wildly around the landscape, but without her glasses, she couldn't make anything out.
Snape drove like a demon.
He drove like the experienced car thief he obviously was.
Hermione stared at him in shock for fifteen straight minutes as he took off north, before circling back south, and finally west. Then she started to giggle. Then she started to laugh. Snape looked like he was worried about her sanity, but then he smiled as well.
"Is this one of your 'hidden reserves?'" she asked with merriment.
"Just one of many," he replied with a wicked smile that curled her belly.
7. Switching the music off, he glared at Lucius. “Are you trying to make my life even more miserable?”
Lucius sighed impatiently. “Don’t take it so personally. It’s just a song. It’s your choice - sit in that dingy place all summer and contemplate your riveting life or join me in a little fun. Remember that? We used to enjoy life once. We can drive somewhere-”
“Where exactly?” Severus still hadn’t forgiven him for his choice of song.
“Doesn’t matter where. It’s a DB5. Who cares where we drive it, just that we do. In style. With Freddie and friends.”
“You have been Crucio’ed once too often, my friend. Narcissa would have your balls if she knew what you were doing. The Ministry would have to re-examine all their files. Hell, I’m considering examining you for Polyjuice use myself.”
“Narcissa divorced me, remember? The Ministry can go and Avada itself. And you know you want this.” Lucius inserted the key and started the engine. The deep rumble of the six cylinder engine, the smell of well cared for leather, the music, all combined to bewitch the reluctant wizard, who found himself strapped into the passenger seat, ready for the complete DB5 experience before his volition caught up with his actions.
“Drive me, you seductive bastard. Drive me.” He switched the stereo back on, leaned back in the luxurious, leather seat, and surrendered to his senses.
8. Severus Snape was feeling smug for a few reasons. First, he was sitting in a sinfully comfortable leather seat behind the wheel of a Jaguar XJ8. Second, as a result, he was feeling remarkably more cheerful about the thought of a holiday in America. And finally, he had stunned Hermione Granger the insufferable know-it-all into silence.
It had taken him exactly 59 seconds to select the best car from the nearby lot, trip the lock with his crowbar and cross the necessary wires to start the V8 engine with a massive roar.
Miss Granger’s mouth had dropped open. He had smirked and opened the passenger door for her with a gentlemanly bow. Tobias Snape had been a mediocre mill worker at best, but he had excelled at stealing cars when honest wages failed to support his family. That had been one skill that Tobias seemed to have no reservations passing on to his son.
Childhood years of skulking trepidation before the law had all been worth it for the look of shock on Miss Granger’s face and the forty minutes of blessed silence that followed.
“Professor?”
He should have known the moment was too perfect to last.
“Professor… where did you learn to hotwi - er, drive a car?”
9. Severus Snape aka Stephen Liston drove on, his magic manifesting itself in a dozen narrowly-missed collisions as he manoeuvred the behemoth of an automobile through back alleys and city streets, frequently avoiding stops by cleverly cutting through parking lots. One would assume he'd learned to drive in Cairo, instead of the north of England. His companion imagined the whole business might have been marginally less nerve-wracking had he shown himself able to refrain from bloody whistling as they careened from near miss to near miss.
"Where are we going?" Hermione asked, her fingers aching from their death grip on the cracked vinyl seat.
"A number of places," Snape said with a mysterious smirk.
"Where?" Hermione asked, keeping none of the annoyance out of her voice.
The look Snape gave her in response slid quickly from the ire of the surprised back to amusement. What a self satisfied shit. In the rear view mirror, Hermione watched as the smirk spread itself into a smile so broad and nasty it deserved some other name. Full of vicious, crooked teeth, it held some secret that allowed for contempt of everything outside itself. It was the smile of an entity complete in itself and content watching the weak fall and flounder within arm's reach. More a warning, more a signal of danger than anything even vaguely like joy. It was the smile of a shark or, somehow more frightening, a crocodile.
"Where are we going?" she repeated, biting the words as though they burnt her lips.
Snape had the utter lack of disregard it took to chuckle at her displeasure.
10. "Seen anyone else?" Hermione asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
"None. No one at all." the elder woman replied.
The three of them made their way to the parking lot. At six thirty am it was still dark enough to require the streetlamps be lit. Hermione noted happily that the other rental cars were still there. Good, we've got a headstart. Hermione was settling herself into the car when a noise to her left made her turn. It was the unmistakeable growl of a motorcycle.
A lone motorcycle came into view and stopped directly in front of her car. The helmetless rider was dressed in a black leather jacket, dark shirt and pants and black boots. Mr. Wright looked straight at her and revved the engine once. Giving Hermione a smart half salute he turned his cycle and roared out of the parking lot.
The whole event had taken mere minutes but it was precious minutes that she had now lost. Hermione was not pleased. "Damn that man!"
"David certainly has style." Emily noted.
"Yeah, style. Plenty to go around I'm sure." Hermione kicked the car into gear with a savage swipe. They drove off following Mr. Wright. She managed to follow him for a while until they neared some hard curves. She watched amazed as Mr. Wright accelerated to a suicidal rate and disappeared around the bend. Knowing the vehicle accident statistics by heart, Hermione took her time around the twisting turns. That man has a death wish!