Severus Snape was never particularly "into" anything. He never had a great love for Quidditch and he found the debates about teams, brooms and so on stunningly boring. He hated politics and economics and all the idiots who spent their hours droning over it. He never held a great love for school other than to escaping his forever arguing parents. He was clever but he had no great wish to do something - say, take-over the world and clean out the magical-blood closet like other Slytherins. He wasn't compassionate, he didn't have a hobby, he didn't even have a favorite food.
He taught potions at Hogwarts if only for something to do. (Plus the money factor always came in.) He was told he was exemplary at brewing them. He always wondered why they immediately thought that if he was skilled in making potions that it crossed over that he was good at teaching potions. While it was true he wanted to secure the position as the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, it didn't mean he had an extreme passion for it. Students hated potions. There was no magic to it and on more than one occasion he heard a muggleborn calling it glorified cooking.
Needless to say, the student didn't get high marks for a while in his class.
Plus, who else would be better for the job than Severus Snape? Double agent to Voldemort, lived with Slytherins his entire life, and more so had spent his entire life on-guard thanks oh-so much to bloody James Potter and his friends. Exactly.
But there was one single thing he had strong feelings for. And that was Lily Evans-Potter. Not that he would ever admit it - not after she picked James. It was possibly the one thing that made him human and not a robot with greasy hair and a talent for potions. He would have rather complimented all the Gryffindors and worn bright pink robes than allow his students or his fellow staff members see that. But that s exactly what he ended up doing (without the complimenting and pink robes, fortunately for everyone).
It was a normal day. He had woken up in the same bitter mood, eaten his usual breakfast, endured the Hufflepuff's brain-addling happiness and the Ravenclaw's sickening sense of superiority until his class of fourth year Gryffindor and Slytherin potions class. That's where everything went to hell and turned upside down.
None of the students paid attention (not that that is unusual by any means, they just weren't hiding it today) but rather spent a grand majority of the time mocking a Gryffindor boy ruthlessly. Now this wasn't odd for the Slytherins but the boy s fellow Gryffindor's were joining it. He'd never seen Gryffindors abandon one of their own. From what he gathered from the class's jeers, the Gryffindor fancied a Slytherin girl who turned a little pinker with each taunt that was thrown.
Not wishing to get tangled in students social lives, Severus barked at the students to get back to work. He assigned 28 detentions in the class until he found a semblance of peace within the classroom. Of course, that was until the two houses teamed up and managed to add wormwood and the Gryffindor boy who had been subjected to all the mocking's potion blew up in his face. The Slytherin girl of his fancy (who had moved from pink to red to a nice purple) scuttled out of the room looking like she d very much like to forget the class's happenings. The boy stayed through his free period and lunch to rebrew his potion.
He shuffled to the front to Severus's desk with his sample of the potion. "Sorry," he mumbled before he moved to turn away.
"Your classmates are amazingly stupid and immature for their age", Severus muttered.
"No, it was stupid. Cox would never go for a guy like me - a Gryffindor no less," the boy scoffed. He seemed too caught up in his own thought process to realize which professor he was actually talking to.
"No, what would categorize as stupid is to let other's opinions get in your way. She'll come around as long as you don't screw it up," Severus said. He knew a lot about screwing up with someone. He knew it too well. He resisted adding a quip about the stupidity of Gryffindors. He felt it might go the wrong way with him. Severus couldn't understand why but he truly wanted this boy to prove all his insipid classmates wrong.
"I've heard that some fifth year kid is going to ask her out," the boy said with a tone of defeat. "Some Hufflepuff."
Severus found it astounding that this boy wasn't the Hufflepuff. Weren't Gryffindors supposed to have a ridiculous sense of determination and bravery?
"All the more reason to quit dawdling. Now out of my class before I give you detention for implying one of my students would be idiotic enough to consider a Hufflepuff and for bothering a professor," Severus drawled. The boy snapped out of whatever reverie he was in to cause him to openly talk to the most hated teacher in the school and quickly scurried out of the dungeons.
Severus couldn't fight smirking the next week when the Slytherin girl - Rae Cox - sat with the Gryffindor boy next class period with the entire class shocked into silence the rest of the period. Maybe it wasn t as useful as potions or Quidditch or really anything else, but Severus Snape found he was oddly glad to be passionate about love. If only Lily could see him now.