The Houses Competition:

Name: Severus' Valentines Adventures

Prompt: [Date] Valentine's Day

Category: Drabble

Round: One

Position: HoH

House: Gryffindor

Wordcount: 609

A/N: Valentine's Day story centered around Severus Snape.

Valentine's day, February fourteenth. Severus Snape's favourite day. He didn't hate it because of the tragic loss of the only love of his life. Ok, well that was the only thing he hated about it. In fact he had a list about the things he liked about Valentine's day. Number one was how incredibly ridiculous the expectations everyone has about the day. Muggle rom-coms put too much of an expectation about how that day should be the perfect day for everyone. This lead to many fails, and possibilities for laughter and amusement.

There were the single female students who would buy lots of chocolates and snacks and lock themselves in their rooms for most of the day. Then there were the single male students who would do the same thing as the single female students, except they'd all hide it from one another. Then we have the couples. There were so many ways that things could go wrong for the couples. They could misperform a complex spell while showing off and end up hospitalised...or have something else go horribly wrong, like transfiguration, or something else that might look like the bad end of a rather nasty prank. Best case scenario, they simply make a fool of themselves.

Then there were the times that they could actually pull it off. In that case they would be forced to endlessly one-up themselves, which would usually end in disaster. Then there were those who took advantage of Valentine's day, He liked those students. They typically would be Hufflepuffs, who love everything so much that they either succeeded at Valentine's day every time by being perfect, or the single Hufflepuffs who would take advantage of the sales that go on, and buy all of their candy in bulk. He snuck out once to follow a group of them one year to see why they all went out in groups constantly. He ended up watching them flood into every store in nearby towns just to stock up on candy for themselves and the rest of their house.

He's gone every year since then. The conversations would typically go like this:

"Hello little lady, what can I get for you today?" The clerk would ask.

"I'd like all the chocolate and Valentine's candy you have please," a kind, smiling Hufflepuff would typically respond, the rest of them waiting patiently.

"Sure thing," the clerk would say, before being stopped by the Hufflepuff who was ordering the candy.

"I think you misunderstand me. You think I meant 'give me a lot of chocolate and Valentine's candy' but I literally mean give me all the chocolate and Valentine's candy in your whole store. Yes, even in the back." Then a troop of Hufflepuffs would parade their loot back to their common room, guided by their prefect and head boy and girl, and would go out yet again to go to another store. Typically most of the candy is free if you buy 10 muggle pence worth of candy. The Hufflepuffs know this and so they abuse that sale annually.

They never really get caught because one of the older Hufflepuff alumni wipes the clerk's mind and makes them forget they were ever there. And so the cycle continues. Of course Severus aids the Hufflepuffs every year by acting as the legal guardian taking children on a school trip, getting his share of candy in the process, and that's quite the sweet deal. The day so far has had its fair share of Valentine's couple mishaps, and it was time now for Severus to head out on his annual candy haul. A good day it had been indeed.