Writing challenge: Fairytale, the 7 dancing princess's

Issued by Lovers of the Potions Master Facebook group

"Snape…there is a problem" There was always a bloody problem! Didn't anyone in this entire damn school that didn't cause a problem? Already a problem with Potter in the midst and that damn squirrely defense teacher, but now there was another problem and the man was never allowed a moments rest. Severus Snape looked up from the parchment notebook in his hands and arched a brow. There she was, the very female he did not want to see, standing in his doorway. Other than Mcgonagall, who fretted right next to his desk, threatening to die of heart attack before her time was up, the crimson haired vixen stood in the door. Arms crossed over her chest, a firm look on her face.

"Doesn't anyone know how to knock?" Snape snarled with distaste. He had not wanted to meet up with either of the females this late at night.

"Don't you ever learn to welcome your guests with open arms?" The red haired woman sneered back.

"Enough, both of you!" Mcgonagall warned, but Snape was already on his feet, hands on his desk.

"Don't patronize me, Miss Marshall, this is my office, and I will have you both respect my privacy." Snape shot back towards the red head. He could see her body tense as she went to shoot back another statement, but she held her tongue. She knew better than to say another word, as long as there was another person in the room. Instead she brewed, she boiled under her skin, Snape knew this well. She had been his student for 7 years, only graduating 5 years prior.

"Silence!" Mcgonagall boomed as Snape and the red head never lost eye contact. "Miss Marshall has come here seeking help from Dumbledore. With the present times as they are… I assured her that one of the instructors would aid her. She said you were the only other person that could help. So, with that in mind, Professor Snape will gladly aid the ministry in its time of need… and keep his howling yapper shut!"

Snape snapped his head towards the elderly witch who did nothing but challenge his gaze. Then she turned with a huff and puff, and was storming from the room.

Soon, it was only him and Anne-Marie.

"You came here in search of MY help?" Snape sneered the moment that Mcgonagall was gone.

"Oh please, save me the ironic tone!" Anne-Marie hissed. "I did threaten to make your life hell and make you rue …that day." Anne-Marie's face was twisted up in a scowl as she looked to Snape. But he kept his face calm and collected. She wasn't wrong; she did threaten that exact thing. It was fresh in his eyes, the sting of the past ever present.

"I told you, this was nothing!"

"HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT I MEANT NOTHING!"

Her tears, the way her face twisted in anger still stung, as he looked to the same angry face.

"Yes… yes you did." Snape whispered before sliding back down into his chair.

"Look! I didn't actually come here to rehash the past. I have a problem and I need someone good at solving puzzles and I can't use the ministry resources for aid." Anne-Marie groaned as she stepped forward. Snape didn't have a moment to take in his own air before the scent of roses took over his nostrils. Oh, she still wore that perfume, the one that drove him insane even to this day.

"You are just a foolish girl…"

Her legs were long and tan, made more perfect by the black heels that accentuated her steps with demanding clicks. Her thighs covered by a thin black skirt that was practically painted on her hips, it accentuated her round hips and hour glass figure, her waist that wasn't thin, but not large, a perfect, toned, muscle that brought out her chest. From head to toe, she was trouble and her face screamed angry trouble.

"And you are just a foolish man stuck in the past, in love with a woman who never wanted him, and the lusty drive of a 16 year old boy."

All it took was her to lean up against his desk, her palms flat against the dark oak for him to flinch slightly. She had been a mistake he wished he could have taken back.

"Why can you not ask the ministry for assistance, you are employed by them." Snape growled.

"Yes, but I'm under cover." Snape's mouth went dry as she pulled a badge from her bra and slipped it onto the desk. "And I'm a nanny for the daughters of Lord Bescius, while he is suspected of being a Death Eater, and aiding the Dark Lord… suspected, at least."

Snape stood outside the door to the bedroom of the children that Anne-Marie was watching. The night was above their heads and the stars lit the way as Anne-Marie pointed her wand to the door. With a quick, almost wordless spell, she watched the door swing open to an empty room. 7 beds, 7 trunks, 7 vanities, but no girls.

"Where are the children?" Snape growled.

"I don't know. And that is the problem!" Anne-Marie hissed. "I heard a noise 6 nights ago and came in here to check on them. All of them, just gone, their precious slippers gone too. Next morning, after I had found guards, I found them asleep in their beds, shoes completely trashed. So, I got them new shoes and cast multiple spells on every and any exit of the room. Came here at midnight to check on them and my charms, gone, new shoes gone too. Every night they disappear, then come back… but something bad is going to happen, I just know it. Normal kids just don't all disappear in the night and come back in the morning."

Severus Snape was at a loss for words as he looked to the red head with her hands rung through her hair. "Tonight is number 7."

"Same as the children… tell me, do they come home with marks, anything wrong about them."

Anne-Marie turned to look at him with the ghost of eyes of the feisty woman he had an affair with all those years ago. Not the strong willed, determined girl in his classroom that got into heated debates about potions. Not the girl who stayed after to nearly scream at him that he was wrong about her grade. Not the girl who kissed him as a 7th year and he kissed back. Not the girl who broke his desk in the back while they made love, or the girl who smashed his entire classroom when he told her to stop coming to see him late at night. He had been young, and stupid, and had the libido of a raunchy teenager, and she was more than willing.

"You're afraid for them." Snape looked to her.

"They're like zombies, one by one, they become almost glass eyed dolls and I fear tonight will be their last. I tried to fix it myself… but I don't know where they've gone…" As her feet stepped to the middle of the room, a light went off on the floor. A golden light, like fairy dust sprouting from the tiles. Anne-Marie looked up to Snape who was instantly by her side His wand was out before the ground started to move and the room around them started to disappear as the floor danced.

"They never left the room." Anne-Marie choked on her words.

"There is something in this room, sucking them of their life-force…" Snape could feel it, as a field of pansy's and lilies soon surrounded them. Golden light glistened and made Anne-Marie's hair glow as she looked around the field. There they were, just a few feet from them. 6 girls lay on the ground of a marble dance floor in the middle of the field. But there was one, dancing still, a face of glee and excitement.

"ELSBETH!" Anne-Marie cried out, but Snape clamped his hand around her waist and pulled her close. Because the moment she screamed the name, the valley turned dark. The girl continued to dance like nothing was wrong, but the bodies of the girls who had lain on the ground slowly rose to their feet. Their eyes black and their bodies pale, as if life never even existed, and Anne-Marie was shaking.

Snape saw it before the red head could. There, in the field, was the beast. The beast of a man. The father of all the girls, strung up on a pillar, face full of darkness as his eyes turned to them on the floor.

"We have to save Elsbeth." She whispered. "The other sisters are dead… but we can still save Elsbeth" She added.

"We can't save her." Snape turned to see the hurt in Anne-Marie's eyes as the dark bodies of the girls began to pick through the field. The dancer on the dance floor slowed down. It was too late, they had been too late. Snape only knew one thing. Trap them here, destroy the fairytale magic and let it die with the girls. Anne-Marie went to bolt off in the direction of the girl but Snape wrapped his arm around her waist and flicked his wand to the ground. There were way too many things to deal with as of the moment without having to die from a dark magic that should have never been opened. The cry from the red head in his arms, her struggle against him only increased ten fold as the floor began to turn again, the black of the valley turning even more dark. White, cold fingers grasped at the dancing floor beneath them, but they could not hold on.

"NO!"

But it was too late, the floor was shut and the room returned. Snape was already flicking his wand and speaking incantations as Anne-Marie fell to the floor, her hands across the pale floor. Underneath her, the once beautiful flowery tiles began to crack.

"We could have saved her…"

"That magic is one that sucks the life force from someone else." Snape snarled. "Stop weeping and help me shatter the charms around that place."

"WHY ARE YOU ALWAYS SO HEARTLESS!" Anne-Marie screamed. Snape stopped and looked to her watery, ice blue eyes that glowed in the redness from her tears.

"I can't afford to care." Snape whispered in a hush. Anne-Marie sniffled before she took her wand from her thigh and put it to the center piece in the floor. The once intricate design of a rose, under her wand, slowly shattered into puny stones.

"Not even about those who cared about you?" She whispered back. There was no answer, because she didn't need one. She knew the answer to her question. Anne-Marie was on her feet as a flood of Auror's came into the room to find the remnants of a shattered charm and soul sucking hex. Anne-Marie was ever silent about what happened at the house that day.

She didn't speak the whole way back to Hogwarts, only kept her eyes at the ground as Snape allowed them into his office. A warming charm and hot tea in mugs, the silence continued. That was till Snape broke it.

"They're trying to resurrect the Dark Lord?" Anne-Marie nodded slowly, keeping her eyes on the warm steam that kissed her cheeks.

"We suspected him of taking the lives of muggles, but we needed proof. So I put myself in harm's way, hired as a Nanny for his girls." Anne-Marie looked up to him and put the mug of still warm tea on his desk. "But I guess it's always my luck, never being able to save the one thing I want most."

The jab hit Snape in the chest as she finally looked to him with the same icy-gaze that made him shiver in his bed at night. "Would we… could we have…"

"No, I stand by my words, that what happened back then was not healthy for either of us." Snape sighed. "I was supposed to be your teacher… not your…" But he didn't have to finish his words. She only smirked as she put her hands to her hips.

"Yeah, but I bet no student will ever make an impression on you like I did. Which is a victory in of itself, I guess." Snape rolled his eyes at her comment, but she cut him from saying another word. "If you're every finding yourself in need of a good roll around… I'm still as flexible as I ever was. Even more now than before, I got a few dancing lessons." She winked and turned from his desk. Snape called for her to stop to come back so they could talk, but Snape watched the sauntering hips of the red headed vixen walk from his desk and out of his office.

Atleast this time she didn't explode his classroom. But he couldn't help the smirk on his lips as he crossed his arms over his chest and let the image of her leaving his office stay in his mind.

"I bet you are…"