AUTHOR'S NOTE: This composition was commissioned by the members of the Teachers' Lounge, as part of their Snapoetry project. As much as other authors would like to lay claim to the words I have put down on paper, they are wholly my own, although the characters and setting belong to a Joanne Rowling, late of Edinburgh.
Softer than Moonlight, by The Chairman
Seventh-year Severus Snape, long wracked with regret and torment, crawled out of his bed at 2:45 one Saturday morning, trying very hard not to wake up the two leggy Ravenclaws he'd brought to his chamber the night before. They were redheads. They were always redheads. And if they weren't, and they wanted access to his bed, his firewhiskey, his "special potions" and his fine Muggle blow, they transfigured their hair red just for him.
The budding Potions Master put two vials of his best hangover cure (Pepper-up, a mild analgesic and a tummy-ache potion) on the bedside table. He looked back at the two (natural, he'd recently found out. Either that or thorough) redheads on his bed and sighed. The more he got, the more debauched his life became, the more women he bedded, the more he thought of her. Ah. Lily. Sweet, sweet Lily. It had been a year and a half since he'd slandered her, and in all that time, regardless of the efforts he made toward making amends, she refused to speak with him.
"Makes sense," he thought. "I wouldn't want to talk to me, either." Writing off sleep again that night as a bad job, Snape grabbed a vial of Pepper-up Concentrate, choked it down, and waited for that sweet rush to overtake him. It didn't, of course - he'd long since passed the day when a simple potion concentrate would provide that rush the way it did in fourth year - but it gave him a sense of ease and comfort nonetheless. After feeling the effects kick in, Snape shuddered, exercised his stiff jaw, and shuffled out the Dungeon door. When he got to the Great Hall, Filch was about to haul him in front of Dumbledore to face a month's detention, but Snape flipped him a 2g baggie of white powder that mollified things significantly.
"Good lad," Filch mumbled. "For medicinal purposes, you see. Me and the Mrs. Norris can't be up as late as we used to be, anymore."
Snape made his way to the grounds, where the cold night air put a chill right into his bones. "Fuck," he muttered, and took a long pull from the mead in a flask he'd stashed in the inside pocket of his cloak.
"Evans. Lily bloody Evans keeping me up late again," he mused. "Why that mudblooded tart gets to be the paragon of all that is good, chaste and pure is beyond me, but she's got my heart by the shorthairs, alright. I wish I could quit her, but there's nothing on earth I want more than... than a kiss from her baby-pink lips? No, that's not right. I'm Severus Bloody Snape, King of the Hedonists. I want to take her by the - hand and make her my snugglebunny? No! Argh!"
Snape took one last long pull from his flask before flinging it into the forest. He then swore, as that flask had cost five galleons, and summoned the flask back to himself.
"Well, this can't go on," he declared to no one in particular. "Yes, nightly potion-fueled orgies are bloody fantastic and all, but they are merely a poor substitute for the love of my sweet, sweet Lily. There must be a solution. Nay, there is a solution."
Two weeks went by, wherein Snape began to withdraw. He passed up occasions for many a nightly debauch, claiming "fatigue" or "better things to do." He began spending his evenings in the library, researching non-magical ways of wooing one's lady-love. And after the second week of that weak-ass nonsense, he had had enough.
That night, cranked up on a heady mix of potions, firewhiskey and blow, he and the two leggy Ravenclaws from earlier were enjoying each other's company. During one particularly intensely intimate moment, their shields went down, and Snape's legilimency probed them deeply, seeking out answers to his dilemma. Being Muggleborn, they were influenced heavily by Muggle culture, and in their heads, Snape began to see images of soft-featured young men with long hair and earnest expressions. Their names appeared to him: Andy Gibb, Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett. These were what inflamed the passions of Muggle girls, and Snape was going to distill the essence of that passion, bottle it, and drink heartily thereof.
The following weekend was a Hogsmeade weekend, and Snape took time to apparate to Edinburgh, to see first hand what it was about those three effeminate young men that captivated girls so. He perused "Tiger Beat" and "Teen" magazines, and found several features in common: feathered hair, soft cheekbones, piercing stares, and a talent for the guitar. While there was nothing he could do about his cheekbones, Snape could very easily change his hairstyle, develop a piercing stare, and learn guitar. Alas, learning guitar would take a very long time. Unless...
A glance at the newspaper alerted Snape to a concert that evening by Andy Gibb in his hometown of Manchester, England. Severus Snape would be there.
Scoring sweet third-row center seats, and looking cooler than anyone else with his cloak and robes, Snape enjoyed the care-free melodies of the teen idol. He did not enjoy the constant shrieking from the girls that surrounded him quite as much, but understood that a girl whose passions are thusly inflamed cannot hope to control herself. After the show, he put a mild disillusionment charm on himself, and walked backstage to where Mr. Gibb's dressing room was. Once inside, it was quick work to body-bind him and probe his mind with Legilimency. Imprinting the memories of playing guitar into his own mind, Snape had truly learned an instrument in one five-minute sitting.
The following Friday night he was ready to serenade the object of his desire. Enlarging the acoustic guitar he had appropriated from Manchester, he set up underneath Gryffindor tower, right below the girls' dormitories. He banished four small pebbles at Lily's window, and cast a Sonorus on his guitar and on his voice, and waited.
After three minutes, he flung six more pebbles skyward, and finally he saw a window open, and he began to play
Magic, softer than moonlight
Magic, still as a shadow
Your love is everything to me
Wizard's angel, Muggle's daughter
xxx
Red of hair, I cry to her each day
But she will never hear my plaintive call
She'll be there, appearing clad in scarlet, golden hues
And I'll wait for her, whether it be hours or it be years.
xxx
Magic, softer than moonlight
Magic, still as a shadow
Your love is everything to me
Wizard's angel, Muggle's daughter
xxx
If I find she'll never talk to me again
I will still my heart as I strum my lyre
Walking day by day through these castle's frozen halls
Eventually I'll find that she loves me most of all
xxx
Magic, softer than moonlight
Magic, still as a shadow
Your love is everything to me
Wizard's angel, Muggle's daughter
xxx
Magic, softer than moonlight
Magic, still as a shadow
Your love is everything to me
Wizard's angel, Muggle's daughter
Snape strummed one last chorus, humming the tune to the refrain. As he looked down, he noticed a pair of cream-colored cotton knickers. Picking them up, he saw, written on them in lipstick:
"Wait for me. I'll be right down. -L"
And so she was.
Personal Assistant's note: Sorry about that, folks. The Chairman didn't know to properly attribute pieces of his work that come from elsewhere. The song was loosely based off of Andy Gibb's seminal 1977 opus "(Love is) Thicker Than Water," and the concept of Severus Snape as Hedonist Sex God comes from the work of the inimitable LilLolaBlue.
-respitechristopher