Disclaimer - If I owned Harry Potter, there would be more in my handbag than -checks handbag- £1.43, six gum wrappers, various train tickets around London and the South East, a broken eyeliner and a picture of David Bowie, cut out from a newspaper. Yeah, that's right, I own none of this, except the stuff that's mine, which is pretty obvious.

Author's Note - This is another one of those little moments that've been floating around in my brain for a while and causing me to not pay attention when I'm supposed to be writing essays on how Jack is a dictator in Lord Of The Flies.

There aren't enough fics which focus on the relationship between Snape and Wormtail. I guess this would be set somewhere during OOTP

Quite The Catch

By Half-drowned Dracula

Wormtail was fairly certain that the Dark Lord had never held a ball in this manor before. He was also fairly certain that he recognised the name Pendleton, being at the Dark Lord's side every day, listening to reports, though he couldn't for the life of him remember who exactly this Pendleton was.

He sat in the corner of the ballroom, arms crossed, a scowl on his pudgy face, feeling noticeably unattractive in his best robes. This evening seemed to be a ball for only the most presentable of Death Eaters. Somehow Snape was included in this, probably by a loophole.

Lucius Malfoy swept in, wearing robes of beautiful green silk and a very smug expression, and proceeded to greet everyone in the hall, paying special attention to the few women: Narcissa (who left his arm to talk to someone); Bellatrix; a wan copper-blonde woman dressed in grey, who Wormtail had a vague memory of; and a rather tall tousle-haired lady who was maybe a year or so older than he was. She was not particularly good-looking, with a long straight nose and prominent cheekbones which appeared to swamp her face, and make her eyes and mouth look small and ugly. In the right light she may have been considered striking, but this was not the right light.

Even with her legs swathed in thick fabric, it was obvious that she walked distinctly knock-kneed, but her strides were long to make up for this. Wormtail followed her with his eyes, pacing purposefully across the room, and stopping abruptly beneath Snape's great nose. He thought he caught a hint of a smile in Snape's face as he saw her, scanning once with those awful black orbs of his over her body, before grabbing her womanly hand in his own long, pale, almost delicate fingers, and kissing it gently as if he were a suitor and she a princess.

She looked embarrassed for maybe half a second, then batted her eyelids at him. The grin he gave to this, Wormtail noticed with a kind of horror, was nearly charming.

He kept himself focussed on the woman and Snape on the other side of the room, watched as they formed a friendly conversation. Suddenly, Snape scoured the room with a look, caught Wormtail's glance and bent to the woman, whispering. She gave him a slightly disgusted look, then spun on her heel and briskly approached the copper-blonde woman.

Snape pulled a patronising face and began to stalk over. He whisked two glasses of red wine from a floating tray, dropped one into Wormtail's hands, and sat beside him with his own glass, tapping his foot impatiently.

'Wormtail, must you ruin every decent conversation I have in my life?'

Wormtail had already finished his wine, he gulped it like water, and then regretted it. If he got drunk and did something stupid, not only would he die of shame, but he might also die, literally. 'It was only ruined because of your paranoia, Snape.'

Snape made an annoying non-committal noise in the back of his throat, swirling his wine-glass between thin hands. He hadn't even started drinking it yet, and Wormtail placed his empty glass on the floor beneath his chair, feeling sheepish. Snape always made him feel small, smaller than he already was, even. He watched as Snape brushed something from his eye with his hand, his knuckles like great white mountains. His own were more like little rolling hills, and when his hand was straightened out, pink dimples in wide fleshy puddles.

'Are you going to stare at me all night, because if that is the case I'll go elsewhere.'

He felt himself blush a little, and Snape's lip gave an odd, amused curl at one side. 'I wasn't staring at you, I just… Who was that?'

Snape chuckled darkly. 'I thought you'd never ask.'

'She's not your girlfriend, is she?!' He realised he sounded so horrified at the idea it was probably quite insulting, and looked at his feet, which didn't even touch the floor properly.

To his relief, Snape did his weird lip-curl again, and shook his head. 'No, but do you remember Math Pendleton? She's his wife.'

Pendleton. That made sense. He did remember Pendleton, too, now he thought about it. He was also a short man, only the same height as he was, but disturbingly thin, with peculiar brown-ish curly hair. The woman's name came to him in a sudden flash of knowledge.

'That's Isadora Pendleton?'

Snape nodded, still toying with his glass of wine. 'Née Geoffries. She was a friend of mine at school' he replied, absent-mindedly.

'Isadora Geoffries! But she was - she was -' He lost his train of thought and looked back to her and the copper-blonde, bemused. 'She was a Ravenclaw! In the year above us too! How -'

To this, Snape extended his hand towards the copper-blonde woman with Isadora. 'Mmm, but as you'll remember, unlike most Ravenclaws, she was quite popular with the Slytherins. Which is where Amelia here comes into it.'

Wormtail gaped. This was all like a freaky school reunion. He thought there was something familiar about her soft nose, and pastel-green eyes. 'Amelia Ibrahim? I thought she was dead!'

Greasy tendrils of hair flapped around Snape's face as he shook his head. 'No, that was Jessamine.'

Wormtail didn't really know what else to say, and stared at the floor again, scuffing his shoes, trying to make his legs look longer. The two of them sat in an awkward silence, the friction of years between them.

'Uhh -' Snape shot him a look, but he carried on. 'How is ol' Math then?'

Snape gave him the kind of despairing gaze he imagined he used on useless Slytherin students he didn't want to take points from, rolling his eyes. 'Are you really that moronic? Math is dead. He has been for quite a while now.'

White-hot anger suddenly burned behind his eyes. There he was, trying to strike up conversation. Snape was such a bastard. 'You're calling me a moron? You're the one trying to get with the dead man's wife!'

Snape glared at him. 'How dare you, you disgusting little vermin.'

'I'm disgusting? Have you ever looked in a mirror, Snivellus?' Damn. It had sounded witty in his mind, but out loud it was so infantile. He may as well have said 'I know you are, but what am I?'. At the other end of the ballroom, the band were announcing the final song, and Isadora was beckoning for Snape to come and dance with her.

He nodded once at her and turned his face back to Wormtail, arching a narrow eyebrow. 'Yes, while we're on the subject of childish nicknames, I'd just like to point out that you're still known by yours.' Snape turned and inclined his head at Isadora again, and was about to walk off, when he decided to deliver Wormtail the final blow.

'Anyway, compared to you, I'm quite the catch.'

Author's Note - I wrote another fic, huzzah! I always thought the Death Eaters would have interesting parties, it can't all be torturing Muggles.

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