Hi everyone, Happy 2019! Bear with me on this one. It's close to my heart and I'm surprisingly nervous about posting it. Basically I love Hecate and Severus and my heart beats for their beautiful, snarky, student-torturing, doomed love. And this is how it came out.
I've tried to make it as canon and timeline compliant as possible. There will be twelve chapters, I'm planning to post one a week after these two. Hopefully someone other than me sticks with it 'til the end.
Our story begins around 1987/88 and goes from there.
1
The Beguiling Nature of Gillyweed
Severus Snape has loved Lily Evans since the first time she spoke to him. Severus Snape has always known he will always love Lily Evans. Severus Snape has never expected to love anyone other than Lily Evans.
He lives in patient acceptance of this fact until the day Severus stumbles upon a woman he feels completely in place with. At ease. Correct. This is not a sensation Severus has experienced in his adult life. But in she walks: Hecate Hardbroom, the unyielding, exacting Deputy Headmistress of Cackle's Academy. A fellow potions master. A like-minded soul.
He spies her for the first time in Mulpepper's Apothecary, long and elegant in a well-tailored black robe that flashes green in the light, her waist cinched with a wide leather belt, her long black hair plaited and wound into a neat bun.
His dark eyes linger upon her quite of their own accord, quite against his better judgement. The attractiveness or otherwise of the fairer sex long ago ceased registering with Severus on a daily basis. But on this day it does register, and his gaze sticks on her like a fly in honey wine.
She is idly fingering a talisman around her neck, tapping long, sharp black fingernails against the intricate gold disk with one hand and tracing the label on a bottle of something-or-other with the other. No doubt checking the purity of the ingredients, or their origin. Glancing down, she presses a button, revealing the talisman at her neck as a watch. Seemingly satisfied with the time, the witch returns to her musing, her attention fully absorbed with whatever decision she has at hand.
Her red lips quirk with displeasure as she scans the ingredients, and something about the action had makes Severus' own twitch upwards. A smile is such a rare thing to elicit from Severus Snape, even he takes a moment note the strangeness of the response. It spurs him to another action he wouldn't usually take. He approaches her.
"I find the Spanish harvested gillyweed generally superior to that harvested in New Zealand," is Severus' undeniably smooth opening line.
"Is that so?" She replies, turning to him briefly and running dark chocolate eyes over him with an arched eyebrow. The look she gives him is almost entirely dismissive, precisely the one Severus himself would have used on anyone who deigned to give him advice on ingredients. "And on what basis do you assume yourself to be," she runs her eyes up and down him disdainfully, "qualified to give such advice?"
"I am potions master at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry." He turns to face her in full, bows slightly before extending his hand. "Professor Severus Snape."
The witch looks at his hand dubiously, as if she's worried it's unclean, before taking it delicately. "I would say I'm charmed, but being condescended about my own field of expertise by one of my contemporaries is a less than appealing way to spend an afternoon."
He affects a tone of idle intrigue rather than condescension, as is his instinct. "In what sense are we contemporaries, madam?"
"I should think being Deputy Head of Cackle's Academy is sufficient for you to consider me a contemporary, Professor?" Severus flounders - a sensation to which he is not accustomed. Severus has underestimated her, he admits that freely now. He'd not assumed she was equally qualified as him. He'd assumed he was clearly in the position of authority. Severus makes a silent commitment not to underestimate her again, if only out of concern for his safety. She is looking at him as if she may turn him into a mollusc. He quite respects the response from her.
Gathering himself, Severus says "Your reputation precedes you, Miss Hardbroom." It is only now he notes he has not released her hand, which he promptly does. And then regrets.
"I myself favour Californian gillyweed, however I was selecting morning dew." She remarks, and plucks two phials of undiluted morning dew from a shelf just beside his shoulder. She almost brushes his cloak on her way past.
Her lips curl into a smile now, and the expression is nothing but a challenge. "Are there any other useful facts you believe I should know about your preferred countries of origin for various ingredients?"
"I apologise for my presumption, Miss Hardbroom."
"Hecate, please." The words are out of her mouth before she's made a conscious decision to release them. In normal circumstances, she would hold onto the formality, particularly after his patronising little display.
"Hecate, then. Might I buy you a drink? An apology, of sorts."
She sweeps her eyes over him once more, before cocking her head slightly and nodding her concession. A single movement. The economy of it endears him. He is not a man who generally finds things endearing.
With a wafture of her hand, Hecate sends a stack of galleons onto the counter.
"Thank you as always, Mr Mulpepper." Hecate calls to the wizened gentleman napping behind the counter.
"Always a pleasure for you, HB." He responds, after shaking himself from his nap.
She follows Severus out and, only when half way to the Leaky Cauldron, queries idly, "Was there something you needed from Mr Mulpepper?" Severus kicks himself internally. He needs a new supply of griffin claws. Badly. He shall have to return tomorrow, or change the week's lesson plan. He will not admit that to her for a year.
The Leaky Cauldron would not have been Severus' first choice to take the only woman who has turned his head in decades, but Diagon Alley has fewer options to for such dalliances than Hogsmeade, so he is left with little choice.
They sit with a firewhiskey each, sparring lightly over potion methods. He is showing off. He hasn't felt the need to parade his skills since he was a student. She doesn't succumb to it, though. Hecate Hardbroom has never given much thought to… well, anything beyond her career for the most part. She is exacting and unforgiving, and in normal circumstances would in no way entertain the idea of spending time with someone who has casually dismissed her in the way Severus Snape did this afternoon. But something in her is instinctively drawn to him. She finds herself enjoying his company, falling into an easy repartee with the wizard in a way she doesn't often with strangers. Hecate does not normally let her guard down to other people, but within twenty minutes, she finds herself smiling softly at his wry remarks. She gives him no room for error, and he adores her for it almost instantly - although he will of course not admit that to himself for some time. And there, in a grimy pub with questionable culinary options, for the first time in a very, very long time, Severus Snape feels like he could love someone other than Lily Evans. Luckily for Severus, today is also the first time in an exceedingly long time that Hecate Hardbroom gives a moment of consideration to what her life might look like with another person in it.