Peggi: This sorta started off as a roleplay between me and this total stranger on Omegle...

Kit: Hai dere! I'm the random stranger! After we got to just about halfway through with the next chapter we realized how awesome it turned out and how great we work together so...this happened!

Peggi: Whee! More friends for Peggi! So, it started off with Kit as Sev and me as Sephy, but then we got so good at it that we took control of both and sorta just went with it.

Kit: It's kinda a trilogy type fic, this will take place soley during 2nd and 3rd year for the Golden Trio over summer break. We initially wanted it to be this action-filled cutesy romance but it turned out to be more of a different-side-of-Snape friendshippy, romantic character development story.

Peggi: Yup. Basically. We're still doing some editing and final touches but we like how it has come so far! If you like it, please review it so we'll know and can then entertain you with future chapters!

Disclaimer: Peggi and Kit do not own Harry Potter, omegle, or even the orange mentioned in this chapter. They own the character of Sephy, some of Sephy's clothing, and this really awful RP-turned-fanfiction. Contains tons of genres including: Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Angst, and Fantasy as well as more! Thank you, that is all.

It was not unusual that Severus Snape would spend almost the entirety of his summer vacation locked away, some sort of book in hand. He would often choose to remain in the castle when he could, rather than at his childhood home at Spinner's End, simply because of the collection of bad memories he had there. It was, however, unusual for him to hear knocking at the door of his Hogwarts Hideaway in the dungeons.

"Yes, what is it?" he asked, quite obviously irritated as he swung the door open to find out who the maker of the offending noise was.

"Severus," it was Dumbledore. Severus could sense that this couldn't possibly be good.

"Headmaster? Come in," he invited, motioning him to enter but not really wanting the company.

"Actually, Severus, I was hoping that you would accompany me to the Great Hall. There is someone I would like for you to meet."

The potions professor exhaled sharply, clearly not really wanting to meet anyone new, or see anyone he already knew, for that matter. Nonetheless, he followed.

"Care to share what this is about?" not that he didn't suspect that Dumbledore wouldn't tell him anyway.

"Well, Severus, this person I am taking you to meet is going to be a guest of the castle this summer."

"And I don't suppose you're only taking me to meet this mysterious person simply because you assume we are going to get on together, become best friends and share teaching experiences and do each other's hair or trade chocolate frog cards, now are you?" he figured not, but couldn't resist throwing it at his close friend anyway.

"She isn't a teacher, Professor, she is a student. Or she will be. While I know you cherish these few months without students, and I am sure have quite the schedule to keep," this was clearly a jab back at Severus' previous remark "I would certainly hope that you could find the time to train a young witch so that she may be ready to begin classes with the other third year students."

The darkly-dressed man groaned inside, using every swear word he could think of inside of his head. Luckily, he was very good at keeping his emotions from others, and simply scoffed a bit at the thought of having to give up his summer from teaching, to teach.

"And, given that none of the other professors have left the grounds yet for the summer, Albus, why is it that you are assigning me to this task?"

"Because quite honestly, Severus, I have a feeling that she is going to need a - how should I put this, strong hand to guide her through her lessons."

"Just as relentlessly obnoxious as the other soon-to-be third years, I should assume?" Severus rolled his eyes at the thought of teaching someone the same age as Potter and his band of...well, he'd used up all of his swear words so he couldn't quite think of a new one that was fitting, which he hadn't already used in the past 5 minutes.

"Don't be mistaken, Severus. She isn't the same age as the other third years, she is about to become 17, which is reasonably older than the classmates she will be paired with. Simply put, she hasn't had any magical training thus far, and until quite recently, was unaware that schools like Hogwarts even existed. This is why I am asking for you to help prepare her for the upcoming year. She should, by the end of the summer, be able to hold her own with her classmates, if not excel further."

"How can she be a witch and not pick up on any signs of it until now?" Severus wasn't sure if he really believed any of this.

"She lived a very secluded life until this point, hardly any friends, no social life to speak of, home-schooled, a bit of a bookworm, and-"

"Boring?" Severus finished for him.

"Actually, I was going to say, not much unlike yourself. Especially at that age."

"Well then, obviously there's something wrong with her."

Dumbledore just gave one of his stereotypical chuckles as he pulled open the doors to the Great Hall. Severus prepared himself. He pictured her to have frizzy hair like Hermione's, thick glasses, too thin and lanky for her height with bony elbows and knees, sunken in black eyes and a pasty complexion. Some boring looking square, making her lack of friends clear to him just upon sight. When he saw her sitting on the table closest to them, feet planted on the bench, taking in her last slice of an orange, he was almost confused.

"Severus, I would like for you to meet Sephy. Sephy, this is Professor Snape. He will be helping you with your lessons this summer. I suppose you two should get introductions in order, and then you may either begin on your lessons or you may show her about the castle first if you'd prefer."

Before Severus could protest, Dumbledore swooped out just as quickly as they'd arrived, leaving the two of them to their silence.

Severus turned to the girl in question, gave her a quick once over, and began forming his opinion of her right away. Black silky hair just below her shoulders with clearly un-natural streaks of purple and red in it, thin but still with curves so clearly not friendless because she was ugly, pale but not really due to lack of sunlight, bright green eyes. Nothing outwardly wrong with her. Strangely dressed even if she were trying to pass for a Muggle, wearing a red and black plaid skirt and a black tank top and boots that came up to her knees. He also noticed the arm-warmers right away, as it was summer and it took a certain type of crazy to wear such things during these months. He assumed that maybe, given that she didn't know she was a witch, or maybe about the wizarding world at all could account for her strange attire, and that maybe she simply dressed this way assuming that this was just how witches dressed. He just couldn't picture any type of home-schooled bookworm dressing like this ever, for any reason. Then he went back to wondering why she hadn't any friends, as she quite honestly wasn't bad looking at all, aside from that smirk on her face. That, he could've done without.

"Find something amusing?" not that he really cared.

"No," she giggled "well, not really. It's just...your name. 'Severus'. Is that a common name here in the wizard world?"

If he had any emotion on his face, which he didn't, it would've left him at that point. He felt like smacking the laughter right off of her, "it's the Wizarding world, not the Wizard world! And you have a problem with my name?" he hissed at her, voice clearly full of all the venom he could muster.

The smile left her face immediately and Severus was quite pleased with his work in intimidating his newest student, at least until she spoke.

"No, your name's just fine. It's just unusual. I like it, actually."

Instantly instilling fear almost always worked with students. Damn, he would have to try harder. Maybe he could manage to scare her off early on into the summer, and she would be assigned to some other poor professor.

"Sephy, that's an odd name itself. Don't you have a last name I can call you by? Something to match that odd sense of fashion you have? And where are you from? That's no European accent."

"I'm from America, and no, my last name isn't half as crazy as the clothes I wear. It's Storms. Persephone Storms, but everyone calls me 'Sephy'. It's just way easier."

She hadn't skipped a beat, though any excitement from her voice had completely drained at this point, so mission partially accomplished, "I suppose we should begin on some sort of lesson."

"Shouldn't I maybe get a look around the castle? I don't actually know where anything is just yet," she suggested.

"You can feel free to walk around all you'd like when you're done with your lesson. That way I can get you out of my hair faster and I won't be bothered with showing you every fascinating room."

She just gave a quick, "yes Professor" and that was the end of that. She followed him out of the Great Hall and what, to her, seemed like never-ending corridors to what was clearly a dungeon. There were several rooms and what appeared to be some sort of empty den. Severus led her into one of the rooms, which was set up as a classroom.

"This is the Potions classroom. Sit down. Learn something," he said, placing a beginners level book in front of her and beginning to walk out, "I'll be across the hall and to the right if you need anything. If you don't, then don't pester me."

Sephy sat there, almost stunned. She hadn't particularly wanted to spend her summer inside of a mostly empty castle, being bossed around by a clearly half-insane man who had little desire to be around her, in a room filled with - ooo shiny vials filled with liquids!

Severus huffed as he slammed the door to his room shut, plopping back down on his favorite chair, his good book in hand hoping he could find his place again. He felt a slight twinge of guilt about leaving her like that, but he had no desire whatsoever to teach right now. Besides, if she was this bookworm Albus made her out to be, she should have no problem reading a book. That should keep her entertained for at least the remainder of the day, and the following day he would find something on Charms. Or maybe something more entertaining, like Magical Creatures. He found his place in the book, and began to read. He glanced up at the clock and saw that it was just past eleven, he would remember to go check on her again at three to give her some time to walk around the castle on her own before dinner.

It was the first year Harry would begin school at Hogwarts and Severus Snape for one, was dreading it. From the moment he sat down at the Gryffindor table, he could see them. Both James and Lily. He looked like the younger version of James, slight differences but enough in common that one might mistake the two of them in a casual passing-by. Those eyes though, they were all Lily. They made eye contact, only briefly, before Harry began getting to know the rest of the Gryffindors. The beginning of their first class together had gone by smoothly enough, but just as Severus was exiting the classroom, he ran into Harry and Ron, who had buddied up right away, and Hermione who seemed to join in, wanted or not.

"Can't you watch where you're going Snivellus?" Harry asked - but it wasn't his voice, it was James'.

"Why you-" before he could begin the name calling, Remus, Sirius and Peter appeared behind the trio.

"What's the matter?" Hermione asked, a devilish grin on her face.

Suddenly, Severus wasn't feeling as confident as he had been moments before. The group loomed over him. The same nervous, fluttery feeling in his stomach that he had experienced for so many years while attending Hogwarts as a student present. He reached for his wand, but couldn't find it.

"Looking for something?" Sirius asked tauntingly.

Severus looked up to see his wand in Sirius' hand, "well then, come and get it if you want it!"

Severus dove for his wand but Sirius tossed it to Harry, who then tossed it to Remus as he lunged in Harry's general direction.

James laughed, "can't keep up with us Snivellus?" he asked after catching the wand himself.

As Severus dove for the wand this time, James balled up a fist, and just as it almost made contact with his face -

THUNK.

Severus' eyes shot open and he realized he'd been dreaming. It wasn't unusual a dream for him, and he recovered from it fairly quickly, or at least as quickly as you can from such a dream. He looked around to see where the noise had come from. He had fallen asleep while reading and dropped his book. He stretched and thought about just going to bed, seeing that it was now six o'clock, when suddenly he remembered he had left his charge in the Potions classroom for almost 7 full hours!

Without fully waking up first he rushed over to the potions room, expecting the girl to be sitting there, an annoyed look on her face, but that wasn't what he saw at all. In fact, there was no girl there at all! Had it just been a dream, all of it? The girl, the task he'd been given to teach her over the summer? No, it couldn't have been. The book he left her with was sitting right on the desk he'd left her at, and underneath was a piece of parchment. He picked it up and read it.

'Dear Professor Snape,'

Dear. He scoffed at the first line, the rest must be rich.

'I am sorry to be a burden on you over the summer. I'm sure you'd much rather be doing other things. I would be too. Clearly, you want nothing to do with me, as you left me with a book like this one, which clearly wasn't meant to do more than keep me amused. I came here to be challenged, and you don't see fit to do that for me, so I'll just tell the Headmaster that you're asking me to independently study and then just observing my work from time to time. That way you won't have to, what did you call it, pester you. OR be 'in your hair'. Hope that works for you.'

"What the bloody hell kind of a letter was that?" Severus huffed, even more irritated now. It was one thing for him to tell a student to leave him alone, but for her to outright disobey something he asked of her (even if he had forgotten about her), and come up with her own plan for him to be able to avoid her, well that was just crossing lines.

He was getting ready to simply go back to his quarters and call it a night when he noticed something on his desk. It wasn't something that hadn't been there before, nor was it something missing, it was that everything on his desk was so...organized. While he was a fairly organized man anyway, he did have a habit of letting some things get out of order. Now, the notes that he'd been taking which he had just haphazardly placed randomly on the desk were in order from start to finish. He had been working on putting some finishing touches to a revision of a potion and clearly the pages had been read and then placed in their proper order. They were then neatly stacked next to the books that were there, which were also now stacked and in order by the dates they were written in. He took a quick glance around the room to see if anything else had been touched. He checked the cabinet to see if any of the stores of ingredients had been tampered with, and they were all facing label to the front, lined up neatly. He couldn't help but be slightly impressed by this, even if it wasn't enough to get a verbal approval from him at any point.

This did lead to one other small question, however. What else had she been 'organizing', and where? Severus made his way to the Great Hall to see if his new student was eating dinner. The room was completely empty. He knew that Minerva would still be putting the finishing touches to organizing her own classroom before closing it up for the summer and heading off to her home for vacation, and he hoped to be able to catch her before she left. She might've seen a student wandering around the castle and taken note of it, as there weren't supposed to be any students in the castle. At least not until this intrusion.

Just as suspected, Minerva was cleaning her chalkboard with magic and sitting at her desk, organizing some documents which she would use at the beginning of the next year's classes.

"Minerva?" he announced his presence.

"Ah, yes Severus? How can I help you?" she looked up from what she was doing.

"You wouldn't happen to have seen an obnoxious, giggly-"

"Sephy?" she asked, clearly knowing that was where his question was leading.

"Yes. One of those," there was a clear hint of aggravation in his voice - well, more than a hint, really.

"I did, she spent some time in here with me, hence why I'm still here so late. It's close to six thirty!"

"My apologies Professor, I didn't think she was going to wander around the castle and annoy the other professors. I thought that was reserved for me."

Minerva laughed at his statement, "not at all, Severus. She was actually quite pleasant. She asked if she could help me with anything, and after I ascertained why she was here, we both became quite chatty. I showed her a bit about Transfiguration and she managed to turn one of the chairs into a glass vase. It was quite impressive, though she did break it. Still, though, impressive for her first try. She didn't tell me exactly who was supposed to be watching over her, but I figured it must've been you from what she was telling me."

He smirked, wondering what horrible names she'd called him on her first day, "was it something about a greasy old git? Or pasty dungeon bat is always popular among new students."

Minerva raised an eyebrow at him, "actually no, she just told me she'd been left alone in a room for over an hour. The words she used to describe you were, as I recall, 'the poor Professor whose summer was ruined getting stuck with me'. Had she not mentioned being left alone, I don't think I'd have placed you as the one in charge of her"

"I suppose I should go find her and she who else she's bothered," he rolled his eyes, turning to leave. He wouldn't admit it, but he was impressed for a second time. If ever he deserved insults, this would be the time.

He walked down several corridors, before realizing she could be literally anywhere at this point, and decided to just let her find her way back to the dungeons. Eventually she would get tired and he would get a knock at his door. He was just about to open his door when he saw flickering lights coming from the large room at the end of the hall.

Sephy sat there on the floor of what she assumed to be some sort of strange dungeon den. Or maybe the torture room. Or maybe it was some super secret room used for all kinds of kinky sex. Whatever it was, she found it to be the perfect place to practice some of the new spells she'd learned. She heard footsteps, and looked towards the doorway. She'd lit all of the torches along the walls, using magic which she was quite proud of by the way, so there was plenty of light in the room and at the doorway. She saw Severus standing there, an angry look on his face, and then more of concern when he saw what she was holding.

"What are you doing you stupid girl? Where did you find Mrs. Norris, and why are you holding onto her?" he rushed up to the pair.

"Hey! I'm not stupid, thanks, and a really nice gentleman named Filch gave her to me!" she pulled the cat out of his reach.

"I am quite certain that he did not!" in his head, he added 'and I am quite certain he is not a nice gentleman', as well.

"Well, no he didn't give her give her, he lent her to me. To play with. She likes me. Well, she actually likes the strings that attach to my arm warmers, but hey, I'll take what I can get. I love cats! She was sitting outside of the girls bathroom and he was scrubbing some sort of magical graffiti stuff off the walls, and she came up to me. Go ask him! He's taking something to a Mr. Hagrid right now if you don't believe me!"

"Listen to me, you do not wander about the castle without being supervised and moving things around! There are parts of the castle which aren't completely safe for students, and there are parts of the grounds forbidden as well! I left you in a classroom-"

"With a childish book that took me no time at all to read through, nothing else to do, and didn't want me to bother you! So I didn't!"

"Then you should've sat there quietly until I came back for you!" he realized that given his falling asleep and how quickly she'd actually finished the book, this wasn't a reasonable thing to say, but he needed to show her who was in control.

"You're a teacher! You are supposed to teach. Not my dad who barks orders at me like that! Gah! And thank God you aren't my dad, you're terrible at giving me orders. I'd be running amok if this was how my dad dealt with me. Come on, Mrs. Norris, lets go find Mr. Filch," she put the cat down who began walking away to find her master.

Severus felt like throttling the girl for speaking to him that way, "how dare you! I am your superior! You will do what I tell you when I tell you, do you understand! And if I had a daughter she certainly wouldn't behave the way you do! I couldn't live with myself if I knew my child was behaving this out of line!"

"Yeah?" she almost yelled back at him, "well guess my real dad couldn't either! Guess that's why he killed himself! Because of me, right?!" she began to storm off.

Severus, for probably one of the few times in his life, felt a pang of guilt. He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around, a sympathetic look on his face.

"Sephy, you are very out of line and you need to start obeying me, but what I said to you was out of line as well. I had no idea your father killed himself."

"Oh," Sephy shrugged "he didn't. Actually he just ran off on my mom and I. I just wanted to see if you do anything other than yell and scowl."

She hadn't said it in a cruel manner, nor a rude one, but the simple fact of the situation brought back that anger from seconds before.

"What is wrong with you?!" he yelled in her face.

"No, see, I really like the other look much better. The one where you don't look like you want to kill me or something. You look so sweet when you aren't angry, it's really cute. And then you get all angry again and it's ruined."

Between realizing there was probably no hope anymore in going any further, Severus released her from his grip and let her walk off. He wasn't even sure what he would say at that point. She was more aggravating than the Golden Trio combined, more insufferable, more obnoxious, more...did she call him cute? Now he realized why she didn't have any friends. Who in their right bloody mind could put up with her for more than a few minutes at a time?

Severus closed the door to his room behind him, heading straight to bed. He had had enough of this day and just wanted it to be over.

After Mrs. Norris was returned to her rightful owner, Sephy changed into her bedclothes and walked into her chambers. Dumbledore had decided it would be better than to stay in a dorm, and she even had a small window to look out at the moon. She sat by the window and looked out at the moon. And cried.

Peggi: BOOYA. Cliffhangers. Kinda.

Severus: You know, your 'Sephy' character sounds an awful lot like you. Maybe that's why I already can't stand her.

Kit: Hey! Be nice. Besides, if you hate her now, just you wait, mister!

Peggi: Psh, yeah. My character is pretty badass.

Kit: Yeah...and now I know from having talked to you on facebook, this is pretty much just you. In real life. Except you use far more emoticons. And can't eat oranges.

Peggi: Yup! Now, readers, to the review button! Go! Accio reviews!