DISCLAIMER: I do not, nor will I ever own Harry Potter. I am merely an admirer of the magical world that J.K.R has created. The world that she has kindly let people, like myself, play around in.
Rolanda Hooch woke up with a start, sitting bolt upright, her yellow hawk eyes scanning the room. She ran her hand through her spiky, steel grey hair, trying to remember. Today was special, very special, though she could not for the life of her think why. She got out of bed and went for a jog around her room, trying to stir her mind into action. When this failed, she walked out into the corridor.
"Rolanda?"
Minerva McGonagall and Septima Vector were standing, staring in bewilderment at the Quidditch mistress, who was still in her pyjamas. Rolanda held out a finger. She watched as a student walked towards the Great Hall. She didn't take her eyes off the student, who was now getting quite uncomfortable, until they had turned a corner.
"Of course!" she whispered, her eyes narrowing.
Running back into her room, she scanned the calendar. With a cry, she quickly pulled on some robes and ran outside again, to where her friends were still standing with looks of utter confusion.
"It's Hug-A-Slytherin Day!" Rolanda said, excitedly.
"What?" asked Minerva.
"Sharp as a knife, this one!" winked Rolanda to Septima. "It is, as the name suggests my dear Minerva, a day where everyone attempts to hug a member of Slytherin house."
"Why in the world would anyone want to do that?" Minerva scoffed.
"For the fun of it!" Rolanda beamed.
"I think you're making this up!" Minerva said.
Rolanda shook her head and walked over to where the corridor branched in another direction. She then beckoned for Minerva and Septima to follow her.
"Observe." Rolanda whispered and the three witches watched from behind the wall.
A small, brown haired first year was walking down the corridor, his green robes indicating he was from Slytherin. He came to a holt and leant against a wall, checking his watch.
"Wait for it..." Rolanda whispered, as a group of fifth year Hufflepuffs came from the opposite direction.
It took them a few seconds to notice the standing boy. It took them less time to realize what house he belonged to. They broke into a run and, before the boy could react, they wrapped him in an embrace, screaming "Happy Hug-A-Slytherin Day!" at the top of their lungs. Then they walked off as if nothing had happened.
"See?" Rolanda smiled cheerfully, as if the random hugging of first years was quite a natural occurrence.
Minerva shook her head and started walking towards the Great Hall. Rolanda and Septima followed behind.
"So," Septima said, as they entered the hall, "are you planning to hug every Slytherin you see?"
"Of course not!" Rolanda exclaimed, scornfully. "That would be much too easy!"
She smiled sweetly at the Slytherin table, most of whom had their wands out for protection.
"No," she continued, "I only take the best and most challenging. Today I shall hug the ultimate Slytherin."
She pointed to a figure who was standing in front of the high table. He had long, black robes that made him look slightly bat like. This effect was not helped by his large, hooked nose. Keeping with the colour scheme, his hair and eyes were also black. He was a formidable looking man, with a formidable reputation.
"Severus Snape?" Septima said, skeptically, "I wish you luck with that. You'll probably need it."
She went to her seat, leaving Rolanda to tackle the task of hugging the head of Slytherin house.
"Severus!" Rolanda said, in an overly jovial voice.
She walked up to the potions master, with a stride that couldn't have been more conspicuous. Severus narrowed his eyes.
"Rolanda." he said suspiciously.
She stopped walking, then suddenly lunged forward, arms outstretched. Severus was too quick, side stepping her and moving quickly out of reach.
"You do this every year, Rolanda!" he said, in his sarcastic, sneering voice, "And every year, you fail."
He stalked towards the door, his cloak billowing behind him.
"THIS IS NOT OVER, CAULDRON BOY!" Rolanda yelled after him. "THIS YEAR IS MY YEAR AND, WHEN YOU LEAST EXPECT IT, I WILL BE THERE!"
Severus sat at his desk, marking papers with his scrawling handwriting. It had been a most uneventful first lesson and he had found himself almost dozing off (teaching first years was his least favourite past time). He finished the last one with a sigh of relief, pushing the pile away from him. Suddenly a loud "AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" came from behind him. This battle cry came from Rolanda Hooch who, unbeknownst to Severus, had been biding her time, concealed in a supply closet. She leaped from her perch on the top shelf, throwing herself towards her startled colleague. Quickly gathering his wits, Severus pushed his chair out of the line of fire, causing Rolanda to land with a large thud on the hard dungeon floor. As she stumbled to her feet, he grabbed his wand and cast a shield charm around his seat. After ten minutes of trying to penetrate his invisible fortress, Rolanda had to admit defeat.
"It seems that you have once again, fallen flat!" quipped Severus, with an unkind smile, "If you'll excuse the pun."
Rolanda left his classroom, but not before giving him the rudest hand gesture she could think of.
By the afternoon, Rolanda was fuming, having made two more unsuccessful attempts on Severus. The first, involved crawling commando style underneath the high table at lunch. Rolanda was sure she would have made it, if Sybill Trelawney hadn't stuck her foot out at exactly the wrong moment and kicked her in the face. The mocking laughter from her intended victim was unbearable. The second attempt had her dressing up as a student and sneaking into his sixth year potion lesson. That had almost worked, until Severus, becoming aware of the 'girl' that kept moving her stool forward, tipped the nearest cauldron on top of her.
"Ruined my best Ravenclaw disguise!" she lamented to Poppy Pomfrey, when she went to the hospital wing to have the feathers removed.
Collapsing in the best chair in the staffroom, Rolanda let out a sigh of anguish. Her friends all smiled sympathetically.
"I can't stand that Snape!" Rolanda moaned.
"Oh come off it," Septima scoffed, "you like the chase."
"Besides," Minerva said, "you're sitting in his chair. He's going to approach you sooner or later."
"He'll have to hug me first, if he ever wants this seat back!" Rolanda said with passion.
"Bit keen, aren't you?" said Poppy, teasingly, "Do you really want to hug him that badly?" Pomona Sprout giggled, in an unusually girly way. Rolanda shot them both a withering look.
"You have a dirty mind, Poppy Pomfrey!" she scolded. "Anyway, it's not a simple matter of a hug. It's a matter of pride! I can't let him win, not when I've directly challenged him!"
"Hmmm.." said Aurora Sinistra, "so crawling under the table, in front of the entire school, was a way of maintaining your pride?"
Rolanda scowled.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures."
"Obviously." Aurora said, under her breath.
The door to the staffroom opened and in walked Filius Flitwick, the tiny charms teacher. Hesitating for a moment, he gravitated towards the group of witches.
"Rolanda," he said, "I understand from a few of my third year students (who saw you running from the dungeons, covered in feathers) that you are on a quest to hug the seemingly unhuggable."
Rolanda nodded and sat up a little straighter.
"Being a man who likes to help his friends," Filius went on, "I thought you might like to know that Severus is headed this way now and will probably be here in about five minutes."
Rolanda jumped up with such force, that she knocked over a table that sat next to her chair.
"Right!" she yelled, "Everyone clear the room now!"
Severus walked into the staffroom and was surprised to see it was deserted, as he was sure he had heard voices. Not that the solitude bothered him. He had spent most of the day avoiding the clutches of the irrepressible Rolanda Hooch. Her last attempt had almost got him. Severus shuddered. There was no denying that she was getting better. Finding his favourite chair, he sank down into it and prepared to go sleep.
"Severus," a familiar voice said, "what a pleasant surprise!"
Severus saw a high back chair swivel around to face him. Sitting in said chair, was none other than Rolanda, her legs crossed, her wand emitting little sparks as she tapped it against her palm.
"Rolanda!" Severus snarled.
"Thought I'd given up?" she said, in a butter wouldn't melt kind of voice.
"I know you well enough, to expect that you'd never give up!" Snape growled.
Rolanda let out a silvery laugh.
"But not well enough to interpret my movements."
She leaned forward and Severus tensed, ready to jump up at any moment.
Rolanda laughed again.
"If it has to come down to a game of chase then, believe me, I'll do it! You and I both know who is the faster runner."
"You forget," Severus drawled, "which of us is the better duelist." "Dueling?" she smiled, "Why Severus, how very primitive!"
"And your little game of cat and mouse isn't?" he retorted.
"We both know that my little game is about pride and honour!" Rolanda said, indignantly.
"It makes one very tired!" Severus shot back.
"Well," Rolanda said, mockingly "one should have thought of that before one become a head of house. I expressly told one that this was my favourite holiday, after Christmas and Halloween, so one had got no one to blame but oneself!"
Severus reached in to his robes.
"Going to curse me?" Rolanda teased, playfully, "Go ahead! I've got ways of getting to you that your painfully narrow mind couldn't begin to comprehend."
"Well, pray show!" Severus said, "Because so far I seen no extraordinary magic, what so ever!"
Rolanda raised an eyebrow. That last statement could be taken as nothing less than a challenge.
Both staff members jumped out of their chairs, wands pointed each other. Severus cast a jinx, but Rolanda deflected it with a swift shield charm. The force of it was enough to knock her backwards, giving him enough time to run from the staffroom. Rolanda quickly followed suit.
"I WILL HUG YOU, SEVERUS SNAPE!" she hollered, in a slightly manic way.
Severus looked behind him and cast another jinx. Rolanda absorbed it using a near by first year.
"If that's they way you wanna play it!" she said, letting her shield out of a full body bind.
With a flick of her wand, she sent a rope spinning through the air. Severus ducked and the rope wrapped itself around a statue of Gregory the Smarmy.
"Are you even trying?" Severus yelled, before running around a corner, scattering students as he went.
Rolanda skidded after him, following him as he ran through a door.
Finding herself in bathroom, Rolanda hid behind one of the stalls, as Severus cast another spell at her.
"This is a male bathroom!" he exclaimed.
"Does it look like I give a damn?" Rolanda cried, leaning out from her shelter and aiming several red beams at him.
The beams hit a sink, spraying water everywhere, including over the potions master. Severus shouted and sent the wall of her stall flying backwards. While Rolanda struggled out of the ruins, Severus opened a window and jumped through it.
Swearing and trying to ignore the pain in her leg, Rolanda climbed onto the sill and let herself fall to the ground. Severus had a good head start and the momentum from the hill was helping him further the lead. But Rolanda was not a quitter. She sprinted after him, continually sending beams of light in his direction. Just as she thought she could run no longer, a spell caught him on his foot and he went face first into a patch of mud. Rolanda ran up beside him, puffing a little, but looking triumphant.
"Happy Hug-A-Slytherin Day, Severus!" she beamed, helping him off the ground then pulling him into a rib shattering hug.
"Happy Hug-A-Slytherin Day, Rolanda." he mumbled, grudgingly.
Rolanda let go, still beaming.
"We are going to be in so much crap when we get back there!" she said, gazing up at Hogwarts.
"I know." Severus replied, vanishing the mud with his wand. "Could we consider a truce next year?"
Rolanda turned to him, with her hands on her hips.
"You ask me that every year! And every year I say -"
"Now where's the fun in that, Cauldron Boy." Severus moaned.
Rolanda nodded.
"That statement still stands."
She tried to walk, but almost fell over.
"Even if you can't!" Severus sniggered.
He bent down so she could put an arm around his shoulder. Then they hobbled up to the school, soaking wet, dripping with mud, but smiling. They got up to the castle and Severus led Rolanda to the hospital wing. Poppy didn't ask too many questions when the two disheveled teachers arrived. She simply sat Rolanda on a bed and began to fix her leg. Severus went to leave.
"Until next year, Professor." Rolanda called after him.
He turned back, his black eyes meeting her yellow ones.
"Until next year."