Disclaimer: The Harry Potter storyline, characters, and all that other stuff are owned by J.K. Rowling. The made-up characters, such as Kel, Jane, and Nesheni are owned by me. Story edited by Kichikitsune.

Summary: Severus Snape's pet peeve is the pair of girls who constantly tick him off. What happens when the dragon Nesheni forces them to work together?

Chapter 1: Of Feuds And Guitars
There were a lot of things that could piss of Severus Snape. Non- Slytherins, inept potion-makers, Harry Potter, the fact that he was turned down for the Defense Against the Dark Arts job every year, Harry Potter, the Gryffindor Quidditch Team's winning streak, Harry Potter, grammatically incorrect Potions essays, and Harry Potter. But nothing, nothing, infuriated him more than the eccentric Ravenclaw girls who constantly gave him hell, Kelenariel Khelekkir and Jane Dumont.
Kel and Jane, on the other hand, said he was their favorite teacher. Not because he was nice to them, or because they thought he had a good teaching style, but because they could piss him off so easily. There was nothing nearly as funny as Severus Snape's reaction to a prank or a joke.
Kel and Jane were different from the other students in a variety of ways. For one thing, they were not British, but American, and had moved to London at a young age, though they retained their American accents. Before long after meeting, they were best friends. They shared similar interests, such as rock music and the punk and gothic styles of clothing. They also shared similar beliefs. For instance, they both believed the Zen philosophy that mental and physical discipline could lead to an understanding of the nature of existence. Kel took this seriously and meditated as often as she could. Jane didn't. On those rare occasions when she did meditate, it was only because Kel had nagged her to do so for days. The Slytherin students viewed them from a distance, and labeled them as "weirdo-mudbloods," not that this bothered the pair. The rest of the students thought they were good people, but a little strange.
But the strangest thing about Kelenariel and Jane was not something that could be seen or heard or touched, but something that was merely sensed, and even then it was sensed only by few. The girls never showed any sign of knowing about this difference in themselves, but the few people who sensed it knew that they knew it was there. The only physical sign of this difference in Kel and Jane was that Kel's spells always had a bit of a silvery quality to them, and Jane's always had a reddish tinge, no matter what color they were supposed to be.
There were several reasons why Professor Snape despised them so much. For one thing, they were constantly making jokes whenever he was around, and he had a shrewd suspicion that they were made about him. For another thing, they especially liked to tick him off. One of their favorite activities was loitering by the entrance of the Great Hall before breakfast just to annoy him. They'd mention one of their inside jokes, then crack up and try not to laugh too loudly. Snape had a feeling many were about him.
And the most annoying thing about them was that they were adept at Potions. He was seldom able to catch them making a mistake. When he did catch a mistake, though, he made sure to point it out to the class and humiliate them. The problem was, they didn't act humiliated. Jane would shrug and say, "Okay sir, I'll try not to do it again," and Kel would just act the way she did in all classes: emotionless. The only times he ever saw her show emotion was when she was out of class, cracking a joke about him.

One morning in January of 1996, Professor Snape was walking to the Great Hall for breakfast when, as had happened every other day for the past two weeks, he caught sight of Kel and Jane standing by the doors of the Hall, talking. They actually looked like halfway normal girls, from behind, anyway. Snape knew better. Jane had a slender build, a pointed, prominent chin, and dead straight, shoulder-length, glossy black hair with bangs parted in the center, her skin shockingly pale in comparison. Her ice-blue eyes, which held a mischievous glint, were accented by heavy eyeliner, the ends pointed in an Egyptian style. Her lips were colored black. Kelenariel looked slightly more normal than Jane, though not much more. She had wavy, dark-brown hair that was pulled into a half ponytail, so dark that it looked almost black, light skin, and brown eyes that changed color according to the light. In his dark dungeon, they were much the same color as her hair, and in the exceptionally bright glare of the sun, they were illuminated to gold, hazel, dark orange, or sometimes even a deep red. In the normal light, they were light brown with a hint of purple. These eyes too were accented with heavy eyeliner (but not so heavy as Jane's) so that it drew the gaze to her multi-colored eyes. The most extraordinary thing about Kelenariel Khelekkir's appearance, though, was not her eyes, or her hair, or her skin, or anything mentioned in this paragraph up till now, but the scar that ran from near her right eye, to her nose, to the corner of her mouth, all the way down to her upper neck. Sometimes it harder to notice, and sometimes it jumped out at the viewer, but it always there. As usual, when the pair caught sight him, one muttered something to the other, and they nearly fell over with suppressed laughter.
Snape had had enough. He swept over. When they realized he was going for them, they tried their best to shut up and give him simper smiles. Or at least Jane did. Kel put on her mask of apathy.
"Yes sir? Is there something wrong, sir? Something we can do, sir?" Jane asked mockingly.
Snape glared at them down his large nose. "The next time I catch you talking here, Dumont, Khelekkir, you will have detention. Both of you. Go."
Jane smiled and skipped over to her seat at the Ravenclaw table, Kel following more sedately. Judging from the laughter of the other Ravenclaws, Jane was telling them what had happened.
Snape scowled more deeply and trudged over to the staff table.
The next morning, Professor Snape walked to the Great Hall again, wondering whether those troublesome little weirdos had obeyed his command.
He smirked, knowing that they probably hadn't, and walked on. However, when he rounded the corner, the smirk melted away.
As he had guessed, there was Kelenariel Khelekkir in her usual spot by the door. There was more than that though. She was strumming a—he couldn't believe it—guitar. A muggle guitar. And singing along.
As soon as she ended the song, the crowd of Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and other Ravenclaws gathered around her and started spewing out requests for songs. She cast her gaze around the room, looking for inspiration. When her eyes alighted on him, a truly evil grin crossed her face. She resituated her fingers on the—fetts? Frets? Ferrets? Ferrets?! What was he thinking?—and started to play.
He nearly fell over when he heard the words.

"Now I wanna sniff some glue!
Now I wanna have somethin' to do.
All the kids wanna sniff some glue!
All the kids want somethin' to do."

As he stormed over, his eyes nearly fell out of his head when he saw the hat full of galleons—which Jane was rapidly adding to—at Kel's feet.
When the crowd saw Snape, they quickly dispersed until only Kel, Jane, and himself were present.
"Detention. Both of you. Report to my office at after dinner tonight," he said with quiet smugness, his eyes glittering.
"Oh I don't think so," Jane replied brightly.
"Excuse me?"
"As I recall, you said that if you caught us talking here again, we'd have detention," Kel said cheerfully, which surprised him because she was actually showing emotion. "I wasn't talking. I was playing a guitar and singing. So I don't think we'll be reporting to your office after dinner."
"She's right, you know," Professor Flitwick said, walking up to them. "So let them off this time. After all, they're in my house." Apparently, he hadn't heard the lyrics to the song she had been playing.
Snape glared down at him, to angry at being thwarted to speak. Without a word, he stalked off to eat breakfast in his office, his robe flapping behind him.
The last thing he heard as he shut the door was the echo of Kel's clear voice singing, "Lucy in the sky with diamonds!"

That night, Kelenariel Khelekkir lay awake in her four-poster bed, staring up at the ceiling. It wasn't unusual to find her like this after lights out. She always had trouble sleeping at first, but then she nodded off. Tonight, though, she had been lying awake for three hours.
Kel turned over and tried to go to sleep, but she couldn't. The best way to solve a problem is to find out why it's there in the first place, she thought.
Very well. What was the problem? She couldn't sleep, that was the problem. Why couldn't she sleep? Sugar? No. Caffeine? No. Unfinished assignments? No, she had finished all her homework. Was it an emotion keeping her awake? Perhaps guilt over the incident in the Great Hall? No. Her guitar playing hadn't hurt anyone, only annoyed a few, such as Snape and the Slytherins. Umbridge would've been annoyed too, and attempted to do the same as Snape, had she been there to witness it. Thankfully, she wasn't. Why should she feel any guilt about Snape? She wasn't sure who had started their feud, but that didn't matter. He deserved everything they gave him.
She remembered the day she and Jane had earned the Potions Master's enmity. It had been the second class of their first year in 1990. Professor Snape had been bullying John Dewaro, who had tripped over his own feet and accidentally knocked some of his lionfish spleen into his potion, causing it to explode. Snape, who had been especially grumpy that day, had started shouting at John, calling him seven kinds of idiot in one sentence. Jane, who was particularly angry at Snape because he had vanished her potion halfway through the lesson because of an easily rectifiable mistake, making her have to start over, and Kel, who hated bullying, unfairness, and, most especially, corrupted and/or biased authority figures, had stood up to defend John. Their argument had been reasonable, until Jane lost her temper and shouted, "Just because you're PMS-ing doesn't mean you should take it out on him!"
As a result of that comment, they had lost 50 points from Ravenclaw and gained a week's worth of detention each, but everyone said that it was worth seeing the look on Snape's face after Jane's explosion.
Ever since then, the Potions Master and the Ravenclaw eccentrics waged a constant, quiet war that no one heard about except the Ravenclaw students and perhaps Dumbledore. No one else really cared much about it.
Kel smiled at the memory. No, it isn't guilt that's keeping me awake, she told herself. Perhaps it isn't me. Maybe it's something in the castle.
Come to think of it, there definitely was something different in the castle tonight. It was like a hum... only she didn't hear it with her ears. No she heard it in her mind.
It wasn't surprising to her to here something in her mind. She had experienced it, considering how much she meditated. Owing to the out of body experiences she sometimes had during the aforementioned activity, she was quite used to it.
She had never experienced a sensation like this though. It wasn't bad...but it wasn't good either.
She looked through the gap in her curtains at Jane. Her friend was asleep, oblivious to the hum that kept Kel awake, her hair fanned out on the pillow. On her bedpost was her crow, Cadaver.
Cadaver was a pathetic example of a crow. With thin, ragged feathers that were constantly falling out and a body that was so dull that it looked almost grey, his name fit him very well. He did indeed look dead. But despite this, he was as strong and noble as any owl. Or any hippogriff, for that matter. Well, maybe not as strong, but certainly as noble. The last person that had bothered Jane had ended up with a face full of scratches from Cadaver's talons.
Professor Trelawney or someone's probably doing some weird spell experiment, she told herself. Ignore it and go to sleep.
But she couldn't go to sleep. The sense of something weird lurking about the castle kept her awake. Finally, she decided that she couldn't take it anymore and got dressed to take a walk. As she left the Ravenclaw common room, she was heard to have muttered, "Spell experiment my ass."
As she wandered through the halls, the shadows seemed to move. A couple of times she heard the whoosh of Peeves zooming around empty classrooms. She half expected the suits of armor to jump out at her.
She checked her watch. 2:48 AM.
This is crazy, the sensible part of her (which was the part of her that was usually in control) screamed. Wandering around the castle at nearly three in the morning, all because you can't sleep. If Filch or Umbridge catches you, you're dead. But if Snape catches you, you're worse than dead! He probably wants revenge. Better to fall asleep in class tomorrow than to get caught by him.

And, as if summoned by her thoughts, a wand light bloomed out of nowhere, revealing the one and only Professor Severus Snape, looking down his big ugly nose at her.

(Editor's note: You shouldn't touch my cheese monkeys. They bite.)

(A/N: You may be wondering "where's this dragon the summary was talking about?" Well, here's our answer: she'll be in the next chapter. I would've put her in this chapter, but my editor, kichikitsune, said I should end it here, at this cliffhanger. Also, you'll find out more about that weird thing about Kelenariel and Jane mentioned in Paragraph 4 in later chapters. Yes, I hate the phrase 'in later chapters' too. It just didn't fit here. I'll try and update as soon as I can. Some things to point out: Kel and Jane are in the year above Harry, Ron, and Hermione. If they sound remotely Mary Sue-ish, I'm sorry. They aren't. Umbridge is currently residing in the school. Dumbledore has not left yet. No, there will NOT be any slash between Snape and Kel or Snape and Jane, especially since Kel is based upon myself and Jane's personality is based on kichikitsune. As good as he looks in the movie, I do NOT want a relationship with Severus Snape. NO WAY. Not if my life depended on it. He has too many emotional issues, you know?)