It was New Year's Eve and Severus was once again spending the celebration alone. His one-time nurse and current Girl-Friday, Bette Grenville, was off with one of her many beaux, set to celebrate the changing of the year in Blackpool proper. It mattered only a little, and to Severus Snape alone, apparently, that this was the anniversary of her first day of employ two years before.

She had grown on him. He had thought her an oddity, with her ideas on what she called "The Craft". She considered herself a modern day witch, and dressed the part of the airy-fairy hippie right down to the loose India cotton skirts and garishly designed too-large tunics. Severus had been more than a little disturbed to find, though her views on witchcraft were cloaked in religion, that many of the ideas she believed were, in fact, rooted in the magical world he had just fled. Over time, however, he had come to trust her judgment, no matter how flighty she might appear to the rest of the world.

Now however…

Damn him if he didn't want the woman in as many ways as possible, and any number of times. This burning, unrequited type of desire was no change for him. He'd been down this path before, and just look where it had got him: years of isolation and torture, both literal and figurative, loss of his magic because of that damned foul snake-bite, and now exile from his beloved magical world.

Fawkes and Aberforth had saved him, the Malfoys had effected his escape and made his largely untouched investments available to him, and the Queen's agent had sold him the Prince family manor, a mouldering pile of dung, along with an entailment and a Tudor-era title. He was now Sir Severus Snape, ex spy and bastard extraordinaire, along with all the other things he had enumerated before in his mind.

He slammed back another tumbler of Scotch, a fine, aged whiskey from a not-too-distant shop that delivered most supplies for the right amount of remuneration. He poured another with the same intent, and another, until the bottle was half empty, and his mood, foul on the best of days, was maudlin. He could lay his current excesses on Bette Grenville.

Miss Grenville's oval face, her perfectly formed lips, her damned freckles, and the frowsy nature of her frizzy hair, drove him to drink away his distraction. He could drown his desire in alcohol, especially when he envisioned her in the arms of her date of the evening, that pustulant delivery boy with the motorbike, leather jacket, and devil-may-care good looks. Severus could, and most likely would, spend the rest of the evening envisioning exactly what that wanker would do to his Bette after the New Year's celebration was over. Severus might even toss one off himself to the vision that both tortured and inflamed him, as sad as that idea was.

The one thing he most definitely couldn't picture was Miss Grenville, with her nature-worshipping optimism, wanting Severus Snape. The very thought caused the former spy to toss back another shot of the whiskey and slosh another finger in his glass, an action he repeated several more times.

Damn the woman for intruding into his life! No matter that he had hired her to live with him so that he might recover something of his former magic and vigour.

He was well on his way to the bottom of another bottle when he heard the woman in question's dog, a curmudgeonly Lakeland terrier named, quite inexplicably, Mr Anderson, rise and trot to the hallway. Severus heard the front door open, with its customary squeal of rusted hinges and dry wood, and he drunkenly sloshed some more whiskey into the tumbler before standing and weaving to the library doorway.

Bette had let herself in and was standing under the flickering lights of the entryway chandelier. She was talking tipsily to Mr Anderson, her hair that had been in a tight chignon earlier in the evening, bursting from the constraints. She had already dropped her stylish coat onto the waiting coatrack, exposing a freckled shoulder to Severus' view as she stooped to remove the impossible stiletto heels that she'd chosen for the evening. His mouth went dry as her uncharacteristically tight skirt rose several inches, giving him a view of a creamy thigh and a pair of stockings held up by magic alone, as far as he could tell.

He took a step back, hiding in the shadow of the library door, and looked at the grandfather clock that had come with the house. It wasn't midnight yet.

His movement caught her eye and she said, "Oh, Sev, I thought you'd be abed by now."

She moved toward him, dangling the impossible shoes from two fingers. "You're drinking."

Severus peered down his nose at her. "As you have been, also. Don't think that because I've let you stick around this long that you can just get cheeky."

The shoulder to her dress dipped again as she walked closer to him. She was so close, in fact, that he could smell the fireworks smoke on her skin, and could clearly see the shape of the freckles that so fascinated him. She stepped into him, her body pressed tightly to his, and she deftly slid the tumbler from his now nerveless fingers. She drank the whiskey in one long draw, following the action by sliding her slick pink tongue over her plump lips. "That's good, Sev. Very good."

She leaned against him, her face tilted up. "Why don't you kiss me?"

"Perhaps I don't want to." Severus answered tightly, even as he felt his head dip. The clock began chiming the hour as his lips found hers.

He wished that he could say the kiss was magic, transcendent, or even marginally life changing. It wasn't.

It was a kiss that tasted of loneliness, whiskey, and desire. Yet it was a hopeful kiss, even if it was liberally peppered with equal parts pessimism and angst. Severus knew what his life had been to lend those flavours to the simple of touching of lips, but her story remained a mystery, and he would keep it that way. He didn't care to bear anyone else's pain, not when he had shouldered his own for so long.

He slid his tongue along the loose seam of her lips and she opened to him. The taste of whiskey and mint became erotic, musky, and frantic. Soon, his hands cupped her arse, and she fumbled at his trousers. His hand rucked up her skirt and she lifted her leg, her slippery mons clad in nothing but air. He impaled her on his cock, stumbling until he had her back against the adjacent doorjamb. Whiskey might have impaired his performance if it hadn't been so long since he had felt the slick, iron-fist in velvet pull of a woman's sheath. They fucked until both of them landed in a heap on the floor, shaking from their exertions, breathing in each other's scents.

Bette (his Bette) said, with heavy lidded eyes and hoarse, sultry voice, "Let's finish this upstairs, Sev."

And they did.

&*&*&

He awoke to a bed that contained only him and his oversized, pounding head. He fumbled in the bed stand drawer until he found the vial that contained the last of his own, patented, hangover cure. Trying not to move his head overmuch, he drank it down and waited for the scant seconds it would take to work.

Once the potion did its work, he half stumbled to the loo to relieve himself, and tried not to picture what this morning would surely bring.

In the shower, he gave into the temptation, and wanked to what he could remember of the previous evening. After the second time, it all became a blur. He was glad he had fucked her, his delectable nurse, because he would have the memory to dole out, since she had obviously run screaming from his house this morning. Once he came, with the quick, furtive movements of a miser, he washed.

Out of the shower, he shaved, careful not to look too closely at his reflection, even though the mirror would make no comment about his lack of looks. He didn't want to see the loneliness in his own eyes. He didn't want to confirm the despair he felt at bollixing things up with yet another woman.

He outfitted himself in his peculiar black armour, a Muggle variation of his teaching robes that were black and severe, even if they didn't billow.

He made his way to the kitchen, meaning to raid the larder for something that would go well with another bottle of whiskey only to be confronted by Mr Anderson. The dog grumbled at his passing, sniffing the air behind Severus as if it knew what his morning activities had been. Severus skirted the animal, his hope rising even as he attempted to squelch it.

Things did not work out for Severus Snape.

He entered the kitchen proper, and saw her in the same place she'd been every morning since he employed her. She was cooking and singing a prayerful song to some god or goddess, in her slightly sharp voice. She turned and smiled at him, but then focussed on her cooking once again.

He sat in his customary spot at the head of what had been the servant's table. She had laid the paper out for him as usual, had set his place with hers next to it. It appeared that she would continue to work for him. He didn't dare hope for a repeat of anything else. He wasn't a greedy man.

He opened the paper, and stared at the words, unable to focus on what they said.

Bette startled him by putting his plate in front of him. "Here you go, Sev, just how you like it."

Echoes of the night before shifted through his consciousness. "Do that again. It's just how I like it. Oh, Sev…"

Had he been his teenaged self, or even the Potions Master from a few years ago, he would have hidden behind his curtain of hair, but Bette had mentioned in passing that she liked to see his eyes, and so he wore it scraped back in a queue. He thanked her, never lifting his gaze to hers. If he didn't look at the pity he knew was in her expression, he wouldn't have to think of their coupling as a one… or more precisely, two and a half off. He lifted his fork and began eating, shovelling the food that tasted of ashes and bitter disappointment, into his mouth.

And then he felt her under the table, touching his leg, moving up his trousers to his rapidly stiffening genitals. He scooted back violently, nearly overturning his chair as he hit a divot in the linoleum floor. "Bloody hell, Miss Grenville! What are you…"

Then she had him out of his black armour, well, at least a part of him, and she sucked his loosed member into that wickedly curving mouth. He watched in fascinated arousal as she expertly bobbed up and down on his growing tumescence. A swirl of her tongue at the glans brought him to fully erect, and soon, too soon, he was spurting into her mouth. He hadn't time to even warn her, but she drank him down with greedy slurps and satisfied moans.

When she had cleaned him, tucked him back into his pants, and buttoned his trousers, she looked up at him, her expression impish. "You know, for such an intelligent man, you can be thick as a brick sometimes. I knew you'd think I had made a drunken mistake last night, but I've wanted you for so long. I'm not about to give you up now that I've had you."

She scrambled up from the floor, her tunic slipping to reveal her perfect breast with its caramel coloured nipple. As she retrieved her own breakfast from the counter, she said over her shoulder, "And Sev, don't call me Miss Grenville again. I'm Bette… your Bette from here on out. You had best get used to it."