Chapter 11.

Snape woke in somewhat unfamiliar surroundings. By the position of the sun in the window he guessed that it was nearly noon. He glanced around and…he was in the hospital ward. Lying in a bed, the very bed that Deborah had occupied. There was no sign of her. His coat was neatly folded on the visitor's chair, next to his shoes. "Does Severus Snape need anything?" He turned in the direction of the sound and saw a house elf sitting at the foot of the bed. "Deborah Jenkins put Severus Snape to bed this morning took off his shoes and coat and told Hoople to stay with Severus Snape and make sure that he is safe and doesn't fall out of bed or get hurt while she goes shopping. Deborah Jenkins said that Severus Snape drank too much calming potion yesterday."

"No, Albus Dumbledore poisoned Severus Snape with too much of the damned calming potion. Shit! I'm talking like a house elf now! Went shopping? She is insane! She nearly killed herself yesterday! What could she possibly need that urgently?" Snape was pulling his shoes on, muttering to himself. The house elf misinterpreted this as a question addressed to him.

"Deborah Jenkins says that she needs to replace the broom that she broke yesterday. She went to Diagon Alley to buy another one."

Snape cursed vehemently. He put his coat on, managing to get many of the buttons in the correct buttonholes. He hurried to his room, briefly considered taking a shower and changing clothes, then opted for a whore's shower (anointing himself with a goodly quantity of cologne) and jumped in the chimney with a handful of floo powder and headed for the broom shop.

She was not there, nor had she been there yet. Great, he thought, the woman was on death's door last night and today she decided to go shopping and I have no clue where to find her. Something tugged at his coat. Hoople. "Does Severus Snape need to find Deborah Jenkins? She is at Ollivander's Wand Shop."

Snape walked briskly to the shop, followed closely by the house elf. "Why are you following me?" he snarled at the elf.

The house elf cowered. "Deborah Jenkins asked for Hoople to watch over Severus Snape and make sure he stays safe because he took too much calming potion yesterday."

It took Snape a few seconds to process the information. "Bloody hell! She almost kills herself one day and the next day she skips off to town and sets her loathsome little minion to nursemaid me!" He headed for the wand shop, dutifully trailed by the house elf.

"Severus! What a surprise. What is this-do you have a house elf now?" Lucius Malfoy greeted him as he strolled with his wife.

"Deborah Jenkins told Hoople to watch over Severus Snape and make sure he stays safe because he drank too much calming potion yesterday," the elf explained.

"Leave!" Snape thundered. The elf cringed but stayed.

"Oh, Severus, this is rich!" Malfoy laughed. "The lady has given you a sitter. You must bring her over and introduce us sometime. I'd like to meet the witch who thinks you need a keeper."

"If I don't kill her first, Snape growled." He resumed his walk toward Ollivander's shop. The little elf trotted at his heels, to Snape's growing disgust.

When he got to Ollivander's, he found Deborah sitting on a crate chatting with the owner, having a cup of tea. She smiled at Severus. "You woke up! Please, join us."

"Yes, Professor Snape, do sit down." Garrick Ollivander indicated a crate next to Deborah. "I'll get you a cup for some tea, be right back."

"Call your house elf off now," Snape hissed as Deborah rebuttoned his coat. "It's humiliating when a house elf keeps announcing that it's your protector!"

"Hoople, Deborah Jenkins does not need for you to protect Severus Snape for her any more. Thank you." Snape shot her and extremely dirty look, which she ignored. She hugged the little elf, which nearly made Snape gag.

Ollivander returned with a cup and poured tea for Snape. Turning back to Deborah, he said "Now, let me see that heirloom wand you were talking about."

Deborah pulled out the unusual wand she had used when she had dueled with Snape. The wood looked incredibly old, with tiny splits in places. It was slightly bowed.

Ollivander held it lightly, with a rapt expression of wonder on his face. He rolled it and carefully inspected the wood, held it vertically and felt the energies it produced. "This is authentic! This is really your family heirloom?"

"Yes. She was an ancestor of mine. It's been handed down through many generations of my family. The last one to use it before I did was my father's mother. It doesn't work very well for men. It's picky about which women it will work for as well."

"I am amazed that this still exists. Have you ever seen anything like it?" He handed the wand to Snape.

Severus turned the wand over in his hand. It felt small, fragile, thinner than most wands, even witch's wands. The wood was stained and worn smooth by long use. "I don't have enough knowledge of these things to understand the significance of this. It looks very old and it's unusually light, but that is all that I can make of it."

Ollivander took the slender wand back and ran his fingers the length of it, almost lovingly. "This is an amazing piece of history. This wand was the wand of Morgaine la Fey. Half witch, half fairy. It's simply amazing that this has survived the centuries."

"You're descended from Morgaine la Fey?" Snape asked Deborah.

"I am, and so is probably at least half of humanity. Likely you too. It's like Merlin-just about everyone is descended from Merlin, most people don't know that they are. The only difference is that my father's family has always been huge on record keeping and bloodlines and that sort of thing, so we know who our ancestors were. It's one of those things that makes no practical sense, but it's fun to know where you came from, or it is for me anyway. I'm descended from witches, wizards, shamans, at least one fairy, and sundry other magical beings, many of them no good at all. It's a pastime. My brother and I research genealogy for fun."

Ollivander handed her the wand and she returned it to her sleeve. She pulled out another, the one Snape recognized as her quad core. She handed it to Ollivander. "My, yes, I've recently heard of these. What is this one made of? The wood is unfamiliar."

"This is made of black locust wood. It is a excellent concentrator of energy, it produces a tighter pattern even as a single core. The outliers, the parts that direct the energy are Pegasus mane hairs. The core is basilisk feather shaft."

"Basilisk! That is highly unusual! I have never even seen a basilisk feather. Do you have problems with control?"

"Only self control." She smiled. The outliers do most of the controlling for me. I tend to have good energy control so I don't need a super strong outlier. But I don't hit all that hard so basilisk gives me the heavy duty kick I need."

Snape pulled his quad out of his sleeve and handed it to Ollivander. "This is the one that Deb and I made together so she could show me how to do it."

Ollivander rolled the wand in his hand. "Excellent, amazing for a first effort, Professor. It has the same wood, but the energies are different. Pegasus core, maybe?" Snape nodded confirmation. "What are the outliers?" Severus looked toward Deborah, he didn't know himself.

"Thestral tail hair." she said. "They compress the scatter and focus it so tightly that they can give almost surgical precision. Severus hits hard but has a good deal of scatter and the thestral tail hair is one of the best for controlling scatter. There is only one thing stronger-manticore-but he really didn't need that much control. Thestral was actually overkill. With quads, they have to be built to order. They're more tricky to use than a single core to begin with, if they're not balanced they are extremely dangerous."

A few more minutes of talk about the technical aspects of wands ensued, which sounded to Severus like so much "blah, blah, wand, blah blah core blah blah blah blah." Deborah finally made the announcement that they had shopping to do and they were off.

The business at broom shop didn't take very long. She didn't know anything about them and let Snape pick one out for her. She paid for the broom and arranged to have it delivered to Hogwarts. They left and started walking along the street, no particular destination in mind. She stopped him for a moment.

"I need to thank you for taking me up to the medical wing yesterday. I don't remember much except that I woke up that night in a hospital bed and you were sitting there." She took his hand and held it in hers. "I must have given you quite a shock."

"I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I saw you fly by the window then I heard a cracking sound and a thud. I thought you were dead when I looked out the window and saw you on the ground. When I got down and you weren't moving..." He looked down at his feet. "Deb, I've missed you. I shouldn't have taken off like I did."

She freed her hands and put an arm around his waist and held him as they resumed their walk. His arm draped over her shoulders. "Sev, I expected that you would need some distance for a while after that night. I'm not angry at you. You needed your privacy. If I thought that you were merely being rude I would have gone on down to the Slytherin dungeon and found you. I'm not exactly shy that way."

"I'll say you're not." he snorted. "I figured that out the first night you came down into the dungeon looking for something out of the stores. Most people are easy to scare off."

"That seems so odd to me. I never got any sort of vibes about you being bad news, or dangerous, or anything like that. I got just the opposite. Like if all hell broke loose the best place for me to head would be down to that dungeon. I got the impression that you're one of those 'save the world' type guys, even though you'd probably bitch the whole time you were doing it."

He laughed. "I don't know about saving the world, but I've been accused of being bitchy and worse. Much worse. I have a portfolio of confiscated 'Professor Snape' artwork. Some of it depicts me performing acts which I frankly think are impossible."

"The good farmer is held in low regard by the rats in his grainery."

"I'm going to remember that one. I should get out my calligraphy quills and make myself a little parchment for the potions classroom wall."

"Or, I could make you one with my Sharpies."

"Or you could come with me and we can get something to eat. Have you been in the Three Broomsticks yet?"

"No, never heard of it." she said. "What is it?"

"A pub. I'll buy us lunch." He offered his arm and she took it.


"This place makes a good hamburger, but I think that you make them better."

"I think so too." They had found a corner booth and were watching people drift through the Three Broomsticks. Snape saw her take a sip out of her mug. "What do you think of butterbeer?"

She tilted her head slightly and looked at the mug. "I think that it might be an acquired taste. It's very sweet. Like drinking candy. So, is this your regular hangout?"

Snape laughed. "If coming into a place once in five years makes it a hangout, then yes, it is my hangout. I really don't get out much."

"Why not?"

"No one to hang out with. I don't like going out by myself."

"British women must have horrible taste in men if they're not trying to remedy that situation. Seriously."

"That is kind of you to say."

"I'm not being kind. I'm telling the truth." She sipped the butterbeer and tried very hard to like it. "I'm not the type to spend time with a man as a mission of mercy. I like being with you. It's too bad that you don't believe it."

"You are, literally, the first woman I've run across who had such a favorable opinion of me." He stared off at some point in the distance. "Are you sure that you're real?"

"You should know. You carted me up the stairs yesterday. You should remember that, I know that I weigh more than a duck."

"I didn't have time to get my largest scales and check. This is insane. I'm not complaining, but it's tough to believe. You like Monty Python."

"I even have a python named Monty."

"Where do you keep your animals and the rest of your things? You said that you had a home that had been in your family nearby."

"Uh huh." She leaned into Severus and was pleased when he put his arm around her shoulders. "It hadn't been used for three centuries. Late 1600's. I've been cleaning the up. So much stuff in it-I don't think my family ever threw anything away. I've had to add chambers on to it just so I have enough room to walk around. I should have gotten a bulldozer just for the dust." She took a sip of the butterbeer. "As soon as it's presentable, I want you to come over. I think you'd like it, particularly the fine library of banned books."

"Banned for what?"

"Exceptionally dark magic, among other things, some of it quite wicked from the little I've been reading. Wanting to know how to do things we shouldn't do is a family tradition. I got expelled from eleventh grade, that would be like your sixth year, for creating and employing a particularly foul curse against several of my classmates. Be glad you don't have anyone like me in your classes."

"What kind of curse was it?"

"There were a bunch of guys who were always picking on me. They didn't like the way I beat them at duels. They said I looked weird because I had grey hair at 16, and yeah, it did look weird, but that was just how I was. I didn't look good enough, too short, dressed funny-you know how it is, Sev. If people want to find fault with you they can always find something."

"Yes, I know." How well he remembered.

"Anyway, one night a thought came to me how I could get back good at those guys. I went to my uncle, told him what the guys were doing to me and what kind of curse I wanted to put on them. My uncle taught me how to create a curse and off I went with my curse and cursed them."

"It was kind of an unusual curse. We had dorms we lived in at our school. I made the curse so that any time one of them masturbated they would make extremely loud porn movie sorts of moans and groans, 'oh, yeah, baby, right there, oh, god, yes, yes!' and other things in a similar vein, and not realize that they were doing it."

Severus tried to stifle his laughter, thinking that he would loved to have put such a curse on a few Gryffindors who had made his teenage life pure hell. Padfoot. Wormtail. Moony. Prongs. Especially Prongs. He pictured himself casting the curse-that had to have required an interesting incantation. Pictured the effect. Pictured the other members of their house reacting. He dropped his face into his hands and shook with laughter.

"Over the next few nights the curse caused quite a stir in the boy's dorm. They checked wands all over the school and found out that I had done it. They kicked me out and I never did go back. Personally, I think that they should have congratulated me for creating such an advanced piece of magic at such a tender age." She snickered. "It's a good thing I didn't go to school at Hogwarts. Once the two of us put our heads together, they'd have to add a children's wing to Azkaban."

Snape was weak with laughter. "You are evil! Evil! I love it!" He put his arm back around her shoulders. "Deb, do you have plans for tomorrow evening?"

"None yet. Why do you ask?"

"I was wondering if you would want to go on a date with me. A real date. You would have to tell me what to do because I am totally ignorant in that area. I truly don't get out much."

"Easy. Find something you want to do, ditch the Snape coat-don't look at me that way-and let me know what time to be ready and give me some idea of what to dress for. Y'know, casual, slutty, half-way decent, going to a dogfight casual, just give me an idea." She leaned into him. "Sure, I want to go out with you."