A/N: A short little one to get you through. I am working on far too many stories at once, but what can you do? Thanks for your reviews and favourites.

14.

Trying to catch Severus Snape on his own proved to be as difficult at catching as a particularly evasive Diricawl. And, very much like a Diricawl, he seemed to possess the uncanny ability to turn himself invisible at will. One minute Aurora would be gaining on him and the next second he was no-where to be seen.

She did not like feeling like a stalker. Much less Snape's stalker. But considering the extent to which he was ignoring her existence - it was more than a clear indicator that she needed to set the record straight.

On the other side of the galleon, her meetings with Septima had increased tenfold since that day. They had taken to spending nearly every evening together now, either working on research, or eating, or drinking, or all of these things. Aurora wasn't at all sure that Charity was completely happy with this arrangement… she had been distant and cold with her for weeks now.

"I don't think your ex-girlfriend is found of our increased socialisation." Sinistra informed Vector one evening, curled up in the Arithmancy professor's soft chair in the corner of her room while flicking through several journal articles at once.

Vector stopped scribbling insanely tangled numerical equations upon the parchment which lay upon her bed and looked up through her blunt fringe.

"My ex can think what she likes. That is why we are no longer seeing one another."

She reached for her glass of wine, took one casual sip, placed it back and kept on with the scribbling. Sinistra surveyed her carefully from her position in the corner of the room. So nonchalant. Much like herself in that regard. And she did look very pretty lying there… her bare feet up in the air behind her back, crossed over one another so delicately.

She bit her tongue, took a much longer sip of her wine, and tried to go back to her reading. Several more minutes passed between them in silence, broken only by sounds of ruffling pages and occasional clunk of wine glasses.

It is concluded that the mass accretion rate values for both systems were lower than the critical mass accretion rate value in the boundary layers of cataclysmic variables…

Sinistra took out her quill and wrote next: "OR a coronal structure above the boundary layer" in red ink next to it.

Vector gave a heavy sigh across from her, which broke her concentration again.

"What is it?" Aurora queried. Septima had already cast her pile of scribbled notes aside and was now lying on her back, she gave a colossal stretch… her body stiffening with the weight of the day.

"Nothing. But when I start seeing Agrippan numerology on the walls and start hallucinating that it's giving me a sign about what I should have for breakfast tomorrow morning to avoid having a bad day... I know it's time to put the quill down," she explained, her head still hanging upside down upon her bedspread. "Pass me the flask, will you?"

"How many have you had today, exactly?" Aurora asked with a very unimpressed raised eyebrow.

"It's Saturday! Any other environment and we'd be out on the town falling out of our shoes."

Aurora smirked. Conceding. "Accio it, then, I shan't be partisan to your sordid demon rum problem."

Her colleague gave a very unamused, upside down scoff.

"What is the point of Accio-ing it when I can watch your slinky behind shimmy its way over there to get it for me?"

"This slinky behind needs to get itself off to her bed. I have duty tomorrow morning, and you know how much of a morning person I am not… especially in winter." In spite of this, she still leapt from the chair and crossed the room - only she held one of the cushions firmly in place behind her as she did so. Vector smirked cheekily as she made her way back to the bed and topped up her glass.

"Get Severus to do it for you," she said simply, as Aurora sat on the bed next to her, passing her the glass as she did so. "I'm sure he'd be much obliging after you snogged him."

"Severus would just as likely dance naked through the Great Hall at breakfast," Aurora informed her.

Septima made a disgusted noise from below. "Well, if I ever needed proof of my rampant lesbianism - that just did it for me."

She laughed, but Aurora gave her a reproachful look. She leant back on her arms and crossed her legs. She didn't know why should feel so guilty over making such catty comments over their colleague, not when she did it to his face on an almost daily basis… or used to when they were talking. (More like arguing). But that was her... she was allowed to do it.

"Sorry." Vector added quietly. Obviously her silence had spoken something to her.

"Sorry? What on earth are you sorry for?" Sinistra demanded, a little more forcefully than she had anticipated.

"Well…" Vector began, shrugging her shoulders in her usual dramatic fashion, "I don't know. I can't make top or tails of the both of you sometimes."

Get in line. Thought Aurora darkly.

"There is no 'both of us'," she educated carefully. "I think the fact that I've promptly become physically translucent to him has set that in stone."

"You don't have feelings for him?"

"Septima!" Aurora bit in a loud and shocked protest. "What is with people thinking that just because I fuck someone, I have to have feelings for them! I'd bet no body would tell Severus that. Being a man after all." She crossed her arms and threw herself back on her friend's bed, feeling positively annoyed now. Dumbledore, she could understand. But the fact that one of her best friends was questioning her own sexual independence… it was almost infuriating.

A shifting of springs signalled to her that Vector was crawling her way up next to her, and soon enough a very apologetic face appeared above hers.

"Now I am sorry," she said, looking genuinely contrite. "Thing is, Rora… I just… needed to check it wasn't anything… too exclusive."

Aurora felt something flutter its wings within her belly.

"No… it's never been…"

She felt one of Vector's soft fingers begin to stroke her upper arm. She didn't even have to look to know the feeling of the goosebumps begin to materialise in its wake.

"Never?" Septima whispered.

Aurora moved her other arm across her belly, where it came to rest upon the hand that Septima was running over her body.

"You think I'd miss out on a chance to kiss you? Come now." Aurora implored the now very out of breath Arithmancy professor. Septima parted her mouth slightly, showing a half-row of very pretty, very happy teeth as she did so. Their faces drew closer and closer together until those teeth were biting ever so gently on the edge of Aurora's lips.

Comparing this kiss to her other most recent one with Severus probably was not the kind thing to do, Aurora thought. After all - she was almost positive that he had never done such a thing before in his life… and Septima… well… she had clearly been well-practiced in the form over the years. Her velvet lips teased her own. They brushed back and forth over one another with such ease that it felt like they were doing it for the hundredth time. Septima shifted her body so that her legs were straddling Aurora's torso, their mouths danced together hungrily in the flickering candlelight that surrounded them.

"At - least - with - us -" Septima gasped as she took in sweet oxygen in between their kisses, "-we won't know - whose - lipstick's - whose…"

Aurora laughed heartily in Septima's mouth. She took a fistful of her chin-length hair in her grasp and drew further into her.

"Astute - as - always -" she panted back as she pushed Septima gently to the side and flipped her on to her back. Septima gave a pleasant little groan as Aurora began placing gentle little kisses in the nook between her jaw and her neck. She brushed her shaking hands over Septima's breasts, which were still swathed in her satin nightgown.

"Fuck, take this off," Septima demanded. Aurora couldn't help but give a tiny smirk from Septima's damp skin, where a vein flicked against her lips periodically…

"Is that all this is?" Aurora asked, sliding her face upward to look in her playmates eyes. "Am I to be nothing but a quick fuck to you? I'd like to know now - "

"No!" Septima protested quickly, reaching out and grabbing Sinistra's hand ardently. "Merlin, no. You don't know how long…" she cut herself off mid-sentence and turned slightly red. She looked away as if Aurora wouldn't be able to notice if eye contact was not being maintained. She cleared her throat "… I mean, I never thought you were interested in… well…"

She gestured to her body. Aurora clicked her tongue.

"And what do your genitals have to do with my attraction to you? Lovely as they undoubtably are, I'm sure..." she asked quite simply.

Vector gazed upon her with a look almost like reverence. "A lot of people would say that it has a lot to do with it."

"I'm not people."

"No," Septima smiled warmly, pulling her back toward her. She ran her fingernails through Aurora's dark hair which made her shiver with pleasure. "You're beautiful."

It was the way she said it; with such honesty and adoration. Aurora felt all of her prickliness melting away drop by drop. She didn't quite know how to respond to such a fond declaration of affection… years with Severus had trained her well in the art of silver-tongued insults and sarcastic ripostes, having a lover who was pleasant and actually liked her was a completely foreign realm to which she had not journeyed in years.

They kissed again. This time Aurora's tongue managed to snake its artful way into her hot little mouth this time. She wanted nothing more than to slide that nightgown up over her head and immerse herself in the body of her colleague… but surely it was too soon. No. It would be best to wait. She liked her too much than to fuck her and leave.

Besides, she thought that she really did owe it to Severus to inform him of this new arrangement. All the more reason to tie him down to his office desk and force him to listen to her… it was rather difficult to comprehend how he would take the news.

"I really should be getting to bed…" Aurora whispered as she retreated from the other woman's mouth and lips. "Otherwise I shall be very grumpy wandering the cold corridors tomorrow morning, looking for any sign of teenage misdemeanours."

"Oh, it's far too cold for you to be in your bed all on your lonesome - shivering away without a body to cling to…" Septima said with a wicked grin as Aurora clambered away from her and began to gather up her things.

"I'll survive. I have done for all the years I've been teaching in this hypothermic castle."

"You and Severus never slept together?"

Aurora snorted as she pulled on her cloak and gathered it up around her neck. "Are you deranged? We couldn't get out of the same room fast enough, let alone sleep next to each other for an entire night."

She looked back at Vector, who was looking at her in a most annoyingly pitying way.

"It's the way we wanted it," she explained. "It worked for us."

"Does it work now?"

Sinistra stopped fiddling with her cloak fixtures and turned back to Vector. She gave her another deep kiss with both of her hands resting delicately upon her warm cheeks.

"I think it'll work even more now…" she smiled. She gave one wave of her wand and all of the papers belonging to her fluttered around the room in single file, where they came to land in the palm of her hand. Before she pushed herself up from the bed one last time, however, Septima had grabbed her arms, holding her in place. Aurora understood why when she began swiping the pad of her thumb around her lips… wiping away all of the evidence of their very recent tryst.

And when she had finished, Aurora turned her thumbs attention back on Septima.

Both of them began to giggle.