In her rooms, Allosia unpacked her things. At first, she used magic, but then found the physical activity and mess of it was a good distraction, not so much from what had happened this evening, but from the increasing dread she was feeling about sharing a world, this world, Hogwarts, with Severus again. After all, she still wasn't clear on everything that had happened, or why it had happened.

She reviewed what she knew to be facts. Severus had been her Potions tutor first year, for no reason other than it was about the only type of detention his poor health would let him serve usefully. He liked her cunning, and her intolerance for the slow, but she was still a child, still a Ravenclaw, and still, ultimately, trivial. He tested new potions on her and she had enough intelligence to lie when couldn't undo something himself and had to take her to the infirmary. She understood quickly, that if she endured this, she would not have to endure the torments, teasings and beatings the Slytherins generally dished out to the rest of the school. She understood that she was helping the wildly unpopular Severus, and that he was enough of a political creature to understand he was building a debt to her.

In her second year, she had confessed to Severus that she had a crush on him. He had berated her stupidity and lowliness for hours and ultimately pushed her towards Gage - he was her age and a Ravenclaw. It was more suitable. Somehow, Allosia even remembered understanding that he was right. They still spent time together though, because of tutoring, because of experiments. Just like the hat had mentioned her first night at Hogwarts, she had a passion for helping great men be great and when it came to Severus, she had managed to convince herself that that could be enough.

In Allosia's third year, she began to date Gage. It was childish, ridiculous, it irritated her even then. It was clear they wouldn't marry, that they held hands and made out because it was what people were supposed to do. It bored her, and it kept her safe. Severus teased her about it, and she would just bite her lip and nod when in reality she wanted to scream at him, "I'm doing this for you! I'm doing this because it's what you want!" She managed to keep herself quiet, to not respond to his commentary on it, until he asked her if they were sleeping together.

"I'm thirteen!"

"So?" he replied coolly.

"Fuck you."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "You certainly tried last year, and if I recall, you were twelve."

She paused, and bit her lip. "I've always been precocious," she said, her voice raising almost as if it were a question.

Severus snorted at this and nodded. "Come here," he said.

She got up from her lab stool ungracefully, presuming he wanted to feed her yet another surprise potion.

"No, not like that."

She had raised her eyebrows at him then and gone back to her chair.

"Now, come here, like the woman you think you are."

Allosia slid off her chair again, this time with some grace, she ignored his chuckle and started computing things in her head very fast. She came to the conclusion that she was going to get hurt, if not now, then later, by whatever this was, she also came to the conclusion that she had to do this, whatever it was. She walked over to him, and stood by his stool, his legs on either side of her. He wrapped his arms, and therefor his robe around her then before lowering his head to hers.

"Is this what you want?" he asked touching his forehead to hers and staring into her eyes with his nearly black ones. "Is this what you want?"

She nodded.

"That's not enough, Allosia. Tell me what you want."

She swallowed, and her voice was raspy. "You," she said. "Teach me -"

He cut her off with "-how much you do not know?" and laughed, and began kissing her.

Allosia Hemrand had, at age 13, lost her virginity to an 18-year-old Severus Snape. Twenty years later, as much as she could convince herself she had been stupid, she could not convince herself it had been more trouble than it had been worth, despite everything that came later.

What she still remembered most, but was unsure of being fact was how much everything had hurt and how grateful he had seemed to her in the dark underground of Hogwarts that day.



As the nearly tangible memory dissipated, Allosia tossed a green leather- bound photo album aside and began shelving her books with an emotion resembling fury.