The Author's Ramblings:  Snape is of course my favorite character and he is the one that I love to read about most, however, when it comes to romance and our dear Potion's Professor, I really do not know what to think.  I had some ideas for a Snape romance, but none ever seemed to click.  Then, after reading my other works, I had several people tell me, "Why not a Snape romance?" I said I'd never do one. Now I put my foot in my mouth as I attempt to tackle this. (This is what happens when you go on a writing binge and ignore all the more important things in life.) My goal is to let Severus stay in character and be himself and take this wherever he wants to go. (So it just may go nowhere at all.)  I may be tackling the impossible. We shall see.  This takes place in tandem with "The Staff of Orkney," my other big story on FanFiction.net but you do not need to read it to understand this, though it may be interesting to witness what Harry sees as opposed to what Snape experiences.  Harry and Co. take a back seat in this while in "The Staff" they are front and center.

Disclaimer: The Harry Potter universe belongs to J. K. Rowling and Warner Bros. The author does not claim or imply the rights to any item related nor belonging to the Harry Potter universe.

Summary: This starts a few days after the night Voldemort came back in book four.  So it actually begins during the end, as the students are not yet out. Snape and another professor have a "ritual." However, it is rudely interrupted, as he cannot ignore recent happenings.  I also will mention quickly who Salazar is since someone seemed confused in the review.  I am not speaking of Salazar Slytherin.  Salazar can be a perfectly good name to bestow upon a proud Slytherin family's son.  Salazar Snape is a distant relation to Severus who got his hands dirty during Voldemort's previous reign and who since then has been job hopping around Canada, the U.S., and Eastern Europe.  For the past 10 years he has been situated at Durmstrang as Quidditch coach and Potions professor.  He is mentally unstable and a recovering alcoholic. And while Severus tends to show disgust for his only living relative, they were really quite fond of each other while in school.  But this story isn't about Salazar, it's about Snape.  Salazar just makes an entrance to help further shake down the little isolated world Severus has so painstakingly built over the past thirteen years. And as for the romance…that has nothing to do with Salazar at all.  It's between Sev and someone he's known since his childhood. So, without further ado, it starts…

Chapter I

Tea for Two

The table was already clean, but Severus Snape wiped it down with a damp towel, just to be sure before setting out the mismatched china.  He wasn't much for setting the table correctly, and he hardly ever had to, just every-other Friday when tea was at his apartment.  It was a weekly ritual to have tea with Professor Sinistra.  They would munch on some sandwiches, drink tea, and grumble about the week while grading parchments or writing out lessons plans.

As he studied a spot on one of the spoons and took it to the drawer to replace it, he thought about how these Friday teas had started.  It had been eleven years ago—or had it been twelve? It had been when Professor Sinistra first came to teach. 

He had only been teaching for a year when he had been informed that an old schoolmate had been offered the Astronomy position.  Naturally, he had volunteered to help move her into her apartment.  If he remembered correctly, he might have still been recalling the last two years he had been in school and still might have had some old feelings for her, but he couldn't remember.  Actually, he doubted it.  At twenty-seven his experience as a Death Eater was still fresh and vivid and his victims hardly cold in their graves. Any happiness seemed like a disrespect to all those who had been hurt by Voldemort…by him.  But he had still been twenty-seven and she had been twenty-five: both still very young. Yet he had been a kid with blood on his hands…he shook his head.  Memories were painful.

Severus looked at his reflection on the back of the spoon he was holding.  It was no wonder why everyone avoided him. He had looked scary enough when had begun teaching at twenty-six, but now… Albus Dumbledore and Florence Sinistra seemed to be the only two people capable of tolerating him.  That was probably why he continued these teas, week after week and year after year.  It was the only time he could be sure to have a decent conversation with another human being, and deep down they kept him from feeling completely alone.

A rap on the door brought him out of his dark musings.  He placed the spoon down on a napkin, next to a fork, and headed to the door.

Florence had her arms full. Books were stacked high enough that they tipped at an odd angle.  Severus supposed that she had used a charm to keep them from toppling over and on top of it all was a cardboard box full of parchments.  She always came to the teas with more work than she could ever possibly complete in an hour or two.

"Can I help you?" he asked, still holding the door.

"Oh, no, I've got it," she replied hastily and dumped the lot near a chair at the table.  She seated herself, rearranged the silverware, and started rummaging through the box of parchments while Severus closed the door and headed to the kitchen to get the hot water.  "I hate this week," she proclaimed as he poured hot water into a china teapot on the table.  He only half-listened for she repeated the same thing at the last week of every year.  "Sure, the students think it's wonderful, but honestly, letting them run amuck for a whole week while we are up to our eyeballs in grading.  It's absurd."

Severus silently agreed.  He allowed her to vent just as she did for him and neither of them ever said anything while the other was letting off their steam.  It was a nice arrangement.

He took two tea infusers off a shelf and dipped them into the tea box, handed one to Florence—or rather placed it in her tea cup as she was currently taking out her anger on the cork to her inkwell that didn't seem to want to budge—and let the other soak in his mug.  He found teacups to be silly; they reminded him of Sibyll Trelawny.  While the tea seeped, he brought his own stack of parchments to the table and graded in silence as Florence continued to complain about teacher expectations and conditions while splattering one paper with red ink.

"And this Miss Granger," she huffed, picking up an extraordinarily long piece of parchment.  "Doesn't she realize that her paper isn't the only one I have to read?"

Severus picked up a quarter of a vegemite sandwich and debated whether it was safe to make a comment.

"Frankly," Florence continued, "I've ceased reading her work."

"You've what?" This had taken him by surprise and he quickly swallowed the bite he had taken from the sandwich.

"She's an insufferable know-it-all.  I've never found anything wrong with her paper, and she thinks I have all the time in the world to read her regurgitation of the text, so I just simply stopped reading.  I only skim it over to make sure she didn't hand in her Transfiguration homework to me by mistake, but other than that, I knock off a few points for being irritating and let her have the highest mark in the class."

Severus put down his sandwich. Now why hadn't he thought of that? "She'll get something wrong someday—she has to." This was a fact, a fact that he was determined to prove before that bothersome girl left these halls.

Florence let out a sigh and placed her quill back into the red inkwell.  "I suppose that I shouldn't be so frustrated with them."  This wasn't an ordinary thing for her to say, but then these weren't ordinary times, though Severus had hoped that at least the teas could remain so.  "You haven't spoken a word, Severus." Her words were filled with concern as they left her strict, uniformly thin mouth.  Her steel gray eyes were staring at the hole that he had punched through a paper napkin. "Not a word about what happened last week, but then again, I suppose you don't want to discuss it.  That he's back…"

No, Severus didn't want to discuss it.  In fact, he had been avoiding the subject like one of Rubeus Hagrid's blast-ended screwts.  Why had Florence brought it up? She knew he didn't want to talk about it and she was normally very good at knowing the things he didn't want to talk about and holding her tongue about them.  So why had she brought this up?

"Are you going to continue teaching?" she asked at last.

Severus lifted his head and stared at her sharp-edged features.  She had an incredibly small nose for such a long face and her dark brown hair and thick eyebrows didn't help the shadows under her eyes.  "Of course I'm going to continue teaching." It wasn't like he had too many options.  He wasn't the type to be so eagerly hired.

There he went trying to change the subject again.  "I'm perfectly fine teaching here, why would I want to change?"

"You know what I mean," and Florence lifted her cup and took a sip.  She set it down softly, reverently, into the saucer.  "He's back and you helped Dumbledore before, and you're going to have to help again."

"I don't have to," Snape shot out quickly.  This was probably the first time that he was actually becoming frustrated at tea.  "It's just that I should."

He began to think back to that night: the way everyone had panicked when Potter and Diggory had disappeared with the Tri-Wizard Cup, and he had known more than anyone what was happening as the Dark Mark had again gone black and seared his arm, and of the crowd that had gathered around the two boys when they had returned.  It still made him shiver at the way Potter had suddenly began ticking off names of Death Eaters before Fudge, for he had been still hoping that something else had happened.  But no, it was real and it was happening all over again.  He closed his eyes as he remembered going back that night to the Malfoy Manor to speak with Lucius, testing out the waters to see how he might be welcomed back into Voldemort's circle, if he would be welcomed back at all.  He still didn't know.  The hole punched into his napkin was now much larger.  In fact, he had mutilated the napkin.

The clock on a nearby mantel ticked loudly.

Florence picked up her quill pen and resumed grading papers.  "I am suspecting that you know much more than I do, but I will mention that I have been thinking about Mr. Harry Potter.  I still cannot believe that a fourth year student faced Voldemort and lived."  She said this like she would an afterthought, such as, "I need some more owl food at the store," but she wanted to make it an important statement but knew that Severus would never appreciate her to do so.

Severus picked up his mug of tea and began to drink, not noticing the infuser until the handle bumped into his nose causing tea to dribble down his chin.

Potter.

That simple word caused so many old sores to hurt. Ones that ran as deep as his first year at wizarding school.  Yes, he had to admit that he found it remarkable that Potter had gotten away from Voldemort.  Dumbledore had filled him in on some of the details that the boy had given about his encounter with the Dark Lord.  One had to admire someone with courage like that.  But why a Potter? Why did the Potters have to be involved again?  And Sirius Black… Dumbledore knew that they couldn't work together.  It had been horribly proved that Halloween night…

An owl swooped over the table, interrupting his train of thought.  It dropped a letter onto his plate, the corner stabbing into what was left of his sandwich.  Florence looked up briefly at it before finishing writing a comment she was making on a student's paper.

Carefully, he extracted the envelope from his food then tossed what was remaining of his sandwich at the owl.  He didn't see what was so important that it couldn't be delivered to his office—well, he could, but he didn't want to think about what that might be.  With a sick feeling he flipped the envelope over and saw the Malfoy family crest pressed into the red sealing wax.  He glanced over at Florence who knew enough to keep her head down at the moment and tore open the end of the envelope and slipped the letter out.  When he unfolded it, however, he was somewhat happy to note that the handwriting was not that of Lucius or Narcissa, though whose it was, didn't thrill him all that much either.  And what that person was doing sending letters from the Malfoy's had to be questioned.  He read:

19-6-95

Dear Severus,

I know that it's been since Christmas last since I have owled you, but I have been extremely busy as Karkaroff left me running the school while he has been there with you at Hogwarts.  As you have probably already noticed from the seal on this letter, I have returned to Britain.  Karkaroff has disappeared for obvious reasons and so has been replaced as headmaster by some idiot.  In the Ministry's fear of the very rumor of him, the board of governors decided to dismiss anyone remotely linked to the events of thirteen years ago, (i.e. yours truly).  I am currently unemployed and with the rumors of his return, I have decided to come home. 

I don't expect Dumbledore to give me a warm welcome, but I think it is imperative that if you return to our previous line of work, that I accompany you.  You would be surprised at what is said here at the dinner table among Lucius' guests and I have already been informed that I would be warmly welcomed. (I have the excuse that I could not just Apparate from the Ural Mountains and join him for the evening.)  As for you, I have not heard good things, so if you decide to take up the duties we once had, you need me. Besides, I will not return if I'm working only for the Ministry.  I will only work for Dumbledore.  Find out what he thinks of me returning.

If you decide to take this burden up once again, come see me.  Lucius is throwing a welcome home dinner for Draco next Friday.  I mentioned you, and you have been invited.  Lucius is still highly favored by him and with his help you can be accepted more smoothly.  Please let me know.

Your cousin,

Sal

Severus stared at the messy handwriting for some time before rereading the letter and then folding it and slipping it back into the envelope.  This tea was not going well.

"Can you pass me the plate of sandwiches?" Florence asked.  As she took a quarter of one off the plate, she added, "And who's the letter from?"

She took a bite from the sandwich and appeared somewhat disinterested but Severus knew that she was very interested.  It drove him up the wall sometimes the way that she acted so subtle about things.  She seemed to know exactly how to extract information from him that he ordinarily wouldn't give.  The way she was chewing her sandwich at the moment seemed annoying as well.  There were times where he wanted to blurt out and inform her of exactly how irritating she could be, but then he knew she might say what she thought of him—and that would not be good.

"It's from Salazar," he said in the same off-handed manner.

"Salazar?" she poured herself some more hot water. "Why he hasn't been in Britain for over thirteen years."  Her tone was still that of someone remarking about the weather.

No, he hadn't stepped foot in Great Britain for thirteen years.  When one sees the inside of Azkaban for more than a day, they most likely aren't too willing to return too readily.

"So where's he staying?"  She had returned to her papers and was looking something up in a book.

"Lucius'." Severus let the tonality of the conversation slip to a dark tone. Florence caught on.

"They are still friends?"

"I suppose." The fact was, he didn't know but he feared it. Salazar and Lucius had been in the same class—two years behind Severus—and they had been inseparable. What had happened exactly when Severus and him had started working for Dumbledore, he had never quite found out. "But he's attempting to keep him close. You know the adage, 'keep your friends close but your enemies closer.'"

What was he doing over at the Malfoys? And why didn't he bother to tell him first? Severus had already begun to boil a pot.  Just another to add to his load of stress.

Voldemort was back. Oh, Merlin, he was back and with that came so many more troubles.

He studied the shreds of paper at the side of his plate that had once been recognizable as a napkin while Florence packed up her quill and parchments and just sat holding her teacup.  They said nothing for the longest time, each just trying to bore holes into the table with their eyes.  The clock on the mantel ticked on.

"I still can't believe he's returned," she said softly.

Severus silently agreed.

A/N: So does this work?  Truthfully, I was ready to strangle Florence and Severus.  I knew that if anyone ever were to fall in love with Snape, she'd have to be just as unpleasant as the "Greasy Git."