Chapter Twelve:
The days had passed in a languid blur of relaxation and repost for Eleanora, punctuated by pleasant meetings with her godfather and lively and entertaining meals taken with the other staff in the Great Hall. They had, she was told by Dumbledore warmed to her immediately and Minerva McGonagall had eagerly and adroitly adopted the unofficial role of surrogate grandmother, much to the surprise of the other staff, who had long considered her an essentially frigid woman.
This congenial reception was extended by all but one, she thought stoically to herself, as she sat in the late afternoon sun of the ancient quadrangle the day before the return of the other students. She weighed the textbook she had been reading absent-mindedly from hand to hand, as she gazed into the dark cloisters, not looking at anything in particular.
Damned fool, she thought to herself, her lips curling into a frown at the mere memory of the irate potions master. She had seen little of him these past few days, save the occasional meal in the Great Hall, where he had been resolutely silent and uncommunicative. The rest of the time, she supposed, he took his meals in his quarters. Antisocial git, she snorted gently, slapping the heavy book shut with a loud snap. Fury still smouldered within her whenever she recalled his angry, disdainful expression, and she resolved to douse the flames with a trip to the kitchens to get a glass of cool lemonade to see of the heat of the afternoon sun, which had left a gentle perspiration of iridescent droplets upon her skin.
She unfolded her lithe form off the lush grass and brushed herself down. Today, she had been forced to cast off her summer robes in the sweltering heat and she stood now in a pair of muggle denim shorts and a khaki green ribbed vest that showed off her deep tan and tightly toned form to perfection. She set off across the lawn, swinging her arms carelessly around her, twirling as she walked, relishing her last hours of having the castle effectively to herself. Within a day it would be overrun by students of all ages, most of them also mourning the loss of their holiday freedom. That said, she was actually looking forward to their arrival. Though she was no stranger to loneliness she had often in the last few days wished that she was back in the company of her friends from Beauxbatons. She missed their easy raucous laughter and infallible sense of fun that was so much like own. Somehow without them, having the run of the school seemed like a wasted opportunity for endless fun and mischief making.
The dark coolness of the stonily shaded cloisters came as a welcome shock to Eleanora, and a delicious shiver ran through her body as she ran lightly down the silent corridor, her footfalls ringing out gaily after her. She looked forward to seeing the house elves again; many times she had tried to engage with one of the diminutive creatures to find out where Dobby could be found, but they always regarded her with their large blinking eyes and informed her gravely that Dobby had work to do and could not spend his time bothering her. She suspected that he would be in the kitchens and quickened her pace along the empty passage. She rounded a corner blindly and ran smack into an imposing spectre, clothed in black, a scowl of seething rage etched upon the harsh plains of his face.
"Merlin!" was her startled exclamation as she fell back, rebounding off the unyielding figure, rubbing her nose gingerly where it had collided with the shoulder of the body stood before her. Looking up, her eyes widened and the pupils flashed with surprise.
"You!" she spluttered accusingly, regarding the austere professor now stood with his hands on his hips in what she assumed was meant to be an intimidating gesture.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? Try looking where you're going next time maybe?" she expostulated hotly, still holding her nose which she felt threatened to bleed at any moment.
There was a moment of dangerous silence. The two tall figures eyed each other with innate hostility, two pairs of dark eyes meeting in soundless combat across the shadowy confines of the passage.
"If I remember correctly, Miss D'Souza," the professor began, never once breaking his gaze, in tones that implied that he did indeed remember correctly, "you ran into me."
His statement was uttered in tones so dispassionate the Eleanora wondered whether the man had actually felt anything at all. From the way that her nose was so ominously throbbing, she assumed that his shoulder, however well padded with all that thick black clothing, had taken at least a small knock.
She glared at him through her splayed fingers, very reluctantly conceding that he was right.
"Alright, it was my fault," she muttered grudgingly and almost inaudibly, her skin crawling with prickly irritation at having to concede the point to this superior and supercilious man before her.
"I beg your pardon?" he asked in silky tones, his thin pale lips curling into a provocative sneer.
"I said," Eleanora replied louder this time, her voice brittle with irritation, "that it was my fault."
An expectant pause ensued, the potions masters' eyebrow hitching up into a derisive arch.
"I'm sorry," she growled with a grimace, her hand balling into a tight fist at her side, whilst the other one alerted her to the delicate drip of her nose onto her palm which so tentatively cupped it.
"You are bleeding," Snape said his voice as dispassionate as ever.
"No shit, Sherlock," Eleanora shot back acidly, muffled by the flow of blood that dripped steadily from her nose.
"Sherlock?" he questioned, his austere face momentarily clouding with uncertainty.
"Muggle literature," she replied absently, now fumbling inside the waistband of her shorts for her wand, tasking care not to tip her head back or forward.
For the first time, Severus noticed her rather scanty apparel. Despite himself he inhaled deeply and blinked rapidly, mentally chastising himself for his gratuitous reaction tearing his gaze up her golden body to rest firmly upon her face, resisting the temptation to once again flick his eyes up and down those finely shaped bronzed legs concealed only acres above the knee by reprehensibly brief shorts, whose waistband hugged her slim waist tightly, above which a deep green vest rode smoothly over her toned torso as she bent in search of something.
What in Merlin's name does se think she is wearing, he thought to himself, his face once again creasing into a well practiced scowl. "That's more like it," a voice in head echoed, daring him to further consider her lithe agile figure. "I will not," he answered silently in his customary exercise of thankless self denial.
"Why don't you simply forgo the wand, Miss D'Souza and treat me to another little display of wandless magic," he asked mockingly, the snide smirk back in place.
"Because," you arrogant git, she added silently, "I'm currently holding my nose with my casting hand, and much as the house elves love to clear things up, I think their enthusiasm might run dry at a pool of blood on the floor" Her voice was caustic to the last word and Severus silently admitted partial defeat.
"Where, then, is your wand?"
"Somewhere in the pockets of these," she muttered still fumbling around the shorts.
Gods, Severus thought, from the look of them there was no where for the wand to hide. He blanched at the involuntary thought and once again tore his gaze from the girl. He filled with electric irritation as his normally obedient mind, well trained by the years of self induced repression, conjured images of him obliging to help the girl before him find her wand in the scanty confines of those shorts.
"Please," he said gruffly, "allow me."
He took out his own wand, an impressive baton of white cherry, thirteen and three quarter inches long, and looked at her questioningly, the subtle raising of his eyebrows prompting her to cautiously remove her blood stained hand from her still streaming, and by now rather swollen nose. She tilted her head up allowing the tall man stood in front of her to point the tip of his wands just inches from her nose and perform a delicate healing charm which almost instantly stemmed the bleeding.
Her breath came quicker as she realised just how close together they were stood in the gloom of the deserted corridor. His face was bent just over hers still slanting up slightly and his shallow breaths blew a gentle zephyr of surprising warmth across her flushed cheek. For one electric moment their gazes met. His eyes glinted like burning coals in the deep recesses of his face, and his breaths stilled.
Then in an instant it was over, his face torn away, leaving her slightly dazed, her own breathing shallow, and her heart racing erratically against her bruised ribs.
Avoiding the eyes that she knew would have been clouded by their customary indifference her fingers clasped around her elusive wand and she withdrew it, not daring to use wandless magic in front of him, feeling surprisingly afraid of any barbed comment he would undoubtedly see fit to deliver. With a minute flick of the tapered wand and a murmured incantation of "sanguine disaparro," she had cleaned the congealing blood from her face and hand. Fingering the wand nervously, she raised her head to meet the gaze of the potions master.
"Thank you….For stopping the bleeding," she said quietly.
He nodded curtly in reply, apparently feeling the same discomfiture with the situation that she did.
"I should be getting back to my rooms anyhow," she said, eager to remove herself from his line of sight and remove from hers the image of the man who she seemed unable to wrench her gaze from.
As she made to side step the professor, he turned and said,
"You might require a cold compress for that nose to stem the swelling. The Infirmary is up the second staircase on the right. Good day Miss D'Souza."
With that he swept away along the corridor, his black robes billowing behind him casting ominous shadows on the stone walls in the dying rays of the blood red sun. Eleanora shivered involuntarily and rubbed her bare arms vigorously, though she agitatedly doubted that it had anything to do with the frigid gloom of the dark passageway.
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