Sorry it took me so long to update. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

When Aletta reached the top of the staircase, she realized that she still needed to get into her rooms. Why did I come up here then, she thought. She then grabbed a nearby floating candle and set off back down the stairs. After what seemed like five minutes, she had reached the bottom again. Now that she had a candle, she could see in the ridiculously dark corridor. Aletta then heard the familiar opening of a painting.
"What are you doing down here?" the same silky voice she talked to before asked from the opposite side where she was standing.
Aletta turned around and saw the golden light of her candle flame light over onyx black hair and the lightly paled features of the man walking toward her. She felt her senses sharpening immediately. There was something about this remarkable man that made her adrenaline rush out of control. But she did not let his catlike grace and hard gaze steer her out of sanity. Aletta had not anticipated the worldliness and sophistication she saw now. A stranger viewing this Snape in billowing black robes, black boots, and black slacks would see him as a bandit or jackal, not a man of guidance and pedagogy as Aletta had labeled him. She had underestimated him, and it was a mistake she didn't intend to repeat.
"My quarters are down here," she croaked finally.
Her disturbed reply brought a quick twisting smile of cynicism to his ruthlessly hard mouth, but his look directed at Aletta was smoothly without emotion. Her desire to run as far away from him as possible was nearly insuppressible. The palms of her hands were beginning to become damp. Aletta chided herself to relax and stop being intimidated by the man standing across from her. She had maneuvered him quite easily earlier. There was no reason to think she couldn't do it again if the need arose. To break the chafed silence he replied in his cold voice, "I was skeptical of why you were down here previously."
"Oh," she said dumbly. "Well, I really must be going. The Sorting will be starting soon."
Before she could turn around to leave, he said, "The Sorting commenced about twenty minutes ago," he said mockingly.
"I see," she said. "Then may I ask why you are down here when it has already begun?"
"I had some paramount business to attend to," he sneered lightly, "not that it is any concern of yours."
His black moodiness was back and Aletta was starting to get distraught.
"Oh, and of course it wouldn't be any concern of mine seeing that I am, indeed, the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher," she said kindly. "And I'm sure your business would be a bit too miniscule and second-rate for a person such as myself."
Aletta gave him a small, sensuous fake smile. His gaze centered on the wanton curve of her lips, glistening with the moistness of her gloss.
" I envy you intensely," he said with sarcasm. "And I pity myself for not having as much," he glanced over her whole body, "authority as you do."
A pulse throbbed in her throat as unwillingly Aletta glanced at the firm line of his mouth, a hint of cruelty in its masculine hardness. It would be no gentle kiss that he'd give a woman, she absurdly thought out of the blue.
"If you would excuse me, my lady," he drawled as he bowed to her in mockery. He then swept past her in long strides and ascended the staircase, his robes billowing behind him, giving him the appearance of a damnable phantom in a moonless night.