THE SUBSTITUTE, Chapter Six
**
Minerva hadn't much of a head for spirits, and knew it; subsequently, she avoided hard liquor. As a general rule.
The centaurs, however, proved to be persuasive hosts. The last thing she remembered was saying, "Another? I really shouldn't – well, just a small one, then." Now, she'd mysteriously sprouted ten extra fingers on each hand.
And five of them were blue.
She moved her three right index fingers experimentally in front of her face and let out a quiet hiccough. Snape nudged her with his elbow.
"Pusshycat, pusshycat, whervyou been?" He giggled, made a snorting sound, and pointed at her. "Pusshycat. Thashyou. Geddit?"
Minerva regarded him narrowly from behind her fan of extra digits.
"You," she said at length, "are a hanshom man. Alwaysh thotsho. Like whatshishname. Th'muggle. Cary. Cary. Cantrmember. Carycarycary." She wagged the blue finger at him for emphasis, blinking in mild astonishment when the other two went along with it. "Whatshmypoint? Oh. Hanshom."
"Really?" He preened, swayed, then grabbed at her arm to keep himself from toppling over headfirst. Somehow they'd ended up sitting on the stone steps leading from the courtyard to the inner entrance to one of the centaurs' barracks; Minerva wasn't sure how that had happened, nor why she had a wreath of spring dandelions in her hair, but it didn't seem to matter at the moment. "Y'thinksho?"
She nodded emphatically. "Absho-absho … whatshawordagin? Yesh."
"Thanksh. Flattrer." He paused, frowned as a soggy new thought swam its laborious way to the surface, and nodded toward her feet. "M'nerva. Y'gotnoshoeshon. Pussh wifno boots." Hiccough. "Pusshnoboots."
For some reason, both of them found this terrifically witty.
Tipped together, snickering shoulder-to-shoulder in wobbly, boozy synchronicity, they gazed out at the scene around them. Most of the centaurs had broken off into sweetly nuzzling pairs, their gangly-legged bodies folded into furry quadrangles at regular intervals around the courtyard's grass perimeter. A few of the younger ones were still dancing, swaying gracefully to an unheard tune of their own devising underneath the pearl teardrop of the quarter-moon. Steve Irwin, in true mythic solitary-bard style, was propped against the opposite wall, khaki-clad butt in the grass, a half-empty decanter of mandrake wine still clasped loosely in his right hand.
"Onshaponatoim therewazsh loitinmoiloife," he crooned absently, his eyes closed, his doughboy's-face beatific. "Nowtherzshonly luvinth'dark." Around the circle, shaggy heads nodded in melancholy unison. Minerva sniffed, wiped away a lone tear that had sprung mysteriously into being on her cheek, and heard Snape, his head still nestled on her shoulder, clear his throat.
"NothinIcanshay," he warbled, unexpectedly taking up the tune as Irwin paused for another slug from his decanter. "'Tshatotaleclipshuvth'hear—M'nerva?"
"Shevrush." She'd managed to pry his head off her shoulder and clumsily pivot so that all thirty of her trembling fingers were clamped securely on his upper arms; there was a Big Point to be made here. His head drooped to one side; she tipped hers to a similar angle so she could look him in the eyes. "Y'vegotta beautiful voish, Shevrush."
He gazed at her with myopic, vacant tenderness. "M'nerva. Prettypretty pusshycat M'nerva. Wanna petyou. Wannapetyou allover."
The moon was bright and the night was clear – she was sitting on his lap somehow, don't ask how that had come to pass, because she certainly didn't know – and everything was slow-spinning and lovely. She hadn't felt like this in forever.
"Turnaround broightoizsh," Steve crooned from the other side of the courtyard. Severus had nuzzled his way inside her robes; some time ago, they'd lost their balance and tipped sideways onto the grass. When had that happened? Didn't matter. Minerva fastened her hands in his dark lank hair and closed her eyes.
Her last coherent thought: I feel so young.
**
She had a mad Doxy in her head, and it was kicking the inside of her skull.
Thunk. Thunk. Pause. Thunk.
Cautiously, she opened one eye, hissed, and shut it again. Too bright. Too hot. And why is my pillow so scratchy? Must have words with the laundry elves – they're using far too much starch in the linens.
Wait a minute.
Steeling herself against the brightness of the morning sun, she let her eyelids creak up to half-mast again and stared, unbelieving, at the object flung carelessly across her chest.
It was an arm. A naked arm.
Fingers curled up toward the palm, long and slender and thickly calloused. Veins pumping briefly blue through the sallow-skinned wrist. Her eyes flicked up toward the elbow – and froze.
The Dark Mark was staring her in the face.
Heart in her throat – it's a dream, a bad dream, that's all – she shoved at the offending weight on her chest and struggled to sit up, stifling a shriek as she simultaneously discovered her own lack of a nightgown and put her hand down on the worker ant trudging up the inside of her knee. Scrambling away backwards on her hands and knees, she brushed at herself frantically until that awful ticklish crawling sensation had gone away, then crossed her arms over her naked breasts and forced herself to look around.
She was sitting on a somewhat crushed patch of grass, sandwiched in between ivy-covered walls and a circle of paving stones. Her clothes were an arm's-length away, bottle-green mixed up with black. She retrieved them hastily, shook them out, and shrugged into them, noting with barely-suppressed anxiety that her brassiere had been torn nearly in half, and that there were grass stains on her … well, never mind.
Across the circle, Professor Irwin was sprawled against the wall, snoring, one arm flung over Firenze's shoulders in a brotherly embrace. Minerva felt the events of the previous evening filtering back into her memory, and shuddered.
What she'd said. What he'd done. What they'd –
No. Don't think about that.
Now fully clothed, her wand in her hand, she felt herself brave enough to look back over her shoulder at the man whose arms she'd just left. He was as naked as she had been; she supposed that she ought to be seeing him in a fonder, more misty light, now that they'd been … er, intimate … but it just wasn't happening: he was still Snape, pale and too thin and frowning even in his sleep, his lank hair in unbecoming tangles around his face and his unmarred arm cupping the other as if it pained him.
Maybe it did. But she didn't want to know about it.
I don't want to know him this well.
Moreover, now that she thought about it, he himself would be mortified to be seen thus – here was a man, after all, who had never professed a hobby, never accepted an invitation to the pub, never entertained in his rooms or stepped foot into anyone else's. She was fairly sure that no one else had laid eyes on Severus Snape's naked body in totalis since he'd come to work at Hogwarts; mandrake wine or no, this unfortunate … occurrence … was the worst sort of privacy-invasion imaginable.
"Vestio," she muttered, looking away, and didn't glance back at him until he was safely draped in his customary black robes.
Better – but not complete.
Teeth clenched on her lower lip, she raised her wand and pointed it at his still-sleeping figure. "Obliviate," she said calmly into the morning air – then pocketed the wand and turned away, through the curtain of hanging vines and out across the clearing toward the path which led to the castle.
If he were conscious, he'd thank her for this.
**