Disclaimer: I do not own Morganna Montaque or anything Harry Potter related. Wh00t.
I have been neglecting this story completely, I'm aware. This is the first chapter I've written since the fifth book came out, but I'm not going to make changes to my story. I'm aware Lucius Malfoy is 6 years older than the marauders and Snape, I'm also aware its not possible for Sirius to have a sister blah blah. Okay?
Chapter 21- The Calm before The Storm
A large group of Slytherin cruised into the entrance hall and were met with a large bunch of Gryffindors. Both groups eyed each other with varying expressions, the Slytherins generally sporting a malicious sneer and the Gryffindors a look of complete disinterest. Severus made sure to issue Potter a particularly contemptuous look before he disappeared down the staircase to the dungeons. Lessons had concluded for the day and consequently for the week on this Friday afternoon. Severus hadn't sighted Morganna since the previous night's events, and he had no intention whatsoever to change that. He also hadn't sighted Akira since he had brushed her off that same evening.
Neither girl was really on his priorities list at that point in time. He however couldn't believe that he'd kissed Morganna and restrained it to simply a kiss. The darker, less reverent side of him was completely fuming he hadn't forced her into sleeping with him and then on the other hand he couldn't believe he'd made such a big screw up of the whole thing in the first place. After their little episode, Severus didn't particularly want to leave Hogwarts without deflowering Morganna Montaque, or at least doing something to that tune to her. She deserved his mark on her, even if he had absolutely no desire to be in a relationship with 'Anna'. But then, he did want to be in a relationship with little Ms Montaque, and perhaps not dear Akira. There was definitely more chemistry there, even if Morganna was kind and loving and Severus was a complete scoundrel.
Severus studied the ground beneath him as he walked the dungeon corridors, listening vaguely to the conversation buzzing around him. The topic was Hufflepuffs on brooms, and some Slytherin was telling an amusing antic dote about a Hufflepuff training session he'd witnessed. He looked up only to direct a faintly amused look at Avery who was snorting with laughter when he realised they were at the common room entrance. Mulciber gasped out the password in between fits of mirth and the group poured into the already occupied room.
"Oi you, get off the chair you grubby kid,"
The common room was already in the usual weekend chaos, with the exception of a few fifth years who were studying fervently for the OWLS. Akira was grumpily shooing some rowdy first year, who was climbing all over the back of sofa she was sitting in, as she pulled her shoes on irritably. The kid rudely ignored her and continued to pull himself up onto the back of the chair, whacking Akira in the back with flailing arms and legs.
Severus gave the kid a rough push on Akira's behalf as she struggled off the sofa, sighing pointedly in exasperation.
"Merlin I detest first years," She exclaimed loudly so that every first year present was aware of her eminent dislike for the juniors. Severus eyed the offending dishevelled first year as he crept away timidly and broke into a run for his dorm, followed by a flock of taunting peers. He snorted softly and glanced at Akira who had fixed him with a plainly irritated look, and was tapping a booted foot. If it weren't for the fact she was standing on an odd angle and holding the other boot out to him, the situation could have been very serious.
"Put this on for me." She ordered imperiously, shoving the boot into his chest. Severus raised an eyebrow coldly and examined the boot. "Do it, Severus."
With a jolt of anger Severus realised what could have brought on her foul mood with him and he directed her to a table nearby, aware of her scornful looks.
"If you're going to continue to look at me like that," He sneered, pushing her down onto the table and kneeling, "I wouldn't have asked me to put your boot on." Severus looked up from her foot, clad in a sock, to her face and met her unfriendly smile.
"Doesn't matter, I'm used to you being rough with me-" Her words dissolved into a cry of surprise as Severus shoved the item on her foot forcefully. He mirrored her nasty smile and began to do up the laces at his leisure.
Akira Black was indeed used to being treated to rough unaffectionate gestures from Severus Snape. Most of it was usually preceded by deceptively and seductively soothing gestures, to her upmost irritation. Severus was however very good at evoking need in Akira, the primary reason why she would never stop Severus doing whatever he pleased.
She bit her lip and watched as Severus pulled the laces tightly, "I heard you were kissing some girl," That earned her another sharp tug of the laces, adding to the pressure around her foot. She valiantly tried to ignore it as Severus shrugged lazily.
"Some girl?" He inquired casually, raising his eyes to Akira's, which were brimming with tears of pain. "Some nameless faceless girl? I deny."
Akira noticed with some alarm, Severus had done no tying of her laces at all, he just had the black ties twisted around his fingers so he could pull on then without too much effort.
"That stupid 6th year!" She cried angrily as he made an inquiring pull on the strings.
Satisfied with her answer, Severus released the ties and did them up properly. "Yes I did that,"
Severus had planned to confess his doings to Akira before she found out some other way, but that would indicate he cared what she thought about it, or actually cared at all. However it seemed this was playing out better.
"Bastard,"
"Yes a lot of people seem to think that,"
Akira promptly aimed a kick into Severus's chest, to which his response was lightening fast.
"Want to be able to walk properly?" Severus inquired softly and feigned a polite and curious voice, twisting her ankle on to an unnatural angle. Akira clamped down on her lower lip tightly and refused Severus the satisfaction of defeat twice but after a moment Severus was once against twisting and she let out a small cry of protest.
"That is what I thought, don't do that again."
Akira glared through angry tears at her fiancé, even in her relief as he released her ankle gently, thinking it probably would have been best if she hadn't challenged him on the matter. She watched as Severus stood up and straightened out, but looked away as Severus leant over to kiss her. His kiss was coaxing and persuasive, and probably a warning not to stay angry with him too. She sighed and submitted to Severus.
"Where are you going that requires your chosen footwear?" He asked idly, patting one of the thighs that sat either side of him as he stood in front of her. It seemed to be the distraction required to get Akira's mind off Severus's apparent cheating, as she balled her fists angrily recalling where she had to go.
"I have to go to herbrology with all those stupid Gryffindor bitches to do extra work, just because their plants died." She waved her arms about animatedly and punctuated her sentence with other such expletives. Severus raised both eyebrows, more concerned with her thighs than anything she was actually saying.
"Did you kill their plants?" He asked absently working his fingers under her skirt, his mind dredging up images of Morganna when they were most unwelcome.
Akira issued him with an indignant look, "Of course we did!" She snorted softly, "Got in trouble though. We poisoned them in our lesson, but some Ravenclaw son of a bitch saw us."
"Did you give them hell?"
"We will," Akira murmured, Severus's wandering fingers distracting her to the point of incoherency and she began to totally forget this was usually the lead up to less gentle treatment, but Severus stopped very abruptly and pulled her off the table.
"There you go," He tilted his head and looked down at her boot, "Enjoy."
She growled at Severus's retreating figure and stomped childishly. She knew Severus had done that on purpose, damn that sneaky bastard! Not only had he somehow gotten away with sleazing about with some 6th year slut he'd managed to evoke need in her once more. Those Gryffindor girls were going to pay on behalf of her Fiancée.
--
Severus himself stepped into his large dormitory a few hours later and found two occupants seated on the floor in the space between their beds drinking something. Aeolus and Evan were having the explicit version of a 'deep and meaningful'. Severus didn't particularly want in but instead fixed his energy firmly on cleaning up his area of the dorm. The two hadn't acknowledged Severus and continued to converse softly between themselves, and Severus didn't bother interrupting them.
"Y'know.. like this is some big preamble to some big struggle… shoo shouldn't we be just living.. that is what I'm saying.."
Severus could see Aeolus's profile in the dim light from the lit candles on their nightstands, and he seemed to be struggling to get out with whatever he was saying, which hardly made any sense, but Evan was nodding ardently in agreement with Aeolus. Severus found Aeolus's expression alarmingly saddening, but he only looked for a couple of moments before gathering his books up off his bed and dumping them on the floor to straighten up his quilt.
When Aeolus De Salis was reduced to drinking, the apocalypse was coming and no one would survive.
Severus wasn't particularly comforted by the fact that the strongest person he knew was drinking out of misery, but then Severus reasoned, he had no reason to be unnerved in regards to himself. He'd just controlled what could have transpired to be an extremely messy situation perfectly. If only he had of been able to practise this on Morganna beforehand things would be a lot less complicated. If Morganna hadn't have said a word to Severus- then things wouldn't be complicated at all. No, if he thought about it, if the 7th years hadn't been assigned that bloody essay on the insulting cactus he would have been somewhere aside from the common room and Morganna would have never found him.
Severus shoved a small box of potions underneath his bed with his foot as he broke off that train of thought to flick the radio on. He turned down the volume so it played very softly on his side of the room and he continued to pick through his own mess that had built up throughout the week.
He wouldn't pretend he hadn't been thinking about Morganna when he was touching Akira, and he wouldn't pretend to Akira that he regretted kissing Morganna. In sense he did, only because it convoluted things, but otherwise he wouldn't have had it any other way. It had taken him a whole 2 hours of solid study to calm down and he still wasn't sufficiently distracted. He scrunched up a handout that was irrelevant to his work now and tossed it to the bin that promptly swallowed the wad of paper up and made an appreciative sound. The radio was churning out some garbage about Quidditch stores as Severus rifled through his nightstand drawer, looking for some string to tie around a scroll of transfiguration notes. He hauled his journal out and threw it on his bed so as to not forget it later, then produced with a note of triumph a piece of string. Lucius had borrowed his notes and taken the string for a mock hanging of Nelson Labree's mouse Severus remembered with a touch of annoyance as he tied the scroll up and put it away.
Speaking of pet torture.
Below, a shouting drifted up the stairs, "SEVERUS, COME SEE!"
Severus begrudgingly tidied everything back into place and shoved his journal under his pillow before dragging himself down into the common room. When he entered the common room everyone had their eyes trained on the ceiling, bunched in a circle around Mulciber. On the ceiling trotted Rosalinda Hedley's pet lizard, walking a perfect square.
"He is doing Imperius," Tomii explained boredly behind Severus, "Thinks he is just too good,"
Severus shook his head in mild disagreement, "Imperius is a hard thing to do," Severus, personally, was impressed with this. He knew Mulciber had been working on it for a terribly long time, but to see him controlling a lizard like that was an entirely different thing altogether. It was like speaking Parseltongue.
Severus wondered what the Dark Lord would think about that- "Hey, it's time for dinner," Severus's musings were interrupted by Tomii's announcement as she pulled up her sleeve to study her watch. A group mumbled its mutual agreement to head up to dinner and filed out after being attached to by Tomii.
Severus looked back over to where Mulciber was being attacked by Rosalinda who was absolutely howling with anger. Severus was mildly disturbed by the stream of obscenities that were leaving Rosalinda's mouth and her rather graphic description of what she was going to do to Mulciber's dead body. Malfoy was howling too, but with undignified laughter, Severus noted as he regarded the blonde heap on the leather sofa. Severus however allowed himself a rather nasty smile, recalling Ms Hedley was not a young woman to be crossed. And to Severus's credit he was right.
The moment Severus turned away Rosalinda had landed her knee into her antagonist's particularly private and sensitive area, causing him to be the third to join to the howling that filled the Slytherin Common. Just an ordinary Friday evening Severus thought as Akira approached him from her dorm, wearing her Slytherin shirt, school skirt and not much else aside from those attractive boots she had set off in.
"I hate the Gryffindors." She supplied before stomping past him and out of the common room.
--
"Don't do that Severus,"
"Your skirt is too high,"
"Doesn't matter, leave it,"
"No, it's too high." Akira waved Severus away from the back of her skirt and tried to pick up pace, however she found herself slapping his hand away again. Severus had been trying to pull her skirt down so that it came below at least her mid thighs all the way to the Great Hall and it was becoming tiresome.
"Severus, stop it, I have to use my old skirt, I have dirt all over my other one."
Severus tugged sharply on the back of her skirt, grabbing the folds of the pleats and pulling.
"Ow!"
"Well it's too small, why didn't you wear robes over your uniform."
Akira fell in pace so Severus walked a step ahead of her and scowled dirtily, "Because I'm hot and my robes are sweaty and filthy. What is your problem?"
"Oh, I just don't want the whole school looking up my Fiancee's skirt thanks very much," Severus snapped nastily without bothering to look at Akira.
"Yes well I don't want my Fiance putting his hands up other girls skirts but we can't have everything can we?" They stopped before the doors to the Great Hall and faced each other; Severus's eyes narrowing into slits, so that all that could be seen were the black of his irises.
"I don't think it's your business where I put my hands," Severus informed her conceitedly, voice lowered to a soft growl.
"Then who looks up my skirt isn't yours either," Akira responded as equally as haughtily, trying to pull herself up to his height.
Severus narrowed his eyes. "I think it is,"
"What? So I have to answer to you, but not vice versa."
"Precisely,"
Akira rolled her eyes and turned away, moving through the door to the Great Hall, "Go to hell, Severus,"
"Go on, give everyone a nice flash Akira," He yelled after her in defeat before slouching in to apologise before she told the whole table he'd called her a harlot and shamed her in front of a bunch or Gryffindors or before her group misconstrued the whole thing and bothered the hell out of him.
Morganna was sitting up the other end of the table; Severus observed slipping into his place across from Akira, where they usually sat with that group. She was sitting closer to the teacher's table today, he noted absently along with her despondent expression as one of her inane little friends piled food onto her plate for her. Morganna made a half hearted effort to return the food to where it came from but when it came back in double the quantity she soon gave up. She raised her eyes to her friends inattentively and listened as they exchanged ideas of what they should put on Morganna's plate next. She sighed inwardly, took up her fork and began to push the food around her plate. If it hadn't been bad enough they'd dragged her out of her dorm for dinner they were drawing the last thing she particularly wanted right from the Slytherin table right now; Attention.
Morganna glanced up, and had she done so a moment later she would have missed Severus staring down the table at her. She blinked and turned her eyes on a dish of apple sauce and let a sudden little angry sigh.
Severus trained his stare on Akira who was explaining how poor Carlene Southward of Gryffindor was, and how her school robes were dyed bathrobes. Severus let her words flow in one ear and out the other, mainly because he didn't know Carlene and didn't particularly want the pleasure of being acquainted with her. He was amusing himself with picking the fat of the chicken he'd pulled from the platter after being difficult and purposely pernickety. Severus realised, pulling the skin off the greasy chicken leg, that Morganna was actually now off-limits. He'd put that restraint there all the other times, but it was never really true, it was just his cowardice. Now, he told himself as he looked back over to Morganna's end of the table, she was beyond him. At Morganna's end however a seventh year boy he recognised vaguely had capture the attention of Morganna's friends and the constant red haired visitor Lily Evans was attempting to coax Morganna away from the table.
Severus let out a derisive snort and continued on with cleaning his food off, attracting Akira's attention and leading her eyes down the same path he had been looking.
She looked sharply back at Severus who had deemed the chicken edible, and sneered. "So that's the Veela girl is it?"
--
The clouds moved over head at a slow dreamy pace in light intricate swirls over the brilliant blue sky, painting pictures for the children playing out in the cold Saturday weather.
"It's stopped snowing." Lucius observed as he stepped out into the cold breeze, flanked by his girlfriend, Severus and his fiancée and over various people of some vague importance to Lucius.
Severus surveyed the blanket of snow that covered the ground as he pulled his gloves on, "Indeed it has."
"Isn't winter nice Severus? I think we should get married in Winter."
Severus turned his head to curl his lip at Akira who merely rolled her eyes but caught sight of Morganna's slender figure, decked out in the Slytherin colours, strolling beside that tall boy Severus had seen at dinner the previous day. He nudged Narcissa urgently and she turned her head and let an irritable "What?!"
"Who is that with Morganna?" Akira was watching too, and snorted once Morganna was mentioned.
"That is Jonathan O'Connell," Narcissa answered boredly for Severus who was squinting to get a better look.
"What year is he in?"
"Our year," Akira offered.
"You know him?" Severus said, trying to keep his expression as impassive as possible.
Akira stretched and yawned lethargically, "Know of him." She shrugged.
"He is having some party at his parents place or something, I don't know."
Severus pulled Akira against him possessively and watched the pair in the background stroll out of sight. Akira was only vaguely aware of Severus's fingers curling tightly into her skin. He may have looked calm on the outside, but it was always hard to tell what Severus Snape was thinking.
Authors notes: Well, we're getting there. I would say, we are a little over halfway now.
Possibly. Neshomeh has stuck her story back up on FF.net. Go read or face death. Its far better than mine and more detailed and thought out and everything. –promotion-, go read it.
Some of it was roleplay based, but then I just sat down and started writing so it mightn't be too accurate. Apologies to Adele if I haven't written her character properly and so forth. I mentioned up the top, no changes were made.
Also due to the fifth book this may be coming down sometime soon.