Obligitory and Traditional Disclaimer: We all know that JK Rowling owns Harry Potter, Warner Bros owns the movies, and Spock owns Kirk. I think I just crossed fandoms, sorry about that. I promise that it won't happen again. All that I own is the story line, and everything that you don't recognize, including Anne.
Author's Note: This story begins in the final weeks of term for Severus Snape and the Marauders' seventh year at Hogwarts. It will be several things, including the following: fluffy, angsty, OOC, romantic, dramatic, humourous, and just plain drivel. But isn't that what fanfiction is all about? Will perhaps contain sexual content, perhaps not. However, I am rating it for that contingency and also for language, because I have a filthy mouth and mind.
Some things will appear unexplained for a while, but it's my intention to fill them in at a different part of the story, so don't let that throw you off.
If you're interested in my other work, which is Phantom Of the Opera-related, my old pen-name was George Esmerelda.
Now on with the fic!
....
"Just three more weeks, Severus," He thought grimly. "Just three more weeks and you'll never see them again...or at any rate they won't see you." The wicked smile that curved his thin lips would have sent chills through the spine of an observer, but as there were none in this deserted section of the castle, his expression went unnoticed.
He was on his way to a room that he'd discovered late in his second year at Hogwarts and had quickly adopted as his own. It had perhaps been a common room of sorts at one time, but had become abandoned and forgotten...the perfect place for a troubled student to sequester himself in.
He was still anticipating revenge when he arrived at the door to his secret room. In fact, Severus was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn't register that the heavy wooden door was slightly ajar and that there was faint light issuing from the crack. His thoughts had conjured a triumphant fantasy and he was smiling widely.
He pushed open the door and froze in place, horror flooding his mind at the sight that met his eyes.
A girl looked back at him, equally horrified. He didn't even look at her face, but let his eyes rest on the first thing they had seen. She was holding something in her hand. Severus struggled to get his perceptions back under control. Yes, she was holding something in her hand. A parchment.
A drawing.
His drawing. Who did this bitch think she was?
"Severus, I--" the girl faltered and trailed off as his expression changed from surprise to puzzlement to blackly murderous rage. He hadn't even looked away from what she held in her trembling hand.
"You." he growled. "So you thought you'd poke around where you weren't wanted, did you? Thought you'd see what you could find?" Suddenly his wand was in his hand. "As my privacy means nothing to you, your life means even less to me. Filthy cu-" he stopped speaking suddenly. While speaking, he had been slowly raising his gaze to the face of the tresspasser, fully expecting it to be Lily Evans or one of her little friends.
Who he saw instead gave him his second nearly-paralytic shock of the evening.
"Anne...?" He desperately wanted to disbelieve. Surely this was a dream, perhaps a hallucination brought on by any one of the various herbs he'd been perusing in the afternoon.
No. There was no mistaking this. That lustrous auburn hair, those cloudy grey eyes, those full lips that had so often sweetened his dreams. Anne? The young woman whom he adored from afar, whose name he sometimes whispered in the dark to no one but the still night air?
Severus was at a complete loss. What little color there was to be found in his pallid face had simply melted away like so much bathwater down an efficient drain. He shook his head and a lock of hair that he did not bother to brush away fell across his eyes. He simply looked at the ground.
"Anne, why?" he finally whispered. His anger was gone, replaced with burning humiliation and unbelieving hurt.
Anne also was rather speechless. She had harbored the hope for some months now that this cold and aloof...she had started to think of him as the caricature everyone else saw, but looking at him in the semi-gloom of a single torch with this heart-wrenching pain in his eyes, she saw him for what he was–a desperately lonely soul who had endured too much hurt in his short life to ever trust his true self to the condemning of petty classmates. She had harbored the hope that he may have had interest in her, however fleeting. And so she had found the place where he spent so much time. Everyone in Slytherin house knew that he went somewhere, but no one much cared to look. His absences from the common room in the evenings and on weekends went largely unremarked by all save for Anne, who had once seen him smiling to himself at some secret thought and thenceforth was unable to see him in quite the same ill-favored light.
An eternity seemed to pass. Neither of them knew what too say, and neither found themselves willing to try sparking a conversation. Finally Anne spoke up. She faltered at first, but as Severus maintained his silence she grew nervous and spoke more than she would have.
"I... I didn't mean to pry. Really, I didn't. You have a right to be angry, but please, please believe that I never wanted to hurt you."
He didn't respond.
"I don't know what I was thinking. I- well, I just wanted to know where you go all the time. I hoped I might find you here," she licked her lips nervously when he shot an inscrutable look at her, but continued, "because I, um, well, what I mean is that I..."
She turned away, cheeks burning. As if through a fog she heard herself saying it to him, a stumbling and awkward version of the eloquent speeches she'd treasured to herself, "I think I like you, Severus. I mean, well, not like, but you know. More. I mean..oh, shit."
Anne crossed the room to sit on the beaten maroon sofa that reposed in front of the cold hearth. She was fighting back tears. She thought about the many ways she'd dreamed this moment, and wondered what she had been thinking, coming here. Not only had she obviously upset Severus, but now he probably thought she was a complete twit. A sob escaped her throat.
Mortified, she choked out, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I came here. I shouldn't have. I had no reason to even think you would want to hear this. God, I'm sorry."
The tears wouldn't stop coming now. She pressed her cheek against the sofa's back. A button poked at her temple, but she didn't care. She couldn't stop crying, couldn't pull herself together and save face, make a graceful exit.
Severus sat down next to her, gingerly on the edge of the cushion. "Anne-"
She covered her mouth with a hand and shook her head.
He touched her arm gently with the tip of one finger and she turned her tear-dampened face to him. He looked into her eyes a moment and was struck by the way her wet lashes clung together and shone the darkest of blacks. He felt the temptation to touch the glistening tear track on her cheek and smiled ruefully at her.
"You think I wouldn't want to hear it?" he paused, "You didn't even look at this, did you?" He tapped her hand, which was still clutching the drawing he'd seen her with when he entered the room. She looked at it dully, without comprehension.
He took it from her hand and unfolded it, smoothing out the wrinkles her agitated hand had inflicted upon the fragile material.
Anne gasped, "It's me!"
And indeed it was. Drawn with skill and meticulous care to detail was a charcoal portrait that smiled a small, secret smile not unlike the Mona Lisa. Anne touched it in wonder. Her finger trailed down the sheet and touched upon the artist's signature, which read "S. Snape". The wandering finger underlined it in a motion that was almost a caress and Severus stood, still holding the parchment. It was his turn now for embarrassment.
In a daze, Anne stood up after him. She needed to see his eyes.
Severus was looking fixedly into the empty hearth, more afraid than he'd ever been in his life. Never before had he felt quite so exposed, so at the mercy of another human being. He felt a feather-light touch to his shoulder and turned, half expecting to be slapped, half expecting to be laughed at.
At the look she was met with, Anne could have cried again. Such naked feeling was almost too much for her to bear, and her only thought was to take away his pain.
Severus looked at her, knowing that the old saying was more apt than he'd suspected- his very heart seemed on his sleeve, and he was almost ready to hand it to Anne if only she would ask.
She reached up and touched his cheek.
He didn't know what to do. "What are you doing?" his mind screamed to her, and his face had the expression of a terrified animal, perhaps an unwitting field-mouse being slowly tormented by a cat.
Oh, but those fingers were so incomparably soft and warm to his cool skin. Severus swallowed nervously.
This is not the way the night was supposed to go. He had planned to evade Potter and Co., then spend the rest of the night until curfew studying the new book of hexes he'd lifted from the banned section of the library. Then, slink back to the common room and go to bed, rise early in the morning to practise said hexes for use against the aforementioned troupe of idiots.
Instead...this. He wasn't even sure what was happening. It was a clear break from the usual comforting monotony of planning revenge and daydreaming about a certain girl...
Who just happened to be here now peering into his eyes.
The silence was almost overwhelming. Abruptly and perhaps of their own volition, her hands were touching him, just feeling the beat of his heart beneath the rough, cheap fabric of his cloak.
Severus watched her in disbelief. Oh, beautiful Anne, are those your delicate fingers? His breathing quickened and he had the oddest feeling of wanting to cry, but with supreme joy. Boldly, but just as unconsciously as Anne herself had found herself touching him, Severus played with a silky lock of her dark hair.
The candlelight flickered. Dancing shadows flirted with their pale faces, figures tensely wondering. The tears on Anne's face glistened like crystal everywhere the light touched.
The hair abandoned, Severus reached with trembling fingers to wipe away these shining tears. The tears were cooler than her deliciously warm face, he noticed. Anne closed her eyes and made a soft noise with slightly parted lips.
Severus drew away, surprised. This was real and irreversible, this whole occurrence. This was not another fantasy. Dare he let down all the protective shields that kept him from further pain? It would be so easy to do what was forbidden to him except within dreams, but it would be just as easy for her to betray his trust later on.
Anne felt him draw away and opened her eyes to see his face, stricken and unsure. She could only guess what was in his mind but couldn't bear to have him look this way.
"I don't intend to hurt you," she murmured and stepped closer to him. He was taller than her, too tall for what she was intending, so she reached up to cup the back of his neck and pull his face close. He resisted at first- a token resistance, but before she could pull away he yielded to her guiding hand. Anne realised that he wasn't really sure of what she was going to do, but was trusting her. Because he wanted to.
Severus was dimly terrified, his heart pounding and the blood rushing madly in his ears. What was she...? Suddenly she was kissing him tenderly. So blinding was this moment in its perfection. Not knowing what to do, he began to kiss her back, savoring her soft lips. Surely this was bliss, but even so it was not enough. He drew her closer, hand on her waist. The kiss abruptly deepened as her lips parted his own and her tongue gently tickled him.
Now it was his turn to make a sound and when she drew away for breath she giggled softly. She took his hand and sat back onthe couch, their thighs touching. He leaned in to her until their foreheads met.
"Oh, Annie," he whispered, "is this happening?"
Her lips moved to his neck and she replied so softly the words were almost lost against his skin.
"Do you want it to be?"
Anne slipped her hand under his cloak, where her fingers stroked the soft fabric of the school uniform he wore.
Severus pulled away nervously.
"I...I have..." he faltered and stood, "I've got homework to do."
Anne simply stared at him, stunned and hurt. Her hand was still in the same place where she had been fondling him, but now it met only with air. She slowly lowered it, her hand curling into a loose fist that she pressed to her side as if she wanted to hide it.
Severus seemed about to speak but he shook his head in panic and nearly flew across the room and out the door, his cloak in a swirl behind like a great black bat.
Anne was left alone, with nothing to do but cry.
"Idiot, bloody idiot," Severus chanted under his breath some time later.
He was sequestered safely in his bed with the heavy green velvet curtains drawn safely around it. He leaned against the headboard with knees drawn to his chin, in much the same posture he had retained for the last hour.
He had been running over the events of the day in his mind and had become more ashamed of his actions every time he thought of leaving her. Leaving Anne when she had come looking for him.
"How dare she?" he thought, trying to recapture the rage that had consumed him earlier.
Unfortunately, this effort was useless. He'd wanted her for far too long, wanted those shapely legs and those delicate hands.
Severus felt his body's reaction to this train of thought and did find himself angry again, but this time not at Anne. He scowled in the dark, determined to ignore the part of his anatomy that demanded attention.
He left the Slytherin dorms with the intention to walk the grounds until his chaotic thoughts slowed acceptably, but found himself instead pacing uselessly back and forth across an unused classroom's dusty stone floor.
"You are a fool, Severus Snape," the young wizard berated himself. "You fantasize about her for months, and then when you have the chance to really do something about it, you fucking leave. What a coward."
He stopped pacing, stricken by a sudden thought, this time for the girl instead of himself. What he had realized so belatedly was that she had feelings of her own, and when he ran out of the room like that...
Severus closed his eyes a moment. When he opened them he was ready to go find Anne, and ready to apologize.