Title: Snape's Private Hell
Author: Madelynn Rae
Description: It appears that Snape has been found out for his position as a spy, and Dumbledore feels he is not safe in the wizard world. Snape is sent to a very unusual place, where no one could possibly find him.
Disclaimer: I don't own Snape, but god I wish I did.
Author's Note: The last chapter sucked horribly, and I apologize. Here, I'll actually try with this one. :P
Magdalena stormed into her apartment and threw her books down on the floor. Her face was red like a tragic sunburn. She stomped over to the couch and grabbed a pillow, shoving her face in it.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"
God, how stuffy and mean and arrogant can one Brit be? She flopped down onto the sofa, sighing. She drew her knees to her chest, hugging her legs. She narrowed her eyes at the TV screen in front of her, willing it to come on.
"Can never find that fucking remote. What does that stupid black piece of plastic think it is, acting like a jerk so I can't watch TV?"
She fell over on the couch, still curled up.
Stuffy fucker.
There was a knock on the door. Mag groaned, squeezing her eyes shut.
"It's open!"
Severus walked in, glancing around. He set is bags down and shut the door behind him, then proceeded to slowly walk through the living room and the kitchen. Coming back to the living room, he sat down on the end armrest of the couch, looking down at her.
"Where am I sleeping?"
"In the extra bedroom, once I get all of my… stuff… moved out of there," she sighed. Severus raised an eyebrow at her.
"What 'stuff'?"
Mag got up and walked into the hallway, and opened the first door on the left. He still hadn't moved from his spot, so she simply stood by the door, waiting. After a moment of thinking, he got up and cautiously walked towards her, making sure her hands were where he could see them. He stepped into the room, and for a moment was taken aback with surprise.
He expected to see a clutter of boxes and stacks of books and magazines, but instead he saw a small art studio. Framed paintings were lined eye-level along the walls. They were abstract and messy, but also very good. Many of them were warm colors, or bright fluorescent colors. A few of them looked realistic, and a few looked like something out of an Andy Warhol gallery. Along one wall she had paintings that seemed to be a study of modern American painter Dave Chihuly, and along another were remakes (with her own little twist) of Van Gogh, and there were some paintings that seemed from the Fauvist movement, and then there was a painting, which almost seemed cartoonish, of a small red-haired woman and a taller blond man, embracing in contrast to a black and red background. The woman looked a lot like Magdalena. He stepped up to it and pointed.
"You and who?" He said it more as a command than a question; it was what he was used to.
She looked down at her shoes.
"Um, that's Joseph, my boyfriend… I painted that when I was 17. He died a couple of years later, in a car wreck."
Snape nodded, then asked (in an unemotional, commanding tone), "Did you love him?"
Biting her lip, she nodded.
"Yes… very much. We had everything planned out… I was going to become a teacher, he a graphic designer… we were going to get married once we both had steady jobs, and have two kids, hopefully a boy and a girl. I suppose when you're so happy, the Universe has a way of finding you out and teaching you that it's not your right to plan your life; the Universe has already planned it for you."
Snape nodded, then absently studied a painting of a metallic purple dragonfly. After standing there and feeling awkward for a few minutes, Maggie cleared her throat.
"Um, you can sleep in my room until I get all of this moved, I can take the couch, it makes a really great bed when you fold--"
"Nonsense!" he spat, almost angrily. "It would be a shame to take these down and drag all of your art supplies out of here and lock them away until I leave." If I leave, he added in his thoughts. He turned and looked at her. His black eyes burned into hers, and he stepped close to her.
"You're very talented. Stupid, but talented. I don't understand why you're assisting an English teacher when you could be an excellent art teacher."
She blushed, both from frustration at being called stupid, and bashfulness from being called talented.
"Actually, Mr. Snape, I am studying to be an Art teacher. As a training-through-experience program, however, I am to assist a few other classes as well as an Art class, to get used to teaching."
He nodded, then continued to look at some more paintings, making comments here and there, while she stood and watched.
"This room is much like a book," he murmured softly, but firmly… powerfully. "I feel as though I'm reading a book about you, authored by you."
Magdalena smiled, taking this as a complement. She leaned against the door frame, a wisp of hair falling at the side of her face.
Severus stopped in front of a painting of a thin, middle-aged woman, with a flowing white gown and long black hair. She was smiling out at the viewer, a twinkle in her blue-gray eyes, a shimmering glow in her tan skin. She stood in a forest clearing, bathed in a glowing light, with a crown of rose leaves and a necklace of clovers around her neck. He looked over at Magdalena again. She stood straight and walked over to him, standing next to him, examining it herself, as though seeing it for the first time.
"This one I entitled 'Goddess.' I am a follower of a nature-based Goddess religion, called Wicca. This woman is my perception of the Goddess Aradia, Queen of the Witches."
Severus's ears perked up at the mention of Witches. Were there other kids of Witches in the world? He felt skeptical.
"So… you're a Witch then?"
She looked at him and nodded, pulling a necklace out of her shirt and showing it to him. It was a silver pendant, a five-pointed star with two circles around it, and four gems: a green gem at the top, representing the North, a yellow gem to his right, her left, representing the East, a red gem at the bottom, representing the South, and a blue gem to the left, representing West. He examined it for a moment, then nodded.
"So, do you do spells then?"
She smiled at him.
"Yes, actually, I do, but not that often. Witchcraft to me is a religion, not simply casting spells to get what you want."
"I see," he said quietly. "Do they work?"
She nodded, putting her hands in her hoodie pockets.
"In my experiences they have. I practice Kitchen Witchery, so I focus more on protection, healing, and divination than getting what I want. A lot of the students come to me for magickal help or advice."
He nodded, thinking for a moment. Muggles have their own form of Witchcraft… interesting. Does Dumbledore know?
He looked at her again.
"Tell me of a spell that you remember doing that was the most effective. What was it for, and what did you do?"
She smiled.
"Well, this is a spell I wrote myself, and in my experience, spells you write on your own are the most powerful and effective. But anyway, my goal was to have a more strengthened sixth sense. I took an amethyst pendant, my favorite goblet, and some salt to a small creek near my house and performed the ritual. I purified the pendant and the chain it would go on in some creek water mixed with salt in the goblet, spoke the words I wrote, and put the pendant on. A week or so after performing the spell I was able to predict what people were going to say before they said it, so many times that it couldn't be coincidence. I could hear if people were thinking about me, even, and I was having very frequent feelings of déjà vu. When I first started noticing that it was working, I was sitting in a History class, and I had answered a difficult question, and my boyfriend at the time thought the exact words 'my smart Maggie', and I had heard them."
"How did you know you heard them?"
"I asked him later, and he said that yeah, he was thinking something along those lines. He didn't enjoy that I was a Witch; in fact, it's why we broke up."
Upon Snape giving her a confused look, she explained:
"Not Joseph, I was about 15 years old, I hadn't met Joseph yet, this was a boy I had dated off and on since I was 13."
He nodded.
"I see. So, not to change the subject, but we need to talk about sleeping arrangements, and I refuse to let you do anything to this room."
She smiled.
"Well, I can move into this room, bring Joseph's old futon in and put it in a corner, and bring my stuff from my old room in, and you can have my old room."
He opened his mouth to protest, but she held her hand up.
"Don't. After much ego-boosting on your part, I feel a great need to be around my art stuff now. I don't really like my old room anyway… there's something strange about it that I can't put a finger on…"
Snape was interested.
"Hmm… maybe I should sleep in your room. I have a habit of scaring things. If there's something bad in there, it won't stand a chance."
She laughed, but he didn't so much as crack a smile. She noticed this a lot about him; he was witty, with sarcastic humor, but always seemed to stern and stiff and angry, he never even smiled at his own jokes. In fact, she only noticed him smiling when he managed to belittle a student. What is it about him that makes him so cold, She thought.
"Well, okay, if you insist. Let me go get my stuff out of there and bring in Joseph's futon from my storage unit."
She walked out of the room, all the while thinking, Maybe he isn't so bad after all.
And there it is, the longest damn chapter I've ever written. :P
By the way, if you want to see some of the paintings mentioned (I did mention paintings that I've done before, and some that I'm planning on doing), e-mail me and I'll link you to them. Also, the pentagram necklace I described is an actual item, I can link you to the page with its picture, from the website my mom bought it from for me.
Kjady: You flatter me. Seriously. Lol But yeah, here's your longer chapter! I actually took my time. Writing informational reports for a class actually inspires me to write creatively too, go figure!