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Short chapter. Thank you, thank you, thank you again for your reviews. Feel free to offer suggestions - I have eight chaps written, still have to write 4 or so more.---
Professor Snape and I worked together on Saint Valentine's Day. Neither of us really wanted to go to the ball, I don't think. Harry and Ron were away from the school, and I didn't want to be cooed at and pitied by Lavender and Parvati because my on-again off-again boyfriend wasn't with me on the International Day when it was Unacceptable to be Sans-Love-Interest.
It was after class, in the evening, when we decided to meet in the lab. He'd be working on Wolfsbane while I whipped up the more banal potions that the Infirmary needed, like Sober-Up and Skele-Gro. That's always how it worked. He'd do the complicated work, while I made sure all the simple but nonetheless important tasks were out of the way.
"Why have you forsaken Casanova Weasley this evening, Miss Granger?"
It was only six-thirty, hardly evening, but the idea of Ron as romantic in any way made me snort. I shook my head at Professor Snape and went to find a properly-sized cauldron.
"Casanova, sadly, has forsaken me for a Chudley Cannons game in Fayum with his brother and my other best friend," I shrugged. "What about you, don't you have your own plans?"
He ignored the implication.
"Let me see if I understand this properly, Miss Granger. Your lackwit other half has left you, and school, for an Egyptian Quidditch holiday with Potter?"
"Right." I sighed deeply. "I suppose it doesn't matter. He'd just end up dragging me off to that silly dance, giving me his favourite candy - Chocolate frogs, even though he knows I like Muggle chocolate bars - then proceeding to eat it all himself before drinking too much and complaining about how much I study."
Professor Snape scrutinized me a moment as I twisted my hair up into an elastic and slipped a work robe over my jeans and sweater, but said nothing.
After a moment, I swore he muttered something under his breath, but I wasn't brave enough to ask him to repeat it more loudly.
I had the Skele-Gro mixed and ready in twenty minutes, and while I let it steep, I hurried off to the greenhouses to pick up a parcel of daisies I promised to chop and bottle. While inside the glass house, I met Professors Flitwick and Sprout, who were nuzzling in a most unexpected way, especially since Professor Sprout had a good two and a half feet on the diminutive charms professor, and the small man had to stand on an upturned flowerpot to reach her cheek.
"Miss Granger!" he squeaked. "Not at the dance?"
"No, not tonight," I replied quickly. "Ron and Harry are away, so I thought I'd get caught up on some extra work in the Potions lab."
"With Severus, you poor thing." Professor Sprout shook her head. "Here, perhaps this'll cheer you up a bit. Doesn't it look lovely, Filius?"
She rakishly stuck a pink spring rose into my hair, one of the painless, thornless hybrids she'd been working on. It smelled lovely, and she and Professor Flitwick both convulsed in laughter when they saw it in my hair.
"You... teehee... rose to the occasion." Flitwick chuckled. "Say hello to Severus for us, though no doubt he'll just berate you for it."
"Er... right. Thank you, Professors, good-night."
I had to wonder if they'd been drinking before I got there.
When I returned to the lab, Professor Snape stared at me as if I'd grown a pair of antennae rather than met two silly lovebirds cuddling over a pile of mulch.
"Met a would-be admirer on the way, Miss Granger?"
He laced his voice with the usual annoyance he reserved for children snogging in corners and moony teenagers caught passing romantic notes in class.
I scoffed. "Hardly. I'm not Lavender Brown. Professor Sprout felt sorry for me and stuck this in my hair."
My face turned red. I loathed pity. He nodded slowly and returned to stirring.
"It is lovely, though, I think I'll put it under a preserving charm." I ran a finger over it. "I've never gotten roses before, from anyone."
I could see him watching me from the corner of his eye, though I wasn't sure whether he was actually interested or whether he was just irritated that his Potions assistant wouldn't keep quiet for more than five minutes at a stretch. I turned and went back to work, clipping the heads off the daisies, tossing the white and yellow petals into the garbage next to me.
"Such a pity," I murmured, then remembered that Snape was in the room with me. "I know, I'm being sentimental."
He hunched back over his cauldron, as if fascinated by the contents, but I knew he was watching me. He never stopped watching. I'd never seen him let his guard down, never saw him in a situation where he wasn't sizing up everyone around him.
"Miss Granger, I think you've done enough work," he declared after he saw me stopper the bottle of daisy roots and move to flask the cauldron of Skele-Gro. "Return to your dormitory, I'll finish that up."
"Really? Thank you, Sir." I pulled off the work robe. "And Sir? Have a good Valentine's day."
In the middle of the night, I had a dream that my entire room was filled with flowers - fat-blossomed tea roses in golden yellow and dusky pink that clouded the air with sweet fragrance. They were scattered over my comforter, over the hair fanned out over my pillow, wreathed around my bed. It was the sort of out-of-the-blue gesture I'd always hoped of from Ron, though I knew I'd be lucky if Ron actually remembered Valentine's day was anything but the anniversary of the creation of the Wronski feint. My fingers trailed over the flowers, cool and silky and damp with dew, and I wondered how they'd gotten there.
I was afraid, for a moment, thinking that someone had broken my wards - even Malfoy wasn't talented enough with charms and transfiguration to get past them, and he was the smartest student in my year. Eventually I settled back onto my bed and just breathed in the perfume.
When I awoke in the morning, every petal was gone, and I realized it had just been an unexpectedly lovely dream.
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Like a medieval ascetic, I now shun everything that Snape offers me. In some part of my mind, I know it's illogical. A prisoner doesn't deny himself the food brought to his cell; but for some reason, touching anything he brings makes me feel like a traitor. Each night I sleep in the corner, with one pillow from the bed, and every morning, I find myself tucked in like a child beneath the covers.
Why he - or maybe Loki - bothers, I don't know.
The first two days there was a dish of soup and bread and chocolate left on my bedside table under a warming charm. After they went uneaten, they stopped being delivered. Pointless, really, as I now refuse to touch anything but the strong-as-lye tea left on the nightstand with neatly arranged tea tray.
I think he's told Loki to stay far away from me; the house-elf just glares and bares his teeth at me when he delivers my meals, or now, my black tea.
Considering how easy I find it to fall asleep in the corner of the room, and how I have never awakened in the middle of the night while being moved, I can only conclude that the treacle-dark Earl Grey has been brewed that way to cover up a sleeping potion. Though I don't eat, I haven't lost weight, either; he's probably slipping a nutritive into my drinks as well.
Today I have decided to forego my caffeine hit and see who it is that's moving me at night, whether it's Loki to scrub the floors, or Snape for some unknown reason.
In evening, I take the teapot, measure out a cup, and carefully pour it into the drain in the bathroom before curling up in my usual spot beside the desk. I close my eyes in a parody of sleep, and wait to see what will happen.
I know it's Snape just by the ripple of the wards. The heavy footsteps against the floor planksjust confirms it for me. When he pauses before me, I have to remember to act like I'm asleep.
Keep the breathing rhythmic, in out, in out.
He lets out a deep sigh.
"Miss Granger," he mutters. "Whatever shall I do with you?"
I almost reply, but catch myself when I realize he's just talking to himself. He kneels before me; I can tell from the faintest breath on my cheek and the warmth radiating from his body.
His long fingers reach around the back of my neck, push forward my head, and he carefully untangles my clip from the snags in my hair. I haven't been touched in ages, and if it were anyone but Snape I might've welcomed it. After the clip goes, he slips his arms under my shoulder blades and knees, lifts me up from the floor and settles me on the bed. I can hear him setting something on the table, I think my clip, then shifting around the bed linens until I'm under them.
A pair of thin fingers brush gently over my forehead before the door slams and I'm left alone again.
I don't want to think about why.
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