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Chapter Ten
"Did you see the way that man was looking at me?"
Louisa balanced herself aimlessly on Charlotte's shoulder as the dark-hair witch struggled with the Spinner's End house gate.
"He was looking at like I was some kind of pasty, Charlie, like a pumpkin bloody pasty."
Charlotte, previously focused on her task of ensuring Lou did not faceplant to the sidewalk, freed the gate from its latch and promptly tipped forward.
A now tangled assortment of limbs and strewn handbag innards littered the walkway to Charlotte's front door.
"How did we end up here?"
Louisa's soft voice interrupted the silence, and Charlotte stuffed her hand over the blue-eyed witch's mouth.
"Shhh," she hiccupped, "You'll wake up Sev."
"SEVERUS?"
Louisa broke free of Charlotte's constraints and had begun screaming. For a fleeting moment, Charlotte's pickled mind questioned whether they had put up a silencing charm and suddenly hoped that Severus had as Louisa caterwauled in the general direction of the front door.
"You married Snape, Charlie," Louisa snickered as Charlotte began crawling towards the door, "Snape."
"Well, you didn't marry anyone," Charlotte retorted, her voice slurred and hot, "So there."
"No one is good enough for me!"
Charlotte seized the railing leading to her front porch and began to heave herself to her feet, suddenly grateful for her weight loss.
"Did you see the way that man was looking at me?"
The railing slipped from Charlotte's grasp as the witch dissolved into a fit of snickering.
"Like a pasty?"
"Like a bloody pumpkin pasty, Charlie!"
It was likely a spectacle, if anyone had been awake to witness it.
Louisa, sprawled across the lawn as she shoved handfuls of grass and sickles into her purse while Charlotte had begun hugging the cool railing in her arms, surrendering for a few moments to waves of inebriation. The pair chortling laughter loud enough – Charlotte was now sure that there was a silencing charm on the house – to wake the entire neighborhood.
They had started the evening with Blishen's Firewhiskey, shot glasses brimming with the smoky liquor. But try as she could, Charlotte was not entirely certain what had come afterward. She could only distantly recall someone ordering the Knight Bus for them with instruction to take the drunken pair home, and that on the bus a wizard had been enraptured by Louisa.
Afterwards, in between, and before were all relatively fuzzed out.
"SEVERUS!"
Charlotte threw up a hand to silence the screaming witch somewhere on the lawn behind her, but it was perhaps several minutes too late, for the front door had begun opening. Slowly, for her neck felt more like gelatin than it had ever had before, Charlotte lifted her face into the stern, narrowed eyes of her husband.
"Severus!"
She hiccupped, and Severus's eyes turned to Louisa, whom was still making her slow crawl across the wet front lawn towards the door.
When the wizard had turned back to her, Charlotte's face split into a warm smile, "Severus!"
Severus scowled.
He seemed to deliberate for a moment what to do with two impossibly inebriated women in his yard. His dark eyes shifted between Louisa, who had moved herself to a sitting position in front of the hedges, and Charlotte, who was still hugging a staircase rail.
Severus leaned forward and scooped Charlotte into his arms as though she weighed little more than a pillow and carried her into the house. Carefully, he deposited her onto the sofa before returning to the yard.
Charlotte noted that her husband was already in his sleeping clothes, but the teapot was out and steaming. She couldn't smell what Snape had been drinking – her own boozy breath obstructed most of her sense of smell – but he had evidently been waiting up for her.
When the dark-haired wizard returned, he had tossed Louisa over his shoulder in a much more haphazard way than he had carried his wife.
"You do not move," His voice dripped with disdain, "Not a centimeter."
Charlotte's mouth opened to let loose another hiccup.
It seemed to take a while, and Charlotte squirmed upon the seat of the sofa. She wanted to take her shoes off, but Severus had instructed her not to move.
She stiffened.
The stickiness of her leather skirt combined with the thin sheet of sweat on her thighs made her skin itch, and Charlotte began counting in her mind. If he was not back within the next thirty seconds, she decided, she would scratch it.
"HE'S COMING DOWN, CHARLIE!"
Louisa's shriek echoed down the staircase, and Charlotte heard her husband pause upon the stairwell.
Charlotte wondered if he regretted every part of their arrangement.
By the time he had appeared before her, Charlotte had counted to thirty-two, allowing him an additional ten seconds.
"Can I scratch an itch?"
Severus's face seemed to be in a great struggle. His mouth was twitching, but his eyes remained still in their clear disapproval and evident contempt.
"You may," He allowed.
Quickly, Charlotte hiked her hand beneath her skirt and scratched feverously at her thigh.
She watched him go back to the kitchen and take a swallow of his tea before going through the drawers where he kept a few stores.
"No potions!"
He paused and looked up from his work, "You've scraped your knees, Charlotte. Do you not want any dittany for it?"
Charlotte chewed her lip, "Only dittany?"
"And some tea."
She watched him as she nodded, and he fetched a small tin from the drawer and made his way towards her.
Severus was a bit handsome, she decided, as he kneeled in front of her and began to work a paste onto her skinned knees. His fingers carefully smoothed the butter-yellow mixture over her abrasions, and she sipped her tea as they slowly began to sew themselves shut.
"You're a bit handsome," she found her mouth forming the words, and slapped her hands over her mouth as a laugh broke free.
Dark eyes lifted up to her with a cocked brow, and Charlotte focused her own gaze on the ceiling. She had never noticed the watermarks there, she decided, and chose to stare pointedly up at them.
"How much did you drink, Charlotte?"
There was a niffler in the watermark. Charlotte made out the long lines of its nose within the dark stain.
"Charlotte?"
"Firewhiskey."
Severus interrupted her line of vision, "That isn't what I asked."
Charlotte lost herself for several moments in his dark eyes.
His mouth opened, but the words missed her ears as she carefully measured her breathing.
Even his hair wasn't that greasy, she noted, but rather incredibly shiny; raven-black, she decided as it caught the lightbulb's glare.
Snape was frowning now.
He was always frowning.
"Why are you always frowning?"
The words erupted from her mouth before she could stop them, and she smiled sheepishly up at her husband. Charlotte was unsure if it were her words or the whiskey that had heated her face and made her cheeks blister.
Exasperated, Severus's face was drawn once again into a scowl and he took the seat next to her.
"Would you like to sleep here, or upstairs?"
Charlotte ignored his question and turned to him, supposing now that she was permitted to move freely under his watchful stare.
"You didn't answer me."
Severus scowled once more, and Charlotte questioned if she had ever seen him smile.
"You should smile more," Charlotte slurred, slumping back into her seat, "I bet you're ravishing when you smile," she dissolved into fits of giggles, recalling Lou's own words in Faustus' salon.
"I do not particularly care to be ravishing, Charlotte."
"Why not? You'd look better with a smile, just as I look better with these fake boobs Lou's given me."
For a moment, Charlotte supposed her husband looked alarmed.
"Louisa has done what?"
"Given me a set of fake girls," Charlotte reached down the front of her dress as Severus admirably turned his head, and fished out her inserts, "See?"
Severus watched her toss the inserts to the coffee table, precariously close to his steaming cup of tea, before his eyes slowly turned to set back upon her.
"Why has she done this?"
"To get a rise out of the lads," Charlotte waved her hand, "But you ought to smile more."
The wizard snorted, reaching to take a swallow of his tea, "I have no need for flirtatious attentions."
"Everyone needs a good flirt, Sev," she commented as she reached down to kick off her heels.
The liquor was tapering off now, she supposed, or perhaps Severus had snuck a draught into her cup of oolong.
"You've never had that problem, as I recall."
Charlotte snorted as she deposited the crushed velvet pumps against the coffee table.
"Why? Because I married Regulus?"
"The wolf seems keen to return to your lessons," Severus answered instead, "Quite keen."
A laugh exploded from Charlotte's lips, "You think I have something with Lupin?"
Severus frowned, and stared at the dead fireplace in front of them.
Charlotte supposed it could look that way. Remus did typically arrive earlier than scheduled for their lessons and stayed long after they had ended. To an outside perspective, it likely looked suspicious.
In truth, Remus simply had nothing else to do.
He had been laid off from his job due to his numerous sick days from Flourish & Blott's and was now renting a room in the Leaky Cauldron for more than he could practically afford. Charlotte doubted the odd and end jobs he received from the Order paid much, and suspected that he likely lived entirely on the money she paid him for her lessons.
"He will never understand you," Severus said quietly, "He's not capable of it."
"And I suppose that you do."
Severus's dark eyes were upon her, boring into her warmed face, "Yes, I do."
"What do you think you understand?"
"You've been faking it at your lessons," Severus leaned back into the sofa, "I've noticed."
Charlotte felt the color slowly draining from her face and her consciousness being brought abruptly forward, "What?"
"You've been faking your lessons. Pretending to have the effort, but you're barely putting any in."
Charlotte watched Severus raise a finger and press it to his temple.
"You truly have become abysmal at Legilimency, Charlotte."
"I have not-!" Charlotte began hotly but Severus raised a palm littered in silvery scars.
"Yes, you have. At both your lessons and Legilimency."
She stewed for several moments on the sofa, before tucking her legs under her.
"When did you notice?"
During her lessons with Remus, Severus had always been in the basement. He had been determined to wreak new methods of torture upon the 'idiots' Dumbledore put in his dungeons, and Charlotte had always surmised that the potions master was too busy to listen in above his head.
She had presumably been wrong.
"The first day."
Charlotte frowned, "Why haven't you said anything?"
"Because that wolf cannot help you."
Severus glanced at her before rising and fished her teacup from her fingers. He made his way back to the kitchen.
"What do you mean, Remus can't help me?"
"Precisely what I've said."
Charlotte watched as he carefully topped off their cups and did not protest when he dribbled a vial into what was presumably hers. He made a quick show of adding sugar to hers – as she liked it – and returned back to the sofa.
"Then what am I supposed to do? I can't just sit in this house forever, I'll go mad."
Severus snorted, "I think you might be halfway there."
As Charlotte attempted to work out whether or not Severus Snape had just made an actual joke, Severus turned his eyes on her once more.
"I'll be returning to Hogwarts in three weeks."
Dread began to fill her belly.
"I know."
"If you will permit it, I will begin working with you once more."
Charlotte blinked, "What?"
"In addition to your fraying abilities in Legilimency, I believe there are alternative treatments available."
"Such as?"
"We will be working with a pensieve."
A pensieve.
Charlotte recalled the wide basin the Dark Lord had used in his office. She had caught glimpses of the images it possessed when she had gone to receive instruction. On occasion, she had been instructed to use it to provide evidence to the Dark Lord she had performed the tasks once completed.
It was a distasteful arrangement, she had recalled, delving into the deep to watch alongside her hooded master.
She could feel Severus probing at the edge of her mind, and in a moment, she had dropped the grate defense he had taught her to envision, effectively locking her mind.
"You've grown careless," Severus finished his tea, "I taught you better than that."
Severus rinsed their cups and walked with her up the stairs, passing her bedroom where Louisa snored loudly.
He stopped at the bedroom door and watched as she carefully tip-toed into his bedroom.
She stopped and turned to the doorway as she heard him shift, "Severus?"
The wizard paused, his fingers still brushing the brass doorknob.
"What will we do when you go back to Hogwarts?"
Severus cleared his throat, "I have made arrangements for Minerva so that I may return during holiday. Is this acceptable?"
Something had lodged itself in Charlotte's throat, "Yes, that would be nice."
Severus nodded and closed the bedroom door.
As Charlotte threw her dress off and slithered between the sheets, she closed her eyes and made a valiant effort not to smile. It was useless, and the expression pulled her lips. Burying her face into the pillow, she took deep breaths, smelling her husband's shampoo.
It was an unexpected surprise, that Snape would come home during the holidays. She had been dreading spending the school year at Spinner's End alone. The holidays had never brought anything to look forward to. A soft laugh escaped her as she rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling.
In the dark corners of her mind, a presence probed at the delight and caught glimpses of her smile.
Charlotte didn't slam the gate on Severus, but rather let him explore the soft frayed edges of what had once been a carefully organized consciousness, and drifted to sleep to the soft pull of him replaying the smile she had pressed into his pillows, feeling the lull of the firewhiskey and the soft pull of the draught.
There we are for Chapter 10! :) Thank you all for keeping me motivated, and I'm glad you love the story this far.
As always, your reviews make me want to do cartwheels but I'm gravity challenged so I'll just imagine them.
I am in the search of a beta reader for this story, if you have any recommendations please reach out to me via PM, or if you are interested in doing some beta reading yourself. You will have my undying gratitude.
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