It was Wednesday afternoon, right after Evelyn's classes finished, that she walked in on a commotion in her room.
"This is the last try! If this charm doesn't work, I swear I will burn this whole room down!" came the angry voice of Lucinda.
"What are you doing?" asked Evelyn as she opened the door to see Lucinda pointing her wand at a parcel lying on Evelyn's bed, while Emma was trying to hold her back from behind, and Bonnie took hiding behind a pillow on her bed.
"Evie, it's here!" shouted Bonnie excitedly when she saw the girl open the door.
Evelyn dropped her bag next to her wardrobe and went to look at the parcel. At first sight, it looked like an ordinary parcel; a medium-sized box wrapped in paper and tied with a string of yarn. On the packaging was her name and Hogwarts address as well as several stamps, among which the words classified and for your eyes only shined in red letters. However, as she inspected the package, the yarn was full of difficult knots, making it impossible to cut through it.
"You didn't try to open it by any chance, did you?" she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
"Noooo..."
"Yes..."
"Maybe?"
Evelyn just rolled her eyes as she raised the package for her friends to see. "Can't you read? It says classified and for your eyes only, which means that only the receiver can open it," she explained as she untied the main knot.
As she opened the package, the girls gathered around her, eager to catch a glimpse of the document.
"Is that it?" asked Lucinda disappointed.
"Just... Plain paper?" added Emma, confused as she took a piece of paper to examine it.
"Of course not. Watch and learn," said Evelyn, taking back the paper from her friend.
The moment she touched the paper, the golden ink appeared.
"So cool…" came the amazed voices of her friends, and the girls slowly went through the document.
For Severus Snape, it was like any other Thursday. He woke up to Evan Rosier banging on the bathroom door, shouting at Avery for being slow.
"For Merlin's sake, just use a spell!" groaned Regulus Black from his bed.
"If there was one, I would! It requires time and touch to get my hair to look glorious! Now stop hogging the bathroom!"
"Look, we all know that you've got a couple of mirrors hidden in your trunk. Just get one and use it!" mumbled Mulciber from the bed.
"And reveal my techniques? Not a chance!"
"Avery, if you don't come out in five minutes, I am going to hex you myself!" shouted an enraged Regulus Black as he got out of his bed.
After they all made themselves presentable, Severus was walking to the Great Hall with his roommates.
"This is absurd! Why do I have to wake up early for breakfast when my first lesson starts at ten o'clock? I could be sleeping right now," mumbled Regulus.
"Well, unlike us, you can still return to bed afterwards. We have Transfiguration with the Hufflepuffs..." sighed Severus.
"Hah, I guess you would like it better if it was with the Gryffindors," smirked Regulus, and Severus just shot him a glare.
"What was that?" asked Rosier as he looked over his shoulder at the two of them.
"Nothing, I was just telling Severus, how boring it must be to have Transfiguration with the Hufflepuffs," said Regulus.
"Oh, in a way, it's better than the classes with the Gryffindors," sneered Rosier.
"Yeah, they are so annoying, constantly trying to be the centre of attention. I wonder what happens if they are not in the spotlight for a minute. You think they might show withdrawal symptoms?" laughed Avery.
"For sure. If there was a class where she didn't get called on by the teacher, I imagine Evans' head would blow-off," said Mulciber and the boys laughed, while Severus just frowned.
"Yeah, not to say that there is also Potter and his mates. Honestly, if I didn't know for a fact that both Potter and Black are from a noble family, I would have never guessed. They bring shame on all of us," mumbled Rosier.
"Tell me about it…" mumbled Avery, "remember when they sabotaged my potion and I had to spend a week in the hospital wing because my face and hands were covered with weird blisters? That was the worst week of my life…"
"Maybe we should teach them a lesson. Give them a taste of their own medicine..." smirked Avery.
"Let us wait until they do something," ended the discussion Rosier.
As the boys arrived in the Great Hall, Severus saw his childhood friend, Lily Evans, sitting with her friends at the Gryffindor table. When she saw him, she gave him a smile and a small wave, making his heart skip a beat. Trying to fight the blush coming to his face, he just nodded back.
The boys were enjoying breakfast when Avery poked Mulciber.
"Oh, look, the bad girls' club is here," he snickered.
Soon enough a group of Slytherin girls entered the Great Hall chatting with each other. They were jokingly referred to as the bad girls' club since they were a group of girls who were not afraid to get dirty, not to say that the school was full of many different rumours surrounding them.
According to the rumours, Emma Vanity, who was the Quidditch captain and was known for being merciless when it came to Quidditch or her friends, only got her position because her father was a quidditch referee and the last captain wanted to get on his good side. Otherwise, why would he make a third-year girl the captain, when she only played quidditch for such a short time? The rumours about her went from the last captain trying to win her father's favour to her father sending him treats and saying that if he doesn't make her a captain, his career would be over even before it started.
The second most popular was Lucinda Talkalot, whose name, in Snape's opinion, was quite fitting as she was the chatterbox of the group. She was also the loudest and the crudest of them all. It was evident that unlike their housemates she was not from a wealthy household, in fact judging by her speech and actions Snape determined that her family had to be working class, which made him feel a little better about his own background. While her speech has improved, Snape suspected that the other girls had something to do with that, she couldn't shake her social background, but unlike Snape, who never talked about his home, she wore it on her sleeves and was always ready to throw hands if someone made fun of her because of it. Even though she was difficult to get along with, it seemed that by some miracle she has made some friends and after her third year; it seemed that she has become popular among boys too. Severus couldn't even count how many rumours he had heard about her. The older boys talked fondly of her and their 'adventures', while there were many girls who said the opposite. Since Snape had never talked to her, he didn't really care about the rumours surrounding her.
The last two members were the ones who were probably sorted in the wrong house.
Bonnie Travers seemed to be the softest member of the group, always looking out for everyone and providing them with advice and tips. Interestingly, there were no rumours about her.
On the other hand, Evelyn Williams was a perfect Ravenclaw with her head in the books, always writing in her notebooks. There were times when they have seen each other in the library, they politely nodded at each other and worked separately on their things, but when he caught a glimpse of what she was reading he was shocked as the books appeared to be on advanced magic, history, potions and herbology. Snape was impressed until he reminded himself that she not only came from a purely magical family but also from a noble family, which means that she probably had tutors and whatnot.
Even though she seemed to be alright, there were rumours about her being involved in dark magic, so maybe that's why she was sorted into Slytherin. Of course, there was also what the others referred to as The Incident with the Muggleborn Slytherin. He didn't know much about that other than there was a muggle-born witch, who shared a room with the girls and who, at the end of their first year, decided to leave the school. It was unusual and given the background of Evelyn's family, there were rumours about her cursing her and torturing her until she decided to leave. Some even said that she had been murdered, because she just suddenly disappeared two weeks before the exams. It was not like he knew the girl and he didn't really care about the rumours, as he considered her to be quite talented and intelligent.
"Mate, you should ask her out," said Avery to Rosier, whose eyes were fixed on Vanity.
"What? No! Why would I do that? We are... friends," said Rosier awkwardly, as his head turned back to his table and took a sip of his tea.
"Right. Friends..."
"Really."
"If you say so..." said Avery with a smirk, and the boys returned to their meal.
"They are staring at us again," said Regulus after a while.
"They have been for the past two days. I wonder what it is about," said Mulciber.
"Maybe they are talking about how handsome we are! And you know, girl stuff," said Rosier as he shot a smirk to Emma Vanity, who blushed and looked away.
She said something to her friends, and they laughed.
"It must be about Regulus," said Severus and the boys looked at him in confusion. "He is the newest member of the Quidditch team and Vanity is set on helping him. I wouldn't be surprised if she got her friends involved," he explained.
"Makes sense," said Avery.
After breakfast, the boys walked to the transfiguration classroom, where they waited for the lesson to begin. Soon professor McGonagall walked in and the lesson started.
"Today, we will begin our discussion of the second sub-branch of transfiguration: switching. It is going to be mainly a theoretical lesson. First, I will give you a general overview of switching and what spells fall into this category, then we will compare and contrast it with the general transfigurations you have been studying for the last three years." She said sternly, and the students groaned
"Please kill me now," whispered Lucinda Talkalot and Severus found himself mentally agreeing with her.
After the lesson finally ended, the students hurried out of the classroom.
"Good luck," whispered the girls, and they gave Evelyn thumbs-ups before they left, leaving Evelyn in the corridor to wait for a certain Slytherin boy.
'Now or never. Remember what Father taught you...' thought Evelyn as she thought about ways to approach him.
She stayed up pretty late, and she came up with thousands of plans. However, now, as she stood here now with butterflies in her stomach, she once again questioned this plan of theirs.
'I can still turn back…'
'No, I went through all that trouble. I got this! I'm good. He will agree and I will be able to continue my research in peace. Big breath! I'm a strong young woman, the Williams heir, I can do everything I set my mind on! Yeah… no worries…'
As soon as she saw him leaving with his friends, she did what she did the best; pretended to be someone she is not. After she got into the character, she walked up to them with a charming smile on her face.
"Excuse me, may I have a word with Severus?" she asked, and the boys just looked at her, confused.
"Certainly," said Rosier as he smirked and sent a wink to the confused Severus before dragging his friends away.
Evelyn watched them leave and turned to Severus.
"I need to talk to you, but it's something private. Please, follow me," she said, and Snape followed her into an empty classroom.
"So, what do you want from me?" asked Severus with a raised eyebrow as he saw Evelyn locking the door and casting a silencing spell.
"I will get there. Please, take a seat," she said with a smile.
"I would rather stand."
"Trust me, we are going to be here for a while..."
Snape just rolled his eyes as he sat down, "So, what is it?"
"Oh, Severus, it's not what I want, but what WE want," smirked Evelyn as she leaned to the teacher's desk and crossed her arms in front of her, "I have a proposal for you. One that could change your life." said Evelyn, as she reached into her bag, took out a bundle of papers and placed them on the table in front of Severus.
"The relationship agreement? What is this about?" asked Severus, confused.
"As the name says, it's an agreement between two parties – "
"This agreement ("Agreement") establishes an exclusive romantic relationship ("Relationship") between the following undersigned parties. What the-? Is this a prank?" asked Severus angrily as he stood up.
"Do you honestly believe that I have spare time to waste on such nonsense?! This is a legal document. Here, you can see the stamps and the signatures of my lawyer," said Evelyn, frustrated as she showed him the papers containing the legal signature of her lawyer and Severus paled.
"But... What? Why? And why me?" he asked sternly, and Evelyn just sighed.
"Honestly, you are probably the only male student in Hogwarts who I could tolerate. You seem to be the quiet, brooding type, and I need someone who appreciates his time alone. You are also smart enough to know that if you try to pull something I will destroy you," she said menacingly as she leaned closer to Severus, "I need you to treat it as a business deal; pose as my boyfriend until the end of the seventh year, or until decided otherwise and you may use the perks that come with having me as your girlfriend," finished Evelyn with a smirk.
"What kind of perks?" asked Severus intrigued as he sat down.
"Oh dear, you do not only get a nice arm candy for social occasions," said Evelyn as she smiled and put her right hand on her hip, "but my family is quite well off, so we could not only sponsor you later on but also help with making connections. Maybe even get back an heirloom or two. Name it and I will help you make it yours," said Evelyn with a smirk.
After giving it a thought Severus asked: "Is this because of Black?"
Now, this was something Evelyn didn't want to talk about. Her father would always say, 'You have to be confident when you are doing business. Or at least pretend to be…' however, when it came to emotions, Evelyn was lost. How is she going to play it confidently when she had no idea what made her do that?
With a sigh, she made her decision, to be honest rather than play a role as she answered: "To be completely honest, it has been on my mind for a while now. You may know that I like to research things, however, recently I had difficulty with one of my research and I believe the boys hitting on me are the ones to blame. Bonnie's slip of the tongue only hurried up the process."
"So, you are blaming them for your own incompetence?"
"My own - ? What? No! Just... Don't worry about that! It has nothing to do with you! The only thing that concerns you is that proposal! You may take that copy, as it is yours. Take a look at it, go through it with your lawyer, or chose someone to be your advisor. You may add your own terms and we will go through it later."
"Did it ever occur to you that I don't want to be part of this... this thing!" said Snape as he motioned to the papers on the desk and Evelyn frowned.
"If you refuse, you are the biggest fool in this school, and I will personally make sure that it would be the worst choice of your life." said Evelyn darkly, before she smiled, "I expect to hear from you ten to fourteen days from today. I believe you know that you have to treat it as a delicate matter..." finished Evelyn and Snape just nodded.
"Well, thank you for your time. I will see you later. If you have any questions, seek me out." She said as she undid the enchantments, "And remember Severus, I can be your greatest ally or your worst enemy. Choose carefully..." she said as she left the classroom.
Severus Snape expected many things when Evelyn Williams asked to talk to him, however, this was nothing he could have ever imagined. He thought back to the scene in the empty classroom as he read through the document in his room. Thankfully, it was empty as Rosier and the boys were outside and Regulus had a class.
He had no idea what to think about this. To say that he was surprised was an understatement. There was some part of him, that still expected it to be some kind of joke. However, Evelyn didn't seem like she was joking. Oh no, it seemed like she had already decided. And Severus hated every minute of it. He felt like a puppet acting, according to Evelyn's plans. Severus was ambitious, yes, but becoming a spoiled pure-blood girl's boy toy was something he didn't know how to feel about.
Yes, she was rich and powerful, but was it worth it? That proposal, with all fifty pages of it, was a bit too much for him.
Also, what about Lily? Sure, they grew apart in recent years, but he had hoped that she will eventually come back to him. What will she say? Will she see right through him?
Severus's wondering was cut short as Regulus entered their dorm.
"Why do they even bother with that class when absolutely no one is paying attention? The history of magic is such an interesting subject! If only we had a better teacher!" mumbled the boy angrily as he threw his bag on the floor near his bed, "What are you doing?" he asked Severus as he saw the stack of papers he was studying.
"Nothing of importance," said Severus, as he put down the paper in his hand, "Say, Regulus, what do you know about the Williams family?" he asked awkwardly, and Regulus just raised an eyebrow.
"The Williams family, or a certain female member of the family?"
"Both."
"Oh, well, the Williams are just like the Malfoys... Ancient, wealthy and powerful. Evelyn's father is a member of the Wizengamot, while he is involved with a couple of businesses; both magical and Muggle. Her mother is a good friend of my mother, and she is in the beauty industry. She is a fashion designer, but her brand focuses on clothes, makeup and perfume. You might have heard of it; girls are crazy about that stuff. And Evelyn... Well, you know her. She is pretty average; she is witty, has an attitude, but otherwise, she is pretty cool." he said, but after some time he added with a sigh, "For some reason, she is on very good terms with my brother… He might have also developed some deeper feelings for her, so he is often around her."
This was another perk that came with dating her. It would piss off Black. The thought itself made Severus smirk.
"Okay, you are creeping me out. Why are you smirking?" asked Regulus.
Severus knew that if he wanted to make the most of this, he would need an advisor.
"Actually, I believe I may be in need of your assistance... I need an advisor," he finished, and Regulus just sighed.
"I hope it's nothing dangerous..." he mumbled as he walked to Severus' bed.
"He is there!" whisper-shouted Bonnie in the Great Hall.
"Calm down, it's only been a day. He probably needs to think this through," said Evelyn, pretending to be interested in the food on her plate, "I mean, I kind of attacked the poor boy with all that information…"
"What is there to think about? He gets to date one of the best girls at Hogwarts! He should feel honoured that you thought of him," said Emma.
"Eh, I don't know. I might have scared him a bit," mumbled Evelyn while she hung her head in shame.
"Good. He needs to know his place," smirked Lucinda.
"Oh my God, he is coming this way!" whispered Bonnie excitedly, and the girls looked up.
"Good morning. I would like to have a few words with you when you are free," said Severus to Evelyn.
"She is free now!" shouted Bonnie, and the girl shot her a look that clearly said shut up.
"I can meet you after classes in the same classroom as before," said Evelyn, and Severus just nodded before he joined his friends at the table.
"So, how can I help you?" asked Evelyn as she entered the classroom after a particularly boring History of Magic lesson.
"I have made my decision."
"Already? Did you think it through? Did you make any additions, or do you have any comments?" asked the surprised Evelyn.
"No. It is a well-written document. I can see that you put a lot of thought into it."
"So? What is your answer?" asked Evelyn.
Even though she tried to keep a straight face, she was anxious. What will he do now? Just roll with it? Refuse and laugh at her? Or try his luck at blackmailing her?
"I accept your proposal," said Severus and Evelyn breathed out of relief.
"Amazing!" she said with a wide smile, and the two of them went over the paperwork.
"Thank you. I believe that this partnership will be quite beneficial for both of us," she said with a smile as she shook Severus' hand.
"I am certain," he said as the two of them shook hands.
While they believed that this was the start of a successful partnership, in reality, they had no idea how much it was going to change their life...
