Chapter 28

Natasha was furious. So, as you can imagine, the fight that broke out on the night of the dance, unfortunately wasn't the last. She'd been using trip jinxes on Lexie for the remainder of the weekend, pretty much every time Lexie wasn't looking.

Lexie was nearly at the end of her rope by Sunday night at dinner. The situation didn't improve as the holiday break approached. Things escalated until they reached the point of absolute chaos by around midweek. Lexie woke on Wednesday morning, late because her alarm clock was suspiciously missing… only to find large chunks of her hair missing and strewn all over her black sheets. Her robes and school attire were crumpled on the floor and covered in muddy shoe prints. Her shampoo had been replaced with marmalade, her toothpaste with some sticky black substance which, weeks later she still couldn't figure out what it was. The heel of one of her shoes was missing and both had no shoelaces.

Lexie used a cleansing spell to remove most of the marmalade from her uneven hair. She could fix the length later… She had to swap brushing her teeth with a piece of Eclipse; Muggle chewing gum. The muddy footprints came mostly off with a cleansing spell. However, Lexie had never mastered the flattening charm which worked like an iron to remove wrinkles. So she had to go to class looking quite rumpled and disheveled indeed.

But the worst part wasn't the stares or the poorly stifled laughs of the students, it was Natasha's smugness. There was absolutely nothing Lexie could do about this. Fight back, and she'd land herself in trouble with the law. Tell a teacher and she'd draw attention to herself in the eyes of the professors and the students; besides, it would be weak and immature to 'tattle'. There was nothing left to do but suffer through it until Natasha got tired of Lexie's apparent obliviousness or until someone took pity on her and put Natasha in her place.

Lexie stumped into Potions on Wednesday (which incidentally was the night she would begin her weeks worth of detentions) and flopped down in her seat. Snape was at his desk and did not initially look up when she entered the room. He was, as always shuffling papers on his desk and closing his grade book.

There was a moment before class began, where, standing up from his desk, Snape caught sight of Lexie. He had quite a bit of trouble stifling a fit of laughter. Now, you may be thinking that it would be difficult to see Snape in a 'fit of laughter'… and you'd be right. However, if you could've seen Lexie, with her choppy, clumpy hairdo, crumpled robes and heel-less shoe with missing laces, you would've laughed too, no matter how serious you are on a daily basis.

Snape tried several times to start the lesson he'd planned with no success. He simply couldn't look in Lexie's direction and keep a straight face. She seemed to have picked up on this as he opened his mouth for the third time, shut it, then paced back in the other direction. She stared unblinkingly at him with a straight face until he finally threw in the towel. He waved his hand at the board and the instructions for Friday's lesson appeared.

One Gryffindor know-it-all put up her hand and complained that they hadn't heard his lecture on that particular potion yet. She continued to complain about not being able to properly brew the potion until Snape snapped.

"Thank you Miss Pinter… that will be quite enough out of you. You will brew the potion on the board and stop your incessant whining." He said, staring down at his notes, averting Lexie's eyes.

When class finally let out, all the students packed up their bags and filed out, but Lexie remained rooted to her seat.

Snape began to shake silently.

"What are you laughing at?" Lexie asked acerbically.

Snape sucked in a breath of air and laughed out loud now. He closed his eyes and truly laughed. One of the only times Lexie had actually seen a smile on his face since she'd met him. He waved his hand at the door and it shut, then clicked as the wards reset themselves. He was leaned back in his chair, his head dropped down over the back of the chair slightly with his hands on his stomach.

As angry as she was with him for finding this amusing, it was music to her ears to hear him laugh. It was such a wonderful, strange sound… and she loved it.

He got control a few minutes later. Lexie was sure that she could see his eyes watering as he continued to chuckle lowly.

"Are you done?" her tone was still bitter. It was so annoying to have an authority figure laughing at her.

But at this he began chuckling again.

"This is not funny." She said seriously.

"Forgive me Miss Bane, but I think it's terribly funny." He said honestly.

"I suppose you would find it funny, wouldn't you? Getting a laugh at someone else's expense… imagine that?" Lexie crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, pouting and not looking at him.

"What happened to you?" he asked sitting up straight.

"Do you really not know?" she replied.

"Ah… the lovely Miss Zaizen." He nodded.

"Mm…" Lexie agreed sardonically.

"Come here." Snape said in an almost kind voice.

Lexie raised an eyebrow.

"Come over here." He said pointing at the floor in front of him.

Lexie got up and walked as gracefully as she could manage in her one heel-less shoe. She didn't succeed in looking graceful at all. Snape suppressed a smile. She came around his desk and right in front of him. She actually had to slink back to duck behind his knees. She sat down on the edge of his desk between his knees.

Snape felt a sudden thrill at the thought of this position. He leaned back. She was still wearing her school attire. The skirt was shorter than some of the girls' was. He imagined it was because she was too tall for her waist size. She was probably 5'5" but her frame was quite small. "But not in a bad way," he thought. She was fit. And… come to think of it, he could have probably leaned back a bit further and seen further up her skirt. But he tried to master this urge and concentrated instead on her fair face.

"Let's see if we can't fix this mess." He said, lifting his wand. With the first swish, he corrected her hair. He made it long in the places where it was short, then shiny and clean all over where the marmalade had made it sticky. That was a huge improvement. He also straightened it while he was at it. He preferred it straight and smooth. It just made her look more mature, and something inside of him couldn't help but wish that she was a bit older.

He then fixed her robes which were open in the front, exposing her rumpled white shirt and green and silver tie. He shook his head as he effortlessly performed the charm that flattened them out. He made quick work out of fixing her shoes and finally she looked like herself again.

"Thanks." She said softly, looking deep into his black eyes.

He nodded in response.

"I can't keep doing this though… I don't want to keep waking up to find myself missing chunks of my hair…" she said seriously.

Snape thought for a moment. "I think I have just the thing. But it'll take me a day or two to line it up. Can you survive until the weekend?" he asked in a mock-sympathetic voice.

Lexie made her eyes look upward, pretending to be deep in thought. "Well…" she said thoughtfully. "I guess so." She said smiling. "But tell me what it is!" she said, beginning to get excited. She wondered what Snape had up his sleeve.

"No, no… this will be a surprise." He said smirking.

"Ahh…" Lexie groaned, sliding down off of the desk and landing square between his thighs. He nearly drew back at the new found closeness.

She clapped her hands down on his legs, just above his knees for just a second while she said, "Well, I should go. What time should I be here for detention tonight?" she said the word 'detention' using her fingers to make quotation marks.

"Seven." He said simply as she detached herself from him.

"Looking forward to it…" she said as she started toward the door. She stopped in the doorway to look at him. He was sitting in the same way with his hands folded over his stomach. She smiled and left.

As soon as she was gone, Snape ran his hand over his face and let it come to rest covering his mouth. He took a deep breath and tried to master his emotions. Was that what these were? Emotions?

He shook off the thought. It was nearly time for dinner. And they would have a long night ahead of them in detention. He got up, pushed in his chair and headed to the great hall.