This is a stand alone one shot featuring a character in my ongoing fic, "Snape's Not Dead!" and an interaction Severus has with her 13 years before it takes place. Absolutely no context is needed to read this, please enjoy and Merry Christmas :)
"Professor?" Tora called, skipping past the crowd of fleeing students and approaching the front of the potions classroom.
Snape's skinny back bristled. He was cleaning off his chalkboard, one last task before he was free to dissociate through the holidays. He would not be waylaid by Mayfield of all people.
As if torturing him with her sickly sweet disposition for nearly six long years wasn't enough, she had begun using it against him, seeing how much her radiating optimism annoyed him and weaponising it. No matter how much vitriol he sent her way, she never got punishably cross with him. The angrier he got at her, the more defiantly and sardonically cheerful she became. He'd seen her rage at fellow students, even engage in an actual fistfight with a bully once, but when it came to him, nothing he did could break her evil grin. It was a bitter rivalry, one that frustrated the hell out of him.
She approached his desk, clutching her books, parchments, inkwells, and everything else in a heap against her chest, her bag forgotten in the dormitories. Ink was beginning to stain her Hufflepuff crest, but she did not notice, nor would she care if she did.
He slowly turned around with a well rehearsed, withering glare. Now that his acne was finally clearing up, he could stand to look in the mirror again.
"What is it you want?" He scowled down at her. She had a lot of nerve being so short. And so strange. Strange and short. Like a Cornish pixie.
"Can I talk to you for a moment once everyone leaves?" She squeaked ever so sweetly, dropping her voice a bit. Some less frustrating students were dawdling at the back of the class.
He narrowed his eyes, surveying her shrewdly. Quickly determining it must be some kind of trap, he snarled, practically spitting, "No, you absolutely may not."
Tora huffed. "But sir, it's important-"
"I highly doubt it is," he muttered, hunching back to the chalkboard.
She was getting desperate. This was urgent, she'd be going home for the holidays in the morning.
"Would it kill you to not be a prick just this once, Severus?" she cried suddenly, her voice raising. He had a sudden image of her as a banshee; her jerhi curl ringlets as hissing snakes around her freckled face.
Snape grinned to himself in pure glee. There it was at last. He had finally invoked the Angry Tora, and her rage was directed towards him for once. He need not address her highly inappropriate use of his first name. Knowing her temper, there was much more to come.
When he turned back around to revel in this achievement and poke the beast some more, he was disconcerted to find crushing disappointment across her little face, and not the anger he had hoped for.
It felt all wrong.
Tora always made direct, unwavering eye contact, boring him down with her sinister, owl like eyes, but in that moment she was glancing around the floor, glum.
He wavered, suddenly feeling an intense need to let her remain and say whatever annoying thing it was she had to say.
But he stopped himself. He must not show weakness. He must not set that precedent.
His face spasmed though a variety of perplexing expressions as Tora finally looked back up at him. She felt a sort of satisfaction seeing this; she hadn't got what she wanted, but she had tripped his wires, clearly. She began to smile again, smugly sweet. He short-circuited a moment longer, before flushing into an automatic scowl at her renewed cheer, pointing her out of the room.
"Fine then," she called in a blasé tone, already to the door, "It can wait." She grinned mischievously to herself. It could wait, until the evening anyway.
The students in the back of the class watched on in shock, knowing they would be skinned alive had they so much as taken that tone with him, let alone said his first name. It was always like this with Tora, they discussed. And thus, the horrifying "Tora shags Snape" rumour was born, but the subjects would remain blissfully unaware of this tale for quite some time.
Later that night, Snape lay sprawled on his sofa with an unopened bottle of gin, already drowning in the dread of another holiday. He told himself, as he did every year, that he was above such frivolity anyway and had evolved beyond the need for merriment. He repeated these ideas in his head, over and over again like a mantra, as if it could drown out the resounding loneliness of his chambers.
But then Snape heard a hard rap on his door. He groaned. Perhaps he could stay silent and ignore it. He fixed his gaze back to the ceiling and returned to his vacant staring.
But his unwanted guest knocked again. And again. And again. After roughly ten minutes of straight knocking, he rolled off of his sofa and onto the dirty carpet, laying motionless like the corpse he wished he was for a moment before slouching to the door. It would be Albus, most likely.
He stepped into the hall and immediately saw nothing. His mouth twitched, until he saw a stray curl just at the bottom of his vision field. He looked down sharply.
Tora had stalked the dungeon for over an hour, asking just about everything and everyone if they knew where Snape slept. (This did nothing good for the rumour issue). He towered over her, his hair messy and tucked behind his ears, the front of his iconic black robes opened to show the white dress shirt beneath.
"Don't you get hot in that?" She asked brazenly, pointing. His chest swelled as he took a massive breath in. She looked quickly up to his face, his nostrils flaring.
He looked about ready to punt her across the hallway. He blabbered on for a moment about "inappropriate contact" and "highly forbidden" and "worst student ever" etc but she filtered it out, noticing with her typical unblinking gaze that his eyes were bloodshot, and his angular face was a bit puffy.
"Have you been crying?" She squeaked suddenly, interrupting him. He stood completely still, glaring down at her, having trouble keeping anger in his face.
"N-no," he huffed, crossing his arms, "I don't cry."
"Sure you don't, Professor," Tora raised her eyebrows, looking up at him with a genuine pity he highly disliked, "Everybody cries. I cry like twice a week."
"Of course you do," he muttered. Already in a state of emotional arousal, his throat began to swell in a foreshadowing of more tears at the thought of that. He turned his head for a moment, choking down the image of Mayfield expressing anything other than joy or anger.
Anger was a safe emotion. Anger hurt a lot less.
"Why are you wearing that?" He hissed, refocusing his thoughts away from crying teenagers.
Tora looked down. Being the evening and the first night of the holidays, she had been quick to change back to her regular clothes; a pair of jeans and a hand-me-down shirt, big enough that she'd had to tie it in with a waist belt. Very stylish.
"Because I hate robes and they get in my way?" She said slowly, unsure if Snape could even begin to comprehend the concept of casual wear.
He narrowed his eyes at her shirt. He had seen it before on her most unpleasant older brother. He was just as much a mess as his sister, but without the unfettered sunshine that pissed him off so much.
"Anyway, out with it," he sniffed, "before someone notices you're here." (Most of the castle already knew, unfortunately).
"Well," she started, suddenly feeling self conscious.
"Well?" He repeated harshly, "Have you come here just to torment me on my spare time?"
Tora took a deep breath, and looked back up at him, right into his glimmering black irises.
"You know, the lanterns in the dungeon do great for your eyes," she observed, completely off track.
Snape took a slow breath in through his teeth before turning around to slam his door. He could obliviate her, but she'd find his room again anyway. There was no stopping a Mayfield.
"No, stop, wait!" She cried, jumping through his door frame and barring entry to his own quarters.
"Wait," she panted, "My dad told me that people who need love the most ask for it in the most unlovable ways."
Snape blinked, stepping back.
"Wha-?" He murmured, wrinkling his brow.
"Here, all I wanted was to give you your Christmas present," she laughed, pulling a little wrapped box from her satchel and shoving it at his chest with a little smile.
He stared down at it for a moment, stunned. It was a brown paper parcel tied with a green velvet ribbon. He watched, entirely immobilized, as her small hands pressed it harder into his chest.
"Well, take it!" She urged, grinning now. A real, joyful smile; not a trace of challenge, or sarcasm, or smugness. Just a happy little smile.
He took it, and Tora immediately ambushed him with a hug, practically knocking him over. She threw her arms around his stomach and squeezed him as tight as she possibly could, her head barely reaching his chest. He had never been hugged by a student before, but it didn't make him as angry as he'd expected it would. He simply stared down in shock as she twirled him around, dancing him back into his room.
"Merry Christmas," she beamed up at him before letting go, "You humbug fuck!"
She was gone down the hall before he had a moment to process any of it.
Bewildered, he shuffled back inside and waved his door closed behind him, not taking his eyes off the box.
It could have very easily been an explosive or a dungbomb or some other sort of prank, but this didn't even cross his typically pessimistic mind. He unwrapped it immediately, and found a little handmade clay cauldron the size of his hand. It was painted black, and filled with green glitter glue. He held it up to the light, looking into the glittering translucent "potion", feeling stirrings of emotions he didn't think he was capable of feeling anymore.
Suspended inside the glitter glue center was a tiny note, written with what appeared to be a muggle pencil; "Merry Christmas Professor Snape".
There was a little string loop attached, clearly to put on a tree. With his absence of family, or even really friends, Christmas trees did nothing but depress him. He sat back on his couch, holding this most curious object in his hands for the rest of the evening.
Eventually, he clamoured up on top of his reading chair and found a way to suspend it from the ceiling, in a spot that was visible from any point in the room.
"A gift from a student," he bragged later, showing it off smugly to the few coworkers who bothered to stop by his quarters that Hogmanay. Professors often got little gifts, but noticing this was evidently the only one he'd ever received, his coworkers all opted not to burst his bubble.
As proud as he was of his one and only present, he had no idea how he could ever face his Arch Nemesis again. When class was back in session, Tora made this cognitive dissonance easy for him by continuing her path of fiery defiance as if nothing had ever happened. But his vitriol had a softer edge to it now, one he wasn't even conscious of. She still annoyed him to the bone, very intentionally, but what would get another student a week of detention in the forbidden forest would get Tora ten points from Hufflepuff, if anything other than a biting remark and a scowl.
This fed the ghastly rumor that the two were entwined in some sort of dysfunctional romance, and as much as it disturbed Tora, it was all worth it for the little happy shock she knew she had given him.
As for Snape, no one ever informed him of his supposed illicit affair with Tora. That is, not for another 13 years anyway...
Thank you for reading! This sitch will be brought back up again "Snape's Not Dead!" but I hope you enjoyed this little advanced screening :)
Happy happy holiday season everyone! Bless you and yours, and prayers for your health to any deity of your choosing :)