Author's Note: Okay so 6 years ago I wrote an Ariel/ Snape fanfic that was so bad that when I reread it this year I vowed to not only delete that shit out of existence but rewrite the whole thing because frankly Movie Snape and Post-The-Little-Mermaid Ariel are my OTP and they deserve a better story.
Chapter One: Miserably Me
It was twenty minutes after midnight and already a shit day for Snape. Then again, it was just another shit day in a shit year amongst a shitty lifetime.
Insomnia came yet again and he did what he usually did to combat that terrible beast: masturbated, and when that failed, he went on a long stroll.
Hogwarts, despites its beauty at nights, felt more like a catacomb lately. A catacomb that rarely offered peace of sleep but instead waves after wave of disappointment, miseries and some of the dumbest young people on the face of the Earth.
He thought the way most people who chase a dream believe, that his ascent from Potion's Masters to his dream of being a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor would solve everything. He thought it meant he would finally be happy and that happiness would cure everything else—the depression, the self-loathing, insomnia. He dared to think that accomplishing his life-long goal would turn everything else in his life around but sadly, he discovered less than a week after the school year started, that his stupid brain didn't care if he had the dream job or that he wasn't in Azkaban or homeless. It didn't care that he was the youngest potion's masters of the school's history or that he had earned Dumbledore's trust or that he had several talents and skills acquired through a lifetime of studying and discipline. It was why, on this day, twenty minutes after midnight, that Snape finally had the epiphany that just because you land the dream job, get the dream salary, get the coveted office (away from the dungeons and the draft and the muffled but undrownable sounds of his horny students' squeaky beds from above)—none of that meant anything if he still had to deal with himself. Even a prick like Snape could recognize just how much of prick he was which only served to make him pray for Death to come already and snuff out his rotten waste of a life.
Only then, he thought to himself bitterly as he made his way alongside the breezy lakeside of Hogwarts, will I finally be—
But his internal monologue was interrupted by the sound of music.
He thought it was a songbird at first, some lonely creature calling out for its mate or to its family until he stopped walking long enough to listen. As he stood there, the singing grew louder and more lovely and recognizably human. The moment he realized it was a woman's voice singing did his black-shoed feet carry him towards the heavenly noise, further along, the perimeter of the lake. He hit a bank of tall reeds and pussy-willows before a nagging voice in his head warned him, you know there is only one creature who can lure people to the waters with such a sound. And they're always waiting for men like you to—
I don't care, said a second voice as he combed through the tall reeds, his feet treading on squishy mud as he pulled himself closer to the body of water. Let it be the last thing I ever hear.
It was then, under a half-moon's light, that he found the source of the singing. There, on the edge of the lake, sat a siren with her tail still in the water as it gently swished back and forth against the surface. She had her back to him so all he saw, in the brief seconds before she turned around to acknowledge him, was the long drape of red hair flowing from her head. She played with a lock of it, twisting it between her fingers, as she serenaded the moon which gleamed down on her appreciatively.
For a moment, he stood there, listening, his mind blank of all thought, his face slack from enchantment as he indulged himself with her singing.
Then she turned around and revealed the loveliest face and the prettiest smile which she delivered onto him, welcomingly. His face went cold with fear.
"Hello," she said her voice so smooth and sweet one would have believed she was made entirely of whipped cream.
"Hello." He greeted half dazed. Then he cleared his throat. "I don't know if you realize this…um—"
"Ariel."
"Ariel." It came out of him like a summer breeze. She gave him a small smile when it passed his lips and he had to avert his gaze to the top of her head, so that he wouldn't get tongue-tied looking into her eyes, to tell her, "But you are on Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry property. And as a teacher here, I must inform you that for the safety of our students, anybody that isn't authorized to be on school property, must leave. So…please leave."
He punctuated the speech with a small plea because he found himself unhinged under her warm smile and her big blue eyes which he feared would undo him entirely if he were to spend another second being looked at by her.
"You're a teacher here?" She asked, lifting herself then turning her body to face him so that only the tip of her tail remained in the lake.
"I am."
"Which subject?"
"Defense Against the Dark Arts."
She looked to the ground and said, "shit." She turned to her right and began rummaging through a red cloth bag which was teeming with magazines. "I was hoping you were the man I was looking for."
Yet another woman disappointed in me for being something I'm not, he thought sadly as he watched her pull out a waterlogged copy of 'POTIONS HEADS MONTHLY' and begin flipping through the pages.
"Y-you scribe to Potions Heads Monthly?" He asked.
"It's my favorite magazine." She explained off-handedly as she kept flipping through the pages trying to find what she was looking for. Then she paused her perusing long enough to lift her head and tell him excitedly, "I even got to contribute to one of their issues." She let out a giddy squeal, adding, "I still can't believe they published one of my potions."
"Which one was yours?" He asked, impressed for it was no small feat to get a recipe published in that magazine (he must have submitted fifty times before they accepted any of his ideas).
"It was in the August issue. It was the 'Poly-vox Potion'."
"Oh yes! I remember Two tablespoons of sperm whale sperm mixed with the phlegm of a Finfolk—"
"One strand of hair from you and whoever you're trying to sound like—" Ariel went on.
"Boil for an hour, stir regularly until it turns blue and add a pinch of cinnamon for taste!" They recounted simultaneously before they burst into laughter.
"Yes, I remember that potion!" Snape said as a rare smile loosened from his thin lips. "Well, this is a treat. I've never met a fan of that publication in person before."
"Well, I got an even bigger treat for you," Ariel said. "Because I happen to know for a fact that one of this magazine's editors works with you."
"Who?" Snape asked confused.
"Professor…" She started slowly as she read from the magazine. "Serve-us Snap?"
"Severus Snape." He corrected with a charmed smile of a man who experienced serendipity for the first time in his life.
"Yes, him. Now I know you're only trying to do your job and I respect that, I do, but if I could just speak to this man for a few minutes…" Ariel started but her sentence trailed off as she watched the strange man lowered himself to his knees until his black eyes and her blue eyes were at the same level.
"Hello." He said.
"Hello?"
He held out his hand for her. "My name's Severus Snape."
"I'm Ariel no last name because mermaids don't have last names." She said, her eyebrow quirked with suspicion even as she slid her hand into his and gave it a cursory shake. "I thought you said you taught defense against the whatever arts."
"I do. But up until last week, I was, in fact, Severus Snape, Potions Master and guest editor/ contributor to Potions Heads Monthly."
"Why don't you teach potions anymore?"
"I was promoted."
"Oh." It came out in a soft breath of a moan. Then she gave him an intrigued smile that could have chipped an iceberg. "A man of more than one passion, I see."
"More like a man of few interests outside the stony walls of academia." He scoffed, slightly embarrassed by her generous smiles. "Um, so, you swam all night just to see me?"
"I did." She scooted closer to him. He tensed, afraid that the closer she would get, the closer he would be to coming undone but didn't move away. "It seems me and you have a couple of things in common."
"Oh?"
"Yes. We're both potions geeks. We're both for the criminalization of the Amoretia and the legalization of the abortion potion." Ariel said. "It makes no sense why the ministry is okay with teaching witches how to make a date-rape potion but throws a conniption any time you try to teach young people how to create their birth control."
"It's mind-numbingly asinine." He agreed.
"And, as it turns out, we are both of the same minds," She continued dropping an open issue onto his lap with the pages flipped to an article that he wrote titled, 'The Exorbitant Cost of Unhappiness: How The Potions Industry Profits From Lack of Mental Health Resources in the Magical Community', "That mental health potions should be low cost and free to all."
He read the headline and felt a wave of pride he hadn't felt in a long-time wave over him. Written however many months ago, when he was back at Spinner's End and he was thinking of his mother and how her depression had robbed her of life and how she spent all those years chugging elixirs, hoping it would undo what years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of his father and grandfather when she needed much more. He wrote it in a night and submitted it when he was day-tipsy and had nearly forgotten about its existence until now.
"I forgot about this article." He said, his voice barely louder than a whisper as emotion bubbled up from within. He lifted his head and found her eyes on him. The mere flicker of her eyelashes sent his butterflies into his stomach and blood to his dick and he had to push away thoughts of her moaning his name as he cleared his throat and said, in his normal voice, "I'm glad my words positively resonated with you."
"I'm glad too because once I read that article I was hooked—pun intended—on all your articles. Any time I saw your name was in the table of contents, I'd read yours first. I don't know if you remember this but I wrote a letter to the editor about your last article." Ariel quickly tore through her tote bag until she found the issue, she needed which was bookmarked and flipped open to yet another article of his immediately. She pointed past the article to a little segment titled Letters to the Editor where A from Ocean City, UK wrote: 'In regards to Traumatic Limbs Regeneration in Non-Wizarding Folks, is it feasible for a those of the aquatic magical community, ie mermaids sirens finfolks, etc, who lost her lower half to regenerate human legs? If so, do you think they would the procedure survive and do you think it be astronomically expensive?' Snape's reply followed: 'Yes. It would be expensive and time-consuming but I think any competent potionteer would be able to pull off restoring human legs on any species.'
Ariel waited for him to read her letter to the editor and from him to realize why she swam all this way to see someone like him. His head lifted to find her hopeful eyes pinned to him.
"Do you still think it's possible, Professor Severus?"
His heart froze then burned at the use of his name which rolled over of her tongue effortlessly.
"I do." He said in a measured tone. "But, if I might ask, why are you asking me such a thing?"
He gestured to her in-tact tail. She glanced at it her eyelids heavy the moment they landed on scaly appendage which curled towards them, away from the water, the paper-thin webbing of her dorsal fin shimmered against the pale moonlight. She turned herself until all of herself was out of the water and her tail hovered before Snape.
"You can touch it if you want." She said sadly, noticing the unmistakable awe in his eyes.
Snape glanced at her uncertainly but then a voice in his head told him when are you ever going to get this close to a siren again and his hand shot out to her tail. As he ran it up and down a small patch of scales, he was dismayed by how rough and cold the tail felt against his palm. It reminded him of a wet brick wall.
"Wow," he breathed out in amazement eyes locked on her tail.
"Yeah. Wow." She said sarcastically as she let her tail rest in the patch of unclaimed earth. Her eyes were narrowed and her posture was hunched as she continued, "I hate that tail more than I hate my enemies combined. And I have a lot of those."
"Another thing we have in common," he murmured. "I meant about having a lot of enemies, not about having a tail. Obviously."
"Obviously." She whispered back absentmindedly as her hands rifled through her long bright red hair with new nervous energy. "Sorry. I didn't mean. I can be a sarcastic asshole sometimes."
Snape smirked. "Likewise."
Ariel let out a dejected sigh then told him, her voice rife with emotion, "I can't stand looking at it." She punctuated her sentence by punching her tail. "Every day, it mocks me. Every day, I beg and plea and pray that one day I'll wake up and it'll be gone. Just so I can go out and make my limb regeneration potion, get some legs, live on land, be apart of this magical world at last. And every day, I wake up heartbroken because it's still there. And I'm still…"
"Trapped?"
She nodded; her pinkened face bowed into her hands as a rush of tears came over her. Snape dropped his gaze, wanting to comfort her but too awkward to do anything. Thankfully Ariel regained her composure within seconds and was able to squeegee her tears with her fingers before she continued, in-between sniffles, "That's why I came here. I was hoping you could surgically remove my tail and feed me limb regeneration potion." She went into her bag again and pulled out, to his dismay, a sparkling pearl-and-sapphire encrusted tiara from her modest bag and extended the treasure to him. "I'm willing to pay you handsomely."
Snape took the crown and studied it. It felt real enough and everything about the crown, from its intricate design to the loud rippling waves captured in the center-most sapphire of the crown, told him it had to belong to mermaid royalty.
"Last time I got it appraised they told me it is priceless but you could easily sell it to the Museum of Magical History and get two hundred million for it."
"Where did you get it?" Snape asked.
"It's mine." She replied. When Snape gave her a disbelieving look, she reiterated. "It is! Look I can prove it." She took the crown back and set it on her head where the moment it rested against her forehead a Jamaican accented voice projected from the center-most sapphire.
"This tiara belongs to Princess Ariel, the seventh daughter of King Triton and Queen Athena. So, don't even think about it stealing this, bumboclaats!"
Ariel pointed at her crown which shot out little balls of confetti and light while steel drums rang out a cheerful tune. "See?"
Snape knelt there in silence barely able to conceal his shock. "You're a princess?"
"I was a princess." Ariel corrected, taking the crown from her head. "But then I turned sixteen and I was so desperate to be a human that I sold my soul, got married to the first guy I met, was promptly cheated on by said man—"
"Ooh."
"Oh, it gets worst. We were still on the boat to go on our honeymoon when I found him in bed with another. So, I murdered him in a jealous rage, wrecked the boat, went back home, got disowned for leaving the ocean and spent the last couple decades just drifting around being depressed and taking up potions in my spare time." Ariel explained. "So, yeah. I'm nothing now. Just a depressed asshole hoping against hope that maybe someone can help me hate myself a little less."
A silence drifted between them. Their eyes veering away from the other, too embarrassed by their impotence and self-loathing to be able to offer assurances. Until, Snape broke the quiet by asking, "Do you want to be a human?"
Ariel looked at him, her eyes moving slowly over his impassive face before she settled on a reply, "More than anything."
"May I ask, why?"
Ariel chuckled. "Have you lived under the sea? It fucking sucks. It's cold. I'm never warm. You're always getting chased by something that wants to eat you or fuck you or just plain kill you. You have no idea how easy it is to accidentally swim into a predator's mouth. And—it's never been home to me. I never felt at home when I was in the ocean. Even when I was with my family. But those few days I spent on land…those was the happiest days of my life. I felt like—like myself when I was on land. And I would give anything just to be happy with myself like that again. Even for a second."
She dropped her gaze to her tail, which twitched mindlessly in the mud, then raised it back to Snape who had slipped into a silence she couldn't read.
"So, will you help me?"
Snape looked at her tail then looked her in the eye and said slowly, "I'm afraid to say I don't think potions can fix this problem for you. Frankly, even with your wealth, it would be very time-consuming to create one potion let alone create enough potions to sustain you for the rest of your life."
Ariel sighed, disappointed but unsurprised. "Well, thanks for your honesty, Professor Severus." She started to turn, to dive back into the lake and swim away when Snape's hand tapped her lightly on the upper arm.
"I do think however that a powerful enough Glamour Charm would suffice in giving you legs."
Ariel stared at him, overcome by a multitude of emotions. "Really?" She choked out.
"Yes."
"H-how fast can you…?"
"Tonight, right now." He said wand in hand knees plunged into the mud. He was about to reach into his pocket for his wand when a thought crossed his mind and he stopped himself to unbutton his cloak and laid the cloth down on the wet ground. He gestured for Ariel to lie on it which she did and then he took his wand out and said, "Okay. I must warn you this is going to sting for a bit."
Ariel laughed. "You're sweet but I lost my virginity to a swordfish. Trust me, nothing hurts me."
Snape's lips twitched upward before he held out both hands, hovered them above her tail as his mind locked and eyes locked onto the task in hand and began to recite words from a dead language.
Pain exploded within her like a grenade as her tail uncurled and stiffened. A yellowish glow surrounded her as the sound of something being ripped tore through the air. She gnashed her teeth while agony sluiced through her bones. Wind from the Forbidden Forest roared as Snape continued to mutter out the words he needed for the spell, his unblinking eyes never leaving the tail which slowly split down her middle and eventually—with a horrible RIP—separated into two.
Ariel clawed at the dirt underneath her as she held back the visceral urge to screech at the heavens. Her body pulsated with fresh agony while the two halves of her tail contorted, turning from dark green into a fleshy white, the scales the gills disappearing and transforming into new muscles and fat.
The searing pain was replaced with a burning pain which was replaced by a dull pain and eventually was replaced by the relieving absence of pain. She picked up her woozy, sweat-covered head to find Snape staring at her lower half, looking mesmerized. She lifted herself onto her elbows and when she looked down to see the dreadful tail was gone, replaced by two bare legs, she sobbed from joy.