"Ruby, wake up." Susan said shaking my arm. I slowly opened my eyes and blinked the sleep out of my eyes. "You're still wearing your robes. When did you fall asleep?"

I looked down at my body sprawled over the blankets on top of my bed and noticed that I was indeed still fully dressed. I stood up groggily and staggered to my trunk. I took out my pajamas and changed into them. I lost my balance and fell once and just stayed on the floor for the remainder of my clothes change.

I laid back in bed and covered myself. I noticed that Susan was looking at me expectantly.

"What?" I asked sitting up slightly.

Her lips widened with the biggest smile I have ever seen on her. "Guess who has an actual boyfriend now!" She bounced excitedly on her bed.

"He officially asked?" I inquired to be met with an enthusiastic nod of the head from Susan. "Took him long enough."

"We should try to get your Slytherin to ask you out so that we can have double dates the next time we go to Hogsmeade!" Susan squealed.

I smiled. "I'm not sure he's the double date type. He's more…of the keep to himself kind."

"I'll break him of that." Susan said. "Who is he?"

I laughed sleepily. "Nice try, Susan. I'm not telling. Congratulations on the boyfriend. I'll give him the obligatory threat from the best friend tomorrow." I smiled at her and rolled over and was asleep again in a matter of minutes.

After breakfast the next morning Susan and I spent time talking in charms. She was gushing about Mark and how brilliant and amazing and cute and funny he is. I couldn't tell her that I didn't need to hear about the time he accidentally wore two different socks the third time but by the end of class my eye muscles were stiff from resisting the urge to roll my eyes at her.

Snape had his usual sneer during class. It was strange to look around and see the other students stiff with intimidation and even stranger to consider that I had been the same way not long ago. It's funny how calling someone a baby and fixing their arm can make you more comfortable around them. Also spending an evening with them laying in the falling snow.

He spent the class talking about the rarity and different uses of some of the ingredients that would be used in the potion we would be making in our double potions class tomorrow. He seemed very careful not to look in my direction and taught with his usual cold attitude.

Finally in Herbology, my mistletoe had only one bundle of berries because of the overzealous pruning I did when I was distracted the day Snape first gave me detention. It was completely useless but Professor Sprout let me keep it so that I would have something to work on with the rest of my class. I tried to use a spell to grow more bunches of berries but Sprout caught me and said that while it would look better the magic berries were not the same or everyone would just magically create mistletoe and there would be no reason for Herbology.

I spent some time in the library doing some homework before my much anticipated potion making session with Snape before heading down to meet Susan for dinner.

As with Charms it seemed the only topic of conversation was Mark. I really hoped this was like other things she liked where it started out with obsession and eventually mellowed out into a general like of the subject. But for now I was happy I had detention.

"Would you look at the time?" I said over the top of some random observation about the way Mark blew his nose or something. "I have to go to detention."

"Do you?" She asked looking up at the staff table. "Sniv wasn't even at dinner tonight."

I sighed at her new nickname for him. "So?"

"So maybe you don't have to go tonight." She said optimistically. "Maybe he's sick."

"If he is sick then he'll send me away." I pointed out.

"Maybe, maybe not."

"Why would he want me there when he's sick?" I got a strange, I suppose happy, sort of twinge in my stomach at the thought of Severus allowing me to nurse him back to health.

"Maybe he'll make you pick his bogeys out with your wand." Susan suggested. "Or worse, with your hands!"

"Why would he do that?" I asked annoyed.

"I don't know maybe he uses them in potions or maybe he eats them." Susan gasped deeply. "What if he makes you eat them?"

I stood up from the table. "You are vile and I am leaving." I turned and started walking down the isle of tables.

"Fine!" She shouted. "But when you come back with Snape bogeys up to your elbows, don't say I didn't warn you."

Several people from surrounding tables looked from Susan to me. One fifth year started a chant amongst his friends of 'Snape bogeys'. I looked daggers at Susan before clomping from the Great Hall.

I entered the potions classroom with nervous butterflies in my stomach. Severus was sat at the front hunched over a piece of parchment. I stood in the doorway for a bit but he didn't look up. I tiptoed silently to his desk. I walked next to him and craned over the same piece of parchment. He still didn't look up.

"What's that?" I asked next to his ear.

He jumped and almost smacked his head into my nose. Luckily his reaction startled me enough that I took a step back just in time. Snape seemed to calm once he saw it was only me.

"My notes for the potion we'll be experimenting with." He looked over to an hour-glass and watched as the last bit of sand fell to the bottom. "The black flowers should be ready for preparation."

Snape led me to his office where he had the flowers spread out on top of a pile of books. I had read about Black Flowers but I had never seen any in real life. The black and white pictures in books did them little justice. The petals were deep black with iridescent strokes of green and blue. The eye was startlingly white against the dark petals but had a pearlescent golden shimmer. All the way down the dark green stem where blood red thorns that had the appearance of fangs.

Snape carried a small mortar and pestle from one of the many shelves lining the walls to a small table. "Pluck the petals and put them in the mortar." He instructed. "Be careful to not touch the thorns. Even though the flower is dried the thorns maintain some of their deadly poison."

Snape watched over my shoulder as I pulled each of the petals from the flower. I carried the handful of black and blue and green feather like pieces to the bowl and dumped them in.

"Quickly grind them into a fine powder." He instructed. "We are almost out of time before they are useless."

I smashed and rubbed and ground the petals until they were a dust of blue and green shimmer.

"Good, now pour that into this cauldron and stir clockwise seven times, counter clockwise three times, and clockwise another four times. When you're finished the potion should be a lavender color.

I did as he said and the potion did indeed turn a lovely shade of lavender purple. Next he handed me a vial of boom berry juice and said for me to add exactly three drops. Which I did. Severus turned to fetch the next ingredient when I heard a deep sort of rumbling noise. I turned to the cauldron and saw the potion inside had turned a sickly green.

"Severus." I said quietly unsure if the potion would react to a loud noise. He turned his head to look at me and I looked back at the cauldron but when I looked I saw the green concoction oozing over the side.

"Get away from there, Ruby." Snape said urgently.

The urgency in his voice startled me and I remained frozen where I stood before awkwardly running to Severus.

He waved his wand and the potion on the floor and in the cauldron were gone. The only thing left was a hole in the rug where the potion had overflowed.

"Can't you ever do as you're told?" Snape barked and ran his fingers over the top of his head through his hair with frustration.

I was caught off guard. "W-what? I did everything you said. I don't know why it reacted..."

"Not that." He spat, turning his back to me and then facing me again. I was confused as to why he was reacting like this. "I told you to get away from there and you just stood there."

"I-I'm sorry. I-I panicked. Why…"

"You can't panic around potions." He was more animated with his movements than I had seen before. "If you're working with a potion you've never worked with before and it starts reacting strangely, say it starts gushing out of the cauldron. Are you going to get away before it touches you since the effects on your skin could be deadly or are you going to stand there like a moron while it eats you alive?"

"I said I'm sorry, it will never happen again but don't call me a moron!" I raised my voice.

"Well you could have sworn you were because who just stands next to an overflowing cauldron?"

"What is your problem?"

"My problem is that you've already been seriously injured under my watch before. You don't think a second time would make Dumbledore question my responsibility?"

"Well, whose fault was it the first time? I don't remember purposefully pricking myself with something that could make me bleed to death."

Snape gave a frustrated wail and threw his hands in the air. "You're just…you're stupid."

I looked daggers at him before I turned on my heel and made my way through the classroom and back into the corridor.

"Miss Winston." Snape shouted at me from the classroom doorway. I turned and stared at him with my arms crossed in front of my chest. "Get back in here and finish your detention."

I opened my mouth to argue when I noticed four dull grey silhouettes coming down the hall. As they neared I could tell they were four girls not much older than third year under what appeared to be an invisibility cloak long past its usefulness. The girls walked between Snape and I doing a poor job of stifling their giggles. They stopped around the corner and began to watch the confrontation they walked in on.

"Girls, shouldn't you be studying?" Snape asked craning his head in their direction.

I heard one of the girls mutter a question of how he knew they were there. Snape walked to the corner, grabbed a corner of the cloak, and pulled revealing a cluster of Slytherin girls.

"Common room." Snape ordered through his teeth. "Now."

The girls quickly scurried out of the area with their heads hung low.

Snape turned his attention to me again. "Get in." He said rather civilly and gestured to the doorway.

I stayed where I was and glared at him.

"Fifty points from Ravenclaw." He sighed as if it was something he really didn't want to do. "You have to finish your detention, Ruby."

I still stood my ground with my jaw clenched and my arms crossed.

"I'm sorry, Ruby." Snape apologized and it sounded sincere enough. "You're not stupid. I shouldn't have said you were, it's just sometimes…"

Snape looked down at his hands and began playing with a loose thread on his robes.

I sighed. I hated that I was so easily swayed but I stomped defeated back into his classroom and stood next to a table.

"Sometimes what, Severus?" I asked with no intention of listening to an answer. "Sometimes being nice is suitable and other times you can't be bothered so show even the slightest bit of decency?"

"No, that's not it." He said.

"Then what?" I demanded. "It's confusing to feel like I can consider you a friend only to be stabbed in the heart when you explode and call me stupid."

"I said I was sorry, Lil…" Snape pursed his lips together before finishing the last word.

"Lily?" I asked. "Is that what you want? For me to be like Lily?"

My stomach churned and my heart jolted. I felt sick.

"I won't ever be like her." I said and made my way to the door. Detention was over. "You need to make the decision of whether you want me to be your friend or not. If you choose for me to be your friend you are going to get me not Lily. You can't be mean to me because I do something un-Lily-like or very Lily-like…I'm not sure what makes you angry. Either you accept all my Rubyisms or you need to leave me be. It's your choice."

I started moving towards the door but turned around. "Lily did something I could never do."

"What's that?" He asked.

"She left." I said shrugging my shoulders. "People make mistakes. I know yours was very offensive but I could never wash my hands of someone I once considered a friend. Though sometimes your actions make me understand why she did."

Snape hung his head and refused to look at me. I turned and left him standing alone in his classroom. My heart was pounding and I could feel a lump of tears closing up my throat.

I didn't want Susan to see me because I knew as soon as I saw her I would start crying. So instead I went outside. The cold felt surprisingly good on my skin and I hadn't realized I had been that heated. I stood under the moonlight as a slight breeze cooled my cheeks and eyelids. I took a step forward and listened to the satisfying crunch of snow under my shoe. I smiled to myself and kept walking. I looked up at the moon and stars as I went trying my hardest not to think about Snape. But as soon as I thought about how good of a job I was doing at avoiding him, he was all I could think about.

I didn't know why I cared so much about whether he liked me or not. He was a professor and besides that he wasn't very pleasant. There wasn't anything particularly drawing about him and his face was rather unappealing most of the time when he was scowling or sneering. But for some reason I needed him to like me. I needed him to think I was intelligent and cool and, the thought was almost embarrassing to have, but I wanted him to think I was pretty. I closed my eyes and shook my head at the want for a professor to think I was pretty but at the same time it was difficult to think of Snape as a professor. He was so young and seemed more like a student himself than someone who taught students.

I found myself at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Had I been braver I would have dared to enter but instead of venturing into the woods filled with deadly and beautiful animals, plants, and monsters I crumpled to my knees and strained to hear the sounds that escaped every now and then. I could feel the snow melting into my socks and burning my knees with cold. I stayed kneeling and within a few minutes my knees were numb and I couldn't feel anything. I heard a low grumble rising from somewhere in the dark between trees accompanied by the snapping of twigs on the forest floor. I didn't realize I was holding my breath until I inhaled deep once the sounds stopped.

I sat a few moments longer and my feet started to tingle with sleep from sitting on my legs for so long. I slowly stood up and brushed the snow and wet from my socks and knees. The breeze no longer felt nice but instead felt frigid and made me shiver. I was about to turn to go back into the castle when I heard the rustle of dry leaves and the clicking of moving branches. I was frozen with fear and my feet wouldn't move. I watched the branches moving when emerged…