"So you really punched him for me?" Susan asked.

I nodded my head.

"And now you have detention?" She asked.

I nodded.

"With Flitwick?" She asked.

I nodded.

"For a week?" She asked.

"It was worth it." I said. "It was so satisfying."

She smiled. "I almost feel bad."

"Almost?" I asked.

"On my run away from the dining hall I ran into the person who opened the Gryffindor portal last night." She said.

"…Okay." I said, waiting for more story. "…Who was he?"

"Henry Wood." She swooned.

Her tone instantly upset me. "The Gryffindor quidditch captain?"

She nodded with a smile.

"I'm not allowing this to happen." I said.

"What?" She asked.

"You're swooning." I said.

"I am not." She said with a slight laugh. "That's the only way I have ever heard his name said. Henry Wood."

She added a dramatic fanning of her face with her hand.

"You're strange." I said, giving her a playful shove.

"Though, to be honest," She said, becoming more serious. "He did make me feel better."

"Oh?" I asked.

"It's stupid and really not much of anything," She said. "But…he said he doesn't believe anything Mark has been saying and if it wasn't so late in the year and if Mark weren't a seventh year that he would cut him from the team for his behavior."

"He really said that?" I asked.

She nodded her head. "It's just nice to know that not everyone is so quick to believe Mark like Melody and Hannah were."

"I suppose it would be." I said.

"How many people do you suppose Mark has told all of this to?" She asked.

I shrugged. "You know how word around the school works. He could have told only a handful of people but they spread word and suddenly everyone knows. If I had to guess though, I would say he told a lot of people. Don't retaliate though, it will go away soon, when something better comes along."

She nodded. "Was he upset about missing quidditch practice this week?

She flashed a grin.

"I thought he was going to cry." I smiled. "Okay, not really, but he whined about it."

Susan and I spent the remainder of the night in our beds working on homework and talking about the N.E.W.T's that were getting so close. I fell asleep on a pile of books and woke up Monday morning with a horrible crick in my neck.

I used some of the time in Charms class to look through one of my healing books to find a remedy for muscle cramps. I was able to slightly dull the pain so that I could look to my left without wincing.

Susan and I parted ways for the day as I headed to Potions class. I was too embarrassed to even look at him as I remembered the look of disappointment from the night before. I kept my head down and attended to my class work, which ended up being better for my neck as the crick came back. I made a mental note to look up a better remedy later. I could feel his gaze cutting into me and it was difficult to not look at him but I didn't want to feel worse than I already did.

During Herbology, Professor Sprout saw me massaging my neck multiple times and handed me a small envelope of dried leaves.

"Make a bit of tea with these." She said. "They'll take the pain right out."

I looked at them and gave them a slight smell. They smelled extremely bitter and I could only imagine they tasted that way. The smell gave me a twinge up my spine and I sneezed. I closed the envelope flap and put it in my pocket.

I was in the common room after classes heating a kettle over the fire when Susan burst in. She seized me by the elbow and pulled me away from my heating water without an explanation and dragged me up stairs to our dorm. She shut the door and looked around.

"Do you know what Snape did?" She asked, her eyes going wide.

I felt a pang of guilt in my stomach. I hoped he hadn't done something mean to Susan because I wouldn't even look at him. I was sure we were past that childishness.

"He tripped Mark." She blurted.

I snapped my head up which send a jolt of pain down my neck and through my shoulder. "He what?"

"Well, I mean, he didn't put his foot out or anything like that." She said. "Mark walked past my table after class and slid one of my books off the corner onto the ground."

"What a baby." I interrupted.

"Shhh." She said, waving her hands in over excitement. "I looked up just in time to see a chair slide into the aisle in front of Mark. He was looking back with a stupid smile on his face when he ran into it and fell flat on his face. The class erupted in laughter and Snape looked very calm and said 'Five points from Gryffindor for not paying attention.' His wand was in his hand, he was trying to hide it in his sleeves but I saw it."

I shook my head. "That doesn't make sense."

"What doesn't make sense?" Susan asked. "Clearly, Snape knows you're upset with Mark and is taking care of Mark's rudeness when you're not there."

I still shook my head. "I am almost certain that he is upset with me about what I did. It doesn't make sense that he would do something like that."

Susan shrugged. "He definitely moved the chair. Maybe you're mistaken about him being upset."

I played with the thought that perhaps he wasn't disappointed in me and I had misread his expression. My considerations were interrupted by a squealing coming from the common room and I remembered my water over the fire. I walked past Susan and down the stairs. I removed the kettle from over the fire, poured the contents of the envelope from Sprout into a mug, and covered it with the hot water.

"I know he moved the chair." Susan whispered. "Maybe you need to talk to him."

I took a sip of the tea. I fumbled the bitter liquid around in my mouth for a good ten seconds, burning my tongue and cheeks before I could convince my throat to swallow it.

I coughed and smacked my lips. "That won't be happening."

"Why not?" She asked.

I took another forced gulp. "Detention."

"Oh, right." She sighed.

For as disgusting as the tea was, I couldn't ignore that a few minutes after I had finished the last of it I had regained full use of my neck without pain. Susan and I sat in the common room studying as it filled after classes and then emptied around dinner. We decided we had better go eat before I had to go to Flitwick's office for detention. I had only had detentions with Severus and I wasn't sure how real detentions worked and I didn't know what to expect.

When Susan and I entered the dining hall, I noticed that a handful of students watched as I crossed the room. A few turned to their neighbors and spoke in hushed tones. I smiled because I was sure they were talking about what happened at last night's dinner.

I walked around to the other side of the Ravenclaw table and sat so that I could see the staff table without having to turn around. Severus sat with his head resting on his hand, looking thoroughly uninterested in his dinner. Flitwick nudged him, apparently waiting for the answer to a question. Severus sat up and raised his eyebrows. Flitwick said something and Severus slowly began nodding and then looked in my direction. I couldn't help but smile when his gaze fell on me, I quickly looked down and shoved a forkful of food into my mouth to hide it. When I glanced up again he was actively talking with Flitwick and the sadness had left his face. I felt better and slightly more confident that he wasn't upset with me.

I found out that Flitwick's detentions had a lot to do with helping him with odds and ends. On Monday I helped him charm a swarm of paper butterflies to fly about the school, each with a different poem about spring on its wings. On Tuesday, we scoured the school for a number of hours looking for all the butterflies since it seemed that someone turned a few of them into paper bats that were beginning to attack students. And on Wednesday, he simply allowed me to study for the N.E.W.T's while he graded essays from his first and second year students.

On Thursday, after classes, homework, and dinner, I made my way to Flitwick's office for my second to last detention. I knocked on the door before entering. The small professor stood on a stack of books reaching up to a fallen mess of books on a shelf. He turned around and smiled.

"Miss Winston." He greeted. "I was wondering, if you wouldn't object, if you could possibly organize my books for me."

I thought it was sort of funny that he was asking my permission to assign an activity for detention. "Of course."

"Now, once you are finished you can study." He said. "If you don't want to organize all the shelves, please, just clean up this one. It's gotten to the point where I can't charm the books to come to me without knocking down several others."

I nodded my head. "Do you want them in alphabetical order or based on subject?"

"What ever you like." He said. "Just so they aren't stacked on each other."

I smiled and climbed up onto a stack of books and began removing books from the top shelf and dropping them as gently as I could onto the floor.

I began unloading the second shelf down tossing the books onto the small pile that was beginning to form.

"Severus." Flitwick squeeked gleefully. "Right on time."

In my attempt to turn around at the sound of his name, the top book of the stack I was standing on slipped off causing me to lose balance and fall onto the mound of books on the floor.

"I'm okay." I said before anyone asked.

Flitwick rushed over. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"I took a spine to the spine, but I'll be fine." I said as I rolled of the books and lifted myself off the floor and faced Severus.

"I've asked Professor Snape to conduct the rest of your detention tonight." Flitwick said. "I have Frog Choir practice tonight.

He turned to Severus. "And Miss Winston and I have already agreed that once she finishes organizing my books that she will be allowed study time. I should be back before nine."

Without another word he scurried from the room and shut his office door, leaving Severus and I alone.

"Are you sure you aren't hurt?" Severus asked immediately. "I could take you to the hospital wing."

I shook my head and took a step up onto the stack of books again before I began tossing books to the floor. "I'm fine, really. Why didn't you tell me you were taking over detention tonight?"

"I didn't know we were on speaking terms." He said. "You seem upset with me."

"You seem upset with me." I said, turning around and almost losing balance again.

Severus took a quick step forward, placing his hands on my hips to stabilize me. "Why would I be upset with you?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "The scene I made with Mark on Sunday?"

He smiled. "Are you joking? I'd heard some of the things he'd been saying about Susan, I expected nothing less of you. There was satisfaction for me just in watching you punch him."

"I heard you got your own revenge on him." I said. "Yours even resulted in a broken nose. I only managed to make him bite his tongue."

"You could take credit for yours." He said. "No one knows what I did."

"Susan does." I said. "She is thankful to you. I certainly am."

Severus attempted to hide a smile and cleared his throat. "Aren't you supposed to be serving detention? Get back to work."

He sat in one of the chairs meant for students since Professor Flitwick's was set up for a much shorter person. I watched him rifle through his robes and withdraw a book which he started to read.

I turned back to the shelf and started removing books again. I started a rhythm of sliding books from the shelf and tossing them, with a hollow thud, into a pile. I picked up another book and glanced at the title, I stopped.

"Dancing Durians." I read. "A Guide to Tangoing Tangerines, Cha-Cha-ing Chickens, and Other Gamboling Goodies."

Severus looked up from his book at me. "What is that?"

I opened the book to a random spot and slowly leafed through the pages. "It's clearly a book that makes me wonder how I made it through these past eighteen years without a copy. I can't imagine how I have lived so long without making my radishes do the rhumba."

I looked up in time to see him smile before he went back to reading.

"Severus." I said. "Did you know that it is more complicated to make a watermelon waltz than it is to make a salmon dance the salsa?"

He looked up from his book again. "Fascinating."

"And it looks fairly simple to make juniper jive." I said.

"I think you might finish more quickly if you don't become so easily distracted." Severus said, looking up from his book again with a grin. "I'm sure Flitwick will lend it to you if you ask."

I smiled and tossed the book on the top of the pile.

It only took about an hour to de-shelf and organize the books. I was finally placing Zebu Zealots and How to Charm Them. I took a step back and admired my work before I turned to unload my bag onto the table in the corner.

I placed my Defense Against the Dark Arts book and partially written essay on the table and took a seat. I placed my head on my hands and began to read a passage about complex defensive spells. I read over the same paragraph three times without taking in the meaning of the words. I stared at the word deflect for several minutes, repeating it in my head but not assigning it any meaning.

"Defense?" Severus' voice broke through my poor concentration.

"Huh?" I lifted my head, he had an amused look upon his face.

"Are you working on defense homework?" He asked.

"How did you know?" I asked.

"Your forehead is wrinkled, you have an angered look about you, and you've been staring at the same page for ten minutes." He said.

"That obvious?" I asked.

"Are you still having trouble?" He asked. "Perhaps we should start up our defense lessons again."

"I don't think so." I said. "If I want help I'll ask Susan."

"Am I not good enough?" He asked, falsely indignant.

I smiled. "That's not what I meant. It's just that…recently, when we've gotten together we haven't been very…productive."

"Well that's not my fault." He scoffed.

"I didn't say…" I began.

"You're always showing up with lustful intentions." He smiled.

"I'm sorry, what?" I laughed.

"You heard me." He said, standing from his seat, a slight smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "I just want to get work done and be a good potions master and you come into my office with inappropriate ideas and you force them onto me whether or not I am willing."

"I don't think what we do when we are alone is completely my fault." I argued with a snicker.

"Are you suggesting that I like…" He quieted down to a whisper and looked quickly to the door. "Kissing you?"

I couldn't help but grin. "If my, what did you call them? Lustful intentions bother you then let's make a wager, shall we? If I agree to defense lessons with you, then we have to work on Defense Against the Dark Arts, deal?"

"What's the wager?" He asked.

"Five Galleons says that I am not the one who interrupts the lessons with…extracurricular activity." I said.

"Ha!" He snorted. "Ten Galleons says you are."

"You're on." I smiled. "What do you say to this Saturday afternoon, I meet you in your office and you help me with complex defensive spells?"

"I say, don't forget my money." He said. "Easiest ten galleons I'll ever make."

I laughed softly and Severus took my hand in his and gently ran his thumb across my knuckles. Butterflies flared in my stomach. We both snapped our heads to the door when we heard the noise of the doorknob turning. Like lightning Severus was back in the chair across the room with his nose buried in his book.

"Miss Winston!" Flitwick's happy tone sounded. "What an improvement to my bookshelves. I see you went with alphabetical order, very good. I trust there were no issues, Severus?"

Severus lifted his head as though he hadn't noticed Flitwick had returned. "For once, it would seem, Miss Winston followed directions. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have potions to tend to."

He stood from his chair and walked from the room.

"He really is an agreeable person most of time." Flitwick said. "He puts up a hard exterior, but he's not a bad person."

I nodded my head and returned to my defense homework.