AN: I hope people are still reading :)

Chapter 6

Saturday came and Samantha found herself sitting at a round table in the Three Broomsticks with Lily, Alexis, Annabel and the four Marauders. They each had a butter beer and there was a large platter of biscuits between them all. The room was buzzing with students and locals chatting, drinking and having fun. It was a beautiful day with blue skies and a light breeze and almost everyone above Third Year was out and about in Hogsmeade.

"Thank Merlin, for this Hogsmeade weekend." James said as he picked up another biscuit.

"I know what you mean mate, school is utterly mundane." Sirius said.

"We have only been in school for three weeks now." Lily chided. She looked around at the other defeated faces and got no help from anyone.

"Sorry, Lil. I'm too exhausted to disagree about having enough with school. Do you know how many hours I've read up on Ancient Ruins this week?" she paused for emphasis and then groaned, "About twenty-eight hours! That is more then a day of reading. I swear I'm going to drop it. I had no idea that all we would be doing is reading."

Pettigrew looked puzzled, "We had reading to do in Ancient Ruins?"

James chuckled as Alexis groaned.

Annabel cleared her throat, "I have something I want to tell you."

"I wonder when the first Quidditch match will be." James mused.

Annabel tried again, "I - "

"Hopefully soon, mate, I'm losing all my muscle mass." That time it was Sirius.

"Ugh, I - "

"Yeah, you know - "

"Merlin, shut it! Can't you see that Annabel wants to tell us something?" Samantha snapped.

They all stared at her, Annabel smiled, and James just lifted a brow and said, "You know your getting a lot feistier." Sirius smacked him over the head, "Ouch!"

"I'm feistier because I don't like how you think that you're on such a permanent position on that high horse?" she questioned. "Annabel was trying to talk and you just kept on going, the sad part is I bet you couldn't even hear her under your egotistical thoughts."

James mumbled something but Samantha turned to Annabel.

"Thank you." she said and shot the boys a mean but on her cute stare. She was never one to stand up against everyone because she was too nice. Perhaps that's why Samantha had always felt the need to stand up for her. "I only wanted to tell you girls but I'm to excited." And she was, she was practically jumping out of her seat.

Lily, Samantha and Alexis moved closer to Annabel as the boys started chatting again. "What is it?" Alexis asked.

"Well, I am sad to say that I will only be spending half of the day with you all." She pouted.

"What do you mean?" Lily urged.

"I've got a date!" she said and clapped her hands once.

"With who?" Samantha and Alexis both asked.

"Gregory Bones."

"From Ravenclaw?" asked Lily.

"Whose mother is in the Ministry?" asked Alexis.

"Who is quite the handsome boy?" asked Samantha.

Annabel turned to answer Samantha first with a yes and then to more yeses to the other two questions. "This morning just after we left the Great Hall and I had to fetch my coat I ran into him on the stairs and he sort of just blurted it out." she explained.

"That's great." Samantha said and they other two girls smiled.

Later after wishing Annabel a great date and telling the other two girls that she didn't feel well she headed back to Hogwarts castle.

Once Samantha was back in the castle she headed straight for the Owlery, she had a letter to give to a school owl to deliver to her family. It was the first one she had written for the past two weeks and she felt guilty already. As she walked through the archway into the Owlery she bumped into someone and fell backwards onto the ground. Thank Merlin they weren't fully in the Owlery or she would have been sitting in Owl dung right now.

"Sorry." She heard her assailant say and she recognized his soft voice.

"Oh," she said as she looked up to see his face.

He must have just looked at her as well because he grimaced and said, "Oh its you, well watch where your going." He got to his feet and stood above her staring down at her.

She sat there looking up at him and waited – to see if a serpent could lend a hand. A moment went by and she reminded herself that they had no hands to lend and she got to her feet.

"I thought you would stay down there forever." he said as he made to leave.

"Whose the letter from?" she asked as she caught a glimpse of the envelope in his hand.

He narrowed his eyes, she was still blocking his exist. "Gryffindor, your never ending inquisitiveness is daunting." She didn't move and he clenched his jaw. "Be so kind and get out of the way."

"How come you're not in Hogsmeade?" she asked looking at her nails. She just felt like annoying him now.

Your wand is in your pocket, hex her, hex her! He didn't remove his gaze from her face but studied her instead. Her blonde hair fell around her face today, its different shades blowing around her. Her blue eyes were lowered at the moment but they were probably darker with her unbearable attitude. She had smooth skin – probably came from a pampered background or something – used to getting everything she wants. It was probably one of the reasons she always stood up to him. Getting what you want all your life can do two things to you – make you lazy and smug not letting you do anything for yourself or arrogant and always fighting, to keep on getting what you want. Apparently she was the latter. She was a pain in his ass but she wasn't the worst Gryffindor scum out there. For that he would allow her one answer to a direct question.

"My parents wouldn't sign the form." As soon as he said it and her eyes raised to his he wished he hadn't had that lapse in judgment.

"You forgot to ask them?"

He had to leave now, "No."

"They just didn't sign it?"

"You're asking too many questions." He said as he moved around her.

"Why did you answer?" she demanded.

"Merlin, are you infuriating," he turned to her, "Why did I answer what?"

"My first question, you never answer my questions with what I actually asked you for."

"And I never will again because as soon as it came out you asked a hundred more questions." He crushed the letter in his hand. He stared down at it and began to smooth it out. He looked up to find her right next to him.

"Who's the letter from?"

He was quite for a moment collecting his rage out of the air around them and sinking it back into the back of his mind. "They should create a whole new house for people like you." he said and turned.

Samantha quickly grabbed an owl and tied her letter to it and ran after him. He moved a lot quicker then she thought he moved. When she caught up to him she heard him groan.

"Honestly, you're like a dog. I have fed you once and now you expect more. You're not going to get attached and become needy will you?" He stopped walking.

How dare he call her a dog, she felt her heart rate speed up and her fist clench as her eyes narrowed.

She punched him in the arm; he hadn't seen it coming and was amazed as pain ran up his arm. "How dare you!" she yelled. She never was the quiet type.

Then she looked at his shocked face and the hand that he held to his arm. Shock crossed over her features, "Oh Merlin. I'm sorry I didn't…its just…did I hurt you? You just get me so mad sometimes. I've wanted to really hurt you before but I never imagined…" She had her hand over his and was looking into his face then back at his arm and back again.

Rage was his first emotion but the look of horror on her face made it to comical. She was crazy, completely crazy, and he smiled.

"You're smiling!" this outraged her even more.

"I have smiled before." He said hastily as he stopped and placed the much more comfortable frown on his face.

"Yes, but at nothing that I have caused." She looked down at the floor, "I'm sorry."

"You've wanted to hurt me before?" he asked, it didn't surprise him that she had. "You know I should report you, I mean you're a Prefect. Not only that but you're a perfect little Gryffindor, imagine what people might think of your alarmingly violent tendencies."

She punched him again in the same spot. "Hey!" This time when he looked up at her it wasn't as comical because she was really mad this time.

"You know what, I'm not sorry. I don't like you very much, Snape. I know you know this but right now I'm telling you. I hate how you treat people, I hate your illusionary superiority and I think that you should come down to earth and get over yourself."

"Funny," he said, no longer amused, "I would tell you the same thing."

"I am nothing like you." she denied.

"Whereas that is completely true you have illusions of yourself that you should get over as well."

"There's no talking to you." she ran a frustrated hand through her hair. She turned to walk down the hall, "Why do I keep trying?"

He followed her, "What is it you keep trying, Cromwell?"

"To be nice to you, hell perhaps not that far but I try, I try to strike up a conversation with you, to get to know something about you so that I can understand for myself why you're such an asshole, but every time I try you either attack me or make me attack you. All I hear are these ridiculous rumors and then I look at you and they all seem to be true which is outrageous. How can someone be like that? How can you be like you? But what am I saying – everyone in Slytherin is like you aren't they?"

"It's lovely to know that it is my own fault why you attack me. Well it's your own fault why I, presumably, attack you. Maybe this is a sign that perhaps you shouldn't understand, that you should just back off and leave me and everyone else alone. I know it would be something hard for you to do but it would benefit everyone greatly."

"Shut up, Snape." She said as she started walking faster.

Snape was fuming as he entered the Slytherin common area where Bellatrix and Rodolphus where waiting for him. Bellatrix grabbed the letter out of his hands and used her nails to rip open the thick parchment.

"What's wrong, Severus?" Rodolphus asked, watching him pace.

Severus knew better then this, he controlled his breathing and sat down across from Rodolphus and gave him a shrug. "I just foolishly let one the Marauders get to me, I'm fine now."

"They aren't worth it, Severus. We'll get them one day, you wait and they'll see. They won't know what hit them." he said his eyes going a bit cross.

Bellatrix handed the letter back to Severus, "You're the Potion master, can you finish it by the next Hogsmeade visit?"

Snape looked over the ingredients for the Dark Magic invisibility potion. "Easily."

Almost a month passes, during which Samantha could only be found in the library when not in class, in the Great Hall or sleeping. She had decided to do her own study of the similar potions to the one she and Snape were making and to find the similar ingredients used in those and concluding reasons why they were used. She assumed that since the potion was a luck potion that if she read up on the history of other such potions and that there would be a common bond between them. So she divided her time reading between such potions and reading about unlucky potions and trying to figure out what each of its ingredients counterpart was.

She had found out a lot in the last two weeks and when she had proposed some of her ideas to Snape as they sat in Potions she was surprised when he had said that some of them were actually fine and plausible ideas. Of course he had also said that some of them were insulting to his intelligence and he mumbled something about her being a fool to think that he hadn't thought of that. At least he wasn't as hostile anymore, or at least not as frequently hostile.

It was the Tuesday in the third week of October and she and Snape were again in the Room of Requirement during the period they both had free after Transfiguration. Samantha watched him stir the potion, first ten times clockwise and then ten times anticlockwise. He had told her last week that it was prudent to be consistent in the stirring of the potion. Well, he hadn't really told her this he has more speaking to himself then her. He showed such care and concentration in the potion it was sometimes eerie and other times fascinating.

As she watched him wash his hands in a cold flame from his wand that day he said, "It will need to simmer now. Ingredients will be next required in a month's time." He held out his wand to her and she hesitated but washed her hands in the flame quickly. She'd never seen such a thing before and wondered if he had read it up in one of those books he's always reading, a cleansing cold flame. It was the first time he had offered her to use it as well. He probably didn't even notice it.

"So what are you going to do for the next month without me then?" she asked, horrified as it left her mouth.

He stared at her in suspicion and slowly said, "I hope that you are joking."

"Of course I was." She said hastily.

"Besides, I have no choice but to see you three times a week in Potions and be in your presence five days a week in every other class. Honestly, Cromwell I can't get away from you." he spat and rearranged their apparatus.

"I'm not the one that is unbearable to be around." She shot back her fists going to her waist again. This was how they had ended most meetings for the past month - him saying something stupid and she getting just as stupid – or the other way around.

"I beg to differ. You're nagging and not even in the girlish sense, in a way that I have never experienced and you can't go a single minute without saying something."

"And the fact that you can go for days without saying anything is so much better? You're a freak of nature, Slytherin." Of course she was the one close to yelling and he was calm.

"And you, Gryffindor, don't seem to realize that not everyone you know is your friend. The world doesn't revolve around you, not everyone is interested in everything you say."

"At least I have something to say."

"Why should I say something to you that might benefit you when I can keep it to myself and let you walk around just the way you are?"

"I don't even know what you're insulting me about now." and she didn't.

"Because you don't have the brain capacity." He informed her and as he left the room said, "See you in a month."

She stared at the door getting her anger back under control. "See you in Potions tomorrow, Snape."

It was a Thursday night again and Samantha was patrolling the third and fourth floors with Remus.

"I want to hurt him, Remus." She told him, "I mean really hurt him."

"I know you think you mean it but I don't think you really want to hurt anyone." He said, again trying to calm her down.

"Well then I don't think you know me at all, Remus." She said and glowered.

He laughed, "Well, alright."

They were quiet for a while and then Remus said out of the blue, "Its funny how Lily always gets herself in worse with James."

Samantha smiled at that. Remus had finally taught James and Sirius how to play Canasta and James had bet Lily that he could beat her in a match. She hadn't believed him and agreed but then he made it interesting by betting that if he won she had go to the Halloween dance with him the following weekend. Still not believing that he could win she agreed. Samantha, Annabel, Alexis and the three other Marauders sat there for an hour and a half watching the two play the previous night. Samantha had bet on Lily but secretly she knew that James would win.

"You do know that they are going to end up together right?" she asked Remus.

"Yes, I do. Together forever those two." He said as he smiled.

After a moment she asked, "So who are you taking to the dance?"

He was quiet for a moment and when she looked back at him he was already looking at her, "I was going to ask you." Sirius had already gotten over asking her out and had invited a Ravenclaw girl to the dance with him. She had thought herself free.

Oh no. She really liked him, she really did like him but as friends. She would have felt something with him by now if there was something. She grimaced, she was starting to sound more and more like those girls in those romance novels she's been stealing from her mother. She looked into his brown eyes and felt completely guilty when she said…

"As, friends Samantha, we can go as friends but I wanted someone to dance with." He said before she had said no.

"Oh," This she could do, she couldn't have said yes and led him on but she really hadn't wanted to hurt him if he really felt something for her. "Sure, I would love to. I should warn you though, I'm an excellent dancer."

He laughed, "I bet you are. Well, I bet I'm even better."

AN: Sam is telling people to shut up alot lately i noticed....o well

Review and Read! In which ever order :)

And again thanks to those that are reviewing they are much appreciated! These chapters are only poping up so fast because of them :) the next to might take a bit longer to post.

Ah - a dance, i wonder if Severus will be there...I wonder if there will be any drama.....hmmm.....i guess you'll only know if you READ. :)

I have so much in mind that i want to put in this fic and alot of it is cute alot of it is sad and more is angsty and guess whaaat? - more reviews will motivate even more