Snape's Match

“Outside, Miss Fitzgerald! You’ll wish you had never said that!”


Snape pushed Lia out of the Potions dungeon, a hand on the small of her back. They reached the freezing corridor and Snape threw the heavy classroom door shut with one hand as he placed another over Lia’s mouth to silence her giggles. He himself could not quite repress a smile.


Snape looked furtively up and down the corridor to make sure it was really deserted, and then replaced the hand with his lips, trapping her in his arms. Desire immediately flared between them, and Lia moaned softly into his questing mouth, reveling in the feel of his warm body pressed closely to hers. Snape insistently explored her mouth, trying to release the pent-up tension of their time apart.


He’d missed her as he had never before missed anything or anyone these past few days, becoming increasingly distracted because he wanted to see her eyes or watch her smile at him. Lia wound her hands through Snape’s black hair, dimly hearing the buzz of the excited Gryffindors through the door. She’d put on quite a show and Seamus and Ron were sure to be dancing a jig right about now, delighted that Snape had been embarrassed yet again.


“I’m sorry,” she whispered, afraid that Snape might have taken it the wrong way. “I mean, for what I said in there.”


“All part of the game, love,” he smirked, “no need to apologize. Besides, you were right, I am enjoying being ‘all melodramatic’.”


She grinned back at him. “I particularly liked the way you set fire to Parvati’s cloak, after you overturned that cauldron on your way to ostensibly murder me.”


Snape snickered into her hair, and she suddenly recalled the events of the morning.


“Severus?” she asked uneasily, “I need to come and see you tonight, Dumbledore said something you ought to hear about when he called me up to his office.”


He looked at her strangely. \"Anything I need to worry about?\"


She shrugged. \"It depends.\"


Snape decided to leave it for later.


“Don’t worry, Lia, I’ll arrange it. We’d better go back in before your fellow Gryffindor troublemakers wreck my classroom.”


“How will you arrange it?” asked Lia, puzzled.


He gave her a trademark malicious smirk as he swept back into the dungeon.


“Detention, I think, Miss Fitzgerald,” he announced to the general audience, “is the only way to cure you of your disobedient streak.”


It was particularly easy at that moment for Lia to rearrange her face into an indignant expression. Damn him, she thought, I was thinking of finishing an Astronomy essay tonight. She gave him a matching sneer.


“Well I seem to be getting a lot of those lately, and all with you, sir. All those long evenings…you better watch out or we might end up in love.”


She could have sworn the corners of Snape’s mouth twitched upwards, but he recovered enough to give her a noxious glare.


“That’s enough, Miss Fitzgerald, sit down now or I shall be forced to take points from your house.”


Lia sat. Harry sent her a sympathetic glance. Ron was trying desperately not to burst out laughing, strangled sounds coming from around the sleeve of the robes he was using to muffle the noise of his sniggers.


“Get off, Ron! That’s revolting!” The robes were Hermione’s.


“Silence, Miss Granger!” Snape had heard her and took no hesitation in docking Gryffindor by ten points.



“Can you believe him?” yelled Ron after Potions had at last finished. “Detention for you again tonight and we’ve lost piles of points, all in one lesson.”


Snape had taken the opportunity of Neville’s cauldron not simply exploding (that was a regular occurrence) but causing his desk to melt into a wood-colored puddle on the floor to round off the lesson with fifty points lost for Gryffindor.


Lia was fuming, he’d promised her he’d try to be fairer towards her housemates and then to pull something like this – well, she would be just as nice to him in detention and he would see how he liked it. All in all, it was gloom that engulfed the Gryffindor table at dinner – even the normally painfully excited Creevey brothers managed to keep quiet. Lia found it impossible to do any of the homework that Hermione kept telling her to finish as she anxiously watched the clock hands move towards eight o’clock, while Ron sat periodically scratching large portions of his History of Magic essay out. Lia was still annoyed with Snape after Potions, but she couldn’t wait to feel his ardent kisses again, and hear his silky voice wrap itself sensuously around the sardonic comments he always made.


“Lia?” Hermione’s voice tore her from a wistful fantasy about the look in Snape’s eyes when he smiled at her.


“Yeah, what is it?”


“Nothing much, it was just that you looked a bit sad.” Hermione seemed to brace herself and spit out what she’d been wondering all day. “Is it Snape? Has he said something or done something in detention? Because if he has, you should go to Dumbledore about it. He’s definitely been getting away with it too long.”


A dozen expressions flitted across Lia’s face as she speculated on what to tell Hermione. Part of her had a powerful longing to let her into the secret, and part of her knew it was madness – Hermione would either die of shock or never talk to her again.


In the end she just settled for a weary smile. “Nothing I can’t handle, Herm, just so many detentions can really take it out of a girl.”


Hermione looked slightly reassured and changed the subject. “Can’t believe you’ve been here over two months! It feels like you’ve always fitted in.”


Lia smirked. “Proper Gryffindor I am, Malfoy hates me, Snape hates me, and I always cause trouble…”


Harry joined them. “Say what I always say,” he recommended, “I don’t cause trouble, trouble usually finds me.”


The knot of friends looked amused.


“It certainly does,” said Lia. “The stories I’ve heard about you from some of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws – they must be exaggerated. Nobody could vanish the bones in their arm by falling off a broomstick.”


Harry laughed. “That may have got a little twisted in the retelling.”


Just then Dean and Seamus entered the portrait hole, bearing gifts in the shape of illegal Butterbeers.


“And just what the hell is this all about?” asked Lia mock-severely. “Buying things on the black market, boys, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”


Dean grinned at her and started passing the bottles around, while Seamus reenacted Lia’s description in Potions of the recipe for an Expressiveness Potion as a beginner’s guide to making tea, and the whole common room exploded with laughter.


“Cheer up, Snape-conqueror,” he winked at her. “Detention for a pro like you won’t be any problem.”


“Merlin, that reminds me,” Lia said, eager to get away from what looked like to be a complete staging of today’s Potions class, “I’ve got to be there in five minutes!”


It was with difficulty that she disentangled herself from the mass of Gryffindors who had abandoned homework, games of wizard chess and Gobstones and letters home to join in the festivities. She slipped out of the portrait hole and threaded her way through silent corridors down the well-known path to Snape’s office, her heartbeat thudding out her desire to see him again. He caught her around her waist as she pushed the door open, and smiled at her stifled gasp.


“Did I scare you?”


“No,” she admonished, “You just squeezed the wind out of me.”


“I’m sorry,” he murmured, lips buried in her hair.


She remembered his behavior in class and extricated herself from his grip.


“What?” he asked mulishly.


“You promised you’d be nicer in class!” she reminded him.


“You didn’t let me choose when you asked me to!” he protested, “You were threatening to leave, what else could I say?”


Lia almost smiled, but caught herself.


“You’re not going to get me around that, Severus”


“Oh really?”


“Yes re-“


Snape caught her up for another heart-stopping kiss, cutting her off in mid-sentence. He did not release her for some time, so they were both short of breath when he did.


Lia gave him a wicked smile.


“All right, you’ve gotten round me. But I only forgive you for today, so watch out tomorrow.”


Snape reached for her again, but she stopped him.


“Dumbledore knows, Severus.”


“What?” He went even paler than usual.


“He told me, in his office this morning. That’s why I wanted to see you, but it’s all right.”


“How can it be all right? He’s probably informing the Ministry right now and I…I don’t want you to be expelled because of me.” He looked so stricken that Lia flung herself in his arms.


“If you’d let me finish, Severus, you would have heard that Dumbledore approves, I suppose, as much as he can.”


“He approves?” Snape sounded as though he couldn’t believe his ears.


Lia giggled. “I believe his exact words were: ‘we always hoped Professor Snape would settle down’.”


She admired the effect of what she had said. Snape’s lip curled in his most characteristic gesture.
“That interfering, muggle sweet-eating, bothersome old man! I will kill him!” he hissed, “He has no right to talk about my private life in that way –“


“Oh shut up, Severus,” yawned Lia. “You know he means well, even if he’s insulted you.”


Snape snorted, but stopped directing curses Dumbledore’s way. Lia suddenly frowned.


“Severus, can I ask you something?”


“Anything, my love, as long as it doesn’t involve potion-making.”


Lia smiled, and then described how Dumbledore had asked her about things she might know that would explain the attack on her (Snape’s arms tightened almost painfully around her as she mentioned it) and then, taking a deep breath, she told him about her dreams. When she had finished, Snape was looking at her with a mildly disturbed expression across his features.


“And you didn’t tell him – why?”


“Do you think I should have done?” asked Lia, anxiously watching his face.


“Well, it could have shed some light, perhaps…”


“It was because I know whose the eyes are, Severus.” Lia interrupted. “They were yours. They were always yours, even before I came to Hogwarts and met you.”


Snape almost said something, but then he simply kissed her - so passionately it made her head spin. Lia wasn’t quite sure how they got to his quarters, but they did.



Afterwards, Snape told her sleepily that he would see Dumbledore the next day.


“You don’t have to tell him about the dreams, I will.”


Lia nestled in next to him and forgot about everything – about unfinished essays, Hermione’s worries, Dumbledore, dreams, attacks and Death Eaters. She fell asleep.



A/N: Apologies to all of you who were expecting some lemons just there - I did mean to put some in, but then I guess my fluffier side took over and decided to focus more on how happy they are with each other...blah blah etc etc. I know. More citrusy goodness coming very soon, promise!