It Takes a Miracle

Chapter 15 – I see you there, farther away


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The week was dragging just like any other week right after the holidays: the students were painfully slow about getting back into the school routine, and the teachers, after long hours of dealing with unruly brats, were laboring until late at night, grading the extra amount of homework completed during the lessons-free days.

Snape had always disliked times like these. Well, to be precise, he had disliked times like these even more than he disliked the rest of the school year. However, in his current condition, it was bordering on unbearable, because in addition to everything else he had to go around pretending to be his normal demanding, sarcastic self, who terrified children in and out of class, and sneered at colleagues. Ironically, Snape had to thank his years in the Dark Lord’s service for his well-developed ability to play a part - this time the part of the Potions Master and the Head of Slytherin House, Professor Severus Snape - convincingly enough to deceive everybody. As far as he knew no one suspected just how much he wanted to barricade himself in his lab, down a healthy (or rather unhealthy) dose of something deadly, and liberate the world from his unneeded existence.

He lived with the only hope that the summer came soon enough. Before he slipped and exposed himself. Before he was humiliated.

“Just a little longer,” he had to repeat to himself over and over again. As unconvincing as the words were, Snape clung to the little comfort they provided. And then, thanks to the latest conversation with Albus, he lost even this feeble prop.

To make matters worse, in came this…girl. After initial shock of the first encounter, after the quick stumble over the irrational reminiscences, he managed to get his foolish knee-jerk reaction to the young witch under control. More or less. It was just frightening how much effort it required.

“She is despicable,” he would resolve to think. After all, she was there on Albus’ sympathy loan and she never made an attempt to bring him to justice over the last year’s incident.

“She is a sham,” he would decide. In mere days the girl managed to befriend all these people, who knew him most of his life, but for whom he remained essentially a stranger. Seeing all the smiles and encouraging pats on the back she got from almost everyone on the school’s staff, Snape would gather enough irritation to sincerely snarled at her. Surprisingly, what worked the best was the sight of Mr. Rag Clown, who with nauseating consistency hung about the young witch. His presence used to make Snape only gag in disgust, now it turned his blood into a boiling mess and sent his fury through the roof.

Still, he was afraid that he might forget to scowl at the young witch. And he was taken aback to find himself wandering to the Gryffindor part of the castle more often than was strictly necessary on his nightly patrols. And he hated a barely perceptible shiver every time someone would so much as mention her name within his earshot.

Time and again he had to remind himself that it didn’t matter what he thought almost a year ago, after a week under the influence of exasperatingly-false dreams. And it didn’t matter what he felt almost a year ago for those few achingly-enthralling moments, when he imagined the impossible, foolishly losing himself in an apparently forced kiss. And it definitely didn’t matter that now, almost a year later, a mere gaze of the girl’s maddeningly-blue eyes, for a reason which Snape didn’t care to determine, could still make him forget to breathe.

And yet, as much as it didn’t matter, the presence of the young witch in the castle quickly became Snape’s major hurdle on his way from mornings to evenings. More than teaching. More than going to the Great Hall. More than talking to Albus.

As bad as his days were, the nights didn’t offer Snape much of a respite either. True, once he stepped over the threshold and close the door to the outside world, he could stop playing a role, constantly checking the expression on his face, the position of his shoulders, censoring every word that came out of his mouth. But then there was another hurdle to overcome - sleep.

For the last three months, there were only a handful of instances when he passed into slumber on his own. Well, he had learned his lesson, hadn’t he? Hours upon hours of nightmares that left him sweating and breathless, the shaking of his hands amplified tenfold, and the beating of his heart almost non-existent from terror, had taught Snape a healthy fear of sleep.

With the young witch in the castle, though, this fear swelled so much that the simple act of blinking would send him into a cold sweat – what if his heavy tired lids would refuse to open soon enough to ward off the…dreams. Yes, the dreams! Those bloody fucking dreams that twisted his coherence, and bent his will, and made him do things…

By Friday Snape was exhausted to the point of breaking. He literally didn’t know what kept him going. And so, when he finally dismissed his last class of the day with an impatient wave of his hand, Snape couldn’t get to his rooms fast enough. There was no question about him skipping dinner. All he could think about were the bottles of scotch, standing neatly in the shelf next to the fireplace, dark glass shimmering in the torchlight, long necks calling for the touch of his lips. Tonight was the night when he could forego the endless pacing and Dreamless Sleep Potion, which had become almost useless after a heavy overdose. Tonight was the night when he could let himself get lost in scotch-distorted slumber, passing over Saturday altogether, and coming to on Sunday morning, or afternoon, aching all over and completely disgusted with himself, but more rested that he had been for days.

Snape flopped on the chaise not bothering to straighten his robe or take off his boots. He ripped the top few buttons of his jacket open, “accio’ed” his first bottle, and swallowed in anticipation, his Adam’s apple moved easily, freed from the constrains of the tight collar. He paused for a moment, his eyes glued to the liquid rippling inside the bottle, and his lips thinned into a nasty smirk. He gave Dumbledore his usual warning about disturbing him while he worked on an extremely combustive potion. He scared his Slytherins enough for them to behave for a day or so. He was free to put himself out of his misery, even if it was for a short while. But before Snape took his first sip, he realized that he had scheduled to oversee the young witch prepare her potion on Saturday afternoon. Fuck!


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It took Gerry only a couple of days to realize that Dumbledore wasn’t exaggerating when he said that Hogwarts’ students would need all the tutoring they could get in order to pass the end-of-year exams. It wasn’t only a matter of two extra months the school stayed close in the winter. Apparently, the Death Eaters’ attacks, which claimed one victim after another and made tomorrow look extremely uncertain for any wizard and witch, drew students’ attention away from studying in the fall. Later, when the war was over and the school was restored and reopened, some time passed before the children could finally stop thinking about the horrors they had barely left behind for long enough to concentrate on learning. But only now, less than two months before the scheduled exams, the mad rush of studying had truly begun.

Gerry’s schedule was filled rapidly, her five hours a day of tutoring turned into seven plus by midweek. After she managed to get a tiny, scared-looking first year girl to transfigure a quill into a racing broom (which wasn’t strictly on the curriculum, but made the child feel the powers she never knew she had, this being her first successful transfiguration ever), the word of her ability to teach the unteachables spread all over the school. Students from every year and every House were signing up for her tutoring sessions, preferring hers to McGonagall’s “it-was-discussed-in-class or look-in-the-book” hands-off approach to tutoring. Having sat through the first several sessions with Gerry, the stern Transfigurations Professor, though a bit grudgingly, let her work on her own.

“I believe you will be fine,” the older witch smiled thinly. Then, she warned, “But don’t let them fool you into doing their studying for them. Remember, it is the students who sit the exams.”

Gerry nodded happily, and went back to the empty classroom she was given in a lieu of an office. The next student was waiting for her there.

Except for isolated incidents – jokeshop candies, left on her desk, her chair charmed to move when she wanted to sit down - the younger kids were no trouble to work with. The older years were a bit more tricky – the girls were asking for handy spells to transfigure clothing (which was not a part of the curriculum, not that Gerry could be of much help with those), the boys were trying to persuade her to go out with them – but she managed.

In the evenings of a particular trying day (she couldn’t figure out how he knew just when to come) Jay would stop by her rooms for a fifteen-minute recap of the latest school events - whose robes were charmed to change colors; who was taken to the hospital wing for limb rearrangement after a flying disaster. Jay would leave, ordering her to get a good night’s sleep to avoid scaring the students and teaching staff with her unkempt appearance in the morning.

And so in all honesty, Gerry rather enjoyed her new life. Even after McGonagall asked her to assist with the homework grading for lower years, which stretched Gerry’s workday into the tenth hour, she wasn’t about to complain. And why would she? She had a decent job, a roof over her head and regular meals. Her colleagues were friendly, and the students – accepting. With her potions being available to her, there was no more suffering through sleepless nights or fighting dizzy spells. Everything was fine. Well, almost everything.

After her two rather painful encounters with Snape on Monday, Gerry had no contact with him for the rest of the week. Except for an occasional cold glare thrown at her from the High Table at meals (which he often skipped altogether), or the spiteful sneer that he greeted her with, passing in the hallways, Snape ignored her.

The situation pleased and troubled her at the same time. On the one hand, it seemed that the little Charms Professor could be right, and she should stay away from Snape for the time being. No matter how one looked at it, she did assault him at their first meeting, came to ask for a favor the very next day, and betrayed his secret in between. Based on what she’d heard about the wizard from her friends at the University, Snape was one unforgiving, vengeful bastard, who would go to great lengths to hurt and humiliate anybody whom he didn’t like, let alone somebody who had wronged him. And one had to be very unwise to forget it.

Gerry remembered and perfectly understood it. At least one part of her did. The part that told her to leave the Potions Master alone and go about her own business until the wizard had cooled off, and could at least look at her without hatred in his black eyes. The part of her that was supposed to consider the facts and make decisions. The rational, sensible part. Unfortunately, at the sight of Snape this part rapidly shrank to a complete negligibility, and the rest of Gerry would be dying to get closer to the man. She wouldn’t refuse to do anything with him – talk, walk, work – as long as he would acknowledge her presence in any manner (by the end of the week she realized she craved even his glares). And so on the other hand, Gerry was feeling utterly miserable. There was this man, whose one kiss made her feel complete as nothing else ever could; a man, in whose presence Gerry had to remind herself to breathe; a man, who had changed her life forever. To be so close to said man and not being close to him hurt like hell.

She couldn’t wait for Saturday afternoon, when he would be forced to spend four hours in her presence. And she dreaded those four hours as well. “He can’t hate you any more than he does already,” she tried to soothe herself. “Or can he?”

Gerry spent Saturday morning getting ready for her meeting with Snape. Make-up or no make-up, nice robes or everyday fare, styled hair or a ponytail. She paced about her rooms, pulling clothes out of her closet and discarding them on the floor. Nothing looked useful. She puffed a lock of loose hair out of her face and collapsed on the windowsill.

The school’s courtyard was full of kids enjoying a good day outside. Gerry mused for a moment if she could ask one of the older year girls to help her with an outfit and hair, but quickly rejected the thought. She could just imagine the horror on some girl’s face when she was told Gerry was going to all these lengths to work in the lab with Snape (the wizard did have a reputation).

Leaving the first issue unresolved, she moved to the next. Out of her trunk she fished her potion instruments. The box and its contents were old and noticeably worn-out. It used to belong to her grandmother, and Gerry held on to this box for the reminder and the comfort and the encouragement it provided her with, when she worked with potions. She then dug out her apron, which also used to belong to her grandmother, and was as old and worn-out as the tools were. For at least an hour she fiddled with it, trying make it look more presentable. The end result was rather disappointing – several mismatched patches, which didn’t improve the appearance of the apron any. Shit, she really needed to pick up a couple of spells for clothes, hair, and such.

She left her rooms allowing for plenty of time to get to Snape’s office and found herself at his door five minutes before the scheduled time. After a little consideration, Gerry decided to wait.

Slow minute dragged after slow minute, and with each minute that passed, she saw her resolve melting.

At exactly two o’clock in the afternoon, Gerry raised her hand to knock on the door and felt her lungs refuse to take in air. She kept standing there unable to breath, her mouth open, her one hand raised, and her other hand clenching the handles of her bag in a death grip. Then, she leaned on the wall.

A few moments passed before the cold of the stones, seeping through her clothes, brought her back to her senses and unfroze her lungs. Gerry hissed in the first full breath and straightened up, gingerly holding on to her middle.

“Get a grip, girl,” she whispered angrily to herself. “You only are going to be making a potion.”


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“You are late.” He scowled at her.

She nodded, pausing at the door, twisting the handles of her bag between her fingers.

“Well,” Snape drawled, “are you planning on spending the rest of your lab time like that, or actually do some work?”

“Yes, no, yes…” Gerry turned red, bit her lip, and moved inside. She looked questioningly at him, her insanely blue eyes seemed darker with anxiety.

“Ah-ha,” Snape thought triumphantly, “looks like our poor Ms. Ardant had oversold her brewing talants!” His lip quirked in a sneer and he motioned her to follow him. After a short hesitation, the witch stepped forward.

Snape swept through his private library, where he had worked for the last several hours waiting for the girl. He broke his stride for a moment, surprised to see an empty parchment that lay next to the open book on the desk. He hadn’t been just sitting there, he had been making notes. Or had he? A clean Autoquill hovered over the parchment. Well, maybe not. Snape swore inwardly, and quickened his walk.

He didn’t look back, but knew the girl followed him into the lab, when he heard a soft “wow” whispered behind him. His sneer grew more distinct. What did she expect? A hole in the wall? After all, he wasn’t a regular Potions Professor, he was a bloody Potions Master. A Master! One of the best in his field! At least he had been… With a loud thud the door closed shut behind them on Snape’s quietly hissed command.

He went to a large window and turned around with a swoosh of his robes. The girl was still standing at the door staring around the room in awe.

“I do hope my humble workroom is up to your high standards,” Snape couldn’t help himself. The girl blushed, lowering her gaze to the floor. “Of course, it is probably nothing like Professor Grumbledam’s, but you’ll have to forgive me. This” he spread his arms, “is all I will be able to offer…”

“Professor, please,” she whispered, looking at him, a plea in her eyes. He barely managed to retain the cold expression on his face. Then he turned his back to her and threw irritably, “I trust you can find your way around a potions lab.”

He watched a lonely bird high up in the clear sky for a while as if his life depended on it. Thank Merlin, Dumbledore convinced him to get this charmed window, otherwise, what would he stare at while two levels below ground? The bird flew away, and Snape forced himself to move to the desk.

He took his time arranging the books just so, pushing a stack of parchments from one side of the desk to the other, and checking the empty drawers. Then, he looked at the witch.

The girl seemed to have overcome her initial trepidation, and was in the process of arranging a cauldron on the part of the worktable furthest from Snape’s desk. Then, she collected necessary ingredients from the storage cabinet and organized the small mounds of leaves, the jars of various liquids, and neat stacks of roots and insect parts next to the cauldron. From where Snape was standing he couldn’t find anything wrong with what the girl was doing so far, but he was sure he would. He had decent practice at doing it.

He made several steps and stopped at the worktable close enough to the witch to scrutinize her every move, but far enough to not smell the distinct vanilla and peach scent of hers. He folded his arms on his chest and trained his eyes on the girl’s hands – he was supervising the potion-making after all. The girl, feeling his eyes on her, halted mid-motion, but recovered quickly and went on with her work.

“You do realize you’ve come here to make a potion, not display your collector’s items, don’t you?” Snape inquired with mock concern. He was appalled at the sight of the instruments she took out of her bag. Definitely second-hand items. No one, even remotely connected to the field of Potions, would use anything like that. Bloody babbling amateur. He couldn’t hold back a comment regarding her apron either. “I believe a rag could be more useful for protection than this. Then again, your robes might be beyond the need of protection.”

“Look, Professor.” The blue eyes sparked angrily, and the witch bit her lip as if to prevent herself from saying anything further. Snape waited, a perfect smirk in place, challenging the girl’s heated stare with his own cold and indifferent one. She lowered her eyes, and he drawled menacingly, “I do advise you to start your work for you are wasting my time.”

For the next two hours she worked and he circled around her like a predator around its prey. From time to time he would throw her a remark that would halt her motions, heat up her face, and ignite a fire in her eyes. Then she would bite her lip, take a breath, and continue with her work. But Snape didn’t relent. Her hold of the knife was wrong. Her minced roots looked more like squashed. Her dash equaled a good pinch. Her stirring was too slow. Snape knew how to unsettle people. He was damn good at it. And he was determined to demonstrate to the little Ms. Pet Project that it took more than pity from the Headmaster to be able to brew a potion. Besides, he had had a very long night and a very long morning to nurture enough irritation and sarcasm to last for the whole four hours the witch had to be in his lab.

Only now and then, when he would leave the girl alone, he couldn’t help but notice how sure her moves were, and how the brewing went along just right. He couldn’t help but appreciate how gently her small hands danced over the cauldron and her lips softly whispered the incantations, but how she, foregoing the grace, didn’t hesitate to force the knife into a particularly hard root and didn’t flinch at the stench of dragon dung. He had to admit it that the girl most probably wasn’t lying about her capabilities in respect to potion brewing. Not that he would ever tell her that. She was still just the little Ms. Pet Project.

Then, there was an hour of simmering, when the witch cleaned and packed her instruments and replaced all the unused ingredients. After that was done, she sat on the bench, careful not to look at him, and trained her eyes on the window.

Snape made another circle around the worktable and noted mockingly, “Whoever taught you to brew potions, should have mentioned such a small matter as concentration. On your work.” The witch shuddered slightly, as if pulled rudely out of reverie, and moved her gaze to him. “Then again,” he continued coldly, “there seems to be a very large quantity of potion-related issues you are either not familiar with, or choose to ignore. If the first is true, you really need to go back to your textbooks and start with the basics. If the later is true, I am afraid, I can’t allow anything like that in my lab, and will be forced to require you to leave the potion-brewing to somebody more…disciplined.”

The girl sucked in air through her clenched teeth with a hissing sound and jumped to her feet. “You…” She didn’t have a chance to finish because the slight push she gave to the worktable disturbed the cauldron. The steaming liquid splashed at the sides of it and sloshed over the rim, shushing into dark smoke in the fire beneath the cauldron.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” sneered Snape and with a wave of his wand restored the balance of the cauldron. “Apparently, proper lab conduct is also not a matter you are familiar with.”

“You bastard, you made me do that!” she yelled, pushing back the bench and starting toward Snape. The blue irises of her eyes burned, her little hands clenched into fists, her pale cheek acquired the scarlet color of anger, the wild locks of her long wavy hair falling from her ponytail spilled softly over her shoulders.

For a moment he forgot she was a charity case. For a moment he forgot her apron was a ridiculous piece of rag and her robes couldn’t remember the better days. For a moment he forgot they were in the middle of a fight. But only for a moment.

“Temper,” he noted coldly to her, “is not a virtue in potion-brewing.”


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She was so angry, she didn’t see where she was going. Running along the dark dungeon corridors, she spat profanities and curses at the stone walls, shattering a couple of wooden torches into splinters along the way. Oh, she was so fucking angry! No, angry wasn’t the right word. Furious!

Fucking bastard! Her wand hand was burning with the need to curse the piece of shit into oblivion. Hell, she wanted to strangle him with her bare hands. Rip him apart and feed the pieces to the dogs. Stuff him into his own cauldron and boil him. Fucking bastard!

Back in the lab, while she was screaming at him, he was standing in front of her motionless, calm, the infernal smirk playing on his thin lips, his black eyes cold and void of any emotions. An insect. A tiny, annoying, powerless insect, that was what she was to him. An insect that could be allowed to talk for entertainment purposes only. An insect whose trifling breath could be squashed away with a slight press of a boot’s sole.

Oh, how she wanted to smack that arrogant smirk off of his face. How she wanted to answer all his nasty remarks one by one with the same degree of malice and sarcasm he seemed to have perfected. How she wanted to send his ass flying across the room and smashing into the opposite wall.

Gerry whipped her wand out and pointed at the wizard’s crooked nose. He looked at her with a barely perceptible degree of amusement, but remained motionless.

“Coward!” she yelled at him. “Get your wand out!”

Still he didn’t move. His smirk just got more spiteful, and his eyes got a few degrees colder. She could wait only for so long before bursting away the wards to the rooms, grabbing her bag, and running out.

The first coherent thought formed in Gerry’s head when she managed to reach the ground floor. She had to go to the Headmaster. She had to go and tell him what an utter bastard Snape was. Nasty, malicious bastard. Gerry inhaled deeply. Yes, that was what she should do.

The light, the movement of students around her, calmed her a bit. Having caught several surprised glances, she realized she was still running with her wand in hand. She bit her lip, pocketed her wand, and forcibly slowed her pace into a brisk walk.

By the time she was riding the stairs she knew she wasn’t going to Dumbledore. As tempting as the idea was, she couldn’t just go and complain. Not to the Headmaster, not to McGonagall, not to anybody else. She couldn’t ask for help in this matter. And in the end, what would she complain about? The wizard famous for his nastiness was nasty to her? She would have to take care of it herself.

In her rooms, Gerry threw her bag on the floor and collapsed onto the sofa. Then she jumped up again and began pacing. One after another the plans were forming in her head. The plans for vengeance, a sweet vengeance that would leave Snape just as she was right now, powerless and furious. She had to retaliate, she had to get back at him, because never in her life was she unfairly insulted like that. Never in her life was she belittled so expertly, so cleverly. Never in her life was she talked down to with so much contempt and mockery…

The knock at the door interrupted her brooding.

“Hey!” She was greeted by Jay’s playful smile. “What is with you?”

“What do you mean?” she asked gesturing him to come in.

“You were running through the corridors like a madman, pardon, madwoman, knocking people off of their feet left and right,” Jay said following her into the rooms.

“What?” She turned around to face him.

“Yeah, I personally had to send a couple of students to Poppy for a bumps and bruises check.”

“No.” Gerry wrinkled her nose.

“Yep, bumps and bruises,” Jay confirmed with an utterly serious expression on his face.

“You are kidding me.” Gerry slapped his arm lightly and realized her fury had subsided.

“No, really, what’s wrong?” Jay settled on the sofa and looked at her with visible concern.

“Jay, I just had an absolutely horrible afternoon, which I don’t want to talk about, and which I’d rather not think about for a while,” she confessed with a sigh and sat next to him, folding her legs under her.

“All right,” shrugged Jay, “then, the best place not to talk and not to think about things is…” He trailed off, encouraging Gerry to finish his sentence.

“A Quidditch pitch,” she offered.

“Could be,” he agreed slightly surprised. “But it’s getting dark soon, which can be a hindrance. Try again.”

“I don’t know…a library.”

Jay looked at her with more obvious surprise. “That would be a…choice, but not what I had in mind. Come on, one more try.”

“I give up, just tell me,” pleaded Gerry.

“All right,” conceded Jay. “In a view of the hardship you’ve had to overcome this afternoon, which most definitely had a reducing effect on your thinking abilities, I’ll give you a hint. The place I have in mind is where they serve food and drinks. You want to guess again?”

“A pub?” Both of Gerry’s brows went up. “But can we…? I mean it is school and all…”

“Ger, we are not inviting the kids along. It’ll be just you and me and a whole room full of complete strangers, who do not give a flying pig about who we are and what we do there,” Jay explained, like he would to a three-year old. “Besides, tomorrow is Sunday, so we will have a whole day to recover. If some of us will need to recover,” he added with an irresistible smile, and Gerry suddenly thought that his offer did have its merits.

Of course, Snape would be only too happy to find out that she locked herself in her rooms to cry or to sizzle. But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. Fuck him, she’d rather have fun. There was no deadline on getting revenge – she would figure out something later. She definitely would.

“Lead the way.” Gerry jumped up from the sofa, motioning Jay to the door. The flames of her fury were back in full force, licking at her insides. This time, however, from scorching white they turned jovial orange. Yes, that was what she would do – in spite of that piece of shit she would go out and enjoy herself.

Jay eyed her skeptically.

“Come on,” she urged him impatiently. He got up, a smile playing on his lips.

“Hmm, I can tell you were not kidding about your afternoon,” he said heading to the door.

“Shut up, Jay, and move,” she snapped at him merrily.

“All right, all right,” Jay chuckled. Then, he stopped abruptly and turned around. “There is one thing…”

“What?” Gerry almost bumped into him.

“Who is the designated Apparator?”

“We’ll walk back,” Gerry promised, nudging him slightly forward. “Come on.”

Jay made another couple of steps and stopped again, this time without turning. “And one more thing…”

“What?”

“Could you get rid of that rag you are wearing right now? It looks disgusting.” Only then Gerry noticed she still had her apron on. She blushed, ripped it of, and followed Jay out the door.


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He continued standing, his arms folded on his chest, his sneer firmly curving his lips, long after she was gone. Then, he slowly sat on the bench.

His hands unfolded on their own volition and slid to his knees, where they stayed, shaking like two pale fish pulled out of the water. His sneer dissolved, and his lips slacked downward. His eyes, which remained focused on the door that let the young witch out, burned either from his inability to blink, or… No, it’s nothing, probably just the result of countless sleepless nights...

A shattered breath suddenly sent a shudder through his entire body. Snape moved his gaze from the door, and rested it on his shaking hands. Bloody Merlin…

“Bloody Merlin,” he thought again, and couldn’t move beyond this thought. Some time passed before he raised his hands and pressed the balls of the palms to his eyes. “Bloody Merlin,” he whispered, finally breaking the deafening silence of the room…

Snape was brought out of his stupor by a more violent hiss of the potion, which still was bubbling in the cauldron, just like the witch had left it. Yet another hiss, and he got up and went to check on the brew. A quick glance revealed that the potion was ready and looked perfect – the color, the texture, the smoking, and all.

“I bet only your valuable remarks could help the witch achieve such perfection,” sniggered the little voice in his head, and all Snape could do in response was to grit his teeth and extinguish the fire under the cauldron.

“Go, run after her, apologize.” The little bugger was laughing its head off. “Better yet, demand her resignation. Don’t you have a good reason to? She raised her wand on you, and she brewed a perfect potion.”

“Shut up!” Snape roared, rubbing his temples fiercely, fingers digging into his scalp. “Shut up!”

He did what he had to do. What was expected of him. What he believed was right. What he thought he should do. What he had to… Oh, shit!

He shook his head and stared at the cauldron in front of him. Yes, the potion needed to be taken care of. Despite of what happened here, what he felt or not, thought or not about the brewer of said potion, he, the Potions Master to the bone, couldn’t let the brew go to waste.

There was actually a small degree of relief in having something to do, to busy himself with something useful. He left the potion on the worktable to cool off, grabbed a cradle of empty vials and placed it next to it. Then he went to the shelves holding the lab equipment. Somehow, he had to figure out a way to bottle the brew with minimal use of his inadequate hands, and without magic, which could have negative effects on the healing qualities of the potion. Rummaging through the collection of ladles and stacks of funnels, Snape forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. He would have time to think about everything else later. Preferably, much later…

He went to her rooms straight after dinner, but the door was closed, and the little witch from the nearby portrait said that Ms. Ardant wasn’t in. He paced along the corridor for a while, and then moved farther down the hallway.

He didn’t know what he was going to do when he saw her, what he was going to say. It would have been so easy to tell her at dinner to go pick up her potion at the lab. He had his sneer practiced until his face hurt. He had his words memorized to the letter. But she didn’t come to the Great Hall for dinner. And now she wasn’t in her rooms.

It was after the curfew, and Snape decided to prowl around a little, and ease his tension by docking some points. Which he did. Still the young witch didn’t come back, and the anxiety he assured himself he didn’t feel, rose wave after cold wave in the pit of his stomach.

He took her potion to Poppy and decided to go walk around some more. No, he didn’t want to think about why she wasn’t in her rooms yet. And no, he had no inclination to ask anyone if they knew where she had gone. And no, he wasn’t the least bit concerned if her late absence had anything to do with the events of the afternoon.

It was well after midnight when Snape felt, rather than heard, the steps that were heading in the direction of Ms. Ardant’s rooms. There was more than one person coming, and after a brief consideration, Snape ducked behind a column. His black robes dissolved into the shadow of the column, and his form became imperceptible in the dark corridor.

Snape stilled his breath when he heard that the sound of steps had died down, and whomever they belonged to had stopped at the door to the young witch’s rooms. There were some whispers, and giggling, and the shuffle of boots on the stone floor. He peeked from his hiding place.

His eyes, which were used to the darkness of the dungeons, quickly recognized the two people who stood not far away from him. They were Mr. Rag Clown, his foolish patterned robes unmistakable even in the dim lights, and the…girl. She was leaning on the wall, her long hair shimmering about her shoulders, when her body shook in yet another bout of giggles. The young wizard stood next to her, close, too close, bending just a little to whisper something in her ear.

His heart suddenly speeding up the beat, Snape could barely keep himself from jumping out of his hiding place and breaking up this cozy couple. His hands rolled into tight fists, his nails drawing bloody grooves on his palms, his eyes narrowed to mere slits, and his whole body tensed like a bow around an arrow. He probably should have left. He probably shouldn’t have been here to begin with. And he definitely shouldn’t stay and watch. But he did.

Meanwhile, the giggling stopped, and the young wizard leaned even closer to the girl. There were some more whispers, but no matter how hard Snape tried, he couldn’t decipher a word. He reached for his wand to cast an eavesdropping charm, but before his fingers touched the polished wood, he saw that their faces touched. And then it was quiet.
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A/N – A huge thanks to my beta Odddoll