Snape's Match

Lia awoke at lunchtime, refreshed and optimistic once more. Damn Snape, she decided. If he wanted to mess with her, well she’d just mess with him back! She’d done it before, hadn’t she?
Hermione came in, and looked relieved to see Lia’s welcoming smile. “You’re better! I was really worried – you looked bad this morning.”
“Yeah, I felt really weird,” Lia agreed. “Are you going down to lunch now?
“Soon as you get dressed,” laughed Hermione.
“Wha – oh yeah, I forgot I’d put on my pajamas. Just a minute.”
“Here you are, by the way,” Hermione was holding out Snape’s Firewhisky. “Don’t want any teachers seeing that, do we?” She gave Lia a small wink, about as far as she could go in condoning her act
T
The two girls suddenly heard the door to the common room downstairs crash open. They giggled, imagining that someone had gotten one too many points taken off them or run into Peeves on the way up, when to their horror they heard somebody shout: “Professor Snape!” He had clearly found out about the lost Firewhisky, and deduced who had stolen it.
Petrified as she was, Hermione managed to inform Lia that nobody had ever got Snape so angry that he had personally come into the Gryffindor common room to root them out.
“Oh God, what are we going to do?”
They could hear Snape (sounding absolutely enraged) downstairs interrogating unlucky students on Lia’s whereabouts. Lia snapped out of it.
“Right, here’s the plan, Herm. You wait here, I’ll go out and then you follow behind me and whatever you do,” here Lia looked right at Hermione, “back me up on whatever I say and everything will be alright. Trust me.”
“OK, but if he proves it was you…” Hermione couldn’t carry on; the thoughts were probably too painful.
Lia ran over to the mirror and artfully arranged her hair as though she had just gotten out of bed, and let one of the straps from her camisole fall off her shoulder. That should do it, she thought.
“Lia, what -?” Hermione was obviously puzzled on why she was worrying about her appearance when Professor Snape was quite plainly out for her blood.
“Just follow me.” Lia took a deep breath. This is it, girl, she thought. Are you going to show everyone how you can beat Snape, or what?
Her appearance on the stairs caused a hush in the common room, which up till now had been full of Snape’s shouts and the outraged tones of the Gryffindors. As Snape turned around to see the cause of the apprehensive silence, Harry and Ron entered and stood, thunderstruck, on the threshold.
Snape was almost as transfixed, though for different reasons. He had never imagined a student could have such a powerful draw for him. Thght ght of Lia in her disheveled camisole and drawstring trousers, with dark hair spilling about her shoulders, almost distracted him from his quest to punish her the way he had punished no student before. She was the first to break the silence, in the insolent voice she had used on him in the dungeons.
“You wanted something, Professor?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, and then almost as if gathering up steam, yelled: “Yes! I have come here to punish you, Miss Fitzgerald, for committing a crime so heinous, that I would not have believed it from any student but you. You will regret the day when you stole from my office! I will make sure you are expelled!”
Lia allowed a quizzical smile to steal across her face. Snape’s face reddened uncomfortably, and Ron wondered why she wasn’t running as fast as possible back into the girls’ dormitories where Snape couldn’t follow her.
“Well, sir, it would help if I knew what I was accused of, so that I can defend myself.”
“What?” spluttered Snape, “You know perfectly well what I am talking about, girl, and you and I are going to the Headmaster now!”
“What, like this?” Lia ladled on the innocent smile. “But sir, I’m not even dressed!”
“YOU STOLE FROM MY OFFICE LAST NIGHT IN DETENTION! I KNOW IT WAS YOU!”
Lia allowed herself a laugh. “Surely you’re not saying I could have stole something while you were in there with me, sir?”
Snape opened his mouth to say something foul when Professor McGonagall pushed a shocked face around the open portrait door. “Professor Snape! Why on earth are you in here?”
He pointed a shaking finger at Lia on the stairs. “This girl stole from my office last night, as I could not find her anywhere to discipline her, I had to come here.”
McGonagall transferred her gaze to Lia. “Why aren’t you dressed, Miss Fitzgerald?”
“Well you see, Professor,” Lia answered, allowing a shade of reproach to enter her voice, “I was ill this morning and so I was asleep when Professor Snape came in here and started shouting for me.”
“Really, Severus,” McGonagall said severely. “Couldn’t you have waited? What is she accused of anyway?”
Snape treated Lia to a poisonous glare. “She stole an item from my office last night in detention.”
“From detention? What nonsense, she couldn’t have! I suppose he was with you all the time, girl?”
Lia nodded. “I swear I didn’t take anything, Professor, I don’t even know what I’m supposed to have stolen.”
“Yes, Severus, what was it? Something valuable?”
Snape was clearly reluctant to say.
“Come on, then, tell us,” McGonagall reiterated.
“A – a bottle of Firewhisky.”
The Gryffindors collectively sniggered.
McGonagall shot him a very sharp look. “Well that’s nothing. I’m sure you can replace it. No need to have come in here to shout at an sick girl – I’m not even sure she stole it.”
She swept out, leaving Snape to follow in her wake. The minute the door closed behind them, the whole room erupted into applause as Lia bowed from the stairs and reentered the dormitory.