Hidden Truths

Emily Weasley was bored. She had been trapped in the Burrow for four days now, her grandmother fussing on her constantly. Truth be told the fussing, however good intentioned, was beginning to wear on her.

Her father was away again. In Japan this time according to the owl she had received when she had fallen ill with the wizard's flu. He wouldn't be back for another two days. This meant that she was stuck at the Burrow with her grandparents, her numerous aunts and uncles and their children, and her cousins (all of which were at least five years younger than her but who all lived at the Burrow now that Voldemort was active again).

It wasn't as if they were bad people, far from it. It was just that they were so...noisy. Emily, much like her mother had been, was a very quiet person by nature. This was why she enjoyed her current position at Hogwarts so much. Willow and her husband were very quiet people most of the time, and strangely enough so was their son who only made noise when he either needed to eat or be changed. Emily had discovered very quickly though, that this was far from a good thing after James had stolen her wand from her for what seemed like the millionth time in class quite quietly and stealthily.

And then there were her colleagues, former teachers of hers that until this year, when she had been accepted into the fold as assistant to Professor Rosenberg-Potter, had seemed quite simple. Indeed, as a student, she had only viewed her professors in one dimension. Now she knew how wrong she had been.

They were interesting individuals to say the least. An example of this lay in Professor Dumbledore's obsession with matchmaking amongst the staff and students, assisted by his significant other, Professor McGonagall.

These sorts of personal quirks that made them interesting were only the icing on the cake though. Through her time as Willow's assistant Emily had learned many revealing tidbits of information about her colleagues. This had been exemplified quite vividly at a particularly illuminating staff poker game at which Willow had taken her colleagues and husband for all they were worth.

It turned out that the origins of the relationship in which Professors McGonagall and Dumbledore had been in for the last few decades had roots in the illicit. Indeed, during her own apprenticeship at the school, a young Minerva had been quite thoroughly wooed-and ultimately seduced- by a handsome and older Albus, furthermore, her supervising professor.ly rly remembered quite plainly from that poker game her own feelings of relief at this news.

It made Emily feel somewhat better about her own current love affair. True, while her own supervising professor was married and a woman for that matter, Emily had still managed to come up with her own illicit relationship to rival even Professor McGonagall's.

His name was Severus Snape.

Indeed, one evening early in the term she had been convinced by Willow to join Harry, Severus and herself for an evening of chess, conversation and fine brandy.

She had found the man she had feared throughout her time at the school to be somewhat different from the man that sat across his living room from her chatting about the latest potion advancement with Willow.

For one, he looked younger. This, Emily recognized from her work with Willow, was a result of a glamour Severus had taken to putting on himself throughout the years for some unknown reason. Well, not so unknown reason now. He had explained the reasons behind his transformation from a robust and youthful looking 44 year old to the haggard and pale late 50's man who taught potions to the dunderheads of the wizarding world one night during one of their last evenings as platonic friends. She smiled as she remembered the night that conversation had taken place. That had been the night everything had changed, his soulful eyes catching hers as she left that evening before dropping a searing kiss onto her very surprised lips.

It hadn't been only his handsome looks that had attracted her to him though. It had been the conversation. Indeed, eventually Willow and Harry had gotten so busy with James and the ongoing struggle with Voldemort that it became routine for just Emily to meet with Severus, sometimes in his rooms and sometimes in hers. He was intelligent and presented a unique and refreshing challenge to Emily\'s often bored mind. The sorting hat HAD almost put her into Ravenclaw after all"¦ At any rate, it wasn't long after these evenings once a week had become twice a week, then 3 times, until they were routinely seeking out the others company at dinner and after.

It was only a matter of time before something happened to change this relationship.

If she was able to admit it to herself, Emily would probably say that the attractio him him had started in her 7th year. He had always been an enigma to her, a puzzle of misery and weariness yet strength all rolled into one. She had longed to solve it for a long time. Now she had her chance.

She hadn't taken it of course, Severus making the first move on that infamous night that had changed their relationship forever.

He later blamed it on the amount of brandy they had drunk and they hadn't spoken to each other for two weeks, the awkwardness of two people longing for something they were both depriving themselves of becoming almost stifling in its all encompassing effect. Even the rest of the staff had felt it.

She had endeavored, as the calendar marked the two week mark of their forced estrangement, to rid themselves of the proverbial elephant that was between them. What better way, furthermore what better location, she thought than to lock themselves in his potions classroom where her attraction for him had begun?

Emily's smile grew as she remembered that day. They had fought at first, Severus insisting that she was far too young for a man of his age and that she could do better. Emily of course had already considered this and had come to the conclusion that she didn't care. She wanted him and she would have him. So, she did the only thing left that made any sense to their current dilemma of his hesitation and her headstrongness.

She had seduced him thoroughly, as Dumbledore had Minerva many decades ago, making him lose control over himself and take her virginity on his desk in the potions classroom. She had only let them out of the room after he had had her once more, this time against the wall, and had promised that he wouldn't leave her "˜for her own good'. With that spoken promise, he had carried her off to his apartment and ran a bath for her before laying her into his bed and making love to her for the third time that evening, this time slow and lovingly as compared to that first ravenous encounter and the second equally exploratory and explosive experience.

They had been together ever since, keeping it a secret from their friends and family, although Emily was certain that Dumbledore knew, he always knew, as they explored their new relationship. So far, it hadn't gone beyond the physical aspects mixed occasionally with conversation ahe ohe odd game of chess (played in bed and interrupted by bouts of passions between moves so she wasn't sure that this counted"¦.) but she knew that she was falling for him hard. One thing was for sure though; this sneaking around had to stop. Indeed Willow, Emily felt certain, was aware that she was conducting an affair with someone in the castle. She hadn't yet figured it out but Emily knew that the now-redheaded-again Professor would shortly if she and Severus continued as they had.

She hadn't slept in her own bed in a month. Well, that is until she had go sic sick.

This past week had been agony. The bed that she had slept in in both the infirmary and then in her more familiar room at the Burrow (which had been her fathers but had been given to her after the threat of Voldemort became too much for the Weasley family to reside in their own homes) felt cold and empty without the warm body of her lover. This wasn't the worst of the problem though. She missed him desperately, having resorted to daily exchanges of owls with the potions master in the last 4 days. The truth of the matter lay in the fact that Emily Weasley, despite telling herself that she shouldn't, had fallen in love.

She had told her family that the owls were from a new boyfriend. They hadn't yet however gotten her to give them a name, though not through lack of trying. Emily was sure that a name at this point would be entirely too much for her family considering the fact that her new "˜boyfriend' was older than her father AND, as if this wasn't bad enough, was Severus Snape. Her father, she knew, would be fairly supportive. That is, after he got over the shock. Indeed, since they had been reunited, her father had always said that if Emily was happy, then he would be too. The other members of her family though"¦ her Uncle Ron's reaction alone would be enough to make her a fortune if she chose to sell tickets to the event.

Shaking her head and willing herself to think of more positive topics, she mulled over what today was. It would mark the three month anniversary of the day that Emily had forcibly broken through the rough exterior that Severus presented to the world. The smile that had gathered on her face as she remembered those days grew until a grin replaced it. It was true about what was said of impromptu sex. ESPECIALLY, impromptu sex in inappropriate places, like the potions classroom. It really was the best.

And so Emily sat in the room that had once belonged to her father at the Burrow and thought about her lover, unaware that at Hogwarts, Severus was doing much the same thing.

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It was perfectly wretched the emotions she was capable of making him feel Severus Snape thought as he wrote out a reply to the owl he had received from Emily Weasley, his lover of three months. Somehow, she had worked her ways under his skin until she was as much a part of him as his liver, or kidney. A heart would probably be more appropriate to his current situation however.

Indeed, in an impossibly short time, he could honestly say that he had fallen head over heels in love with the woman that could have been his daughter if one were to compare their ages critically. With a sigh, he raised a hand up to rub his eyes wearily. He missed her, ached inside with the emptiness in his bed and in his life.

Willow, he thought, had had a hand in this. The beginning of the relationship at least as he was certain that a sweet young woman like Emily, at least the Emily he had known as a student here at Hogwarts, had been incapable of instigating a relationship with someone who had frightened her as much as he had without a spot of help. Certainly Willow, and probably Harry too, had had a part in the suspicious disappearing act that the pair had participated in in regards to the get togethers that he had Willow had shared for so long, leaving Emily and himself quite alone to marinate in their own thoughts and growing feelings.

Indeed, the evenings of brandy and conversation had changed slightly when Willow had become a mother and Harry had returned. For one, Willow was less inclined to stay up as late or as frequently as she once was and for another, her husband generally joined them when he had a free evening from the hectic and unpredictable schedule the Aurors were subjected to on a daily basis. Emily had joined them soon after her arrival at Hogwarts as Willow's assistant and Severus couldn't have been more annoyed.

At first he had viewed her as inferior, a creature to be indulged as she grew older and wiser, but certainly nothing more than a former student that was now biding her time as an assistant professor while she waited to begin her training as a curse breaker for Gringotts, like her father.

How wrong he had been.

Emily had turned out to be intelligent, open-minded, strangely mature for her 18 years, and inordinately attractive. It was a fact that had nearly driven him crazy as the attraction he felt for her grew and he forcibly tried to squash down into a hidden corner of his psyche. It hadn't worked.

He shuddered yet again as her age flashed before his eyes. Barely legal really. He should be quite ashamed of himself, but he wasn't. Albus and Minerva had started their relationship when she had been the same age and that had worked out. The question remained though: did he WANT this very strange and new thing in his life to work out?

It was true, she was extremely young, still a child really. Indeed, his own age of 44 seemed ancient when put in contrast with her 18. But, she had been insistent that they at least explore the attraction that they felt for each other before disregarding it completely. And Emily could be quite persuasive when she wanted to be. He gave a light groan as he remembered how persuasively she had pushed him off the ledge of control he had been balancing himself on after that fateful kiss as she was leaving his apartment that now infamous evening. Two weeks later, she had cornered him in his potions classroom, a place he had later discovered had been a part of her fantasies for a year (of him no less), and seduced him.

Severus was still lightheaded from the swiftness of the transition. One minute, he had been arguing with her over the inherent wrongness in any further actions they might participate in and the next, she had gotten his pants off somehow and was on her knees before him, giving him a rather expert blowjob.

And that had been that. He had pulled her up before he had lost it completely, returning the favour to most satisfactory results before taking her virginity on his desk.

Afterwards, common sense had returned, but once again, Emily would have none of his excuses and had insisted that he at least ignore the age difference that seemed to bother him so much for that evening. And he had, making love to her against the wall of the classroom before carrying her back to his suite of rooms and doing it all over again, this time in the bed that they would share off and on for the next three months. Truthfully, it wasn't the age difference that bothered him. Indeed, many wizarding marriages and relationships were made between much older men and younger women. It was an accepted trend. He was more concerned about what her family would do.

Severus could honestly say that he was more afraid of what the Weasley family would do to him if they found out he was dallying with Emily than of Voldemort himself.

And with good reason. Not only was he older than her father, Bill Weasley, but he was, in the words of Emily's uncles and aunt, a "˜greasy git.' He was sure that for these reasons alone he could kiss any acceptance he might have received good bye.

They had decided to keep their affair secret because of this fact, at least until either of them mustered up the courage to spill the beans to her family, although this was starting to wear on him. He was in love for the first time in his life and all he wanted to do was shout it from the rooftops, a huge leap for the man that had always been so quiet and contained. He had never felt like this before.

With a sigh, he broke himself out of his thoughts to continue the letter he was writing to his beloved. She had been locked up in the Burrow for four days now as she recovered from her battle with the wizards flu, but the mediwitch had declared her fit and healthy only this morning. With this in mind then (and the ache he felt in his heart and his groin for her driving his hand to write what they both desired), did Severus Snape write to her now, extending an invitation to return to Hogwarts (now deserted save for a few students and teachers) for the evening. He smiled wryly. Perhaps she would be able to sneak out tonight for a few hours. One could always hope. Chuckling lightly, he turned to the task at hand, imagining his bed warm for the first time in a week, and an even warmer body lying next to his.