The Scavenger Hunt

This was written for my friend Becca, in honor of her birthday, which was on December Tenth. I'm probably breaking some rules, posting this here on aff.net, since there is no sex or dark stuff in this story and it's all just cute fluffiness. But, since it goes somewhere within "Darkened Lust", I reckoned the people who've been reading that story would perhaps enjoy this little side-tale as well.


The Scavenger Hunt
By Ami E. Bowen

Disclaimer: Severus Snape and anything regarding Harry Potter and that world belong solely to J.K. Rowling. Becca and myself belong to Severus Snape... At least within our fantasies and shared writings, we do! ^_^;

Becca Middleton lay awake and staring up at the ceiling. The room reeked of sex. The bed sheets were tangled about her legs and felt warm against the chill of her skin. She sat up to pull the covers upwards and untangle the sheets.

Against her left side rested a softly rounded breast and a murmur of sigh escaped the slightly parted lips of her lover and best friend, Ami Bowen. She turned her head to gaze at her lovingly for a few moments. To her right, curled into her was her other lover. Severus Snape.

She swiveled her head towards him and reflected how unlike the sardonically mocking Potions Master everyone was knew him as he seemed when he was sound asleep, breathing deeply through his nose with a soft smile playing across his features. She loved him. Loved them both.

Oh, it wasn’t the kind of romantic; flowers and crap type of love that swelled within her breast for these two. After all they’d been through together, not only in the confines of the bedroom, the love they shared between them was all at once much deeper and much more complex than that. And right now, she was too involved in feeling their closeness to contemplate it further.

When next she awoke she came instantly to the realization that she was alone in the bed. She felt a sense of sudden dread as she reached out and felt the empty bed on either side of her. The places her lovers had been were cool to the touch. Her blue eyes hardly yet open, she pushed back a length of her long, dark hair just as the fingers of her other hand brushed against something.

“Hmm?” she sat up, her fingers closing about the soft piece of… she sniffed the paper… parchment? No. Vellum. She smiled. Severus. Her feeling of trepidation vanished then as she unrolled the paper, her fingers brushing across the rather loopy handwriting of the former Potions Master.

Of course she knew it to be his writing. Ami’s writing, what she’d seen of it, looked like chicken scratches. The ink he’d used looked strange, too. And soon she understood why. As soon as her eyes scanned the writing it began to dissolve into the paper, leaving no trace of itself behind.

“On the bed you will find my coat. Slip it on and come at once into the kitchen. For the first clue, you must go and seek…those places that store that which you eat.”

Becca had no idea what was going on, but if this were some new game they were playing, she would be more than happy to oblige them. She looked and saw that Severus had, indeed, left his long, flowing onyx frock coat draped carefully across the end of the bed. Swinging her legs over the side, she ran her fingers over the fabric of the garment and smiled.

She adored his coat and it’s many buttons. A fact that, undoubtedly, he all ready knew. She slipped it over her naked form and spent a moment with her eyes closed, feeling the material against her skin, along with a delicious sense of naughtiness. Buttoning it took a few more minutes, of course, but, when it was finished, the hem reached the tops of her knees.

Slipping the piece of vellum into one of the coat’s pockets, Becca ventured through the corridor and into the kitchen. “Go and seek…” she murmured, gazing around. Now, what in the world was she supposed to be searching for? “…places that store that which you eat…”

A smile flickered across her lips as she saw something peeking from a slightly ajar cupboard. Something red. She strode, barefoot, across the floor and draw out the length of silk, wrapping it about her hand as she did so.

Unwinding it, she saw the words upon the fabric, written in the same, magically created dark ink. “The first clue was simple, that much is true, for the next you must venture to where upwards is blue.”

That was easy, Becca thought, as she stuffed the silk into the pocket with the first clue. She raced back to the bedroom and slipped on a pair of boots. It was December and ungodly cold outside, she knew. She felt warm enough within Severus’ coat and the boots reached the tops of her knees.

The only part of her body exposed now were the middle of her thighs, between the hem of the coat and the tops of the boots. Once outside, she gazed upwards. Yes, the sky was rather blue this morning. She blinked and grinned once more as the whiteness of the clouds began to arrange themselves before her eyes.

“A bear shall growl while as squirrel doth chatter, for the next clue, you must seek the latter…” Oh, their rhymes were worse than the Sorting Hat’s; she giggled, and shook her head. She wondered if Ami were helping with the clues. No doubt she was! “Okay…’seek the latter’… a squirrel? They want me to find a damned squirrel?!”

No, she thought, as her eyes flicked towards the trees surrounding the house, not a squirrel. A tree! But, what tree?! There are a zillion of them! Wait! She glanced back upwards, but, of course, the only thing remaining in the sky were normal, everyday puffs of white against azure.

“Of course!” she cried as she raced across the back yard and towards a particular tree. She ran her hand across the thickness of the trunk until her fingers brushed the four marks, which had been gouged into the bark years before. Bear claws. A leaf fluttered downwards and landed in her hair.

She reached to pluck it out and, before she could brush it aside, her eyes caught the flicker of words written upon the foliage. The leaf was small so the words were written one at a time before vanishing to be replaced by the next…and the next until the message had been completed. “My. Darling. Girl. You. Have. Seen. The. First. Clues. Unfurl. Now. I. Don’t. Mean. To. Sound. Uncouth. But. For. The. Next. You. Must. Seek. Untruth.”

Instead of dropping the leaf once the writing had finished, she slipped it within the pocket along with the vellum, and the length of silk. If she could, she probably would have pocketed the clouds as well.

Well, she thought, I’m going back inside! I can think about what the next clue means where it’s warm! With that thought, she re-entered the house. She spent a few moments at the coffee pot, thankful that one of them had had the foresight to set the pot to brew before they’d slept.

Seated at the table, her hands wrapped about the ceramic mug, she sighed and breathed the strong, delicious odor of the dark liquid. Once the coffee had warmed her some, her mind cleared and she thought, again of the last clue.

“Seek untruth?” she mused aloud, setting down the cup upon the table and leaning back slightly in her chair. “Oh!” she exclaimed and was instantly out of the kitchen, leaving her half-drank mug of coffee to cool upon the table. She knew, instantly, where to go.

She pushed open the door to her brother’s old room and headed straight for his computer. It took a moment to type everything in and log on. She typed in the address for the fan-fiction site she went to a lot.

She skipped by most of the stories. She knew exactly what she was looking for. Just as she pulled up a story entitled; “The Evil of Snape…Murdering Double-Crossing Bastard!” something blinked at her from the bottom of the screen.

Stifling her anger and the need to suddenly, childishly flame the author, Becca clicked whatever it was that had blinked at her. An instant message box had opened. Funny, she didn’t recall opening her messenger.

“You’ve found the lie, congratulations. But, give not into useless sensations. Time now for another tact, you know what is false and what is fact. Where water flows both hot and cold, another room would see you bold.”

Ugh, she thought, as she switched off the computer, she wondered if the rhymes could get any worse! Still, it was rather cute, and she only needed to ponder for a moment the meaning of the text which had been written within the instant message box.

‘Where the water runs both hot and cold’ could only mean the tap. But the comment about ‘being bold’ made her blush as she stepped towards the bathroom. She had certainly been quite bold there. All three of them had been!

When she pushed open the bathroom door, a haze of steam met her face and she had to wait a few moments before she could see anything. The magical sunken pool was still there. Severus had yet to undo the spell that had created it. The candles were flickering all around and Becca knew there was no risk of fire as they, too, were summoned from magic and part of that magic was the prevention of accidental injury.

She crossed the threshold and sat down on the edge of the pool. Reaching a hand into the water, she swirled it around. The temperature was perpetually perfect and she had the sudden desire to remove the coat and slip into the heated water.

Before her hands could fly to the buttons of Snape’s frock coat, she paused in her swirling of the water as the ripples she had been making began to formulate what appeared to be words.

She watched, startled. One would think she’d have been used to magic by now, but Severus always seemed to find ways of surprising her. Surprising them both. “This is the last clue to be found, you must now step without a sound, back to the place from whence the first clue was found…”

The first clue, Becca thought and began to mentally retrace her steps. She thought first of the kitchen and then realized that the clue found there had been the second, and not the first. She took a moment to shed the boots she’d still been wearing and left them inside the hall closet, recalling the words warning her to ‘step without a sound.’

She padded silently back towards the bedroom she’d been sharing with her lovers and turned the doorknob slowly. Walking into the room, she couldn’t see a thing! It was unnaturally dark. Almost as though someone had placed a blindfold across her eyes. She stood still in the center of the room as the door behind her closed softly with a click that seemed impossibly loud in the quiet of the room.

Slowly, the lights came up. Becca heard Ami’s familiar bird-like twitter of a giggle and, as her eyes adjusted to the light, saw her seated, dressed in a rather pretty, if low-cut, plum-colored knee-length nightgown, one strap falling off one of her pale shoulders, seated on the edge of the bed.

Severus was standing in front of Becca, slightly to side in order to give her the view of her friend. All around the room streamers of paper floated, never quit touching the floor, and balloons flittered near the ceiling. Ami moved aside and Becca gasped at the pile of wrapped presents that had been stacked upon the bed behind her.

“You look rather fetching in my coat, Miss Middleton,” Severus whispered, stepping close to breath against her throat for a moment, “Although, I must be honest with you. I’d rather see you in nothing at all...”

Ami called them over just as shudder of lust raced up and down Becca’s spine, and Snape turned, with a knowing smirk, and, with one hand upon the small of Becca’s back, led her towards her friend.

Ami embraced Becca with gusto, kissing her friend deeply, passionately, allowing her tongue to explore the warm, wet crevice of her friend’s mouth before pulling away and grinning madly at her. “You didn’t think we’d forget, did you?”

“I don’t know what I thought!” Becca exclaimed, gazing around again, “Your idea?”

“Well,” Ami shrugged as Snape stood by, arms folded across his chest. Becca had noticed he was dressed in his dark trousers and a white shirt, unbuttoned slightly at the collar to expose a teasingly small amount of flesh.

“Mine and Severus’ idea, actually. He chose the colors of the decorations…” No kidding, Becca thought, with a smile, as she watched a green balloon collide with a silver bit of streamer. "But, we both worked out the 'clues'..." she finished, flushing slightly, "Horrible, weren't they?"

She laughed and pulled her friend to her once more, holding out her free hand for Severus, who gladly came to her. Falling backwards onto the bed, they shoved the presents aside for the time being, and succumbed, once more, to their desires.

As she ran her fingers through Severus’ dark, and yes, rather oily hair, she thought that this, being here with these two, in this moment, with their love for her wrapping about her like a glove, was something that would live on in her heart and memory forever.

Just before falling asleep, later that evening, with Severus’ arms about her on one side and Ami on the other, holding her just as near, Becca heard Ami’s whispered voice against her ear, her breath tickling the fine hairs about her neck; “Happy birthday, sweetie…”

Becca sighed, smiled and snuggled down between them, feeling extremely safe and happy and sated.

~The End~