Even Old Morose Bats Can Get Soft

Lo, the glory! Behold, the might! Oh, the joy! He was the shining star of the night, the keeper of riddles, the revealer of dark mysteries! He had the estrade! The cringing pathetic mortals were gawping up at him with awe, as he - and he alone - held the spare keys to the Dark Lord’s chamber of secrets!

Or... so felt Severus Snape, who had literally stolen the late night show at Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. The hasty meeting - whose participants had been dug up from various nooks and holes, some of them wearing pajamas and hair rollers - had become an instant success. And it appeared to be also full of glittering behoof unlike the normal instant successes. For example, what actually where those instant successes puked out by the storm-tossed wizarding marketlife? Merely jubilant fireworks that lasted for a pitiful second. Sparkly, but oh, so meaningless... Who any longer recalled The Batstreet Boys, a one-hit wizard boyband and their megatons of merchandise that filled the stores of Diagon Alley overnight? Now landfills were cowering with shame, forced to preserve myriads of useless knickknacks picturing the five band members, who mewled eternally their one single song... Singing Batstreet Boys flyswatters, Batstreet Boys ketchup bottles that hum for your enjoyment while you eat, Batstreet Boys chess pieces that ceaselessly chant their sole hit while you play... Grand is the woe.

Thousands of such shooting stars have fallen down, their dazzling flames of fame forever vanquished... Today, nevertheless, the utter rarity of combined benefit and glory raised its frequently unseen head.

Although principally Tonks had heard Malfoy and the minion’s discussion, Snape seemed to suck the most credit out of the night’s touch-and-go bogey-play. The cogwheels inside his head seemed generally inertia-free, as they were able to create intricate theories faster than Neville melted a cauldron during a Potions lesson. And now he definitely did not suffer from a frozen tongue. His refined syllables slithered sleekly onwards like a viper in a pool of oil, while he gloated there in the candle-lit kitchen. Sweeping around the table like a bat that had drunk a tad too many pints of Skele-Gro, the Potions Master mused the possible consequences of You-Know-His-Name-Too-Well-So-What-Is-The-Point-Of-Repeating-It getting nearer the Prophecy. He had briefly adopted a strange manner to swing the corner of his billowing cape every time his mind cooked up something ingenious and the result whizzed out from his thin mouth with a semi-Shakespearian accent. When emphasizing some important detail, he was prone to tap the tips of his long, skeletal fingers together. Nose shining with overly smug pride, Severus Snape enjoyed thoroughly his post as the newly crowned emperor of the moldy old kitchen. His awareness had become oblivious of such insignificant details as the throbbing sensation of his muscles. And he definitely, on the summit of his importance, was not soaking in the Mushy-Slushy-Land of pink gamboling bunnies. His greasy head was cool as the solidest helium, his wits as penetrating as high-frequency X-rays.

The Order members huddling around the table were burbling heatedly. They had myriads of opinions to share about the darkening tides. If only the non-dark side had had more bold soldiers... Yet, the few fellows were ready to perform acts that would have made Superman, Spiderman, and Indiana Jones to slink under their beds and suck their thumbs in whimpering fright. On one stool, Nymphadora occasionally eyed the celebrated night-bat, giggling slightly in the shelter of her hand. Unbeknownst to himself, the professor managed to appear quite comical with his mothlike fluttering around the crowd. Nonetheless, it warmed her heart to see his mood being far away from the usual sour-milk-attitude. The mellowest feeling yet radiated from the fact that her blunders had been forgiven. Nobody was maltreating a cat inside her conscience any longer. And the girl really did not mind that the old crow had filched a lion’s share of her role. In her opinion, he deserved it. Deserved some respect after today’s happenings.

The only visage in the flickering candlelight showing no delight belonged to Sirius Black. Perhaps he solely saw behind the coulisses, and apprehended who stole whose grandeur.

Hours later, the parchments were finally rolled close, and the threatening enigmas of the Dark Lord set aside for a teensy weensy moment. The kitchen’s clock was snoozing, its hands lazily flapping over numerals that were placed past midnight. The Order members were yawning in canon, most of them looking like sleepwalking zombies when they swayed out of the chamber. Severus was one of the last nightcrawlers to creep out. But just before he started to ascend the kitchen stairs, a low snarl coming from the shadows ceased his gliding.

“Had a good gloat, Snivellus?” The barker, Sirius, was leaning against a pillar just behind the cookroom’s exit.

An ill, deformed grimace spread across the Potions Master’s gaunt face, as though someone had abruptly set a cauldron full of rotten eggs under his conk. The terms between these two old ‘school pals’ had been very acid lately due to certain obvious reasons. And, no doves of peace soared initially above the scene either. Moreover, Black’s narrowed eyes were forecasting a storm as violent as Nymphadora’s infamous indoors typhoon.

The professor aimed an acerbic scowl at the Animagus, unnoticed clutching his wand deep in the cloak pocket. Dumbledore had warned him not to pick up a quarrel... He so was tempted to shoot Black with a few slanders, but he morosely forced his tongue into a reef knot. Merely he glanced calculating at the grimy stairs, ready to dash off before he would give in to his anger. But Black was severely forgetting his own unwritten oath of peace, which the Hogwarts Headmaster - who currently carried a temporary ex in his occupational title - had made him swear.

“Wonder what your two-faced motives really are, after all... Enjoying the spotlight, willing to play such a tragic hero in the public... But I know better, behind the scenes you are just the same double-dealing oddball as twenty years ago. What have you done to restart the Occlumency lessons with Harry? How many times has Dumbledore stated how important they are for my godson? I wonder... Who knows if you are deliberately trying to expose his mind for Voldemort with your damn foul actions?” His countenance had gone to the color of sour milk. Lately, Sirius had become expressively frustrated with his role as a mere doggy lurker. He yearned for action, so much desired to fight like a he-man against the dark foe twining its evil cobwebs upon the galaxy. This bee in the bonnet stung him day by day more bitingly, thus making him act occasionally like an annoyed wasp. And then there was the dilemma of this one insufferable insect bugging Potter so unfairly. Combined, these two peeves formed a formidable army of hungry red ants ready to strike.

Snape recoiled horribly at the sound of the name. Alike, his face was turning into a delicate shade of green, as the bitter mementos of the Pensieve case were being unleashed from the troll-guarded dungeons of his subconscious.

Hissing venomously, he spat, “Even though it never was a pleasure to teach your teen celebrity pet, I perhaps would have reluctantly carried on these futile hours, if it was not for you and your dear friends’ little innocent trickery... And to drag you down from your - so to say, too grand - expectations concerning your ‘splendidly ingenious’ pampered Potter, he was learning merely nothing during the Occlumency tuition. Did he bother to pay attention to my instructions? No. Did His Puny Preciousness bother to empty his mind like I plainly stated he ought to do? No.”

He kept a tiny pause, his tone turning ever bristlier. “Notwithstanding, I of course ought to have deduced this already before the start. These Potters simply consider themselves so much above us normal mortals that their swollen heads -”

Sparks of hatred flared in Sirius’s gaze, and his voice deepened into a hoarse grumble. “He would have learned. But you insufferable git apparently always gave him such a hard time that it made any concentrating simply impossible. I do wonder why Dumbledore trusts you. I’d seriously reconsider my motives if I were him...” Taking one threatening step onwards, he growled on, “And see here, Snivellus, what it comes to Harry...”

“What in the name of Merlin’s nail polish?” A feminine voice suddenly interrupted the beginning riot. Nymphadora was standing nonplussed in the kitchen’s doorway, peering at the both men in turn. She had furthermore stayed in the chamber with Mad-Eye, plotting some fresh, last-nanosecond schemes. But what was prowling a mere inch behind the threshold? A near civil war such as this was definitely not welcome to demolish the Order’s strong community spirit.

“Blimey! Now you blokes stop this stupid nonsense immediately. Sirius, why are you calling Mr. Snape that way? Don’t see him sniveling or weeping even though we had one blasted rush down the streets,” she snapped at her cousin, who had gone mute in sudden surprise. Her accent did not ring any more mawkish either, when she turned to the professor. “And you. If I were you, I’d fancy a good rest after that running. You should get back to Hogwarts, it’s awfully late!”

The whole vista bathed in absurdity. The little Auror, who barely reached Snape’s shoulder-line with her majestic height, was scolding at the duo of these tall sinewy males with broad chests. As though a minuscule pooch poodle had been yapping at a bulldog and an oversized cobra, and astoundingly shocking them. Then, without further ado, she grabbed the Potions Master’s arm, and began to haul the utterly confused greasy-locks upstairs. Although her tone was still slightly nagging, she managed to retain it so low that the screeches of Everyone’s Favorite Mommy did not start all over. In the main hall, Tonks led the bat towards the front door.

“Now, you really need to rest,” she prattled, squeezing his arm in her soft clutches. “And don’t forget the relaxant potion. Blimey, what’s with everybody? First that Malfoy and now my cousin goes all berk. Why’s he calling you like that, anyway?”

But the girl could not extract even a minuscule meow out of the phobic raven. His tremendously traditional bonfire stare with the titanium-rigid petrification had returned, at least when the couple stopped to tinker open the front door’s multibillion locks. There Tonks cast a last glance up at him, a hearty smile illuminating her visage. His gnarled hand received a warm series of pats.

“Hey, thanks, really. I could’ve hurt myself or far worse, if it wasn’t for you. Goodnight, Mr. Snape.”

Therewith, she wafted out into the chilly night. The ebony darkness almost immediately swallowed her slender figure.

Snape’s flying home was awfully perilous concerning the whole fauna of the sky. He kept colliding with owls and treetops as he soared with his broomstick like a blindfolded and drunken vulture, the trajectory looking merely like a slapdash travesty of zigzag. The high empyreans were full of hallucinations, and a single carol had clogged his ears from the reality.

Goodnight, Mr. Snape...

That smile... that touch... so warm, lovely, graceful...

When the lovesick Potions Master finally arrived in the Hogwarts grounds sometime during the small hours, he looked as though some nefarious knave had pilfered his brains and transported them all the way to Betelgeuse. The folds of his robes were full of feathers and twigs that stuck out in odd angles. A microscopic, windswept owl perched on the brim of his pointed wizard hat. It had some fifteen minutes earlier crashed against his nose, fallen unconscious for a second, and gotten stuck in the brim’s folds. It hooted dazedly, but the batty professor paid no attention whatsoever to it while tottering up the castle’s outdoors steps. The poor bird was the hat’s hostage. It had to pursue Severus all the way down into the somber Slytherin dungeons. Not remembering what century it was, the exhausted professor flopped almost instantly down on his bed, and fell asleep.

---

The next day dawned with a bonsai Armageddon. The formal definition of these happenings of course depends from the observer’s point of view, but basically anarchy had the top throne. All the known physical laws had been eradicated inside this very school. Oh the pitiable Albert Einstein and all his fine work...

A horrible hullabaloo made Severus - still in bed - wake up with a start. Some infernal dream-shatterer was pummeling the front door of his private chambers. In his veiled nocturnal panorama, Tonks had been massaging his hand for the 3141592nd time. The man rubbed his sticky-feeling eyes. The mellow dream had all of a sudden burst like an overinflating balloon. They were all gone, his blissful, precious illusions! Who dared; who was this sordid, six hundred and sixty-six times damned pigeon dropping that dared disturb...? And at this time of night...

Or, how early was it actually?

For his utter shock, the serpent-shaped clock on the wall tooted that it was well beyond breakfast time. This meant that he had infernally overslept. Luckily he had this artificial pal to indicate time, since he had totally forgotten to set the hourglass before falling asleep. Gasping, he took a spurt out of the bed.

SPLAT!

A hideous sound reverberated in the dusky underground room. Snape found himself sprawling at full length on the flagstones. Moaning in sheer pain, he attempted to get up.

BLONK!

The clatter opera was replayed. The reason for this macabre musical piece was his physical condition. Naturally he had not recalled to mix the relaxant potion the previous night. Initially he was made to comprehend how his every single muscle was aching, smarting, mourning, and pining. Stealthily during the sleeping hours, the cruel lactic acid had crept along his body. Now, the results of the Death Eater marathon were fully visible. It was unbearably laborious to get up from the floor, since Snape’s legs felt as though they had been made of sloppy meatloaf, spiced with extra-strong pang. Finally he managed to conjure up a crutch, and arduously limped to the door supported by this prop.

“Augh! Igh! Squick! Yif! Pfii! Piu!” His wails of pain sounded as though someone had continuously trodden on a mouse.

It was Argus Filch panting behind the exit. He had apparently run all the way from the toady throne room down into Snape’s premises. The super-frog herself had sent him. Clutching at a stitch in his side, he wheezed his urgent news. The further the caretaker went on with his scandalous announcements, the more venomous smirk curled Snape’s lips. Umbridge, for some incomprehensible reason, had caught Slug Diarrhea overnight, and she needed a remedy faster than plain quickly. The situation was highly inconvenient, because Moaning Myrtle kept haunting her personal toilet and followed the Headmistress literally everywhere.

Severus almost utterly forgot the ache of his limbs, while listening to this exceedingly outrageous report. He kept trailing a finger along his goatee, sniggering behind the poisonous leer. That served the slimy, swollen old gastropod right... He had Black Crawlycreeper Extract, but she did not have... He ought to make a potion from it, but what actually obliged him to tell that he possessed any...? What a delicious opportunity to avenge this would be... For a while, he played evilly with the thought of not being able to brew the remedy, measuring the exhausted Argus down the bridge of his nose. Yet, he was forced to yield in the end.How ironic that he would have to demonstrate the same potion to the NEWT appliers today. How very unfortunate...

“Very well,” he retorted sourly. “I shall go and fetch the potion ingredients. If you will wait for a moment there in my office...” Thus, he turned about, making a beeline to his wardrobe. Along with those icky liquids, he needed something else on than just the pajamas he still wore.

The airborne paper bag, where all the toxic thingamabobs had been loaded the previous evening, was hovering still intact in the same nook where he had thrown his traveling garments. The minuscule owl that had so appallingly become the prisoner of his hat, was now snoozing inside it. It seemed entirely unaware of the rumpus that had only a few minutes ago shaken the whole chamber. Yet... yesterday’s brouhaha soon revealed its darker than dark secrets. The tiny bottle containing the Black Crawlycreeper Extract was shattered, its inners now happily swimming somewhere in the London sewers.

Thereby vanished Snape’s possibilities to gloat with his superior potionmaking talents in front of the seventh-years. On the other hand, his wicked mind felt such effervescent glee because of Umbridge’s fate that he did not regret the loss of the flask even worth a dungbeetle’s dropping. If his nature had been even an itsy bitsy more like Voldemort’s, the subterranean chamber would have initially echoed with a sinister muwahahaha. However, as he was merely half a villain, he did not need to act along the Evil Overlord Codebook. If so, he would have also been required to conjure up flashes of lightning to accompany the hysteric gloating. But Snape’s mirth was much subtler, more snakelike.

He hobbled into his office. Filch was eying a particularly large, fat and green fish concealed inside a huge glass jar. This monstrosity sported pouchy, swollen cheeks, round bulging eyes, and a wide, slack mouth, which was slightly open and showing pointed teeth. Scratching his balding head, he apparently pondered whom it reminded him of. If that creature had been put to wear a fluffy pink cardigan, perhaps the caretaker would have been able to connect the association. As Snape came in, he turned his gaze away from the ugly organism.

“Professor?”

Severus stopped beside him, set the tips of his fingers together, and sneered silkily, “Unfortunately I am disinclined to acquiesce to your request.”

“Eh...? My apologies, Professor...? I didn’t quite understand your fine wording -”

“Pssht, Filch, you ought to be cognizant of that my expression meant merely no.” Snape’s voice sounded frustrated. What was the matter with all these lack-wits? Could they not comprehend plain and simple English any longer?

“I daresay I am unable to brew the remedy. I am short of Black Crawlycreeper Extract, and the cure to Slug Diarrhea obviously cannot be produced without it. Thusly...”

The old caretaker was horrified. “But... but... can’t you go and buy it? Hogsmeade, anyplace? Ma-am’s really sick and we need it...”

Snape’s thin lip curled even more dreadfully, the smile bringing out the whole set of teeth that would have desperately needed both brushing and braces. “But of course you clearly ought to know how rare this Black Crawlycreeper Extract is. As far as I am concerned, Diagon Alley in London would be the nearest place to achieve a vial...”

The options were scarce. As Snape’s classes had to be cancelled in any case, His Hooknosedness was obliged to repeat history. After a strong muscle relaxant potion and an even stronger breakfast, he buttoned his traveling cloak, expelled the stowaway owl from his hat with a bluster of curses, and mounted his broom for another London trip.

That day, the sky was colored with a blanched hue of blue. A few shreds of clouds hung lazily here and there. In the embrace of the pearly heavens, Snape’s thoughts were momentarily free from any distraction... until a too familiar tingling took the upper hand of his hands. Then, abruptly, every cloud and treetop started teasing him with associations, little patterns that reminded him involuntarily of her...

She had been in his arms, so long... So warm, so soft to hold... the little, sweet thing... How she had held his arm, smiled at him so sincerely...

And, for the very first time, the number one enemy of sickeningly saccharine slush did not even want to toss the treacle thoughts away. For the first time he admitted their very existence, as unexplainable as they were. The tingling wormed up along his arms, and made a nest in his stomach. And he did not want that sentiment to decay... No... So weird and inexplicable was that this feeling made the common clammy emptiness vanish from his chest. All of a sudden, that usual frosty hollowness had become his fiend. He did not want a roomer like that in his heart any longer, that plague that turned everything icy with the bare skim of its fingertips... This novel guest in his heart made it beat so much more warmly. Hence, he wanted it to linger... longer... longer...

He had to see her again.

His palate dry, his pulse feeling as though someone had fiercely played a kettledrum inside his chest, he began leafing through his mental calendar.

When was the next Order meeting? Would she be there...?

Oh, if he only could hold her again... Feel that blissful warmth against him... Dwell in that twinkling smile...

Just one more time...

---

The following day dawned gloriously with heavenly fireworks, the spheres blazing with sparkling gold and red. Although the sky so shamelessly imitated the Gryffindor color scheme with no regret whatsoever, nobody scolded it. The ongoing hours bathed in a mellow weather. As the day teetered towards afternoon, a mild spring sprite veiled the grounds with misty warmth. Perhaps a gentle drizzle would caress the blooming nature the upcoming night. No storms loomed on the horizon.

Snape swept out of Umbridge’s office together with a single black slug tardily crawling over the threshold. The Amphibian Duchess was getting rid of the embarrassing sickness considerably fast. Consequently, she was able to squat on her toad stool beneath the Technicolor kitten exhibition. Severus had extremely aversely brewed the Slug Diarrhea remedy. And only a few minutes ago he had - extremely reluctantly - brought a new dose of it to the Headmistress. He bolted the inferno of lacy pinkness behind him, the door closing with an almighty boom. Now it was also safe to remove the clothespin pinching his nose. The office reeked like a cubic mile of runny dung, and the Potions Master expressed generous gratitude to his luck for that his robes had not caught this piquant aroma. Face sour, purple patches decorating his beak after taking away the nose-squeezing peg, he glided down into his private chambers. He still could feel the stink in his nostrils. Perhaps a gas mask or a space suit would have been a better shelter against the pong peril. Oh, if only Dumbledore returned, then everything would settle down again... This pestilential frog show was highly starting to get on his nerves.

Zap. All abruptly, all these hideous dilemmas seemed just as irrelevant as a moldy old banana. Due to the Slug Diarrhea hassle, Severus had totally forgotten that the ‘next’ Order meeting was today, starting actually in a few hours. This sudden thought made Snape’s cheeks flush, which for once gave his visage a healthy look.

Would she be there...? That sweet child... He had to go and find out. And if he could just... somehow... feel her presence again, just once, just once... Perhaps this odd longing in his heart would cease that way...

Although nobody had hit him with a Jelly-Legs Jinx, his wobbly knees barely carried him to the pile of traveling clothes, which were slapped rather pell-mell on a random chair. In his angsty haste, the Potions Master put on his traveling cloak inside out. The stupefaction ended merely when he grabbed his hat. The potty owl, which had become the headpiece’s prey two days ago, was napping inside it again. Severus had had the impression that he had permanently kicked it out of his chambers the previous day. But that this gaga creature was back? Annoyed, he snatched the hat up, so that the barmy bird slipped out and plummeted onto the flagstones with an audible splat. Nonetheless, such foul treating the owl did not stand. Obviously it had caught a tad of Snape’s pythonlike attitude since it started viciously defending its rights. The fluff lob the size of a golf ball began zooming around Snape’s head. It made sharp air raids like an angry wasp, hooting fiercely. It wanted its nest back and immediately! How dared that ugly travesty of a crow filch it?

Snape’s shoos and swears aided much nothing. Lastly, the bullheaded bird overcame the hat war. Scowling, he threw the headpiece back onto the chair.

“Fine! Keep it then. I do not have time for this!”

When the chamber’s door banged shut, the owl fluttered down on top of the hat’s point. It remained perching there, hooting solemnly, looking as dignified as though it had just conquered Mount Everest.

---

Tonks indeed was present at the Order meeting that day, but Snape’s chances to ogle and fantasize were sparse. Sirius was even moodier than two days ago, and he had taken as his number one task to maintain a menacing scowl combat with the teacher. In the kitchen, he sat down opposite to Severus on purpose. Thus the hours ticked past as the two semi-rivals frowned at each other from under their thick black brows, pouting, nostrils quivering. Neither one could quite concentrate on what Lupin, Alastor, and Dedalus Diggle tittle-tattled in the background. Ere long, the meeting was over and Snape found himself wiping his watering eyes. His temples were lightly throbbing after the futile facial muscle tension.

While squinting there ferociously, he in the corner of his eye spotted Tonks tiptoeing out of the kitchen in the middle of a small crowd. No, he could not lose this single opportunity. He might not meet her in weeks! The male sprung up from his seat like a rocket gone haywire, tumbling out of the chamber to reach the girl. His reason was melting like ice cream in oven, the familiar tingling sensation beginning to tickle his hands. He had no coherent idea what he was doing. The mind-chaining illusions dragged him up the slippery escalator into the main hall.

She was there, just a few meters ahead... Nymphadora’s burgundy robes were swaying just an inch behind the towering figure of Shacklebolt. Over Emmeline Vance’s pointed hat, he saw how she step by step was drifting farther away like an unattainable dream. In Snape’s vision, the hall was growing oddly transparent and foggy, as though the solid walls had become liquid. The corridor was nearly supercharged with other phoenix pals, but they were going through an equal diluting, turning into idle swamp gas. The man’s ogling pupils saw only Nymphadora’s outline. He and she were the sole beings in this gauzy reverie, only the duo of them... The seconds were stretching like well-chewed bubblegum... Time existed no longer. It had died to sheer boredom while waiting for Snape to do something else than just goggle idiotically at his pink-haired princess. Now the cosmos arched as an empty infinity around them, the dust of passing millennia as their hazed path... The Beauty and the Beast, slowly floating forwards in the darkness...

In his mental blindness, the Potions Master almost walked through Vance, or at least unnoticed jostled her so hard that she flew head first into the vast umbrella stand. Nanometer by nanometer, he was nearer the girl’s gracefully curving, slender form. Severus extended his arms forwards...

If he could just hold her, feel that mollifying softness against him one more time...

Snap. His hands with those long, hard, pallid fingers seized her upper arms from behind like the scaly talons of some giant monstrous bird. His unmannered pinch, which he probably though to be a very affectionate hold, made Tonks freeze totally. Her heart leapt up in sudden fright, collided against her palate, and flopped down to quiver petrified in its usual hidey-hole. The male jerked her backwards, almost cementing the little Auror against him. She vanished halfway inside the shelter of his vast, batwing-esque cloak flaps.

The old scarecrow himself was hovering far above the seventh heaven. To be exact, in the seventy-seventh. His heart hammered against his ribs like a mad woodpecker, while a whole bug paradise had conquered his body. Moths and butterflies fluttered in his stomach, ants marched along his spine, an insane cricket chirr whirred in his ears. Oh, what sweet warmth was radiating from her, as the damsel finally was back in his hold, resting against his thorax... His other hand slid down along her arm, enjoying every single bit of the softness it felt on its journey. And so desperately it wanted to hop just a tad aside and touch her slim waist... No, actually the whole sinewy arm that owned this clawlike extension, longed for to spiral around her, turn the lass about, and bring her nosetip to nosetip with the bat-master himself. Yet somehow the hand chickened out. It never leapt onto her waist but just remained tightened around the crook of her arm. Nonetheless, every picosecond’s microscopic fraction that Snape held the girl, was another prolongation of his rapture, his golden Eldorado, the very perfect Shangri-La...

Tonks, whom the crazed bloke kept squeezing like an insect in tweezers, had survived from the first shock. What on jumping Jupiter was going on? She cast a baffled gawk up over her shoulder, and became twice more terrified. If she had vaguely gotten used to Snape’s weird stares, this one went beyond all known oddness. His eyes burned like two overheating nuclear reactors, their hungry heat almost setting her cloak on fire. She could perfectly sense and hear his deep, heavy respiration against the back of her neck, as being attached to him with conceptual superglue. What in the name of Merlin’s troll doll collection was that man up to? Why had he halted her in a way that had nearly scared the living Hippogriffs out of her?

“Eh... Mr. Snape? Excuse me, but... what are you doing?” she awkwardly piped.

Kaboom! His whole fantasy universe exploded, making all the galaxies fall and quasars perish. Severus noticed that he was back in the dull, musty hall of Grimmauld Place, with a whole pack of staring visages surrounding him, including a few stuffed house-elf heads.

Oops.

Where on earth had all this audience suddenly come from? Of course... they never had been dispelled anywhere in the first place. These eyeballing mugs had lodged here all the time. How had he fallen so utterly unaware of them? The livid, scabbed fist of panic grabbed his throat.

“I - I...” he croaked to the girl, ashen-faced.

“What?” Her sharp gaze was manically seeking for answers.

“Grbll... I - I w-wanted to... grohh...” Snape’s voice was turning ever huskier, as though he had caught a mega-fast flu.

“What? Do you have something to tell?”

Definitely an uncanny way of telling, she thought. Just a tap on the shoulder would have been enough to get her attention. Yet, at the moment she was half-buried inside his wide, voluminous cloak. Furthermore in that clutch that resembled a barbaric hug of some sort.

“T-t-t-t - t-t-tell...?” Snape spluttered on, hardly knowing what to say. He did not have the tiniest excuse for his behavior, no well-polished explanations ready on his tongue. He would need to pick up something from the box of white lies, and quicker than another Mary Sue scribble about Harry’s long-lost twin sister invaded the Internet. He could not go on telling the truth, could he? The truth was more impossible than the mere impossibility itself...

Suddenly a deep grunt coming from somewhere behind Snape’s oily head ruptured the whole scene. Sirius had stomped out of nowhere, scowling at the Potions Master murderously.

“Is he bothering you, Tonks?” Black barked. Nonetheless, before the baffled girl managed to blurt ‘no’, he had grabbed the professor’s arm, and ripped him harshly away from her. Just as abruptly, Snape flared up with a tantrum fiercer than an erupting Vesuvius. He jumped aside, his vampiric fangs bared, his hand clutching tight a wand he had in a breeze jiggered out of his pocket.

“DO NOT EVER TOUCH ME!” he bellowed, flying spit sprinkling the air. “Do not EVER, EVER touch me again!”

Half a second later, the hall was in utter pandemonium. Every single poster, portrait, and other artistic dabbling presenting humanoid phizzes, began bawling with earsplitting roars.

“FILTHY VERMIN-INFESTED MUDBLOODS IN THE HOUSE OF OUR GRAND FOREFATHERS! DISHONOR! ABOMINATION! BLASPHEMY! ETERNAL DAMNATION! THE VIPER ON MY BUST, THE DISGRACE OF MY FAMILY... ”

It seemed that Mrs. Black was on an especially charming mood today, as her tender motherly voice had such a kind tone in it. Everyone was with good speed stuffing fingers and cape corners in their ears. Hence the intermezzo between Snape and Black attracted no more attention. In the bedlam’s shelter, the professor decided to take a camouflaged hike. His visage was going synchronically through the whole color spectrum of the visible light. Such overboiling embarrassment swelled in his heart. Oh, what a fool, what a pathetic fool he had become again, all over again... Phantom-like, he glided past Tonks towards the front door. His gaze hit her briefly.

She appeared so puzzled, the little thing... She was not looking in his direction. Would he dare...?But no... But... she was so close, the fair creature...

He reached out his arm, brushing inches past the Auror.

Nymphadora flinched once more as though someone had shoved a whole bucket full of cockroaches down her collars, her eyes flying seventeen hundred miles wide. She had just an instant to spot how the batman soared out of the riot factory. The girl brought a few fingers up to touch her cheek, where she had just felt this long, caresslike skim of someone’s hand.

And she knew perfectly well to whom this hand belonged. That stroke was something she would never have expected from Severus Snape.