Vector's Challenge

Chapter 20

Snape's private quarters.

After the two teachers left the Great Hall and were in the dungeon corridors, Snape picked Vector up and slung her over his shoulder.

"Oh! Severus, put me down, you big oaf," Emmy ordered him. He ignored her, and she started to wriggle. He gripped her tighter. She continued to squirm and protest. He slapped a hand over her mouth. She nipped at it.

"Hush, Emmy," he said. "Do you want Malfoy to hear you?"

He carried her into his quarters, and flung her down on the black leather couch. She started up into a sitting position, and tried to jump up. Her head bumped into his chin. He caught her by the shoulders and started to kiss her. Her knees started to shake, and then gave way. She fell back down onto the couch, and hit her head hard on the wall, with Snape on top of her. She broke the kiss and yelped in pain. Stupid clumsy lout, I can't even carry off a woman without bollixing it up, he thought. What are the symptoms of concussion? Amnesia, vomiting, pupils not the same size...

He sat down on the sofa next to her, took her face in his hands, and tried to look into her eyes. "Severus, what are you doing?" she asked.

"Are you quite all right?" he asked. He noted that her pupils seemed to be the same size, and he slowly pulled his hands away from her face.

"Asides from having been celibate for the last six years?" she retorted. "I'm not quite sure I know what you were doing, and I'm not quite sure why you stopped. Could you please explain either of those?" she asked.

Snape gulped. "Well - I - er - I -I was going to put an end to our mutual celibacy, and I thought knocking you on the head might not be the right way to begin," he replied.

"It's tradition. Brendon tripped trying to carry me over the threshold," she replied.

He thought, Better and better. Now she wants to talk about her late husband. "I was planning on shagging you until your ears bled, but knocking your head open against the wall was not the way I planned to accomplish that."

She looked at him and her jaw dropped. "_What_ did you just say, Severus?"

"Yes, you heard me," he replied.

Emmy looked shocked. Her mouth was still open. Severus thought, Wonderful. I have completely wrecked my chances of getting laid any time in the next decade. Or six. Then he looked at her again. She looked shocked, but also interested.

Emmy started to make odd noises, like a cross between laughter and choking. She closed her mouth with an audible click and started to shake her head. "Does it have to be on the sofa? There's a perfectly good bed in the other room, Severus. I can see it and I can walk to it." She got up off the couch, and walked toward his bedroom.

He got up and followed her. "Are you serious? This isn't a joke, is it?"

She spun around. "Well, I'm certainly not going to carry you...wait a minute!" She got an evil grin on her face. "Yes, I am." She pointed her wand at him. "Mobilicorpus!" she said.

Snape thought to himself, There are at least three counterspells to Mobilicorpus, and I am not stupid enough to use a single one of them.

"If you go through with this, there is no quarter and no turning back," he said, while hovering in the air.

"I'm a Roman Catholic. I already knew that about sex," she retorted.

Snape tried to come up with a witty comeback. He hated it when people came up with lines that he couldn't top. He settled for a croaked "Good." I'm trying to be sinister, and she's going sacramental on me, was his last coherent thought for quite some time.

The next morning, Severus Snape watched Emmy Vector sleep in his bed. Emmy turned in her sleep, and snuggled her cheek into her pillow. Now I am getting jealous of a pillow. A bloody damned pillow. She has finally driven me utterly mad. He gave her a cautious kiss on the temple, but she smiled without waking up. Just as well. You don't want to face her rejection when she wakes up, do you now? He got up carefully and slowly. Best to let her sleep. She was magnificent last night. She deserves to get some rest after that. He headed for the shower.

Emmy Vector woke up alone in Severus Snape's bed. She could hear the shower going. Hmm, that seems like a good idea, she thought. She was hot and sticky from the dance and various other activities afterwards. She started looking around his closet and dressers for something to wear other than her dancing costume and cloak. She finally found a deep green shirt that looked like it was part of a pajama set. Then she went into the sitting room to get her bag. She was not going to use that man's shampoo. Sleep in his bed, yes, share the towels maybe, but she drew the line at using what seemingly had the same effects as motor oil to wash her own hair with.

She tested the door to the bathroom, and it opened. She took off the shirt and slipped into the shower with Snape. He spluttered in surprise and protest. She saw the Dark Mark on his arm, and she suddenly realized why he hadn't removed his shirt last night. And here I thought it was out of urgency, or to protect his back from my fingernails. She reached out a hand to his arm. He pulled it back. She retreated, ready to leave him his privacy. "Oh, Merlin, dammitall," he said. She hesitated, half in and half out of the shower. "Come on in, woman. You're getting water all over the floor." He put one arm around her waist and dragged her back in. He swung her around so that her hair and face got thoroughly wet. She spluttered, and wiped the water out of her eyes. "What's this?" he asked her, as he picked up the bottle she'd dropped.

"It's my own shampoo, Severus," she replied. "I will not use that excuse for motor oil that you get from God-knows-where."

He smirked. "I will permit you to use this and insult mine on the condition that I get to apply it."

"Fine, if I get to use it on you and show you that it works better than yours," she retorted.

After the aquatic fun and games, Severus eventually wound up combing Emmy's waist-length hair as she sat, wearing his pajama top, on a chair in his sitting room. He did not have such a frivolity as a mirrored vanity table with a matching chair in his chambers. "I like your hair," he said to her. "The length, the smooth texture."

"I've always liked your hair," Emmy replied. "At least how I remember it from when I saw you in the Quidditch locker rooms, and it was all curly and wet."

"You like curly hair?" Severus asked her.

"Mm-hmm," Emmy replied. "And that's why I get so irritated that you put all that nasty grease in it and straighten it out and make it look all dead and slimy. I would cheerfully trade hair with you in an instant, Severus."

"You must be utterly mad," he replied. He paused with the comb in his hand. "Wait a minute. When did you see me in the Quidditch locker rooms?"

Emmy grinned. "When you and Mike were seventh-years and I was a first-year," she said. "I was waiting for Mike so that we could go out to dinner with our parents after the game, and I saw you in the doorway of the Slytherin locker room wearing nothing but a towel around your waist and with your hair all wet and clean and curly."

"You were eleven years old, for Merlin's sake!" Severus said, aghast. "You started noticing boys that young?"

She blushed, bit her lip, and looked at her lap. Snape noted it. She swallowed and went on, "Mmm. I didn't really appreciate what I'd seen until I was a bit older, but I did find it rather aesthetically appealing. Rather like a Renaissance prince, or St. Sebastian, or a corpus of Christ."

Snape shook his head. "Merlin. I take it you never told your brother?" He thought, I'm still alive, after all, so she must not have told him.

Emmy chuckled. "I asked him who you were, and he told me that it was Severus Snape, the Dark Slytherin, the greasy git, every man's woman and every woman's man," she replied.

"Emmy!" Snape said. "Those rumors are entirely untrue, I'll have you know. Vicious slander on the part of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team."

She laughed outright now. "No, he didn't say that last bit. What he did say was that I should stay as far away from you and your Death Eater gang as possible, and he would personally assure that if necessary."

"So of course, it was a match made in heaven," Severus replied sarcastically, as he went on with combing out her hair.

"Ah, yes," Emmy said. "On the subject of matches. Severus, I was thinking about it this morning, and I don't understand why Lucius Malfoy was stopped in his tracks by an engagement ring. Why did you think that a bullying, sexist, all-round sleaze-ball of a Death Eater would take issue with that, of all things?"

Severus smirked. "Lucius got into some serious trouble with a married woman at one point in his career."

Emmy frowned. "Got into serious trouble? What kind?"

"Life-threatening," he replied. "And Narcissa would only pull his chestnuts out of the fire on the condition that he stick to single women from then on."

"Oh, really? How does that get enforced?" Emmy asked.

Severus sighed. "Perhaps it would help if I rephrased my description of Malfoy's sexual pattern. He keeps looking for a strong woman he can dominate, and so far he's only managed to satisfy the first prong of the test."

"Oh," Emmy said, starting to snicker. "So I suppose that his darling Narcissa is going to rake him over the coals for this one?"

"And how," Severus replied. The clock chimed twice. She looked at the clock, which said eleven-thirty.

"Severus, your clock is broken," Emmy said. "It can't possibly be eleven-thirty. We didn't get in until after ten p.m." She thought, And we've been together for much longer than one hour...

"Eleven-thi - it's not eleven-thirty p.m., it's eleven-thirty a.m. Merlin's ghost!" he said.

Emmy pulled a set of robes out, and Transfigured them into a blue set that would fit her. She and Severus ran so quickly out of his rooms and up to the Great Hall that it almost seemed like Apparition.

End of Chapter 20