Snape In Love: Chasing Darkness Away

Chapter 4

Vexation

Persephone had fallen asleep while Severus and Ella breakfasted, and he stooped beside her now, crouching low to slip both of his hands underneath her tiny frame. Slowly, delicately so as not to disturb her slumber, he picked her up and cradled her against his chest. A Levitating charm would have been the ideal way to transfer Persephone to her cot, but he knew better than to even attempt it while his wife was present. She had threatened, once, to withdraw certain...privileges if he did, and while he was fairly certain she would not really have the inclination to make good her threat, still he knew that she could be very determined, and he preferred not to risk putting it to the test. Catching Ella smiling at him knowingly, he merely raised a quizzical eyebrow and proceeded to carry his daughter through to the nursery.

"A fuchsia babygrow, indeed!" he murmured to her as he crossed the large, airy living room, his thumb gently rubbing the shock of soft black hair resting on his hand. "With a daisy motif, no less! She'll be planting you in a pot in one of Sprout's greenhouses next, you'd better watch yourself..."

Smiling thinly, surprised by his own sudden whimsy, he stood at the side of the fantastically carved cot for a few moments, just gazing at her. Sometimes it was so difficult to believe she was his, and always it was so wonderful to realise that he had been twice blessed. He bent to lay her down in her cot, watched her stir in her sleep, and then settle, then left the room as stealthily as he could so that he could return to the other love of his life. He wanted to tell her just exactly what her closeness to him at the Quidditch match had done to frustrate him, and then he wanted to show her how he had wished she could have relieved it.

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As the weeks went by he schooled his mind to subdue any errant thoughts and flights of fancy regarding Ella Redemte. Not for nothing was he the most skilled Occlumens in the school, Dumbledore notwithstanding, of course. It had been Dumbledore who had taught him, equipping him with all of the skills he needed to disarm and mislead Lord Voldemort. Skills that had probably saved his life each time he encountered the Dark Lord. He could not afford to let her wheedle her way into his consciousness, and he had all the means at his disposal to stop her. The uncharacteristic weakness he had displayed during the night he had lain with her through her fever had worried him immensely. He was satisfied that she would remember none of it, of course, but he berated himself for disclosing such intimate details of his past to a complete stranger. Stranger she was, after all, and stranger she would remain, however right it had felt for him to bare his soul.

He avoided her where at all possible, his adeptness at sinking into the shadows a very useful skill and one which his wariness of her kept sharply honed at all times. His forays into the library were infrequent, since he had all that he required on permanent loan. Mealtimes were problematic, he freely admitted to himself, and he stole far more glances at her bright, vibrant form than he cared to count. Staff meetings, too, were even more of an ordeal than usual, but he tolerated them with his habitual sullen grace and tried to stand, arms folded, out of her line of sight, and she out of his. Gazing into her eyes was too great a temptation for him to resist, and he did not want to read her. He was afraid to learn more about her.

The first Quidditch match of the season was to be between Gryffindor and Slytherin. Never a man to ignore the merits of gamesmanship, he had excused his Slytherins most of their homework for the two weeks preceding the match by the simple expedient of ensuring they received marks in class adequate enough to absolve them from the 'requirement' to write two scrolls on procedures and processes in potions making. In contrast, their Gryffindor counterparts, particularly those on the Quidditch team, were marked down a little and told that their substandard work needed immediate attention.

He was greatly relieved that Crabbe and Goyle, the two Slytherin beaters, had not taken Potions beyond the Ordinary Wizarding Level. He doubted that even a teacher such as he would have been able to help those two dunderheads along by giving them pass marks in class. They had barely scraped one OWL each in Potions, and the skill required to study such a subtle science and exact art at NEWT level was quite beyond them.

To be so blatantly partisan was perfectly understandable, and he would never admit that his methods were perhaps a little unfair. He felt completely justified in his approach. This was Quidditch, after all, and the standing of his House was at stake. If McGonagall failed to do the same for her own students out of some misguided sense of fairness, then that was her own concern.

The whole school turned out for Quidditch matches, so he knew, of course, that she would be there although he did not know which of the staff stands she would choose. Striding purposefully down the lawn to the Quidditch pitch he made for his preferred stand, and he schooled his features into what he hoped was an aggressive scowl as he approached Black and Lupin where they stood chattering inanely to Potter's friends Weasley and Granger. And Ella Redemte. Damn the woman, it was too late for him to change direction now and choose another stand. And besides, part of him thrilled at the sight of her. He glared at her menacingly, allowing his gaze to linger on her and convey the message that he was not to be trifled with.

He took the first steps up into the stand two at a time, until he knew he had passed out of her sight, and then he paused to catch his breath before continuing to the top, berating himself for the pounding of his heart against his ribs which was not solely the result of his ill-advised physical exertion. He took his seat on a bench in the middle of the stand, and tried to relax as the places slowly began to fill all around him. If only Black could keep control of his verbal diarrhoea perhaps the party could make their way up the stairs and put him out of the misery that was not knowing where she would sit.

Black, of course, he thought bitterly, could no more rein in his long-windedness than he, Snape, could tolerate it. The trio of Black, Lupin and Ella were, naturally enough, the last to arrive, and they took the last three places in the stand, on the very bench that he had chosen. Lupin went first, asking Snape to stand up and inflicting on him a very irritating grin. Then Black brushed past with his usual arrogant swagger and a broad smile. That left Miss Redemte to fill the empty place beside him. He stiffened as she passed, and her signature scent of jasmine assailed his flaring nostrils even as the wind blew her long dark hair across his face. Space was at a premium in the stands, and she had only a little room to pass him, and so physical contact was inevitable. Her shoulder blades brushed against his chest, and her buttocks could not help but come into contact with his hips. He gritted his teeth and swore at her under his breath as he sat down again.

"Are you looking forward to the match, Professor Snape?" she asked.

He had avoided conversation with her for weeks, and had not even heard her low, musical voice for the last few days, and now, hearing her gently amused question, he found himself at a loss as to how best to respond. He was too polite a man simply to ignore her, and unfortunately her innocuous question did not warrant a scathing response; his only course of action seemed to be one of common courtesy. At last, when he had mentally exhausted various options, he replied,

"It promises to be a tolerably interesting match."

"As long as your team wins?" she teased lightly.

He did not know what to say to that, either. To demur would be insufferably coy, while to acknowledge the accuracy of her remark would go against the spirit of 'fair play' that seemed to be the ethos of Albus Dumbledore's headmastership. He arched his brow, and pretended to be very interested in something - anything - away in the middle distance. Black was having yet another attack of verbosity, drivelling on about his precious godson Potter, and Snape tried to block the sound by emptying his mind. He was well schooled in this technique, but today the usual calm waters of self control were replaced by a raging torrent of sensory input that threatened to engulf him completely.

He could still smell her. Jasmine was there, yes, but there was more...there was also citrus, musk, vanilla...and woman. And coconut, every time the wind picked up her hair and blew it across his upper arm. She was sitting so close to him, their thighs almost touched...almost, but not quite. He wanted to growl in frustration and the longer they sat, the more uncomfortable he became with her proximity. She was too close for him to control his body's reactions to her, and too far away for him to be able to succumb to them. To her. And he did not want to succumb to her, ever. And she was staring fixedly downwards, he noticed, her attention far from the Quidditch match playing out in front of them. She was staring at his hands, and his thighs. Gods, he hoped that was all she was staring at, he thought as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat and tried to think of a way to distract her. What on earth was she staring like that for, anyway? Surely she wasn't doing just as he was, and struggling with a ridiculous attraction that could go nowhere?

There was a loud cheer from the Slytherin students as the Quaffle soared past the Gryffindor keeper and through the central hoop.

"Ten points to Slytherin!" shouted the scorekeeper unenthusiastically.

"Are you enjoying the match so far?" Snape said softly, turning his head slightly to look down at Ella, who had shown no sign of having heard Lee Jordan's commentary. Her lips were parted, and as he watched he saw the tip of her tongue poke slightly from her mouth to moisten her lower lip. He drew in his breath, closing his eyes for a second as he tried not to wonder what she was thinking. He repeated, a little more forcefully,

"Well? Is the...match to your liking, Miss Redemte?"

This evoked the desired reaction, he was gratified to note, as she started guiltily and looked up into his eyes.

"Er...yes, it's fascinating," she replied faintly.

"Evidently."

He barely needed to try to read her. The woman was an open book to his practised eye, and the raw lust he saw there both aroused him and terrified him. Her fascination was with him, not the match, and he exulted in it even as it shocked him. This ill-advised attraction could not be allowed to continue, he knew, but the momentary connection was broken as, once again, Slytherin scored. He turned back to the match, smirking grimly to himself. He had made her feel as uncomfortable as he did himself, and what was more, he now knew exactly why she unsettled him so. She wanted him as badly as he wanted her, although he hated to admit to the strength of his feelings. 'Know thine enemy'. Both Voldemort and Dumbledore subscribed to that little homily. He had just become far better acquainted with his, and he knew what he had to do to dissuade her attentions.

When the match ended, a sudden triumph for Harry Perfect Potter, he rose to his feet quickly and began to move along the row. Once he was sure she was right behind him, he swept round and loomed over her, asking,

"How is your ankle, Miss Redemte?"

"Oh! Much better, thanks. Although it does still ache a lot...do you have anything that would help, by any chance?"

He looked down at her thoughtfully.

"Yes, I do, as it happens." His pause was just long enough for a flicker of hope to appear in her clear, entrancing eyes. His own narrowed and he continued dismissively, "But nothing you won't be able to get from Madam Pomfrey, at far greater convenience to yourself. I suggest you go to the Infirmary."

With feelings more mixed than he cared to acknowledge, he noted her shoulders slump slightly in barely masked disappointment, and he turned on his heel and was gone.

By the time Ella had made her way to the bottom of the stand with her two companions, he had ensured that he had put half the length of the lawns between them. And at dinner that night, after he had stared across at her long and hard, drinking her in, he closed the book on his misguided and dangerous attraction to Ella Redemte.

He had, of course, reckoned without Albus Dumbledore and his propensity for meddling.

Snape thrust his plate of cauldron cakes back onto the occasional table before the fire, and it thanked him nervously.

"I won't allow it!" he said, through gritted teeth. The Headmaster had just informed him that his carefully laid plans to avoid Ella Redemte until Christmas, when the school would be rid of her, had been all in vain.

"My dear boy, I was not aware that I was giving you any choice in the matter! Miss Redemte is an intelligent young woman who is currently being sadly underutilised. While she is here I am sure that we - the school as a whole - can benefit greatly from her recent experience in the Muggle community."

"Yes, but - "

" - And I am putting the needs of the school first, Severus. And the needs of the war effort. Who knows, the two of you might even hit upon a new weapon to fight Voldemort!"

"Oh yes, I can see it now," Snape interjected bitterly. "Ah, Miss Redemte, I was your parent's poisoner, would you care to work with me on a new and improved version?"

Dumbledore sighed.

"You do not know for certain that it was your doing, Severus."

"Don't I? Don't you?"

The Headmaster turned away but Snape caught the sad frown that Dumbledore was trying to hide.

"I thought so. Albus, this isn't fair. I've read her, and she's attracted to me! Stupid, misguided woman..."

Dumbledore turned back slowly.

"You read her? Severus, did you tell her what you were doing?"

"Of course not, I'm not stupid!" Snape spluttered.

"Then what you did was unethical, boy, and not worthy of you or of the training I gave you."

He ignored the younger man's glare, and eventually Snape rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and forefinger in the gesture of resignation that so many of Dumbledore's edicts caused him to make.

"You're right. I shouldn't have. But you don't know how hard it is not to, when she stares at me so..."

"And when you stare back?" the Headmaster asked gently. Snape shifted uncomfortably under his knowing twinkle.

"You know better than anyone else here why it could never be allowed to go any further, Albus. I can't - she couldn't care for someone like me - it would be futile, on both sides."

"Severus..."

"No, Albus, no more homilies and words of encouragement. I lack the temperament for - love," he spat out the word as if it was distasteful to him, and Dumbledore's brows knitted together as he watched his friend struggle to find the words to describe his fears, for fears they were. "And besides, Albus, imagine the danger to her if Voldemort were to discover my attachment." - At this, the Headmaster's eyebrows raised - "If any such attachment were to exist," Snape added hurriedly, two spots of pink suffusing his otherwise pallid cheeks.

"Indeed, indeed," he replied thoughtfully, crossing over to Fawkes and tickling him under the chin.

"And please don't encourage that bird to sing again, Albus, it's so obviously an attempt to manipulate me into agreeing with you!"

Dumbledore allowed himself a wry smile, and sat down at his desk. Their meeting, Snape surmised, was over. He stood reluctantly and brushed the crumbs from his frock coat.

"And, ah, how is the young lady's ankle?"

The sudden change of subject made Snape frown as he had been about to offer one last complaint, futile though it was to object.

"Aching. I sent her to the Infirmary for Poppy to administer a poultice or some such," he said dismissively.

"Very well. I shall inform Miss Redemte of our plans, and work can begin tonight."

"Our plans?"

The Headmaster smiled mildly, and Snape turned on his heel, muttering imprecations under his breath all the way back to the dungeons.

Dumbledore sat back in his chair and tented his fingers, looking up into the high domed ceiling of his office.

"It'll all end in tears, you know!" sneered the disdainful voice of Phineas Nigellus from his portrait's vantage point part way up the wall to Dumbledore's left.

"No, I believe it will all begin in tears. And that is quite, quite different," mused the Headmaster thoughtfully.

Several unfortunate students had happened to be loitering in various corridors on Snape's route back to the dungeons and he was able to vent some of his spleen by deducting a sizeable number of house points. His success did little for his overall mood, however, and he paced his room up and down, running his hand through his hair absently, going over and over his meeting with Dumbledore and his last encounter with Ella. It had been earlier that day, and they had been leaving the staff room at the same time. He had held open the door for her to pass through before him, and she had graced him with a soft smile and a gentle blush. Combined with her heady scent it had almost been enough to drive him to his knees. He had been forced to take the long way back to his dungeon, since she had set off along the corridor he would ordinarily have taken. And now, on nothing more than an old man's whim, all his precautions and good intentions might as well count for naught.

He spent the afternoon in his rooms stewing, simmering, steaming, and by the time the dinner bell sounded he had brought himself to a slow boil. It was all Ella Redemte's doing, he was convinced of it now. The scheming, duplicitous witch must have gone to Dumbledore fluttering her eyelashes, appealing to the old man's annoyingly avuncular nature, pretending to be something she was not. And for what reason? A misplaced, unwelcome, misguided and incomprehensible attraction. A niggling voice inside his head kept on whispering to him, 'She likes you, she likes you,' but he subdued it angrily. Hell, the woman probably lusted after every red-blooded male in the school - and probably the entire world, for that matter! She obviously was not picky, if he of all people had caught her eye. She had certainly been around enough - in every sense of that phrase, he shouldn't wonder. Men were probably just playthings to her, he thought bitterly as he nursed a large goblet of firewhisky. Diversions, to be discarded without a second thought when another, better opportunity presented itself. Well, she would get short shrift from him. He was far too accustomed to losing both on the swings and on the roundabouts of life to entertain the notion that this time his life could be different.

He had no appetite for dinner and he magicked his whisky away with an impatient flourish. It would not do for his senses to be dulled this evening. He needed to make his position perfectly clear to the siren that was Ella Redemte. He just hoped that his brain could get the same message across to his errant body, too, since up to now it had done its level best to ignore his better judgement.

There was a knock at his office door, and he knew it was her. Scowling, he opened the door. She was flushed and her eyes were bright with nervous anticipation, although her manner tried to disguise it.

"I'm sorry, have I come at a bad time?" she asked with a false casualness. His eyes narrowed.

"You've come at the appointed time, I believe. But since I don't consider this forced collaboration to be of any use, either to myself or to the school, then yes, it is a bad time!"

"I'm sorry you feel that way, I was under the misapprehension that this was your idea."

He tried not to inhale deeply of her fragrance as she brushed past him into the room, and masked his discomfiture in his usual way, by snapping,

"Pah! And why would you think that, Miss Redemte? Potions making is a subtle science and an exact art, and I am more than capable of it. Do you imagine I need to seek out the society of unqualified girls in order to help me with my work?"

"I imagine no such thing when I think of you, Severus. Oh, and do call me Ella."

She had used his name. She was all but a stranger to him, and yet his name tripped from her lips as if it had been meant for her mouth to shape, for her vocal chords to give life, for her tongue to caress with sibilant sensuality. He could not move. He stared at her back dumbly as she laid down her books on his desk and seated herself there, and he tried unsuccessfully to relax the knot of tension that had formed at the top of his spine as he clenched his fists, and which had, most unfortunately, found its evil twin in the area of his groin. The tension there was agonising in its sudden intensity and he drew up his own chair, sitting down quickly at the desk beside her, but at a relatively safe distance, before she was able to notice that anything was amiss.

Two hours sped by, during which time they discussed various potions ingredients and their properties and applications in both the wizarding and Muggle worlds, and at the end of them he had begun to realise that there was, perhaps, slightly more to Ella Redemte than a man-eating flibbertigibbet with an unnatural interest in him. As his physical stimulation receded at last, it was replaced by a mental one of the most pleasurable kind - a meeting of minds, of roughly equal curiosity and enthusiasm, and fairly well-matched intellects. Granted, she might not have his years of experience or his innate talents, but she challenged him constantly and made him reassess and adjust his long held beliefs. When their meeting was over he felt drained and exhilarated, and as he watched her stand up and close her books, piling them neatly in the middle of his desk along with her scrolls of notes, he realised that he did not want her to go.

"Will you take a glass of wine before you leave?" he asked, awkwardly formal and dreading her answer, whatever it was.

"I'd like that, thanks."

She had agreed almost too readily, he noticed, and he wished he had not asked. He crossed over to the sideboard in a dark corner of his office, and she followed. There was a tray there, with a decanter of Hogwarts' finest claret and two golden goblets, and he poured them each a drink. He was about to continue a discussion they had been engrossed in half an hour before, until the sudden discovery of a hitherto little-used Muggle weed had distracted them, but as he passed her the goblet their fingers touched, and he felt the atmosphere in the room change, becoming heavy with expectation. Their eyes met and his heart skipped, and then his treacherous body reminded him that he could smell her, he was gazing at her, he was touching her, and he wanted more. And then she had turned away and raised the goblet to her lips, and he heard himself say quietly, as if from a long way away,

"It's late. You should... go. Now."

Alone again, he sat by the fire and brooded into its flames for a long while.

Looking back, after she had gone, after his deliberate cruelty a few weeks later had driven her away and she had left a gaping hole in his life that no amount of firewhisky could fill, he would look back on those evenings they spent working side by side with an ache in his heart so profound that it threatened to be his undoing.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Thanks for all your lovely comments so far. I am really enjoying writing from Snape's point of view.

Please review!