Drying in the Sun

I had to try it, I told myself. Just to see what would happen. Hell, he might not even fall for it. That's what I was thinking as I walked into the potions dungeons that day. There he was, sitting at his desk as usual, fiddling with the draught he was trying to perfect. Doesn't he do anything else, I asked myself, but still, I had to try.

"Severus, I think I found that mushroom you were looking for the other day, but I'm not sure. Didn't you say something about it emulating the look of another one that's poisonous? I don't want to pick it if that's the case, can you come make sure for me?"

Luckily for me, he agreed and didn't even ask where it was. He just grumbled about not having time to go out and find it himself, but still followed me unknowing of my plan.

He mumbled the entire time about it probably being the poisonous one and about how I don't do my homework since we just studied it in Potions on Tuesday until finally, we came to the cliff overlooking the lake. Remus had just told me about it the other day - about how he, James, Sirius and Peter use it as their jumping point into the lake. Apparently, it's one of the few spots where there aren't any rocks below.

"Adele." Severus looked at me dubiously, his eyes glaring in the bright sunlight that he didn't see nearly often enough. "I don't see what you're talking about; these are just average mushroo..." At that point I shoved him, harder than I meant to, into the shining lake below. After making sure he bobbed back up unharmed, I dived in after him.

Needless to say he was a little angry when I got there.

"WHAT IN THE BLOODY HELL WAS THAT?!" he shouted after spitting out what could have easily been a lungful of lake water.

"I had to get you near water, you greasy git" I shot back angrily. His glare told me that had hurt him more than I wanted.

"What are you talking about, woman?" he replied, still angered by my unprovoked attack.

"I'm going to wash that hair of yours if it's the last thing I do," I replied innocently, smiling as sweetly as I could muster, being drenched as I was. I calmly pulled out the shampoo I had shoved in my pocket that morning. "And since Remus claims the water turned to grease when they tried it, I figured I'd go somewhere with so much water, even you can't grease it up"

Another glare - it wasn't going as well as I had hoped.

"Do you even know how to wash your own hair, Sev?" Damn, I had slipped up; he hated it when I called him Sev, saying something likeit was below someone such as himself to have a cute nickname that did not call to one's mind the image of overgrown bats, neglected dungeons, skeletons, or the sound of little children crying. Slytherin pride, I supposed. At this he said something about shampoo being worthless and showers being germ filled pits. "Yes, that's what I thought, mind if I try, since you're already here and everything."

I tried to sound innocent; God knows my mind was being anything but.

"I don't see why you even bother, Adele, all that slime is-is just some sugarcoated herbs, and you girls spend so much money on it when I could make some in three minutes tops if you just asked."

He continued to talk on about how to go about whipping up such a potion, and I took that as "Sure, Adele, go ahead", figuring it was as close to that as I'd get out of him. I started to scrub away at his grease-coated scalp. As much as I enjoyed his company, the man's scalp was disgusting now that I had to actually touch it; no wonder he's never had a girlfriend before.

As I finished I told him how this was a shampoo that you can't just pick up off of Diagon Alley, which seemed to appease the haughty Slytherin in him. He actually seemed pleased with me, at which point I dunked him into the water.

He came back up sputtering. I laughed in my head; I had actually caught him off guard. "WHAT IN THE BLAZES WAS THAT FOR?! YOU COULD HAVE KILLED ME!" he shouted once he regained his breath.

"I had to rinse it," I replied innocently. "And don't even get angry at me, Severus Snape, I'm doing you a HUGE favor here."

He glared at me menacingly and said something about me being the most annoying Ravenclaw that he had ever seen and how once he got dry he was going to hex me into oblivion, but I didn't notice as I had already started swimming towards the shore.

As I scrambled up onto the rocks, I heard him mutter something about it not working anyway, at which point I told him how it looked better, but it was still wet and we wouldn't know for sure until it was dry.

"Don't I even get a 'Thank you, Adele?' for all my efforts?" I said as I stared at him trying to climb up onto the shore. I couldn't help notice that the wet fabric of his robes clung very nicely to his climbing form.

"No," he spat when he finally reached the top, smoothing out his robes and trying to maintain some sort of decency.

"So you really aren't going to thank me, Severus?" I said, a little put out.

"No, I didn't ask for anything. Why should I thank you?" There it was - that trademark glare of his.

"Oh, I don't know," I replied angrily, "because now you're actually clean for once, and James will be hard put to insult your hair for at least another day?"

"I still don't plan on thanking you," he snarled. He was putting up a good fight today.

"Fine," I said, striding up to glare at him in the face. "I guess I'll just have to take it from you."

I let him think for a moment and start to say, "What do you mean woman," before I did it, I kissed him, full on the lips.

He was surprised; I could feel it in him, all tense as usual. I had tried to give him a massage once; you would have thought I was the plague the way he flinched. It took a bit of - how should I say? - coaxing on my part to get him to loosen into the kiss, but he did eventually. After a few minutes of this, I finally pulled away, smiling into his still startled expression.

"That wasn't so bad was it, Severus?" I asked innocently as he placed a hand to his lips in that oh-so-childish way. I giggled softly and walked away, as his hair started to dry in the sun.