You Belong To Me

The flashes of light were blinding but he pushed forward. She was helpless in this situation, for all her spunk and sass. His heart pounded harshly in his chest and his breath was rasping as he tried not to let panic rise. Whatever had possessed her do this, he had no idea, but if they got out of this alive, he was going to kill her. Facing off Death Eaters alone was an extremely stupid thing to do without an army to back you up.

He darted from behind a column and skidded on his right side behind a fallen statue that afforded very little protection, but it was better than none with the Cruciatus and Avada Kedavra curses flying around. He panted a moment, sucking in desperately needed air, and took a chance to peek over the cracked arm of a contorted woman in a bad copy of Grecian art.

She was lying in the middle of the floor, crawling away from the tall regal man not more than five from her. From the look on her face, she was in extreme pain and his heart twisted. If something happened to her, he'd never forgive himself. His head jerked back down, not to dodge a curse but from shock at his own thoughts. He jerked back so hard he cracked his skull against the marble floor but he paid no attention to the dizzying affect that occurred from the hit. His brain was busy registering the shock that he actually did more than care for that little slip of a Muggle.

He closed his eyes, willing the emotions to go away, but they didn't seem to be obliging. He didn't want love, had no use for love, and had always held love as a worthless emotion that was infinitely more trouble than it was worth. From the current situation he was in, it would seem he was right but there wasn't much he could do about it.

He actually considered scurrying away and leaving her. It was her own damned fault to begin with, rushing off to face off Death Eaters after hearing them make threats on his person. What possessed her to do such a thing? He sighed. There was no understanding the female mind, let alone a female Muggle's mind. She never seemed to comprehend how powerful magic was. She always argued that wizards still bled the same as Muggles. She never understood that wizards didn't need to bleed to die.

"Come one more step and I swear I'll burst your eardrums!"

He rolled his eyes. That was the best she could come up with? She'd threatened him much more imaginatively over spilling a cup of tea.

The snickering laugh was easily identifiable even if he hadn't seen who was 'guarding' her; Lucius Malfoy had always enjoyed torturing Muggles. She began to scream and he wished he could tune it out, but something within him would not let the sound be ignored.

It was heart-wrenching, listening to her cry and scream, but he took some pride in the fact that she didn't beg.

"Is he worth protecting, girl?" asked Malfoy right before she screamed again. "Why protect that traitor? He's nothing to you!"

"You're wrong!" she spat out and he silently cheered at her courage even as he cringed at her stupidity. "He's everything to me!"

His heart dropped at her words. Did that mean - ? He swallowed hard. - What he thought it meant?

"You love him, don't you?" Malfoy's voice was incredulous. "You love that greasy, slimy worm!" He began to laugh. "Did you hear that, MacNair? He's everything to her!"

There was a bark of laughter three columns down from his position and he tensed. Walden MacNair would be on him any moment. He pulled out his wand and tensed his body, ready to leap and strike. His wand hand was steady but he could still feel his heart pounding like a hammer and he was certain MacNair could hear it. How could he not?

"STUPEFY!" The words rebounded around the arboretum like a bullet and he blinked. It hadn't come from his mouth and it hadn't been aimed at him, because he was still able to move.

He glanced over to where MacNair had been in time to watch the slender man fall like a sapling, landing with a bone-jarring crunch. Taking a chance that help was here, he bounded to his feet and turned toward Malfoy and the Muggle woman at his feet.

"One more move and she learns first hand how wizards dispose of trash like you." Malfoy nudged her with his shiny black boot and she glared up at him, blood trickling from the side of her mouth. Her breath had a hitch in it and he glanced at her worriedly.

"Severus," she said with a wheezy smile. "You came."

Severus Snape's glittery black gaze pulled from her own bright blue eyes and he squared off with his former ally. "You hurt her," he stated in an almost conversational tone.

"Yes," agreed Malfoy maliciously. "And I'm going to do it again. Cruciatus!" She contorted and screamed.

"STOP IT!" Severus shouted, horrified.

"You weak fool!" snarled Malfoy. "Look at you, in love with a Muggle! Disgraceful!"

"Not so disgraceful as you might think, Lucius," came the calm voice of Albus Dumbledore from behind Severus.

With a muttered curse, Malfoy vanished with a wave of his wand.

Dumbledore raced past Severus to kneel by the woman. She was still whimpering with pain but her eyes were focused on the horrified countenance of the wizard she'd come to inexplicably care for. "Severus?" she whispered around a cough. He was staring at the spot Malfoy had been, angering simmering, turning into full-blown rage.

His wand waved to Apparate as well, but another hand came from nowhere to push it back down. "She needs you, Snape, don't be an idiot." The voice was gravelly from disuse and Severus turned on the man.

"Leave me alone!" he snapped.

"Look at her, man! Look what she did for you and you're going to go and do something stupid like face off Malfoy by yourself? You know where he went! He went for reinforcements. We have to get out of here!" Sirius Black shook Severus harshly. "Are you mad?"

"Severus, please," coughed the woman on the ground. Dumbledore was busily checking out surface wounds and he glanced up at the two men arguing. "Don't go. It was dumb of me. You were right, I didn't understand."

His glittery black gaze glared down at her and he felt the anger dying away one flame at a time. He gave a heavy sigh, not willing to say the two of them were right, even if they were. He knelt beside her and took her hand. "You are an idiot, you know that, Muggle?" he informed her with his usual superior air.

"I have a name, you dork." She glared at him as well, trying to suppress a cough. Her blue eyes glazed with pain for a moment. "Please use it and stop calling me 'Muggle'. You sound like the psychopath who just left."

His eyes narrowed. "I was once a friend of that psychopath." He paused a moment before swallowing his pride. "Don't ever do that again, or I'll hurt you myself. Clara."

She smiled at him, a weak smile but still bright and almost happy. Then her eyes slowly fluttered close and her grip loosened. Dumbledore stood up brusquely.

"Pick her up, Severus, and we'll get her Madame Pomfrey. She needs immediate attention." The older wizard glanced at Sirius, who shared the look. It was a considering look, a look that said volumes about the other man's emotions. Severus missed it completely, focused totally on picking up the fragile woman on the ground. He hefted her up and he winced when she winced. "She'll be all right, Severus," assured Dumbledore but the words sounded forced.

"It's my fault," he murmured, staring down into the fluffy ginger mass of her hair. "I should have left well enough alone."

"We can't pick who we fall in love with," Sirius began awkwardly but Severus turned on him.

"Who said I was in love?" he snapped peevishly. "Let's get this foolish little girl to a doctor."

Dumbledore waved his wand hand and transported them just outside Hogsmeade. They quickly made their way to the looming castle in the distance. No words were spoken and no one knew that the "foolish little girl" had heard every hurtful word that had left Severus Snape's mouth.

Dumbledore and Pompfrey badgered him out of the infirmary four hours later. Dumbledore insisted he bathe and change clothes. The dirt from his scrounging on the ground was still blanketing his skin and robes. Severus reluctantly did as he was bid but only with stern instructions that if there was a change in her condition, good or bad, that he would be informed immediately. Pompfrey rolled her eyes and shoved him out the door, closing it with a firm but soft click.

He drudged down to his rooms and sat by the window, staring out at the lake and watched the squid sun itself in the early morning summer sun. The castle was quiet without the noise of students but he didn't mind the quiet. In fact, he welcomed it at the moment.

"Sir?" squeaked a voice from the door. Several house elves were standing there awkwardly, holding several pails of steaming hot water and a large brass tub. He waved them in and continued to stare out the window. He didn't bother to ponder the fact that Dumbledore would have known that Severus didn't want to use the private teachers' bathing room. Severus had never needed luxurious surroundings. The simplest things worked much better for him.

After his bath, he sat back down on the windowsill, still staring out, seeing but not seeing at the same time. He saw things in his mind's eye. He heard her laughter and her screams. He could see her pixyish face screwing up in a torrent of anger or wrinkling into a peal of musical laughter.

Severus grimaced. Musical laughter? He was getting mushy! Suddenly angry at himself, he threw his brush across the room, cracking the mirror hanging there by the wardrobe. "Great, in love and seven years of bad luck," he growled. "Could this day get any worse?"

He was picking up the mirror fragments when there was a soft knock on the door. "Come in," he snapped.

Albus Dumbledore's thin and bearded face peered around the huge wooden door. "May I speak with you, Severus?" the powerful wizard asked tentatively. Snape shrugged and went back to picking up the shards. Dumbledore made his way to the bed and sat down on it, his face pensive, as if deciding how to word what he wanted to say.

"Out with it, Headmaster," Severus sighed, tired of the silence.

"You love her, don't you?"

'To the point,' Snape thought as he sighed again. "Yes," he answered as though confessing a great sin.

Dumbledore laughed. "It's not so bad, Severus," he began but Severus interrupted him.

"Would you fall in love with me?" He stood up suddenly and threw his arms out as if inviting the other man to look him over.

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "You're not my type, Severus, I'm flattered though, really." Snape glared at him and the older man gave him a speculative look. "What's so wrong with you that you feel you cannot be loved or love in return?"

Severus turned back to the window, dumping a handful of sharp mirror pieces in a nearby waste bin. "Why would anyone love me?" he asked rhetorically.

"Everyone has a lot of give in some fashion or form, Severus," Dumbledore answered. "You think that because your life hasn't been storybook perfect, someone won't find something good or attractive about you?"

Severus considered the words for a long moment before he spoke. "I watched my father drink himself to death, Headmaster, for my mother, a witch who married him because the name Snape was powerful, not because she held him in any regard. She berated him, verbally abused him and destroyed his self-worth."

"Sounds like she did a number on you as well," Dumbledore said in a casual manner, peering intently at the silhouetted face of his companion.

Severus ignored the regard. He laughed hollowly and shrugged. "Mother didn't care about me or my siblings. She wanted power. Father used to tell me I was just like her and I am." He glanced down at himself. "I want to be powerful, important, respected and feared. Held in awe. When I was a Death Eater I loved it when people whispered about me behind their hands, a twinge of fear in their voices and in their eyes. It was intoxicating."

Dumbledore had never heard Severus speak like this before. Usually any discussion they had about Severus' dealings with the Death Eaters centered on his information gathering toward the end of the Dark Lord's time. He let the younger man continue speaking interrupted, sensing it was a purge of some sort.

"It took a long time for me to see what I was doing. I was turning people into me, into my mother. Creatures with no self-worth or self-respect. Then you came to me, offered me the deal of protection from Voldemort if I gave you information regarding his activities, try to warn people of being his targets." He gave another hollow laugh, more derisive this time. "I scoffed at marriage, made fun of those weak enough to give their hearts away to someone who could easily destroy you. Now look at me! I actually feel shame at what I am, at what I was, all for a Muggle woman who thinks so much of me that she deliberately put herself in harm's way just to protect me. Me!"

"I've always like you, Severus," Dumbledore told him amiably.

"You are one of few," Severus told him, turning serious black eyes to the older wizard. "Why do you suppose that is? Is it because you're a blind fool who doesn't recognize the viper he let into his own home? She's just as optimistically foolish as you are."

Dumbledore didn't take exception to the comments directed at his person but he frowned at the scathing remarks about the young woman they had just saved. "She puts up with your attitudes, Severus, she can give as good as she gets. She must see something in you, otherwise she wouldn't bother. Women can be lazy creatures unless the mood strikes them. If they find someone or something worthy of their attention, its a blessing and a curse." Dumbledore stood up and walked over to the younger man, placing a hand on his upper arm, deliberately placing his hand over the hidden Dark Mark tattoo that labeled Severus Snape as a Death Eater, former or otherwise. "She trusted you with her heart and her life. You came after her to protect her, to save her. Whether you like it or not, that's the way it is and you really should stop beating yourself up about it. It's not such a bad situation and everything has a risk." Dumbledore paused a moment and then beamed at him. "Now you really should go after her and tell her how you feel before it's too late."

Severus froze, his muscles tensing. "What do you mean, go after her?" His eyes traveled to the ceiling. "Isn't she still in the infirmary?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "She insisted that we let her go as soon as she could move on her own. That was about two hours ago. She and Sirius have surely reached Hogsmeade by now and he's Apparated wherever she wanted to go."

Severus' mouth thinned and he repeated in a low, dangerous rasp, "Sirius Black took my Muggle somewhere and you never asked where? She's injured and you people just let her leave? You were supposed to tell me as soon as there was a change in her condition!"

Dumbledore smiled crookedly. "She was dressed and sneaking out when we caught her. She brow-beat Sirius into escorting her. We figured she'd wind up in the Forbidden Forest if we let her go on her own."

Severus' face storm-clouded and he shot across the room, grabbing socks and his boots, pulling them on hurriedly. "I don't suppose you conveniently overheard where she was going?" Dumbledore shook his head negatively. "The one time in your entire life you don't know what's going on," muttered Severus under his breath, ignoring the widening smile on the other wizard's face. "You realize I'll never forgive you if she disappears." Dumbledore nodded, unrepentant, and Severus jerked open the door.

"Oh, Severus?" Dumbledore called. Severus' head popped back into the room, his hair still damp from his bath and eyes narrowed. "London is a big town." The black eyes widened in comprehension and then he disappeared. Dumbledore could hear the rapidly increasing footsteps in the hall until they turned into a dead run.

Sirius Black grinned when Severus Snape charged passed him with a growled threat of castration if the lovely little woman got herself into trouble. He'd gotten two more steps before Snape's hand clamped on his upper arm and spun him around. "Where did you take her?" he fairly spat, black eyes glittering dangerously.

Sirius took great pleasure in telling his nemesis, "I can't tell you. She'll castrate me before you do." Severus said something not repeatable in a public place and turned on his booted feet. "London's a busy town, I guess big cities are the best place to disappear." Black chuckled as Snape hit the large front doors of the school so hard they bounced twice before closing behind him.

He had a stitch in his side long before he got out of Hogsmeade, the invisible wizard town nestled next to the school. With a wave of his wand, Severus disappeared with a pop of air that rushed in to where his body had currently been. He reappeared in a dank alleyway in Cheapside and he hurried into the busy thoroughfare. He had a fairly decent idea where Clara might be.

He walked quickly for the Underground terminal, mentally tracing in his mind the route she always took to her flat. It wasn't far from the Leaky Cauldron and Diagon Alley, the wizarding city within the capital city of England. That was how they had met. He'd stepped out the Leaky Cauldron and ran over a petite Muggle woman who had immediately called him a clumsy moron in her lilting Scottish accent. He'd helped her with her fallen bag and books, noting that she was a chemist.

When she'd stalked away, he'd watched her pretty backside with no little interest. Just because he'd not been interested in love didn't mean he didn't appreciate a pretty female when he saw one. The next day she'd been waiting there for him, ready to give him another piece of her mind because several of her chemical mixes had been broken in her bag and had burned through several books and ink pens.

And thus it had started, a love/hate relationship that culminated into the current mess he found himself in. Severus had found himself totally enjoying baiting the little ginger-haired minx with the violent temper. They had struck up a friendship, corresponding over the school year and he had visited her sometimes when he had spare moments.

Severus sighed as he settled into the hard plastic seat of the subway train. First stop was the Leaky Cauldron to see if she was moping outside there. Once he'd shown her how to see the building she'd been amazed that no one ever saw it. Little things amazed her. Once as a joke he'd made a tulip spring from his wand and she'd been dazzled, though surely she'd seen stage magicians do similar tricks.

He smiled to himself as he remembered her reaction when he told her he was a wizard. She'd laughed at him and then when she saw he wasn't laughing with her at the joke, she'd asked him if Hogwart's wasn't another name Bedlam. He'd had to prove it, but she'd been gratifyingly impressed with the truth.

His black-eyed gaze morosely stared out the window as the underground shot past signs and other terminals. What had made her leave? Why hadn't she stayed? His thoughts shied from the natural negative thoughts of the ridiculous notion of her not loving him after all. If that was true, she wouldn't have gone to protect him from the threat of Death Eaters. Her loyalty to friends and acquaintances was commendable but he knew she had more faith in herself than was healthy. If she was going to be embroiled in the wizard world, someone would need to protect her from herself.

He grimaced when he realized that such a task would fall to him to protect her and that he really didn't mind that much.

As the Underground pulled into the terminal, he found himself wondering what it would be like to kiss her. He stomped out of the train with a scowl that convinced a pack of teenagers to take a different entrance onto the train.

The small bistro across from the Leaky Cauldron had one customer sitting outside. The sun was hidden behind the clouds and Severus ignored the warning signs of a summer storm as he marched up to the lone person there.

He jerked her up, staring into startled blue eyes. He reverently ran his fingers through her ginger-hair. "I don't know what you are thinking, young woman," he growled at her softly, his eyes softening slightly when he saw that she was okay, "but you belong to me."

She stomped on his foot, her blue eyes blazing. "I am not some piece of personal property, Severus Snape," she snapped at him and she tried to walk away.

He grabbed her arm and jerked her back to him. He put his slightly crooked nose to her upturned one and stared into her eyes, which widened with shock. Just before his lips touched hers, he murmured, "You missed the point, Clara. You. Belong. To Me."

He knew that she understood that comment was as close as he was going to get to telling her he loved her and her lips brushed his for one moment before pulling back. "Ditto," she said with a mischievous gleam in her eye.

He groaned. Life was going to be an enjoyable hell with this troublesome, wonderful Muggle.