Dance With A Serpent

Look At Me

Her heart pounded. she really tried to concentrate on the cauldron in front of her, but it was so hard. Hard when he was walking about and so close to her.

This was so unfair. She had no feelings for him, she didn't like him in the slightest yet.... Yet he affected her this much?

His pale torso played once more before her inner eye, his breath once again on her face, and his steely eyes boring in to hers. That intense gaze had torn right into her deepest self. Had their souls met for a rendezvous in those dark eyes?

She shook herself. This was madness. If she had only been able to destroy the awful mirror!

"Daydreaming in my class, Miss Granger?" a far too recognisable voice whispered in her ear.

She jumped and turned to look up at him.

So tall. His hands behind his back and an eyebrow raised in ... annoyance? amusement? Her soul saw him as handsome, so if she only tried to perceive him as such maybe she'd....

She quickly whipped her gaze away. He was just as in the mirror! The only thing she had had to do was open her eyes, and he was there.

Her hands shook. Professor Snape was... Professor Snape was... he was handsome.

"Is there a problem, Miss Granger? Cat got your tongue?"

"N...no sir." She couldn't look at him. It was a hallucination! He was ugly! Old, ugly and foul! Trick of the light! Besides, if she looked at him, she might look at him in the wrong way, and he'd have to gore her eyes out.

"That brew won't make it self. Five points from Gryffindor for slacking in class." And he strode away.

She breathed out. No, he wasn't handsome.

Stupid Hermione. Make your brew and forget that old bat.

She tried.

The brew was a disaster at the end of the lesson. It was mud thick and spew green. Either that was what Martha Willower thought summer green looked like, or Hermione had failed.

With heavy feet, she walked up to leave her vial.

She felt the professor looking at her. She was avoiding his form completely.

Hermione tried to put the vial in the stand without looking at the professor but he was right behind the desk and making it very hard for her.

As she fumbled with the glass tube, she heard a heavy sigh and felt his cold fingers relieve her of the vial.

The small patch where their flesh had met burned.

"This is disgraceful Miss Granger."

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, the brew as well, but I meant the childish way you refuse to look at me."

Hermione's cheeks flushed. She looked around. She was the last one there. As always it would seem. She shouldn't have waited to go up to him this long.

She forced her eyes upwards and on to him. "Snape'sUglySnape'sUglySnape'sUgly."

Tall and yet slender with his emperor stance. The pale flesh, so potent against his dark robe and framed by his long black hair. And the eyes..., they tore into her with the gentle force of a storm. DAMN!

"You said you didn't like me looking at you yesterday."

Snape raised his right arm and massaged his temples.

"Miss Granger, I merely wanted you to stop looking at me like a frightened deer in headlights."

She looked down at his desk.