Dance With A Serpent

Sour Love

It felt like he rarely saw the higher floors of the castle but for when he went to fetch more books. This semester especially he had been in and out of the library like a bloody yoyo.

Well he had meetings with Minerva now and then, but he could floo himself there so it really didn't count since he only saw her office.

Severus nodded his gratitude to Madam Pince as she turned off the lights after him. The hour of curfew had stricken and the deputy headmaster strode down a disserted corridor.

Damn Winter. Couldn't the man have had the foresight to not go bonkers and not leave his daughter with the deluded idea to following in his footsteps?

Not becoming bonkers but becoming a potions master...mistress.

Good thing the two of them were close to done. The girl was annoying Severus no end.

It had seemed the only right thing to do, taking her on as a gesture of gratitude to her father, his former tutor, and she had saved his life, even if she hadn't meant to.

She might just have shrugged at him when he had asked her about it, but no matter how much Ari said that she hated all of her Death-eater relations, she didn't actually want them to die. Especially not Draco Malfoy.

Severus suspected she had brewed the brew of Second Breath thinking firstly of her fragile sweetheart.

She would never confess to it, she didn't need to.

But gods help him if she wasn't soon sent of to another Potions Master for the second part of her training.

She enjoyed ticking him off, he was sure of it. The mentions of his mulish determination of not giving in to his feelings for Miss Granger, the voiced and very correct assumptions that he had feelings for Miss Granger, was becoming a more frequent topic than the apprenticeship or even the potion processes.

It was enough to make Severus want to rip that annoying little head of that annoying little body and use it as a doorstop.

He looked down at the two books he carried. They were his ticket to a Winter free life.

Footsteps and the sound of voices reached him as he walked through the supposedly empty school. He was heading towards the knot were the first floor entwined the upper levels of the school with the lower. The voices were ascending from the dudgeons.

Other teachers maybe or prefects one their last round heading back to their rooms?

He should have known his luck. Especially since he didn't have one.

Miss Granger, accompanied by the source of Miss Winters recently acquired insanity, young mister Malfoy.

How quaint.

They were walking level with him but on the floor beneath his. They would cross paths as he descended the staircase up ahead.

They appeared not to have noticed him as they seemed to be engrossed in a discussion of some sort.

He slowed his pace and hid in the gloomy shadows.

Severus hadn't seen Miss Granger for over a month. Not up close and he hadn't really allowed himself to more then glimpse her during dining hours.

Her beautiful curls bobbed in her wake hinting of their soft nature. Her lushes lips parting and delicately closing as her bell-like voice formed words. Her sensual grace as her young curved body moved closer to the stairs and inevitably, to him.

Miss Granger, the source of all his troubles. Without her he would be thankfully dead and rid of this world. Without her he would not have found out that one of his students was his soul's desire. Without her he would not repeatedly have found said student having her lips pressed to his. Without her he would not have had to dance with a half-his-age young woman at a stupid ball function. Without her he would never have had the heart aching discovery that she was not only his soul's desire but his soul desire and love...