GOOD DOG || Sirius Black

(Twenty: Absquatulate)

Absquatulate: to leave without saying goodbye

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Alex's last potions session with Severus before the Christmas holidays was on a Friday night.

There are many problems with Friday nights, especially ones that occured during a person's OWL year. You've pretty much already given up on life itself and the hope of ever making it out of the endless grey monotony of school days and lessons. The weekend seems like a mirage on the distant sun-starved landscape of shitness. Seconds take minutes, minutes take hours, hours lasted forever and Alex was sure those were the lyrics to a pop song her annoying cousin had liked when they were ten.

Needless to say, she wasn't paying one hundred percent attention as she shoved lacewing flies into her very rough approximation of a Draught of Peace. It didn't help that Severus maintained a strict rule of 'no Gryffindor potion in the potions classroom'.

"Careful." Severus hissed warningly as the potion, which was by that point a bubbling grey colour, spat at her.

"Sorry." Alex muttered, eyes downcast. Her oversized dragon hide gloves chafed on the blisters that had already formed as a result of carelessness.

"The Draught of Peace," Severus said as he gently gestured her out of the way and took over trying to save her feeble attempt at the potion, "Is one of the most contradictory potions ever created. If you get even one component the slightest bit wrong, it can prove fatal, as it has in many accounts throughout history."

Alex bit her lip, and glanced around for a slip of parchment, "Will I need to remember this?"

"Unfortunately not." Severus articulated, barely glancing down as he swept a perfectly measured handful of charmander tails into the cauldron, "If you will excuse me for trying to fill in the atrocious gaps in the education system."

"Right." Alex smiled to herself, "Sorry again."

Severus flicked his wand through the air, and the little fire burning under the cauldron dimmed a little, so that his face became less of a blur through the steam, "Your transformation, then? I assume it took place?"

"Um," Alex lowered her voice, as if there was someone listening outside the door, ready to throw her out of the school at a moments notice, "Yep. Full moon. I'm a werewolf."

Severus observed her through slitted eyes, "Interesting."

"What is?" Alex asked, slightly alarmed.

"The fact that you felt compelled to point out that you turned onto a werewolf on the full moon." Severus raised his eyebrows, speaking smoothly. Alex flushed red, "Curiously enough, even half bloods know that little fact."

"You're a half blood?" Alex inquired curiously. There wasn't an awful lot that she knew about Severus Snape. She had just sort of assumed that he would have been a pureblooded Slytherin, like all his friends.

The boy frowned in concentration as he stirred in a very particular way that looked just a bit too fussy to Alex, "Yes, I am. Are you rethinking these tutor sessions now that you know they're taught by such an inferior creature, your majesty?"

"Why would I do that?" Alex felt her anger slowly building. It was always like that after her potion wore off. Like everything she hadn't felt just came rushing back, overflowing out of her centre. And always, always, there was that hole in the middle of her chest, just tugging everything in. 

Severus quirked an eyebrow, still not looking at her, "His status didn't seem to do Logan Mitchell any good."

"Why does everything always come down to blood status with you lot?" Alex fumbled for words angrily, "It's... Anything bad happens to you and it's the purebloods being racist again. Why aren't I allowed to be angry with someone because they're being a dick?"