Shadows || A Severus Snape Fanfiction

Chapter 34 - Dance Practice

A/N: As always, feel free to skip everything in bold...

Oopsies sorry for being MIA! Sometimes the depression just hits ya know 🤷🏻‍♀️ also I keep getting hyped and writing excerpts that can't be used till like ten chapters from now... lol

In other news, I finally caved and told someone I know irl about this story *sigh*. It was my bffl who also happens to my ex 🤦🏻‍♀️ ffs I don't know what I was thinking! Aaand I definitely scared him with the whole having eyes for men twice-thrice my age thing lmao I tried to convince him with AlanTok - I was like "Look at all the other people who watch these! SEE! IM NOT THAT WEIRD I SWEAR!" buuut that just weirded him out more ahaha

Aaaaaand now he's reading this story AAAAAHHHHHH WHAT HAVE I DONE 💀💀 but luckily he's an engineering student so, like me, he's slow af at reading and will hopefully get bored and won't make it to the spicy 😂

Anyways, in BIGGER news: The Diaries of Alan Rickman! whaaaat!!

"A generation-spanning collection of 27 handwritten diaries kept by the late, great Alan Rickman are to be edited down into a single book and published, by Canongate, in 2022. As reported by The Guardian, the famously sharp-tongued actor began writing these memoirs in the early 1990s, with the intention that one day they would be published for the world to see."

😱😱😭😭 *throws handfuls of money at publishing company*

Now, back to business. I've ended up cutting this chapter in two because I couldn't be bothered editing it all at once. Enjoy! ❤️

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Over the past week, a plethora of Christmas decorations had sprouted up throughout Hogwarts castle, cultivating an almost dizzying air of festivity. The students were becoming increasingly boisterous as the approaching final classes of 1994 brought with them the promise of holidays, presents and, most topically, the Yule Ball.

Asha was back to excelling academically (with the tragic exception of History of Magic). Her self-taught spells had finally started to overlap with the curriculum, meaning she could pay zero attention in Charms, Transfiguration and DADA and still achieve near-perfect grades.

Given her lack of need to focus in these lessons, she had begun seating herself toward the back of the class where she could better spend her time reading books such as Advanced Charms for the Studious, Spells Every Nomad Should Know and The Path of an Auror: A Collection of Interviews. Dumbledore had also given her a pass to the restricted section where she had discovered a series called Duelling Not for the Faint-Hearted. She was currently on Volume IV, Chapter Twenty-Two: Sixteen Creative Ways to Disarm your Opponent.

In previous years, when Asha had found classes easy, she would still pretend to listen and learn alongside the others, all with the intention of blending in. But things were changing. The once compliant and attentive Asha Winters was slowly but surely fading. In the few weeks since her memories had been returned, her desperation to stay safely below the radar had dissolved. She recognised that this was rather ironic given she now had an extremely good reason to fit in. Of course, she was still mindful not to give away any clues that she was the missing child of Lord Voldemort, but she found Severus and Dumbledore's urge for extreme caution excessive and unnecessary. What did it matter if she stuck out just a little?

Unfortunately, there were still a few classes where she had to pay attention if she wanted to do ace them; namely Astronomy, Herbology and Potions. She had soared to the top of Potions, though, as Snape - or Severus, as she now often thought of him - frustratingly liked to remind her, she still couldn't out-perform Draco Malfoy or Hermione Granger.