School Work
"I don't know, Seamus," Ron said doubtfully. They were in the library beavering away at their Potions essays. Right, perhaps not beavering. More like squabbling over the latest issue of Quidditch Monthly and occasionally giving their scrolls exasperated looks.
"I'm telling you, he doesn't read them!" Seamus leaned over the table to whisper when Madam Pince glared at him. Next to Snape, she had the most frightening glare at Hogwarts. Of any human, that was. "There are never any marks on them, unless you count those rings where he puts down his coffee mug."
"Or the giant red slashes crossing out entire paragraphs," contributed Harry.
"Right, and those are random, aren't they? So we could just write anything we like. Hell, *I'm* going to do it." Seamus stared at his scroll. "A limerick!"
"That's appropriate," murmured Ron.
"I heard that. It's not all leprechauns and four-leaf clovers, you dolts. Right, now. There was a man named Snape--There was a greasy bastard named Snape--"
"Seamus!" Ron was shocked. "Are you *writing* that?"
"Watch it, Ron, you're sounding like Percy."
Ouch, thought Harry.
"There was a greasy bastard named Snape, who appeared rather like an ape. He made vile potions--"
"He'll take that as a compliment, not an insult," Dean commented dryly. He was busily writing away on his scroll.
"What are you writing, then?" Seamus tried to read over Dean's shoulder.
"An essay on why the Cannons are such effing losers," Dean said, smirking at Ron.
Ron sharpened his quill meaningfully. "Well, that's given me my idea. 'Why the Cannons are the greatest team of all time', by Ron Weasley."
Seamus looked over at Harry. "C'mon, Harry, you too."
"I don't know." He had reasons for not wanting to piss off Snape too badly.
"Listen, we've only got a month left of school, then we're out of here. You've had a month's worth of detention before." Seamus grinned.
"Yeah, but I don't want to spend my last month here with Filch." With Snape, on the other hand--
Seamus leaned a little closer. "Just one month, Harry. Think of all the things you've wanted to say to Snape over the past seven years. This is your chance, and it's safe, because he'll never read it! It'll be like that therapy thing Hermione was telling us about."
Ron's head shot up. "Hermione?"
"No, she's not here, Ron," Harry said soothingly. Hermione had been pestering them about what she called their 'poor study habits'; she was worried that they wouldn't earn high enough marks on the NEWTs to take up jobs at the Ministry. "And if she does come by, look, we're working." Not on school work per se, but what Hermione didn't know wouldn't hurt her.
"Okay." The red head bent over the essay.
"Anyway, Harry, it'll be good for you. Venting all those pent-up feelings."
Oh, they were pent-up, all right. Harry realized he had a death grip on his quill. He relaxed his hold slightly. "All right. But I'm not showing it to any of you."
"Mr. Secretive strikes again," Dean said. "Wow, I have a lot of material here. This may be my longest Potions essay yet."
"Oh, good on you, Dean!" Hermione walked up to their table, dragging Neville with her. She'd been giving him extra tutoring to bring him up to speed, and he was pathetically grateful. "See, Ron? See, Harry? *Dean* is devoting himself to his school work."
Harry kicked Seamus under the table so that the other boy wouldn't burst into laughter. "Yes, Hermione," Harry said obediently. For the life of him he couldn't understand why Ron was so attracted to her. But perhaps Ron wanted to be bossed around for the rest of his life. Harry rolled up his scroll and hid it in his bag. He'd finish it later.
The next day Severus Snape glared at the Gryffindors as they handed in their essays on the theme of "Ethics and Potions". That was par for the course. But the way some of them looked back at him, with a hint of challenge, wasn't. Finnigan, Thomas, and Weasley all met his eyes, gave him an unusually defiant look, and then glanced away. Strange for the three of them to conspire without including Potter. He ratcheted up his glare for the Boy Who Kept On Living; Potter handed in his essay, looked Snape straight in the eye, and-- blushed. Well. That was unexpected. Perhaps he should actually read their essays all the way through for once, instead of just standing at the top of the dungeon stairs, throwing them down, and assigning grades according to their ultimate landing spots.
So it was that after dinner Snape settled in his favorite armchair with a glass of wine and four essays. Finnigan's was an astoundingly pedestrian commentary on the supposed immorality of Veritaserum. But smack in the middle Snape encountered a limerick.
'There was a greasy bastard named Snape,
Who appeared rather like an ape.
He made vile potions
Had very strange notions
And his robe resembled a drape.'
How uninspired. Snape sighed heavily. Even Sirius Black had been able to do better than that. Snape whipped out his quill and wrote, 'Unoriginal and unexciting. Lacks the necessary dramatic flourish that the limerick form demands.'
Thomas was next. The boy had only made it four sentences into his essay on illegal uses of bubotuber pus before beginning a lengthy critique of the Cannons through the ages. At the end Snape wrote, 'Needs more examples; conclusion simply repeats main points of introduction. Weak transitions give the all-too-accurate impression that you simply wrote down ideas as they occurred to you instead of striving to create a coherent argument.'
It was Weasley's turn. Snape drank some more wine. He was almost beginning to enjoy this. Weasley had interrupted his argument that healing potions with severe side-effects should be used in cases of otherwise terminal illness in order to pen a spirited, albeit disjointed, defense of the Cannons. Snape wrote, 'No evidence whatsoever to support your specious argument. Your illogic and emotionality preclude a rational approach to the topic and bespeak a writer who has made up his mind before investigating his hypothesis.'
That simply left Potter. Snape's hand trembled as he fortified himself with another glass of wine. Potter had managed to produce a full five inches on, of all things, the Ministry's rules for allocation of the Wolfsbane Potion. Snape found himself nodding in agreement at one point; the rules were arbitrary and illogical in the extreme, typical of the documents produced by Ministry bureaucrats. But then he read something that made him set his glass down before he dropped it.
'Dear Severus ['Snape' had been crossed out heavily and replaced by 'Severus']. I'll write this as if it were a letter. And I'll pretend you'll read it, even though I'm quite sure you won't. Anyway, Seamus told me to write all the things I ever wanted to say to you.'
Oh, no. Snape braced himself.
'That would be at least ten scrolls, though, and the things I wanted to say in my first year aren't the things I want to say now.'
Snape's heart started beating a little faster.
'Do you hate me? Because I don't hate you. And really, I don't think you hate me either. Do you know that you look at me sometimes? You don't glare, or scowl, or smirk. You just look. Have you noticed me looking back?'
He had, but hadn't dared to think about what it might mean.
'I love looking at you.'
Oh god. His hands started to sweat.
'I think I might like it best when you're working on something. You're very intent and focused. I used to watch you during Order meetings when you were listening to the plans. Your eyes would go a little distant and you'd have a tiny furrow between your eyebrows. Then you'd snap back into focus. I like to watch you making potions, too. You bend slightly over your cauldron and your hair falls forward. Is it really as greasy as it looks?'
Snape reached up and touched a lock of his hair. Yes, it was.
'It probably is. Oh well. And your hands. I love looking at your hands. They're so strong and deft.'
Snape glanced at his own hands. They were still sweating.
'I want those hands to touch me.'
The hands in question gripped the parchment tightly.
'Do you want to touch me? I think you do. Oh god, I hope you do. I want--'
The rest of the parchment was blank. Snape carefully set the scroll aside, picked up his glass, and drained it. He retrieved the scroll and re-read it. The words were still there. Was this some kind of joke? It had to be. He picked up his quill and wrote, 'Too elliptical at times. Abrupt ending. Over-use of rhetorical questions.' He thought for a moment and added, 'Intriguing premise.'