Severus Snape One Shots

~Read~

Severus x OC
OC: Amaranth (Arth) She/They
(it's a name and a nickname because I said so.)

Word of the day according to me:
Indubitably: without a doubt or lacking doubt

      Amaranth stood inside a dimly lit room gazing at her partner, who was sitting at a desk and aggressively scribbling in red pen on some poor students essay on different kinds of mushrooms. It was kind of sad actually, the first year appeared to make several grammar mistakes in each sentence, and this paper was almost certainly going to be failed. It was kind of cute how Severus so aggressively graded such a simple paper however. He would much rather be the DADA teacher, but no one could say with truth that he lacked a passion for potions.

       Severus was in fact, so absorbed with his paper that he didn't even notice when Amaranth moved through his bedroom, closer to him, peering around to see both the paper and his face. Taking the opportunity, Amaranth leaned over, gently placing their hands on his shoulders and placed a soft kiss on the top of his head. This caused a deep sigh to come from the frowning man as he finished a word and looked up into his partners eyes.

"Hm" was his verbose way of greeting Amaranth. But he turned slightly to brush some of her hair out of their face, tucking it behind her ear. Amaranth relished the feeling of his fingertips grazing across the side of her face, and slowly leaned down to rest their head on his shoulder. Severus stiffened for a second but didn't push her head away, so she murmured quietly

"Are you almost finished with your papers?"

He paused, seeming to think through his response,
"Not quite, love."

"I see, well may I have a request for once you finish?"

"Perhaps"

"Can you read to me once you're done?"

"...perhaps" Severus replied with an amused tone to his voice.

"Alright it's a deal then."

"Mhm" was his final response as he flipped over his paper and continued to mark it in the red ink.

       Supposing that was the best answer they would get, Amaranth moved over to his bed and curled up on top of his blankets, facing him while she waited. He spared her a glance, and a slight smirk, before exchanging the paper he had been grading with a new one.

        Amaranth couldn't help but watch him as he worked. His workspace was lit up by two candles on either side of his desk, and the light they cast shone with warmth across his midnight black hair. His hair loosely fell beside his face, making it harder to see from their angle on the side. His eyes were narrowed, and his eyebrows furrowed as he read his student's work. His hooked nose led to his frowning mouth, which would open occasionally as he muttered things under his breath.

Sitting up, Amaranth went in search of a proper book to get him to read to them. When she had first settled in she had brought quite the stack of books with them. Sifting through the short piles in their overtaken corner of the small room, they pulled out their next victim; "The Phantom of the Opera" by Gaston Leroux. Severus and Amaranth had recently finished "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelley together, Severus had requested that after they finished "The Phantom of the Opera" they should start "Dracula" by Bram Stoker. But that would happen when they reached the end of "The Phantom of the Opera" which Amaranth was highly invested in.

Dusting off the well worn hardcover, she stretched and returned to the bed, perching on the edge, and returning to watching Severus work while hugging the book close to them. The air was chilly in the dungeons and she was feeling slightly impatient, but calmed the irritation with a deep sigh and lay down once more.

Severus, upon hearing the sigh, glanced over at them quickly, and seemed to hesitate in his work for a minute, a faint wistful look crossed his face before he returned to his grading. He was almost finished with his last paper, which was better than the one he had been grading previously, but was lacking in creativity. As he wrote his last note, he gathered the papers around him into a small stack, tapping them against the table to straighten them. He then walked over to Amaranth and raising a cool eyebrow at them as they lay with their arms crossed over their chest holding the book.

Amaranth looked up at him and decided to grace him by moving over a whole one inch to give him room to sit on the edge of the bed. Severus simply walked around to the other side before sitting on the bed with his back resting against the headboard. He carefully pulled Amaranth's upper body into his lap, extracting the book from her clutches and putting one of his arms around her as he opened the book.

Relaxing into the feeling of his warmth Amaranth shifted onto their side with their head resting on the top of his thigh and curled up into a vaguely sphere like shape. She listened to his heartbeat as he thumbed through the pages searching for the page they had last left off on. It was slow and steady in rythm, and it made them feel happy to be reminded that his heart was in fact beating.

"Chapter 21: Interesting and Instructive Vicissitudes of a Persian in the Cellars of the Opera" Severus spoke as he started to read. His low voice drifted about the room as he continued to read, telling the tale of a certain "trap-door lover" and his obsessions.

      Suddenly remembering several pages in, that when people spoke, you could feel it through their chest, Amaranth immediately sat up and moved further onto his lap to rest their head on his shoulder and focus more closely on his voice. It did in fact resonate through the muscle and bone of his chest and it was a calming sensation. Her eyes started to slowly drift close even as the plot grew more tense, as did the voice of her lover. Though it was interesting, sleep was seeming far more interested in her than she could possibly maintain on trying to decipher the words coming from Severus' mouth.

Shortly after they closed their eyes completely, Severus noticed a shift in them, and he finished his sentence, marked the book with a makeshift book mark, and picked them up to place them beside him in the bed. Putting the book carefully back in the corner, he grabbed a cold glass of water to drink, before returning to the almost completely asleep Amaranth.

"You seem quite energized this evening Arth" he smirked as he watched them struggle to open their eyes to gaze at him.

"mm." murmured Amaranth before closing her eyes again.

"Exactly my thoughts darling."

Severus smoothly shifted the covers on one side of the bed back, and shifted her onto the cool sheets, before removing their slippers and running a hand through their hair to smooth it out. He adjusted the pillow underneath her head and leaned down to place a soft kiss on her mouth before tucking her in and moving around the room to get ready to go to sleep himself.

Soon Amaranth had drifted off into a deep sleep as Severus moved to lay by their side.

*the exhaustion sets in*
If you guys have any requests you can write them in the comments here, if my imagination is allowed to continue to have free reign these are about to end up as practically fever dreams.