Hell's Last Lantern | A Severus Snape x OC Romance

Chapter Five

The next few days flew by as Vela attended all her classes for the first time. She especially loved herbology and potions. The two classes seemed to complement each other because in herbology, the students got to grow specific herbs that would then be used later to experiment with in potions. She had to admit she also enjoyed potions a bit more because of her growing curiosity of Severus Snape. There was something about him that she just wanted to unravel and figure out. He was so complex and interesting. He didn't want to be seen, which made her want to see him even more.

Ophelia had helped Vela become more familiar with the castle and some of the strange customs of the magical community. She also introduced her to the world of wizarding fashion which Vela found enthralling and beautiful. There were lots of layers and flowing cloaks and hoods. She liked the hiddenness it provided. She loved the dark colors, the ambiguity the clothing afforded her body, and the freedom not to conform to the same unspoken rules and guidelines for dress that existed the muggle world.

Vela still hadn't cast magic, and she grew increasingly worried because of it. She began to wonder if the incident back home was a misunderstanding––if the Magical Congress had been alerted in error and it wasn't magic at all. Or at least, not her magic. It couldn't be, she didn't feel anything when she tried casting spells and incantations. It was as if she were here by mistake, and soon Dumbledore would see that and send her back to her empty life in the real world.

'By the "real world", you mean the Muggle world. This world is real too!' she tried reminding herself.

Friday came around and Vela was nervous to begin her first remedial defense lesson that evening, bearing in mind how impatient Snape would be when he realized she still couldn't cast. While she was taking DADA classes with the other students, she found that it wasn't useful information, seeing as how the ministry had seriously regimented what the students were allowed to learn. However, since there was no practical application to what they learned, she could easily hide her magiclessness in a sea of obscurity among the other students.

She had been told to tell no one about these remedial DADA lessons, and after her potions class that morning, Snape did give her a specific time for this evening's defense lesson. He had marked her assignment with a 'P' and written a little note in the top left corner of the page, next to his scathing review of her essay on the uses of billywig stingers.

"Come to my office, 10pm. Don't be seen."

The shame of failure at her assignment was overshadowed by this thrilling layer of secrecy and the prospect of learning more about him and about her magic.

That night at 9:58pm, Vela left her dorm as silently as she could, circling down the long, dark corridor of the dungeons. Since it was so late, she had changed out of her uniform so as not to arouse suspicion by wearing it to bed as she waited for her roommates to fall asleep. Her body was charged with the adrenaline of doing something clandestine with the mysterious man who had captured her attention from the first time she'd laid eyes on him in that pub.

She knocked on the door and held her breath. She suddenly regretted showing up in a t-shirt and jeans as she considered that he might detest muggle clothing like many wizards did. That was an interesting fact to learn from Ophelia. There was a lot of tension and resentment toward muggles in the wizarding community due to ancient wars, witch hunts and prejudice. With many wizards, the very association with muggles that wearing their clothing brought was thought to be distasteful and offensive.