The Things our Heart likes, without our Brain's Consent - A Severus Snape Story

Chapter Ten - We cannot allow this to remain a fact.

"Have you noticed," Pomona Sprout said to Minerva McGonagall as Severus Snape strode out of the staff room, a few weeks before they broke up for the winter holidays, "That Severus looks different?"

"Yes. Quite so." Minerva replied with a slight nod. "He looks-"

"-handsome-" Irene interjected quietly, though none heard it.

"-healthier." Minerva said, raising her eyebrows. "And he's been behaving strangely." She added under her breath, as Irene walked out after him a few moments later.

"You think so?"

"Oh, of course. Before, he was like a serpent. He used to hide in the shadows and mull over his gloomy thoughts."

Professor McGonagall rolled her eyes.

"Not to mention he refused to acknowledge that he too requires food, just like the rest of us. He's even graced dinner with his presence this week, as you have probably noticed."

"Of course I did." Pomona said. "And now?"

"Now," Minerva continued, reading something on a piece of parchment, "he enters the room as though he has a right to be in it. Which he does, but you could have never thought he thinks that himself. And he actually appears during breakfast which is good - it works like a spell on keeping the order. I don't have to have fifty pairs of eyes any more, not when he can quell his own house with a single look, and that's helpful enough."

"Do you know," Pomona said, after nodding vigorously, "that he paused to open the door for me the other day?"

"As a man should."

"I'll be ready if there's an announcement at the end of the year." she muttered, nodding to herself.

"Announcement?"

Pomona Sprout glanced at the stern Transfiguration teacher, choosing her words with some care.

"Well. Yes. Severus and Irene have been spending a lot of time together, after all."
"Nonsense." McGonagall said after a brief pause, though her mouth thinned considerably. "They've barely made friends."

"And they'll make more." Professor Sprout muttered into her coffee cup, then said her goodbyes and left.

Professor McGonagall's brows furrowed as the door closed.

"And yet we all know how it works. Especially at that age." she muttered to nobody in particular. "After all, no man and woman under such a circumstance can stay just friends for long. And then..."

Minerva made a hmph sound through her nose.

"Then it will either last or it won't."

***

Severus Snape had been thinking about the Solstice a lot. Much more than the students, actually, who were very eager to go back and have a break from school. Severus, on the other hand, as much as he was certain that he would remain at Hogwarts for the length of the break, he was just as uncertain whether Irene Twill would, and he was a little anxious to ask.

"Look, Professor Snape," he was broken out of his musings and came back to the walk they were currently on by her pointing in the distance.

He squinted and tried to see what she was pointing at.

"What is it?"

"It's snowing." she looked at him, then sent him a sly smile. "Can't you see?"

No.

"Yes." he muttered, then stopped squinting, because something soft and cold landed on his face. "So it is."

"Hm." she was still looking at him with that expression which made his heart clench and yet again push away the thoughts of devouring her in an embrace. "Are you short sighted or long sighted?"