Hindered Love (A Severus snape love story)

Hindered Love

"I would prefer it if you payed attention next time Miss Bell. Now grab my arm." Hestia looked slightly alarmed and wary as she stared at the professor as if to clarify what he just said.

"Grab your arm ?" She repeated, slightly confused. Severus sighed with frustration and thrust his arm out in front of her.

"We are going to apperate." As he said this Hestia grabbed his arm tightly before being thrown blindly through a twisting maze of darkness and landing on her front in the middle of a busy high street. She pulled herself onto her knees but swayed slightly, trying to fight back a wave of nausea and dizziness.

Snape bent down and helped her to her feet. She wobbled slightly but after a short while she was able to place one foot in front of the other without vomiting.

"Are you alright now? Side-Along apparation is always more uncomfortable than single person." Hestia nodded weakly and Snape released his grip on her arm. They continued walking slowly in silence before coming to a stop outside a large, crooked shop. The sign was faint and peeling, but the words were just legible. Flourish and Blotts.

A bell jangled slightly as the professor creaked open the door. The room was stuffy and crowded, yet there weren't many people there, taking up all  the space. It was the books that occupied most of the room, stretching from the cracking floorboards all the way up to the ceiling of the second floor. Towering piles of books balanced precariously on top of or beside one another, there was barely any space to move around the strange little shop.

The room smelt strongly of dust and parchment, Severus could feels his fingers itching to grab hold of all the books he could carry. He glided over to the textbook section of the shop and started leafing through the collection of Potions, Herbology and Defence Against the Dark Arts books.

Hestia, however just stood motionless, her eyes wider than usual as she struggled to comprehend the sheer enormity of the book collection. She had always been a passionate and avid reader, so this seemed like some kind of fantasy. It surely couldn't be true.

She began to move slowly around the shop, stopping now and then to thumb the spines of various books, or to read a couple of pages. Each time she stopped walking the floorboards creaked ominously beneath her, and a large sculpted lens that was hanging from the ceiling swayed gently, the twine it was hanging from humming under the immense strain.

Severus had once owned a lense like this, they were enchanted glass used to magnify a book so large that it is reflected onto the opposite wall. This, however, didn't look like it had been used for years judging by the amount of dust that had accumulated on it. It was obviously just for show.

The lens was around the size of his fist, the gold rimmed lip seemed monstrous compared to the fingernail-size of a normal lens. He heard a loud twanging sound and glanced up at the string securing the heavy object to the ceiling. One by one, the small threads were snapping lose, the lens jerking more wildly as it was lowered towards the floor.

Just as the last thread snapped, Hestia happened to be walking underneath it. It seemed to happen in slow motion, the lens was thrown from the ceiling just as Hestia stopped walking, Severus leapt over the large table situated in the middle of the room that was covered with books. He stood gawping as the heavy lens hit Hestia square on the head before rolling out of sight under the bookcase. She crumpled to the floor, unconscious.

~*~*~*~*~

Hestia emmerged from darkness with a splitting headache. She lifted her hand to the back of her head and gasped when it came away wet and silky with blood. She heard someone murmuring nearby, but it still seemed so far away. It was as if she was trapped between living and breathing or some kind of dream. She swallowed loudly, coughing as spit became trapped in her throat. Her eyes snapped open and she sat bolt upright, finally getting her breathing under control.