I fidgeted with my quill, running the sharp edge over my thumb again and again. I was looking down at my parchment and waiting for him to teach something worth writing down. Instead I was forced to listen to his annoyingly sexy voice answer questions for the best student in our class. Whether the kid was better at making potions or better at crafting questions to show off his knowledge while seemingly having a query that was always at best scantily related to the subject matter at hand, remained to be seen.
I have snuck a peak at Severus four times during this class. Every single time his eyes have found mine and I've snapped my eyes back down to the ground. I thought this was supposed to be better after the star's magic was quelled but instead I just have an overwhelming awareness of him. It feels like the tether between us is crackling with the truth of our sordid weekend activities. I am dragging the end of my uninked quill under my fingernails and shifting in my seat, trying to find the peace of mind I require to brew a potion. We are making a poison today and they can be so volatile.
At last he moves on from Mister Perfect Potions Boy and is at the black board. I dip my quill and ready my hand to take notes. He begins explaining the connection between poison and poisonous ingredients, the difference between brewing to bring out those qualities or their other benefits. Most poisons have a collection of ingredients whose poisons flourish at a similar temperature. We are brewing a hot poison today.
Everyone must wear extra protective equipment, a mask that covers our whole face with breathing holes through filters on either side. They make the whole lot of us look like flies. We could use a bubble head charm but in school, this is safer. You don't want someone's focus breaking and their charm going awry when the room is full of poisonous vapours. So we all pull our masks on and tighten the buckles behind each other's heads. Talking is nearly impossible.
Inside the mask I find a kind of quiet calm, separating the beetle's wings and legs and depositing them into little piles. You must do this right before things are all combined. The poison brews hot and fast. It is all over in less than 20 minutes. I like how focused it makes me, no outside thoughts can slip in, there is only bring the base to a boil, separate the beetle into parts, warm your roots by the fire then crush them under your pestle for a single drop of the juice. I'm counting my five clockwise stirs that are to be done after each part of the beetle has been added when my friend's cauldron explodes.
My friend is knocked into me with the force of it and I tip sideways, falling into a chair which presses my mask away from my face for the briefest moment. It was only a second but as soon as the air touches my lips I start to choke on it and then my legs give out. On the ground, my body begins to go paralyzed and but I can hear and see, just having trouble breathing and swallowing without choking.
I can hear him instructing people to stay calm, to keep working or else the rest of the cauldrons will blow up as well. As I lay on the floor I realise he cannot come to help me, the tether means he can't even get close. As my saliva pools to drip painfully down my throat I wonder if this is how I will die and why the stars bothered to bring us together at all. I want nothing more than him to be able to come to me.
I vaguely see my cauldron being levitated over to Mister-Know-It-All, Snape must be telling him to mind mine as well as his own, I am levitated off the floor and toward the door. For some reason choking on your own saliva is worse while airborne. He is sealing the door with a permeable bubble and hauling my friend through by the arm and I'm floating through ahead of them. As soon as we are in clean air he puts me down on the ground. My friend is crying and panicking and he is yelling at her in a way I have never seen him do before. There is an absolutely ferocious tone to his voice as he shoves a small vial into her hands.
I start to feel like I'm gonna vomit in my mask and panic sends me spiralling. Suddenly my friend has pulled my head into her lap and she's freeing me. I gasp the fresh air and choke on it anew. She picks up a dropper from beside her on the stone floor. Severus is looking on, several feet away, unable to help and absolutely losing his mind as my friend fumbles the dropper in her shaky hands before she manages to get a few pearls of purple liquid into my mouth.
In a few moments I'm back to being able to breathe, my mobility though is not as fast to return. "I can breathe." I tell him, so he will stop pacing the hall like a caged lion. I do one last cough to clear my airway. Laying in my best friend's lap, I cry a bit, my fear had been held at bay by panic but now that I'm alright, salty water clouds my eyes and drips into her skirt.
"You forgot to remove your inner wings, didn't you! You made the whole thing completely caustic!" He starts scolding out of nowhere and my friend's slightly shaking body tells me she is crying too.
"It's okay, sir. Everyone makes mistakes." I try to intervene, my voice is cracked. I want to reach out to comfort my friend but my limbs do not respond.
"I'm really sorry." She is sobbing. "I'm so so sorry I never meant to-"
"It's okay!" I say at the same time he starts yelling again.
"It's unforgivable to not take this level of potion making seriously. The compounds are complicated and need to be respected for their power before, during and after preparation!"
"Professor! I'm fine! Can you take me up to the hospital wing now please and stop yelling?" My friend is looking at me in shock wondering where the hell I got the audacity to tell him what to do. He dismisses her and we begin our trip upstairs. She keeps apologising as I am floated away.
As he took me up to the hospital wing through empty hallways we had nothing to do but stare at each other. He had no choice but to levitate me at the end of the tether. It was odd floating so very far away. Our eyes were locked intensely the entire way but we remained silent, a heavy understanding of knowing we couldn't really talk lest someone overhear. As we finally reached the hospital wing he lowered me into an open bed and rushed off to find our resident healer. Alone for a moment, I take stock of myself. I had been so relieved to stop choking on my own saliva that I hadn't thought overly much of my limbs not being very responsive. I tried my fingers and I felt them waking up. It was okay. I was fine, it was just a close call. My mask had only momentarily pressed away from my face.
He returned with Madame Pomfrey and they had a back and forth about the antidote which he left with her incase I needed more. "I must go back to ensure my class has not gone further awry but I will come back at the end of the period to check on her condition." He says to her, but I get the feeling the information is more for me than the nurse. His eyes seem full of something as he looks at me on the cot one last time before he rushes back out of the room.
It hurts a little to be dropped off and left but I know I am in good hands. I know I am already on the way back to normal, and yet it bothers me that we have to be so secret that he cannot even sit at my bedside. He has obligations, I remind myself. Our class may have had more explosions and he needs to be down there. Our lovely nurse has asked me to imagine my comifest clothing. She places my hand over hers and together we summon it. She magics me into them skillfully. Then she is tucking me into the bed tightly and tells me that I'll have painful tingling for a while but I should just breathe and relax as my limbs come back to life and as soon as I can use my hands I will have a cup of tea and some biscuits to complete my recovery. It occurs to me that so much of nursing is just knowing how to comfort people while healing magic is working. Suddenly I have a newfound respect for Madam Pomfrey's day to day life.
I find myself falling asleep under the weight of the quilt. I wonder if she bewitched the thin hospital wing blankets to feel heavy, for once I'm under it I feel sucked into the depths of the bed and sleep begins to prod at me. My eyes are heavy and I enjoy what feels like a five minute nap when I hear his voice. Blinking my eyes open I see him at the far end of the hall giving the full account of the incident to the nurse. I must have slept for the entire rest of the period. When he is through he approaches my bed and I sit up.
"I see you have some mobility back. Can you move your extremities yet?" He asks as he approaches. Pomfrey is following behind him so he has to keep things quite professorial. When I try my fingers and surprisingly find them to be in working order he asks in my mind "Are you alright?"
"It appears I can move all my fingers... and all my toes as well. I seem fully recovered, Professor." I tell him. I'm feeling fine. Don't worry."
"See, what did I tell you? Relax and it's over before you know it. I'll send for that cup of tea for you." Pomfrey smiles at me and heads off to do so.
"I am glad you have recovered so quickly." He looked over his shoulder to see how far the nurse had gone and when he was sure he had a moment of privacy he added "I'm going to talk to Minerva as soon as possible and tell her this tether isn't safe. You could have died. I drew suspicion by making an already upset student administer the antidote but I had no other choice, every other student had a boiling cauldron that needed attending to." He agonised, looking tense and standing as close as the charm would allow him to my cot.
I checked and Madam Pomfrey was on her way back to us with a pot of tea so I steered away from our more personal subject to "Did everyone else's potions complete without devastation?"
"Yes, luckily it was a simple enough stirring pattern for everyone to keep their heads even with the distraction." He reported as the nurse set a tray on my lap with a cup of tea and a saucer of chocolate biscuits.
"Would you like to join us for tea, professor?" The healer asked.
"No, thank you I have another class right away. I hope you continue to feel better." He says to me and I feel like even this statement is more than he would have said to any other student. "Poppy." He tips his head to her as he leaves. In my head he says "You gave me a scare, today. Don't do that again." His tone was playfully threatening. I wondered if he was going to promise punishment for my accidental poisoning.
"Yes Sir. I promise not to breathe poison anymore if I can help it." I pray he hears it with my internal eye roll as he marches out.
I am dismissed from classes for the rest of the day owing to the traumatic events of this morning. I languish around my bedroom, get bored, do homework of all things, then hang about in the common room and wait for my friends to come up and tell me the rest of the story of the day. They begin to relate what had happened during the remainder of the potions class, and what dramas had spun because of it, while on the way to dinner in the Great Hall. They were in the middle of telling me about the massive lecture Snape gave them on the importance of keeping focused and calm while brewing dangerous substances when a letter makes its way over to me delivered by a floating balloon.
The contents tell me I'm summoned to McGonagall's office after dinner. My friends want to know why. I shrug, saying I have no idea, maybe it's because I almost died and she has to make sure I'm still sound of mind or tell my parents I got poisoned or something. Privately I hope it's to discuss the tether.
When I arrive at her office I'm only slightly surprised to see Severus standing at the mantle of the fireplace, a dark cloud of brooding in the cheery plaids of her furniture and curtains. I take a seat in her sitting room and wait for them to tell me why I'm here. I try to force my hope of what the meeting could be down.
"How are you feeling?" Minerva queries as I sit down.
"Put to rights. It was just a little scary for a couple of minutes." I answer.
"I'm glad to hear you are fully recovered. Professor Snape feels your life was in danger today because of the tether. What do you think?"
"When my legs seized up and I fell down I realised he wouldn't be able to get to me and I did panic, but it all worked out." I'm trying to be neutral, I don't want to beg for her to take the tether off, she should come to the idea herself. Last time we had a discussion I yelled at her and I have regretted it ever since. "It could have been worse..." I add.
"It could have been infinitely worse!" The brooding black cloud erupted. "Not only could you have died in front of my eyes with no way for me to reach you, we managed to get out of the situation without drawing attention to the extremely obvious issue that I can't approach you!" His words were directed at me but the anger was directed at McGonagall.
"Severus, I know you are upset you have made that abundantly clear." Minerva's voice was rising to match his. "Let us not lose our tempers-"
"On the contrary, Minerva I feel I have very good control of my temper considering how close we came to losing a student today. It is you who seem to be nonplussed by the event."
"She is here and she is perfectly well. Let us not argue about what could have happened. We are meeting to discuss whether the tether is still a reasonable solution."
"I do not think it is." I quietly. The room has so much tension and raised voices of the professors standing on either side of the room in front of me.
"Can you elaborate?" She asked me, sitting in a chair across from me, matching my energy instead of Severus'.
"It's not worth the safety hazard. I feel that placing barriers on us seems to make the universe create disruptions to bring us together. Is there any reason we can't self regulate from here on out?" I ask.
"You know I can't allow you two free reign to be ... lovers." She spits out uncomfortably. Severus moves to the far end of the room to pace. I sense he doesn't trust himself to speak right now.
"Whatever the stars mean for us, it's related to us having a close relationship. I'm not entirely sure this potions accident isn't part of this magic. It is the second non life threatening poisoning that has occurred while he and I were tethered apart. Yours, now mine."
"We can't know they are connected." She responds.
"But weigh the risk that they may be connected and something like this could happen again, versus allowing us to privately find out what this connection wants of us."
She sighs and contemplates. "I think you may be right. I am going to remove the tether for safety reasons." Severus and I exchange looks as she says it, we can't get ahead of ourselves, we stay quiet. "I am concerned about what happened today. I am worried what could happen if you were somewhere solitary and something happened. Given the nature of this magic drawing you together against my wishes the likelihood of you two finding yourself alone is high and with what happened today... I don't want it on my conscience. Also given that you two have already... done the deed." Her pitch went up as she touched topics she would rather not discuss, it seemed. " I wonder what I am really protecting. However, mark my words, if I catch the two of you behaving in any way that I feel is drawing attention I will be forced to take more drastic action. I am not opposed to sending you away to take your final semester at another school if you do not heed my warning. No one can know."
I nod eagerly. She doesn't know about the fireplace. He and I can see each other in complete secrecy. Getting caught is absolutely not a worry in my books.
"Also, I am visiting someone over the holidays and I don't want to be worrying about safety while I'm away. Plus with the bloody tantrum Professor Snape just pitched in my office because you got hurt, it proved to me that he must really care about you beyond some kind of sexual frenzy." She was teasing Severus which seemed like a good sign but she did sigh at the end, letting us know she was not happy about this outcome.
"Professor," I begin. "I really appreciate this. Between me ageing up and us already having been together it just makes sense to look the other way so to speak. I promise you won't even know anything at all is happening." .
"Severus, so help me if you get this girl pregnant or get caught in the act or doing so much as looking moony eyed at each other I will curse you to hell and back."
"Understood." He says tight lipped. We both hold our breath as she untethers us. He walks up behind my chair to test. "Seems to be gone." He confirms, and I try not to let on how exciting it is to feel him standing so close to me again. "Thank you for your understanding, Minerva."
"Severus you may go. I wish to speak to her alone." McGonagall announces.
"Very well. Good evening, Ladies." Before he is gone from the room he adds into my head " Come to me later. No sex. I just want you in my bed tonight after our little scare today." I stare forward at McGonagall praying I don't give away anything on my face.
When he is gone she addresses me again. "I want you to know I am always here for you to talk to. I know I've not always been the most receptive person during this but I need you to know, you can come to me. You must tell me if he is trying to coerce you or hurts you. I have not decided to allow this to occur without the understanding that even if he has behaved perfectly up to this point that he is not capable of controlling or hurting you later. I feel so conflicted on this score but I know that if you have truly spontaneously aged up, and you have walked through magical barriers with no wand in hand there are forces at play beyond what a situation like this would normally entail."
"Thank you. You have my word I will tell you if this morphs into something it shouldn't."
"Good. Goodnight, and use your good judgement and stay on top of your grades or you will have to answer to me!"
"Thank you professor!" I smile as I rush out of her office.
I try to keep a reasonable pace as I speed walk to my dormitory. As I come through the door my friends call to me. Damn, friends. I make my way over to them and tell them McGonagall just wanted to hear about what happened in potions and asked if there was anything that should be done differently. I stay and talk to them for a few minutes, shortly after the conversation changes to not being about me I pretend to get sleepy. I let them all see me slouching back in my chair and blinking slowly. I do a good enough job that someone tells me I should go to bed, that I've had a long day. I cheer internally as I scuttle off to my room.
I change into my cutest nightgown, brush my teeth and comb my hair before throwing some grains of floo power into the fireplace. When I arrive in his room he is already under the covers, and he pats the space beside him. "Come to bed." He murmurs softly. I leap in, crawl into his arms and snuggle into his smell. His chest is a perfect pillow. His hand strokes my back as he turns out the light and we are just quiet in the dark together, and it's some kind of bliss just to be close.
~
"Good Morning, my little problem. Try not to get yourself killed today, would you?" He asked sarcastically while leaning down to extract a kiss. He was somehow up and dressed and I had slept through all that. I was laying in his bed alone, spread out in a way I hoped I hadn't been while he was sharing it with me. His hand slid up my leg and grabbed my ass which is how I found out my rear end was not currently covered by my nightgown. I pull it down, blushing at my unladylike sleeping position.
"Why didn't you wake me?"
"I was enjoying looking at you. I have things to do before breakfast otherwise I would be making you miss your morning meal in favour of something else."
"Well thank goodness, as Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I can't just miss it because you have urges, Professor." I tease.
"I think we should avoid seeing each other for a while. See what our natural self control is without Minerva's tether. We never got to test it."
"Oh that's right. Okay cross my heart and hope not to die again today. I will not come through the fireplace." I say as I get up and approach the exit to my room.
"Is it possible for you to stay here for the holiday? With Minerva away for Christmas break we could have free reign for two weeks to discreetly do as we please. Perhaps we can get it out of our system before next semester."
"Like the 12 days of Christmas but with sex every day?" I ask hopefully. What a present that would be.
"Perhaps even more than once a day." He grins, pulling me closer by the front of my nightgown. There's something so erotic about being held to his front while he is completely dressed and I'm in nothing but a flimsy cotton thing. I enjoy the feeling of him snogging me and as his hands roam my body I realise he's wearing his leather gloves. He must be on his way outside. He pulls away and I pout, I don't want him to stop kissing me. "Thank you for not dying right after I deflowered you. I would have had a hard time recovering from that."
"I didn't realise how inconvenient it would be for me to die on you. Are you beginning to care about me?"
"You are rather annoyingly the light of my life."
"Happy to live to annoy you for another day." I laugh until he slaps my behind with his leather glove on and I squeak . I grab some floo powder in my fingers and say "See you in class, handsome, I'll be the one trying not to think about fucking you." I wink at him as I toss in the power and zip to my room.