A/N: Woah, the classic 'detention with Snape' chapter already! lel
Just wanted to say I hope there's someone out there who kinda enjoys this c: It's fun to write - I've never tried to write anything before - I thought I would write a chapter and get bored but look how far I've got!
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The castle was strangely quiet. It was the last Hogsmeade weekend in the lead up to Christmas, meaning almost every student in the third year and above had rushed off to purchase armfuls of presents in the form a Zonko's joke products and Honeydukes sweets. Everyone... except Asha.
The dungeons were icy-cold this time of year and Asha was regretting not wearing anything warmer than her usual black hoodie and her deep blue scarf, gifted to her by Maive during her first year at Hogwarts.
Even though several days had passed since Asha had decided she was going to check the restricted section of the library, she had refrained from taking action. She'd figured her best chance of not getting caught, and hence being able to find what she was looking for, was to wait until the Christmas holidays. During this merry time of year, the majority of staff and students would leave the castle to spend time with their families, meaning the enforcing of school rules would be more relaxed and the corridors would be far less patrolled after hours. Thus, Asha was forcing herself to endure her burning curiosity for a couple more weeks.
She pushed open the heavy wooden door to the potions classroom and slipped inside, returning her hand to her comparatively warm pocket as quickly as possible. Snape was sitting at his desk marking homework and didn't look up. A violent shiver ran down Asha's spine. How was it possible that it was several degrees colder in here than it was out in the drafty corridors?
"It's freezing in here," Asha said into the silence, "don't you ever light a fire?" before remembering where she was and why she was here and quickly adding "-sir".
"I'm glad you noticed," said Snape with a malicious gleam to his tone, still not bothering to look up, "I thought a slight chill might help the message sink in."
"Slight? This is practically arctic," Asha muttered.
Snape finally looked up from his parchment-covered desk.
"Careful" he warned, his voice dangerous, "you're not here to make complaints."
"No, sir," said Asha. She walked further into the classroom.
"Now, what is there for you to do?" Snape mused. "Shall I get you mending cauldrons? Or perhaps scrubbing the floors is more appropriate." His eyes seemed to shine a little brighter in the candlelight.
"This is my first ever detention, you know?" said Asha, "so perhaps you could go easy on me." She flashed a well-practised small, endearing smile.
"Yes, I remember generously deciding not to give you detention last year, after catching you in the library in the middle of the night. Evidently that was a mistake or you wouldn't be standing here now, disturbing my peaceful Saturday. Wouldn't you agree?"
That wiped that smile off Asha's face. After an uncomfortable silence, Snape indicated a large stack of boxes in the corner and told her she would be unpacking their contents - mostly ingredients and brewing equipment - into the store cupboard, without the use of magic of course. She suspected he had purposefully placed the boxes at the furthest possible distance from the storeroom.
After forty-five minutes of monotonous walking back and forth, carrying as much as she dared (Snape had assured her that if she broke anything he would extend her detention by at least an hour), the stack in the corner did not seem to have shrunk at all. Asha had been keeping her eye on Snape for the past fifteen minutes and swore he had not looked up from his work once. Feeling daring, she slid her wand from her pocket and non-verbally levitated an entire box worth of ingredients so they were hovering just above her outstretched arms. That way, if he glanced at her briefly it would still look as though she were carrying the ingredients manually.
To Asha's triumph, she made it to the storeroom undetected, where she waved her wand and silently sent all the items to their designated shelves. When she emerged from the storeroom, the potions master was still hunched over his desk, his head resting lazily in one hand while the other scribbled no doubt condemnations on below-par essays.
With her new illicit method, Asha was getting through the boxes at triple speed. After half an hour, the pile had shrunken dramatically. She was just getting overly confident, walking with a levitating stack of scales that would barely make it under the storeroom doorframe, when he finally noticed.
"What- Winters!" he barked.
Asha stopped in her tracks. All the exhilaration that tends to accompany getting away with mischief was sucked out of her feet through the hard, cold floor. She stepped back, out of her fake carrying stance and waved her wand at the cupboard before turning to face him. The scales glided into the storeroom and gently settled on the shelves.
For a second, Snape looked half furious, half surprised. His eyes moved between a guilty Asha and the near-vanished stack of boxes.
"Have you been using non-verbal magic?" he demanded, sounding sceptical of what he had just witnessed.
"Yes," Asha admitted. There was no point in denying it, he'd seen her. Snape was wearing his usual cold, blank expression.
"Show me," he ordered.
"What?" Asha half laughed in surprise. When he didn't reply she mumbled, "Er... okay". As much as she didn't like the idea of anyone finding out about her non-verbal abilities, the look on Snape's face was deadly. She pointed her wand at the box that remained to be emptied. Viles of moondew and dragon blood hovered into the air. Asha then moved her wand in a subtle swooping motion so it was now pointing at the storeroom, before flicking it in a subtle figure-eight motion. The viles bobbed across the classroom and within seconds were settled in their intended places in the cupboard. Snape's face was unreadable.
"I've got sixth years who can't do that half as well as you've just done," Snape said slowly.
Asha's face reddened. She was well aware that she was overly skilled for her age. It was a fact she definitely wanted kept quiet. Not only did she not want the attention, she was almost certain her obsession with practising magic was abnormal.
"Who taught you?" demanded Snape, somehow looking even more severe than usual.
Asha shuffled uncomfortably, unsure what she should say to minimise the repercussions of what she'd thoughtlessly revealed.
"Answer me." His voice was quiet but threatening.
"I just sort of taught myself, okay," Asha blurted out. She saw Snape's face twitch.
"A likely story," he spat, standing up from his desk. "Third years don't just 'teach themselves' non-verbal magic".
"I read about it in a book-"
Snape actually scoffed.
"-but the book was rubbish" she finished. That caught his attention. Asha plunged onward: "I remembered reading somewhere that it's theorised that magic came before language, and incantations became the basis for language, not the other way around. And from that, I came up with this theory that ...well... if you imagine magic is like an energy that flows within you, that you can learn to channel it in specific ways. Words help you to capture to essence of how you need to channel the energy to perform spells and influence the physical world." The words were spilling out of her mouth before she could stop them, like she had been desperate to share them. "I figured that to do non-verbal magic, you need to stop thinking of the words as words, but as a flow of energy. Different consonants and vowels representing the intensity and direction of the flow of magic in your body. It's like I'm feeling the words, not saying them in my head. I know it sounds stupid and it's probably very inaccurate but it doesn't matter because thinking of it in that way just works for me."
The shrewd way Snape was looking at Asha made her feel stupid and vulnerable. She wished she had just stuck with 'I read about it in a book'.
"Why don't others know you can do this?" Snape asked harshly, "Surely you would relish in being admired by your peers and commended by your professors?"
Asha averted her eyes. In truth, she didn't know the full answer. She just liked to keep to herself; didn't feel like people were worth confiding in. She didn't feel very connected to her friends. Despite living in a castle full of her peers and teachers, Asha couldn't shake the feeling of isolation. Totally unaccustomed to this dreadful feeling of exposure of what was far too close to her true self, Asha resorted to a shrug.
"Fine," said Snape curtly. He had an almost suspicious look on his face. "If you finish the unpacking by hand you can go." He returned to his desk and leafed through a book, though Asha had the impression his thoughts were still focussed on the unusual ability of his fourteen-year-old student to perform non-verbal magic.