Chapter Four


I shouldn’t stay here.

It’s only been a week and I am already feeling things that I have forbidden myself to feel for so long. So very long.

Of course, re-reading my journals from those summers haven’t helped me any, but I found them when I was unpacking and I just couldn’t help myself. I am too sentimental sometimes. It is my curse.

Or perhaps it is the wine. Albus keeps such a fine stock of it in his cellar and he gifted me with several bottles of his finest as a thank you for the cognac I suppose. At any rate, I am maudlin this evening. I hate being maudlin, I drink more wine when I’m maudlin, which makes me more maudlin, which makes me drink more wine.

I shall have a terrible headache tomorrow.

Why am I here? Of course, to please daddy. I am thirty-seven years old and I am still trying to please daddy. Not that my choices over the last fifteen years or so have been good ones in his eyes. Especially the two years I played with Lestat, he wasn’t very pleased about that time, I could tell. Mother must have cajoled him into silence, for he said nothing to me that night back stage.

Gina thought that the leather get up I was dressed in was cool, so that’s something I suppose. I do have to admit that I did look rather fetching! The boys in the audience lusted after me I am sure and my ego was fed exceedingly well. The tarnish wore off eventually, as it always does.

I have meandered, thanks to the merlot. I was writing about feeling things that I have forbidden myself to feel. Thinking of things that are best left buried in the deep recesses of my mind.

Severus Snape.

The bane of my existence.

My first love.

My first lover.

His too, I think. No. I know it.

He kissed me well, left me breathless and throbbing. I remember his hands stroking me. At the time they seemed sure, now I can see them for what they were. Shaking, not from desire but from nervousness. He was so awkward! At the time he seemed like he was so in control. Now I know that it was just the raging hormones of a sixteen year-old virgin Catholic school girl.

And it hurt damn it all! He apologized to me as my virgin’s blood ran down my body and he caressed my face with those fingers of his. I can still feel the little kisses he rained on my face as the storm outside raged overhead. I still remember him telling me that he loved me as he climaxed and slid out of me. I felt like I had found paradise curled up in his arms.

I was so naive. So young.

The memories are still bittersweet.

That was the last truly happy summer of my life. I imagine it was his last too. But then he made the choices he made, my family and I were merely casualties.

I need more wine.


~**~

Severus Snape patrolled the dark halls, as was his custom every night. There were no students in the summer term, but he walked the same route he walked every night. Sleep would not come to him otherwise. Sleep tonight would be aided by a potion. Again. He had taken the potion every night since her first night there.

Mia Antonia Marvolo. The dark haired beauty if his youth, the pest, the shadow, the first woman he had ever loved. The only woman he had ever loved.

He hated her for it. As much as she hated him for even existing. Because of Antony. Because of her father and mother. Because she had given herself to him and he to her.

Pausing at his favorite alcove, he ducked in and leaned against the wall. From here he had an outstanding vantage point on the whole of the corridor, and here he would hide during term. It was a storehouse of point deduction opportunities.

Tonight it was merely a quiet place to gather one’s wits. She, damn her to Hades, could still make him tremble, at the mere thought of her.

He, if he were being honest with himself, knew that he had no cause for complaint. Not really, for her family had done nothing but-love him. He shuddered at that word.

It had frightened him, repulsed him. Yet he envied Antony for his family while at the same time his feelings, his pride was injured by the kind gestures of Mrs. Marvolo.

He hadn’t realized that the new robes and clothing he was heaped with during his summers were a gesture of pity until his sixth year. They had all colluded to make him look foolish. They had only taken him in out of a misguided sense of charity or pity. Severus neither knew nor cared which it was, the mere fact that he was the object of such was shameful to him.

It had also been an awakening of sorts. He was a Snape. His father and mother were of the purest blood. They were neglectful and abusive but they were his parents. They were not to be disrespected by this American lot. Fools with their pity, their mixing of Muggle and Wizard blood, their piety.

Mia had been the freshest thing in his life that year, now he regarded her giving of her self as a mere mercy fuck.

Well, he did at the time. Despite the fact that he knew that Mr. Marvolo would have hexed his privates off had he known about that afternoon at the hunting camp.

This didn’t stop him from saying the most hateful things he could think of when he confronted her later that summer. Antony had somehow found out about them and the confrontation was fiery. A challenge to a duel was issued by the offended brother. Angry words exchanged, Marvolo Senior’s intentions screamed at him in anger and indignation.

They had wanted to adopt him.

He joined The Death Eaters as soon as he returned to Hogwarts.


~**~

Dawn crept through the gaps in Mia’s curtains, a single ray of light shining on her closed eyes. She winced against the sudden brightness that invaded the inside of her lids.

The hangover from a good merlot wasn’t as awful as a hangover from a bad merlot, but it was still a hangover.

“Damn!” she whispered, tumbling from her bed. She yawned cautiously, wincing at the stabbing in her skull, and then made her way to the bathroom. After downing three ibuprophen (she’d be damned before she went to Snape for Hangover Relief) she stepped in to her shower and luxuriated in the hot, streaming water.

Last night’s pity party was fresh in her mind, and she winced again at the thought of her maudlin behavior. Perhaps she should burn that particular page of her journal and forget that the incident even happened.

“Don’t be stupid, Mia” she chastised herself. Grabbing her shower gel and poof sponge she set to work at expelling the remainders of the prior evening.

Soon she stood before her mirror, critically examining her reflection and liking what she saw. Her skin glowed from the scrubbing she had given herself and her eyes looked a little less glassy. Not as clear as she would like, but nothing that a bit of properly applied make up couldn’t conceal.

“Wouldn’t do to have him see you like this, Mia,” she muttered as she got to the serious work of putting on her face.

“Maybe I can skip breakfast,” she mused to herself.

“Well that wouldn’t be wise dear. You look as if you could do with a good meal or two,” her mirror answered.

God she hated enchanted mirrors! “Shut up you piece of glass. When I want your opinion I will ask for it!” she snapped.

“Humph!” it answered. “Well I took this kind of talk from Professor Snape till he saw fit to move me. I never expected to have another rude, skinny –“

“You were Snape's mirror!” she hissed, cutting off the looking glasses rant. “Well that won’t do. I shall have Dumbledore move you immediately!”

What nerve! Giving her HIS mirror. His discarded one at that! The thought made her nauseous. Eggs and fried tomatoes weren’t so appealing to her any more.

She wondered if there was a Taco Bell in the area.

Thirty minutes later found her walking into the Staff Dining Room, where the smells of a hearty British breakfast assailed her nostrils and caused her stomach to turn somersaults. The ibuprophen had dulled the ache in her head, but had not gotten rid of it completely. The damn mirror hadn’t helped either.

“Good morning, Mia,” Albus said when he saw her approach. “Come sit next to me.”

She sat in the offered chair and forced a polite smile on her face. “Good morning Albus.”

“You look all done in this morning, Mia. Enjoyed the merlot?” Albus said giving her a fond look.

She had the grace to look abashed. “Well, I did rather imbibe a bit too much of it. It snuck up on me. You are such a sneak!”

“You never had a head for wine,” he replied good naturedly.

“Yet you gifted me with a case of the stuff,” she growled.

“Yes, well. Have some eggs and sausage,” he said removing the cover of the platter with a flourish. The distinctive odor of fried eggs and sausage assailed her already tender senses causing her to turn a rather delicate shade of green. “Yes, well perhaps just the eggs and maybe some toast.”

“My dear Miss Marvolo!” exclaimed Minerva McGonagall upon seeing her expression. “Perhaps you should see Severus about a relief potion. You look positively ill!”

Upon hearing his name, his ears perked up. Glancing at the woman he had been ignoring since she walked into the room, he saw that she was looking rather peaked. Arching a brow he said, “Imbibed a bit much last night, Miss Marvolo?”

She nibbled delicately on a triangle of buttered toast and ignored him.

Cheeky little chit. Fine then.

“Severus, perhaps you have a nice hangover relief potion somewhere?” Albus asked in a hinting tone. He’d be damned if he’d offer it to her.

“Sorry. All out I’m afraid,” he answered in what for him was a cheerful tone. “Perhaps someone should warn Miss Marvolo about the dangers of drinking alone.”

The eyes of every soul at the table flew to him and stared in disbelief. Hermione Granger narrowed hers and clucked her tongue in a very McGonagall like manner and muttered “rude prat.”

“Watch your tongue, Miss Granger,” he hissed as he pushed himself away from the table and then strode from the room.

Unable to stand the smell of food any longer, Mia soon followed suit and exited muttering something that sounded like “Taco Bell” to the still incensed Miss Granger