The Potions Master and the Ravenclaw

The Invitation

Snape had slammed the door to the classroom with a blinding, white hot rage. He was furious with himself. Furious with her.

He stormed through the corridor and entered his quarters, going to straight to the liquor cabinet. He pulled out a glass and filled it generously with firewhiskey. He slammed it down, feeling the burn of it as it flowed like lava down his throat.

Good. He deserved to hurt.

He refilled the glass to the brim and carried it to his favorite chair by the fireplace (which he didn't even bother to light).  He sat and banged the glass down on the table next to him, a bit of the liquid sloshing out carelessly. He raked his hair back with his long fingers and rubbed his eyes as if he could wipe her image from his mind.

He sighed deeply, then let out a frustrated roar.

This was a disaster. He had gone too far. He had touched her. Touched a student. Touched her face, her lips.

When he had legilimized her, he saw that she had been thinking of kissing of him, wondering what it would it be like to be held by him. It had planted a seed. He couldn't imagine someone so beautiful and young thinking of him in that way, but he had seen it quite clearly. There was no question.

Then when her dark eyes had filled with those pretty tears, it compelled him. Her vulnerability ripped at him and he could not prevent himself from touching her. He had wiped a tear from her cheek and had felt a strange and intense impulse to taste it. Then she had held his hand to her face and the ice he had built around his cold, black, damaged, heart had cracked. He could almost hear it.

He'd come dangerously close to kissing the girl. His lips had almost touched hers. He could almost taste her. Gods, he wanted her.

Worst (best?) of all, he could feel that she wanted him, too.

Thank the gods he had been able to stop himself, though he had never done anything so difficult in his life. Stepping away from her - not taking her in his arms and kissing her until she was begging him for more - had nearly killed him. Turning away from her felt like a death, but he knew he'd done the right thing.

She was his student. She was too young. And he knew it wasn't fair to form an attachment to any woman. Not with the plans that had been laid out for his life. A life that he knew would be short and fraught with peril.

He raised the glass to his lips again and drank deeply.

It had been a long time since he'd felt the need to be truly drunk, but he knew he would drink himself into oblivion this night.

He wanted to blame her. Hate her. Forget her.

But even as he made his way to the bottom of the bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey, he found he could do none of those things.

...

Severus Snape woke with a raging hangover.

As soon as he opened his eyes he was violently hit simultaneously with two overwhelming sensations. The first was the intense need to vomit. The second was an all consuming sense of shame at what had transpired the previous evening in the cupboard with Madeline Clovewater.  He forced himself to sit up, slinging his long legs over the side of the bed and holding his head in his hands, propping his elbows on his knees. He sat very still for a long moment as the room spun, willing himself to conquer the nausea that was plaguing him and replaying the scene with Madeline in his mind.

For the love of Merlin. The humiliation was almost too much. What must she think? Was she hurt? Frightened? Confused? Disappointed? Relieved? Would she tell anyone?