Saints and Sinners ||Severus Snape

08 : while you were skipping

08 : while you were skipping

Severus Snape flickered his eyes onto his office door as knocks echoed. He'd only been expecting one person to come in, a particular blond that had skipped his class today and, after further inspection, all her classes of the day. He'd declared a rule that students who arrive tardy must serve their detention hours for every minute they were late. If a student was two minutes late, they would have to serve two hours of detention.

For skipping the class altogether? That sixty minutes had turned into sixty hours for Alicia. Even Severus had to second guess his own policy at the thought of spending sixty hours alone with Alicia. Truth be told, he'd asked that worthless excuse of a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart. However, he'd made a concerning comment on his "lack of self control" with Alicia Malfoy so Severus decided it best to just do it himself.

He'd prepared himself before slurring, "Come in," in an irritable tone that he hadn't even meant to do.

He'd then caught sight of blonde hair that was curled to perfection, carrying streaks of caramel that blended with a dirtier shade of blonde underneath the thickness of her shiny waves. As Alicia emerged from the door, she'd gently scratched the area above her ear as she avoided eye contact with her professor. She leaned her back against the door frame and held her left wrist to finger her bracelet.

Severus had noticed the way her uniform hung on her, as if they'd just been thrown on last minute and haven't been given the time to cling onto their human yet. Her collar was uneven, her tie and buttons were loose and her robes were nearly falling off her broad shoulders.

Severus cleared his throat but Alicia only looked elsewhere, and he'd noted how strange it was for Alicia to act this way. She'd gotten in trouble and stayed at the office for detention more than she'd attended classes but she'd never walked of shame before today. In her fourth year, Alicia had skipped a total of one hundred and seventy-five classes, which meant that she'd only attended fifteen classes that entire year, all of which she was tardy. She'd faced the possibility of expulsion on top of repeating her fourth year when Headmaster Dumbledore called a meeting with the Malfoys. And yet, Alicia showed up to the meeting wearing six-inch stilettos and a nude-coloured skin-tight designer dress without a care for the world. Severus was called onto the meeting to present the evidences of unexcused absence and mere irresponsibility. For the three hours that the meeting occured, Alicia giggled at all threats of her punishment. The girl thought she was untouchable.

Severus pulled out two fingers and signalled for the blonde to come over. Alicia moved with her chin tucked and eyes glued to the floor as she dragged herself to the cushioned seat across from her professor's desk. She crossed her legs and her hand remained fiddling with her bracelet uncomfortably. She was ashamed. She'd promised herself before she returned to Hogwarts that she would never go back to her old habits. And she hadn't. This wasn't about the habit. It was the fact that she felt like an outsider, much more than Neville Longbottom. At least he had Potter and his friends. Alicia had nobody.

"Do you mind telling me why you were absent today?" Snape asked, ready to hear some mind-boggling excuse. In the second year, she'd once come up with the lie that her father's familiar had sent her a letter saying that she was being drafted into the Romanian war on behalf of her grandmother, who was the Romanian Queen. But as she'd gotten older, the excuses became less creative. One time, she had told him: "I didn't know I took this class" in the middle of February.

"I wasn't feeling well," was what Alicia went with this time with a quick purse of her lips afterward. Her voice was huskier and manlier, as if she'd been smoking packs and packs of cigarettes and screamed all day long - or as if she'd been crying.

Severus' face softened, as much as it could at least. He'd never seen Alicia this way; not being the superficial bombshell she usually was. He'd even began to think she never entered the realm of deeper and darker emotions. Perhaps he was wrong.

"Might I ask, why?" he asked as genuine as he could, but he simply couldn't bring himself to empathize with such a privileged girl with her privileged problems.

"Uhm," she stuttered. "I don't know."

Severus sighed in the back of his mind. Alicia was usually full of life. How could he degrade and punish such a vulnerable version of her she'd presented? "Head back to your dormitory," he gave in.

Alicia's eyes shot up instantly before she shook her head with such vigour and protest. She placed her sweaty quivering hand on top of his cold ones and squeezed it. "No, professor. Please. Let me serve my detention right now." What was that in her voice? Desperation?

Severus stared at her in confusion. He'd began to think he was being pranked. This was the same girl who'd apparated right out of Hogwarts itself when Snape had dropped his quilt pen on the floor during her detention hours.

"I'm sorry," said Alicia as she fixed herself. "I just want to make sure I'm starting back again on the right foot. If I deserve detention, I'll serve that detention."

"Who are you?" questioned Severus with a broken face.