Hell's Last Lantern | A Severus Snape x OC Romance

Chapter Eight

"Vela, are you coming along?"

She sat up straight, her mind quickly rushing to figure out what the hell they had all been talking about. For the past week she had been too distracted with Severus. Ever since that dream, that look on his face when he saw it, and their unspoken understanding of what must happen to release her magic, she had been very distracted.

She realized with a start that she had taken to calling him 'Severus' in her head.

"Sorry, coming where?"

Fred shook his head and huffed, "It's a good thing you're not ugly." Vela's brow furrowed and Hermione scoffed, "As if looks are the only basis of a woman's worth!" Fred lifted his hands in defense, still wearing that irritating cheeky grin, "Alright, relax, I'm only joking." Before Hermione could dissent further, Ron interjected, "Hogsmeade, later. Wanna join?"

Vela's brows furrowed and as if suddenly realizing his absence, looked around the group and asked, "Where's Harry? I feel like I've barely seen him today." Ron and Hermione shifted uncomfortably and the former said awkwardly, "Yeah, he's er...well, he's got a lot on his plate at the moment, what with that miserable toad jumping down his throat and giving him detention every night for the rest of the week."

"That woman is a disgrace to the teaching profession!" Hermione added, her eyes flashing with ire.

Vela had, along with the rest of the fifth years, witnessed the interaction between Potter and Umbridge in defense class the previous day, and seeing the woman finally lose composure, doing away with her cloying facade was at once relieving and horrifying. But Vela was well acquainted with masqueraders, having grown up surrounded by them. In her upbringing, sanctimony was all over hell's half acre, what with being a preacher's kid. The skeletons in the proverbial closets of the people in her life had been difficult to sniff out, but she had a knack for it.

She assumed that was why she liked Snape so much. He had secrets, plenty of them. But he never pretended to be better than he was. If anything, he seemed to pretend to be worse than he was, and she admired that for some reason. It held the peculiar promise that unveiling his layers would reveal something unexpectedly beautiful, whereas when peeling back the layers of most people, one might instead find unexpected ugliness and disappointment.

But she also knew she couldn't be honest about feeling anything but spite for him, because having an in with Gryffindors as a Slytherin was almost unheard of, and if she knew anything about Gryffindors, it's that they all seemed to hate the Slytherin head of house. Well, not Hermione so much. She seemed to understand and have more patience for Snape than the others, but there was still resentment for him. Vela figured it was only natural, witnessing firsthand how poorly Snape treated the Gryffindors and especially Potter's friends.

She had tried to split her time equally between both houses, but found herself enjoying her time with neither very much. The Gryffindors had a self-righteousness that irked her, and the most of the Slytherins were vindictive and cruel. Both were two sides of the same coin of an overindulgence in their unbecoming traits.

Vela had spent most of her free time alone, exploring the enormous and seemingly unending castle, determined to see all of its rooms and alcoves and corners before the end of the school term. The Weasley twins had mentioned secret tunnels and passageways under the school that they promised to show her sometime after curfew, but they warned the possibility of getting caught by Filch which was both terrifying and exhilarating. She didn't mind the twins. They were Gryffindors who knew they were little shits and didn't pretend to be anything different.