Caledonia only managed to find him once she'd given up searching. Severus Snape was in the last place she'd thought to look. He was perched on the edge of her bed with his head in his hands. Even from the doorway, she saw that the day had broken something in him.
"Why has this upset you so much?" her voice was hollow when she managed to force words out. A part of her was terrified that he'd fly off in anger at her again. Thankfully, he only straightened where he was sat, but did not turn to her.
"Why has it upset me that you intended to trick me into marriage?" his voice was very even, without all his usual bitter irritation.
"Is marrying me such a terrible fate?" he scoffed as soon as the question was out of her lips and she felt like a fool even for asking it. She couldn't fathom where all his anger was stemming from. "If you do not wish to marry me, just say. For what it is worth, I hadn't a clue that that was even the intention. I kissed you because I wanted to. Honestly," she sighed. "it is the one thing I have truly wanted most since I got to this forsaken place. I figured that if I was going to be auctioned off like a prized pig, I might as well kiss one last man of my choosing. If I knew that they intended for us to marry, would I have done that?"
"I find it very hard to believe that you did not know. I feel as though you have all conspired to trick me and have been laughing at me all the while." He grumbled and she frowned. For the first time since this new debacle had started, she thought deeply about what she knew of him. He'd spent his youth being tricked and teased and now he thought they'd played the biggest cosmic joke on him.
Caledonia sighed and slumped into the seat beside him, her hand coming up to his shoulder in an uncertain fluttering motion.
"Severus, I truly like you," she emphasised. "This situation has just... run away from us both. I did not know what my brother had planned for me. All I have done since the start is tell you the truth. I am to be married. My entire life, I have defied and rejected and rebelled to prevent it but I cannot deny it any longer. If not to you, then to another. I will not ask you to say yes to whatever absurd ploy they'd concocted but please, let us not hate one another for my last months of freedom." Caledonia sighed.
"That has got to be the strangest proposal I have ever heard," Severus sighed and rubbed his hands together and she snapped her gaze to him. "I would be a fool to let you marry anybody else, Caledonia. I have no doubt you'd set them on fire before the honeymoon even began," he took her hand and her mouth dropped open. "It's a broken and frankly frightening system but I would never let someone like Magnus Avery anywhere near you."
"You'll marry me?" she blinked.
"Could you sound any less eager?"
Caledonia threw herself at him, tackling him in a hug. Their emotions were a catastrophic mix and nothing had progressed in the way that they'd expected or intended. Marriage certainly hadn't been expected on the cards for them for years, if ever. But the world had funny ways of pitting people together and Caledonia had re-sparked joy in Snape's life, even if he refused to outwardly admit it.
He kissed her in that room and knew he'd never regret saying yes, despite everything.
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✔️MERLIN | Severus Snape (Short Story)
Fanfiction"And what is wizarding royalty doing at Hogwarts?" -SS "Come now Severus... Princesses love castles" -AD Severus Snape was like an abandoned castle; cold and secluded. That was the way he liked it. He'd long since accepted the fact that he would be...
