Hearts are Blind (Severus Snape X OC)

The Crash

If there had been any doubt in his mind about her, he might not have pushed so hard. If she had rejected him even a little bit, he might have just backed off. After all, they had agreed to come back to school as nothing more than teacher and student. It was for the best, given what had transpired over the Holiday. He could understand why she had done what she had. They were supposed to be as least suspicious as possible, but still... She wasn't supposed to be carrying on the charade with Samael... but she was.

It had been an entire agonizing week since classes started back up and she hadn't so much as looked at him twice. She didn't seem upset. She didn't seem overly cheerful. She didn't seem anything at all. She was as normal as she could possibly be, which he didn't understand, because she was still seeing that piece of SHIT!

Severus' stick of chalk snapped in his hand and he looked down at it, the pieces crumbling to dust in his palm. He had been staring at her, much to his annoyance. It was a weakness that he was trying to get a grasp on. Just as he was trying to get a grasp on her apparent weakness... because it obviously wasn't for yours truly. Honestly, how could she go on seeing him?!

He looked up at her again. She was just as he'd left her: pulling milkweed silks from their pods, ever so delicately, and tossing them into her cauldron. She stooped slightly to her right and mouthed something to the Borealis girl and then they both giggled. He restrained himself from lashing out and taking a hundred points from the stupid, little Gryffindor House. Instead, he breathed deeply in through his flared nostrils and let it out quietly into his hand, resting his chin there on the edge of his palm. He could smell the chalk. He closed his eyes and focused on that.

He had watched them the very next day, walking together; the day after they had all returned from their Christmas break. It was the only moment her eyes had locked with his for longer than a second. Lucinda's gaze had trailed up his front and rested on his face. Then her eyes softened and were in sync with his. She hadn't meant to do it, because she looked away instantly, but in that instant, he knew what she was... She was afraid. Samael looked at him, too. He looked with his knowing eyes and an arch of his glossy eyebrow. In all of a few moments, Severus knew what was happening. Samael put his arm around her shoulders as they passed and his smug expression verged on sinful. Severus was about to pull her away from him while they were still in arm's reach, but he stopped. He stopped, because she was looking over her shoulder at him. It was a subtle look and never reached his eyes (soon, she was never going to look him in the eye again). Her gaze lingered near his mouth, maybe. Her eyebrow arched up in the same way that Samael's did; that pitying, abhorrent look of dismissal. With that single look, Severus questioned everything... absolutely everything.

Lucinda was not that good of an actress... was she?

Every ounce of fear that he had gotten from her in the first look, was now obliterated by the utter preposterousness in her second one. None of it made sense... but Severus knew of one thing, absolutely... Samael did this.

"Oh, I'm sorry," said a silky voice. "Am I interrupting?"

As if to show emphasis on the situation at hand, there he was. Severus' body snapped to attention and he stared over at the boy standing in his classroom doorway. Samael looked back at him with a smile.

"Actually, yes—" Severus began to say with vehemence, but there was a sudden fumbling and then a screeching, as Lucinda pushed her chair back. Without so much as a word to anyone, she suddenly packed up her things and headed for the door, leaving her cauldron still smoking slightly on its flame.

"Lucy, your potion—!" Aurora stood and called after her, but she was already out the door, followed by the Slytherin boy.

Snape was also on his feet, he realized. Aurora and Severus turned and looked at one another.