Trapped In Time: Love's Secrets (Adult)

Chapter Seven

Shannon grinned and yawned then folded her letters back together and tucked them into the drawer of the side table. She should probably change and brush out her hair -it always got so ridiculous if she fell asleep with it wet but she was so comfortable and relaxed. Night was starting to fall in its slow summer way; day refusing to give up its hold on the world. ‘No one should need me now, and who cares about my hair?’ She thought to herself, then stretched out and closed her eyes.

The knock at the door was hard and abrupt and Shannon opened her eyes to blackness. This was the kind of situation most people dreaded. She had only been in the given room about 24 hours and had to find her way to the door in the pitch black. Then she had to answer the door in a towel… who would be knocking at this time of night anyways? She grumbled and felt her way carefully across the floor and down the wall until she hit the heavy wooden door.

Opening the door enough to poke her head out and clutching her towel while trying to hide behind the door, she was shocked to see Severus standing there. He took in her tangled damp hair and bare, rosy cream limbs down to her bare feet, and then travelled back up the towel scowling fiercely. “We do not answer the door while undressed at Hogwarts Miss O’Connor” the revulsion in his voice unmistakable.

Shannon felt the sting deep in her chest and looked down in shame. “I’m sorry, I fell asleep and when you knocked it was so dark, I don’t even know how to turn on any lights and Dobby put all my stuff away so nicely but I haven’t even looked around to find where…” Why was he here anyways? Did he want to just stand here insulting her and thinking she was an idiot for not knowing her way around a new place? Well he could just take a long walk off a short cliff then, how was she expected to know everything after all she’d done today.

Severus peered over her head in to the darkness behind her. “Why is there no fire lit? That would provide adequate light.”

“It’s the middle of summer…” Shannon said as if he were now the idiot for suggesting a fire at this time of year.

Severus’s scowl deepened “we always have fires in the inhabited rooms. It may have escaped your notice that this is indeed a castle, not a small muggle home that holds heat.”

“Well, I’m quite comfortable now thanks and actually quite like the cold, so if there’s nothing else…” Okay, she might have thought she liked him at the start and might have thought he was somewhat attractive, but that was going to change real fast at this rate.

“Dumbledore would like to see you, he asked me to inform you. I’m not in the habit of knocking on doors for my own amusement.” He turned to leave, making a hasty retreat as if standing there with Shannon in her towel was the worst type of torture he could imagine.

“Wait!” She called out. “Severus, please wait” she opened the door and considered running down the hall in her towel but thought better of it. That would sure help his impression of her. Severus turned, making his annoyance as obvious as he usually did. “Can you…help me with the lights?” Shannon frowned, she hated having to ask, but who else was there?

Without a word, Severus turned around, marched to her door, waved her aside without even looking at her, and walked in to the room. With a wave of his hand, the lamps in the room were lit and he rounded on the half-naked girl who was just about to thank him. “You do not belong here Miss O’Connor, and this is the least example of why. Nor does a paid elf with set work hours that does not light lamps or fires in the room he is employed to maintain. You have trouble with a task as simple as lighting a lamp and I have to waste my time and patience on a girl who doesn’t even have the decency to be properly dressed. Now if you have no other pressing needs” his words were dripping with sarcasm as he brushed past her and out of the room “you may get dressed and find your way to Dumbledore.” With that he was gone around the end of the corridor and to the dungeons.