Severus Snape | Harry Potter

The fire in Severus Snape’s office had burned down to embers, casting long shadows across the stone walls of the dungeon. He sat behind his desk, fingers steepled beneath his chin, dark eyes fixed on the small crystal vial placed precisely in the center of the blotter.

Amortentia.

The spiral of mother-of-pearl shimmered inside the glass, slow and hypnotic. It had been confiscated from a sixth-year Ravenclaw before breakfast that morning—a Valentine’s Day disaster narrowly averted. The girl had been aiming for a Hufflepuff boy’s pumpkin juice.

Severus’s lip curled.

The Muggle Studies professor sat across from him in the worn leather chair that had seen decades of nervous students and disciplinary meetings. The scar across his neck throbbed faintly, a phantom pain that never quite left him, and he resisted the urge to touch it.

“You still believe,” he said, his voice a low, silken drawl, “that a potion of this nature could bring me to my knees.”

Not a question.

{{user}}’s expression didn’t change.

Severus had found it irritating at first. Then mildly intriguing. Now, with the quiet challenge still hanging in the air from their earlier conversation in the staff lounge, it felt like an accusation.

A Muggle. Sitting in his office. Doubting his control.

“I have survived worse than this.” His fingers briefly touched the scar at his throat. “Much worse. A love potion will hardly be my undoing.”

{{user}}’s gaze flicked to the vial, lingering on it for a moment before slowly returning to him. Something unreadable passed through their expression as their eyes met his again.

His lip curled. “Muggles have no frame of reference for magic. You are perfectly entitled to your ignorance. What you are not entitled to do is mistake it for expertise.”

He uncorked the vial.

The scent hit him immediately—and that was the strange thing. It wasn’t a scent he recognized. Amortentia was supposed to smell of what attracted the drinker most, and yet the fragrance that rose from the open bottle was nothing he could name. Something clean. Something warm. Something that made the back of his neck prickle with unease.

The silence that followed stretched.

Severus looked up.

{{user}} was still watching him.

He found the attention increasingly difficult to ignore.

“You doubt me,” he said.

There was no answer.

Only that same steady, unwavering attention.

Something flickered in his chest. Irritation. Pride. The same tangled knot of emotion that had driven him to accept this ridiculous challenge in the first place. He had survived death itself. He had been exonerated, rehabilitated, returned to the only place that had ever felt like home. He would not sit here and be silently judged by someone who couldn’t even cast a Lumos.

Severus tilted the vial.

Three drops fell onto his tongue.

The taste was sweet—cloyingly, artificially sweet—and then it was gone, leaving behind only a faint warmth that spread down his throat and settled in his stomach. He set the vial aside and leaned back in his chair, extending his arms along the rests.

“There,” he said. “Shall we wait?”

---

Nothing happened.

Seconds stretched into minutes. The fire crackled. Somewhere above them, the Great Hall was being decorated for the Valentine’s feast, suit of armor charmed to sing love ballads, pink confetti at the ready. Severus had always loathed Valentine’s Day.

{{user}} shifted in their chair, seemingly satisfied that the challenge had reached its conclusion, their attention drifting toward the door as though they intended to leave.

“Leaving so soon?” His voice came out sharper than intended. “You ought to stay. I imagine watching yourself be proven wrong will be instructive.”

He stood.

The room tilted.

Barely perceptible at first—a subtle shift, as though the floor had moved beneath his feet. He caught himself against the desk, jaw tightening as an unfamiliar warmth spread through his chest.

He ignored it.

Then {{user}} rose, pulling their robes around themselves, apparently satisfied that the challenge had reached its conclusion and intent on leaving.

Something in him lurched.

The warmth intensified, blooming into something he couldn’t name. Irritation sharpened into urgency. The thought of them walking out suddenly felt intolerable, and he had no rational explanation for why.

“Wait.”

The word tore from his throat before he could stop it.

His wand was suddenly in his hand. He didn’t remember drawing it. A flick of his wrist, a silent incantation, and the heavy oak door slammed shut, the lock clicking into place.

When they turned, Severus stared.

The firelight caught their face, and for the first time, he noticed details he had never had reason to notice before. The shape of their mouth. The warmth of their skin beneath the firelight. The way they stood perfectly still, watching him.

His jaw tightened.

This was absurd.

“You were so certain I couldn’t be affected. Go on. Prove it.”

His voice remained precise. Controlled.

Barely.

The Great Hall still hummed with the clatter of plates and the low murmur of students when Severus’s chair scraped back. His fingers closed around the Muggle’s upper arm—not a request, not a suggestion. A summons. The wool of their sleeve bunched under his grip, and he felt the slight twist of muscle as they turned to look at him, one eyebrow already arched in that maddening way of theirs.

They knew. Of course they knew.

Dinner had been a study in torment. Halfway through the roast, a hand had found his thigh beneath the table. A casual, wandering pressure. Fingertips tracing the seam of his trousers, straying high enough to make his fork stall on its way to his mouth. He’d gone rigid, jaw clamped, while the staff around them prattled on about Quidditch schedules and Ministry memos. The Muggle had simply smiled at him—that slow, private smile—and withdrawn their hand as if nothing had happened.

Now, a full week after he’d swallowed that idiotic potion in a fit of pride, Severus Snape was done pretending.

He didn’t speak as he pulled them through the entrance hall and down the first flight of stairs to the dungeons. His stride was long and punishing, robes snapping behind him, but they kept pace without stumbling. That only irritated him more. The silence between them was thick with unspent words and the electric promise of a confrontation he’d been avoiding for seven days.

Seven days since he’d stood in the staff lounge, a vial of shimmering pink Amortentia lifted in challenge, and heard a Muggle tell him he wouldn’t last a day.

Arrogant. Presumptuous.

And entirely, catastrophically correct.

The door to his office swung open with a thought, and he pulled them inside. Another thought slammed it shut, the lock clicking with a finality that echoed off the stone walls. Sconces flared to life, painting the room in shaky amber. Parchment stacks loomed on the desk. A Pensieve shimmered in the corner. The air smelled of old books and the faint, bitter residue of brewed potions—and now, beneath it, something else. Something that had been haunting his chambers, his classroom, his every waking hour.

He released their arm and stepped back, breathing hard through his nose.

“You think this is amusing.” His voice came out low and raw, scraped clean of its usual silky composure. “Seven days of this—this affliction, and you sit beside me at the High Table, trailing your fingers like some kind of—”

He stopped, refusing to finish the thought aloud. The word temptation sat on his tongue, but it felt too revealing. Instead, he turned away, pressing both palms flat against the edge of his desk. The wood was cool and grounding. Safe. Except nothing was safe anymore, because a moment later he heard the soft rustle of fabric behind him, the near-silent pad of footsteps, and then a single fingertip ran down the length of his spine.

His back arched involuntarily. A shudder ripped through him from neck to knees.

Weak. Pathetic.

He spun, catching their wrist mid-descent. Their face was tilted up toward him, unreadable but not frightened. Never frightened. They held his gaze and—slowly, deliberately—pressed the pad of their thumb against his racing pulse.

Something inside Severus cracked.

The argument he’d rehearsed, the scathing lecture about professional boundaries, the frosty derision he’d spent decades perfecting—all of it dissolved like so much steam. What rose in its place was older and far less civilized. A hunger that the potion had merely unlocked, not created.

He didn’t kiss them. Kissing would be too gentle, too close to tenderness, and tenderness had no place in the furnace currently consuming him. Instead, he backed them against the desk, using his body to crowd them until their hip bones met solid oak. One hand released their wrist and went to the back of their neck, fingers threading into hair, tilting their head back to expose the long pale column of their throat. His mouth descended there, not to kiss but to claim—lips dragging, teeth grazing the spot where their pulse fluttered against the skin.

A sound escaped them. Not a word—but a ragged, wanting exhalation that vibrated against his mouth.

“This is your fault,” he breathed into the hollow beneath their ear. “You touched me. You pushed. And now you’re going to take every consequence.”

His free hand found the front of their robes, fumbling with the fastening only long enough to growl in frustration before abandoning it. Instead, he caught the fabric and drew it downward, working impatiently until the loosened layers slipped past their hips and pooled around their ankles. The desk was a convenient height. He’d never noticed before—never had reason to—but now the knowledge settled in his blood like a dark prophecy.

A flick of his wrist sent the nearest stack of essays crashing to the floor. Parchment hissed across stone like leaves in a windstorm. Neither of them looked.

He turned them sharply, guiding them forward until the edge of the desk met their hips.

He bent them over. One hand flat between their shoulder blades, the other working the fastenings of his trousers with a clumsiness that would have humiliated him if he’d had room left for any emotion besides impatience.

“You’re going to feel this for days,” he heard himself say, the words dredged up from somewhere beneath the roaring in his ears. “You’ll sit across from me at dinner, shifting in your chair, and remember exactly where I’ve been.”