"Bye Sev, see you on Monday!"
Severus waved to Kia as she hurried up the staircase, heading for Gryffindor tower, carrying the bag of costume stuff she had bought in Hogsmeade that day. As soon as she was out of sight, he looked dismally down at his own bag. In under three weeks, he, Severus Snape, would be dressing up as a fucking vampire and heading out to the Hallowe'en ball, and why? For a girl. For a girl.
'Not just any girl,' said a little voice inside him. 'This one's different.'
' Oh yeah?' replied the reasonable side of him. 'I've never liked any girl before, so how do you reason that Kia is "different"?'
'She's the first person that treats you as a person with real feelings, just like everyone else. She's the first person you've ever felt anything other than hatred, contempt or envy for.'
'Yes...' Severus' feet had taken him to the Slytherin common room. Gloomily, he spoke the password and stepped through the portrait hole.
The common room was mostly empty. He and Kia had returned early from Hogsmeade to try and avoid 'bumping into people', by which he knew she meant 'I want to avoid seeing Sirius Black'. And frankly, so did he.
'I'm not finished with you,' the voice inside him said.
"Oh, shut up!" said Severus aloud, suddenly storming up to his dormitory and throwing himself moodily onto his bed. He wasn't supposed to like girls, let alone fall for the only person that had treated him with any respect since he'd come to this godforsaken school.
'Look, if it's bothering you this much, why don't you just tell her how you feel?'
'I can't do that!'
'Why not?'
'I just...can't. She wouldn't feel the same way, anyway.'
'You're certain of that?'
'Well...no.'
Of the feelings I have for her in my heart
Every time that I come near her
I just lose my nerve as I've done from the start
He rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. "Seeing as I'm half crazy already, talking to myself won't make much of a difference," he said, then uncerimoniously launched into explaining the problem he had not, until now, admitted to even himself, to the rather perplexed ceiling.
"I've never felt like this before. I can't get her off my mind. It's embarrassing. I know ordinary people feel like this every day, but not me! I'm not supposed to fall for people! I'm supposed to be the one that waits silently at the sidelines while everyone else goes off and does watever it is happy people do. I don't know, I just don't know! and it's like she can do no wrong, everything she says is right, and goodm and just makes me want her more!"
He grabbed a pillow from behind him and pulled it over his face, to cover the colour rising in his cheeks.
Everything she do just turns me on
Even though my life before was tragic
Now I know my love for her goes on
Pulling the pillow off his face, Severus continued. "And I don't know how to cope with it, because it was difficult enough finding ways to keep her as a friend, let alone try and prove to her I could be-" he broke off, blushing madly, despite the fact that there was no one else around, "a boyfriend," he muttered, before continung in his usual voice. "Every time she gets anywhere near me, I freeze up, and it's like I forget how to talk or something, because I end up coming out with the most stupid things, she must think I'm even more of a freak now! And I just want to do anything to make her happy, to see her smile..." He broke off again, and sudenly turned and reached under the pillows left on his bed.
Of a thousand rainy days since we first met
It's a big enough umbrella
But it's always me that ends up getting wet
He pulled out a creased, fading photograph. It was a shot from Christmas in the fifth year, when Kia had been crazily taking photos of everyone she could get close enough to her new camera. He had been dragged into a picture, and she had held the camera at arm's length and taken a picture of them both. She was grinning happily, and he was looking slightly uncomfortable, and giving her a sidelong look that said clearly, "You're crazy." Severus smiled every time he remembered that day, of her child-like happiness and the closeness of her skin in the photograph. He unconsciously put his hand to the side of her face, where her hair would have brushed against is cheek...
He let out a small cry of exasperation and rolled onto his back again, holding the photograph in one hand, the other hand covering his eyes.
Everything she do just turns me on
Even though my life before was tragic
Now I know my love for her goes on
"What is wrong with me?" he murmured. "I should not be feeling like this...besides, she's my friend, and the only one I've got. I can't risk losing that just because I've got some crazy dream that we- that she might-" his throat closed up, he couldn't get the words out. He couldn't even bring the words to his mind, he was too afraid of the implications of what they meant and what they would mean in the future. Then, wallowing heavily, he said, very clearly for the fear that he may not be able to say it otherwise, and filled with the burning desire to say it at whatever cost, to make sure he himself was awre of what was going on in his head, "Some crazy dream that I might love her and that...that she might love me back." 'I want her so much,' he thought desperatley. 'But I just can't bring myself to tell her. I need her..
A thousand times a day
And ask her if she'll marry me
In some old fashioned way
But my silent fears have gripped me
Long before I reach the phone
Long before my tongue has tripped me
Must I always be alone?
Severus sighed deeply, and spoke again. "I think I have fallen for my closest, and only, friend," he said clearly, determined to summarise this thing and decide upon an answer. "I have absolutely no experience of dealing with things like this, as I have never felt anything like this, not even compassion, for another human being in my whole life. I have the choice of telling her, and risking our entire friendship on a whim, or not telling her and letting myself go slowly crazy because every morning I wake up telling myself that they day will be wasted if I don't see her. I can't get her out of my head, and it's killing me from the inside out."
He sighed again. He had summarised it, but he was no closer to an answer. Propping the photo up against his clock, he pulled his schoolbag towardshim and tried to get started on the homework he hadn't finished yet. But that only led him to remeber why he hadn't finished it- because he had been too distracted by Kia sleeping aganst him, and had been unable to concentrate on anything except her.
Things did not get better. As he pored over a Potions essay, he noticd with a jolt to his stomach that every time he had been required to write "key ingeredient" he had inadvertantly put "kia ingredient". He groaned and proceeded to scratch them out.
He looked up at the photograph. Photo-Kia was attempting to push Photo-Severus to the floor and stick her eye right up close to the frame, and Photo-Severus was watching her with a bemused expression.
"I'd say get out of my head," he said softly. "But I like having you there. I seriously think I love you."
He sudenly recalled that moment in honeydukes, earlier that day, when he had been so close to Kia, and had been holding her arm. She hadn't moved away, he couldn't help but note, or tried to move his arm. He had come so close there to kissing her that it frightened himself, he had been seized by the sudden reckless desire to pull her close to him and never let her go.
He flopped back onto his bed. "Scratch what I just said," he groaned. "I am officially head-over-heels, pathetically, obsessively in love with Kia Alborias. Help me."
Everything she do just turns me on
Even though my life before was tragic
Now I know my love for her goes on
Every little thing she does is magic
Everything she do just turns me on
Even though my life before was tragic
Now I know my love for her goes on
Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh, yeah
Every little thing she does is magic
Aw!
Aw, ain't Sev sweet? Really hope you liked it, please rate and messgae! Can you believe just as I went to save this first time over, my computer crashed? and when I turned it back on, the Quizilla I knew and loved was gone! GONE! Replaced by this red...MONSTROSITY...ah well, I guess I'll get used to it. I'll try to put 16 up now, but I really hope you liked this little interlude. Ah, Severus, what a tortured little soul you are.
