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MetroVampire & Rhosymedre

Part 20 - Avon Calling

Snape knocked on the dormitory door with his foot, thumping the wood with the toe of the black leather ankle boots that he'd found lurking under Hermione's bed when he went hunting for more copies of Cosmo - he hadn't found more magazines, but the boots had been interesting. Something like a cross between motorcycle boots and western boots; thick and practical, and much better for the back than the heeled court shoes that Hermione had had neatly stored in her room. He only wished he'd found them earlier; with jeans and a sweater, he had felt almost normal for all of five minutes when he first tried them on. Then he'd looked in a mirror and realised just how snug-fitting the sweater was.

Nonetheless, he had deliveries to make - the trade in cosmetic potions would ensure that Hermione's account at Gringotts was a touch healthier by the end of this term. He knocked on the dormitory door again with his foot, holding the potions bottles carefully in his arms.

"Coming," came a yell from inside, "patience, just a minute!"

Patience was not one of his most prominent virtues - or, it hadn't been. Six months incarceration in a body not his own was teaching him rather a lot, patience included. It had taught him some extra-curricular lessons he hadn't anticipated as well, but he wasn't going to think about those. Not until evening, anyway.

He became aware, abruptly, of a figure lurking nearby and spun round. A small girl stood nervously just in the shadows; she was familiar and Snape searched his memory to recall her - she was the sort of person easily overlooked. Alice Lacock. She had come to him for counselling a couple of times, and he had suspecting that all she really wanted was for someone to listen to her ramble - she certainly hadn't said anything concrete. Such sessions went a long way to ensuring that he frankly loathed being Head Girl.

"Can I help you?" he asked. He held back, remembering just in time that he didn't have the luxury of being Snape - being irritated with her would help neither of them and, in any case, she probably had more right than he did to be here in the Slytherin girls' dormitories. The Head Girl could, of course, enter any of the House areas but on the whole it was a power more observed in theory than practice; right now, though, it was extremely useful in getting the last of these bottles out of the laboratories in the dungeons. Hermione appeared not to have noticed what he was up to; Snape wasn't sure whether to be worried at her apparent lack of observation - she must have noticed the smell, if nothing else. Floral potions were not something that the dungeons experienced on a regular basis.

The girl hesitated, then spoke.

"I just wanted to say thank you - your advice last time we met helped me a lot, especially over the last few days."

Snape almost dropped the bottles in shock; her parents. How the hell could he have forgotten her parents? For a frantic moment he wondered whether there was some long term effect of the Longbottom Wonder Lotion that would cause senility - then sense reasserted itself and he shook his head. The child was not memorable, and he had barely associated her with the concept of the student whose parents had been attacked. She went out of her way to avoid being noticed, or so it seemed. She had been successful, if that was her intention.

"I'm glad to have helped," he replied more formally. Some response was surely necessary, but anything more was cut off by her rush of speech.

"It helped a lot," she repeated, "and I wanted to tell you that my father's been found! The Aur-aurors," she stumbled over the word, "found him. The Headmaster told me just now, I was coming to tell my friends but then I saw you and I thought I'd tell you. I told Professor Snape, too, and he was really sweet." Snape wondered whether the evening's shocks would actually come to an end. Since when had he been sweet? What had the Granger girl been saying?

"He's been so good to me, I don't know why everyone has been so mean about him. He's wonderful."

With that particular bombshell, she turned and half-ran for her dormitory, a final "thanks" tossed over her shoulder as she went. Snape stared after her, barely aware of the door next to him opening at last. He needed to have a sharp and pointed conversation with Hermione Granger, and he needed to have it soon.

"Oooh, thanks Granger," came a voice next to him, and the bottles were lifted from his arms. "Oh wow, this smells delish - Granger, you're a star. But if you tell anyone I said so, your name will be lower than mud. Understand?"

He understood. Then again, it would be hard not to - Millicent Bulstrode had never been particularly subtle. He simply nodded and muttered, "let me know when you need more," and turned to leave for the relative sanctuary of Gryffindor Tower. The House of Slytherin was not a welcome place for him; he hurried through the corridors and avoided the jeers thrown his way as he sped through the common room. It was ... interesting to observe, though. He saw here a side of Slytherin that he had suspected still existed but had not seen - or not chosen to see - in recent years. It needed to be dealt with; and dealt with subtly. Too overt a move would tip his hand and destroy far more than it could acheive. The cosmetics were useful start, though, even with Bulstrode's charming comments. For all her words, she still saw the value in a product of another House - even if that House was Gryffindor.

Snape headed for the dungeons; all was silent as he let himself in, and a quick search of the rooms found no-one in residence. Picking up a couple of books that he had planned to use for research, he left through the classroom and wandered back upstairs, wondering where Hermione was. He definitely needed to talk to her. If she had been Summoned, Dumbledore would undoubtedly have found a way to let him know. Surely he would have let him know ...

The various and rather disturbing thoughts of the evening tumbled through his mind as he walked purposefully up through the staircases and corridors to the Gryffindor common room. The Fat Lady murmured "good evening" to him and opened as he absent-mindedly recited the current password - "omnia vincit amor", chosen in a fit of lust by one of the sixth-years at the recent prefects' meeting.

He still hadn't resolved anything in his mind when his arm was caught; he looked sharply backwards, abandoning his increasingly bitter musings about precisely what Hermione had been saying to the Lacock girl to make her think him "wonderful". The very idea made his lip curl.

"I don't know what happened to make you look that way, and I don't want to know. You're coming with us, anyway - we've got plans for you, you'll feel a lot better afterwards."

Lavender Brown had tucked his arm through hers and was leading him towards the dormitories' staircase, with Parvati coming along behind them.

"I don't quite understand ..." The confusion was real, but the apparent hesitation in his voice was not. Still, it seemed to lend an authentic note because the two girls laughed - kindly, but a laugh all the same.

"We owe you a favour - a big favour," said Parvati. "Those potions are stunning!"

"Actually," said Snape, thinking quickly, "I think I owe you the favour - do you know how many orders I've had thanks to you?" The apparent pleasure and awe in his voice was a masterpiece of acting; the reality was more like profound annoyance, since the potions took time to make. He refused to address the kernel of pleasure that lay below that annoyance, pleasure at the apparent acceptance and respect that he was garnering. It would all benefit Hermione, after all, and he refused to consider that he was happy about such a thing.

"Uh-uh," Lavender was shaking her head. "You're not getting out of this one - an eye for an eye and all that." Now Snape was worried; her next words made him terrified. "The Yule Ball is coming up soon, and I'm not going to do your make-up for you this year - you have to learn to do it yourself. That natural thing you've developed over the last couple of years just isn't good enough any more; the way your hair and skin is looking, you've got to take advantage of it."

Parvati took over the horror story.

"So, as a thanks for the potions, we thought we'd give you a makeover - a proper one, and teach you what we're doing at the same time. We thought we'd do the whole thing, you know, exfoliating, waxing, everything. Make a session of it - and we know you have nothing to do this afternoon."

Snape didn't want to know why they thought he had nothing to do - he could think of plenty of things to do. In fact, almost anything that didn't involve exfoliation and waxing. He had a reasonable idea of what was involved in the latter, thanks to Cosmo, and he knew full well that he wanted nothing to do with it. He didn't want much to do with the Yule Ball, either, and he suspected that he was getting out of neither.

--

Evening found him in the dungeons again, the door opening easily to him. Heat poured from the room, with light slipping through the opening. Hermione was back. She looked up from an experiment as he entered, and her eyebrows rose.

"What happened to you?"

"Miss Brown and Miss Patil 'happened' to me, Miss Granger. I believe the phenomenon is called 'a girlie afternoon'. I can't say I'm in a hurry to repeat the experience."

Hermione's eyebrows rose higher still.

"And you stayed in one place long enough to allow them to put you through that? You must be slipping - I always managed to evade them."

"They wouldn't take no for an answer. They seemed to think that they owed me a favour. Personally," he bit out, "I think they owe me even more of a favour."

"So why do they owe you a favour in the first place?" asked Hermione, settling a ladle on the workbench and turning to watch him fully, curiosity evident in her features.

Snape sighed and recounted the small business sideline that her fellow students believed she had set up. Hermione nodded at the appropriate moments, but remained silent as he spoke.

"Hmm. Well, you'd better teach me how to make the things as well. It does look like they work - or is all that the result of the 'girlie afternoon'?"

Snape thought she was teasing, but on the whole was disinclined to find out. He must have scowled at the thought of the afternoon, though, because Hermione picked up on it.

"What did they do to you - you don't look impressed with it."

"Have you ever had your legs waxed, Miss Granger?" he asked. His voice had never been so acid-etched, even in his own body.