A Snape-ish Valentine
by Warrego

I am the very model of the potions master Slytherin
My dungeon was a haven that was free from female ditherin’
And while this situation wasn’t good for presbyopia
It was the very acme of an introvert uptopia.

Mid-winter spring, a season sempiternal for frivolity.
An ancient Roman martyr, blessing witless bloody jollity,
Encouraging the union of the foolish and the fatuous,
Ensuring perpetuity of personages vacuous.

The halls of Hogwarts heavy with the scent of flora hybridized,
And surly cupids on the wing, their genitalia bowdlerised,
A-plaguing every classroom in a manner inconsiderate
With adolescent billet doux in verses semi-literate.

For thus an ancient festival that celebrates cupidity
Becomes a weary exercise in popular stupidity,
And while a native surliness still urges me above it all
It seems a lesser torment now a woman has me in her thrall:

The Dark Arts witch from Aquitaine, with peregrine of misery.
Her high disdain, her ersatz name, her re-invented history.
She stripped in fury, threw a gauntlet, sang a song of cicatrice,
And suddenly I found I had a lover truly picaresque.

Iconoclastic, murderous, impetuous, infuriating.
Contradictory, inconsistent, reckless, feckless, fascinating.
Confident, aristocratic. Disabused. Ambivalent.
Traumatised. Tormented. Dishabille. Never penitent.

She very nearly killed me with her heels of honed titanium.
She saved my life, and when I let her ex sub-let my cranium
She swore she’d have no more of me, and yet it seems fate’s grand design
That here, perchance, is offered me a soul as trafficked in as mine.

An underused intelligence that yields a rich exotica,
The charms to join a talisman with all our shared erotica -
Though brewing potions with her is a liaison that’s dangerous
Her knowledge of ingredients is really rather Grangerous.

She’s brazened Malfoy’s manor house and thwarted plans maleficent.
She’s joined me in his cupboard where she was, of course, magnificent:
In lives where stakes are always high, and death a frequent signatory,
Such interludes are all we know of grace and fond propinquity.

I never thought I’d see the day when I would bed a Devereaux
Still less I ever dreamed how hard I’d find it, then, to let her go –
For stubborn bloody wilfulness, I fear I’ll be bereft of her
But she’s my match, in rustling robes and subtle scent of vetiver.