Severus Snape was thoroughly annoyed with the students in his classes who insisted on coming to their lessons with sniffling noses. The almost constant sneezing and coughing could drive a lesser person insane, but Snape could handle it. Barely.
He bent his head back down to his desk, his quill quickly scrawling notes across some unfortunate student’s essay.
Sniff, sniff.
Instinctively, Snape looked up to glare at the noisy person. To his horror, he saw one of his pupils hold her arm up to wipe her running nose with her sleeve. The dangling robe was less than an inch from the potion’s vivid green surface.
He was out of his seat and standing by the offending student in a flutter of black robes. “Miss Henderson,” he said through gritted teeth, “Hospital Wing. Right now.”
The intimidated little first year looked up at him; her eyes wide and confused. “But, sir, there’s nothing wrong “” she interrupted herself with a large sneeze that nearly propelled her out of her seat, “”with me,” she finished lamely.
“You will be supplied with Pepperup Potion at the Hospital Wing. Then you will stop spreading your illnesses to your classmates.”
She looked up at him, and Snape could tell that she was torn between running away from the dungeons as fast as she could and staying rooted to the spot in fear. She sat frozen in her seat, not daring to move a single inch, lest her irritable Potions teacher yell at her even more.
Sniff, sniff. She wiped at her nose again and breathed in deeply, trying to keep her swollen eyes out of her Snape’s point of few. But this little first-year was yet to learn that absolutely nothing got past Severus Snape.
“Go!” he demanded, and the girl didn’t need to be told another time. Squeakily, she pushed her chair in and practically fled from the room.
Snape took a breath to try and regain his normal voice before commencing silkily, “Now, anyone else who may be afflicted with a cold, or is otherwise unwell, will receive a Pepperup Potion from Madam Pomfrey straight after this lesson has concluded”is that understood?”
Twenty heads bobbed at him in unison. Snape let his lips curl into a smirk; next class the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff first-years would be completely healed and he wouldn’t have to deal with the constant sniffling sounds anymore.
The next part of the lesson continued in something resembling peace and Snape had just finished inspecting everyone’s potions when he heard the dreaded noise from the doorway again. Sniff, sniff.
“Miss Henderson,” Snape asked coldly, “what are you doing here?” There was no steam billowing out of her ears, meaning that she had not yet taken the potion. Had the girl become lost on the way to the Hospital Wing?
“I-I…” she stuttered, “Madam Pomfrey says she’s all out of Pepperup, sir, and that you were meant to give her a new batch yesterday.”
A scowl passed across Snape’s face as soon as he heard the name. Didn’t the infernal woman know when she was trying to be avoided? But if avoiding Poppy Pomfrey meant sitting through more classes of sniffling students, he supposed he would have to see her again. But he promised himself that this time, he would do nothing more than hand her the vials.
At just that moment, the peals of the school’s bell bounced off the walls of the dungeon. Young frightened first-years quailed under the Potions Master’s ferocious glare and scrambled out of their seats, glad to be out of his presence at last.
As he gathered up the vials of Pepperup he had recently brewed, he wondered what was making him so nervous. He would give the vials to Poppy and then he would leave. He had another pile of marking waiting for him before dinner, after all.
But could it really be that easy? Of course it was. He would simply avoid her eyes this time. Was it her eyes that had held his gaze for so long the last time they met? He frowned at himself. What was he doing standing in his lab, indulging in silly behaviour? Better to get the potions to Poppy at once; it would be absolutely awful if the whole school succumbed to the flu.
The moment he walked into the Hospital Wing, he was met by an irate Madam Pomfrey, who had a large line of students trailing behind her. Snape was thankful that she was sensitive enough not to yell at him in front of all the first-years he had sent here. Snape didn’t want his students to lose respect for their big, scary Potions professor.
Just give her the potions and leave. That was the plan, he reminded himself, but he couldn’t help but wish that he could have an actual conversation with Poppy, without all the first-years being there to overhear.
He loved the conversations they had in the past, even if most of them seemed to be of Poppy yelling at him because supplies of something-or-other were dwindling. Then he would feel inclined to remind her that his main priority at Hogwarts was to teach, but Poppy seemed to think that he had some sort of obligation to stock the Hospital Wing as well.
On the worst days, she would remind him of all the injuries he had sustained while he had been a student at Hogwarts, and how many times he had need of these potions himself.
He usually chose not to reply.
Several minutes later, with all of the children dosed and off to their next class, Severus found himself still dawdling around in the Hospital Wing. I do not dawdle, he reminded himself as he watched his hands perform the alien action of fiddling with potion vials. His long white fingers seemed to be flitting from bottle to bottle, rearranging them in their cabinet.
"Ahem."
Severus turned around. "Yes?"
"Twelve students. Twelve students I’ve had to turn away in the last two days because you've neglected your position, Severus Snape. No Pepperup Potion, nothing to congeal their sinuses. It's as if you like hearing them going around sniffling everywhere. Does it put ease to your heart to know that their noses are a dripping fury?"
Severus Snape noted that Poppy was beginning to talk of sickness with a gentle caress in her voice. He held back a snort, reminding himself that she was a healer for a reason.
"Is that it, Severus?" She turned to look out the window, fiddling with the hem of her blouse. "Or you are just avoiding coming up here entirely."
It was not a question, but a statement.
"Am I an annoyance? Do I bother you?"
Severus Snape did not know how to deal with this. He was used to small students sniffling and crying, and then he just glared harder and walked away. But Poppy? She was his co-worker; she was not one who he could condescend. She was somewhat like a friend.
He tried a different tactic. "Poppy, you know how busy it gets down in the dungeons. Potions, classwork. It's not as carefree as in the Hospital Wing." He felt accomplished. A gentle retort “ but with a slight cut to it, as if a tiny monster had bitten off the edge of her toe.
Her eyes darkened. "Carefree? In here? Oh yes, Severus, because saving people's lives is carefree. Half the school would be dead if it weren't for me, no thanks to Quidditch and you ruddy Potions professors who let their concoctions explode onto people." She walked off muttering, wiping at things on the edges of beds and tucking sleeping students in ever tighter. She walked into her office and Severus followed.
She was leaning over her desk, swiping at her eyes furiously. "Go. I'm just out of sorts today. Must be something the students have brought on."
And somehow, something underneath those choppy words, the matted hair and wrinkled skin told Severus to stay.
Severus leaned against the doorframe and Poppy, seeing him out of the corner of her eye, said, "It's impolite to stare at a woman while she's indisposed."
"Times have changed. That's all we men like to do these days."
"It's impolite!"
"This whole relationship is impolite! It's built off weekly visits and harsh words! What else are you expecting out of me?"
"This - This is not a relationship, this is a, a partnership. A working partnership and nothing more," Poppy mumbled, staring at the pattern of her desk.
"For you, maybe."
There was such insistency in his voice that Poppy glanced up, her hands back at work on the hem of her blouse. "I'd, I'd rather reevaluate my opinion."
"It's settled. I'll bring up potions twice a week, every Monday and Friday."
"There are usually no students in right before lunch. They all skive off to go outside."
"Right before lunch, then."
Poppy smiled. "Right before lunch."
Severus walked out of the Hospital Wing and glared at a passing first-year, trying to forget the last half hour and what he had just promised.
I must have been out of my mind , he told himself, all the while searching the corners of his mind to replay her smile creeping into her face.
Yes, absolutely insane!