I'm Quiet You Know...

A/N: Please Review! I hope you like this chapter. Thanks again to my beta, ImOnMedication.

***

It had been a very bad day. After her last confrontation with Snape, he stopped coming to supervise her classes. It was her only consolation for what had turned out to be a total crap day! Amanda had an explosion in her third year Hufflepuff/Ravenclaw class. Her anger was so fearsome, it came as no surprise to her when she overheard two Hufflepuffs outside the Great Hall talking about her being just as vile as Professor Snape. It was true, the constant day-in-day-out tension of having to deal with these children handling potentially dangerous materials that could blow them all into oblivion at any given moment had her nerves raw. She could genuinely appreciate Snape's lethal death-grip control over his classes. You had to constantly watch these little fuckers! If they weren't making cow eyes over one another, or knocking over their cauldrons, they were adding WAY too much of this or that ingredient, causing toxic fumes that threatened to kill everyone. So, these were the thoughts of Amanda Dangler as she walked off her frustrations from a VERY bad day.

She walked past the lake and skirted the forest.

Then, Snape appeared out of nowhere.

"Great," she muttered.

He was sporting a very smug smile today. He quickly walked in her path when he saw she was going to ignore him.

"What?" she snapped impatiently as she stood in front of him, her arms crossed, and tried looking menacing in her billowing black robes.

"A bad day with the dunderheads?" he smirked.

"Is it all that obvious?" she said nastily.

"If it were not for your blonde hair, I swear it would be like looking in a mirror."

"God, Snape, you really know how to depress a girl!" she retorted.

"Well, yes, minus the hook-nose and evil black eyes part," he muttered quietly.

Amanda grinned. "Is this Snape trying to be genial?" she asked in mock surprise.

He looked down at her with his usual disdainful expression. "What do you want to know about your father?" he asked.

"Everything you can tell me."

***

They sat underneath a large tree. It was the stupidest thing, in Amanda's opinion, that she ever had to do just to get someone to talk with her. He sat on one side, facing one direction; she sat, facing the opposite. It was one of those "ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies" kind of arrangement. If she were ever going to get to the bottom of things and the truth about her father, she would have to indulge the intensely paranoid and excessively private Severus Snape.

So there they were, two people in billowing black robes facing opposite directions, talking into the air. She would indulge the git, but she just had to say one thing....

She leaned to the side and told him, "I want you to know for the record, I think you are completely insane!"

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Miss Dangler."

She rolled her eyes. "Tell me how you met my father," she demanded. "What was he like?"

"He was very continental," he answered sarcastically.

"Oh, do get on with it!" she snapped.

"My, my," he drawled. "You must have had a really terrible day with the dunderheads. You're starting to sound like me."

She could feel him sneering. "That's right, tosser, and if you don't start dishing out the information in more than one sentence answers, I'm going to start taking house points and make you do detention scrubbing cauldrons without magic!"

He laughed.

She leaned over to see if she were hallucinating.

He was laughing!

Then she started laughing.

***

She learned a lot that day, sitting under that tree, just listening to Snape's voice talk about her father. She envisioned her father standing in front of her as he spoke. He had been the Dark Lord's darling in the '70s. When he started hanging around the Death Eaters and especially after his fifth year, he spent more and more time with him. He was French, so he was unique and mysterious. He and Lucius Malfoy were constantly trying to goad the other; both men were extremely good-looking and (Snape's voice grew very soft at this point) equally vicious.

Charles Dangler was in the most intimate circle with Voldemort. He was a man not to be crossed. Starting at fifteen, Snape had been in awe of the older man. He was in his 30's, an excellent duelist, very suave, and genteel. He oozed manners. The wives of the other Death Eaters practically fawned over him. Snape admitted he wanted to be just like him. He followed him around like a dog whenever in his presence. Lucius was already being groomed into his likeness, so when he was at school, he followed Lucius around like a dog. Hence, the derogatory term of being "Lucius Malfoy's lapdog" was born.

As Amanda listened, she started to understand why Snape chose to not face her while he said these things. Severus Snape was a very prideful and neurotic man. He had endured far too much humiliation for his 30+ years. This was a very big step for him. He did not have to say these things for her to understand.

Once a week, and the day always changed so he could keep his control over the meetings, she would get an owl telling her the day and time and she would meet with him under the tree, and he would talk. She always found him waiting there. She would take her seat and he would start up where they left off.

Each week became harder and harder to bear. He spared her nothing, but honestly, she had never asked that of him. She would sit and the tears would roll down her face as she listened. Her father had been a sadist, a vicious murderer that enjoyed all kinds of torture, but especially torture of a sexual nature. He loved virgins. His true madness had been hidden from Snape until after he had graduated from Hogwarts, moved into Malfoy Manor and was with the Death Eaters full-time.

"I was taken completely unawares. I thought I knew what I was getting into, but I knew nothing! I was blinded with a desire for power," he said, berating himself.

"What was it like living there? Did my father live there?" These were the only times Amanda spoke, when he got stuck in his remembering and started to either rave about how much an arsehole someone else was or condemn himself for being duped into serving the Dark Lord.

"No, he went from place to place, but yes, he did spend a great deal of time there. Those were the worst times. He knew how to seduce and lure women. He was like that fox in that Muggle fairytale. Where the fox lures the duck, turkey, and chicken, I think, into his lair where he kills and eats them. For as debonair as he was before he came across an unfortunate Muggle girl or woman, once he got them in his clutches, his viciousness towards them was just as efficient. It was frightening to behold."

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but can I tell you some things I came across after my father's death and also some things about my father that were confusing growing up? Do you think you could explain them?" Amanda asked.

"Perhaps."

"Well, he drank a lot. But he would lock himself in his office and rage. He never raged in front of me until the night he died. He would smash things, scream. But the next day, he was calm and collected. Our house-elves always cleaned up after him, so I never saw the damage. But I was never allowed in his office, although I would try to catch glimpses. It was always spotless. You would never know that he raged in that room on a frequent basis. Then, after his death I found a secret dungeon in our chateau. There were manacles and things...I don't even know what they were! There was dried blood on the walls and it reeked of stale sex."

"Sex?" He snorted. "What do you know about the smell of sex...from the Pensieve?" he sneered sarcastically.

"Snape, I'm not a virgin. I know about sex," she snarked.

He whipped around his side of the tree so fast; she thought he was going to lose his balance. "You've had sex?" he whispered in a shocked tone.

Amanda leaned over to face him, closed her eyes and shook her head. "Snape, I'm 18. I had a boyfriend when I attended Beauxbatons. He was a Muggle from the village. I was 17, he was 17...why in the hell am I telling you this?" she snapped at him in irritation.

He whipped back to his side. They were quiet for a while. Then he said in a small voice, "Did you like having sex?"

She was intrigued! Mr. Snarky is interested in my sex life! she thought.

"Well, I hurt for the first few times, but I think he didn't put too much into the foreplay department. But, after a while, it got okay."

"Idiot!" he muttered. "Did you ever have an orgasm?" he asked quietly.

Her mouth dropped. Now she knew if they were facing each other he would never have the balls to ask her those questions. I should tell him he is being completely inappropriate! she thought. But I am liking it. Why do I like this?

"Once. But I had to orchestrate the whole thing, you know, do it myself. He was a real selfish boy and I think that was the problem. He was a boy, not a man."

She heard a snort. "Just because a male was fortunate to age beyond puberty does not a good lover make!" he snapped.

"Sure," Amanda agreed. "I guess...I just know my own experience."

"But you liked it, or at least wanted to experience it again, even though he did not fulfill you?"

"Yes, I..." she stopped talking. Oh my goodness! He's never made love to a woman!

She broke the rule and crawled over to his side. He drew back in horror. "Get back to your side!" he bellowed and turned his face from her.

"Severus," she whispered as softly and lovingly as she could. Her heart was broken for him!

He turned to her and his face relaxed. His eyes softened and the tension lines melted away.

"You know, I never get to hear a woman say my name. It's always 'Professor,' or if they don't know me, 'Mister.' Even here, it's 'Snape.' But even the few times Poppy or Minerva says my name, it's so clinical or business-like. When Narcissa Malfoy says my name, I feel dirty."

He reached up and took her wand from her hair. Amanda used it to keep her hair up and out of her face. It tumbled down in tangles...greasy tangles...since working with potions day in and out made one's hair a wreck! The wind blew it around a bit, but neither one cared. Amanda knew this was a benchmark moment for him. She was not going to ruin it for him by protesting her vanity.

Obviously, as he touched her hair and ran his fingers through it, he liked what he saw and felt. She did not stop him.

He continued as if a thousand miles away. "Is it too much to have a woman all my own, to speak my name so lovingly like you did, a woman all my own to love me and want to be with me and like it? Or maybe I've done too much. I've forfeited the right." He stopped talking, but he did not stop touching Amanda's hair.

She continued to kneel before him and reached her hand up to his face and stroked his cheek. "No, Severus. What you ask for is not too much. You deserve a woman of your own who will say your name in a way that thrills you like no one else can. A woman that in her arms you can feel safe and loved deeply. I wish this for you," she whispered sadly.

He swallowed and she noticed he was breathing hard. He took his other hand and brought it to her shoulder and gently pulled her closer to him. She was just a breath away.

"Please, say my name again," he asked in a voice so full of anguish, Amanda thought he would cry.

"Severus."

He kissed her. He pulled her to him and held on so tight she felt lost in his embrace. They were a striking sight to behold. Two people in billowing robes rustled by the wind underneath the fall leaves, kissing so passionately as if kissing were something no one had ever discovered before.

But for Severus Snape, nothing could be further from the truth.