Tomorrow he would go to her. He would watch her teach, watch her speak. He had no doubt that what lay between them was a sea of mystery and magic. He would listen. And he would look. And he would consider the waves.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Breakfast was very nearly over. Snape and the librarians were the only staff left, seated at opposing ends of the Head Table. He had had no choice but to nod cursorily at them, before sitting down late to the meal.

He was soothed by the predictability of his eggs, coffee and two thick, toasted pieces of molasses bread, and ate quickly.

A small, lone group of students were clustered at the far end of the Ravenclaw table, their breakfast plates and bowls being arranged and rearranged in individual and group processes. He could hear them arguing the feasibility of life on other planets, completely engrossed in one another and the explanatory tableaus they were maneuvering on the table. He refrained from rolling his eyes, Ravenclaws.

He finished his meal and sat with his long forearms flat on the table, thinking. He held his last cup of coffee of the day and he wanted to bring it up to his face and smell deeply of it before drinking it down, instead he shuffled it on the table top between his open palms and considered which class he would visit of the Norn Witch. He knew the class scheduling by heart. It was a constant within the walls of the school and had not changed once in the nine years he had been teaching there. Nor had it been any different when he was a student. It was as though the school was part of an established mathematical theorem and it always, unwaveringly, represented x.

A sudden giggling from the other end of the table froze his hands and curdled his thoughts. He resisted the urge to drum his fingers in a show of utter exasperation. Again the giggling and the sound seemed to be feeding directly into his brain. He pursed his lips. The incessant attention of the two women was beginning to unhinge him. He smirked thinking that if he were the hedonistic creature they so obviously took him for, he would have been comatose by now under their ministrations.

He let his gaze drift to the Ravenclaw students; none appeared to be aware of his small drama.

He turned his head, the subtle swivel of a raptor, and looked down the table to where the twins sat. Both were looking at him. A laden bowl of fruit was before them, and each held a piece in their hands. A gorgeous, ruby red apple was cupped in one long-fingered hand, and Snape could not look away as the twin licked tentatively at the skin of it, watching him from under lowered lashes. She closed her eyes, opened her mouth and bit into it. She held a bite of the white flesh between her teeth, closed her lips over it and swallowed. Snape breathed in deeply through his nose.

The other twin began peeling a banana and as she bent her head over the erect fruit, opened her mouth and wrapped her lips around it, Snape felt his body betray him. His solar plexus seemed to implode, and the librarian looked up at him with just a movement of her eyes. Heat spilled into his belly. Slowly the woman pulled back; keeping her shuttered gaze firmly locked to his, and circled the wet tip of the fruit with her tongue before covering it with her mouth once more. He could not look away. He watched as she worked her teeth into the succulence of the pulp, then popped her lips from off the end and appeared to actually bestow it an open-mouthed kiss. Snape's eyes widened as she tipped the banana towards him, revealing how she had shaped it into a glistening phallus with her teeth. He instantly became erect. He looked from the fruit to her face and she brought it back up to her mouth to run her pursed lips down its curved edge. His cock became a heavy pendulous weight. She shut her eyes, languorously put half the thing into her mouth and bit through.

He could not move. His fingers clenched and unclenched around his coffee cup. He ground his teeth together and brought his eyelids to slits, the unfathomably black irises reflecting darkly from behind his thick lashes. He inclined his head to both women. They stood and with a swish of hips and sliding shoulders they left the Great Hall, arms around one another's thin waists. One looked back at him; he was still gazing upon their retreating figures. She caught his eye and winked.

Under the table Snape pressed the heel of his palm hard against his erection, closed his eyes and wondered, is this desire?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

He could not remember the last time he had been in Binn's classroom; surely it must have been the last day of his own History of Magic class as a student. He doubted if the way it looked and smelled now had anything to do with Professor Binns. The room was bathed in a soft, glowing light and Snape looked to the huge casement windows that ran nearly from ceiling to floor and saw the swathes of silk that curtained them, filtering the gloomy Scottish light and transforming it into the atmosphere of dreams. The air hung heavy with the scent of cinnamon and wood smoke. She was heating the room with the fireplace.

He had slipped in quietly before the class began and now stood at the back, watching the sixth years move in relaxed groups to tables, and chairs and even the floor. He had never seen the students so at ease in a classroom. The room was filled with the low hush of their laughter and gentle murmurings to one another. The children sat and Snape watched in amazement as all of them produced hand-crafted bags and pulled yarn and needles and handwork out and began arranging the wool in their laps.

Then Katla entered and the students stood and greeted her with familiarity and respect and Snape found he was strangely envious. These sixth year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs were certainly never disrespectful to him or in his potions classroom, but they had never stood upon his entrance. She bowed her head in greeting and they sat again and began knitting.

The Norn Witch stood at the front of the classroom and as she watched her students she slowly brought her gaze to rest on him and he wondered how it was that to the others she appeared veiled. He looked at the sharp, Nordic planes of her face, the light pink of her lips, the incredible blue eyes and the white-blonde hair that fell down her back bound in its thick braid. Her eyes widened slightly upon seeing him there, then she smiled broadly and yet there seemed to Snape to be something shy in her face. He nearly smiled back at her but nodded instead and she held his gaze for a long time before she looked away.

"Let us continue discussing the wizards who were known as The Brothers Grimm. We were talking of how their stories, their tales, were used as a means of hiding olde world magic. Who said that if you want to hide something the best place is oftentimes right out in the open? I believe that the Grimm brothers would agree with that."

A hand was raised, "Yes, Miss Cavanaugh?"

"Instructor Freyan, I was wondering if you believe that the Grimm fairytales are still applicable today, for the wizards and witches of today, or if the form no longer speaks to the modern mind."

Freyan nodded at the girl. "That is an excellent question, actually. Now, why would you think that the form no longer speaks to the modern mind?"

The girl spoke slowly, considering, "One example I was thinking of primarily was the wolf in the fairytale representing evil. I don't think that the modern mind necessarily equates the wolf with evil incarnate and thus the fairytale does not translate properly."

"Werewolves!" a Hufflepuff boy exclaimed. "Werewolves are evil!" Snape startled at this and found himself nodding.

He watched Freyan narrow her eyes in thought and look at the boy. "Are they really, though? Can a curse alone make one evil?"

The boy blushed furiously and shrugged.

"And we are not talking of werewolves, but wolves. A wolf that stalks and devours whole. And Miss Cavanaugh would posit that the wolf no longer frightens the modern mind and therefore is no longer capable of conveying the message intended by the Brothers Grimm. Why would that be?"

A muggle-born witch who Snape had never heard utter a word in six years raised her hand. "Because we no longer fear the dark and what lurks in the dark? We have lit up the world artificially and we fear the darkness in men's hearts?"

"Are we saying that muggle-borns and non-magical folk no longer understand fairytales as they were intended? And do we include the modern day witches and wizards in that category as well? Certainly, the world has changed these past two hundred years."

Freyan was walking amongst the groups and she would stop and take a student's knitting up in her hands, adjust something and hand it back, or stoop down and point out a mistake, or bend slightly and place an encouraging hand on a shoulder. All the while she maintained the lesson and Snape stood enthralled.

"How many here would say that they fear a wolf? How many here have walked through a forest at night lit only by the light of the moon?"

Again the muggle-born raised her hand and Freyan motioned to her with an elegant wave of her hand, "This isn't about wolves, Instructor Freyan, but I bet that a lot of witches and wizards don't know that most muggles don't understand the way the moon waxes and wanes. They just don't know that much about it."

Freyan nodded at this, "Do the rest of you understand what Miss Brava is saying? Most muggles, unbelievably, have not been taught the lunar phases."

Students looked at one another in wide-eyed amazement and shook their heads. Freyan continued, "Who knows the small rhyme about the moon a muggle poet wrote for children?"

No one answered, Snape shifted his weight uncomfortably from one leg to another. He knew. He knew the poem and it ran through his mind like water.

"No one?" Freyan asked again.

He could stand it no longer, "If I may, Instructor Freyan?" She turned to him, a smile playing along her lips, surfacing in the depths of her eyes.

He spoke the poem and his deep-timbered voice echoed warmly off the walls,

"0 Lady Moon, your horns point toward the east;
Shine, be increased:
0 Lady Moon, your horns point toward the west;
Wane, be at rest."

She smiled, pulling a corner of her lower lip under her top teeth and ducked her head. "Yes, that's it. Christina Rosetti. Thank you, Professor Snape."

He bowed his head to her and felt his heart throw itself against the cage of his ribs. This, then, was desire.