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(Content warning: do not read this chapter in a public setting.) Petunia’s heart was a surging tide, crashing over and over against the walls of her reason.
She could feel that fierce desire rising from somewhere deep inside, an invisible hand tugging at her, drawing her toward territory she had never crossed.
Her heart hammered.
Her breath came in shallow pulls.
Every cell in her body seemed to be crying out for something she had no words for.
Reason and feeling fought hard, and feeling won.
“Where do you live?” It was only halfway there that Petunia realized she had no idea where Snape actually lived.
She had a vague memory of Spinner’s End, nothing more.
The only answer she got was a sudden, violent retching.
The sound split the quiet street, and Petunia’s brow pinched tight.
She looked at the thoroughly drunk wreck in front of her, and doubt stirred in her chest, along with a faint edge of regret.
Maybe I should just leave him here on the side of the road.
The thought made her feel considerably lighter.
But then she watched Snape hunch over in agony, heaving as though he meant to bring up his insides entirely, and the coldness inside her dissolved into something she couldn’t name.
Something soft.
She let out a slow breath.
In the end, she couldn’t do it.
Couldn’t leave him like that.
And if she was being honest with herself — most importantly of all — there was still that quiet, unspoken anticipation living somewhere in her chest.
She guided him to a secluded corner of the park and settled him onto a bench.
His body was heavy, as if the alcohol had pinned him down from the inside.
“Just sit here and wait for me like a good boy.
I’ll go buy you a Sobering Potion.
Once you’ve taken it, you’ll feel much better.” She crouched down and cupped Snape’s face in both hands, bringing her eyes level with his.
Snape seemed to sink into himself.
His gaze went deep and still, locked onto her eyes with an intensity that felt almost deliberate.
Time stopped.
Petunia felt her patience wearing down thread by thread, but Snape was somewhere else entirely, submerged in his own thoughts, oblivious to everything around him.
Finally, just as she was nearly out of patience, he gave a small, slow nod.
That tiny motion broke the stillness and let everything start moving again.
Somewhere in the middle of it, his forehead had grazed her shoulder.
In that brief instant, a strange and pleasant sensation moved through Petunia, like a warm current spreading out from the point of contact and running all the way through her.
She jogged to the nearby pharmacy, her step light and quick.
Inside, a faint disinfectant smell hung in the air, mixed with a mild coolness that settled over her the moment she walked in.
She moved through the shelves, her gaze drifting across rows of medicines and everyday items.
She found the Sobering Potion and headed to the register.
The cashier smiled and began scanning her items one by one.
Petunia watched the numbers tick up on the display, and a sudden hesitation moved through her.
In the end, she added a box of condoms.
Back at the park, Snape was still sitting alone in the same quiet corner.
He caught sight of Petunia approaching and reached out to tug lightly at the hem of her clothing.
She helped him take the medicine with careful, unhurried hands, then asked him again, quietly, for his address.
His voice was low.
The words came out a little blurred.
“Number Nineteen, Spinner’s End.” Petunia turned it over in her memory, and the image of Spinner’s End came back to her, the tangle of it, the disorder, the general air of chaos.
It made her uneasy just thinking about going there.
“It really is far too chaotic over there.
I’m honestly a bit frightened of going.” She glanced at him with a careful look.
“Shall we spend the night at a hotel?” Snape seemed caught somewhere between waking and not.
Perhaps his usually sharp mind had gone sluggish.
Perhaps he was simply letting his defenses down and not fighting it the way he normally would.
Either way, he didn’t push back.
He sat quietly and let Petunia make the call.
Seeing no objection, Petunia quietly breathed a small sigh of relief.
She took his hand gently and led him toward the hotel.
On the winding path there, his steps were still heavier than usual, but the retching had stopped.
The Sobering Potion was doing its work.
She pushed open the hotel room door, and an unfamiliar smell met her at the threshold.
Without pausing, Petunia steered Snape straight toward the bathroom.
But when the bathroom door eased shut behind him, something surged up in her without warning.
She stood there for a long moment.
Then she bit down, as though making up her mind, and stepped into the steam herself.
She watched him.
Water slid silently from the top of his head, tracing the clean lines of his profile all the way down his face, collecting at his chin before dropping away.
This was the first time she had ever understood what a lean, angular body could do to a person.
It was nothing like the full, solid men she had always gone for.
This was something different.
Quiet, self-contained, and it moved through her like a stone dropped in still water.
Ruth had teased her about her taste in men more than once, calling it distinctly unrefined.
Yet here she was, developing feelings she had no good explanation for, for this lean, angular man.
She turned it over in her mind.
Maybe real magnetism had nothing to do with what you looked like on the outside.
Maybe it was something that came from within — a quality, a character, that either had it or didn’t.
Carefully, she reached out and caught the droplet as it fell from his chin, cradling it in her palm.
It trembled lightly against her skin.
Moving against that faint trickle, she traced upward, slow and deliberate, until her fingertips reached his cheek.
The texture was exactly as it had been in her dreams, carrying a faint warmth, but not the open heat of an ordinary person’s skin.
Snape’s hand shot out and seized hers.
The force of it was startling, hard enough to make her feel the bones of her hand.
The veins on the back of his hand stood out in sharp relief, like small winding snakes moving beneath pale skin.
It came without any warning at all.
Petunia let out an involuntary cry.
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