Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Love On The Rock	By : sheherazade Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Het - Male/Female Views: 7113 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any of his heirs or successors or anything to do with him. I earn nothing from this story.

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
Lucius Malfoy is in my office when Ruby arrives on Monday morning, having been sent by Voldemort with a quantity of potions ingredients and further depressingly noncommital news of the war. I suppose it could be propaganda, or his misguided attempt at morale-boosting, but the Dark Lord really does seem to be getting the best of it at the moment. I sip gloomily at my coffee, Malfoy’s chat about Draco and Narcissa going over my dejected head. I excuse myself to answer Ruby’s knock and gesture for her to go into the office.
“Clear up these breakfast things, Ruby, and tidy the kitchen,” I order before resuming the dull conversation with Malfoy. He seems interested in Ruby, taking a good long eyeful of her cleavage as she bends to retrieve his plate of toast crumbs. When she sashays off, he turns to me and grins broadly.
“It’s not all doom and gloom around here then, Severus? Where did you find her? For a Muggle, she’s not half bad.”
“She was sent here by an Employment Agency, Lucius. Don’t fret, I’m not having improper relations with a Muggle.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you did. What are Muggle wenches for, if not a bit of no-strings rough and tumble? Take her to bed, old fellow; it might put a smile on that sour face of yours.”
Lucius floos back after ten more desultory minutes of this and I steel myself for what may be rather an unpleasant interview with Ruby. There is nothing else for it; it has to be done. That flush on her cheek when I let her in, that sparkle in her eye bodes ill for me. I should set her free.
She enters the room, a frivolously frilly apron over her chic wrap dress, and smiles at me. “I hope you had a good weekend, Sir,” she pouts. “Mine was terrible; I’ve given up smoking. I was desperate for a fag from morning to night. I’m not going to fall off the wagon, though, Sir. You’re right; it’s a terrible habit. You’ve taught me well.” She almost winks.
I cough and rearrange the pens on the desk somewhat compulsively.
“Take a seat, Miss O’Riordan,” I order peremptorily. She perches demurely on the sofa. Idly I wonder about the state of her bottom; probably fully recovered now, I suppose. I will never see it again.
“I’m afraid this arrangement no longer suits me,” I tell her. Her eyes widen and she sits forward, quivering. “Our working relationship has strayed into…inappropriate territory. I cannot allow the situation to continue, therefore I must terminate your employment here. I will, of course, provide you with an excellent reference. You may take your belongings and leave forthwith.”
She stares at me, pale as death and similarly speechless, for a good while. She seems unable to process what I have told her. Eventually, she whispers, “Why?”
For heaven’s sake, is she deaf? “I believe I have set out my reasons for releasing you. Now please go.”
“Releasing me?” She stands and walks over to my desk, leaning over until her face is inches from mine, her blue eyes ablaze. “You are releasing me?”
“That is my understanding; yes.”
Merlin! A crack rends the air and my cheek bursts into flame. Or such is my immediate impression; in fact, it transpires that she has slapped my face. I am momentarily poleaxed. No woman has done such a thing to me before and I am unsure of how to react. While I am thus deliberating, she launches into a tirade of woman-scorned magnitude.
“How dare you treat me like this? Who the hell do you think you are? I thought you…cared for me. I thought there was something between us. I wanted there to be something between us. You can’t just bring me here and…do all the things you did to me…and then just turn your back on me. You just can’t.”
“I rather think I can.” I have moved out of range of any further assault on my person at this stage. However, she takes a flying leap at me, which I pre-empt by grabbing hold of her wrists and pinning them together against my chest. “Ruby, you are a young woman of nineteen. I am nearly forty. We come from different worlds.”
“I want to know about your world. I want to know you.”
These simple words have an oddly unmanning effect on me. She wants to know me. When has anybody ever said that to me? But I must not be moved. I pluck this little needle from my heart and dismiss the second’s infirmity of purpose.
“You cannot know me and you are better off out of my way, believe me.”
“I….can’t….please don’t send me away,” she whispers, finally realising that no impassioned speechmaking is going to sway me.
“Go home, Ruby. Look for another job.” I introduce a gentler note to my stern tone and finish with, “Thank you for all you have done.   You have been very valuable. I…appreciate it. Goodbye.”
She blinks back tears and bolts down the stairs.
I take a bottle of wine from the kitchen and pour myself a large glass.
*
I don’t have the heart to seek another assistant so I resign myself to a solitary existence for the duration of the war. I keep myself busy in my lab and make occasional forays out to the Co-operative Shop, braving the inevitable gawping and nudging that seems to accompany my every move.
Two days after sacking Ruby, I notice a pair of knuckle-dragging youths skulking by the side of my house with a can of aerosol paint. I sense mischief afoot and go downstairs to confront them. They take to their heels when they hear the door and I step outside to be confronted with a scrawl of red paint across my wall.
“PEADO,” it says. I have to challenge them on this. I mean, they can’t even spell the word, which I’m assuming is a diminutive of paedophile, let alone have any understanding of its import. Paedophilia is the last thing on my mind; if anything, I’m a paedophobe. But they have scarpered up the hill towards the swingpark and I’m damned if I’m going to be seen rowing with children in such a venue – it would only tend to confirm their illiterate accusation.
I resign myself to an evening spent with a bucket of whitewash and a brush. Ruby should be doing this.
On Thursday I am taking an early evening walk along the sea wall when giggling from the pebble beach attracts my attention. Ruby and Pinkie are sitting on the shingle. Her head is on his shoulder. I feel a savage urge to go over there and pull his fatuous pink hair out by the roots. The sensation is painful, unfamiliar. Especially when I notice that Ruby is puffing on a cigarette. I cut my walk short and go home to drink more wine and listen to Tchaikovsky on my Muggle CD player. What on earth is wrong with me? I don’t even like Tchaikovsky.   Sappy romantic rubbish.
By Friday I am seriously concerned at my erratic behaviour. I spend most of the day staring into my empty fireplace. I forget to add the lionfish spine at the crucial brewing moment and ruin an entire batch of my antidote. It is half past eight in the evening before I realise that I have eaten nothing all day, and even then, I have no appetite for anything. My thoughts tend uncontrollably towards the Alternative Night at the Lodge. I may go. No! Of course I won’t go. What could be more unpleasant than spending an evening in the company of an army of drunken Pinkie-clones? But…I could just drop in for one drink. You pathetic excuse for a man! Resist! I will never darken the door of that establishment.
Half an hour later, I am standing beneath some bushes on the opposite side of the road from the Lodge. Small groups of eccentrically dressed young people drift inside to lose themselves in the repetitive thud and metallic whine issuing from its portals. This is the maddest in a long line of insane ideas I have had. I shall turn and head for home, stopping off at the Co-Operative Shop for a bottle of that Merlot.
My resolve is sliced in twain by a familiar voice approaching through the tennis courts behind me. “I know, we can’t afford a ring. Maybe a curtain ring?” A silvery laugh.
“Are you gonna do it soon, then?”
“No point waiting, is there?” Pinkie’s voice. Grrr. “Gonna go down the Registry Office tomorrow and put our names down. See if we can get in next month.”
“Oh my Goooood, that’s so romantic. Why aren’t you romantic like that, Monkey?”
“You saying I ain’t romantic? I bought you that packet of Marlboro Lights, didn’t I?”
Giggles.
“Will you wear white, Rubes?”
“No way. I’m wearing black!”
“That’ll make a change then.”
More giggles. “Oi,” says Pinkie. “No being nasty to Ruby. It’s our engagement party, be nice.”
Engagement party? I watch as the five of them cross the road to be swallowed up in the mystical maw of the Lodge. Then I stride after them. Ruby is NOT marrying Pinkie. And that is my final word on the matter.
I catch something, just the merest flicker of something moving in the beer garden as I pass and the message flits through my head – something is not right – but I wilfully dismiss it, unusually for me, and pass inexorably through the peeling doors of this unappealing tavern.
The distorted clamour that offends my eardrums almost sends me directly out again – is this what these young people call music? – but I hold my nerve, picking a way over the stained, sticky carpet to the stained, sticky bar top. It is dark inside and heaving with listless black-clad bodies, so I attract less attention than usual. From the corner of my eye I can see Ruby, her back to me, gesticulating wildly to a group of big-haired vampirealikes. While I wait for the barmaid to fix my whisky and soda, some skinny children dance to what sounds like vomiting, though on closer listening I discern a lyric. “Tainted Love,” it says, over and over. “Tainted Love.” Oh Ruby.
Suddenly she is at my side, peering anxiously up at me from underneath a spidery scribble of fringe.
“Professor Snape? Are you here to…see me?” she asks tremulously. At least, I think that is what she says. My lipreading skills are average.
I lean down to her height – almost a foot less than mine – and speak into her ear. “Do you want me to be?”
She breathes in quickly. “Yes.” Then, in a rush, “I’m sorry about Callum.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh, you know, he sprayed ‘Paedo’ on your wall. My little brother. Sorry. He was angry that you sacked me, that’s all. He doesn’t really think you’re a…you know…kiddy fiddler.”
“How reassuring. But now everybody else in the district does.” She pouts apologetically and half-smiles. She is clearly thrilled to see me. So why?... I take her elbow and hiss, “Are you seriously betrothed to that Pinkie abomination?”
“Be-whatted?”
“Betrothed, Ruby. Affianced. Promised in marriage.”
“Oh. We’re engaged, yes. He asked me to marry him. I didn’t see any reason not to.” Her eyes hold mine defiantly.
“I can give you a reason.”
“Give me a reason.”
Her eyes are pools of infinite promise; the air between us shimmers as I move in for the kill.
“Oi! Get your mitts off my missus!” Three lairy lads, led by Pinkie, wave beer bottles in my face. I turn to face them, my patented Most Intimidating Stare In The World Ever at full wattage. They appear to be somewhat inebriated, however, so its efficacy is proportionately deadened.
“Who the fuck are you, grandad?” enquires one of Pinkie’s associates.
I have opened my mouth to make reply when that ripple of something-not-rightness reasserts itself, and now I know exactly what is causing it. Half-concealed behind a pillar by the dancefloor is somebody I know to be an Auror…Dawlish, is it? How has he found me? This is a question for pondering later. I must act, and quickly.
Presuming that this would be one occasion the Dark Lord would sanction as legitimate emergency, I take my wand and shoot a rapid and immediate Stunner to the unsuspecting Auror. As he hits the floor, an alarum is raised; the three boys are staring at me in petrified perplexity and everybody else is running over to Dawlish, asking each other if they saw what happened.
Pinkie stammers, “What…was that?” and backs away from me.
Not so fast, brothers. I sweep my wand across the three of them and cast an Obliviate. They fall to the ground in a heap, eliciting still more frenzied shrieks of horror and some very unfriendly glances in my direction. Ruby is frozen to the spot, her purple-lipsticked mouth hanging open. I grab her by the elbow.
“Time to go, Ruby.”
- 5
- 6
- 7
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Love On The Rock