C: Alice Longbottom. - Blog Posts
Severus stayed in their little out of the way table for twenty minutes after Lily gathered her worry-fueled determination about her like the hems of a too long dress and set out anew to find Lupin. They didn’t envy the werewolf, who was unlikely to find anywhere clever enough to hide from Lily, but if he was going to indulge in self destruction then Lily was free to indulge in her excessive mothering. Severus kept an eye and an ear out, just to see how that went. Indulgent, themself, in their own hobby : people-watching. They liked to see how things went with people, once they picked up on a thread.
Soon enough they were bored with their seat and changed vantage points, picking up their near-empty butterbeer and moving to the bar, where they could see the other side of the club more easily. It was the same glass they had all night. ( Severus didn’t get drunk in public — alone in their room? Very much. Too often. Especially while working on a difficult project. But not in public. That would be embarrassing — dangerous, too. But mostly embarrassing. ).
A glass of Whiskey slid down the bar towards them. ‘ How terrible of me to forget my manners, ’ Severus rolled their eyes, but picked up the offered drink. ‘ And with such respectable company at that. ’ The din of noise and chaos rose around them at just that moment before dying down quickly. This was more of a post-Quidditch House party than anything else.
They’d meant to reach out to Longbottom — just to test the waters. Just to see in what direction her thoughts and inclinations leaned. It was interesting to see her reach out to Severus first, but not, from what they observed, completely unexpected. They looked at her, eyebrow raised, made a quick pass over the surface of her thoughts. Intentions rippled slowly from underneath. ‘ I’ll take the company and the drink, ’ they said with a nod, ‘ but keep in mind I’m not as easily entertained as Lupin. ’
Whiskey with Notes of Ulterior Motive
LOCATION: The Flaming Dragon DATE: June 12, 1984 @wrongdeor
Alice shook her stinging hand out, pleased and pleasantly tired in that slightly-battered way that followed a game of Quodcup, and leaned back against the bar to finish catching her breath. Not that she was some old-fart like Moody who needed to catch her breath after a rousing game or anything, of course not. But it was a nice excuse to relax and take a breath.
She took a sip of the rich Cinnamon Crackle Whiskey she’d ordered as a rich, mellow break from the brighter, more interesting drinks she’d been imbibing so far tonight, distractedly savoring the way the sparking crackles snapped against her lips before dissolving into the almost honey-like liquid that trickled down her throat like a balm.
Then she paused so abruptly that she almost choked, swallowed before she actually did choke, and beckoned urgently to the bartender for a second beverage. Waiting for its arrival was torture that had her bouncing on her stool. The glass had barely brushed her fingers when pushed off the bar with sudden, impatient purpose. The grin that had flickered across her face at the sight of her target flickered away again almost as quickly in favor of determination. The rest of the bar fell away (not completely; Alice wasn’t an idiot, which meant she knew that if she ever let herself close-focus so hard that she forgot to pay attention to the world around her in a place where Alastor Moody could see her, she would regret it) and she walked through the cluster of her allies on autopilot, heading for someone who had joined those ranks only a few months ago and whom Alice hadn’t made an effort to seek out more than in passing yet.
But that had been before she’d realized the true value Severus Snape brought to the Order of the Phoenix. It wasn’t what he knew about the Death Eaters, so much of which he couldn’t explicitly share with the rest of them – whether because of compulsion spells Voldemort placed on his followers or admonishments from Dumbledore not to spread his secrets too widely Alice neither knew nor cared. It was because he knew of what they knew: the Dark Magic they used to such devastating extent against the Order. And not just the sort of Dark Magic that one could learn from books, no. She had learned that Severus was one of those rare wix with the gift for true creativity.
Alice slid into the empty chair next to Severus and pushed the second glass of whiskey towards him with her fingertips like it was a sort of offering. “Bad form to drink alone at a party,” she said lightly. “So I brought you a drink and company with which to quaff it.” She offered a smile – warm, but thin; she didn’t want to come on too strong and put his hackles up. (Not that she was sure she’d ever seen him with his hackles down anywhere among the Order.) “You can decline either or both, of course,” she added in a dry deadpan, “but know that if you do so you’ll be shattering my heart irreparably.”