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Sybill Trelawney watched the last of her students leave the classroom, taking care to stare out the window pensively when one of them looked back, an air of mystery about her. As soon as the trapdoor closed, she leapt up with such energy that any Hogwarts student would have been shocked. She put on a pot of lovely floral heart chakra tea (to balance the mind and open the heart), and, looking around suspiciously, retrieved a small notebook from the back of a cupboard. It was patterned with pink fur in layers of odd zigzagged stripes. Humming a soft tune to herself, Sybill poured a cup of tea into one of her prized pink teacups and sat down. She picked up her peacock-feathered quill with a grand flourish and began to write in a large, loopy, cursive handwriting.
Sybill Trelawney, it turns out, wrote trashy romance novels under a pen name. They were wildly popular in the Muggle world, consistently outperforming almost every other book in the genre. 30-something-year-old women couldn’t describe exactly why they loved these books. There was just something, well… magical about them.
***
Severus Snape was having an absolutely horrific day. He’d had no Slytherins in class to show off to, that idiot boy Neville had ruined some perfectly good Angel's Trumpet Draught ingredients by being a blundering fool as usual, and to top it all off, Severus had complained to Dumbledore about Harry’s complete and utter insolence in class, and the Headmaster hadn’t even glanced up once from the edition of the Quibbler he was reading! The nerve.
Severus banged about in his office for several minutes, hacking up various animal parts and shoving them into jars for preservation. There was always some form of pickled eyes staring at Severus from his walls. He liked it; he found it kept him on his toes.
After a particularly slimy octopus that just didn’t want to fit into the small bell jar that had been selected for it, Severus gave a loud huff and sat down at his desk, looking for something else to take his anger out on.
His eyes alighted on his manuscript, waiting innocently on the corner of his desk. Sitting straight up, Severus pulled the parchment towards him with a jerk, yanked out a pointy black quill, and began writing furiously in cramped, tiny print.
For some reason unbeknownst to him, Severus Snape wrote detective mystery novels under a pen name. He always found that writing the violent, bloody portions helped control his anger when he was in a bad mood, and today, he was in a very bad mood. Skipping the sections he had yet to write that would end up crammed with exposition and subtle clues as to the identity of the true killer, he went straight to the blood and guts scene, lips curled in a snarl as he wrote.
***
It was about two months into the school year when Dumbledore came up with another of his harebrained schemes. This time, it was purportedly to “promote professional cooperation and empathy between professors.” Severus knew this was a load of crap, but once Dumbledore had an idea in his head, there was no convincing him otherwise.
The professors at Hogwarts were to play musical chairs—with their classrooms. They would switch for a week or so, and then move again, each time only taking the absolutely necessary supplies so that they could eventually return to their original classrooms if they so wished. Dumbledore hinted that they may not want to return to their old classrooms, his eyes twinkling, but everyone was grumbling too much to notice.
This was how Professor Trelawney suddenly found herself standing, disoriented, in the middle of the Potions dungeon, a crystal ball under each arm. And this was how Professor Snape somehow found himself sneering in disdain at the disgustingly sweet Divination room, a cauldron full of Potions ingredients hovering behind him.
Needless to say, neither were happy about their circumstances. Severus even briefly considered, and rejected, a plan to force-feed Dumbledore a potion to change his mind.
The next day, after classes were over, Sybill found herself shivering on Severus’ hard stone chair behind his desk. She pulled the edges of her shawl closer for warmth and thought longingly of her too-warm room at the top of the tower. This dungeon was darker, and damp, without any of the quaintness she cultivated in her classroom. The stone walls felt like they were leering at her, and she was convinced the eyes in jars would move when she wasn’t looking.
Shaking off her discomfort, Sybill took out her trusty notebook and pen, which… suddenly seemed out of place. Frowning, she grabbed one of the spare black quills off the desk and pulled a spare sheet of parchment out, placing it neatly in front of her. That seemed better, somehow.
She meant to write about romance—really, she did. She sat down to write about Rosie, her happy-go-lucky protagonist and owner of a very stylish flower shop, but five pages in, she found herself suddenly writing about… a kidnapping.
Sybill blinked. A kidnapping? What had gotten into her? Well, she supposed it could be Rosie’s sister who was kidnapped, and the male love interest could come to Rosie’s aid and comfort her in such a difficult time. Yes, that would do. She could even hint at a romance between the sister and kidnapper. Maybe a sequel? Now she was thinking!
Five hours and over 100 pages later, Sybill was knee-deep in a mystery novel in which Rosie enlists the help of a dashing young intrepid detective to help her rescue her sister and discover the mastermind behind a spat of local crimes and killings. They had just uncovered a mysterious clue that linked Rosie’s sister to a line of royal princes of Scotland from the 1600s. So far there had been no romance, and there probably wouldn’t be until the very end, but Sybill couldn’t bring herself to care. For some reason, the dungeon didn’t seem as cold and dark as before. Now it was as if mysteries lay in every shadowy corner, waiting for her to write them out.
Meanwhile, Severus Snape had spent 15 straight minutes trying to find the least squishy armchair to sit on, before giving up and sitting gingerly on the edge of a hideous pink one. He leafed through the pages of his draft, frowning slightly. Blood and guts just didn’t seem appropriate anymore, not when he was surrounded by chintz armchairs and red scarves draped over innumerous lamps. He rolled his eyes in annoyance and suddenly caught sight of a magnificent notebook on the highest shelf, covered in jewels and sequins. I’ll probably just rip the glitter off, he thought to himself, levitating it down and into his hand. But then—he hesitated. The notebook was blank. There was no one around. He might as well.
Severus Snape set out to write about the detective of his mystery series, who always wore the most fashionable suits and seemed to miraculously get out of trouble at the very last moment. He meant to write about mystery and intrigue—really, he did. Instead, he suddenly found himself describing the detective’s marriage problems, cataloguing his inner turmoil whenever he looked at his wife, and his traitorous thoughts when he met the cute barista at the local coffee shop.
Wait. Marriage problems? What was this, a sappy romance novel? Severus was disgusted. He resolved to kill off the wife in the next couple of pages, and have the detective go searching for the killer.
Instead, Severus found himself getting lost in a romantic story about a conflicted man who tries to follow his heart and is thwarted at every turn by crazy exes (not crazy criminals) and miscommunication (not miscalculated evil plans). For some reason, the odd perfume smell that the fire gave off no longer bothered him. Severus breathed deeply, smiled (which looked slightly painful for him) and continued to write, filling page after page of his new notebook.
***
A few days later, Severus and Sybill were both stumbling about the castle in a sort of daze, clutching full-length novels in the opposite genre they were used to writing. None of the other teachers could quite work out what was wrong with them; when asked, both professors would simply mumble something vague about “dungeons” or “tea leaves.”
One morning, as Severus Snape was rushing past the staffroom, on his way to reprimand several students for suspicious-looking behavior, his notebook tucked under his arm (a habit he had taken to after catching a first-year looking interestedly at the open pages), he ran—quite literally—into one Sybill Trelawney. Sybill was not looking where she was going, as usual, instead watching her feet and mumbling quietly to herself as she drifted down the corridor. She wasn’t accustomed to being down in the hustle-and-bustle of Hogwarts castle, but was finding it necessary to leave the dungeons once in a while, in order to avoid growing mold. Her own manuscript was clutched tightly to her chest; due to the position of Jupiter at the moment, Sybill knew that important objects should not be left alone for the next month, and her manuscript was extremely important (along with a half dozen amulets, all strung from her neck in a cacophony of muted jingles, some of them glowing).
Sybill was just floating by the staffroom when Severus rushed headlong into her. They both fell to the floor, shrieking, piles of loose leaf paper billowing out around them.
“My manuscript!” Sybill screeched in an uncharacteristically loud voice.
“Your… what?” droned Severus, in a tone that betrayed the slightest bit of interest.
“Help me,” hissed Sybill, and she began gathering up the pages frantically, trying to sort them all back into the correct stack.
Severus, feeling guilty for knocking over his co-worker, helped her shuffle the pages back into order, all the while wondering what she had meant by ‘her manuscript.’
The next moment, they both reached for the same sheet of paper, and their hands touched.
Severus winced and retracted his hand, being all too comfortable with rejection on the romantic front. But then he glanced up, and noticed Sybill staring at him, her amplified insect eyes wide. She blushed when he looked at her, and hurriedly continued picking up her pages.
When they were finished, the two professors stood up and looked at each other uncomfortably. Sybill was thinking that Severus’ greasy hair actually looked quite marvellously shiny, and his hooked nose seemed particularly regal today. Severus was wondering why he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Sybill’s frizzy pouf of hair, and why her many bangles and necklaces jangling against each other suddenly sounded like music.
“What did—” “Sorry, I—”
They both spoke at the same time, then stopped and blushed. Severus continued, his nasally voice surprisingly gentle.
“What did you mean, your manuscript?”
“Oh,” Sybill said, blushing. “It’s nothing. Probably stupid.”
Severus paused. Usually by this point in the conversation, Sybill would be spouting some nonsense about his upcoming death, or Harry Potter’s, or her cat’s. Today, though, she was simply blushing and avoiding eye contact.
Severus decided to continue the conversation, if only for his own piece of mind. “I’m sure it’s not. Stupid, I mean. I actually have a manuscript, of a sort, myself.” Silently he berated himself for diverging this extremely private information.
“Really?” Sybill asked, mouth agape. She stared at him for a solid 30 seconds, then snapped her jaw shut. “Well, I… I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to tell you…” She trailed off, then cleared her throat and said, “I wrote the manuscript for a book. It’s not exactly my usual genre, so I don’t know if it’s any good. It’s a mystery novel.” She paused and peered at him. “You’re probably not interested in those, are you?”
Severus got the vague feeling he was being tested. “I love mystery!” he said somewhat enthusiastically, and then caught himself. “I-I mean, I… enjoy… mystery novels. Sometimes.”
“Well, I don’t think mine’s any good,” Sybill said bashfully.
“Nonsense,” Severus said pompously. “Let’s hear what it’s about.”
And so the two professors stood in the corridor and chatted for the better part of an hour. Sybill told him what her book was about, and somehow the conversation turned to Severus’ book, and he described what it was about, also qualifying it was most likely rubbish.
“I’ve never written romance,” he admitted. “I’ve barely even experienced it, honestly.”
He cringed at his own words, but Sybill only smiled up at him and said, “I could help you with that, if you like.” Realizing the implication behind her words, she blushed and quickly clarified, “I mean, I could help you with your romance book.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Severus said, and found that he meant it. “And I could look at your mystery novel, if you want.”
They had been getting closer and closer with each back and forth, and were now suddenly inches apart.
“I’d like that,” Sybill whispered softly, her enormous eyes looking up into Severus’ cold, dark ones. She felt that she could get lost in the long, empty tunnels of his eyes. “I’d like that a lot,” she repeated quietly, just as their lips touched.
They kissed for a moment before a small first-year, hurrying past them to class, screamed at the sight of two professors lip-locked. Sybill and Severus pulled apart, and Professor Snape took away five points from Hufflepuff for “an absolutely uncalled-for invasion of privacy.”
As the boy hurried off, now sobbing, the two professors looked at each other again. “I see bright things in your future,” Sybill proclaimed, and for once, Severus found he didn’t mind her odd predictions.
“Some romance too, I hope,” Severus droned in his monotonous voice—it sounded a bit as if he had a cold—and Sybill tried out a sexy wink in response, which wouldn’t have worked on anyone except a desperate man. Luckily, Severus was a desperate man.
The two professors awkwardly took each other's hands, and together, walked into the staffroom to begin reading the two manuscripts. They didn’t yet know where this relationship would take them—to the New York Times Best Seller list multiple times, as it would turn out—but they were ready to find out.