Goodnight, Sweet Princess
Chapter 3- Moving In/The First Dream
Tara quickly set to putting her clothes in drawers before choosing a pair of long pajama pants and a t-shirt. Both were deep midnight blue with tiny celestial bodies that were enchanted to move in time to the night sky. She slipped out of her school robes and pulled her nightclothes on. When she was through, she took her bag and moved to sit on the bed, where she began to put her things in the nightstand. In went a small photo book from when she had lived in Louisiana, a few trinkets from the trips she had taken with her parents, her CD player, and her diary, along with a few other random odds and ends. Tara was putting a picture of her parents next to a picture of Danielle and herself in front of her plantation house and a framed sketch of the man who had been her sire, when Snape knocked on the door. Hastily she set the picture down and moved to open the door. Snape sneered down at her and she blushed. "Lovely pajamas" he drawled. "If you will follow me, I will show you where the bathroom is." He walked out of the door and she followed him as she showed her around, then he lead her back to the bedroom.
Snape was having a rather hard not smiling at the girl's pajamas. He hadn't seen a pair like them in all his years, in fact, he'd seen very few pairs of pajamas in his years. Still, he thought as he pulled himself together, she was taking this rather well, now that the initial disgust was gone. He finished giving her a tour of the rooms they were to be sharing, and left her to use the bathroom, while he went back to the main room. Snape took a seat in one of the chairs by the fire to wait for the young witch to finish. As the minutes ticked by, Snape felt himself drifting deeper and deeper into thought. How am I ever going to emerge from this sane? He wondered. The girl, Tara, was his star pupil, and he knew he was hard on her. If she didn't hate him already she most likely would by the end of her time here. Not that he was hard on her because he disliked her, no he was hard on her because he actually liked her. He, Snape, actually found pleasure in the girls company. Which he found rather hard to believe, that a person as cold and heartless as himself could actually still feel. He had only been cruel because it seemed the harder on her he was, the better she did with her potions.
Tara retrieved her toothbrush, toothpaste, washcloth, and brush from the bedroom and padded softly into the bathroom. She set her things on the counter and pulled her hair back into a quick ponytail. Looking around she found a small piece of soap, she had forgotten hers when she gathered her stuff, and washed her face quickly. Unwilling to take more time than necessary she brushed her teeth and then removed the tie holding her hair. Taking up her brush she ran it through her silver hair, time and time again, letting the soothing motion calm her and bring her a small measure of peace. When she was finished she moved out of the small room, back into the main living area, where Snape was sitting in one of the high-backed wing chairs waiting for her.
Once he was aware she was finished, Snape brought her back to the bedroom and told her to sit down and wait for him to get the potion. He moved to the desk, took out a key from a pocket in his robes. He could feel her staring at his back. He opened the lid of the desk and took out the bottle of blue potion and a small goblet. Turning back to her he poured a measure of potion into the goblet and handed it to the girl. "Drink it all. Once you are finished, you will become rather drowsy, I expect. The potion will create a kind of movie of your dreams, allowing them to be better analyzed. Now then, drink up." Tara looked at the blue liquid in the goblet, held her nose and swallowed it down, nearly gagging at the horrid taste of it. Rather quickly she did feel, as Snape had said she would, drowsy. Before she realized it, she was lying down, and Snape had moved the chair to sit by the bed.
Tara lifted her head enough so that she could see his face. Where he had previously been sneering down at her, he was now staring curiously at the sketch she had done of her sire. "Miss Landers, who is this man? Did you draw this?" Snape found himself asking as he gestured at the image. "Oh, that... well, he's my sire. I don't know why I keep that old thing. I just can't seem to get rid of it. Not that I haven't tried. I always find myself making another if I do. He's just so... perfect... and..." She drifted off mid-sentence, leaving Snape to contemplate what she was about to say. For a short time he simply sat there, watching her sleep, wondering about this strange girl who now shared his private space. Then he stood and worked to maneuver the covers out from in under her and then cover her with them before he sat back down while avoiding touching her.
For a while Snape waited for her dreams to start. Then, just as he was moving to go try to make himself comfortable on the couch in the living area, it happened. An image began to form above the girl's head, roughly a foot and a half by a foot and a half. Curious, Snape sat down on the foot of the bed to watch the girls dream unfold. At first it was blurry, but slowly it became sharper, the shapes forming into what was easily recognized as the house she had once lived in. It was a beautiful white antebellum mansion, surrounded by trees resplendent in their greenery. The house itself was a great contrast against the darkness of the blue velvet of the night sky. On the porch stood Tara, dressed in a sheer white nightdress and barefoot, her long hair hanging down her back loosely. As Snape watched the dream-Tara moved off the porch and approached one of the trees. Despite the darkness of the dream, the potions master could easily make out a person standing behind the tree. He had to bite down the urge to wake the sleeping girl up, but instead he clenched his fists and assured himself that the sooner this was over the sooner she could move out. Still, it took him a good deal of effort to not do anything.
Then, the dream-Tara moved to embrace the shadowed person who, as Snape discovered when a sliver of moonlight fell on them, was her sire. Now the potions master was forced to fight down a very unexpected wave of jealously. It didn't last for very long, since the dream quickly took a violent turn. As he watched in horror, Tara's sire leaned in and drew a small knife from his cloak, which he plunged deep into the dream-Tara's chest. Still, the dream girl clung to the man, her eyes showing her pain and heartbreak. Then, shocking the usually unflappable professor even more, another man ran up behind the two, kneeling by the girls side as she slid to the ground, begging her to stay with him. For a moment Snape stared at his own face before realizing that the real Tara was thrashing wildly around, gasping for breath. Professor Snape moved quickly to her side and tried to shake her awake, but it seemed the girl was trapped in her dream world. Giving in, but not giving up, Snape settled for trying to hold the girl immobile. Unfortunately for him, she was much stronger, and she had quickly freed herself from his grasp. Unsure of what to do, Snape tried to restrain her again, and this time he managed to do so. She was still dreaming, but though he didn't want to watch, he had no real choice, he was on Dumbledore's orders to watch her dreams and then leave them in a pensive. He watched as he continued to restrain her, once again unable to look away as the man who was him in the dream bent down and begged the dream-Tara to forgive him.
Snape wasn't sure how he understood what they were saying; all he knew was that he did understand. Then the dream began to go out of focus, but somehow though the haze he heard the dream-Tara whisper "I love you. There is nothing to forgive." before the dream faded out completely. Disturbed by what he had seen, Snape was snapped back to reality when he realized that the real Tara was no longer struggling and that her breathing had returned to normal. He also realized, rather quickly, that in his haste to restrain the small girl, he had climbed on top of her, and was straddling her hips. Still asleep, Tara moaned softly and shifted her position ever so slightly, making her hips brush against her potion master's thighs. A single tear ran down her face and, on impulse, he leaned down and brushed the tear away, surprised when she whimpered as though in pain.
Then realizing what he had done, he threw himself off the bed, and stalked to the dresser, removing a pair of green and silver striped pajamas from his drawers. Snape padded out of the door, and into the bathroom. Quickly he shed his robes and dressed himself in his pajamas. He moved into the main room, and conjured a blanket, fluffing the pillows that were already on the couch. Snape lay down, but after a few minutes realized how futile it was when all he could think about was the young girl sleeping in his bed. Cursing the fate that brought him to his, the potions master conjured a large bottle of firewhisky, which he downed in a record fifteen minutes. With a sigh, he lay back down, and promptly fell to sleep.