Chapter Text
The Great Hall was a riot of floating candles and staring faces when Hortensia Dursley stepped through the double doors. She was inconveniently, awkwardly older than every other first-year shuffling nervously in their too-large robes. The whispers started before she even reached the stool.
"Merlin, is that a student or someone's mum?"
"She's got to be at least—"
"Bet she's a half-giant."
"Shhh, the Hat'll hear you."
She ignored them. She had survived worse. Vernon's rages. Petunia's constant bleaching of every red strand that dared appear in her hair ("Red is rude, Hortensia, it's common"). The secret magical accidents that had terrified her for years, plates shattering when she was angry, her reflection smirking back at her, the time the garden gnomes had started tap-dancing in perfect synchrony. All of it had led here. She had found the hidden letter, years after she'd received it just because they'd made the mistake of blurting that if they ignored Hortensia's letter they could ignore Harry's her skinny wimpy cousin. She had threatened to scream the truth about Harry and the freaky world they had hidden from her straight into the neighbours' ears and straight into Vernon's precious Grunnings office. They had folded like wet paper. Dumbledore, the weird headmaster who was a complete Pouff (nothing against it, but no one else would be ballsy enough to wear that shade of turquoise with purple sequence with that high of a boot heel), well that weird headmaster had been sympathetic. She'd technically be the oldest first year to ever begin Hogwarts, but it was a place of learning and so, of course should she desire training she may come to them.
Now she sat on the rickety stool, the Sorting Hat dropping over her eyes like a dusty curtain surrounded by midgets and her scrawny little cousin watching her. She still couldn't believe he was famous. It still seemed faintly ridiculous.
Well, well, the Hat murmured inside her skull, voice dry as old parchment. You're a bit late to the party, aren't you? Ambition like a dragon's hoard. Cunning enough to blackmail your own family. And a temper that could burn down a castle. Slytherin it is, girl. Try not to eat the first-years.
"SLYTHERIN!"
The table at the far end erupted in a mix of cheers and uneasy laughter. She walked to it with her chin high, lips curved in the spoiled little smirk that had always gotten her whatever she wanted back on Privet Drive. The older Slytherins, actual teenagers in their proper years, watched her like she was a particularly interesting piece of roadkill.
Professor Snape's black eyes found her from the staff table. They narrowed. A muscle ticked in his jaw. Petunia Evans' daughter. He had known the moment her name was called. The same bloodline that had spat on Lily, the same smug, magic-hating stock. He would enjoy making her time here miserable. It would be petty. It would be satisfying. It would be fun.
It started small. Points docked for breathing too loudly. Sneering comments in Potions about "late-blooming muggle trash who think they belong among their betters." The older students took the hint. Hexes in corridors. Ink spilled on her essays. Whispers that she was "too old to be here, too stupid to be sorted anywhere else."
She smiled through it. She was Hortensia Dursley. She did not break.
Then they took her hair.
A sixth-year named Travers and two friends cornered her after Charms. A vicious little Diffindo variant aimed straight at her scalp. Her painstakingly bleached blonde hair, Petunia's pride, forced on her since the first red strands had appeared, fell in golden clumps around her ankles. By the time she staggered into the hospital wing she was patchy, half-bald, scalp raw and burning.
She did not cry where anyone could see. She waited until the curtains were drawn, then sobbed until her throat ached.
Madam Pomfrey tutted. "Nasty hex. But we'll fix it. Professor Snape brews the best Hair-Regrowth Potion in Britain. I'll have him make a special batch for you."
Hortensia's stomach twisted. Of course it had to be him. The cold potions master who sneered at her at any chance he got and seemed intent, even pleased to make her life miserable. He was probably laughing at her and giving her bullies house points.
Snape stood at his workbench in the dungeons, jaw clenched so tight it hurt, stirring the shimmering potion with vicious precision. The girl, inconveniently, awkwardly older, all long legs stuffed into first-year robes, was Petunia's. Spoiled. Arrogant. A living reminder of everything he had lost and everything he had hated. He had relished her misery these past weeks. The way her shoulders hunched when he snarled at her in class. The flash of humiliated fury in those blue eyes when he called her "Miss Dursley" like it was filth on his tongue. Petty. Bitter. Delicious.
He decanted the finished potion into a crystal vial and stalked to the hospital wing without knocking.
She sat on the edge of the bed in a hospital gown, a scarf hiding what was left of her hair. When she looked up, defiant even now, his lip curled.
"Drink," he ordered, shoving the vial at her. "And try not to choke on it. I've wasted enough ingredients."
Her fingers brushed his. She downed it in one go.
The change was instant and obscene.
What remained of her hair exploded outward in a torrent of vibrant, living red—deep auburn threaded with copper fire that caught the torchlight like liquid garnet. It cascaded over her shoulders, down her back, thick and silky and exactly the shade Lily's had been. The hospital gown suddenly looked criminal against it. Her cheekbones softened. Her mouth, suddenly fuller, suddenly hers. The resemblance hit Severus like a curse to the chest.
She looked like Lily.
Not Petunia's washed-out daughter. Lily. The girl by the lake. The girl whose laugh had been the only bright thing in his grey childhood. The girl he had loved with every bitter, broken piece of himself.
But the eyes were wrong. Blue. Petunia's eyes. Vernon's eyes. Wrong and right and devastating.
Snape's breath punched out of him. His cock—traitorous, unwanted, aching—swelled so fast against the front of his robes it hurt. He could feel the heavy throb of it, the way it strained the fabric, the first hot bead of precum already soaking through. Cuntstruck. The word slammed through his skull like a Killing Curse. He was cuntstruck by this inconveniently older first-year who looked like the love of his life reborn in the body of Petunia Evans' daughter.
Filthy images flooded him, unbidden and vicious. Her on her knees in the Potions classroom, that glorious red hair wrapped around his fist while she gagged on his cock. Her bent over his desk, first-year robes rucked up around her waist, begging for more while he fucked her so hard the cauldrons rattled. Her riding him in his office chair, red strands sticking to sweat-slick skin, those blue eyes glassy with pleasure as he whispered every filthy thing he had ever wanted to say to Lily and never dared.
His hands shook. He shoved them into his pockets before she could see the way they trembled.
"Pomfrey will discharge you in the morning," he said, voice low and ragged, every syllable a lie to hide the raging heat in his veins. "Try not to get hexed again, Miss Dursley. I won't brew another dose just because you're too soft to survive in your own House."
He turned on his heel and fled, robes swirling, cock throbbing painfully with every step.
Behind him, Hortensia Dursley touched her new red hair with trembling fingers and smiled for the first time in weeks—small, sharp, and utterly unaware that she had just become the most dangerous obsession Severus Snape had ever allowed himself.