He asks you to the yule ball ★

any pov! ── ✦

requested!

Secrets I have held

In my heart, are harder

To hide than I thought

Maybe I just wanna be yours

I wanna be yours

I wanna be yours.

⊹+ ̊‧(‿+୨ᰔ୧+‿(‧ ̊+⊹

Scenario: By the time December settled over Hogwarts in soft sheets of snow and silver frost, dating Severus Snape had become something both wonderfully sweet and deeply inconvenient for Severus personally.

Not because he disliked being with you. Quite the opposite. That was the problem.

You had somehow slipped past every defence he possessed with alarming ease. Somewhere between late-night studying, quiet walks through empty corridors, and your stubborn refusal to be intimidated by him, Severus had developed the deeply unfortunate habit of caring about you constantly.

He worried whether you had eaten. He noticed when you were cold. He memorised your schedules without meaning to. And, most humiliatingly of all, he had become painfully aware that he enjoyed physical affection. Not excessive affection. Merlin forbid.

But small things. Your hand brushing his sleeve while you walked together. Your knee against his beneath library tables. The way you leaned sleepily against his shoulder near the fireplace when studying late. Each incident left him simultaneously pleased and catastrophically flustered. Which was why the announcement of the Yule Ball immediately became the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

The Great Hall buzzed with excitement for days afterward. Students talked endlessly about dress robes and decorations and who was asking whom. Severus pretended to complete indifference while internally unravelling at terrifying speed.

Because obviously he would ask you. You were dating. That was how these things worked. And yet the idea of verbally saying the words aloud made him feel physically ill. For nearly a week, Severus attempted to approach the subject. Every attempt failed spectacularly.

“You are... attending the Yule Ball, I assume.”

You glanced up from your book. “Probably.”

“...Right.” Then he simply stared at you for several seconds before turning sharply on his heel and leaving the library entirely. The next attempt occurred during Potions while the two of you worked side by side.

“The Ball is statistically likely to be insufferable.”

“Probably.”

“...You would dislike attending with an incompetent partner.”

You blinked at him. “Severus, are you trying to ask me something?”

“No.”

He crushed dried herbs into powder with unnecessary violence for the next ten minutes. You, unfortunately, found this adorable. Severus found it horrifying. By the third failed attempt, even his housemates had begun noticing something was wrong.

“You look unwell,” one of them commented dryly as Severus sat glaring at an untouched breakfast.

“I am surrounded by idiots,” Severus muttered.

“That doesn’t explain why you nearly walked into a wall yesterday.”

Severus ignored him completely. The truth was that Severus wanted the invitation to be perfect. Which was absurd because he did not know how to do perfect. Or romantic. Or normal, for that matter. Every imagined scenario sounded embarrassing.

"Would you accompany me to the Yule Ball?" Too formal. "Do you want to go with me?" Too plain. "You are the only tolerable person in this castle." Absolutely not.

Though admittedly it was true.

Eventually, desperation drove him to the library in search of what he claimed was academic material but was, in reality, a catastrophic mistake. A book on courtship traditions. It only made things worse. The following evening, you found Severus waiting outside your common room with the expression of someone moments away from facing execution. Snow drifted lazily past the castle windows behind him. His dark robes were dusted faintly white at the shoulders, black hair slightly windswept from pacing.

He had clearly been standing there for a while.

“You’re staring at the floor,” you observed gently.

“I am thinking.”

“That usually means trouble.”

“Hm.”

He did not elaborate. For a long moment, Severus simply stood there clutching something behind his back with visible tension in his shoulders. Then, abruptly, he thrust it toward you with all the grace of someone disposing of evidence. It was a flower. Not a fancy bouquet. Not some elaborate magical arrangement. Just a single pale winter rose, slightly bent at the stem like he had been gripping it too tightly.

You looked up slowly.

Severus immediately stopped making eye contact.

“I read,” he began stiffly, “that flowers are apparently conventional for this sort of thing.”

“This sort of thing?”

His ears turned pink instantly.

“You know perfectly well what sort of thing.”

“I don’t know, I think you should explain.”

He narrowed his eyes at you in suspicion. You were enjoying this far too much.

“You are unbearable.”

“And yet you like me anyway.”

That earned you a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth — dangerously close to a smile. Then Severus inhaled once, sharply, like gathering courage hurt him physically.

“The Yule Ball,” he said quickly, words nearly running together. “I thought perhaps you might accompany me since other people will undoubtedly ask and they are all intolerable and you are already familiar with me, so—”

He stopped abruptly.

You stared at him, trying not to laugh from sheer affection.

“...Are you asking me to the Ball because I’m ‘familiar’?”

Severus looked genuinely offended.

“That is not the important part of that sentence.”

“What’s the important part?”

His expression shifted immediately into guarded embarrassment. Severus glanced away, jaw tightening slightly before muttering quieter:

“The part where I wish to go with you.”

He looked up at you, a hopeful look in his eyes. That and his voice nearly melted you on the spot.

(I take requests!)

↓

BOT REQUEST FORM