Strange Bedfellows

Minerva sat on the edge of the big sunken tub in her dressing gown, watching the water thunder in, churning the bubble bath into clouds of perfumed sea-foam. Steam rose from the boiling surface; the water would be almost too hot.

She turned it off and sat for a moment, her chambers around her still save for the crackle of popping bath bubbles, faint and calming.

The water had cooled enough to be tolerable. Minerva dropped the dressing gown on the floor and stepped in, feeling a pleasant shiver as the heat at her feet made her shoulders prickle in cool contrast.

She subsided into the tub and relaxed, stretching her long legs. She felt her every muscle relax gradually in the heat and her sorrows of the day watching away.

After a while she sighed and pulled up the plug with her toes. The last of the water gurgled away. She stood up, feeling slightly light-headed, and wiped away the last of the bubbles. The big mirror was misted with steam, but clear enough to show her herself from the knees upward, pink as a boiled shrimp.

Dropping the towel, she looked herself over. Flexed her arms, raised them overhead, checking for bagginess. None. She turned slightly to one side, tensing and relaxing her abdominals.

"Good thing the family doesn't run to fat", she murmured, remembering suddenly the backside of her mother when they had been swimming in the Highland lochs. Women, after all, had a certain amount of excess tissue to contend with.

Minerva turned all the way round and peered back over her shoulder at the mirror. The long columnar muscles of her back gleamed wetly as she twisted. She still had a waist, and a good narrow one, too.

As for her own backside...

"Well, no dimples, anyway", she said aloud. She turned around and stared at her reflection.

"It could be a lot worse", she said to it.

Feeling somewhat heartened, she put on her nightgown and went about the business of putting her things to order for the next day. Then she returned to the bathroom to brush out her hair for the night.

Suddenly the sound of the door opening and closing again startled her back to awareness. Her wand lay ready on the small vanity table and she grabbed it now immediately. One could never be too careful. You-Know-Who was defeated but some of his death-eaters were still at large and nearly as dangerous as he had been. Carefully she went to her bedroom, leaving the bathroom door wide open to let in the light. The sight of the big double bed, smooth under its dark green satin spread, led her to believe that the sounds of the door had only been her imagination. But then she moved towards the door to her sitting room and the lights, plotted out earlier by her body, crawled farther up the bed to expose a dark figure, lying spread-eagled across the pillows of her bed.

Minerva stopped in her tracks and slowly crept closer to examine the intruder. The black robes around the body had swallowed his existence in the shadows. Silently she crept even closer, noticing black shoulder-length hair and pale masculine face. Minerva bent low and carefully brushed aside the greasy hair with her wand. It was Severus Snape, the new Potions teacher, ex-death-eater and her former pupil.

"Now what are you doing in my bed, you cheeky boy?" she asked quietly, not really wanting to wake him and get an answer.

Silently she crossed the room again, opened her wardrobe and got out a thick woollen blankets and pillow. She then extinguished the light in the bathroom and tiptoed out of the room to sleep on her couch in the sitting room.