Author's Notes: To my dear, faithful readers of the Unquestionable Love series, including these Untold Stories prompts who may not already be aware, I've begun posting NEW UL prompts privately at crmediagal [dot)com. Prompts #59 through #62 have been posted there so far (#62 was posted just today!), with plenty more updates to come, so if you would like to request access to these prompts, as well as any other fics, artworks, and fandom creations I'm developing, you may request access to them there.

Hopefully one day I'll be back to fanfiction [dot)net, but until that day, I'll be happily creating and posting and sharing on my own safe space...

Also, IMPORTANT FYI: To those who have requested access to my work but haven't seen the Welcome e-mail in their Inboxes yet, PLEASE CHECK YOUR SPAM FOLDERS. All requests I've received have been issued the Welcome e-mail and, unfortunately, 99% of them are ending up in there. If you still haven't received the Welcome e-mail after checking your spam section, please contact me and I can resend the e-mail to you.

Anyway... Below is an excerpt from Prompt #59. I'd LOVE for you to read the rest, as well as the other prompts that have been posted since, so, head on over to my website if you desire more!

Disclaimer: Harry Potter is copyrighted to and belongs to JK Rowling. I'm just playing in her sandbox and own none of their associated characters. New characters belong to me.

Unexpected Company

One of the Snape children finds an ally in the most unexpected (and seemingly unlikely) of people.

(A prompt stemming from teasers dropped in two previous one-shots, Future Home and Happiness and Generations. I've wanted to expand upon them for some time (just like most other aspects of my little UL world…ho hum #SML), so you will find a more in depth explanation here as to certain connections between the girls and another character from canon. This prompt's my own but general requests for more on this have been asked by readers in the past, so I hope those interested may enjoy this little addition).

Excerpt from Prompt #59, "Unexpected Company":

The following evening Surina was interrupted by a light, unexpected tap at the door to her dormitory. She had had the room to herself for an hour or so and spent the quiet time strategizing that weekend's much-talked about Quidditch matchup between Slytherin and Hufflepuff. It was to be her second game and she was looking forward to impressing her housemates (and her sister, Lily, to be frank) at the pitch on Saturday.

When she inched the door open, Surina was surprised to see her father standing in the middle of the tight corridor, both arms tied behind his back. He appeared either cross or reserved or somewhere in the middle but, evidently, his intention was to retrieve her from her room, despite it being nightfall and well after curfew. The Common Room was packed with students doing late night studying for exams or completing important projects and many of them paused to glance at lookalike father and daughter as they swept by, each of their expressions curious as to the two's abrupt exit.

Surina was stumped as to why and where they were going, and Severus proved unhelpfully vague as they wove through the frigid dungeons, with only sparse torches to brighten their path. "We'll talk in my office," he mentioned in brief halfway there.

"'Talk'?" To Surina, that signified trouble. "About what, Dad?"

"In private," he insisted, refusing to give her anymore to go on.

Surina couldn't wait the short distance between the Common Room and Severus's office to potentially get herself out of a sticky situation, whatever it may be, and began rattling off in haste, "Listen, if this is about that stunt I pulled on Johnny Swindlehurst yesterday, it's like I told you in Potions, he was sticking his hand in the—"

Severus's eyes met hers, both eyebrows raised in question. "Johnny Swindlehurst is hardly my concern."

"Oh..." Surina blinked, nonplussed, and crinkled her nose. "Well, then what are we talking about?"

"You'll know soon enough."

By then, they had reached his arch-shaped office door, where Severus lowered the wards with a noiseless flick of his wand and the muttering of an incantation under his breath. Surina already knew the password but, like Lily, was sworn to secrecy so as not to unintentionally spread it around the school. Not that any magical oath should have been necessary, in her opinion, for she had no intentions of infringing on her father's personal space; but it was an official regulation she couldn't contend with.

Surina stilled as Severus reached for the handle. "Am I getting a detention, Dad?"

One of his eyebrows lifted higher than the other. "Not unless you think you deserve one?"

"Nope," she commented without missing a beat. "The wanker got what he deserved so—"

"Very well, then." He pushed the door ajar and motioned for her to go first.

Though still tentative, Surina entered Severus's office, confusion and reluctance slowing her gait. She heard the faint detection of the door clicking behind her and whirled around, by which point her father had drawn quite close. She couldn't read what he was thinking, but she could perceive, upon much narrower inspection, that he looked drained of what little colour his cheeks possessed. The short walk hadn't so much as broken a flush on his ashen skin, which troubled Surina at the off, and he also appeared worn out to a point she thought drastically varied from when they were in the Common Room only minutes ago.

Seeing his fatigue wasn't uncommon to her, but closer glimpses of it unnerved Surina, nevertheless. Her father tended to look too stressed, too tired, and not particularly well since her start of term; but Surina figured it wasn't anything serious. Surely, her parents would inform her and her sisters if something was truly wrong, so she usually let her troubled observances slide.

"Is there something you wish to tell me, Surina?" he began inquiring softly, caringly, the question of which caught her off guard.

Surina blinked hard. Had her father really summoned her from her room—And in my bleedin' pyjamas!—to ask if she had a secret to share? Unlikely. She shook her head, newfound befuddlement marking her smooth brow. "Um, not that I'm aware of?"

A muscle in the wizard's sharp left cheek twitched, nameless wisdom swirling behind the rich depths of his eyes. "Then you have nothing to share with me about a certain possession?"

A knowing heat trickled up Surina's neck. "Uh…a 'possession'?"

Severus tersely nodded. "One that seems to have gone astray from the school library of late?"

Surina's mouth dropped. "How in the bleedin' hell do you know about—?"

"Careful, Surina," he heeded her, the deeper reach in his register tripping up her tongue from slipping a second time. It tended to be Hermione chastising her for blurting out the occasional swear word, not Severus.

Surina's lips drew together. "It didn't deserve to be here."

Severus's stringent expression hardened. "So, you took it upon yourself to destroy property that doesn't belong to you? Since when has that become acceptable behaviour in your eyes, Surina?"

"You honestly care that I got rid of that – that thing?" she argued, aghast by the surliness of his reaction. She didn't expect him to be proud, certainly, but she hadn't predicted such gross displeasure from him either.

"Surina—"

"It's bleedin' slander! It's offensive and crude and shouldn't have a ruddy place at this school!" She puffed out her chest and squared her shoulders. "Yeah, I destroyed it! So what? No one's going to miss it, I can tell you that much!"

The silence that fell upon Severus's lowly lit office was disquieting. Somehow, in spite of believing her actions justified, Surina suspected that she was going to end up on the wrong end of this argument. Severus's morbid look over was an additional blow to her cause and threw the young witch's defences off balance.

"What did you want with it anyhow?" he asked so softly that the strain in his voice made Surina uncomfortable, so much so that she squirmed.

A/N (cont.): Available to read in its entirety at crmediagal (dot]com...