Harry Potter One Shots

Object of Affection

All rights belong to the author, SnapeGirl

A week before school

Summer, 1992:

"What do you mean, Dad said you have to earn your own money?" Lexy asked her brother Harry as she swung back and forth upon the swing in their backyard. They were both twelve that year and would soon be attending their second year at Hogwarts.

"What I said," Harry groaned, he was leaning against a tree. "Dad said if I want the new Nimbus 2001, I have to earn at least a quarter of the money myself. And how can I do that, when I'm too young to have a job?"

Lexy thought for a moment. "You could always do chores for Grandpa." Tobias always had some kind of work that needed doing around his house.

"He doesn't pay enough. It'll take me years to save up."

His sister frowned, thinking hard. "You could . . .sell your old broom back to Quality Quidditch supplies."

"What? You crazy, Lex? Then what would I ride in the meantime?"

"Okay, okay, bad idea. There has to be something . . .Wait! I've got it!"

Harry eyed her warily. Sometimes his adopted sister came up with the most insane ideas. Trouble was, they usually worked.

"Do we still have that picture Grandpa took three years ago? The one where Dad was changing his shirt 'cause Eileen spit up on him, and he was, like, shirtless for three minutes? It's the one that Grandpa said could stop traffic if we enlarged it and put it on a billboard?"

"Uh . . .yeah. It's in the family album, I think. Mum said it's her sexy Sev picture," Harry answered, flushing. "Why?"

"Because . . .we could make copies of that photo and enlarge them and then you could sell them!" Lexy said excitedly.

"Sell them? But would people really buy them?"

"Are you kidding, Harry! Dad's a chick magnet, you know how all his women patients drool over him!"

"Yeah, but . . .we can't do it here, somebody might tell him."

"Okay . . .so we'll do it at school."

"How much should we charge?"

"Worry about that later. First, let's get the picture and then we can go to the chemist down the street, they have a machine that you can enlarge and make copies of pictures on, it doesn't cost too much."

"Good, because I don't have too much."

The two kids pooled their money, most of it was allowance gained from doing chores around the house, Severus Snape's children were no strangers to doing chores, as he was a firm believer in chores teaching responsibility. As was their mother, Alaina, who was actually Harry's stepmom, but Lexy's real one.

Lexy knew how to work the photo machine, she was familiar with most Muggle things as she had grown up one back in America, before her mother had divorced her abusive father and moved to England, where they had met Severus and Harry and discovered Lexy was a witch.

They made seventy-five copies, enlarged, and Lexy had added the words, I'm Too Sexy across the bottom half of the photo. It cost them all the money they had, but Lexy swore it would be worth it. Harry hoped she was right, because now he was broke.

October 1st, 1992:

Master Healer Severus Snape was walking back from a local café on his lunch break when an owl flew down and delivered a letter to him. His office was just off of Diagon Alley and so this was not unusual.