It was fifteen minutes to five when Snape arrived at the gates of the old Manor. Not wanting to present himself any earlier than he was expected and frankly not wishing to stay in the company of his hosts any longer than was necessary, he chose to pass the time with a brief walk along the outskirts of the estate. It was not, by any means, a mistake that Snape arrived here at this time. Old procedures that were once again becoming frequent practice and a preference for digesting a place before allowing himself to become part of it impelled Snape to arrange for these fifteen minutes of appraisal and adjustment. It was late October and the tall oaks that lined the perimeter of the grounds were nearly all stripped of their leaves. Their gnarled, twisted braches, blackened by the bloody sky behind them, stretched and contorted in the air above Snape as he walked. Their outgrowth was as greedy as the roots below them. But there was no water for these branches to drink in; no earth in which to ground themselves. There was only endless space to seize, only invisible wind to resist, only inexhaustible time to challenge. Freedom, pointlessness, and the primeval power it all exuded.
None of these thoughts befell the man that walked in the gray shadows of these oaks. It was not time for them yet. Instead, after surveying the tangled wood above him warily, Snape gave his mind to the geometrical show on the lawn behind the wrought iron fence. Thick bars of darkness patterned the sloping stretches of dead grass occasionally interrupted by the orange ellipses cast by floating gas lamps. Sixteen years ago, when a woman was struck dead here, these lawns had looked very much the same. She could have allowed herself to stay hidden in her strip of shadow. A moment's illumination under one of the lamps had been her end. Snape's lips tautened as he moved his gaze upward, taking in the Manor itself. Large, stately, Baroque. It differed from the other manors of the Wiltshire area and indeed most of England in its Italian influence: Corinthian columns lined its facade and above, a magnificent clock, illuminated with the same orange light, stared out from the centre like an enormous gaping eye.
The clock told him he had ten minutes left to himself. Snape increased his pace as if to jam as much substance into the remaining time as he satisfactorily could. As his boots thumped and crunched methodically on the dry autumn earth, he subsided in his examination of the place, instead forcibly groping for thoughts and then shoving each aside, one after the other. Memories, sensations, orders, conversations, annoyances, speculations, calculations, torments were each torn from their dark compartments, scanned over quickly, and then thrust back in search of the next. This cycle was a regular luxury Snape allowed himself in spare moments like these. It was self-affirming. Self-damning. All in all the sort of comfortable practice that keeps a man sane and well oiled.