From the elevated height of the Tower you could see for miles. Gently lolling hills gave way to mountains backed on the orange golden sky. Clouds resting over the landscape shone with reflected sunlight, adding a touch of red to the scene. It was a glimpse of perfection, yet there was no-one awake to view it.
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A gentle breeze wafted over a disordered desk by the window, knocking over the inkpot in its path, creating a pool of black that threatened to engulf the already blotched sheaves of white paper that littered the surface. At the sound a dishevelled head raised itself, caught a second of the glorious view, before jumping frantically around, hands feverishly snatching at papers, books and quills, to save them from being drowned.
"Drat, drat and bother!"
It was as if this was the call that nature had been waiting for to signal the true release of the day. A chorus of birds began their morning song, seemingly rising as one from the canopy of the forest. The wind ceased its quiet way and whipped itself to a blustery level, thus startling the greater beasts that, now awakened, caused the once tranquil meadows to brim with a cacophony of noises.
Frizzy hair awry, hands on hips with lips pursed Augusta Sinistra surveyed the disaster that were her previous night's Astronomy notes and let out a pained sigh. Her face, covered down one side with Dalmatian-like ink blotches, had the lines of middle-age though she was still approaching it. Although she would be loath to admit it, teaching had definitely aged her before her time. Yet she could say, and with some pride too, that the majority of those lines were creases of good humour rather than consternation.
As she bent over to tidy her desk, swallowing a little distastefully at the parched taste, from a night of snoring, in her mouth, she took a moment to smile at the beauty framed in her window. Albus and Minerva had counselled her on numerous occasions to install glass windows in the tower, if not in the stairwell windows then certainly in those of her private quarters, but she had always refused. They had chided and gently reprimanded her when she caught one of her frequent colds, but these discomforts she found trifling, for it seemed a shame to try and barricade herself from nature. And in her opinion, glass had a colour of its own and tended to distort and diminish the hue of colours outside.
Realising that most of the notes were beyond salvation she gave a small shake of the head and consigned them to the bin, handily located beneath the table. Ruefully she wandered out of the study to the bathroom to make herself somewhat presentable for breakfast, cheering considerably as she remembered that it was Sunday, so she had the day to herself.
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More than ten floors beneath her, piercing black eyes shot open as were their custom at the start of the day. After a moment they shuttered slowly as the dull ache that was now the norm, made its presence felt somewhere behind his stomach and above the nape of his back. Catching his breath, he adjusted himself to the now familiar sensation, and swung upright on his bed and exhaled. A wave of nausea washed over his senses and he unsteadily made his way to his bathroom. A lesser person might have stumbled back into bed and hidden away from the world, a person with a less pronounced sense of duty and procedure might have ignored the bell that announced the commencement of breakfast and curled back to sleep. But this was Severus Snape, and that was not his way. Wearily he made his way from the dungeons to the Great Hall.