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The boy peered, as always, over his pale, hooked nose through the dying bushes.
The twigs scratched at his face, leaving it each time he turned to trudge home reddened and oddly marked. His mother never noticed, though, and he could not decide whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. She just huffed her little huff, and her 'herm-phed' in reply, and they left for their separate ways, as always.
The smell of the bush, too, flipped his stomach as he crouched there. Manure reeked from it's gangly roots, drifting upwards directly into his large nose. The boy sneezed more than he would have liked, and each time he did, he froze, listening intently from behind the bushes. But, as always, no one noticed.
It was Summer, and the sun had turned against the earth, leaving it dry, crumbly and cracked.
A little like the boy himself, actually.
Sweat gathered, as always, down his spine, though he made no move to remove his overlarge, baggy, gray jacket. Instead, it protected him from the blaring rays, and as the time dragged on, he disappeared further and further into the thick, old cotton, his nose peeking out from between the folds.
And from the insides of his moth-eaten jacket, he gazed, as always, out from the bushes at two small girls.
The taller one was lanky and thin, with elbows that stuck out at the sides at an awkward angle, disturbing everything they happened to brush up against. She reminded him of a flamingo, and he often wondered whether anyone would mind if he practiced some of his more potent potions on her. She had a habit of looking down over her pointy nose – an action the boy was quite familiar with. Though if there was anything the girl looked down over her nose at with the greatest pleasure, it was the other little girl.
She was slightly smaller, her head only coming to the older girl's shoulders, though she held herself in a way that would make the older girl cower at times. She reminded him of a bee. Thinking it through again, he decided that a bee wasn't the nicest of creatures, and he knew this certain creature playing in front of him was nice and so much more. Her hair was vibrant, and had a strange way of flipping about whenever she jumped or, to the boy's regret, fell. She raced with the older girl around the archaic playground, hanging of hinges and poles till they groaned in protest, and making the flowers gathered at her ankles open and close at her wish.
And, as always, the boy crouched behind the dying bushes, watching the littlest girl with an interest his mother would have scowled at.
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The young man peered, as always, from beyond the corridor.
They were often dark and deserted, and he wondered whether this was what attracted him to them. His dark, oily hair blended in with the shadows, and when a student would happen to pass, only the flicker of a ghostly pale face would emerge from the depths, then disappear, and the student would know Severus Snape was waiting for her again – as always.
A rat may scatter past, maybe a spider or two, but still, he waited in the shadows.
She would not see him – he had always known that. The white, haunting face that troubled so many students as they passed would never trouble the young red-head. She was too happy for that; she was sunlight itself.
He knew her classes, her timetable, her schedule. It may have bothered her to know that he knew all this, but he wasn't about to perform a memory swipe. The sight of her was too much of a reward.
She would pass – as always – right past the spot where the young man's cloak merged in with the shadows, where his face was nothing more than an illusion of the already pale brick walls. Instead of watching in the blistering heat, he now prowled in the cold. He knew that; she knew that, and perhaps it was what kept her away; oblivious, free.
Still, she never looked.
And, as always, he left with a final great sweep of his oil-black cloak, watching – but never touching – the illusive Lily Evans, as always.
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