The Doe in the Walls
Chapter 2
To Breathe
A moment, precious, precarious. The stillness greeted him, broken only by the shiver of his robes and the trivialities of living that divorced himself from mute existence of the walls about him. Here, in this span between his office and the class… He lingered. Taking in the quiet, he lingered over the most basic pleasure of all. That elusive sense of simply being.
There was no titles for him than, no guises, no roles.
Just a moment, one breath, then he was recalled the foremost of his charades as the silence was broken from the other side. Voices and the familiar clatter and scrape of the oncoming horde. Book bags were carelessly thrown to the floor, never mind the precious literature between the tattered pages that took the beating.
Lips twisting into a sneer so familiar it had become trademark amongst the stupid crush of colleagues, acquaintances, and the like, Severus Snape applied this most familiar mask. There was no ribbon to hold it in place, no porcelain with death's face engraved upon it to press against his own. Still, the edges bit, as all unfitting facades did.
Gripping the handle he pulled open the door, a Professor once more.
XXX
Pink did not compliment red… despite what the romantics said. Nor did it fittingly belong besides gold, which was a regal color. Pink at its gaudy heart was ever frivolous, ever irritating. It also went without saying that pink did not under any stretch of the imagination belong next to green, and it was proven throughout the day that pink did not go with black.
As for cliché sayings about black going with everything… well it didn't, and a permanent sneer had anointed his face as he looked upon his feathered Slytherins and seethed.
Potter hadn't been the only one out of rooms that night. Merely a distraction, and Filch, the fool, had fallen right into it. Dragging Severus down with him. And while the prank had a certain cheek it also held a subtle layer of complexity beyond Potter and his two little friends.
Thus, despite how much he hated the boy, Severus was well aware this was not the child's fault.
Not directly, anyways.
It took effort, godly effort, but he did not deduct points from his own house as the last of them left for the day. Losing feathers in a fuchsia trail, the additives that adorned his whole house were woven into big peacock tails that absently swept the halls. And no one had been spared, no one. Not the first years still wide eyes with wonder over their assimilation into the Serpent house, or the weary seventh years that held ambitions beyond the walls of Hogwarts.
To say the least… he was quite vexed.
Slytherins were supposed to be the cunning of the cunning, not oblivious incompetents, and every class that had shuffled out, pink feather in full attendance had shown him how much work he had yet to do. As for the Lion's house... well he'd helped himself and bestowed a blessing of negative numerals on the Gryfindors.
Lily would have killed him. Her rebuke rang in her ears.
Call it what it was, deductions, not blessings. Not a gift, but a taking.
Honesty had been a sore point with her. She'd not have minded him his irritation at the prank but even the most subtle nascence of this self-deception would have irked her. She'd hated his word games, loathed any lie, and in part him and his sly Slytherin tongue.
Taking a deep breathe he mastered his irritation with effort, and as the door closed and caused a cluster of fluttering fuchsia to spin about he flicked his wand. A few choice syllables and the leavings of his disgraced house were just a memory.
Damn the Gryfindors, damn the whole house. He hadn't been able to get one lesson without contamination running amuck in all the student's potions. He'd had to stop all brewing and teach from the text book, ordering them to recite the steps of each potion and mime the motions of the stirring because –especially amongst his later year students- contamination was the same as death.
So he'd paced up and down the seats, face a rigid mask of frustration, hoping, waiting, for one of them to crack. Point loss had run amok, and he was sure at the teacher's dinner he'd be given hell for his actions. If not from Minevra, than Dumbledore. For weren't the adults of the Lion's Den unaccountably brave, one and all? Pride more than wit would carry them towards the confrontation they so obviously felt would be "necessary". At least the heads of Ravenclaw and HufflePuff would not feel it necessary to address him when he was in one of his darker moods.
Nor would they confront him over his temper or indulge in the crass stupidity of trying to coax him out of a rage.
A room away, unseen but not unfelt, the time ticked by. Ten more minutes hung between this moment and that span he'd have to leave. He'd be called out if he didn't take the usual route up the moving stairwells to the great hall.
The chair of Slythrein head of house could not be empty after all. Frivolities of temper aside. He had a duty, many many duties. And he'd never be allowed to forget it.
A moment, a breath, he sought calm and fell so bloody far there were no words. Hands shaking, he let out a wordless hissed a curse. An Unspeakable made unspoken, so slurred it might as well have been parsletongue for all its incoherence, incoherent for all his rage…
Images, disjointed but bound by expectation, flashed through his mind in pace with his long hurried steps as he chased nothing and ruminated over everything;
Albus, smiling, an offer of a lemon drop dribbling off his lips.
Twinkling, always bloody twinkling, miming that damned concern that was damning for its lack of substance.
A saying: Words were after all, only words.
Sticks and stones…
..and broken bones.
Damn it all. He swept from the empty class room, slamming the door behind him. Starting the long journey up from the dungeons to the great hall. Duty was duty after all, and he could not leave the seat of Slytherin unmanned. Not now, in these dark times. Robes billowing with that absent grace that so entranced the dunderheads and the masses he swept up the stairs, content to broil in old hatreds of his private storm.
One hall, before the Great, and something caught his eye. Glistened, piled, he stopped, noting the miniscule and its glitter.
Piled before the painting, barely a pinch worth's of height to its name, sullying the grey stones was a span of white. Curious he drew near, daring he knelt, a whiff later and he frowned. Sweet, cloying, an utter confection.
Once an oddity, now fast becoming familiar
Sugar, not granulated this time as before… but powdered.
Daring he picked up a sample, texture confirmed olfactory analysis. He ignored the temptation to run the fragment over his tongue, to prove the obvious, instead he looked up. Letting his cache drop.
And he wondered.
A smear of white, a naturalist painting that wasn't still. Never still, since it was a wizarding work. Grass and trees cast in hues compared to autumn by the multitudes so often they were cliché. There was no subject beyond the ordinary. A breeze captured on the canvas set the leaves upon the fabric to shiver and shake, but falling was forbidden.
And atop that, never by accident, was a smear of white. A span of sweet set to entice… something… on the foreground. Something that wasn't there. But something had been there; recently. Fall brittle grasses were smashed to the right, paralleling the smear was a span of churned up leaves and scarred up ground.
He bared yellowing teeth in what was not a smile, certainly not that. But his blood was up, his curiosity aroused like an irate serpent, and his wand hand clenched under the pressures of a habit decades old.
Severus Snape was a source of mystery, hate yes, but mystery. From motive to each and every thought he was never to illuminate, only to obscure, such had been his role and inclination. But he'd never meant to be caught up in a mystery of his own, no matter how pedestrian.
But he was caught, even as he straightened, and smoothed his robes he knew this simple truth. He'd been caught, by nothing more than a mark, a smear upon canvas, and the coiling ruminations of his own curiosity. Hands loosening on the black fabric Severus grunted, and though he was alone he did not allow himself to openly ruminate, simply turned on his heel and swept to the Great Hall. The flare of his own private storm dimmed, but never dulled.
Never that.
