He was walking faster than was wise. The last grand trick of Potter's, before the incident, had been to enchant the third floor corridor so that any utterance of "Snape" within its confines was immediately followed with the sound of a thunderclap, and the frightened bleating of sheep. Severus had since developed an intense dislike of the place.
When he reached the second floor, he found himself having to lean on a suit of armor until a wave of dizziness passed. He set off again at a far more reasonable speed.
The looks he got from the few fellow students he passed on his way to the dungeons were enough to confirm what he already knew; that he'd gone from unappealingly scrawny to frankly cadaverous. One curly haired little Hufflepuff with a stack of books clutched to her chest even gasped audibly.
Curses died unspoken on his dry tongue. There really wasn't any point. All he wanted to do at the moment was curl up, sleep away the last of the drugs and wake up himself again, in his own bed...
"Snape?"
He froze at the top of the stairs. He hadn't heard that reedy, pompous voice since June, and he had forgotten just how much it grated him.
"Avery?" He turned around, and started in surprise. It was Avery, but not as he remembered him. He looked older than nineteen, all angles and ill health, and his bloodshot eyes were underscored with violet half circles. There were two long scratches on his cheek that looked suspiciously like fingernail marks.
"What are you doing here?" Severus asked, once he got over the initial shock. What a pair of ghouls the two of them must have looked. Really, had Avery even been eating?
"I dropped by to see Slughorn. Gave him a present from my father." He gave a weird, strangled little laugh. "What have you been up to?"
Severus chuckled sardonically. "Most recently? Whatever girls tell me to, it seems." Avery cocked an eyebrow. "Does that explain the haircut?"
"Ask Wilkes," Severus muttered. "I don't remember the details."
"Ah, Wilkes. Tell them I said hello, will you? Her and the other one." He was absentmindedly rubbing his arm, as though he'd been bitten there, or stung...
A grin that was almost a leer spread over Avery's gaunt face.
"Ever seen one before? In the flesh?" He pulled up the left sleeve of his robes.
Severus stared, awe and revulsion dueling within him for prominence.
"Did it.." He bit his tongue. Dit it hurt? He had almost asked. Stupid, childish thing to say...
"Yes," Avery answered him, anyway. He shook his sleeve back down.
"You should be getting to bed, shouldn't you?" he said softly, his tone somewhere between bemusement and desperation.
Severus nodded.
Avery smiled, and doffed his aggressively purple bowler hat.
"Oh, hold on a moment." He dug in the crown of his hat, which had obviously been enchanted, since he had his arm in up to the elbow. "Ah."
He smiled, and tossed Severus a box of Muggle kitchen matches.
"Give those to Wilkes. Tell her to knock herself out."
"All right..."
"Goodnight, Snape." Avery half ran, half walked, down the corridor.
"Fucking lunatic," Severus hissed, once he was out of sight.
He scrambled down the stairs and deep into the dungeons, his heart pounding.
I never liked you Avery, he thought, seizing upon contempt as the emotion to feel. Never liked you. All that damn talk, and look at you now... You're pathetic. You won't live long.
"Dormiens," he spat, and clambered through the portrait hole to the Slytherin common room.
He looked around warily. The room was nearly empty, and there was no sign of Rosier and Wilkes. He let loose a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding. He had no desire, just then, to be cornered and told "What Bellatrix had to say." Or to give her Avery's bloody matches.
He looked down, saw that he had been crushing the box in one hand, and clenching the other so tightly that raw half moon marks were visible on his palm.
He laughed softly, staggering to his dorm.
It would be remarkably easy for Wilkes, he thought. She would go straight from her schoolgirl days into a life of murder and destruction, and he doubted that any of it would be more real to her, in any way significantly different, from her antics on the Hogwarts pitch. He did not know whether to think that lamentable, or enviable.
He threw himself onto his bed, and pulled out one of the matches. He struck it against his cottony teeth, a Muggle trick of the sort one learns in mill towns. He let it burn down to his fingertips, staring at it intensely all the while.
Even after the ghost of the flame had faded from his eyelids, he could see the skull with a serpent tongue, burned into Avery's smooth skin.