So, I'm just going to come back here from chapter 6 and make an important note.

This story is a story created for the author's release. It's not a story that so much follows a line, but instead is an image of my own thoughts with depression and the such. This story circles the war.

I hope overall that some of you can relate and follow this story as something personally understandable. Though, I hope less of you experience the understood.

Enjoy the chapter.

Chapter 2

From The Quiet School Grounds

The grounds of Hogwarts before the start of term is something incredible. A quiet luxury of vast greenness and beautiful, natural life on ancient landscapes; a gift only granted to those who worked there. A truly amazing sight to see, the slow sets of waves from the pond lick the smooth, rockless sand of the beach as a flute can be heard playing from the lips of the half-giant, Hagrid, the live-in groundskeeper, who lives in his hut and would play with with the rise of the birds and each turn tonight.

There were no students yet, no noise of chatter, no running of steps, no chaos of pranks, no fighting of children.

Nothing.

Only him, the empty halls, and the handful of staff who would gather in the weeks before the start of term.

Years came and went and within these weeks, Severus would find his only solace under the sun. It was a time he enjoyed and could often be found walking the gravel paths in silent peace, alone. But, like everything else Severus had learned and gained, this was temporary. At the start of the school year, he would slip inside his darkened dungeons, into a thriving world of shadows that he had built in empty classrooms and behind forgotten doors.

...

Severus did not like the massive crowds. He did not like the speech of the many at once. He had had enough of madness in his life, but chaos is what he currently saw as he looked out into the feeding Great Hall that very first day of the new term. He had lost his appetite at first sight at the massive gorging and had his eyes on the Daily Profit instead. He was reading of a Ministry break-in that he knew all the shadowed details of, his eyes sitting on the print statement of the money reward for any information.

"An opinion," A woman's voice rose from his side and would continue without him giving any acknowledgment to, "would the money really be worth it?"

It was Minerva who asked and referred to what he was staring at.

The woman who had been sitting at his side at the head table since Severus's first day of teaching.

The colleague Severus had once called, Professor.

"Honestly?" he sighed, "No."

"Why?"

Once every day. One meal of three, one time in the staff room. One point of the day for the entire span of his teaching career, the older woman with the tightly bunned hair and piercing, spectacle protected eyes had always made sure to talk to him, to get him to respond, to say anything back to her. Anything. At some point, this would happen, and apparently, that time was now.

"Because," He straightened slightly in his seat and for the first time his neck and eyes titled to meet the witch who sat on his side, "It's a one time payment for what becomes a permanent, forced, arrangement."

"Hm."

Satisfied with words and even more with the added eye contact and thought to his words, Minerva was done and unless he prompted another conversation, which he would on other occasions, she wouldn't talk to him for the remainder of the meal.

Quietly, creating a quiet space within the chaos, Severus falls back into his mind and into the words of the paper before him.

From the Wide Brown Eyes in Great Hall.

She was watching him. Watching him from the Gryffindor table. Watching him as she spoke to her friends. She watched him as she took in a hearty meal from her plate.

Maybe not watching him. Watching people is rude. She was learning him. She was noticing for the most numerous of times that he didn't eat.. That his fork remained cold and on the table next to his empty plate, his eyes on the paper that was nearly camouflaged against the deep wood of the head table.

She had seen that he rarely looked out onto the students while the crowd was eating. He only seemed to scan below when their eyes were busy, and tables empty.

She saw that Minerva, The head of Gryffindor, speak to him and she noticed that he responded without a snarl or what she could tell as a bite to his tone.

She saw it all and so did, Ginny.

Ginny hadn't told a soul about what Hermione pulled from under her pillow, nor did she ever straightforward address Hermione herself. In the past year, Ginny had noticed a decline with Hermione. She talked less, moved less. She was distracting herself with everything she could and for whatever reason, one of those distractions became, Snape. Ginny would admit that it was true that Hermione hid it all well. That if you weren't watching you wouldn't see that the book studious silence had turned into a heavy bleakness searching for a distraction. There had been something there that summer break, a sadness from her friend that Ginny couldn't shrug away.

She would talk to her.

Soon.

Just not tonight.

From the 'Criminal' at the Head of the Dusty Table

Showered and washed, he sits in a clean purple and gold robe and clothes set that hangs over his unhealthy form as his neck length hair hangs wavy and clean for the first time this week. He sits at the head of a dusty kitchen table, his body cast in flickering candlelight, the darkness at his back seeping over of his shoulders and exposing only that of the outline of the closest of the old, dusty kitchen appliances around him.

He is not alone, but says nothing, nor looks at the man across the table.

That man who sits across, his name is Remus Lupin, and he looks just as tired as Sirius Black.

They are both exhausted, worn, and beaten men. Locked away in a home for not even the eyes of light will accept them anymore.

They are forsaken, and in this, they find comfort in each other.

But, that was then and is not anymore. Now they are silent, the warmth of their schools day's gone as too many bodies are missing from the chairs around the table. They are indeed very broken people in a world where they are the last remaining of a pack no one thought could break.

Sirius takes from the glass and swallows hard as the burn singes his throat.

But, it feels good.

It feels good because at least it's something felt. He sighs and falls into the chair and blackness of his old, haunted home.

...

That night the lives of many will mirror in perfect mimic. Time will be spent, many will utter at least something small to someone else, and then they will crawl into their bedchambers and stare into the darkness until sleep covers their eyes.

Tomorrow is another day, different only in assigned scheduling.

Tomorrow is class, the start of the school year, the beginning t another day.

Tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.

But, tomorrow will come for all.