He stood leaning over the window sill with his arms out before him, his fingers delicately spread taking the weight of his shoulders. A lean, wistful silhouette against the brightness and hope of the morning sky. His black robes traced elegantly high up his neck, pulling against him tightly, an oppression he safely encased himself within.

His shining, dark eyes reflected the three figures moving through the courtyard in the grounds below, happy voices carrying on the wind to the castle tower, from where he observed. He'd spent years watching, waiting; not acting. This was a different time, now.

He heard a shuffle behind him - in an instant he swept around and met Dumbledore's eyes, piercing him with their blue, searching gaze. He had been caught off guard: what had he seen, what did he know?

"It's almost time, Severus," His voice sounded as if from afar.

Snape pulled his eyes away and trapped them on to the door instead, billowing past the other wizard without a word. If the old fool truly knew what he was giving up this time, he should leave him be. He stalked through the ancient wooden doorway without another fleeting glance in Dumbledore's direction.

"Anger is not a useful emotion," the elderly wizard had called after Snape as he began to descend the stone spiral steps of the tower, "and it certainly will not help Lily's son."

It was as if fury had detonated an explosion at the front of his mind. Snape stopped and turned, his eyes glaring like two black fires towards the top of the steps where they met Dumbledore's wise smile - almost acknowledging his successful provocation of his potions master.

"I am not doing this to help that egomaniacal brat." He almost spat the words through his gritted teeth. Did he mean to say that? He tightly clenched his pale fists low behind his back. He was losing control too frequently now. He didn't care whether Dumbledore knew he couldn't stand the boy, that wasn't the problem. He could sense the probing eyes glinting at him through the reflections of his spectacles again.

"Why not tell me where your motivations now lie, Severus?" Snape felt a growl erupting in his throat and suppressed it with a curl of his lip instead. He was too close. He'd given enough away already. His fist banged the stone wall as he again began his descent down the steps. Maybe the old wizard wasn't such an old fool after all.

He knew he should have been more careful, he was definitely losing it now. Back in his dungeon room he held himself up with an arm on a corner of his four-poster. He felt exhausted concealing just plans and secrets, now he beheld new emotions and motivations behind his ever crumbling occlumency walls. He allowed his mind to drift to the night he had first felt it and had to take a seat to brace against the shudder that crept through him.

He had been patrolling the ball with another professor, irritably barging past the elated students - all fancifully dressed up as adult witches and wizards, flowing thoughtlessly around the room as if there wasn't an ongoing war.

He barely hid a snarl as a group of them dared to dance too close to his dress robes, brushing his shoulders in an unnecessary exaggeration of personal injury, only to come to the sickening realisation that through the raving delights of the party, he had failed to be noticed enough to be intimidating.

Aggravated, he turned on the spot, throwing him straight into a slender woman in a deep blue velvet gown who had waltzed directly into his chest. Instinctively, they held each other in their mutual surprise, she caught hold of both his upper arms and his hands had rested briefly at the small of her back.

He thought back: had his hands just rested, or had he naturally pulled this beauty closer towards him? She had gasped, and he felt her chest push up against his. He couldn't help his eyes. They gravitated down, drawn by her welcoming neckline before, suddenly horrified at his own indiscretion, he dragged them up away from her cleavage and towards her face. He swallowed, his mouth felt dry. For this short moment he hadn't realised he was beholding the polished chestnut eyes of Miss Hermione Granger. Within an instant he had rushed her hands off him and stalked away, grimacing as he noticed her perfume following him on his robes.

"Snape?" The other professor had called after him, but he had no wish to be followed. He had learned quickly that any projection of his character other than being a solitary and unapproachable bastard made hiding everything else much more difficult. If he clung to this detached persona he could exist in both worlds safely. The dark and the light. Thus, he hid, lurking like a caricature of himself in the shadows under the stone arches outside, and watched as the chattering throng started to emerge into the torch-lit courtyard when the music quietened, meaning the night was coming to an end.

His pushed his spine poker straight against the cold stone. That had been the first time he had felt off his guard for years. He scolded himself for his outward panic; to everyone present it would have appeared a normal every-day accident. Even for Professor Severus Snape it was merely an isolated incident that no one would have thought upon at all – it was only he who knew differently. His standards of behaviour were higher than this. His entire existence depended on his control, and yet for this one moment he had lost any semblance of it.

He was captured from his thoughts by a glimpse of her. She exited the great doors, lifting her gown with one hand as she attempted to traverse down the steps in her heels. She laughed as she toppled awkwardly yet elegantly along, arm in arm with Ginny Weasley. His eyes danced from her ankles up to the rest of her slender leg which suddenly escaped through a deep slit in the dress that he hadn't noticed before. He looked away quickly, blinking as if he had looked directly at the sun. He undid the top button of his robes and grasped his chest to feel his heart pounding. What in the world was wrong with him?