Title: Stains
Angry red lines crisscrossed his forearm, doing nothing to hide the stark black image. The snake twisted from the skull's mouth no matter how much Severus scratched. It just wouldn't go.
To most of the staff at Hogwarts he was the strict dungeon bat that Dumbledore trusted. Little did they know that by night he tried everything to erase the visible reminder of his mistakes. But despite his enormous knowledge, he found nothing.
First he had attempted to use his potions expertise, to find or create anything that would at least hide it.
When that had failed, he had tried transfiguring the flesh and charming the ink, even resorting to a curse which earned him a visit from Madam Pomfrey.
His last resort was muggle methods: a knife, and a scalpel. In desperation he had been scratching away the skin. It caught under his nails and stained his fingers with blood.
