The leaves swirling around his feet gave a limp, jaded crunch as he trudged onwards. Their wearied crackling seeming oddly in tandem with the heavy burden closeted firmly in his chest. Sighing as he felt the cruel October wind curl around his ears, he instinctively drew his cloak around him.

He was desperate for a feeling of warmth, that the heavy cloak could never provide.

Not when he was cold from the inside out.

On he walked, harrowing memories strolling by his side. The unwelcome, unshakable accompaniment of every minute, of every day.

Eventually stopping short at the familiar wrought iron gates, he stood wearily.

This last mission had been particularly taxing, and for the fools who believed in souls and the like, they would say his one had taken a hammering. His dark eyes raked the inky blackness of the cold night, and another sigh was heard.

Whatever soul he had had, was long since departed.

His lips twitched mirthlessly.

The fable of souls was amusing to him, seeing as he felt a twisting pain in that area of his abdomen…where this mythical organ of the good ought to lay.

The shimmering golden lights from the slumbering castle shone down at him, and his feeling of all consuming misery shot up a notch. The façade…the act, it was becoming more and more wearisome.

He had never felt more out of place in the one place that he had first claimed as home.

Before he could delve even further into what he recognised as…one of his bouts, he shook his head firmly.

There was a reason that he now did the things he did, saw the things he saw…and that reason couldn't be abandoned. It was the only thing that gave him purpose, that facilitated the air he dragged through his reluctant lungs on a daily basis.

With a flick of his wand, the gates sprang apart and the man swept up the springy garden path, his cloak billowing in his wake.

He should really check in with Dumbledore before he retired, but he found…that he just couldn't stomach recounting the night's events.

It could keep.

That night was a restless one, like the many others before it.

Rising from an almost enshrined habit at six am, he set about his morning routine with a lacklustre enthusiasm, mentally gearing himself up to get through the day.

Parting his hair into his trademark severe hanging curtain, he swept from his quarters and made his way down to the Great Hall.

Rolling his eyes at the empty corridors, he once again lamented Dumbledore's soft policies.

Well…his opinion of Dumbledore's soft policies, it wasn't an opinion shared by the rest of the staff.

If he had been headmaster, the students wouldn't still be lounging in bed at gone seven in the morning.

The eyes rolled again.

What did ever happen to standards?

Entering the hall and throwing himself down in his usual spot, he shot a glowering look of dire warning at Trelawney who foolishly decided to attempt chit chat with him.

Mystical chit chat at that.

Scowling into his porridge, he ran through his class schedule in his mind. An even deeper frown worked its way onto the pale complexion in response.

First up, Gryffindor's and Slytherin's.

His inoffensive porridge quivered in the wake of another offensive scowl sent in its direction.

A double class of trying to repress the bitter war that was brewing between his house and Minerva's.

Just the start to the morning he needed.

As if on que, the oak doors of the hall suddenly burst open and a rowdy grouping of boisterous boys barrelled in.

Gryffindor's…third years.

His eyes narrowed as he spied the cause of the most complex pool of emotions that had besieged him in recent years.

Potter.

He scowled, sighed and frowned all at the same time.

When that kid had first arrived through the doors of Hogwarts, he had been prepared to loathe him on sight.

And he had…he really had.

But…not for the reasons he thought. Not for the reasons that had set his teeth on edge, and raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

Not because he was so like…him.

No… it was…because he was so like her.

He watched surreptitiously as…her son, her flesh and blood roughhoused with some other boy whose name he didn't pretend to remember.

His brow furrowed even deeper when the boy's laugher could be heard dimly up at the teaching table, the hall still being moderately empty.

The tinkling laugh, interchanged with a dash of hearty guffaw…was her.

He shook his head, and averted his gaze. Stabling his porridge moodily, he willed the conflicting emotions that were growing stronger every day to leave him.

It had been easier a few years ago…much easier in fact.

But as the kid grew, as he moved up the school…the similarities became more and more pronounced, and the diverging spectrum of emotion grew in tandem.

He wanted to keep hating the Potter offspring. With his carbon replica looks, right down to that tangled mop he called hair.

He needed to hate him.

Needed to maintain the natural order.

…and he was failing.

With each passing year, his feelings were changing from loathing to a…a paternal affection?

He rolled his eyes.

What was he becoming?

He loathed children.

He especially loathed any children of James Potter…right?

He swallowed with difficulty.

Wrong.

He had been brought face to face with these jarring feelings about eight or nine months ago. When Potter and his shadow Weasley got into another of their idiotic scrapes.

Of course he had been the one to catch them, his student snaring abilities second only to Filch.

It was then…as he'd roughly pulled the two boy's back by the scruffs of their collars as they'd foolishly attempted to discharge a bet by entering the forbidden forest, that the problem started.

It was then, as he had shouted himself hoarse at the two of them, that the cosmic shift in his consciousness where Potter was concerned really showed itself.

In all its confusing, infuriating splendour.

He had been…livid at his actions…but he had also been scared by them.

…scared of what could have happened to him in the forest that he lacked any defence against.

He didn't feel the same fear when he had rounded on Weasley. With him, he was merely furious.

With Potter…it was more than that.

Another stabbing of the mutilated porridge cracked around the teaching table, with Professor Flitwick squeaking in surprised indignation.

Another sigh resounded around the filling table.

He sat in stony silence as he continued to berate himself for his soft, foolish inner monologue, accompanied with some more vigorous porridge stirring.

That was the case… until he was interrupted.

By a deafening, sickening bang.

Startled, he instinctively jumped to his feet and drew his wand in one smooth action, his eyes darting around for potential danger.

His double life meant that he was acutely aware of any hidden pitfalls.

…which also boded well for a teaching career.

Rounding his gaze downward, his black eyes narrowed dangerously as he took in the scene that engulfed the Gryffindor table.

A haze of dense smoke hung over the shell shocked sea of black and scarlet clad faces, as he stared furiously.

His eyes swivelled to the obvious cause of the mayhem, who was backing away from his self created spectacle with a doomed look on his face.

The black eyes were now slits, as the now familiar dance of anger and fear danced inside their host.

There was a complete silence in the ornate hall for just a moment, before it was uncerimonously broken by a magnified, furious voice, that had all present students cringing away from the line of fire.

"Potter!"

…..

TBC

…..

A/N: Ok, so very first Harry Potter fic! Please let me know what you think!