First Snow
by Fabula Rasa
Snape was always the first to know
about snow.
Sufferers of bone and joint pain know that there is something cleansing and awakening and wholly to be welcomed in sharp, blinding pain that slices through one in a bracing wave. After such pain, one breathes more deeply. Far otherwise, however, is the insistent push and pressure of pain in the bones, which only furrows the brow and knots the neck, and awakens nothing but one's own foul temper.
But it couldn't be helped, not these many years later. The hand had never healed right, and it had been his own fault, his own stubbornness after all, though he would never own it publicly. And there was no call to mention such a thing publicly at all; no one even knew the old injury gave him occasional trouble, because no one, not even Dumbledore, knew it was there. It was a private thing, unbearably intimate. At first it had been so of necessity. Now it was so of old habit, and an unnamable something else that said this is mine; this I will keep.
This clear quiet morning in late November he flexed his fingers and tightened them again as he sat at his desk. Snow before nightfall, without doubt, clouds or no. He tried another flex and drummed his fingers, watching them, assaulted against his will, as he was throughout every winter, by the body's long and unforgiving memory.
"Bet you won't."
"Bet I will."
Remus rolled his eyes at the exchange. "Will you two please shut the hell up," he murmured. "You're throwing Peter's concentration clean off. He's likely to blow us all to pieces." As if in confirmation of his words, an unpromising belch of smoke issued from his partner's cauldron. Professor Guffries two tables away cocked a brow at them, sighed and turned away, making a study of Lucinda Keeble's cauldron instead.
"Very good, Miss Keeble, very good. Excellent work," he said in his wispy little voice. "Ah, Mr. Andrews, and where have we gone wrong?"
The hapless Andrews chewed his lip.
"Bet you won't," James muttered.
"Oh, for..." Remus began.
"I'm going to do it." Sirius reached inside his robes and thunked a small vial on the table, carefully screened behind the mountain of beetle legs Peter had spent the entire period chopping. Vainly, as they weren't required until the next stage, which they weren't going to get to this lesson anyway, but no one had stopped him. Peter busy preparing ingredients was a far less dangerous creature than Peter engaged in the active brewing of N.E.W.T.-level potions.
"Sirius," Remus tried again in his most prefectly voice. "Surely even you know better than to think you'll get away with that."
Sirius flashed him a grin. "This didn't come cheap, Professor Lupin, and I'm not about to waste it. It's not like I can just keep it around forever, you know. It's a very volatile substance. Carpe diem, St. George for England, and all that." James hid his laugh behind a cough.
"Oh, help," Peter moaned. "Please, I think I've got it all wrong, and he's heading this way."
"What makes you think you've got it wrong, Wormtail?" James teased. "The green smoke, or the orange sludge?"
"Oh, very funny, very bleeding hilarious," Peter hissed in a fury. "You three have been skiving off –"
"Hey!" Remus interjected.
"All right, you two have been skiving off all lesson, and now I'm the one that's going to get in trouble because no one will help me, and..."
"Oh, calm down, Peter," Sirius said, scooting over to investigate the contents of his friend's cauldron. "And it's not skiving off because we did our own work and neglected to do yours too." But he accompanied his words with a lopsided smile at Peter, who glowed under it. With a quick hand Sirius sifted the powdered bicorn horn into the sorry-looking mixture, stirring it quickly in with a drop of the Harpy urine.
"What will that do?" Peter whimpered.
"Nothing that this potion ought to. But it will make it the right colour, and if we're lucky Guffries won't ask you to test it."
"Oh, hurry, he's almost here." Peter was in an agony, wringing his hands and practically hopping from foot to foot.
"Grace under fire, that's you, Wormtail," James sighed. Professor Guffries was at the next table over now, where its sole occupant was standing stiffly by his potion.
"Mr. Snape," Guffries was saying with distaste, and the four at the opposite table fell still like hounds tensing for the signal, sensing, with varying degrees of delight, the impending kill.
"Mr. Snape. What, pray tell, is this?"
Snape's beak bent over his cauldron. "It is the Felix Iungis potion, also known as the Binding potion, that enables two dissimilar substances..."
"I know perfectly well the function of that potion, Mr. Snape," Guffries barked, his reedy voice gone a bit higher than usual, even. "I want to know what your assignment was at the beginning of this hour."
The rest of the class had turned to listen, now, the general low hub-bub of potions class quieting at the prospect. Getting reamed by Guffries was known, even in the lower years, as being "Snaped;" not many would miss a chance to witness the original article.
Guffries was leaning closer, and the calm in his voice boded ill for Snape, who remained resolutely staring at the table.
"What was the assignment, Mr. Snape?"
Snape blinked, his error only now, apparently, dawning on him. "It was...we were to prepare the initial stages of the Felix Iungis potion," he said quietly.
"Precisely!" the little man screeched, a stray fleck of spittle flying off his lower lip to land on the cauldron's rim. "And what is it that you have done, Mr. Snape?"
Snape's hands began to fidget. "I...the completed Felix Iungis. Sir," he added half-heartedly, knowing as well as the rest of them it was a useless gesture.
"In other words, Mr. Snape," Professor Guffries bellowed at his eyeballs, "you have not done the assignment! You have, in fact, completely ignored the assignment in favour of your own conceited and pointless little project, convinced, as always, that you know best and that your teacher's opinion, as well as the assignment at hand, is utterly immaterial! Would you say that is a fair assessment of your performance in this class today?"
Not to right or left did Snape turn his head. "Yes, sir," he said in a voice barely above a whisper.
Guffries reared back, apparently dissatisfied with Snape's lack of defiance. "All right then," he said at last, his eyes darting between Snape's still face and the cauldron."All right. Now clean this slop up." And with that he gave the cauldron a little shove across the table, away from them. Boiling potion sloshed onto the table and dripped down to the floor. Snape reached forward, but Sirius was faster. Like lightning he vaulted over the aisle.
"Allow me, Professor," he said deferentially, bending down, cloth in hand.
"Mr. Black. Helpful as always. Thank you, thank you." He began to move across the aisle to the next cauldron, where Peter stood quaking.
"Not at all, sir." With a quick and easy motion the mess was wiped up, and his hand passed for the barest fraction of a second over the cauldron. He could have been wiping stray liquid off the rim. Snape did not look up as Sirius sauntered back to his place across the aisle.
"Ah, Mr. Pettigrew, you have made great strides, I see. With Mr. Lupin's help, naturally, but still, your effort has paid off. Great strides. Yes indeed. And Mr. Potter, as always you and Mr. Black have... what the... ?"
A suspicious looking smoke had begun to roil out of Snape's cauldron. Snape was frowning, fanning at it with his hands, glancing round in desperate puzzlement. His gaze landed on Sirius's smirking face, and his eyes widened even as Guffries bore down on him.
"Mr. Snape! What on earth have you done? What new incompetence is this? Have you completely..." Guffries got no further. The cauldron exploded in a great roar and rush of blue-green flame and choking smoke that swallowed both Snape and the Potions master.
"So."
Sirius watched as the headmaster replaced his cup on its saucer with a faint displeased chink. "We find ourselves in this position once again, Sirius."
Sirius studied the carpet.
"What is it, Sirius," the headmaster began, steepling his fingers, "about the presence of Mr. Snape that renders you so. . . unable to control your worse impulses?"
He wanted to swallow, but feared how loud it would sound. He had never feared his father – or his considerable displeasure, or that displeasure's inevitable eruption in violence – more than he feared the headmaster's gentleness. It unstrung him, and always had. It wasn't so much that he feared the flash of disappointment in those pale blue eyes. It was that they were disappointed all the time, every time they rested on him, and yet the gentleness never changed.
Professor Dumbledore reached into his desk drawer and placed a small empty vial on his desk, watching it. "Professor McGonagall tells me she found this," he said mildly. "Does this belong to you?"
Sirius blinked, but not for a moment did he consider lying. "Yes, sir," he said.
"I see." Dumbledore's eyes were watchful on him again, waiting for. . . what? Sirius never could figure it. "You sabotaged Severus's potion with an extremely volatile and dangerous substance that caused an explosion. An explosion, I might add, that could have done grave injury to both Professor Guffries and Severus." He cocked his head. "Why would you do such a thing, Sirius?" He might have been asking why Sirius preferred vanilla ice to chocolate.
"It..." He closed his mouth abruptly. "I apologise, sir. I accept full responsibility for what happened." He darted a glance at the headmaster's face, but curiously, the displeasure had deepened. He had thought Dumbledore would be appreciative of his deference. The quiet in the headmaster's study lengthened and grew heavier; little metallic ticks and whirrs murmured from the shelves.
"Very well, Sirius. You may go."
He raised startled eyes. "Really?""Of course." He waved his hand, and Sirius sprang up. Could it really be that easy? A little circumspect insincerity, a sober-faced apology. . . was he off, then? His hand was on the knob when the headmaster's voice stopped him.
"You will of course be serving detention tonight, Sirius. With Professor Guffries. And I will expect a report from Professor Guffries on your deportment."
Sirius shut his eyes and set his mouth. "Yes, sir," he said, and wrenched the door open.
Well, he thought, every cloud had its silver lining. The explosion might technically have been Sirius's fault, but Guffries had been in such a spitting apoplectic rage that he had screeched at Snape in a voice Sirius was quite certain only dogs could hear. Quite the sight he had been, too, his grey tufts of hair standing completely vertical on his shiny head, his plump smoke-smudged face contorted in fury. Guffries was a good sort, but over-excitable. It had ended with Slytherin minus about seventy points, and Snape with a string of detentions to serve. With any luck, they would be with Filch.
So when Sirius shoved back the door of the Potions dungeon at half past seven and saw not Professor Guffries, but Snivellus, standing before a cauldron, dicing something, he gave an inward howl and an outward snort. He slammed his books down on the nearest worktable.
"What are you doing here, Snivellus?"
He didn't get a reply, but then, he hadn't expected one. All term it had been like this, ever since the fuck-up at the Shrieking Shack, end of last year. Instead of the hissing, snarling thing Snivellus had been, he had acquired this slimy new malevolence, and a look in his eyes that Sirius recognised. It was the way he himself looked at his father in a towering rage; it was contempt, and it drove him wild, made him want to grab Snape and beat him until the blood gushed from his over-large nose and his face was an even uglier hash than it already was.
"Where the hell is Guffries?"
Snape continued to ignore him. Fine, then. He debated whether he ought to just leave, but even Guffries might not be able to ignore blatant ditching of a detention assigned by the headmaster himself. Not that he wouldn't try, of course. Guffries would bend his round little body over on itself to do his Gryffindors good, and he would never have believed Sirius had had anything to do with this afternoon's debacle if it hadn't been for McGonagall, of that Sirius was sure.Sirius sighed and stretched himself out in one of the chairs. He yawned and affected ease, though he couldn't be sure Snivellus was watching. Those eyes had got hard to read these days. He stretched again, twisting his neck the other way, and his eyes caught sight of the board. Ah. That was the reason for Snivelly's quietness. Hoping he wouldn't see the assignment and might get penalised. Well, keep hoping. He squinted to read the tiny precise hand covering the board and quietly groaned. Guffries had set them – no, Snape – what looked like a bitch of potion to make. He hadn't known, in all likelihood, that Sirius would be joining them tonight when he set that assignment, or he never would have chosen it.
It was impossible, a potion that would take them until midnight at the very least, and then only if no mistakes were made. One of those potions so complex he wasn't even sure he knew what it did, or that it had any purpose beyond the torture of students. He sighed and pulled a cauldron toward him. He had about an hour of dicing and chopping to do, it looked like. Briefly he considered bashing Snape on the head for his ingredients, but he recoiled at the inelegance of it. With another sigh he collected his herbs and insect parts from the piles on the center worktable. Fuck all, but he was going to be here all night. And Guffries was probably asleep anyway. Damn it to hell, if it wasn't for the headmaster's final remark about checking on his "deportment". . . . .
They worked in silence, as far away from one another as they could get. It wasn't actually an impossible potion, Sirius reflected, just a really annoying and time-consuming one that involved way too much manual labour to be worth it. Probably why Guffries had chosen it in the first place. Snape worked doggedly for the first hour, not once looking up. Sirius had given up hope of Guffries ever making an appearance when the door from the office swung open, making both boys start. Guffries lurched in.
And really, lurched was the word for it. Was he ill? No, not ill, Sirius thought. Drunk. The Guffer was dead drunk. Sirius smothered a grin as Guffries wove to his desk, hiccuping slightly. The afternoon's excitement must have told on the poor old bastard.
"Good evening, gentlemen," he hicced. "Carry on, carry on." He waved an airy hand and began to bang and rummage at the shelves next to his desk. Sirius watched him for a bit, wondering if there were a polite way to suggest that potion-brewing might not be the wisest activity right now. He decided against it, and plowed resolutely ahead. Snape, as far as he could tell, hadn't so much as looked up.
Guffries' day was continuing, apparently, to go downhill. He was muttering to himself as he stumbled around, preparing his ingredients, pausing to shoot malevolent glances every now and again in Snape's direction. After a glare Snape-wards, the muttering would become louder.
Sirius tried to work out what exactly Guffries was doing from careful glances at the pile of ingredients assembled at his desk. He frowned. What could he want with the leafy hellebore? That was most often used to counteract the effect of hallucinogens, and bring one out of. . . well, naturally. Of course. A sobering potion. Sirius hid another smile and continued to chop and poke and stir.
Those most in need of such a potion, however, were seldom in a position to brew it competently, and Sirius watched as Guffries sweated and puffed and generally lost the thread of what he was supposed to be doing. His florid face got redder, the sweat glistened on his balding head, and his mutterings became louder and distinctly more off-colour. When at last he spoke, his voice had an unpleasant thickness to it."Mr. Snape."
Severus froze. "Yes sir."
"What did you do with my herb mallet?"
Sirius watched Severus blink in that slow turtle-like way he had. "I...nothing, sir."
"Don't lie to me, boy!" Guffries bellowed, a drop of sweat landing on his desk. "I know perfectly well you've taken my herb mallet, and you have the effrontery...the audacity...the unmitigated...unadulterated..." He untangled himself and re-settled on familiar ground. "I might have known better than to trust my laboratory to a Slytherin," he spat, hissing on the final word. "You return my mallet this instant, you thieving little pissant, or I'll see that the money this school gives you..." He stopped abruptly as his eye lit on something at his feet. With a wobble, he bent to retrieve it. It was the mallet. "Hmph," he said, darting a look at Snape. "Thought you could sneak it back over here, and I wouldn't know the difference, eh? Well?"
Snape opened his mouth, then shut it, eyes firmly on his cauldron. "No, sir," he said faintly.
Guffries snatched up a huge bundle of hellebore from a basket next to the desk. "It's like I've been telling the headmaster," he continued in a surly mutter. "Admitting students who can't pay will only lead to an increase of thievery and criminality. Lying and stealing and filching. . . nasty rotten little urchins, the lot of your kind. . ." He trailed off, examining his hellebore. Sirius frowned. He didn't have to look up to know what Snape's face would look like.
But Guffries was done, apparently, because he started in on the hellebore with vigour. He swung his pulverising mallet with rather more enthusiasm than accuracy, and the oversized metal head glanced ringing off the slate countertop more than once.
Sirius glanced at the clock. Nine thirty. Good God, he wasn't even half way through with his potion. And Snape may have started before he did, but he didn't appear to be that much further along. This was excruciating.
After fifteen more minutes, Guffries raised his head from his potion, now simmering quietly, and narrowed his eyes at Snape. "Wha'd you do with that viburnum extract, boy?"
A pause."Nothing, sir."
Sirius watched contemptuously. Snivellus got this look about him, when Guffries was on him, like if he didn't make any sudden moves Guffries might leave off him. It was pathetic.
"Tha's the second lie you've told me tonight," Guffries snarled. "Haven't you learned your lesson yet? But disrespect, I suppose, means nothing to you, not after attempting to murder your teacher," he panted. "In hospital, I almost was," he said, mopping his brow with his handkerchief. "Could have been wounded. . . blinded. . . but no, Dumbledore knows best. . ."
"It wasn't my fault."
Sirius froze. Guffries stopped his mopping and tightened his eyes on Snape. "What did you say, boy?"
"I said, it wasn't my fault."
Sirius would not have thought Snape could keep his voice so steady. He'd never seen anyone actually commit suicide in his presence before, and the prospect looked to be interesting. He turned down the fire on his cauldron and watched as Guffries stalked down from his desk to Snape's worktable. Guffries held him in his beady gaze, but this time Snape's eyes did not drop. Interesting, indeed.
"Repeat that," Guffries whispered.
"I should think, sir, that you heard me perfectly well," Snape said in a rush. "The explosion this afternoon was Black's fault; he sabotaged my potion and made it explode, and the headmaster knows it. That's why he's here, and the whole school knows it. He's the one you ought to be punishing, not me, and furthermore..."
"Silence!" Guffries roared, his round face quivering.
Jesus. Had Snape suffered brain damage this afternoon?
"You will not open your slime-filled insolent mouth in my presence again, Snape!" A fountain of spit was spattering from Guffries' fury-twisted mouth; it appeared to be a race to the finish, whether Guffries would stroke out before he could kill Snape. "You will keep your eyes and your mind on your work, which you have plenty of, I should think, and tomorrow I'm marching straight to the headmaster to tell him exactly what ought to be done..."
"I'm finished, sir," Snape replied in a voice that seemed to have grown in calmness. He stepped back from his cauldron slightly, and Guffries frowned, peering down at it. Sirius frowned, too; Snape must have been working like the very devil to have finished that potion in that amount of time.
A little smile was on Guffries' face as he straightened. "Oh no, you're not," he said, and with the mallet still clutched in his hand, he carefully pushed the hot cauldron on its side until every drop of the bubbling stuff had splatted thickly on the floor. Sirius watched slack-jawed.
"Whoops," Guffries said mildly.
There was no colour left in Snape's face. For good measure, Guffries whacked the cauldron with his mallet. It rang dully and clattered to the floor, rolling at Snape's feet.
"Pick it up, boy," hissed Guffries.
Sirius watched Snape hesitate, watched the internal battle. He cut his eyes down to his own potion, suddenly sick of watching.
"No," he heard.
The loud smack of the backhand froze him in place. Oh, fuck. Oh, Jesus. That he had never seen before, not in six and a half years. No teacher had ever touched a student in his presence before. You heard about it happening, sure, but in legends and whispered tales of bloody canings and apocalyptic rebelliousness; never this pointless, this sordid. He dared a glance at Snape, who was standing ramrod straight, his eyes fixed somewhere just beyond Guffries.
"Pick it up. Now."
"No."
Smack.
Sirius was the one who flinched this time. Holy fuck, he thought. Fucking, fucking shit. Guffries must be drunk off his ever-living arse if he thought he was going to get away with this. And then with a sickening twist in his stomach he knew precisely why Guffries thought he would get away with it; because, after all, it was just Snape's word against a professor's. Guffries was reckoning on his silence. He clenched his jaw and shut his eyes.
"Pick it up, you pathetic little sneak!"
"No."
Smack.
Fuck it all, why wouldn't Snape just pick up the goddamned cauldron? He saw Guffries open his mouth to ask the question again, and saw in a flash that there would be no end to this, to Guffries' drunken insistence and Snape's crazed defiance. Obviously Snape had suffered some sort of psychotic break this afternoon, and the best thing for everybody would be to get him carted off to St. Mungo's as soon as possible.
Quickly Sirius darted underneath the worktable and grabbed the cauldron, thunking it back on the table in front of them. Guffries was startled off rhythm, as was Snape, apparently. The round bottomed cauldron wobbled slightly, and instinctively Snape edged a hesitant hand forward to steady it. Guffries saw his opportunity and seized it. With a deadly precision he had not displayed earlier he swung the heavy ridged mallet and landed it square on the long-boned hand as it inched across the table.
Rage, Sirius discovered, felt white.
Time seemed to slow and fracture, and he became aware of several things at once. He saw the blood flush out of Snape in a wave, and watched him sway under the shock of the blow; he heard a crunching sound which he knew beyond doubt to be the bones in Snape's hand; and he felt a splatter of blood on his left cheekbone as a gleeful Guffries lifted the gory mallet.
The next instant Guffries was shoved on his back, staring startled up at Sirius."You fucker," Sirius said, voice shaking. "You keep away from him."
Comprehension crossed Guffries' face, and renewed rage. He scrambled to his feet, hand fumbling for his wand, but he wasn't quick enough.
"Expelliarmus!" two voices cried together, and Guffries flew backwards, colliding with his desk with a flat thud and sliding to the floor in a motionless heap.
Time resumed its normal pace, and Sirius only just managed to catch Snape as he swayed into the table. "Easy there," he said, and knew Snape really must be about to pass out when he made no attempt to push him off, but let himself be eased into a chair.
"I don't believe it," he murmured as Sirius guided him down. "We attacked a teacher."
"Yeah, well," Sirius said grimly. "It's not as though he's likely to remember. Come on, let's have a look at that hand." Snape was cradling it on his other arm, hugging it to him.
"No, it's. .I'm fine," he whispered.
"Are you insane? He smashed every bone in your goddamn hand with that fucking thing. How it is you're conscious I don't know. We've got to get you to Madam Pomfrey, right now."
"No!" Snape turned fevered eyes on him. "No. I can. . . take care of it myself. Just. . . forget about it, Black. Just go on and leave me alone."
Sirius frowned. "Snape, don't be stupider than God made you. You have a major injury there, and if you don't want to lose your hand you'll get your arse to the infirmary now, you idiot."
"Shut up, Black," he said through gritted teeth. "I'm perfectly aware of the nature of my injury. Exactly what do you propose," he panted, "that I...we...say to Madam Pomfrey about how I hurt my hand?"
"Tell her the truth, of course. Guffries'll get what he has coming and there's an end of it."
"He won't be sacked," Snape said softly. "He won't be. Oh, fuck." He bowed his head and bent over his hand as the endorphins, Sirius supposed, wore off and the pain hit him. "Listen," he managed. "We have to just...forget...this whole thing...ever happened. We might not...be punished...but Guffries will still...be here. I can't...oh, fuck," he breathed again.
Sirius swallowed. He watched Snape rock back and forth, hunched over his hand, and weighed the possibilities. This was, after all, his second assault of the day on Professor Guffries, a fact the headmaster was not likely to ignore. And while Guffries had needed to be stopped, he wasn't actually sure that what Guffries had been doing was, by the school's by-laws, technically illegal. Supposing it wasn't? Perhaps they were all better off pretending this had never happened, if Guffries would let it lie. And he suspected there were parts of the evening that the fat little bastard would prefer to conceal, anyway. He frowned and took his wand out. "Look," he said. "Look. I took Elementary Healing last term with Madam Pomfrey, when I was thinking I might like to be a mediwizard. Let me...I don't know, I might be able to do something."
Cautiously, and with a muffled groan, Snape drew out his hand. Sirius controlled his wince and bent to examine the bloody mess. He shook his head. "Fuck, Snape. I don't know if there's anything I can do. We learned bone-mending but I never had anyone to actually practise on. Are you sure you don't want..."
"Just do something, and quit yammering, you cretin," Snape moaned.
"Fine, then. Hold still." He aimed his wand and concentrated, dredging up the spells from memory. He had always been able to rely on his near-eidetic memory, and it served him well now. He sensed the satisfying tingle of a successful healing spell, and peered down at Snape's hand. Well. Slightly successful, anyway.
"That's the best I can do, I'm afraid. How does it feel?"
Snape gingerly flexed his hand and winced. "Not...so good."
"Yeah. Well. Like I said, Healing was not really for me."
"So noted. What made you decide against it?"
"Sick people," Sirius frowned. "I don't really like them."
Snape shot him a look, then gave a bark of a laugh. Sirius grinned. Well I'll be damned, he thought. Look at that.
"Come on, Snape, let's get out of here. I'd stay to clean this up, but I think the sooner we flee, the better. No telling when Sleeping Beauty will wake up for round two."
"Right," Snape said, rising slowly. "Right."
"You're welcome, by the way."
"I'm. . . what?"
"You're welcome. For kicking Guffries' arse for you."
"You. . . you unbelievably conceited little prick. I wouldn't even have been here if it weren't for you and your...how dare you...why, I had the situation completely under control...""Yeah, that was some plan you had going there. Just keep saying 'no' until he beats you into a pulp. Strategy is not really your long suit, is it." He met Snape's eyes and let the corner of his mouth turn up in a small smile.
Snape cocked his head at him and blinked as though trying to decipher Sirius's expression. Slowly, he scowled, and the absence of a hissed curse told Sirius that this was, for Snape, the equivalent of an answering smile. Or as close as he would get.
"I suppose not," he said. "No, I. . . suppose not, at that. Well. Good night, then, Black."
"Good night then, Snape."
Snape sighed and dipped his quill, flexing his left hand in his lap. He squinted out his window at the iron grey of the sudden clouds, heavy with impending snow. He took another sip of lukewarm tea and bent to his marking again. He scratched and scowled in silence for some time, ignoring the mewling cat's insistent push against his ankles, kicking it away. After a bit he tossed his quill aside and rubbed his neck. If it wasn't pain in one place, it was another; the best he could ever hope for was to keep it in one place at a time. Today was not such a fortunate day.
He rose and stretched himself on the hard narrow sofa beside the desk, arranging himself for a brief nap, toying with the idea of taking a pain potion first. No, he decided, let it be.
He frowned and twisted, trying to find a comfortable position. Get an hour's nap, maybe, then more marking before dinner; perhaps he could get through the fourth years by then. Could do seventh years tomorrow, which shouldn't take nearly as much time.He shifted one last time, settling stiffly into an uneasy doze. Yes, definitely snow before nightfall, he thought. And a hard freeze. A hard winter all around, it was going to be, not that they were ever easy. And they were getting harder, it seemed; or perhaps it was just that he was getting older. Or perhaps the winter was getting older, and he was getting harder.
He woke with a start to a darkened room and the sudden awareness of having overslept. He stumbled up and caught the glister of white out the window, frowning at it. So soon, then. He shivered in the chilled room, cursing himself for not having stoked the fire before his nap. His rooms were impossible to heat; the only way to survive the winter was to keep a veritable Yule blaze going twenty-four hours a day until April. He rubbed a diamond pane of the window with his hand and peered out. First snow. Odd, the exuberance it always sparked in the castle; he could hear, now, the faint stompings and shouts as the students streamed out of doors in the waning light to frolic and caper in all that irresistible pristine whiteness. He snorted. Idiots. He turned to the fireplace and threw on two more logs. Didn't they know, he mused, that the snow changed nothing? It only covered over the deadness, so they didn't have to look at it.
He grabbed his heavier robe from the back of the chair and wrapped himself in it, settling himself back at the desk. With perseverance, he could still get another hour's work in before bedtime.
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