Potter's Girl / Butterfly Effect.

93. Snivellus Has Doubts

CHAPTER NINETY-THREE;

SNIVELLUS HAS DOUBTS

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"You really have no idea why I have called you into my office today."

"No, sir."

"Why don't I believe you?"

"No idea, sir."

Cassie held her ground firmly under the adamantine glare of Severus Snape, shaking her head no when appropriate and only speaking when spoken to.

For the first week or two, it had been difficult for her to keep her emotions in check and hold her tongue around Snape, but she slowly gained the hang of it. She still burned with anger every time she saw the man, but it was becoming easier to keep from lashing out around him.

Snape himself had not much changed since the year prior, surprisingly. Cassie had expected to return to the castle find the power-hungry man hunched over his desk in his Headmaster's office in his school, glare heavy and sneer ever-present. Cassie had anticipated and prepared for Snape's authoritarian nature to have been exponentially increased in the three months since she had seen him – not to mention his allies with the very Dark Lord Cassie was so adamantly trying to avoid.

"There's been an.. uprising, of sorts." Snape's voice was as dull as Cassie remembered it to be. Monotone and boring enough to put even a hyperactive toddler dosed with Weasley Wizard Wheezes' sweets to sleep. "I had a hunch that you may have some information, Delacour."

"No, sir," Cassie replied coolly. "I've been too busy with the monumental stacks of homework assigned to me by the Carrows."

Snape's eyes shut and opened as slowly, giving the air of a turtle in the way his blinks prolonged and lips pursed. "You haven't heard... whisperings?"

"None at all." Cassie shook her head. "May I go now? Speaking of homework, I really do have a load of it–"

"Not quite," Snape said, voice drawn out. He circled his desk, revealing the window behind it, and Cassie's gaze instantly averted to the view beyond the glass. It was grey outside; bleak and – if Cassie had to guess, as she was not outside herself – stuffy, the abhorrent type of weather wherein one was forced to carry an umbrella along with oneself in fear of rain that never actually came. It was as if the sky wished to mirror the dreary and desolate insides of the castle.

"Miss Delacour," Snape suddenly snapped, and Cassie realized he had been speaking while she had been gazing out the window, "are you listening to me?"

"No," Cassie replied plainly.

Snape's calculating eyes scrutinized her, and it felt the same as the feast, where he seemed to actually gaze into her mind and pick out her deepest secrets and darkest memories. She held back a shiver, suddenly uncomfortable.

"I said," continued Snape, "you have been extremely social amongst the Houses of Hogwarts, much unlike your other Housemates. I, or one of my other associates, have seen you with Lovegood, Weasley, and even Longbottom. I trust you to be daft enough that you're entirely oblivious of the antecedents of this group, b–"

"You've been spying on me, sir?" Cassie arched a blonde eyebrow challengingly, setting her jaw and cocking her chin in the slightest. Perhaps she was pushing her luck; Merlin only knew how much more gall Snape would allow when it came to Victoire Delacour.

   "Your imprudence is admirable." Snape's voice dripped with sardonicism. He surrounded the chair Cassie sat in slowly, taking leisure steps and eyeing her as though she were a bit of prey. "As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, it would do you well to cut ties between you and these volatile twits."