𝐒𝐀𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄 || Severus Snape x OC ||

5. OF SCARS & WOUNDS

*.·:·.☽ ✧ ☾.·:·.*

When she had awoken in his arms, her eyes still fighting against the blurriness that surrounded her, bathed under his warmth, his scent, and his darkness, sprawled on the cold, stone floor, her breathing eased feeling her lungs take in the air with assuring rhythm, but her heart pounded in its cage as she met his gaze. His black pools were piercing through her and burned in a way she had never seen in another human. The echoes of woes and emotions which had nothing to do with the horror she had experienced moments ago when her trauma took over. Haunting emotions deep within that she had never felt before, except perhaps when looking at the waters of the Black Lake and their fathomless depths. Such was the intensity and depth of his gaze. Two black pools, vortexes of withheld and hidden emotions swirling and drawing her, pulling her by invisible threads. Her mind was barren of thoughts as she looked at the man arching above her figure. Not even a whisper of a thought, of a sound, of anything, was there for her as he bled out his a river of agony and despair from the depths of his black oceans, without moving or uttering a single word.

She blinked and parted her lips ever so slightly. After that, his eyes changed. As if walls of thorns and stone rose from the depths of his dark pools, barricading the last droplet of emotion behind a fortress, as the harsh lines of his face turned prominent. No more than a gentle caress of a rock, like those of the Black Lake, instead of the bleeding wound of feelings she had found in his gaze merely a moment ago. His lips pressed. His body had stiffened. His hands felt different beneath her form. Yet it was those black eyes that kept her lost in her returning thoughts.

He rose from the kneeling position he had held her and helped her stand up on her feet. One hand picked up the wand from the floor and held it, the other barely touching her on her back. Stiff and closed, Snape made sure she can stand just as Filch and McGonagall appeared at the door, in their nightrobes. Each awoken from Alice's horrifying screams.

"For goodness' sake, what is the matter?" Minerva's voice sounded worried, and Snape turned abruptly, looking at the pair over his shoulder. He straightened his back further and took a step back, away from Alice who was struggling to get a grip of reality.

Snape's eyes caught McGonagall's and he nodded towards the door.

"Stay here" he ordered Alice in a low voice before his long strides took him to McGonagall and the dungeon's door closed. Alice brought her hands close to herself as if to cover her chest. The wound of her wrist was aching still and had turned a flushed red. She tried to rub it, but it turned worse, stinging her.

She covered it with the fabric of her clothes and turned her attention to the subtle whispers from behind the door. She knew they were talking about her and that frustrated her even more. Scared her, even more. It terrified her that it almost felt as if everyone knew something about her that she knew not. The headmaster, especially. Why did he insist that she, a complete outsider, had to stay in this castle? Why didn't he speak unless it was in riddles and sayings? What did he know that she didn't? Why were these nightmares getting worse each day, each night that she spent in here? And Snape? What was there that he, too, knew and she didn't? Why was he switching from stone-cold and bitter to the cascading river of emotions that brought her back moments ago? What-what did I do? She asked herself in vain, struggling to recall what happened and how she ended up escaping from the nightmare, waking up in his arms. Fear crept into her heart again, but this time, this time its needles couldn't pierce right through her heart. Fear's claws couldn't scratch her and bleed her as they used to. A part of her, a tiny part of her, felt stronger. As if assured in a manner she could not explain, assured by him.

She shook her head, trying to make sense of it all. Scared, confused, baffled.

She tried to hear the indistinct whispers from behind the closed door, without moving towards it. She tried to hear the conversation; what was perhaps decided, what happened to her, whether she had broken another rule.