Certain Dark Things || Book Five

xxxiv. dwindling youth

No matter how many times he washed his hands, Severus couldn't get the blood off.

Visibly, the remnants had long since dwindled down the drain, leaving his hands as pale and clammy as a dead fish under the faucet's icy deluge. The red had disappeared from his nails, from his palm's lifelines, he'd even gotten it out of his cuff. That particular stain had left a vague discoloration against the white fabric in the distinct shape of a fingerprint.

But the blood was still there. It lingered.

Tears gathered and clumped black eyelashes, green eyes downcast, the whites tinged red—.

"I don't care about myself."

He could feel the impression of words under his fingertips, ragged valleys and hills, slashes bearing down into the bones like the careless carving of a child's hand using a penknife to leave their initials on a tree's side—.

Severus twisted the handle until the faucet shut off, and the last of the water gurgled in the sink. He lifted his gaze to the mirror and studied the hard, exhausted face reflected there.

He might be in Azkaban by morning.

A shuddering breath escaped him, and Severus ground his teeth, counting the seconds he inhaled and held the air in his chest. His head swam. His hands shook and curled into wet, cold fists.

Slytherin's fingers slid against the girl's neck, his mouth to her ear, the obscene hissing of an animal escaping his curled lips. Crimson eyes flicked to Severus, glittering with sadistic humor. Potter leaned away but couldn't move, couldn't escape—.

Severus shut his eyes, leaning forward until his forehead met the mirror's cold surface.

Be logical, he sneered in his own mind. My emotions don't control me. They're nothing. Disconnected, floating. Nothing there—.

Behind his closed eyelids, he saw the girl's tired face again. He could feel her hand shaking in his own, cold and as substantial as dust.

"I don't care about myself."

He'd looked into the face of a young woman only a shadow of her former self, a wizened replica of the girl who'd arrived at Hogwarts bursting with enthusiasm and snark. She'd grown gray, the color leached from her, warmth dwindling. Wet eyelashes haloing quiet eyes. Cold, weightless hands. Scars peeling back bloodless skin, encircling her like a shackle—.

Tom Riddle was killing her. The Ministry was. Dumbledore. Him.

He leaned off the mirror, pressing his hand there instead to lever himself farther away, leaving streaks of water on the glass. His Occlumency shields writhed.

A grating, high-pitched cough, the tap-tap of nails on a clipboard. "Progress for progress' sake—."

Slytherin's hand colliding with the girl's burnt cheek, Sangfort's grip on Severus' robes, keeping him in place, keeping him from taking that final step forward—.

Albus Dumbledore looked at Severus from across his desk, something like sadness in his blue eyes—.

"Harriet will not always be fourteen, Severus."

"Yes, thank you, Headmaster. I am aware of how time operates."

"Then you understand we cannot simply discount her role in proceedings because of her youth—."

A youth spent like coins on dead eyelids, paying passage for past guilt from the moment she came into this world—.

He traced untidy letters scrawled in the margins of a Muggle book. "No one is beyond redemption but for those too cowardly to seek it—."