I Was Younger Then

Parched

Snape gave Penny a room at the far end of the upstairs. From what she could work out, his room was on the opposite and nearest the stairs, but she'd never seen inside. Snape came and went frequently in the evenings, though he never made any mention of where he was going. Penny tried hard not to imagine him in a Death Eater's mask, but the thought pricked at the back of her mind every time she watched his black cloak billow behind him as he departed.

Part of Penny also worried there could come a day where that cloak would depart and not return. It was hard sometimes for Penny to accept that Snape lived in a pocket so near the person who took so much from her. She did not want Voldemort to take Snape too, did not want to think of Snape bowing to Voldemort and calling him Lord. But voicing these feelings was pointless, and broached on a topic Penny was sure Snape would not openly discuss with her. So, she tried very hard to bury the feelings, not wanting him to read them on her.

It was easier said than done, Snape never missed anything, a product of always being on alert for the misdeeds of guilty students. He made the point of bidding her farewell when he was leaving, watching her closely from the doorway of the small living space upstairs (where Penny could usually be found in the evenings because she was still averse to sleeping.)

Penny would have liked very much if her heart didn't pound in her chest and her startle reflexes not jolt her every time he uttered his goodbyes, but they betrayed her every time. Unnaturally wide green eyes would move instinctively to the dark ones, watching him, her mouth half open, feeling very much as though she should say it back, but the words were too painful and she could not dislodge them from her chest, so she'd merely nod. And then he'd be gone, like a puff of smoke, there one moment, dispersed into the universe the next.

The quiet evenings were hard for Penny. She'd become reliant on the sounds of Snape to comfort her. When he was absent she could not distract herself by observing him or arguing with him. She was left to her own thoughts, which always drifted dangerously close to Cedric. Snape seemed to ascertain as much, probably by the fact he always found her resisting sleep when he returned in the early hours of the morning. One evening before leaving he brought her a large stack of books from his bookcases downstairs and left them for her to read. As was to be expected, Penny found numerous challenging academic works in the fields of potions and even some on the dark arts. Snape was correct in thinking Penny would not be able to keep her hands off of them, but some nights such challenging reads were not what she wanted. That's when she discovered the particular additions to the pile and titles she never would have believed Snape would offer her much-less own it himself. Penny found Peter Pan, A Room of One's Own and the Tales of Beedle the Bard hiding at the bottom of her pile.

Penny started with Peter Pan, having never seen or read the story before. Seeing as the Dursley hated anything to do with magic, they'd absolutely banned Peter Pan from their house, so Penny was intrigued. At first, she figured Snape just randomly threw the novel in to provide some variety, but the further she got into the book, the more suspicious she became that he'd done it on purpose. And then the night came when her tired eyes would scan over the first set of words that would reach into Penny's chest and squeeze her heart.

"Never say goodbye because goodbye means going away and going away means forgetting ."

Penny slammed the book shut and sprang to her feet and moved to the door. The house was dark, except for a few dim lights, but Penny did not care. She was more afraid of the feeling in her chest than what hid in the recesses of Snape's house. Groping blindly, Penny found the light in the kitchen and flicked it on. Her eyes naturally traveled to her right, landing on the door that led to Snape's basement. For a moment, Penny swore she heard something whispering from behind it, but shook the thought out of her head.