𝐒𝐀𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄 || Severus Snape x OC ||

7. THE PHOENIX & THE SNAKE

Snape paced to the dungeons, after the dinner at the Great Hall. His steps echoed in the lonesome flight of stairs as if the stone walls acknowledged his existence with each stride he took. The spiral shape seemed to go deep down in an abyss of stone until the darkness was devouring it completely. A faint heart would easily let the imagination carve out a monster lurking in that thick darkness that reached below ground.

A dragon... he thought. A few years ago, imagination wouldn't be needed to form a dragon, for a monster was indeed lurking in the shadows and the plumbing system of the centuries-old castle. Potter, with a little assistance from the Headmaster and his flame-coloured phoenix, had seen to the beast's demise. The King of Serpents. No beastly breath echoed again in the castle's walls.

He sneered at the thought of the Basilisk. And as he reached to the thick wooden door of his potion dungeon he glanced back at the abyss. Alluring, as magnetic as it was frightening. But not to him. The darkness of the castle never made him feel a splinter of fear. It lured him as all things obscured, dark and mysterious. All things that need to be understood, cultivated, acknowledged and worshiped in their own way. The obvious and bright were deprived of opportunity, of dimensions beyond those understood even by muggles. Such was the beauty of the darkness and the Dark Arts for him; no limits and no boundaries were there.

The lock echoed in the flickering candlelight and the door receded before him. The thought of the dragon lingered instead of flying off to where it had come from.

Soon... Quite soon.

He pushed the thought out of his mind and reached his shelves of hundred vials, big and small. Their new labels bearing Alice's handwriting were neatly placed upon each vial. A pensive gaze observed them, and he ran his thumb gently across one of the labeled vials. His skin grazed against the dried ink.

He drew in the air in a slow, steady breath.

"You will watch after the girl, Severus. There are things about herself she must not learn of yet." Dumbledore's words were final, as always. Cornering him to a task that he didn't ask for and binding him by the biggest mistake of his life that took place long ago yet felt like only yesterday.

The last thing Severus wanted was to have another dunderhead to look after, other than Potter. When the door of the Great Hall had parted last fall, and the new students walked in, he'd spotted the girl with little effort.

His fingers ran one more time against her handwritten label before he placed it back on the shelf.

Alice. Her pagan eyes, as he privately thought of those dark pools, seemed to hide the deepest nocturnal mysteries. He recalled her form, standing amongst the students. She didn't have the inherited arrogance Potter was sporting. Alice's gaze had something steady yet reserved, loud and silent at the same time.

He turned on his heel and reached his desk. His fists pressed their knuckles against the wood as he leaned his weight and supported himself against the desk. Dumbledore's brilliant mind and agenda.

Snape shouldn't care. In his life as a Death Eater, and a spy for Dumbledore, he had sacrificed enough souls for that agenda. Friends or foe, it mattered not anymore. And Wolfwind, Alice, was destined for the same fate. A tool against the Dark Lord. A weapon the Headmaster would somehow manipulate. And Snape was the one to keep her leash tight.

And he would have. He most certainly would have without a care or remorse; if he hadn't witnessed her collapse before him as she did the other night. But for all his stoic and rigid appearance, Severus couldn't banish that moment from his mind. The moment, the seconds when she screamed and something he had no power over consumed her whole.