𝐒𝐀𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄 || Severus Snape x OC ||

31. VIPER'S KISS

*.·:·.☽ ✧ ☾.·:·.*

"Can't you think?" Draco snarled at his henchman, and though twice the size of the Malfoy boy, Goyle shrunk like a battered dog.

"I told you to fetch this"—he hoisted the silver Death Eater mask he had found moments ago in Alice's things— not the whole bloody trunk!" The carved metal of the mask shone in the blond boy's hand under the light of the torches.

"Sorry—" Goyle mumbled under the echo of Draco's sneer.

"Put it back. The headmistress needs to see this," he flipped the mask in his hand.

"Should we come along?" his henchmen asked, still trying to hold Alice's things in their arms.

"Certainly not!" Draco curled his lip. No, this pleasure he'd savour on his own. Besides, sharing wasn't one of his attributes and he wanted all the praise and credit for this find for himself. He shot a glance at the two large boys as if they were nothing but piles of manure. Useful in some cases, but too dull for anything else.

Crabbe and Goyle nodded in silent defeat and watched as Draco walked away, making his way towards the Headmistress's office. They shrugged at each other and hoisted up the opened trunk, carrying it back to the Ravenclaw dormitory.

The eleven-year-old student, whom Draco had frightened enough to open the common room for them, was still there, all shaky and waiting for the bullies to be done with whatever they had to do and finally let him go.

"Hey look at that!" Crabbe chuckled as a sheer stocking slid out of the opened trunk and fell upon the staircase. The undergarment drew Goyle's attention in the blink of an eye and he paid little mind as the trunk almost slipped from his hands. His plump rosy cheeks shook from the guilty laughter of stealing a peep and laying hands on something of a young woman's private possessions.

They dragged themselves up to the dormitory, dumping the trunk where they had found it, and shoving back into it the sheer stocking. Their chuckles and heavy steps echoed in the emptiness of the tower as they descended it, pushing aside a little house elf that was making her way up the stairs, shakingly, to clean up and care for the common room and dormitory of the Ravenclaw tower.

The house elf let out a whimper and curled up against the wall, trembling and covering her eyes. But Crabbe and Goyle, when they pushed her in the staircase, had little care for her old elvish bones, and her acrophobia, that made her feel paralyzed by fear when she almost lost her balance.

Her little curled-up body unfolded slowly, and she peeked through her trembling fingers at the boys, now almost vanished in the spiral staircase. She shut her eyes feeling dizzy from the view and from gulping down far more butterbeer than her little body could handle, no matter the strength of the elven magic and blood in her veins.

"Winky must...Winky must go up... Don't be a disgrace again Winky..." she mumbled to herself and almost walking on all fours, she started climbing up the stairs again.

But as she made her way up, half covering her eyes out of her fear for edges and heights, her little feet stumbled upon something hard, but not as painful as stone. Her lingering thoughts of her former masters and her beloved Barty Crouch Jr., and all the pain she had suffered from that family's demise, dissolved as the unexpected finding pulled her momentarily out of her depression.

She glanced down and her bony, shaky elvish hands reached for a book. Old and tattered, having fallen upon the steps of the stairs where Crabbe and Goyle had previously stood and held the half-opened trunk of the raven-haired witch.

"Advanced Potions Making..." Winky tilted her head to the side and leafed the book.

"Half-Blood Prince?" the tips of her long ears shook ever slightly by the motion of her head, and she sighed looking down at the path it had taken her such an effort to climb up. She didn't know of any student that called himself like that. But, at least, if she were to climb down towards the Potions classroom to leave the book there for the right student to find, she could also head back to the kitchens and find a little more liquid courage in a bottle of butterbeer. A hiccup from her tiny body echoed ever faintly in the tower's staircase, and Winky braced against the wall, taking each step slowly, carefully, shakingly, down the spiral of the staircase.