The Princess and the Bloodstone

Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Professor Severus Snape was seated in his usual place at the Head Table, it was Saturday morning and he was absentmindedly pulling his spoon through the hardening oats in the figure eight. An uncomfortable knot in his stomach left him in no condition to consume food, for it was as if he recently got off a fast broom ride, his body still feeling like it was still speeding through the air even after he had touched down.

His thoughts were a whirlwind, unable to find rest. The previous evening had seemingly forked his entire life path.

Yet here he was, eating breakfast with the rest of the castle's inhabitants like it was any old Saturday. Which it was not. It felt like everyone knew what he'd done, and yet, everything but his blood pressure was the same.

Still, he bore a deep-seated suspicion toward the normalcy of today, almost expecting ministry officials, Sirius Black or perhaps even Molly Weasley to burst through the doors at any moment. At the same time, he was actively repressing visions of Dumbledore hunting him down for a terrible duel to the death. Perhaps a mob and a pyre.

There were only two of the last twenty-four hours that he had not a clear recollection of and that was because he had dozed off when the witch finally fell asleep in his bed. He mentally tread through the sequence of events again, unable to stop his tired thoughts from turning back to the hours he'd spent with Holly.

She lay curled on her side, black hair sprawled over his pillows like dark roots, gazing at him with those doe-eyes that haunted his dreams on the nights he prayed for sleep with his face buried in that very same pillow.

Like the hole from a missing tooth that your tongue can't stop finding over and over again, Severus was painfully aware of having developed a new dirty secret that he had to both carry and conceal along with the already toppling pile of secret sins.

Where is my breaking point? Severus didn't think he could take much more than this.

Perhaps this is it? Would this finally be his downfall? A witch? It only made sense that this was the beginning of the end, he felt it in his bones.

He was pulled back to reality by the cacophony of screeches from the morning's postal owls swooping through the rafters, he dug into the clumped oats again, not bothering to look up. Amid the stir of excitement, he was suddenly gripped by the need to somehow express his own turbulent emotions, and so he busied himself with digging his symbolic grave in the breakfast bowl.

When he was satisfied with the depth of the hole - a shallow grave was most appropriate for someone such as him - he tipped the last spoonful of gruel from the silverware to fill the grave and conclude the mock ceremony.

He felt like his epitaph should be short. Perhaps just one word: fool.

No longer fully in control of his spiralling thoughts, Severus stewed in his own special mixture of depression a while longer. Eventually, he settled his mind in the gutter for a dopamine boost and wondered in earnest how Holly came to be so good at such wicked and wanton acts as she demonstrated on his person not hours ago.

His body reacted with a lurch so violently, that his hand trembled and he had to lay down his spoon in haste before hiding the rogue extremity under the table.

If she knew to do that by instinct, he should probably be more scared of her.

I am not scared of Holly Potter...

Perhaps the angst stemmed not from cowardice but from the respect he had for Dumbledore's grand plan and the sacrifices the Order and scores of witches and wizards including himself had made to keep the flame of resistance and hope alive.