*Lines at the end that Snape annotates into an article are from 'The Ultracheese' by Alex Turner
In the morning, there was tea and the papers. A new issue of The Practical Potioneer or Transfiguration Today. He upped his subscriptions- now he got Dust & Mildew, Obscurus Books. There was constantly new research on Wolfsbane, as a result of the post-war heightened demand- today there was an article about the efficacy of Glimmering Essence in healing traumatic injuries. He wouldn't finish them at the table but they gave him something to do later when the business of the day was done and burying one's nose in something was a way to discourage conversation with the new Defense teacher, who sat beside him.
It didn't always work on Longbottom.
"No longer getting the prophet?"
Severus ignored him.
A bit of paper pushed into his field of vision, almost touching his plate. "You can have a look at mine. The subscription fees just hiked, smarter to share."
Severus glanced up at the hall. Too many witnesses. "I don't read gossip rags. If you so much as breathe in the general direction of my personal space again, Longbottom, it's your eyebrows I'll burn next time." He reached for his wand under the table.
"Next ti- ARGH!"
The paper curled and burned in blue flames.
Then there were classes. The older ones were more interesting than the younger ones. Sometimes there was batch brewing- that was soon, they were just coming up to the Christmas holidays. There was honest grading, there was mood grading. Sometimes it was a great distraction to pick apart every sentence in an essay and eviscerate them with corrections in the margins. Sometimes it bored him so horribly to read anything at all of what they'd written and he'd fail them all without a skim. Either way they failed, actually.
Then there was his own profit brewing. He'd gotten the idea many years before, when he'd been making Wolfsbane for Lupin but never had time to act on it until after the war. He made a good bit of money that way- brewing for werewolves. A few shops had sent him requests to make some for their stores, but he preferred to keep all the profit and the people he sold to said his batches were better. He didn't know what he'd do with the money, but it felt good to have it anyway.
Then there was the thinking about dying.
He got tired of himself if he ruminated on it. He hated himself for wanting to do it, he hated himself for not doing it. If he was going to think about it so much, it would be better just to do it, and if he wasn't going to do it, it would be better just to put it out of his mind- but it was difficult, giving up a comfort, and he tried not to do anything very difficult.
Then there was lunch. Then maybe more classes or more grading or reorganizing the lab or the cupboards, then there was dinner.
Then a shower, then the water in his thoughts and his hair around his face under the stream.
He didn't write in the notebook anymore. He only read, sometimes a volume, sometimes the articles from the morning, if there were any left by then. Never a novel. Never a letter.
Then he set whatever he was reading beside him on the bedside table. Then he reached into the little inset drawer- it was always sort of jammed so he had to wiggle it (there were nights where the task was inexplicably difficult and for a split second he was filled with a dire, choking need for the relief of what was inside) and he pulled out the little vial of concentrated belladonna (very purple, but a dark purple that made it seem black) and, until now, decided not to kill himself.
