The Ghosts of Our Past

Fear & Sensuality

Fourth Year-

"This has to be some kind of a twisted joke, Snape ! The other champions all have three extra years of magical knowledge on me ! How am I supposed to compete with them ?!"Hally cried out while she paced the small expanse of his secret room.

She was fully spiralling at this point.

She had thought about just going back up to Gryffindor tower and talking to Snape tomorrow but after that whole debacle she was too anxious to even attempt to go to bed without talking to him first.

So Hally waited until he finally slunk into the room at the end of the hour and instantly came at him with all of her burning questions.

"Will you please take a breath and take a seat, you are giving me vertigo with all of your pacing !" Snape barked out sharply as he sat down on the chaise next to the couch.

"I'm in crisis mode right now and you're asking me to sit ?!" She stopped her pacing momentarily and shot a glare at him.

"Potter, I am not going to speak to you unless you bring yourself off of the ledge you are currently placing yourself on."

"Im assuming that is your way of telling me to calm down and that I'm making the situation worse in my head ?' He nodded his head at her question as Hally took a deep breath through her nose while finally conceding and making her way over to the couch. 'Why are you not more worried about this ?"

He lifted a brow at her as she plopped herself down and sighed. "Who says I'm not ? I can be concerned and remain level-headed— a skill you clearly do not possess."

She let a chuckle slip through at the absurdity of his words. "I actually think I'm handling this quite well, considering the circumstances." She defended.

"Whoever put your name in the goblet is certainly not a friend." He stated while folding his hands in his lap.

"Yes.' She agreed. 'At first I thought professor Moody was being a little paranoid when he said that but the more I think about his words— the more they make sense."

Snape tsk'd. "You're not still on about that dream, are you ?"

Hally's eyes landed on his as she took in his tired features. "He's out there Snape, you know it. I can tell by how you've been acting. You know he's coming back."

Snape's chest heaved at her words but he nodded his head. "Yes. I believe that he is."

Melancholy hung heavily in the air at his admission. "The question now is when and how." She mumbled.

Snape watched Hally stare off out at the darkness of the Black Lake. Her cheeks were still flushed from her insistent pacing and her brown hair laid less tame than usual, making it clear that she had been running her fingers through it in agitation.