Spiteful Beginnings // Severus Snape x OC

8 - Evening Reads

During the evenings, Kalina would often spend them marking students work on Herbology and if she has a second to breathe she wold settle down into reading a good book or the Daily Prophet. The Daily Prophet was a sickening media source in her opinion. The stories they would sell would be exasperated, false or just plain rude but she couldn't help but not look away and stop reading as she found the falseness of the articles to be amusing in some odd way.

That evening, it was one of those nights where she was reading that very paper. Her skirt was draped over the back of her chair lazily, her boots were scattered in the middle of the room from her flinging them off her feet with her own feet rather than untying them sensibly and placing them neatly by the corner. Her legs were propped up on the desk, her back laying into her chair as she swung side to side idly as she read. She was wearing her reading glasses, black frames, big and square. They rested on the tip of her nose.

She did hear the faint footsteps echo down the hallway outside but she didn't think anything of it until she heard her door open.

Frowning to herself, she crinkled the pieces of the parchment in her hand slightly, causing the newspaper to fold over so she could see who had entered. To much of her dismay ad her peace.... And quiet, it was Lockhart.

"Evening Professor." She smiled at him weekly, unfolding her legs and slipping them off the desk once she had caught him staring.

"Ah, good evening Professor." He greeted, walking further into her room, his eyes scanning over her quarters in wonder.

She watched him awkwardly, placing her reading on the desk, her hands landing to her thighs as she traced a small finger in circles over the faux-leather fabric of her pants.

He didn't respond, instead, he carried on making his rounds around her room, taking a quick glance at her large four-post bed on the other side of the room, the bedding neatly made.

"Can I help at all?" She sat forward, resting her arms on her desk now as she watched the man. He stopped abruptly, chuckling a tad and shook his head.

"Sorry," he stops his slow walking, his hands clasped behind his back as he admired the photos on her wall, "was in a world of my own then." He laughed but she didn't find it amusing. Instead she nodded slowly and waited for him to continue, giving him the eye.

"I was just coming to see how you were settling into Hogwarts is all. Being new can be quite daunting can't it?" He stated, his fingers tracing over the wooden frames of her photographs, inspecting them closely.

Kalina licked her lips slightly, watching him nervously as a photo he touched began to wobble, teetering over the edge of the nail that was holding it in place, "I suppose it is. Are you settling in well?" She answered, seeming it was only gracious to ask him too about how he was feeling about everything and everyone.

"Of course I am. I'm just so pleased all the students like me! Although it would appear that none of them know a lot about me..." He moped to himself, reiterating back to when he had set them a test purely based about him and his work.

"That's a shame." She muttered sarcastically, already bored with his presence.

She didn't want to be mean in saying that she disliked Professor Lockhart.... But she disliked Professor Lockhart.

His arrogance was staggering, his lack of care for others was appalling. To set work for students purely based on his books was outrageous in Kalina's mind but she wasn't going to argue with him, or even state her opinion, about it with him. She just felt uncomfortable talking to him and the way his eyes would roam over her like a wolf would with its prey.