Spiteful Beginnings // Severus Snape x OC

14 - Exhaustion

The rest of the week and the week after that was diabolical from Kalina's understanding.

Professor Severus Snape was becoming a worse nightmare for Kalina in every sense of the word.

He would constantly nit-pick at her within Potions, telling her that her help was 'average' although the students homework was saying something completely different. Not only that, but he would remind her constantly that Mrs Norris and Colin were not going to get better if she kept 'dawdling' with Professor Lockhart which was probably the most infuriating part of it all.

Snape knew well enough that the draught takes weeks so for her to have one night off in almost month of her working on it was incredibly obnoxious. She would see the sly glares he would give her whenever their paths crossed or even in the Great Hall every morning and evening.

She had enough of it and stopped going to the Hall.

It sounded childish but she felt uncomfortable when people stared at her; especially from Snape. Everywhere she looked he would be watching her, a devilish like look in his eyes as they burned into her skull. Not only was this problem, the main issue was that Lockhart was back and she did her upmost best to avoid him.

When he first stopped her in the corridor on the way to Herbology, he had grabbed her by the arm and she almost, just almost, lashed out. She didn't like to be touched. Well, not by people she wasn't too fond of and after he tried to kiss her, he was high on the list of 'people I don't want to breathe near me'.

He had told her that he was a fool that night and the, as always, told her about how he work up, how he felt, how he dealt with Dumbledore. Not once did he address her and ask how she was. He had seen the paper, surely, he was just trying to ignore it so it didn't tarnish his representation.

It was the weekend finally which meant she had no classes to teach. However, she did have a pile of marking to do. Snape had 'kindly' plummeted a large handful of homework for her to mark, as revenge for her allowing the class to do what they wanted rather than follow the curriculum. She didn't seem to care when he handed it over to her and then it dawned on her that she had that to do as well as her many Herbology classes homework.

At the weekends, she didn't mind nipping down to Hogsmeade, doing some light shopping for stuff she may or may not need, she liked to read and was hoping to start reading about Animagus' as she didn't exactly have the best knowledge about it at Illvermony. She found it interesting to learn new things and she thought that maybe one day, she would like to turn into an Animagus like most Wizards and Witches could. Her Patronus itself was a Black Jaguar, something she didn't particularly understand the reasoning behind but she never looked too much into it.

So, instead, she was stuck in Greenhouse G where the mandrake draught was being formed. She had spoken to Professor Sprout and Madam Pomfrey and she could see how tired they both were. The three of them just prayed that another attack wouldn't happen.

She began removing the leaves from some plants, using a microscope to observe its qualities in better detail.

Although it was all there in books that had been written for hundred of years, she found it fascinating to observe things herself with the naked eye.

"Anything interesting?"

She jumped up and away from the microscope, sighing a breath of relief when it was only Minerva.

"Forgive me, I didn't see you come in." Kalina apologised for her lack of awareness and peoples presence.

"That's all right my dear..." Minerva chuckled, her witches hat drooping over to one side as she walked over to see what the Herbology Professor was doing.