"Chrysanthemum." Severus Snape x reader fanfiction.

Break apart her heart.

*TW: descriptions of mental illness.

                              Your fingers curled around the edge of the ceramic sink, knuckles white as you gripped it as tight as you possibly could. You hated what you saw in the mirror — someone who let down their guard when every fiber of their being had told them not to. Someone who thought it was possible to get through to someone else so utterly unreachable. When you looked into your own eyes, you had no idea who it was staring back at you.

All this time, did you ever really know who you were? Or had you simply fooled yourself into thinking so? You couldn't think of one singular defining feature about yourself that stood out, that let the world know you were ready to take and conquer it. You were a shell of a person, a shell of a witch. You felt nothing but emptiness at the bottom of the barrel.

Taking in a slow and deep breath, you looked over yourself in the mirror one last time and studied the bags that were forming beneath your lashes. Your skin was devoid of it's normally flushed tone. You were falling apart in real time and you had no idea how to stop it anymore.

You tore your grip away from the sink and fumbled shakily into your pocket, yanking your wand out and holding it out in front of you. The lavatories were empty at this hour, no one but you. The silence was heavy and deafening on your ears as you stood there, chest heaving with each breath. You felt that familiar twitch within the muscles of your neck, causing your head to tilt briefly to the side as you attempt to soothe it.

Except this time, it didn't go away.

"Orchideous..." you mumbled softly, watching as the faintest of sparks leapt out from the tip of your wand. Just as before, that was it.

Why wasn't it working? You had been able to conjure up a multitude of spells before, so why not now? Another twitch in your neck and you felt the rim of your ear hit the bone of your shoulder. You gripped your wand tighter, feeling your wrist start to tremble and shake from the energy put into concentrating.

"Orchideous!"

You called out louder this time, brows pulling together as the twitch of your muscles seemed to radiate from the base of your neck and down the length of your spine. Still nothing. You brought your other hand up and used it to grip the one already holding your wand, squeezing as tight as you possibly could with your smaller fingers.

Your eyes shut and your jaw clenched uncomfortably, working to envision the outcome of the spell in your head. The flowers, the chrysanthemums, the blooming florals. "Come on, come on...."

"Reducto!" You had a change of thought. Destructive ideals seemed to flood your senses and push you into a smoldering blaze of a fire that ignited in the pit of your stomach. Destruction and chaos. That's all you could see.

Sparks.

"I said, REDUCTO!"

The wood of the lavatory stalls shook for a mere matter of seconds, nothing more and nothing less. Tears were brimming your swollen eyes again, heart pounding within your chest. It felt as if every muscle in your body was suddenly on fire, uncontrollable and on the verge of imploding from beneath your skin. 

Your veins throbbed and pulsed, knees shaking as you struggled to keep yourself upright on your own two feet.

"REDUCTO, REDUCTO, REDUCTO!"

Everything snapped. The grip on your wand loosened and you couldn't even hear the clanging of the wood against the stone floor. In fact, you couldn't hear anything at all. Your vision began to tunnel into black, falling to your knees in a heap as you convulsed and cried out in a pain you couldn't even feel in your own limbs. It was a numb, mindless sort of pain that your body knew was happening, but it didn't seem to connect up to the nerve endings in your brain.