obsidianwarden

[obsidianwarden]

ooc; I'm still here! working on threads. been busy and whatnot but I am eager to interact with all, old and new followers. so hmu!

[obsidianwarden]

something’s pissing him off

[obsidianwarden]

ANONYMOUSLY TELL ME YOUR HONEST OPINION ABOUT ME. I CAN’T REPLY/COMMENT, JUST PUBLISH.

[obsidianwarden]

The Half Blood Prince 👑

Still trying to figure out a consistent look of Snape. I'll probably redraw this in the future to adjust the nose and eyes. But so far I like to draw him with moles tho 🥰

[obsidianwarden]

[obsidianwarden]

✒✒✒✒

Snape's mouth thinned to a grim, humourless line, his dark eyes glinting dully in the half-shadows, more mournful than malicious.

Of course. Of course.

The words draped over them like the last threads of a torn shroud, and Snape felt them - not like a blow, but a slow, surgical incision along a rib he'd thought long since petrified. The old instinct stirred in him - the impulse to sneer, to lash out, to douse the room in sarcasm so thick it would smother the vulnerability bleeding out across the floor. Instead, he remained still, his hand tightening - infinitesimally - on the rough blanket he had wrapped around Lupin's shaking shoulders. The weight of him, brittle and spent, pressed against Snape's side like a dying star, all ruin and gravity. No one is safe with me.

The irony was so rich it nearly choked him. Pot, meet kettle, he thought, with the grim amusement of a man attending his own funeral out of spite.

But he couldn't help his throat clamp bitterly at Lupin's cracked voice and the broken, repeated confession of loneliness - raw and far too relatable for comfort. Lupin's condition took away his dignity, comfort, even chances at a basic human companionship, and yet he bore it with that sickening humility, accepting solitude like some miserable penance rather than an injustice. Severus recognised it with cruel clarity, familiar enough with loneliness to spot the same wound bleeding out of someone else, and resented Lupin deeply for forcing him to witness it.

The universe truly had a twisted sense of humour, throwing them together in this decrepit shack, two men whose youths had been defined by isolation, poverty, and shame - each clawing at survival in different ways. Severus through spite and coldness, Remus through guilt and resignation. But that didn't mean Snape could stand to hear Lupin speak it out loud - acknowledging his exile from humanity as though it were justified. The idiot might believe he deserved this, but Snape knew better. He knew punishment, knew its shape and its weight, and this was beyond that. This was meaningless cruelty, a godless, random torment.

He could still feel Remus' fingers curled in his robes, a desperate plea for anchorage, the only stability Lupin was allowing himself to claim. The grip wasn't strong, not by a long shot, but it was there, tangible proof of the fragile trust forced upon Snape. He didn't pull away. Instead, his thin lips parted slightly, ready to retort, to scold Lupin for daring to accept his solitude so readily. But he found the words curiously absent.

Because Snape understood.

If survival were merit, Severus thought grimly, he would have been king of us all.

With a sharp inhale that bordered dangerously close to gentleness, Snape eased Lupin back slightly, one pale hand guiding him until he was half-resting against him, his posture rigid yet patient, like some bleak statue resigned to its martyrdom. It felt disturbingly like holding death itself, all sinew and bone, broken skin and tangled breath, but Snape held him regardless - brusque, uncomfortable, yet steady.

He let out a breath, low and contemptuous, but not at Lupin.

"Then it appears we both must settle for unsafe company." Snape murmured finally, voice low and bitterly amused, the words sliding softly into the quiet, charged air like smoke from a funeral pyre.

He watched over Lupin's exhausted features - the lines of brutal agony etched deep around his eyes and mouth, as he held the husk of a man he once despised (and perhaps still did in some festering part of himself). Snape knew he was no saviour, no hero - he was barely even human at times, himself - but for one long, uncharacteristically soft moment, he allowed himself to wonder how it would feel to ease the wretched burden Lupin carried.

Foolishness, surely. Utter nonsense. Yet the thought lingered.

He adjusted the blanket again, tucking it with clinical precision against Lupin' clavicle, as if neatness could stem the rot. His fingers brushed too long against fevered skin - a fleeting, traitorous gentleness - before retreating back into the safety of the folds of black cloth.

Snape settled back against the rough stone wall, eyes burning with a tiredness so old it had no name. And for the first time in a very long time, he did not think of himself as the most cursed man in the room.

"Rest, Remus." Snape added quietly, voice edged with a subtle kindness he would never admit to as he used his colleague's first name, sure he'd forget in the morning. "No harm will come to you here."

Not tonight, at least. And perhaps, for now, that was enough.

---

Severus waited in shadows so deep he could feel their weight on his skin, timing his breaths to match Remus' ragged, uneven ones. Only when the last faint shudders of pain finally ebbed away, when the wolf's madness faded like fog after the dawn, did he move. Then, silently, carefully - as though handling cracked porcelain - Severus lifted Lupin' limp form with a tenderness he'd vehemently deny if asked, cast a levitation spell on him and retreated to the quiet, candlelit solitude of his chambers, where he lay him on his bed, breaching the last fortress of his hard-won privacy.

There, going back and forth between shelves laden with jars of carefully labelled ingredients, he methodically applied oils and salves with precise, careful strokes - pale, elegant fingers tracing Remus' wounds gently, as if willing each bruise to fade beneath his touch.

wretched , vile creature as he is , body racked with pain that is indiscernible , that is unrelenting , that does not let go . it grasps him with both hands && holds his life in a chokehold , pinning him to the very walls of a torturous life . hanging , feet swinging from the moon , as if a lasso had roped around his neck && dragged him there to lie motionless once a month . if he was to endure such pain every time he TRANSFORMED , the way his skin stretched , his bones ached , his complexion greyed . if he was to endure his lips shredding && his heart stopping to make way for the changes inside his body , surely perhaps the world might be a KINDER place for him to walk .

no .

it hated him . && remus turned that hatred inwards . loathing the very thing he was till it spilled out && attacked remus' very own soul . the monster devouring him from the inside out .

racked with pain , remus curled in amongst himself . limbs far too thin to support him , malnourished to the point of sickness , he is putrid to look out . abhorrent . if any one saw him so foul , they would mark him a dead man walking . && yet , once the moon waned && the rays of the silver light cast away from his body long enough , his strength would return . && he would be ... almost a WHOLE man .

not in this moment though . not right now .

his fingers trembled && STRAINED , bending in an unnatural way , before pulling back , wretched sobs of agony spilling from his core before he was able to stop them . he did not want severus to think upon him weak . but his body betrayed him , && he was unable to hold back . the pain was too much for him to bear , too much to cope with that he would beg && sob && wish for DEATH .

it would be a sweet release to feel the calm of black sea instead of the storm it was .

limbs shaking violently , tremors && spasms coarsing through him at an unstoppable rate , he clamped his hand hard against his mouth as severus told him to stop apologising , brittle gums holding onto teeth that once were white && pearled , now aching with being changed && filled with rot from the bile that CARVED its way from his stomach .

he did not realise he was biting so hard upon his hand until blood touched his tongue .

severus had pulled away , no DOUBT , remus knew in his addled state && mind , in pure disgust . but before he had a chance to slip into the veil of unconscious , remus found his eyes searching for severus . the other hand made a casual flick of his wand && the mess that remus had created was gone in seconds . another wave of guilt && shame swam across his minds eye -- more people cleaning up his messes . he had to be better than this . why wasn't he --

the question fell short within his mind as severus was beside him again . remus reached for the other mans robes , feeling the coarse material underneath his fingers . anything to GROUND him to reality .

a damned fool .

remus felt tears fall thick && fast down his cheek , mingled with sweat && the last remnants of vomit && bile that stained him . he wished he had someone here . he wished he had wolfsbane . he wished more than anyone would ever know that he was not like this . that he was not this evil creature . not this vile repugnant thing .

severus steadied him . holding him carefully before pulling a blanket over remus' shoulders . fingers tersely went for the edges , holding them to the best of his ability as more spasms of pain travelled down him . he knew he was a fool . he knew he was a DANGER && a fool && --

❝ i had no one , ❞ his voice hoarse . ❝ i HAVE no one , ❞ his voice cracked . ❝ no one is safe with me . ❞

his eyes were heavy . he was so tired .

[obsidianwarden]

ooc: playing expedition 33 and oh my—

[obsidianwarden]

“you can’t save me from this.”

he protecc, he attacc - accepting.

Severus Snape did not sigh. He inhaled sharply - which was a very different thing - and schooled his gaze into the carefully cultivated disdain that had gotten him through a war, seventeen years of adolescent idiocy, and a lifetime of catastrophic personal choices. His arms folded across his chest, black robes cascading around him like a funeral shroud he hadn't quite gotten around to donning properly.

Potter had said it like a death sentence, and the words fell between them like broken glass. Of course the boy would toss that particular emotional grenade into the middle of their already-fractured peace, and stand there blinking at him like a kicked puppy. He did not immediately answer. Silence, after all, was a language he spoke more fluently than comfort.

Snape turned away, just enough to give himself a second to arrange his features into something less revealing than horrified recognition. Because Merlin help him, he knew that tone - the bleak resignation of someone who'd already pencilled in their own downfall and was just waiting for the ink to dry.

When he turned, he regarded Potter with the same expression he might reserve for a particularly difficult potion - something volatile, inevitable, and entirely his problem now, dark eyes sharp enough to open veins. His unwitting charge stood before him - rain-soaked, fever-eyed, stubborn to the last - and Severus Snape felt, for one hideous moment, the unbearable temptation to lie; to say something soft, something that would smell suspiciously like hope.

Instead, he allowed a breath to scrape out of him - slow, tired, scathing.

"You say that as though you've cornered the market on reckless sacrifice." he said at last, his deep baritone like ruinous velvet. "At this rate you'll become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

It was easier to be cruel than kind. Always had been. Kindness was exposure, it bared the throat. He'd rather swallow glass than admit how deeply it shook him, hearing that tone in his voice, knowing the hideous truth Albus had oh-so-kindly kept from him all those years he dedicated himself to the survival of the boy. It didn't escape him that the last time someone had said those words, Snape had killed the only person in the world who knew him. And this time--

Well. He was already dead, wasn't he?

"But you're not a bloody prophecy." he said at last, quieter. His lips twisted, something bitter roiling in his breast.

"Save you--" He prowled a step closer, slow and calculated, as if approaching a dangerous, wounded creature - which, in fairness, he was.

"You think salvation is what I offer you?" Snape went on, voice dipping into something softer, tainted. "No. I offer you survival." a temporary lie of one. "Ugly, clawed, bloody survival."

The kind that leaves you standing while the better parts of you rot.

The fire hissed in the grate behind him, spitting sparks like accusations. Snape let his gaze rake over Harry Potter - the gaunt, dirt streaked cheeks, the feral gleam of defiance beneath the exhaustion - and something inside him shifted unpleasantly. Some old scar aching with the memory of sunlit fields it had once dared to want. He could not save Harry Potter. He could not even save himself. All he could do was hold the bloody line, teeth bared, until the end. He could taste the approaching end like rust on his tongue.

"I can't save you. But I can damn well make sure you live long enough to regret it."

[obsidianwarden]

✒✒✒✒

Her name was like a spell, it had become an invocation in his loneliest hours - carved somewhere deep into his chest alongside other wounds that had never quite healed. Narcissa. So often whispered at the edge of memory, syllables laced with ash and longing. But to speak it now would be admission, and Severus Snape was a man of many faults, but he did not admit to weakness, not to want.

But the sound of her voice carrying his first name had undone something; a whisper with the weight of an avalanche. It was soft and shattering, unmaking every barricade he'd spent years constructing. Severus, she had said, and there it was - raw, human, unspeakably intimate - a quiet catastrophe.

He closed his eyes for half a breath, just long enough to bury the look on her face somewhere unreachable.

They were fragments, two shards of what might have once passed for people, carefully honed into weapons. They'd been raised on expectations and cold etiquette, not warmth. She had been fashioned into a beautiful sculpture of grace and control. He had been forged in darkness, lonely and bitter-edged. Neither had been designed for love - merely survival. And yet they stood here, bound not by hope, but by ruin. Familiarity. Shared rot. Two figures held together only by bone-deep promises and the sheer, impossible strength of what they could not have. She, still pristine and breaking. He, already broken and pretending not to remember how it happened. Not hers. Not his. Only this.

He moved - not forward, but around her, orbiting like some ill-starred moon. Always close, never enough. His fingers brushed the edge of her sleeve as he passed, nothing more. And yet it burned.

She, too, had never been his, not in the way he wanted, not in the way he would never allow himself to say. She was a ghost in silk and perfume and inherited melancholy, and he had spent years pretending he did not mourn her.

Not for the first time, he wondered what might have been if he had not been Severus Snape. If she had not been sold like a myth to the highest pureblood bidder. Instead, all he could do was stand in the silence they'd made and listen to it creak under the weight of the unspoken. His fathomless eyes darted toward her elegant, trembling hands, and his jaw tightened - they did not blink, nor soften. But there was something behind them.

His voice came low, composed - as if he were picking each word from his ribs with a scalpel.

"You call for Severus. What answers is what's left."

A quiet confession, a blade passed hilt-first, deceptively. And how laughably cruel that she had.

Because what, exactly, did that mean? The man? Not the spy, not the tool bent toward a darker future for her sake, or for Draco's. Not the potioneer with his hands soaked in the scent of asphodel and sorrow. No. She had summoned Severus - the man - as if he was still there to answer, and he had come, dragged himself from the crypt he lived in, all pale hands and shrouded dignity, wearing flesh like it still fit.

He hadn't been a man in years. But for her, just once, he had tried. And what a wretched, glorious thing it was.

"I would have spared you this." he said, quietly, savagely. "If I had the power." But he didn't - he never had. And so, instead, he would suffer beside her in silence - an offering of companionship forged from misery.

"You should go." he said at last, though there was no command in it. No scorn. Just the sound of someone closing a book they've read too many times. The space between them vibrated with the unsaid, an aching chasm strung tight with ancient string. There was no gentleness in the silence that followed - only inevitability, like snow on a battlefield.

Words coil about her ankles, the potent richness of his tone erodes suddenly unstable ground beneath her feet, like sand coaxed away by the tide. An iceberg tossed into the abyss of his whims,fractured and lured closer by the way his proximity laps against her defences.

A weaker woman may have melted, thawed liquid flooding the rare flaws in his own exquisitely crafted defences. Perhaps she could have justified foolishness by insinuating it as a means of exerting control, filling those carefully concealed cracks she felt profound honour to know of, with pieces of herself.

Such a beguiling lie.

Oh that she were a woman not mantled by the crushing weight of expectations, and he a different man not saddled with an omnipresent sense of his own demise. Longing to indulge in the beautiful falsehood of flowing easily together with another human being. Thus is their existence that she lacks the freedom to even imagine the possibilities if life lacked consequences.

Willowy frame contorts within his dusky currents, seduced ever toward the gloaming. Siren song elevates heel clad in immaculately shined leather to lure forward. Frozen in parody of ballet steps she learned as a child, tendons screaming against the restraint. Recovering movement is glacial and the click of heel landing back on the ground is resounding. Hides from the shame with slight turn, shoulder to his chest, unable to withdraw more fully. Willingly caged by shadowy presence that dwarfs the room, enveloping thin frame until she feels frail. Chin inclined, gaze escapes to the floor. A breath of a tremble across narrow shoulders is the only allowance she grants herself, and the catharsis is freeing.

"Severus…"

Whispered name tumbles from her lips in catastrophic flight, crashing into the room as she reaches futilely for a means to restrain it. Tidal wave colliding with the shore, a devastating blow. Gaze flashes upward and succumbs to the abyss of his, chasing the indiscretion as though to contain it. Defiantly, it hangs heavy in the air betwixt them, an ornament to bitter, grieving silence. Ice shattering echoes in her ears, shards slicing porcelain flesh, and she bleeds and bleeds and bleeds.

Fingers dart to her outer robes, then hair, then back to brocade. Pause, and alabaster digits hesitate between various routines. Twitching turns to trembling, and finally they curl into palms. Nails carve crescent moons in her skin, and Narcissa allows herself to sink into the ache.

Sharp sensation provides sufficient clarity to straighten shoulders, pull lips into a taut line. Finesse has been discarded in favour of frigid cold, every fibre of her being excruciatingly tense. Control never permitted to slip since childhood scrapes roughly across ashen skin as she forces it, ill-fitting, into place. Little effect to quell the ocean storm of her eyes, churning violently beneath the glassy sheen that glistens in wasted light.

"Here we are."

The beautiful statue of House Black, sold many years ago to the Malfoys, cracking and crumbling in the darkened house of another man. A man who has so succinctly reminded her of their places.

He is not hers

He has never been hers

Worse, the glimmering veneer shatters under the weight of her own decisions. She has not called upon Severus the potions master, her husbands friend or her sons teacher. Narcissa the witch called upon Severus the wizard, infinitely more, but never less.

"Here we are."

[obsidianwarden]

✒✒✒✒

A chair scraped against stone - she had moved not closer, not further - simply … adjusted. Like she'd sensed something fraying and leaned into the space it left behind without comment. Offering nothing but presence, expecting nothing but resistance.

The orange was extended with the kind of gentle, deliberate reverence one might reserve for communion bread, as if this moment were sacred. As if he were. Or perhaps, more appropriately, a dare. He eyed it as one might a suspicious package wrapped in citrus peel - sweet, cheerful, wholly out of place in the necromantic stillness of his chambers.

He did not immediately move to take it. A flick of his quill. The parchment sighed beneath it, ink blotting like spilled blood on a battlefield he no longer had the strength to wage.

Her presence lingered - maddeningly warm. He could feel it from across the table, some quiet yet tenacious gravity pulling at his cast-iron composure. There she was, cloaked in tenderness and war-wounds, her eyes, too knowing; her stillness, calculated. She was quiet in the way of wolves: with awareness. Waiting. Watching - not out of threat, but out of care.

And Merlin, wasn't that worse.

He was not hungry. Not for food, at least. But his body - that traitorous, collapsing vessel - had begun to betray him in ways he could no longer bully into obedience. Sleep had become theoretical, meals, laughable. And now this - a woman with eyes like stormlight and a soul full of grace, offering him an orange like it might offer salvation.

He took the half, at last. Not because he wanted it, but because he hated the idea of being pitied more than he hated oranges.

"May as well." he muttered, turning the half in long fingers stained faintly with ink and crushed valerian root - a small, defiant sun against the bleak landscape of ink and exhaustion. It's not as if he'd consumed anything with vitamin C since the First Wizarding War.

One elegant slice disappeared between his teeth. The first bite was sharp, sweet and somewhat unrepentantly sour - not unlike himself. As he did, he dared a glance at her hands, the way she worried the segments apart like rosary beads - the ritual of someone who'd spent too long surviving and was just now finding purpose and even repose in everyday tasks; but he saw the way she shifted, drawing her shawl tighter over the ruins of her throat. A gesture so small, so practised, it barely registered unless one had the misfortune of noticing things. Unfortunately, Severus Snape had built an entire life out of noticing things.

So he spoke - not kindly, never kindly - but precisely, in his silky deep drawl.

"It is said that not talking is the highest form of intelligent conversation."

A pause followed, broken only by the fire's crackle and the faint, wet sound of her separating another sliver with gentle resolve. The stubbornly fresh scent of citrus now curled into the room's air like some familiar enchantment.

"--you may stay, of course. You know by now I find your silence more pleasant than most people's chatter."

His hand had stopped trembling. His eyes returned to the parchment, the ache behind his brow pulsed in time with his heartbeat, a grim little drum summoning him to surrender. He was too bloody tired to care.

𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐓, 𝐈𝐍𝐀𝐔𝐃𝐈𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐈𝐍𝐇𝐀𝐋𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐁𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 HER OVER-ATTUNED SENSES COULD PICK APART EVERY NOTE FROM THE AIR [ ... ] every scent, every sound was hers to bear the weight of. the scratch of his quill against parchment / the beat of his heart. whereas the firelight haunted the razor edges of his sallow features, reed's seemed accentuated by warm hues. the vivid auburn of her hair was set alight; and cradled by darkness, her canine eyes mirrored eerily when she tilted her head a little to one side.

the professor's piercing onyx eyes might have run a shiver down the spines of others .. she met his gaze instead, holding onto it and letting it bore as far into her soul as he dared. ( 𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝚕𝚒𝚎𝚜 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚚𝚞𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚠𝚑𝚎𝚗 𝚋𝚛𝚊𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚝𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚜𝚌𝚎𝚗𝚍𝚜 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚘 𝚏𝚘𝚘𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚑𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚜, )

the matron flicks her wand, and when an empty chair skids to a halt before her, she settles herself within it. ACROSS FROM HIM, but never entirely out of reach. then she takes out an orange, peels off the rind, and splits it perfectly down the center. a half is extended toward @obsidianwarden with scarred hands, whereupon she arches a single brow. ❛   ────then i suppose you have just enough in you to share a bit of nosh with me. ey?   ❜ then, doubling back on herself just a little, she pulls her shawl a little tighter over the scars on her neck and begins to separate her half of the fruit into sections... endlessly toiling over a need to busy idle hands. ❛   we don't have to talk,   ❜ she reiterates, albeit a little absently.

the smallest little smile dimples into pale cheeks, but she's rather prepared for rejection [ ... ] every opportunity for escape was stretched before him. one word, &. she'd bow her head politely and go. until then, she takes a sliver of orange into a cheek and lets out a sigh. quite apparently, sleep and the maiden had troubles of their own.

𝙲𝙾𝙽𝚃. x

[obsidianwarden]

Send 🐰 for barely intimidating /your writing skills are over 9000 im afraid this puts you in this category.

are you intimidated? - accepting.

asqsghfhfg -- jay coming from you this is high praise and I am so humbled! right back at you !! I must thank you once more for being so kind and welcoming and complimentary to me, I know snape is a tough and a lot of times hostile muse to interact with but you do it so beautifully AND MAKE IT LOOK SO EASY lmao

[obsidianwarden]

GOT AU

Night’s Watch Sirius Black X Maesters Severus Snape

[obsidianwarden]

hogwarts middle courtyard, 1972

(and if everyone was happy and normal)

[obsidianwarden]

🦊 - AGAIN I’M SHY

are you intimidated? - accepting.

aaah me too ?? I WISH I HAD FOXY SWAG! but I'm actually very harmless - I may munch on unattended cables but I don't bite! ;)

[obsidianwarden]

“You look so… empty. I’m worried for you, please talk to me.”

don't worry about him, he's fine - accepting.

Black eyes stared at her for a long, glacial beat - long enough for the silence to grow legs and start pacing. Severus Snape did not do concern - more often than not, he drowned it under bitter contempt.

"Empty?" he echoed, dark eyebrow arching. "Charming. You do know how to brighten a man's evening, Cairistiona."

Her shop - The Raven's Nest - was adequately stocked and smelled of dried wormwood, and forgotten tragedies steeped in secrets. A lovely little cage for clever birds with too much interest in damaged things. He should know - he'd been selling parts of himself since he was seventeen, usually in jars, labelled and stoppered.

He turned from the counter, robe flaring like a disapproving bishop, and exhaled through his nose as if breathing alone were an inconvenience.

Of course she was worried. People were. People who should know better - Harry, Minerva. Even that ridiculous bloke at the post office who insisted on offering him shortbread - as if shortbread might patch a soul burnt around the edges.

He looked at her then - really looked, despite himself. The girl who'd once been just a student trying to impress him, now sold fluxweed and silverleaf by weight, and spoke to her former professor like she cared about him.

"I'm afraid my conversational reserves have been depleted." he finally muttered, half to himself, half to the iridescent wing of a desiccated dragonfly pinned behind the glass, and paused, sharp gaze dragging back to watch the concern on her face twist like smoke.

" ... but I appreciate the sentiment," he added quietly, and with a dryness so brittle it might've cracked under pressure. His eyes, black and sharp and impossibly tired, met hers.

"Now please fetch me the powdered nightshade before I change my mind and make tea of it."

[obsidianwarden]

“Why do you keep stumbling over your words? Just how tired are you?” From worried starters (hope this is okay!)

don't worry about him, he's fine - accepting.

Snape blinked slowly, the way a serpent might before deciding whether to strike or slither away in disgust. He'd barely noticed the way he'd been grumbling under his breath as he marked essays. He did not look up immediately - he'd found, over the years, that pausing just long enough to inspire discomfort was often as effective as any spell in silencing further inquiry. His quill scratched out one last acidic note across a parchment before he finally deigned to respond, holding back a long, suffering sigh.

"Only as tired as a man can be after a day spent correcting the linguistic carnage of the barely literate." he drawled dryly.

Long, ink-stained fingers lifted the edge of a nearby essay as if it had personally offended him. Which, in fairness, it had.

As for the stumbling - he refused to dignify that with an answer. It wasn't that he was tired, but his mind, as always, was five labyrinthine turns ahead of his own mouth, and the tongue - being a traitorous, fleshy creature - occasionally tripped over the architecture of his thoughts. But naturally, voicing this would only invite more questions. And Severus Snape had already fulfilled his quota of emotional transparency for the decade when he hadn't hexed a sobbing third-year earlier that morning. Perhaps a break was overdue, but he was an adult and a teacher and damn it, he was not going to let anyone tell him that.

He resumed marking, but not before muttering just loudly enough to be heard:

"Fatigue isn't my only affliction."

[obsidianwarden]

“You haven’t slept for days, have you?” from Fish, teacher verse? @imprvdente

don't worry about him, he's fine - accepting.

Severus regarded his colleague through dark eyes, where sleeplessness had painted its familiar bruised fingerprints, ringed with shadows deep enough to make the Black Lake look like a sunny holiday destination. His lips twisted slightly - something too sardonic to be a smile, too honest to be a sneer.

Sleep. That quaint pastime for those with the luxury of uncomplicated minds or functioning consciences.

His posture - leaning against the desk like some exhausted vampire in sprawling black robes - belied the rigid tension coiled in every sinew of his frame. Days? A charming underestimation. It felt as though sleep had abandoned him permanently, like an ex-lover taking off with his dignity and any remaining semblance of patience. He straightened his shoulders back to his usual composure ( like someone held together more by bitterness and spellwork than bone and sinew ) and tilted his head just slightly, black eyes narrowing in weary appraisal.

"Am I becoming too obvious, or has my façade of vibrant, cheerful optimism finally begun to crack?"