A Hand is Not a Heart

Intimate Touch

Would she ever toughen up? After getting hurt so many times, it would seem logical to become less sensitive to situations like these. So why did every single comment sting so badly? It was as if scraping her knee against the relentless pavement as a little girl. Nothing hurt more than that. And the instinctive reaction of crying was inevitable.

She wasn't meant to live in a world like this. She wasn't tough enough.

And she had no one to depend on. Her parents had failed her many of times. She couldn't even depend on herself. And now... now her husband had made her feel lonelier than ever. Her tears were the only thing she could depend on. They never failed her; they were always there. Sadness was her only friend. It was her best comfort. The only one she knew.

Her husband's footsteps retreated on the other side of the door. He left. He listened to her. Finally.

She didn't blame him. She didn't feel an ounce of anger. How could she? She didn't have the strength for anger. She was weak, fragile. She had never been anything else.

What she did have though was her student mentality. Especially when it came to assignments. She was and had always been a teacher's pet. And now she could use it to her advantage. She had developed a drive to push herself to be the best at every task thrown at her. And with the deadline coming closer, stress was about to be her biggest motivator. So she was going to finish it. Even if it took her all night. And she was going to prove that she didn't need any help.

So she grabbed a quill and parchment and started writing down ideas. They started out rather mild, exactly like the ones Severus had berated her for. She thought of a million parchment cuts, loss of all the senses, amputated limbs, and even burning wounds. But she could hear her husband's voice in her mind. Is that supposed to impress the Dark Lord?

She needed to up her game. To think of something more twisted. Her mind was spinning, rattling to come up with the most vile, horrendous ideas. Thought after thought was discarded. Words on her parchment scratched out and hands in her hair in frustration. This simply wouldn't do. She looked around her room desperately. It was a mess. She was probably on her the thirtieth piece of parchment, the rest were crumbled up and spread across her room like a snow storm had hit.

She checked the time. A little past midnight. Her husband should be asleep by now. She could sneak out. Ha. She laughed. Sneak out. She didn't have to. She was free to go wherever she pleased. She wasn't a student anymore for Merlin's sake. Why did it still feel like that though?

She shook her head. It didn't matter. She needed to get to the library. After taking a lit lantern from her room, she creaked open the door of her bedroom and stepped into the living room. Severus was nowhere to be seen. It stung. The memory of him. She had created images in her head of him, far too beautiful and magical to ever be true.

Her delusions were definitely not reality. Reality was something entirely different. She knew that know. He showed her. And that was good. She needed to get her feelings hurt. She needed to be reminded of her own weakness.

She walked through the room and slipped out through the door, into the dark corridors of the dungeons. It took her a while to get to the library and the night was cold, forcing goosebumps on her skin. The stupidity of roaming the halls of Hogwarts in her nightgown finally settling in. But she didn't let it stop her.

The door to the library was easily unlocked with a simple "alohomora". There she got to studying. Busying her mind with academic sentences and advanced spells. She soon realised that the best information came from the history books. For hours on end she turned page after page.

Yawning, she rubbed her eyes as light began to grace the large library with its presence. She was on her fifth book about medieval torture methods and wondered how much more brutality her mind could take. Her exhausted state morphed with the newly processed information and turned it into odd images in her mind. She began visualising blood, lots of bones everywhere, fingertips scattered across the floor, and organs being ripped from bodies.