Severus and the Skye

6

Skye spends the day teaching each class while I grade papers and inconspicuously add ingredients to my notes for her potion. Tomorrow is the dance and I would love nothing more than to be able to slip the potion into her drink and watch the recognition gleam in her eyes. 

I sent Juniper out again last night with a potion the color of a Chinese Fireball's scales and the result this morning was interesting. One patient was able to remember his wife’s name, but not her face. He asked to see his wife even though she was at his bedside. Tiny victories, but victories nonetheless.

I can only hope to improve between this potion and the last one that showed positive results. Classes have been canceled tomorrow in anticipation of the dance, so tonight I will spend my time brewing, even if it means missing our chess session. 

Skye pulls me in when I am needed, but she mostly handles everything herself. She has little need of my mentorship, she could step into my position tomorrow and the students would thrive. However, she could use a bit of help with her brewing. She can follow a recipe but she would never be able to attempt what I am behind closed doors. She does not yet have the potential to create a potion on her own, but I will change that.

I helped her learn and grow in her potioneering but she was ripped from me before I could make her an unstoppable force. It will not happen again.

I find myself stopping my grading several times to watch her, losing myself in her golden hair as it flows over her shoulders when she leans down to flip the pages in a student’s book. My gaze falls to the fourth-year Hufflepuff who is watching me as I stare at her, she drops her gaze back to her own paper, a small smile on her face.

I’m being too obvious with my affections but in time I hope it won’t be one sided or secretive. Even if I didn’t already love her, I think I would find myself captivated. She is a beautiful thing and she glides so effortlessly through the world. 

My wrath was brutal when they erased me from her but had they taken her completely, I would have burned the world down. There would have been nothing left but ashes and I would have burned them again until they were dust. Luckily the only ones who had to suffer were the perpetrators, the rest of the world was left intact. 

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Skye asks as the last class of the day files out of the room.

I sit down my quill and pull a piece of parchment over my notes as she stops across the desk from me, “Not at all,” I muse, “But somehow I still can’t wait,” A smile plays across my face and she mirrors it, her eyes shining in the dim light.

“Neither can I. Are we playing chess tonight?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” I say with a heavy sigh, “I have something I must attend to.”

A sad expression takes over her face but she nods and quickly repairs it, “I understand.”

I want so badly to fix it, to put the pieces back together and take her in my arms, I lift my hand as if to take hers but quickly snatch up my quill instead.

She watches me for a moment before gathering her things and slipping from the classroom without another word. I slide my arm across my desk, through the stacks of parchment and bits and pieces of notes and books, even the vials. The vials immediately shatter, the contents staining the wall and dripping down in long lines until it seeps into the stone of the floor. The papers flutter and fall until they land in the carnage, the parchment grows dark and the ink runs as I stare, my mind all too familiar with the damage.

My eyes don’t leave the dripping lines that the potions caused, the dark branches that flow down the dips and chips of the stone wall and mingle with the shards of glass that once held them. I watch them as if they’ll fix themselves, but they never do.