All I need is a heart attack, c'mon, humble my bones with a cardiac

[dontbegoofy]

Comments

[notquitefacist]

*When the door opens again, an unexpected face enters into Snape's stubbornly peripheral vision. With a large stack of sickly yellow folders following just behind him like a threatening but subservient pet, the Minister's sunken features are more exaggerated than a mind might, kindly, expect. Most people outside of the Ministry are accustomed only to seeing him on the front of a press release or staring out at them from a watchful poster, and it becomes easy to assume he cannot look quite as distinct in the flesh. It is an awkward and mockable face, but only when it's owner is far, far out of sight and earshot, a distance which he does not plan to allow Snape

[dontbegoofy]

*His angles come in and out of focus - the gaunt, inward slope of a cheek, the harsh lines of bulging veins, the cut of an expensive suit. Unlike the bricks, the Minister for Magic never seems to grow soft, his presence slicing and prominent and nearly impossible to ignore. Nearly, of course, being the key word. Snape banks on that nearly, wraps its possibility around himself and waits. There's power in it, a summoning of a life filled with the dusty, dark panelled confessionals of his youth, the lies he'd spoken plain-faced to the Dark Lord and to Lily, the torture that had filled up his world and his mind not even an hour ago, the boiling sauna of a room that leaves him dizzy and parched. Against all of these things, these things Snape has resisted and snaked past for no real reason or end other than a dull, aching aversion to dying, the neat little pile of folders - Bartemius Crouch's weapon of the day - seems laughable, pathetic even.

Snape makes no move to respond.*

[notquitefacist]

*The insulted horror of being ignored is a force that runs in the blood of every Crouch who can still be remembered. From infancy, the offences of distraction or disinterest or stubborn rudeness had been catalogued in some hidden part of the brain, left to fester until adulthood, when Crouch Sr. decided he would make something of himself that would be impossible to ignore.

This trussed up sack of bones and stink all held together by a strong but curving backbone has, intentionally or not - and he very much suspects not, spoken a language the Minister can understand. Unfortunately for Snape, his tactic will not work this time. Ignoring the world most often forces it to give up and ignore you back, but all it does to Crouch Sr. is make his eyes rise from the puddle and pin themselves onto him for the rest of the night.*

I've been told you haven't been forthcoming with my staff. But perhaps you didn't hear me. You've had hours to speak with them, and that lucky chance will not be given again. So. Do you know what this is.

[dontbegoofy]

*There's a sudden and increasing awareness in Snape. The water, now reaching down the back of his throat and his robes, affords him some precious mental mobility. However, as the world turns into tangible strings, dull pinpricks of pain flare into a consuming soreness. His bones feel like they've been spun around - which isn't surprising, as that's exactly what happened with the hitwizard before last. He still isn't sure if his knees have migrated back to their proper position.

More importantly, however, he still isn't sure what the Minister expects - what any of them expect. Confessions, after all, are hardly needed. Neither is proof. This is an unnecessary step, some extra superfluous fate reserved just for him - it's something personal - and that something seems to have escaped him entirely.

Finally, he answers, defiantly monotone.*

Yes.