Is There a Problem?

[subtle_simmer]

Date: Wednesday August 8, 2001
Time: Mid-to-late afternoonish
Location: Severus' borrowed Hogwarts labs
Rating: PG Better make it 'R' - Severus needs to be knocked around the head a bit.
Characters Involved: June Connors, Severus Snape

Comments

[sightlesswolf]

Around two, June arrived back at Hogwarts, feeling worlds better after her lunch with Stella. It felt as if she'd been living in a tunnel for the past couple of months, and had only just been reminded of the fact that there was still a whole world out there. The grim, unhappy atmosphere of Spinner's End had gotten inside of her so easily and completely, riding on the tails of Mandy's death and the subsequent revelation of Greyback's role in it. Grief and anger had driven her all summer. Now she felt like she'd been allowed to come back to herself. Not that she was any less determined to find the renegade werewolf, but... that was not all there was to the world anymore.

For one thing, there was good old-fashioned gossip.

Remus had mentioned the new lycanthrope in town, Moore. Ordinarily June would have been hopping to meet him, but with everything else on her mind... But Remus hadn't mentioned that Caleb Moore was seeing Stella! And pretty seriously, if the conversation over lunch was any indication; Stella was smitten but

[subtle_simmer]

Her usual level of too-cheerfulness was quite grating enough, but to come in and be positively . . . vivacious . . . was almost more than he could stand and he found himself gritting his teeth to prevent snapping at her out of nearly-forgotten habit.

"Fine," he said curtly, instead, pointing to the various ingredients he had laid out for her. "And busy. The usual, enough for four viewers today."

There were things to chop, dice, grind to a powder, mix and brew into infusions and the like, all well within her capability levels. And all requiring enough attention that maybe she would keep her bubbly chatter to herself.

[sightlesswolf]

Obediently, she began preparing the ingredients as had become almost routine. She measured out enough of each item for each of the four viewers he'd specified, and for a while he had his longed-for silence, as she had too much regard for him, Seamus, and their business to risk botching the formulas at all. But once she had mortar and pestle in hand, grinding away, her full concentration was hardly necessary anymore. She watched his black-clad back as he worked, never looking at her, as if trying to pretend a wall between them. As he'd been doing all summer. And she'd been letting him get away with it, all summer. They all had. Mandy's death should have drawn the rest of the family closer together; instead, it had drawn the wolves into a darker bond forged of anger, and distanced all of them from the closeness they used to share. Severus in particular because such closeness had been foreign to him to begin with

[subtle_simmer]

Forty-one years and some-odd months of one sort of habitual behaviour would not be overcome by less than a year of a precise, polar opposite.

When stressed, Severus did what all humans did. He reverted to old coping mechanisms which had allowed him to survive stress in the past. For Severus, that meant withdrawal, isolation, and slamming up ever defence mechanism he knew from a lifetime of various hardships.

Juneau's paltry attempt to defeat those four-decade old defences were like launching a pebble at the Great Wall of China.

Severus did not so much as blink as her question interrupted his sulking concentration as his quill worked through calculations next to a small, simmering cauldron.

"Working," he said flatly, without even looking up. "Potion commission for a long-term customer."