Similarities (or: Colder Than They See)

I suppose it's my own fault.

Antagonize, antagonize, antagonize, and you get retaliation, hate, and eventual scorn. Now and only now do I see past that too-familiar visage; his parents may be a part of his physical appearance, but somehow he is much more than that. The mind in that malnourished, ever-fearful, ever-defiant frame is sharp as a knife when I try to look into it and innumerably more painful to touch upon - he lived an unpleasant life and he uses that as a weapon, makes a brutal cold flame of determined vengeance - and the whole thing is wrapped in deceptively strong walls of nightmares. Touching even the walls of that really hurts, and it leaves an infection of empathy forever on the mind, if there is any trait to empathize over.

Starved. Hit. Scorned. Loathed. Isolated. Insulted. Degraded. Locked away. Deprived. Terrified.

Alone.

How uncomfortably familiar it all is.

It's strange, the way that I only notice now, of all times, the way his hair, even dripping with sweat, sits just right to accentuate those high, delicate cheekbones - a relic of his mother - and the thinnish way his face curves along the jaw - from his father, of course - which are shown so clearly in the fresh, crisp morning air. Those oft-spoken-of eyes look impassive in the glow, and he has a cruel-looking black halo from the few strands that stick out and the unscrupulous sunlight coming out from behind him.

Old habits die hard, though. He has a blind pimple or possibly a particularly ugly bruise near the corner of his jaw, his skin is beginning to show that strange translucency that the particularly sick, old, or poisoned have, and there are dark circles under his bloodshot eyes. His untrembling hands are littered with small and ugly scars. Too many of his ribs show. He has the slightly hunched-over walk of a boy - well, a man, if I am to be honest - who can never remember what happened in a fight due to that red mist of fury, but contradicts that with his calculating glances and carefully controlled temper. He already had frown lines, though that was unsurprising, and his breathing catches with a painful rattle. He smells unwashed and exhausted, but not exactly unpleasant; merely sweaty and tired. He looks tired in every sense of the word.

His hand unwaveringly points the wand at my heart, his grip perfect, and for a moment our eyes meet, calculatingly. He raises an eye, looking at my darkly hooded eyes with a hypnotizing contempt. An odd sensation of fire and water fills my head - not the sensations that they cause, but the sensations of the elements themselves; water an unstoppably powerful force, yet slow and weak in small bursts, fire energetic, chaotic, deadly and delicate - before I realize what is happening and scramble to collect my thoughts behind a strong wall.

"You fear me, do you, Snape?" I know now that he is toying with me. He's wished to kill me for a long time. That is a horribly reminiscent voice to The Dark Lord, but the fact that it's coming from someone so calm, so controlled, so poised, and normally so merciful - I fight against the gag reflex at this sudden change to calculative killer - and glare tiredly at the small, worrying smile he wears.

The smile doesn't go away as he matter-of-factly states, "You should fear me, Snape. I left that useless school as a child and now I've come to remove the threat you impose, as a fully-grown man, an intelligent man, a powerful man, and above all, a rational man.

"Rationality does not come easily to me for one such as yourself, so don't push your luck too much. I don't have the patience for your games of antagonism or listen to a soliloquy." It isn't a threat, not exactly. Just an explanation of the current choices. I can either be calm and, presumably, die quickly, or... the gag reflex has to be suppressed again as I imagine the wide-eyed eleven-year-old who walked into Hogwarts implementing thumbscrews with innocent fascination.

Well, all a speech like that does is make me angry. Bitter. I glare, suddenly feeling no sense of self-preservation left in me, and my low voice comes out rasping and harsh. "Oh no, what ever shall I do, there's someone out to kill me! If you think that's going to scare me, you've got another thing coming to you, you asinine do-gooder!" I swiftly withdraw my wand from my sleeve and point it to my throat. I reach 'Kedav--' before he does anything.

The thing he does is kiss me.

Having been partway through a curse, my mouth is open enough to let that far-too-clever Gryffindor boy to slip in his tongue; with some expert maneuvers he has me completely dazed and unable to react with anything but that which is instinctive and physical. Normally it would be unnerving to know that he kisses so well; instead my brain basically shuts down from the surprise of it all. Strange, I think fuzzily, that he chooses to kiss me now while I am contemplating how strange his compelling good looks are.

He pulls away, and I have a moment where I want to smile happily at him. Then I see his eyes haven't changed. While I feel incredibly glazed and slightly mussed - one of his hands has mussed my hair just slightly - and my lips are feeling softer and warmer than before, he is still looking cold, calm, and ineffably calculating. He then smiles slightly at me, and I'm not sure whether the smile reaches his eyes, because it's so slight. It is just a little reassuring though, and I am so tired of fleeing.

"You're still a very useful person to have around, Snape. It's getting on my nerves to have to listen to Slughorn." Very briefly, he has a pleased grin, which seems so much more appropriate for what I remember of him, as he says almost-proudly, "It was essential to have some Potions knowledge and skill, so I'm actually decent at it, mainly thanks to your book."

Ah. My potions textbook. I give him a sharp look, suddenly guarded and angry at his foolhardiness. Part of me feels triumph as the cold leaves his eyes in irritation.

"Yes, you prodigal git, to answer that unspoken insult, I've been a lot more careful since sixth-year." For a moment his eyes look guilty, pained; it passes quickly into that damnable coldness, more impenetrable than before. "Now, your choices are fairly simple. You can continue fleeing indefinitely, or you can follow me and agree to tutor me and aid me. Not the Order, not the Ministry, just me. I don't care whom you get along with as long as you don't aid my destruction. Either way I'm taking your wand for now. Accio baton de Severus." He looks impassively at the wood as it tore itself from my limp fingers. "I do hate mixing French and Latin, but it seems to work more effectively than just calling your wand." Fear sneaks back to me quickly at that blank mask once more hiding the whirring-bladed mind. He's cleverer now and less of a moral prude. He looks up sharply, and my mental defense, honed for the unsubtle barraging of The Dark Lord's brute-force mind is caught unawares by the comfortable floating-on-water sensation he instills into me with it, fire cracking the mental walls and water gushing through them. I drift for a little while, before he gives me a slightly suspicious, slightly hungry look that snaps me back to myself in a tide of anger. Instantly the cold walls are up again.

"Why must you keep doing that?" I glare at him and he shrugs helplessly.

"Instinct, if you must know. Now relax." He looks at me for a moment longer, as if slightly unsure of something, then says, "This won't hurt a bit. Homi homini lupus." I cock my head. 'A man is a wolf to another man'? I feel increasingly odd, too, so he isn't babbling - ah. I look down and there are paws. My paws. Strange that he has the power to do that; it's very difficult to transfigure someone else.

He makes a fine, if rather conspicuous wolf. After all, who ever saw a black (well, almost) wolf with green eyes? Thankfully, in this form his scar is covered.

He smells of alpha all over, and decidedly male. I cannot put enough emphasis on this in words, but he is overwhelmingly male as a wolf - the scent of it is intimidating.

He has the posture of a hunt, and makes a small 'hrrrrrrrmmn' sound in his throat. I know well enough to follow him. My mind is slightly isolated from my body, and I idly wonder how severe the war has become. He lopes ahead, then suddenly turns to me, hackles raised, and growls to stop me. Obedient instinctively against his angry dominance in this form, I obediently sit and look, head cocked, at him. He lopes between the trees, and I can almost feel the point where he goes from wiry and panting wolf to embarrassingly naked man hidden behind a tree - though as a wolf I am indifferent. He emerges after a brief pause, buttoning up a brown shirt, and mutters 'homini morphus' loud enough for me to hear.

He tosses a lump of cloth at me. "Spare clothes. The shop I got my stash from didn't have any robes, so you've got jeans and a shirt; same as me, but your jeans are black and your shirt green, so that we don't look odd. Get dressed quickly, we're leaving." He completely ignores my glare and begins checking the snares and traps I hadn't noticed before.

"Traps?" I ask as I button the jeans awkwardly. I hope we're leaving quickly; I am looking forward to not having to remember any of this. I mutter, under my breath, a quick self-discovered spell (niet op dit ogenblik) as he replies with a simple, "Rabbits, deer, boar and people." His eyes still look cold as he surveys my clothes. "We don't eat the people though. You've missed a button." He calmly uses a curse to kill a deer, and I flinch away - apparently three years of isolation and paranoia to preserve myself have left me more skittish than I realized. He methodically kills all his other captured prey – he’s caught no people - and then quietly calls me over.

"We're Portkeying. I don't trust you to apparate after three years of low-level only magic to keep off our respective radars." He grabs my hand - I manage not to flinch - and grabs a piece of razor-wire rather more strongly than is necessary. He's swearing as we emerge into watery sunlight, and his palm is slicked with blood. "Idiot." I hiss it loudly, fear forgotten. "Bloody asinine of you, and I bet you've brought us into a null-healing zone, yes?" He seems to feel at least a little embarrassed by that. I take his hand irritably and look it over. "It's fairly shallow and should heal quickly. If you somehow get that infected I've no reason to give you any respect." I curl my lip disdainfully. Honestly, he should know better or else he wouldn't even survive being attacked by an upset kitten. It's fascinating to watch him blush - he is one of the few people I know who blushes only on his cheekbones, though it is yet another thing I had never noticed before.

"Welcome to Chimera Manor," he says, with a self-mocking flourish. I can't help but smile, this time, though I'm not sure why he picked the name.

He grins for the first time that I've ever seen directed at me, and replies to my unspoken question. "Seemingly brave as a lion, stubborn as a bull and with hidden and potent cunning and venom. Good enough? I couldn't use Potter, after all. It's far too obvious."

I waver a little on my feet, and he smiles, softer now, and leads me inside.

He's out of his cold shell now. He gives a genuine smile.

I'm beginning to suspect that he has masks to cope with. But at least the cold is over for now.

I never did like unexpected cold.