Who: Severus & Charlotte Where: Azkaban When: Thursday, 30 October
Rating: PG Status: Complete (logged)
Severus finished packing a small assortment of things into his bag. Generally, people weren’t allowed to bring things into Azkaban, because any number of objects could create a potential safety threat or the opportunity for prisoners to escape. But he didn’t intend to go to Azkaban again (he couldn’t bear the place any more than most people) and because of that he wanted to make sure he had everything he needed, and wouldn’t have to return for any reason. For appearances’ sake, he shrank the bag and slipped it into his pocket before Flooing to the Ministry. Although the Floo network at Hogwarts was extremely limited (and had been ever since Umbridge had been in place) the Headmaster’s quarters allowed Floo access to and from a few different select places, including the Ministry of Magic.
Severus figured that if Danielle Edgecombe could walk through the Ministry on impulse and go into the prison with no questions asked, certainly he could, as well. He was one of the highest ranking Death Eaters, they wouldn’t stop him. He went through the official Floo to Azkaban, inadvertently with similar demeanor as the woman before him. When confronted with the human guards that dealt with visitors on the ground level, he snapped “Charlotte Montgomery.” They paused, likely wondering what one prisoner could have done to deserve two Death Eater visits in one day. However, the deadly look on his face quieted any thoughts they may have considered voicing.
They took him through the prison, and he could feel the weight of the Dementors on his psyche, even though they weren’t physically present when the human guards took visitors through the halls. He glanced into the cells as he walked, catching glimpses of the prisoners in them. Most of them didn’t look back. When he caught a face he recognized, Justin Finch-Fletchley who had agreed to tell him when Edgecombe left, he turned his eyes away. He hated seeing people like this. No matter what the popular opinion was, Severus didn’t take pleasure in the pain of others, and having experienced Azkaban (even for as short a length as he had been imprisoned) made it all the more difficult to process. He felt extremely angry that anyone had felt fit to further punish a prisoner, and when he entered Charlotte Montgomery’s cell, glaring at the guard until he left, he was even angrier. She seemed so small, and it was nothing but gratuitous that anyone should try to break someone so thoroughly. Why did people feel the need to smash things just because they were delicate? It didn’t make sense. He frowned, waiting to see if she had any response to offer him, uneasy and unsure of what words to offer her.
“Are you awake?” He asked, his voice low and lacking any tone that might betray his emotions.
At the order to stay put, Charlotte had remained curled up behind her slab-like bed, wrapped in a now blood-stained blanket but shivering all the same. Saying she looked like a mess would have been kind, because it was more than patently obvious to someone who hadn't seen her in a few years how she was faring. Once ample curves had been whittled down to barely rounded angles, her cheeks looked uncomfortably poignant next to deeply ringed eyes, and where there wasn't blood on her sternum was a litter of dull, persistent purple-black bruises from lying on that bed with this body. The bruises persisted down along her ribs and hips, but with any luck Snape would not be noticing that. As if this wasn't bad enough. Part of her didn't believe he was actually coming - the part of her that didn't believe in hoping for things only to be disappointed (and right now that part was rather weighty) - and as the door sounded, she flinched into the corner afforded by the bed and wall. It was a stupid response, and when it was obvious who the visitor was, she felt embarrassed and ridiculous looking.
If her cheeks hadn't already been raw-red from crying, they might have brightened, but her ears obliged and heat soared through them and back across her neck - not enough to warm her in any meaningful way, unfortunately, and she tried to stop her shaking by pressing up against the wall a little harder.
Trying to figure out how she felt about Professor Snape standing in her cell while she was half-naked and mostly-maimed was a task unto itself, and she didn't undertake it, knowing that contemplation of exposed weakness would only make her upset - and upset invariably meant tears - and she was not going to cry in front of him. Except that tear right there. That one didn't count.
"Yeah." Where his tone remained faithful, Charlotte's seemed to delight in betraying her emotions, and she wavered a moment before snapping her mouth shut in determination.
Severus frowned at the sound of her voice. She looked incredibly thin and the waver in her speech had caused an odd twist in his chest. He didn’t know why he felt so protective of children in his care; he’d always done his best to make sure they were not in physical danger. He was known for being very harsh and hurtful with his treatment of people, but it wasn’t because he hated them or wanted to do them harm. He just didn’t know any other way of interacting with others. When it came down to it, he’d always done as much as he could to protect all of his students, and Charlotte Montgomery was no different. He felt as protective of her as he had when she was a student – it was hard to alter the way he saw people once he had categorized them in his mind – and he couldn’t believe the state of her. Not only soaked in blood and covered in bruises, but also that she was skin and bones. He had a moment in which he knew how difficult her recovery would be once she was released from Azkaban, and he hoped she was placed with someone who would be able to understand that and wouldn’t exacerbate the challenges she was sure to face.
He was caught in a moment of discomfort, unsure of whether to kneel down before her to look at her wounds or whether that would be too familiar a gesture. However, he pushed the uneasiness away and approached the situation as he would for any child injured in his care. He pulled the shrunk bag from his pocket and enlarged it. The first thing he did, once he had his wand out, was to cast a cleansing spell over her body and put a warming charm around her. The last thing he needed was her body giving out from the cold.
“You mentioned your thumbs.” He stated, setting the bag down on the floor and awkwardly kneeling next to her. He felt odd, on the level with a person huddled so low in a prison, and it was against his natural instinct, but he knew there was no other way to accurately assess her situation. He thought for a moment, considering taking her hand, but deciding that it was too risky; he didn’t want to accidentally injure her hand more. “Give me your hand so I can look at it.” He said, assuming that her choosing to show him his injury would result in less trauma to her person. He had seen that the source of the blood seemed to be a large wound on her chest, but he felt that it would be much more difficult to get her to let him heal that because of the fact that it was on a more personal part of her body. It didn’t seem to be too horrific, so he felt it could wait the few moments it would take to increase her comfort by healing her other injuries.
He was very close.
That was Charlotte's first, immediate, nervous thought. It wasn't that she didn't trust him - though really she had absolutely no reason to aside from lingering school biases that had been inflicted upon her (Professors were always right, Professors were always respected) - it was more that she hadn't been this close to a human being in over a year. Her small contacts with Justin not included, she'd been incredibly, painfully alone, and the fact that he'd come here to help her struck a deep chord within her. Despite her best efforts, heavy tears began to swell at the bottoms of red eyelids, and her lip trembled tightly, a desperate remnant of her need not to look vulnerable and pathetic in front of someone she'd once respected quite a bit. She almost couldn't bear the kindness - or whatever this was that he would probably deny later - and her chest tightened as she repressed a sob. It'd been long, too long. Too long. She couldn't bear it.
Though warm now, she still trembled - nerves or fear or some mixture of emotions holding her nerves hostage that refused to be eased by magic - but after a moment's reticence, let the blanket fall away from her hands, which were clutched near her chest. Palms up, Charlotte's hands were offered upon very thin altars. Each thumb looked relatively normal, but for the deep red that originated at each joint and spread outward beneath the flesh, and the odd angle at which she held them against her palms.
"I didn't know you'd come," she finally managed. She didn't know how to say thank you this time, too overwhelmed by... well, goddamned near everything.
Severus looked up as she spoke. “Well, you’re a silly girl.” He commented with a shake of his head. His tone had a level of sternness, but it was lacking in the bite that would have made such a dismissive comment offensive in a normal situation. What had she thought, that he would just leave her after telling her not to move? That his solution was not to move, and wait for it to get better? He didn’t understand people sometimes. Actually, he didn’t understand people most of the time.
He put the glowing tip of his wand against her left thumb, wrapping his free hand around the wrist of the same arm to steady it. The bone knitting could be somewhat painful, but considering she had been under no pain treatment for the breaks, it would likely be an improvement to the pain she was already experiencing. More a dull ache than anything, and Severus knew from breaking bones in his own life that the feel of them snapping was much more shocking. He released her wrist as the left hand was healed, though he pressed the pad of his thumb against the previously broken area to feel it and ensure that the bone was fully healed. He turned his concentration to the other hand and repeated the action.
He looked up, again, to her face. “You have a wound on your chest.” He said. This was going to be the tricky part. Severus didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, but there was no denying that the wound on her chest would need the clothing pulled away for him to view it properly and make sure it was healed cleanly and completely. “I would like to heal it, but if you feel you need to arrange yourself for modesty’s sake, I can turn away.”
Charlotte's expression settled into something like wry relief, and it was strange how much more exhausted she looked when not cringing. There was the Snape she knew and loved (!) - and in these few uncomfortably close seconds between them, she found his sourness almost endearing. "Did you bring that veritaserum?" She asked, voice low and wet but managing to carry a spark of amusement - of life - and she looked up from her hand and tried very hard to smile. It came out something closer to a grimace, but, hey, at least she was trying.
And that grimace tightened as healing magic wound around her broken insides, culminating in a sharp inhalation through closed teeth. No, it didn't hurt nearly as much as having them broken in the first place, but for someone utterly unaccustomed to having the hell beaten out of her, it was painful enough. The intimacy - and she used that word warily - of being handled by a professor (even in the medical sense) when she was extremely vulnerable, was embarrassing as Christ, and the redness of her ears spread down across her neck and into pale shoulders as he mentioned the gash across her chest. Oh right. Great. She was really appreciating her bosom comments of a few days prior. Maybe she could just curl up and die now.
Or maybe she could just suck it up and deal... and try to wipe the look of mortified malaise that had smeared across her face the second he'd looked at her. Chewing on her lip, she tried to think of how exactly she was supposed to arrange herself.
"Okay... Okay, don't look," Charlotte rasped uneasily - and when he'd turned away, she carefully peeled the unsubstantial remains of her shirt over narrow shoulders and matted hair. This was worse than the torture. Jesus, this was so much worse, though - she realised suddenly through her agonising - her thumbs felt much better. Good thing, too, because she needed them to wrap the cloth back around her middle - over breasts and bruised ribs. It was difficult to reconcile her misery at feeling completely unfeminine in a body that belonged better to a fourteen year old boy with her relief that there was barely anything for him to see, even if she hadn't been meticulously hiding every potentially female inch. She dragged a couple fingers down from her collarbone to her breastbone, pinching the skin there as if that would make it thicker somehow, less revealing.
Teeth chattering (in what she wished was cold), she sat up a little straighter, back hurting from nervousness, and exhaled. "Okay."
Severus turned when she gave the word, all-too glad to do so. Not that he liked to see the broken and vulnerable remnants of his former students, but he hated having his back to people. It took every ounce of self-restraint to keep from turning so he had an eye on her, which he forced himself not to do because he was well aware that a young girl would not want him ogling her as she tried to collect herself in a very uncomfortable situation. He turned back to her and tried to ignore her obvious embarrassment. He resumed his position kneeling next to her to look at the wound. Luckily it wasn’t Sectumsempra, or it would have been a fair bit deeper and might have even killed her. His memory flashed to when his spell had been used against Draco Malfoy several years ago, and he bristled at it even still. What kind of an idiot would just hurl a spell at someone if they didn’t know what it was? Potter never failed to amaze him.
He performed a few cleansing charms on the wound, keeping his mind in the present to prevent any absent-minded mistakes. He smirked slightly at her feeble joke, although it was all too clear to him how difficult it was to find true humour in a situation where she was not only in Azkaban, but also gravely wounded. He took his free hand and tilted her head up slightly and away from the wound. People stayed calmer if they didn’t watch as he treated them, he wasn’t sure why, but something about seeing another person poke around a bad wound seemed to unsettle most. When he was sure that the wound would not get infected, he pressed the tip of his wand to the lowest point of the gash and drew it upward, the wound pulling closed like a zip with a thin, seam-like scar where the wound healed together. “I apologize that there is a scar. The conditions aren’t the best for proper healing. I suppose if it bothers you, you could have it removed once you are out. But for now, this will have to do.”
When he finished, he stepped back, giving her some more room. “If you would like to dress yourself again, I have a few more medical things I want to check, and then some things I will leave with you.” He shifted backward, looking at her. “I wish I had thought to bring you some clothing. This is completely inadequate.”
Oh she had intended to watch every little poke and jab, but so daunted, Charlotte peered up and watched his face instead, blue eyes sharp and interested despite her humiliation and lingering fear. While her teeth spoke of nerves, her eyes spoke of curiosity, and she stared (a bit rudely she would have recalled on hindsight if she were the sort of person who was cognizant of socially unacceptable body language), watching the way his eyes moved across her, the way concentration tightened his cheeks or jaw, the small flexes across his forehead and lips. Intense hunger for knowledge was one of the few defining characteristics she'd managed to retain over the last year and a half, and it fixed her attentions upon him - almost to the point of distraction.
So when the wound was knit and she was informed of the scar, Charlotte seemed almost surprised that she hadn't noticed the pain, and she peered down at it, fingers sweeping over the line with a physical sort of interest. "I'm sure my thousands of boyfriends won't mind," she said wryly, looking back up at him with an expression more closely resembling a smile than she'd managed thus far.
It was difficult not to comment on the clothing observation, but even she had a hard time being spiteful about his position as a death eater among the many who'd done this to her when he was standing only a few feet away - and had just saved her ass from months of excruciating pain and crippled thumbs. Thus she remained quiet, turning away from him and readjusting her shirt. It was a little pitiable, but who was she going to impress in here? A tight knot rejoined the thin strap of her shirt to the body, and she shrugged into it, eyeing the tiny, barely feminine bumps beneath it almost accusingly. It was creepy being in pyjamas in front of a professor, and it was growing more uncomfortable by the second now that she wasn't hyperventilating over torture.
But she was grateful and trying not to act like his presence (or, more accurately, her current state) made her want to throw herself out the window. Wrapping her arms around her chest, she turned back toward him, standing now at her full height but not feeling much taller by comparison. She wasn't kidding about the bat thing, but again... not quite the appropriate time. She could be funny later when she had a quill and paper shield between the two of them. "What sort of medical things?"
He shook his head at her comment about thousands of boyfriends, not missing the smile she gave when she said it. “I’m sure they won’t.” He commented, before turning away as she moved to readjust her clothing once more. When she seemed finished, he turned back.
“I want to check your eyes and I should listen to your heart and lungs. This cell – well, you’re just begging for pneumonia and I want to make sure you don’t have anything of that nature going on before I leave. It would be a sorry waste to come all the way out here to heal this only for you to end up dead of pneumonia.” Perhaps not the most positive thing he could have said, but he was uncomfortable and what few social graces he had were difficult to keep hold of. It struck him that it was lucky he had worn his heavy cloak. At the time he’d put it on, he was only thinking of the bone-chill that accompanied Dementors, but surely he couldn’t leave her here in these insubstantial rags, so he was grateful to have something that would be of real use to her. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have another at home, and he wasn’t going to just leave her to freeze to death.
“I’ve got some potions I’ll be leaving with you. We’ll have to find somewhere to hide them, though. Can’t just have them out in the open. And I’ve brought some ink, since yours ended up…” he gave a vague wave of his hand. “And a sandwich the house-elves made. I’m sure it’s horrifically fatty, so it should suit you just fine.” He picked up his bag, which had been mostly discarded through the course of the healing, but he pulled out a small light. “I want you to look toward the light so that I can check your eyes.”
"I'm pretty sturdy." If they were having a contest for laughable statements, Charlotte probably won with that one. Though she'd had made it through her first winter here without too much suffering, it hadn't occurred to her (yet) that she was a little worse off this year. It was sort of a shock, to be in a cold as fuck cell without the same amount as flesh as a year prior. Losing weight had never been on her list of priorities, despite being a rather well-fed child, but now she was realising how easy it would have been if she'd gone without a little more often; the gruel she got twice a day (and bloody well ate, thank you) was barely enough to keep her going, and some days (like today) she found herself missing her mother's cooking - an irrational longing that made her angrier than her physical state. Still. Now was not the time for internal monologuing, and she moved a little closer, arms still strewn across her chest in some sort of barricade of modesty.
But then he literally struck her dumb. When he'd started rambling, she nodded - eyes, check. Pneumonia, bad. Got it. No dying, har har, irony.
Potions. Hiding. Ink. Sandwich. What? Her mouth dropped open a moment and for the second or third time in her life, Charlotte Montgomery was speechless. By the time she'd dragged her jaw off the ground and finally realised what he'd said about the light, an uncomfortable sort of pause had passed. If by pause, we mean chasm. Large chasm. Of time. Without talking. Was this seriously the same person who'd made her scrub bits of cauldron out of a dungeon wall with her bare hands when she was twelve years old? (And thirteen. And fourteen.) She certainly didn't deserve any sort of generosity, so either he was not a complete bastard, or he was planning on jabbing her in the eye with the light and laughing about it.
She decided to take her chances. Frowning sceptically at the light, she peered up at it, and him, and back at it. She'd never been very good at the sitting-still-for-medical-tests thing.
"I don't want to sound ungrateful because I really fuc--gahhhh-- am." Awkward. Pressing on. "But this seems" batshit crazy? like you've been imperiused? "really nice. And I didn't think you did nice. Because it's, you know, fake or something."
“How is any of this nice?” He snapped, as he inspected her eyes. They looked alright, and although he was not a licensed professional or anything of that nature, he’d worked in a school long enough and had more than enough of a personal interest in medicine to feel confident that if something was significantly wrong, he would be able to spot it. “You’ve been living in a cold cell for a year, surrounded by Dementors, with barely substantial clothing and a Dementor’s idea of high-nutrition diet, subject to the whims of madwomen who feel the need to crush things just because they are weaker than them. I fail to see how trying to improve this situation even the slightest bit constitutes as nice. But perhaps you are more addled by prison than I had thought.” Severus wasn’t nice. He had never been, and never would be, and anyone who thought otherwise was just mistaken. He could never come to grips with the idea that anyone might actually value the things he did on a personal level, rather than just acknowledging that they improved general functioning of the people around him.
He finished checking her eyes and put the light back into his bag, pulling out a flat disk with a long cord attached, which he drew up to his ear. He moved to put the flat disk against her back, to listen for any red flags in her heart or breathing. “Besides, I’m sure this is somehow selfish. Everything I do is, ultimately, so I doubt this is any different. Probably I’m just trying to increase the chances of getting a slave that isn’t Neville Longbottom, because I have no doubt that he’d give me an aneurism within the hour.” He felt more comfortable with her under the idea that he was doing this only for his own gain. He wasn’t entirely sure why it bothered him so much that she was in this situation. All of the prisoners being treated in this way bothered him, to an extent, but she had spoken to him at greater length than any of the others, and he supposed he felt friendly enough with her that he was more resistant to the idea of her dropping dead. He didn’t want to analyze his own feelings, so he said what first came to mind. She could think he was just fattening her up to eat her, if she liked, and it would be more comfortable to him than any positive feelings she might have toward him.
“Anyway, I hardly think that an aversion to the conditions prisoners are kept in is particularly nice. I would think it was fairly common.” He pulled the listening device away from her back and dropped it into his bag. “Your lungs seem in order, at least. It doesn’t sound like you’ve got any latent illnesses hiding anywhere.”
And this was where time and circumstance had broken Charlotte away from the personality that came across on paper - though she wasn't sure which one could aptly be described as her true personality, because the truth was that she'd changed, for the worst most likely, and that was now an immutable truth. Part of her balked at his statement; part of her was angry and wanted to tell him off, to argue with him the finer points of social interaction and point out his incorrigible inability to accept compliments, which really aggravated her more than she liked to admit. But she didn't argue - she couldn't even look angry, or even neutral, which was how she'd dealt with his acidic personality while in school. Now she just looked afraid, and embarrassed at that fear and her instinctive reaction to pull away.
When he was finished with her eyes, she looked elsewhere, digging her fingers even deeper into her sides and pressing her lips into a tight line. No, it wasn't nice. She'd never claimed this, and the hell she endured every day so that she could look forward to another hellish day (and for what? She wasn't doing anyone a damned bit of good, even if Snape liked to assert otherwise), was anything even remotely resembling something in the vicinity of nice. Maybe she ought to have just said thank you in a more conventional way and skipped the intellectual probing. Next time. Curiosity could be quashed and, really, by now, she was getting to be an expert and stifling emotions.
Though she knew, on an academic level, that her reaction was a psychologically predictable one (being rejected/criticised by one of your only ties to humanity was daunting), Charlotte had never found getting upset to be acceptable, and her only defence was to shut off. She said nothing throughout the rest of her examination until he was finished, at which point a very flat "thank you," directed to the wall, was the greatest length to which she would expose herself.
Severus noticed her clamming up immediately, and wondered if he should have somehow been more compassionate. Not that he knew how to manage such a thing – it was a trial just to keep from snapping at people all the time – but he couldn’t help a niggling moment of guilt at having created some sort of unpleasant feelings in her. Still, it couldn’t be helped, so he simply pushed it away. He only indulged in guilt when he was alone. It was yet another weakness that others would never be privy to, and he would not show others what made him feel guilty just so they could use it as a tool against him, to get their way.
At her flat tone and the words of thanks, Severus shook his head again. Just as he couldn’t accept apologies or compliments gracefully, he had never really been shown how to accept a person’s thanks, either. They happened so infrequently that he had never found it to be a real problem, but this girl in particular seemed set on making him uneasy in that fashion. It almost irritated him, but more than that it confused him. Why would she bother thanking him? It was a matter of providing what any human life deserved and needed, regardless of crime. She hadn’t been sentenced to execution, which meant her life ought to be protected. Apparently some people thought they were above the law. He sneered to himself, thinking about this awful situation as he dug through his bag again.
“I think we could fashion a hiding place for you in one of these stones. They’re certainly big enough that you could cut a hollow into one of them and have it make no difference at all.” He pressed his fingers against the stone of the wall to avoid looking at Charlotte for a moment as he collected his thoughts, choosing a place that was high enough that she wouldn’t knock into it accidentally if something like this happened again. He drew a rectangular outline against the stone with his wand, which glowed for a moment before a piece the size of a cinder block slid out and fell to the floor with a loud thud. Severus silenced it almost as soon as it struck the floor, keeping the echo from alerting any lingering guards that might be about. He glanced toward Charlotte, hoping no one had heard his blunder (why hadn’t he thought of the sound before he had set the spell in motion?), and used his wand to cut the chunk of rock into several tiny pieces. “Small enough so you can drop them out through the window.” He said, so she understood why he did it. He waved his wand once more and the wall suddenly looked whole, as if there was no hollow part in it at all.
Severus moved back to his bag and pulled out a narrow wooden box. “There are several one-dose bottles of various potions in this. Blood replenishing potions, calming potions, and a few dreamless sleep. They’re labeled. I want you to know, though, that even if you took all of them at once, it would not be enough to kill you. So don’t waste them trying something stupid.” He stood with the box, and put his hand through the visage on the wall. It was just a mask for the hole, no one would know it was there but her, but would require no magical effort on her part to access.
To be honest, she'd been expecting some sort of harshness at her thanks - so when it didn't come, Charlotte settled a little. As much as she said she didn't care whether he accepted it or not and that it was too bad because she could say whatever she pleased - today had been a very poignant reminder that, no, she really couldn't say whatever she pleased. Though she'd never intended to offend, it was all too clear that her rights as a human being had been revoked along with those she'd once had as a citizen. Even Snape could do whatever he pleased to her; he was certainly capable of it, and though she had no reason to suspect that he had anything but a tight reign over his bizarre anger toward social niceties, a sliver of fear still lingered.
Opening her mouth to ask a question and then closing it again, Charlotte wavered between concern and the desire not to be snapped at again. She didn't really know much about death eater hierarchies and all that sort of thing, but it seemed that being helpful to a prisoner was generally considered Bad Form. For one selfish second, she wanted to protest - she could live without sleep and calm and - okay, well not blood, but still - but she wasn't sure she could carry on without some sort of attachment to the Outside.
Her train of thought was interrupted by stone hitting floor, and she froze, every frayed nerve reacting to the sudden noise and the fear that there'd be guards swarming the doors. Staring frantically at the cell door, she waited and waited, only relaxing again when she was sure she could hear no footsteps in the distance. Compulsively, she stepped in closer to Snape, to the wall, so she could see what he was doing. As the stones 'closed' again, she stretched out a few fingers to touch the gap, watching warily as they disappeared into the stone façade and reappeared again when she pulled them out. Very useful, though she was still afraid of being caught. She'd just have to be careful.
Nodding at his instructions didn't seem to relieve her of these doubts, though, and as she watched him hide the box away in the alcove, she shifted her weight, trying to put voice to the nagging worry. "I don't want you to get in trouble."
“Don’t be stupid,” he said, though with effort he kept any harshness from his tone. “I know what I am doing. You don’t need to concern yourself with whether or not I’ll get in trouble. I can take care of myself.” He shook his head, again. “You have yourself to worry about. Don’t waste your feelings on people who don’t need it.”
He turned back to his bag, pulling the sandwich from it. It was still hot against his palm, (he’d specifically requested a warm sandwich from the house elves). It was wrapped in wax paper, and he placed it on top of the box in the hollow in the rock. “Eat it when you’re sure they won’t catch you.” He commented, his voice low after the sound of the rock. Perhaps if the guards heard it they’d just assume he had smashed her head against the floor, or something of that nature. His own thought discomfited him, so he turned back to the bag. He shrank it and slid it into the pocket of his robes, under his cloak. He still felt uneasy about leaving his cloak with her, although he supposed his mind had been made up once he’d seen what she was wearing, but leaving a cloak was a bit more risky. It was more likely to be seen. But the fact was that unless a human came to call upon her, there was little to worry about – the dementors couldn’t see and the human guards usually stayed on the ground floor unless they were leading someone up. They would certainly be heard far enough away for her to hide it in the hollow stone if she had to, but it was unlikely anyone would notice unless they were inspecting her personally. From afar it would probably look like a blanket.
Decided, Severus removed it and extended it toward her, a carefully fixed look of indifference on his face. “It’s for winter, and it’s wool. It should be heavy enough to keep you properly warm, and the reason I only buy wool cloaks is because unlike other fabrics, even if they are wet they retain heat. Which means if it gets very damp in here, it will continue to keep you warm.” He paused. “If you know someone is coming to visit you, you should hide it in that hole. But I wouldn’t worry about it, otherwise. Dementors don’t have eyes, they can’t see, so they won’t know the difference.”
Eyebrows knit together and she had half a mind to snap at him about waste and emotion and how he was a big jerk and she'd hug him if he didn't knock it off, but in reality the situation was a little more problematic - on the one hand because one didn't generally piss off someone who'd gone well out of his way to help, and on the other hand because, well, he was scary and looming. Very looming. Charlotte had the distinct feeling of being eleven again and staring very up at her batlike potions professor. Not much had changed, though she'd managed to scrounge up a few more inches since. Even when not physically imposing, his demeanour was usually enough to make her mouth snap shut - and so it did again, and she let a non-committal shrug roll over her shoulders. She'd care if she felt like it.
The smell of food at once brought nausea and overwhelming, desperate hunger, and Charlotte knit her fingers together above her stomach, eyes plastered to the waxy package as he hid it away. Her glance trailed back to the breakfast she'd never gotten a chance to eat, still sitting in its bowl near the cell door. Oh God she was hungry, and it was taking more willpower than she was aware she possessed not to just walk away from him and inhale her gruel - because as unpleasant as it was, feeling this hungry - and having it piqued by the smell of real food - was worse.
But she was startled from her reverie by a very large outstretched hand. Was that actually a cloak? Her own hands stretched out of their own volition, gathering up warm wool into her arms, and then into her chest, neck, jaw. Charlotte had always been a little disconcerted with generosity, especially when it came from someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a complete jerk, but there was nothing on God's green earth that would convince her to reject this gift; her arms tightened around it in response to this thought. The cloak smelled... she didn't know. Snapey. Smoky potions ingredients and old, sweet parchment, and clean. Considering the enormity (for her, anyway) of this particular offering, she didn't dare offend him by saying thank you. She just nodded and clutched at it a bit harder, wishing there was some way she could share this particular thing with Justin. She'd already decided to slip him half of the sandwich he'd brought in, though her stomach twisted sharply in protest at the idea.
"I'll do that."
Severus was relieved that she didn’t try to reject the cloak or make him uncomfortable by acknowledging how desired such a thing was. Although his memories of Azkaban were fuzzy for obvious reasons, one never really lost the intense feelings that accompanied a stay there – the cold of the place was something he would never forget. It was simultaneously the easiest and most difficult thing to withstand. It was constant and reached a person nearly to their core, and while the other feelings the Dementors and environment encouraged were more damaging by the first impression, the cold was constant and made it infinitely more difficult to deal with those emotions. If someone had offered him warmth during his stay, he would have accepted with excessive greediness. But then, his social graces were barely present to begin with, they certainly didn’t override his more base desires. He had worried she would feel an obligation to reject a gift of this sort, even though he would never have done so himself.
“I suppose there’s not much more I can do for you, then. I shouldn’t stay too long, they’ll get suspicious. Unless you have anything else you’d like me to do while I’m here… I don’t think I will be coming back.” Although, he hadn’t intended to come at all, or ever to return to Azkaban while he lived. If she desperately needed it, or even one of the other prisoners who didn’t deserve to be there (who, ironically, tended to be treated that much more harshly by the Death Eaters than the ones that actually did deserve their imprisonment) he supposed he would return. But he truly hoped it would never come to that.
Charlotte didn't move at first, still holding the cloak against her, between them, a barrier of sorts and a childish kind of security blanket that made the very real fact that he was leaving - and not just leaving but leaving her here - a little more tolerable. It took a very pregnant pause before she could open her (very tightly closed) mouth without fear of making a wet sort of noise. It was frustrating to feel attached to someone she had absolutely no real reason to like, but even more agonising that she was actually going to be alone here in a few short minutes. It occurred to her to hug him for a second - a very, very short second - if only because she ached for human contact, but she knew (strongly believed, logically inferred, whatever), that a death eater would find it abhorrent, and that kind of anger wasn't something she really wanted to bring on herself.
So, instead, she slowly pushed herself toward the bed, retrieving the now soiled journal and pulling that tight to her chest as well.
"Do you think you could, mm, ward some pages. Just private." Her mouth shut again as a treacherous lump rose in the back of her throat. Fewest words possible - that was the safest.
Severus was fairly oblivious to the fact that Charlotte was battling internally about his presence in her cell. He knew that some kind of human contact was incredibly desirable to a person in this particular prison, but it still didn’t really occur to him that the desire would extend to himself. He didn’t really think she wanted him to be the one who was there, he was just the one she was stuck with, the only person left with the ability to give her any level of extra comfort. And he didn’t want to be reminded of it, either, he didn’t want to have to tell her that there wasn’t anything real he could do to help her. Only the Ministry could determine that she had improved in behavior and attitude enough to be removed from the prison. But any small amount he could do, he wanted to. So Severus looked at the journal she held toward him, and after a moment nodded and took it from her. He flipped to the next page and pressed his wand against the paper, hexing several pages private for her.
“There.” He said, though his mind was elsewhere. He went back to his pocket, pulling the bag out and enlarging it. “I nearly forgot, I brought you two pots of ink. It’s probably best to hide one away, for emergency use.” He pulled the pots from the bottom of the bag, before shrinking it and stowing it in his robes once more. He closed the journal and put it on her bed, setting the two inkpots on top of it.
“I really ought to go.” He said, then, with an air of finality. “Perhaps you will get out of prison soon. Once you do you can return my cloak to me.” It wasn’t as if he really wanted the cloak back... it was heavier than his other, but the fit had never been quite right and he rarely ever wore it (it was too tight across the shoulders). Still, he thought that perhaps if he gave her an assignment of sorts, she would have it to focus on. Not that a person would attempt to prolong their life just to return Severus Snape’s wayward cloak, but he didn’t expect it would hurt to give her a tiny amount of extra motivation to hang on.
She took a step backward; it felt the correct thing to do - a division of space was similar to a division of emotions, or at least she could pretend it to be so. "Travel safe." Again, a wry, uncomfortably tight sort of smile pulled at her lips, though nothing similar to mirth reached her eyes as she moved to set the cloak upon the edge of the bed. It was hard to stop the angry swells of self-pity that flooded through her, and a tiny, persistent part of her wished he'd just left her to get infected and die. Maybe the easy way out wasn't the most noble, but at least it was, well, easy.
There was nothing more Charlotte could say and so she just sort of stood there, next to her bed and new things, meagre as they were (but also greatly appreciated), hands wound together in front of her stomach and waiting for him to hurry up and go if he was going to go so she could at least wallow in peace.
Severus absorbed the strange look on her face. It discomfited him that she would even try to smile in this situation, though he had plenty of times imagined through the journals that she was experiencing somewhat improved mood. It seemed out of place when he actually saw it, and although it seemed a false expression to him, it still unsettled him to see. He nodded at her words, feeling relieved at the prospect of leaving the prison and guilty for feeling such relief.
He turned, pushing away his feelings to be examined when he was in a more private place, and walked out of her cell. He pulled the door closed behind him and saw to the latch. “I’m off, then. Stay alive.” He said, before stalking down the hall. When he reached the end, he found the guard had fallen asleep in a chair and roused him, giving a few empty threats about informing the man’s superiors about him sleeping on the job with an implied ‘unless you don’t tell anyone I was here’. It was only a matter of a few minutes before he’d be safely in his home at Hogwarts again, and none the wiser to his trip.