Spinner's End

Ch 32





The days grew shorter and colder as Christmas approached.



Raven enjoyed the Christmas decorations going up around on all of the shops and restaurants. She thought about putting lights up in her large sitting room window then decided that since the end of the street was deserted, there would be nobody to look at them and it would probably just make her lighting bill higher.



Kevin had let her do all the decorating of the store, which suited her fine. She kept up with her candle rituals. Kevin was being very nice to her. She had even made mistakes, he had been angry with her, but then by the next day he was again nice to her. Raven wondered if Severus had enchanted Kevin or something. She had asked Severus point blank one lazy afternoon as the two were lying on the sofa each reading a book a few weeks before Christmas. Severus had very honestly told her that he had enough to worry about on his own without meddling in her business. He did though assure her that if Kevin fired her, he really would turn him into a toad.







Raven laughed at that and snuggled tighter against him. She wondered if it were possible to feel more secure than being with Severus. She knew that he was too thin to be much of a physical threat to a lot of men but she mused on his magical ability and knew that nothing could make her feel more relaxed and secure.



Raven thought about all of this as she stirred some horrible canned chicken soup in a small pot on the stove while she nibbled at some crackers. She liked the Christmas rush at the store. The crowds and being very busy made the workday fly by. She smiled outwardly as she imagined her and Severus’ approaching vacation. She had been threatening to take him skiing. She let out a little laugh recalling the frightened look that he had when she pretended to get upset about him not wanting to go skiing. He wasn’t frightened that Raven was upset. He was frightened that she was actually going to goad him into skiing with her. She had laughed at the horrified look on his face when she showed him a skiing event on the television. She had specifically picked a ski jumping event.



Raven sat at her small table eating her soup. She tried to read her book, but her mind wandered to thinking about Severus. She wondered what he was doing right now. She wanted to picture him involved in an animated discussion with some coworkers over some huge, complicated meal. But she knew that he probably had little if anything to do with his coworkers as talk of them had almost dried up completely. She so longed to get to see into his world. In the past he had spoken of the school where he worked. He referred to it as ‘the castle’. Raven tried to imagine how fabulous it would be to be a student and go to school in a castle or to go to work everyday and live a castle. However, she pictured it, as she wanted it to be in her mind, not as it certainly is for Severus.



He told her that it was just made of stone and mortar and that some parts were probably nice, but that for the most part it was just big, stony and cold. He indicated to her how he dressed, telling her that wearing layers and layers of wool wasn’t exactly his idea of fun.



Upon her insistence, he described his rooms where he stayed. To Raven it sounded beautiful. She begged him to take her there some night at midnight or any time he chose, but he insisted that it wasn’t a good idea. It was at this point when Raven felt his mind drifting away from her as his brow wrinkled. She knew that he would never let her near to anyplace that he thought could cause her danger. And he felt that anyplace in his world was a danger for her.



The seclusion made her feel both good and bad. She knew that he loved her and that he would do anything to keep her safe, but it felt bad for her because she wanted be there for him and help him even though she knew that the magic people would kill her like a bug if she tried to get in their way. She just wanted to be so much more in his life. Even though she knew of his love, sometimes she felt as though she was just a diversion for him.



Raven regarded her half eaten soup. She crushed up one of the crackers from the package lying next to the bowl. She dropped it into the soup, picking up her book trying to pay attention to reading as she slowly spooned up the soup.



Many, many miles away Severus looked out across the great hall at the Hogwarts students. Sitting in the Headmaster seat, he loathed every bit the imposter he knew he was. The students hated him, if possible, and it was, even more than they hated him as a professor. For Severus the students were of little consequence, what he despised was the loathing of his long time co-workers. Some of them were people he had thought of as his only friends and now they distrusted and hated him. It had been his very existence for years to be impenetrable and hard even to the people that he liked, but now they were turning the tables on him. Of course as was his nature, he feigned indifference to their distrust and treatment towards him.



Severus glared at some children walking past the table in front of him as he drank ale from a large stein. He disliked children almost as much as he disliked the ale. The combination of these factors seemed to register to the children as they moved rapidly to get away from in front of the headmaster. Severus set the stein down slightly overly firmly on the tabletop, which frightened the children, who though that his anger was directed at them, they fairly ran from the hall.



Severus knew that in the past he would have laughed internally at the fright of the children, but now he simply felt disgust, but not with the children, rather with himself.



He regarded the barely eaten plate of food in front of him. He really rarely had any sort of appetite at all while at Hogwarts now. The only time it seemed to him that he had any desire to really eat was when he was with Raven.



Severus thought suddenly of Raven. Had anyone had the desire or nerve to actually look at the headmaster, they might have seen a smile, not at his lips, which he could control to the finest degree, but rather at his eyes. Severus regarded the food on the plate again and thought about Raven, and her telling him one time how it seeded that every week he came back thinner and how someday he was just going to disappear and it wasn’t going to be because of any sort of magic, just starvation. She had then proceeded to make him some huge meal, of which he would never be able to recall, because the food didn’t matter to Severus. For him what mattered was that someone cared enough about him to notice that he was human, thin and that they cared enough to actually do anything at all for him, much less make a time consuming meal.



While remembering and thinking this, Severus had managed to eat a majority of the food from the plate. Severus moved his eyes to the opposite edge of the table from himself, almost in a trance like state, he envisioned Raven’s eyes looking into his.



Rousing from his near trance he grasped again for the stein and drank the weak, terrible ale. As his eyes scanned the Great Hall, seeming to look for transgressors of any sort, his mind was actually far away trying to picture what Raven might be doing at this exact moment. He pictured her wrapped up in the cashmere blanket he had given her; warm on her sofa engrossed in one of her many books.