Parts Will Form A Whole

Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Severus Snape and all associated characters from the Harry Potter universe are the property of J.K. Rowling. No money is being made.

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Hands

I caught myself watching him again in class yesterday as he was grading papers. We were working on a test, well, we were supposed to be working on a test but that feather he uses, the black one tipped white at the end and stained red at the bottom, caught my eye and consequently, my attention. His fingers, long and lean, held the quill with the utmost of care as he skimmed through essay after essay. I was fascinated by those fingers; the way they curled at his sides distastefully when he found something particularly annoying; or the way they hardened on the quill when he read an unpleasant paragraph. There were a lot of those and I had forgotten my test in favor of observing the delicate nuances of those fingers.

They tensed in different ways, depending on the level of his disgust or the nature of it. It’s hard to describe, the loose tension I saw as he graded paper after paper. It gave me the impression of old annoyances, the same mistakes read over and over again for... how many years had he been teaching now? Then they would relax again, waiting for the next paragraph to be written. Occasionally he would mark something off, crossing out or circling then noting the mistake in long red paragraphs that would appear when one touched their wand to the editing in question.

Then there was the startled tension. It doesn’t happen often but I saw it yesterday. His head jerked up to glower at someone, not me I was thankful to discover, and his hands tensed, twitching once and gaining a slight angle. His glare must have been enough reprimand for the student as he had gone back to his work quickly enough and the tension dissolved as quickly as it had come.

I was watching at dinner and saw him, well not happy, but pleased at least. Those hands were as relaxed as they ever could be while he was eating his meal. It was when desert came that I saw it. I happened to have glanced up when a bowl of cherries appeared in front of him. Now I’ve never known Snape to indulge in anything. I mean, look at him. He’s skinny and pale as a ghost, he obsesses over potions and snarks at anyone who so much as breathes wrong. I see no indulgence there; but I did at dinner. The instant those cherries appeared, three of them had been snatched onto his plate. I must have blinked because I didn’t see it happen.

Throughout the rest of the meal I would see him eat one calm as you please, but he always had three on his plate. He picked them up with three fingers by the stem and I caught a glimpse of a soft tongue as they were brought to his mouth and clipped precisely off with finality. The action gave me the shivers. Then the stem would roll between his fingers, as though he was pondering some great mystery of life before it was placed exactly and without hesitation, on the side of his plate; lined up with the others before them. His hand then snaked out sharply and stole another cherry from the bowl to place it on his tray before he went back to his meal.

Then there was today at breakfast. He was there before me and I was able to watch him as I took my seat between Hermione and Ron. Those hands were almost soft, but not in a relaxed sort of pose. They were angled, as though he was exceedingly tired. Only his hands showed it though and I knew those hands like nothing else. Only I, and perhaps Dumbledore, one could never tell with him, knew that the night before had been heavily trying on him, on his position both in Voldemort’s circle, and his position as a spy. His back was ramrod strait as usual and his sneer was as formidable as always, but his hands told a whole other story. Softly tired, disturbingly tense, swiftly pleased; they were a language unto themselves…