Snape’s eyes held nothing but cold indifference, as though nothing in the world could disturb whatever stillness lived inside him.
Even when a flicker of amusement crossed his face, it was always wrapped in mockery — as if he found everything around him beneath contempt.
His nose was sharp and hooked, like an eagle’s beak, giving him the look of someone arrogant and cutting.
It suited him.
Keen, direct, no softness anywhere.
His lips stayed pressed shut, as though holding some secret in place.
When he did speak, the words came out like arrows, sharp, precise, straight to the mark.
His frame was tall and slender, thin as a bamboo pole.
But there was something coiled inside that lean body.
Every movement carried a sense of restrained power, as if he could unleash something tremendous with barely any effort.
His fingers were sharply defined at every knuckle, like something carved rather than grown.
No softness there either.
They looked hard and capable.
In the dream, Petunia wanted to move closer to him, and yet feared what that cold gaze might do to her.
And then the forgotten moments came, unreeling slowly, like a scroll pulled from somewhere dusty and sealed.
The light had been just right that day.
The breeze warm and easy.
His figure had cut across her field of vision like something bright and unavoidable, and her eyes had locked on without her permission, pulled there like iron to a magnet.
When it had actually happened, she hadn’t felt much.
Relief, mostly, the dull, grateful kind that comes from surviving something.
But in the dream, her heartbeat lost its usual rhythm entirely.
It sped up and slowed down and surged and dropped, as though something unseen had taken hold of it.
Looking back on it now, Petunia felt something uncomfortably close to regret.
That look she’d given him, it hadn’t been as simple or innocent as she’d told herself at the time.
She was starting to wonder whether she’d already been clouded by something purely physical, her usual clarity quietly slipping away without her noticing.
— What came next in the dream only made the suspicion worse.
She was in a dim, hazy space, the atmosphere around her something she couldn’t quite name.
He appeared in front of her, expression severe as ever.
Then he reached out and stroked her cheek.
Gently.
His fingertips felt warm — real in the way dreams rarely are — and her heart sped up at the contact.
She caught the smell of Potion, sharp and unpleasant, and her brow pulled together involuntarily.
She tried to pull away.
Her body wouldn’t move.
She watched herself lean into his chest without meaning to.
And then he spoke, and the words that came out of that cutting mouth were the last thing she expected.
The cruelest, most biting delivery imaginable.
Love words.
The kind that made her pulse jump anyway.
By the end, the dream had slid fully into the territory of a steamy romantic film.
— Petunia drove her face into the pillow.
The impact produced a sound far louder than a pillow had any right to make.
Out in the hall, Mrs.
Evans startled at the noise.
She put down whatever she was holding and hurried to Petunia’s room, knocking softly at the door.
“Petunia?
Are you all right?
What happened?” No answer from inside.
Petunia was curled up on the bed, knees pulled tight to her chest, not moving.
She didn’t want her mother to see her like this.
She definitely didn’t want to explain the noise.
This is just desperation, she told herself.
Being rescued by someone, it does things to your head.
She needed to calm down.
There had been quite a few dreams like this lately.
That was nothing new.
What was new was that over the past several nights, the blurry shape at the center of them had gradually sharpened into a face she knew from waking life.
Petunia took a slow, deep breath and tried to smooth out the tangled mess in her head.
Much good that did.
She still couldn’t accept it.
➤ Next: Three Women (1)