Weak
Six months, and the crippling feeling was more than he could bear. He was discovering that loneliness was, in the end, as natural as thirst and hunger; a kind of heaviness he only became aware of when it reached his heart, as if his brain wanted nothing to do with it. It certainly was true, as he was just as incapable of ignoring the sharp feeling of shame that accompanied each of these episodes.
He often woke up disoriented at night, as he had always done when suffering from nightmares. His first instinct was to go down to the kitchens for a hot beverage, and he often got up without second thought - only when he had put his hand on the door handle did he brutally remember that a colleague - or a student, for all he knew - might try to kill him the moment he stepped out of his apartment. The first time it had happened, he had stood a long time on his side of the door, lost in thought. Trying to come to terms with his new reality had left him in some kind of trance; there is something truly terrible about dreading to open your own door.
Every evening, no matter how busy he tried to make himself, he would look up at the clock at precisely 9. This was when he was supposed to meet Minerva in the staff room - she would forbid him to have coffee given the late hour, he would protest, she would tell him he should care more about his health, he would roll his eyes, she would propose fire-whiskey instead.
Often too, he would get confused. He would momentarily forget why he no longer taught and wish to ask her about a student, even help her grade essays; in late December he had spent a week thinking about the gifts he should get his colleagues, or rather such thought had been at the back of his mind somewhere. It was only when he had met Filius' resentful gaze that the thought had truly presented itself to him in all its absurd concreteness. Within the same painful, brutal moment he had realised how senseless it had been but also how much better that illusion had made him feel that week, as if his mind desperately tried to hide things from him. He felt foolish and empty. What had he left, if not control over himself?
Being homesick in your own home: that is poison.
It had been six months and, barely present at all anymore, completing each task with the utmost care, lying with undeniable expertise, Severus sustained himself, when left alone, by thinking of the past. He found comfort in anything: there was the memory of being safe in his own bed, the pain, but incredible relief he had felt every time he had come back from a meeting to the soothing sight of the school's gates, the recollection of a conversation between students he had overheard when the school was not so silent - Merlin, he never would have thought he would have missed that.
And then, there was Minerva. There was something familiar about the way he felt about her, and though he always refused to dwell on the subject, even in the privacy of his own mind, it is clear to us that it was heartbreak: raw, intense heartbreak.
It is no surprise that these emotions, shut down and locked away so brutally that they seemed to Severus a complete alternative state of consciousness, finally merged with an acute need for revolt, for anything to assert even the slightest command over his life.
One night, sick, disheveled, shaking, he came out of his room his wand still in his pocket, perhaps wishing to get killed the moment he took a step outside. But all was quiet and he found himself, at 4 in the morning, in the staff room. It was cold and empty. His chair had been moved to the back of the room. Severus felt a kind of frantic satisfaction in being there, in standing on the freezing flagstones. He moved his chair back exactly where it used to be, by the fireplace, right in front of Minerva's.
Then he sat and drank coffee, smiling slightly, still trembling.
At 5 he carefully lit up the fireplace, kneeling to cast the spell as if he had never done it before, putting in just enough wood for the fire to last well past 7.
Then he left, silently.
Minerva had always hated how cold the staff room was in the early morning. She could not stand being there until the place had warmed up to an acceptable temperature, and, as a Scottish woman, she considered it to be a low one still; but this room she had always compared with Antarctica, and, depending on her mood, the list of comparisons could go on well into the rest of Northern Europe and to the depths of Siberia.
But that morning when she came in the room was pleasantly warm, just as warm as it was in the evening.
She stared at the empty cup of coffee for a long time.