calloused/within pushing up daisies
t's the casting of a shadow over him that makes Harry look up, a dark figure blocking the bright glare of the sun.
Up until then, Harry had simply been swinging lazily on a park swing, watching the gravel beneath him blur into an indistinct grey, his thoughts blurring with it. It had been nice, having the world centre only around Harry and a swing and a patch of grave, and not Voldemort and Cedric and a bright green light.
And then the shadow had cast over him, and his peace had been ruined.
Harry looks into the eyes of one Severus Snape, staring down at him from his hooked nose with an inscrutable glare.
"Professor," Harry greets him politely, swallowing against the dryness in his throat. His voice sounds odd and unused, probably because it has been.
"Potter," Snape returns, that one word conveying far too much on their ever tumultuous relationship. "Do you plan on dying at the hands of scorching heat, as opposed to the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters?"
Harry turns away for a moment and closes his eyes, trying not to drown under the onslaught of perverse cackles, mocking applause, the dark figures spectating his death like damning omens. He sees them sometimes, hovering in his periphery, watching from the shadows in his room and lurking in his nightmares. Ready to watch him die and eat his soul, toast to his death.
"Aren't you one?" he says mindlessly.