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His chest hurts.
It is four in the morning, and reasonable people are in bed, and he is grading essays in the quiet of his quarters with a glass of Ogden’s Old at his elbow.
The fire pops behind him, and his quill scratches yet another accusing red line across the page. He sets the quill down, gently, and the feather brushes across the newly-inked line, smearing the ink slightly. His vision has blurred enough at this point that it doesn’t really matter.
He takes a sip of the Firewhisky. It burns more than it has any right to, but his vision clears slightly. The glass thuds quietly when he sets it back down at his elbow, and the parchment rustles when he sets it aside to dry.
His chest hurts.
Last night, he had been at a party, of sorts. The Dark Lord had been in a fairly good mood, and they had captured another random muggle girl with which to play. She was all blonde hair and pale skin, with eyes that were too wide and a mouth that was too big. Just Rosier’s type. She’d even managed to spit a few insults through the blood dripping down her chin, before they’d cut out her tongue.
Before he’d killed her.
Lucius had oh-so-generously opened his home to them, setting his myriad house elves to quickly wiping the blood from his marble floors. They hadn’t been waxed quite some time, he’d apologized. The blood was likely to leak under the tiling, if it wasn’t cleaned quickly enough. Ignore the elves, please, won’t you have another glass of wine?
There’d been no useful information that night. He doubts that the Order, or the Headmaster, cared about how old Malfoy’s antique silverware is, or about the fact that The Dark Lord’s head was slightly shinier than usual, isn’t that quaint?
Maybe The Dark Lord oils his head for special occasions, instead of styling his hair.
He’d returned when the sun was almost to the horizon. He’d walked into the Headmaster’s office as the sun rose, and told him that the night was a total waste of everyone’s time, retreated to the safety of his quarters to soak his blood-stained robes, and then left the safety of his quarters to walk out the pit in his stomach under the pretense of late-night (or was it early-morning?) rounds.
Maybe he shouldn’t have gotten satisfaction out of taking fifty points from a young Ravenclaw sneaking back to the dorms from falling asleep at a late-night study session, hair mussed and textbook tucked under her arm, but she had looked so much like the girl he had killed not three hours prior when her eyes had widened in fright, and his options were either to yell or to cry.
Obviously, he’d chosen to yell. And then he’d chosen to stalk back to his quarters, look in the mirror, and wonder if half an hour of sleep would have any effect on the bags under his eyes.
But that was last night. Tonight, he has twelve more essays on the uses of mugwort to grade before he can finally, finally close his eyes.
Maybe the Firewhisky was a bad idea.
He sighs, coughs one dry, short cough, and stands. His right hip cracks, and his knees ache, and his spine creaks loudly as he straightens. His footsteps are muffled by the ornate carpet.
The pressure in his chest has not abated. He wonders, for the twelfth time that night, when he got so old, so young.
There is a basin in his bathtub, in which soak the robes from last night’s revelry. He’d gotten a fair bit of blood on it, from when he’d been bumped by Rosier and severed a femoral artery, granting their latest victim the mercy of a quick death.
She hadn’t seemed all that grateful, but that’s. That’s fair enough.
This thing of his is quite old-fashioned, scrubbing at a robe with his wand placed neatly on the floor tiles. But it’s been a ritual of his since the beginning, since the first time he split open a throat and was rewarded with a hot gush of arterial spray. What right does he have to wave a wand and clear the remnants of someone’s life away?
Well.
The girl had down fighting, and her blood is, too. The side of his mouth twists in something that might be a smile, or might be a grimace, as he flicks up his robe’s sleeves and gets to scrubbing again. The water swirls pink, and doesn’t stop. He lifts the sopping robe, dripping water down the side of the basin and into pristine white bathtub, and considers it. It’s a black robe. A bloodstain will hardly be noticeable, or really even out of place at the next meeting.
He sighs and drops the robe back into the basin. It splashes a drop of water onto his forehead, and he irritably flicks it off.
Twelve more essays.
The chair creaks when he sits back down. He nearly tips over the inkwell when he dips the nib of his quill in, and then he flicks red ink onto his wrist when he pens the letter “m” too aggressively.
He sighs, and glances at the still half-full glass of Firewhisky.
The wards around his office chime.
“This is a rather poor time to be drinking,” the Headmaster says from behind him.
The Headmaster sounds far too cheerful for this time of night. He rather wants to throw the glass at the man. Or something. Instead, he simply responds, “This is a rather poor time to be grading.”
The Headmaster hums in acknowledgement. He puts his attention back to the essays. A grammar mistake here, a factoid lifted directly from another student’s essay there, and the clink of glass on glass behind him.
He turns, and sees the Headmaster settled in the armchair next to the fire, a glass of Firewhisky of his own cupped firmly in his hands. He says nothing, simply raises his eyebrows as the Headmaster lifts the glass a little in a small salute, then drains the entire thing in one go.
“Minerva will be disappointed she wasn’t invited,” he says, just to fill the silence as the fire crackles accusingly.
The Headmaster chuckles. “Minerva will understand. She has class with the first years first thing tomorrow.” The Headmaster pauses, sets the glass down in front of the fireplace. “As do you.”
Eleven more essays, and the rustle of drying parchment. A drop of crimson red ink falls into a knot in the table.
“I’ve yet to receive any special requests from my colleagues,” he says, as he puts an x through a paragraph that is riddled with factual errors. The walls have ears, after all. Sometimes.
“Have you taken any days off yet this term?” The Headmaster responds. “You should. Aurora would cover for you.”
His left hand trembles with some long-faded memory, and the space behind his eyes aches, vaguely. “I am not ill,” he says.
“How long has it been since you’ve had a good night’s rest?” The Headmaster asks.
He lets his silence answer for him. The Headmaster’s silence returns his answer.
His quill scratches a D into the blank space at the bottom of the parchment. His quill scrapes across glass. ‘See me after class,’ he writes.
“Your inkwell is running low,” the Headmaster comments. A moment, the flicker of magic racing along his skin, and the inkwell is full again.
“Thank you,” he says, as the Headmaster takes a sip from his again-full glass.
“You’re quite welcome,” the Headmaster replies. The Headmaster lets out a breath. He does not need to turn and look to know that the Headmaster suddenly looks very old, and very tired.
Another drop of crimson red ink falls onto the table. He sighs, Vanishes it, rubs at his eyes.
“I will see you at breakfast tomorrow,” the Headmaster says, robes rustling as he levers himself to his feet. The door misplaces air as it opens, a near-silent breath.
Suddenly, he is alone again.
He sighs. His chest hurts.
Ten more essays.