Interruptions (Open)

[Severus Snape]

Dark shadows crept down the cold stone walls like insects, only to be banished seconds later by the flickering light coming from a large candelabrum mounted upon a great desk made from dark coloured wood. The top of the desk was covered with rolled parchment and behind it, hunched over an unrolled piece, sat Professor Snape as he scrawled ten different corrections across one small paragraph. This particular Essay, belonging to a one Ronald Weasley by name already had another set corrections scribbled onto the paragraph above, all of them detailed in red ink.

Lifting his pheasant feather quill from the parchment, he dropped it lightly into a small inkpot beside the Essay and frowned. An expression not uncommon on the mans worn face. How he hated marking them, particularly those that belonged to Weasley and his friends, Granger the Know-it-all and Potter… Though he rarely had to correct anything Granger put in her work, he hated reading through her perfectly formed equations with a passion, he hated every neatly dotted 'i' and crossed 't'. He hated reading through all of them, in fact he didn’t want this job at all, they all knew which on he wanted and yet here he was, still stuck in the Dungeons, working amongst pickled creatures in jars.

Retrieving the quill, he tapped it twice on the inkpot's glass rim to shake off any excess drips, before bringing it down onto the parchment once more and continuing with Weasley’s corrections, no doubt he still had at least another hundred or so to get though, after all, the essay was three and half rolls long.

A few minutes later, movement outside his office door caught his attention. Looking up form the Essay again, he locked his cold eyes on the panelled wood of the door and waited, his dark, somewhat greasy hair caressing his sallow cheek with the movement. A few seconds later, there came a sharp rap. Hesitating for a moment, Snape set the quill down on top of Weasley's essay before his cold voice called out across the room.

“Come in…”[/b]

[Dugan Tiernan]

An icy draft whipped through the corridors of Hogwarts School, causing the torches that lined the corridors to flicker and thus distort the shadows cast on the walls into dark and ghoulish shapes. The chill of the wind was typical of the change of seasons, however it was with almost alarming swiftness this year that autumn had begun to turn into winter, for already the days were becoming unpleasantly icy. The harsh conditions did not however seem to bother Professor Tiernan, for on this particular evening he swept through the school without hesitation. His destination, the office of Professor Severus Snape, was still several floors beneath him, however Dugan made it to the Grand Staircase in good time and was quickly crossing the castle’s atrium towards the passage leading to the dungeons.

As the Professor walked he made a mental note to learn as many of the secret passages in the place as he could; after all, the school was far too large to take the scenic route every time. It seemed odd to him that no headmaster had thought to provide maps of the place, although as he considered it he realised there was a distinct possibility that this omission was simply designed to add to the mystique of the place. That explanation would certainly fit with the reputation most headmasters had acquired for being eccentric, Dumbledore in particular if the Daily Prophet’s campaign against him was to be believed.

The chill of the castle only worsened as Dugan descended another set of stone steps down into the dungeon, so much so that in spite of his demeanour the Professor was quite unable to prevent himself from shivering. Why anyone would choose to have their living quarters down here was quite beyond him... then again, it was Snape he was talking about. The potions master had struck Dugan as odd almost immediately, from his obviously unwashed hair to his expression that looked as if he were plotting painful ways to kill each and every student. Smiling in amusement for a moment at this assessment of Snape, Professor Tiernan reached Severus’s door and rapped smartly on it with one hand.

“Come in...”

The potions master’s oily voice trawled out from within the room fairly quickly, so without further ado Tiernan pushed the door open and entered the office. It was just as he’d expected it to look: dark, foreboding and unkempt, rather like the room’s occupant who sat hunched over a desk. Remembering the teacher's reputation, Dugan quickly reinforced his Occlumency shields, making sure that they were at full strength before looking up to speak.

“Ah, I do hope I’m not interrupting anything...” began Professor Tiernan, before changing tack as he noticed the large stack of unmarked essays beside Snape, “...incredibly tedious.”

[Severus Snape]

Snape’s eyes narrowed slightly as the door creaked open and a cool drought from the windowless corridor beyond seeped in, its frosty tendrils curling with ease around the body of his visitor. The desk at which he sat, stood in the centre of his office, it was round in shape and gave him a perfect eye line with the person now approaching him as the door creaked back into it’s frame with a loud click behind him.

Severus’s office was particularly sizable due to its location. The Dungeon rooms were huge in both width and height, spread out beneath the chambers above in the main castle and around him, mounted on many shelves stood countless books, bottles and phials of all shapes and sizes. Some were tall, some small, some curved here and there and others simply looked like something you expect to find in an Alchemists laboratory, somewhat ominous as the flickering light from the candles (He preferred candlelight to the light of torches) danced on their reflective skins. Though most of them contained simple Potions ingredients, some of them were filled with pre-mixed droughts and bases, the others…filled with pickled creatures, well preserved and looking simply as if they we’re sleeping.

Their eerie presence enhancing the already intimidating aura that seemed to surround the Potions Master, Snape folded his arms across his chest and sat up straight in the high-backed chair as his visitor came to a halt before him.

“Ah, I do hope I’m not interrupting anything...incredibly tedious.”

Dugan Tiernan, had recently taken over the History of Magic position from the late Professor Binns, so to find a History teacher down here in the Dungeons certainly intrigued Snape's curiosity, as most of the other professors avoided Snape's domain if they could help it

“Dugan”. He answered with a short nod, “I’m afraid you find me marking the work of dunderheads presently”. He said simply, indicating to the pile of rolled parchment, which Tiernan’s eyes now lingered on as if it were normal to address your students as dunderheads. “Perhaps it is time I took a break from correcting Mr Weasley’s Essay on the Drought of the Living Death…” He uttered before rising slowly from his desk and moving around to the side where he placed one hand palm down on its smooth wooden surface. “Permit me to ask...what it is that brings you down here?”

The School had been back in session for almost a month now and in the time Dugan had been with them, Snape had only ever conversed with him once or twice, he didn’t have much to discuss with a History professor, had Dugan taken up the Defence against the Dark Arts position instead, then perhaps they would have had more to talk about, but as Fudge and the ministry had seen to that…they had very little in common.

A dark look passed across Severus’s face at the thought of Fudge and his interference, before his concentration returned to Professor Tiernan.