Alabaster digits curl like talons into darkened wood of the dungeon. Nails gouge fresh marks alongside pocks from various potions failures. His rumbling groan could be the ageing castle, complaining but never faltering, or the exhaustion that has curled up deep in his chest. There it will make a home, unbothered. Or perhaps resolutely ignored, until the beams come crumbling down around him.
As a younger man the crucio shakes had been far more rattling. Many a night he had returned to Hogwarts, crashed to his knees. And screamed. Always into the silence, always on his own.
Now the shakes are as much from his own ageing bones as they are the curse. And he no longer screams, but offers a few curses of his own into the silent belly of the school.
Unnatural cold creeps from fingers and toes along limbs, reaching threateningly toward his core. Like eldritch shadows on the wall, a looming threat dutifully ignored and drowned by discipline. Severus offers only a grunt as he stalks his way through empty corridors. Merlin help any student he might happen across on his journey.
By the time he reaches the hospital wing, the frigid fingers of the curse poke and prod his joints. Crossing the threshold and his gait is far more limp than stalk. Until each flex of tendon and scrape of bone becomes a crack and a pop.
" @m4tron ." He offers by way of greeting, coal eyes set on the roaring fireplace, rather than the warm shadow of her. Forearm crashes onto mantle, forehead falls after it. Leg he still hasn't dared to examine, cocked to protect it from his own weight. Warmth of the fire provides little relief, though he groans as though every burden had been lifted from his shoulders. "Merlin's shit and Salazar's piss."
