>VERBOSE

et_tu_lj (after gamma_x_orionis):

Post a random sentence (or three whole paragraphs) from every WIP you're currently working on, even if it's very short. Then invite people to ask questions about your WIP. With any luck, you'll get talking about writing, and the motivation to take that WIP one step closer to completion will appear as if by magic!

Haha, rly? sure I will. *skeptical Severus eyebrow* Warning, some of these are very old indeed, just... not deleted yet.

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Behind the door, there was another man slouching in an old leather armchair on a landing at the top of some stairs. He was smoking a cigarette and he was neither thin nor dark; he was blond and strongly built and obviously had been hired to mean business at people.

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"You might be willing to die for a reason," Regulus continued, "but there's no way you'd increase your own suffering just out of stupidity or stubbornness. You've given yourself away by not turning me in immediately. And that means I can count on you to help me, Severus. I need you."

---

Truthfully, Severus did, but he began feeling like a leech the first time he spent the night. It would have been ludicrous to try to tell Regulus it was too much expense, and in a way that made it worse. If he were a burden, at least he would be taking on an honest debt he'd have to work to pay off, which was a concept he could get his mind around.

---

Regulus felt his cheeks get warm. He hated being compared to Sirius, good or ill; had hated it all his life, but especially nowadays. He was almost seventeen, damn it; sole male heir to the Black line he might be, but that didn't mean he wasn't his own person, an adult wizard in his own right.

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But take tonight's dinner, for example. Severus had been observing the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall and trying to avoid thinking about how it resembled the sky in his memory of that night, when Harroway addressed him without any preamble: "Who was she, Severus?" He hated how the man could come up with things like that without, it seemed, employing Legilimency, unless he was a greater Legilimens than the Dark Lord had been, which he could scarcely credit.

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After twenty or thirty seconds, though, he noticed that Snape's breathing didn't seem to be improving; he was still gulping air as though he had been drowning. "Are you going to be all right, Snape?" he asked. "Only I'd rather not have to deal with your corpse, you see." He took a swallow of his whiskey.

---

I had an odd dream yesderday morning. Albus/Severus. Yeah, you heard me. Not Albus Severus -- Albus/Severus, something I usually rather squick at. It was afterlife, and only barely above the level of friendship or platonic love, almost pre-slash I suppose you could say. It was poignant and thoughtful and comforting and contained the idea that Dumbledore had actually had to kill Grindelwald, so he knew plenty about damaging your soul by killing someone, please and thank you. I even dreamt an illustration (which I have no hope of drawing -- detailed close-up drawings of hands? forget it). I wonder if I could possibly capture the feeling I had if I tried to write it. It seems like the kind of thing where you see a magnificently coloured sky, and photograph it, and the colour all washes out and it's never the way you saw it in your head.

ETA: Ah! What I am fumbling towards here is the fact that it was sympathetic to Dumbledore. I don't usually Dumbles-bash except for humourous effect, but I don't feel very warm towards him anymore. The feeling of the scene I was dreaming was very much so. That's what I couldn't put my finger on, heh.