you had me several years ago, when i was quite naive

[inkdamage]

Who: Antonin Dolohov, Severus Snape.
What: words words words
Where: Severus' Flag Hill home.
When: Little while after the riots.
Warnings: Medicinal drug use??

Though disdaining of social pursuits, Severus can't quite be called a homebody, either. He works, and he works a lot - he'd be bored otherwise, and considering the pace his mind works at, boredom is intolerable. When he isn't working he's studying, because Severus looks at learning like both an enjoyable leisure activity, and something vital to his existence. He'll never just be done.

Which makes tonight rather rare: sitting in the covered garden room of his house, one window open, a few books laid out before him but nothing that would give the pedestrian academic a headache. He's accompanied by a plate of leftovers, a pizza box with several pieces missing, an oversized plastic cup filled with what is apparently iced coffee, and a lazy golden-colored dog, currently laying dejectedly on the floor near him, in utter, bleak despair over not being permitted to eat anything.

His last few jobs have been intense - fascinating, difficult, different, but also draining. He needs some time off of commissions of that nature lest he burn himself out, and after a day of not having the stomach for anything even resembling food, he's taking an evening for himself.

Comments

[requirethree]

He laughs again, shaking his head. "You're too skinny, Severus, I have - had - a reputation to uphold." In fairness, if all the rumours about Antonin in the 70s had been true, he'd probably be dead from exhaustion. He thought they were funny, so he encouraged them.

"I just do not know how you do not get bored, in the house all the time." Then again, confinement in a cell for years will give anyone a touch of wanderlust, perhaps.

[inkdamage]

Severus rolls his eyes, because yes, him being too skinny is why anyone ever passes over sleeping with him, it has nothing to do with being ugly and unpleasant. That's practically a compliment, Antonin - but he was kidding anyway, because apparently being stoned permits him to do that.

"I work. I'd be bored if I wasn't doing anything, but I do tend to be quite busy."

Hence the long hours shuttered down in the basement, doing fuck-knows-what.

[requirethree]

"I would say I am bad at work," Antonin replies, confidentially, "but I can not honestly say I have tried it." Guess who was not a star pupil at Durmstrang. (Nor did he finish - he ran off before his final year.) There was little need or opportunity for actual work after, though one might argue that inventing spells showed more initiative than many wizards possessed.

"I do not think 'locked in a basement' would agree with me."

[inkdamage]

"No, I doubt that it would." Because of Azkaban, yes, but also because Severus cannot see the older man committing quite so much time and effort into slow, fiddly experimentation.

"You could try for Hellsing. The others seem content there." But not Severus.

[requirethree]

"It's something to think about," he says, "I do have to do something for money." A nuisance, but true; it may serve the side purpose of giving him something to do besides drink and harass Severus.

"You think the chocolate really would do anything?" he asks, skeptically, after a short silence.

[inkdamage]

With great dignity, Severus refrains from making a cracks about Antonin already doing plenty for his money by drinking it. But he isn't actually put-out; Severus does (perhaps worryingly) well for himself.

"Yes, I do," he says easily. "Nothing dramatic, not by far, but honestly someone should have been shoving it in all your faces immediately. I imagine there was something of a lack of medical attention after the storm, however."

[requirethree]

Antonin laughs, and this time it's a bit ugly. "No, the Dark Lord met us all with bars of chocolate and warm towels. It was quite touching."

[inkdamage]

Severus exhales and - doesn't say anything, but he gestures slightly like he might have, his expression uncharitable. It's probably for the best that he doesn't say anything disparaging about the Dark Lord, but he can think it. (Sometimes, he wonders if he's more angry, or more disappointed.)

"Well," he settles on eventually, "At least you got out."

It sounds like a poor consolation even to him.

[requirethree]

"I was going back in," he says, "and getting taken alive twice, that is just carelessness." Just because it's gallows humor doesn't make it untrue.

It certainly means Antonin is in no hurry to find a way out of Baedal.

[inkdamage]

"It--" An aborted attempt at saying something, but he doesn't quite outsmart himself, this time. "It's unbelievable."

This time he sits up slightly white gesturing, startling Cadie. "-No, sit." Severus rubs his forehead. "He's brilliant, truly bloody brilliant, how does he end up making that many missteps?" Rhetorical, obviously. "The first of which would be torturing your comrades."

How in the seven hells Voldemort was surprised as many people as they did jumped ship, turned, or ceased to look for him is mind boggling to Severus. And he was one of the closest to the Dark Lord.

[requirethree]

"Do you mean the first time? Because when we came back, He was mad." Which rather answers the question on its own, Antonin feels. "I am not entirely convinced He was still human."

Not that he has a good answer for the earlier war, though. Severus' question is one that doubtless occurred to many of His followers.

[inkdamage]

"He didn't want to be human," Severus says. "And he started to lose it even before the end, the first time." Quiet, a little distant. The paranoia, the secrecy, the sudden habit of turning his own followers against each other to test their loyalty in fits of jealous insecurity - Voldemort should have had a perfect army. But he was incapable of holding onto anything without ruining it.

[requirethree]

"Yes, for us as well." He should have never brought Igor in so close, never started taking so much of the council of Bellatrix and Crouch and those like them. Still, it's all done, and Antonin sees no point in performing an autopsy as long as he's here in Baedal.

"It was very different, in the beginning, and in the end, it had its own momentum." And so it went.

[inkdamage]

Severus lets that hang for a while, smoking; he doesn't blow rings, but apparently the suggestion of magic manages to make an exhale look slightly like a rune, for a half a heartbeat. It's almost idle.

Then- "This lukewarm talk is pointless." Half and half, not pretending they don't have a thousand grievances and regrets, but not playing hardball, either. They both know it.

"It's making me sound as old as you." So apparently the alternative is sass.

[requirethree]

Antonin laughs, quiet and worn. "So we will talk of something else. What happened back there is done." Even if its effects lingered, visibly and otherwise. "Besides, my memory for good times..." He makes a so-so gesture with his hand. "Reminiscing, it is not my favorite thing."

[inkdamage]

"And I'm a shit conversationalist even at the best of times." Stoned, why even try? Slightly bleary now he rubs a hand over his face as if to ascertain his degree of coherency. "In addition to the fact that I have little to talk about to begin with." Besides all of this, anyway. "How are you finding the city?"

[requirethree]

"Strange," he said, settling back. "Not bad, exactly. Rodolphus showed me the fog, by the..." He gestures, thinking of the name. "...the SkyRail," he resolves, with satisfaction at remembering.

"It seems interesting, but not so interesting I will go poking it."

[inkdamage]

"It's not that bad, if you don't get bit by anything." ... Of course Severus goes out there poking at things. Of course. "The weather here's a bit tricky, being by the border. Sometimes we get funny things out of the shadows."

[requirethree]

"Funny things do not bother me," Antonin says, speculative. "It is only that it seems... familiar." In a way he has no desire at all to cultivate." Antonin had felt a draw, which paradoxically means he now has every desire to leave it alone.

[inkdamage]

Severus seems to understand perfectly what he means by that - and chooses not to comment on his own feelings on the matter. In truth, he's never been good at saying no to things that grab his interest, especially dark, powerful things. It's how he ended up a Death Eater to begin with, caring very little about anything else besides what Voldemort could give him. Teach him.

"Supposedly there's quite a lot to see here, fog aside."

[requirethree]

Antonin smiles, lopsided. He's affably stoned, which is more or less like regular Antonin but quieter. "Lots of bars. And lots of soldiers, I noticed that too."