"Phew-" The boy, Dickens, and the girl, Louisa, lay snuggled together on the ground. Their sleep quality looked excellent; they had dropped off in an instant. Ah, to be young-no, sleep this good probably owed more to the Sleeping Spell Snape had suddenly cast.
"...?" Brian was puzzled. The Sleeping Spell had been very gentle and would put no strain on the children, but why had Snape's movements been so practiced, as though this were not his first time doing it?
Brian looked at Severus Snape, who had put away his wand. The wizard who still considered all black the best possible outfit and imitated a bat's comings and goings looked absolutely dreadful at the moment.
Snape's hair was at least twice as greasy and disheveled as it had been at Hogwarts, almost forming a protective shell. His eye sockets were black and purple, as though he had just smoked ten pounds of weed and gone on an eating and drinking binge. Meanwhile, his hooked nose, still stubbornly putting on an "I'm full of energy" act, gleamed with oil beneath the streetlight. Add to that Snape's perpetually gloomy expression...
Honestly, Snape now looked exactly like a stereotypical villain from a Muggle comic-though, of course, he was not the sort to do something as stupid as "explain his inner journey to the good guys at the critical moment, then laugh uproariously and get killed in a reversal."
His Stunning Spells were crisp and decisive. He was absolutely the ruthless sort who disliked wasting words and attacked with zero startup frames upon meeting someone, leaving readers unable to imagine "how the protagonist could possibly win."
As a child, Brian had heard that Batman went out at night in the Federation to deliver heavy punches in the name of justice and punish bad