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He returns to the castle a broken man.
‘How did this happen?’ He asks it of himself, speaks the word even, but is aware as he does that the action is more to regain control, the security of verbalising the words and hence realising them, than a real query. He knows how this happened.
The world swims before him as he mounts the steps to the doors, almost falls, sways and grips for support that is not there, never has been. Blood is beating in his fingertips and he dimly wonders why it hurts, it hurts – before the red he can see all around him, that is soaking his robes, skin, everything, gives way to a blackness that is terrible and merciful all at once. Once he would not have thought the two could exist side by side.
He does now.
*
Light. Light and pain and fuzzy, cloying numbness. His mouth tastes sour. Somewhere, there are voices. Voices shouting. Voices crying. Voices moving ever closer.
He slips away from them all, back into sleep.
And awakes again, and this time it is different. This time the world is sharper and he is aware from the start of where he is, that this is real, and it fills him with heaviness and dread. His mouth is still sour and he wants water, but does not want to wake, doesn’t want to do anything other than lie here, just wants to sleep –
“I know.”
And is it really any surprise that he, he who that voice belongs to, knows, considering that he knows everything, considering that he holds the strings of this little puppet show in his hands and makes his subjects dance and dance until their wooden feet burn –
“Please.”
Why ‘please’? Why use the word, when they both know it isn’t a question and never has been. He speaks, I listen; he walks, I follow; he asks, I trust. And then the trust cracks through, breaks like a mirror, breaks as surely as a person will break when their life is shattered, their heart is murdered, their soul is blackened and no hope of reprieve, none at all –
“There is always hope.”
The eyes open. It is in fury that they do so, fury and weariness and grief so violent that it is paramount to madness. But it is in shock that they fix on the man in front of them, and in horror that they register that his eyes, also, are unnaturally bright.
“I am sorry. I really am. So sorry – to have to ask this of you –“
And the strings of the puppet pull tight, the bond wrought reluctantly, falteringly, loathingly over so many years, drawn taut by the same force that brought it into being; the force exuding from the very breath of the man before him, that brought him to life, that refuses to let him go, even now, even now –
Eyes open, truly, and meet those before them. A path is decided. A decision is made.
And a question is asked. One question. So simple.
“What do I need to do?”
*
In the end, it is shockingly easy and jarringly, horrifyingly hard. He speaks the words - and how many times had he spoken the words? How many times has his mouth shaped the sounds, whether they be ‘Avadra Kadavra’ or ‘The prophecy, my Lord’ that have led to an innocent party’s death? – and watches him fall like a stone.
This man. This man whom he loves, whom he loathes; this man who gave him his trust when nobody else would give him so much as a nod. This man whom he spied for and lied for, put himself in mortal danger for. He kills him.
And finally he understands the words of a poem, a poem that his mother sang to him long ago, because he was too young to understand and she was too broken to remember anything more than words written by another broken soul.
Yet each man kills the thing he loves
By each let this be heard
He watches him fall, lit all around by a blaze of green light, and something in him swoops to the pit of his stomach, where it burns.
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
‘You’re – you’re beautiful! You’re the loveliest person I’ve ever seen!’
‘I’m just a mudblood, Sev, remember? Find a nice pureblood girl to give your compliments to.’
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword
And hadn’t he knelt among the ruins of their – her – house, before anyone else had arrived, and kissed her cold lips, her cheeks, wailed along with her boy in his cradle? And doesn't that same boy, as he chases him through flames and screams, taunt him?
‘You coward! Coward!’
A year later, he drops the sword into the lake – like an old legend, he seems to recall, another of his mother’s stories – and watches as he nearly dies retrieving it. A spark of something that could be admiration lights in his chest, but he squashes it into disgust. Just like that brat; determined to play the hero.
*
When he dies, he does so quietly. Even his blood flows politely, without a drip, without a dribble. It is his memories that cause him the most pain – that steady stream of them, flowing like tears from his eyes.
‘Look – at – me.’
A final mercy, he thinks, before his thoughts become undone, the way that they do before he falls asleep. Though he hasn’t slept, not really, in many years.
Green. They are so green, he thinks, like the light that lit Dumbledore, like the spell that snuffed out Lily’s laugh. Like emeralds. Like snakeskin.
When he awakes, he realises that the colour that they are closest to is that of grass. But perhaps that is because there is so much of it; great plains and hillocks of the stuff, sparkling with dew and trampled with footprints, like the grass in a playground, long, long ago.
He stands, slowly. He feels his face and there are long marks on it, the imprints of stems. His skin is damp with dew or with tears. He rubs his eyes and the sun warms his back, glorious, scorching, from somewhere behind him, high up and far away.
He turns around.
And there she is, walking towards him, the sun ablaze behind her. His Lily, his girl, whole and well, smiling with the small shy curve of the sickle moon. Her smile says ‘Thank you.’ Her smile says ‘I forgive you.’ Her smile says ‘You saved my son and we will embrace you for it.’
For the first time in years – in so long, so long – Severus Snape smiles back.