MUSIC IN OUR VEINS
CHAPTER ONE
By Pure Black
NOTES: I'm ignoring HBP. I'm going to pick some facts out of the books and ignore some events. Hopefully it'll turn out to be something good. I'm pretty sure you'll like it if you like both hetro 'n' slash, bi, music, and fights.
WARNINGS:The story will deal with alcohol and drugs so be prepared for that. Sex in various forms, SLASH. This is a both dark and light story. It is also sensual and sexual, so I would not recommend it for younger readers, hence the rating.
EXPLANATION: It might be a bit confusing first, but this story starts at scratch and will build and grow into something huge. It will involve everyone we've seen so far but mostly Severus, Draco, Harry and some marauders.
For more information email or check out my livejournal. The link to that is over at my presentation. Click "homepage" and Draycious. Enjoy!
Severus Snape was lying wide-awake in his bed, thinking of everything and nothing and all. Sleep didn't seem to find him easy these days. He'd even stopped drinking his tea, hoping it would help him be able to sleep. Well, it didn't. He still couldn't sleep no matter what he did. It was really starting to get frustrating and that in turn lead him to be in a bad mood, much too the horror of the first years at Hogwarts. The term had started two weeks ago and he already felt worn out. He was still spying for Voldemort, or so people thought. Personally he wasn't so sure anymore. In truth he wasn't exactly sure about what he tried to accomplish, or if he was trying anything at all. His goals which had previously seemed extremely clear was now blurry and confusing. He was going through a though period of self doubt as well as doubt of others. For the first time in his life he didn't know what he wanted.
He'd always been strong headed and he'd always known what he wanted to accomplish in life. He used to have a very clear picture in his head of how he wanted things to be and he didn't stop working until the reality matched that picture. Right now all he saw was a black picture, no, it wasn't even black. It was frigging blank!
Groaning he turned around in his huge black bed and lay on his stomach. He wasn't the only one who had second thoughts regarding loyalty. A certain Harry Potter had been acting up and caused lots of trouble for Dumbledore when he went to the papers and told everyone how Dumbledore was a lying asshole. Snape snorted down in his pillow when he remembered what was written in the article. In particular he remembered a certain quote that told him a lot about the boy but that others (that weren't as clever as himself) wouldn't look twice at.
That seemed like a typical thing a self-absorbed complaining brat would say, and everyone thought Potter had meant he hadn't been himself in ages because he hadn't played quidditch, but in reality Potter had managed to make two separate statements with two different meanings in just one line. It was very clever of Potter to do that. He told everyone the truth but yet no one recognized it for what it really was. It was complicated but brilliant. Something he actually had to give the boy credit for. No one would know what Potter had actually said unless one was looking specifically for that particular things which was…
Well, Severus wasn't exactly sure what to make of it but he was pretty sure he'd gotten some of the hidden message right. Potter said he hadn't been himself in ages, pretty much stating that the "golden boy" image was nothing but a façade. Therefore that left Severus to think of who Potter really was, who he might be. The boy had many strange sides and he was positive that he hadn't even seen half of them yet. He was also intrigued by the words "
Severus took that as a statement that Potter was confused about his loyalties. Perhaps he could put his spying skills into motion and figure out what the boy was up to. The interview had been a total shocker. He hadn't thought Potter had it in him to go out in public and throw shit at Dumbledore, no matter how much deserved it was.
Severus sighed and sat up in bed. There was no use trying to settle down. He knew he couldn't rest with this new mystery on his mind. He was intrigued, he had to admit.
Instead of sleeping he reached down underneath his bed and grabbed a notebook from the floor. He always kept one there for he never knew when he needed to sort out his thoughts. He often vented his ideas by writing them down. He couldn't even count the many times he had woken up in the middle of the night, either remembering something he had to immediately write down or describing a dream he thought was significant.
He also picked up a muggle pen since they didn't tend to get messy with ink. He crossed his legs and sat Indian style in the dusk inside his bedroom in the middle of his bed. It looked like he was meditating, even more so since he only wore a pair of black silk pyjama pants. He stared at the paper a while before scratching away over the paper. He composted a song. He'd always liked writing songs and he was pretty good at it too. It wasn't light songs; they were dark and everything from rock to metal. He tried to write down how he felt right now, and compare it to how he felt when he was younger. He had never been a carefree person and he knew he was sometimes close to suicide, but he never did push himself over the line. He was depressed through; he had only just admitted that to himself. He hadn't realise that he was before, or at least he didn't want to admit it to himself. He had always been good at denying things even to himself.
He had always had a thing for analysing his own emotions and reactions, just like he did others. Sometimes he wished he'd just let his feelings be instead of analysing them. It just turned shit anyway. The big turn around, when he first began to analyse his feelings, had been after a particular rough death eater meeting when the dark lord had captured some order members and tortured them before killing them. Every death eater in the two closest circles around the dark lord had been there and watched, participated. Even Severus. He could do nothing to save them without revealing himself. While dead was nothing new to him he couldn't cope with the helplessness he had felt that night.
That had been two months ago and he still wasn't over it, he wasn't sure he'd ever be. He didn't let anyone know about his current state of mind through, and no one suspected a thing. They just thought he was a greasy bitter old man. That wasn't true either. He wasn't greasy, not really. He could probably protest and show them wrong but he just didn't care about what others might think about him. There was only him, and no one else. Nothing else matters, no one else mattered. Severus thought about all this and tried to but some of his feelings into words. It wasn't easy but after many scratched words he managed to make something that he kind of liked. It went like this:
Only I'm becoming less defined as days go by Less concerned about fitting in to the world Yes I am alone but then again I always was, as far back as I can tell There is no you, there is only me Well the tiniest little dot caught my eye And I kept picking at that scab And now I'm somewhere I am not supposed to be There is no fucking you, there is only me, only Is this really all there is?
Fading away (you might say) I'm losing focus
Kind of drifting into the abstract in terms of how I see myself
Sometimes I think I can see right through myself
Your world that is because it doesn't really matter anymore
None of this really matters anymore
I think maybe it's because, because you were never real to begin with
I just made you up to hurt myself, and it worked. Yes it did
There is no fucking you, there is only me, only
And it turned out to be a scab
And I had this funny feeling like I just knew it's something bad
I just couldn't leave alone
Like it was a doorway trying to seal itself shut
But I climbed through
And I can see things I know I really shouldn't see
Now I know why and now I know why
Things aren't as pretty on the inside
Is this really all there is?
(Written by Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails)
He read it quietly to himself before he threw the notebook onto the floor and let himself fall back into the soft pillows. He turned his head to see his digitally clock shining green, telling him it was 04:59. Great, I'm supposed be up in only three hours and I'm still not asleep. His first class started by 08:30 this Tuesday morning.
He didn't dare take a sleeping draught either because there had been a time in his youth when he had become addicted to them. He didn't ever want to go through all that again; trying to stop taking the draught. He had started using mild sleeping draughts but with time his body got used to them and need progressed and he had to take stronger and stronger variants of the potion until he reached the point when he was in danger of stopping his own heart. The draught he used at the end of his addiction was so strong that it made all his muscles and body organs fall asleep too, including his heart and lungs. It had been a real bitch trying to quit the potion and it hadn't been an easy thing to do. Thinking back he couldn't remember much of the time either. He only remembered feeling like his brain had been packed in a several layers of cotton, his mind wasn't working properly and his vision was blurry. He also remembered intense pain running over his entire body. His veins had felt afire and he had developed an intense itch that drove him crazy.
He knew that was what it was like when experiencing withdrawal. His is body screamed for the draught while he stubbornly denied it. Then there were the aches, shakes and the constant heaving. It was almost like he'd been on some real drugs that would eventually damage his brain. The sleeping draught couldn't cause any permanent damages, but it could do some real bad damage for the time being. Such as not being able to concentrate or listen, or see even. There were some records on people going crazy, and some events of freak accidents since the body wouldn't respond to anything in the environment and the reaction was slowed down to almost nothing. He himself had fallen down the stairs because his body failed to register the first step. He didn't even notice he had reached a stair before it was too late.
Never again!, he thought forcefully. As he finally began to drift off he promised himself that tomorrow he would start to analyse Potter. Maybe he'd find something interesting.