So Little Else
A/N: I wrote this after I heard of Alan Rickman's death but couldn't bring myself to post it. I think, I hope, that with a little distance it stands as a tribute without being as trite as it felt once I'd originally finished.
Minerva closed the door from the Great Hall with a quiet thunk and leant heavily back against it. She paused there in the still quiet of the ante room, letting the cool air permeate her robes and breathing slowly. They were alone now. It was just the two of them for the very last time; alone so that she might perform one last gesture for the man who had been a friend. It was an archaic tradition but one that was still adhered to in old families like her own and one she hoped he would have appreciated. She would lay him out, ready him for his final resting place with the quiet reverence he so richly deserved. There had been so little else she could do for him, especially of late, but she would do this.
Bracing herself, she pushed away from the door and crossed the small room to the table where he had been lain. She would strip him of the trappings of his death first; the soiled clothes, torn and stained. A silent featherlight charm and she could move him as though he were a sleeping child allowing her to gently pull him free of damp wool and sodden cotton, both saturated with sweat and blood, both now cold. She unlaced and unfastened the many layers he had worn, his armour against, the world until he was bare. The wound on his neck had seemed horrific when she had first seen it but now, exposed, it was worse. While it was by far the most recent it was certainly not the only sign of injury that littered his body but she knew the damage that could not been seen was much worse.
Someone had left water in a self-warming bowl and a selection of fragrant oils on top of a cabinet and she reached for the sandalwood without consideration. She soaked cloths in the mixture and set to work bathing him. During life he had not been fond of touch and often she had wondered if that was because it had so rarely been kindly given in his life. She had always insisted though, always placed a hand on his shoulder when she felt he had needed it, though never without fair warning. She bathed him now with practical caresses he would not have accepted given the choice, cleaned away the dirt and grime, and when the blood was gone from skin and hair, she placed her hand over that awful wound and sealed it from sight.
He looked younger somehow, though she couldn't say why. It was as though the weight that had been on his shoulders for so very long had finally lifted and with it his body had relaxed, whether he was in it or not. He had looked old beyond his years for as long as she had known him; even when he had walked into the Great Hall for the first time as a child, clinging desperately to his prickly shell. He had already learnt the cruelties the world far too early and had already been set to walk a rocky path. They could have pulled him back from that path though, if she had spoken to him before the sorting, shown him a little kindness perhaps, then he might not have been sorted as he was. Perhaps if they had punished Black and Potter the way they should have been for almost sending him to his death then, maybe then, he wouldn't have felt so ostracised and wouldn't have ended up making the mistakes he had when he was still really just a boy.
But they hadn't, she hadn't, and so, he had become the man before her now. A man for whom those mistakes had weighed heavily and whose entire adult life had become about trying to atone for them. Who had given and hidden so much. Who had lived through unimaginable pain in what must have been the most unbearable isolation. She had not been trusted to know it all but she had always suspected more than she could prove and still had been able to do nothing for him. He had done it alone. He had died alone and in pain without knowing whether the truth would ever come out.
She had managed to hold back the tears, the ones that had been burning in her eyes for hours now, until she finally brushed his hair back from his forehead and placed a hand over his heart.
"You were alone at the end, my friend," she whispered, her voice cracking, "but you are not alone now. And through it all, you were always loved Severus. Always." Leaning in she closed her eyes and placed a chaste kiss on his forehead.
A/N: I'd love to hear your thoughts on this - thanks for reading! lha x