Addiction
Nagini's bite was not that deep, as it turned out.
There wasn't that much venom there, either.
And still, he died.
They cannot understand it. Only I can.
People who have an addiction do not live with it, they live by it. Even though the addiction is slowly killing them, it becomes their life-source, their sustenance, their daily bread.
His anger was his addiction, his nourishment, his daily bread. His anger towards me sustained him throughout the years.
Even as he kept saving me, and looking after me, he kept loathing me. He berated me, taunted me, bullied me, intimidated me. He screamed at me in his dungeons, nearly spitting in my face, hurling horrible insults at my father, who had been long dead.
And still he saved me, time and again. When the night was pitch-black, he watched over me from the shadows, my dark guardian angel, my own personal demon, who rushed to my rescue, with loathing, with disdain, putting all of his anger and fury and scorn into his efforts to deliver me.
Addiction isn't there just for the fun of it, you see. It exists for a reason. It subdues the shame of failure, the guilt of misdeeds, the anguish of rejection, the pain of unrequited love. His anger towards me was his addiction, and it held up admirably throughout the years. It sustained him. It kept him alive.
From time to time, though, on a rare occasion, he would forget to be angry, and gaze at me strangely, as if seeing something incredibly precious, something long-lost, yet suddenly recovered. When that happened, is obsidian-black eyes would acquire an odd glint, that looked suspiciously like the glow of unwept tears. And then, he would catch himself, just in time, and grasp his life-line with renewed determination. His life-line, the anger. The addiction.
Over the years, his grip on his life-line began to slip. He would forget to be angry more and more often. Perhaps, he had lost his will to live, who knows.
And then, as he was dying, he summoned me to come to his side. The black vapor of his memories and thoughts was pouring forth, and he kept telling me, "Take it! Take it!"
I took them. I saw his pain, I saw his shame, I saw his guilt, I saw his anguish. I understood the necessity of his anger – just as I saw that he could no longer hold on to it. Not when he was sending me to my own death (or so he thought), not when he was believing that his mentor and benefactor, Albus Dumbledore, had raised me "as a pig for slaughter" - only to die at the right time. That was not true of course, but we had no way of knowing that, at the time.
As he looked at me with pity, his lifeline slipped out of his fingers, and the rest of his life rose up, like a storm upon the waters of the ocean, and pulled him into the deep. He went under, it seemed, without a single murmur of protest.
He died, because he lost his life-line, his rage, the only coping mechanism he had to block out his grief. He died, because he could no longer be angry with me.
I run my fingers across his tombstone, across the letters that spell his name: Severus Snape.
"How long are you planning to torment yourself with guilt?" Ginny asks. She's standing behind me, casting a dark, sharp shadow on his grave.
I laugh softly and kiss her hand laid on my shoulder. "It's an addiction," I say light-heartedly. She laughs as well.
If only she knew.