Sonata and Destructions
Author: Odette
Disclaimer: Of the following characters, only Nina is my own invention. The rest, as
well as the setting, belong to J.K. Rowling and various publishers. I am not making any
money off of this, and it is solely for amusement purposes.
Secondary Disclaimer/Source Citation: The title is borrowed from a poem of the same
name by Pablo Neruda.
Summary: My debut fan fiction. I'm hoping will become a fairly psychological story
explaining why Snape joined Voldemort, and also his redemption. Obviously, set in old
school times.
Ch. 1: In Which our Heroes Think Deep Thoughts and Watch a Talent Show.
She was beautiful, he thought, and he loved her. It became a refrain of sorts,
echoing around in his head. Somehow, that single sentence had come to embody both the
hope and misery that plagued his waking hours and his dreams.
The sudden, raucous applause of the crowd jolted him out of his state of self-pitying
reflection. I even sound ridiculous to myself, he realized, and with little more than a last
mournful glance at the girl walking off stage and down the aisle, her light blue robes and
long blond hair fluttering behind her, he turned his attention to the next performers to
take the stage: his friend and fellow Slytherin, Lucius Malfoy, performing a very loud and
very dramatic rendition of Hamlet.
Despite his general mood of despondency, Severus Snape caught the irony
immediately and chuckled to himself. Trust Malfoy, of all people, to fancy himself a
master of drama and tragedy. Bet he didn't even know that the character he was so
fantastically butchering had been written four hundred years earlier by one of those
muggles he despised so much. Of course, Severus had more than a bit of suspicion that
Shakespeare was a warlock himself. Fairies, ghosts, and sprites were not the sort of safe
topic that muggle writers were eager to tackle at the time. Without some sort of
protection above and beyond the mundane, the offending writer was all too likely to find
himself dancing on the end of a rope.
But Malfoy, unlike many of his peers in Ravenclaw, and unlike Severus, was not
the type to immerse himself in any aspect of academia, or even to do basic background
research before signing up for the first annual Hogwarts talent contest in the dramatic
reading category. As such, he remained on stage blissfully unaware that the emotion he
was primarily fostering was amusement, not sorrow. Ten minutes in, though, Severus
began to lose interest and his mind wandered back to the previous performer. Lily. Lily
Evans. She was his secret obsession. She had to be. He couldn't even imagine what his
friends would think if they knew he had fallen in love with a Gryffindor and a muggle.
The first would amuse them. The second they would find nothing short of revolting. The
secret rejoicing he had observed in his Third Year upon the opening of the Chamber of
Secrets had made that clear enough.
Applause sounded once again, mixed with snide remarks. Malfoy, still oblivious,
bowed in proper Elizabethan fashion and headed back towards Severus and the other
seventh year Slytherins. Conversation broke out as those assembled waited for the scores
to be tallied. Severus forced a smile onto his face and, with all semblance of normality,
joined his classmates in attempting to ridicule Lucius out of his newly founded dramatic
ambitions.
Lily Evans had the oddest sensation of being watched. A bit silly, she knew, as she
was sitting in Hogwarts Great Hall surrounded by well over half the school, but still, she
felt paranoia kicking in. Just then, James whispered something vaguely suggestive in her
ear. She blushed, but turned around and kissed him anyway. From behind them, she
heard familiar sounding cat calls. As James turned around to deal with his friends and
fellow Gryffindors, Lily felt the feeling of being watched return. She looked around, and
from across the hall she saw an unpleasant Slytherin boy with whom she was only
vaguely acquainted looking at her intensely. For a moment, their eyes locked.
But at that point, applause broke out as Headmaster Albus Dumbledore stepped
forth to announce the winner.
"Let me begin by saying a few words." Loud moans resounded from the audience.
"Boo. Walk. Squirrelcookie. Thank you, Lucius for a brilliant rendition of that great
muggle tragedy: Hamlet." Lily glanced over at Lucius, who looked more than a bit
startled and annoyed by that revelation.
"The judges have put their heads together, and come up with a winner for our grand
prize: a gift certificate to the best candy store in Hogsmeade. Congratulations, Lily
Evans!" The room erupted with the sounds of wizard crackers and wands making sparks
in the air. Lily noticed that the four Marauders, counting on their share of the prize come
the next Hogsmeade weekend, were particularly jubilant. As Lily started up towards the
stage, she noticed a group of silent Slytherins towards the front. In the middle, however,
she saw Severus Snape, wearing a typically serious expression, clapping earnestly.
On the opposite side of the Great Hall, in the middle of the Hufflepuff section,
someone else noticed Snape's apparent fixation as well. She's beautiful, thought Nina
Cosanthium resentfully. No wonder she gets every guy she wants, and half of those she
doesn't. The applause begin to die down, and students began to file out of the Great Hall.
But, before she joined her friends in their cheerful banter about local gossip, she snuck
one last mournful glance at Severus and saw him still looking, enraptured, at the group of
departing Gryffindors.