DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER CHARACTERS. HARRY POTTER IS UNDER THE AUTHORIZATION OF J.K. ROWLING.
The Occlumens
Severus is not a kind of person who likes attracting somebody else's sympathies. He does not care whether he has friends or not, he does not care about Harry's revulsion, he does not care about his students' loathes. He always says what he means, and he means what he says.
But I can tell that he is so virtuous in nature. He rarely speaks about his love towards Lily Potter, but his action proves that he never forgets her. One of the things that becomes the evidence is the event when I was alone with him in the teacher-office. I saw him opened a cupboard, and suddenly Lily fell down from inside, died, her eyes opened wide. Severus was so shocked seeing that, but soon he managed to control himself. He said, "Riddikulus!" and the boggart was gone. He acted as if nothing had happened afterwards, but I could see that somehow his eyes were unfocused. Yes, I could understand his feeling. I had ever been in the same experience with him: I pulled the drawer and saw Ariana was attacked violently by Grindelwald and me. I remember I could not sleep the whole night after that.
In Harry's first year, I asked Severus to accompany me to the class in which I hid the Mirror of Erised. I was about to tell him about its secret, that it would be a perfect place to keep the Philosopher Stone. I saw him standing in front of it, and I noticed his dark and black eyes gazing at it scrupulously. I turned my head to the mirror then, and I understood why he could be that enthralled: he saw his past, when he and Lily were still best friends. They looked happy—they played hide and seek in a garden, chuckled. I never saw Severus' eyes shone that bright.
I coughed, tried to wake Severus up. Gazing at the mirror for very long time was not a very wise thing to do. Severus blinked, then stared at me in confusion. "What is this?" he asked. I asked him to read the inscription carved around the mirror's top. "Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi," he murmured. "I don't understand, Dumbledore."
"You have to read it from the right."
He did what I said, and he sighed. "Is how not your face but your hearts desire."
"Correct."
"So what do you see when you look at it?" Severus asked.
"I saw myself holding a pair of socks," I answered lightly. For some moment I saw perplexity in the dark eyes, but then he looked at me sternly. "You lie."
"So? Come on, let us get out of here. I only want to say that this mirror is the perfect place to keep that troublesome stone."
I explained about how the mirror worked for Harry and the stone, but from the corner of my eyes I saw that Severus did not want to stop looking at the mirror. Once again I could understand his feeling: I myself once was sitting in front of it the whole day, being mesmerized by the reflection of Ariana, Aberforth, my father, my mother, and I gathering as one in our warm dining-room.
Then I remember the day when I asked him to send message to the students with his patronus. He looked at me in horror. "What?! No! Better we use yours."
"Why?" I asked him curiously.
"Mine is not too powerful."
"Can I have a guess? Maybe the shape of your patronus is a bat…or…let us see…a snake? Like Voldemort's?"
Severus glared at me. I could see that he was defeated; patronus is one of the ways to discover somebody's real nature. I am sure he was not dull enough to let me have a wrong guess about what his patronus is.
Growling, he launched his patronus. And my eyes twinkled seeing that his patronus is the same as my kind-hearted and lovely student's.
"Satisfied?" he grumbled. "You have seen my patronus, but don't expect me to show it to that arrogant Potter and the other students."
That's the way Severus is. A good Occlumens, always pretends that he is cruel and stern, but ironically his deep nature is revealed by rather small things: boggart, the Mirror of Erised, and patronus. Harry has asked me for thousand times about why I trust Severus Snape completely. I have to force myself not to answer him everytime he asks me, because once again, Severus is not a kind of person who likes attracting somebody else's sympathies. He does not care whether he has friends or not, he does not care about Harry's revulsion, he does not care about his students' loathes. He always says what he means, and he means what he says.
He will never tell anybody that he is all about Lily Evans Potter. Well, probably he will. Someday, in his last day.
The End