Disclaimer: World and characters belong to JKR, italicized story belongs to Oscar Wilde.
High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt. He was very much admired indeed.
In and out, chest trembling with effort, the baby cannot find the strength to even wail. Too small, too underdeveloped, too undernourished. To him, blood and breath mean nothing but the means to secure a position on the overcrowded sphere of Earth.
Although he will not remember it, it is one of the few times his father touches him with something akin to love. This is an innocent, a scrubbed-clean wrinkly receptacle of life, and his father is sober and hopeful. Maybe the child he holds, now sleeping peacefully in his protector's arms, will be enough to make him stay away from the draw of the drink. Maybe this babe will be enough to mend the ugly and broken mess his parents have made of their relationship. He is a fighter, the father knows. Just like him. A fighter to the end. The baby will be named after the Roman emperor whose rule and whose heart came from the military: Severus. Severus, the soldier.
'Why can't you be like the Happy Prince?' asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was crying for the moon. 'The Happy Prince never dreams of crying for anything.'
He wants his mother, wants her so badly he can hardly see to make his numb, queerly silent way to the Hogwarts Express and pick a compartment. He must have, though he cannot really remember actually doing so. He has strange blanks in him memory, and all he knows is that he is sure that he will never smile again, not even if Lily Evans hugged him a thousand times, not even if James Potter and Sirius Black fell off the back end of the train and were left behind. He wants his mother, and his eyes are blurring but he can't be crying because boys don't cry. He hasn't cried since he was a little baby boy and didn't know any better.
He is just very tired. And then the door is opening, and someone is coming in and he is suddenly screaming at James Potter and his friends, screaming and screaming until his throat is raw like someone turned it inside out and rubbed it with salt and sandpaper. But it is better that way, better that he cannot talk anymore for the pain of his abused vocals, because it lets him concentrate on a different hurt than the one that has him waking himself up every night in an attempt to reach his mother. But she always gets away, always turns and disappears and he wakes up panting, and tries to think about how he can get back at his tormentors, until he is almost thankful for Potter and Black because their taunting and tricks lets him feel something other than blind pain, lets him feel rage and revenge and reminds him that he is human.
"Snivellus! Snivellus!" It's about all he can really remember of the confrontation, but it becomes a daily occurrence, as dependable as Lily Evans being beautiful or Sirius Black getting in trouble. The dehumanizing agony recedes, slowly, but just hearing that name again brings a new wave, and it becomes impossible not to associate the sight of the Marauders with the familiar and breath-taking yearning for his mother.
'Why are you weeping?' asked the Swallow; 'you have quite drenched me.'
'When I was alive and had a human yeart,' answered the statue, 'I did not know what tears were, for I lived where sorrow is not allowed to enter. So I lived, and so I died, and now they have set me up so high I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot choose but weep.'
It is really quite similar to the months he spent in a stupor of nightmares right after his mother's death, he thinks dully. He should have seen it coming. His fault, his fault, his fault. But they both promised they would be there for him forever, and now all he can do is hold the remnants of the broken oaths in his fumbling hands and clutch to them with all his might. It is all he has left, the shards his mother and Lily have carelessly left in their wake.
It is his fault. He should have insisted that his mother see the doctor at once, brewed her a potion, taken her to St. Mungos despite his father's anger. Anything but do nothing. It is his fault that he called Lily a Mudblood, called her that unforgivable of terms. But years of friendship, of sharing secrets, none of it is enough to save what Lily has deemed unworthy. He is unworthy of her—she is the sun-in-glory, and he prefers the cool logic of night. But he would give it up in a heartbeat, if she were willing to forgive him.
Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. 'You are blind now,' he said, 'so I will stay with you always.'
'No, little Swallow,' said the poor Prince, 'you must go away to Egypt.'
'I will stay with you always,' said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince's feet.
Fear is a powerful motivator. It is enough to babble at the Headmaster, even though he may get in trouble. When Slytherins and Gryffindors fight, he has realized, the professors are more willing to listen to a red-and-gold child. But he doesn't care anymore whether the Headmaster will expel him for yelling at him, or if he tells Tobias Snape about such disrespect. Fear is enough to break the control he is always working on.
"Headmaster, they were trying to kill me! They were all in it! You should expel them all!"
But again, he is taught a lesson he carries close to his heart in place of the broken promises of Eileen Prince—he will not think of her as a Snape!—and Lily Evans. Gryffindors always win. He will not forget it.
And the next day, when the headmaster calls him in for a private talk and he is no longer motivated by the fear of the werewolf and the adrenaline has worn off and left a bitter thirst for revenge, Severus learns another lesson: fear can not only be a motivator, it can be a tool if used skillfully. And the headmaster wields it with precision, like a scalpel in the gloved hands of a surgeon. And instead of the hot rush of blood and panting gasps of breath it was the day before, fear today is cold, like his very blood cells have slowed and frosted over, and he can't breathe at all. Because telling his father that he showed disrespect to his elders, most especially to the headmaster, is most certainly an effective blade in Professor Dumbledore's poised palm.
He won't tell. He promises. He won't, not to anyone. Remus Lupin is safe. Just don't tell my father.
But at last, the Swallow knew that he was going to die. He had just enough strength to fly up to the Prince's shoulder once more. 'Good-bye, dear Prince!' he murmured.
'I am glad you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow,' said the Prince, 'you have stayed too long here but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you.'
'It is not to Egypt that I am going,' said the Swallow. 'I am going to the House of Death. Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not?'
He has her eyes. Most children do not look like mini-clones of their parents. They have their own appearances, and the similarities are only in form. Severus ponders, over an unusually large glass of alcohol, how he can be so unlucky as to have one of the rare cases on his hands. Harry bloody Potter is a miniature of his unfortunate father, except for his eyes. No, not his eyes. Hers. They do not belong in Potter's face, even a Potter as scrawny as James Potter never was.
He supposes it is karma. Retribution in the form of a child with green eyes, for all his sins. He is not a religious man, or a spiritual one, but Severus almost believes, in that instant of meeting Lily's inquisitive gaze again, that there is a divine being out there who is seeing to it that Severus pays for all his wrongdoings. Breathe in. Breathe out. He concentrates on regulating the air to his lungs. There is little he can do about the pounding and roaring in his veins. After all, his heart is beating three times faster than it has in years, and the extra blood in circulation is like the unstoppable tide, surging through his body and back to his overworked organ.
He kissed the Happy Prince on the lips. And fell down dead at his feet.
At that moment a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is that the leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.
He watches with curious detachment as his former master leaves with several swift strides, his snake twined affectionately around the neck of a man-turned-monster. It's over, then. Decades of careful manipulation, of being one step ahead, of thwarting the Dark Lord without appearing to, of being branded like cattle—it's over. He can breathe again. The blood that runs in his veins and arteries is his now, not Albus', not Voldemort's. His, even as the snake's venom pulses through it, insidiously riding the life-giving bloodstream to the heart. No matter. It is a small trifle Severus is willing to dismiss, just to be able to take five breaths as a free man.
And Lily comes to him then, now that he belongs to no one. Somewhere in the distant recesses of his mind, Severus realizes that it is not Lily after all, but her blood nevertheless—her son, staring at him uncertainly with Lily's liquid green eyes. There is something he should be telling the boy, something, but he does not know what. He cannot remember, he can only feel the sweetness of each rattling and hard-earned inhalation he takes.
"Take it…take it…" He cannot remember anyhow, but perhaps the crucial information will be in the memories he bleeds, and he vaguely realizes that the moving shadows behind Lily's son are actual figures, one of them with a bottle for the precious memories of…something.
"Look…at…me…" He wants Lily's eyes to acknowledge him once more, to wordlessly convey forgiveness. He wants his first and last breaths of true freedom in over two decades to be taken with Lily's eyes on him. It has been thirty-eight years of breathing without life, blood without heart, and Severus, even as his vision hazes and blurs much the same way they did the long-ago day on the Hogwarts Express, relishes every moment of it.
In and out, chest trembling with effort, the man cannot find the strength to whisper anymore. Too thin, too overworked, too unloved. To him, blood and breath mean nothing but the symbol of his status as a free man for the first time since childhood.
Although he will not remember it, it is one of the few times anyone will touch him with something akin to love. This is a man submerged in darkness, whose soul remains in the night where it thrives the best, and yet retains the innocence of one who has never stopped loving the sun-in-glory. The boy holding his hand is scared, but hopeful. Maybe the man whose hand he holds, now sleeping peacefully in the House of Death, will be enough give him an edge over total darkness. Maybe this man will be enough to mend the ugly and broken mess one despot has created of their world. He is a fighter, the boy knows. Just like the boy. A fighter to the end, named after the Roman emperor whose rule and whose heart came from the military: Severus. Severus, the soldier. Severus, the consummate spy who fought until his last, freedom-filled breath.
Outside, the world will soon claim peace again, and the soldiers and fighters will not be needed. Inside, the body of a man who was a warrior is all that is left of a life etched in blood, and sustained by measured breath.
'Bring me the two most precious things in the city,' said God to one of His angels; and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.
'You have rightly chosen,' said God, 'for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.'
A.N.: To my "Last Spy" readers, I promise that I'm making good headway on the next chapter! I just needed to write something not related to that universe.
I was inspired mainly by a children's story by Oscar Wilde, titled "The Happy Prince," from which I have taken bits and inserted them into this story. It is about a statue of a prince who never knew sorrow, until he died and his statue was placed high enough to see the sadness of the city. When a swallow visits him, he persuades the bird to stay and distribute the jewels and gold that adorn the statue to the various poor and sick of the city, and when winter comes the swallow refuses to leave the statue alone, instead dying of the cold at his feet. The statue's heart breaks when the bird dies, and the city council melts down the statue and throws out the lead heart onto the garbage along with the dead bird, where they are lifted up by an angel to dwell in heaven forever.