A/N: This turned out to be much darker than I'd planned. And it's in honor of #HarryPotter20 too! :(
Oh well. In other news, let's raise a glass to 20 years of friendship, family, and magic. I know I've enjoyed it, and here's to many more years to come!
Wherefore do minstrels sing such wistful songs
of rainbows and what at their endings lie?
A prudent mind shall mark their premise wrong,
but prudence doth a gentle truth belie.
Yea, wishes were not always hung on stars;
their powers were conferr'd when one believed
and, bless'd with hope that pragmatism bars,
let far-fetch'd pray'rs reality achieve.
Hast thou the voices heard - the siren song
that calls our names in drowsy reverie?
They draw us all t'ward where we each belong-
on to our lot like sailors to the sea.
Thus lovers, dreamers, and I all are bound
to someday see the rainbow's treasure found.
Kermit the Frog, "The Rainbow Connection"
He stands amidst the fallen bricks and ruined stone of the viaduct entrance. Staring at the jagged landscape, Severus Snape again feels the phantom pain of Nagini's fangs slipping into his neck. He cannot fathom how it was just yesterday that he had nearly died.
The hidden antivenin and blood-replenishing potion did their job, merely because he could not imagine a worse way to die than at the hands of the Dark Lord, begging for mercy. Severus decided long ago that he would die only at his own terms.
A step onto the uneven railings and then another step into open air – that is all it will take for eternal silence, eternal peace.
As the sun breaks into the horizon, he does not know why he finds his resolve slipping away. Sand through his fingers.
Before he can do anything more than breathe, the quiet is interrupted by the rhythm of shoes hitting the pavement. Severus slips his wand out of his sleeve and into his palm but he does not turn. The footsteps slow and then, eventually, cease altogether.
"You're supposed to be dead."
It is a woman. And despite what her words suggest, Severus hears no surprise, senses no hostility. He curls his palm and his wand slips back up his sleeve. If the woman expects a reply, she does a good job of hiding it.
She asks him another question: "Are you going to jump?" A wry smile touches his lips.
"I want to," he says.
"Good. This is my spot anyway. We might as well share."
He hears her scuttle onto the railings, and for a millisecond he experiences panic, considers lunging towards her and stopping her from taking the leap. Isn't it silly though, because wasn't he thinking of doing the same just moments ago? He certainly is not in any place to stop her.
It turns out there is no need for such drastic measures... yet. She merely comes to sit on the railings with her legs dangling off the edge. She swings them back and forth.
It is only then that he notices the sketch pad on her lap. The pencil gripped loosely in her hand taps a vaguely familiar beat. Severus recalls a similar image of the same woman sitting in one of his classes, years before The Boy Who Lived ever came to Hogwarts. Her face was younger, brighter, not so haunted – her dark hair tied into the very same messy bun that she now wore, identical down to the escaped strands framing her frail jaw.
"You're that Hufflepuff girl," he says.
She smiles. "I suppose I didn't really do much to be remembered as anything else, did I?"
"You were quiet. All you did for your House was lose points because you refused to pay attention in class. You were much too busy… sketching… as you are now."
Indeed, her pencil was flying across the page even while he spoke.
"Well," she says, "I passed my NEWTs, didn't I?"
Barely, he wants to say, but he does not recall whether such a thing is true.
There are a few moments of silence. He watches her sketch, watches as an image slowly forms on the rough parchment.
"Have you come to terms with your life yet, professor?" She tilts her head and stares ahead, almost unseeing. A tiny smile plays on her lips. "That's why you're here, isn't it?"
"I came to accept death a long, long time ago. Frankly, it is a miracle that I am still alive, that any of us are still alive, for that matter. Yet here we are."
"Yet here we are." She turns her smile onto him and it becomes rueful, almost sad. "I imagine you're as exhausted as I, professor – more, probably. You certainly had more difficult people to spy on."
Her revelation catches him off-guard. Dumbledore never mentioned anyone else within the Order acting as a mole. Severus cannot bring himself to imagine the woman before him tricking anybody, especially not Death Eaters, into spilling their darkest secrets. Still, he tries to catch her eye, hoping to get a glimpse into her mind.
When she very discretely allows the loose strands of her hair to fall over her eyes, Severus' doubts are extinguished. He sees in her the practiced subtlety that he'd honed within himself for years under the watchful eyes of two masters, and it is easy to see that she was, indeed, as she said. A spy, but no longer.
"How far have you come that you would take your own life?" he asks, and she smiles.
"You lived past the first war, professor. You know how difficult it is to move on, especially after all that's happened... all we've done." She sighs. "Always having to look over our shoulders, never able to take off our armor because we don't even know when we'll have to return to the fray, back into battle until God knows when… And I say this with all respect, professor, but I for one refuse to live like that: ignorant to the next hell that's coming my way."
She sighs. "It's no way to live."
He cannot bring himself to contradict her, because her arguments are the very same as his. The frown on his face is involuntary. "You are far too young to be so pessimistic, miss...?"
There is a question there but she does not offer her name, and Severus cannot remember it. "It doesn't really matter anymore, professor," she says. "Nobody needs me anymore... Even I don't need me anymore. I just want it to be over."
"And you're absolutely sure of this?"
"I am, but I'm positive now that you aren't."
He is surprised at her boldness. "Elaborate."
"I've accepted what I'm about to do with a clear conscience. I know what I want, but I see something on your face that tells me that you don't want your life to be over just yet."
If he had the strength, he would tell her that there is nothing on his face. Yet even he is not sure of that anymore. He just stares at her, stunned and not the least bit scandalized.
She laughs. "It's completely alright, professor. I agree. I think there's still much happiness to be found for you."
It is only when her hand stops moving that he notices she's been drawing all throughout their conversation. He is just about to lean over and lay his eyes on her work when she abruptly shoves the sketchpad into his hands. He fumbles for a moment, confused, overwhelmed at how well she seems to understand him. Or perhaps, at that moment just between them, he is wearing his heart on his sleeve. Something he has never done before, certainly not with a near-stranger.
Severus looks down at the page; on it is a hurried sketch of the viaduct and the rocky landscape below and beyond. The shading is a mess of scribbles, inconsistent and smudged at some places. It is hardly worthy of a museum, but Severus is impressed given the amount of time she finished it under. There is honest simplicity to it and, as he looks back, there was a certain kind of desperation in her movements.
He stretches his arm out, about to return the sketchpad, but she shakes her head.
"I'll have no use for that in the afterlife, will I?" she says. "I have nearly every part of the castle on there… Keep it. Something tells me that once you leave here, you won't be coming back, and that you'll miss Hogwarts more than you care to let on."
A scowl crosses his face. "You are sorely mistaken."
"Only you wouldn't grant a suicidal girl time for fantasies" she says, laughing.
Numb, he can only watch as she places her feet on the railing and rises. It is a miracle she doesn't lose her balance. She looks down. "There's something poetic about it, isn't there? Dying like this. One minute you're flying through the air and the next it's all over, like… Icarus."
She pauses.
"Do you think it will hurt, professor?"
Severus experiences a moment of clarity. Somehow this girl, a stranger from his past, has impossibly pulled him back from the brink of self-destruction, all by just talking about her own feelings of suicide. It makes no sense whatsoever but he knows now what he is supposed to do.
It is almost like an epiphany, when he realizes it. If he is to start a new life then why not start now, with this woman?
Speaking as softly as he can manage, he steps away from the railings, turns and says, "If you think the viaduct so enthralling, miss, then perhaps you may return when repairs have been made. Now, I think it is in our best interests to return to the castle." He, of course, will do no such thing. He will only stay long enough to ensure that someone finds her, at which time he will make his leave and never return.
There is the faintest whisper of breath, cool oxygen drawn into her lungs right before she releases a shaky laugh: "If anything, I am happy that the last thing I ever did was change your mind, Professor Snape."
He growls impatiently at her candidness. A sharp retort is just on the tip of his tongue when, in the still air, he hears the heel of a boot scrape against stone.
And then nothing.
When he turns around, she is gone.
Mischief managed.