Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of its characters.
To Live and Die in a Picture
He sat on his chair watching the picture, so still and quite one would think he was dead: it was all he had left of what was his. It was the perfect picture: she was smiling, looking exhausted but joyous, holding a squirming bundle of jet black hair with golden brown hands grasping onto larger ones. It was a close up her and his son. he could see her coffee coloured eyes shining down on the child's closed ones and smiling at his little mouth's demands for food and him failing, he smiled, he is a demanding child already, gets it from him, but as the child's demands weren't met he opened his eyes; it is a moment he will never forget: seeing those obsidian eyes, that matched his, open for the first time. The scope of a man's life changes when you see the same eyes you've been seeing in the mirror devoid of all the sufferings of life; instead filled with yearnings of a life to be lived. His son was perfect: a divine amalgamation of two separate beings.
When life is created one would think that it should always be under the conditions that mirror the joyous occasion, but he lived a life that was filled with contradictions and ironies; conformity and normality were the rarities of his life; therefore, when she came to him and informed him that after the brutal incident she was, as she said, "Pregnant." He could not help but laugh, not because he found the situation in anyway amusing but because he recognised the tragicomedy the fates had created of his life: a man in love with another forced to rape a woman, whom he had come to call a friend, to save both their lives, turns up at his door to announce the arrival of the unexpected repercussions. In that moment he couldn't care what she would do with it, kill it or keep it either way a life changing sacrifice would be made. He recognised that the cards had not been dealt fairly: he was the perpetrator of the crime and she the victim and she would have to make the decision to kill it, and realise that she is taking a life or keep it, and live knowing that it was his. It was a tragic world they lived in.
She decided to keep the child, saying that it did no wrong and did not deserve such unfair judgement to be passed on it, all it, rightfully, sought after was life. Could she deny it that? Her answer was no. she is and always has been too noble and kind for her own good, but then she always said kindness is a virtue that cannot be too good. She is right in some sense because that kindness of hers has always and still is being shown to him: she does not blame him for what happened, does not hate him for it either but stands firm in that the injustice was not done to one but to two persons.
Andonis Erasmus Snape, weighing 6.2lb, (he was so small) was born two nights ago on the 28th of April 1997 at 22h13; all ten fingers and toes present and accounted for. It was the morning of the 30th that found him sitting behind the headmaster's desk staring at the picture of the living miracles: living miracles because in this moment a heart that could only have space for one now had space for two more. He could not continue to do what was need of him purely in the name of vengeance, no he had to do this because these two lives deserved to live peacefully and he would make sure that they did.
And as he lay in that dilapidated building beating his last life drum and looking into the eyes of his first love his mind moved back to that picture, to that serene moment eternally swathed in life and in love to that captured life dream and realised that he could not be there, that he would never get to be there.