The moon's livid purple glow glistened proudly in the midnight sky. A lone owl contentedly screeched her path across the bleak landscape. A doe bravely stepped out from under the canopy of the Forbidden forest, bracing herself against the bitter wind.

Snape stood pensively at the window in Dumbledore's dimly-lit office, drinking in the darkness, taking deep breaths of the humid air in the room, wishing it to be the crisp, cold air outside. His robes whispered gently as they caught a draught.

'What are you going to do, Severus?', a voice came from behind him. A wise, sentient voice he had become familiar with all his life at Hogwarts, both student and professor.

'I'm damned if I know, headmaster,' Snape bowed his head as the sight of the freedom of nature beyond the windowpanes agonised him. He grew jealous of the wind, it's freedom, it's boundless adventures through lands known and unknown. He grew weary of the moon, the same old moon shining its same old glow on the same old forest. He grew impatient with the trees, swaying nonchalantly in the breeze. He found himself angered by the birds, fluttering by without a care in the world.

'No sense in prolonging the pain, it has gone on for too long now and you know this better than anyone', Snape scoffed in audible agreement, still refraining from facing his Headmaster. The man who single-handedly raised him as if Severus were his own son. The only man to effortlessly break down his barriers and see the man behind his steely facade.

'Yes headmaster, I see that, but what good would come of it?' Snape enquired as he reached into his robes, retrieved his wand, and began to trace his fingers along it thoughtfully.

'Please Severus. I think it is safe to use first name terms now, after all these years, don't you?'

'Headmaster,' Snape repeated fervently, 'he would be no more and no less a hero to this school if he were to know.'

'He, Severus?'

'Potter,' Snape spat. The name alone reviled him. He clenched his fists and held his wand almost tight enough to snap its weary spine.

'My dear Severus, I believe we have our owls quite sufficiently crossed here. I refer to your pupil, Miss Dansfire, the accidental spillage of Scintillation Solution in your Potions class. She will have to know that her toad has come off a little worse for wear, don't you think?'. Snape's heart sank a thump so heavy, even Dumbledore could have noticed.

'Oh of course, that,' Snape had lost track of the entire reason he entered his headmaster's office in the first place.

'May I enquire as to what you were referring to Mr Potter for, Severus?'

'We have not the time for such irrelevance, Albus. I bid you goodnight.'

Snape apparated from the office in a dancing black haze, leaving no trace but a sharp breeze to circulate the room amongst the many others.

Snape reappeared behind the door to his own chambers. Brushing a hand up against the door's walnut panels, he braced himself, staring petrified into the darkness of the corridor ahead. The wood grain felt sharp against his fingertips as he tapped them nervously. His other hand, still wielding his wand, raised slowly, tentatively.

'Expecto patronum,' he muttered under his breath. From the tip of his wand, a blinding bolt of light streamed effortlessly into mid-air and collected itself to form a ghostly silhouette of a young doe, her glistening outline radiating around the otherwise bleak corridor. She turned to face Snape, standing proudly as Snape slumped into an ungraceful heap on the floor, propped upright only by the door. A single tear drifted slowly from his eye as he beheld the doe in front of him, she treaded gently towards him, bowed her head down to his height to take a closer look. The one tear was soon followed by many more, coursing uncontrollably down Snape's rough cheeks.

'Lily.'