Part 1: Genesis
"Don't judge a book by its cover. Judge it by the harmful messages it contains."
-Welcome to Night Vale
The roads in central Missouri are as long and uneventful as a lonely life. The rise and fall of loose wire dangling between telephone poles is as endless as the waves. If you stare too long, let that sagging wire mesmerize you into blinking, it can make you overlook the town altogether. But if you glance back quick enough, you might still spot the water tower, sticking up out of the straw-yellow fields. Quick, right there! Or you'll miss the only break in the flatness for hours.
Not that there's much else to miss out on, in the town called Pleasant Hope. Just a handful of houses corralled along a stretch of perfectly ordinary, solitary street. One teeth-rattling pothole later, and the town's gone, sinking into a sea of corn and soybean bisected by an occasional country road, narrow and dusty. At the turn of one such road, past the small cemetery, sits a wooden church with a white painted steeple.
Pastor Snape lives here, in his small shed-sized dwelling out back. Year after year, he tolerates the screeching gaggle of Sunday school brats who are far more teeth-grindingly loud now than they ever were during their baptisms. He puts his back into shoveling the snow off the driveway on winter mornings before funeral services. He sweeps the aisles free of rice after a rare spring wedding, scrubs grease from the plates after church dinners, and leads prayers and processions, all with measured grace and somberness and sobriety.
As jobs go, it's not too trying: just enough for one man, to keep the scant, three-digits-and-dwindling population from sinking too far into idleness or TV-induced stupor on a Sunday. One man's all a town this small needs, to tell them to keep their gazes firmly planted on the ground at their feet, and to remind them not to send their thoughts wandering too far, searching blearily, miserably past the heavens. (If there's one lesson Pastor Snape has learned, it's that pondering the theological mysteries of the world too closely can only lead into trouble.)
One might say the Pastor is a sensible man of the cloth, if not a particularly pleasant or hopeful one.
On Mondays - when all the psalm books are tucked away in the narrow shelves behind each pew, and the pews themselves are empty of even the most dedicated stragglers; when the stained glass window spills low, slanting rays from the setting sun - Pastor Snape takes one last look around the church and locks up. He walks back to his cottage alone, and settles down to a late evening between himself and the Lord, though He's never been keen on joining in so far. So Pastor Snape sits alone in his tiny kitchen and treats himself to a nip of something far stronger than sacramental wine.
He lets his drink warm its way down his throat, and he breathes in the stillness. All is quiet. All is well.
In the evening hush, unbroken by any tell-tale crunch of driveway gravel under car tires, the sudden rattle of the locked doorknob is as startling as a tornado warning past the end of the season. Pastor Snape jolts, shoves greasy hair out of his eyes, and heads for the door. The Lord's work is, apparently, never done. But Snape's well used to thankless tasks by now: someone has to be.
He unlocks and opens the door and pauses in the doorway, sweeping the yard with an unimpressed glare which comes to rest on the figure sitting on the porch stairs, head-down and huddled into the gloom.
"Hello," Snape says quietly, lifting his fingertip from the porch light switch. He doesn't turn the light on or approach any closer. It wouldn't do to frighten away a late visitor, or to let them catch the scent of whiskey on him.
Suddenly remembering proper manners, the visitor yanks his baseball cap off his head, releasing a fluffy dark mop of hair falling just past his ears. "Um, hi! I, er... I thought churches are always open."
"You can come back on Wednesday or on Sunday for services. Eight AM and six PM. Sharp." As far as Pastor Snape is concerned, there are four types of people in this world that usually find their way into his parish: scholars, sowers, survivors...
Seekers.
It's painfully clear which type the boy belongs to: fearless, thoughtless and troublesome.
The visitor's head lifts. Wide green eyes flash behind round glasses, and his throat moves as he swallows. "How do you know God even exists?"
Seekers always think they're unique. This one is pure stubbornness and sass, Snape thinks, self-absorbed enough not to bother looking at the hours posted on the church door.
Snape takes a deep breath and rids himself of the irritation that's tightened his chest, exhaling it in a slow, outwardly serene sigh. Far better that, than giving in to his first impulse and snapping 'I don't know. No-one knows!' Instead, he remains silent, with the grim, gritted patience of someone who's been stuck in this world doing godly duties for long enough to know that there's no point in complaining about Greater Truths, or complaining about their absence.
"Er, sorry," the boy adds when the silence has gone on just a bit too long, "M'not usually here. You probably don't remember me." He rubs his hand against his flannel shirt and sticks out an open palm. "I'm Harry."
"I know." Snape makes no move to take the offered hand; instead he folds his arms in a deliberately forbidding gesture. Lily Evans' boy. His lips thin. "It's much too late to be on my porch," he declares firmly. When the boy doesn't take the hint, he snaps "Go home!"
At least that brings the boy to his feet and sends him backpedaling away, down the porch steps until he's standing in the front yard staring up at him.
Years before Snape began to wear collars stiff and starched with the ever-present white square, Lily Evans and Severus Snape were in the same graduating class. Though at one time Snape thought he wouldn't live long past drinking age, it's Lily who's gone now, leaving only a stone in the town cemetery to remember her by.
And a son.
The tragic irony of life still stings, even after all these years. And Snape's not the only one stung by it.
"You are welcome to come back this Sunday," Snape declares before the boy runs too far across the gravel driveway, but even as he makes the offer he knows that Harry won't be there. Seekers aren't the type to bend easily to anyone's will. They're the type most likely to question, to leave their heads unbowed during the communal prayer, to open their eyes, seek out Snape's gaze and hold it in mute challenge: so sure in their self worth, in their assumptions about the world and about Snape himself.
Snape always makes a point of looking away. He's not about to let other people's assumptions define him. ...At least not any more than they already have.
He watches from the porch steps as the boy trudges silently off, along the highway to town. The dwindling crunch of his footsteps is the only sound, apart from the cicada chorus and the fluttering moths and the county sheriff's cruiser driving by.
The next morning, Snape takes the short walk out to the cemetery. He spends a few minutes staring at Lily Evans' stone. It's a small granite block, smooth as an unwritten book's pages. He bends to brush away a few dry leaves covering Lily's last name.
It's only as he finds himself looking down at the date of death that the realisation hits Snape. She's been gone almost two decades. And I'm still here. The stone must have been recently cared for; it's cleaner than most others. It's so strange to think that the last hand to touch it would have been her son's.