Written for avatarluv97's The One Word Challenge. The only word of dialogue had to be "search."
Severus walked silently into Number Twelve, it was familiar to him after all the time he'd spent there in the past two years. He imagined that spells would be put on it to keep him from entering, but no one would have had time yet.
The house looked exactly as it had the last time he'd been there. If he didn't know he wouldn't have been able to tell that anything had changed.
But everything had changed. Dumbledore was dead, everyone thought he was on the dark side including the boy he hated but lived to protect, and there was nothing he could do about any of it.
Severus wandered through the house going into the various rooms and looking for anything of value to him. There wasn't much but if he didn't something the Dark Lord would be displeased and after everything he couldn't let that happen.
Eventually he came to Sirius's bedroom. He walked inside and looked around. It looked exactly as he would have expected it to. So completely rebellious the if was disgusting.
Severus wanted to leave. He didn't want to be in the room of a man he'd hated all his life. But something told him to stay. You never knew what Sirius might have hidden.
He went through all the drawers and then knelt to look under the bed. All he saw was a few sheets of parchment. He pulled them out. The first sheet was a letter. Severus recognized the handwriting instantly. Lily.
He slowly read through it. He could almost hear her voice in every line. Finally he came to the where she'd singed her name in the same way as all the letters she'd written to him.
Then he looked at the other sheet. It was a photograph of Lily and her husband and son. She looked so happy, laughing at something one or them had done. It hurt him so much to know that he'd ruined that.
For a minute he couldn't even move. But he knew he couldn't sit there forever. It wouldn't change anything. So he ripped the picture in half and kept Lily's half along with the second page of the letter while he threw everything else back under the bed.
He stood and walked to the doorway letting himself look at the picture one last time. Then he said to himself, "search." And he left the past behind him.