This Is
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Written for Round 11 of the QLFC
Team: Kenmare Kestrels
Position: Chaser 1 ("losing someone/thing on a windy day(s)")
Prompts:
# 14 (song) Castle on the Hill — Ed Sheeran
# 12 (colour) yellow
# 2 (emotion) bitterness
Word count: excluding these notes and the title — 1270
Beta-checked by: Emiliya Wolfe and Celinarose
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The hardwood floor is blackened from age and maybe water, and he stares blankly at it. He's cold, but he's numb inside, so he doesn't bother with shivering or huddling into himself for warmth. He remembers a playground, and children screaming in delight. Is that childhood?
He looks at the floor. Is this childhood?
He hears the front door slam, and draws his arms tight around himself. He's shivering now, alright.
"Sev'rus," comes a slurred voice, and his shoulders slump. There's a figure in his doorway, thin and wiry but impossibly tall. "What are you doin' on the floor?"
He clenches his teeth.
"I'm speaking to you, boy. Look at me," says the voice, and it's more commanding, and angrier, too. It demands his attention, because it always demands everything. That's what it does. It takes.
He looks up. He feels so small.
"Are you an animal? What's wrong with yer bed?"
What's wrong with his bed is that he can't stop seeing his mother sitting on the edge, crying softly with her mouth wide open — like a child — as she gasps for air, because Severus is her safe haven. But where is his safe haven?
"I'm speakin' to you, boy. Look at me," his father says, but he can't. Something in his neck is broken (nothing is broken).
There's a hand on his chin, lifting his head until he's staring into bloodshot eyes. "I'm your father — "
Severus closes his eyes.
This is childhood.
This is Father.
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The first time he sees her, he pauses. Her hair is bright red and everything about her screams passion and vibrancy, from her green eyes to her cackling laughter.
And she has magic, too. His father railed against his mother for her wickedness, but the knowledge that this girl has magic, too, somehow turns that wickedness into sacredness. If she's special, so is he.
"Why are you laughing?" he'd once asked her.
She'd looked at him strangely. "Why are you frowning?"
He'd wanted to tell her what a stupid question hers was. It was the first time he had ever felt angry at her. He didn't have a nice house with a nice little picket fence and a happy little family that said 'I love you' and actually meant it. He didn't have a warm bedroom and hours filled with screaming delight.
He had his father. But she didn't know that, and he'd felt the distance between them just as he'd felt the distance between himself and his father.
She was so childish.
He'd felt ill.
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Hogwarts is something out of his mother's woven stories. It exudes possibility. He can't breathe for a moment. It feels as if he's been drowning his whole life, and now that he has his head above the waves he doesn't know what to do.
He's supposed to be dead.
Living is … terrifying. He feels vulnerable. He waits for an impossibly tall man to come out of nowhere and grab his chin, and force Severus to look into his eyes. He waits for his respect to be demanded, to be taken, and for his dignity to be destroyed. He waits for a slap, stinging and angry, and then for soft apologies and "I love yous" that he has to return. He waits for nauseating fear and bitterness in his mouth.
What he gets is a hand winding around his, offering comfort.
It is then that he realises he loves Lily.
She burns bright against the coldness.
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He calls her mudblood and she calls him Snivellus. He rears back as if struck and feels —
He doesn't know what he feels.
She's supposed to be better than this.
Better than him.
But she's not, he realises. She's just a witch. Just a girl.
He's never felt so ill before. He's glad, in a way, that she doesn't speak to him again. There's no need to remind himself that she's just like the rest of the useless muggles (or like useless witches with their bloody Amortentia).
He tries not to picture his mother's devastated face.
He tries not to picture his father after he found out his love was fabricated.
He tries not to picture himself when he realises that Tobias felt the same way towards his son as he did his wife.
He fails.
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The Dark Mark is black (like hardwood floors) and he can't stop shivering (he's not cold).
For some reason, he keeps picturing Lily. He can imagine how her face would fall. She'd ask, "What have you done?"
But then he remembers that he called her mudblood.
He remembers that she hates him, just like his father does, and that he's all alone again, and there are dozens of impossibly tall figures looming around corners.
He's been branded by two already. He has scars from his father and the Dark Mark from Voldemort.
Both are regarded with equal eyes.
Maybe if Lily were special, he would be, too, and he wouldn't have the Dark Mark because he'd have her.
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"Please, my Lord," he says. His knees ache from kneeling.
"Why should I show mercy to the mudblood?" the Dark Lord asks.
Severus pauses. How does he justify love to a Dark Lord? He settles on, "She is intelligent, unlike her fellow muggleborns. She would do well to further your regime." The words are inadequate. Deeply so.
"Is that so?" the Dark Lord says, amusement in the curve of his thin lips. A wand is pressed to his throat. "Tell me the truth, Severuussssss." The amusement is gone.
"I love her," he says haltingly.
The wand is removed. The Dark Lord stills. "I will offer her mercy, Severus."
"Thank you," he breathes, and presses his forehead to the floor.
"Do not thank me. I will offer, and then the mudblood will hate you, because you have killed her only child and her blood traitor of a husband. And you will be mine, because you are no-one else's. Is this not so, dear Severus?"
"Yes," he says. He feels so small. He feels as though there is a hand on his chin, forcing his eyes up, forcing his lips to say I love you and I'm sorry when he just wants to say I hate you. This is the legacy of his childhood.
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Lily is dead.
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It takes him a while to understand. Lily is dead. Lily, with her fire. Lily, with her hand around his, offering comfort. He shivers whenever he thinks about her, and when people eye him, he blames the howling winds. He blames his thin black robes, and his natural skinniness, and his propensity for discomfort. He blames everything but Lily. He doesn't think he can ever blame her for anything ever again.
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Lily is dead and her son looks like Potter and the wind is screeching like a banshee and he has worthless yellow roses which spout friendship, though theirs ended years ago. He drops them at her grave and leaves, because he doesn't know what to say and he's tired of shivering. He's so tired.
So he leaves, and he goes to her old house — the one she grew up in — but there are people moving behind the curtains and there's a muggle radio loudly singing, "… found my heart and broke it here … Made friends and lost them through the years …" He listens for a while, somehow frozen in place. Then he hears, "… I can't wait to go home …" and he leaves, because that is one thing that he will never do.
He has no home. And no fire in the cold.
This is the legacy of his childhood.
This. Only this.