Scratch, scratch, scratch.
The nib of his ink-dipped quill worked it's way elegantly along the parchment. Stopping only to refill the ink, Severus wrote word after word in his cursive hand-writing, never once looking up from his monotonous task.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
The almost hypnotic project he had assigned to himself was soothing to him, writing as though in a trance, escaping from the outside world. His mind was blank aside from his brain dictating the essay he was striving to complete.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
His class was working silently in front of him, the Gryffindors too scared to speak and his Slytherins had too much respect for him to talk. But that was they way he liked it, silence.
Silence had been his solitude all his life.
Sitting in his potions master's quarters, he was far away enough from anything. He never heard a thing. He was completely alone, enough quiet around him to let him drift into a bewitched state.
At his home in Spinner's End, no one ever rang his doorbell or knocked on the paint-peeled door. He was left in silence.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
It never used to be that way.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
When he was eleven, his life was filled with secret jokes shared by him and her. Smiles thrown across noisy classrooms. The crinkle of parchment as he opened a note from her. The tearing sound of Christmas presents she had sent him.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
When he was twelve, his time was full of conversations, stories told in her singing voice. The creasing of robes as she hugged him. Her moans that the dungeons were too far away for her to walk to.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
When he was thirteen, he heard the clasp of hands as she took his. The crunching of snow underfoot as they walked to Hogsmeade. The scraping of the wooden chairs on wooden floors in The Three Broomsticks. The whistle of the winters wind as it blew through her wine-red hair.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
When he was fourteen, his ears were filled with the quiet giggles they shared in the library. The screams of his house and hers as they competed in Quidditch games. Her crying on his shoulder as she told him what her sister had done that summer. The hoot of her owl as it delivered another message from her.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
When he was fifteen, his moments were full of her laughing as he messed up a muggle phrase. The quiet turning of pages in the library as they studied for the O.W.L's. Her complaints of that arrogant toe-rag, James Potter. Her hugging him each night before she left for her tower.
James Potter and his cronies laughing at him. Him screaming that accursed word at her. Her ending their friendship. The slam of the Gryffindor tower portrait hole as she left him in the cold. His quiet tears as he sat outside at night, not caring if he was caught.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
Since that night, his life had been full of ... nothing. He no longer heard her laughter at a joke he had told. Never again did he hear the tap, tap, tap of her owl against his dormitory window. Not once more did she hold his hand.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
Then that night, when he sat in Dumbledore's office, waiting for news on her, his life heard noise for a few seconds.
The Potter's are dead.
BANG!
Severus looked up, jolted out of his mind and surveyed his classroom. Great plumes of purple smoke billowed from the Gryffindor side of the room. Or, more specifically, Potter and Weasley's cauldron.
He saw the scruffy head of James Potter on his son and swooped down, fully intending to give a weeks worth of detentions and thirty points from Gryffindor.
But then Harry looked up.
As Severus saw the emerald green eyes, duplicates of Lily's, he was thrown backwards into the past.
Lily's smile. Lily's wine-red hair. Lily's laugh. Lily's letters. Lily's touch. Lily.
"five points from Gryffindor." He heard himself saying. He saw the shocked faces at the minimal punishment and ignored them, returning to his desk.
Softly. He slid open his top, right hand drawer. There, lying on the wood, the only thing in there, was a photograph. It was a thirteen year old version of him and Lily, his arm slung over her shoulders, hers wrapped around his waist. Both were laughing at some long forgotten joke.
His vision blurs slightly and he shoves the drawer shut. Surreptitiously, he wiped his eyes on his sleeve, before turning back to his essay.
Scratch, scratch, scratch.
Silence isn't all he has ever known.
He's known her. Laughed with her, joked with her ... loved her.
And he's still haunted by the ghost of those years.
By the ghost of her.