Disclaimer: I don't own the "Harry Potter" book series. The story of "Harry Potter" is the property of J. K. Rowling, it is not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only.
His father had always been a horrible, horrible man. And Severus had always known that.
He had known it from the age of three, when one bitter cold November night, he had accidentally wet the bed, and instead of comforting him in that moment of embarrassment, his father had forced him to sleep outside in the yard for an entire week as punishment. He had again been reminded of it at age five, when his daily beatings had started to become so severe that not a month would go by without one of his bones being fractured. At eight years old, he'd spent many nights lying in bed and listening to his parents' violent fights. He would hear the shouting and screaming, the punching and slapping, the begging and crying – all while desperately clinging to his worn-out teddy. During the summer before his first-year, he'd needed to start dodging the empty beer bottles thrown at him in a blind rage for even the slightest misstep, and it was only about three years later when he'd slowly started to realise that none of the other children living in his neighbourhood were afraid of their own fathers the way he was and that it maybe wasn't normal for someone to derive so much enjoyment from hurting and taunting his own flesh and blood. At the age of 15, he had finally tried to stand up for himself for the very first time – only to receive the worst beating of his life. In that moment, with the older man pounding into him and screaming "I AM YOUR GOD, I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT TO YOU, YOU WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT!", he had truly believed that he was about to die.
But even so, as he was now kneeling there in the heavy rain, staring at that pathetic little tombstone marking the freshly dug grave in front of him, he didn't know how to feel. His abuser was finally gone for good – but the expected sense of relief still failed to materialise for some reason. Granted, he hadn't seen his father in almost two whole decades; however, even just the thought of him still being out there somewhere had always terrified him. So shouldn't he be now finding comfort in his passing, as morbid as that may sound? Shouldn't he be rejoicing and hollering and celebrating? The all-too-real bogeyman from his childhood had finally vanished. But then why was he filled with nothing but that awful, almost paralysing numbness inside?
Furrowing his brows, he reached out and allowed his fingertips to run across the smooth, cold surface of the plain headstone. Don't speak ill of the dead – he had never understood that saying. Dying didn't make someone a saint all of the sudden. The fact that his sperm donor's lungs no longer pulled in oxygen, that his heart had stopped pumping blood and that his brain wasn't processing information anymore didn't erase all of the terrible things he had done during his lifetime. It didn't make all of those bruises – the ones his mother had used to so carefully hide behind her makeup every single morning in order to keep up the appearance of a happy marriage – any less angry-looking, it didn't remove any of the deep, jagged scars running along the length of his back, which served as a daily reminder of where exactly that thick leather belt had met his skin over and over again, and it also didn't change the way that he, even now, way into adulthood, would involuntarily flinch a little whenever an older, taller man raised his voice in his presence.
And so when he finally broke down and allowed the tears to start streaming down his face, he wasn't crying because of his father's passing. Rather, he was mourning the loss of the father he had never had, the loss of the father that he had always wished for. He wasn't grieving the death of a person; he was grieving the death of the smallest bit of hope he had still had in his heart for all these years, telling him that his dad might still be able to change and give him that fatherly love he so desperately needed and desired.
Thus, he wept. He wept for what felt like an eternity; but ultimately, his tears ran dry. Squeezing his bloodshot eyes shut for just a few seconds, he took a deep breath as he allowed himself to regain composure. He knew that this was the last time that he would allow himself to cry over this heinous person – the last time he would ever allow himself to even think about him. Standing up and ignoring the wet feeling of the mud that had penetrated the thin fabric of his pants, he looked down at the grave one last time.
"And whose god are you now, old man?" he whispered hoarsely, his voice cracking halfway through, before turning around and walking away without another backward glance.
He was finally free.