RED HAIR, BROKEN GLASS, AND EMERALD EYES
DISCLAIMER/ WARNING: Same as first chapter
A/N: This was just supposed to be a one-shot when I started it a while ago… for some reason, this conclusion came to me so I decided to write it. I debated on whether to put this up separately or add it here. You can pretty much tell which won over. As always, feedback is always appreciated. Without further ado, I present you Severus' POV of that fateful tragedy and its immediate aftermath.
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A week later after Severus Snape last cried, the carpet in the master bedroom had been stripped, baring the dark hardwood flooring. It was stained.
The room's former occupant sat in the huge king-sized bed that still adorned the middle of the otherwise empty space. Everything else had either been thrown out, 'incedioed' or passed on to homeless shelters.
There was nothing left for him –nothing he could take without his guilt creeping up his conscience.
The white washed walls of the room were closing in on him. He could not seem to breathe all of a sudden. He stood up on shaky legs, stepped outside and closed the door behind him. His onyx eyes them roamed around, taking in the rest of the house into his vision.
Empty.
Suddenly, his head started to pound, an unseen mallet perhaps? His vision clouded until everything was nothing but a blur.
Then, he felt his cheeks dampening.
Were those tears? No, not again…
When he cried, he'd remember those eyes –those brilliant emerald eyes that once held so much life and desire and passion for him.
Lily's –no Harry's eyes.
They would now always be Harry's eyes.
His heart clenched at the thought, his mind spinning madly in the vision. No matter how hard he tried, he fruitlessly managed to forget seeing those eyes… floating like pickled potions ingredients inside that glass jar.
The tears were now a steady stream.
What had he done?
He thought back to that fateful day.
Blood… glass… hair… everywhere –Oh Merlin! What has happened? The other side of the bed was empty. Had someone attacked in their sleep? Had they been that complacent in the absence of war? Severus was so tires coming home from his current illicit rendezvous with Jane –Janila –Jamilla –what was –who cared what her name was? She was an incredible fuck, and she had this gorgeous mane of auburn. No, no time to be reminiscing now.
The wards in their home were a rival to Hogwarts'. No one could have broken in –then why all the mess? Severus snatched his wand, his still fuzzy brain failing to register yet the odd spread of red hair on the other side of the bed. He loved red hair. It always reminded him of Lily.
There was only one thing that could have happened. He tiptoed to the open bedroom door. Across the hall, the door to the bathroom was ajar. Soft yellow light was peeking through.
Harry always left the bathroom door open. His stint at the cupboard under the stairs drove out his love for confined spaces.
Severus frowned. His gaze went back to the bedroom then back towards the bathroom door. The trail of hair and glass and blood followed.
It was a mess.
Harry's mess.
What the heck was that brat thinking?
Blood… glass… hair… everywhere.
Severus pushed the bathroom door open.
He'd never forget that day.
He scrambled back to the bedroom to pull on a coat.
Harry's bleeding!
The younger man's face was drenched in blood –but oh, what a sweet, sweet smile he had!
Severus lit a fire in the grate to floo call Poppy, Harry's personal healer –he would not let anyone else see to him. The jar of floo powder was not in its usual place by the mantel. Onyx eyes gazed until it rested on a familiar-looking glass jar by his bedside table.
His heart skipped a beat. His mind froze.
Was that floo powder scattered on the table?
Each step he took towards it was painful, contrived.
Floo powder used to be inside the jar –he remembered how he threw a fit when Harry took his spare specimen jar and filled it with the acid green dust.
"Go buy an urn, for Merlin's sake!"
Harry just laughed but came home the following night with a new set of… specimen jars.
"It's cheaper than buying an urn, Sev,"
His knees gave way, the soft carpet cushioning his kneecaps –it would still bruise though. Severus' skin bruised easily, ironically. Harry called him 'delicate' –the nerve!
The jar before him now held a most wondrous thing.
His breath hitched as the growing sunrise breached the bedroom windows and hit the clear glass.
It was beautiful, but oh so horrifying –to be suspended –as if in air –inside the glass jar by its lonesome. It was then that he had realized that it wasn't just the eyes, but the person who once possessed them…
With shaking hands, he grabbed a fistful of floo powder, careful not to disturb the jar. He stumbled all the way to the fireplace and threw it in.
The flames turned emerald, like those haunting eyes in that jar.
Severus Snape screamed and cried and pleaded –until he was hoarse and out cold.
What had he done?
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It was already too late.
Before, there was only one thing that he regretted the most –calling Lily Evans a mudblood. The memory haunted him day and night like an annoying attic ghoul. For him, everything started to crumble that day; He lost his only chance of redemption.
Oh, how wrong he was.
Then came her son –he'd never thought of the young man as another chance, but a chance Harry did become for him.
More than redemption, he gave him reason…
To hate, to love; to doubt, to believe; to change, to remain; to live, to lie…
It was all a lie.
Sometimes people hold on to things, not because they cannot let go, but simply because there is nothing else to hold on to.
Severus held onto Lily… even after her marriage to James Potter… even after her death…
Even after Harry came into his life and the young man had started to worm his way onto the Potions Master's bed… eventually his life –but his heart, you ask? Never his heart, Severus would say.
In the dark, it had been easier to pretend as most things that differentiated the son from the mother disappeared in the absence of light. For more than a decade he had lived in the illusion if the abyss, finding solace.
But it was never enough.
In the light, he began to find more things of the mother that the sin did not posses.
Thus, his obsession with red hair.
It had all been nameless faces to him –men and women. No other name and face mattered other than Lily's.
It had always been Lily.
Her face, her hair, her eyes…
Always,
He lived in that sick fantasy for years –at the expense of his soul, of his sanity, of his Harry…
His.
'Harry!'
He'd never forget that sight: his pallid countenance, drenched in blood, the gouged out cavern behind his closed papery lids; and that macabre smile on his face.
"I refuse to let you use me anymore, Sev."
The red hair and the eyes suddenly made sense.
"I refuse to be a part of your illusions any longer."
It was all he ever wanted, right? Lily's hair, her eyes… her radiant hair and brilliant eyes…
"I refuse… to be a stand-in for a dead woman."
Merlin, had Lily died at all? In his heart, she always seemed to be just there –unreachable, yes, but constantly present. What had happened? He seemed to have lost it all in the blink of an eye.
'Harry! Harry!'
"It's time to let her go, Sev."
'Harry! Harry!'
"It's time to let her go. I did, you can too,"
That day, Severus Snape lost his last chance for redemption. It would always seem like it had just happened yesterday to him though. Weeks, months, years may pass, but he would not forget any bit of it.
"Let go, Sev."
It was Harry's last words.
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He burned the hair –all of it, and an acrid stench wafted up his aquiline nose. He burned it up together with all of the things that once resided in their rooms. It was a huge muggle bonfire in their backyard.
The last thing that he had to burn was a photograph –two men with their arms around each other, laughing and smiling, identical silver bands adorning matching fingers on each of their left hands.
He had loved him, right?
"Let go, Sev."
He dropped the photograph into the glowing tangerine embers where it shriveled up and blackened instantly.
By morning everything would already be ashes.
Severus walked back towards the house, which was completely empty now –except for a couple of jars.
"Let go, Sev."
'But I can't!'
"Please!"
'I'm sorry, Harry.'
The jars stood side by side on the tiled countertop of the kitchen –one contained the revered pair of eyes –green as a freshly-pickled toad…
The other jar was much larger, also made out of glass. It now held a pair of pale hands, severed from the wrist – both adorned with long, potion-stained fingers –and a sterling silver band around one of the bloody digits. And, if one would look closely, engraved words could be seen: 'Always'.
"Let go, Sev."
"I did, Harry. I finally did."
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Sometimes people let go, not because they want to, but because they could no longer hold on.
***FIN***
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A/N: What do you think? Personally, I don't know what to make of this, but I kind of liked the ending this way. I had been so depressed lately because no one was reviewing my chaptered fics and I reckoned that nobody's liking them so I wouldn't update those in the meantime and I'd just focus more on my angst-filled one-shots that my muse seems to like writing whenever I'm in this sort of funk. No, that was not a plea for reviews, but I'd really like to know what you think. Even a PM would do!
In the meantime, me and my buddy Darwin (that1BEAUTIFULboy) are throwing prompts and writing challenges at each other. Try to visit my profile page sometime in the future if you want challenges and prompts for your use. Pick out one and let us know how it works for you. –C.