.
Part
[ IV ]
the world may rush over you
you will be carbon and charcoal
and maybe one day the space
between your atoms
condensed
a diamond
but until then
let your story
unravel around you
seize its threads
go further
and deeper
Capricorn
[December 22 - January 20]
Saturn
He has forgotten what England felt like (ominous), what it smelled like (crisp snow warring with air pollution) and what it was like to exist there (years of poverty and self-denial). He is a different person in London—deeper but sadder, melancholy, and his skin is tighter and less comfortable. It is a strange sense of reliving that he finds in the shadows of his former life and past experiences.
He knocks softly at number 6.
There is a pause, just long enough to start a low thrum of panic in his chest before the door is opened to the warm interior and Hermione is smiling up at him for a moment before embracing him in a tight hug. He lowers his head to rest his cheek on her riotous hair.
There is nowhere he would rather be. Perhaps, if it were possible, he would step outside time. Would there be space for human consciousness there? Would he be just the same? But he has no time to wax philosophical because Hermione is moving again, tugging him effortlessly into her orbit.
"Come in, come in—" She pulls him into the little flat, warm and bright.
He abandons England's Severus at the doorway and returns to Morocco's Severus with the press of a wineglass in his hand.
"I'm so glad you are here, that you came." She entwined their hands and snuggled up under his arm. "It's just us for a few days; I hope that's alright."
He can only smile. The trees outside were bare and laden with a cozy wrap of snow, but inside the room was littered with reminders and metaphors of their shared existence: a shell he had given her—title revision, a scarf hung like a tapestry—knitting togetherness, a set of glittering crystal and gold chai cups—community in the shared table.
And of course, in the corner, a Christmas tree, covered in fairy lights and what appear to be homemade paper star ornaments.
He draws closer and realizes, with a jolt, they are her old potions essays, traced over with his vicious red ink.
He is shocked and perhaps a little hurt. Is this a cruel joke? Once he might have been able to turn it around and use it, instead, as a weapon—but he cannot now, not here, not with Hermione.
But when he meets her eyes, she is smiling widely.
"I wanted a bit of both of us and this was all I had of you, besides your precious letters, that could be made into decorations."
He cannot speak.
She continues, softer now, "I thought it was time to let go of that part of our history." And after another pause, "I can take them away—are you upset?"
He discards his wine glass as he crosses the room in two long steps to embrace her: a former student (but the pain of that time is dulling at last), his smoking partner (though they have exchanged the cigarettes of their first meeting for a delicate vase-like hooka), a balcony sitter (the darkness seducing secrets out of each of them by turn), and an amorous future partner (at least that's how it feels when she tilts her head back and catches his mouth with hers).
And gone are the closed-mouth kisses that sought an eyebrow, a temple, a cheekbone, or a forehead. In their place is a long tangling of lips and tongue, the taste of wine and chocolate and Hermione.
When they end the kiss he is panting and feels near tears.
"Love me slowly," said a hoarse voice, and he is surprised to realize that it is his.
She pulls back from where her lips had been exploring his neck. "Shall I stop?"
He does not reply and she pulls back further to look in his eyes.
He closes them and turns his face away, ready to angle his body away and then, perhaps, to retreat.
"Severus?" Her voice takes a strident, fearful edge. "My love doesn't have limits—it doesn't run out like an hourglass or a bottle of wine."
And then it is just the sound of his ragged breathing; staccato punctuation. He hardly needs to explain, nor can he imagine trying to put words to the past, memories that had once been bottled up inside of him, slowly and quietly killing every scrap of grace and goodness in his soul.
"Do you remember when we talked of the future—our dreams?" she asks.
He nods because he does, though that café table and their second meeting are long past.
"Well this is the future—and you are here, and I am here, just as we promised."
And there is nothing more to be said.
Aquarius
[January 21 - February 19]
Uranus
He stays in England until late January.
He cannot tear himself away from her—not since the universe expanded at the touch of her lips.
She is the sort of woman who is like the moon that, despite the sun, can still rise behind the daylight clouds and be seen.
If someone asked how it was to be in love he could not have articulated how she is embedded in his skin. It is wild, like the brambles that overrun gardens. It is perplexing, like an old cardboard puzzle that you may or may not have all the pieces too.
But it is better than anything else.
His story has turned outward, rather than revolving only around himself and his insular guilt and grief.
He meets Potter again. 'Harry,' he tries to say. The boy has stood in for two separate, yet entwined agonies: Harry's green eyes, in them the woman who had been his first and best friend as well as his first love, and his dark hair and face, his father, Severus's teenaged tormentor. But, to Severus, he has never been able to be just Harry Potter, a boy.
Severus is amazed and humbled by his willingness to forgive.
There are new narratives to be written in other languages: the language of forgiveness, of love, of justice. There are new plans, like city builders who lay out grids, and new plots and dramas (Harry is getting married to his own red-haired school sweetheart, you see) to explore.
He feels like he has been counting down to his body's failure for too long, waiting for his blood to still and congeal and his lungs to stiffen with their last breath. But now—but now.
A starling, feathers dark and just brushed with iridescent green, calls from its perch on a low wall. He looks up and feels as though it might have been only yesterday (though it was another January, long ago and far away) he was leaving London for anywhere.
Now he is sad to go.
He is certain that the future watches mortals and wonders at their inability to see beyond.
Pisces
[February 20 - March 20]
Neptune
He has scarcely had a chance to air out his apartment at home again in Morocco before there is a familiar knock at the door.
"Hermione?"
"Do you know there are spaces between atoms—there is loneliness there in the miniscule, rather like the spaces between trees in the forest or between galaxies and stars?" she asks, solemnly standing, hands folded, on his step.
He watches her for a long moment. "No, I suppose I didn't know that."
"I'll not be a pentameter mark on someone else's poem." And there is that brave fire in her he remembers vaguely from her youth, but it has burned and sharpened into something full bloomed and beautiful.
"You are my poem."
And then she smiles, her lips curling invitingly under her freckled nose and sparking eyes.
"Careful, Severus Al-Amir Prince Snape—you may never be rid of me."
And he rolls his eyes (at least he hasn't forgotten how to do that) and hauls her up for a long kiss.
He will read the curves of her body like no man ever has before—following the draw of a map that they could not see or interpret. She is so beautiful it hurts, an ache that starts in his heart and spreads outward. It isn't the kind of pain that he hopes will go away but the kind he welcomes like an old friend.
He admires the freckles on her skin; they are akin to stargazing. He wants to make love to her—all of her.
In her arms there is ecstasy and it is not only physical—but in their intimate oneness, the perfect arousal.
She traces poetry over his chest, the heart that had been broken now a prism, refracting light into a rainbow of desire.
This May he will not be alone—and neither will she.
Edited on April 22nd by renaid whose response was "wow". Interpret that how you will, gentle reader.