Sarah watched Severus look away, his eyes fixed on the stub of a candle burning on the sideboard. Her expression quickly changed from shock to thoughtfulness as she considered his words: permanent and irreversible in nature. Surely that defines what true love is supposed to be, she reflected. True love should be unwavering; intense and bright and eternal. What I'd give, and what I would want in return; one hundred percent devotion. Anything less makes a mockery of love.
"Would that necessarily be a bad thing," she asked, looking at her glass and swirling the crimson contents within.
Now it was Snape's turn to look shocked. "Being bound, by all intents and purposes, to a complete stranger? How could that possibly be a good thing? I know nothing about you, and you know nothing about me." You know nothing of what I am, what I have done, and who I used to be, he thought gloomily.
"At the moment, that is true. But it wouldn't be that way forever." She looked directly at him, challenging him.
Is she mad? he thought with surprise. She should be tearing her hair out and trying to get as far away from me as humanly possible. Any other woman in their right mind would beg to be Obliviated rather than suffer being magically bound to me both romantically and indeterminately.
"Are you seriously saying to me that you would engage in a relationship with a complete stranger through one act of sex and because you are magically bound to do so?" he asked incredulously.
"I know of relationships that have been built on a lot less," she said dryly and smiled briefly, before becoming more serious. "Don't you believe in love?" she asked quietly.
Severus blinked. Love is something that I feel and that is never reciprocated, he thought to himself. Love was something I never had and never deserved. From Mother. From Father. From Lily.
Voldemort's death had let him, finally, put the ghost of Lily and his love for her to rest. His love for Lily had been the only thing that had spurred him on to do good, to atone, to relentlessly day after day put his life on the line to defeat Voldemort and once the war was over and after recovering in St. Mungo's he'd spent the rest of the summer grieving; for Dumbledore, for Lily, for everyone who'd lost their life so needlessly, and for all the mistakes he'd made. He knew he was over Lily once and for all when he'd cast his Patronus one day after his recovery and it was no longer a doe but a Thestral. It was quite fitting, really, he'd thought wryly. And yet, as much as his love for Lily had been painfully one-sided, it was almost like a cold comfort to him, allowing him to cry in the dead of night, or project fantasies of what may have been in some alternate universe had he not ruined their friendship. It was like a blanket of pain and misery that he'd clung to for so long, that once it had gone he started to miss it, for even unrequited love was preferable to the numbness and void of no love at all.
And yet, she was right: the ritual had undoubtedly conjured feelings of intense love within him, love that he'd thought his soul too destroyed to ever feel again. Surely if the love had been created by magic alone, it couldn't possibly be any more than a cruel illusion, to taunt him of all that he'd never had, and never would have.
But then there was the issue of his Dark Mark disappearing. The Dark Mark had been formed with such evil, such malice, that only something so light and good could have possibly have removed it; something like love. He never considered casting a spell to remove it, because he'd thought Voldemort's magic so strong that to try would be futile, let alone dangerous. As far as he knew, the mark would be with him until he died; a permanent reminder of all he'd lost, of all his faults, of all the evil he'd ever performed. It was his penance, the symbol of a life wasted on pain and regret.
"Do I believe love exists? Yes," he answered eventually, one hand playing absently with a strand of black hair, his black eyes caught in a thousand yard stare.
She didn't push it any further than that. Some instinct told her not to. I believe in love too, she thought. And I believe in magic.