Halloween arrived at Hogwarts with its usual back-stabbing abruptness. Oblivious children swarmed the halls, smiling at the hovering jack-o-lanterns, comparing him to the bats that occupied the Great Hall during mealtimes, and being altogether naively enchanted with the holiday. Severus' fellow professors remembered the day as one to celebrate, the day the Dark Lord had fallen the first time.
Didn't they remember the cost of that fall?
In recent years, that price had been outweighed by the price of the final fall, that being Hermione Granger. But the first fall… the first fall had set the second in motion. If the Potters, if Lily, had never been killed, Harry Potter would never have been in Gryffindor. Any son of James Potter, raised by James Potter, would have, undoubtedly, been in Slytherin. Harry Potter would not have been friends with Hermione Granger if he'd been in Slytherin, as there was no way she would've been in his House. Chances are, she would've been Sorted into Ravenclaw if the Hat hadn't known she'd be needed in Gryffindor.
Things would've been different.
Halloween always reminded him that it was his fault. He had been the one to overhear and deliver the prophecy that had set it all in motion. He had been the one who had attracted attention to Lily, who had given her the chance to give her life in the place of her son's, though that had certainly not been his intent. He had been the one who had watched Harry Potter and Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger become friends, allowed their delinquent interference in the adult world. He had been the one who had pushed them when the time came, prodded Potter in the right direction, fed Granger the right reading material. He had been the one to deliver the sword. He had been the one to watch her die.
He had been a driving force, the driving force, in the Voldemort Wars. Hell, he'd gotten an Order of Merlin for it, a decorated war hero status and a delusional fan club to boot. If anybody were to ever really look at it, to examine his life… It had been as much his war as it had been Voldemort's or Dumbledore's. His masters.
Halloween wasn't a time for carved pumpkins and sweets; Halloween was a time for bitterness and firewhiskey.
"I had no right to survive those bloody wars, Minerva," he informed the headmistress when she Flooed to his rooms that evening. He'd sequestered himself after the required appearance at dinner and wasn't nearly pissed enough to be feeling any better about his life and survival yet.
"That's not the way it works, Severus," Minerva responded, her voice much too cheerful in its neutrality for him not to scowl at her, even though she was hard to look at when she was swimming around in his vision like that.
He merely grunted in response and filled up his tumbler with more whiskey, pouring her a few fingers in the tumbler he'd set out for her when he'd begun drinking and using his knuckle to move it towards her. With a bleary sort of nod she accepted the liquor and joined him in front of the fire. There wasn't very much to say anymore.