Severus ground his teeth as he waited. Lily was gone. He was alone.
Then, he heard a voice he hadn't heard in so many years come from behind him. "Severus." It was softer than he ever remembered it being. All three syllables pronounced and enunciated in a way that not many people often did.
He turned, and felt the emotion swell up in his chest. She looked much as she had in life, similar to when he had last seen her, but healthier and unburdened. In her present state, or lack thereof, he saw his own reflection more than he'd ever seen it while she'd been alive. A marriage riddled with the stress of abuse, both emotional and physical, and a son who had disappointed her greatly, had aged her more quickly.
His lip trembled at the sight of her. She looked him up and down. "Severus..." She repeated, the same enunciation, but softer, and more emotional. "Come and sit."
He watched her with childlike wonder and disbelief as she moved about the room to the couch. Her transparent hand touched the couch, gesturing for him to join her. He moved obediently and stared at her. He was silent for a long time as he took in her features.
His eyes began to sting. He choked, "I'm so sorry, Mum..." He looked away, blinking rapidly to try and stop the tears.
"Oh, my son," She said. "You've suffered so much. So much of it because of me... Because of my weakness."
He shook his head quickly. "It wasn't your fault. This..." He gesture to his left arm. "It wasn't your fault."
"Not completely, no," She admitted, but her eyes were full of regret. "I know now how much I contributed to your feelings of isolation and powerlessness, and how I contributed to your tremendous desire to find a sense of belonging." He stared at her in awe. "Death leaves little room for ignorance." She smirked at him. Her dark, ghostly eyes sparkled slightly.
He'd never really considered what she'd mentioned to be contributing factors to his decisions. In moments of anger, he'd blamed her for not leaving his father, for not loving him enough, but never for the choices he'd grown to make once he'd left her home. "I don't blame you," He said plainly.
"You wouldn't. You're not the type. You tend to shoulder more guilt than necessary," She chided lightly.
"In the end, I made my choices," He argued quietly. He had been very protective of his mother as a boy, and it hadn't changed as a man.
"The job of a parent is to put one's child in the best position to succeed in life, to help them build resiliency to hardship, and to make them feel safe," She admitted. "I didn't do those things for myself, which means I certainly didn't do them for you." He opened his mouth to counter, but she smirked again. "You don't need to defend my honor as your mother to me, Severus."
"Yes, I do," He said firmly. "He took everything from you when he started drinking again. He took the spark from your eyes, your smile, your softness... Your very soul," His voice broke. "He broke you, and then I broke you all over again. I betrayed you, as he had. I was my father's son in the end." He spat, and then he began to blink rapidly as he failed to keep the silent tears at bay. "I am sorry, Mum."
She moved a bit closer to him on the couch, and her transparency felt heavy. It hurt to look at her after so many years. "Look at me," She demanded. He obeyed. "You are my son, and I am proud of you." He bowed his head and covered his face with one of his hands. The other balled his pants into a fist. "If I could go back in time, I would do so many things differently. I would be better to you, for you."
He shook his head once. "You were trapped. Your family disowned you for marrying a Muggle, and they would have disowned you twice over for divorcing one..." He swatted at his eyes in irritation.
"I was afraid," She admitted softly, and the brokenness in her admission drew his eyes to her face immediately. "He was such an angry drunk. Always so loud. Always violent. Despite the fact that I was a witch, that I knew I was more powerful than him, I was paralyzed... And I felt like... a failure," She sighed. "I'd fallen in love, but my family had disowned me for it. He was sober. In the beginning. Before we married. After we married, I could show him magic. He didn't react well at all. I suppose it's quite a shock, and quite a task to accept something like magic. He started drinking. I found out I was pregnant almost immediately. I told him it was possible you might not have magic. He straightened up for about a year, and then..." She shivered. "He saw magic in you, saw you tuck yourself in to your blankets. When it turned sour, I was too prideful to tell my parents it wasn't working. I wanted you to have a proper family. When he'd sober up the next morning, he'd apologize, and swear he'd never do it again... I felt like if I would have been a better wife, a better mother..."
"Stop it," Severus hissed. "You were a victim."
She looked away from him. "I know that now," She admitted quietly. "I should have never turned you away. I should have been better for you. I am sorry, Severus." Snape crumbled in on himself, burying his face in his hands. He wanted so badly to reach out and touch her, but knew he wouldn't be able to do so. She moved closer. "I'm so sorry," She repeated.
After a minute or so, with his mother's voice, her true voice - motherly and comforting and not hardened in defensiveness, in his ear, he calmed. Changing the subject, she asked, "You've snagged yourself quite a witch, Severus." He smiled slightly, trying to recover from his emotional breakdown. " "Lily's right, you know."
He raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"You deserve to be happy."
He looked at her long and hard. He studied her face. Gone was the sour-faced, sallow looking woman. In her stead, there was a woman Severus only dreamed of knowing. There was a confidence about her, despite the fact she was acknowledging so many of her wrongs. There was a certainty in her presence even though she wasn't entirely real. He could see the proud Slytherin pure blood she'd once been. She no longer had that diminished and shrunken ego. If he been raised by this version of witch, would he have turned out the same? He frowned. Inadvertently, unintentionally, merely thinking the question blamed her.
"Something is troubling you," She said plainly. "I sense... Confliction."
He shook his head once. "It's nothing."
"It is pointless to lie to the dead," His mother said. "I am a part of you. I feel you."
It was as if she were leaning on that aggravated nerve inside of him. "Why didn't you leave him? Why didn't you take me and run? We could've returned to your family. We could've gone anywhere else," He cut himself off and snapped his mouth shut. "I apologize."
"You'll get nothing from this if you keep everything inside, Severus," She said seriously. "When I married your father, my family's disappointment in my choice could not have been greater. He was a Muggle, and he was only middle class then. My parents wanted nothing to do with our marriage. I was proud. I could have a marriage and a family without my own family's involvement. It didn't go well. You were right in saying divorce wasn't exactly a viable option for me, but I don't know that my mother would've shut me out if I had divorced him. My mother was a lovely woman, and she would've eventually brought my father around, though it would've taken quite a long time."
Severus' blood boiled a bit again, as if she were jabbing her elbow into that same nerve. "Then why did you stay? We could've had a better life! We could've been safe. We could've had money."
"You cared about the money?" She asked and narrowed her eyes.
"Yes!" He growled. "Not because the money itself mattered, or being rich, but because it would've afforded me clothes that other children wouldn't have laughed at! It would've adored me a home in a neighborhood people didnt turn their noses up about. I could have played sports with the boys from school. I wouldn't have been such an outcast..." He stopped himself again, and took a deep breath. "Didn't you want those things for me? For yourself?"
"Of course I did," She said seriously. "I also wanted my marriage to succeed. I wanted my family to work."
He scowled. "It wasn't going to work. He would never accept us, never love us." His heart dropped when he looked at her face. Her eyes had dropped to the space between them.
"He did," She said. "He loved me. Once upon a time." Her voice was so soft and filled with heartache that it made his stomach twist. "He didn't have an easy childhood. His father was sick with addiction. He grew to be a better man. In the beginning, he was kind. Loving. He was excited to be married, to have a family. The magic got in the way."
Severus became defensive again. "Love isn't supposed to be conditional."
She met his eyes, hers filled with hurt, and snapped, "I loved him. Unconditionally," Her dark eyes softened. "And I wanted him to love me again. I wanted him to love you. I want him to love our family. I didn't want to quit on him. I wanted the man I married back, but it..." She closed her eyes. "It didn't happen."
Severus took a deep breath. "I'm sorry."
She looked up at him. Her ghostly eyes were shimmering. "I'm sorry, too, Severus."
The weight of his anger toward her, his frustration, lifted off of his chest in one giant wave. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the couch as the relief of blame and shame and anger and guilt washed out of his soul. "I forgive you," He whispered. He opened his eyes and looked at her.
"Thank you," She said and smiled. "Goodbye, my son,"
Severus dropped the Resurrection Stone from his hands and it bounced on the floor in front of him. His mother disappeared. He realized that this entire ordea had not at all been about him receiving forgiveness. He'd already been forgiven - by Lily, and by his mother. All along it had been about him affording himself enough grace to give those people forgiveness in return, forgiveness he hadn't even known was his to give.
A door that hadn't been behind him opened, but he didn't turn to the sound. He knew who was coming to him now. He bowed his head as the relief of forgiveness continued to work wonders on his soul. Hermione's arms wrapped around him and held him tightly.
"The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward." ~ Unapologetically You: Reflections in Life and Human Experience
