WRITTEN FOR THE HOUSES COMPETITION, YEAR 7, ROUND 6
House: Ravenclaw
Class: Muggle Studies
Drabble
Prompt: [Colour] Green
Word Count: 636 (google docs)
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Grass Grows Green
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The grass had grown green over Lily's grave.
Severus didn't know why he had expected it to be barren, why he had anticipated seeing exposed mounds of dirt over Lily's final resting place. It had been almost six months since that one terrible night had changed everything. Six months since – since Lily had died. Since Severus had gotten her killed.
It had been six months, and even as Severus had found himself trapped, inert, time had continued moving around him. Grass had grown over Lily's grave, covering the raw, overturned soil that had buried her.
If Severus still knew how to smile, he would have. The vibrant green of the grass was so Lily, the colour reminiscent of her eyes, and the light, fluttering feeling that always filled Severus' chest whenever he escaped his house to play with Lily as a child.
He didn't like to think about what came next. He didn't like to think about Hogwarts, and the cool, aristocratic emerald that tinged the very air in the Slytherin dungeons – didn't like to think about the distrust and hurt that began to colour Lily's gaze whenever she looked at him, and soured the lightness in Severus' chest.
A cloud crossed the sky, shrouding the sun and dimming the daylight.
The remembered soaring feeling in Severus' heart from whenever he looked into Lily's eyes was grounded with a jolt. He recoiled as the viridescent grass shifted slightly to a sickly shade just shy of emerald.
Most poisons were green, he thought faintly. And he had brewed many – if not all – of them on behalf of the Dark Lord. Noxious Poison, a belching olive as he handed it over to Lucius to administer at the Dark Lord's behest. The Drink of Despair, a vivid emerald he had sworn stared at him reproachfully as he brewed it.
He had stopped thinking too hard about the potions he was brewing after that.
Avada Kedavra was green.
Severus remembered how it looked coming from his own wand, the colour searing itself into his eyes in a flash of light. He intimately knew the way casting it felt like ripping energy from your very veins, the way your victims froze into a picture of horror before falling lifelessly onto the ground.
Like Lily must have, cast down by the same curse Severus had learnt so diligently.
He fell to his knees, flinching away from the thought, from the image in his mind of Lily dying from a bright green flash so similar to the colour of her eyes.
How could he have been so wrong? Why did he place his trust in the care of a man who took no mind of anything beyond his own selfish machinations?
He clutched his chest, convulsing with sickening grief that refused to abate. His wand, concealed in the inner pocket of his robes, dug into his side, sticking painfully into his ribcage. As he knelt on Lily's grave, on the grave of the one woman he had ever loved, Severus couldn't imagine ever wielding his wand again. He couldn't imagine returning to the Wizarding World, and watching as fools on the streets celebrated the Boy-Who-Lived – celebrated Lily's death.
Severus couldn't imagine going back to a world where Lily died hating him, the idyllic friendship of their childhood torn to pieces by his own actions.
He let out a shuddering sob, falling forward until his forehead touched the ground. The freshly trimmed grass pricked against his skin, and when he opened his eyes, it was all he could see.
Severus wanted to vomit, blurry green filling his sight.
Once, green had meant happiness, green had meant freedom, love, friendship – green had meant Lily.
Now, he would never be able to see the colour again without thinking of death.
a/n: beta love to sekdaniels and LadyS