I love you, Severus. Hermione's confession kept echoing in Severus' thoughts as he brewed his potions. Snape bent over the cauldron, coming to the disappointing conclusion that the fumes had definitely hit him in the head and he became overly sentimental. He dared to hope. He had become too soft. He dared to be happy, even.
Severus certainly didn't believe in love. In principle, he considered blind belief in anything to be akin to insanity. During his espionage years, balancing on the razor's edge, Severus was thrilled that Occlumency's shields allowed him to hide emotions in the farthest corners of his mind, leaving him with the ability to think rationally.
Snape recalled Dumbledore's inspired eulogies about love with a shudder and gnashing of teeth. Every meeting, when the professors took a quiet nap or surreptitiously checked their homework, the Headmaster suddenly burst into a lengthy lecture about the greatest feeling in the world.
"We will win all battles, my friends! Faith and love will save us from the forces of Darkness that are already lurking around us!" Dumbledore exclaimed with inspiration. Snape scribbled sarcastic comments in his first year's essays, spilling red ink all over the parchment, just as enthusiastically. Professor Vector was drawing a numerology chart for the next week, and the results were not at all pleasing. Pomona Sprout was knitting another one of her colorful sweaters. Minerva snorted under her breath, exchanging glances with Severus out of the corner of her eye.
"Tell me, Severus, why didn't universal love and optimism save us from Grindelwald?"
"It's simple, Minerva, he was waiting for the dear Headmaster to teach him an optimistic view of things."
The professors supported Snape's snide remarks with a quiet laugh of solidarity. Dumbledore frowned.
"You are mistaken, my boy. Lily Potter's love saved Harry's life!" The Headmaster threw out his trump card, but Snape had long been immune to this kind of moralizing, so he only grimaced before rushing into the battle of witts.
"Tell me, Albus, do you seriously think that Lily Evans was the only one who kept her child safe from the Death Eaters by sacrificing her life? But what about the Longbottoms? What about Narcissa Malfoy, who has been walking on a razor blade since Draco was born? What about Walburga Black, who survived two wars and raised her sons in the most troubled times? And should I remind you whose disregard for his own promises cost Lily her life?"
There was a whisper in agreement through the staff room. Albus stared at Snape as if he had seen a ghost and ended the meeting in record time.
Minerva found Severus at the Astronomical Tower later that evening. He was again suffering from self-loathing. Minerva knew that, so she did not bother with unnecessary consolations, she stood by his side and leaned on the railing. A starry night lay before them.
"You know," Minerva began her old fairy tale, "in some ways the old meddlesome goat is still right: love turns this Earth, although not always in the direction we need it to turn."
Severus chuckled and left McGonagall's comment unanswered, she continued calmly.
"When the war with Grindelwald took my husband's life, when my injuries seemed incompatible with life, and the arrogant wizards made it clear that they did not want to have anything to do with the heroine of the almost lost war, I came to Hogwarts and looked at these very stars as if I had seen them for the first time. In this very Tower, Pomona found me."
"Professor Sprout?" Snape frowned, turning his head to Minerva. McGonagall nodded, rubbing her palms chilly. Snape non-verbally cast a warming charm on both of them.
"You do not know, and it is not customary to talk about this secret even among such gossips as my esteemed colleagues, but Pomona and Filius had a long romance affair in their youth."
Snape stared at Minerva in disbelief.
"It's nice to know that I am still able to shock you," Minerva grinned. "So, they were young, full of strength, ready to win any war and overcome any evil, but the origin of Filius intervened. You see, goblins are very jealous of their race, with little or no interracial marriages. They had a choice: to leave Britain and leave behind their careers, family and friends, or stay at home, but forget about each other's existence."
"But Professor Flitwick is a half-goblin," Snape muttered. Minerva replied with a nod of her head.
"He got lucky. Or maybe his father was just more stubborn or more loving than him, as Albus would have said. In a word, Filius and Pomona broke up but remained best friends for the rest of their lives. Lonely best friends."
"And what did Pomona do when she found you at the Tower?"
"She told me one wisdom that I want to convey to you: "Love does not necessarily imply the presence of another person. Love your job. Love your students, even if they act like ungrateful fools most of the time. Love these stars that you two once looked at together. Love yourself first of all. And don't be afraid." She led me out of here then and took me to the greenhouses. From Pomona, I learned to look after peonies, make strawberry jam, that favorite jam of yours, by the way, and, you know, I gradually stopped hating myself."
Snape gripped the railing.
"I am so lost. I'm so confused about everything. Every time I hear the words of love, someone dies." Severus laughed nervously. "I'm serious. My own mother wrote me a letter promising to love me no matter what happened, and a week later she was found dead. Lily vowed eternal friendship, and how did it all turn out in the end? Narcissa said that I was her best friend, and she almost died giving birth to Draco. I am... afraid of these words."
Minerva nodded in understanding.
"We each have a choice, Severus. Eileen died not because she loved you, but because she chose to stay with your idiot father. Lily left us so early because she believed too much in Albus's inspirational speeches and was too young to question them. You warned her, didn't you?"
"Of course, I did. Countless times for that matter," Snape replied grimly, "I warned her, and Black did, and even Petunia!"
"And that was her final choice, Severus, accept it at last. As for Narcissa, I suppose there was more genetics and notorious Black's incest involved in her near-death experience than just the fact of the mere friendship with you. Don't take on more than you can handle, Severus."
Snape grew silent, looking thoughtfully into the night. A warm summer evening inspired nostalgia when he was a young boy, who still knew how to believe. When he looked at the stars in the same way and believed that everything would be fine, that Minerva or Poppy would find him on the Tower in the evening and give him tea with strawberry jam. And there will be no losses, no deaths, no Dark Lords, no Marks, no self-hatred in his life.
"You think too much, my dear, it's harmful," Minerva chided with a smile.
"What would you have me do?"
"The flower doesn't ask questions, Severus, it breaks the ground to grow, and it certainly doesn't despise itself for it. Step by step, day by day, learn to find what pleases you."
"I can't drink whiskey every day and run to the Red Lace brothel." Snape joked sarcastically.
Minerva snorted and smacked Snape on the head.
"You're incorrigible! But you perfectly understood what I mean: love your potions, as no one understands them as you do. Love your Slytherins, because there is no one else for them but you. Love the herbs in the garden, the stars in the sky, love the darkness, it always understood you. Learn to accept yourself. Throwing your life at the pedestal of Lily Evans was also your choice, but what did that choice leave you with at the end? Accepting the Mark was also your choice, but you managed to realize how deeply delusional you had been."
"Listen to yourself, so I'm just a misunderstood and mistreated tragic hero!" Severus protested. Minerva patted his arm.
"Absolute light, my dear, simply does not exist. As well as absolute darkness. The Earth turns and we make choices every day."
"But how can I live on?"
"Live by habit. Stubbornly get out of bed every day, do exercises, it seems to me, you completely neglected yourself, make yourself a sandwich with butter and jam, brew your potions. Write the thesis, bother Filius, steal the Transfiguration books from me, complain to Poppy in the long evenings when no one is listening. Ulcerate Albus, grow peonies with Pomona, draw numerology charts with Septima Vector, secretly play Quidditch with Madame Hooch. Live, my dear, remember how it's done. And come to me for tea."
"With strawberry jam?" Severus asked hopefully. Minerva ruffled his hair.
"With strawberry jam."
Snape put the stirrer aside and extinguished the fire under the cauldron: the potion of Pristine Memories was ready. Tomorrow he and Hermione were leaving for Australia to meet the Grangers.