Rosebud.



Snape is talking about things he lost, and forgotten along the way.

Disclaimer: This stuff isn't mine. Except the words. Not Snape.

Rated.. PG, because some younger people just may hate it!



This was not a dark and stormy night.

You heard me, it wasn't. Infact it was a clear night with a strangely orange black sky, striped like a tiger, almost in the same zig-zagged pattern. A few stars hung this way and that, up in the sky, but that is to be expected.

This is beyond the point. The point is that it was not a dark and stormy night. Lots of strange things can happen on clear nights too, and this was one of those, less cliché nights.

The two of us were dancing under the midnight tiger sky. Underneath the stars that all seemed strangely closer this evening than others. We were simply dancing to the music that was being played a few hundred feet away, you would expect this to be fairly normal, correct? However, it wasn't.

This night was normal for several reasons. The first being that the person I was dancing with was not a women of any kind of interesting stature, or profession, she was just as normal as one could possibly be. She wasn't even magic. She spoke of television and how her new Fender played so well. It was strange because all I did was smile and nod, and she assumed I knew all about a Fender, and about I Love Lucy, and how instant coffee just had been making her mornings so much easier.

What was strange was that not only was I dancing with her, I was pretending to be just like her. Sliding my feet along and her words blended together with the music and my silent nods, and simple lies, and the clear night sky.

There are several other aspects of the simple dancing evening that made it out of the ordinary. One being that I, Severus Snape, really doesn't dance. But this was nineteen eighty, and apparently I did then.

She was wearing a black dress, I remember. Or atleast it looked black with the little light I was supplied with, perhaps I don't know what color it was for certain, but I think it must have been black. I wouldn't have danced with someone not wearing black as the primary color- its just not fashionable, especially not for me.

She had very large blue eyes that reminded me somewhat of dyed plastic icicles muggle children hang on their Christmas trees to create a sort of pleasantly cheap and plasticy feel to their holiday. The eyes themselves were not cold- but they darted around and turned every such place every so often. Ever so unexpectly.

Plus she was just a muggle, and so I was bound to associate her with cheap plastic ornaments, doesn't everyone?

We must have danced for hours, for days, for weeks and years and years. All the clocks in my head had sprung their sprockets that night and were currently in a jarbled mess up in the sky, along with everything else that we ever lose when we sometimes forget our heads up in the clouds.

We danced, and twirled, and whirled, and swirled, and I lied to her enough lies to fill the hearts of the population of an entire metropolitan city, and then some. I told the woman about my family, and about my mum, and father, and how we were all so happy until a man, (Mister V. I told her, anyway) had come along and killed them. She hugged me tightly and shivered,

"Oh, Severus, that's terrible. And such a sweet man for it to happen to." And I hugged her back. Wanting comfort, even if it was only there because of something that never happened-she wasn't lying to me when she said I was a sweet man either.

To make a long story slightly shorter, we made later that evening or earlier that morning, while watching some documentary about a famous muggle author. I don't know why in the hell she wanted to bugger me while watching that, but that was how it went. Perhaps she was just the sort to be turned on by older British men like me, and like the one featured in the documentary- I don't know, and I don't care to know. Its funny that I would remember us watching the film, but not even remember the woman's name.

But I think her name my have been Ellen. Ellen Fafrite. But like I told you, I really don't remember.

All I remember is that I miss her, a miss her like something wonderful that captured my innocence as a child, as a young man. I miss her with all of my heart, and my entire body, although this is not sexual, because she was very ugly, and not even very nice.

I miss her because I miss the night I hadn't been afraid to dance with a women who may not have been wearing a black dress.

And I miss all the things that used to be. Before Voldemort, and before everything terrible that I've done- that I did.

Sometimes I dream of my childhood, and my parents, and how they weren't murdered by anyone, and how they were very nice to me, even though I was often mean to them.

Sometimes I dream of long cold nights I spent outside, carrying out my former masters orders, doing this, killing that, cursing them.

And sometimes I dream of a documentary, of a man whose name I never knew.









blush This kind of, was all over the place. But that's how I'm feeling at the moment! And that's all. If you liked it, please tell me. If you didn't, tell me.

And.. Yes, have a nice day! :D

- 11/17/01 -