Disclaimer:
It's JKR's world, I just play in it.
--------
Severus Snape stared out the window of the carriage. His wife sat across from him, looking at her hands. Neither spoke.
After their interlude with the girl, Lucius had swept in again and tried to convince Snape to torture her. Snape had begged off, claiming he'd rather see her used and humiliated by the rest of the guests. Allosia thought it a deft sidestepping of the issue before the possibility of his sincerity occurred to her.
That she wasn't even sure how she felt about it made it all the more uncomfortable. After all, what Snape had shown her this evening wasn't the petty cruelty of the Death Eaters or the ridiculous machinations of a certain segment of wizarding society. He had shown her that as a spy it was possible to justify absolutely any behavior, to anyone, on either side. He was, she understood, necessarily his own compass, and it was an occupation that would have challenged anyone. For her husband though, it was clearly a particularly peculiar maze. The girl was probably dead by now. It might have been kinder to kill her, but there were some things the potions master would not do in his wife's presence, even if she had proven she was not as unlike the rest of the world as he had so long needed to believe.
She shuddered, and Snape raised and eyebrow at her without further commentary. As anyone who had ever worked or studied with him could tell, spending two hours with Severus Snape in non-companionable silence was anything but a pleasant experience.
That night and the period of time it ushered in was not only one of the worst in our lives together, but one of the worst in my life at all.
We arrived at Hogwarts to find Albus waiting for us on the front steps. Gabriel had been hurt, and while he assured us it was not serious, there is no such concept when the child is your own and when the accident is freakish and owes entirely to a trusted friend's carelessness. For all that my public passion was always for my husband — I was not a doting mother nor a woman who took naturally to the unavoidable confines of the task — my son of course was and is the center of my universe in a way nothing else could ever be. Severus just often needed more, and I suppose that made me a poor mother, but it was hard to love him as I did and not to want to try to make up for any of his past that I could.
Gabriel was, as Albus had assured us, alright, but even so we sat there on opposite sides of his bed, watching him sleep until well into the night, and Albus watched us, watched as Severus threatened to kill Hana, and as he shrugged off my touch.
He wanted to bring Gabriel home right then, but Albus said he would make Poppy forbid such a thing if need be, since we so clearly had things to settle first. It was of course, an invitation to confession as things so often were with Albus, but I was too ashamed to speak and the words necessary were not ones Severus was much comfortable speaking in private, let alone in public to a man that was nearly his father.
It was, for some people, easy to forget just how powerful a wizard Severus was. He was smart, he mixed potions, something that often seemed, and even often is, a quiet science. His heart though was as unquiet as his mind, and, as such, even with all his training wandless magic was not any more uncommon an occurrence then than it was when we were children. As an adult, it was just better controlled, which did not, by any means, make it safer. For many reasons, a lesser woman could not have slept as soundly at his side as I did, all those years. Not of course that it was always wise, or easy.
It was nearly dawn before we returned to our apartments, to sleep or argue, we were unsure. Both would have been useful. I finally found my voice, but Severus merely held up a hand. We climbed into bed to sleep, and when I brushed a hand lightly across his back, damp fro his habitual scalding shower, he froze, and told me not to touch him. The only other words he uttered all evening were to tell me he was going to speak to Hana. It was five in the morning, and I perhaps should have stopped him, but in the moment, I was merely relieved to see him go. I was frightened and needed to be alone to panic.
Severus Snape entered his office the door slamming both as it opened and shut. It was far too early to wake Hana, and as much as he wanted to hex her clear to mainland Europe, he had this terrible sense that he had to find some way to solve this with her if he didn't want to be terribly alone.
He broke two quills merely trying to begin one of his habitual letters to wife. It was as if he could not remember how to write, could not remember that they weren't knives, could not remember suddenly love without loss.
My so ordinary wife —
You do not think. You are a Ravenclaw, and yet you do not think. I wonder why, but of course I know better than most that curiosity is something to be paid for, although I should not have to pay for yours. I have not been this exhausted in a very long time.
I feel raw, as if I had scoured my insides, instead of my misused flesh just now. I find suddenly that I cannot keep my thoughts in order, that I do not know what to tell you, now that our roles have been reversed, now that we suddenly both know the obvious we have kept hidden for so long. You are as cruel and as banal as every other creature I have ever known. You are ordinary. And mortal. And I am corrupt, not elevated by you, but merely exposed for who I am, not a philanderer or a murderer or even some kind of tragic hero, but just a greedy man who takes perhaps too much pleasure in his violence. I am so ashamed and I have you, and this moment of terrible generosity, to thank for it.
If I could only hate you, I would flee this instant, go back to one of my many prior lives and live alone. There would be so much less fear that way. The boy, I cannot even think about it. Sometimes it too easy to believe in the gods, the cost equations seem so clear.
What are we to do? And why am I so weak before you? I do not want you to love me for the monster, and clearly, you always have.
On nights like this, running is the only option, and since I have returned here this evening, it is clear I cannot run from you. And since I am writing to prevent myself from plotting murder on Gabriel's behalf, it is clear I cannot run from him. Which of course leaves a single option, that my so ugly and so falsely redemptive profession must end and I wonder if you will be happy or if you shall no longer know me, much as at this moment, I no longer know you.
Too obviously yours,
Severus Snape.
For a long time he merely sat with his head in his hands, until he found the will to move again and folded the letter, creasing it too tightly, fear hammering in his chest from knowing too well about the brutality of most cures, of most solutions.
He could not go home yet, not to his bed, not to her, not to the woman he wanted to destroy as much as he wanted to sob against. Nor could he visit his son, terrified the force of his emotions would wake the boy, or worse, cause the bottles in Poppy's office to fly from the shelves.
And so instead, he sought his old cure, and went to fly, using one of the terrible student brooms liberated from the shed by the pitch. He didn't care that the sun was coming up, or that he looked like a madman or a fool. He just knew that if he hurtled himself at the ground fast and often enough it would soon become nearly impossible for him to breathe, near impossible to think, and that that would be a very good thing indeed.