SNAPE'S STORY - CHAPTER 6

I am reliving a nightmare. Over and over again, it is coming back to haunt me. They say that evil deeds can do that to the mind, break it and distract it until no picture but one shows itself in the frame of the conscience. But I never did anything wrong. Nothing wrong that I was aware of. Ever since that great man, the idol of the wizard community, took it upon himself to refute the fact that I had been a follower of the evil side, I have scrupulously refused to be wavered or shaken. But today I believe I am shattered. Today of all days, when the rest of the Wizard Community is celebrating, I am mourning.

I never thought that his loss would be so agonizing, so excruciatingly painful. He was always there, like his father before him, an eternal thorn in my side. So confident, so beautiful, so effortlessly successful at every endeavor. Every time I looked at him I seemed to see the ghost of his father laughing back at me. Perhaps that is the reason I treated him with such contempt, even with disdain. I never got the chance to tell him that I never hated him, that my anger was not towards him but towards the people of whom he was irrevocably a part - his parents.

I never disliked his father. I ached to be friends with him, to share his confidences, to laugh at his jokes. But that was not to be. He was always with his own particular clique, as earth-shatteringly intelligent and popular as he. They treated me with scorn, with amused ridicule. Always sensitive I drew away from them. I became an outcast. I became a student of the dark arts. I learnt all I could to hurt them, and especially him. And when I succeeded, I found that it was always myself I had been hurting. Why did he always turn away? God only knows. He never knew how much it hurt me, his careless contempt. But I know in my heart that if I had made the first advance, met him halfway we could have been close, we could have been friends. But for me it was always all or nothing.

But if it were only his father, that popular scoundrel I saw in him, I could forget him more easily. I could remind myself of the mad pranks that his father played on me; I could remember all the names that I was called because of his mocking sense of humor. I could convince myself that I do not miss him. But things are never as simple as that. At least they are never that simple for me.

In him, I also saw the one true love of a bitter, bleak life. I saw his mother. Every time he looked wonderingly with his eyes of forest green I remembered another pair of most beloved eyes who used to look at me with just that expression. In every comforting word he spoke, I heard the echo of the only person who deigned to speak to me like that. Every time I saw him I relived the glorious moments we were together, and the heartbreaking years of rejection that followed.

Nobody knew how much I loved her. Sometimes I wondered whether even she knew. She was one of the few, very few people who used to treat me as a fellow human, rather than a pariah. I used to call her Flower, the blossom that had filled the barren garden of my life with the fragrance of her presence. We spent so many days talking till the sun sank tired and weary. We laughed and we wept over the small joys and tragedies that make youth such an earth-shattering experience. Those are the happiest recollections of an unhappy life.

Then she fell in love. In love with him and in front of my eyes she was whisked away. She was taken into his kingdom of endless laughter and merriment. She still wished to be friends. Even then she defied her love. Even then she came to me, hoping to pick up the strings where she had in a moment of passion let them fall. She came to me looking for affection, I gave her scorn. She came to me looking for support, I gave her disdain. I spurned her, and I gave her contempt in return for his love. That was my sin, and now I pay.

I pay with guilt, I pay with loneliness. Why was I so harsh, why was I so intemperate? Why did I cut her down with a ruthless knife? Did the moments we had spent together mean nothing to me? Seemingly not! Even as she walked away, a voice within me yearned to cry out - stop. Do not leave me. I need you and your affection as deeply as you need me. But I could not, for a voice within me cried out in cold pride and arrogance - she preferred another to you.

Every time I saw him, the son of my Flower, I saw the son that might have been mine. I saw the son that I could have called mine own. How could I have hated him, when in him were bound the sweetest, dearest memories that I can bring to mind. But then in him I also saw the man who stole her away from me, and my heart was torn. To cover my confusion, to cover my bewilderment, I treated him with contempt. I taunted him, laughed at him derisively. But I swear to god, I loved him.

Now he is gone and I will never have the chance to apologize. I will never look into those green eyes of his and say I love you, as I loved your mother. I will never be able to tell him about her, the tales that he has never heard about the mother he has never known. I will never be able to tell him, the only son I have had by proxy that he has made my life a better one simply by his presence. Why, why did I have to understand the meaning of the agony of my heart only after his death?

Today, for me as for many, many others is a dark, sad day. I have broken the promise I had made to myself, the promise to protect him, the promise to defend him. This vow, the only true vow I have ever made to myself has been broken and with it has broken my heart. Forgive me, my Flower, I could not save your son for you.