Fall From Grace
What would it be like, he wondered, to feel the wind in your hair as you fell?
Would it be like flying, but with a hundred times more adrenaline? Or would the fear kick in half-way down? And what would it feel like to hit the ground?
A twisted little smile crossed Severus Snape's face as he sat on top of the astronomy tower. He'd already hit rock bottom, and it couldn't be any worse than that. Finding out the boy you loved, who you had given your heart to completely and utterly was a liar and a monster in more ways than one was pretty much as bad as it got.
Here Severus, watch as I grind your still-beating heart between my hands and discard it as though it were no more than a sweet wrapper.
The smile disappeared from his face as the pain kicked in properly.
It had been a week since he'd found out Remus Lupin was a werewolf. Seven days of soul destroying pain. He looked up at the Gibbous Moon above with spite. The cause of all his pain, he thought for a second. But no. Remus should have told him, helped him to understand. But there was nothing to understand. He was a monster, both in what he was and in how he had treated him.
"May all the Gods damn him," hissed Severus, trying to ignore the tears that leaked from his eyes. He wouldn't cry. Not for him. Not again. It hurt, it hurt so much, but he was a Snape. He was strong.
"Severus?" Came a familiar voice behind him. He didn't turn. The headmaster probably just wanted to make sure he wasn't going to tell anyone of Lupin's lycanthropy. He wouldn't. He didn't want to mention the son of a bitch ever again. Soft footsteps told him that Dumbledore was approaching, and he wiped at his eyes quickly. "Is everything alright?" His voice asked softly, the concern cutting into him like ice.
"Fine," Severus spat, bitterness swelling up in him again.
"Indeed," Dumbledore said, and sat with a grace that belied his age. He looked at his student, and the intensity in those light blue eyes made Severus look away. "You cared for Remus, didn't you?"
"I don't want to talk about it."
"It will eat you up if you don't."
"Let it! What's one more misery buried under layers of bitterness?" Severus glared out at the grounds, enveloped suddenly in darkness as the Moon went behind a bank of cloud. He risked a glance at the headmaster, and looked away quickly when he saw he was being watched. But in that short glance he had seen sadness in Dumbledore's eyes. He wondered why briefly, before returning to wallowing in his pain.
"You've had a hard life, Severus. No-one as young as you should have so much suffering in their eyes." Severus didn't say anything. He agreed completely, but admitting that was a weakness he would not succumb to. "I'm not certain it will get any easier for you, if you don't let us help."
A lack of humour and an overdose of irony curved Severus' lips. Help? "I've been 'helped' enough, don't you think?" He'd been lied to by Lupin, nearly killed by Black and been shunned in favour of protecting the reputation of that Gryffindor golden boy by Dumbledore.
Turning to fully look at the headmaster, eyes full of the hatred and bitterness that would one day soon make him a Death Eater, he stood. "I've had enough of your 'help', sir," he sneered, and turned his back on Dumbledore, and on Lupin and on anyone that could have helped save him from self-damnation, and went back to his Slytherin common room, where he felt he belonged.