Elysium – Part the First
"Greater glory in the Sun, An evening chill upon the air…"
Severus let the gentle, hoarse voice of Remus Lupin roll over him, paying little attention to the empty words. He recalled that feeling of timelessness, that desperate desire to enfold the boy in his arms, to never ever let the moment end, to never let him go, to hold onto that feeling. The knowledge that he could feel had been vaguely terrifying...
That one moment, which would have been perfect if not for the oh so many things which were oh so wrong, which made everything impossible… and the crushing, ever-present despair, like a fist clenched in his chest, which made him press his eyes shut all the tighter and wind his fingers in that black hair…
And afterwards, in those few moments alone on the floor, briefly crumbling and broken in the boy's explosive wake, the strands of black wound in his fingers, clutched around white knuckles… He had, for one fleeting moment, almost – almost – grasped paradise.
And that is why, Albus, I have to leave. I'll tell you that it's because you've no more use for me now, I'll say that I can't face another year of teaching… I'll consider going without letting you know, leaving you only a brief, scathing note of exoneration – Don't worry, Albus, no one would ever dream of blaming you – but I realise that you'd eventually find me. So I'll take my leave of you and this accursed castle and I'll be gone before I'm tempted… Before I start aching for something I have no right to want.
From behind a curtain of sable hair, Severus gazed detachedly at the faces of those around him. Eight scarlet-haired heads and one darker head bowed, and two Muggles accepted into the fold, united in anguish and loss. He stood back from the stooped, heavy shoulders and the twisted misery of grieving faces, lurking in the background, noticed by few, acknowledged by fewer. Slowly, silently, he began to drift away, wrapping his robes around himself, trying to become invisible, part of the all-consuming shadows which spread from the base of trees and the feet of gravestones.
And then red-rimmed, dry eyes flicked upwards from beneath the too-long black hair of the man on the opposite side of the chasm opened between them. Focused on Severus, and Severus alone, a questioning, quiet concentration settled across the other man's face. For a lengthening moment, Severus held that intensely calm, silently furious stare… then turned on his heel and walked away.
Behind him, Harry's gaze remained fixed on the patch of darkness into which Severus had faded, until a small, cold hand grasped his. Closing his eyes, he let the pale, tear-stained face next to him bury itself in his robes and tried to ignore the ache in his chest.
"Bid imagination run/Much on the Great Questioner;"
Long red hair so female under his fingers, the soft sounds of desolate grief echoing around him… He turned his face away and let himself stare down into the intense darkness before him. Two souls descending, the past and present laid to rest, and the future disappearing along with those black, burning eyes.
~~~~~
If it was a weathered, aging strategist, chess-player in the fates of worlds, who had called for Severus to enter his office, it was with a heavy heart that he watched him leave. Albus Dumbledore, a bespectacled Marcus Aurelius ensconced behind his desk, had looked so frail in the moment that Severus had spoken. A sudden reminder of his age, his face had sagged, grief etched deep and disguised as wrinkles. And Severus had abandoned the bitter anger he had carried for so long and shaped into vicious stones which, until that awful change, he had been prepared to hurl at the old man opposite him.
I'm sorry, Severus, a final parting shot.
No, Albus, I won't give you my forgiveness. It isn't mine you want.
And now, as he sat at the desk in his own rooms, one last time, Severus picked up his quill and began to write. The vial before him glowed darkly and the hand with which he gripped the quill shook as he tried to think up words with which to express the ache and anger and I'm sorry.
Finally, dipping the nib into the pot of ink, he scrawled a single sentence. He folded the slip of parchment and placed the vial on top of it, leaving them both in the centre of the desk. A single word shrunk the pot and quill and he placed them in the trunk which stood open by the desk. Closing it and casting a last look around the dungeon rooms which had for so long been his, Severus' ragged voice rose in a low hum, the words of a childhood song he thought he had forgotten…
"Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand…"
He strode to the desk, cursing himself for his weakness, for even entertaining the thought that he could have this simply because of some selfish desire… What right had he? What right do you have, Severus, what right? Pulling the parchment from beneath the crystal vial, he closed his fist around it, crushing it in his trembling fingers. For a moment he hesitated, then opened his hand and let the crumpled ball fall to the floor. Levitated trunk hovering before him, he pulled the cloak around his shoulders and slammed the door.
~~~~~
As Severus marched, almost determinedly, down to the edge of the school grounds, Harry was hurrying along the corridor from Dumbledore's office. The conversation between them on Harry's return from the afternoon's dark affair had been brief.
"You have to stop him! You can't let him go!" Harry had screamed in exasperation.
Albus had regarded him passively and spoke as though he was discussing how many sugars Harry wanted in his tea, "Professor Snape has no wish to remain at Hogwarts unnecessarily. His duties with the Order have been fulfilled -"
"'His duties with the Order have been fulfilled'?" Harry repeated, gazing at Dumbledore with a look of growing horror, "He saved my life! He destroyed Voldemort!"
"And he knows that we are grateful, Harry," – Harry flinched at the disgusting familiarity, felt dirty and angry – "I have done my best to dissuade him, but he is quite adamant."
Harry stared at Dumbledore with incredulity and disgust, too angry to halt the violent, hissed words which he hurled at the old man behind the desk before slamming the door behind him: " 'Done your best'? If you'd done your best he wouldn't be leaving."
And now, walking down the dungeon corridor, he quickened his pace. He broke into a slow jog, then a run. He had to reach Severus, to argue with him, shout at him, plead with him. To push him against a wall and kiss him, prove to him that he couldn't leave, that Harry needed him.
Not bothering to knock, Harry drew his wand and prepared to disarm any wards which might stop him from entering. Instead, a burst of powerful heat burst from the tip, as if by its own volition, and blew a hole in the door, which swung open to reveal a room empty except for a few rows of shelves and a well-worn desk and chair.
Heart plummeting and gripped suddenly with leaden fingers, Harry stumbled forward and into the room.
"Snape?" He called, rushing desperately to the connecting door and peering into the drawing room beyond. "Severus!"
He was greeted by a heavy, stony silence. Too late, Potter, too late. Oh God, too late. Harry sank into what, until minutes before, had been Severus' chair. Resting his head in his hands, he was about to let his eyes slip closed when a glimmer of darkness flickered next to his elbow. Harry seized the vial and stared into its shimmering depths. He wasn't a fool, this had been left for him.
In a second he was on his feet and charging back in the direction from which he had just fled. Barking the password at Dumbledore's guard-gargoyle, he jumped the stairs and crashed through the office door.
"Where is it?" he demanded.
Dumbledore raised his gaze from the papers he had been perusing, and had the decency to look vaguely surprised. "Harry! Would you -"
"Where's the chart?"
"Chart, Harry? I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."
"Don't lie to me, stop fucking lying to me!" Harry pushed the chair before him aside and strode over to the handsome wooden cabinets which stood against the walls of Dumbledore's office.
"Harry, please calm down. I know you are upset, but -"
Harry wasn't listening. He flung open the cabinets, one by one, searching through their contents then moving on to the next. Finally, he turned and faced Dumbledore, his face terrible and twisted with rage and wet with angry tears. "Where is it?" He demanded. "I know you know what I'm talking about, I've seen it!"
"Harry, please…" Dumbledore sighed, suddenly resigned, suddenly no longer able to fight.
"Where is it?"
For a few tense seconds, Dumbledore held Harry's burning gaze, the seconds stretching to encompass minutes, hours, years… And then he simply sank into his chair. With a small, somehow fragile gesture, he passed his hand over the surface of his desk, and a scroll of parchment appeared, spread over the wood, glistening with strange, metallic ink.
Harry fell upon the map, searching furiously for the name he sought, the destination he needed.
"He will not return to Hogwarts," Dumbledore said gravely.
"I'm not going to ask him to," Harry replied. There, in northern England. One glittering silver dot – Snape Manor. Pausing slightly and passing one finger over its location, fingertip barely brushing the warm parchment, Harry turned away from Dumbledore and strode to the door.
"If I have hurt you, Harry… I have only ever tried to protect you…" Dumbledore's voice did not waver, but there was a terrible weakness which Harry could feel emanating from the tired old man being the desk, even as he pulled open the door and left, allowing it to slam closed behind him.
~~~~~
The scene is set, the players jolly. And here, see him approach.
Severus entered the church through the main doors, which were now thrown open, their ancient wood creaking as a few prematurely orange leaves danced red and gold over the threshold. This antique building which lay hidden amongst trees; beech, oak, chestnut; basked in the warm Indian summer weather which, it seemed, became milder and more seasonally appropriate the further one was from Hogwarts. Once the ancestral chapel of the Snape family, eschewers of the New Faith of Queen Bess and her half-brother, it had now stood unused and decaying for well over a century, suffering only the occasional visit from a strange, silent, black-haired boy some thirty years previously.
Out of long-repressed childhood habit, Severus dipped and crossed himself before the lone remaining image of the Virgin, and sank onto one of the wooden benches which were still upright, despite being riddled with woodworm.
"Forgive me, father, for I have sinned." Severus' voice rang cold and empty in the silence.
He raised his head and gazed at the faded eyes, which looked down upon him, flat and blank and real.
"God, how I have sinned." Fading saints gazed on, silent and crumbling. For a long moment, Severus let the heavy quiet settle.
Is this what it is to be blind? This eternal, boundless darkness, infinite in possibility. I want to escape, but how can I break free of this, something of which I cannot perceive the boundary? There is no wall for me to scale, no window that I could break… Just this deepening, widening darkness. And though I know there are colours, shapes before me, I cannot reach outside and pull them in. There will always be a little further… none more black, none more black than in here, more black than this inescapable room of rooms in which I sit and am destined to sit until my body fails and my soul is finally free.
The grand futility is unending and cruel in its sympathy. You show me the dead yet I am not living, you bring me the dying yet I cannot heal. Expect no miracles from me, for glory has forsaken this house.
And when he spoke, his voice was somehow changed.
"I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercise; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory. This most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire –"
He noticed not a cloaked figure which had appeared silently at the door and now stood still, as though frozen, perhaps entranced by the terrible beauty of the man's soliloquy, "- why, it appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god – the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!"
Sinking his head into his hands, Severus' voice became somehow softer yet more harsh, acquiring a hoarse rasp which filled the icon-less alcoves and the shallow, occupied porch, "And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me – no, nor woman neither. Nor woman neither…"
For a moment there was silence, then a heavy footfall as the figure threw off its cloak and entered the chapel, speaking softly and intently, "Careful, Severus, it's my dreams you're treading on…"
~~~~~~
Notes : Greater glory in the sun… – 'At Algeciras – A Meditation upon Death' by W.B. Yeats
Come away, O human child! – 'The Stolen Child' by W.B. Yeats
I have of late – but wherefore I know not – lost all my mirth – 'Hamlet' by William Shakespeare, act 2 sc. 2, l. 296-310
Careful, Severus, it's my dreams you're treading on… - Wilful misquote from 'He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven' by W.B. Yeats
