Disclaimer: I own nothing, please don't say I do for I have an irrational fear of lawyers. If you have a problem, email me first or bitch at someone else. Also, this is a bit morbid, so it you don't like that type of writing, don't read. Thankyou.

An Ending
By SpitefullySane

He remembered the moment he first saw her, a tiny eleven year old who memorized her entire textbooks before she first stepped foot on the Hogwarts Express. Then he saw her as the Annoying Gryfindore Know It All who somehow kept her two closest friends from death and expulsion for seven long years. Next, she suddenly blossomed into a woman. Her head held with an inner certainty and courage that stunned all those who oppressed her due to her 'lowly birth'.

That was the woman who connected with him, who loved him and married him much to his surprise and the surprise of her generation. That was the goddess in mortal form who became his wife and blessed him with children, a hopeless dream to him in his darkest of time to believe he could be worthy of such.

And because of their age difference and the hard, dangerous life he lead for so long, he always assumed he would be the one to die first, their children a testament to the love they shared. But now he realized that assuming had been his downfall. For this was the day she would receive her final resting place, an insult to hide his beloved beneath the earth.

His oldest son, Lorenzo, stood with him as they lowered her into the cold earth, his silence as deafening as his father's.

"She let me brush her hair, that last night." Lorenzo said quietly, speaking just to ease his own thoughts, "She never let anyone touch her hair except you, especially after the chemotherapy."

That was true, He thought, as he remembered how long and wild her hair used to be. Then the muggle doctors made her go through the awful experiences of that 'therapy' to kill her sickness that was inside her. After years of her long, bushy hair being so much apart of her image, it unnerved him to see it slowly thin and eventually fall out completely.

"It wasn't as soft as it used to be, and was uneven in places, but she finally let me touch it," Lorenzo said, both felt the pinpricks of tears in their eyes.

"It was still beautiful, though." He replied to his son, tears now forming and falling down both men's faces. He turned to study his son who stood at his side, noticing his fine jet black hair grown to chin length, the sharp angular contrast of his cheek bones to his high forehead, his thin lips, and his small beaklike nose. The boy was a carbon copy of him at seventeen, except for his eyes. He had his mother's amber brown eyes that easily displayed emotion and concern.

He turned back to the gaping hole in the earth that held her coffin. Images of her smiling and full of life was the constant contradiction to her funeral. The frail, wasted away creature in that lacquered box wasn't his wife. The thin and sickly incarnation of her wasn't the strong, sufficient woman he had love for nearly twenty years.

"I could smell the soap she used as I kissed her for the last time that night." Lorenzo continued, "I smelled it for so many years that I've almost missed its absence lately. I could smell it when she tucked me in every night, and I smelled it when she sat up, worrying whenever I went out at night."

"She did that a lot. Worry about you, that is."

"But I guess I missed it over the years I've been away at school. I missed her soapy smell mixed with lavender and whatever else in her shampoo. Last night was the first time I've noticed it in what seems like ages."

"Honey-suckle." His father whispered, she used that lavender muggle shampoo that had honey-suckle because she said it reminded her of her own lost mother, a casualty of the Second War with the Dark Lord Voldemort.

Lorenzo glanced at his father for the first time during his rambles. The feared Potions Master who loved his mother was glaring at her coffin, almost as if waiting impatiently for her to rise from the wooden box and return to her true form.

He remembered her proud smile she wore for months when he returned to the Manor for summer holiday, her laughing with him at his adventures he had at Belle Nora, his magical school in New Orleans. He remembered how they would argue over various subjects ranging from new wizard laws to the length of his hair. He could almost smell the perfume she wore for special occasions and feel the soft kisses she would place on his cheek every year before he left for his plane to America.

He knew she hated for him to be so far away from the family, Hogwarts, and her. But he knew she secretly helped him convince his father to let him go so he could have space to become his own person, so he could live out of the shadow of his brilliant parents who taught at their own Alma Marta.

Is this it? he asked himself. Of all the Catholic dogma his mother hammered into his head, was this truly her ending? To be alone in a hole in the earth for the rest of eternity?

"Do you think she made it to Heaven?" He asked his father.

"She did and she's queen of all the angles now." His father replied with strong certainty, tears now streaming down his face.

"Really?"

"If not, then I don't understand God's ways." He said as the grave diggers started to pile dirt on top of her, "You need to go now, Lorenzo. Your sisters will start to worry soon."

With one last look at her head stone, he nodded and left his father to apparate to their manor.

He stood there a few moments more, remembering her shining eyes and embracing smiles. Moments of their life together filtered through his mind.

The day Lorenzo was born, the time she kissed him softly on top his head when the Dark Lord fell, him embracing her when their twin daughters were born, the day she whispered "I do" to his question of matrimony. The day she cried out when she found him broken and bloody after a particularly painful summons to the Dark Lord, reminding him that there was someone to morn his passing.

Her coffin was nearly covered now, barely any of the box was showing through. He knew he was needed at home, that his son and daughters would need his comfort. He turned, the image of her headstone burning the joy from his life.

Hermione Angela Granger-Snape
Beloved Wife, Mother, and Friend
1987-2023

That was the last image he remember seeing before his world became dark and his mind blank. He became a shell of a man, returning to old habits to those who knew him before his marriage to an angel. He returned to being Professor Severus Snape, Potions Master and Snarky Bastard Extrodinare.