Chapter 4
Albus vanished along with the landscape. Severus was alone once more. He was still in shock that the Headmaster, his only friend had was the one who impaired him. All these years he harbored anger towards one of the Death Eaters in vain. All the nights waking up in the middle of the night, his knee flaring in pain, Severus was unable to think. Images of the war played on constant repeat in his head.
Severus had always told himself that after the war, he would no longer feel the guilt, or the pressure, that he dealt with everyday when Potter was in school. The truth was, that it very nearly got worse. Severus pushed himself into his research and his classes, trying to avoid thinking about all the pain and death. Sleeping and eating became a nuisance, and Quidditch was now merely two hours in which he was too pre-occupied to think of anything else.
His former colleagues were replaced, by students he once taught. He avoided all conversation with them if at all possible. Headmistress Abbott, tried to talk to him. She even approached him about his teaching style, at which Severus promptly dismissed her ridiculous suggestions. Severus withdrew into himself, more so than in the past, and that is how he lived until he died.
SSS
Severus was no longer able to glide effortlessly; he now staggered to a tree, which he grabbed for support. It was beginning to snow, and while Severus did not feel the cold, he instinctively wanted to find shelter for protection.
In front of him, Severus saw a town, much like the town of Hogsmeade. There was a narrow street, which had one lamppost, which was conveniently not working. There were a few shops scattered down the little street. All of the stores seemed dark, and not open for business.
Severus continued limping down the street, until he found a small little pub, who still had its lights on. Severus pushed open the door with a shove. The door rang as he entered, letting the staff aware of his presence, but to his surprise, no one even flinched. Severus looked around, he saw an young woman helping a man around his fifties.
Severus looked again at the man, he looked familiar, as if Severus had seen him somewhere before, but was having trouble placing him. The man took his coffee and stood up. As he turned, Severus got a good look at his face. He knew this man, he knew him all too well.
Severus tried grabbed the man by his shoulders, but his hands could not grasp him. Severus's eyes grew in rage. How he had waited for this day, the day when he could let his pent up anger out.
"Dad! Dad, you bastard!" Severus yelled, the man still unfazed.
"Dad! Dad, its Severus!" He yelled at him again, his voice getting a little rough from the emotion that he was trying to fight off.
"He can't hear you." A woman with very old fashioned wizards robes said.
SSS
"What do you mean he can't hear me?" Severus asked still upset.
"He is waiting, like the others in here, but he is not waiting for you." She explained.
"But he must, I mean, he is my father." Severus explained his eyes darting from the woman to his father who was now sitting at a table in the corner of the pub.
"I know he is your father, but I am your third person." The woman explained.
"Who are you, I don't even know you." Severus said.
The woman gestured to the woman behind the bar, and spoke.
"That was my great, great, great, great grand daughter. Wasn't she beautiful. Looked just like me." The woman said. Severus looked at the woman, while slightly older, she was quite pretty he thought. She had ebony down to her shoulders, and her eyes were blue. She was wearing a rather unbecoming apron, but looked happy nonetheless.
"It was a shame that she died in childbirth, married a muggle she did, named Tom I think." The woman said sadly. Severus quickly thought of Tom Riddle's mother, but brushed it off, still thinking about his father.
"Why can't my father hear me? Why can't I speak with him?" Severus said still upset.
"He can hear you Severus, just because someone has died, doesn't mean that they stop hearing those in life. He simply cannot respond."
"Your father was a teacher, was he not? Like you?" The woman asked.
"Yes, we both taught potions, but I did not choose to teach potions, it just came to me unwillingly. However, I would not call my father a teacher. He was the farthest thing from one." Severus said angered.
"How old were you when you came to Hogwarts?" The woman asked.
"I was born in the castle."
"You know I always love schools. I loved books as a young girl. I would read anything my parents would put in front of me. Of course, back in my day, there was not Hogwarts to attend. Witches and wizards taught themselves in hiding, afraid of being caught by Muggles."
"How old are you?" Severus asked abruptly.
"I died when I was 133, but I have been waiting for you for nearly a thousand years, but it only feels like a moment here." She explained.
"Who are you?" Severus asked again.
"Follow me." The woman lead Severus out of the pub and down the winding road. At the end of the road, she stopped and pointed into a window of a shop that was originally dark. Severus watched as two witches and two wizards carried on a conversation.
SSS
"A hat?" A wizard in red robes asked.
"Yes a hat, I think it is clever idea." One of the witches piped in.
"Well we each have our houses. This way we can sort them can't we." The other witch said who was wearing blue robes.
"Why can't we just sort them ourselves?" The same wizard who spoke before asked.
"Because Godric, we won't be around forever now will we. You want this school to last forever don't you?" The other wizard tried to explain.
"All right, but how are we going to get a hat to know which qualities we want in each individual house?"
"Salazar and I have been working on a spell, that will allow us to put the hat on and think of the qualities that we would best like to see in each of our houses." The witch in blue said.
"Shall we try it then?" The other witch asked.
"Yes, who wants to go first?" The one named Godric asked.
"I shall try it, since I have been working on it the longest." The other wizard said.
The one called Salazar put on the hat and sat perfectly still. He spoke out loud in sort of an incantation the qualities in which the Slytherin House was known to possess. They were making the sorting hat.
"Only purebloods? Salazar that is crazy, Hogwarts should be open to everyone." Godric said after he had heard what qualities the Slytherin house was to possess.
"You have your own house Godric, you may do whatever you wish. However I do not believe that we should allow muggleborns into our school. Look at what the muggles have done, forced us into hiding as it is. Imagine the power they could have over us if their sons or daughters were magical. I say it is better not to associate ourselves with that sort of trouble." Salazar answered back.
"But muggleborn witches and wizards are now turning up alone and abandoned, are we to shun them from education?" Godric yelled back.
"I am simply looking out for the safety of our school." Salazar tried to explain in a loud tone.
"No, I think you just want to protect yourself Salazar." Godric raised his voice.
The two witches sat looking at each other, unsure if they should intervene.
SSS
The scene faded before Severus's eyes, and was now replaced with one of the Great Hall at Hogwarts. The woman was standing next to him, and began to speak again.
"Poor Salazar and Godric. How foolish of them not to speak to each other again. We were all the best of friends you know. We started out with a dream of a safe place where children of magical background could come and learn. I fear the houses divided more than brought together the students. That was never our original intention you see." The woman explained.
Severus still looked unsure of who the woman was, and why she was showing him this.
"Haven't you ever wondered how the school in which you grew up in and lived your life in was founded?" The woman asked.
"I have read the book." Severus explained.
"My name is Rowena Ravenclaw and I was one of the founders."
"I wasn't really expecting you, I mean I was in Slytherin, if I was to meet one of the founders, it should have been him." Severus said.
"Ah, yes but you know there are some things that books do not tell you." Rowena said walking towards the high table.
"Funny isn't how one little idea can get so out of hand? Muggleborns, and half-bloods. We are all the same are we not? Even the muggles share qualities with us. Having magic is just a small part of who we are in life."
"You are talking to the wrong man, miss, I believed in purebloods, I was taught to shun any others. I joined a cause whose soul purpose was to purge the country from mudbloods."
"But you became a spy for the other side did you not?"
"Yes, but..."
"But nothing Severus, we grow up learning what we know, your father was a Slytherin, as well as his father before that. It is a pity that Salazar's convictions became so misconstrued over the years. But you saw that what you were doing was wrong. You set a new path. Not all Slytherins have a disregard for rules, not all Hufflepuffs are loyal, and not all Gryffindors are courageous."
Severus stopped and thought about what she just said, it was true, not all Hufflepuffs are loyal, and he knew one Gryffindor who was not courageous.
SSS
"Mum? I came to visit." Severus said. It was his 42nd birthday today.
"Severus dear! How good to see you. Happy Birthday! Your father's just gone out for some tea, he should be back shortly." She explained cheerfully. Severus looked at her, knowing that his father was not coming back.
"Mum, dad died remember?" Severus said as he helped her into a chair.
"Died? But he was just going out." She said confused.
"He has been dead for nearly twenty years, mum." Severus tried to say without upsetting her. Emily's eyes began to water. She nearly jumped out of her chair and started busying herself with cleaning the kitchen.
"So mum, how've you been?" Severus said laying his cane next to his chair.
"Fine Severus fine, busy, you know Madame Caldwell wants another order of sheep tongue, so I have been working on pickling them." Emily explained as nothing had happened earlier.
"You know Madame Caldwell just wastes them, with her meaningless experiments." Severus said.
"Well, at least she uses them." Emily said more distantly.
Severus picked up book beside him, and began reading it. Emily was busy trying to forget what she had said earlier. She was not crazy, but she did blame herself for what happened all those years ago.
"Oh Severus, it was all my fault. I am such a coward." Emily now stood at the sink sobbing. Severus stood up and walked towards his mother.
"Mum, we have been over this before, dad died because he made a potion incorrectly." Severus was never really moved by his father's death, after all he was the one who had caused him all his problems.
"I should have stopped him, I knew it was dangerous. I am such a coward." Emily said in between tears.
"Mum, why are you defending that man, he was arrogant and made his own mistakes, for gods sakes he hated me." Severus sneered.
"Do not speak of things you do not understand." Emily said walking towards her bedroom and shut the door.
Another happy birthday memory for Severus.
SSS
"My mother, a Gryffindor, was a coward. She should have left my father. Why did she stay? She should have stopped him from hitting me all those times." Severus said upset.
"Your mother was right Severus, you should not speak of things you do not understand."
"You talk of the situation as if you knew." Severus commented.
"Perhaps you are right, I do not understand, but your father loved you Severus." Rowena said.
"Yes, I think his beatings as a child really showed his love don't you think." Severus said sarcastically.
SSS
Rowena walked over to a portrait of the founders, and started to examine it, tracing it with her finger.
"Curious don't you think that there was only ever heirs of Slytherin and Gryffindor." Rowena said.
"I had never thought about it, to tell you the truth." Severus said.
"How I loved Salazar." Rowena said reminiscently.
"Pardon me?" Severus asked, never hearing any such companionship between the two founders.
"As I said, not everything is written in books."
"Salazar and I fell in love, perhaps it was all that time we spent working on the Sorting Hat, or maybe it was the way he understood me better than anyone else. Whatever the case, I loved him. We had a son together, and that is how the heir of Slytherin was born.
Godric's heir was conceived by his wife, a muggle by the name of Bridget. They had a daughter, Amile, they called her. Amile grew up and went to Hogwarts along with my son. Without our knowledge, the two fell in love, but it was not to be, when Salazar forbid him to marry Godric's daughter. My son then had an arranged marriage to a pureblood, and Amile ended up marrying a Potter. Sound familiar Severus?" Rowena said, looking into his eyes.
Severus knew very well what she was talking about, but pushed aside the memories.
"Enough about me, perhaps we should talk more about your father, it is after all the reason I am here." She said as the scene of the Great Hall faded before him, and was replaced with St. Mungos. The room was light blue, the sun shone in from the east. Severus had been here before.
SSS
It was Severus's 21st birthday, and he was spending it in St. Mungos. His father was in a potions accident. Severus was unsure of the contents of the potion, but he had never seen a reaction such as this to a potion.
The medi-witch said that he was unconscious, and running a very high fever. Severus looked over to his father. He looked weak, something Severus rarely saw. Dorian's skin was pale and sallow. His lips were a bluish tint. It sent a chill down Severus's spine.
"Thank you Madame Norrell." He heard his mother say.
"What did she say, mum?" Severus asked, his voice disconnected.
"Oh, Severus." His mother cried as she wrapped her arms around her son. It was a rather odd sight. Severus was nearly a foot taller than his mother was and he could look down on her head when she hugged him.
"Stupid man and his stupid potions." Severus mumbled as his mother continued to cry into his chest.
Severus's father died a week before Christmas, leaving his mother in a very difficult position, Hogwarts had been her home, and now with her husband gone, she feared she would have to leave. Severus was already under enough stress as it was from his job as a rouge Death Eater, now to have to worry about his mother as well.
The Headmaster had Madame Pomfrey fill in for his father until the end of the term, but seeing as now his father would never be coming back, the Headmaster asked Severus if he would fill the position.
Severus was reluctant at first to take the position after all, he hated potions. Well perhaps he did not hate potions; he simply hated the subject because of his father. If he was to teach, he surely wanted to teach Defense against the Dark Arts, but it was filled by none other than Remus Lupin's father, Rowland Lupin.
Severus knew he needed to stay close to look after his mother, so he took the position and started to teach. He despised how ungrateful his students were. He never understood why they would take things for granted as they did. There was however, one good aspect that he found with teaching, and that was the ability to do research.
After a year of teaching, his hatred for potions seemed to dispel, along with his seething anger towards his dead father, and he found potions rather intriguing. He became so talented at potions, that he was able to fool the Dark Lord into letting him brew potions for him, which would in fact hurt him more than help him, thus helping the newly formed Order of the Phoenix.
SSS
"You came to enjoy potions, you even created a potion to help alleviate a werewolf's pain, did you not?" Rowena asked.
"Yes, I suppose, but I only did it because I was curious of the end result, not because I truly wanted to help them.
"Nevertheless, your potion helped many werewolves, especially your peer, Remus Lupin." Rowena said.
Severus thought back to the day when he found the documents containing early versions of the Wolfsbane potion.
SSS
Severus was going through his desk in the Potions classroom after a double period of Gryffindors and Slytherins, searching for a headache relief potion, but instead found a document that contained an experimental potion. It was entitled Werewolf's Bane. Severus read the document several times through, and determined that whoever had been working on this potion had spent quite a bit of time and money trying to prefect it.
Severus's mind was now intrigued by this potion, and decided that he would test it. The first time Severus attempted the potion a week later, he nearly blew up the classroom, but as the weeks went on, he found tiny errors in which he would correct. Finally, nearly a half a year later from when he began, Severus solved the puzzle and renamed the potion Wolfsbane.
He found it ironic that he had solved a potion that would temporarily relieve a werewolf's pain in transformation. How he detested the Gryffindor werewolf, and his stupid little friends. He did not complete the potion for Lupin or anyone else for that matter, it was a simply a case of interest in solving the puzzle.
SSS
"Your father did love you Severus. Do you see there?" Rowen asked as he walked around his father's bed at St. Mungos and looked on the wall. Severus saw a portrait of a woman, he looked down at the title.
"Rowena Ravenclaw, One of the four founder of Hogwarts." The title read.
"You stopped coming to visit your father after the first week, but he still called out for you in his sleep." Rowena said.
"He was unconscious, and it was his own fault anyway that got him there." Severus said unmoved.
"He would fade in and out of consciousness, until the day that he finally gave in. He did love you." Rowena said as she touched his father's hand.
"Do you know how your father died?" Rowena asked looking back up at Severus.
"Yes, he blew up a potion in his lab." Severus said.
"Do you know what potion he was making?"
"No, and I do not see how this is of any importance." Severus said moodily.
"He was working on a new potion. A potion that he called Werewolf's Bane." Rowena stopped. Severus eyes grew wide.
"My father started that potion?" Severus said as he thought about that day he found it in his desk.
"Yes, you see he was friends with Rowland Lupin, Remus's father. Your father saw how much it hurt him to have a son with such difficulties, so he began researching methods to cure the condition."
"If he cared so much about the werewolf, then why the hell did he not care about me?" Severus asked, almost yelling.
"Your father never knew how to handle you, Severus. When you were a small child he was afraid to hold you because he thought he might drop you. Then when you got older, and you both became distant, he thought that force would make you heed him, the way his own father did to him.
Your father lived through the battles with Grindelwald. He, like you saw things that no person should have to. Your father fought his own battles as well Severus. He was a man just like you." Rowena said looking down at the unconscious man.
"That does not give him the right to have done the things he did." Severus said more resigned than usual.
"No, it does not, after all you were only a child, and how could you know to forgive? But you are older now, and it is time for you to forgive him." She said.
"I cannot forgive him." Severus said.
"Forgiveness, is a part of life as well as death. If we did not forgive each other, then the world would be much worse off. Your father was a man Severus, he made mistakes; you have made them too. You must forgive your father now." Rowena said, as the scene faded back to the pub where Severus started.
Severus looked at Dorian, sitting alone at a table in the corner. Severus closed his eyes, and searched for a reason to forgive. He had easily forgiven the Headmaster for what he had done, impairing him for nearly half of his life, but yet he could not forgive his father who had caused far more pain on the inside than on the outside.
"Severus, you can forgive, your father wasn't the reason you stayed at Hogwarts, the reason you stayed was out of your love for your mother and for the Headmaster, not because you had to. It was not your father's fault that you became a teacher, it was your destiny." Rowena said.
SSS
Severus walked over to the table, and sat across from his father. His father's eyes unable to acknowledge Severus. Severus took hold of his much younger hands and inhaled and exhaled, how he hated to be wrong, to forgive.
"Dad." Severus started. The man still looked right through him.
"Dad, look it's forgiven. Everything that happened, I forgive you." Severus tried to say. His father still sat stiff as before.
"Dad, you don't have to worry anymore, I fixed the potion, I made it for Remus. You don't have to worry. I took care of it." Severus said, trying to hide the emotion behind his voice.
"I... forgive you." Severus said one last time. As those words escaped his lips, he felt lighter, like a weight that he had carried with him his entire life was now lifted from his shoulders.
"I must go, it was nice to meet you Severus Snape." Rowena said as she turned towards the door of the pub.
"Wait, there was a little girl, did I save her?" Severus asked.
"I cannot say, because I do not know. Goodbye Severus." Rowena said, and again Severus was left alone, to wonder if he had saved the girl. Every time he was taught a lesson, it seemed as if a stone was lifted off of his back, stones that he had been carrying since he was a boy.
A/N: Well what do you think? It is my favorite chapter so far and my longest ever. I am sorry if Severus a little OOC, I have a hard time getting anywhere if I constantly make him unresponsive and brood-like. I figure, he is much older, the war has been over for years, and he is finally seeing glimpses of his life, which help him better understand who he is.
I must say that I was on the Lexicon today, and I saw that they had Dumbledore becoming headmaster circa 1970's so it made me feel better about what I wrote in the second chapter. One final note, The stuff with Rowena, when she says "Sound familiar Severus?" That will be explained later, so don't think I just left that hanging.
Thanks to all my reviewers! I am glad everyone likes it so far. If you have suggestions to add or what not let me know, I may re work the chapters later. Oh and a general question, how many of you have read Mitch Alboom's book or watched the movie? Just curious :)