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THIS WORLD WHICH IS MADE OF OUR LOVE FOR EMPTINESS
It was a small classroom in the Astronomy Tower, one large window looking out into the sparkling darkness. Furniture shoved to the walls years ago revealed a carpet of dust across the floor.
Harry opened the door slowly, inside Malfoy stood limned in the stark moonlight.
"What are you doing here, Draco?"
"There's bad blood between us, Potter. I've done my part, now it's your turn."
Draco held out the knife, hand shaking as dark blood drifted down the wrist. The knife slipped, but did not fall from the weakening grasp.
A deep breath, and Harry took the knife, handle too wet to be sticky.
Silver eyes glimmered in the pale face, "Smile for me, Harry. One last smile."
Meeting those eyes, Harry drew the warm red blade sharp across his throat.
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He woke with a start, gasping. It was always the same, but it never got easier. Pushing damp hair out of his eye, he got out of bed, his lover still sleeping peacefully.
The world had changed with the war. Without Dumbledore to provide a comforting barrier between the school and what was going on outside, events erupted.
Death Eaters had already violated the sanctity of Hogwarts, but this time the school was prepared. Battle in the halls and red blood soaked stones; shifting stairways crushed friend and foe alike in the madness.
He smiled to himself. In the end Potter had saved the day, as he was expected to.
They all tried to go back to normal afterwards, Mcgonagall became the Headmistress. Snape returned to Potions, giving up on the Dark Arts position, too injured to teach it. Lupin took over the post, his gentle demeanor a comfort to students that had too recently seen real battle.
The smaller classes tried to make up for missing friends with increased joviality. The halls rang with laughter, brittle, hysterical. McGonagall smiled, complained of the new generation, "Every one a Weasley twin." Then faces would darken again, and no points were taken.
The war was over, true enough. And the world had ended.
Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape had come back into the light and fought valiantly, Malfoy defending the gravely wounded professor for hours against Death Eaters who showed no mercy for one of their own turned traitor.
Afterwards they returned to their lives. Some militant hold-outs still watched them carefully, constantly on guard, but most people were just too tired.
But not even the most suspicious mind could have predicted what happened next, what a father could do to his son.
Raised in an environment of abuse and neglect, Draco's inherent empathic ability made him a time bomb of rage and anguish. Lucius Malfoy, judged posthumously to be almost as vile as the Dark Lord himself, raised the boy to be a back-up plan. Should Voldemort fail to destroy Potter, Draco would; and he had.
Too many dream tossed nights, visions of twinkling blue eyes; too many days shrinking from suspicious glares, real or imagined, had come to a head.
With a scream of despair, Draco tore through Hogwarts, leaving in his wake pain enough to drop the population to its knees.
Except Potter. Drawn to death, cursed to be near it, as he had been all his life, Harry followed Draco to the tower room.
Hours later, when students and faculty had recovered enough to move, they discovered the boys, dead, in the dusty class room.
They were unmarked, but every night he dreamed gruesome, violent deaths for both of them. Sometimes knives, even muggle guns. In some nightmares they killed each other, a final battle between light and dark; in others, they killed themselves.
No one knew the truth. The others had accepted that they might never, but he couldn't.
Warm arms wrapped around him, as a gruff, sleepy voice growled in his ear, "Severus?"
The questions were unspoken. What did you see? Are you okay? Too many fractured nights. "Knives. Suicide. They looked peaceful this time." And they had, peaceful in a pool of blood. Snape's dreams were black and white and red.
"Come on, Severus. You need this tonight."
Lupin grabbed his lover's good arm and led him through the dungeons, to a small room. Inside, he drew away a green blanket to reveal a small mirror, the size of a wall portrait.
"Erised, Remus? It won't help."
"It isn't. Dumbledore told me about this one, he felt you might need it. It's called Veritas. Now look."
So he did. At first he saw himself, but as he was, as he had been, tall and strong, dark eyes snapping with life, and anger, he saw that now. He absently ran his fingers over his face, but as they hit the puckered scar where his eye had been, he shook himself out of his reverie. He wasn't that man anymore, from the missing eye, to the almost bone-deep burn he'd received when Voldemort died. Draco had the same burn, as did the rest of the surviving Death Eaters. The Dark Mark was gone, but the scar it left behind was a constant reminder of choices made, and the consequences of those decisions.
A grey mist covered the shining surface of the mirror. As it cleared, Severus saw dark stones, but it wasn't the hallway behind him, it was a small, dusty classroom. A large window let moonlight stream in.
A slender, pale figure stood at that window, as it turned towards him, Severus saw that it was Draco, and he was weeping. No surprise after the boy had run off that night, but still striking to see.
At the doorway of the room stood another boy, just as pale, Potter. He said something to Draco, but Severus couldn't make it out. There was no sound, and Harry was turned away.
Then, clearly, he saw Draco say, "It's time."
Potter crossed the room, and as he joined the blond Slytherin at the window, Snape saw him reply, "I know."
"It's too soon," Draco said.
"Not soon enough. I'm tired. Aren't you?"
Nodding his response to the green-eyed boy's question, Draco threw himself into Harry's arms.
They held each other for a moment, beautiful in the milky light from the window.
Then they kissed.
And, in that kiss, Snape thought he saw a knife blade flash, heard the sharp report of a gun, felt the screaming freedom of a short, sudden fall.
They kissed. There was a small flash of green light between them. They were gone.
Snape turned away from the mirror, closed his eye. He supposed it was what he wanted, but he wasn't sure. Lost and cold suddenly in the empty corridor, he reached out and Remus was there, to take his arm and lead him back to their rooms, to their bed.
In a few weeks he would question what he saw, whether it was the truth, or a lie he wanted to believe, but for tonight he could sleep, and maybe, with Remus's arms around him, he wouldn't dream.
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This World Which Is Made of Our Love for EmptinessRumi (translated by John Moyne and Coleman Barks)
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence. Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of
dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece
of straw
blown off into emptiness.
These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.
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Note: Well, this was actually a one-shot I've had in my head for a while. I had the first scene, and the fact that it was Snape who was dreaming, but I didn't have an end, I didn't have a shape. Then yesterday I randomly pulled "Open Secret- Versions of Rumi" off of my shelf and there it was. Rumi lived from 1207 to 1273, in Turkey, and yet his words reach me, here and now, sometimes stronger than anything else. I thought they just fit with the story.
I highly recommend giving him a chance. If you don't like poetry, some of his pieces are very short, just a few short lines about love, or thought, or the universe.
I also highly recommend reviewing. It costs you nothing, but has immeasurable worth to me.