Written for QLFC, Book Club
These Violent Delights
Prompt:
[title] These Violent Delights
These Violent Delights
A line from Shakespeare's famous play haunts Severus after Lily explains it to him.
"These violent delights have violent ends, and in their triumph die, like fire and powder, which, as they kiss, consume," Lily said, reading the quote out loud from the thick tome in her hands.
The emerald-green grass swayed in the cool breeze, tickling Lily's bare feet. Severus sat beside her listening to her songbird-sweet voice, his legs tucked under him and his heart at peace. While flitting from flower to flower, a bee flew too close to him and he batted it away with a flick of his hand.
"What does that mean?" he questioned, bewildered by the strange phrasing of the writer. He had never understood Shakespeare's language, but because Lily loved reading his plays, Severus obediently sat and listened to her read. He loved watching her; it gave him immense pleasure to admire her from such close proximity.
"It means that the extreme emotions—the kind of pleasure Romeo and Juliet are experiencing by being together—often end in disaster," Lily explained patiently, her red hair blazing in the sun. She pointed to the next line. "See? Next, Friar Lawrence warns Romeo that even the taste of honey can become sickly—because it is too sweet—and ruin your appetite."
Severus leaned closer to her and read the next line. "Therefore love moderately; long love doth so; too swift arrives as tardy as too slow."
Ever since he had called his beloved Lily a 'Mudblood' in his passionate rage, the friar's warning haunted his dreams and reality. He watched Potter close in on the Gryffindor witch and charm her, and Severus was unable to do anything.
Despite the warning in his head, he continued to love her with his entire being, pouring his soul into the letters he penned for her. As the obsession began to take over his heart, the pure love he felt for her started to warp into something more sinister, something… ominous.
As a child, his desires had been simple: to hold her hand, stay by her side, and show her the wonders of the wizarding world. As a teenager, he had wanted to hold her in his arms, kiss her sweet lips, and whisper in her ears how much he loved her. But after she refused to accept his apology for the slur he'd used, Severus' love twisted and gnarled into a hunger to possess her mind, body and soul.
And then, one day, he found himself standing over her corpse. Lily's haunting voice echoed in his mind, "These violent delights have violent ends…"
Her beauty, her flaming locks—they had once been a painting for his eyes alone. As Severus fell to his knees, his heart in his throat, he caught a whiff of her sweet and subtle scent, drowning him in its fragrance.
He whispered her name as though it were a prayer, but she lay unmoving in front of him. Ignoring the crying child in the crib behind him, Severus reached out to clasp his beloved's corpse to his chest for the last time.
She was supposed to be mine. Mine to marry, to make love to, to bear children with. She should have been mine to love. He traced his finger across her pale cheek, screaming internally at the unfairness of it all.
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