Disclaimer: Again, nothing here belongs to me.
23. The Belligerent Medusa
What do you pretend? Are you going to make me walk through every muggle neighbourhood with you? Are you going to drag me to the theatre and the cinema and the fireworks exhibitions? And then what, Granger? Then you will get bored or you will think I don't need you anymore and you will leave with any other guy to continue your verbiage and your parade of condescending smiles. Is that what you want, Granger? Do you want to see me integrating to your world, to your way of seeing things and being happy, or trying to? You want me to stop wearing dark clothes and stop frowning or crossing my arms.
And what would I get in return, even if I change for you? What will you give me?
Will I manage to keep your company even when I'm old? If I give you my artificial, forced smiles?
The thing is, Granger, I don't want you to leave.
There is something between us, something like a flare; there's something, just that. A small burst that didn't exist before.
You scare me, professor Snape; that new stare has something I don't want to recognize. If I wasn't talking about you, I'd dare to say it's the same ravenous expression men show as they look at girls on the street, the way in which their eyes search them greedily. I'm barely realizing now that you're a man of flesh and blood, and you can't be exempt of everyone else's weaknesses. But you wouldn't look at me like that, would you? I'm not even pretty, and you seem to be celibate; your mere clothes speak of firmness, of self-control, decency. Then what is it, Professor Snape? Why do I see rage and silence in you? As if you wanted to ask me something and would hate me for not doing it, as if you despised me because there's something in me that hurts you. What's wrong, Professor Snape? We agreed we'd keep seeing each other; well, at least I promised I'd keep looking for you, we will go to the city and the cinema and we will be friends. Then, what is bothering you? What is it that you can't ask me?
Dear Professor Snape, sometimes I don't know what to do with you.
Three days, professor Snape. The girl sits, the chair's arm sinks slightly at her weight. Her veil smelling of vanilla spread over both. The man is tense, he always is when she is concerned. The clock throbs on a wall; the girl's eyes wander over the green tapestry, rounded shapes that multiply to the end of the wall. Granger lets her head tilt, perceiving the air around her; it smells like grass, why does Snape always smell like that? Finally, she feels a warm shoulder under her head. You will be free, professor. There are no noises, the girl shrinks; she wants to look for another body's warmth, she wants to hunt down a hug. We may be a... what did you say? A bunch of morons, but we will defend you anyway. The man doesn't smile; he looks at her, something in the bottom of that blackness makes her tremble. Do you believe me? The gaze stays, fixed, suddenly too intimate, too intrusive and silent. Snape's eyes aren't actually even ugly, they see through you, so heavy, so still. The girl feels her cheeks redden. Yes, Granger, I believe you, but that's not the problem. She seems disappointed. Sometimes I'm afraid of many things, I'm afraid for you. She stares back the pale outline, the protruding nose. A bold hand travels through space, arrives at the warmth centre, to the dark and rough and tepid clothes. Once there it comes and goes, caress a rigid arm, two eyes watch her, the hand follows its trajectory. Granger is no longer afraid of the half-blood. The thing is that you don't have to fight alone this time. Yellowish lids cover the deep stare. Deep down, he was never completely alone, he had a reason, but Granger doesn't know that. He had a name which he clung to like a sword, like a flag. Lily, the homeland and the reason. The braided girl watches him like a picture; Snape understands why Potter was so strong, she radiates it, she probably held him many times. Granger, the burning flower, the new country in which he starts to root.
Hermione opened the room's door; nothing could be heard from Snape's dark cave. The lamp barely shined; the man slept. Downstairs someone knocked on the door, something highly unusual and improbable in that house. Hermione went downstairs, wondering if it wasn't some Ministry's member. A green gaze too ingrained in her memory was outside the door. But Harry didn't seem happy to see her; when she threw herself to his arms, the man barely reciprocated.
"What's wrong, Harry?" she asked, scrutinizing him, trying to find the reason for his serious expression.
"The day after tomorrow is the hearing, and I came here to see if you're prepared."
Heavy steps went down the stairs; Snape's tall, dark frame was soon with them. Harry tilted his head as a greeting; the Occlumens raised a brow and grimaced.
"What are you doing here, Potter?"
The boy put his white hand inside his jacket and withdrew two envelopes. Snape felt a sudden, hot flush.
"Professor McGonagall sent you a letter, and Hermione, Ron sent you one too."
The green in Potter's eyes was one from a marshy swamp, a sour, resentful shade.
The Potion Master watched with a horror he could barely hide as Potter put the letter in Granger's hands; his brain squeezed itself, painfully trying to find a way, an excuse to avoid what he knew would happen, but there wasn't anything he could do, even if he managed to delay the disaster he wouldn't be able to contain it forever.
The girl squeezed the letter next to her heart.
"I want to talk to you alone, Hermione," Potter whispered, but the Potion Master's long body got in between, menacing.
"Please don't extend your already untimely visit, Potter, and let me rest in peace. The house arrest will soon end and you will be able to talk to Granger alone as much as you want."
The boy watched them alternately, hesitating. Hermione's big, uncertain eyes, Snape's stony frown. He retreated while the man gained ground, corralling him against the door.
"Goodbye, Potter."
"Excuse me," he mumbled while his hand found the doorknob. He looked for the girl one last time. "Reply to Ron, Hermione."
She nodded.
He watched her unfold eagerly the parchment; his heart throbbed in his ears, his voice had gotten stuck in some unknown part of his throat. Granger read the paper, already opened. Her eyes jumped from one line to the other, darkening slowly, turning stormy, like scorched smoke. The corners of her mouth were lowered, as if something pulled them downwards.
Hermione:
I received your letter. I'm not going to beg; you were very clear. Do I seem little to you? Do you want something different for your future than to be my wife and raise children? Why do you assume it would be that? Why do you assume you couldn't be more if you stayed with me? But you know what? Do whatever you want. I know you have no intentions of replying, just as you haven't replied to any of my previous letters, but even if you try, it doesn't matter, I leave the country today for my Quidditch's training, and you won't find me. You don't want to see me, Hermione? Great! I'm leaving, I'm not going to make you uncomfortable by meeting in that stupid trial. The last thing I'll tell you, Hermione, I was sincere, I wouldn't have limited you. I didn't expect you to be a mere housewife! I'm not that kind of git, but deep down you never stopped thinking of me like that, and you're wrong.
You already decided. Go make your life perfect where I can't see you.
Goodbye, Ron W.
Snape couldn't say anything; he stood there like a moron next to her, perfectly knowing that in a few minutes he'd be trapped in a bombing of reproaches and cries and punches.
Granger had finished the letter, smiling nervously.
"I don't get it," she found him in front of her and asked him, with disturbed unease: "He says he's leaving, that he doesn't want to see me, why is he saying I haven't been writing to him?" Her expression was sealed by her tears' wetness, soon her eyes were undone in a wet, lukewarm pain.
"I write to him every day, he's the one that hasn't answered me, why?" her voice sounded sharp, like a bird's screech. "I never told him he was too little for me, why did he…?"
Snape shook to his core when those brown eyes roamed and focused on him, when they stood fixed on him, like boiling pincers.
"Ron never got my letters."
Snape's face was pale, it seemed like he didn't have any blood under his skin. Granger's gaze interned in his.
"Someone wrote to Ron under my name."
"Why do you say that?"
"You have been receiving the mail, all this time."
Snape desperately put his best, deceiving face.
"What do you dare to insinuate, Granger?"
The girl's face transformed into a transparent, wrathful mask.
"Where are the other letters?"
"Why would I know that?"
"You didn't want Harry to speak to me, right? Who else, if the only ones here are you and me? No one from the outside did it."
The man raised his chin; his eyes shone dangerously in a last attempt to defend himself.
"What did you do with the rest?"
The girl's rash figure got close to him, squeezing the parchment in her hand.
She looked at him with her bushy hair like a tornado, like a belligerent medusa, without still being able to believe it, without wanting to believe it.
With her crumpled letter, she took three steps towards him, contained yells boiling in her throat. Treason filled her eyes, burning them. Ronald slipped from her arms; salty, hot water washed her face, water that came from inside her. She let her fierce tears fall, just like that, in front of the Potioneer. She poured out in front of him, feeling as if that moment was sinking in her, that vision of the grieving man, teacher, martyr and traitor.
Slowly, like a vengeful ghost, she extended the paper so he could see it.
"What did you do with the other letters?"
"Nothing."
"What did you do with the other letters?" she repeated as if she hadn't asked a first time, and Snape knew there was no point in resisting, no one else would do such a thing, no one else was in the position of doing so.
"I burned them."
Granger trembled slightly, as if deep down she had been expecting him to deny everything; her strength vanished for a few seconds. She looked at several points of the room, watching the paintings as if asking for help, and then looked at him, almost as if she didn't recognize the man in front of her.
"You burned them," she said in a trembling whisper. "Why?"
Waking up from her grogginess, questions started to fill her.
"You falsified a letter to Ron. What did you tell him? What did you do?"
The irate fire devoured her quickly; she was already on Snape, punching him in the chest like a crazy woman. She pushed him backwards, crumbling the yellow paper in her aggressive hands.
"What is this, why! You bastard!"
Snape never wanted a fight of bare nails, hair and teeth between them, but there they were, twisted in a knot, a bunch of tears and screams and scratches. She attacked him, he tried to protect his face.
"Tell me why, damnit! What did I do to deserve this!"
She punched him in the ribs, without managing to hurt him.
"Speak!"
She got rid of the hand that halted her with a hostile gesture. The eyes, once clear and honest, were now stormy with anger and tears, reddened, changed.
"Speak."
The man opened his mouth but closed it again.
The half-blood's face was a weak ashen shade; he looked at the floor stubbornly, grimacing. When he raised his gaze, the girl slapped him right in the cheek and rushed upstairs.
Around you, whoever you really are, I had built an altar of mirrors. It's dumb, but I didn't expect you to hurt me this way; you killed Dumbledore, maybe for a good reason, but that doesn't undo the damage your hands can do, the acid you spray around your life and which finally reached me. You may have taken a vital piece of my life away from me, because Ron is a piece of me. Why? Why did you give me this, instead of what I asked? Was it so bad to want to take you to the world with me? How did I not see it coming? It almost seemed as if you were satisfied with me, that you'd accepted me, that you were already my friend. I don't understand, and I will never understand why. I can't bear to meet you, with that strange gesture of holding down words, with troubled eyes. Don't try to feel regret, you kept on with this to the last consequences, until you managed to take him away from me. You lost that woman who you wait for in the window and you want everyone else to lose too. That's bad, you're fundamentally bad; even with your loyalty and bravery, your insides are eaten out by resentment. You destroyed our chance, you destroyed our afternoons of music, you destroyed whatever was growing inside me for you. Snape, snake, perverse, resentful.
I can't forgive you, not this. So many years between Death Eaters and conspirators dried out your conscience, blinded you, devoured your mercy. And the worst thing is that you don't even have a reason to offer me. I quit, I quit your company, I quit your poison and your ghosts that will never leave you alone.
Not even once had he stopped to think about her, he hadn't actually cared; he'd wanted to infect their love, he wanted to tear it apart. He never thought of Granger, he never imagined her tears hidden in the bookshelves, never saw her wet face and his eyes now sharp, piercing through his.
He remembered that time when Albus had told him he disgusted him and he knew that, were he still alive, he would have repeated it at that moment. With depressing irony, he saw he had done it again, he had fucked it up again. Every good thing his hands touched ended up fucked up. Bravo, Severus! A flawless display of your gifts.
He laid down on the bed, without any intentions of getting back up on the remaining of the arrest; the trial was in two days and Hermione wouldn't be with him.
He had tried to apologise, but as soon as she saw him, she left with a violent air, barely contained.
Why? He questioned himself: because he didn't want to see her with Weasley, smiling, getting full of children and kisses, turning into a different woman, one that he wouldn't be able to reach. Getting the life he could never achieve.
He had given so much for Lily and yet hadn't learned anything; again he had let himself be possessed by envy and his compulsion of making everyone around him unhappy. As unhappy as he was.
Only then he understood that greed had overtaken him, that he had wanted her for him, despite how abhorrent that wish was. Him, an old man contrasted with Granger's youth. Him, who had been her teacher, who met her when she was a child, who saw her grow up. It was disgusting, repugnant, maybe one of the most despicable crimes he had dared to commit. The mere fact of having yearned for her. It didn't matter that Weasley was a moron, he couldn't compare to him.
And yet, in between the mud around him, he admitted he wasn't completely sorry, that deep down he was still glad he had removed the redhead from Granger's life.
He should have definitely died in the Shrieking Shack, it was the worthiest end he could aspire, it was the only way he had to pay for his stupidity and take some dignity to his grave.
He hadn't moved from his room in the past ten hours, he didn't want to bother her more than he already had. His stomach growled and he'd lost the ability to sleep. He watched her over and over, bringing her back in his mind, the exact shade of her eyes, her face's darkening at his crime. Lily and Granger, one next to the other, both of them joined in the same memory of seeing him destroying his human bonds.
He himself was amazed at his instinct of treachery.
He looked lazily at the watch; the next day, at that hour more or less, he would be getting ready for the trial. The sun had almost disappeared from the sky, the night was conquering the infinite clouds and stars.
He heard noises on the first floor, and masculine voices. He went down the stairs with a fearful shock and the bad sting of his intuition.
She was in the house's threshold, carrying two brown cases, one in each hand. She looked at him for a long time with her reptilian eyes, with a shade of hate that came from the deepest part of her. He'd never expected that Granger would look at him like that. He felt like trash.
Potter entered with seriousness and studied the two persons in front of him. Hermione irradiated such hostility, uncharacteristic of her, Snape was pale to abnormality and seemed shrunken by a vague illness. He knew what had happened between them; Hermione had written to him asking him to pick her up, and their stormy faces confirmed the letter's story. He watched them with caution, without truly knowing how to act.
"Good evening, Professor Snape."
The man inhaled noisily, face rigid, as if made of cold wax.
"I'm ready, let's go, Harry. I can't stand being here a minute longer."
His friend left without looking back, as if no one had lived in the house apart from her; she carried her suitcases with strong arms and resolute disdain. Potter watched Snape; he found it strange that his dark, tired eyes followed Hermione until she left his line of vision. He thought he saw in them something that left his body cold, something that he had already seen in the past.
"Are you ready for the trial?" he asked, without managing to completely hide his annoyed tone.
"Yes."
"I'll come here to pick you up in the afternoon to take you to the Ministry. Review your declaration."
Then silence came. The half-blood looked at the place where Hermione had disappeared.
"She's really hurt, let some time pass and she may forgive you."
Snape averted his eyes, uncomfortable and irritated.
"Goodbye, Potter."
"Goodbye, professor, take care," the boy closed the door behind him with quiet humility.
He looked at himself in the mirror for a long time, as if he was looking at an old photo of some ancestor, of a life before, of a man that wasn't him.
He understood he was alone and that it was his fault.
Snape normally didn't allow himself to feel sadness; he was always busy thinking, going some place to the other, and he lived with the pain from his past like a dim shadow that accompanied him, but one he never dared to look directly. And there he was, with his inner darkness, with the eclipse that always covered his eyes. He had hurt Lily, he had hurt Granger, he didn't even want to know why.
What did I do to deserve this?
The girl asked him in his mind once again. Nothing, Granger had just been kind, loving, merciful. But she was wrong for him, Granger would leave like everyone else had left and he already hated her for that. He was getting his revenge on her, because she wanted Weasley and not him.
In front of his reflection, he dared to discover himself. Where had his usual pride and disdain for humanity gone? He let himself be demolished in front of his image, the one he hated, the one he had always hated, since he was a child and he knew himself hopelessly ugly and lanky with a huge nose. Incurably unpleasant, lacking something everyone else had, without any chance of Lily loving him, and provided with innate wickedness he sometimes couldn't contain.
He wanted to kill himself or be killed, he wanted to be a sudden, cold memory for the ones that knew him, because he hated them all and he hated himself most of all, himself and that miserably perverse instinct of sinking and wanting to sink everyone else with him.
NT: Don't worry, this is not a Romione fic, and things still have a long way to go :)