Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Rowling and Gato Azul.
A bit of Romione, but don't worry, it'll be over soon.
Warning: Suicide ideation, be safe guys.
25. The Golem
Two dense months had passed for the half-blood. He was still in the house that had tied him to Granger; he had sold the one in Spinner's End and unbelievably bought the building of flower paintings, of upholstered walls, of dubiously-originated cassettes and CDs.
The same voices that had spun around the bushy girl remained in his ears, singing Hermione's absence, an absence which he couldn't untie himself from, which he didn't want to give up. He ate in the same table, but now in front of a chair where nobody sat, he listened to the same songs. Even, to his shame and disgrace, he had dared to read the storybook she'd forgotten. He couldn't find the vanilla's veil anymore, the sweet floating smell that'd sheltered him before in his convalescent afternoons and flickering fevers.
Even for him it was hard to avoid the small mountain of remorse that oppressed his lungs.
How could he admit the Gryffindor's absence was more insidious than he thought it would be? How could he confess the nights of silence, the dreams where he saw her, always mute, always on fire? How could he dare to even tolerate the idea of what was happening in him? He told himself constantly: not again, not with her. And yet he passed time thinking about her, about her body's frame in the spaces of that house. With a sudden terror and euphoric shiver, he felt her in the music's edge, in the notes that exploded in the song's climax; he sensed her in the vase paintings, turned into another invisible verse in the books she left behind. He recalled her while peeking through the window and waiting to see her silhouette, her bushy, stubborn hair. Then he sat on the kitchen, with a cup of coffee she'd prepared, and put his head in his hands as if he wanted to hide in a pit.
I have looked for you, Ron.
My Ron, with the name of alcohol, that reminds me of a warm fall of water in my stomach, a fizzy, sweet flavour of fruits too ripe. My dear Ron, I'm still waiting for your travelling words, I'm still waiting for you to answer the letters that I certainly wrote this time, the letters that no pale, treacherous hand will steal. I already told everyone, I already passed Snape's name everywhere in the Burrow as if it was the name of a coming storm, or a natural disaster. But you still don't reply to me and I'm surprised and I'm scared that you're so irrationally sentimental, my Ron. Nobody believed me at the beginning; Ginny glared at me constantly, like a razor's glint, your mother's hair seemed redder by the outraged fury on her face, everyone seemed like walking fires, lightened up against me, but as soon as I said 'Snape' the fire extinguished. Snape, a word that always announces disgraces, that is a good reason to explain any misfortune.
But you're still quiet in my dark vision, you're in silence in the dim light, and I can't see you.
My dear Ron, I never said anything you think I said, and I'm hurt that you know me so little, that you could've believed Snape and I are the same person. That you mistake his voice for mine. Maybe deep down you think you have to abandon me, maybe deep down you have convinced yourself that I don't love you and that it must be that way because you're not enough. But you are, Ron. How wise was Snape, putting his hand in your biggest weakness. My dear Ron, I'll never forgive him for that, even if he kneeled and cried, even if they marked his forehead, even if he was condemned to be himself, to the very end, to be Snape. The natural disaster, the bad omen, the excuse for misfortunes.
Pessimism and crying were for the weak, for the useless ones wandering on the streets shrinking and looking down, like asking for help, but without asking, because they were too weak even for that.
Snape wasn't good at being weak, he didn't like to ask for anything, because his ego wore down in vain. And his ego was one of his biggest possessions, in fact, the one he fed the most.
He didn't ask for Granger, he didn't kneel before the offended virgin's eyes, before the hair like foam, of golden curls. He didn't beg the virgin so she wouldn't banish him from paradise; like a proud sinner, he left without a confession, to give himself away to the small, solitary hell of flower paintings and melancholic songs. He was resigned to have to resign himself, because everything was useless, he knew it by experience; to ask for mercy only shrinks one's soul, only oppress and degrades it. It was better to bear the sin and the punishment with stoicism. So he swallowed Granger's absence in big mouthfuls, he let it in and install itself in between his ribs and blow coldness in his blood, in the centre of his heart, that despite the years and weariness was still red, still warm, still lightened up, this time for someone else than Lily.
Snape wondered if everyone else was like him, if there was something always burning in them, always turning into whips of fire. Why, if he was a dungeon inhabitant, a cold gargoyle, Voldemort' and Dumbledore's Golem? Why did he always have a bird deep down, a tiny ball of nerves that vibrated in each corner? Why was he always furious and frustrated and chronically unhappy?
And he looked at himself in the mirror and got surprised at the painful stupor that stained his gaze; only like that, when he looked at the mirror, he realized how much was the girl's absence squeezing him, because he recognized it on the eyebags that extended like cancer, a wounded animal's weakness, something lacking, a withdrawn absence.
He looked at the kitchen knives like individuals, like actual voices, and he imagined them stuck inside his veins. But he couldn't die, because it was too sentimental to choose that exact moment and that exact way of doing so. Because the press would eat him alive and Skeeter would take a picture of his body on the floor and everyone would see it in the morning edition. Those fuckers. He would wait until the magic community's focus drew away from him to aspire to a three-sentences obituary forgotten on the third page. To reach Granger like bitter but flashing news, so she could say he was a strange man that hadn't learned how to live and that was why he disappeared. Because, good or bad, he didn't want Hermione to find herself in the middle of his gory storm, he didn't want her to discover herself as the unholy dagger that opened his wrists. Besides, Granger wasn't the only reason, she was just the final period of an old list, extended by the years and Lily's absence.
I'm gone, but that doesn't mean I don't love you. I'm here, still waiting for you, waiting for your voice made words. I had to look for my parents, but I still wish that one owl carries your letter, I still yearn for the wing's fluttering outside my window and to find your blue gaze peering mischievously between lines. Do you think that, if I write a lot, if you put together my letter one over the other, will you forget those weeks of silence and uncertainty? Ron, if I could make the envelopes float over your redhead and draw a loving circle, if I could make them rain like feathers from your roof, would you love me again?
Minerva felt her bones going soft, her next step faltering. She knew that black figure in front of her too much, she saw it in her nightmares and her regret's vault.
"Severus, dear Severus."
Her hand reached a stiff shoulder, to a small crash against the black wall of Snape's eyes.
"I didn't come here to socialize. I left some of my things in my room."
It wasn't hard to guess the insomnia nights in the colourless, long face, in the silent pain, in the weary, rattled gaze.
"Severus, are you unwell? How are you? Where are you living?"
The man didn't answer any of the three questions, he just raised his brow, causing in Minerva an annoying and depressing deja vu.
"I haven't touched your old office; everything is just like you left it. Where are you working? You will always have your place and your job here."
The students walked around dressed in that same robe, watching furtively over their heads, to see the hero, martyr and traitor.
"I just came here to pick up my belongings, I'm not insinuating I need you, Minerva."
The woman withdrew her hand and looked around, suddenly understanding the bridge between her and the man was gone. That knowledge left her disoriented for a few moments.
"I just want to—"
"Wash your conscience. It is as easy as just forget, Minerva, but you Gryffindors are so idiotic and hypocrites about those things."
Young Potter left one of the doors in the long hallway and looked at the dark, disconcerting clot that his two former professors were forming. And he told himself that sometimes luck was a machine too precise. Just at the right moment, he left his only class of the day and Snape did his surely last return to Hogwarts.
The trio's forced conversation; the heavy, thorny exchange of words was slow and hard, until the point of frowns and grimaces. Snape wanted to retreat in a quick, painless flight, but Potter cut his way on purpose.
"Tell me where you are living, or I swear, professor Snape, I'll follow you if I have to."
Minerva joined the invasive interrogatory.
Both wanted to be sure they would be seeing him soon, his dark face of a weary ghost that made them feel as if he could disappear, as if he was torn apart, as if he would just die like in a cold exhalation.
Finally, Potter managed to rip out the confession he hadn't changed houses, that he was still in the same place he and Granger had lived in.
Potter saw in him a hint of old water, a grey trail in his gaze. Potter wasn't too brilliant, but he was good with hunches, with a bunch of invisible links, with weightless steps. Potter had a fulminant green in his eyes and saw the tainted glass in Snape's gaze. And the presence of something dark and overwhelming touched him, gave him soft pushes; the half-blood carried on his back a bad shadow and Harry could smell it, smell its cold mark, its disturbing omen.
His questions were like fingers looking for the half-blood; he threw them to his face like smoke and the man shook his pale head, nose wrinkled, crossing his arms, colourless every second that passed.
And then, when he chased him to his house, when he insisted on sewing himself on him like a prison's warden, Snape asked the question. Harry stood still in the middle of the dirty rain; the tall, grieving man also stopped. They looked at each other with glassy eyes, in between an instant, tiny war between their gazes.
Where is Granger?
Snape had asked. Harry thought about the lost letters, abouy Ronald's frenetic expression, abouy how he talked desperate and angry and then sobbing while exhaling Hermione's name everywhere, like a tiny cloud of red dust. Wondering about her.
"After what happened, I don't think you have any sincere interest in Hermione. I mean, you didn't care about hurting her."
He had almost forgotten those old, hostile and short conversation with his professor. Those black smoke eyes emitted fire; Snape frowned his lips and seemed thinner and older when he started to walk again.
"What would you know," he heard the deep hiss from him. Snape reminded him, at that moment, of a tree's fallen leaf.
Watching his back, watching his worn, melancholic cloak, Harry knew it. The cold wind sneaked inside him; rain drew tears on his face. The long street was empty and full of puddles, the gravel reflected weakly the wet, greyish lights. He knew the reason for that question, he knew of the anxiety, of the lonely wait, of the hopeful peeks through the window that were contained in that mere question. That was somehow too much for him, he couldn't take the next step; he stood still, hair dripping. In front of him, Snape's shadow was getting smaller. Harry told himself that Snape's life (who reminded him in that moment of a wet crow, or a rag) was too strange and twisted, too much if he wanted to stay alive and sane, too ironic. And he denied it on the inside, feeling water sneaking in his shoes, socks wet and heaviness inside as he watched the grieving man, walking like a soldier on the puddles. One never knew what Snape carried in his cloak, the marks on his skin, the words he swallowed, the love he confined like tombstones and that consumed him like a disease.
But Harry knew it when he asked him about her, about Hermione and the letters' incident started to make sense.
Hermione:
Ginny told me and my mum and Harry, you know, about the letters and that bloody bat. I should've imagined it, I don't know why I didn't think about that. Well, you know me. I hadn't answered because I didn't know what to say. I'm not mad, don't worry about that. So you're in Australia? Have you seen any kangaroos?
I'm training with the Chudley Cannons, so I can't go back and see you. Do you plan to stay there for a long time? I found out you won the trial, we should start another one against the bat, you know, for the identity steal, don't you think? You're not seeing him anymore, I guess. How could he do that? Only someone as shitty and bitter as him could dare. Whatever, he must now be around McGonagall, asking for the Defence's job.
Hermione, there's something I want to tell you, but I don't know if it's alright to say it in a letter, you know? It's important and I don't know how will you take it; the thing is we have been separated and I, well, I thought you didn't love me anymore, I was angry, more like furious. But I love you, Hermione.
Ron W.
Hermione sat on a chair in the kitchen, that new, modern kitchen so different from her last house, and so different from the house arrest one. The white walls made her feel alone and cold. Her dad was still angry, he didn't speak to her; once she discovered him watching her from the threshold with pained resentment in his eyes, and she realized she was about to cry, then David left without saying a word, putting back his angry expression.
Just like that, drinking coffee and thinking about her dad, her professor's memory came back to her. First, it was small, growing like a firefly. She looked at him as if through a thin paper skin, next to the window, with his sad figure, sleeping on a couch with a runes book. Crying for Lily Potter like one cries for a lost country, as if he wasn't Snape, but any other common man. She realized that what really hurt her was that Snape didn't want her as much as she wanted him. That he didn't consider her a friend, that she meant so little to him, he didn't care about hurting her. She wondered where he was, what was he doing. Whether he still listened to music. Her music, the one surrounded him like an old man's painting, a man from a story. Every time she thought about him she had the sensation that life wasn't fair, that they were tied to a reality that could've been better, that could've been happy.
Snape found in one of Granger's drawers a letter he hadn't seen before; he was surprised when he noticed it was addressed to him.
My dear professor Snape,
He felt warm and struck for a moment. He read in silence as cold winds howled outside the window and pulled the trees' leaves. The girl's voice surrounded him like a perfume, like thick water that sprouted from his insides. An old pain, like a war wound, expanded in his chest.
I would like to talk to you about everything…
He remembered that time he had found a letter from Lily and he told himself his life was inhabited by the shadows of the people he had lost.
Professor Snape, try to move on, but not forget, because that's not possible. I'll be with you.
And Snape knew that, were he less old and less tired, he would've cried in that exact moment, he would cry for the girl's absence, he would cry for having hurt her. But it didn't matter anymore.
Your pupil that esteems you and cares for you.
Snape felt an overwhelming mix of happiness and pain; he let himself be drowned by them, his eyes were hot and wet. The cold fluttering outside the window made him shiver.
She made him shiver, and he felt like the beast of that muggle storybook, shattered by a mere rose, by a woman with big eyes.