Disclaimer: I do not own these wonderful characters, and I am very thankful for it, as I can throw them together in the loveliest of ways.
A/N: Thank you to everyone who has read/reviewed/followed the story thus far. How wonderful to see some familiar faces and some new ones! Note the year change - we're almost twelve months after the prologue. We're all ready for a bit o' a slow burn, yes? But not too slow, eh? This chapter's a bit short, but true to my word, it's longer than the prologue ;-) Never fear – the action kicks off in the next chapter.
'No man is an island' – John Donne.
A note on the locations – everything can be googled, everything can be seen, but I've intentionally not mentioned a specific place for Severus apart from the County. The man likes his privacy, after all.
Chapter 1: Time
They're going to want to analyse me
Canonise and demonise me
Buy the rights and serialise me
Moralise and sermonise against me.
Paul Kelly
.
2005 – Low Head, Australia
Hermione,
When are you coming home? Your parents arrived ten months ago!
Harry
/ /
Harry,
Your talent for writing long missives is simply astounding.
I'm sitting on a beach on the coast of Tasmania, watching tiny little penguins walk their way across the sand. I'll be home soon, but it is an enchanting sight. There are a few more things I want to see yet. Give Ginny (and Ron, if he wants it) my love. How is James? Tell him Aunty Hermy (and if you call me that yourself, I'll hex you six ways from Sunday) has a little penguin for him.
How far along is Ginny now? Have you thought of a name yet?
Really, I'll be home soon. My next task is to Apparate 'across the pond' – if you paid attention to my last letter, you'll know where I mean. Wish me luck.
Love,
Hermione.
/ /
Hermione,
Right, sorry. I do remember you saying that… we all miss you, though. Even Ron (don't make that face, he does). I passed the message onto James – he is excited as Ginny will be once you assure us that the penguin is not actually alive. It isn't, is it?
Ginny is four months along – he's already kicking! No names yet, though I'll be sure to tell you when she's decided and I've inevitably agreed.
Across the pond… across the pond… just a minute.
New Zealand! You'll be proud – I turned on the computer and searched, just how you instructed last year.
I meant it when I said that we all miss you. The Order meets every six months. Everybody comes – everybody always asks when you're returning home to us. I hope that I can give them a date next time.
Love,
Harry.
/ /
Harry,
The penguin is of the soft and cuddly variety – i.e., not alive. I did learn from the howler Ginny sent after the blue tongue lizard fiasco.
New Zealand is fantastic. Have picked up some lovely wool for Molly along with a few spare for Ginny, in case hell hath frozen over and she's picked up knitting. Who is 'everybody'?
H.
/ /
Hermione,
Well, everyone mostly, with the exception of Snape. I'm sure he also misses you… in his own way.
Harry.
/ /
Harry,
When did you last see Professor Snape?
H.
/ /
Hermione,
Why?
H.
/ /
Harry,
It's a good thing we have this charmed notebook, or else your owl would have been rather indignant to come all of this way just for a one word letter. I, also, am feeling quite annoyed at receiving it. But anyway – just curious. I've been wondering how he has been faring.
Between you and I, I keep dreaming of finding him after the battle… he did so much for us, Harry… it doesn't seem right to not know where he is, or if he's even alive. I want to thank him – but I also just want to see him. Perhaps it would help with the dreams, or perhaps it would just close the file for good, so to speak. I don't really know what I want, but I know you'll understand when I say that we can't just let go of him, not after all that he's done.
Love,
Hermione.
/ /
Hermione,
Sorry for the delay, I had a look around for you.
I know. I do understand… I do. I will help you, if I can. But I don't think that he wants to be found.
Anyway, your guess is as good as mine. I last saw him at the first Order meeting five months after his trial – you were searching for your parents by then. It seemed like he just came to get out of any of the others. He did pass on his thanks for what you said at his trial, but you already knew that. The truth is that no one has heard from him since. I suspect McGonagall knows where he is, but no one else has had any word. Spinner's End is vacant… I went over last year and left a letter. I don't know what I was expecting, but nothing eventuated anyway.
As for whether he is alive today? I had a look after work last night and the wards are still up at his home. So – yes, still alive.
Love,
Harry.
/ /
Harry,
Coming home in a week.
Hermione.
~0~
2005 – County Galway, Ireland
"Professor? Can you hear me? It's going to be all right, Professor… Oh, if you can hear me you'll be terribly angry, but I'll take the liberty anyway: wake up, Severus! Can you hear me? Severus?"
~0~
Hunching his shoulders, Severus stuffed his hands into the pockets of his coat and continued walking down the street. The low voice had been running through his mind since he'd woken in the morning, flailing and sweating. It was always the same – and it was always her, speaking into his ear as she held him in the Shrieking Shack, and then when she stayed by him on the narrow hospital bed, even while Poppy ordered her away. He had always dreamt of her. Sometimes it was her calling him back, trying to soothe him; sometimes it was his voice as, in turn, he'd stayed as long as could be called appropriate when she'd inevitably lost consciousness after the ordeal she'd faced just to retrieve his body. Severus still didn't know what was more surprising – that after so many years he was still dreaming of her and the feel of her lips on his forehead, or that she had returned to the Shack and helped to nurse him back to health in the first place.
Hermione Granger. Not even a vial of extra strength Dreamless Sleep was enough to stop her anguished voice calling out his name, every damn night since he'd last seen her. And it should have been enough – it should be enough, considering he had not seen one wink of the witch in years.
It was with a long resigned sigh that he bent his head as he walked against the wind, nodding shortly as greetings were called out, raising a hand every now and then. For a moment he wished that his hair was long enough to hide his face again, but it wouldn't particularly matter in the end; this was his home, now. Well, not here, exactly – this small town was close to his home, to be sure, but it was far too populated for Severus' liking.
Still - he had a home.
And no dream, not even if it had been bothering him for almost five years since he'd last seen the young, wild haired woman defending him to her last breath at his trial, was worth losing that. Not when it had taken him all of his long life thus far to find it. He could be selfish now, and he was bloody well going to do so.
Forty five years of Severus Snape's life had been spent alive. If he thought about it - truly thought and spent time on it - he could pinpoint exactly when everything had changed; the moment when he could begin to breakdown his five hundred and forty months on earth, give or take a few. Birth was the obvious answer, but for Severus, whose childhood was nothing to write home about, it was something different – or rather, someone.
Lily… beautiful, trusting Lily. Even now just thinking her name had him exhaling with a forceful breath, knowing that at sixteen he'd cocked it all up so much that it'd been the turning point from childhood to… what? Not adulthood… perhaps simply being. Sixteen years of living a quiet, largely lonesome, sometimes abusive, life. Then three years of internal hell, followed by twenty years of… nothingness. No Lily, no solid, truthful friendships, no life to speak of unless it was forged by his own hands. With permission from those who held the leads to his collar, of course.
And then it had all ended. Severus still couldn't quite believe that it was over. The spying, the double life, the years of living in constant darkness; mistrusted, skirted around, spoken about in hushed voices. The silence of those years was so damn loud that as soon as his obligations to those he had formed relationships with (McGonagall and… that was probably it) had been finalised, he'd packed everything up and left England, not wishing to spend one more minute in the country where he was being plastered over front pages. One day he was the 'Dark Saviour', the 'Dark Horse', or, to his annoyance, 'Dumbledore's Secret Weapon'. The next he was the 'last single warrior', the 'brooding wizard, biding his time until the perfect witch sweeps him off his broom'.
Severus thought that those ideas could just fuck right off. With that in mind, he huffed and continued on his way.
Scratching at the short black beard that covered the lower half of his face, he pulled the neck of his coat up higher – unbidden, a thought came to him that his old robes would be welcome here instead of the dark jeans, jumper and thick black coat; robes fared better in the early morning winter chill. He brushed it off as he sprung lightly up the steps to the wharf, heading over to where the rest of the early morning risers were congregating around the first few boats to come in, haggling. He threw himself into it with gusto, barking out prices and surprising himself by even laughing once or twice, then turned on his heel with his bag of cod and mackerel, and walked back to the point that was safe enough for him to Disapparate. It was a short walk away from the wharf; not short in general, but short for one used to stalking around Hogwarts for hours on end each day.
It took him ten minutes to walk the stone streets, past the rows of pale white houses, restraining a roll of his eyes each time he passed a bright blue or yellow painted home. A tad ridiculous, in his eyes (sweet Merlin, there was even a pink one), but the village had barely batted an eyelid when he'd arrived four years ago, windswept and stern, and now he had to hurry to make it to the curve at the end of the road before he could be invited in for tea or for a Guinness later on; at forty four, Severus had been taken under the wings of the entire population. Which wasn't much – a hundred or so – but it was still quite an unsettling thing, if not entirely unwelcome.
Disregarding magical propriety, he pushed his legs forward with an unnatural burst of speed when he saw the baker's door beginning to inch open, and soon enough he was at the curve of the road, away from the houses, staring at rolling green fields, dotted with livestock. With one last look at the landscape that had enchanted him in the first place, he turned, and was gone.
~0~
Home for Severus was the most beautiful thing he'd seen in many, many years. It still made his breath catch when he appeared behind the sessile oaktree at the end of the lane; the stillness of it all in the early morning fog, the peace. He checked the closed front gate, kicking his foot against it in a time honoured male tradition of simply feeling an object to test its strength, then began to walk.
There were no other homes in the immediate vicinity – the closest was his landlord's, perched precariously on the faraway cliffs near the lighthouse. He couldn't even see Conan, though, when he walked outside. Sometimes he caught a blur of the burly man, but Severus was still fairly thin and wiry, so it was safe to say that Conan, on the other hand, could certainly not see him. And so it was almost like being on his own little island.
"'No man is an island'," he quoted to himself with a wry smirk that carried none of the weight that it used to at Hogwarts. Severus was an island; and he loved it.
Severus' island began at the gate, then the long walk down the lane, long flattened by car tyres, not that he had one. Grass was threatening to grow over the tracks again, so he flicked his wand and neatened it all up, before continuing on down the path that wound around the trees, before eventually coming to his stone cottage that was surrounded by a proudly made wall with wildflowers poking out in the gaps.
The cottage was a small, two level home – three, if you counted the potions lab he'd conjured himself in the makeshift basement. It faced the sea, but wasn't on the cliffs; it was just far back enough that he could see the expanse of blue from his kitchen window, then anchor himself with the green grass moving with the wind on the land before it. Severus did not particularly like the water – he could not swim, he could thank his parents for that – though he enjoyed the quietness of it all, the roaring waves that moved with the wind, bringing the smell of sea salt through his windows when he left them open in the summer.
Just in time, he jogged with the bag of fish past the back of the house to reach the front with the wooden door painted a peeling white, ducking his head and stepping inside as the rain began to beat down.
Humming to himself, Severus waved a hand and warmed the cottage as he twisted and turned to get out of the coat, dropping it around the back of one of the wingback chairs in front of the fire. As was his wont, he cast a critical eye over the sitting room, nodding to himself when he saw that nothing had changed; the bookcases still towered over him, taking over the space so that there was only enough for the two chairs and one battered couch. Still, his mouth twitched with an almost smile when he made his way into the little kitchen with its cupboards painted sky blue as he noticed that, as usual, his spelled black coffee was ready and waiting near the sink. A quick check of the wards after that, then Severus shoved the fish into the fridge, grabbed his cup and tapped the bench twice to turn the music on, before padding downstairs with bare feet to the basement.
Perhaps today would be the day that he would make the potion that would finally succeed in having him dream of nothingness, rather than the wild haired Hermione Granger.