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Dumbledore, traversing through the hilly land in front of Hogwarts, held a thick tome filled with sun-yellowed pages, which was nearly falling apart at the spine. He heard quiet murmurings, but assumed they were just students whispering their daily dose of gossip amongst each other. But when he reached the top of a rather large, soft-earthed hill, he saw a vision beneath him—it must have been a vision, for Severus and Lily were long ago driven apart from each other. It was not real. His old mind was giving away to senility. Had he fallen, tumbled down the hill and hit his head? For once, the meddling puppeteer did not interrupt Severus. Dumbledore, still clutching the leather bound tome, hobbled back to the castle, smiling. Teary eyed, he made plans for another day: Seeing Severus and Lily embracing each other had given him hope for another day. But he hadn't the power to predict what would happen afterwards.
It is astounding how many minutes can pass without a single breath being taken as you kiss another. Straight on the lips, mutilating one another's petals of beauty, Severus and Lily were truly kissing each other for the first time in over a month. Lily had fistfuls of his shorter, black hair in her hands, and she held onto it, relishing in the feeling of the entirety of what was happening—the way his body felt against her, the magnetic force attracting her lips to his and vice versa, but also the way he held her, his arms expertly, but affectionately wrapped around her waist.
"Is this a dream?" asked Lily childishly, her face flushed and glimmering from the light of the setting sun. The pupils in her eyes were dilated and glossed over.
"If it is, don't pinch me," replied Severus, the same carnal lust congealing in his sable eyes.
Then Lily realized what she was doing—consorting with the enemy. Dumbledore's word was given to her; his godly words that everyone foolishly took to heart. Severus was not an enemy to them. But Severus was a Death Eater, and had a mark to prove it. He was branded like cattle meant for butchering. To her, he was still an enemy. But this was one sin the Lily could not repent: kissing him without abandon. It was inevitable, this joining of opposing forces. No matter how demeaning the image of him was in her mind, he was the essence of her soul, and the syrup of her longevity.
"I can't do this," Lily put a finger up to Severus' mouth in order to shush the words about to erupt from his lips, "but I must. I am so stuck in the same pattern: sleep, eat, mourn, sleep, skip a meal, cry, sleep, shower, perish and repeat. I'm dying every day—can't you see? No, you haven't seen; I've don't too good a job of avoiding you. But you see it in my eyes; I'm not the same person I was a month ago, and even before that. I'm not the ditsy redhead who traipsed into the park one day and met you. I'm not your dream girl anymore! I just can't stand this—you, me, us, them."
It was true. Her eyes were made of glass, shining only because they had to. Lily's eyes were not filled with devils nor imps, they were empty of deviance and whimsy. They were empty crystalline orbs, defected and useless for divination. But that was not all that was different about her. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, and her cheeks were sunken more than usual. Her hair was greased over and lacking its usual luster. She appeared thinner and feeble. Yet he sensed something more: Her aura had changed. It's once vivacious allure whimpered weakly for help.
Lily was not the only one who had changed. Severus had become a different man altogether. He had cut his hair, though it was slightly longer than average nonetheless. His once expressive eyes quickly flitted between an ocean of emotion and a barren wasteland of passiveness. His lips had grown pale and were twisted into a seemingly endless sneer. Veins bulged out of his tightly gripped hands, and were a tell-tale sign of the devastating wreckage piling up within him at that very moment. He opted out of wearing his school robes as he usually would have. Lily assumed that it had become a daily practice—to seem as if he were going to a funeral. When she had touched him he seemed even more callous, more unbearably ambiguous than ever. He was supercilious in every notion, but mercilessly pitiful as well. Lily felt unable to call him "Sev". That part of him was eradicated.
"Severus."
"Lilian."
Lily was walking away like she always was; the one thing she never did was run away from anything. It felt even more deplorable to nonchalantly walk away from her troubles. But this time Severus did not chase after her, nor bother to even whisper a word of regret. That part of their forsaken lives was over.
Severus closed his eyes as he inhaled a breath of musky air. He was transported to Hagrid's hut. This hut was full of pots and pans whose handles were bigger than Severus' own head. A salt and a pepper shaker sat upon a molding wooden table far too tall for anyone but Hagrid to sit at. A half giant (though friendly despite the term), he was twice as tall and three times as wide as a man of normal stature. He owned what he called a "small hut", though to an ordinary man it would be considered anything, but small. It was proportioned to fit a half giant such as he, and also designed to fulfill the rustic style Hagrid's daily life reflected. A bed filled with straw lied in a shady corner of the hut, and a fireplace on the other side, endlessly heating up a copper kettle of unsavory stew. Pheasants and birds hung from the ceiling and gave the abode a gamey scent, not too unlike the scent Hagrid found comfort in. It was a memory he found both solace and suffering in.
Severus had found comfort in the hut as well. He associated this place as somewhere where he could find open arms and ears made to listen. Though Hagrid looked a menace, he was an overstuffed teddy bear. Hagrid, though under the constant spell of the Freudian slip, would never utter to a soul the words Severus entrusted to him.
That noon Hagrid was sitting on a stool next to the fireplace. His head abruptly turned when he heard someone entering through the door. Heavy footsteps came with a heavy heart. The footsteps dragged on the wide, coffee-colored floorboards; it was a death march—one two, one two. Without welcome, Severus fell into the dark orange armchair, his head down to the floor, but angled enough so that his eyes bored into Hagrid's soul. His eyes told a tale, of the light in the dark, and when the dark took over. They spoke of his travesty, for what else could his life be, but a travesty? They choked out sputterings of love lost, but never gained. His eyes told a tale as broken as can be, discord raging through its every seam, and a poison coated needle poking through its every weakened spot.
"She'll come ba', Sev'rus, she'll—"
"I don't want her back—I want her happy. Despite everything, despite the fact that I've grown to loathe myself even more because of her—despite the fact that I risked my life to assure that her life would be safe—despite all of it, I want to see her happiness radiate from her like a damned beacon of hope. Don't you see? I want her rotting out there, rotting with her bloody happiness, until her corpse is coated in a golden film of sainthood. I want her to be spoiled with satisfaction, and for her to never look back at me, to never look at me and say 'If things were different'. I don't want her blasted pity tarnishing me more than I am tarnished already."
Hagrid was reduced to blubbering out inconceivable words as he aggressively wiped the tears away from his beetle-black eyes. "Sev'rus, don' say tha'. Don' say tha'. Yeh two were meant fehr—"
"Absolutely nothing." Severus turned away, his cloak wiping wildly behind him. "Goodbye, Hagrid. Thank you for your time." But Severus would never acknowledge Hagrid's emotional outburst. He was back at the start, thinking emotion was weakness. Emotion destroys a life, and ultimately kills someone even before they die. That was what Severus thought, but it was not what he believed.
Regulus stirred in a hollow room where damper candles flickered on and off and a wrinkly skinned monstrosity with bat-like ears croaked in a raspy, sly voice. He minded little attention to the ratty beast sullying the already dirtied floor. A house-elf—one bloody, dodgy, good-for-nothing house-elf was what the Dark Lord needed. Feh, thought Regulus, Feh, it's just a creature, it's just a heartless toad made of filth and unworthy ingredients. But why, why in the world would the Dark Lord ever want to use one of them? For what purpose would he use Kreacher?
Regulus could only imagine the Dark Lord's motives. Among them were crucifixion of the poor thing, an exorcism, or perhaps (dare he think of such a ludicrous thing) even as a tool to use on one of his secretive missions. A house elf?—for a mission!—that was beyond absurd, maybe beyond insane as well. Who in their right mind would ever use a house elf for a mission? After all, they relied on humans for a reason: They cannot do anything themselves. They were weak, bumbling sub-humans with only a willingness to serve a master.
It wasn't just Regulus' curiosity which was gnawing at him; the underlying mission for the house-elf was essential. If he did not find out soon, he would have more to face than the Dark Lord's fury.
'Oh, what could it be?!' His mind was a nest of bees, whizzing about, buzzing and bumbling in confused thought and outlandish theory. 'If only Severus were here…' Regulus assumed that he was a beacon of knowledge, with perhaps seer-esque abilities to predict the future. It would have been simply outstanding if he were to magically drop in at this exact moment to assist Regulus in this head-splitting endeavor. 'Perhaps Dumbledore would—what am I saying? Severus would never go to Dumbledore unless it was of the utmost importance.' Crucial information such as this should be saved for Severus to dispose of as he pleased.
Regulus, with a weighed down mind, continued his pacing until there were black scuff marks on the marble floor of the common-room. He laid his head against a wall for a moment, to rest his mind. He closed his eyes…just for a second. They fluttered open and close for a moment before he decided that the wall was a perfectly comfortable place to take a mid-day snooze.
In his dreams he dreamed of crashing waves against ebony stone, and water colder than the sea in a blizzard. He saw an impish figure guiding him begrudgingly through thick and thin. He could feel his hands and feet go numb, and he knew that his lips had already turned a revolting shade of frostbite-blue. No matter, he lumbered on with his thick-head leading the way. He entered a small cave, soaking wet, and the creature instructed him to sacrifice his well-being for entrance to a room hidden by the cave. Taking a sharp jade crystal out of his cloak pocket, he split the middle of his palm. After rubbing the crimson blood onto the wall, the wall glowed greenish-silver and between the cracks of the newly opening passageway, Regulus could see a lake. Even more appalling was the odor emanating from the room. It reeked of rotting flesh, and made Regulus wish that he was never born with a nose at all.
Regulus stepped forward, his heart slowing slowly. His eyes rolled upwards as he was claimed in the sea of the dead. Cold water rushed into his lungs. He choked on it slowly, before he held his breathe until he was gone. In neither heaven nor hell he awoke, startled by the premonition.
Lily had never felt more like the mud in her blood, so covered by dirt and darkened to the core of her very heart, than the moment she sat at the bottom of the hill, curled up in a pathetic ball and holding in every tear to an extremely unreasonable extent. She was ravaged within, torn to shred by rabid beasts, with acrid foam spewing from their sharp-toothed mouths. These beasts were known as emotion—the very vice and virtue of man-kind—so deliberately destructive in this one moment of her ill-fortuned life.
When she was sure that Severus had gone back to the Hell he came from, Lily let out an ungodly shriek. It pierced even her own ears and rendered her throat raw. It was a sound so unbearably human; a sound coated with the harboring of a month's worth of heart-wrenching guilt, but above all—regret. It made the gargoyles that sat atop Hogwarts' tallest torrents shake away from their cement shackles and fly away with their slowly crumbling wings, only to fall to the Earth to their much wished-for deaths, just so that they could escape the sound of her agony. This was anguishing so vile that the Dementors from Azkaban began to look outside of their prison home, dreaming to feast off of the disintegrating soul Lily housed.
Severus heard from the other side of the hill. It lifted even the shortest hairs from the back of his neck and evoked painful goose-bumps on his entire body. His downturned lips transformed into a reviling smirk: Severus heard her thoughts, despite the distance and even in spite of the fact that he was not looking in her eyes; he could hear her thoughts loud and clear as they raged through hopeless seas.
"Sev—Severus…you're dead. You're truly dead. To me." There was an empty pause that somehow did nothing to wipe the smirk off of Severus' face. "And I'm dead too. To myself."
This was how it felt to break a heart—to shatter someone so thoroughly that they hardly considered existence as an option anymore. Severus now stood on the other side of the spectrum, a victor—finally the breaker, not the breaking. Then why was it that he felt this vast void taking over his core? This was what he thought Lily felt like when she had split the ties between them—smiling because she was not the one to fall, but tearing up, because she was the one who was left standing. Where was the grandeur of it all, the satisfying thumping in his heart as he walked away the victor of love and war? This was what it felt like to break a heart. This was what it was like to lose a part of your soul for the umpteenth time. It was the most unsatisfyingly hapless emotion he had ever felt.
But instead of walking toward her to apologize, instead of running off into the darkness of the world, he altogether disappeared. He was nowhere to be found, lost in the realms of time and space. A dark shroud lay over him, erasing the land where he once stood, eradicating his foot-prints from the Earth's soil, but never—for it was impossible—eliminating his mark on the world.
He was once more a new man—someone so different and yet so similar to who he had been before that day. Severus was no longer sure if of whom he loved, whom he hated, his goals, his dreams, his hopes, dare he say—he was lost as to what was his supposed purpose in this world. Was it even possible for him to be dubbed Severus, Sev, a friend—a human being? Horcruxes may not have defaced him, acid may not have eroded his appearance, but he was no longer Severus Snape. From that day forward, he walked on, knowing that even if someone were to call him by his name, it would never feel right.
Severus stepped forward, but it was not the same forward as he would have called it before. He walked on always moving physically forward, but emotionally he moved backwards, looking in no direction, but down into the deepest, blackest, coldest hell in the world. When he grew weary, he put down his quill and burned his robes, leaving Hogwarts. It was too damaging to stay in a place where the worst of his history was laid at his feet. He could not face it every day for the rest of his unfortunate life. But this time, unlike the others, no one was at the front gate to stop him from ruining everything.
Dumbledore starred through the window of his office, glassy eyed at the entire event. He no longer knew how to take Severus and Lily. What had he done wrong? In the deepest cavern of his heart, he knew that this was his entire fault, leading the boy on the way he had. Yet what could he have differently? Life's riches were not meant to be poured in to a single being…But life's harshest slaps were not meant to brutalize a single being either. And so the question remained: How could he stop this, and how could he not bring this travesty to a halt?
Had he shown the contents of the tome, perhaps Severus would have stayed, for only a short time, perhaps only enough to make his life even worse. This time, Dumbledore would not mettle—it was his most severe promise.
Clearing his throat, Dumbledore stood and quickly returned the tome to its spot on his bookcase. Maybe for another day it would serve its purpose, but that day was no such day. Dumbledore, for the first time, set out of the castle to complete things on his own. He left unannounced. It was not the first time he had done something so drastic. All the while, he thought of Severus. Fate could have them cross paths one day, but for now there was only one last thing for Dumbledore to say, "Goodbye, my old friend."
A/N: As promised, chapter 40. I apologize for its ambiguity. Up next is a dark, winding road that must be taken. I'm sorry that this took so long to post. My muse had completely left me for a long time. Now it's back, and hopefully I will be posting chapters with some regularity.