Author's Note:
Written For The Potter Complex Competition
Prompt: Include Snape, but not Lily (this prompt was quite difficult)
Other Prompts Used: Back then — Loss
Time: This story takes place during the summer, days after Severus's graduation from Hogwarts.
Warning: Swearing, mentions of death, loss, drug addiction, Death Eaters, Severus being out of character?
She was gone. Though this time, she was gone forever. She wasn't coming back from the other side of the thin line, covered by a veil that kept those with a soul and those without one apart.
There was a burning, prickling feeling in the inner corner of his eyes. Lonely tears began rolling down Severus's face, blurring his vision. He was crying for some unfathomable reason.
Though Eileen was his mother, she had always been gone. Ever since her addiction to pills began when he was six years old, she was unable to recognize her own son. Her mind was always hazy and she was oblivious to her surroundings, including the beatings Severus suffered under his father's hand.
If she didn't take those pills, she would become aggressive and cold. Every voice was a mere sound to her, while every pill was a hooking, alluring call she followed blindly, without hesitation. Soon, she was absorbed by it, taken away and covered by mist that matched her vacuous eyes, empty of emotion and full of nothingness.
She had been gone for a long time. Longer than Severus could remember. He had very few memories of the days where she wasn't a fragile leaf swayed away so easily by the breeze.
Sometimes, he even had the temptation to reach his hand amidst the mist and join her in the fog, but he never did. Sometimes, he regretted it.
All he could do was blame that fucking dead old man for shattering his mother, causing her to become a drug addict. Because of him and his intense hatred for magic, nothing was the same as it was back then.
His mother was no longer the determined, quick-witted, observant witch she was back then, nor was she the clever, ambitious person she was before. Back then, she used to tell Severus magical stories and myths about Hogwarts. Back then, she used to teach him how to brew potions. Back then, she was a Slytherin he admired. Back then, he was her son and she was his mother. They were family back then, before that man ruined it all.
He missed how it was, before her addiction grew and slowly took her spirit and her soul far away… before everything crumbled and tumbled downhill. All that was left now were ruins. Ruins, faded memories of how everything was back then, and white chrysanthemums beside her grave.
Severus scarcely remembered his mother's smile, her mirth or her love. They were tiny, blurry moments scattered and shattered in his mind, left to rot and fade away like these flowers.
Infact, when was the final time she spent a few hours with him? When was the last time she'd ever acknowledged his presence? When was the last time he held a proper conversation with her?
He, himself, could not recall. Perhaps it was because some memories, despite their importance, were best left locked away, undusted and forgotten until they faded, leaving hollow, empty places. Back then, Severus never understood why there were things best left unanswered, as his mother used to say when she refused to explain something. Some things were best left boxed up because one would be better off without dark truths.
When somebody in the neighborhood died when he was five, he asked her if they would be seen again. She told me, "No. They're truly gone, forever." Then Severus had asked her why. She said the same thing she always did.
Once he understood the concept of death, he asked her if someone could be gone before their death. She replied in the positive, but once again, refused to say why, repeating the same phrase. Back then Severus yearned for an answer.
Another time, at the age of six, when he found a bottle of pills in the kitchen, he asked his mother what it was, but she quietly, nimbly said the same answer. That some things were better left unanswered.
Nobody even told him how his mother died. Did she die because her addiction to pills and drugs caught up to her? Suicide, maybe? Or perhaps she died because of an illness? …Perhaps it was best to leave this unanswered too.
At this point, Severus himself did not know how he felt, only that there was a sinking feeling of heavy, dark, empty hollowness. His muscles felt numb and sore, as if they ran out of energy that had never been used in the first place. There was an aimless breeze running around his mind and uncontrolled tears forming in his eyes.
His mother's death had been another abrupt addition to all of his unsolved problems, as these days, everything he loved suddenly meant nothing to him. Really, the only thing he had left were the Death Eaters — the people he belonged with — and his reach for power.
He didn't regret taking the mark, late in his sixth year. It was something that made him feel powerful, that erased the hollow emptiness he was constantly feeling, even if it was only temporarily. It was a distraction — a way to cope and deal with the loss of friendships and others in his life, like his mother's addiction to pills was to her.
There was no sunlight around him as the sun had set long ago and the sky was dark and cloudy, void of any stars and empty of the moon and its light, matching what Severus was feeling. He had been here for hours…as if his thoughts would bring his mother back from the dead. It was another thing he was forced to get used to. Severus wiped his tears away with his sleeve and disapparated, leaving behind him only the flowers on his mother's grave.