"What made you think he'd really stopped supporting Voldemort, Professor?"
"That, Harry, is a matter between Professor Snape and myself."
**
I remember what the boy used to be. I remember when he was a boy.
Not a man, not as he is now. A boy.
I never knew him entirely innocent, but I remember a boy.
I remember a boy, a young man with jet black eyes, no separation
between pupil and iris, merely coal dark under eyelashes of equal intensity that
seemed painted onto ivory skin. I remember the slight sheen of sweat on his
upper lip, the way his mouth stretched into shapes, sometimes words, but always
aimed to please, aimed to mark, aimed to score.
Well-taught, that mouth. Not by me, even though I did receive much
of the benefit.
I remember the boy, remember scenting it, a pale remnant wrapped
deep inside the coiled intensity fostered by his mentor, Voldemort. I remember
that it was buried far beneath layers of ambition, covered by too-pale skin, but
it was there. A shadow of a boy. I remember thinking *danger*, but I also
remember how angry I was.
I remember my hair was red.
Now when the thoughts grow too thick I touch my wand to my head and
withdraw pure silver strands. They were red once, like my thoughts still are.
Masked by silver, but still angry.
It's a different anger these days. In the old times I had anger only
for myself, anger that clouded my vision to show me only a boy playing
off tricks his master had taught him, too angry to see more than the obscenity
of the offer clearly made the first time he came through my door, voice
saying 'Please sir,' and lips shaping something completely different. I was too
angry those days and it seemed to be hot, searing and cleansing. Fire. Pure fire.
So I thought. So I paid.
The phoenix burns too, but its tears are healing. I...
I couldn't. Heal him. When he came to me two years later.
I could only remember what he had been. And pay silently too, along
with him. But never the same debt. Never enough.
I take that thought too and drop it into the Pensieve. Its waters
swirl, growing murkier with a dash of hidden brightness.
**
Hogwarts follows the fine old traditions of mentoring and student
rule. It isn't unusual for prefects to have a hand in choosing their
successors, it isn't even unusual for a Head Boy to spend much time with someone of
his own house, grooming him for future better things. It was almost expected
that Severus Snape would follow in Tom Riddle's footsteps, and this he
did to the extent of becoming a prefect. He was also an excellent student and
perhaps I was lulled by his chosen fascination; potions, and he seemed to
spend all his spare time in the laboratories, concocting, decanting and learning a
delicacy of touch that Dippet raved about.
Sometimes I watch him now, the man grown, see him take a tender
pinch of something dry, sift a gentle pile of dust, add the whole to an
innocuously bubbling concoction that becomes something fantastic. And... and...
And I weep. I'm grown old now, so I weep. Times were the sight of
his fingers plucking restlessly drove me to distraction.
I'm grown old now and we walk side by side as we used to, years ago,
when none questioned the sight of Professor and student striding around the
walls together. But then it was our bodies restrained under terrible
misery, prevented from leaning towards each other as we walked, backs ramrod
straight, hands not permitted to touch in passing. The boy because he thought
he was keeping our secret. I because.
I couldn't bear to touch him.
Because I knew what he was. What he was sent here for, and by whom.
And I laughed because his seduction of me was bound to fail and .
And I was angriest because the I hadn't foreseen the lad of nervous
intensity and deep love for the intricacy of potent mixtures would become
Voldemort's catamite. I hadn't foreseen it. I hadn't prevented it.
So when he fell to his knees before me I didn't stop him. Not even
when his hands reached up to me and showed me the delicate butterfly touch
that handled skeleton leaves and mandrake skin with equal desire. Easy enough for
his young hand to simulate passion for me. So I thought. So I knew.
I was younger then. And when I take the thought from my mind and put
it into the Pensieve, it grows glitter-red in the light thrown from my
phoenix's tail.
Phoenix tears heal. I didn't have Fawkes when Severus came back to
me two years after. A man. Broken. But a man.
At least...
At least I remember now. At least I didn't laugh then.
**
Those memories are fractured at best. Most swirl in darkness inside
an almost bottomless well. I remember I looked through them at some point of
sanity, the time when my hair grew so white I no longer was ashamed of the color.
But I remember the boy. No, the *man* who lay on his side, gasping
through tortured ribs and sweat-tangled hair, whose eyes, snake-black as
ever, were hollow. For the first time empty of the lust I'd grown used to
seeing in them.
We had no Potions Master then, no adept Healer either. I did my
best. We were at war.
"No more," he whispered, when I tried to raise him up, to give him a
drink of water, to feed him. "No." I thought he wanted to die.
I was wrong.
"Tom," he called out once, a lost boy and when I went to him he
pushed me away. I tried to hold him down and found I was gazing into sanity-crazed
eyes.
"No more," he said to me. "No more Tom."
I remember understanding. I remember weeping.
There was a time when I believed love belonged to Gryffindor, that
Slytherin's folk were incapable of anything but selfish ambition. I have since.
Grown very old.
**
He lets his hair grow, careless and tangled, sweat-choked and
greasy. It hurts him, I think, to touch or brush or even seem to cherish an
instrument used in his degradation. Sometimes I wonder if there isn't more to it than
that, but I have too many thoughts. I have to drain away the absolutely
unnecessary so as to keep space for the essential. Harsh truth, that in times of war
there is no time to ponder the death of a boy or the desolation of the man he
became. No time for wrath at the savage idiocy of Voldemort's crime against a
boy who loved him. A boy whose only crime was to have failed.
In seducing. Me.
There is supposed to be some great satisfaction in knowing that one
has sided with virtue. I have never achieved it. Sometimes my hands itch to
take a brush to that hair and I sit on them. Use them to peel sweets. I eat a lot
of sweets. They prevent me from thinking of other things.
Lost.
When all else fails I take my thoughts and put them in the Pensieve.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes.
Other times I remember.
**
I remember...
A boy. With jet-black hair and open eyes asking earnestly as if this
is the only question in the world he needs answered. "What made you think
he'd really stopped supporting Voldemort, Professor?"
(We stopped having it off. He stopped washing his hair.)
(And I lost him. Before. I even got to know him.)
Those words won't do. Even as I notice his hair covering the jagged
scar on his forehead and remember the phoenix feather in his wand. Even then I
tell him, "That, Harry, is a matter between Professor Snape and myself."
Later that evening, in the great hall, I see them looking at each
other. Severus looks away as though his eyes just flickered over once, but
Harry keeps it up. Intent.
I see Severus. Look back at him. Until the boy flushes and turns
away, leaving the man - who turns back to his food, with a shuttered glance in my
direction.
I observe all this and my hands creep into hidden pockets looking
for sweets. I find my thoughts are too much for even the Pensieve.
Title: Pensieve.
Author: Spyke (spyke_raven@y...)
Rating: R
Warnings: Everything nasty is hinted at. First person POV. Lots of pairings, all of which are also hinted at.
First story in this fandom, which I suspect should be the biggest warning..
Disclaimer: None of the characters are my property, nor do I make any money out of this.
Summary: The function of the Pensieve is to clear your mind. Dumbledore uses it.
Spoilers: Up to and including 'Goblet of Fire'
Category: Angst, definitely.
