4 drabbles - snape/lily, harry/hermione, hermione, snape & harry

if dreams are like movies, then memories are films about ghosts.
|harry potter; snape/lily; pg.

He sees her, sometimes, when the Order is at Grimmauld Place arguing about whether or not to let the kids in, who to send on the next mission, what dress Fleur should wear. (He knows the last one isn't about the Order, but they always end up discussing something about the wedding at their meetings and frankly, he thinks the other adults should be more professional.)

She places a hand on his shoulder when she notices him scowling at the other members--a gesture that he had seen Molly give Arthur many a time or two.

And so, as she flashes him a toothy grin and tucks a strand of red hair behind her ear that would put any Weasley to shame, he smiles at her, and tries to focus on the sight of her hand on his shoulder, and not the empty feeling that has settled over that limb.







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He sees her, sometimes, when he's pacing Dumbledore's--no, his--office and feels truely sorry for what he's done. He didn't want to kill perhaps the only man who'd shown him kindness every second they were acquainted. He didn't (no matter how insufferable the members could be at times) want to be booted out of the Order.

Him, his place in the Order of the Phoenix, made him feel like at least a part of his life had counted, had mattered for something.

She holds his hand and paces with him, thumbing circles in his palm and murmuring things for only him to hear. He really wants to kiss her; wants to take her in his arms and profess his love for her, profess everything he'd ever felt for her so she could know that he wasn't all bad. Just a little stained, that's all.

But he doesn't. He knows not to overstep his bounderies, because it's happened before. He gets too close, she disappears, and he has to either drown himself in firewhisky or mumble himself into insanity before she returns. And it's a long wait trying to kill yourself with a glass bottle.







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He sees her, sometimes, when he watches Slughorn brew up things he wishes he still could, but his hands grew stiff after feeling a death curse flow through them and he doesn't think he'll ever be able to make potions efficiently ever again. Sometimes, he watches Slughorn, almost as if living through him. He thinks he'd give up Headmaster to be able to brew again. He knows he's give up Headmaster for her.

She comes up and sits by him and he thinks about how she would have been amazing at that stand. Hogwart's Potions Master and Potions Mistress, the two of them. He thinks maybe that could have been, that they could have been--

She squeezes his left arm where she knows the Mark is, and he inwardly cringes, resentful. She doesn't notice, but instead latches onto his arm as he runs a hand through her hair, and for once, she doesn't fade at his contact.

He thinks maybe he's getting through to her, and maybe, all the voices in his head sounding strangly like Molly and Mad-Eye and Remus and Minerva saying he should take a visit to St. Mungos are wrong.







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He sees her the most when he knows he's been sad for too long and has had too many shots of firewhisky. (No, that's not right, because he hasn't picked up a glass all day. He must be drunk on something else, then, he thinks. Something... intangible, he thinks.) He sees her more clearly, more wholly when he thinks it might be his last time.

He smiles. She's here tonight. He can see her clear as day, bright and smiling like she never even left at all and for one sharp, quick moment, he almost believes she hadn't.

It isn't until the serpent strikes and he is back in his right mind that Severus realizes Nagini and Lily look nothing alike.







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That was the last time he ever saw her. He thinks she must have gone to Heaven, then.

That sounds like a lovely place, he thinks, as his skin starts to catch fire.


i'm telling you something your words can't express (i always wanted to be the hero).
|harry potter; harry/hermione; pg-13.

This is the way the world ends:

He never thought the Golden Trio would "break up", for lack of a better word, but the ache in his heart and the ache in his head tells him that they did, and that he's had too much to drink.

He scoffs. Too much to drink. He hasn't even touched any alcohol today.

Has he?

Disgarding the question (either way, he doesn't really care) he needs some, so he goes looking for a place to drown. If he had class he'd drink wine - courage he'd drink vodka - passion he'd drink whiskey, but he doesn't have any of those qualities anymore, or any qualities at all anymore, so he wanders into a muggle bar and collaspes onto a stool, scowling at the countertop and scowling at his life.

He doesn't want to look at himself. He's here and he's suffocating under life, under just life, and he killed a Basilisk and destroyed a Horcrux and defeated Voldemort and he can't win over his own damn life.

He wonders how something so pathetic could take him down. (He doesn't much care for living, these days.)







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Somewhere, buried under thirteen glasses of beer and the sorrow of his youth, his rational mind is telling him that he should probably get the hell out of that bar before things get ugly, but another part (the stronger part) of him doesn't want to. He's made friends with the chair, you see, and she wants to buy him another round.







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This is the way the world ends:

It's four a.m. before he wakes up in the bar, slumped over the chair he thinks he remembers making out with last night. He's got a splitting headache and when he tries to stand up his legs buckle.

I must have had one hell of a night.

He doesn't remember what sent him over the edge. Really, it's not like he enjoys waking up at random drink stands and feeling like crap. Most nights he'll take a Bud Light in his living room, sipping quitely before everything fades away. He likes those moments the most. When things leave slowly, and it doesn't create a scare when they're there one moment and gone the next.

Smart analogy, he chides himself. The only difference is when the alcohol wears off the memories come back, and Hermione and Ron never came back.

He never drank until they left.







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He wants to apparate. But apparating makes him think of magic, because it is magic, and magic makes him think of her, because she's magic, and thinking of her makes him think of him and he's far, far from magic. Really, they both are, but while he's shit-mad at the both of them he's scared, really. He doesn't want to die alone. He doesn't know who would.







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This is the way the world ends:

Stumbling back to his apratment, half-dead and weeping, he fumbles with the key in his hands like a football player with a broken wrist. He's taken to inserting himself into the world in a muggle way. Muggles like football, right?

He doesn't know; doesn't care.

Opening the door and doing his best to shut, lock, deadbolt after he enters and through his hung-over haze, he sighs. Then he almost falls backwards. She's sitting in the middle of his kitchen floor, barefoot, holding a glass of wine. She must have brought it, he muses. The only thing he keeps are beers.

It doesn't look like she has drank anything from the glass, but she instead moves the cup in slow circles, watching the yellowish liquid ripple and scar.

Funny. He always saw her drinking it red.

Shaking his head, he manages out a What are you doing here? and she replies by lifting her head to look at him. There's a black mark from her left eye down to her jawbone, and he gasps at the scratch marks on her right cheek.

You were always the good one, she says, and abruptly downs the liquid. I needed to see you one more time. He hurridly goes to sit beside her, and within a few minutes she limply slumps over onto him.

Maybe a little more than limply.







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He's not scared of dying alone anymore; now, he's bloody terrified.

Not with a bang but a whimper.


books and cleverness only go so far.
|harry potter; hermione; pg.

She's been at this for hours. She swears by Merlin she's looked that book cover to cover at least five times over and still nothing, nothing except a few random doodles and markings.

The doodles meant nothing. Heck, neither did the markings! Maybe if a word was underlined, or something was circled... at the current state she's in, she'd take the entire book in brackets if it meant this blasted book Dumbledore gave her was more than just for show.

Sighing, she kicks back in her chair and runs a hand through her hair. She really should pull it back, because she works better with it back, but the wedding is in an hour and she's already dressed and ready and she does not want to walk into the celebration with this piled high in a rubber band. It'd make it uglier than it already was.

But still, as she sits in the den of the Burrow with the book in her lap, she can't help but feel a sense of foreboding as she watches Molly and all the other adults rummage around to make everything perfect for Bill and Fleur.

She wishes she could get away from the stupid book. She wishes she could put the blasted thing down. She wishes, oh how she wishes, that this feeling inside of her would go away; the feeling like there's something to the book that she's completely missing. And if Hermione Granger is anything, it's a careful researcher.

Wringing her wrists and blinking a couple times, trying to focus her eyes on something other than that 10 font text on aged parchment, she hears a sound come from somewhere upstairs. "Harry! Hermione! Have either of you seen my tie?"

She stifles a chuckle at Ron's sudden outburst, and makes her way to the staircase to lead him through where he last saw it, because she knows the tie's pattern--and there's no way anyone would want to take that thing.

She tucks the book under her arm before she leaves the den, and it feels heavy in her hands.


we're one, but we're not the same (part 1).
|harry potter; snape & harry; pg-13.

None of them ever stayed.

They took what they had and left, memories wafting off their presence like carnival food at a fair. The scents lingered for a couple heartbeats after they were gone, but once the initial shock wore off and your heart started doing unfamiliar things in your chest (like beating faster, breaking slower, pumping colder) the rancid stench of lonliness was back and it hurt worse than anything you could have imagined. Anything you'd wanted to imagine, because you know that deep down it sometimes felt good to hurt.

At least you were feeling something.



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You've been called many things: Snape. Snivellus. Professor. Severus.

Sev.

You remember the childhood nickname and almost scoff. That long ago, huh? You haven't heard that nickname roll off someone's tongue since seventh year, and even the memory of that three leter word makes your heart want to leach onto something higher, something better than yourself.

You had that once. Your parasitic heart attatched to one person, and one person only, who radiated righteousness and was perfection in the most holy sense of the word. No, of course she never acknowledged the leech that was clinging to her skin or spoke of the bloodsucker that gulped up ever ounce of platonic love that she posessed for you, but it was enough then. And you knew that was all it was, you chide. Platonic love, on her part.

(Stop trying to make it something it's not.)

But your low self esteem and emotional breakdowns did nothing to help, as she was there, as she was always there, but you just had too much pride to realize that all along.

You know it could have been you. It could have been you, laughing and chatting animatedly with her, celebrating Christmas and Easter and making airplane noises for a baby with green eyes. Silently, you used to wonder if he'd still have black hair. You thought he probably would, but it'd be a shame for him not to inherite her red locks.

You also thought that of that ever happened you'd wear long sleeve shirts. Always. Because she was worth so much more to you than a scarred-up arm, even if you weren't to realize that until now.

And now, the thoughts you posess are nothing if not morbid, and the macabre images you subject yourself to help to calm the nerves when a bottle of firewhisky isn't enough. The mutilated images of your body bring about a sense of peace that, if only for one night, replaces the forlornness that seems to have settled over your heart.

Broken arm. Slit throat. Chopped up feet. Cut out heart.

Sometimes it hurts to think about. Those are the times you wonder why you never thought like this before.

And when you don't think like that, which basically just hurts the same depending on how much firewhisky you've consumed, you repeat her momento over and over again in your mind, your heart pounding in your chest as your head replays choruses of sev,sev,sev and the thinck Hogshead bottle falls from your hand and crashes into the dusty floor.

You wish you had enough class to drink wine. You think you'd probably drink it red.