Sabrina's Fannish Musings

NaNo update.

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:11:37 GMT

18771 / 50000 words. 38% done!

Well, I am caught up till Wednesday now. I really have got to stop not writing during the week, mostly not because it is so impossible to catch up on weekends, it is doable, but it means that I do nothing else for the entire weekend.

Luckily, it seems that my original problem, which was that I had no idea where to take the middle, seems to have been solved when I jumped forward to write the 'end'. I am now back into the middle section, and it is moving, I keep shaving off chunks of hundreds or thousands and I feeling a bit better about things - it is only 6:00, and I keep giving myself the 'get to this point before I go get tea' method, which is working.

I told R today over lunch that I have no desire to even contemplate how much of this is going to get shaved out in post-editing. And of course I fear the continuity is lacking, but that is something to deal with in editing mode. I do still like this story - I like what it tells and that does help.

Ficlet; Autumn (Severus Snape & Lily Potter, PG, Blurred Lines Canon)

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:26:46 GMT

Title: Autumn.
Author: sabrina
Fandom/Spoilers: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Length: 1575
Summary: 17 September 1980: Severus Snape leaves the past behind him.
Warnings: Character Death.
Author's note/Disclaimer: blurred_lines Canon; For the 25 Flavours Meme: Crying.

They said time healed all wounds but Severus was certain whoever it was that said that lied. Over two weeks after the battle on the grounds of Hogwarts and he was no longer in St Mungo’s, but he was also not healed and there were at least some wounds that time would not heal. His leg had suffered permanent damage the mediwitch had said, and the healer had said that he would be likely to feel mild to severe pain on and off for the rest of his life. Nerve damage, and a million other things that he would likely wish he’d paid better attention to later on. Agatha had been there though – listening intently – and Severus was certain he could trust her to remember.

Today Severus Snape stood on the edge of a children’s park near Manchester. Time did change things that much was certain. One swing drug in the mud under the swing set, the chain had fallen victim to time or bored teenagers which was unclear without closer inspection. The merry-go-round was rusted around the edges. No children played here today – leastwise any of Lily’s calibre.

To Muggle eyes he no doubt made equally strange a figure at twenty as he’d made at eight: a too-skinny man in the place of the too-skinny boy: wizarding robes in place of the crazy smock: his hair still long and somewhat unkempt. But there were changes too. He had just a hint of being cared about now, and to a wizard, he’d have looked perfectly normal. No longer stuck between two worlds Severus Snape had found one corner of the world in which he belonged.

But that finding had come at a cost.

He skirted the edges of the park, sliding between trees that looked as if they had seen better days, between a half a hedgerow, into what had seemed as a boy to be a forest on par with Sherwood. As an adult it held a different feel not nearly so magical after all. The creek was smaller and less sparkling and the trees lower and less ancient -- it was infinitely lonelier. He sat down on the bank with his back against the tree and he closed his eyes as sunlight filtered through onto his face. As a child he’d always felt this place held magic. As a child he’d known that Merlin had once walked there – long before the Muggles had come – and that he’d blessed the place and what ever happened there would be sacred. In a bizarre at the time unrecognised mix of his father’s Muggle religious terminology and the tales of Magical history from his mother, he’d counted this place as special. As an adult, he noticed things that he’d never noticed as a child. How there was a slight odour from the stream that no doubt came from industrial England, or how the ground was damp and soaked through his clothing, and it was cold – so cold.

The truth was that the place held nothing magical. There was no special charm about this location that made it magical – rather just the hint of a memory: a warm summer’s breeze, stunning red hair and a whisper of a breath on his cheek. The warmth was only imagined because there was no warmth left.

Twenty years of his life and the only things he had to show for it were those things he had taken hold of so strongly within the past year and determined he would never let go. Within the last year he had lost everything from his first nineteen years of life. His parents were dead and his childhood home a pile of ashes and Muggle ‘Keep Out’ signs. Memories from Hogwarts held no joy to him now. Two of his closest friends were dead or might as well have been and Lily...

His breath hitched in his throat and he opened his eyes. Lils.

The tears came and Severus wept. The tears on his cheeks were warmer than the sunlight and far warmer than the breeze that came through the leaves hinting at autumn. He had done everything he could think of and it hadn’t been enough. Worst was the voice in his head that if he’d just done something more – something different – she’d still be alive today. It was what if’s and should have done’s that were ten times worse than the actual reality and it was the longing that things had been different that was perhaps most painful.

He would have done anything for her. He would have gone to the moon, fought dragons, the darkest monster you could throw at him – he had fought the darkest monster you could throw at him although Severus wondered if in reality the darkest thing he’d had to fight hadn’t been the Dark Lord, but had been himself. After all he’d been the one to push her away for a dream and a foolish naïveté that he would make the world a better place. That was the dream of his first nineteen years as well. No, there was nothing left of those years. And Lily was a painful reminder that this was all too true. He had lost so much in this past year and no amount of time would heal those wounds any more than they would heal his leg or the scars along his right side.

Time was no greater a magician after all.

Severus raised his head, wiping tears from his eyes that two years ago he would have been embarrassed to admit to – but this year he’d also learned how to cry, which was admittedly something he’d wished he’d never had to learn to do.

The autumn breeze dried his cheeks and Snape stood, turning his back on the magical grove of his childhood. He did not look at the playground as he strode past it, his gait uneven and his teeth gritting against the pain in his right hip. He would have to get used to it, he supposed. He had been steadily weaning himself from pain potions, refusing to become dependent upon something to make his life easier. His life had not been easy thus far and there was no reason why it should suddenly be so now. The war might have ended in name with the Ministry regained and the Death Eaters in prison or dead or on the run, but Severus was uncertain it would ever completely end for him.

Clear of the park he Apparated.

In the end, he had not lost everything had he? Even as he had nothing left from his childhood, he yet had much of what he’d started building the past year. Aberforth Dumbledore was still a friend and a mentor and a better father than Tobias Snape had ever been to Severus. Pepper had lived, despite all his certainty that he would die, and he’d been perhaps a truer friend than Aquila or Demetrius had ever been. There were relationships of mutual respect and perhaps in some cases the beginnings of friendships of a sort with Moody and other various members of the Order and although Severus would regret till the day he died those deaths he had been unable to prevent, the friendships he’d begun to make still stood.

And then Agatha had stuck with him tenaciously, with bravery and determination that had made him admire her in ways he wasn’t yet comfortable telling her, but the feelings were there nonetheless and although he would never have thought it all those months ago when he had stumbled awkwardly through an embarrassing dinner, he’d learned to consider her beautiful in her own right. And she cared and she was loyal to him and those two things alone were enough to make him grateful for her presence in his life, even had he not genuinely learned to enjoy time spent with his wife.

Truth be told, Severus wondered if anything would ever be normal for him. The Inner Circle and perhaps many of the Death Eaters knew that he killed the Dark Lord and while Severus knew that the blame for their lost loved ones should be placed squarely upon Lord Voldemort’s shoulders, it would be too easy for those who knew the truth to blame him and easier still when he would no doubt be asked to confirm identities and events and Severus knew that those things would make both Agatha and him a target for angry and embittered former members of the Cause. Their house would always be unplottable, always strongly warded, and perhaps always off the grid, because if nothing else during the past year Severus Snape had learned to be paranoid. But he would have a family, of sorts, and while it might have been nothing like the family he had imagined as a socially awkward eight year old boy, it was still family wasn’t it then?

The wounds would never truly heal, but while they might change him, they did not define him.

He walked unevenly down the hill towards the house, his eyes on the light in the kitchen: Agatha was waiting for him.

Ficlet: Drunk Severus Snape

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 04:24:30 GMT

Characters: Severus Snape & an Unnamed Witch
Setting: Bezoar’s Bar and Brewery, Invermoriston, Great Glen, Scotland, Early 1979
Rating: PG-13 for sexual situations and one occurrence of the F word
Word Count: 610
Note: For the 25 Flavours Meme: Drunk

“Get out.”

Through bleary eyes Severus watched the witch fumble for her robes, covering herself all the while with the sheet from the bed. She was tall, slender, curvy in all the right places, and full of the right sort of blood. She tripped over the rag rug on the floor, catching herself on the wooden arm of a chair sitting alone near the window. As she did so, she looked back at him, a touch of fear in her eyes.

With a growl of impatience Severus snapped his wand from that table and waved it, her robes, scattered across the room, were suddenly in her hands and she was staring at him wide blue eyes between long tendrils of fiery red hair.

It was wrong, all wrong. She was wrong, and Severus knew she was wrong, and he no longer cared. The woman struggled, sliding her robe up over her body, not taking the time to really dress herself. She skittered, a frightened look over her shoulder, from the room, and Severus slammed the door behind her with his wand. He could hear it lock itself and he rolled onto his side.

His eyes were bleary and his vision blurred, whether by exhaustion, firewhiskey, or tears no longer seemed to matter to him. He sat up too quickly and the room swam in front of him. With a moan of despair he sank his head into his hands, praying that the world would right itself.

The Dark Lord would not be pleased that Severus had sent this witch away. She’d been specially imported, the Dark Lord had sneered. She would do whatever Severus wished, or she would be killed. Severus’ rejection of her was likely tantamount to a Death Sentence. The Dark Lord would see it as her fault, something she had done incorrectly.

It wasn’t fair to her, Severus realized. The only thing she had done was to not be somebody else. A month ago he might have stopped her; kept her around for a bit of time, convinced the Dark Lord that she was precisely what he desired. He would have tolerated her presence easily enough, and when an appropriate amount of time had passed he would have seen that she disappeared, creating a distraction or an excuse designed to keep her alive. Tonight he couldn’t bring himself to care that in the morning the woman he’d just fucked would probably be dead.

He turned his head towards the nightstand and reached for the Daily Prophet. The page was folded down, the meaning of the article as clear as an incantation for an Unforgivable, and as far as Severus was concerned, twice as painful: “Mr and Mrs Emmerson Potter wish to announce the betrothal of their son, James Potter to Lily Evans of Great Ayton”.

The Firewhiskey was a potion like any other. Not designed to inspire love or luck or happiness, it simply masked its drinker’s pain. It wouldn’t erase the poison, but it would make the passing less painful. With a shaky hand, Severus poured himself yet another glass. He drank it slowly, his eyes blurring more with each sip, and he turned back to the bed.

His face buried as it was in his pillow, he could have been mistaken for a much younger boy, dreaming quietly in the night. Only the empty glass of firewhiskey gave way that this was a man whose dreams were broken.