Swan

Swan

Ancient peoples believed that the stars were gods. Severus has read of such beliefs before, which is why he doesn't look to the past for answers. The past is riddled in falsities, confusions and corruption. What can be trusted is purely analytical and must be recognized as theoretical. Magic is the only thing he trusts. It's mainly composed of mathematical equations and nitrogenous bases. It has nothing to do with the pounding of your heart, despite what dreamy poets say.

Severus was always a quiet boy. His mother, a typical socialite, made it clear to him at a young age that he was socially awkward, and that it embarrassed her greatly. Severus never wanted to horrify her, really he didn't. He found that the abandoned rooms on the third floor were a good place to roam while she was entertaining guests. Sometimes, when he felt rebellious, he took a walk on the grounds and veered dangerously close to the windows, just threatening one of the politician's wives to inquire what a little boy was doing in their yard in the middle of January without a coat on. But no one ever saw him.

One night, when he was a complicated nine-year-old, he was walking back up the pathway to his house when something large and white caught his eye. An animal, he thought. It was right beside the small pond (the large one being several meters south). As he approached it, he was frightened by the eerie creature's sloping neck and feathers that stood up at odd angles. It was a swan.

It was, without a doubt, dead. It was very unfair, he thought, that something so captivating couldn't even understand the way it enraptured and was now too dead to ever learn.

Severus stood there, held by this lifeless thing that could still glow with unsettling animation in the blue night. It was the first dead thing he ever saw. That is if you believe in death, because death is not an equation, it is an end wrapped in many, many myths. Like all things caught up in myth, he blanched at first sight and then couldn't keep his eyes off it. It intrigued him. He picked it up, as gently as one would hold a sleeping child. The neck was folded under its body and hidden in his cloak. The house was dark and basically empty. With a nearly invisible presence, he ascended to his room. That night, in the tub of the bathroom adjacent to his bedroom, by light of a candelabrum, he saw the inside of a body. He used scissors and tweezers for children too young to use magic, but mostly he used his own hands. In the morning, he learned what decomposition was. He bagged the remains and dropped them in the lake, but the big one because no one ever went out that far. His mother punished him because he smelled.

When Severus was eleven, he met a loud brazen boy on the train to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He was torn between the aggravation of company and the flattery that someone was approaching him first. The boy whose ego was taking up most of the car, identified himself as "Lucius Malfoy...My father is Caesar Malfoy, obviously." Severus didn't mind him. His prestigious lineage would make his mother proud. He didn't even mind when a brooding boy named Sirius and his sister Bellatrix came in to join them. And he was even entertained their older sister Narcissa sauntered in to discuss dresses with 'Little Bella'.

Most children loved the summers. Severus loathed them with a passion he designated to few things. Summers meant politics and politics are capricious and unpredictable. Politics are not like science. Summers were spent pushing his father's papers and pursuing the respect of the newest leaders in the Muggle Resistance Movement. Many years later on, when Voldemort took over and completely ravaged their revolution of meaning, people envisioned some cult nightmare that raped and burned innocence for the pure ecstasy of power. The truth is, before Riddle even met his idealistic side, the MRM was legitimate. They had public meetings and their own purist party that ran for office. So what if they were conservative? The world is more conservative than you think. Yes, there was a dark side, but it was not as ultimate as Riddle made it.

One August night, before Severus' second year, when the moon was deep in symbolism and flirting dangerously with the stars, the MRM raided a mudblood household. The husband heard the small group outside and was ready when they entered. Severus' mother was shot the stomach. And then the back. And then the face. After that, his father took over as much as he could, for being an absentee by nature.

Lucius knew what happened but he never brought up anything that didn't concern himself, and he just wasn't expected to. Narcissa cried on his shoulder and made a terrible scene. She said was ok to grieve for his mother. He said he would grieve for the dress she stained in blood, because that was probably the part of her death that upset her most.

In his third year, a Hufflepuff named Sybill, had an outburst in the library. She started screaming to her housemates that it was true, she had a vision that there would be a riddle that no one could solve and to rid the world of muggles, it would devastate everything. Severus later met Tom Riddle before his face was mangled; before he smelled like he had just spent hours tearing apart a dead swan. Putting the two occasions together, he knew Tom was a myth, and like all things caught up in myth, he blanched at first sight and then couldn't keep his eyes off it. It intrigued him. For a time, he was consumed in ridding Hogwarts of the malignant muggles and mudbloods. He wanted to get rid of the rebels too, like Sirius Black, who cursed his family. He knew the boy was a problem when he was sorted into Gryffindor and even more so when he began to hold hands with that werewolf in the hallways.

On his seventeenth birthday, Narcissa Black approached him. Her flighty demeanor and devastating looks made her the archetype of trophy wife. She hooked her arm around his and requested he escort her to her room. Her prefect's bedroom was spacious and decorated in the theme of bittersweet. He lost his virginity to her that night but never fully understood what she saw in him. He was thin and pale with a Roman nose. His eyes were dark and his mother used to call him socially awkward. James Potter was popular and charismatic and taunted Severus everyday for the grease in his hair and the loveless life he led. It didn't matter much what Narcissa Black felt as her brother had already tarnished their name and forced their father to marry them into the most respectable family he could. The Snape family was not respectable enough. Severus always held that against Sirius.

They were so rebellious, meeting the way they did, right under her fiancé's nose, right next to Lucius Malfoy's bed. When she was leaving Hogwarts at the ending of that year, she told him that he shouldn't come looking for her, that he shouldn't let their attraction retard the goals of the MRM and it's rising star, Tom Riddle. He believed her then because his beliefs were skewed back then and the thought fighting for her seemed like something James Potter would do. They were Slytherine's when it came down to it. They were not Shakespearean tragedies of lovers, broken and disillusioned by war. They were ambitious teenagers who thought they couldn't bleed. They had many things to learn.

In his last year, he fooled around with a tiny quiet girl that had the body of a gymnast. Months later he learned that she was engaged to marry a man twice her age and adopt his surname, Bulstrode. Severus would find years later, as a potions teacher, in a moment of purely dry humor, that the man's genes were obviously the more dominant ones.

Two nights before graduation, stumbling drunk, he ran into Lily Evans. The girl was beautiful and drowning in moonlight and the perfect match for a self-absorbed sports king. She saw him and he walked away, but he should have known she would follow him. She never missed a chance to save him from her boyfriend's taunts or bet that kindness would turn his rotten Slytherin soul. He hated her, but he let her kiss him anyway and slide her hand up his shirt, because maybe she liked Roman noses... 'It could be', he indulged. More likely, she was what Severus had seen her as all along, a girl addicted to controversy and teasing. She also had a penchant for grand exits.

Albus Dumbledore could have been God for all his students knew. He was wise and beyond following even the simplest rudiments of dignity. His power was great. When he explained the world to Severus, Severus didn't know what to say back. Dumbledore (no matter what people say) is not a diplomat. He painted the world in black and white, but somehow, it made sense to the black haired man. He appealed to Severus' hate for politics and people, saying that once this was over, he had freedoms and choices. He could hideaway in his dark mansion by the two lakes and never speak to another person again. Under Voldemort, though, he was subject to others until death. In speech of almost evil outreach, he explained that Severus may be right about muggles tainting the wizarding world, but what was more important: the background of who you were living near? Or how you lived? Shouldn't the individual be safe before the bloodline? Bloodlines, after all, are a piece of politics. They have nothing to do with science...

Severus Snape decided it was time to work for serious matters, not purity and power, which come and go in fleeting moments without any sense of pattern. He became a master of potions which is the most scientific, measurement-based area of magic. It suited him well.

When Severus first laid eyes on Harry Potter, he already knew he was a myth. Like all things caught up in myth, he blanched at first sight and then couldn't keep his eyes off it. He hated the boy, just because of his father's long-gone clique, but that was a good enough reason for him. To add to it, he was a Gryffindor and they are all so happy and simple. They are always at a tender age, which moves them with clean-hearted mischief. If he was disenchanted by age nine, they should be too.

Severus never thought he'd die saving someone, especially a myth. It was like science, throwing itself in its humble equations, to save the glory of hearts and gold. When he knew that was what was to be, he cringed, but he did it. Harry Potter was a beacon of hope emblazoned on the dark casket of a madman. He couldn't die. Severus might even have left leeway in his argument that Potter was destined to win. The latter part wasn't to be true though. In a magical explosion, that only the dreamiest poets could have found earthly similes for, Voldemort and Severus both killed each other. Riddle exploded and Severus' head drooped to the side as his other limbs pointed at odd angles. Dumbledore, even older still, was the first at his side, but all efforts of resuscitation were fruitless.

Albus was also the first to speak at his funeral. It was held at the school since any other acquaintance he knew outside of Hogwarts would not have cared enough to come. The day was cold. The clouds rolling over signaled a night that would be without godly stars.

"Well," Albus concluded, "I would have to say at least that he was my favorite myth, as myths are unpredictable and yet strangely captivating."

(End)