Idyllic

Idyllic

It wasn't as if she hadn't known.

It wasn't as if she couldn't foresee it, it wasn't as if she could stop it, though, however much she wished she could. The world spun like a merry-go-round, faster and faster until she was slung off. Instant history, instant death. Perhaps only death for him, but for her. . . to live without him? To not be with him, like they had been together every day since what had it been... second year at Hogwarts? That would be a complete loss of control... she needed control... if she had it. Did she have it?

Sometimes even in her old - she chortled at this to be true, she called herself "old" at only thirty-seven - but yet, sometimes even in her "old" mind she felt as if she had lost control somewhere. Or, more accurately, as if she had never had control to begin with. What in her life had she decided? Had she decided to make her best friend into her love interest? Her husband? Had she decided to love Dark Magic? Had she decided anything at all? To be beaten? To be drunk just to force everything out of her mind? To cut herself with razors when she was young? "Innocent cuts" she had called them then, merely slips of the hand, only that and nothing more. Or had it been a "control mechanism" as a Muggle psychiatrist might say? Had the ability to cause pain to herself been the only thing that she had ever controlled in her life?

But perhaps she had never wanted control, she rationalized, perhaps letting him be the one in command was better than her not only because he knew what was best for her but she had always managed to screw herself over with her decisions... somehow. And he had always been the calm one. Even in everything that surrounded them: all the chaos, all the lies. And he tried to protect her from it, but she always knew, always knew the lies, always knew the pain, always knew the hurt, even hiding behind him, even crying with his cloak over her shoulder.

She'd always known that people tell people like to tell you lots of lies. The first one they tell you is that you will always be safe. Bull. The first thing that she'd learned in life was that you would never be safe, there would always be snags, there would always be hidden catches. And it amazed her that someone else knew that things were that way too.

She had always assumed that things would somehow smooth themselves out someway or another, perhaps the only difference between the two of them. He called her naïve for her belief.

She was fourteen and in a Muggle bar.

She was fourteen with a beer in her hand, with it stinging down her throat.

She was fourteen and she was on a bed.

She was fourteen and she hurt, hurt, hurt.

She was fourteen and he was staring at her.

She was fourteen and she was alone.

She was fourteen and she was afraid.

She was fourteen and somehow she didn't feel fourteen anymore.

The letter had come by owl. Her mother hated birds; her father hated them as well: consequently, the owl's flight to her was only one-way.

Hogwarts. The name and place were so intriguing, so incredible and incredulous. Her father had thrown it in the trash before she'd read all of it.

Junk mail, he'd said.

She was afraid and her throat was so dry from the liquor.

She was afraid and she couldn't move for some reason.

She was afraid and she heard something in the room move.

She was afraid but suddenly wasn't when she saw who it was.

She couldn't speak, so much pain filled her.

If she could, she could only think of one thing to call out: Severus.

She'd thought it would be different there, somehow, in her naïve way. She thought perhaps people would be more accepting of strange people.

She was wrong.

She still hated those names: James, and Sirius, and the little cronies Peter and Remus.

It hadn't been that bad her first few years, no, it had almost been better, she had almost loved Hogwarts, almost been tempted to call it "home", if for her there was such a place.

Of course, she got teased, she got teased everywhere she went.

Which was why they stuck together, of course, the two of them, if he often snorted and called her a stalker.

She always laughed when he said that, and he would always ask her what the hell she thought she was.

And the answer, up 'til her fourth year, had always come so easily.

Your confidant.

She was his confidant and yet she blushed every time he got close to her.

She was his confidant and yet they spent nights together that she wouldn't give back for anyone, nights where his lips curled into an almost-smile, not a sneer.

She was his confidant and she was the only one who could get him to almost-smile.

She was his confidant and the only one who he ever complained about "Them" - Potter, Black, Pettigrew, Lupin, damn them all - to. He never complained to anyone but her.

She was his confidant and she was the only one he ever talked about what he would like to do to Them.

She was his confidant and the only one he ever talked about the Dark Arts with.

She was his confidant and the only one he ever practiced the Dark Arts with.

She was his confidant and the only one he ever helped with homework.

She was his confidant and the only one to whom he would admit he needed help in Charms and Transfiguration.

She was his confidant and the only student he would take homework lessons from.

She was his confidant and the only one who during those homework lessons he ever kissed.

She was his confidant and she was sure she was the only one he'd ever wanted to kiss.

She remembered saying that, remembered as she was on that bed, so drunk and so hurting, feeling so angry at him for seeing like this: naked, exposed, and worst of all, weak. She wanted to know what right he had to see her like this. She wanted to know why he was there. She wanted to know why he had the right to stare at her with that stupid, horrible look...

Pity.

Pity was the one thing she hated.

Pity was the only thing that made her heart thump with anger, with the need to hurt.

Pity - what right did they have to pity her?
Pity, pity, pity.

Pity they were all so stupid they couldn't see that they shouldn't pity her.

Pity her? Oh no, she pitied them, pitied the fact they were stupid and ignorant, pitied the fact they would never know just how refreshingly forbidden the dark tasted when compared to the obnoxiously ever-present light.

She never looked at him with pity. More with awe, more with "how do you do that?"

He never looked at her like that. She'd forgiven him long ago for it, for not being able to ask for help even when his rabbit-supposed-to-be-stone-statuette was still hopping around on the table.

His thanks was always silent, always just the sheer importance that she was the only one he didn't snap at when she offered her help.

A greasy-haired little git, Black and Potter called him.

Black and Potter never called her names until third year.

She was thirteen and blushing, blushing so hot her cheeks burned.

She was thirteen and talking to Severus, trying not to rush to Sirius's defense when Severus cursed him.

She was thirteen and Black had asked her to go with him to Hogsmeade.

She was thirteen and her best-friend-who-called-her-a-stalker didn't speak to her for three weeks.

She was thirteen and when she tried to talk to him, he gave her the same look he gave everyone else and asked why she didn't just go sit in Black's lap.

She was thirteen and she became the most unpopular girl at school when she stood Sirius up for a study session (more like a pleading session) to get her best friend back.

She was thirteen and Sirius began calling her Snape's whore.

She was thirteen and suddenly Sirius Black didn't seem so marvelous any more.

Had drinking that been when she started? What had been her first real taste of alcohol? Had it been that white wine at such-and-such's wedding?

Severus knew her better than anyone. He knew her so well he believed she could be summed up in one sentence.

"She always has to have an addiction."

Alcohol, cutting ... the Dark Arts.

All embedded in her mind, the fact she had abused the alcohol, had tried excusing her scars by saying they were like tattoos. The way she loved the darker parts of magic that wove itself around her soul and squeezed her so tightly.

She was sixteen and Lily Evans caught her in the bathroom, in the last stall.

She was sixteen and Lily was calling McGonagall.

She was sixteen and her sleeves where rolled up.

She was sixteen and James and Sirius were laughing at her, calling her a psychopath.

She was sixteen and she stuck her first two fingers up at them, a crude form of communication they'd hopefully understand.

She was sixteen and Severus was staring at her arms.

She was sixteen and Madam Pomfrey stared at them too, before healing them. Before healing all but one.

She was sixteen and she only kept one scar where she had cut herself, where she had written in her skin and bore her soul.

Even now, at thirty-seven, she could pull her sleeve up and see the faded scar.

A small heart with three letters in it.

S E V.

It had been seventh year when Severus and she had found themselves enchanted by Defense Against the Dark Arts. At that time the... education... of Defense Against the Dark Arts was rather limited. So limited that to learn more about Defense Against the Dark Arts, you learned about the Dark Arts.

It was intriguing, like the forbidden fruits of Adam and Eve that's taste lingered on their tongues hours after the spells had been performed and perfected ... the sweet taste of getting a head over the teachers ... of revenge, like water almost: washing away the bitter memoirs of being hexed and jinxed by Them. It was, however, a taste that turned so suddenly sour when someone saw them, when they realized that the price to pay for such a sweet dish was not one that would be easily paid.

She was seventeen and Severus walked beside her.

She was seventeen and their hands were tied behind their backs.

She was seventeen and she had never seen the Headmaster look so severe.

She was seventeen and crying out in protest.

She was seventeen and begging.

She was seventeen and Severus had just saved her hide, again.

Again.

She was seventeen and he had agreed to be a spy for Dumbledore.

She was seventeen and her best friend - her boyfriend, her confidant, her brother, her father, her something-she-couldn't-quite name - was going to become a Death Eater.

She could remember Severus coming home from Christmas break that year. He lifted up his sleeve and it had been there, so faint, so almost not there she had wanted to believe it wasn't there for just a moment...

But she couldn't. She cried. She cried her signature, hiccupping cries that so annoyed Severus, the ones that bubbled up from her throat, the ones that made her ashamed to be herself. She screamed her signature screams of injustice. She kissed him, like he'd kissed her a few times before, always so shy, always so tentative, so ready to be rejected. Curling up next to him, she cried and promised him she'd make it up somehow. Somehow or someway.

She had made it up somehow or someway.

She had become his wife.

She had stood beside him even when he did stupid things.

She had been confused with him -even when he wouldn't say it-- like when James and Lily died: such a tragedy, surely, but James had been a prat... did prats deserve to live? Did prats deserve to die?

She had been there for him the way his very arms were, his second eyes, his second body.

She had found a house for them.

She had bore him a child.

She had remained his best (and, to be truthful, only) friend, stalker, and confidant throughout the years.

And she was always confused about where the borders of "friendship" and "love" had been crossed and if there really was a border. If they really were lovers--maybe they were just best friends who got married. It felt like that sometimes.

It was a Thursday, Rebekah Pe-Poole remembered as much because she had double Transfiguration with the Slytherins. While most of them reminded her of vaguely moving rocks that seemed to only have one notable attribute (pure blood); or the ones that reminded her of street urchins with shiny glints to their eyes, easily sighting anything that glinted (she kept her money of all sorts - wizard or Muggle - in a pocket inside her robes); and still yet others seemed to have the same greedy shine to their eyes, they dressed like the masters and mistresses of future estates they were. Most of the Slytherins fell in to one of these three categories, but still others were oddly misplaced in each.

Like Snape, for example.

Grimy though the twelve-year-old second year was, there was something that Rebekah identified with in his untrusting mannerisms and sarcasm. It was vaguely familiar, a more unpleasant version of herself, the sarcasm, the wit, the way he didn't seem to really be a part of anything, more of someone included only for intelligence or "just for the hell of it". He didn't really seem to fit with the other Slytherin boys who all seemed to swarm around the weak, poking and prodding their preys' egos by pointing out how stupid or ugly or foul-blooded they were. Snape normally just stood on the sidelines, watching and glaring at nothing in particular, his eyes normally filled with some sort of thought - perhaps his next class. Or maybe she was just really too nosy and needed to mind her own business, but it seemed to her that Severus Snape needed a friend. And a helping hand, by the looks of whatever-it-was he was trying to Transfigure.

She was sitting with Millicent Drockenmire who was gazing longingly out into the hall, hopelessly in love with a seventh-year named Carlton Bulstrode. Everyone told her it was hopeless - five years apart - but Millie, as Rebekah teasingly called her fellow Ravenclaw, never gave up.

Rebekah had always thought of her most people-alluring quality to be her intelligence and aptitude at almost anything. She was smart, bordering upon brilliant (in her mind), and not all that bad looking. Never mind she had an ego that bordered upon elephantine, she could be quite annoying if asked her opinion on something she felt strongly about. She had no physical abilities whatsoever, including broom flying and what-have-you. Not mentioning her extremely large, extremely annoying vocabulary of which seemed almost alien to most twelve-year-olds, as well as her intense love of sarcasm. All these vaguely not particularly unpleasant if perhaps displeasing qualities aside, she was a fairly decent sort of human being, which compelled her to get to know Snape. Just because, you never knew, he might not be a horrible, evil git like James and Sirius made him out to be. Hell, stranger things had happened.

She wondered what the lesson had been on. It wasn't as if she was expected to pay attention when she was done, was she? Oh. By the look of slight annoyance upon McGonagall's face perhaps she was. Damn. People needed to tell her these things before they let her drift off into space.

But looking around the room, with celery sticks and candles in various states of green vegetation and household ornament, she was guessing that they were supposed to be turning a celery stick into a candle. Or something.

Yes, she picked up the candle lying on her desk, and sniffed it. There was a slight perfume of vanilla hanging around it.

"Millie?"

"Oh?" the head of the other Ravenclaw looked up at her. Before Rebekah could ask her question, Millie started a line of them. "Do you think I should name my daughter Millicent? ...Millicent Bulstrode, a nice name. But wouldn't that be a little conceited of me? Or do you think I should name her Ella? I've always been fond of the name Eleanor."

Rebekah massaged her temples. "Or perhaps Georgina? Or maybe Henrietta - but wouldn't she get teased?" Millie paused. "You aren't really listening are you?"

Rebekah shook her head.

Millicent snorted. "Well, get on with it, what'd you want to ask me?"

"Do you think..." she whispered, now, "do you think Snape's really as horrid as James makes him out to be? I mean, he's never done any worse than just kind of glare at me when I accidentally walk in front of him or something... and hell, that seventh-year Slytherin you're always ogling over hexed me for Pete's sake..."

Millie let out a gasp: "Carlton would never do something like that!"

Millie was positively no help at all once she got started at how wondrous her Carlton was.

So she turned her attention to her newest ah... soon-to-be friend. Or as some people who knew her would say, victim.

Snape kept flicking his wand at a rather green, rather veggie-looking candle. It had a wick but it was made at the leaves at the end of the stalk. Poor fellow, right good it was that Rebekah existed to help people in need.

She prodded him in the back. "You need to give your wand more of a swoop then a bit of a swish after you say the spell. You're flicking it."

He promptly glared at her. "I can do it on my own, Pe-Poole."

Which shut her up for a few moments, before she noticed he was trying her advice but wasn't doing it quite right. "Snape..." she sighed, "Your swish is just too long... make it quick, but flowing." She took his hand. "Like this."

Rebekah entwined her fingers around his, and moved his arm with hers, "First swoop," she demonstrated such, "then swish." She let go of his hand. "Exactly like that." She smiled benevolently at him. He glared maliciously. Same reaction she'd gotten out of Sirius when she'd tried to help him with his Charms homework. People were so ungrateful these days.

He did, however, follow her instructions. And a sort of faded yellow candle was in place of the leafy green veggie. She picked it up and sniffed it. "Eucalyptus, very nice, mine's vanilla."

Snape growled and grabbed it from her, placing it in front of him. She looked at him oddly.

"Did you ever notice most of the things you do start with a G? Grab, grunt, growl..."

"Did you ever notice most of the Ravenclaws are only a site less annoying that the Gryffindors?"

Severus Snape was not one of those people who idolized about love. He didn't believe in fairy-tale satin velvet silk feelings and skin like some mixture of cream and milk as pale as a crescent moon hanging upon a velvet sky; he did not believe in full, red lips clumsy and innocent but endearing; or caressing hands like little sparrows, fluttering and flying, under your robes; or soft tinkling-bell laughter; or hair falling in your face like a beautiful curtain made from the most beautiful creature of all.

But to say that he didn't think about it, didn't dream about it, was another thing entirely. Just because you don't believe in something is no reason to give up dreams.

Perhaps he had known from the moment he caught the merest, oddest glimpse of her, she was trying to calm a small baby with paint all over its face, she was patting it on the back and cooing, motherly and yet there was a distance to her: she didn't want to be doing it. A woman beside her was talking rabidly to a man, with a little more of her chest revealed than necessary. The woman had sleek black hair, not unlike his own when he had the time to wash it, and the man looked so very business-like prim and proper and the woman just seemed to radiate, well, sex.

He watched her, he couldn't take his eye off the girl for some reason. She wasn't as pretty as some girls he had seen, but he identified with something about her scrunched up face as she told her mother that the baby - Johnny? - needed a diaper change. The mother didn't seem to care and he was daring, he touched the girl's arm and said, in a rather cruel voice, if she didn't hurry up soon the train would leave her behind.

As if she hadn't mattered. But she did.

And she had sat the baby down on the concrete, giving a worried look up to the woman, and hurried behind him. She'd had dark brown hair, almost black, that swayed in a rhythm almost, flowing like a serpent, curling up beside her when she sat down. As she moved, she made music like perfect rainbow raindrops drip-dropping down their way from heaven to earth, like icicle demons with white hair clawing their way up to earth, like little lost kittens meowing in the wind, like lost souls howling to the earth.

She had three holes in her ears, each filled with a large, silver hoop, getting progressively smaller as they moved up her ear, and chiming as she walked. Magic. At eleven, he hadn't known what she was, she was fantastically new, something he couldn't define and he watched her out of the corner of his eye every day from then on.

He tried not to look too interested when she spoke; he tried not to act too happy when she offered help. But as she walked away, huffy with anger and pride that he had poked with a needle and deflated if only for a moment, as she walked away he could still hear those ice demons scratching to the surface, still hear the lost kittens' meows. He could still hear her music and he could still hear her silent cry for help.

It was a Sunday. Rebekah knew because she had a Charms essay due the next Monday and she hadn't even started it. It was on the disappearing charm or something like that. "Like that" meaning "something so incredibly boring that only the most mundane and study-oriented people would ever even think about doing it before the night of the day it was due."

She always sat at the round table in the library, she was always impressed by the shiny gloss it had that sparkled even on the dimmest day. Unloading her books, quill, inkbottle, and parchment, she sat down to work.

Snape was sitting at the table across from her, his body bent over the parchment. His sheer determination, the quill flowing in angry motions, scribbles that were close to unreadable flying across the page, the way his hand almost pulled the parchment apart, as he held it in place - it would have been artistic and enjoyable except that he was growling like a dog that had just had its tail pulled.

She poked him in the back with her quill. "You really should learn some other G verbs, there are lots of them you know," she said, cheerfully. "There's giggle and grin and gasp--you see, what you're doing right now is called a 'glare' but you do that quite often."

"Pe-Poole, I don't need to be told when I'm glaring."

"Oh, but Severus, really, there are so many other G verbs! Let's take 'gander' - it means to stare. You don't stare enough, it just isn't human - there must be something that amazes you here! Look at all these books - you could take a gander at them or what about the perfection of this parchment in its imperfection? Isn't it beautiful the way the inkblots and the way the letters flow together? Or--"

"Pe-Poole! I know what the bloody word 'gander' means!"

"Well, yes, I was only saying you should practice it more often."

"Shove your suggests and sod off, if you'd be so kind."

Rebekah Pe-Poole had always loved words. She loved the way her tongue formed then and the way each word, when used correctly, had it's own precise rhythm and taste to it. She loved the word "peckish" and the word "inebriated." Odd words to love, but they flew off her tongue in a mixture of spit and joy.

Rebekah's first word had been "magic." The irony of the situation was not lost on her years later when her mother told her the story. When she was small, she would write until her little fingers cramped, until her script was perfection, until someone would look at that and say: "A seven-year-old wrote those letters?" with absolute disbelief. At ten she discovered pens. She had always known what pens were but she had never really written with one before and paid attention. When she wrote on a napkin with the pen, the ink bled like the words would be there forever and ever and after that even, and she took to writing everything down on napkins with a pen because it just seemed more permanent somehow.

And as Rebekah got older, she began to love books. She began to read and read and read until dawn and her mother would come in, groggy-eyed at three in the morning and tell her to turn the bloody lights off.

Later in life, Rebekah knew that she did not love writing for just the simple joy of writing or reading for just the simple love of reading - no, to Rebekah things could never be as simple as that. Writing was loved because it had a permanence to it that didn't come with spoken words, a permanence by the pen that was certain and scary. Spoken words were chosen in a hurry, jumbled together and put out in the open without proper thought. Written words were handpicked and unique, each adding a flavor to the sentence that hadn't been there before.

And reading... Rebekah had loved reading for knowing. Knowing was important because if you didn't know then you would be left in the dark. No one ever told Rebekah things. The teachers didn't understand that she didn't care about how to write impeccably because she had been doing that since a very young age - they didn't understand she already knew about colonies and she already knew about dinosaurs. They didn't understand that she had things she had always wanted to know about. And reading gave her that information: that knowledge.

The first thing Rebekah realized once she became hungry for knowledge was that people classified knowledge in the most idiotic way. They said something was "dangerous" or "safe" and by that they said who could learn it and why. Rebekah could remember being small and pulling out the third drawer that Mum had told her never, ever, ever, ever to look in. Lacy knickers and bras flew the floor, and Rebekah could remember her mother coming in, mad as hell. Mum's red hair was frizzier than usual and messy, as her mouth opened wide and all Rebekah could remember were two words: lingerie and sex because of the rage in which they were spat. Rebekah began collecting those words, like sex, words that could be hurled like rocks at people. These were words that had the potential to change and shape and build something. Soon there were other words to that list like hate and evil, eventually she discovered all the curses and wrote them all down on neat little index cards, trying to keep everything in order. All her weapons to sling at her whim. Slut, tramp, bitch, bastard, dick, whore. She ran them through her head a few times each day, feeling the power that lay within them: The power to change, the power to shape - the power to hurt.

"The Dark Arts are the most potential weapon and I'm here to help you combat them." Professor Warwick, the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, was a beefy, reddish man with a graying brown beard and a balding head. Rebekah hang on to those words, when class got too dull, and during her first year she just wondered what kind of horrors lay within The Dark Arts.

If not for the Dark Arts her friendship with Severus might never have blossomed.

"I don't get what's so horrible about the effing Dark Arts," she snapped one day, doing her homework (an essay on the history of Aurors) for Defense Against the Dark Arts.

Severus rarely talked to her those few times, except to tell her she was babbling or to move her head so he could see better. But now, he answered with such passion that she was almost afraid.

"The Dark Arts can make your worst fear come alive!" He had said, nearly rising out of his chair. "They can obey the whim and will of their commander--" He carried on but she was unimpressed.

That was all it started out as: a show. To let her see just what the Dark Arts were capable of, that was all it was in the beginning. But then there were more and more spells and the feeling of the dark energy, the black magic, pulsing through your hands was just as addictive as caffeine.

This was what made Severus and herself special. They were intertwined in a way that no one else she knew was, their faults the same, their downfalls the same, their shared beliefs and shared likes and distrusting attitudes. She couldn't think of anything without thinking of Severus somehow. And the Dark Arts, just as deadly as something the Muggles shot into their veins, pressed them together tighter. By their shared defeat of morality, they were bound together.

As Rebekah walked down the halls of Hogwarts she thought of how ironic it was that she was teaching the very class that had started her last addiction.