Are You Having Fun?

Are You Still Having Fun?

You are on your own,
You do as you please,
Having so much fun,
Gone and lost your reason.
After all is said and done
Are you still having fun?

The light in your blue eyes unsettles me like very few things can. And it's not because your eyes seem to dance with it, like they danced with laughter and merriment all those years before, when you could upset me with one look just the same. No, it's unsettling exactly because the light has changed. It's strange and it doesn't become you, like an aurora borealis dancing in the stifling Egyptian night, like the shimmer of a lit wand in the damp walls of a stone tunnel where no one should be.

You've gone mad.

I announced it so many times, prophesied it even, like Trelawney calling for the death of a student, loud and boisterous, unaware I was actually telling Fate where to strike. But it's not my fault. There is nothing I could have done to prevent it. At least that's what I tell myself, alone in my dungeon, while I stare at one of my many newspaper clippings with your picture and see your eyes shine in madness.

All because of your arrogance, your pride, your intention to do better than anyone else. Why weren't you Sorted into Slytherin, if all you wanted from life was to shine above others? But maybe I'm just reflecting upon yourself my own defects. You never shone *above* others, but rather *amongst* others. Your friends were essential to you, they still are. Maybe they (the lack of them, more likely) are the cause of the haunted light in your eyes. Not me, no.

How were you to know when you've gone astray,
That happiness would go like a lost emotion?
You have always gone your way,
Are you happy today?

You were so beautiful then, so lively, so full of energy and laughter and joy. It hurt me to see you then, and it hurts me to remember you now. I can still go back to the time when I watched you from behind the fumes of my cauldron, I watched you joke and chat with your friends, pass notes and boycott potions, and I couldn't stop staring, because you were all I wanted to be, all I wanted to have, all I wanted to destroy. If you were not mine, then you wouldn't be anyone else's.

Where is all that now? Twelve years in Azkaban, another three feeding off rats until Dumbledore took pity upon you and graciously thrust you inside the house you had fought for so long to escape. Were really those fifteen years of disgrace what shifted the spectrum of emotions in your eyes? Or am I lying to myself again, and pretending that after that evening when Potter so valiantly saved my life there was not even a trace of darkness in what always had been light?

My hate, my feelings of betrayal, my accusations, my fear, my resentment after The Prank... I hope they didn't affect you at all. And at the same time I wish they did, to show you that you, in some small way, cared about me. Did I put the first trace of that strange light in your eyes? I hope not. There's always the Dark Lord to blame for all the things that have wrong in our lives, and yet I get the feeling that you blame yourself for everything.

Well, you know when you've been defeated,
You don't care and you thank no one;
Feeling low, you will always need it
Are you're having fun?

The joyous light in your eyes has gone, replaced by the empty luminosity of despair. I know you think you shouldn't have survived that Halloween Eve, that it should have been you, and not the Potters, who fell under Voldemort's wand. It's only your hate for Pettigrew what keeps you going. Not even your interest for that Potter brat, whom you have donated to Lupin long ago. All your repressed energy is dedicated to that sole purpose, the death of the man who ruined your life.

You don't know what is it you've done
You don't know that...

Or was it me who ruined your life? So many nights I have stayed awake, wondering if the Shrieking Shack episode put such a strain on your friendship with the rest of that gang of Gryffindors that they were ready to trust Pettigrew more than you. And yet it was you who tricked me there, and it should be you who felt guilty about it. But there is no guilt in your eyes when you turn to me; there's only contempt and hate and anger. At least it's not indifference, which is more than what I can say for the rest of the world.

This was your mistake with the master plan,
With all the drugs you take, you can hardly stand;
After all is said and done
Are you still having fun?

And now you wander around the old place, restless, with no determinate purpose, nettling your house-elf and trying to clean around. And the strange light in your eyes isn't the only thing that tells me things are not going well inside your head. The soft smell of herbs that had no place to be around you, the widening and narrowing of your pupils at inappropriate times, the nervous shaking of your hands, the hundred-and-one symptoms for potions you never should have drank, the signals of a man about to break down (been there, done that), all those things the morons around you haven't noticed.

Maybe because no one else watches you like I do. In the few occasions that I meet you, in my visits to Grimmauld Place or in the meetings of the Order, I dedicate my well-honed senses to observe you and every little detail about you. The way your hair shines under the torch-light (so different from how it was before, thicker, a bit more opaque), the end-of-day stubble (unlike the soft skin you had in our Hogwarts' days), the way your bone structure shows more, because you are still far too thin for your own good (gone is the Quidditch musculature and slight but strong build), and your eyes, your dead, ever-shining, never-focused, clear eyes, that continue to haunt me days after I have seen them last.

Well, you know when you've been defeated
You don't care and you thank no one;
Feeling low you will always need it
Are you're having fun?
Are you still having fun?

I hope you haven't noticed my eyes following you, or that, if you have, you attribute that unusual experience to the hatred that runs between us both. Because I hate you, as much, if not more, as you hate me.

Why do you hate me so? When did it go beyond the school-boy animosity into this full-fledged revulsion in your eyes when you look at me? So many pranks before The Prank that very nearly got both of us killed... because Potter may have saved my life then, but he wasn't there to stop me from handing you over to the Dementors in childish retribution, years later. And even if I have to be grateful to yet another Potter for avoiding *that* death, I sometimes feel perfectly capable of throttling you with my bare hands and then going on to join Bella and Lucius at the feet of the Dark Lord, if only to stop this incessant turning of wheels inside my head, the painful jolt in my chest when you come near, the inexplicable melancholia that creeps over me when I leave your presence.

If killing you would stop all this, I would do it. But I'm familiar with death, and I know that the answer to my problems lays not there. If I killed you, your ghost (not the almost-corporeal entities I'm used to, but a far more subtle presence) would continue to haunt me, your memory would become all I would be able to think about, your absence would echo in my mind until I couldn't take it anymore. Dead things are even more dangerous than living things, when it comes to the matters of the heart. If you died, by my hand or someone else's, what can be vexed and made cruel fun of now would become sacred, holy, unnameable, and it would take away even my hate for you, which is the only thing that keeps me sane nowadays.

You don't know what it is you've done,
Just to show that you're having fun

You don't know what it is you've done
Just to show that...

Sometimes I think we could have been friends, that everything could have been different. That year, the year of The Prank, I was scared. I had spent part of the summer in Malfoy Manor, and Lucius had been focusing all his charm and power on me, bending me to his will, whispering sweet promises in my ear, making offers I couldn't resist. And yet there was a small part of me that screamed somewhere inside me, that wanted to be free and not follow the steps of the rest of my year-mates, that looked at you and your group of friends with longing.

I like to think that I might have been brave enough to talk to you or to Dumbledore, if nothing out of the way had happened. I like to think that I wasn't so avid for friendship and camaraderie that I would have refused a chance of turning away from the Dark. But The Prank came and went, and all the trust I might ever had had in you, in Potter, in Lupin, in Dumbledore, went up in smoke. Hurt and betrayed (why betrayed? You never owed me anything.) I fell gladly into Malfoy's arms, and I dedicated with all the loyalty of my selfish heart to the Lord that patted my head, allowed me to kiss the hem of his robes and provided me with a sense of belonging and purpose.

I can set you straight, if you let me stay
I hope I'm not too late.
No, you won't regret it
I can show you the way
And make you happy today.

But I won't blame you for all the misfortunes of my life. Not now, not while you are so fragile, while I fear that a careless and inconsiderate word from an innocent bystander might shatter you to pieces. And yet I can't help but test you every time we come near, spitting my worst to you, trying to convince myself that you can handle it, that if I can't make you crumble, no one will. And at the same time I fear for you, for the what remains of your sanity, for the rejected child that emerges more often than ever under the shadow of the house where you were abused into submission when you were a mere boy.

I want to help you. Oh, don't think I'm becoming altruistic as I mature. It would be a completely selfish deed, like most of my deeds are. I want to help you, and repair you, and put you back together again, so that I could once again have my ideal paraded in front of me, in the shape of a laughing and vital man with impossible charm and a winning smile, that smile that made me bite my lips to stop me from smiling back.

And I think I could help you, if only I could get over the fear of rejection. I understand you in a way that Lupin, or Dumbledore, or Potter, or anyone else, can't even begin to comprehend. I have gone through long years of misery, or pain, of fear, of hopelessness, of misery, just like you. I have had to pretend for others, just like you are doing now. And I know that you wouldn't be afraid of showing me that dark side of yours, like you're afraid of showing it to Lupin, because I already hate you, and you hate me, and nothing you can ever tell me will lower my opinion of you.

Yes, you know when you've been defeated
You don't care and you thank no one
Feeling low, you will always need it

You've always said I'm a coward. Well, I am. I don't dare show you the other side of my obsession with you. The hate, the mistrust, the anger, they are all very well represented every time we meet. But I don't think I'll ever reveal my more humane side to you, or to anyone. Because you may be damaged after years of imprisonment and misery, but are still a prize many people would fight to have. And who am I to rival Lupin's insufferable calm and tranquillity? I would never stoop so low as to contend with Nymphadora Tonks for your affections. Not even if I want to.

Well, you know when you're being cheated
Yes, you know when you've been defeated
Feeling low you will always need it
Now you're having fun...

Sometimes I think you see past me and into the very thing I'm trying to hide. Sometimes I think I see (but it may be pure wishful thinking) you're eyes turn questioning and curious when you look at me. Sometimes I think my obsession does have some hope of being requited. And yet I do nothing to investigate any further into those possibilities, because I fear what may come out of them. Instead of confronting you (which I'm sure is what you would do in my place), I write my feelings on a piece of my finest parchment and put it somewhere safe, but not so safe that you may not find it if you put your mind to it.

But why should you nose between my private papers, looking for a misshapen declaration of love? I think that if you ever stumble upon one of these writings (hopefully after my death), your reaction will be one of disbelief. You will show it to Lupin, to see what he thinks of it. You will consider the possibility of a twisted posthumous joke. You will ponder upon these words and then forget all about them, except to tell your grandchildren what kind of strange people went to your school. Is it too much to ask, to expect some consideration from you?

And are you still having fun?
Are you still having fun?
Are you still having fun?

I've read over this incoherent jumble of thoughts once again, and I have the impression that I've said none of the things I wanted to say when I started writing. I guess those are things that cannot be explained with words. Maybe, if you read this, and if you're still the man I wrote this for, you'll understand everything that I wanted to say and couldn't. Maybe. To think I have to depend upon the insight of a Gryffindor! It is really a sign of my decadence, if nothing else.

The glass of sherry by my side is empty, the fire is burning low and the candle is about to go out. I suppose I will leave this here and go to sleep, in preparation for a new day of frightening students into some kind of academic achievement. Maybe tonight I'll dream of you; half the time, I dream of your death, and the others, of your life, as it was before and hopefully will be some day in the future. I cannot tell you what dream I enjoy the most.

I fear I could still ramble on for too long, so, with this, I remain

Sincerely yours,

Severus Snape