Preludes, Interludes and Asides

Dear All:

This interlude has been graciously written by the immensely talented Aieshya - who happens to be a very good friend, as well a fantastic beta and an amazing author. Her own epic, The Fire You Touch, and her exploration of the canon characters (particularly our very own Severus Snape) form the basis of this small excerpt from the plot of The Greatest Love, The Highest Sacrifice. I should point out here that TGLTHS, written after Aieshya's, has incorporated the events she created as part of the background history for my own fic. The events recounted below take place immediately after the end of Chapter 12. The Show Must Go On is also a companion piece to Falling Even More, which is told from the perspective of Sirius Black.

I do hope that you enjoy Aieshya's contribution to the TGLTHS world. Her Snape is the way that I see him, enigmatic, tortured - and beautifully human.

Please do review and let us both know what you all think. And keep the comments and suggestions coming for the main body of TGLTHS. You know you directly influence what is going to happen next!

Cheers - and a very Happy New Year to all J

Kwinelf

Chapter 13: The Show Must Go On

If shame had a face I think it would kinda look like mine

If it had a home would it be my eyes

Would you believe me if I said I´m tired of this

Well here we go now one more time

-Lifehouse, "Sick Cycle Carousel"

It was half past midnight, and the school had long since folded into its nocturnal slumberings. Windows were shuttered, doors were barred, and only the misty glow of moonlight cut through the velvety shadows. In the stone hallways and corridors the school´s nighttime denizens, rats and mice and spiders and the errant wandering student, went silently about their business. And it was here that the Hogwarts ghosts came to play, to drift through the silent chambers and guttering candelabras. Here, between the hours of dusk and dawn, the dead past came once again to life, if only for a little while.

Professor Snape could not sleep.

In the bowels of the castle, behind a sliding panel of stone wall, through a narrow, rough-walled hallway lined with glowing green globes, locked safely behind a heavy oak door, the Potions master of Hogwarts stood before a large fireplace, his spine rigid and his hands clasped behind his back as he stared into the flickering fire. It was late, especially for a school evening, but he had made no move for his bedchamber.

For ghosts assumed more than one shape.

And in the flicker of the warmthless flames, his coal-black eyes were hollow and haunted.

His muscles were knotted with tension, sending twinges through his back as he twisted his fingers together, slowly, their fingernails cutting into the flesh of his palms.

He had climbed to the top of the Astronomy Tower that afternoon after the Quidditch match to escape the suffocating closeness of the Slytherin common room. Slytherin had won, yes, against Gryffindor, a victory that usually had the power to coax a smile even to his own thin lips, but today the victory had rung hollow for him. He had climbed the steps to the Tower slowly, allowing the knotted muscles of his back to loosen with each step; his own painful form of meditation.

And as he had taken the last step to the Tower top, he had looked up and seen Black.

The ex-resident of Azkaban had been leaning over the ledge of the Tower, his fingers white as he gripped the stone and stared down at the Quidditch pitch. His face had been twisted--at first Snape had thought from pain, and the idea had brought a satisfied sneer to his lips--but when he had looked again, the Potions master had realized with a queer leap of his heart that it was...anguish, hunger, hurt, anger, and...jealousy.

Jealousy has driven him mad....

Snape had, after a hard look at the Animage, turned silently and headed back down the steps of the Tower, his calm broken and a familiar sickness beginning to spread through his limbs.

He knew at whom Black had been staring, who had caused that expression to wrack his features.

Even an idiot could have figured that out.

Now, back in the silence of his chambers, the Potions master shuttered his eyes, closing out the dancing flames. But the afterimage of the flickering light danced against his retinas even in the darkness.

Jealousy...

Snape had seen Black watching her before, when the other man thought that no one else was looking. The light in his eyes was unambiguous, and the hunger radiating from him--leaching from him, almost tangible, like the smell of musk from an animal--was unmistakable.

The girl.

Jealousy will drive you mad...

A girl, young, too young, barely a woman.

...will drive you...

So similar...

...drive you...

So like the other...

....mad....

A hiss leapt savagely from between Snape´s clenched teeth, and he whirled around, tearing his eyelids open, jerking his mind away from the thoughts that buffeted him like an invisible wind, the half-forgotten murmurs that still whispered in his ears. Yet her face rose unbidden into his mind.

Elsie Norr. Seventeen years old. Quiet, shy, with mousy-brown hair and luminous eyes. Gryffindor. Easily his best student at Potions for the past three years. An intelligence and maturity far beyond her age--most of the time--and a student whom every teacher liked. Even Filch liked her, a variant that both amused and slightly alarmed Snape--he had assumed the school´s caretaker incapable of such subtle emotions as amicability.

And now Black was staring hungrily down at her from the Astronomy Tower.

It was all too, too familiar.

Snape swore and began to pace across the Oriental carpet, back and forth, his heels biting deeply into the rich multicolored pile. His long fingers twisted behind his back, tightened against each other until his nails bit sharply into the flesh of his palms.

He should go to Dumbledore. He should go to McGonagall, tell them both what he had seen. The girl was a Gryffindor; it was essential that the Head of her House know of the situation, and even more so for the headmaster to realize the danger. Snape had cautioned them both before about the complications of hiring Black, of trusting Black, but neither Dumbledore nor the deputy headmistress had attended his warnings.

But they would now. They would put a stop to it. They would know what to do this time.

It had, after all, happened before.

Snape stopped pacing abruptly, his black robes swirling about his ankles at the sudden halt. For a moment, his features hardened into stone, and his body went rigid. Had anyone been there to notice, they would have seen the Potions master´s eyes glaze slightly, as if he was trying to pierce the far wall with his sight.

But there was no one in the room...unless one included the ghosts of memories, in which case, he was suffocated with company.

Snape slowly lifted a hand to brush a strand of oily black hair away from his sallow forehead.

It had been five years ago, but the memories shadowed him with every breath, with every footstep, every time he closed his eyes. At the beginning, after it had all ended, he had done his best to try and move on. His bed he had replaced--that had been the first to go, barely an hour after he had returned to Hogwarts--and now he slept on something that could have passed for a cot, had not the mattress felt as if it had been carved from brick. The coffee table he had splintered into firewood. The mirror he had given to Sibyll Trelawney--Snape had found bitter humor in the idea that, if and when the diviner´s skills decided to awaken, she would have quite a show if she tried to coax the mirror´s memories to life. The only thing he had kept was an empty silver box, and that he had buried into the bottom of his wardrobe, the very sight of it burning his eyes.

The room had grown silent with forgetfulness.

And the silence was killing him.

With slow, jerky movements, the Potions master folded to the brocade cushions of the couch. He leaned forward, putting his clasped hands to his mouth.

No one knew, yet everyone was aware. It was not spoken of, yet he was reminded of it every day in a glance, in a movement, in the subtlest phrase, in the very air he breathed.

When it had ended, this had not bothered him so - the silence of the headmaster, the aloofness of the teachers, the furtive and swiftly silenced murmurs of the students. He had barely noticed, considered it the least penance he could perform. But the years had passed, and the murmurs had passed into whispers, until now...nearly all those who remembered had left.

But the rumors lingered. And for the staff of Hogwarts, memory did not fade. Even now, five years later, it was a concerted effort to meet McGonagall´s eyes, and Professor Sprout´s words were still frosty when she spoke to him. As for Hagrid...Snape had done his best to avoid any meeting with the half-giant.

And thus he had lived, and he had been content with his purgatory.

But now, this girl...

Elsie...

Snape made a strangled noise and buried his face in his hands. The muscles of his jaw worked silently, savagely, as his long fingers dug into his scalp.

He knew that she was infatuated with him. How could he not? She was certainly open in her admiration of him--a rare enough trait in a Gryffindor--which he normally would have ignored, or blistered out of her with a few scathing comments. But she was attracted to him--attracted--something of which he had only vaguely suspected until Malfoy had made that cutting remark to her after Potions class one day.

After that, he had been unable to ignore it.

Snape rose quickly to his feet and strode blindly into the connecting room, his semi-storage and makeshift laboratory. His fingertips brushed past the assorted bottles, fumbling the glass against each other, filling the air with sharp clinks.

At first he had been amused, annoyed--even a little flattered. But then...

A bottle of toad´s blood, nudged less-than-gently to the side by one finger, teetered suddenly and fell from the shelf, shattering messily against the stone floor. Snape leapt back with an exclamation as the liquid splattered against his ankles. Drawing his wand from his belt, he bent to collect the scattered splinters.

But then...no matter what steel grip he had on his emotions, his imagination was another thing entirely....

And she was so like the other....

Snape choked, his fingers tightening white against the dark wood of his wand.

...his imagination was another thing entirely....

Not beautiful, no, but pretty. Pretty enough. An intelligence and wit to almost equal his own, rare enough to cause him to look back twice. Mature, until he could almost forget that she was a mere seventh year, and then, clincher of all clinchers, she was attracted to him, him, Severus Snape, Head of Slytherin House, Hogwarts Potions master, him, odious, greasy-haired, beaknosed Snape.

Laughable.

Unthinkable.

Impossible.

But his imagination was not shackled by rationality.

And the jealousy will drive you mad....

The wand clattered against stone and Snape gave a hoarse cry, burying his hands in his black hair.

Not even the excuse of outside forces could condone his feelings this time, they were real, razor-sharp, bitter as ashes in his mouth, and try as he might, he could not push them away.

Jealousy...

His breath snagged in his throat as if on hooks, and at that instant he heard it echoed in the recesses of his mind, except that the voice was of a woman.

A girl.

Her....

--"No--please--"

...jealousy has driven him...

And through his bones, in the memory of his flesh, he felt his hands digging into skin, the jar through his arms as a weight he held crumpled wetly against the stone wall, the warmth of his breath as he whispered into an ear--and then--

--but he could not allow himself--could not--to think of--to hear the--

...has driven him...

His eyes flew open, wide and glazed and panicked as a wolf caught in a trap, and as the soft, pained whimpers of memory flooded his ears, he threw his gaze to the floor, to the glittering shards of crystal gleaming wetly--

--"please--stop--"

...driven him...

A high-pitched howl ripped from the Potions master´s lips, and he smashed his open palm down upon the broken phial at his feet.

The shards tore into his palm, shooting jags of pain up his arm, and still he drove his hand down, gritting his teeth as the splinters burrowed into his flesh, and then, and only then, when the agony was almost intolerable, did the sweet sound of silence flood his mind.

...mad....

Snape lifted his trembling hand to his face. His palm, stuck through with glass, bristled like the back of a hedgehog, and his stomach writhed in protest. As he flexed his fingers slightly, wincing at the movement, a thick stream of blood began to ooze down his forearm. It collected at the crook of his elbow and began to soak into his sleeve.

The Potions master closed his eyes and drew a deep, quivering breath. With the pain came clarity, and with the clarity, sight.

The girl was infatuated with him. So be it. Let her revel in her girlish fantasies, let her turn her luminous eyes towards him, let her sigh, let her dream, let her fantasize...but he would show no notice--or better yet, he would show notice and wither her budding hopes with the icy cruelty for which he was known. No pity, no mercy, no quarter--prize student she may be, she was a student nonetheless, and a Gryffindor. And Professor Severus Snape showed no favoritism towards any Gryffindor.

Never again.

Snape looked down at his ruined hand, now slick and sticky with blood. A cold, hard smile twitched his lips, a gesture that did not quite reach his suddenly-empty eyes.

He would protect her, as much as was in his power. He would close the door on this attraction, this forbidden desire, but that was not all. The black beast would be shackled as well, and Snape would see him muzzled by his own underlying desire. There would be words with Sirius Black, and though the bastard would probably ignore him--as he was often wont to do--Snape would clearly and cuttingly make it known to the ex-convict what the Potions master would do to him if he so much as looked cross-eyed at Miss Elsie Norr. And Snape did not make his threats lightly.

She would not suffer as the other had.

Pain was throbbing through his shredded palm. Snape slowly closed his eyes and turned his hand over, allowing the blood to drip onto the floor, mingling amongst the toad´s blood and splinters of glass.

"She mustn´t know," he whispered, but whether it was to himself or the ghosts of memory hanging in the air, he could not say. "The show must go on."

And a bleak smile crossed his lips.

After a moment, the Potions master rocked back on his heels and picked up his wand with his good hand. His black hair curtained across his face in a greasy shroud as he bent over his lacerated palm and began to slowly heal the wounds.