Graduation, Miss Stanhope

I have been sitting here all day. It is cold, but I don't care. I have always been cold, afflicted with an icy numbness that radiates from the inside out. It was better when you were here, and now that you are gone, it is all the colder. Sometimes, on days like today, when the sun is out and warm upon the grass, on days you would have loved, in other words, I come and sit here and think of you.

You've been gone nearly a year. Some would say a mere year, but those who would say so are either insane or sadists even beyond my measure. They know better than to say such a thing to me. They know I will curse them into eternity if they so much as breathe it. They just look at me from the corners of their downcast eyes and let me pass. They know there is nothing they can say that will ease the burning sting of loss.

And it stings far more than I ever would have guessed. Sometimes I sit in the cool, dusty darkness of my chambers, and the space in my heart where you used to be throbs and screams at me, its emptiness a gaping wound that will not heal. I do not fight it; I learned long ago that such struggle is useless. I sit in my chair or lie in my bed and let the pain wash over me in an acid torrent. It eats away at my skin, gobbles everything down until only raw nerve endings remain. Exposed, unprotected, unable to keep you out, I grieve for you. Silently. Blindly. The same way that I loved you.

I still haven't cried, and I'll be damned if I will. I'm too Slytherin for such a maudlin demonstration of emotion. I wish I wasn't. If anyone ever deserved to coax tears from these tired, dry, hateful eyes, it was you. You with your stubborn streak a mile wide and your grating, stupefying curiosity. You from whom I could hide nothing, no matter how hard I tried. You and your all-seeing eyes. Maybe if I had blinded you, you would still be here now. But it's too late now for second guesses.

So I haven't wept for you. Life and circumstance have beaten all tears out of me, but sometimes, when I least expect it, my chest tightens with old memory, and my jaw aches as I grind my teeth to keep yesterday at bay. You still live in the shadows of the dungeons, you know, a skulking shadow that wraps itself around my brittle, aching heart. Your thin, angular face looks out at me from the flickering torchlight, and I have to stop and catch my breath. It only lasts for a moment, and when I realize my mistake, I take out my fury on some impotent, cowering first-year.

Just last night, I thought I saw you sitting in my chamber doorway. The moonlight had washed everything in its dull silver haze, and your shadow fell across my floor, long and spidery, the misshapen monster from a childhood nightmare. For the briefest instant, I saw you there, hunched in your improbable chair like a visiting gnome, blue eyes blazing like spirit lights. Then you were gone. If you were ever there at all.

Do you come for me in the dark watches of the night? I think you do. You're just obdurate and arrogant enough to think I still need you. You creep around the corners of this old castle and whisper in my wake. You scald me with your flitting presence. Why don't you go and leave me in peace? Surely you have better things to do than haunt the footsteps of a broken, bitter man who sits and watches others pay debts that should be his.

We wouldn't be having this conversation if it weren't for you. I wouldn't be standing here talking to a slab of marble with your name on it, and I wouldn't be seething with the bitter, wormwood knowledge that one of the finest people I have ever known lies beneath the earth, returning from the dirt from whence she came. Why did you do it, you stupid, stupid girl? Why did you interfere? Why didn't you just let me take the penance that was mine by right, a penance in the shade of Slytherin green? It was that damn Gryffindor honor, wasn't it? The one miniscule sliver I could never quite stamp out. Damn it. Damn it to hell! How could you do that to me? How could you be so bloody selfish?

You should be the one with the nightmares and the freezing sweat. You should be the one full of useless rage and a misery so deep it dissolves your bones from the inside out. Those things belong to you, but you avoided them all when you threw yourself in front of a Curse marked for me. You just had to do it, didn't you? You just couldn't hide behind the ready excuse of your fragile, twisted body. At the last, a Gryffindor heart shone through a Slytherin face. And I damn you for it.

I paid for your burial. I thought it might make your face fade from memory. It didn't. So I took to tending it. Keeping it clean. Bringing fresh lilies. Polishing the cold marble that is a pitiful monument to what you were. That didn't help, either. But it's the only way I know to work off the debt that will never have an end. I know everything was my fault.

You lost everything when you cast your lot with me. You became pariah in your House, the blotch on McGonagall's flawless record. Your friends, the few you had, turned their faces from you. And you didn't give a damn. You stubborn little chit. You thought it was a worthy sacrifice. You sacrificed everything for me, and you never knew what a terrible bargain you had made, not even when it cost you the little bit you held back for yourself.

I'll never wash you from my hands. Never. I never should have let you in. When I saw the respect blossoming in your eyes like a fragile, stunted rose, I should have crushed it beneath my heel, soured it to curdled contempt like all the rest. But I was so amazed to see it there. It was like seeing a diamond in the eye of a frog. Never in all my days had I been burdened with a pupil obnoxious enough, straight-on stiff-necked enough, to rise to my bait. And Merlin in a sidecar if you didn't. You did it too well. And I enjoyed the game too much. Now there is no one with whom to play it, and all of that is my burden to bear. I was the adult. I should have known better.

I should be moldering in the grave, and you should be here, but you loved me too much, and I loved you not enough to do the right thing. Maybe that is why the Headmaster sometimes finds me perched here in my nightclothes, barefoot and shivering as I rock and mutter over my greatest failure.

You were my penance, child. A penance of flesh and blood that winnowed into my black heart as deeply as it went and then cracked it in two. My heart ceased to beat the moment the breath left your body. It sits in my chest, a hard unmoving lump. Why then does it shatter every time I lay eyes upon this white stone? Why does it bleed and weep and cry long after the Fates have ceased listening?

I long to cry. I would go to my death if I could, but I can only bring you these lilies and sit in the frigid breeze like some tragic Byronian figure while tittering first-years speculate behind their hands about sour old Professor Snape's lost love. I find comfort in the fact that you would be amused.

I can't say it, but you know. You always did. Maybe these lilies will speak for me, say all the things my stubborn mouth will not. I'm going inside now before I attract attention and some doe-eyed first-year tries to console me with mounds of horrendous poetry. I wish you could see it. That way mine would not be the only gorge to clench in tortured disgust.

There were a lot of things I wished for you, Miss Stanhope, and rest assured that this was not one of them. I'll see you tomorrow.

If you come for me tonight, mind the books on the end of my dressing table. The last thing I need is to have a heart attack with you thumping about. I'll leave the windows open.

All of them.