Footsteps in the Garden

In the fall, the footsteps crinkle on fallen autumn leaves and the man in the shadows pulls his cloak tighter against the growing winds. The air grows cold as the sun dips faster, earlier, beyond the hills and the horizon, but he waits, he watches. The darkness is cover, the darkness is a fraying old blanket in the cold, empty night.

In the winter, the garden is dead, but the boy returns still. He kneels as if in the rectory, as if there are spells that words and wand-waving have forgotten, that herbs and extracts cannot produce. The bitter man laughs from the shadows, remembering with scorn more innocent days, but he watches still in silence.

And in spring the flowers grow. He can see the smile growing slowly, filling the boy's face, innocent eyes forgetting what horror they've seen, what horror they will see in the world that grows colder as the season grows warmer and look only at the first green buds of spring, stretching, straining, reaching for the sunlight above the nearly-frozen ground.

Severus watches as Neville works, as he sprinkles soft warm soil from inside the greenhouse, nurses the budding flowers, the whisper-weak stalks as if the last front of whisper, one angry frost, will not come and kill them all off within a week's time.

He does not pretend to know the weather, he only knows it will always get cold.

The summer sun strengthens, the days grow brighter, the nights shorter, and doors close.

Children, laughing children, crying children, restless and up all night with silly games and huddled messes, are told to spend their summer here. Where they are safe. Where no matter what will happen outside, what the world will be come fall, and winter, and spring, they will be safe.

Severus doesn't think that is so important. He cloisters himself in his office, tightening lids on vials, casting unbreakable charms, noting days on his calendar to make sure the little magic does not wear off, as if some seismic event will shake them off the shelves in the weeks to come.

He looks around the tiny room, all poisons and powders stowed away amongst dusty volumes he attempts to memorise, telling himself that even if the books are gone, he will persevere.

He does not believe it. Not when his arm starts to burn and even the caustic acids ripped from their stuck-to shelving cannot salve the pain. Not when he takes to his paring knife and presses the tiny blade into his finger, watching blood drip over fanged serpent as if blood will work where potions fail or the tiny, nagging slice in his fingertip will distract him from the burning call.

The pain is only worse outside, in the burning summer sun. His head aches from squinting his eyes this time of year, he can feel the heat beating, first warm comfort then hot dry harm, on his pale skin. The air is dusty dry, stagnant, unlike the careful cool enclosure of his office walls.

But still he watches. It's the only comfort he has left now, with the Heroes called away and the Headmaster silent in concentration, teeth gritted to keep this prison, these walls holding firm around them even as other Masters tear down at the crumbling, aged, salvation walls.

Neville has grown taller now, and thinner, leaving most of his rations for the others, even as he toils in the gardens, trying to make fruits grow in the sandy Scottish soil, anything anything to temper the gruel he passes on - Severus has seen even if no one else is looking - to the homesick first years.

It's disgusting, really. No one needs another crying prepubescent; yet, he's learned as he watches in silence, as he receives the silent-left parcels of new-harvested herbs on every Sunday morning, Neville is needed.

It's his face that's changed the most, Severus thinks. The nervous child he remembered, the clueless daze in his eyes as he spilt many a potion, crashed heavy cauldrons onto stone floor, the bang bang bang echoing off the walls in the sullen dungeons again and again and again, is gone. Instead, teeth are bared, eyelids are closed low, only the ground visible, no more no less as he plants, seeds, sows, prays, as if this is all that matters, all that can matter.

That the world inside is, like his seedlings, at the mercy of weather, luck, and prayers.

Severus never believed in gods, never really believed in anything except the thought that if the cock's crow woke him, he'd have to face another day. It worked that way, sunrise sunset, day in day out, more students, more mistakes, papers to graded, tests to administrate and in the quiet evenings nights alone, potions to brew.

It had all seemed so simple.

As word comes back that heroes have fallen, as Minerva barges into his office - last vestige of peace, of solitude as quarters grow cramped, nights grow loud with wails despite dwindling populations - to tell him that the Headmaster will see no one, that he needs what strength he has left, what powers he can glean from the dirty, dusty, diseased air inside the castle, to hold up these false barricades, the wards that leave them something close to alive.

It will be worst for him, Severus knows. But as the quiet humming no one had noticed grows fainter, into a high, tinny buzz, as the days grow shorter again, the air dusted with first hints of cold, the garden is still tended, the dirt rubbed between fingers, the rain leaving its mark on the topsoil as Neville kneels still in the dirt, robes brown and worn thin no good for winter, Severus realises that they all needed something to believe in.

**

Neville tells himself he will not look up, that he will act as if he's not being watched. After all, he's used to it by now, played at Snape's game and still the plants have grown. No word from Harry in weeks, Colin says he's dead for sure, Lavender says they're coming. She shrieks at night from Dean's bed and Neville can't sleep, can't sleep, not that he wants to, afraid he'll see her again, standing over him, laughing.

But he wakes up in the morning and digs his fingers into the ground, willing the plants up again, willing they only last through winter, last 'til spring.

And somehow, he likes that Snape is watching. He likes that he could lose ten points from Gryffindor at any time, but won't as long as he keeps the seeds alive.