Hello... Again

What if?

Crackling and spitting filled the void created by silence. A hand was outstretched palm-up atop a nearby desk. The arm attached was dressed in a black sleeve. A ravenette head rested upon the arm. The person pressed their cranium’s weight against the arm with their forehead as they rocked their skull from side to side.

By the black figure’s side were two bottles of alcohol; one was empty, the other was only empty halfway.
The crumpled heap of a man turned his head to the side and exposed his profile to the world. Professor Severus Snape, the Potions Master, looked very worse for wear. As morning light found its way through the drapery (somehow…), Severus focused on one spot. As he allowed his conscious mind to become a vegetable, Severus was fixated on the ancient wallpaper. It was peeling, telling its age, and the morning sunlight glistened off of the old, beige glue that was underneath.
Flicks of red hair danced in Severus’ mind’s eye. Like fingers, the fiery tendrils wriggled and writhed within his view.

The dancer is blind from all the candlelight.

Then she was dead.

She chokes.

Her body collapsed before him. Completely lifeless. Again.

A tear ran down his one exposed cheek as he pictured her limp corpse in his arms.

Shaking away the plaguing thoughts, Severus leaned back in his chair. His head lolled to the side. Spotting the half dranken Jameson Irish Whiskey, Severus’s hand moved to pour himself another shot.
Taking back the liquor in one gulp, Severus slammed down the glass on the wooden surface as he coughed from the burn (and not having any chaser).
Trying his best to clear his mind once again, Severus focused on the sharp, spitting, crackling fire.

Severus winced as familiar - fatal - urges came back to him. The yearning for the deadly, yet welcoming, silence of the darkness. His hands rose to either side of his head. He wept as he rocked his body from side to side.
Back and forth. Left and right.
He was used to these… feelings… being accompanied by thoughts of Lily, but they weren’t.

What is worth fighting for?

This time his mind was on Agnes. Her face danced in and out of view. The absences of Agnes were filled with Lily running away from him before turning to beam her beautiful smile.

Agnes’s tearfilled eyes haunted him. Lily’s crimson strands flowed before him - almost close enough to touch.

Your dancer’s still there, but will you ever try to cope?

In frustration, Severus folded his arms and dropped his head over the wooden surface below him. He groaned in agony as Agnes’s memories plagued him. All of those times that she had seen him cry in the dungeons… without him knowing. He had thought that he had been alone. He should have been alone. Alone and safe to let out his pain. But he hadn’t been alone. He never was alone. Someone else knew. Someone else saw how those damn Marauders got to him; how they affected him so. And it humiliated him, while, at the same time, … comforted him? Comfort… this feeling confused him the most. Very rarely had Severus felt this… comfort. It was even more confusing to be comforted by, in Severus’s eyes, having your privacy violated.

What if… we could live a better life?

Agnes Blackwood… Agnes had been hiding a similar pain for almost as long as Severus had - has. He remembered her approaching him under that great tree in the courtyard. He remembered the many times she tried to strike up conversation with him. He remembered giving up and finally joining in with her conversing.
He remembered her revealing her pain to him of the love she felt for him. The very same pain that Severus felt whenever he had seen Lily together with James Potter. A love that he, Severus, unfortunately did not return. Right?