Rescue Me Challenge
Title: Spoke Rings
Team: Death Eaters
Rating: PG-13
Length: 100x4
Challenge: Rescue me
Warning: Angst, angst and angst, oh my. Happy endings are there none. This is for Droxy. It's not all rainbow-shitting unicorns in the Wizarding world, sometimes.
Summary: In honour of droxy's birthday, the Muse gave me this angsty little tragedy in four acts. Enjoy the misery, Droxy!! :)
Spoke Rings
Before, he was just an angry, brittle shell, lashing out. His anger radiated like a wheel with no friendly spokes to circumvent. Hermione thought he hated the world, but in reality, it was personal. Everything, including the world, was personal.
Later, when he survived, and some of the spokes were broken, or gone, never to return, he still turned his watchful, wary gaze three-sixty, wand at the ready, trusting no one, even the dead ones.
Perhaps he trusted them least of all.
I would like to be your friend, Professor, she whispered into his ear.
“What for?” he answered indifferently.
“Why do you wear black all the time?” She asked one day, fetching his healing potion.
It was probably the best question she’d ever asked him. It certainly was the one that derailed him.
Snape answered her two days later. “I’m in mourning.”
Hermione made her excuses and fled. He had made her cry only once before, and she never forgot the gloating triumph in his eyes as she ran weeping from the classroom. She had been a child then; now it would break her to see his satisfied sneer, knowing someone else was hurting as much as he was.
He lit a cigarette and passed it to her. She had picked up the habit from him; another thing she would be better off without.
“Will you ever be able to love me?” she said, as he lay beside her, blowing smoke rings into the air above the bed.
She hoped he wouldn’t answer. He took another deep drag on his cigarette.
“Why would I want to do that, Granger?”
“Because we could be happy.” She turned to him, plucking the smouldering fag from his fingers. “Because you’re alive and she’s dead.”
His look was pity-filled. “Who says I’m alive?”
She left him the next day. Harry had warned her; Snape’s broken. I know you want to rescue him, but he’s beyond repair.
Hermione had so wanted to prove him wrong. Victory should have meant peace for everybody. Harry and Ron had moved on, making homes and babies and happiness for themselves. Why couldn’t she?
She saw Snape ten years later, while volunteering in a soup kitchen. By that time, she was nobody’s saviour; just another recovering alcoholic with a smoker's hack. He was destitute, and starving.
Both had gone Muggle.
He didn’t see her, and she didn’t recognise him.
Team: Death Eaters
Rating: PG-13
Length: 100x4
Challenge: Rescue me
Warning: Angst, angst and angst, oh my. Happy endings are there none. This is for Droxy. It's not all rainbow-shitting unicorns in the Wizarding world, sometimes.
Summary: In honour of droxy's birthday, the Muse gave me this angsty little tragedy in four acts. Enjoy the misery, Droxy!! :)
Spoke Rings
Before, he was just an angry, brittle shell, lashing out. His anger radiated like a wheel with no friendly spokes to circumvent. Hermione thought he hated the world, but in reality, it was personal. Everything, including the world, was personal.
Later, when he survived, and some of the spokes were broken, or gone, never to return, he still turned his watchful, wary gaze three-sixty, wand at the ready, trusting no one, even the dead ones.
Perhaps he trusted them least of all.
I would like to be your friend, Professor, she whispered into his ear.
“What for?” he answered indifferently.
“Why do you wear black all the time?” She asked one day, fetching his healing potion.
It was probably the best question she’d ever asked him. It certainly was the one that derailed him.
Snape answered her two days later. “I’m in mourning.”
Hermione made her excuses and fled. He had made her cry only once before, and she never forgot the gloating triumph in his eyes as she ran weeping from the classroom. She had been a child then; now it would break her to see his satisfied sneer, knowing someone else was hurting as much as he was.
He lit a cigarette and passed it to her. She had picked up the habit from him; another thing she would be better off without.
“Will you ever be able to love me?” she said, as he lay beside her, blowing smoke rings into the air above the bed.
She hoped he wouldn’t answer. He took another deep drag on his cigarette.
“Why would I want to do that, Granger?”
“Because we could be happy.” She turned to him, plucking the smouldering fag from his fingers. “Because you’re alive and she’s dead.”
His look was pity-filled. “Who says I’m alive?”
She left him the next day. Harry had warned her; Snape’s broken. I know you want to rescue him, but he’s beyond repair.
Hermione had so wanted to prove him wrong. Victory should have meant peace for everybody. Harry and Ron had moved on, making homes and babies and happiness for themselves. Why couldn’t she?
She saw Snape ten years later, while volunteering in a soup kitchen. By that time, she was nobody’s saviour; just another recovering alcoholic with a smoker's hack. He was destitute, and starving.
Both had gone Muggle.
He didn’t see her, and she didn’t recognise him.