Ficlet, challenge #100: All the Night-Tide
Title: All the Night-Tide
Summary: Severus Snape contemplates his love for Lily, finding similarity and solace in a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. (Written for the monthly ficlet challenge theme of "Love".)
Characters/Pairings: Severus Snape, mentions of Lily Evans, James Potter, and Harry Potter
Genre: Angst-y general romance-ish
Rating/Warnings: G
Medium: Ficlet
Word Count: 604
Can the Order post to Tumblr?: Yes
If yes, your Tumblr username: N/A
It was only afterwards that I stumbled across the works of the muggle writer Edgar Allan Poe. It takes a depressive to truly appreciate one, I suppose. His poetry penetrated where so few other things did, always a background melancholy voice running through my thoughts, providing a frame to stretch my sanity across.
Annabel Lee was for Lily, of course.
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
Known to the rest of the world as Spinner's End. Not exactly the sea, and not anything like a kingdom, but close enough and that's certainly where we were.
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
In my heart of hearts, I dream this as truth. And in our childhood pre-Hogwarts, I'll wager it was true enough.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee-
Always, Lily. Always.
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
If one could call James Potter and his cronies seraphs. They certainly had the seal of approval from the Powers For Righteous Good. And there was coveting, of that there can be no doubt.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
And it was a wind hissing one ragged, wretched word. Mudblood. Echoing between us, unretractable and utterly unforgivable.
Bloody seraphs.
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
And while Godric's Hollow wasn't officially a sepulcher, it may as well have been. She was gone, ensconced with her cadre of noble Gryffindors.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me- Yes!-that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
And this time, the wind had a distinctive green light made of obliterating un-fire. And surely there were true seraphs whose envy contributed to make it so that the prophecy was just so, so that Voldemort interpreted it just so. So that Lily was in the path of devastation and would not be moved.
And that's how I found her afterwards. Unmoved from her final, desperate stand.
Just so.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And as I held her in my arms, cold and stiff and nothing like Lily at all really, I knew this to be true.
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
Every night.
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
Every time I see her eyes looking back at me from her son, who looks so like James. I hate him for that, for being the blend of them. And I will protect him to my last breath because of it.
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling-my darling-my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea-
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
And, in truth, I have never, never arisen.
25 points
Summary: Severus Snape contemplates his love for Lily, finding similarity and solace in a poem by Edgar Allan Poe. (Written for the monthly ficlet challenge theme of "Love".)
Characters/Pairings: Severus Snape, mentions of Lily Evans, James Potter, and Harry Potter
Genre: Angst-y general romance-ish
Rating/Warnings: G
Medium: Ficlet
Word Count: 604
Can the Order post to Tumblr?: Yes
If yes, your Tumblr username: N/A
It was only afterwards that I stumbled across the works of the muggle writer Edgar Allan Poe. It takes a depressive to truly appreciate one, I suppose. His poetry penetrated where so few other things did, always a background melancholy voice running through my thoughts, providing a frame to stretch my sanity across.
Annabel Lee was for Lily, of course.
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
Known to the rest of the world as Spinner's End. Not exactly the sea, and not anything like a kingdom, but close enough and that's certainly where we were.
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
In my heart of hearts, I dream this as truth. And in our childhood pre-Hogwarts, I'll wager it was true enough.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea,
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee-
Always, Lily. Always.
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
If one could call James Potter and his cronies seraphs. They certainly had the seal of approval from the Powers For Righteous Good. And there was coveting, of that there can be no doubt.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
And it was a wind hissing one ragged, wretched word. Mudblood. Echoing between us, unretractable and utterly unforgivable.
Bloody seraphs.
So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
And while Godric's Hollow wasn't officially a sepulcher, it may as well have been. She was gone, ensconced with her cadre of noble Gryffindors.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,
Went envying her and me- Yes!-that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
And this time, the wind had a distinctive green light made of obliterating un-fire. And surely there were true seraphs whose envy contributed to make it so that the prophecy was just so, so that Voldemort interpreted it just so. So that Lily was in the path of devastation and would not be moved.
And that's how I found her afterwards. Unmoved from her final, desperate stand.
Just so.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in Heaven above
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And as I held her in my arms, cold and stiff and nothing like Lily at all really, I knew this to be true.
For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
Every night.
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
Every time I see her eyes looking back at me from her son, who looks so like James. I hate him for that, for being the blend of them. And I will protect him to my last breath because of it.
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling-my darling-my life and my bride,
In her sepulchre there by the sea-
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
And, in truth, I have never, never arisen.
25 points