You Don't See Me

II.
'Is this as hard as it gets? 'cause I'm getting tired of pretending
I'm tough.'

It was going to rain. He should
go inside. Severus knew this, but the promise of a cold wasn't enough
to pull him out from under the weathered oak by the Black Lake where
he'd taken to coming these days to reflect. Nagini's venom had been
incredibly powerful. If the fangs had sunk in just another
millimeter, he knew he'd be dead. He wished they had. Every movement
was agony, and the physical pain, that was only a surface wound
compared to the ache in his chest.

He hadn't wanted to die. That
wasn't it. But he'd been ready, and when he felt it happening he
couldn't help but think maybe, just maybe, he'd finally be allowed
some peace. And now? Now he was just convinced that Minerva was out
to get him. The students still gave him a wide berth when he made his
way through the halls, but the usual petrified terror of him had
lapsed a bit now that there was no doubt what side he'd really been
on during the war. Sure, there were a few who weren't buying it, but
for the most part he didn't instill quite the same degree of terror
he used to, and if you asked Snape the Gryffindors could still stand
a good measure of indignant fright to keep them in line.

Speaking of Gryffindors—Minerva
had assigned Harry Potter as his assistant while he'd been infirmed,
which had to be a sick joke because that is the only context in which
it made any sense. And damn the boy for being so eager to assist. It
was all Snape could do to contrive mountains of paperwork to keep
Harry busy with so the boy—no, he was a young man, now—so
the young man didn't get any funny ideas about things like striking
up conversation. Harry tried anyway, but Snape had managed to
sidestep any dialogues lasting more than five minutes. ...so far.

Potter, no doubt, wanted to be
his usual nosy self. After the memories he'd revealed, Snape supposed
he couldn't entirely blame him, but that didn't mean he wanted to
humor him either. Those memories, his past—these things were
personal. More than personal, they were embarrassing. He'd been
awkward and weak as a boy. It wasn't something he cared to think on
overmuch himself, let alone share with the person who'd made his life
absolute hell for the past eight years. Hell. In fact, Harry could
really be blamed, almost entirely, for the bulk of his adulthood. Not
for the most important things, no—for that Snape had no one to
blame but himself, and he wasn't sure he'd ever assuage the guilt, or
find a way to make up for the chain of events he'd caused to conspire
by sheer bumbling idiocy.

The past had been on his mind a
lot lately. He knew he should focus on the future, but he couldn't
help but feel that where he was going was so intimately connected to
where he'd been that if he could only discern a pattern in the past,
the burdens he carried forward with him would become lighter. There's
nothing like a near-death-experience to force one to really take
stock of their life.

There was Lily, of course, but
the intense agony of loving her had miraculously transformed into the
memory of a young girl's smiling face that left warm coils of comfort
trailing through his veins. That one part of his past—the most
important one—he'd finally come to peace with, but there was
more lurking in the shadows of his heart, so much more.

'Of course. The pensieve. If
I can use it to determine the patterns of my past behavior, perhaps
I'll be able to determine what I should be doing now.'

He blinked, coming out of his
thoughts, and realized that his robes were nearly soaked through.
When had it begun raining? It was down-pouring now. He sighed and
pulled out his wand, casting an umbrella spell overhead. The rain
pattered against the shield, though he had to admit as wet as he was
there was hardly any point in having cast it.

As he walked back to the
Headmaster's office (he couldn't bring himself to call it his own,
even now) a particular memory struck him. It wasn't a pleasant one.
In fact, he found it so humiliating that he mostly pretended it was
little more than a dream, but the fact that he would recall it now
made him think there must be something important to it. If he could
view it from the outside, then perhaps he would be able to determine
what that something was.

He
sighed. Harry wasn't here and the paperwork hadn't been touched.
Well, that was just as well for the time being. He pulled the memory
out of his head and dropped it into the pensieve. He frowned at it.
He wasn't looking forward to watching that particular episode from
his past, really. 'Well, I'll change first,' Severus
thought. Some dry clothes would help his dismal mood. He turned on
his heel to head to his room, massaging at the throbbing in his neck
and internally complaining about aching joints and old age setting in
and durable old Slytherins who just don't seem to know when its their
time. He was, of course, referring to himself. He couldn't help but
think that between living and dying, dying must be the easy part.

“Too
bad I never do things the easy way,” he grumbled under his
breath.