Love Songs: Loving the Dark Wizard

This story contains non-graphic mention of oral sex.



Empty



Ray LaMontagne

2006





She lifts her skirt up to her knees

Walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing

I never learned to count my blessings

I choose instead to dwell in my disasters





Let me just open with the obvious, I did not expect to survive the war. That I did held some surprise for all around, including the recently dead Albus Dumbledore. As I sat in the filth that was to be my tomb, the blood dripping in almost lachrymal torrents from my clothing, I thought, Well, shite, now I have to use that retirement plan Albus always blathered on about.



No, just as in life, my death was complicated by ghosts, a meddlesome phoenix and rather pushy house elf. Potter\'s, I believe.



I listened to the dim song of battle going on just a thousand yards away, wishing to have the strength to move, to flee, or to finish what the Dark Lord started. However, as had ever been the case, I was weak. When the Aurors came to collect my body, I rose from the gore on the floor, feeling more than a little drunk with the sudden lack of overhanging threat. Shackelbolt was the one to cast the Binding Spell and a young, nervous Auror levitated me to the holding facility.



On my days went ,until my trial came, with me under house arrest in Grimmauld Place, my jailers the Golden Trio plus the entire Weasley clan., less one. That gave me a start. As insufferable as I found the twins of the genus, I had never wanted to see them dead. I wept more than a few tears in the safety of my room. It would not do for the Greasy Git to suddenly lose his githood.



Potter spoke on my behalf some eight weeks later, and I was acquitted, without prejudice. That was the legal manoeuvring that allowed the Wizengammot to review my trial if more of my Death Eater activities came to light.



Let it be said that Eileen Snape and her husband Tobias raised no fool. As soon as the ink was dry on the court documents, I was gone. Never to return to English soil. Australia was my new home of choice.



Walk on down the hill

Through the grass grown tall and brown

And still it\'s hard somehow to let go of my pain

On past the busted back

Of that old and rusted Cadillac

That sinks into this field collecting rain



Will I always feel this way

So empty, so estranged/i>



You might ask, was I content, did I ever find that illusory happiness that most men seek in transcendent moments? I might answer, in my customary vein, do you think I ever did? My twitchiness and hatred of all things human continued well past my first five years of freedom. I acquired two dogs for companionship and invested my savings in a cattle farm on a dry thousand acres of red and rusty soil. I made little profit, but did find some solace that I had indeed found creatures that were much more intolerable and cantankerous than my own lean company. The dogs, a blue merle bitch and a red male cattle dog tolerated no other human but me. I enjoyed siccing them on various salesmen and the occasional widow who braved my austere lands to convert me to their religion or more often, to get me in their bed. None of them were Lily and so none of them made it past the dogs.



Australia lost its appeal, however, when my funds ran out and the cattle died, all in the same year. I had enough wherewithal to take my dogs, grandchildren of the originals, to escape back to the city of my birth, and the welcoming home that awaited me in Manchester. The dirty streets and concrete landscape lent veracity to my current mood. I, Severus Snape, was finally lonely and actively seeking human companionship. I do believe, however, that I had forgotten how to be in the society of people. Perhaps I should just remain with my dogs for the time being.



Of these cutthroat busted sunsets

These cold and damp white mornings I have grown weary

If through my cracked and dusty dimestore lips

I spoke these words out loud would no one hear me



Nineteen years and some months after the war, Ron left me. For a Veela. With large breasts and no stretch marks. He left me with the care of our son, Hugo, and the financial burdens of their Hogwarts education. I could be the typical ex-wife and blame him for straying, but I did push him to it. I freely admit that. I was guilty of just being myself, but that had never been good enough for him. He always liked buxom and beautiful, not haus frau and harried. He lives in our old house now with his new wife. They have a child on the way, and I have grown tired of the wizarding world.



I spent my entire career in the Minisitry wishing to change wizarding perceptions of creatures who were entirely happy with the status quo. I found that house elves resented my interference, and that there were more werewolves like Greyback than Lupin. Centaurs resisted my meddling and giants were completely unassailable.



Therefore, I quit my post, took a few courses in Library Sciences and ended up shelving books in Manchester at a school of indifferent tutelage. My son and I lived in the poorest section of town, what I could afford with Rose in her first year at Hogwarts. I thought the experience might make him aware of the plight of others. It simply made him hard. I sent him back to his father with the hope that he would make Ron\'s perfect life hell. The boy gets on well with the Veela and has become a model student.



So, you might ask, did I end up with the perfect life and the perfect ending? My answer would be, \'Does it look like it?\'



Ginny visits and Percy sometimes, but both seem to be so out of place, most times that I hear them Fire-call me, I pretend I am not at home. It\'s better that way. They remind me of what I lost due to my indifference and what I gave up due to my depression.



On most days I walk to work and I always see him and his two sturdy-bodied dogs with their wild hair, wolfish grins and knowing, gold eyes. He, of course, is Severus Snape, the one person from my past to whom I wish to speak and the one person I never will.



I see him in his garden in the morning, usually he\'s reading and takes no notice of the plain-packaged me. I am no Lily Evans. I notice him though. The way his mouth is a straight line when he is thinking, the way he scans the pages of his book from behind the heavy-rimmed glasses he now wears and the way his eyes crinkle at the corners when the dogs greet him in their mute way. Yes, I notice and I pine.



I don\'t know when I started to love him. It could have been when I heard him crying over Fred\'s death at Grimmauld Place, it could have been when I found out about his feelings for Harry\'s dead mother, or it could have been when he left the country. I just know that my day is incomplete when I don\'t see him. He\'s my one deepest regret in a life full of disappointments. I suppose if I were more socially adept, I might approach him. I do grow tired of my own society.



Lay your blouse across the chair

Let fall the flowers from your hair

And kiss me with that country mouth so plain

Outside the rain is tapping on the leaves

To me it sounds like they\'re applauding us

The quiet love we make



Will I always feel this way

So empty, so estranged



She was there this morning, lurking in the shadow of the fir tree that has grown up wild in between the wasted sidewalk and the wasted yard. I wonder what she wants. I let the dogs perk their ears, but stopped them from pursuing my bushy-haired stalker with a movement of my hand.



Yes, Miss Granger, I do recognize you, even with all the years and the added, and much needed weight. You came around nicely, from what I can tell with you in that shapeless blue frock you wear all too often. The material flows nicely around your curves.



You were never Lily Evans, but I do regret alienating you. I suspect if things had worked out differently, it would not have been Weasley you snogged in the library at Grimmauld place all those years ago. I did love to watch you during my house arrest. It made me uncomfortable at first, a little like the teacher in that famous Police song.



You had been my student only two years before, but two lifetimes had passed since that time. I could see it in your eyes and in the way you shied from contact with all but your closest friends. You were as damaged as young Potter, and both of you were almost as much a twisted wreck as I was. Weasley was still an idiot, but you loved him and so I squelched my desire to be with you. There are only so many times a man can endure unrequited love before he counts himself a fool.



I rise in the morning hoping to catch your daily parade in front of my home. It\'s difficult for me to admit, but you\'ve always drawn my eye with your bland and pretty face and intelligent diffidence. Perhaps tomorrow...



Well I looked my demons in the eye

Laid bare my chest said do your best destroy me

See I\'ve been to hell and back so many times

I must admit you kinda bore me



I noticed you watching me in October and let myself think you were annoyed, even as your eyes followed me down the street. I made eye contact with you on the Knight Bus and watched you go to the Leaky Cauldron. It was the strangest courtship in wizarding or Muggle history, stranger than my experiences with Ron, stranger than Lupin and Tonks.



In November, I saw you watching the Guy Fawkes festivities and relished the look on your face as you saw me looking at you. It was heated and dark and all the more reason for me to pursue my fantasy. You knew I was no Lily Evans, but you looked at me again, your lashes sweeping over your depthless, black eyes, leaving smudgy shadows underneath them. I wanted to see what those long lashes would look like in the morning, when the light softened your harsh features and the night\'s stubble darkened your cheeks. I imagined us both awake at a time when we wouldn\'t both be so plain and lonely.



I fed titbits to your dogs when you weren\'t looking, I devoured what you read, and I slept in a greying dress-shirt you discarded. Your trash, my treasure as I imagined your arms around me, your pale chest against mine and your hard mouth softened by my kisses. If I could have acted, I would have, but you have always paralysed me with your disdain and cutting intellect. I had to let you make the first move, no matter how aware I was of your returned regard.



Loss of you was my greatest fear. You held my heart without a gesture of good faith between us.



There\'s a lot of things that can kill a man

There\'s a lot of ways to die

Yes and some already dead who walk beside you

There\'s a lot of things I don\'t understand

Why so many people lie

Well it\'s the hurt you hide that fuels the fires inside you



I approached you in the market after three months of mutual stalking. Funny that a powerful wizard and an equally powerful witch could not sense the catastrophe that was to occur. I tapped your shoulder, and you jumped, upsetting a bottle of pickles with your brolly. The ridiculousness of the situation was too much for me and I laughed, rusty though it sounded. It felt good to see you as discommoded as I at that time. After a moment in which I was sure you would Hex me first and ask questions later, you joined in the hilarity. Your laugh was almost as rusty as mine, I think. It was December twentieth and that was the first time in almost thirty years that I felt alive.



I walked you home, smelling of vinegar and dill, enjoying your shy chatter. I do remember that you were always one to speak before thinking when you were nervous. Instead of finding myself alone on the stoop at the end of our walk, I followed your invitation into the kitchen where we ate sandwiches and canned soup. It tasted like ambrosia and soma. The way your lips curled to blow in the bowl of the spoon sent me to almost aching need. I do believe you were quite as aware of me as I was of you.



You invited me to stay. I did, and I tasted you for the first time, and drank the nectar of your tears and your cunt, just as you tasted my bitter spunk and sweat.



You were never Lily Evans. You gave me back my heart.





Empty

Raycharles LaMontagne, 2006



She lifts her skirt up to her knees

Walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing

I never learned to count my blessings

I choose instead to dwell in my disasters



Walk on down the hill

Through the grass grown tall and brown

And still it\'s hard somehow to let go of my pain

On past the busted back

Of that old and rusted Cadillac

That sinks into this field collecting rain



Will I always feel this way

So empty, so estranged



Of these cutthroat busted sunsets

These cold and damp white mornings I have grown weary

If through my cracked and dusty dimestore lips

I spoke these words out loud would no one hear me



Lay your blouse across the chair

Let fall the flowers from your hair

And kiss me with that country mouth so plain

Outside the rain is tapping on the leaves

To me it sounds like they\'re applauding us

The quiet love we make



Will I always feel this way

So empty, so estranged



Well I looked my demons in the eye

Laid bare my chest said do your best destroy me

See I\'ve been to hell and back so many times

I must admit you kinda bore me



There\'s a lot of things that can kill a man

There\'s a lot of ways to die

Yes and some already dead who walk beside you

There\'s a lot of things I don\'t understand

Why so many people lie

Well it\'s the hurt you hide that fuels the fires inside you