The One Left Behind
In the summer between his fifth and sixth year, Severus Snape finds out the identity of his soulmate – and decides to fuck it all. In a fit of rage and despair, he applies to transfer to Beauxbatons. They teach in Latin there, right? He can manage Latin.
Once there, however, the language barrier is the last thing on his mind.
A girl named Yvonne Bacri happens. She’s a year older than him and sardonic as hell, and when she sits next to Severus in one of the many pique-niques the student body arranges, Severus can feel the butterflies in his stomach flutter like leaves in the merciless autumn wind.
With a shaky voice, he asks her out and she says oui, and when she does, her eyes look like they’re on fire.
And Severus – he dares to hope for the first time in years that maybe – just maybe – he can have a future.
On their last day together in Beauxbatons, he proposes to her.
She says oui again and smiles.
After that, everything happens like on a schedule. Severus studies a year more and graduates, best of his class; he gets an apprenticeship with a famous French potioneer and marries Yvonne; and a year after that, their fist child is born, on the longest day of the summer.
For three golden years, life is wonderful.
Until his past comes knocking.
Or:
Sirius knew he had fucked up when Snape failed to show up in Hogwarts after the summer.
He tried to ask about him, from Reg, from Evans, even from that idiot Rosier; but no-one seemed to know where Severus Snape had gone and why. It wasn’t until he asked the headmaster that he learned the truth.
Beauxbatons.
After that, Sirius spent countless sleepless nights hoping to understand the Slytherin. Had the knowledge of his soulmate been too much for Snape? Had he ran away because he couldn’t handle the thought of loving Sirius?
Sirius wasn’t sure, but that seemed to be the most reasonable explanation.
But the thing was – one couldn’t just outrun their soulmate. It simply wasn’t possible. Everyone knew that in one way or the other, soulmates would eventually end up together. Snape would come back to him, if he just waited.
So wait he did. A year turned into two, then three, and four. Time dripped away slowly like syrup.
And then he hears about a violent Death Eater attack in the outskirts of Paris. It is uncharacteristic and irregular; the Death Eaters don’t operate in the mainland.
Nevertheless, a woman is dead. A muggleborn. Yvonne Snape. Her husband is said to be alive but badly injured.
Upon hearing that, Sirius’s world stops rotating. For a few painful seconds, nothing exists in his mind, nothing but pain and anger for the fact that his soulmate has dared to wed another. And then, a thought emerges, this time urgent and fearful: I need to get to Paris.