The thoughts weren’t fleeting like one might assume. They were king and heavy, they weighed on his soul and consumed his mind. It would be so easy. One step, one shift in his weight. He looked out onto the courtyard of children in near lines, guarded and miserable.
He wouldn’t make them watch.
But he could wait, until they were gone and then let the wind take him just off the side of his ledge. He would fall, much like his mentor had at his hand.
So many at his hand. Perhaps not his hand but his words, his inaction, had caused more death than he cared to think about.
But what he cared to think about was irrelevant because it was all he thought about.
James and Lily… his words.
Sirius Black… his inability to act fast enough.
Charity Burbage… his inaction.
Albus Dumbledore… his wand.
The children were gone now.
He could take the final step, let his wand float away and simply stop. Stop fighting the endless battle.
But then the list would lengthen. It would consume Minerva, and Hagrid, Draco, and Narcissa, Harry… He would not allow this. So instead he took a decisive step backwards. Away from the ledge, and even as he did so he longed for it, sweet release from the everlasting torment of his mind.
~
The shack was cold, even as the may air warmed.
He had almost died here before, as a boy, tricked in what would be chalked up now to be a school yard rivalry. Yet what it had been was cruel attempted murder, manipulation of the victim and the weapon by an immature boy with no forethought. When he thought about, which he often did, Remus Lupin had been just as much a victim of this crime as he had been himself. At the hands of a man who had paid his time, perhaps not for the crimes he committed but at the time of his death Severus felt owed nothing from the shell of the man that had been.
Time moved slowly as he felt the blood pour from his skin. He didn’t try to stop it, it felt right, it felt complete, like all he had longed for for nearly seventeen years.
Perhaps even longer.
He felt them as they ran to him, a warm hand around his neck, trying to stop the bleeding.
Don’t. Let it go.
He looked and met the eyes, those eyes, the perfectly green ones, but they were different. Marred by youthful war and lost friends. Weighed down in a way that reminded him far to much of his own.
He wanted to say so many things. He wanted to apologize, for how he’d treated the boy. For what would have to happen next, that he couldn’t do it for him.
He would. He would if he had been able.
“Look at me.” He whispered finally and met the eyes once more before the cold shack drifted away and all he felt was warmth, and peace.