Taking You With Me
It doesn’t feel right yet.
Jupiter is off balance, he can hear Trelawney screaming into his ear over breakfast, and the stars shine in all the wrong places.
“It doesn’t feel right, yet,” the Headmaster can agree, hand deftly picking up a sherbet lemon from the bowl that is always full, “Not yet.”
Severus denied it, of course, because the stars have never been right for him and Jupiter with all its glory is still a spec in the sky he’s eyes drown in, his soul to bask in…
“Give me a chance,” he asks at twenty three, chances as much as the years he’s lived shoved under the carpet, “Give me another chance.”
“What will you do with this chance, Severus?”
The bowl of sherbet lemons sits between them, overflowing with the sweets filled to the brim. They are sweet, sweet on the tongue. The tongue years of swallowed words have grown sour.
Tongue, gaze, smile, dreams… The task of listing things that haven’t rotten under his touch would be easier to accumulate. Spoiled secrets, ignored demons.
The chances shoved under the carpet, carless and above all afraid.
Because it was still him, under the mask he’s foolish self had carved as his own. Still him, with his second hand muggle shoes and the thrift store pants trimmed to fit him around the waist.
Severus wants another chance. The cast-off lives and chances rotting, ignored. So no, it doesn’t feel right yet.
Like the mask, Severus is willing to carve this chance until it does, just like he’d done then. Only this time, Minerva can scold him, the mother he found too late, the friend he accepted too slow. Minerva can scold him, support him and all the things Jupiter would rather not have her do.
The stars are wrong.
For Severus, they’ve been written that way.
“I will make it ours,” Severus dares to say, and the guilt of his heart weighs like the snow drawn paths of the woods. Heavy, terrifying, their road uncrossed. This, Severus knows. For this, he doesn’t make the chance his.
“For him, I will make it ours.”
“You’d wear your heart on your sleeve, Severus?”
Severus’ chuckle isn’t kind, and the bitter sound lingers in the air, the spell fuelled by a different sort of magic.
Regret, as emotions tend to be, come in muggle and wizard both.
Severus wears his heart on his sleeve, his love knows no bounds. That very love brings him to the Dursley’s one Christmas evening, the child pressed to his chest, snow on his cheeks. It’s what drives him to kiss Harry’s forehead, his tongue still bitter, the broken button on his sleeve still healing, his world still hating him from the shoes on his feet and the thoughts in his head.
“There’s a house by the coast, Harry,” he whispers to the child, gentler than what either of them are accustomed to, “Right by the sea, where the shells shine and the water ripples at your feet, despite who you may be. I’m going there.”
He lifts his coat, the apparition magic flowing around him, pulling the sleeping child closer, lips pressed above his hair.
“I’m taking you with me.”
Number 4 is silent once more that evening, unaware of what they’ve lost. Unwilling to learn the future to come.
That is fine with Severus. Because there is a house by the coast, and a (new) father is healing.
And the world continues.