Missing

Severus Snape, Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, had put his memories of Hannah into a pensieve shortly after her death. He put it on the top of his tallest bookshelf in his highest room, and forgot.

You won’t cry for my absence, I know. You forgot me long ago. Am I that unimportant? Am I so insignificant? Isn’t something missing? Isn’t someone missing me…?

The mere memory of Hannah drove him mad. But her memory was strong enough to reach out to him, if only in his sleep. He had taken a lover into his bed some years back and was asleep with her now. Severus had pushed the memory away for too long. It was time he remembered…

Maybe one day you’ll walk out, and barely consciously you’ll say to no one: “Isn’t something missing…?”

I spot her, there, just beyond the thicket. Did you see her? Her hair is long and beautiful as it dances below her elbows. She’s drawing me nearer…I can feel her. I catch sight of her ruby lips. I’m running as fast as I can, yet nothing I do will bring me closer. I am in the Forbidden Forest chasing this ghost. I don’t know why. I don’t know how I got here.

There is something missing. I feel like I’ve forgotten something. I see her again! I’m running over fallen branch and shed leaves. She seems so alone…

I stop abruptly when I come to a clearing of fresh, clean grass which I notice is a direct contrast to the autumn woods around me sprouting from a brown lawn of death. I see her. She is lying in the centre on the grass. Her hair is fanned out around her like some inky headdress.

“Hannah?” I speak into the darkness that has gathered around the clearing.

I walk up to her and see her eyes gazing at nothing. She is dead. I kneel to touch her porcelain face and its warmth fades under my hand. Her ruby lips are tinged with the blue of death. My vision of her blurs as I cry and bellow into the sudden night around us.

I remember.

I take her hand and brush her knuckles against my lips. “Not again…” I whisper to no one.

I jolt awake in a sitting position to find I am covered in sweat and the dungeon air is chilling my skin. In the darkness I can still see her eyes…the eyes that used to flare alive under me as I made love to her. I realize a single tear has rolled down my cheek and I wipe it away in disgust.

When I was a deatheater in my youth, I tried my hand at love. My lover, Hannah, was a muggle-born witch with the most amazing eyes... I loved her to her ruin. Before Lucius slit her slender throat, she made contact with my mind and uttered these last few words:

“Please, please forgive me. I won’t be going home again. Even though I’m a sacrifice, you won’t try for me, not now. Though I’d die to know you love me; I’m all alone. Remember me…”

I lay back down and embrace my lover sleeping at my side. I feel her shift comfortably in my arms and I rest my forehead against the back of her neck. A sob escapes my lips and I feel tears dampen her hair. She shifts again.

“Hermione?” I say softly.

She moans quietly and assures me of her sleep.

I thought I had rid myself of Hannah long ago. Then I realize with a quiet, desperate gasp of air, and an emotion that causes me to squeeze my eyes shut until they hurt, that I will never be rid of her. I will live with what happened for the rest of my life. And I will die with the knowledge of how I could have stopped Lucius and didn’t.

And that she knew it.


Fin