Tossukka (sitruunavohveli) wrote in lupin_snape, @ 2011-01-31 19:56:00 |
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Current mood: | cheerful |
Entry tags: | fic: pg, project: a decade of ssrl |
A Decade of Snupin: January
Title: Nothing ends when you say goodbye
Author: sitruunavohveli
Beta: snapealina is the best and checked this for errors. All the remaining ones are mine alone. Feel free to point them out.
Word count: ~700
Rating: PG
Notes: This is ridiculous, I know. This piece is based on a Finnish song and I’ve kind of taken some lines of it and translated them in English and put them in the story. But the song is lovely! Keltainen satama by the Finnish band Don Huonot. If you don’t mind that it’s in a language you probably won’t understand, listen to it here! (And if you understand Finnish, please do tell. Nobody ever understands it. :D) Anyway, the song is about travelling and not being able to run from you own heart even though you are far from home. My theme word for this month was “travelling” so the song seemed fitting.
Part 1
Part 2
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Severus never thought Muggle transport as an efficient way to travel. It was slow, there were other people everywhere around him and it seemed to need a lot of planning.
When the second war of Voldemort ended, Severus found himself in desperate need of change and solitude. He had been fighting in this war since he’d been a teenager, and for all of his life he had been dependent on someone he’d rather not been dependent on. First it had been his father who had mistreated and abused him, but since Severus hadn’t had any own money and he wanted to finish his education, he was forced to live with his parents. After Hogwarts it had been Voldemort. Severus had been foolish, young and hungry for power; it had been easy to lure him to the group that called itself the Death Eaters. The rest of his life he had hanged on Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter. The first was manipulative and in his own way as power-hungry as Severus had ever been, and the second was also young and foolish but had surprisingly succeeded at avoiding all the mistakes Severus had done when he had been at his age.
Then there was Remus Lupin.
Their relationship had been complicated and fragile from the beginning, but Severus had always known he could come dependent on Remus if he chose to do so. Remus was gentle and friendly and had been the first person in years that Severus had been able to trust. But after the war had ended, Severus knew he could not stay in Britain and still keep his sanity. He could not build his own life around another person once again just when he had just got his freedom. He had to get away, see something outside the little world he had built around himself, and maybe find what he wanted from life now that he had no more urgent responsibilities. It left the whole story between him and Remus hanging in the air, but regardless Severus decided to take the first Muggle train he saw after the last battle ended and just flee. The Ministry was probably looking for him so he couldn’t use any means of Wizarding transport, but after he was in London, he got himself some Muggle money and bought a ticket for an airplane.
At first he meant to be away only for weeks, a few months at most, but in the end it turned to be almost two years. He had seen a lot more than he could have imagined, and found traveling by trains and planes soothing in a way. Everybody always seemed to be in constant hurry, but when traveling from one place to another, Severus had some precious hours only for himself. It had been relaxing, it had been different and Severus felt for the first time in his life that everything indeed was possible for him.
But you cannot travel far enough to get rid of your own past and your own shadows, and you can’t escape from them forever. Finally, he had written a letter to Minerva McGonagall who, Severus knew, was the new Headmistress of Hogwarts. She had been able to get him a job and flat in Scotland, and now Severus was returning to his own life. He was a free man, and he now had no commitments in Britain; he could stay or leave as he pleased.
What he refused to admit, was that he was urgent to see what he would find back home. His new flat was in Edinburgh, where Remus also lived with his son. Severus was sure it was not a coincidence that Minerva had arranged them to live in the same city.
Now Severus sat on a train from London to Edinburgh. The East Coast Railway showed him some of the most beautiful places in all of Britain and gave him the opportunity to feel his home country fully again. It looked exactly like he remembered, but Severus couldn’t say why he had expected it to change. Everything back here had kept its own pace while he had been away.
Nothing ever really changed when you said your goodbyes, and now Severus just had to deal with everything he had left behind. Before that he had some more hours to cherish his solitude and just admire the beautiful landscape.