Severus touched Alecto's arm before drawing his wand.
"Deserted..." he said, looking around, "The thing about Evans... maybe, she couldn't understand. How important she was to me, or what it was like for me. Why I made the deicions I did. Imagine... you're powerless. Completely. Your parents, you know they'd be happier without you. That your existance tore a rift between them. These... people, they are supposed to nuture you. Teach you to love, teach you right from wrong. When you skin your knee... they're supposed to hold you. Mine didn't. My mother, she tried... but Tobias was a tyrant, so... And, I saw him beat her and them fight. I'd run and hide when I could. In this old graveyard, and I'd wonder... what it was like, what it was supposed to be like."
He looked distant as he spoke, trying what he could to remove himself from those feelings that made his fingers tremble and throat feel tight. Severus was a very determined soul, he was driven. He always had been.
"Lily... she lived in town, more in town than I did, because we lived far from the others. Tobias didn't want them to see the freak my mother was, or hear them fight... And her problems they were so sweet, so trivial. It was so beautiful to me. I think... I gauged everything by her. She had this nosey, gossip mongerer sister that troubled her and it was all so laughable. I was so envious, and... so I fell for her. I knew I'd never have what she had and I knew, I think somewhere, that I'd never have her either. So I took what I knew I could get. My father's temper, my mother's silence, and I suffered, lashing out in hate at everything, at everyone... I thought that if I were stronger- and so I began to stand up to my father, and... he hit me instead, and I was so accepting of it..."
He knew his thoughts were disjoined, as if he were ruminating over decades of questions and answers and memories, and he was. Severus was trying to work it out as he spoke. It didn't really matter what he said or if Alecto heard or even understood it. It was like he'd taken so much in that he had to let it overflow or he'd blow. So he did.
"And then, I let her hurt me and it took it so gratefully, and Potter, and his friends. It fueled something in me. Without that anger, I couldn't have ever killed, or become what I did. I couldn't have lashed out and cost her and Potter their lives... and... she tells me, I martyred myself. Protected her bloody child, his bloody child, and I taught. I hate children, I hate that school. What am I punishing myself for, Alecto? I did nothing!"
His voice had picked up to a near shout and he felt that dangerous sensation of uncontrolled magic. Severus sighed at it and lifted his hand to push at his forehead. He was angry and hurt, embarrased maybe at his lack of control, but in a way, he was relieved. He'd held it back for so long, so very long.
"Help me burn it. We'll call it an effigy. If it's abandoned, no one will miss it. Please," he said, looking sideways at her, "I need this."