TITLE: Clay

AUTHOR: Richan

PAIRING: SS/?, SS/HP

RATING: PG-13

FEEDBACK: tempusstella@yahoo.com

DISCLAIMER: Don't own. If I did, I wouldn't be typing this in a cold basement. I'd be typing this

on some tropical island with cute guys waving palm fronds and sipping drinks with umbrellas in

them.

SUMMARY: Someone writes a 'Dear Severus' note.

NOTES: Part of the Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest, response to the three word challenge: letter,

invisible, ubiquitous

ARCHIVING: The Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest Archive; my site, Time Star.

Severus,

Since you won't talk to me, I will have to write this in a letter. I have put a charm on it, so

that you must finish reading this, because I know that you have little tolerance for the things.

I haven't been able to pin you down for the chance to say what I need to say to you, so this is

my only recourse.

I am leaving you.

I am not taking anymore of your shit.

I cannot love a person that finds more pleasure in belittling the one person he says he cares

about.

There. That's what I wanted to talk to you about.

No. I do have something more to say. A lot more to say. Things that I have been wanting to say

for a long, long time. Things that I would have rather bit off my tongue than say at the time,

just because I was waiting for you to love me like I have loved you.

You are the most selfish, utterly cruel bastard and prick that I have ever met. And that includes

meeting Malfoy. You take everything that I give and turn it on me, taking pleasure in my broken

hopes and dreams that you could return my feelings. You mold me into what you want me to become,

leaving everything that has made me me behind.

I have given you years that I could have spent with what was left of my family, but since I

thought that you cared about me, I abandoned them the same way they did me for my choice to stay.

I have given you things that I should have given to somebody else - somebody that would care and

love - yes, LOVE - me the way I deserve. I may not have had much of that, if any, growing up, but

I know now that I do deserve better treatment than what I have gotten at your hands.

You sit in your lab, your ubiquitous self barking out orders to the newest batch of students to

be frightened, and don't care about what feelings you hurt. I would say that you are almost as

bad as Voldemort is, but I know that he would rather manipulate somebody else into hurting the

ones they care about, and enjoy the show.

No, you could care less about anybody but yourself. You do your duty to Albus and pretend to be a

good, little boy. You do it to play both sides, just in case one or the other wins.

When I first worked with you under Albus' orders, I thought I had finally found that you had

principles. I thought that you were doing what you were for personal reasons, for redemption, for

quelling the guilt I thought arose within you.

I obviously thought wrong. Didn't I?

Four years of my life have been wasted on a man that could hardly care if I woke up in the

morning, as long as I didn't expire in the bed we shared. Four years have been spent thinking I

was making love to a wonderful man, only to find that I was 'a good bugger' and nothing else. Oh,

yes, I heard your explanation to yourself last night, as you used the bedroom as a convenient way

to get to your lab.

I think that was the last straw.

Before I heard that, I had been hoping that maybe we were just having communication problems. I

thought that your being called to Voldemort's side so often had tired you out, and that I should

wait until you were rested.

Well, I am tired of being invisible to you, Severus. Of being ignored for your own concerns. Of

being ignored, period.

I hope your soul rots in Hell with Voldemort when he is finally vanquished. I hope that someday

you find somebody you love with all your heart like I did you and find the despair that I am now

going through when they don't love you back. Heh, I actually have hopes, but they are no longer

the 'sweet' things they used to be. You destroyed my ability to wish for better things.

I should have listened to my friends when they told me I was crazy, before they left me to my

unknown misery. I don't know if they will ever forgive me the transgressions that I have

committed by staying beside you, but even knowing that I have left you will be enough for the

moment.

Your ring is on the table, where you should have left it. No, shove back into your vault with the

rest of your precious little goodies you hoard there, the things you actually care about. The

ring should have never left that vault, but you must have wanted to show that I belonged to you

just as the ring does.

I hated the damn thing, just like I hate you now. Don't come and speak to me, if you feel you

have to reclaim me. I don't belong to you.

James

Severus looked at the crumpled piece of parchment. It was well worn, wrinkles spread across every

surface as if it had been balled in a fist more than once before being spread flat once again.

The wrinkles formed jagged pieces of a puzzle, with indications that it was beginning to tear at

the seams. One corner was ripped, the uneven edge worn soft with age and fingers.

He had been cleaning out his rooms, readying them for the next occupant, when he had found the

old letter. Severus hadn't meant to look at it, but had been caught once more in the charm that

forced him to read the entire thing. He had often wondered just how cruel James knew he had been

when he had put that on the parchment.

Severus hung his head before stuffing the parchment in one of the boxes. He didn't have the time

to keep on looking at this piece of history that he wanted to forget. His current lover knew of

it, and they had argued over it and what had caused James to write it in the first place. Still,

he couldn't handle the emotions that went with reading it.

He knew that he had been a selfish bastard all those years ago, and while he had tried to use the

excuse that he had been young and thoughtless, it didn't erase all the damage that he had done.

Severus had ultimately ruined seven lives with his behavior, including his own.

Often wondering about what life would have been like if he hadn't played the part of the ultimate

Slytherin, Severus had tortured himself over the years. He wondered how life would have played

out if Voldemort had never gone after the Potters, taking James' life and her life and leaving

behind a healthy son. His guilt grew, and it did so exponentially once Harry Potter stepped foot

into the Great Hall for the first time. It was James' face all over again, but with the green

eyes of his mother.

It had hurt.

It had hurt seeing the fruit of his behavior in an eleven-year-old boy that should have never

been born. He was the culmination of James and Lily, when the woman should have never been in the

picture. It should have been James and Severus, but he had been too stupid and full of himself to

ever work this out until it was too late.

Severus hadn't read the letter until he'd had word that James hadn't been in the castle for over

a month. He had seen the note, of course, but had thought it was telling him that James was going

to go see his parents like he did the last two summers since they had graduated.

He had never gotten the chance to tell James that he had been the reason why Severus spied. To

keep him safe from Voldemort. What he hadn't realized was that while James was safe from a madman

trying to rid the world of people that were, in his view, undesirable, he hadn't been safe from

the one person that had sworn to protect him.

"Severus?"

He turned to find his lover watching him with curious eyes. Green eyes sparkled behind the thin

wire-framed glasses perched on the nose that had grown more like Lily's as he had gotten older,

skewing the perfect model of James' face that Harry had worn. Severus nodded, gesturing for Harry

to join him.

"Aren't you about done?" Harry asked, joining Severus as he kneeled in front of a crate. "We have

to be out of here tomorrow, and there's still a couple more loads to take to the house."

"I know," he answered in a quiet voice. He held up the letter, folded neatly in thirds once more.

"I looked at this."

"Oh." Harry's voice was faint as he rose from his kneeling position.

Severus looked over at his lover. Harry's face was solemn with the reminder of their past as he

returned to his own study. Even after all this time, the letter chilled both of them for a while.

They had worked hard to overcome the past when they had found themselves forced to be partners by

Dumbledore. At first, neither one of them had been able to move from their corners of hatred for

the longest of times, Severus grudgingly teaching Harry what he needed to know for the next

battle with Voldemort.

It wasn't until Lucius Malfoy had caught Severus in an attempt to rise back to Voldemort's right

hand side, that things had shifted. Severus had been left lying in the middle of the room,

surrounded by the Death Eaters, with Voldemort watching with a sadistic grin on what passed for

his face, when there had been an explosion outside the building. Smoke had filled the room,

filling up the lungs of all those standing. It had been the perfect opportunity for Severus to be

rescued, as deadly carbon monoxide - dangerous to any human - incapacitated the rest of the room.

When Severus realized he was looking at stars instead of a cracked, plastered ceiling, he had

turned to see his rescuer.

He hadn't been happy to see a dirt-streaked Harry Potter sheltering him from a second blast, to

say the least. Still, he had grudgingly seen what Dumbledore had been telling him about Potter,

once he was confined to a bed in hospital with a hovering Madam Pomfrey. Potter had shown up with

a card and box of chocolate frogs. At least they hadn't been those idiotic beans.

He was intelligent, stupidly brave whenever possible, and uncannily Slytherin at times. Something

that he had never seen, when he had never looked past the exterior of his own failure. Something

that had grown on him as they continued meeting for lessons once Severus had been declared well.

The lessons had progressed to a meeting of the minds on subjects other than defense. Severus was

intrigued by the intelligence that had been hidden by Harry's suffocating relatives, by being

overshadowed by Granger and the world in general.

The peace had been shattered when their little world exploded into flames.

Voldemort attacked Hogsmeade, attempting to enter Hogwarts' grounds. The end of Harry's seventh

year had been bloody and utterly never worth the amounts of lives that the battle had been paid

with.

Severus had been the one to nurse Harry's mind back from the oblivion that had settled over it

when he found his friends slaughtered. Black had been too sick - besides, Severus had never

trusted him anyway. There was no chance that he wanted to take of Harry being brainwashed back to

the stupid Gryffindor he had been when eleven.

Everything had gone almost too well, Severus had thought. Things never went like they had been.

He'd been right when Harry found the letter, searching for a book to read. Severus had never

thought of a better place to store it than his copy of Moste Potente Potions, a bookmark for the

Obliviae potion, and it had fallen into Harry's unaware hands.

Their fragile friendship had been cracked, until it seemed that the gulf between them would never

be repaired.

It had been then that Severus had finally, finally understood all of what James had said. He had

been devastated by Harry's coldness and Dumbledore's disappointment and Black's even more bitter

malice towards him.

Was this what James had felt when he'd been with Severus? Thinking that it was, Severus had

actually wished for Voldemort to come torture him. Nothing else would make up for the pain he had

caused twenty years ago, when he'd torn friends apart with his selfishness.

At that point, Severus had taken a long, hard look at his life and what he wanted to make it. He

had been molded by his father into a perfect model of a dark wizard, honed by Voldemort into a

ruthless killer, and embalmed by Dumbledore's attempts to play god. Severus had never fashioned

his own path. Now he would. He would take everything that James had ever wanted and start from

there. He'd take every little thing that James had come to hate and turn it around in the hopes

that Harry would see that Severus was worth the effort, the pain, to stay with him.

When he reemerged from his chambers a week after his fight with Harry over James' letter, he had

gone straight to the son of his former lover to talk. It hadn't been pretty, but it had been a

start. From there, it took the final defeat of Voldemort to get either of them to admit their

feelings about each other.

And now they were at a new starting place in their lives.

Hogwarts had lost its leader in Dumbledore in the Last Battle, and Severus wanted no part in the

school if his mentor/master was no longer here. Now he would forge ahead with his own plans of

independent research, selling his inventions to various companies or patenting potions that he

improved upon.

Severus looked around the barren rooms, its contents boxed in a few crates. Twenty years of

slavery to two masters reduced to a couple of rooms being slowly emptied of life. Forty years of

following someone else's path had been blown to the winds with the cobwebs in the house they were

moving into.

Satisfied with his work, he moved out to the living quarters to find Harry sitting on the sofa,

book on his lap and eyes trained on Severus' study door. Severus walked over to him and held out

the letter to Harry. "This is yours."

Green eyes looked between the battered parchment and Severus' face.

"What?"

"This is yours," Severus carefully and slowly repeated. "I have no need to live in the past any

more than you do. To this end, the letter your father wrote is yours to do with, what you will."

Harry's eyebrows rose slightly. "Anything?"

Severus nodded. He wasn't about to repeat himself again.

Harry reached for the parchment, turning it over and over in his hands as if memorizing every

line on its surface. "You said anything?"

A sneer crossed Severus' face.

Harry laughed for a moment before sobering. "Very well." He laid the parchment in the middle of

the floor between the sofa and where Severus stood. He raised his wand and pointed at it.

"Incendio!"

Severus watched his past burn in a quick, bright orange flame. His eyes were still trained on the

ashes when a cool hand brushed his cheek.

"You once told me that you were always molded into what other people wanted you to be," Harry

said when Severus' eyes met his. "You are no longer that person, Severus. Instead, you have been

forged into steel under your own power, unscathed by the flames."

Severus glowered. "That was incredibly disgusting and maudlin."

Harry grinned cheekily at him. "I know," he laughed back. "But it is true, no matter what you

think of it." He rose to the tips of his toes and wrapped his arms around Severus' neck, brushing

his lips against the other man's. Severus leaned in for a better taste, but Harry was already

pulling back.

"Ready?"

Severus looked around the rooms once more. These rooms were no longer the prison that had been.

He looked at Harry. Yes, it was time to go home.

Fin.