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| A scene from The Philosopher's stone |
By this time I write about you, Severus, it feels like the train has left..the platform is empty and I am still walking….it is easy to see that hoards of fanfare has already happened. I strode on this path late. But then better late than never….I would not have known what I missed! With such surety I may as well not write, because only the screens have been visited, the lines revisited, but the source still unread. Yet I wouldn't have been as fascinated probably if the screen hadn't shown Severus. I was not acquainted with the actor who cast you, through any other movies. But I cannot help admiring the transformation from a real pleasant face to the one that does not twitch into the faintest smile even once. I asked myself if it's the cast or the character that has had me completely locked down in a magical den, and must admit, a bit of both.
Here am I, bewitched ensnared, right here at Hogwarts excited, to learn the subtle science of potion making....yes I will learn to brew glory, bottle fame and even put a stopper to death, Professor! I guess I can appreciate the simmering beauty of cauldrons and its shimmering fumes..I would love to learn about that liquid that can creep into veins in an instant to bewitch the minds, ensnare the senses….. as exactly as you have done!
"It may have escaped your notice but life is not fair."
Indeed... for a life of quiet suffering, not let out for an instant, disguised deeply under an uncompromising black robe and a stern air that could knock breath out of a gullible one...Black eyes..penetrating deeply into the skin of the one who is nabbed from behind, whose stealthy path you intercept with perfect cat like steps…..the eyes....they cross into a snake -like venom which would send frenzy down the spine ....except that beneath them lurked a glimmer, a shadow, that could cry for ever in the undying memory of wild green eyes... . A promise to lead a double life which was bought in exchange from the only other person who knew the entire thing that ''no one shall know!"
What fear lurked in your mind every time, as the 'potter boy' as you contemptuously alluded to of him, walked the corridors at night?….when a prisoner escaped the gallows, when the goblet of fire threw his name from the blazing flame to knock against life and death...when the broom at the quidditch, jinxed, upturned, threatened to throw and kill him in an instant...You struggled to keep him alive...muttering counter curses …saving with a word, an act or a gaze…..you ran the risk of being seen...misunderstood ..if understood it could be worse! The shade of concern that crosses your face an instant.., even when with contempt you ask him to turn out the pockets...alleging him of strutting about the castle like his father who he felt thought of himself beyond all rules.…disconcerted, worried to the greatest measure for his safety….except that you couldn't show, for none must know. You cared, Severus, you surely cared beyond mere promises, despite detesting his form for bearing that uncanny resemblance to your arch enemy... A real enemy at that not just who let you down every time but who changed life for ever...in a cursed moment.
But then every frame showed ...when you went closer to him in deep abhorrence.. something softened in your hard face.. was it the eyes, Severus? The wild green eyes?
Now I lose my connection quickly.... unless I focus I cannot write my mind….so for now let me relive the story...yes I am here ..the occlumency class....I can hear the urgency of your voice Severus….
"Focus ...Potter...control your mind..Legilimens!!!"
How you held his hand in urgency as you strode down the stairs to teach him at that time of the hour because any moment the dark lord may enter his mind. He had to be taught to defend….protective of an enemy, Severus?
I am hearing the conversation as it is…..I can hear the husky impertinent voice that pause a bit clumsily though, to emphasize every word uttered..every word is a statement!
Severus Snape : It appears there is a connection between the Dark Lord's mind and your own. Whether he is, as yet, aware of this connection is for the moment unclear. Pray he remains ignorant.
Harry Potter : You mean if he knows about it then, he'll be able to read my mind.
Severus Snape : Read it, control it, unhinge it. In the past it was often the Dark Lord's pleasure to invade the minds of his victims, creating visions designed to torture them into madness. Only after extracting the last exquisite ounce of agony, only when he had them literally begging for death would he finally... kill them. Used properly, the power of Occlumency will help shield you from access or influence. In these lessons I will attempt to penetrate your mind. You will attempt to resist. Prepare yourself! Legillimens!
He was weak ..you snapped...just like his father....what plain disregard for the sentiments of a boy who lost his parents before the drool left his face as they say….how detestable when you seem to despise a young boy as much. .
Severus Snape : “Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily — weak people, in other words — they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!”
Shaming his mind, but desperate weren't you, almost sure that he couldn't stand a chance against the dark power that had destined his doom.
Severus Snape : You're just like your father. Lazy, arrogant...
Harry Potter : Don't say a word against my father!
Severus Snape : Weak.
Harry Potter : I'm not weak!
Severus Snape : Then prove it! Control your emotions! Discipline your mind!
Harry Potter : My father was a great man!
Severus Snape: Your father was a swine .
Indeed..a life such could tell nothing lesser than that. Severus, how unexpected was that when Harry in curiosity penetrated your mind that moment ….a moment of access to your worst memory! Being buckled and swayed up to tease by the marauders which involved James Potter. You couldn't allow to be seen further ... ...For more reasons than one….
Severus Snape: "Enough!!!!!!...your lessons are at an end Potter…"
Harry Potter.." I …"
Severus Snape : "Get out! "
Startled by the unexpected exposure of your most intimate secrets, you couldnt help further. But for him he must have sensed why you hate him so much. Of love how could he know! You have such amazing powers to block yourself up from even the most powerful dark lord...Indeed, 'No one can know!'
Cold and impenetrable you kept yourself all the times….distanced..a solitary life..complex!
But the lines of time don't lie. They show up sometimes when the frame contains only you..looking faraway ...to something in time that nothing in the world could retrieve. The deep remorse of living life as this ...moments of mistakes ..moments of helpless insanity....we are all helpless surrendering to some other thing all life when we mean good aren't we.. Severus? How many times you must have cursed the moment you let the dark lord know of the prophecy of his death, dutybound…you were faithful to him....unsuspecting ...it did not, in your wildest dream contain anything of her…. the most terrible mistake ….and a repentance with your own life….you returned to live a life such as this ..
Lupin, the werewolf, of all people said that. Harry once asked him if he liked or disliked Severus. The one thing he said was that he did not like or dislike you. He could not be bosom friends without you, given the way James and he were among the rivals in younger days. But one thing when he was teaching at Hogwarts, on those days when he had to change into werewolf... on those moonlit days the potion you brewed for him was perfect all the time and it gave him immense relief like never before in his tough days. Not many would do it on an enemy for sure. It touched me coming from Lupin. He called Harry prejudiced! About you!
The pain of acting on things which weren't easy for anyone who cared. Can you kill a father figure ...a friend... can you watch over with perfect indifference when a colleague bobs up and down in an enemy's camp awaiting cold blooded murder pleading for help when you sit across the table helpless... She was saying desperately... "Severus … we were friends" … What could you do… the moment cannot be masked from the face ... an expressionless pain watching motionless and unmoving as the victim tumbles dead on the table right before you.
The pain of life.... numbing the body … you grow stiffer in every frame … did you notice? ...the head pulled up more... to wear that mask of expressionless expression...except the eyes Severus..the far away gaze penetrating more into the blighted time. How more should it tire?
"Has it occurred to your brilliant mind that I do not want to do this anymore."
It hit me hard, this tired lament, to the one who made you do it all when he asks for one last favour....This time it was nothing short of asking to kill him...Devastating... to any being born on earth….
The last frame of Dumbledore..as he stands against the huge window…The Malfoy boy is pointing his wand ..can a little boy take the life of such a powerful wizard..….the entire force is pressing him to do…As you appear from behind scarcely noticed by anyone it would fail to occur what you were asked to..
Dumbledore: "Severus ...please!"
Without as much as the slightest twitch on a hardened face... you raise your wand…
"Avada kedavara"
A moment ...as the flowing silver hair flew down the window....and the August dumbledore ended. The unutterable fatal curse! Everytime the curse had been uttered by others, one would wince ..the grim of death would hover for more than a few moments.....that from you Severus? Agony!
You just stood there and killed him this way…..for Harry that was the end of the last ounce of any goodness left for you. How would he know the writhing pain behind the act, the years behind braving oneself to do such on the victim's command. How easy it is to kill the sole one before whom you had broken down in privacy when you were devastated once...the only one who knows how cold your fate had been ..life just isn't fair!
I am here, standing frozen...watching in awe, grief and sudden shock .. the fire is blazing behind .... the most cruel Bellatrix laughing in insanity- her laughter itself is excruciating.. the death eaters dancing away celebrating the death of Dumbledore.. the greatest wizard of his time.
Harry in shock and grief chases...uttering a volley of spells as you hurried away in the darkness of the night...like another death eater..the cursed real life of some one who wasn't one….you flicked away all his spells with ease before it could touch you….until he uttered the one that could inflict irrecoverable injuries.
Harry Potter : Sectumsempra!
Severus Snape: How dare you use my own spell against me...I am the half blood prince!
Harry looks bewildered….
Indeed the half blood prince who rewrote the art taught by masters for the perfect result...Harry never dreamt in his wildest dream that he was using your book for study, with all its secret adjustments scrawled on the sides and winning laurels while others gaped on in the new potion masters class….that year when you left the potions department and moved to teach the defense against dark arts..lucky boy to have accidentally laid his hand on your wonderful book….it is magic to remember the careless scrawls ..the black letters...the changed numbers..'Crush the seed instead of cutting it.....it lets out the juice more..' Truly enchanting!
Harry Potter: Coward! Kill me as you killed him.
The pain flowed...you bend down to him knocked on the ground…
Severus snape: "Don't ..call me a coward."..One sees an entire life in that face..…. an inhuman contortion, deep in pain '"like the howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them..""
Severus, it blows away at once, all niceties told about life. What courage it must be to stand where you are!
We wouldn't know about it...nor Harry...or anyone.. until the end...until you allow..until the pen sieve could reveal your memories...
What must have passed from the years of love.. true and deep….you were the one who told her she was special and that she had powers, even before you moved together to learn the art of magic. . How you fed her soul with your love until then…
Pursuing passion is magical until it becomes tragic. I wouldn't blame you Severus, for choosing dark arts out of academic interest. Why would anyone? Yet for someone as pure as Lily it wouldn't be appreciable. Probably the threads were loosened already, on that account...... for the slur of the tongue in a moment of deepest shame and exasperation cannot end a relation.….the pain and remorse didn't leave your soul until the last moment. But some do not know...understand.....she left for what she thought was a better life with James.... Ah! Living with that an entire life.
Yet you begged to keep her alive…...the desperation in your voice and being….as you broke down your agony before Dumbledore….he failed ..for she cast herself between the dark lord and her son….
That frame is shaky and blurry to anyone who has a heart....the way you enter the Godric Hollow to see her last. The tears that flowed upon the body that took every ounce of breath, love and life from you. The lament as you swung her up to your bosom!
One would feel that was your worst moment until you see the next frame. Asking someone to lead double lives to protect her son.
How severe can life hit one? The agony on your face Severus..broken and shattered..
Severus Snape ...But he doesn't need any protection..the dark lord is gone..
Dumbledore : He will return..
You must do this...If you loved her...he has her eyes.. remember…"
'No one can know'…..choked, tears staining the face, in writhing pain , that is all you ask in return.
Dumbledore : "Not reveal the best of you Severus ?"
Indeed!
Would you have agreed Severus, if you had known then what you knew years later? Wasnt Dumbledore treacherous to have hidden from.you the real idea...Harry had to die if the dark lord had to be vanquished ....as part of the dark lord's soul resides within him. In the moment that his mother had cast herself between them….the curse rebounded and part of his soul clung to the only living thing it found around...harry!
The words burn in the heart when you said
"So you had been raising him like a pig for slaughter?" Carefully constructed to vanquish the dark.power…..but treacherous to you Severus, again….unfair!
A white doe once revealed when Harry was alone... deeply in trouble...was it you or her? You share the same patronus...it's touching..it feels nothing short of a soul divided between two.
I leave this here, this emotional pen note..who would want to talk of how the dark lord took away this life most unexpectedly..or did you expect that one day it would end ..all in vain in the hope that the elder wand would reach him. The elder wand never belonged to you...alas! I do not like to talk of death. But those were the moments you connected with her eyes again through her boy..
Severus Snape : "Look at me Harry, You have your mother's eyes.."
The heart that melted only in the end. I marvel at the life that held such love locked in.
Amazing power the tears must have had …...that could finally reveal the best of you Severus..that made the world say..there was no man as brave as you were...
Perhaps this may cease to haunt me sometime… perhaps I would carry it a little further than that..but then perhaps I would want to say sometime when someone asks me… after all this time?….
"Always!"
* * * * * *
Alan Rickman who portrayed Severus Snape was told the entire story confidentially by J.K.Rowling even before she completed her series of Harry Potter. He promised to keep it such. At the sets it seemed he had to put up a bit with the directors who were unaware of the character as much as he did..at the end of it all he wrote a touching letter about his character......about how he knew there was more to Snape than an unchanging robe.... J.K.Rowling's Severus Snape has a face and it's certainly Alan Rickman's!
