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The Man With the Missing Past by libertyelyot [Reviews - 5]

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They had decided on forty-eight hour intervals between each bout of memory recovery, to ensure each batch was fully processed before piling on another. The preceding two days had been prickly, with Severus clearly brooding on the childhood he never really had, but accepting Jemima’s delicate conversational interventions to the extent that he appeared to have reached an acceptance of what he had experienced. This, though, would be the easy part, Jemima thought apprehensively. Severus had seen nothing so far for which he could be blamed; only the foundations of his adult personality. His home circumstances had been traumatic enough, but things could get worse, and she assumed that they were going to. Today they faced the psychic minefield of adolescence, barbed about with innumerable tripwires for the ego. She felt that there would be some bloodshed and she only hoped she had the wherewithal to staunch the wounds.

Severus gazed gloomily into the tricoloured glow before drawing the orange strands up into his wand.

“I’m here,” whispered Jemima urgently just before he took them inside his head.

“Yes,” he said hoarsely, black irises dilating wildly until his whites were tiny peripheral rings.

Then he spoke no more for a long while. Straight away, he crouched on the carpet, looking avidly at something in the distance, looking for something. A curiously triumphal look for a minute or two, reminding Jemima of times she had excised particularly tricky aneurysms from a patient’s brain. Then a lot of defensive gestures – wand waving, tricksy up-down swishes, posturing reminiscent of fencing scenes in swashbuckling movies. If it weren’t for the odd sleepwalk-like quality of his face, Jemima thought she might find this quite sexy; he had a wonderful fluidity of motion, economic yet expressive. ‘Have at you, Sirrah!’ she thought with the ghost of a smile after one particularly emphatic jab. Then the humour drained from her face. Terrible anxiety was etched into Severus’ features; he clutched at his hair and screwed his eyes shut. And then he spoke, for the first time during this process – a repetitive half-whispered chant of ‘Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me’. Oh God. Forgive what? Jemima felt sick on his behalf. Then there was a shriek, he fell flat on his back, staring at the ceiling and remained there, motionless, until the half hour’s grace had passed.

Jemima decided to wait for him to make the first move. He had the look of a man in shock, and she thought he might lash out if she were too precipitous in her attentions.

At length, still shaking slightly, he propped himself up on an elbow, looking blearily over at her with one eye open. “Still here?” he said, rather gruffly.

“Of course,” she said. “Where else would I be?”

“A million miles away, if you had any sense.”

“Oh, give over.” She went to sit next to him on the floor. “That bad, eh?”

He chewed at his knuckles for a while. “I knew about this. I don’t know why it…came as a shock. I don’t know why it feels so raw, when it’s really so remote. Such a long time ago.”

Jemima bit the insides of her cheeks, fighting down a furious jealousy. Oh, right. The girl. The silly bint that rejected him, more fool her.

“Was she very brutal?” she asked tonelessly.

“Well, that’s the thing. She wasn’t…anything. She wasn’t cruel or…she didn’t even know. I never told her.”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Obvious, Jemima. I’m a freak. I’m…not worthy.”

“Oh, Severus, you sound like a fourteen-year-old. Stop it! Step back – take a look from the distance of your years. You can’t really believe that still?”

“I…don’t know.”

“You mean you went through your whole life thinking you were a worthless waste of space, based on one…”

“No! It wasn’t just her…everybody thought so. I was in No Mans’ Land. I was a penniless half-blood in Slytherin, and a dirty Slytherin creep in all the other Houses…”

“Houses?”

“Four Houses, making up the school body. I was in Slytherin, with all the silver spooners and…bigots. For some reason. I didn’t fit in. Though I could play them at their games of deceit and trickery more than adequately. I suppose that was why…”

“Well, you’ve lost me, but never mind. Didn’t anybody see anything of value in you? Surely a teacher?”

“They admired my abilities. But they all thought I was a slippery piece of work. Even Slughorn, the Head of House found me rather beneath his notice. Until a certain someone took an interest in me.”

“The girl?”

“No, not her. Not Lily. She was my friend, my only friend for a long time, it’s true. Then my…talents…brought me to the notice of Slytherin’s Head Prefect. Lucius Malfoy. Took me under his wing…offered me his patronage and protection. Introduced me to his inner circle. They used to pay me the odd sickle here and there to come up with new duelling spells. I was very…flattered. I suppose my head was turned. Jemima, I was…am…desperate for recognition of my skills. I wanted to be the best, and I wanted to be acknowledged for it. There wasn’t much I wouldn’t have done… In fairly short order, I became quite unscrupulous. You would not like me…it’s hardly surprising she didn’t.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t have liked you? What makes you think I was a paragon of all the virtues all my life?”

He shook his head impatiently. “Jemima, I…crushed any vestige of principle I’d ever had by the time I was thirteen. I laughed at the very idea of principle, in fact. I sneered at anything…good, or…pure. Except her. I did cling to her. But she was getting away from me; I could see my grip loosening, and I didn’t know how…”

He stopped for a minute, overcome with the memory.

“You did something…she couldn’t forgive?” prompted Jemima gently.

“I called her a name. A nasty, uncalled-for name. I didn’t even mean it. It was just…I had to act the Pureblood snob, as a survival technique.”

“But survival had become more important than her, then?”

“I…no…it was the people she was with at the time more than…it was just an outburst. It wasn’t even directed at her, really. I’m sorry, Jemima, I’m gibbering.”

“You’re bound to be a bit…semi-coherent, after all this. She didn’t forgive you?”

“No,” he sighed. “She never did. She never spoke to me properly again. And I had to watch her…getting friendlier and friendlier…with somebody I despised. One of the gang who bullied me relentlessly throughout my school career.”

“Oh, nasty! Is that what all the shouting was about?”

“Shouting? No! Oh no, that was something else. I nearly got killed. By a tree.”

“I…see.”

“Long story. Tedious and depressing. Like the rest of it. All tedious and all depressing. Jemima, I think I should leave.”

“What? No!”

“You have nothing to gain from any association with me. I…”

“Oh shut UP, Severus!” She grabbed his wrist so hard he had to wrench it away quite forcefully to break free. “You’re ‘eighteen’ in your head, you’re depressed, neurotic, full of self-loathing…but that’s not YOU as you are now. Don’t get sucked into that, please!”

“I’m not a good person. I’m morally bankrupt.”

“No! To say that, you must still have some credit in your moral account, Severus! Really amoral people don’t even give it a second’s thought – you obviously have agonised yourself into a ball over this. You have principles! You are worthy!”

“I’d sell you to further my ambitions.”

“Oh, no you wouldn’t, you ridiculous man. Would you have sold Lily?”

“No.”

“Well then. You wouldn’t sell me. You’re just trying to put me off, and you’re doing this for the very sound moral reason that you think I’ll be better off without you. But that’s flawed thinking too, Severus, because I would not be better off without you at all. I would be miserable. She didn’t love you, and I’m sorry about that, but I DO!”

“Of course you don’t,” he snapped. “You can’t.”

“You wouldn’t have said that before. It’s the memories…your adolescent self talking. Before you took those memories back, you were able to accept that I might…like you…that you were likeable. Lovable, even. But now, it’s paradoxical; it’s as if remembering your past has made you forget how to relate. Because you were so badly messed up, and through no fault of your own. But you have to rise above that, Severus, work through it. We’ve got something worth fighting for. Please don’t fall back into that…horrible fog of…misery.”

“I don’t deserve you.”

“You do. You really do. You deserve me, and you deserve to be loved and I’m going to love you, goddamn you, if it bloody well kills me. And it probably will.”

Jemima’s entire body shook with the force of her pronouncements and she stared at Severus, who was staring straight back, speechless.

“Please,” she said, more softly. “Just stay.”

“I don’t know if I dare do otherwise,” he said, traces of what she would call the ‘real’ Severus creeping back into his voice. “Ten points to Gryffindor.”

“I’m sorry?”

He put a hand against her cheek. “Don’t be. You’ve nothing to be sorry for.”


The Man With the Missing Past by libertyelyot [Reviews - 5]

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