ART & FIC: A Parting Gift (G)
Title: A Parting Gift
Type: Art & Fic
Age-Range Category: Three
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Severus Snape, Albus Dumbledore
Artist & Author: mt_nestor
Rating: G
Summary: Beauty can be hidden in the most unlikely places.
"Anything."
One word, spoken in desperation. A word that would define the rest of his life.
Anything meant saying goodbye to his dreams of a career as a Potions researcher. Instead, as Dumbledore's lackey, he was back within the confines of the castle.
Anything meant the frustration of teaching potions to children, most whose only interests were Quidditch, the members of the opposite sex, and ways they could get by with as little work as possible and still scrape a passing grade.
Anything meant humiliating and sneering at the upper division students, who still remembered when he had been their peer, and cowing the younger ones into submission with glares and degrading remarks.
After all that, his promises to Dumbledore had yielded nothing. The Potters were dead. Finishing up the first term in a haze of misery, he no longer cared that his students despised him. There was nothing left to live for.
Dumbledore notified him of his father's death on an icy, grey day in mid-December. The Headmaster had been in full patronizing mode, his speech filled with platitudes and expressions of "my dear boy." As the youngest professor the expectation was that he was to stay in the castle over the holidays, but Dumbledore had made an exception in this case. And he was supposed to be ever so grateful, like a third year clutching a permission note to visit Hogsmeade!
He really had no desire to return to the place of his birth and unlovely childhood, but knew that after what would most likely be a sparsely attended funeral his parents' belongings had to be sorted through and dealt with.
The house looked as miserable and unkempt as it always had, perhaps even more so than usual after the lack of care during his father's final illness. The tatty furniture was left as it sat, and his father's belongings were vanished with dispassionate waves of his wand. Whatever was left of his mother's things remained in a trunk in the attic.
At first glance, it looked as if nothing in his mother's trunk was worth saving. He'd already taken possession of her schoolbooks and Gobstones set years ago. He played with the idea of simply binning everything but decided that she deserved more than that. He would at least look through everything first.
It didn't take long to get through the items of clothing and the few personal effects, the sad reminders of a wasted life. Intending to shove everything back inside the trunk, he grunted in frustration when the items he'd taken out no longer fit properly. Pushing around what was left in the bottom, he discovered something he'd missed - a package wrapped in much used brown butcher paper.
Folded carefully and tenderly preserved despite the rude wrappings was a soft, light green blanket. He could see that it had been knitted by hand rather than purchased in a shop, for a few small inconsistencies in the pattern were evident. This was his mother's work, done at a time when hope and love had filled her heart.
It was only then, after all these bitter months, that he allowed himself the release of tears.
