The only way to cope. Snape X reader

CHAPTER 50

3 years on

Snapes POV

I grew bitter in the years that followed. If I could of become more bitter that is. Dumbledore had begged me to stay at the school after her death, to continue teaching potions. It pained me. To sit in that classroom and be in the same chambers that I had shared with her.
I still kept that black dragon hide jacket she had picked up from her parents house the first summer she had spent with me. I'd kept it hung on the back of the chair she would sit in to braid her hair each morning before breakfast. I had kept it even when I'd been so cruel that I had told her she had been nothing but a game to me. Nothing but a whore. I'd kept that jacket to hold onto her, her smell still covering it and drifting into my nose every so often. So perhaps that's why I stayed to teach. Perhaps because as much as it pained me to be so close to her, it was the only thing I had left. The only part of her I had to hold onto.

But even that had become suffocating. I had gone to Dumbledore weeks before the beginning of the school year and handed him my resignation. Had refused to spend a second longer in the castle. Had explained how suffocating it was. Had explained that I blamed him for it all. For Lily and now Y/N. If he hadn't of forced us to be separate. If he hadn't of made me say those disgusting things to her. The situation would of been different. I would of fought at her side in that battle. Wouldn't of let her get hurt. Wouldn't of let her die......

And Dumbledore had looked at me in pity and tore up the parchment with my resignation. Saying that it would be too damaging to leave now. That I needed help. Needed to be around people. Wrong. Utterly wrong. Being around people had caused this. Being around people had caused all of this pain. Had taken her from me.

"Severus. There is an opening for the Dark Arts teaching post. I'd like you to teach it. Get out of the dark and damp of those dungeon classrooms, move your quarters to a different part of the castle. As you say my boy, you have become suffocated down there. I need you to move up out of those lower levels of the castle." The anger in me surged as I listened to the headmasters words. That twinkle in his eye was back and I wanted to hex him right there. He'd got me. He knew as much as I wanted it that I couldn't face being alone. And that perhaps, teaching the post i had always sought after would help. It wouldn't bring her back. Nothing would. But this may help.

***

The start of the school year began smoothly. I had, as always since her death kept myself locked away from the great hall, fretful that any single student may look strikingly similar and I would break down in front of them all. The dark arts had always interested me and I found I enjoyed teaching it far more than Potions. My new quarters were smaller than the dungeon ones but brighter and allowed sunlight in through more windows than I had been used to. But I was missing something. I hadn't picked up her jacket. And I hadn't picked up the white piece of ribbon that she had used to tie her hair out from her face when leant over an essay. Those items mattered to me. Were the last scraps of her I had left.

I didn't care who the new Potions Professor was, didn't care that I would go rooting through another Professors chambers to get what I wanted back.
The thought occurred to me as I took the familiar path down to my own classroom that I should just ask whoever was teaching in there for the items back. That it was not wise to go snooping through another persons belongings. That's what I would do. The class would be finishing in ten minutes and then I would meet and ask whoever the new Professor was if i could have my belongings back. Her belongings.

I hovered outside of the door to the classroom. Not wanting to enter before the class was over. The students didn't need to know my business. I listened, curious as to who was now teaching and what was being taught. The students were loud, chattering above a volume I would of deemed acceptable in the classroom and yet at the snap of a ruler on the desk, it ceased. A voice spoke then. A voice of a female and unchanged since id last heard it.

"Rodgers, What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"
My heart stopped. Impossible. Literally impossible. And the cheek. To steal my own questions for unruly first years.
"Where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?" The very questions I had asked Potter in his first lesson. The same lesson she had attended.

The noise in the classroom had ceased. Every student waiting on whoever Rodgers was to answer her questions.
"I should think not to speak over me again do I make myself clear?" Her voice commanded such an authority I had not heard from those lips.
"Class dismissed."

Each student seemed surprised to see me paralysed on the other side of the door and lowered their heads one by one, each hurrying past me. The doorway finally lay clear and I could now see who stood there. Dressed in a dragon hide jacket and a white bow tied half of her hair on her head. Her eyes scanned parchment on her desk, seemingly unaware of my presence in the doorway. If my heart had stopped before, it now raced at a million beats per second. How. God how had this happened?

My feet were moving before I could take a breath. Carrying me across the room towards my old desk. Now hers, where she sat so perfect, golden brown hair tumbling around her now adult face. As my footsteps sounded upon the stone, her eyes raised to meet mine and the stars exploded.

Perfect.

She was perfect.

Exactly how she was before and at the same time a completely different person.

My feet carried on towards her, her own eyes widening as I approached. She stood as I came closer to the desk and I only briefly, yet to my great relief, noticed the absence of a wedding band on her finger before I took her face between my hands and kissed her red lips. We melted into each other and her lips parted, allowing me entry before she began to kiss me back, her own hands finding their familiar spot in my hair.

We broke apart gasping and eyes wide. A small smile crossed her lips as she waved the door shut and bolted it with a spell only we had ever used.

"After all this time?" Her voice was quiet, and yet so unbelievably loud.

"Always."