The butterfly effect - english version

The butterfly effect

Severus was sitting on the porch, a cooling spell taking care of the excessively high temperatures of that summer, lazily flipping through a book he now knew by heart.

He did not know why he insisted on returning to that house every year. It was as if the castle, of which he had now been headmaster for many, too many years, seemed to become an unfamiliar labyrinth once summer arrived, ready to suffocate him within its walls. Perhaps it also didn't help that all the teachers had families and friends to return to; planned vacations that saw them forced away for eight weeks every year, and Severus... Well . As much as the students called him an 'old lonely bat' behind his back, Severus hated being alone at Hogwarts. It might have seemed like nonsense, but the castle was too vast and, because of that, it took his breath away.

At least here, at Spinner's End, the four walls that surrounded him seemed to caress him. Not quite home, despite the fact that the government had paid him a hefty sum decades ago for permission to demolish, erasing the desolation of Cokenworth's poorest neighborhood, and Severus had reinvested the money to erect a small cottage that was decidedly more elegant than the old walls of black, dirty stones; in this way the link with the abuse he had suffered in childhood had come to be severed, leaving only a faint connection with the few happy memories he retained there, which could be summed up in the polverse, trampled driveway that from his house ended on a small playground, now no longer abandoned and rusting, but refurbished by a more forward-looking municipal administration.

But still.

Always a better place built just for him. The place where, in spite of everything, he had created a little nook of his own in the world: not only a well-stocked library that was his alone to draw from, in the hall, but also and especially the little square of garden in which Severus had lovingly planted seeds and flowers over the years, which bloomed every summer, filling his personal paradise with color. That was why he loved so much to spend time on the porch, reading and basking in the fragrances that were the fruit of his hard, Muggle work.

"Professor Snape?! Headmaster?!"

The astonished exclamation made him lift his head from his book. Beyond his hedge, which was slightly sparse that year, stood Lily Luna Potter, the last of the Savior of the Wizarding World's progeny, hanging from the metal bars that bordered his private property, watching him with her hazel eyes filled with wonder.

Severus blinked once, taken aback.

"... Miss Potter?"

"Headmaster! I didn't know you lived here!" replied Lily, smiling with thirty-two teeth.

Severus arched his eyebrows slightly.

"I've lived here all my life, Miss Potter."

She removed one hand from the fence only to slam it on her forehead.

"Of course! I had forgotten. But I thought that, well... That you had moved out at some point."

Severus continued to look at her impassively.

"Lils! Are you there?" a voice was heard, distant, and Lily turned toward the source of the noise.

"Oh, well," she commented, turning back to look at him and smiling, "I have to go now. I'll see you, headmaster."

I don't think so , Severus thought, but he was unable to say anything because the girl had run off, as fast as she had appeared, leaving him confused.

***

Severus had kept well clear of the first two Potters who arrived at Hogwarts. In fact, he had kept well clear of any students. After they had found him, at the end of the final battle, miraculously still alive.... After they had nursed him back to health and Harry Potter himself had come begging him with those stupid green eyes of his to resume his post as headmaster of Hogwarts... Well, you don't say no to the Savior of the Wizarding World.