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𝚇𝙸𝚇 >> 𝚁𝙴𝙼𝚄𝚂 𝙻𝚄𝙿𝙸𝙽'𝚂 𝙱𝙻𝙾𝙾𝙳𝚈 𝙵𝙰𝚄𝙻𝚃

< 2 MONTHS >

Although it is only a single day of difference from the one prior, Severus wakes up to the feeling of abatement regarding the idea of nineteen-eighty-one being now beyond him. The mere alteration of a mere digit on a calendar has harnessed such a sensation of deliverance, of amendment, of opportunity.

Even his more newfound realizations — knowledge of feelings and hard truths and terrifying terrain, boundaries he has not yet crossed and summits he only recently has discovered that he wishes to climb to at all — feel like they've all been left to the summer of the previous year, and he doesn't have to worry about them anymore. He has nothing, in fact, to worry about at all. Everything, for once, is fine. All the death and guilt and fear, if only temporary, can keep to itself in its own year while Severus Snape can continue on in his own new one.

He marks the rest of his papers in the Great Hall as all the students avail themselves of their Friday off, many of them sitting on top of the tables and wishing one another a lucky and well-intended nineteen-eighty-two. If he were in a slightly worse mood, Severus is certain he would hand out the graded papers to them now to ruin the fun of it all, but then he remembers that, without a task in front of him, perhaps people would get the impression that he has come to the Great Hall for recreational purposes, or that he's having an adequate time, and he truly can't have that. So he sits there and marks parchment after parchment until he's through with the stack, and then he hoists it all up into his arms and leaves.

There's a tranquil lull in the building today, pleasantly warm air outside even despite the winter season they're only halfway through. Snow is melting out of the courtyard, the ground wet and the air crisp and cool. He stops for a moment to breathe it in as he passes the open-windowed corridor against it.

It's the first day in quite the many years wherein he feels free, or calm, or entirely unaffected. What a privilege it is to have survived such a horrendous year. What a privilege it is to know oneself, to know what you want to do and know what you've been confused about for so long. He now knows what's holding him back, what makes him feel estranged from his own skin, and how to reign unvanquished over its very thought. He knows things about himself that he barely knew yesterday. He feels put-together. Structured. Figured out.

He remembers coming down with a fatuous case of misgiving on the bench in London, remembering his father, imagining what he would tell him now. He remembers being unsafe with his own feelings, how he felt unstable merely because of something that an unimportant person would think about it. And he remembers Remus pulling him in, comforting him, reminding him that his fears cannot hurt him if they are dead.

Remus.

Remus is the reason he's thinking about all this in the first place. For months he's had incoherent feelings about him, always bemused about why he made him uncomfortable and angry and sheepish, how Lupin was able to stop his words from flowing. But he knows now. He knows that it is internalized affection keeping him in such an unpleasant manner. He's been avoiding it for so long, and now it makes so much more sense.

It all checks out, he decides. It fills every box. Every thought and feeling he has ever had about Remus Lupin matches the symptoms. Discomfort. Incertitude. Overthinking. Hesitance. Guardedness. Overthinking again. It's all his connatural recoil to interest. His mask he's put up subconsciously so that he himself doesn't see what is actually there. But now he feels awake. Awake and synchronously lucid.

Never before in his life has he considered falling for another man. It's always sounded sort of out of the question, perhaps because of his own father, or perhaps because he does not like to think or face things. Likely both, he decides, and then furthermore surmises that this is a trait that can be left in eighty-one as well. Maybe it is about time he learns to face these things with a shield of steel and iron. To run towards his discomfort and draw its blood.