Chapter Text
They said that Severus Snape never smiled - that the closest he ever came was the twisted sneer he gave his students. They said he never smiled, that when alone he mourned his former Lord in secret. They said he never smiled, and it was very nearly true.
His smile was an icy, bitter thing. He directed it at nonsense in his students' essays and at his reflection in the mirror. It matched the cold frost that had settled in his chest on a chilly morning in November, and it suited the black robes of mourning he had worn ever since.
He never allowed that frost to thaw. Each summer, he locked himself in his hated childhood home and did nothing but brew and sleep and mope on the couch. When the holidays came, he returned any and all gifts to sender. (After two years, this became unnecessary.) He instructed his classes to write long essays; grading them abolished his free time. He accustomed himself to skipping the staff's outings, and eventually, they accustomed themselves to his refusals, and stopped asking him to join.
He did this because he was afraid. (He was afraid he would forget her smile -) His love for his childhood friend was the best part of himself, something he could not allow to change. If he lost it he lost himself. (And he deserved this, he deserved to live this half-life, he deserved the ice in his heart and he deserved to have his remaining days reduced to this dark wasteland -)
And as the seasons spun round and round without meaning or purpose or pause, and as he snapped at the children of Hogwarts until they scattered at his approach, and as he ignored his colleagues' overtures until they learned to leave him alone -
He almost never smiled, until the morning he woke with flowers blooming in his hair.