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Sitting upon a plushy stool, doubts crept up in your mind upon what was supposed to be the most beautiful day of your life.
The sun is streaming through a window just off to your side, where hours ago you could see the guests excitedly pouring through the villa rented out for the wedding. Their happy comments and gossip and high-pitched laughs like birds made you feel like you were the one in a cage.
The room was airy and empty, and the shimmering wood floors were threatening to burst into flame when the sun set. You gulped at the feeling– you would be walking down the aisle soon enough, timed perfectly so you would be drowning in the golden sunset light as you walked down to your lover.
Down to your lover, who surely stood there right now, awaiting your arrival very soon.
You fidgeted with your hands, getting up from your chair, ignoring the pinch in your scalp as the million bobby pins tugged into your hair. Yes, your lover is waiting for you, impatiently waiting for you to turn him from fiancé into husband. And you from fiancée into wife.
Wife.
The word sat sullen on your tongue, and you couldn’t find it in you to say the word out loud. Wife. It’s one syllable, it shouldn’t be that hard, you thought, scolding yourself as you started to pace around the room.
You wish your bridesmaid were still with you. You missed their carefree and delighted attitude– honestly they seem happier than you were about the marriage.
A knock at the door drew your attention away from the racket that was your thoughts, and you looked over at the threshold, where your maid of honor was standing.
“Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow up as her eyes scanned you.
“I’m just getting the pre-wedding jitters, that’s all,” you said with a nervous laugh, but she clearly wasn’t buying it.
“Damian was out shot-gunning beers yesterday like there was no tomorrow, and is probably out there right now with the worst hangover that man has ever seen, but even he is putting on a brave face for this. And this is Damian we’re talking about– that has to count for something,” she said, and you just sighed.
“I know, and I’m sure he’s waiting for me at the altar–”
“He’s all smiles right now,” your maid of honor said, placing a reassuring hand on your shoulder, “And when you walk out looking like this, oh his jaw is going to absolutely drop.”
You nodded, looking over at the full-length mirror where you found yourself staring back. You looked stunning, even you couldn’t deny that, the dress worked wonders on you and made you look like an old Hollywood goddess, the kind that men would never tire of looking at, the kind that women would never tire of admiring.
You were gorgeous.
“Come on, let’s get you out there. Once your feet hit that white aisle, you’ll see that this is what you really want, okay? And not just the pre-wedding jitters,” she said, giving your shoulder a comforting squeeze.
“Thank you Ivy,” you said, and your friend just nodded. Your hands glanced down to the small diamond that sat on her ring finger, and you realized that she must have experienced this too. She knew this, knew the fright, and could be your lighthouse, guiding you back to the shore.
She led you out of the room you were being prepped in, and onto the back room, where the doors were open, leading out into an open stone pavilion.
As you stood at the mouth of the entrance, the piano came to life, a familiar tune piercing the air as the audience stood, looking over at you.
You walked down the aisle slowly, alone, clutching your bouquet as you tried to ignore your weeping friends and family.
Damian stood at the end, your soon-to-be husband dressed in his best, beaming at you. Honestly, you could have never told that he was barely able to get out of bed before noon.
As you took your final steps and came face to face with him, you gave him a smile, and noticed his face drop slightly as you both faced the priest. You looked back over his way, and noticed the dry eyes. Not a single tear, and he almost looked bored, now that the guests couldn’t see his face.
You turned your attention back to the priest, ignoring the gnawing pit in your stomach and tried to steady your hands, clutching the delicate bouquet with an iron grip.
As the song came to an end and you heard everyone sit down, the priest's voice boomed, giving the usual wedding opener of friends and families that were gathered here today, blah blah blah. The introduction was swimming in your head, falling on your deaf ears as you tried to imagine what would come after. The wedding reception, the first dance, fucking in the master bedroom of the villa, and then what?
Your mind whirred– you two had an apartment together and always talked of getting a house, but the England weather was a constant drop on your head that was making you slowly go insane, and you needed a change of pace. And job– god, the place you worked at now was driving you crazy, underpaying you for twice the work you put in at your last place, and the managers there all hated your guts for no reason, but Damian liked his lofty lawyer job and was adamant that you stay, and that you get yourselves a nice new home in a nice new suburban cookie-cutter home where you would raise kids in a perfect little neighborhood and serve on the school committee and would send them off with little notes in their lunch boxes until they grow old and sour and despise you and never speak to you again and then–
You took a loud inhale as you tried to calm your rapid mind, looking down and focusing on the flowers in your hand. The priest was still rambling on, and you looked at Damian for any support, but his eyes were dull, fixed on the priest.
You looked away, embarrassed. Here you were, the most important day of your life, and you were still nervous even though you had looked forward to this for the past eight months of planning.
God, you felt like an idiot for being so stressed when you were already at the altar, with your love by your side.
Did he remember when you two first met at university? How you had woken up late and the last seat in your tiny, twenty person class was next to him, the supposed jock frat boy leaning back in his chair, eyes bored as he watched the teacher get out his materials.
It stabbed your heart to realize the expression he wore on his face right now was the same expression he wore when he watched Dr. Bernstein take out his notes and laptop from that run-down satchel of his.
You felt the bile rise up in your throat, a burning sensation that pricked your eyes but you refused to let it be seen.
You focused your attention back to the monotone priest, trying to steady your emotions, as he droned on.
“Should anyone here present know of any reason that this couple should not be joined in holy matrimony, speak now or forever hold your peace.”
A moment of silence, not a soul stirring, and just as the priest began to speak, a gravelly voice shouted from the back of the crowd:
“I do!”
The guests gasped, as you and Damian turned around to see who dared object at your wedding.
You dropped your bouquet in shock when you saw the familiar frame of your beloved former teacher, one that you had known intimately at your time at your alma mater.
He didn’t change a bit, perhaps for some greying hairs, but his stoic, cold face and clean-pressed coal-black clothes didn’t.
Professor Snape.
“I said, I do object to this marriage between this bride,” he spat out the word as if in disgust, “and this vile man who should have never been lucky enough to be standing next to her now.”
“And who the hell do you think you are to say such a thing?” Your fiancé shouted, clutching his hands into fists as he glared daggers at the intruder.
You couldn’t dare say anything, your eyes fixed on the perfect image of your former potions teacher. You knew him the same way you knew your own breath, that it was so comfortable and familiar that you didn’t have to pay attention to it to know your chest rises and falls with that same pattern day in and day out. You knew him as easy as breathing, and you had for so long wanted him in a way that left you breathless, knocked the sense out of your body and left you shaking for more.
You had loved him once as if he were a part of you.
His steely eyes were fixed on Damian with devastating emotion, as if you were barely a ghost that was next to him.
“Well, say something!” Damian shouted, and you realized in your shock that he was yelling at you, for you to be angry and snap at him, or chase him out with a broom.
“Why are you here, Severus?” You asked in the most level tone that you could.
“Because, once I had heard of the wedding, I knew this coupling was a doomed one. Even once in university when you sent me letters I knew you were weary of him… When we lost contact, I was all but sure that you had let yourself be content with such a man. Your letters haunted me, the image of you laying with a man who gave you no sympathy or warmth in your life was one that sat bittersweet in my chest. I knew that this was wrong, that you could never be happy with a man such as him.”
You blinked back in surprise, astonished to hear him admit something that so clearly was forgotten by you. You had done your best to push back your initial worry of him when he had asked you out, of the rumors you’ve heard, that he was a fuckboy, that he liked confident women so that he could try to bring them down, that he never took no for an answer.
“So, you’ve come to interrupt my wedding? Because I got busy with a job and graduating college, and forgot to write back?”
The harshness in your voice surprised you, but you felt your blood boiling, tongue curling in your mouth like one of a snake’s. You had had enough stress for the day, enough worrying over the men in your life to have this day truly go to shambles.
“No, I’ve come to do something else entirely,” he said, his usual timbre sending chills down your spine as if he were still speaking to you as one of his students, as if it were as plain as day, “I’ve come here to ask instead that you be mine.”
Another gasp from the audience, and Damian stormed off to confront the man, which was enough to snap you out of your rage and try to hold him back, but his swearing fits aimed at your former professor drove a knife to your hurt.
You couldn’t bear to listen to the other students make fun of him back at Hogwarts, and you wouldn’t stand for this uncivil slander now.
“Damian, Damian stop it!” You commanded, finally grabbing him enough to shove him away from Snape and to put yourself between the both of them.
“Forgive me if I’ve been too brash or too late, but I had to know that even after all this time, that you still thought about me,” Snape said, and you were considering pummeling him to death, but as he slowly stepped closer to you, you couldn’t find it within you to raise a fist towards him.
His calm expression could have fooled the audience of the spectacle here, but you knew that gaze all too well, and never in a million ways it would have fooled you. You had his complete, undivided attention now, and he looked at you, silently searching for any sign of his rejection.
“Why did you come then Severus, to make a fool out of me? To make sure you would haunt my dreams for years to come? So that you may proclaim that you love me, and that you wanted to make sure I was old enough, that I knew enough and had thought enough about, well about us!”
By the pause he took before speaking, you knew, oh you knew, that you had gotten it right as every one of your words came closer and closer to his truth.
“Even after all this time, I still think about your sweet breath on my neck when I have a bad day, and things feel just a hint better. I think of your smile and laughter, I think of your unruly nature you hide under such sweet, disciplined deposition. I think that you know of me better than anyone else alive does, that you know me better than I sometimes feel I know myself.”
It would have been too easy to yell again at him, to push him away, but something in your chest fluttered at the idea that your stoic potions professor, the king of expressionless emotions and rough interiors, thought about you after all this time.
And truth be told, distance did make the heart grow fonder in you as well, something you had pushed far, far away from your mind most days to forget about the pain of the day you graduated.
But he stood here now, awaiting your words.
“Why must you come now of all time?” It came out barely more than a whisper.
“Because, it was the only time I could reliably catch you” he said, taking a few steps closer to you until he stood barely a foot away.
“You made me wait, you made me still be so foolishly in love with you, and when I left I drowned myself in work just to make it go away,” you said, your voice rising, “I didn’t date for two years because I didn’t like the way they looked at me, or talked to me, or touched me. I dated men your age because I thought maybe I liked them older, but they disgusted me twice as much. I finally came around to someone slightly sensible, and it turns out that he can’t do laundry or cut an apple without calling out for me! I graduated with honors, I graduated with a diploma that was going to make me happy and four years later your memories still stung. Well, three years after that graduation, and here I am, still hopelessly chasing you in my wildest of dreams. I did try to contact you, for the record, but they told me you’d left Hogwarts. Couldn’t even be bothered to tell them where you had left for.”
Your rant left you breathless, and as he placed a hand on yours, giving it a small squeeze, you realized that even after all this time, he still was your breath, your peace as easy as it came.
“I need to hear you say it,” he said, in a whisper so silent you knew it was just meant for you.
“Severus Snape, I swear if you leave me to a life without you ever again, I will hunt you down and kill you myself,” you swore, and with that, he took your face into your hands and kissed you passionately, a kiss seven years in the making.
You didn’t hear the guests gasp and cry, or Damian yell out and sputter out his anger like a broken car engine. You could only hear your own heart beating with the intensity of thunder in your chest as he swept you off your feet.
You looked behind, and saw his full form emerge in all of its glory, winding behind him as he fled with you in his arms, hanging onto his neck.
You were right. This was the most beautiful day of your life.