The Bare Arms of Trees

The Bare Arms of Trees
By: Erinyes

He never meant to do it. He almost never did, but it happened nonetheless. It would always sneak up on him and escape his mouth before he could stop it. Such things as, “No, not like that - “ or “I know that, but it’s obvious that you do not - “ and the like.

His parents hated him for it; well, to tell the truth his father hated it and his mother thought it was sweet that he was ‘such an intelligent little boy!’ Of course, she never told him that anymore, not after what his father had done to her after she ‘encouraged such behavior.’

When he was four he was correcting himself often enough that by the time he was five, he spoke as if he were a nine-year old. He was proud of himself and often would put-down the other children that would visit when his father held dinner parties. They would then leave him and play in a different corner with their little snitches and broomsticks, leaving him to his books and his Potions-For-Children kit that held a tiny cauldron.

It was this very thing that led to his lonely, caustic self. His intelligence had destroyed not only himself but his parents as well. His father hated that his nine year old was smarter than he was, and would continually beat his mother when she complimented him in any way. The boy found that he was scathing to students who were happy and those that were too stupid to understand.

The only day his father ever smiled at him since he was two was when that owl flew into their kitchen and deposited his Hogwarts letter during breakfast. His father smiled at him, and patted his back, telling him they’d go to Diagon Alley in a week to gather his supplies.

His mother smiled shyly at him but said nothing. Later, after his father left for work she pulled him into a corner in the kitchen, taking his face between her hands she spoke quietly - ‘Severus, I’m very proud of you and I love you more than life itself. Please, I hope you never forget that and do your best to make me - and your father - proud.’

He never once forgot those words, the tears in her eyes were real, the hasty words were real, her fretful glances at the door were real. The wet kiss on his cheek was real.

He loved his mother, and she was probably the only woman he ever would love for the rest of his life. She was his friend when she could be, and she was his supporter, even if all she could do was simply smile.

When he entered Hogwarts, he found it odd that there were so many smiling happy faces. People that would talk of their family as if it were a happy place, and he wondered if they had a happy family merely because they were born normal. After a while he came to hate his intelligence and his habits to correct every single student that was wrong, and it was quite often. In fact, he was positive that the Professors were also beginning to get tired of him as well.

Because of his disposition to correct people with such impertinent words, he found himself a group of enemies. These enemies would not only make fun of him, but they would make fun of his House, family, and ‘friends’ or lack thereof. He found himself becoming even more hateful as the years wore by.

All the happiness that he ever stored in himself, all the kindness, fled as he became older. He found that if he just sneered and spat and said awful things to people, they would leave him well enough alone. His mother was the only thing he would look forward to during the day, her letters would come at least once a month. Though they were hurried - he noticed because splattered ink lined the edges and that the letters were never more than a few lines - he would save them nonetheless.

During the summer he would stay in his room during the day, visiting his mother only when his father had left for work. During dinner he would eat quickly and leave quicker, hoping that his father wouldn’t ask what he was doing down in the dungeons.

His potions work was the only other thing he ever loved, and when his mother died when he was fifteen, it was the only thing he had to hang on to so he studied hard and often. He would often stay late into the night, attempting to find a way to improve simple potions like Pepper-Up and Skele-gro.

By his seventh year, he was lonely and spent his free time either in the potions classroom taking extra-credit classes with the Professor, or in his dormitory reading and doing his homework. He found that he had forgotten his tormenters, the Marauders, and that they seemed to have forgotten him.

He found that he missed his mother dearly, and would always look up at the owl windows, hoping for a letter even though he saw her lain in the ground. But death will not destroy a hope.

When the Slytherin group, a group mainly of popular boys, came to him one evening, he found friends. Or at least he thought he had found friends. They were kind to him, kind and funny and they accepted his scathing humor and biting remarks. He found himself drawn into their circle, and when they asked him to join their ranks - to gain a power that only their master could give him - he did it. He joined them, and he gave up life as he knew it.

His potions texts slowly started gathering dust, and his cauldrons started to rust without their weekly polish. But soon, he found that he wasn’t getting what he wanted. He didn’t find a replacement for his mother or the friends that he never had. These people didn’t like him and didn’t accept him; they only wanted to use him.

After that, he wept. He wept and turned himself in, hoping for a life in Azkaban. Hoping for a release such as the Kiss to take all of his painful memories away and leave him like the shell that he was. The lonely man that he always knew he’d be.

He thought that his father would have been proud of his show of stupidity that night. His stupid move, stupid decision, and stupid mind. He found that his father would celebrate with his new wife when he was rid of the son he didn’t want. If that boy would recede into the darkness of a dirty prison where his only happy thoughts would be sucked out of him.

But he found not what he wanted. He found forgiveness and a chance for redemption, though he was wont to refuse it, he found that he could not refuse the intense blue eyes that bore into his soul, telling him that he made the right choice. That it was going to be all right.

Now, years later and alone in the dungeons, this same boy finds himself bent over a bubbling cauldron, still quite alone. He finds that nothing is all right and that he didn’t make the right choice, that what he finds himself as is not what he wanted. He finds a new hatred for his father and even his mother for not doing anything.

But, he accepts it as penance for what he did. For all those that he killed, for all those who could have had a happy life. Though he believes death would be kind, it is not just for all the pain he’d caused in a few short months.

As he looks into the mirror-like quality of a simmering potion, he finds that he is just like his father. Alone, miserable, angry, and contemptible.

The Bare Arms of Trees
John Tagliabue

Sometimes when I see the bare arms of trees in the evening
I think of men who have died without love,
Of desolation and space between branch and branch,
I think of immovable whiteness and lean coldness and fear
And the terrible longing between people stretched apart as these
branches
And the cold space between.
I think of vastness and courage between this step and that step.
Of the yearning and fear of the meeting, of the terrible desire
held apart.
I think of the ocean of longing that moves between land and land
And between people, the space and ocean.
The bare arms of the trees are immovable, without the play of
leaves, without the sound of wind;
I think of the unseen love and the unknown thoughts that exist
between tree and tree
As I pass these things in the evening, as I walk