Severus kept the book buried in a drawer to save himself from the discomfort of seeing the thing. He had struggled to find one that he did not regularly open, but had eventually settled on the drawer in which he stored his dress robes. The scratched leather cover had settled itself nicely between folds of thick and expensive silk. The dress robes had been a rare indulgence, paid for with part of his ample, and often unspent, salary. He rarely wore them, and when he did he felt a vague sense of guilt - perhaps it was the feeling of pleasure that wearing such a fine garment provoked in him. Today, however, he had occasion to open the drawer and pull the robes from their confinement.

There was to be a Yule Ball, of all things, and a Triwizard Cup resurgence. He had snorted and disagreed his way through the meeting that had decided the event, but as was so often the case, his objections had been entirely overlooked. It was a difficult enough task protecting the Potter boy without the added complications of so many strangers around the school. The headmaster had seemed positively pleased with the whole prospect, while Severus had merely felt a weight of worry somewhere below his ribcage. Even Professor McGonagall had allowed a slight spring to elevate her steps as she left the headmaster’s office, while he had tried to stress the impossibility of it all, and the fact that Potter would surely try and grasp some glory from the event.

He glared down at the dress robes, wishing that he needed them for some nice, sombre event like a funeral or an award ceremony - preferably one in which he was the recipient of some trinket of glory. The silk slithered across his reluctant fingers, its chill soon disappearing at the touch of warm skin. The removal of the robes left the yawning drawer empty save for the green book. He placed the black garment fastidiously on his bed and allowed his fingers to touch the edge of the leather. Every instinct he had told him to leave it be and walk away, but something about the melancholic colour made his hand close around it, and he lifted it from its solitude.

He had been in possession of it for twenty-four years; a going away present from his mother. His mother seldom handed out gifts; he knew she had a difficult time persuading his father that anything given to their son was money well spent. He felt the book might have been an act of defiance against his troubled father; Tobias Snape probably didn’t even know it had been purchased, if it had, indeed, been purchased. There had been a few embarrassing incidents recently in the Muggle town that they lived in, and once, a tall police man had brought his mother home in tears with dire warnings of serious consequences if she attempted to steal anything from Woolworths again. The incidents had stopped after that.

She had been so proud of him in his uniform, the pride swelling and bursting from her as she saw him onto the Hogwarts Express.

"You'll do so well at that school, Severus," she had said, with such determination he had believed it for a short while. "Here's something for you to record everything in. You can keep it filled and look back in later years. I wish I had done the same thing."

It was unwrapped, but she had tied some grey ribbon around it and attempted a feeble bow that was working itself loose. The sad ribbon created a lump in his throat and the need to say something, but somehow the words collided with the lump and remained unsaid.

The colour had been brighter and the leather less scuffed on that bright day in September when he had gone off to school with the whole world waiting for him. Record everything, she had said, perhaps from the need to live vicariously through him. He had pondered over the fact that maybe she felt her schooldays had been the best of her life and she wanted to relive them. It was an assumption that made him feel a little uncomfortable, but he had returned her papery kiss with a small, slightly damp one and boarded the train with a promise to fill it with everything that happened to him.

There had been so much; so many events and incidents that he could have filled the book a hundred times over. There had been the occasional triumph and many, many disasters, but he had treated them all with the same dispassionate grimace.

He couldn't help parting the covers to reveal the yellowing parchment within. All those events and clippings and photographs and memories that should have been tumbling around inside were not there. His eyes looked down at the pages, taking in their emptiness.

Severus had kept nothing but his memories, and they resided in his own head, safe from prying eyes. His mother had meant well. She could never have known what his schooldays would contain. Only once had he almost written something, something that was important. Only once had he almost pasted in a photograph of someone who had almost awakened a deeper emotion in his barren heart. Yet it had not been meant to be.

Emotionless, he dropped the empty book back into the drawer and closed it with a sharp thrust. It did not do to dwell.