The lyrics to "Ghost" belong to The Indigo Girls

There's a letter on the desktop
that I dug out of a drawer
the last truce we ever came to
in our adolescent war

Severus goes back to his dungeon after he hears, and he doesn't have mementos of things past, has nothing that might whisper "Sirius" to anyone, except he does have this one letter, that he kept mostly out of spite, out of the chance to wave it around and know, he apologized to me, he admitted he waswrong. He has the remembrance of subtle, bitter hints around Sirius, and a piece of parchment with the words painstakingly inked out under Dumbledore's eyes, "Dear Snape, I am writing to apologize for the danger I put you in. I apologize for any fright you might have received (that part made him snarl when he first read it, though to tell the truth he'd been ready to shit himself when he saw Lupin, fangs glistening, howling, limbs changing and reaching, reaching for him). I swear, I didn't mean to kill you, I didn't even think about it. Please accept my most humble apologies (a snort -- that part was all for show, for Dumbledore and McGonagall and Black is clearly a Gryffindor if he hopes to pass off such a blatant lie as *that* for the truth) Sincerely, Sirius Black." The letter is old now, faded, the parchment worn from being read and reread over the years. He remembers Black's hand in his, in Dumbledore's office, only a year ago, and his hand shakes now, and the parchment flutters to the ground, unnoticed.

and I start to feel the fever
from the warm air through the screen
you come regular like seasons
shadowing my dreams

A bottle of Dreamless Sleep lies on his bedside table, but it is unopened. He has far worse dreams to banish with it than these, than the memory of Black taunting him, hexing him, shouting at him. Black's face in the fire, and he told him, he *told* him to stay put. He combed the forest for Potter, searching, screaming, his voice hoarse, for all of them, Weasleys and Granger, Longbottom, Lovegood, and Potter, Potter especially, but it was too late, and Black ignored him, and for once he was the one left behind, stuck in Hogwarts because he couldn't fight Death Eaters face to face. He closes his eyes, pulls the covers closer. Black will haunt him again tonight, and the Dreamless Sleep stays untouched.

and the Mississippi's mighty
but it starts in Minnesota
at a place that you could walk across
with five steps down
and I guess that's how you started
like a pinprick to my heart
but at this point you rush right through me
and I start to drown

So much hatred, and anger, and he never noticed how much Black meant, how much he relied on having someone there. Potter Senior left first, with Lily. The boy, of course, he despises, but that's different. Black was *there*, and an equal, and he hated Severus just as much as the day he wrote that letter, and somewhere along the way he started to need that. There were few things he could count on. He spied, begged to the Dark Lord and kissed his robes, locked himself in studies with Lucius Malfoy, pouring over manuscripts, and tried to shield Draco during the day, to instill in his students some sense of what they were brewing in their cauldrons and to give his Slytherins safety, and then there were secret meetings and whether it was Albus or the Dark Lord there were orders and missions and always, always the undercurrent, the thread of knowledge that soon, soon he would see Black, and taunt him and be taunted, and the hatred was there in his heart, the need.

And now, suddenly, it's gone, and he is left anchorless, adrift in a sea of emotions and he doesn't know what to feel, only that something is missing, some*one* is missing, and he still remains, left behind like always.

and there's not enough room
in this world for my pain
signals cross and love gets lost
and time passed makes it plain
of all my demon spirits
I need you the most
I'm in love with your ghost
I'm in love with your ghost

He can do this, one foot in front of the other, sneering at students and grading papers and brewing Wolfsbane, Living Death, Pepper-Up, Arsenic, reporting to Albus, to the Dark Lord, the burning on his arm, in his chest, he can do this. He does do it. And everywhere, following behind him, he can almost hear familiar footsteps, a soft, whispered "excellent", the barking of a dog. He wakes up more exhausted than he was when he went to bed, and when his mirror tells him he looks awful, a voice in his head calls him "greasy git", "worthless slimeball", "Snivellus".

He cannot bring himself to care.

dark and dangerous like a secret
that gets whispered in a hush
(don't tell a soul)
when I wake the things I dreamt about you
last night make me blush
(don't tell a soul)
and you kiss me like a lover
then you sting me like a viper
I go follow to the river
play your memory like a piper

It starts in his dreams, the screaming and sneering leading to more, and sometimes there isn't even anger, isn't hatred, just desire and envy and a man he never could have had in any event.

Black sits in a wing-backed chair, by the fireplace, and watches him grade papers, and he already has a conscience but that doesn't stop Black from asking, "passed any Gryffindors today?" Severus can see him, from the corner of his eye, his leg over the armrest, swinging back and forth, and sometimes Black is the boy who hunted him in schooldays, and sometimes he's the face in the fireplace, desperate over Potter, and sometimes. Sometimes he lies in Severus' bed, flushed from sex and in his sleep he tosses restlessly and Severus can hear him whisper, "Jamie. James. Come home."

There comes a day he whispers only, "Severus," and Severus wakes slowly, blankets warm against his back, but not as warm as flesh and the arms he thought had held him, and it's Black who went home to Potter.

and I feel it like a sickness
how this love is killing me
I'd walk into the fingers
of your fire willingly
and dance the edge of sanity
I've never been this close
I'm in love with your ghost

The war continues around him, life goes on, and he balances, always, a high-wire act like he saw once in a Muggle circus, when he'd slipped away from home. The Dark Lord on the one side, Albus on the other, and waiting, far below him, he thinks he sees a black dog cut the net.

He longs for sleep, and fears it, and prowls Hogwarts in the night, protecting Potter as the child grieves. He can't see through invisibility cloaks, but he can follow unseen sounds, and guard the doors, the secret entrance-ways, the Whomping Willow. Only he's not sure if it's really Potter, or if the feet that he hears are invisible for another reason, and his dungeon feels too cold.

unknowing captor
you never know how much you
pierce my spirit
but I can't touch you
can you hear it
a cry to be free
oh I'm forever under lock and key
as you pass through me

He lies in bed, naked, and Sirius leans over him, touches him, kisses him, and he comes with a choked cry, cock in his fist, as Sirius disappears and he is alone again in his room.

He leans back against a chest that isn't there, and keeps the bruise from the mantel as a reminder.

He pours whiskey for two, then downs both glasses and drinks the rest straight from the bottle.

He never dreams of earlier horrors, of killing and torture and brewing poisons, because Sirius will come to him and lead him into better days, days that never happened, and always, always daylight comes, and he must wake, and Sirius melts away.

now I see your face before me
I would launch a thousand ships
to bring your heart back to my island
as the sand beneath me slips
as I burn up in your presence
and I know now how it feels
to be weakened like Achilles
with you always at my heels

He feels him there, during the day, kisses on the back of his neck, soft chuckles, whispers behind his back and "Snivellus" right before an embrace, and he cannot do a thing. He can brew death in his cauldron, but he cannot bottle life, and there isn't a spirit to exorcise or a body to burn. There is only a cry in the dark, and a touch too light to be real. There is nothing.

this bitter pill I swallow
is the silence that I keep
it poisons me I can't swim free
the river is too deep
though I'm baptized by your touch
I am no worse than most
in love with your ghost
you are shadowing my dreams
(in love with your ghost)
(in love with your ghost)
(in love with your ghost)

He dreams of Sirius, always, only, Sirius beside him, love and hate and boy and man, sex and fights and the brush of fingers on his cheek, and he cannot tell anyone.

He downs the bottle of Dreamless Sleep, then hurls it against the wall and sinks down, sobbing, in the broken glass. He feels the ghost of a kiss on his bleeding knuckles before he falls asleep.