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snaketonguedgod · 7 years

Text

“お帰り”

He wasn’t sure why he’d gone to Japan in the first place, maybe because it was in a way a mirror reflection of Britain for all that it was the other side of the world. He knew the reason why he’d stayed though, her name was Saori.

He wasn’t entirely sure even now how it had been that they’d met, except that it had been a hot Tokyo night, sticky and steamy. There had been alcohol involved, blurring and distorting the neon lights. He hadn’t intended to stay long, just another stop in a road to nowhere. But somewhere in that first week of staying at a different Love Hotel every night and seeing all the seediest bars in the city, somewhere in between his broken Japanese and her rusty English, they had understood each other. He wasn’t a thrill seeking womaniser and she wasn’t a wild party girl, they just both needed a break away from who they really were and Tokyo was an easy place to lose yourself.

She had been the first person to compliment his nose, a compliment that had taken ages for her to explain, going round and round in circles as she became more frustrated with his inability to understand. He was used to it now, now that he lived somewhere that his nose drew compliments. He had almost forgotten that once it had only drawn insults. That had been a very long time ago. It felt at times like it had happened to another person, back when he’d still been Severus Snape.

He’d taken Saori’s name when they married, happy to cast off the reminder of his past. After close to twenty years, his Japanese was good, so the Japanese surname combined with dark hair and eyes resulted in most people assuming he was a half. He had never felt the need to correct the mistake, confidently and calmly writing the kanji for Miyata as though he had never known another name. His first name was still officially Severus, though no one called him that any more. It was too long, and the V was a problem. Even Saori called him Seb. A life time ago Lily had shortened his name affectionately to Sev, before their friendship had ended, and no one else had ever been close enough to dare to consider a nickname. There had only been a few who called him Severus, and even then most of that was through professional courtesy. He might have been doing them wrong by making that assumption, but he had left that life behind in the image of a bled-out corpse in the Shrieking Shack. Ironic, that he had twice nearly been mauled to death by magical dark creatures in the same building. He’d burnt it, leaving the wizarding world with only Harry Potter’s firm insistence in his death and a heap of ashes that no one would ever know contained no body. Fire symbolised rebirth, and he had been reborn.

He’d been washed clean in a fancy jacuzzi on the first night, when Saori had given up on trying to say Severus correctly and had called him Seb, and he had let her. He had thought it didn’t matter what a woman he would never see again called him, yet somehow it had become his name, the name he thought of himself with, the name he scrawled in katakana without hesitation. A name more his own than Severus Snape had been.

Saori had been the daughter of a Shinto priest, though he had never met him. Her sister had been a witch, who had left her muggle family behind when she went first to school and then to marry into an ancient magical family who had played an important role in advising the government since the Heian period. It was, Saori had explained bitterly, in part the betrayal and abandonment of his daughter than had worsened her father’s illness and led to his early death. He had felt awkward, the first time meeting her mother, confessing guiltily that he was a wizard. Saori’s mother had considered this carefully, slowly, before judging him as a good wizard to her mind. He would not have called himself a good anything, and he wasn’t even certain about wizard. He had had nothing to do with the magical world since leaving the Shrieking Shack, content to live in the muggle world where there was less chance of him ever being recognised. The only time he had done so had been two years after their marriage, which had been a traditional Shinto one, when he had realised that his old wand so rarely used no longer suited him. They had gone, uncertainly and feeling like foreigners in a strange land, to buy him a new one. The wandmaker had tried to tell him that his new wand, made of the wood from a cherry tree, showed that he was a wizard worthy of respect, but he had just shrugged, paid and returned to his muggle village on the slopes of Mount Aso. He had been grateful of it and his magic when the house had shaken in the earthquake that seemed to last forever, but even then it had not been true necessary.

At first he had taught English, finding adults to be a far more appealing type of student than the teenagers he had found so annoying. It had been an easy job, but now he sold teas. Saori was an acupuncturist, and it was rare that her patients would leave without buying an infusion that was just right for their needs. The villagers and the customers who would come from quite a distance would often swear that it was magic, the way in which his brews managed to perfectly soothe whatever problem they had, and he would just smile enigmatically as he gently touched their minds for hints of what troubled them. He had a website, where people could buy infusions from as well, but he preferred the personal touch. Those were generic infusions, rather than the carefully mixed ones that he made for anyone who came to his little tearoom where he would mix herbs kneeling on a traditional cushion on the tatami.

He found he was forgetting words of English now, through disuse and maybe the slow creep of age. He had stood in front of a herb, twisting it in his hand, smelling it and trying to recall what its name was in English. He had given up eventually, looking it up on Tangorin on his phone, translating it from the Japanese that came much easier.

His keigo was the only aspect of Japanese that he struggled with now, though he had little need for it normally. The one time he had used it was to an obnoxious American customer who had insulted Saori, and he had with a calmly collected fury insulted him in perfectly polite Japanese. He had no idea if the American had understood everything he had said, but he hadn’t thought of that at the time. Saori had laughed at that, especially when he had later cursed the man in the savage English of a working class lad from Cokeworth, words that she didn’t understand. Her English was good now, though they normally spoke in Japanese, but there were some words that she had no need to know.

Now he was used to the smell of tatami, accustomed to folding his futon every morning and spreading it out every night. He was content to live in a volcanic land where he could bathe in hot springs heated by underground lava. He rarely thought of Hogwarts, of the people he had once known. He knew new people now. Aside from the villagers, Saori had dragged him dancing. He had thought at first that she was joking, that it was a part of her wild phase when she had wanted to lose herself in response to grief, but he had realised she was not. There was sometimes something wild about it, about staying out all night dancing either salsa or Argentine tango in Kumamoto city or sometimes even further afield, but there was something in the release of the combination between the music and the movement that he had found himself falling in love with.

They had returned that night, late, from a regular milonga followed by a cheerful meal and some drinks with the usual crowd. As always upon their return he let the herbs steep in the pot, nothing particularly magical just a simple concoction to ward off the creeping cold of autumn, before pouring them carefully into two cups. Saori smiled gratefully from her position on the floor as he entered the room, handing her her cup. Her hair was still wet from the bath and her expression still a relaxed contentment from a pleasant evening. He knelt beside her, blowing on his tisane.

“ね〜さおり,” he said, as he had many times before, “愛してるわ,”

#snapeloveposts #snape lives week #i don't know if that makes any sense to anyone #are explanations or translations needed?#i could have written more dialogue but i don't think that would be appreciated #as it would all be in japanese #and not even standard japanese at that #sorry #i thought of this in the sento #i drew severus in a yukata a while back #i should draw him and saori in wedding outfits

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