Charity Burbage did not go looking for trouble. She was the quiet, unassuming girl who silently scribbled notes in the back of the classroom, the well-mannered, well-behaved student who had never had a single point deducted from her in all her years at Hogwarts. For the past four years, she had flown quite under the radar; in fact, if you asked anyone outside of her small, close-knit group of friends who Charity Burbage was, there was a more than likely chance that they would have to pause to think before remembering the mousy little Hufflepuff with the pensive gray eyes—that is to say, if they remembered her at all.

That's why, after Lily Evans stormed away from the scene under the tree by the lake on that fateful spring afternoon, Charity Burbage was the last person anyone—herself included—would have expected to come to Severus Snape's rescue. In fact, as James Potter shouted, "Right, who wants to see me take off Snivelly's trousers?" she was strongly compelled to turn and walk away from the scene, to ignore the bullying and go back to the solitude of her dormitory to finish her Charms essay. However, just as she began to turn her back on the crowd of onlookers, she caught Severus's gaze and their eyes locked, just for a fleeting moment. But in that moment, she witnessed a myriad of emotions pass through his normally expressionless eyes: anger, despair, fear…hopelessness. And before she could stop herself, before she was even fully aware of what she was doing, she shouted, "STOP! STOP IT!"

The laughing, jeering crowd automatically went silent, and all at once Charity could feel more than a dozen pairs of eyes turn to bore into her. A blush spread furiously across her pale cheeks, and her mouth immediately began working to make some sort of apology, but her voice caught in her throat and her intended apology came out as a sort of terrified squeak.

Bemused, James Potter turned to face his new opponent, allowing Snape to fall into a heap of robes and gangly limbs at his feet.

A full year older than Charity and infinitely more popular, Potter stared at the younger girl for a moment, his hazel eyes narrowed as he tried to make sense of this strange little Hufflepuff who dared challenge him. "Who are you?" he said at last, reaching up one hand to tousle his already unruly hair, "And what makes you think I have to listen to a word you say?"

Silence fell over the assembled group, and Charity felt as though she were breathing it in like a toxic gas that would soon leave her dead on the ground. "I-I…" she stammered.

Before she had a chance to formulate a sentence, a resounding crack sounded around the area and the crowd of students yelped in surprise. Before any of them realized what had happened, Potter was lying on the ground, stunned, and Snape was up and running. Charity barely heard the shouts of accusation coming from Potter's partners in crime, Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew—"I thought you were watching him!" "I thought you were watching him!"—before she felt a sharp tug on her sleeve and she stumbled backwards, only just catching herself before toppling over. And before her mind could even make sense of the situation she was being dragged across the Hogwarts grounds by Severus Snape himself.

Snape only stopped running when they reached the Quads, and the two unlikely allies stood for a moment, struggling to regain their breath.

"Th-thanks," Snape panted out after a while, "But you shouldn't have said anything. You realize you'll be one of their targets now."

Charity shrugged, beginning to question what had caused her to shout out. "You're welcome," she said uncertainly.

Snape did not reply after this, but merely fixed Charity with an intent stare, and then turned and stalked off in the direction of the castle.

Charity wondered if she and Snape might be friends after this, but he never made another attempt to speak to her and returned her smiles in the hallways with only the most disinterested disregard.

He was, however, correct in saying that James Potter and his cronies would unleash a series of nasty pranks on her, some of which included a tiny exploding marble in her pumpkin juice, which sprayed the sticky orange beverage all over her face, and a small bag of catnip in her robe pocket, which caused half of Hogwarts' resident cats to be enamored of her all day.

And although Snape did not speak to or even acknowledge Charity after that day, she did catch him jinxing Potter on more than one occasion after he had pulled some sort of humiliating prank on her.

So though there was no bond of friendship between Charity Burbage and Severus Snape, Charity liked to think that they shared an alliance.

Potter and Company must have grown bored with Charity by the beginning of the next year, or perhaps they had possibly felt badly for tormenting a timid fourteen year old Hufflepuff. Whatever the reason, their pranks on Charity came to a much appreciated end.

Charity was more than happy to return to the slow, quiet pace of her life pre-Snape incident. In fact, she had never enjoyed her invisibility more. She nearly managed to get through her entire fifth year without a single reminder of the strange turn the last month of the previous school year had taken. Of course, though, she could not be nearly so lucky.

It was a particularly warm evening in early April, and Charity left her friends in the library to go study outside. Strangely, she found herself approaching the tree under which Potter had tormented and humiliated Snape the year before and Charity, against her better judgment, had intervened. As she drew nearer to the tree, though, she stopped abruptly and strained her ears against the whistling of the gentle, warm breeze. It sounded as though someone was crying.

Briefly, Charity wondered if it wouldn't be better to walk away and take her studying elsewhere, but her Hufflepuff compassion won out, and, cautiously, she approached the muffled sound of the sobbing.

Needless to say, she was quite taken aback when she recognized the long black hair and Slytherin robes as belonging to none other than Severus Snape.

Now Charity was certain she should leave. She and Snape had shared a brief alliance the year before, but they had never been friends, and she had always regarded Snape as a somewhat hostile person. If he knew she was watching him cry, she was sure he would hex her well into next week. So, figuring that he would prefer to be left alone, she turned and started to walk back up the hill.

"You."

The malice in his voice sent a shiver up Charity's spine, and she was sorely tempted to run. However, she held her ground, though she still did not turn around.

"Burbage. Come back here."

Gritting her teeth, Charity slowly turned and walked back down the hill, nervously twisting a strand of waist-length dark blonde hair around her index finger.

"If you tell anyone about what you just saw, I cannot be held accountable for the things I may do to you."

"Of course I won't tell!" she said quickly.

Snape's cold black eyes, though the red rimming around them made them seem just slightly less intimidating at the moment, latched onto Charity's gray, and he held her gaze for a long while until something in his expression finally relaxed, and he said, "Fine. Now go."

Charity began to hurry in the opposite direction, but something stopped her, and she hesitated. "Are you…alright?" she asked uncertainly.

Snape gave her a look somewhere between a sardonic smirk and, dare she say, an appreciative smile, if such a thing were possible. "I'm just brilliant. Now go away, and don't forget about what will happen if you tell anyone."

Charity nodded quickly and rushed back up to the castle, her studying forgotten.

Mousy little blonde-haired, gray-eyed Charity Burbage grew up. She graduated from Hogwarts, and she disappeared into the Muggle world for over a decade. She got an apartment, a cat, and a job as a secretary in a Muggle doctor's office. She went on a few dates with said Muggle doctor, fell in love, and eventually got married. She got into a few fights with said Muggle doctor, fell out of love, and eventually got divorced.

It was just after this divorce that she heard Hogwarts was looking for a new Muggle Studies professor through an old friend from school, and, with nothing more to lose, she applied for the position.

And this is how Charity wound up sitting at the Hogwarts staff table on September 1st, 1991, looking out over a sea of excited and apprehensive faces that reminded her so much of herself many, many years ago.

She was engrossed in a conversation with her former Head of House, Pomona Sprout, when a terribly familiar figure in a black robe swept into the Great Hall and took the empty seat beside her. Her sentence trailed off as she stared at him, struggling to place a name to that pallid skin, those black eyes, that hooked nose…

"Snape! Severus Snape! I didn't know you taught here, it's wonderful to see you again!"

Snape swiveled around slowly to observe her. "Miss Burbage. What a pleasure," he said, though the tone of his voice gave Charity the impression that "pleasure" was not exactly the word he had been looking for.

"Well…how have you been?" she asked, beginning to feel more than a little awkward.

"Fine, Miss Burbage," he snapped, his eyes roaming the hall disinterestedly. "Now if you don't mind…"

"Oh—of course, sorry," Charity stammered, and she quickly turned back to Professor Sproutwhile Snape returned to his conversation with the stammering, turban-clad man sitting on his other side.

"Don't mind him," Professor Sprout said softly, eyeing the raven-haired professor with only slightly concealed disdain, "I'd say that response was just about as nice as that man knows how to be."

"I remember," Charity laughed, "I sort of knew him in school." But there was something different about the man now, though she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. He had never been friendly, to put it mildly, but there was something deeper behind the unfriendliness now than there had been back when they had been students at Hogwarts. There was something more angry, more bitter in his countenance now than in her memories of him. Or perhaps it had always been there and she had simply forgotten.

"Severus, I made these arrangements to give Miss Talbot extra help on our electricity unit a week ago. Isn't there any way you can reschedule her detention?" Professor Charity Burbage, Muggle Studies Professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, stood in front of Professor Severus Snape's desk in the Potions classroom, her mouth set in a firm line the way Minerva McGonagall might look at a misbehaving student. However, on Charity's face the attempt looked silly, and Snape was not in the least intimidated.

"Perhaps Miss Talbot should have thought of that before she decided to run her mouth in class. This is not up for negotiation, Burbage."

Charity's mouth twitched irritably. "Their electricity test is tomorrow, and she'll fail if she doesn't understand the material. I don't see why you can't just move the detention to tomorrow evening."

"Well, how unfortunate for Miss Talbot," Snape sneered, "Perhaps this will teach her not to disrespect her professors."

Charity sighed. She knew it was not likely she would get Snape to change his position, but she decided to make one last effort. "I understand that you want to teach Miss Talbot a lesson, but now your detention is interfering with my schedule as well. If I have to reschedule another time for her to take the test because I didn't get a chance to tutor her, that puts me at an inconvenience."

Snape smirked at the exasperated woman before him and said, his voice dangerously silky, "Like I said, Burbage—not up for negotiation."

Charity released a short breath of frustration and was about to leave before she noticed a sharp intake of breath come from Snape, and he clutched at his left arm, his mouth set firmly as though preventing himself from shouting out in pain.

She took a wary step closer to the Potions Master. "Severus? Are you alright?" she asked, her voice betraying her concern.

"I'm fine," he hissed at her through clenched teeth.

Charity's eyes widened as a sudden, horrifying realization dawned in her mind. "Is it…it's him, isn't it?" she breathed, "He's calling you?"

Snape took a deep, steadying breath and slowly released the viselike grip on his left arm. "Yes, it's him. The Dark Lord. You must be thrilled, Burbage, you are free to Miss Talbot this evening."

"Of course not!" Charity exclaimed, "Not like this, at least. Is there anything I can do?"

Snape snorted derisively. "Unless you'd like to go make negotiations with the Dark Lord, no, there is nothing you can except leave."

But Charity did not leave. She remained standing, frozen to the spot, as Snape shoved past her and rushed out the door in one large billow of black robes. And she remained standing there long after he had gone, pondering the paradox of a man who had previously been occupying the desk upon which her hands were resting.

Severus Snape was not a good man. There had been times when he almost believed that he could be, but then he would berate a first-year to tears or poison a child's pet as part of a lesson or hand the Dark Lord a potion that would slowly kill its victim, disintegrating them from the inside out. No, Severus Snape was not a good man, and he knew that no amount of spying, no amount of sacrifice, no amount of protecting Harry Bloody Potter could ever change that about him.

Even Dumbledore, the great, infallible Albus Dumbledore—the man who had tried to convince him on multiple occasions of the goodness that lay within him—knew, deep down, that any good that had ever resided within Severus had long been gone from the world.

"Don't be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?"

As if it were as simple as that.

"Lately, only those whom I could not save."

Charity Burbage fell into that category.

Charity Burbage. One of the few who had ever shown him genuine kindness in his life. One of the few who had ever made an effort to reach out to him. Not that he had ever reciprocated her gestures of kindness, not that he had ever really cared. There had always been bigger, more important things going on in his life—there had always been much more to worry about than the little Hufflepuff with the absurdly long blonde hair and the surprisingly thoughtful gray eyes.

Now, as he watched her prone body rotating, suspended above the long, rectangular table which seated Voldemort's inner circle, he was stabbed with crippling guilt. She had treated him with kindness, and this was how he repaid her; by watching impassively as she pleaded for her life, her face contorted with what could only be the most excruciating pain.

"Severus…please…" Charity whispered, her voice hoarse from screaming, as her face passed his.

Forcing his Occlumency shields firmly into place, he continued to stare at her, his expression blank.

"Severus, please. We're friends…"

Severus dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands until he could feel his skin tearing.

"Avada Kedavra!"

There was a flash of green light, and then it was over. Charity's body dropped onto the table with a sickening thud. Even some of the stronger among the Death Eaters couldn't help but flinch. Draco Malfoy was shaking like a leaf. Severus wiped his bleeding hands on his robes and let out the breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.

A horrible, rasping hissing noise emitted from Voldemort's throat, and Nagini, his snake, slithered up around the table leg, coiling around it like a vine, until it reached the flat surface of the table and glided with a sickening grace towards the body. As she neared Charity's body, her mouth opened wide revealing her razor-thin fangs, dripping with poison, and by the time she reared her head back to strike, Bellatrix and Voldemort were the only two still watching.

There was a horrible half-cruching, half-squelching sort of sound which nearly brought up the bile in Severus's throat, but somehow he managed to hold it down.

"This meeting is concluded," Voldemort said softly, the calm in his voice stirring the nerves in everyone present, "You are dismissed."

He was the first to leave, and his snake abandoned her meal and obediently followed him out of the hall. Once he had left, the others started to trickle out one by one until finally, Severus was the only Death Eater remaining in the room.

Slowly, afraid of what he was going to find, he approached the broken body of Charity Burbage.

The sight of her made him suck in a horrified breath and wince, and he nearly turned and rushed out of the room, but he stopped himself. He had encountered worse than this before. If he could forget that he knew her, that she had been kind to him, then viewing her mangled body should not be so disturbing.

She was wearing her Hogwarts robes. She was supposed to have been at the school two days ago, like all of the teachers, but she must have been intercepted before she could arrive. That meant she had suffered through two full days of torture. Her long hair was matted with blood and grime. Both of her legs were bent at absurd angles, and he could see a bone protruding from her right wrist. Her dark robes were made even darker in spots from blood stains, and there were obvious tears in her clothing where the snake must have struck her. But the worst part of it all was her face. A deep purple bruise covered the entire left side of her face, and her eye on that side was swollen entirely shut. There were lacerations and gashes all over her face, but none worse than the two spots on her right cheek where the snake had bitten her and torn off large chunks of her skin, revealing bone and muscles and sinew. She was almost unrecognizable if not for the fact that her right eye was still open, staring blankly into space. And though the expression in her eye was vacant, any fool could see that it was still her.

Severus reached out and brushed her eyelid shut with slightly trembling fingers, and then he turned from her, forced the image out of his mind, and vowed not to dwell on it any longer, other than to make a brief promise to himself that her death would be avenged.

After all this time, it was still for Lily, but the more he saw of the war, the more he realized that there were other reasons for him to be fighting.

The root of it was for Lily, and it always would be, but it was also for Dumbledore, for the students he had promised to protect, and, now, it was also for her.

Fin