Title: Irony?
Summary: Severus ponders the importance of terminology.
Rating: T (For some profanity)
Disclaimer: As I'm sure you well know; all characters and situations belong to JK Rowling.
It's funny.
No, maybe 'funny' is the wrong term. 'Funny' implies amusement after all, and this is anything but.
It's ironic.
Perhaps that's a better word. I honestly don't think it matters much, not anymore.
Wait, maybe it IS rather funny…at a time like this I stand here debating correct terminology. When it all comes right down to it, it makes no difference. It won't save me. But at least if I can define this I may die with some sense of finality.
Or is that irony?
It's an ironic situation of no amusement.
And that statement makes me laugh.
And that laughter scares me. It's been awhile since I've laughed.
I really don't like the sound; it's harsh and bitter.
It's fitting though.
Somehow that one cruel, acidic laugh ties this whole fucked up state of affairs together. Not that there's anyone around to hear it.
I'm totally alone.
That's neither ironic nor funny. It just is.
I'm standing in the middle of the battlefield, surveying the carnage and trying to figure out what I feel.
For surely I must feel SOMETHING? Intellectually I know I must, but emotionally I've slipped into apathy.
It's almost pleasant.
I just wish I could put a name to this emotion. I believe I should feel some sense of triumph; I have survived after all.
This ended just the way I had always intended.
But how could it not? Whatever the outcome of this battle, there was no way that I could lose.
I was the perfect double-agent, the one yanking on the war's ragged strings.
But to be the one of the only survivors? Particularly when the world spent so long a time debating who would come out alive…and my name never once featured.
That's funny.
Yet now…now to survey the charred remains of the only world I have ever known, it makes me wonder what I have to live for.
I have played my role to perfection, let the war play out before me and predicted this outcome from the very day it began nearly two decades ago.
Predicted?
No, I did not predict this outcome…I made it so, I manipulated both sides and helped them dig their own graves.
Still I came out clean, with not a spot of dirt on my hands. Though I believe that if one were to look close enough one may notice a fleck of dried blood beneath a fingernail.
Innocent I may not, nor have I ever claimed to, be.
But perhaps my greatest crime was a desperate attempt to survive.
Though now I question why that ever was important. There is nothing left for me.
I have proved my point…but who is left to witness this triumph?
With a final look at the remnants of my world I turn and walk from the ruins, barely stopping to notice as the sun's first blood-streaked rays erupt over the horizon.
How odd that a new day could dawn after such a night.
But what a glorious day it promises to be!
What a pity I will never witness its death.
To be one of the only survivors in this world's most devastating war…and ready to die.
Wanting to die.
It's funny.
Or is it 'ironic'?
