This is a oneshot. I was reading an incredible book, Bareback by Kit Whitfield, and this emerged from the stew of my mind in response. Dumbledore's POV, HBP compliant, and while it is definite Dumbledore-bashing, I can't decide if it's very sympathetic to Severus, either. You'll have to draw your own conclusions.

Disclaimer: The characters are not mine. The reasoning is too screwy to be anyone else's.

His Anger

"What are your values, old man?"

I remember a night, a long time ago, when a young man, dark and torn, sat bleeding in my office and asked me what my values were. My new spy, my reserved Severus, watched me with fathomless eyes as I wondered what he meant, how I was to answer. Then he took the words from me.

"No. Don't tell me. I won't understand."

He said he wouldn't understand. He said he understood his own value system. He said, if given a choice between the lives of two people, he would choose the one who defied death, because they would be more useful. I thought him cold, and in anger I told him so. In anger, I challenged him to choose between a defiant Sirius Black and a defeated Lucius Malfoy. In anger, I asked him to choose between a man he hated, and I man he thought had been a friend. In anger, I asked him a hypothetical question to which I knew he could have no answer.

He never gave me one. He looked at me, with black eyes that laughed at my innocence and scorned my stupidity.

I had thought him cold, that night, but I learned that he was not. Severus was never cold, never sterile, never removed. He was passionate, deeply and irrevocably moved by everything that happened. No-one else ever thought him cold. They thought him angry.

I thought I had information they didn't. I thought the anger a facade to hide the calculation. I learned that I was wrong. But so were they.

His anger was his passion, the vehicle through which he expressed all the powerful emotions in him. Anger was safe, in a way impartial, and he used it to carry the words and thoughts he could never voice another way. The spectrum of emotion, of joy to sorrow, of love to hate, which in others was a rainbow of crystal colours, was in him a wheel shaded in anger's red.

Over time, I learned to see the differences in the shades and textures. The swift biting words, thrown out in a lash to draw a line of blood across his questioner's heart, that anger was his pain. The hammerblow to crush opposition, the snarling fury that drove straight for the throat, that anger was his ever-present fear. The cold, implacable fury that hunted ceaslessly for bloodless wounds, that anger was his hate. The contemptuous anger that ridiculed your every step and drew unconcious, involuntary tears, that anger was his strange caring. The quick, snapping anger that tested your every sore point but never drew real blood, that anger was his rare respect. The black, cynical anger that sprang out in rare weaker moments was his inexpressible sorrow, a sorrow I was never close enough to understand. And the righteous rage that leapt out to defend others, that was his harsh and brutal love.

From that first night, I watched the wheel of his anger turn and turn again, learning its rhythms and reasons, from the biting, lashing, bludgeoning angers of those first fearful, hurtful months where my spy showed his mettle, to the years where my spiky professor drew lines of judgement through the ranks of colleagues and students and outsiders alike. I watched as various people drew down angers of caring, of loathing, of respect, and even bursts of a pure, simple anger that simply meant he was exasperated at you.

Then Harry came, and I waited to see the cold anger of his hate, or the black anger of his sorrow, or biting anger of his pain. I waited for this child who wore the face of one of his tormentors to draw down his bitterer angers.

Instead, I saw a new shade on the spectrum, an anger unlike those I'd learned, but somehow made of them. I didn't understand this new fury for the longest of times, years, until a moment in Harry's third year when Black and Lupin had drawn Harry out into what everyone thought was danger, and what unintentionally had turned out to be exactly that. I tried to explain to a Severus I thought simply vengeful that they had never meant for anyone to be hurt, and that it was alright now, and my angry spy exploded. The anger he showed the boy burst into new, excruciating relief, and I saw another boy, years earlier, trying to explain to me that whether or not they had meant to, whether or not it had turned out alright, they had still tried to kill him. All those shade and tones of anger rushed and coalesced and became something deeper and purer. The anger of his passion.

"What are your values, old man?"

It gave me hope, that anger. At least this passion was for Harry's sake. This power, the power of the spy, was on Harry's side. In the empty war that drew closer, I knew that somehow, that would be the key. That anger would be bent to scour the face of the enemy. That flame in the dark would die in service of the dawn.

"What are your values, old man?"

Then the moment came when that anger would swallow me. It was my turn to die in service of the light. His hand held the wand, and I waited to see the anger that is my due. I wonderes what it would be. His face was taunt, the snarling mask of a Death Eater, but his anger hadn't appeared yet. I waited, and it seemed a silent eternity. I entreated him to hurry, to show my judgement. I don't know why. It is simply that knowing where I lay on his spectrum of red had become important to me.

Then his wand was raised and his voice rolled out, and green light trickled towards me at a speed so slow I wondered if time had somehow stopped, and I watched his eyes for an anger that never appeared.

There was no searing warmth of anger, only cold green light, and empty black night, and eyes that laughed at my innocence and scorned my stupidity.

"What are your values, old man?"

I don't remember, Severus. I don't know if I ever knew. I'm sorry.

"If I, like you, had to choose between two lives, I would choose the life that is defiant. It is worth more, because it will do more with the life it is given. It would be more useful."

I understood too late that the lives that are defiant in the face of death are the lives that have learned that no-one else is going to rescue them. I learned too late that his passion and caring are for those who have nothing else. And I remembered too late that since that night, his anger has never been directed at me as a person. At my decisions, at the situations we have found ourselves in, but never at me. His anger was his passion, his values, which ascribe lives their worth, were measured in its ferocity.

Wrapped in cold light and empty night, under the gaze of black eyes empty of regret, I realised that since in anger I answered him incorrectly, my live had no value to him. In his eyes, it was worthless. I did not even deserve his anger. He had to choose between Draco's life and mine, between Harry's life and mine, between his own life and mine, between the life of the wizarding world and mine, and in each decision he had no regret. Has no regret.

It was all for the greater good, of course. Always, for the greater good. But it hurt, so deeply, to realise that in the eyes of someone I respect, I was worthless. Too late, I realised the pain of a betrayed schoolboy. Too late, I understood the cold question of a battered man about to turn spy. Too late, I saw the anger of a pressured boy trying to be a hero for the pain it is.

"What are your values, old man?"

Whatever they were, they are not worth your anger, Severus. And, maybe, neither am I.

I'm sorry.

Fin

Review if you feel like it, but in truth I don't expect too much after that. Thank you for reading.