Thank you, Iva1201, for pointing out that stupid mistake. August? Really. What was I thinking? And thank you Overhill. I have made that little change you suggested, and it does look much better.

Nothing

It was a windy night, and the cloak of the lonely figure approaching Hogwarts school for Witchcraft and Wizardry whipped around him, so that it would've brought the mind of a casual observer – if there had been a such – to a black-sailed ship in a strong gale. But there was no casual observer, nor an observer of any other kind. There was just the night, sprinkled with stars that flashed on and off as grey-black clouds chased each other over the sky, and the wind that sang, howled, screeched and murmured as if this dull darkness was going to last forever.

The gates of the school were not locked. So Dumbledore knew about his approaching visitor, and had left them open. The thin lips, that were almost all you could see of the heavily cloaked figure, curled into a derisive sneer, as a pale, bony hand was extended to push the gates open. As soon as the darkly clad person was inside, the doors shut themselves on their own accord, and a quite loud clicking could be heard as several magical locks sprang to life. The figure paused for a moment, looking around the hall, remembering; calling back to mind what it was like being a new student, standing here among a bunch of people that were strangers, in one way or another. It was not hard, for fear leaves the deepest imprints of all.

Stairs; walls; portraits; windows. The hasty footfalls were muffled, as if the strange visitor was used to sneaking, used to being invisible. Invisible like the prey, invisible like the hunter – in the end, it all came down to the same thing.

The corridors were deserted, a sinister omen of the dark times. No children were padding through the darkness, stifling their giggles; no couples were making out in deserted classrooms. Far off, there was the sound of rebellious off-key singing. Argus Filch was known to drive away the painful hours when he could not torture students by means of the bottle. But the visitor ignored this, looking neither left nor right. It was clear that this person knew exactly where they were going, and was not going to be distracted.

When the figure reached an ugly stone gargoyle, obviously its destination, it however did pause shortly. Once again the clawlike hand shot out of its nest, this time to push away the hood that was obscuring the upper part of the visitor's face. The shadows slid away, to reveal the pale, almost sickly face of a young man. He was by no means handsome, with sharply angled features, a nose like a hatchet, and almost white lips that were pulled taut in a strange, unsettling grimace. Small scars, probably souvenirs from a bad case of teenage acne, made his skin look somewhat coarse, and from the hollowed-out look of his cheeks, one would guess that he had not had enough to eat these last weeks. The black hair falling about his face and down his back showed every possible sign of neglect; it looked distinctly unbrushed, unwashed, and it was obvious that it had not been cut for a long time.

"Let me in" he ordered the stone gargoyle, and his voice was a soft tenor one, somewhat unpleasant in a way that was impossible to explain. "You know he is waiting for me. So let me in."

Sure enough, he was admitted entrance, and he quickly climbed the revolving stairs, lifting his black robes slightly to avoid tripping on them. As he approached the office, he heard voices behind the door, the kind of subdued voices that you'll hear at a funeral. A flash of emotions surfaced in the black eyes, but were then hastily quenched. He righted his cloak, lifted his chin, extended his hand to grasp the doorknob.

"Ah, I believe our guest is here" said a mild voice on the other side of the door, and this seemed to make the man very angry. He bared his teeth in an ugly snarl, and the door was pushed open more forcefully than necessary and banged into the wall.

Inside was quite a large group of people, and the way they kept half-sitting on tables and against walls, the dishevelled look on several of them, suggested a hastily summoned meeting. Some were in their pyjamas, while others looked like they had been summoned from the heat of battle. In the focus of everyone's attention, however, was the old man sitting behind the desk in the middle of the room, and a young man who was sitting, slumped and boneless, in an armchair before him. The latter was deadly pale, trembling horribly and gasping for air as if he was choking. Tears were seeping out of his eyes, and he looked like he had been crying for hours at end. He was the only one not to look up as the other young man entered, quite obviously absolved by his grief.

But a tall man with greying hair and a face almost completely covered with scar-tissue got to his feet as soon as his eyes – oddly mismatched – fell upon the intruder. His rage was obvious.

"Snape? Snape! A bloody death-eater! Filth! And you allowed him to come here, Dumbledore? Are you completely out of-"

"My mind is in excellent condition, thank you, Alastor" said the old man sternly, effectively silencing the outburst. "Severus here obviously has something to say to me, and I'd be a fool not to let every man have his say before condemning him."

"Be that as it may" the man called Severus cut in icily "but what I have to say to you, Dumbledore, is only going to be said between four eyes. I don't really enjoy spectators very much."

Dumbledore sighed. "I thought you might see it that way."

He was repaid by a sneer.

"Why, of course."

"But Albus… is it safe?" asked another man nervously, eyeing Severus with a wary face. "Should you really-"

"Shut your mouth, Weasly" the pale man hissed, and as if he had spoken the words of a spell, the mouth of the man with the flaming red hair snapped shut. He blushed and looked angry, probably at himself, but made no attempt to speak again. Dumbledore smiled at him.

"I give you my word that I will be perfectly safe, Arthur" he said. "After all, I hardly lack means of defending myself." He winked, and then stood up, looking quite splendid with his white beard and moss green robes. Severus was wearing a strange sneer that seemed stiff and… fake. Like he was trying his best to mask something else, something that would make him weak in the eyes of the others.

As the door to the private living-quarters of the Headmaster swung shut, mumbles started to ripple through the room like the first signs of a new tide. Finally, a woman raised her voice, obviously not being able to hold herself back anymore.

"I don't understand this" she said. "He's one of them, we all know it. How can Albus-?"

"It doesn't matter" said the horribly choked and hoarse voice of the young man in the armchair. "Nothing does, not anymore…"

"Remus, we know how you feel, but we must consider..:"

He looked up at her, with eyes that were hollow enough to swallow galaxies with their endless loneliness, and she fell silent. No, none of them knew what Remus Lupin felt at this moment, they had no means of possibly comprehending. In just a few hours – although it could've been mere seconds for all the difference their attempts to stop it from happening had made – he had lost whatever had made his otherwise miserable life endurable.

James and Lily were slain, their son was out of reach, all that was left of poor Peter was a finger…

And – probably worse of all – guilty of the betrayal, guilty of all this, was Sirius. Sirius Black. The boy that nobody could help loving. The boy with the wide, charming grin and the disarming honesty, the blessed looks and the big heart. James' best friend. The one of all the members of the Order, it had been said, that hated the powers of Darkness the most. THAT Sirius.

The pain would not have been greater if he had died. Probably, it would've been lesser. Remus hoped it would. Because if Sirius ever got out of Azkaban, he was going to kill him.

Severus Snape was watching Dumbledore through narrowed eyes. "You didn't tell them" he said, softly. "If you had, Lupin would've ripped me apart. But why didn't you?"

Dumbledore looked seriously at him over the top of his spectacles. "First of all, I hardly think Remus would. The boy has just had his life demolished. He's not even strong enough to stand up straight, let alone rip anyone apart. Secondly, no, I didn't. I didn't see why that should matter. Every Death Eater is our enemy, Mr. Snape. We treat them as such, no matter what they have done. Sentencing them is up to the Wizengamot."

The young man started to pace back and forth, and what was visible of his face behind the lank curtains of hair was marked with heavy lines that made him look a lot older than merely one and twenty. And then he came to a halt, abruptly, and spun around to face the old man, who still had not moved.

"It was my fault…" he began, and his voice was accusing, as if Dumbledore had let him down by not telling everyone of what he had done. However, he was interrupted.

"No" said the old wizard, and his voice was quiet and sad. "Nobody is to blame except Voldemort, and, alas, young mister Black. You did not know what that prophecy would mean when you first told your Lord about it."

"He is not my Lord anymore" spat Severus in sudden anger. "And what difference does it make? I still marked a child for death, and it just happened to be the Potter boy." He pronounced the name 'Potter' with every sign of contempt in his voice, yet his eyes betrayed a strange kind of regret.

"But you didn't" Dumbledore pointed out. "The boy is, in fact, healthy as anything, and the only mark left on him is a scar on his forehead. Well, the only physical mark, I should say." He sighed gently and the sincerity in his eyes was tinged with melancholy.

"Well, not for lack of trying on the Dark Lord's part" Severus bit back. "And he's still an orphan because of-"

"Voldemort" finished Dumbledore, and he held up his hand to silence Severus as he opened his mouth to protest. "No, mister Snape. Not because of you. You did not know what consequences it would have."

"You know nothing – NOTHING – about that!" The young man was angry now, and his voice trembled as he strained it to keep from shouting. "When I went to the Dark Lord with the information, I knew a child was going to die for it."

"Did you really?" wondered the white-haired elder, gently. "Did you think about the mourning parents? Did you think about the corpse of a toddler? The small coffin? The gravestone with the short life-span for ever carved into stone? Or did you simply think the words 'A child is going to die', without really thinking about their meaning? Was it not so, that it was when the child became real for you, and even more so the parents, that you finally realised what you had done?"

The young man did not answer, but he turned his face away, and suddenly he seemed to look much, much younger. It was as if a shadow of the teenage boy he had once been, the angry seventeen-year-old that had been won over to the Dark Lord's side with promises of revenge and power, suddenly swept over his face like the memory of choked-down tears and fear he had never let himself show. With the same mild voice, the Headmaster of Hogwarts continued:

"If you have hardened your heart, it is easy enough to kill faceless foes in combat, easy to murder when spurred by the presence of others, others that make you feel like you belong. But to know that something you said, no matter if you intended it, resulted in the death of two classmates from school… no matter that you never got along with James, and nevermind that Lily never knew how to help, but something like that is not easy, mister Snape. Do not try to fool me to believe otherwise. I'm sorry, but I am really far too clever to fall for that. And that is why you are here, isn't it?"

The silence that fell over the room was powerful, it demanded an answer to the question that had created it, and that was immediately. The tired young man finally collapsed under its pressure; although skilled at facades and masks, the fatigue and the guilt were eating at his soul, and this was taking its toll on him. He nodded, once, and he hid his face completely in the shadows created by his long hair. He was swaying gently where he stood.

"Do sit down, Severus" Dumbledore said softly.

Scowling at the new way at addressing him, and at words that bade him to be weak, the young man shook his head sharply. He looked so pale now that he seemed to be in danger of fainting any moment. A chair shot forwards and hit him quite forcefully over the back of his legs; unable to retain his balance, Severus more collapsed backward into the chair than sat down.

"I am afraid that I do insist" the old man said, and no change could be detected in his tone. Maybe, though, there was less twinkle and more steel in his gaze. And perhaps, just perhaps, his face betrayed something that almost was like pity. But then again, that could just've been imagination.

Severus did not protest, but he clenched and unclenched his hands with cramplike motions, and his lips whitened as he pressed them tightly together.

"Are you giving yourself over, Severus Snape?" asked Dumbledore.

"Yes." He spat out the word between taut lips, almost like it tasted bad in his mouth and he wanted to rid himself of it as quickly as possible. The Headmaster turned his gaze away when he noticed the give-away lustre of tears in the onyx eyes.

"I have a feeling" he said, slowly "that there is something I do not know of here."

As Severus closed his eyes, one tear slowly broke free from the clutches of his lashes, and slid down his pallid cheek like a liquid diamond. With a harsh, impatient gesture, he quickly dried it away. A faint blush, sprung from humiliation, gave a touch of colour to his skin that just looked hectic and unhealthy against the whiteness.

What could he tell the old man? There were no words for eyes that sought what they knew they could not have, a self-torture so sweet that the addiction became a part of his soul. What could there be said to describe the endless frustration of words that would not be spoken as he wanted them, but came out hard, sharp and edgy, unpleasant and in every way alienated from his emotions? How could he explain what it felt like to know that he had lost even before the game began, and that the time when he still was allowed to hope served as nothing more than a way to prolong the torture? Was there a word in any language that could communicate the guilt he felt now, the guilt he would always feel, and the unbearable loss in knowing that he had lost for ever what he was not even allowed to own in the first place?

No. There was nothing he could say that would do justice to what he felt.

And even if he could, even if there were such words, he would not have spoken them. It was too private, too painful and too fresh a wound. And he knew, oh he knew, that even these thoughts were weakening him, and if he confirmed it with real words, he would at the same time sign a contract with his own destruction.

And even worse: Nothing of it would bring her back. Nothing could change the way life had turned out. Nothing would help, and nothing hurt so much as this simple fact.

"Nothing" is a simple little word that means impossible, and impossible is the thing that chains humans to the ground when they want to fly.

Severus wanted to fly. He wanted to fly right out the window, fly to meet the ground in a perfect, ever-lasting embrace. But the way of the noose and the knife and the painless slumber was the way of the weak.

"There is nothing" he said, and his voice was hollow. But even the void contains some things. It contains chill, and darkness, and fear. And pain. The void is built from the pain of hearts in despair. "Nothing at all."

Nothing matters, he thought, echoing Remus' pain with his own, Remus' words with his own. Nothing. Impossible is a word that means that hope is only in your own head.

And Albus Dumbledore, who would certainly not have become what he was without learning a thing or two about life, saw something in the eyes of the young man that he knew he was not allowed to touch. But that did not matter. For whatever it was that made Severus regret, whatever it was that had overcome his pride, at least there could be no doubt that it was very real. Real enough to give birth to trust, and a second chance for the young man, if he wanted it.

Trust in a caring heart is something that lasts, blind like love and strong like faith. And how can you be indebted to someone who will take nothing, nothing at all? Nobody fights for something they can have for free.

But then again…

It is when we deserve to be trusted the least, that we need it the most.