Summary: Snape's thoughts after HBP.
A/N: I'm thinking of using this as part of my A2 coursework, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Hate. It's easy enough to say in the heat of the moment, people throw the word around like it means nothing. Fools. If only they'd felt it, because that isn't so easy. Especially when that hate, that loathing, is directed at yourself.
I've done many awful things in my life time, teased, taunted, killed and tortured the innocent, and I've always held a certain disliking for myself. But this is by far my worst act, the fact that I was given permission, ordered to, doesn't seem to matter, the guilt and the deep seated self loathing still remains.
As I run to Draco, the boy for whom I've basically given my life for, deep regret wells up inside me. Not just for the atrocity I just committed, but for letting my anger loose on Potter. It's not like he couldn't do with being taken down a peg or two, but screaming at him, cursing him, probably isn't going to help me in the long run. Because the beautiful irony of it is that I know, I just know, he's going to be the one who kills me, who gets me in the end. I saw it in his eyes tonight, and the pure hatred in them, something I know he usually reserves for the Dark Lord, unnerved me.
Not that it isn't a fitting end to my life, I know that I honestly deserve it, it's just it has to be him. If it hadn't been for his arrogant, self centred, stuck up father then I probably wouldn't have turned to the path I did. My fascination with the Dark Arts would have been there obviously, but I wouldn't have become so obsessed in using them to exact my revenge on the world in general.
But still I realise that I don't hate them, either of the Potters. What I feel towards them is nothing compared to the disgust I feel with myself at the moment.
And Dumbledore. I hate him almost as much as myself. He had to choose me didn't he? I still don't know how I did it, how I killed the one person who ever believed in me. It was that silent plea that did it. Those quietly uttered words. The complete desperation, the pleading and begging tone Dumbledore inserted into my name. If Dumbledore was begging for something, it had to be important, so I did it. Killed him. The greatest sorcerer of all times. And I hate myself for it.