"Killing The Stars"
Demeter
Warnings: Snape-angst and dark stuff ahead, folks. Slash and somewhat preslash. Guess who the two 'boys' are. A hint of Remus/Severus
Disclaimer: All rights and privileges to Harry Potter are trademarks and property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic, Warner Brothers, Bloomsbury Books, Raincoast Books and associated parties. The author claims no legal responsibility for problems associated with using this work. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The original story and characters and relationships within the fic belong to Demeter.
Special Thanks to Celeste and Kirstie from the SnapeSlash group for help on the title. ^__^
Thanks to Priestess of Avalon and ThreeOranges for this 3rd edition of the fic.
Every Slytherin that slips from his hands into the writhing darkness, he mourns. Their faces swim constantly in front of his eyes, each accusing him of damning them to the eternity of hell. He slept at night with the aid of dreamless potions, but the nightmares crept in, smiling maddening smiles, smiles edged in insanity, in wickedness, in evil.
He was constantly cold.
It didn't matter that Albus Dumbledore insisted that he had saved numerous lives, that he had prevented the complete destruction of many Aurors, that his work was his redemption. That his work would and could be the tool to atone for his sins.
But Slytherins still drifted away.
Those bright-eyed children, so many who gazed at him with adoration, with respect, with such love that he found the days heavy with responsibility, the nights choking with his own darkness. He wanted nothing more than to see those young ones, his beautiful pupils, follow a path lighted with sun, to avoid the path that was edged with thorns, with harmful monsters.
So few of them understood that they didn't have to follow their parent's footsteps. So few dared say 'no', a word not looked kindly upon in Slytherin homes. Their frightened faces looked to him for answers, for protection and when he had none to give, the children, his children, looked at him sadly, without comprehension in their dying eyes, and turned their backs on Hogwarts, on Dumbledore, on him, and they fell into darkness.
Like him.
Oh, how he wanted to pull them back, shield them from truths best-denied, questions that few knew the answer to, and from lying whispers that promised love, affection, fortune, fame, all the inconsequential things that children appreciate. He wanted to hold all the crying children in his arms and sooth the fears and terrors that caused the silvery tracks… but all he could do was give the child any child, a sleeping draught and send the child, any child, back to the cold, to the evil, to the endless darkness.
There was no hope for his Slytherin children. They were damned. If only because they were born of a house that they didn't know was evil, blindly followed ideals that they didn't know were outdated, swallowed curses like food for the soul, and believed in their mothers, their fathers. Their heritage.
It hurt.
It hurt unbearably to watch one after another, child after child, teenager after teenager, grow old within the matter of a single summer. They saw murders, tortures, attended bloody gatherings that no adult, or even Auror, should see. They understood the power, the pain, the essence of why they were Slytherins and so many, so many couldn't stand that knowledge, couldn't face the facts that they were truly the devils, the monsters, the demons that the other Houses said they were.
They cried to him, asking why they couldn't be something else, couldn't be someone else? But what answer could he give them? He was a double agent, a spy, the spy; he was in the most delicate of balances. One rough move, one wrong comforting word, and his game would be up, the Order would lose their spy and he… he would be dead. Worse then dead.
He hushed their stifled sobs, dried their tears with a dispassionate air. He couldn't afford such sympathies such as pettings, hugs, or even words. He sent them back to cold beds, ignored their pleas, their whispers, and their very souls. He watched as their eyes dulled and he hoped that they would make the good choices themselves, even without his help, yet he knew, he knew that their tears were dried forever and in the end, they would succumb to the same madness, the same darkness, the same evil that had taken their parents.
And then there was nothing he could do to save them.
He mourned his children.
Every year, a new crop, a new batch, a new set of Slytherin students would grace his doorsteps. Some were doe-eyed, complete with pedigrees and lusty thoughts that befitted children of the twisted. Many were pale, quiet, almost ethereal in their beauty. Others were cold, hard, cruel, and manipulative. And a rare few were much like the famed Gryffindors, brave, daring, cheerful in their quest to the Quidditch Cup. But oh, those were so very few and far in between. He didn't dare favor those, no matter how much he wanted to, he didn't ever dare give praise to them.
Those few reminded him that Slytherins could be part of the light. That they could triumph over the prejudiced biases of the world. While Voldemort lived however, they were the few, the very, very few in Slytherin.
Hope had died so long ago… he wondered at times whether it was worth anything to go on.
But those were dark, wicked, evil thoughts that plagued him. Dumbledore insisted that he was useful and worthy of life, but was he really? He was Head of Slytherin, the one the children should have been able to go to without hesitation or dread, the one that should have saved them all when they did ask him to intervene, to stop the pain, to change the fork in the road. Those who asked, oh, they begged so prettily, so nicely, so innocent of the dangers that they were putting him in.
The Headmaster said that many of the Slytherins did choose to follow a different path and yes, he was deliriously happy, joyful that some were saved.
Yet many were not.
And those grieved him. Grieved him in ways that bespoke of torment and wrongs, and yet, and yet, there was one that if he saved, perhaps, just perhaps, all his sins could be washed away. If he could save that boy, pretty, delicate, as pale as the silvery moonlight, then all would be rendered in the blinding softness, in the edging light, as pure, as true… and maybe even his sins could be cleansed, maybe even he could be saved also.
But that boy, oh, that boy, he was the cruelest of them all. The coldest of them all. The trickiest, the slyest, the most ambitious, the most cunning, the most Slytherin of all the Slytherin students. He was the one that could save or damn the House to an infinity of heaven or hell. He was the only son of two beautiful, two icy, two purebloods that had groomed the boy for servitude under the Dark Lord.
The boy had been marked for death and evil since birth, called since his dubious childhood, and yet, he could see some light struggling to burst forth in an iridescent rainbow beyond all the darkness that was wrapped around the boy. There were glimmers of confusion, of unanswered questions of why, just why, were Muggles so bad? Why were mudbloods dangerous to the wizarding community? Why did he have to follow one path when the world told him to walk another?
The boy dared not ask these questions out loud, but as the boy's Head of House, he could see, yes, he could see the seeds of doubt planted and he watered them zealously. He showed the boy that not all muggle-born were the poison that many purebloods said they were. He labored with infinite gentleness, belying the sarcastic nature everyone thought he had, to take the boy down the sun-lit path that Dumbledore had taken himself down years ago.
With covert glances, soft touches, he tried to convince the boy that he cared more then the parents – cold, stern, beautiful as they were – ever could. And the boy smiled more and more with wonderment, less and less with cruelty, with coldness, with malice. Year after year passed, too slowly, too quickly, and the first bled into the second, the second into the third, the third into the fourth, the fourth into the fifth, and still yet, the boy was his, was the Order's, and he had real hopes that the boy could break from his family, from the father the boy worshipped, the mother the boy adored, from the heritage that would have doomed the boy if he had not stepped in to intervene at that impressionable age of eleven.
The boy returned the summer before the sixth year with scars that were lashed across his pale, his pretty body, and the boy was changed. His eyes glinted with a burgeoning madness, were red from sleepless nights, and there were times he could hear the boy weeping from sheer despair.
Times were dark, and few, if any, had time to think about the children the arrested left behind, the bereft who had lost their parents the same as any other child. But because their parents had been killed by Aurors, by the righteous good, that made those children different. His Slytherin children.
So many to protect and lead, so little time to accomplish the impossible, and his own sanity was threatening to break. The spying, the work, the very life he had invested in many of his children were starting to teeter on a tightly-drawn rope of vague hopes and he didn't know whether any could be saved now. The Dark Lord was calling and some of his children answered eagerly and he let them go in hopes of preventing the others, but more and more, seeing no protection from the side that was supposed to guide them, left, looking for power, for wealth, for love and affection that so many lacked.
And he still watched and waited for the boy's answer. The boy who was still his hope, who was still the one who could possibly help Harry Potter, the one who understood the darkness the way Dumbledore understood the light, and in all that shifting black, he thought the boy could draw upon his first, second, third, fourth, and fifth years.
The boy continued his nightly pilgrimage to the tallest tower in Hogwarts, confused, bewildered, in excruciating pain, asking silent questions, wringing desperate words out of the indifferent sky. The boy, still pretty, delicate, as pale as the silvery moonlight, was lost and he couldn't reclaim that mind… but someone else could.
Another boy. Beautiful, strong, perfect in every way, except for the scar that marred his forehead, except for the coldness he had given to the pretty boy for years past… but that boy, that particular boy could understand the pretty boy and the two fell in love, ignoring the many boundaries that separated them, thrived in the light they found when both had fallen into despair.
He watched with hooded eyes, with a heavy and shattered heart, because he had nursed a small flame all those long years, that perhaps, perhaps, perhaps, after the war was over, after the pretty boy had chosen the path he wanted the boy to choose, he could keep the pale, pretty, painfully thin man by his side.
But he saw the happiness the pretty boy had and he couldn't deny, couldn't keep that child, the man now, from joy, from the light he had been denied when he was younger. The light that had extinguished the full moon a werewolf, a man, a friend, a near-lover had attacked and nearly killed him. The night when a Headmaster had betrayed him. The night when he had despaired to the heavens that perhaps, just maybe, that Slytherins were the unloved, the ones no one wanted.
That night he had vowed to join the Dark Lord and had promised himself to blood, to the pale, older version of the pretty boy, who came with words of love and hands of comfort. So he couldn't jealously take and take and take, even though he had been giving and giving and giving endlessly over the last two decades, be it under one Dark Lord or one twinkling Headmaster.
And he could comfort himself with one thing, one shining moment of glory. The boy had chosen a path lit with sparkles instead of glitter. Though the boy wasn't his, the childhood was, and all the other damning, inconsequential things that he, even if no one else, appreciated.
He could sleep with ghosts at night, even as his dreams were still plagued with that pretty, pale, delicate, painfully thin boy,who smiled adoringly, who always called him Professor, who asked him once…
Slytherins don't always have to become Death Eaters, do we, Professor?
And he said, "No, we do not."
- Fin -