Dumbledore was dead. He still could not believe the words as they floated through his brain, images of the old wizard's final moments, the look of momentary pain on his face as a brilliant flash of green had brought an end to his one hundred and fifty odd years. But oh, how he wished those could have been the only memories. The smell of blood in the air, the dark mark casting its light across the schoolyard, even the feeling of wood against his palm as the curse had struck, with Albus powerless to stop it.
He was a traitor, a filthy traitor for following orders, for obeying a foolish, dying man's last wishes. Dumbledore had always spoken of doing what was right over what was easy, but how could he have meant something like this? There was only one thought passing through his brain as he recalled in vivid detail every whisper, every syllable of the curse that had taken the life of his friend and mentor. It should have been me.
It would have been so easy just to turn around, to fight back. He would have been dead within a minute, but Albus might have... So easy, so painless, and he would not be here now, with this child curled up and asleep in one of his chairs, contemplating the greatest atrocity he had ever committed.
Ah, yes, the boy. Even now, after all he had done, the boy was not yet a killer. Ever since the night one year ago that he had sat here and bound himself to the child's mother with a vow that only death could break, he had known that Dumbledore and he would be parted by the end of the year- one of the them would die, but he had been ready to take that burden. The blonde-haired child who now slept fretfully in a red armchair might never truly realize that the greatest wizard the world had ever known had give his life to protect him.
And to protect me he thought, almost unwilling to admit it. With his dying breath, Albus had pleaded with Severus to obey his wishes, and the innocence of one traitorous half-blood and one seemingly insignificant child had been saved in the process. You overestimate me, Albus he thought, conscious of the liquid brimming in his own eyes and thankful that he was alone, save for the child.
Wiping would-be tears from his eyes, an action that he could not recall duplicating in at least ten years, he got to his feet, leaving behind the comfort of a familiar seat and walking purposefully to his bookshelf. Withdrawing a large encyclopedic volume from the shelf, he opened it to reveal not pages, but a hollow cavity, within which lay six short hairs from one of the most horrible women he had ever had the displeasure of meeting. Disguising himself as the terrible woman he had been forced to teach under the year before would be unpleasant, at best, but he could not dare come within ten miles of Hogwarts as he was. He already had the polyjuice potion he would need, brewed and ready in case the Order required him to use it.
Removing two of the hairs, he took one look back at Draco, whose dreaming seemed to have become less restless. Still fighting back emotions that he knew he could not show, for fear of causing even further harm, Severus left to prepare for the funeral of the man he had killed.