The Revel's End
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. The verse used here was written by William Shakespeare. I own this idea, I think. Or, at least, I've never seen it before.
Author's Note: This is a quasi-songfic, using verse from The Tempest. Enjoy!
Hush and be mute,
Or else our spell is marr'd.
Avoid, no more.
The door exploded. Harry Potter stepped into the tiny, one-room shack, and froze.
The room was in total disarray. Books and broken bottles were scattered all over the floor. There was a cracked table and a rickety chair in the corner. A crystal goblet, filled nearly to the brim with dark red wine, stood on the table. A dark-haired man, standing at the table, had spun to face Harry the moment the door burst open. The man was as disheveled as the room itself, with a knife in one hand and a wand in the other, bloody gashes in his arms and face.
"Oh, no you don't, Potter," he hissed. "Between the three of you, you, your father, and Dumbledore have taken everything from me: my life, my dignity, and my will. You will not take my death from me, as well!"
Our revels now are ended. These our actors
(As I foretold you) were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
"I came to kill you," Harry said.
"I know, I know," the man said, dropping his wand and knife and sinking down onto the chair. "And I'm glad you came now rather than later…I was hoping I'd get to explain…"
"Explain what?"
"Why I did the things I did."
"No explanation can excuse you, Snape."
He laughed bitterly. "I'm not asking you to excuse or forgive me. I'm asking you to hear me."
"All right, fine." Harry conjured up a chair--much more stable than the one Snape sat in--and sat down. "You have my attention. Explain away."
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
"You will, doubtless, want to know why I killed him."
Harry nodded.
"I swore an Unbreakable Vow. To watch over Draco Malfoy, to protect him, and to finish the job if he was unable. To break an Unbreakable Vow means death."
"I know that! You should've broken it!"
"I couldn't," Snape whispered. "I couldn't."
"Why not? Were you really that excited about living in hiding?"
"No." Snape took a deep breath. "A year and a half before I killed him, Dumbledore enchanted me, bound me to do everything in my power to prevent my death by violence or magic."
"Why didn't he lift the enchantment?"
"I asked him to. Several times. Each time, he refused."
"Why?"
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant faded
Leave not a rack behind.
Snape laughed again, more bitterly than before, and rolled up his left sleeve. Cutting through the Dark Mark was a thin white scar. "I tried to kill myself. He found me, healed me, and enchanted me before I regained consciousness. He still needed me, and the only crime he considers more heinous than murder is suicide. His priority was to prevent me from making another, possibly successful, attempt. He knew if he lifted the enchantment, I would try again." He rolled the sleeve back down and looked away.
"Why did you try and kill yourself?"
"You don't know what it's like, do you," Snape said, still avoiding Harry's eyes. "To betray everything you once held dear. Half the time, I wasn't even sure myself which side I was on. The Death Eaters--they were my friends, and I agreed with their politics, but I couldn't agree with their policies…it took them targeting two people I knew and respected as much as I did your parents to make me really understand that.
"Yes, I respected them," he said, in response to Harry's skeptical snort. "I think that's why I hated them so much. Because they were, in so many ways, more than I was. I was jealous, I felt guilty for being jealous and contributing to their deaths. I'm not proud of it, Harry," he said quietly, and Harry registered, in some part of his mind, that this was the first time Severus had ever used his given name. "But I can't change what I did. I can only…atone…"
His eyes strayed to the goblet and stayed there for a long moment. He sighed. "Well, I'd like to say it's been a pleasure, Harry, but…that wouldn't be entirely truthful." Finally, finally, he met Harry's eyes. "If you can bring yourself to do so, I request that you tell the others what I have just told you." Severus picked up the goblet, swirled the wine, and stared at it for a minute. He smiled slightly, and raised his glass to Harry in a mocking salute. "Cheers, Harry." He drank.
It wasn't until that moment that Harry realized the wine had been poisoned. He shouted something appropriate for such moments, and knocked the glass out of Severus's hand. It shattered.
But Severus was already dead.
We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep…