All It Took Was One Word

All it took was one word to make her hate you.

You knew Potter would one day ruin your life, take away the one thing you wanted more than anything else in the world. You can see him watching her right now, giving your girl lusty and loving looks. Looks that are probably mirrored in your own expression. Both of your feelings for her are the only thing the two of you ever had in common. You tried to warn her that the boy she hated had an obvious crush on her but she simply called him an arrogant toerag and seemed to think nothing else of it, you relaxed reminding yourself that she hated him, that you were her best friend.

You watch her blink, see the anger and hurt in her eyes as you call her that word. You blame Potter for angering you, you blame your 'friends' for making you think that way about muggle born's, but you mostly blame yourself and somewhere deep down you realise that this is the end of your friendship. And he seems to realise it as well as he instantly tells her that he would never call her that word, making himself seem more worthy of her love.You realise he now has a better chance of winning her over without you there to tell her what he's really like.

She glares at you, eyes scorching, the colour of her hair making her look on fire with anger, as you try to explain just how sorry you are. She tells you that she doesn't want to hear it, that she's made excuses for you for years. She makes it sound like defending you was hard work. Maybe the thoughts you've always had that your friendship meant more to you than it did to her were true. You would worry all day if you thought you had upset her in some way. You would feel sick to your stomach when she was on dates. You were jealous of her Gryffindor friends whenever she was with them and not you. You were even jealous of him whenever he could be around her and you could not.

The looks her friends give you in the corridors don't bother you in the slightest. You are used to Potter and his cronies attacking you. You are even almost grateful when they do. For the hate you feel for Potter has only increased as you watch the love of your life draw closer to the one you loath more than any other. You like having an excuse to hex his smug face. You are only upset by her refusing to talk to you, she won't even look at you, and she barely acknowledges your presence.

You stare into his unblinking, snake like eyes as you promise to be forever loyal to him. You feel the scorch on your arm, making you feel like you're a cow being branded. But you don't care, for you know that being a death eater will bring you the respect you deserve. People will look at you with respect and a little fear rather than the mocking and hate you get from everyone unless they are a Slytherin.

You first see the two of them together around Christmas in your seventh year. You are unsure how you feel, you want her to be happy but not with him. Why should he get everything? She is too good for him. She leans up to kiss him and you actually feel sick, you don't know whether it's with anger or jealously, but you know that you cannot stay and watch them any longer.

You see her screaming and thrashing round on the floor, her blond hair falling over her face, her soft brown eyes begging you to stop. She cannot be any older than seven years old, you can feel her pain, you feel guilt, it's the first time you use the torture curse and it is on a young girl, a muggle. Young and innocent but still scum. You know what muggles are like, your own father was controlling and selfish, he drank and smoked away all your money. You try telling yourself that this young girl will be exactly like him when she is older to try and ease the feeling of guilt. You almost believe yourself.

He is saying something to you, but you barely hear him. The death of the woman you love, even though you have barely seen her the last few years, has filled you with numbness. You do not care what he has to say, it won't bring her back, you wish you were dead. He asks you what good would that be to anyone and asks you to help protect her son. You don't want to help protect the boy who was proof of her love for him but she will always be your weakness and you cannot help your need to see her eyes again, and maybe, unlike you, the boy won't take after his father.

One glance at him and it's as if your worst enemy has risen from the dead, you try testing the boy when he arrives at your lesson, he doesn't seem to have inherited his mother's skill for potion making. You know you are going to hate this boy almost as much as you hated his father.

In your nightmares you relive killing him, the man who gave you a second chance, the only person the Dark Lord himself ever feared, you murdered him. And though it was on his orders it was still you who cast the spell, you whose soul is no longer whole. The student's at Hogwarts look at you with hate that could almost burn through you, if only they could understand you are trying to protect them. The Slytherin's still respect you, although you know some of their parents are no longer treated with the respect they once had, they must have been too cowardly to admit to their children that they were wrong to join Voldemort, he didn't give them what he promiced, yet thay are too afraid to change sides, and you know their children will find out what it's really like soon enough.

As you lie there dying, you worry you will never be able to get Dumbledore's message to the boy. The snake venom starts to flow through your blood and you know you will not be alive for much longer; you almost start to beg that the boy will find you. When he walks in and leans over your blood stained body you summon all your remaining strength to give him the memories he will need. You tell him to look at you as he gathers the memories in a jar. You want the last thing you ever see to be her eyes. As you look into them many thoughts flow through your mind in the space of one minute; you are thankful you may have helped defeat the Dark Lord, yet regretful you couldn't explain everything to the boy yourself. Will you ever see her after death? Her husband?

You can't help wondering that maybe if you had never called her that word, you wouldn't be dying now, would you have been married to her, or would you have at least been able to stop her marrying him.Or would she still have fallen for him. Would you still have become a death eater? Would you still be one now? And what if you had never had the courage to talk to her in the playground all those years ago, would you still have been friends?

And if you had never called her that word would you still have been fighting on opposite sides of the war, the two of you were already going down very different paths before she broke off your friendship.

So many questions and they all lead back to the only memory of her you wish you could forget.

I'm ill and couldn't go to school so I decided to write this instead. I actually wrote most of it yesterday but I forgot toz save it. I was very mad at myself for being so stupid and I think it was better than what I've wrote today but it can't be helped. So yeah...in case you didn't really understand this, it was meant to be from Snape's pov and it was just moments of his life. I've never written in second person before so this was me experimenting really.