"Are you afraid to die, Severus?"

In this stupid war? "Yes, my lord. Although, if it must be, it would be worth it for our cause."

Worth it... Words I didn't mean. Words I would never mean about anything ever again.

My "master" wanted me to be afraid. He was plotting my death at that very moment, for all I knew. True, on the surface he was pleased with me, but I knew him better than that. I had changed the plan on him. He was pleased with the result, but in order to give him that desired result, I'd needed to disobey him. That alone was probably reason enough, and then there was the Elder Wand. He had planned to kill Draco the moment this whole thing blew over, and not a moment had passed when I'd been arrogant enough to imagine I would not meet the same fate.

I wanted to do this. To die, no matter how brutal the death, in Draco's place... it was a worthy cause, but honestly, it would not truly be worth what I had been through. Nothing ever would. While the prospect of death frightened me, I knew that when it came I would welcome it. Every breath I'd taken for the last twenty-two years had been numbingly painful.

Mud-blood. That word had destroyed the one thing good in my life. It had taken the one thing that mattered, and squeezed every drop of happiness from it. She would always matter, but it had never felt good for it to matter, ever again.

Mud-blood. The people I now found myself surrounded with spoke that word every day.

Mud-blood. I was sacrificing my life for a boy who I'd heard say that word countless times... and I'd never corrected him. I'd never told him how it hurts, or how it destroys lives. Why hadn't I? I had been the Slytherin head-of-house, and in the end, it had meant more to me that my students' parents approved of me than if my students actually learned anything important. I wanted desperately to tell him now. I had just given the boy literally everything I had to offer him. I would hate to watch him throw that away... but I couldn't. It was the story of my life. I never realize what I need to do until it's far too late to do it.

Lily...What would she think of me, if she were alive now?

James Potter was right. Right about everything. Not nearly deep down enough, I really was nothing but a filthy, slimy, Slytherin, liar. I'd done everything wrong when I was younger. Everything. Nothing I did now would make up for that. If James saw me now, on my knees before my master, would he laugh? Would he sneer? He would do both. And she'd do it right along with him. Then he'd hex me, and I would welcome the sting. She would probably laugh at that too, because I'd earned it. Any sting, be it of embarrassment or of physical pain, would be well deserved after all I'd done.

I'd been setting up for my own death since I was eleven. Since my first night at Hogwarts, when Lucius Malfoy had looked at me with those cold gray eyes and asked me about my blood. When I'd given him the stuttering answer that I was pure, he sneered and demanded a name he could check up on. I was trembling where I sat on the sofa, praying to nothing that Lily wasn't going through the same thing. I lied that night. I'd insisted to him that I was a pure-blood. My mother, Eloise Prince, had attended Hogwarts as a Ravenclaw, and that the only reason he didn't recognize my last name was because my father was a Latvian immigrant.

And then, when I'd convinced him, he smiled. It was the same warm, welcoming smile that he'd given me when I'd first been sorted. He questioned the other three boys, none of which took as long as I had, and showed us to our rooms, promising us that if we had any problems, he'd take care of them. From that moment I knew that I had no choice but to lie, not just that night, but everyday. I had always known muggles were inferior, but never had I thought that Lily and I would be any different than the boys sitting around us.

When I explained this to Lily the next morning, I'd expected to her to understand, even agree with, my stupidity. I couldn't bear the look on her face when she hadn't. She'd said that she hadn't been confronted the way I had, but that I shouldn't let people bully me into doing and saying whatever they want me to. Then, only briefly, I'd gotten outwardly frustrated with her. Didn't she understand that I'd lied to protect myself? And that the only reason I was telling her to lie was to protect her? The last thing ever wanted was for harm to come to her!

And even though ten minutes later I held her hand and walked side-by-side into Charms with her, deep down that frustration never died. She wouldn't let me protect her! Salazar damn it, why wouldn't she just let me keep her safe? For eleven long years, I wondered that.

I'd known from the first night at Hogwarts that it was going to happen, but nothing could ever have prepared me for it. We'd made it until December without any trouble, then, the morning before she was leaving for the holidays (I was staying, of course) it happened. We'd were up in the clock tower, I was listening to her talk about how much she couldn't wait to get home, and a Slytherin boy, a boy I knew and slept in a room with every-night, began to taunt her. Waving around the letter from her muggle-father, calling her a filth-lover, a tainted-child who just couldn't wait to return to her disgrace of a home to see her shameful parents, and of course, a mud-blood. It was the most painful moment of my twelve-year long life when she looked at me, begging me to come to her rescue, to explain... and I'd started at her with a shocked face and vacant eyes, and she realized that I was not going to do a thing.

I'd gone to Lucius that night, and asked him if he could tell the boy to stop calling my friend a mud-blood. For an entire minute, he'd looked at me as though I'd just asked him to cut out his own heart. Then his features softened, just a little bit, and he'd told me quite calmly and in no uncertain terms that the best way to keep people from calling my friends mud-bloods was not to be friends with mud-bloods. He had, of course, said this as though it was the most obvious thing in the world, and that only an idiot (or a blood-traitor) would think otherwise. He'd stroked my hair and told me that when the holiday was over he wanted to see me spending more time with our kind, and then he'd left.

I didn't know what to think of it. After that first night Lucius had always been friendly to me, so it probably wasn't that he just didn't like me... why wouldn't he help me? The boy had insulted my best friend! Sure, she was a Gryffindor, but was it too much to ask that he take the kid aside for three seconds and tell him to watch his tongue? Or at least watch whom he shot it off at? Why, if not out of personal dislike for me, was he taking my concern and turning it into a reason to chastise me?I had done nothing wrong... right?

And it was that night that it finally sunk in just how serious this blood thing really was. Lily meant nothing to Lucius. In his eyes, she was nothing. Just a stupid muggle who didn't even deserve to scrub the floors in this place, let alone stay here as a student. Her ability to do magic meant nothing to him. She came from muggles; therefore logically she was a muggle. It was the most basic and flawed way of thinking I'd ever heard, and yet almost everyone around me followed it religiously.

I don't remember the exact point when I'd decided to take Lucius' advice, but I did. When the holiday's ended, rather than rush to greet Lily, which I so desperately wanted to do after going two weeks without her, I stayed in the common to spend the evening with Lucius and with my roommates. I noticed Lucius keeping his eyes on me after that. Every time I was walking with Lily and we crossed paths with him, I could feel the sharp glare on the back of my neck. I heard the unspoken words: What you're doing is disgusting. I hated those glares. I wanted them to stop. It was somewhat hard to explain, but I craved for Lucius' approval. It wasn't anything personal, but, as our prefect, he was the most dramatic in my house when it came to our values. He was the one that shot me glares that stung as much as any hex when he saw me with her. He was the one that had spent the first night of the term insuring that our house was still pure. He was the one that, whenever I ran around with other Slytherin boys, would gaze almost adoringly at us, as though we were little brother's who'd grown up to be just like him.

And in a way, we had. The more time I spent with my fellow Slytherins, the less radical our views seemed to be. The more times I was told that mud-bloods were just muggles playing dress up, the more I understood. The only reason I hadn't understood it before was because I hadn't had Lucius' experience, and unlike the other first years, I'd been too foolish to just trust those older than I.

Our views. It was no longer Lucius' views and my views, it was our views. Our views, and our kind. And deep down I knew that there was no room for Lily in that equation. In the back of my mind, I knew that one day I would have to make a choice between her and between my kind. The Slytherins were my kind. Even if I wasn't a pure-blood, I knew they had to be. No one who wasn't there kind could ever manage to get along with them. But Lily... she was everything to me. Even if I no longer spent any more time with her out in the open than I absolutely had to. But still I lied, this time to myself. I told myself that wouldn't happen. That I could have both, but I would have to be very careful.

Mud-blood. My second year at Hogwarts I started using that word. I don't remember the name of the first boy I'd ever screamed that at, but I remember his face. It was a Hufflepuff in my year. I'd been paired to work with him on a potion, and the idiot had blown it up. I was covered in black goo, and shaking with rage. Every Slytherin in the room was yelling it, telling him to go the Hell back to the muggle world where he belonged, and the next thing I knew I was saying those things too, and what surprised me the most was that I meant them.

I don't remember the boy's name, but I remember his face as he ran out of the class in tears.

It was in my third year that James Potter decided to make my life a living Hell. For a while, I didn't understand why, but then I saw the looks he gave Lily, and it was painfully obvious. I was afraid. She said she hated him, that he was a stuck-up wannabe that only ever thought of himself, but did she mean that? Every other Gryffindor girl in the school would go out with him in a heartbeat. Was she really so immune? Of all the girls in the school, why did he have to choose mine? The fear that I might loose her was worse than anything else James could ever do to me.

I'd complained to Lucius, of course. But he couldn't do anything about it if he hadn't witnessed it, and sadly he was in his N.E.T.W. year by then, so he spent most of his time in library, and thus witnessed nothing.

Fourth year came, and my Slytherin friends finally put two-and-two together and realized why James hated me so much. They began to tease him about it, calling him a mud-blood lover and a blood-traitor, reminding him of what filthy half-blooded children they would have. They were just trying to help me. They wanted revenge for what James was doing to me, and that the one thing they had on him. It never crossed their mind that in order to hurt James that way, they also had to hurt Lily that way... but what could I say without blowing my own cover? I'd been telling them repeatedly I barely saw her anymore.

And indeed, as much as I longed to spend time with her, it had become my guilties pleasure. When I did meet with her, it was always late at night and always somewhere private, like the Astronomy Tower or the Owlery (although goign there made me nervous. You never know who's going to need to send a letter). I loved her so dearly... but between my fellow Slytherins and James, I can't deny there were, and still are, days when I despratly wish I did not.

Some days she would come to my rescue though. She wasn't always around when James managed to catch me away from my Slytherin friends, but... I remember one day out on the docks when James had been feeling unusually sadistic, and I'd lied in the snow for a good ten minutes, unable to move from the pain. As much as I hurt though, she was there. Shielding me from the snow, trying to keep us both warm, and begging me to get up and walk back inside with her. It wasn't until she cried that I managed. Anything to make those tears go away.

My Fifth year... That dreadful year when I'd messed up the one good thing I've ever had in my life. Why, of all the people I could have lashed out at, did I choose her? She'd been trying to help, and I'd called her a mud-blood. The same word that had hurt so much to hear screamed at her back when we were first years...

... but James and Sirius had humiliated me! I was terribly embarrassed and mad as Hell; I would never have said that if I hadn't been! But even my fellow Slytherins were laughing, and then to have a mudblood run out and touch me! What was I supposed to do? They already thought I was weak for letting James do that to me, I couldn't let them think I need a mud-blood's help!

And once again, I thought she'd understand, or at least be able to forgive, my twisted logic. I'd expected her to be sensible about it, even if she didn't like it. I was a Slytherin! It didn't mean I loved her any less, but was it too much to ask that she didn't do things like that in front of my other friends? I'd been such an idiot.

Save your breath. No words could ever have hurt me more than those words did. Save my breath? I wanted to dive into the lake and hold my breath... forever. Even as an adult, spending so many years back at the place where it all happened, sometime I'd still finding myself wanting that. It would come suddenly, flicking across my mind as I graded essays or examined samples. Sometimes it would spring itself on me, while I was walking past the courtyard where it happened, or nearing one of the areas we used to hang out in. Other times, I would dream about it. Those blissful dreams when I finally had the death I craved, but was denying myself, simply because I didn't deserve it.

My fellow Slytherins noticed my sour mood, of course, but they all assumed it was the result of James' tormenting, and said nothing. This was for the best, I suppose. Even then, when she wasn't speaking to me, if they'd asked I would have just lied. I couldn't, after all this time, let them know that I had feelings for a mud-blood.

The cutting hexes James cast on me two days later to 'teach me how to talk to a girl' couldn't possibly have felt better. I consider it by far crueler that Remus talked him into stopping while there was still blood coming out.

My sixth and seventh years were uneventful. My mother died. After that I thrust myself into my studies, not wanting to think about anything else, and occasionally I'd try to apologize again, only to be met with the exact same answer. My depression deepened, and already, at seventeen years old, I'd been left alone and in constant pain.

The summer after I graduated, I joined the Dark Lord. I don't even remember why. I suppose it was because every other Slytherin boy in my year had, and it wasn't like I had anything else going on. Beneath the surface, I would never agree with 'the cause', but what else did I have left at this point?

Being marked was one of the most physically painful things ever to happen to me. You know how they say that being branded is like holing an ice cube for a few seconds? Not if you're being branded by dark magic. I could feel every skin cell in that pattern slowly die an agonizing death. The first time the pattern was complete; it started on the second layer. Voldemort told me that it usually takes about three hours for the process to be complete. I think mine took three and a half, and even after that, it must have been a week before anything, even the sleeves of my robes, could touch it without sending fresh wave pain up my arm.

Lucius had been there that night. He'd talked me through the pain after I'd gotten the mark. The instructions were basic; don't grab it like that, don't even try to dull the pain, don't move your arm too much, go bow before our master and thank him, but they'd helped.

So here I had friends, or at least, people who didn't hate my guts? Indeed, being in the newest group of Death Eaters was like being in the new group of Hogwarts students. The older ones would give us all the advice they could on serving our master, and they'd even protect us while we got the hang of things. It wasn't true friendship, like what I'd had with Lily, but it was acceptance, which wasn't something I was very used to at that point.

Our master. A new word I got to add onto the list now, and why not? Why not play the good little Slytherin boy? Why not do exactly as they expected me to, whether I agreed with what I was doing or not? If they rejected me now, who else did I have?

James' final act of cruelty towards me was the send me an invitation to his wedding. Lily obviously wasn't in on the joke, since there was a note attached to the back telling me he'd tear out my eyes and make me eat them if Lily ever found out he'd sent me that, but it felt as though it may as well have been from her. When I opened that card, I felt as though she'd personally stepped out of the envelope and bitch-slapped me. Him? It was bad enough that it had to be any other guy, but of all the other guys it could have been, why him?

I'd thrown the invitation away and went back to bed, and it must have been another three days before I managed to get myself back out. No one came. My master didn't summon us, so I wasn't missed at the meetings, and aside from that I never saw anyone anymore. Whether that was a blessing or a curse I'll never know.

By the time I was twenty I was pretty well tired of working low-pay jobs as a bartender in run-down Knockturn Alley pubs. I knew I needed a job a bit steadier, and that Hogwarts had an opening. So why not? Sure, my master's greatest enemy was Head Master, but he had been when I attended there as well, hadn't he? And as much as I didn't want to go back to place where it had all happened, it was a free room and food, and the pile of unpaid bills on the kitchen counter was telling me I desperately needed that. I couldn't afford the one-bedroom apartment I'd had at the time, and there was no way I was going back to Spinners End.

During the winder of my second year as a teacher, I'd gotten wind of the news that Lily was pregnant with his child. If that wasn't painful enough, the child was born at the end of July. Perfectly in time with the prophesy about a boy who would grow up to defeat my master.

So he spoke to us calmly about the Potter child, and the Longbottom boy, and told us not to worry. He would kill them both, and their filthy parents.

My heart jumped into my throat. Not her... he could do whatever he wanted to James, and even to that child, if it truly was inevitable, but not her. I'd stayed behind for hours after that meeting ended, begging him. I think I even cried at one point. He could kill the other five. No problem. Just don't kill her... kill me instead if he wanted to...

As annoyed as my master seemed by my pleas, he finally softened to them, telling me he would avoid it. So I kissed his feet and the hem of his robes religiously before going back to my rooms.

A part of me was not surprised when he did kill her. That part meant nothing though. The mix of fury and pain I felt was like nothing else, and the next thing I knew I was weeping on the floor of Dumbledore's office.

Thirteen years passed without me feeling my mark burn again. I would love to tell you that I counted every one of those years in bliss, but I couldn't. With Lily gone, what did I have left? I wanted to die. The only thing that stopped me from killing myself was thoughts of what it would do to my students, not they were exactly a joy to have around. If I had a knut for every terribly written essay, essay with virtually every point wrong, or even those Salazar-forsaken copied essays that some of the older Slytherin's sold in the bathroom, I would not still be living in my mother's house.

Oh yes, I went back to Spinner's end. By the time I was twenty-six I really didn't have much a choice anymore. Dumbledore refused to let me stay at the school during the summers, saying that I should not let my world stop for one death. It was either spend my summers there, or spend them in a cardboard box somewhere, and don't think I'm joking when I say I honestly considered the second option.

And then Harry Potter showed up. I can't explain my feelings on that boy. I disliked him greatly. He was his father's son, and it showed in every other move he made... but he was also Lily's son, and for that I had to love and protect him as though he were my own. Lily had died to keep him safe, there was no way I was going to let him waste that sacrifice. So I spent the majority of that year matching wits against my master, scrambling to both keep the boy alive and keep the stone safe, and I won't pretend like there weren't times when doing both, or even either, of those seemed impossible. The most notable time was, of course, when he decided to run off after the Dark Lord with only his friends for back up. Three eleven year olds? It's a miracle a single one of them made it out alive.

Then the Dark Lord returned, and as much as I didn't want to, I had to spy. It was another I had to do for Harry, and for Lily's memory. So I convinced the Dark Lord I was still his, and I fell right back into place at his feet.

Once I'd convinced him my loyalties still lied with him, he just had to push the one issue I'd been praying he would not bring up. He actually apologized for going back on his word (Well, "I regret..." is probably the closest he's ever given anyone to an apology) and told me to see it through his eyes, and I'd realize he had to kill her. I wanted to scream at him, to cuss at him, and even to send him to the darkest pit of Hell where he belonged... but I couldn't. So I lied. Again. I would always be the Slytherin Liar. I'd told him I did understand. Of course I did. I had been young and stupid. Now I understood that I had not been in love with Lily, I had been in lust for her, and quite foolishly so, considering her filthy blood. He'd smiled at me, and my role as a spy began.

I did everything for that boy, from counter-jinxing his broom to diving in front of a werewolf, and yet he'd probably hate me now. Harry possesses the same fatal human flaw that made his father torment me and his mother hate me. It was also the same flaw that convinced Draco he could kill, and a younger me that Lily would forgive me. We all only saw the side of the story that was right in front of our face. I would never get to explain things to Harry, and after all I've done for him, he would probably laugh when I died.

No, master. I don't fear death. Not even at your hands. I choose this death. Ever since I was eleven years old, I've been choosing this death. I'll welcome it when you bestow it.