He marched against the snow, his face arranged in a strange attempt at passivity. The layers and years of emotion and contrition erupting behind his eyes would never be betrayed by this steel-carved shell he'd been crafting for years.
His cloak billowed around him like some eerie guard, a dark wingspan installed on his prized suit of armor. An assumed hatred that covered the insecurity and the years of self-loathing and doubt. Deep at his center, Lily's scorn still burned like a furnace alight with useless memories and discarded chances.
Better, he thought. I could have been so much better.
He spat at the ground, desperate to rid his body of the writhing hold on his stomach.
With each step, he could feel a guilted apprehension building inside him, stoking that fire to the point of pain. And unbidden sense of debt and blame were truly his best allies, the better part of his redemption.
"My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?"
Dumbledore's disembodied voice still accompanied him, lurking in the darkest of corners, coming to light when he was neck-high in regret. A buoy bobbing in a sea of self-pity.
I'm not sure there was ever anything worth revealing, headmaster, he thought. Vindication has never served me well, has it?
He could still feel the spite rising in the back of his throat, threatening to rip his heartstrings. The memory of Lily's corpse was enough extinguish it, coupled with a deep breath of icy air.
"If you insist..." Dumbledore's voice rose once more. He felt his feet hit a hard layer of ice with an arctic thud.
I do.
He laid the sword of Gryffindor in the center of the icy lake, before retreating silently into a layer of trees. A thin veil emboldened by the oppressive darkness of the forest. He pointed his wand at the sword, alone and unguarded.
"Descendo."
The sword sank into the ice in an ethereal bow to the bottom of the frozen lake. Snape snapped his eyes upward and flourished his wand again, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Expecto Patronum."
A silver jet of the brightest light erupted from his wandtip before swirling into a gentle doe, a Patronus one would hardly think to assign to its severe owner. The silver doe turned to him, eyes alight. Snape felt warm tears fighting for freedom against the penetrating cold and his own resolute pride.
"Find him."
The doe bowed its head obligingly as it gracefully turned and strode into the darkness, carrying with an orb created its own world of light in a dark universe. It disappeared into the trees, and Snape slid further back into the trees. He could not be seen.
Moments later, he heard footfalls softened by icy thuds approaching the lake. Proceeding its own brightness, the doe reappeared, leading Harry Potter to the center of the frozen lake, directly above the Gryffindor sword lying stealthily at the bottom of the water's basin.
Snape's breath was strangled by an overwhelming combination of adoration and loathing. Harry's eyes were ablaze with a furious curiosity, an innocent need to understand. A look Snape could never forget. His eyes, Lily's eyes, were alive and fighting for enlightenment. But they were trapped in a head that so arrogantly reminded him that she had loved another man.
Snape was convinced that he had hated Harry, because he was so like the prideful beast that ravaged his own self esteem and intentions so many years ago. More than anything, he hated what he represented. A product of the misfortune he hand delivered to Lily and her family, and a constant reminder of the qualities borrowed from his parents and intertwined inextricably in a living, breathing relic.
That's what he despised about Harry, that he couldn't revive Lily from his tangled genes. She was forever weaved with James Potter in Harry.
The doe faded, before briefly lighting up Harry's wide eyes. It was all Snape could do to breathe.
Harry's gaze fell to the lake floor, transfixed on the sword winking at him in the abysmal darkness.
With a quiet retreat, Snape turned and glided away from the painful scene. Harry had found the sword; there was no need to torture himself further.
The idea that Harry still hated him because of pretensions and obligations suddenly soared across Snape's mind; he hated that it bothered him. He abhorred the fact that the fate of the world fell to the product of the person that he hated most. He despised that Harry assumed the worst of him. And he loathed, hated beyond anything else, that he was responsible for it. He delivered the Potters to Lord Voldemort. Had the Dark Lord never known of the prophecy, Harry wouldn't be marching unknowingly to his inevitable death to destroy the last piece of Voldemort's soul. Had the Dark Lord never known, Lily might still be able to gaze at her own Patronus with a lovely wonder that was robbed from her with the flourish of a wand.
He hated that he could only blame himself.
"I shall never reveal the best of you?"
Give it up, old man. His face contorted against his passive mask, in anger and grief.
There is nothing to reveal.