Rough winds did shake those darling buds of May
As the anxious princess of night was born from the queen of day.
Two Titans prepared to duel on the haggard face of Hogwarts that night,
Their roars preparing the supple fieldgrass to bend for the fight,
A fight that would threaten the bones of a thousand men and women
Who desired little more in life than the peace that once had been.
They were not alone in their hopes to end the weary war:
One mighty hero embodied this purpose, but lay near-vanquished on the floor.
Desperate to fight time, a pool of his own blood around him,
This undivine man patched his wounds alone; he stunk too much with sin.
Severus Snape knew his insignificance well, and only prayed
That Dumbledore's gift of phoenix tears would be not squandered aid.
In his heart he knew that there was nothing further he could do
To turn the fight in their favor, though it was a knowledge he rued.
All the more did he mourn that Dumbledore's plan
Was in action; the recipe called for death of more than one man.
Dumbledore had conferred with the fates concerning the best tests
Through which to put Snape, a man craving rest,
In designing the termination of Riddle, which meant that
Severus' life-purpose to preserve the boy was wrapped.
But despite the atrocity of Dumbledore's games,
Snape accepted Harry's death, paramount being his aim
To atone for his sins to a worshipful-woman fair,
Crushing the part of himself that had caused him to err.
As the medicine did its duty as a balm to the corporal vessel,
Snape pondered his future in the event of a mission successful.
If the world learned his soul was merely unbeautiful-not unhuman-black pith,
He would merely be a post-Copernican Atlas, only beloved in myth.
Was this enough gratitude to make all the memories worth enduring?
A life-review was necessary to begin on his soul's structural repairing.
There had been so little satisfaction in all of his years of duplicitous lies
But there would be so much in fierce Sectumsemprasand his enemies' surprise.
Thus he sated his imagination until his healing was done.
Though weak, Severus began to think of how the tired son
Of a demon could best turn against his father mid-battle.
Would it be better to retain his mask before the devil,
Explain the error that Satan had made,
And to expect a welcome back to serve in the unholy raid?
This would cost the life of at least one Malfoy;
Though Severus would not regret Lucius, the boy
He had promised Narcissa to keep safe for life.
Death for himself would be certain if he made Draco a sacrifice.
If this was not enough, his spirit and the boy's were kindred.
Snape never killed a man lest it was his duty sacred,
Much less one who bore all the hatred, anger, and pain
That Severus himself carried, long and in vain.
So unconflicted by cost, since neither daughter nor ducats had he,
Severus, like Atlas, did not foist off his burden for eternity.
But might the dark lord, at his abrupt reappearance,
Find due cause to kill him for the sin of resilience?
Snape thought he respected Fawkes' tears
Better than to gamble on the Moirae's shears.
So the safest chance to further the greatest good for the greatest number
In Snape's view, was the simple disguise of an anonymous glamor.
He wandered onto the field thus, with this guise
Drawing and shooting his arrows like Artemis wise
Empowered at the knowledge that he finally could fight
Without need to justify which party he thought more right.
The devil himself, had he been on the field,
Might have, beneath Snape's vigor, keeled
For Severus Snape was no selfserving bore
But a fighter, and survivor, and passionate menace of war.
It was not for his own colors that he fought, like Achilles fair;
He thought only of a beautiful doe with green eyes and glossy red hair,
Until the ceasefire came, and with tragic dignity
He and the others lowered their arms and took their dead from the sea
Of battle, where Posidon ruled in blood, to the distant dry shore.
Then all the living heroes, unsatisfied and enraged, returned for
The sight that grieved them all: Harry Potter, the divine child
Was borne in defeat by his dearest magical friend, the mild,
Impassioned, grief-ridden Hagrid, with a bawling so fierce
That the half-giant had a fortune's worth of tears in his beard.
This horror was not unexpected, however;
Not long ago Dumbledore had lost Snape's her
And it had only been a matter of time before
Those Potter-rimmed green eyes were no more.
The only thought that resonated in the mind and heart of the spy,
Was a poem-stanza, simple and hollow and terrible and dry:
This is the way the world ends,
The world ends, the world ends
This is the way the world ends
At three o'clock in the morning.