DISCLAIMER: Everything's JKR's.
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For Guilt
By Kate Lockhart/Meressefers
Prologue: Ablution
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He was the only child.
Oh, the sadness that came of that! There was no other progeny to absorb all of his parents' love, no sibling to call usurper. The bleak truth was, his parents did not love him, and there was no one to blame but himself.
This does not ring so bitterly now for Severus. He is used to blaming himself. There is much to feel guilty for, too. Thoughts of everything that has happened reverberate through his mind constantly. How could such things have occurred? Why? Mostly, he asks himself what things might have been. Could his life have been any different? The idea plagues him to no end.
It makes little difference now; the past is done and over with. Let bygones be bygones, as Albus would say. Severus can do little but silently nod to his mentor. Dumbledore will never understand it completely, the sense of failure and contrition that has embedded itself so deeply in Severus' soul. If there is such thing as a soul. Severus has long been a disbeliever, and even his skeptical convictions are wrong, he is sure he would not have a soul. No man such as he would.
He does not fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.
----------------------------------------------
For Guilt
By Kate Lockhart/Meressefers
Prologue: Ablution
----------------------------------------------
He was the only child.
Oh, the sadness that came of that! There was no other progeny to absorb all of his parents' love, no sibling to call usurper. The bleak truth was, his parents did not love him, and there was no one to blame but himself.
This does not ring so bitterly now for Severus. He is used to blaming himself. There is much to feel guilty for, too. Thoughts of everything that has happened reverberate through his mind constantly. How could such things have occurred? Why? Mostly, he asks himself what things might have been. Could his life have been any different? The idea plagues him to no end.
It makes little difference now; the past is done and over with. Let bygones be bygones, as Albus would say. Severus can do little but silently nod to his mentor. Dumbledore will never understand it completely, the sense of failure and contrition that has embedded itself so deeply in Severus' soul. If there is such thing as a soul. Severus has long been a disbeliever, and even his skeptical convictions are wrong, he is sure he would not have a soul. No man such as he would.
He does not fear death; it is the only way to be cleansed.