Chapter 1
"Another day gone by and I'm still standing. I suppose I should be proud.
Some days I lie in bed at night and revel in how old I've become. I've always viewed age as a measurement of life lived rather than years living. Tonight I feel older than ever before; aged, worn out, and fatigued. How then can I be considered anything but old; over the hill? I question how long I will have to continue on this way. Now more than ever I question myself, and how much longer I can withstand my own mind.
The Dark Lord asked to speak with me first thing in the morning. I haven't a clue as to why yet. Perchance I have made a fatal error, a miscalculation, which has slipped by me as a serpent in the grass, unnoticed. Perchance, this is my last night to breathe.
Funny how all I can think is, that I hope I sleep well, so I may be well rested for hell."
Severus Snape capped his quill and closed the thin leather bound tablet he had finished writing in for the night. He sat for a moment longer, his jaw set and his sable eyes lost in the world of turmoil he saw in his mind. He sighed wearily and stood, his long body, thin as a rapier unfolding and standing just shy of six feet and five inches. He reached up his long thin arms to the heaves, knobby spider-like fingers flexing as he stretched, letting out a mix of a sigh and a groan. He then let his body sag, as though the reach towards the heavens had exhausted him. His eyelids drooping he walked towards his bed, far different from the one he had had as a child.
That one had been much smaller, only a cot. It's mattress had been uncomfortable and lumpy, smelling of mildew and musk. He had slept on that cot for 15 years before he had found solace in a new family, a family he to this day lived with. The bed he now slept upon was large, much larger than the one from his childhood, with a firm even mattress and sheets of dark Egyptian cotton. He pulled back the covers and lay beneath them, letting his worn body for once relax ever so slightly and willing his mind clear of all things. He lay in the darkness, and willed the world to stop, if only for a moment, and let him find the smallest fathoming of peace.
