A/N: Written for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Muggle Studies assignment #4 – Write about someone who continues to do something, even though they know it hurts them. The hurt here is mostly a life/death thing – I was tempted to write a poem but unfortunately don't have the time to write a 500 word one…
Sheep in Wolf's Clothing
He was lucky, in a sense, that he had thirteen years to steel himself to the idea of returning to the Dark Lord like a sheep in wolf's clothing. Because that was exactly what he was: Dumbledore's sheep to hide scars and information in the wool and be slaughtered when the truth came out. There were no illusions to that. He wasn't in a hurry and he doubted Dumbledore would be either, considering the potential a spy brought to the cause, but there was little hope of maintaining such a façade forever. Years, if he was lucky. Days if he wasn't, or even less. He was signing his life away and he knew it.
But, in a way, he'd signed his life away already, the day he became a Death Eater. The difference was he'd wanted it then – or, at least, he'd wanted it a lot more than to be a spy. It was just a price, a price he'd paid almost for naught.
If only he could have said it was entirely for naught, he'd be free of the obligation. But that wasn't so important. Neither of those would have saved Lily and that was what he'd strove for: her safety. What he'd paid for, what he would have paid anything more for if only it had been possible…
And at that point, he couldn't really care about the outcome of the war, and whether it had ended or not. The fact that it hadn't simply left him tied: left him with a rope loosely knotted around his neck, to lead him like that sheep in wolf's clothing until it snapped and left him loose or tightened like a noose… And thirteen years later, that rope began to pull.
It wasn't something he wanted to do, to return to those people, to that life only this time with different reasons, different feelings – the glamour that had first led him along that path had faded long before he'd turned away, and the prospect of losing the only valuable thing in his life had shown him another road. But that road lead nowhere and there was no road that existed with a destination for him. Even the one he'd originally been on had lost that final abode.
He continued simply because there was nothing better. He'd stayed a Death Eater because there was no escape from those throes, no redemption – and then there'd been that piece of news, that threat, that made him look deeper and find another road. It wasn't an escape, not really – maybe an opportunity for redemption or a way to add to the barbs that surrounded him… But he wasn't a man who sought redemption. The only person who could see he'd redeemed himself was gone.
Instead, he wore his wolf clothes: form-fitting and carefully kept, and underneath those clothes, he perfected the mask that came with them. That was the price he'd paid: that old self of his, the one who'd loved, the one who'd made a mistake that could no longer be redeemed and had been too much of a coward to turn back when there was still time to do it. He didn't want to do it, to pay this price until he was dead: either caught in the crossfire or ousted as the traitor he'd become thirteen years before – but he wore his wolf's clothes over the wool and the mask to cover the features of a man who'd already died in soul.
And dead men had no desires, only duties. And that was the price he had accepted for his last desire.