Disclaimer: Snape's mask is not mine, thank Merlin, and neither is any of the rest of it.
Dedicated to: Robin4 (though I doubt she'll ever find this story) because I reading her PU AU finally prompted me to attempt an HP fic.
Pretense
The mask.
He hated it more than anything. Snape detested it all the way down to its atomic structure. The feeling didn't stem from the knowledge of what it was – for, besides the Dark Mark, this was the foremost symbol of the Death Eaters.
He didn't hate because it had saved his life. Later, perhaps, he would have the time to reflect on this smallest of ironies. The mask was meant to hide the identities of Voldemort's followers and to inspire terror in the Death Eaters' victims. After all, what could be more terrifying than a faceless enemy? The person that invaded, tortured, killed, and laughed could be a neighbor, your family, the mad Bellatrix Lestrange, or even Snape himself. But the mask that was meant to hide Snape did exactly that. As his denial finally twisted into an immense revulsion, the mask concealed the involuntary wince he became a master at warping into a sneer. It veiled his suddenly ghost-white face when children were killed in front of the professor. It was a most peculiar situation. The more he loathed what it stood for, the more it helped him.
No, Snape hated the mask because he always wore it. Though it may not touch his skin at every moment, Snape found himself masking his true thoughts all the time. He began in his youth with the fledgling Death Eaters, foolishly – Merlin, how foolish he'd been – pretending to believe all of their drivel. He pretended that it'd been his fondest dream to live by those principles. For the sake of belonging, he pretended everything and hoped that everything would change as a result.
Snape had thought he'd never been one for dreams, just cold practicality. So, when Lily Evans died and he realized that his life was a mistake and his pretense was just a dream, he almost felt shocked.
But he knew, even before his transformation, that he despised the mask. He knew he loathed it upon seeing it for the very first time. Severus felt a thrill go through him, a fizz of something that first time in an overgrown field, and translated the excitement he felt as a pleased satisfaction. The mask had been handed to him wrapped up formally in a black cloth after he'd taken his oaths and had the Mark cut into his arm. He'd unwrapped the cold, shining thing and rubbed a thumb across the slick surface… It was oily to the touch and he almost sensed a nastiness to it, if a piece of clothing could be pristine and foul all at once, but he let that thought fall behind the wall of his denial.
His mask grew more complex as he aged, and life grew increasingly complicated. After he turned, he found that the mask he wore around his students, the Dark Lord, and Dumbledore – for he couldn't show any pain at all in front of his savior, his pride wouldn't allow it – became exhausting. He wanted to be himself like he'd only ever been around one Lily Evans, lost long ago to his stupidity. He wanted to act once more like the Sev residing in his head, but that name hadn't been uttered for over a decade.
And, as the mask and mistake of his youth continued into his future, Snape hated.
552 words…