The sun was setting over the burning chaos as Severus looked out over the ruined house. This was what he was. This was what he'd caused. This is what he'd thought he'd wanted. Smoke was spiralling to the skies, to the brand that he knew too well, that he used to value beyond life itself. It was familiar smoke. Smoke that had been people's homes, people's belongings, people's lives, turned to ash and dust and blown away on the wind at a flick of his wand.

The smell of decay and death swirled through the smoke past him. Death was everywhere. Death and blood and indignity, and he had caused it. He had brought the pain, the suffering. He had seen the eyes of the victims before they died, begging and pleading with him, and he had brought his wand to bear and seen that desperation fade from their eyes with their life and he had thought himself righteous. He had thought that this was the better path, he was going towards a better world. In his youthful ignorance he had chosen this, he had revelled in the deaths that he had brought about.

Until today. Until he had seen the red hair battered and bleeding. Until he'd seen the angel that had been the only creature that he had ever loved lying in the all too familiar throes of death. She was face down and limp, hair fanning out around her and swaying slightly in the wind, belying the stillness in the rest of her, a terrible stillness that he had never seen in her before. He crossed to her, turning her, seeing the expression on her face, too peaceful for one taken so early in life. She should have been angry, angry at him. She should have been furious at him for failing to protect her, to protect her son. The son that she had died for, the son that she had given her life for. Carefully, painstakingly, he wiped the dirt from her face and ran his hand through her hair.

'Lily...I...' An engine sounded. An engine that he knew. Black. Taking his moment again. If Black found him here then he would surely kill him. Potter's death would hurt Black as much as Lily's had hurt Severus, and he couldn't afford to die, not when his only love had just given him a purpose in life. Finally he could do something that Lily would approve of. He had been wrong. There was nothing glorious in killing. His lord was nothing but a power crazed killed. He would not find what he was looking for in the den of that snake. He could not make Lily proud like that.

And so, decision made, Severus Snape said goodbye to the woman he loved more than anything else in the world and apparated back to Hogwarts, to Dumbledore. He would serve for her. He would fight against the tyrant who had murdered her and he would make sure that her son lived.

It was all he could do for the woman he loved.