Of course she would try to save him. She was too much like Lily not to. And he was too much like James, no matter how much Dumbledore argued that he wasn't. Severus didn't move from his spot, though his pride ruffled at the idea of him being at Potter's feet and at his mercy. Once again he lamented that he'd been unable to help nurture her mind the way she needed. He regretted having to treat her the way he had. Especially when she looked at him with tears and a tortured expression.
"This is murder," she insisted to deaf ears.
"It's nothing more than he would deserve."
For once, they were in agreement. He'd killed Dumbledore. Albus, he'd killed Albus. He'd betrayed Lily, who'd been the only reason he kept going. He betrayed Minerva, who was the only true mother he'd ever known. He'd killed Albus, who never failed to lose faith in him. He should have refused. He should have let Draco do it. He should have killed Lucius when he'd had the chance years ago.
He could feel everyone's eyes on him. It had been a long night. He hadn't meant to his Weasley's ear. He was aiming for Lupin. Speaking of, the wolf stepped forward towards the girl's side. Granger.
"Then do it and be done with it."
Severus could see her look to the werewolf with hopeful eyes, but she was a fool. The wolf was a coward, Gryffindor or no. Not like Granger, who probably only knew fear in theory. Betrayal was a foreign concept. Something from a book that she'd only ever heard in stories. No doubt she expected his 'defection' as much as Potter had. He knew what she'd done to her family, probably being one of the only ones. She would never tell her friends. She wouldn't want them to worry about her. Lily was like that too.
He had been thinking, drifting to his thoughts when the name- Voldemort- snapped him back with a shot of pain through his arm. He felt the magic slither through his veins, not quite as painful as the Cruciatus, but worse than getting the Mark.
"Did that hurt, Snivellous?" Potter leered at him. "Does it hurt to hear your master's name?"
To hell with destroying that monster, he reared in his mind, I'm going to kill him. He could see Granger's face as he was pulled away, guilty. She'd discovered the name's affect on the Marked and told him. And now she regretted it. She shouldn't. He deserved much worse.
"Dumbledore isn't here to get you out of it this time," Mad Eye growled gleefully in his ear as he was dragged down a corridor. "No more cowering and hiding."
"You'd know all about cowering, wouldn't you, Mad Eye," Severus said finally, as smoothly as he could. "Don't forget that I was there when they pulled you out of Crouch's trunk. Tell me, how does it feel that he played yourself better than you could?"
Moody's response elicited a groan from Severus as he could feel two of his ribs grinding together. He gritted his teeth to keep from making a sound when they threw him forcefully into the room. Okay. He'd been through worse. Where was he?
Potter has just turned seventeen. Seventeen, he'd come of age and inherit his parents assets. Including his father's childhood home, Potter Manor. Of the properties Lily and Potter had owned, that he could remember, Potter Manor was closest. Okay. He was in Devon.
What was near Devon? Near Potter Manor? From throwaway comments Albus made he knew it was surrounded by wood. He could do wood. He was a runner, you couldn't be a scrawny kid in rags in Spinners End without being one. If he could get out of the manor, he was home free. How was he going to get out?
Severus sighed. The wards were too strong for wandless magic. And then he'd have to navigate and that was assuming that there were no other precautions. Potter wouldn't have thought that far, but Moody would have. Granger would have, though she might not have said anything if no one else did first. Even if by some miracle he did get out, he wasn't sure how far he'd get with severely broken ribs and a busted leg from his initial capture.
"Professor?" The soft, quiet voice made him look over to the door from the opposite side of the room. Of course she would come. Damned Gryffindors.
"Even this close to death, you cannot leave me alone with your incessant chatter. Is this to be the first wave of torture, Miss Granger?"
He could see her face through a small opening in the door, illuminated by light protruding from a source he couldn't see- likely her wand. She looked relieved to be on the receiving end of his acerbic tongue again. Perhaps she thought they'd already killed him. No. Moody was secretly nearly as dramatic Albus or the Dark Lord, he wouldn't have given up the show that was expected the next morning.
"How are you feeling?... Right, stupid question."
"Well, they say the first step is admittance."
She was so much like Lily. He had found her on more than one occasion, asleep on her books at the same table he and Lily used to frequent. He would move her homework so she didn't smudge or spill the ink. It was odd. She was muggleborn. Neither of them had any remote relation to her, but Potter was too much James and Lily. Where he should have been Severus'. But Granger, well, Lily's mother had had brown hair, and Severus' mother had had brown eyes. If he shut everything else out he could almost pretend she was his and Lily's. The child they should have had.
"Is anything broken?"
But she wasn't. Lily had chosen Potter over him. She was dead. Albus was dead. And soon, so too would Severus be.
"Why are you here, Miss Granger? You can do nothing for. You haven't wronged me in some extreme way for you to come seeking last minute forgiveness. This is nothing more than a way to ease your misplaced guilt by saying you came to see me before I die."
Very good, he commended himself. You didn't choke talking about your impending death. Severus wished she would go away. She reminded him too much of Lily. And he both, wanted Lily to be his last thought, and yet wanted peace that her memory wouldn't bring.
"It isn't right."
"I killed Albus Dumbledore," he told her. "Why are you struggling so hard to stop it if you already know you can't? If you couldn't, close to Potter as you are, then nothing else could."
Maybe if he was sure there wasn't an alarm on the door, he could open the door the good old fashioned way- by trying to pick the lock and breaking it when he realized he couldn't.
Then she was telling him her transgressions against him. All of which he knew of. Of course he knew she'd set his robes on fire. He'd been impressed at the time and he was still. Yes he knew she'd stolen the Polyjuice ingredients their second year. It was Potter and Weasley that had provided the distraction and she was the only one half intelligent enough. It didn't hurt that a month later he'd been called to the hospital wing to help put her half cat form to rights. He hadn't laughed so hard in years, having to take ten minutes before being able to think clearly on how to fix her.
"You're insulting my intelligence by assuming I didn't already know these things. You were the only one with half enough intelligence to do either at that age."
Lily could have. Lily, the brightest with of her age as was Granger.
"We used a Time Turner," she said quietly. "To help Sirius escape Professor Flitwick's office. I'd been using it to get to all my classes."
Severus laughed at his own oversight. Why hadn't he thought of that? "You know," he stood to try and get closer to her. If he couldn't be near Lily before his death... "I considered all possibilities, I even dreamed a few that were impossible, but I can honestly say that didn't even cross my mind. Lily used one during our third year. I should have remembered."
"Lily?" She asked in a whisper, obviously to herself before asking louder. "Lily Potter?"
Potter? No. Oh, that was right. She had chosen Potter. Lily Potter. Severus frowned to himself. "I was Lily Evans then, but yes. You always reminded me of her, much more than Potter. She too had the insane obsession with knowing everything. It was probably why the two of us were friends."
Though, he'd always been worse. Lily, when confronted with the mystery of Remus Lupin's disappearances, trusted Lupin that he'd tell her if and when he was ready. She never approved of Severus' sneaking about and trying to find out. They had very different methods of knowing everything.
"You were friends with Harry's mum?"
Harry's mum. Potter's mother. Lily. That's what she knew her as. And yet, that wasn't even a scrape of who Lily was. He wouldn't be able to set Granger right on who Lily was in the short time they had. Lily had too much substance to her.
"Go away, Miss Granger. Let me have my peace in the last hours I am to be allowed it."
She didn't move, not even marginally, and Severus looked over to her. Her hair was darker than the brown Lily's mother's had been. And her eyes were a lighter brown than the near black his own mother's were. Her nose was far too straight and small too be from his, and not upturned enough to be from Lily's. She was Granger; born to two dentist muggles that neither he nor Lily held any relations to. How silly he'd been.
"Is that Potter's doing?" He expected, upon seeing the purple on her face, to be filled with the same rage he'd held when looking at a similar mark on Lily's face. But he only felt resigned.
"What?"
Her feigned ignorance made him grit his teeth. "The large bruise forming on your cheek, girl. Is that Potter's doing?"
He could see her reach up to her face and wince at it. No doubt it had been about him. He recalled overhearing more than once, her defending him to her two idiot friends. And with the seething anger he'd witnessed from Potter before being dragged away...
"Yes."
"And I suppose you're going to tell me as well that he didn't mean to?" Lily had been forgiving to a fault, but Granger was more rational in that area if only slightly. So he was very pleased to hear her say no. "Lily said that. Just before her wedding day. She needed Bruise Paste, and I refused to give it to her. She never spoke to me again."
It had taken him months to get her to talk to him again after calling her a mudblood. Months during the summer of waiting outside her house for her to hear him out. In killing damned heat, in freezing snow, at their special spot under the tree in the park. And then he messed up again.
"It was only once, but Lily was always too forgiving. No matter what it was I did, or Potter for matter, she never failed to give a second chance. Except that once. We never quarreled often, but when we did it was always explosive. I think you're familiar with the legends of her temper, and you've seen hints of mine."
Lily had a temper, oh, did she ever. Severus understood why Potter lived to annoy her if he couldn't charm her. She was never more beautiful than when she was angry, her fiery hair flung over her shoulder and her emerald eyes narrowed at you. It could take anyone's breath away.
"I was angry," he told her. "She was always defending Potter, and now he'd hit her and she was still going to marry him." And not me "I told her to leave and never come back, so she didn't and I was too prideful to go after her."
The girl didn't respond. Neither of them said anything for a moment and he could see her expression of deep thought. Likely wondering why no one knew he had been friends with Lily. That had been his one condition to anything Albus requested of him. Was that no one ever knew, and the surviving Marauders hated him too much to tell them anyway.
"Why did you kill him, professor?"
He thought about telling her. About admitting the conspiracy, the oaths, and his vow. But he was cut off by approaching people. He'd be damned if he was sitting in pain or begging when they came for him, and he forced himself through the pain to stand and lean on the wall. He could still feel his ribs grinding against each other, could smell his own blood.
Once he was standing, he could see the pride in her eyes- the ones that were too light to be his or his mother's. Pride at him. Pride that he would do anything to see from Lily once again.
"I am no longer your professor, Hermione."
It was the only thing he could give her. The last thing he had that he could offer before he died. The offer of being equals. She'd perhaps always been his equal. Even if she was far from being Lily's. But then, Lily had no equal.
*
Once again, he found himself at Potter's feet and mercy. And this time, armed with the memory of Lily that at least one other person might have a hint of, he faced his fate with narrowed eyes- looking up at the boy. He raised his wand. And the was a blur. And Hermione was between them, pleading with her friend once again with eyes that were too light.
"Move, Hermione."
"I won't."
Lily would have been proud, and so would James, though for different children. Potter demanded she move again, trying a softer approach, and once again she refused. The first curse was fired at an insult from the girl, and he demanded again.
"I WILL NOT! I am doing what I believe to be right. Guilty or innocent, he was once someone you all respected. Dark or not, he is a human being. If this is who we are, in this case where it truly matters, then maybe we deserve to lose this war. That is what I believe and I will not move from this spot."
She looked at him, and he nodded. Step aside, you silly girl, he thought. Move or he'll do it. You know he will. Leave me to my fate. The fate I have chosen.
"If you want to kill him, you'll have to kill me too."
Severus' eyes widened at her statement and he lunged forward to shove her aside as a jet of green shot from Potter's wand and enveloped them both. Green. Like Lily's eyes.
Lily.
A/N: So here is Severus' POV of the first chapter. I was very tempted to make this its own and not an addition, but oh well. I am thinking of adding a third to show the Order's reactions to finding out that Dumbledore made Severus do it. If I do it, it will be called 'Your Fault'. Each of the three are song titles from Into the Woods, which I listen to while I write. It's something like my muse. I really hope you liked it. Thank you, AdrianaSnapeHouse for your ideas. I hope I did it justice. And thank you for everyone's reviews.
Dasvidanya, Mia.