To Face What He Denied

By Tygershark

Rated: Fiction T

Summary: The end was only the beginning for Severus Snape. After that, there is a clarity to be found and one can see things as they really are, not how one imagined them to be.

Disclaimer: I am not JK Rowling, I do not own anything from the HP universe.

A/N This story is completely AU, as such it takes a left turn at Canon Blvd. and winds its way from there and ends up in a completely different place. There are what could be construed as spiritual, religious, non-denominational themes in this story There are small references to God, Higher Power, etc. please consider yourself warned if such might upset you. However, there is no graphic violence and only minor swearing. Absolutely no slash, in fact no 'Ships of any registration will set sail here. There is what at first blush looks like Snape bashing, it is and it isn't. Snape, as written in the books, is a horrible human being. People fell in love with him because of the late Alan Rickman. But this story is about someone being confronted with their mistakes and having to admit them and grow beyond them. At its heart, it is a story of redemption.

I disliked the amount of recapping that was always in the original books and in many of the stories I have read in fandom. The way I figure it if you are reading Fanfic of any universe you already know the background information. There will be spoilers for any of the original books and/or films. Any other books i.e. Fantastic Beasts and Cursed Child are soundly ignored. As is anything JKR pulled out of thin air later to try and explain a plot hole the size of the Mariana Trench. There are some elements from the films in this story, such as the male population of this story except for Dumbledore all wear trousers (pants for Americans). That brings up another point, I am an American but I have tried my best to write in UK English since the story is set in Britain. Please forgive me if I miss some terms as I have only spent a few months in the UK.) If anyone would like to volunteer to Britpick I would be grateful for the assistance. Format note: Thoughts are in Italics.

This story picks up during the Deathly Hallows at the scene where Snape has just been bitten by Nagini and has been left for dead by Voldemort. Snape has just given Harry his memories. This will be more of a character study of Severus Snape and will include elements from his past which will be different from what was in canon, however, I give what I feel is a plausible reason for this. You could call this AU since it's not repeating, word for word, the books. I do not own anything within the HP universe. Anything you recognize is the creation of JK Rowling.

Chapter One - The end of one story and the beginning of the next

With the last bit of strength he possessed he rasped out, "look… at… me...". Lily's eyes were the last thing he saw before his world faded to gray. In that eternity of a split second, as his life ended, he hoped that finally, after all these years and after all the sacrifices he'd made, he would find some well-deserved peace.

Moments or eons later, whatever had once been Severus Snape tried to identify where and what he was. He could see nothing, not even himself. I must exist on some level, he mused, I think, therefore I am. But what am I now, and where am I?

"Where indeed?"

A voice like the crack of a whip called from somewhere close by causing Severus to jump.

As suddenly as a switch being flipped he could see his surroundings. He was in a gray room if it could be called that. There were no discernable features, but he was standing near what he took for a wall. Opposite him was an older man seated at a plain table of the same featureless gray. The man appeared to be in his sixties with closely cropped white hair, light blue eyes, and a pale complexion. He was wearing what reminded Snape of a priest's cassock without the dog collar. An empty matching chair faced Snape's new companion. The man gestured to the chair. "Come, sit. We have much to discuss and you have already taken an inordinate amount of time to become aware."

Snape looked as if the man had slapped him in the face, his lip came up in a sneer as he prepared to let loose a torrent of vitriol. Who does this cretin think he's talking to? He thought. If this is the afterlife he should be congratulating me on my part in bringing down the Dark Lord…

"SIT DOWN!" The man roared.

Snape lurched to the chair and thumped himself down into it.

"I know EXACTLY who you are, and unlike yourself, I know exactly what you are. The longer you delude yourself the longer you will stay. Make no mistake, you are in a place where everyone gets not what they think they deserve, but what they truly deserve."

Snape felt a flash of fear go through him before he remembered smugly that he had done almost more than anybody to bring about the fall of the Dark Lord. Ha, he thought, the only thing that little waste of space Potter has to do is stand there and die. At least he won't live to reap any benefits from defeating the Dark Lord.

"Please spare me your immature and envious drivel." At Snape's shocked expression the older man merely looked at him as if he were an exceptionally obtuse child. "I have already told you that I know exactly who and what you are. Therefore, it should be more than obvious that I would know what passes through your mind. At least it would be obvious to anyone with a brain not overflowing with self-delusion."

Snape again looked as though he'd been slapped. Before he could think anything else, the man in front of him continued.

"Now if you are quite finished wasting time, we shall begin. My name is irrelevant, but the newly arrived seem to cope better when they can attach a label to everything their tiny minds can fathom, as such you may refer to me as George. As for where you are, you may label it anything you choose, Purgatory, Limbo, transit lounge, or the near unending wait at your local DVLA. The material point is this, you are here for a purpose. The extent of your stay depends entirely on you. The comfort or conversely discomfort of your stay is again up to you."

"This is preposterous," sputtered Snape. "If this is the afterlife I should be rewarded for all my sacrifices. I have almost single-handedly ended the Dark Lord. No one but I could have been a spy in his ranks, providing the information necessary to bring about his end…"

George's loud clapping stopped this rant. "Oh bravo, how very heroic of you," sarcasm dripping from his every syllable. "Well, you certainly put me in my place. My, my I haven't had such a thick-headed charge in ages. Continue to believe your own lies and we will be here forever."

George pulled a small notebook from a hidden pocket and perused the contents, "You were or are, however you choose to look at it, Severus Tobias Snape, born 9 January 1960 to Tobias and Eileen Snape, departed life on 2 May 1998."

Snape looked resentful, he did not like this George, how dare he gloss over my many accomplishments... Snape thought.

"Yes, yes, to continue. Let's talk about those accomplishments for a moment, shall we?"

Snape merely snorted.

"In the spring of 1979 you, on orders from Tom Riddle, went to meet one Albus Dumbledore on the pretense of obtaining a teaching position. Whilst you were waiting in the Hog's Head you took it upon yourself to eavesdrop on Dumbledore and the applicant for the Divination post. You were subsequently caught and evicted from the premises. So tell me, Mr Snape, what were your thoughts throughout those events? What was your motivation?"

"I was there on orders from the Dark Lord if I had not done what he ordered he would have been displeased."

"So Tom Riddle knew Albus Dumbledore would be interviewing a Divination candidate, and Tom Riddle knew she would be making a legitimate prophecy so he sent you, a lowly new recruit, to glean what you could from the conversation? Don't waste time with more deceptions. You know as well as I do Tom had no interest in divination whatsoever until YOU came back and so eagerly related to him what you had heard."

"If you already know what happened then what purpose does it serve to speak of it?" Snape groused.

"It is the whole purpose of why you are here, you are here to learn the lessons you refused to learn in life. The most expeditious way to do this is to guide you to drop all your deceptions and see the truth for what it is. In life, humans hold desperately to certain truths about themselves, others, and the universe around them. When these perceptions are incorrect it sets up within the person an endless loop of self-delusion. People are always so eager to believe the lies they tell themselves."

George leant forward and simply waited Snape out. Unnerved by the man's gaze, Snape let his own fall and looked down at his clenched hands. "Why is everything gray?"

George let out a huff of annoyance, "you wish to continue playing games, very well."

"What do you mean by that? Are you the only one allowed to ask questions here?"

"Classic avoidance and distraction, such tactics would be expected from your former pupils. However, as an educated man I had hoped for better, not that I expected anything different from you. To answer your question, everything is featureless because that is all you allow yourself to see at this time and all is gray because it is helpful to have as few distractions as possible. Now, why don't you answer my questions?"

Snape said nothing for several moments, he had tried not thinking about that time, it was most uncomfortable. Usually, whenever the subject would intrude upon his thoughts he would distract himself by listing all the things he had done to make up for it. "I uh… I don't… I wasn't thinking of anything."

"Really, so no thoughts crossed your mind as you skulked with your ear to the keyhole? Nothing was going through that brain when you cast a charm enabling you to hear what was said in the room? And you called your students dunderheads."

"Alright!" Snape barked, his sallow complexion was now red with embarrassment, he had truly forgotten that he had cast an eavesdropping charm, he had made himself believe that he had simply heard voices through a wide-open door and that he hadn't really been eavesdropping.

"Of course you cast a charm, there would have been no other way for you to hear anything through that door. If the door was open I'm certain Dumbledore would have been happy to allow you to listen in. I'm sure that as he was sitting not five feet away facing the door, he would have done nothing as he watched a known Death Eater making note of everything that was said."

Snape flushed even further. "I… I wanted to do something significant, but whilst I was so young there was precious little of import that I would be trusted with. That would change if I could bring him something important. I knew the Dark Lord…"

"Stop calling him the Dark Lord! He is no more a Lord than you are. Do you want to know who it was you sold yourself to? Tom Marvolo Riddle born on 31 December 1926, the son of Thomas Riddle and Merope Gaunt. His mother worked as a scullery maid in the home of the wealthy Riddle family. She was obsessed with the Squire's son, Thomas. As even you can ascertain Tom Marvolo Riddle's father was what you would call, a muggle. Merope was barely magical herself, but she possessed just enough magic to brew a love potion. She slipped it to the object of her obsession and they ran away together. Contrary to Albus Dumbledore's belief, they never actually married. How could they? The girl had no papers, no identification, and officially she didn't exist at all, therefore what Vicar would marry them? Therefore in the usual vernacular that makes Tom Marvolo Riddle the bastard son of a near squib and a muggle. But this is who you and many others bowed and scraped to and called master, and yet you still call him the Dark Lord." George laughed loudly as Snape just stared at him in shock.

If this were true then he, Malfoy, and all the others had abased themselves before a bastard and a half-blood. Snape had served a man no higher in status than he, himself. No, lower than himself, at least he was descended from the Prince line and he was no bastard, although that was his father's favorite name for him. It had been rumoured that the Gaunts were descended from the Slytherin line but nothing had been proven even though such proof was readily obtainable. All the Dark… all Riddle would have had to do would be to go to Gringotts for a heritage test. Snape slammed his hand down on the table. Of course, he thought, how could we have been so blind? What reason would a pure-blood who was descended from Slytherin have for hiding the facts about their origins?

"Yes, now you begin to see and it is a very common ploy," George smirked. "So common in fact I am astounded that even an imbecile would fall for it. Thus it proves that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. So you wished to impress your insecure master by bringing him some information he could use and hopefully garner yourself something in return."

"Yes"

"What were you hoping to obtain by joining Riddle?"

"I wanted to be successful. To make something of myself. I thought the Dark… Riddle was trying to help the wizarding world."

"Come, come now you started the conversation with something closer to the truth. Why return to the lies you've told yourself? Either you knew, or at least suspected, Riddle was only after the domination of the magic world, or you didn't care that he was out to conquer as long as you were on the winning side, or else you are an idiot and in which case you would have followed Hitler just as blindly. As for your assertion that you just wanted to make something of yourself, that isn't even a passable lie. If that had been the case you would never have joined Riddle. You would have become a Potions Master and worked toward success. You were already well on your way to a potions mastery at eighteen years of age. So try again."

Snape took a breath, "Why must you torment me!? Haven't I been through enough?"

"Oh yes, you're so hard done by. It does you no good to be coddled. The wound must be excised before the healing can begin. And in this instance, the truth will set you free."

"I wanted power and respect," he snarled, "I wanted to make them pay."

"From whom did you require recompense?"

"All of them, everyone who had wronged me."

"Such as?"

"My father, James Potter, and his band of savages. All of them!"

"The muggles as you call them, did they need to pay as well?"

"Yes, they would do no less to us."

"What about Marlene McKinnon, Alice Fenwick, Mary McDonald, and Lily's other friends?"

"Yes, none of them made any secret that they despised me. Always trying to poison Lily against me. She was my friend first, she should have stayed with me."

"And Lily herself, did she need to pay?"

"Yes. No… Wait… no," he sputtered, "she was my friend, I loved her."

"Yet she needed to pay, what debt did she owe you?"

"I sacrificed much to maintain our friendship, Slytherin House did not look kindly upon our continued association. She should have been grateful that I was her friend. I was the one to tell her about magic. She was my friend and she deserted me. If she hadn't abandoned me I would never have become a Death Eater."

"I grow weary of your lies. You were already well entrenched in the death eater camp long before the demise of your friendship with Lily. You were quite well versed in dark magic even before you went to school. Need I remind you of the training your mother gave you? Your proficiency in dark magic is what attracted the notice of the death eaters in the first place."

"I saw the power that Malfoy, Avery, Mulciber, and the others had and I wanted that for myself."

"So your friendships or rather your associations with Malfoy, Avery, and Mulciber were incongruent with your friendship with Lily."

Snape merely nodded.

"So, in the end, you made your choice and she made hers. Yet you claim to have loved her. You have quite the interesting notion of love."

"How dare you question my feelings for Lily!"

"I don't question them at all. I call them absolute bosh beginning to end. You didn't love Lily, you were obsessed with her. How could you possibly love anyone when the only person you care about is yourself?"

"That's not true, that's not true at all," Snape spat, looking about himself wildly as if to spy some escape. "I loved Lily, I loved my mother."

"No, you were obsessed with Lily, and you did love your mother after a fashion, but you bitterly resented her for marrying your father."

"She should never have married him, she was a Prince. Whatever possessed her to marry a filthy muggle?"

"I'm sure Hitler thought the same thing about his grandmother. How you do like to wander off-topic, may we continue?"

Snape said nothing and just folded his arms across his chest.

"You do not know how to love and you do not even know what real love is. Real love is wanting the best for the other person more than for yourself. It is giving of yourself and supporting the one you love without expecting anything in return. True love isn't self-seeking it does not envy what others have, true love protects and does not tear down."

Grasping onto one phrase like a madman, Snape shrieked out. "I tried, I tried to protect her, I tried to save her."

"But why? Did you do it for her or for yourself? When you went back to Riddle and related what you had heard of the prophecy, you knew that it would mean someone's death. You knew at a minimum, that an innocent child would be murdered. You knew it was likely that this unknown child's parents would also perish. Yet you did not care, you were giddy at the prospect of telling your master this information. You could hardly contain yourself. You went to him with full knowledge and understanding that you were contributing to the brutal and unprovoked murders of one or more human beings and magicals to boot."

Snape made a choking sound, but George did not stop there. "The only time you allowed yourself to realise what you had done was when Riddle decided that the child referred to in the prophecy was the son of Lily Potter. You were quite content to engage in evil acts right up until it meant that you might lose something that you coveted. Then and only then did you try to protect your victim. You pleaded with your master to spare Lily and give her to you. You cared nothing for her husband or child. Even when you went to Dumbledore and begged him to protect Lily, you still cared nothing for her son and husband. You only cared about yourself. In your heart of hearts, you hoped that James and the child would die so that it would leave the way clear for you."

Snape couldn't even shake his head in denial instead, a sob caught in his throat. "Yes I did, he had no right to take her from me, and the brat had no right to survive when Lily did not."

George gave him a slight look of pity, "It would never have happened. She did not love you and she would never have been happy in a relationship built upon obsession. It would have been doomed from the start. If she had married you, the two of you would have ended up like your parents."

"I would never have been abusive like my father!"

"I'm not saying you would, but you would have grown to resent and hate each other. It would have been a life of misery for both of you. Obsession is extremely toxic and it destroys everything it comes into contact with eventually"

Snape choked up again and sobbed into his hands.

"That is enough for the time being. We shall continue again soon. For now, I should like for you to consider what we have discussed. Really consider it, look at things objectively and examine your true motivations. It will make things going forward much easier."

"Easier for you, I suspect."

"No, easier for you. I am merely a guide, none of this is for my benefit but for your own." At that George got up and walked away and seemed to vanish into the gray wall.

A/N I had read somewhere that Dumbledore had claimed that Merope Gaunt might have worked in or around Riddle Manor so for the purposes of this story I made her a maid in the household. It is my opinion that it would have been unlikely for Thomas Riddle to have accepted any sort of refreshment from her had she not been a member of the household staff. Also, please no comments that the books said that Tom Marvolo Riddle's parents were married. I also find that unlikely in 1925 given that Merope Gaunt did not exist in the Muggle world. Although irregular marriages, those not officially sanctioned by the Church probably did still exist. But again for the purposes of this story, they were living together in a "Common Law" marriage. So by some interpretations at that time TMR could be called a bastard. Also, I could find no mention anywhere of Alice Longbottom's maiden family history so I have made her a Fenwick. It's up to your own imagination if she's closely related to Benjy Fenwick or not. This story is being seen by a number of people but very few are leaving a review. Reviews would be most appreciated, they've been known to reduce the boredom of quarantine, prevent wild snorkack attacks, remove unwanted stains, effective treatment for unsightly Umbridge-itis. and prevents zombies from getting into your cabbages. Or maybe they're just good karma.