"It had to end this way." Snape spoke with cool confidence. "It had to."
But the words did little to soothe his troubled thoughts. Just looking at Harry brought to mind the life he'd lost for so trivial a thing as his pride; just one look destroyed all the barriers he'd put around his past.
And now, with the terrifying aftermath of Triwizard Tournament, he found himself thinking more and more of his past, and the people in it. Most often, his thoughts wandered to Lily Potter.
It couldn't have been different, he knew that - or thought he knew - but it made the guilt all the more acute. It killed him to think that it had been his fault - just the way it always had. And what had happened here, Harry's close encounter with the Grim Reaper himself, only made him more aware of his own mortality.
Which, of course, led to thoughts of his past. He had always thrown himself into his work, into his responsibility to the Light Side, but now, with the light of day - and his salvation from the memories that haunted him - still hours away, he could not keep him from thinking of the past he thought he'd left behind.
He'd been a fool to think it had ended - Voldemort was no mere mortal, he knew that. But he had managed to convince himself that his former lord was gone. He'd known better, naturally - the feeling had been worst when he woke in the middle of the night, panting, certain that his doom was near, at Voldemort's hands - and a worse fate he could not imagine.
Well, yes, he could imagine a worse fate, he admitted, as he allowed himself to briefly consider where pride and prejudice had taken him. His own.