Just some explanations up front - I'm not a modern history scholar and I do not have an in-depth understanding of WWII or the Holocaust so I apologise if any information contained in this chapter is not quite correct. This chapter is not a comment on the Holocaust or any kind of dissertation on it. The Holocaust has been used purely as a plot device here to allow the reader to find out more about Snape's background as a Death Eater. (You'll understand what I mean when you read it.)







Chapter Fourteen

"few and evil have the days of the years of my life been" Genesis 47:9

Things were quiet for a few weeks and before she knew it, Hermione had started at Hogsbridge University. She had opted to do several general Arts subjects first year before she made any decisions that would take her down any particular career track. She was tossing up about going into the Department for Magical Research and Development at the Ministry of Magic but had not finally made up her mind whether she wanted a research and development career as yet.

Padma had gone onto Hogsbridge as well and was doing a major in Muggle Studies hoping to eventually get into the Muggle Relations Department at the Ministry. One of her first assignments had been to compare the previous war on Voldemort and the Death Eaters with a similar Muggle crisis. Of course, those brought up in wizarding families had little exposure to Muggle history or current events. Padma had asked Hermione for help in gathering Muggle sources of information.

One afternoon, one week into semester found them in front of Hermione's TV with a stack of videos and DVDs. Padma had never used a TV before. "This is so cool! Geez, Muggles are clever. They don't have pensieves or moving photos or crystal balls so they use these to document their history visually," she observed, looking at the TV from all sides.

"Yes. Now you decided on World War II as you comparative Muggle crisis and fortunately there is heaps of information on this part of history," Hermione clarified, setting up the video with a tape.

"Uh huh. I wanted to compare the Nazi's hatred of Jews with the Death Eaters hatred of Muggle born wizards and witches," Padma elaborated.

"Oh. So you're really interested in what Muggles call 'the Holocaust'," Hermione said with a frown, glancing back from the video at Padma.

"That's right. The whole of World War II would have been an impossibly broad subject for an undergraduate paper. That would require a Ph.D. thesis," Padma explained.

"Very true," Hermione agreed. "Okay, so have you formed a hypothesis?"

"Not yet. I will compare why Nazis hated Jews with why Death Eaters hated Muggle borns. I'll look for common threads and then come up with my hypothesis," Padma said with a decisive nod.

"You're looking for a common basis for the prejudice across Nazis and Death Eaters?" Hermione probed.

"Something like that. There may not be any but it will be an interesting study," Padma qualified cautiously. "Why do you think Nazis hated the Jews?" She asked curiously.

"There are a lot of theories," Hermione said with a shrug. "I don't know a lot about it except that ostensibly is was about racial purity. Nazis had an ideal of 'the Master Race' made up of pure blood Germans. They didn't want the German race sullied by Jewish blood intermingling with theirs'." Hermione said, her disgust evident in her voice. "Really, it was probably economic. The Jews in Europe were very rich and economically powerful. The Germans wanted what they had and used the excuse of racial purity to get it. The Germans felt threatened by the Jews."

"Do you think the old wizarding families felt threatened by the Muggle borns coming into the wizarding community?" Padma asked seriously.

"I don't see why. The old wizarding families are far wealthier and more powerful than the new Muggle born additions to the wizarding world," Hermione pondered.

"Then it boils down to the issue of blood lines and the Death Eaters not wanting wizard and Muggle blood mixed," Padma continued.

"Prejudice must have some basis in fear," Hermione reasoned.

"You're right," Padma agreed. "What were the Death Eaters afraid of?"

"Maybe weakening their magic over time by mixing it - even in small amounts - with Muggle blood?" Hermione postulated.

"Definitely possible," Padma nodded.

"What we don't know yet is whether their fears are actually justified or not," Hermione said thoughtfully.

Padma was silent as this realisation dawned on her for the first time. "So you think the Death Eaters may be right?" She finally said, her voice quiet with horror.

"No. I will never believe there is any just cause for murder, torture or any attempt to wipe out a whole race or section of society," Hermione said firmly, her eyes hard.

"No," Padma said softly.

"Even if we Muggle borns do weaken the pure bloods' magic over time, I don't believe they were right to embark on their campaign of terror. Here's why," Hermione stated and turned on the first video.

Sketchy black and white shots jerked over the screen. Humans packed like animals into cattle cars. Dozens of people squashed into one flea-ridden room in the ghettos, their faces skeletal and their eyes without hope. Walking bones with shaved heads in rags lying on rough wooden bunks, six deep. Old men being kicked to death in the street; mothers forced to throw their babies on huge lit pyres. Rows of ovens filled with human bones. Human carcasses being bulldozed like dirt into huge mass graves. Massive bonfires of the dead with the bodies stacked like so much firewood; half dead women undergoing grotesque tortures under the pretence of medical science. Piles of shoes, spectacles, gold teeth, hair, clothes; all that remained of millions slaughtered. Naked men crowded into huge shower rooms and gassed; the lines of people stripped naked and shot dead before huge pits. Nazis setting huge dogs on helpless Jews on the streets; winding lines of people carrying all the possessions they could manage as they marched away from their homes. People screaming for their loved ones as they were separated at the death camps; mothers, children, grandparents, siblings.

Minute after minute of the horror unreeled before them. Hermione's face was tight with cynical and tired resignation. Padma's was flooded with horror, never having seen anything like it in her life.

There was a sudden crash behind them. Hermione and Padma jumped and turned to look. A very sick-looking, white-faced Snape was standing there with a mug smashed at his feet. His dark eyes were riveted on the screen.

"What is this?" He rasped.

"Footage from World War II," Hermione replied, examining him with concern. "Are you sick, Professor?" She added.

He didn't reply, simply watching as though unable to remove his gaze. Hermione thought she understood. She knew what Padma didn't, that Snape had been a Death Eater. She wondered how many scenes similar to these he'd seen during those years as Voldemort's flunky. She turned back to the screen. The footage was coming to an end, thank goodness.

As soon as the tape ended, Snape woke up as if from a dream and fled downstairs to his rooms.

"Well, that was odd." Padma observed, looking after him.

"It is pretty horrifying the first time you see this footage," Hermione fobbed her off. Padma was quiet. That was a complete understatement.

"There are some other tapes that explain more about what was in the raw footage," Hermione said to change the subject. "Do you want to see those now?"

"Yes, please. I'll make some notes too," Padma said gratefully, getting out a quill and some parchment from her bag.

* * *

Snape sat on an armchair in front of the fire, as still as death and staring sightlessly ahead of him. Memories flickered in front of his eyes, each as dark as the images he had just watched. "Muggles do this to each other, too." He murmured.

It was dark before Padma left and she thanked Hermione for her help. She was unusually quiet, the scale of the evil and human tragedy she'd witnessed too great to even comprehend fully.

After she'd left, Hermione made some coffee and on an impulse took some to Snape having cleaned up the broken mug earlier while Padma was busy making notes.

"Professor?" She called as she went down the stairs. He didn't answer. "Professor?" She found him still in the armchair looking shocked and lost in some other world. Not a pleasant one either, from the look of it. "It's freezing down here," she commented, putting the coffee down next to him. She efficiently built a fire. She looked at him again. He hadn't moved. "Professor, what's wrong?" She demanded, handing him the mug.

Finally he looked at her and took the coffee. He didn't drink it, however. "I take it that footage brought back vivid memories of being a Death Eater?" Hermione stated bluntly. He nearly dropped his coffee. He was in no state to wrangle with her.

"Yes," he rasped.

"Why'd you do it?" She asked flatly, sitting on the foot-rest.

"Become a Death Eater?" He clarified. "I come from an old, powerful, wealthy, wizarding bloodline Miss Granger." He said with a sudden, cold formality.

So it's 'Miss Granger' again now, is it? Hermione thought with irritation.

"I was afraid our powerful magical bloodline would be diluted if we allowed Muggle borns to invade the wizarding world," he continued harshly.

"So I was right," Hermione concluded aloud as an aside. "Was it worth all the torture and murder?" She asked mercilessly, her face withdrawn.

"No!" He almost yelled and put the mug down sharply. "No! How could it be?" He asked, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

"Then why?" Hermione persisted, needing to know.

"I didn't know," he replied emotionlessly, suddenly flat. "Not anything like the full extent of it. When I did, I went to Dumbledore and turned myself in."

"How could you not have known for all those years?" She asked incredulously.

"I went into the Death Eaters as a Potion Maker and Muggle spy. I only had to attend very few, formal meetings. I was never part of the most inner circle. Most of the time I was in a lab making potions that were picked up by other Death Eaters or I was in the Muggle parts of Europe someplace spying," he explained wearily.

"But you've never lived as a Muggle," Hermione questioned.

"I didn't spy as I am. I'm an unregistered animagus. I spied in my raven form," he said quietly.

It took Hermione a few seconds to take that in. "And the potions? Surely you could tell from what was ordered that it was being used for murderous purposes?" She probed.

"Some were poisons but most were truth serums or body binds or other fairly innocuous things. The Death Eaters weren't very sophisticated. Their methods were remarkably similar to the sheer base brutality of that. that."

"Footage?" Hermione supplied.

"If that's what it's called," he replied drily, never having watched TV or a video before even in Hermione's home.

"How did you finally find out?" Hermione asked more gently.

"Voldemort was thinking of promoting me from what I can gather but I was untested in the more unsavoury aspects of the Death Eaters' activities. I'd been oddly protected from the worst of it for over a decade. One night, he called me for a special tour of the inner circle's operations. I'm sure it was quite deliberate. If I'd shown any reaction at all to the horrors he was about to show me, I'm sure he would have killed me on the spot. There are times I wish he had," Snape said frankly and without self- pity. Hermione carefully did not interrupt.

"We toured.Death camps so similar to the ones I saw today." He couldn't continue for a minute. "People half dead, corpses everywhere, the stench of death. All were Muggle born witches or wizards - any half bloods. Even friends of half bloods were targeted. Horribly tortured people in filthy, flea-ridden, rat-infested cages like animals sitting in their own excrement." Snape covered his eyes with one pale, long-fingered hand. "They stared at me without hope once they saw the Dark Mark on my robes. That was when I first really understood what I was. These people saw no difference between me and those that tortured them everyday," Snape's face was bone white and his slender hands trembled. "They were starved like skeletons, their heads shaved and sitting naked on cold, bare stone; chained like dogs. The had horrible infected wounds from some bizarre experiments that were being run on them." Snape shook his head. "I can't describe the filth, the dark, the despair - the complete inhumaneness of it."

Hermione was quiet. "Not all of them were treated that way. The pretty Muggle born girls and boys were kept clean and better fed to be used sexually by the high ranking Death Eaters." Hermione wanted to bring up her lunch. "Of course, they were all killed eventually too," Snape continued blankly.

"How many died during that time?" She asked quietly in a neutral tone.

"I don't know," Snape admitted with shame. "I should but I don't."

"How did you get away?" She asked.

"After the 'tour of operations' we were going to have a dinner. I never wanted to eat again," he commented bitterly. "I was shown to my room in Voldemort's manor and I apparated as soon as I was left alone and went straight to Dumbledore. I wanted to go straight to Azkaban rather than be associated with those evil lunatics ever again," he explained, his face tight.

"If you had gone to Azkaban, all you would have been able to think about was those wretches in Voldemort's clutches," Hermione observed quietly.

"Yes, I know. I thought it was fitting punishment. Dumbledore knew too but said I would be more useful outside of Azkaban," Snape added.

"He wanted to save you from there," Hermione said.

"Yes," Snape agreed.

Hermione was silent for a few minutes. "What did your parents think about you becoming a Death Eater?" She asked curiously.

"They were Death Eaters too but like me, weren't part of the inner circle," Snape said quietly, looking away.

"So now? Are they okay with your choice to leave?" Hermione asked gently.

"They were killed by Aurors long before I defected," Snape said emotionlessly.

"I'm sorry," she said simply.

"Don't be. I don't miss them." He said matter-of-factly. Hermione looked at him without surprise. Something in her expression suddenly made a connection in Snape's mind.

"You're the same, aren't you? You don't miss your parents either. That's why you never cry," he said with narrowed eyes.

"No," Hermione said honestly, her face blank. She was silent for a few moments. "My parents weren't very affectionate people and they had ridiculous expectations. If I got 98% in an exam, they asked what happened to the other 2%. It was hard work earning their love and approval, and I never managed it." She explained finally, with a shrug. "What were your parents like?" She asked.

"Hard as diamonds, cold as glaciers and distant as a mountain peak," he replied wryly. "I was their only son of an old bloodline, so you can imagine the expectations."

"Yes," Hermione sighed. "And you were brought up with this pride of pure bloodline?"

He simply nodded. "I didn't question it and I should have," he muttered.

"Why? In a way, it makes sense to try and preserve the full magical strength of the wizarding community," Hermione said logically.

"The biggest lies are concocted mainly of truth," Snape snapped angrily. "I fell for it."

"Did you suspect that the Death Eaters' strategy was simply to destroy anyone with mixed Muggle and wizarding blood?" Hermione questioned with a frown.

"I didn't see it with my own eyes so I deliberately didn't think about it. I guess I knew deep down. I just didn't want to face it. My family and all my friends were Death Eaters. On the surface, even if I had faced the truth there seemed no-where to run to," Snape said resignedly. "It sounds pathetic even to my own ears now."

"Poor Malfoy," she murmured.

"Yes. He would appear to be in a similar situation," Snape agreed.

"He's not even as smart as you. He won't see any alternatives," she mused.

Snape shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "We have yet to know Malfoy's true character under a big test," Snape replied fairly. Hermione suddenly understood Snape's preferential treatment of the boy. It was born of a sympathetic understanding of his situation in life as it had been so similar to his own growing up.

"If you saw so many people in these death camps that one time Professor, how did so many disappear without the Muggle community panicking?" Hermione asked inquisitively.

"Memory charms. The Death Eaters took people that were suspected of having wizarding blood and then everyone who had known them had their memory erased," Snape explained simply. "Tens of thousands disappeared from all over the world during that decade, I estimate."

"A huge, well-organised endeavour." Hermione commented with a shake of her head.

"Yes. My role as a spy was to identify them from ordinary Muggles," he said with a twist of his thin, pale lips. "I had no idea what happened to them after that. I chose not to know." He added bitterly.

"How did you find them?" She asked thoughtfully.

"Arithmancy at first. Then once I'd located a suspect, I watched them in my animagus form until they gave themselves away," he clarified.

"Use of raw magic under emotional stress?" Hermione guessed.

"Yes," he answered briefly.

"There must have been hundreds of spies," Hermione said with a frown. "Then the Death Eaters who ran the camps and experimented on the captives as well as the elite inner circle," she said, thinking aloud. "Most of them got away." She concluded.

"Yes," Snape said heavily. "Very few are in Azkaban.

"The same happened with the Nazis," Hermione said with quiet anger. "You can't identify them?" She asked hopefully.

"We wore masks at meetings and I had little contact with other Death Eaters other than that apart from my family and friends - nearly all of whom are now either dead or in Azkaban." Snape said with a hopeless shrug. "I could now identify very few. I would need proof anyway and how would I get it now?"

"Mmmmm," Hermione mumbled, disappointed. She noticed suddenly that he looked drawn. "I'm sorry talking about all this has been hard on you," she remarked and gave his arm a brief squeeze. He jumped as though she'd burnt him.

"It should be hard on me," Snape said sullenly, deep lines cutting into his drawn flesh from nose to mouth. She examined him closely and her thoughts from the animagus potions lesson came back to her.

"That's why you do all those things, isn't it? Risk your health making noxious potions without protection; skip meals and stay in those dungeons never seeing the sun; test dangerous potions on yourself. It's all a form of self-punishment, isn't it? Even being nasty to people so they stay away from you is a kind of self-enforced loneliness that adds to the punishment," she reflected rather analytically.

Snape's dark eyes bored into her profile, blind for once to its delicate, feminine curves. He was speechless. Was it true, he thought anxiously? If it was, why had he never realised it himself? He frowned deeply. He suddenly felt as transparent as glass and he loathed it.

Hermione glanced at him after a moment when he was silent. His face was white and haggard, his body tense and bowed. Her face softened into concern. "You need a good meal and a glass of wine. I'll bet you've eaten nothing all day because I've been out for breakfast and lunch," she accused gently with a wry smile.

She was right. Snape hated it. She got up and said, "come upstairs in an hour and we'll have dinner, okay?" Before she turned to go, she dropped a kiss atop Snape's head. Snape grew even more rigid under her affectionate caress. He didn't relax until he heard her footsteps on the stairs going up to the kitchen.

* * *

As Hermione made dinner she contemplated what Snape had just told her. She made no excuses for Snape's behaviour in the past but she could imagine that it would have been very hard to break out of the life his parents and friends had wanted for him. She could even understand to a lesser extent the fear that drove the Death Eaters of their magical ability being diminished by the Muggle-borns. She felt restless and a bit sick as she chopped carrots and peeled potatoes. Once again, she didn't know how all this made her feel. She still felt a bizarre sense of concern about him but the thought of him being involved in these activities made her stomach churn. She very much wanted to cry but found, as per usual, that she couldn't. She knew she was still sexually attracted to him too as sitting near him, talking to him today had made her skin prickle with awareness even while what she was hearing was horrifying her. She felt mixed up and confused and over-wrought.

Meanwhile Snape was struggling not to think about all the memories that had been dredged up that day nor how hard Hermione had struggled not to show her revulsion regarding what he had told her. Still, she had wanted to know and he was tired of hiding these things inside him and allowing them to grow in him like a cancer, taking over his mind. He did not understand why he had told all this to her in particular, apart from the fact that she already knew general details about his past thanks to that blasted Potter. Then again, he still had no idea why he did all manner of things with regard to Hermione. He wanted to protect her but he didn't want to hide the truth about himself from her either. Better she has no illusions, he thought grimly. He knew she was not a romantic person nor that he was likely to be the object of any projected romantic ideals but he didn't want to lie to her, not even by omission or be evasive. Suddenly he realised that somewhere along the line, Hermione had earned his respect and trust. He frowned darkly. It was not in his nature to trust, he was a naturally suspicious person. He bit his lip hard as he contemplated the dangers that this new feeling of trust could bring.