Chapter 21: Through to the End

There was another moment of apprehensive silence during which Snape seemed to do his best to make all the scattered pieces in his mind fit again. The result appeared to be confusing.

"I assume you are talking about my father?" he asked. His voice was quivering slightly, but apart from that he had a firm grip on his emotions.

"Well, let's assume that I am", Voldemort responded, still looking his opposite straight into the eyes. His voice was calm; however, a nervous twitch around the right eye betrayed him. The Dark Lord was waiting eagerly for an answer that would change the course of more than one life.

Snape plucked a dark velvety rose from a nearby bush and gazed at it silently. As he closed his hand around the tender stem the thorns pricked his skin. Tiny beads of blood trickled down his wrist and he followed their trail with his eyes.

"I'm not sure I can do this", he said in a low voice, hardly more than a whisper.

"That was not what I asked."

Voldemort was only inches away from him now. His blue eyes seemed to absorb the light around him only to flash it out again in calculated little doses.

"Do you want to do it?"

Setting the flower aside carefully Snape raised his head and looked pensively across the garden and towards an enormous old oak tree. Then he nodded his head.

"I knew it! He is a murderer!"

How Ron had managed to produce a thunderous whisper Harry never found out. Nervously he scanned the assembled spectators in the hall before he turned around to face his friend who was practically shining with self-righteous indignation.

"Could you shout it out loud the next time? I'm not sure everybody heard you."

Hermione reached back and up to slap both of them absentmindedly.

"Shut up, both of you", she murmured. Harry seriously expected the strand of hair around her finger to disconnect from her scalp any minute now.

Dressed in dark robes Snape was walking down a dimly lit street. His face was as stern and set as when he wandered the Hogwarts corridors at night, merely lacking a couple of years and the visible signs of uncountable sorrows. Quietly he turned around another corner where six hooded figures, dressed in black like he was, were already waiting for him.

Lucius Malfoy slipped the dark hood off his long blond hair and looked at the newcomer expectantly.

"Ready?" he whispered. There was excitement in his voice.

Snape nodded, reached inside his cloak and pulled out a mask. Apart from Lucius the others had already hidden their faces. They all followed the young man out into the street. As Snape started to place his own mask over his face with an elegant and practiced move his blond friend grabbed his arm.

"I meant are you ready?" he asked so quietly that none of the others heard him.

Snape shook off the other man's hand and completed the disguise.

"We will see", came the muffled reply.

Harry recognized the house they were walking up to from previous memories. A flickering light shone from one of the topmost windows, presumably from a fireplace. He wasn't sure he wanted to see this.

The seven figures moved silently across the street and into the garden, communicating with each others only by the use of signs and little gestures. Seemingly without any effort they climbed up towards the windows on the first floor. Wands were drawn, spells muttered and the windows swung open without so much as a creaking. Inside the house they moved swiftly up to the library where Snape's father was in his usual place in front of the fire, scribbling away frantically on a large roll of parchment. Books lay scattered all around him, covering the whole table and a good part of the floor.

He didn't notice the intruders until a shadow fell upon him. Instinctively reaching inside his robes for his wand he retreated from the table with one swift movement, confusion momentarily making his face more human than ever before. He was disarmed before he had a chance to even get a steady grip on his wand.

"Who are you? How did you get past the wards?"

His eyes flicked from one hooded face to the next, like an animal that knows it is hopelessly trapped. Nobody answered his questions as they drew the circle closer around him. Their cloaks didn't swish. Their boots didn't make any kind of noise. The absence of those well expected sounds was eerie.

Suddenly one of the figures lashed out, quick as lightning. A deep cut appeared on the old Snape's cheek and a bloodstained dagger shimmered shortly in the firelight. Then the others joined in to what could only be described as a ritual punishment. Methodically they lashed out to cut all visible areas of skin. Not a single one sliced through the layers of fine crimson silk.

In the beginning the old man would try to avoid the blades, trying to somehow keep up his arrogant and superior demeanour. After a couple of minutes, however, he crumpled to the floor, attempting in vain to protect his face from the assault. He never moaned or begged for mercy.

His face was a bloody mass when one of them finally raised a steady hand and made the others stop. A dagger dropped to the floor, while a gloved hand reached inside the dark cloak and produced from there a polished wand, about eleven inches long and reflecting the light of the merrily sparkling fire. After a moment of hesitation the wand owner reached up to his face, removed the mask and withdrew the hood. It was Snape.

A sneer spread across the older man's distorted face, squeezing out more blood in various places.

"Well, well, look what the cat dragged in", he chuckled quietly. After that his voice dropped to an icy whisper.

"I thought I had made it perfectly clear that I didn't want you anywhere near this house again, let alone in it. You are living proof of my fallibility and should have been eliminated long ago. But perhaps I should have used clearer language. My refined phrasing was probably too much for your poor mind to comprehend."

The flicker of a smile crossed over his son's face. His wand arm relaxed and he lowered it slowly, still regarding his father, who was kneeling on the floor in front of him.

"Let's leave", he announced in a steady voice. "He is not worth the trouble."

Hesitantly the other stowed away their blades and turned towards the door. They seemed to be hungry for a kill and disappointed at the idea of leaving unsatisfied.

"You never see anything through to the end, don't you, Severus?" his father cried after him.

"You are weak-minded, gutless and pathetic. That's why she stayed with me. That's why she didn't want you."

Snape spun around, his eyes ablaze with fury, his wand pointing directly onto his father's chest.

"Avada Kedavra!"

There was a proud smile on the old Snape's face as his body crashed to the floor, green flames licking lightly at his fingertips before they, too, died away.

Snape replaced his mask with shaking hands, drew up his hood and walked steadily down the stairway, through the hall and out the front door. The others followed him quietly and in respectful distance.

Harry couldn't decide if he felt appalled or satisfied. Judging by the look on Arthur Weasley's face he was not alone with that dilemma.

Lucius Malfoy didn't speak a word to his friend until they were back at Malfoy Manor again. Once inside the door he threw off the cloak and stared at Snape intently for a moment.

"I will inform him", was all he said before he disappeared through a door at the far end of the hall.

Snape walked slowly up towards his room, closed the door behind him, folded up the dark robes carefully and cleaned the small dagger. Then he placed his wand gently on his nightstand, went into the bathroom and started throwing up violently.