'Revenge is a dish best served cold.' (supposed Klingon proverb)

Chapter Four

Today, I am paid an unexpected visit from Mr. Anumis.

He knocks on the door as usual and, as usual, bursts in without my having voiced my approval. I was lying on the bed at the time, drifting off to sleep, and as he enters, I simply open my eyes, not bothering to get up. Damn him for his impudence.

I am not in the best of moods.

Neither, it seems, is Mr. Anumis for he abruptly takes out a chair from underneath my writing table and sits on it, glaring at me. Then he clears his throat and begins to talk. He is clearly lying: there is a thin frown line of the utmost concentration on his forehead and his hands are completely stationery whereas normally, they would be moving around expressively. I look at his face, but avoid his eyes.

"Mr. Prince Snape," he begins. "Due to the... request of your son Francis, the authorities have agreed to allow you letters from various associates outside Azkaban prison." He flares his nostrils as he says 'son' as if it were the most distasteful thing he had ever come across. I'd almost be amused if I weren't so tired. "These will only be accepted from a limited number of people and," he places extra emphasis on this word, and my ears prick up, "and they will be opened and read by myself and your fellow warders before they get to you."

Fair enough, I think. What else would I have expected?

I nod.

"I am glad that we have both come to an agreement on the matter, Mr. Prince Snape," he clears his throat again and smooths out his robes. "Now, as for your impending trial..."

I look at him sharply and notice with no small amount of horror, that there is a small smile curling on his lips. Ever the professional, he smothers it and continues to speak. "Because you will get one, I'll make sure of that..." This time, the smile unfurls, uninhibited and near-manical. It was at that moment that whatever fear I had had of Mr. Anumis vanished. He was no more a sophisticated brute than I was. He was just another of us sad wrecks that the Dark Lord had left in his path, another of us trying to lead our own lives for once... I shook my head. He misinterpreted it and added, "don't you worry, sir... I'll make sure they go easy on you, though... it would certainly be less traumatic for yourself if your son didn't get involved..."

I nearly swear out loud at him.

"Unless you want to make it easy for yourself..." He says in a low voice, examining his nails, "and confess."

"Confess what?" I ask wearily.

"You deny you have anything to confess?" He immediately snaps back. I simply look at him tiredly. I have been through two years of this sort of interrogation. It's not going to work. I am tired with the lot of them and certainly the epic that I have currently stowed away, hidden in separate places, is giving me a firmer grip on my reality than ever. I will not be reduced to the state of making over-dramatic, pre-prepared confessions in court. I have a book to write.

"Did I say that?" I respond coolly. "I am merely trying to say that I know all too well how you people operate, charmingly polite as you are... If I do not confess to one thing, you will make me confess to another. I have nothing more to confess to. You know what I am here for: that is all I could possibly have to confess to..." Damn, I am thinking to myself. It is on a day like this that I need Francis. Or Moralis. Moralis.

Mr. Anumis looks at me carefully and a horrible thought comes to my head: he looks just like Lucius did the first time he tortured a Muggle and killed her. Well, it was as my muggle grandfather had always said - we reap what we sow.

The silence is just the sort that I would have used to interrogate my students with. It is the sort that can make someone blurt something out at the last minute, in an attempt to kill it.

"Mr. Anumis," I say finally. "Please go away."

I should have known better. Perhaps I was so tired that I didn't realise that I had spoken aloud. I am now under solitary confinement - I am not to be visited by anyone for as long as Mr. Anumis wishes.

It has been three days now since that particular outburst of mine and they have even stopped supplying me paper: I only have three more sheets after this one and my handwriting is already very small. I am feeling a little depressed about the turn of events and am in no mood to even think about my past, but I have always enjoyed musing over my immediate family, and so that is what I shall do.

As I have already mentioned, I have three children. Francis, Vida and Cronan, the last two being twins. Francis is my favourite, even though I am not supposed to have any, but I have always had a soft spot for Vida, my only girl. That doesn't make Cronan my least favourite. In many a way, he is the most normal of the three of them, and I greatly appreciate this because it has always provided me a strong hold on reality. His siblings have the tendency to be solitary, aloof and generally strange in some of their habits, as well as the tendency to be dreamers. Cronan is the often gloomy realist. Something of an Eeyore, I suspect.

Paranoia is not a state of mind that has been particularly common for me. Neither is the feeling of being content. However, I experienced both of these in plenty once the twins were born.

With just Francis, our family unit was easily manoeuvrable - it was easy enough to deal with just the one child, quiet and uninterfering as he was. With the twins, however, suddenly we were transformed into a real, bustling family with concerns for a budget, where we would be living and the standards of life we could afford. During the holidays, on the rare occasion that I would come to visit them, I would go to bed, and be wide awake all night, trying desperately to think of any back-up strategies should the Dark Lord return or, when he eventually did, discover my secret family.

The contentment was for the daytime. I was always content in the knowledge of the fact that my children were, well, mine. They were all quite intelligent and very silly and stubborn, as children are apt to be. Hearing them read, or reading to them for example, always made me feel strangely satisfied.

If my love for their mother can be considered a near self-destructive love, then the love I have for my children is something even more dangerous. The age-old cliche of the obsessive parent was one that I may have appreciated but never truly believed (in spite of all evidence to the contrary), until I myself was a parent. I and Moralis would have done anything for our children and there was always a little resentment between the two of us at how readily their affections would veer from one parent to the other. It sounds ridiculous, but that is the truth of it. They were growing, after the initial shock of their conception and births, into the most delightful creatures we had ever known.

It is strange what hormones can do to you.

Vida was one of those unfortunate (or fortunate) creatures who had the worst of it during her early teens. I suppose out of all of my children, she appreciated having a Potions Master for a father the most. It was not uncommon for me to be deluged with the most emotional letters, all containing pleas for some extra-strong acne removal cream to be made on her behalf (to which I obliged: terrible acne seems to run in our family) or a fat removing elixir (to which I did not oblige). She would also frequently write to me on the topic of magic, more so than either of her brothers, which explains her extraordinary talent for it, a talent that frightens even me at times.

Although it is Francis who is the most like me, the twins have particular mannerisms and characteristics similar to mine in regards to very different things. With Vida, it is more in terms of interests: she was always fascinated by Potions and Transfiguration (her two specialities, funnily enough) whilst Cronan is more like me when it comes to his frequent outbursts and angry moods. We have never got on quite as well as I have with his siblings, so it just goes to show. He is much more the usual sort of impressionable young man you will find on the street, having no real interest in his studies (although he has a rather interesting band project going on), a little too much in his appearance and comic books. The latter isn't so bad, because he is a talented cartoonist. When the mood takes him at any rate.

Both the twins have a rather worrying talent for forgery, maybe from the abundance of spies in the family. Vida used to frequently delight Dumbledore with her letters asking for tips on more advanced magic (sent by a humble Ermyntrude Glow) and Cronan, despite his lack of interest in his studies, always managed to come home each year with the most outstanding reports. Even though Moralis and I knew what was going on, it was hard to pin it down on him: both the twins had an inborn aptitude for Occlumency, unlike Francis who is pretty much an open book.

At present, all three of my children are in University: Francis is in his final year of studying the Classics and Philosophy, whilst Vida and Cronan are undergraduates, studying History and English Literature between them. Vida, after the troublesome years of her youth, has now emerged as a rather pretty thing who bears an uncanny resemblance to her dead grandmother, and Cronan as the sort of boy I'd have hated were we in school together: vaguely good-looking and nonchalant, lazy and charming.

None of my children went to any magic school and instead received all their training from my great great grandfather and the Elders of the family. Because every single magical child is registered with a quill that cannot be influenced by magic in any way, the danger in sending my children to any public magical school is obvious. As it is, I believe that they are all registered on that magic list under their mother's name, as I was during my childhood.

What else? There are so many things to recall that I'm not sure when to begin. Francis' eighteenth birthday - when the twins staged an abortive re enactment of some famous episode from classical antiquity (I think it was the murder of Julius Caesar)? Or my visiting them during the summer holidays from that miserable hovel in Spinner's End to find no one in the house, but the four of them trekking from the local park an hour later, all absolutely sodden (Cronan, thinking he had seen a water snake had upturned the boat with his siblings and mother still in it)? Recalling such events is like something from a dream. It seems to me that I am the closest any man can come to an acceptable schizophrenic: Severus Snape as a teacher must have been quite different from Severus Snape the father and husband. I don't know. But what is for sure is that it explains all too much about my state of mind, this my double existence. Was I really that successful in cutting off both parts of my life from one another? If so, did I ever fully participate in either one? I truly don't know.

Ah, night has come: the sea is getting rough, I can tell from the louder roaring sounds echoing through some two feet of mortar and brick into my cell. It is now time for me to sleep.

The ninth day of my solitary confinement and the orders have been lifted. I am very grateful for this because I ran out of paper three days ago. Some more was brought to me by Octavius, funnily enough, who acted as if it were a top secret mission he had to carry out.

Sirius' escape from Azkaban and the appearance of Remus Lupin at Hogwarts was like something from a nightmare for me. By that time I had spent just over a decade in a relatively comfortable job with very little of my past left to confront me: I was a cleared Death Eater, in a respected position at the school and pretty well established and content. Sirius escaping was bad enough because it suddenly alerted me to the fact that I had lulled myself into a false sense of security: the return of the Dark Lord was no longer a possible chance, but suddenly became something close to palpable fact - Sirius had managed to escape. The Dark Lord would manage to return. My worst fears were indeed being realised.

However, Remus Lupin's own return eventually became a huge annoyance. It seemed that just as I'd had to cover up for him whilst we were in school, so I was to do similar once again, what with having to make his Wolfsbane potion each month. As it happened, I didn't do too well this time around when it came to keeping his secret, but I'd had an entire school year to put up with him after all.

I never thought I could be so vindictive, so I suppose it is the shock of recognition that hits one hardest: for example, Harry Potter was, in truth, only a minor, petty inconvenience. Yet I responded to his mere presence as if he were so much more than that. Something certainly irked me about him, but it was never as bad to warrant the insane anger that I felt bubbling through my veins each time I saw him or heard his name being mentioned. It was much the same with Remus Lupin. Merely being around him, observing how well he got on with the junior Marauders (Potter and his second and third bananas) was almost as bad as being in school again, in fact worse, because there was no actual harm in it and it was just me feeling humiliated. Ye gods, how I loathe my temper.

It's easy enough to say with hindsight, I suppose.

But I was most furious with Dumbledore for his continual and insistent dismissal of anything I might have had to say or feel. Perhaps it was mere jealousy, an unfounded grudge. Ah, well: who would have thought? It must have had more of an effect on me than I would have liked, particularly when coupled with the permanent irritation that was the presence of Harry Potter.

Since my solitary confinement was lifted, I have seen nothing of Mr. Anumis. I have a dim awareness that I ought to be somewhat worried, but for some reason I can't bring myself to feel anything about it.

It is strange: since the fall of the Dark Lord, life has been oddly colourless. I'd always imagined that life in Azkaban, without the Dementors, would be naught but a constant struggle against legalised tortures and grim figures predominating over every aspect of my life... a strange sort of raport being built up between us few prisoners that were. At this stage of my life, it is embarrassing to admit that I still have something of a romantic in me.

How wrong I was.

In a sense, though the logical part of my brain screams out the opposite, I find myself wishing that my militant opponents in the wizarding world would indeed get their own way and hold me on trial, if only to allow me a break from the monotony of prison life. Even getting my soul sucked out would be preferable to this grey existence. They certainly knew what they were doing when they sentenced me here: they are planning to bore me to death.

Someone then knocked on my door. I suspected it to be Mr. Khan because whoever it was paused for me to speak.

"Hello there, Severus," he spoke in an obscenely cheery voice. "How was solitary confinement?"

"I have certainly learned my lesson," I replied slowly. "I very nearly ran out of paper."

He laughed at that and I can tell he assumes I am making a joke. He is as clueless as my other two guards as to what I actually do with my supply of paper.

"Well, that's something. Else there'd be no point now, eh?" He added lightly. I allowed my lips to twitch. "I've brought you your post, by the by, and the last two Daily Prophets. Some interesting stuff - they're thinking of abolishing the House system at Hogwarts."

I feel an instant pang of regret. It certainly seems a shame to get rid of that tradition, but again, it is probably for the best. It reminds me of how much I have really left behind and how far I have come. All those years ago when I was a student and even a teacher there, seem like so many years ago, another lifetime. I look at Mr. Khan's face, relatively cheerful and bright and wonder what really goes on beneath that patient, pleasant exterior. He wouldn't really be able to understand: he is only a Squib after all, left on the fringes of wizarding society his entire life. Such turmoil within the culture that had excluded him would no doubt be greeted with something akin to jubilation. But perhaps I ought not to judge by my own standards.

"Interesting, eh?"

"Yes."

He nodded absently.

"Went through your post: regulations, see. You'll like some of the letters - very funny. You don't mind me asking who Ms Glow is by any chance? Wife of yours?"

I turned to look at him blankly. I hope he leaves soon because it would do me no good to laugh aloud in his presence.

He shrugged, vaguely amused. "Have it your way--"

"No. I don't have a wife." Childishly, I narrowly avoid the temptation of crossing my fingers as I say this. You would have thought, after all these years, I would be used to telling lies.

Now it's his turn to look at me blankly. "I thought Francis-- ah, well... shouldn't judge, though, should I?"

"True." I clench my jaw.

There was an awkward pause. "Well," he started first. "I'll leave you to it, shall I?"

"Thank you."

To Mr. SP Snape,

I had tried getting into contact with you for some time now but I soon discovered that you were not allowed any mail. All the previous letters I sent to you were sent back, which is a shame, because you would have found them very enlightening. At least they weren't opened. I would know because I checked the seal.

Very little has happened since you left. Cronan has been a bit difficult to get on with and made Morry quite upset a few days ago. I do love him but he can be such a pain and I sometimes think that Morry is a little frightened of him, but then, she's been quite low for a long time now: Fran is the only one who can really control him - it makes me wish that you were still here. You can tell that Cronan resents this, and I'm just waiting until he explodes. Literally, possibly.

Fran tells me that they heard some news of you about two weeks ago. They tell me that apparently you are well, and as happy as one can be, given the circumstances.

It's very stupid. When I realised that you were allowed no mail, I was very sad because there was so much that I wanted to tell you about. But now that I am writing this, nothing seems to be able to come out of my head. I really don't know what I should say to you other than that everyone is fine and the tortoises (if you'd believe it) actually seem to be missing you: when I tried to feed them dandelion leaves (which they usually love) they wouldn't look at them. It took me and Morry ages to realise that you'd always been the one to give them that sort of thing. They'll eat ordinary greens and such, mind you, but choice delicacies such as dandelion leaves... no. It's actually quite funny. They only seem to like Fran now.

I have started school now and so I won't have as much time on my hands to visit you. I wish I could.

Even though I have told you about Cronan, you won't get involved, will you? I think he'll just get angrier.

Yours,

Ms E. Glow.

PS I tried to track down some of your students. You wouldn't believe what they're doing now to earn some filthy lucre (!).

The Daily Prophet proves to be a very useful read. Not only do they devote several pages to debates between the most respected contemporary wizards on the topic of the House system being abolished within Hogwarts, but I also later find an article in which the writer (Stebbins, he calls himself) attacks the Ministry on their past failures which had come to light in some important documents that had been leaked out since the end of the war.

This is fascinating stuff. I would normally be very dismissive of such a journalist (it's very easy to attack a wounded soldier, after all), but something in me says that this could well be the beginning of something very different. The more recent Daily Prophet has a letters section that goes on for several pages because of the outrage but also the lack of surprise of the wizarding populace who read the article. It is probably a very good thing that Potter died with the Dark Lord: I wonder what he would have made of all this.

The letters are wide-ranging: some directly attacking the Ministry for it's failure to properly protect and inform the wizarding world: failure at International Co-operation: an overt willingness to let the pure blooded families get away (and quite literally at times) with murder. Immaturity, naivety... a downright unwillingness to acknowledge any other than their straight and narrow. Even the oldest accepted norms come under fire - several letters propose the dissolution of the Secrecy Act altogether. I am almost impressed. Almost, because one suspects the majority of the writers to be crackpots and loons, or idealistic youth. But for the most part, it is as if the entire wizarding world had woken up and spoken as one. I myself have only ever seen such a united front since the smear campaign on Cornelius Fudge.

Dumbledore would certainly be pleased by all this. It would have been worth seeing his reaction were he still Head of Hogwarts and I it's Potions Master.

It would be nice if there were something to what those mysterious wizards who work in the Department of Mysteries say and the veil really were some barrier to another life. I wouldn't mind bumping into half of the people I have met and befriended, or hated - even killed. Some of them, like Dumbledore and my muggle grandparents, represent that time of my life when I was actually secure in my hopes and dreams and ideas. Others, the Marauders, Lily Potter, my old Slytherins, my colleagues and my fellow Death Eaters, a time when things were so damn easy: when everything was black and white and it was safe to ignore any grey.

But I don't know. I remember something from one of my memories: my father discussing such things with my mother (I was sitting on the window sill, reading), and I listening. He had just spoken to my great great grandfather, I think, because he was talking about the old philosophers of ancient times.

"They believed in ghosts and such things as well you know," he was saying. "We just have a different name for them - Memory, the subconscious... things that are equally as terrifying, equally as powerful as the mere ghosts of our stories if not more so-" (my father didn't believe in ghosts in the least, despite or maybe because of his experiences in the wizarding world) "- don't you think?"

My mother said something - a disagreement probably - to this and he laughed.

"The dead speak to us in dreams because that's the only way they can be heard... what we see is a projection... like light coming out of a dead star..." He sighed and sat back theatrically. "And I say dreams because who sees what is real? I look at you and see my beautiful wife... your parents look at you and see a troubled adolescent girl and as for Francis here..." he looked at me. I pretended to keep on reading. He laughed again and that is all I can remember.

Dear Father,

I know I only saw you last week, but a lot can change in that amount of time. How are you? How are your guards? Thank Mr. Khan for me, please: he was very helpful in regards to us sending you letters. It is a lot more complicated than one would think. But perhaps it is because of the weather that any owls would have to endure on their journey. The North Sea is not known for it's temperate waves and such of the like.

Everyone is fine at home. Even though it has been a long time, still no one speaks about you. Even great great great grandfather avoids asking about you even though I can tell he wants to because he saw me writing this letter. They all pretend that you're dead, which, in a way, you are. Is it not so that our true death comes when we are no longer remembered? It's quite sad because I had no idea how much they'd all admired you until now, though I guess you must have done. They all think that it was little short of amazing that you'd managed to recover so quickly after that attack and that you managed to keep to your studies. I think they're disappointed because it turns out you had an ulterior motive, and you know how much the Elders hate being wrong.

Have you heard from Ms Glow yet? She tells me that Cronan is being very difficult again and that he keeps on making Morry upset. I shouldn't really tell you this because I suspect it would hurt your feelings, but I think you ought to know. I don't think he's being so unbearable, myself. I suspect it's just that Morry is going through a rather rough time. We have recently been visited by some old phoenixes and we may have to move. Morry is considering moving us abroad and worst luck is that she has great great great grandfather's approval. I suppose I'd be able to stay in the country, as I am still in school, but my goodness, it's a horrible thought that we shall all be split up. I will keep you informed.

Ms Glow has met young Malfoy. She says that one of your students is a teacher and that the current Potions Master is a Communist. I keep on trying to tell her that she doesn't even know the meaning of the word. Perhaps she means Machiavellian: she probably does (that was a joke by the way. I'm sure you knew that but it's just so that the guards can appreciate it. They would have read this before you do and might not get it).

Anyway. I graduate on the of . You'll be thinking of me, won't you?

Yours affectionately,

Francis.

Killing Dumbledore was a necessity, I can see that clearly now. Had I opted to die, rather than murder him, I would have left Draco in his care, which, from my experience, isn't really care at all. The truth is that it all came down to trust and I did not trust Albus Dumbledore. He was getting old and proved resilient to whatever healing measure I or Madam Pomfrey placed on him. He would have been unable to make the most of my death. He was unable to make the most of many things.

But it was a pity and certainly not an experience I would care to repeat. I did basically have a liking for the old man and I had some degree of respect for him, I can admit that at least. He had employed me, after all, protected my reputation at expense of his own as well as that of others. He rarely sought out my opinion but gave me considerable freedom as a teacher. He was also, as I have said before, living history. It was difficult to be in his presence and not to be moved to loyalty even on a small, practically insignificant level. I suppose that is why the Dark Lord himself always seemed strangely reluctant to dispatch of the old man. I doubt he could envision a world without Albus Dumbledore. Certainly, when I and Draco returned from the cave that night, he seemed more stunned than jubilant to hear that Dumbledore was dead. He didn't even look at me for several weeks afterward and even after that, up until his death, he was oddly quiet and watchful around me, more so than usual.

Loyalty is a beautiful thing and beauty is terror. The Dark Lord was in so many ways, still a child who wanted to prove himself to some grudging parent-figure, boosting his own ego with pathetic illusions: always disturbed and clueless when confronted with the real thing, be it love or beauty or terror.

And yet we were all drawn to him. The first Death Eaters, the older ones and then those of my generation. He had the same sort of charisma as Dumbledore had. Even though I can now see and probably saw it even back then, that Lord Voldemort cared for nothing and no-one, not even for himself, he was able to make us think that he did. He would ask about our feelings, and our families... what it was that we wanted... he would make you transform your sense of inferiority into one of superiority. Even after his resurrection, when he transformed into an understandably bitter and desperate Dark Lord, he was still able to make us feel needed, wanted, in spite of the glaringly obvious evidence to contradict that assumption. After all, he would regularly torture us if we failed to obey his commands; he did not forget and he did not forgive. He was cruel and uncaring and cold. But we loved him.

That was why we were so vicious and cruel when it came to those ardent supporters of Dumbledore: we were those unfortunates who had been touched by the Lord of the Phoenix (ha ha) as well. We knew deep down in our hearts that our precious Dark Lord was no match for Dumbledore and was himself affected by that fount of wisdom, swayed by the magnetism of the kindly Headmaster of Hogwarts. Some, like Regulus and to a certain extent myself, would find ourselves broken by the two conflicting forces in our lives, others would seek to turn their backs on one to try and serve the other.

That is why the battle against the Dark Arts is so hopeless. In an attempt to defeat it, the wizards of light try to ignore it altogether, instead of appreciating it for what it is. Such attitudes breed extremism on both sides, and the oppressed devotees of the Dark Arts will once again attempt to rise up and inflict chaos and pain on the wizarding world. Neither side has got it right: even I can say that the Dark Arts are by nature cruel and a method of releasing the blackest of human nature. To completely absorb oneself in it... one becomes less than an animal. But to ignore it completely seems childish and ignorant. Magic becomes something separate and scientific rather than intertwined with our very own natures, as it really is.

It is difficult to convey the sense of relief I feel in having written that. It's as if that is all I have wanted to say for a long time.