Here's the next chapter! Thank you to all my reviewers! You all better love me! Cause I'm swimming in tea and as sick as a dog! The poem was written by me...and um...I hope you like it...

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Standard disclaimers apply

Chapter 2

(Severus)

Severus' Journal-

Stained

These hands they are stained

Nothing I do can clean them

The blood of hundreds taints them

Screams of thousands have made me deaf

My deeds come back to haunt me

There is no one who can save me

I have played God with too many lives

Faces of unknown men revisit me

Husbands, fathers, sons

How many have died from my spells?

Too many shrieks my mind

Not enough hisses my wand

My heart has long since frozen over

Ice, they say, runs in my veins

It must be true for me to still be standing

Comrades have been slaughtered with this instrument

Innocent lives ended

Flesh shredded to ribbons

You think nothing should faze me

But this does

No one knows

But it does

-Severus Snape

Voices.

Sounds.

People.

Darkness.

Time passing.

Pain.

Helplessness.

X-X

"Severus."

My name was whispered, and gently I was shaken. Dredging up the miniscule amount of reserve energy I had left, I pried open my eyes a scant millimeter. Above me hovered a woman with blond hair and caring eyes. Narcissa. I wanted to say something, but I was barely breathing. Speech was impossible. As if she understood, Narcissa smiled at me and then forced a potion down my throat. My first instinct was to reject it, drive it from my body. It could be poison or something equally bad. Everything blurred at the edges as my eyelid sank shut, and I sank back into oblivion.

X-X

"I have to go get something, I trust you to watch over him."

"How can you ask me to do that, after what he did."

"He did only what he had to and I expect you to remember that."

X-X

"Wake up."

Another command, but I couldn't follow it. I was so tired.

"My Lord, he's still very weak!"

Narcissa? Definitely female.

"I don't care. Severus, wake up!"

It was the Dark Lord. I must show him I am awake. Through some miracle I manage to moan loud enough for him to hear me and know I am not asleep.

"Very good."

A cold finger trails down the side of my face.

"Have you learned your lesson? No more disobeying orders?"

Another moan.

"Good."

X-X

"How are you feeling, Severus?" Narcissa is here again.

"Living." I croak. My mouth is so dry.

"It's August now."

Disbelief courses through me. So much time and I am still invalid? There is so much to do.

"Your body is almost completely healed. I've…I've been drugging you…"

Drugging me? How? Why? With what?

"I couldn't bear you having to go out there not fully healed! I can't lose you too!"

Questions continue to swirl around my mind, but I cannot voice them.

"Mother…" I hear Draco whisper. "You called?"

"Watch, Severus; I have to go do something."

The weight on the right side of the bed lifts, and I hear her exit. A chair is dragged up, and someone sits in it. So much time has flown by. I don't know what is going on in the world. Potter's birthday has passed. He's free to do what he wants, go where he wants. I am no longer safe. I never was safe.

Draco shifts in the chair, and my thoughts turn to him. How am I to help him? 'Albus, why did this have to happen?'

Guilt washes over me. I am the one who killed you; now I cannot even do what you want me to because of some paltry injuries. How am I to protect anyone? I cannot even raise a finger to save myself. I could be killed right now. Oh, how I wish that's what would happen. The pain of being here, of all my sins is making it even harder to breath.

A whimper makes it past my sealed lips. How many times in the months have I cried out in my sleep? Begged for something? Revealed too much? There was so much in my past that if discovered could destroy so many people. Too many lives I had already ripped to shreds to save my own hide. Well, now I was going to finally going to save someone, I was going to make sure Draco got out of this whole. I must finish what I started. But I must rest before I can do that.

The tiny part of me that had still contained some light, some happiness was now totally and completely dead. It died with Albus.

"Out of here, quickly." I grasp Draco and rush down the steps of the astronomy tower. I must get out of here. I know the others are behind me as I race to get the boy to safety; my life matters not at this point. I faintly hear someone yell out behind me, but I pay no heed. Death Eaters look at me as I sprint past them.

"It's over, time to go!" My flight with the boy continued without interruption, but I know that Potter is following. The only thing that is running through my mind is that I have to get off the property so I can Disapparate; I have to get out of here. The gate, if we could just make it to the gate. The distance was fast closing, and I was certain we would make it. I knew we could.

"Stupefy!" Damn! It was Potter! Why did he have to intervene now? Couldn't he see there were bigger things at work?

"Run, Draco!" My godson stared at me a moment, fear and something else in them. Thankfully he didn't question but ran.

"Cruc—" Harry began, but instinctively I parried and sent him flying backwards as one of the others set Hagrid's house on fire. I barely registered him shouting something about his dog.

"Cruc—" He tried again, but I stopped him a sneer twisting at my lips for bravado. I couldn't let façade fall, even though half of it was show. I had hated his father with a great passion and some of that carried to him, but it had faded quickly. Leaving me to pretend.

"No Unforgivable Curses from you, Potter!" I shouted, not letting the background noise distract me. "You haven't got the nerve or the ability"

"Incarc—" Harry bellowed but I blocked him easily, how could he make it so easily? He wasn't focusing! Albus had known how weak he was, why hadn't he trained him better? "Fight back! Fight back, you cowardly"

"Coward, did you call me, Potter?" I rose to his childish name-calling. I couldn't help it; his taunt hit a shallowly buried nerve. After all the things I have done, to help him and everyone else he called me a coward. Typical. "Your father would never attack me unless it was four on one, what would you call him, I wonder?"

"Stupe—"

"Blocked again and again and again until you learn to keep your mouth shut and your mind closed, Potter!"

Even though he was trying to kill me and I was dubbed his enemy I couldn't help but give him sneering instructions that would help him. If only the dunderhead would listen for once in his pathetic life. "Now come!" I motioned to the other and turned to leave. "It is time to be gone, before the Ministry turns up -- "

"Impedi-- " Potter started, but before I could cut him off, one of the others used the Crutiasus curse on the young boy. His screams rent the air, tearing at my insides. I may have hated him, but he was the only one who could kill the Dark Lord and no one deserved that agony. I had experienced that kind of terrible pain too much in my life and I couldn't have another innocent ripped to shreds. The curse was a horrendous, blinding, wrenching pain that poured through you like lava. It was something I wouldn't have happen to any child.

"No!" I bellowed at him, startling the dunce into stopping. "Have you forgotten our orders? Potter belongs to the Dark Lord – we are to leave him! Go! Go!"

As I ordered the rest to retreat, I stayed behind to make sure we weren't attacked. My gaze landed on Potter who was struggling up and towards me.

"Sectum – " Unbidden rage poured through me like a boiling potion, lighting my veins on fire as I blocked his attempt. Reaching out, I touched his mind to find he was about to utilize another one of MY spells.

"No, Potter!" I roared, flinging a spell at him. He flew backwards and landed with a satisfying thud, and his wand disappeared into the night. Stalking forward, I loomed over him, my wrath palpable. I could forgive some things, but this wasn't one of them, he was acting like his father.

"You dare use me own spells against me, Potter?" I demanded, the spells I had created to defend myself from his horrid father. "It was I who invented them – I, the Half-Blood Prince! And you'd turn my inventions on me, like your filthy father, would you? I don't think so…no!"

The ingrate had lunged for his wand, and I was forced to hex it away from him as my anger built higher and higher.

"Kill me then," the little twit gasped. "Kill me like you killed him, you coward –" "DON'T –" I screamed at him as the knife that I had buried in my own heart twisted; he was right but at the same time wrong. There was no way he could have done such a thing. If he had been handed the duty by Dumbledore to kill him, he would not have been able to do it. And he condemned me for doing what the old man wanted? "CALL ME A COWARD!" My rage got the best of me, and I hit Potter with a hex as I whipped around to leave, but that beast of a Hippogriff attacked me screeching loudly. Not bothering to even try to kill it, I fled off the school property and Disapparated.

"Snape." Someone shook me and I slowly peeled open my eyes, dragging myself away from the terrible memories. Draco's face hovers over me, concern etched in it even though he hates me for killing Dumbledore, even though he, himself was supposed to do it. Trust my godson to think like that. His whole life I have watched him, protected him, and now he denounces me for saving him. I feel the withered heart within me twist. He looks so tired, defeated even. It's easy for me to see that he's lost weight and is even skinnier than normal.

"Water," I whisper through parched lips, and the boy reacts as if stung. Quickly, he brings me a cup of water, and, greedily, I gulp it down. He retreats back to the chair on the opposite side of the room as I drag my body into a sitting position. The blankets are tangled about my waist and, belatedly, I realize that I have no shirt on, leaving my scarred chest in full view. There are multitudes of small insignificant ones, a couple medium sized ones and a few large.

"Do you see these scars, Draco?" I ask, not even bothering to wait for him to answer me. "They are the map of my life. Each and every one tells a story, and I don't think one of them is good. When I joined the Death Eaters, my body was for the most part unmarred, now look at it." Drawing a deep breath I am surprised when the action isn't met with pain.

"Why did you join?" Draco's voice was so low I barely discerned what he said.

"I joined for many reasons, none of them good." I let my eyes flutter shut as I shook my head. "I wanted to belong, I wanted to be able to get back at someone, and I wanted to fill the loneliness left by another's death."

My fingers lightly traced some of my older scars that were faded, but still easily seen. "These are from the initiation into their society."

"Why do you think my dad joined?" I knew the real reason, and it was worse than as any of mine. I didn't want him to realize how bad his father was. I couldn't stand for him to hurt any more, he was like the son I never had.

"I don't really know; your father is a very complex man," I hedged the question quite elegantly in my opinion. "He was never one for giving away a lot of information to any one person."

"At times I don't think he cares about anyone."

Draco was speaking more to himself than to me, and I knew he just needed to get it off his chest.

"He always cared more about appearances than how Mum and I felt. She loves him so much, but sometimes I wonder if he even gives a damn."

Anger shook his voice and my heart went out to him. It was like a milder version of my childhood repeating itself right before my eyes. I could see myself inside Draco, a young man longing for a loving family, but never getting what he wanted.

Don't worry, Draco; I will be there for you. I will save you.

This, I promise.


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