WARNING: Graphic gore.

The lines Rosier quotes are taken from Swinburne's "Anactoria."

Intermission: The Initiation

Snape wondered that no one in the building they were about to attack could feel the power lapping around him, Malfoy, and Rosier in black, quiet waves. Perhaps they simply accepted the Dark Lord's magic as part of the natural power of the night; it was the autumn equinox, the old holiday of Mabon, when the light and darkness were of equal lengths.

The pause before the night grows longer, Snape's father had once called it. Snape had stared at him in astonishment. Tobias could only have learned that from his wife, and he had said it long after he stopped communicating with Eileen in anything more than grunts. But he had turned away when his son tried to speak to him about it, and never said it again.

It was, though. Snape could feel the power of the night on the wind that swept over them where they crouched in a low, scrubby field of trampled grass. Cold dryness filled his mouth. Overhead, clouds tattered across the moon, which had just begun to dwindle. The stars seemed smaller than normal, and impossibly far away.

Snape shook his head slightly. Whatever concealing spell the Dark Lord was using, it still seemed strange to him the Light wizards could not sense how their lives were about to end.

"It is time."

Malfoy said that as he rose to his feet. He carried his wand out already, and the moonlight let Snape see his faint smile as he held it up. Beside him, Rosier laughed, but Rosier was always laughing. Snape drew his own wand, but didn't raise it as yet. The point of this raid, for him, was to undergo his initiation into the Death Eaters. That meant he had a specific kill to make, in a specific way. No blindingly striking out, for him.

A low cry drifted up to them, a sound like a dying deer might make.

"Now," said Malfoy, in an exultant voice as soft as the cry, and then aimed his wand at the house. "Cremo!"

The house's roof exploded into fire. Snape could hear the screams of the children inside, and knew a moment's wild contempt. Observations had indicated those children were at least seven and nine years old, and they were both magical. They should have known how to defend themselves by then. That they did not was pathetic. That their guardians had not taught them to expect something like this, when they were in the middle of a war, was beyond scorn.

The house's door tore open, and a wizard in a huge, floppy robe ran out, his wand aimed at the flames. He didn't even glance at the Death Eaters. Snape wondered, with weary incredulity, if he actually thought chance had started the fire, when the Dark Lord's people were everywhere hunting Mudbloods and the Light wizards who sought to protect them.

"This one's mine," said Rosier. "Glubo!"

The curse manifested as a stream of black fire that Snape could barely see, which struck the wizard full-on in the back as he tried to deal with Malfoy's conflagration. He staggered as if under a physical blow, then let out a wail of astonished pain. The robe flew aside as his skin began to peel from his body, strips falling from the spine, unwinding from his neck, yanking like pared apple skin from his legs. Snape watched the flesh revealed without flinching. He had charred out the part of himself that should be horrified by such things, he thought. Or the Marauders had done it for him.

"As the poet says," breathed Rosier. "I pray thee sigh not, speak not, draw not breath; let life burn down, and dream it is not death." His laughter returned then, sharp and high. "Except that it is. It always is."

"Howard!" cried someone inside the house, and then out came a witch with long, pale hair. A sudden flash of light from the fire revealed that she bore the yellow eyes of a pureblood Light family.

Rosier tilted his head at Snape. "That one's yours," he said. "I prefer them younger." He glided forward, aiming for the house where the Mudblood children lay. He easily avoided the charge of the red-haired wizard who sprang out, and who soon saw Malfoy anyway and ran forward with a shout. Snape concealed a smirk as he caught a brief glimpse of Malfoy's face. Lucius had not known that Gideon Prewett was here, and the chances that he would be able to defeat him all by himself were extremely small.

And then Snape was alone with his victim. A Vance, he knew that, but he could not remember her first name.

She stared at him, one hand scrambling for her wand, caught between her terror for the wizard Rosier had flayed and her terror of him and the shock of the attack and the horror of it all. Snape held her eyes, and did not look away as he raised his own wand.

Every Death Eater initiation was different. For some, Lord Voldemort would require that they did something they personally found repugnant, such as killing a child, to show their dedication to his cause. For others, they had to use a bloody, torturous spell, rather than the painless Killing Curse. And for still others, the test was a test of emotion.

The Dark Lord had told Snape to commit a murder in a certain frame of mind. Then the Lord would read his mind when he came back to the Death Eaters and learn if he had actually done as he had been instructed.

Snape had never murdered before. He wondered, distantly, if he should have felt some hesitation. Gryffindors would have said yes. Even some of his fellow Slytherins would have said so. They bragged about practicing Crucio, but they would have gone faint and sick if they had seen it used on a human being, rather than the rats and spiders they found to practice with.

But none of them knew the lessons that Snape's mother had already taught him by the time he entered Hogwarts at eleven. The Dark Arts take a steady hand and a clear mind. And, above all, you must not care that much.

Snape met the witch's eyes, and said, "Ardesco."

The flames exploded from within the Vance woman's body just as she readied her wand. She screamed and screamed as her eyeballs blazed from behind with the fire, as her hair caught flame from underneath, as her bones were briefly outlined against her skin with the sheer intensity of it. Usually, that curse took some time to kill, giving the victim a chance to counteract it, but Snape had cast with considerable power and care. She died, but the death was concentrated into a few seconds of endless pain.

He watched, and he noticed the way that her skin smelled as she fell, and the blackened smears her crisped hair cast on the grass. Then he turned and walked to the house. Behind him, Malfoy was battling more and more fiercely with Prewett, but that was to be expected. Snape was not blind, even if the others were, to the consequences of the Dark Lord sending Malfoy to a house where that wizard lurked. Malfoy had failed to defeat him time and again, and the Dark Lord wanted only the strongest to serve him.

He peered into the house, and saw that it was done, the Mudblood children dismembered. Rosier sat in the middle of one bed, tracing a hand in the liquids. He was chewing on something. Snape thought it was a heel, with a large strip of flesh still attached. He glanced up at Snape, blinked, and swallowed.

"Any trouble?" he asked.

Snape smirked. "Malfoy is having some trouble with one of the Prewett twins," he said.

"Let him have trouble," said Rosier comfortably. "They won't kill each other." He lay back and closed his eyes in bliss as the blood crept under his robes. Snape wrinkled his nose. He could not imagine bathing in the liquid; it would dry into a sticky mess that would prove hard to clean off later. But Rosier evidently enjoyed it.

There were few Death Eaters like Rosier, and Snape was just as glad.

He lifted his head as he felt the alteration in the night around them. It was not merely the cessation of curses from outside, which indicated Prewett had once again escaped. It was the arrival of that deep, earthy power that he had felt around him when Malfoy had taken him to meet his Lord. He turned to the door and fell on one knee moments before the night parted to reveal Lord Voldemort.

Rosier let out a small, happy sound. "I would kneel, my lord," he said, "but this bed is so warm."

Voldemort laughed, a hissing sound that seemed to come from the back of the house more than from in front of them. "I will grant you that concession, Evan," he said. "And Severus."

Snape lifted his head and met the Dark Lord's eyes. He felt the Legilimency sweep into his mind, a casual scything, looking for the emotions he had felt when he killed the Vance witch.

He showed his Lord everything, of course. He had no reason not to. It was true. He had joined the Death Eaters to have revenge on his enemies, but he would not run into battle madly shouting, a liability to his Lord's larger cause. His rage was not even smoldering embers. What was left was the cold ashes of bitterness, and the wormwood satisfaction of inflicting losses, of any kind, on the hypocrites and liars and braggart children of the Light.

Snape had changed from even as much as a month ago, when he had first met the Dark Lord. He had had a chance to walk among and work with the other Death Eaters, and he had seen what they were. He knew he was beyond them, save perhaps the mad Rosier, who genuinely did enjoy what he did. He was not touched by what he did. He had no personal rivalries as Malfoy did with the Weasleys, no desire to seek out the Marauders before anyone else. What he had was the ability to do anything, as long as it hurt the Light.

Voldemort was smiling, he realized when he looked up. "Very good," said the Dark Lord, softly, and then lifted his wand, yew body and phoenix feather core, symbols of resurrection. "Bare your left arm."

Snape did as he was told, never taking his eyes from his Lord's. The smile might have a touch of genuine amusement to it now, Snape thought. That did not matter. He knew exactly what he was here for, and what the Dark Lord could give him.

"Severus Snape," said Voldemort, "wizard, son of Eileen Prince, do you consent to serve me all the days of your life?"

"I do," said Snape. He could accept a lifetime of torturing and killing and hurting those who hurt him, he thought. Easily. The satisfaction was worth it.

"And do you consent to be loyal to me, putting my goals and not your own first, for as long as you shall live and carry the Dark Mark?"

"I do." Snape saw a gleam far back in Voldemort's deep eyes, and knew he was signing his freedom away. He did not care. Freedom had never brought him revenge.

"Do you consent to wear my Mark upon your skin, and take no steps to remove or alter it?"

"I do."

"Morsmordre!"

And the Dark Mark formed on his skin.

Snape had never felt any pain like this pain. Crucio did not compare. Knives slashed his skin open, his flesh, his bone, and imprinted the Dark Mark deep, deep, deep, into the core of his being.

Against the temptation to flinch, however, Snape brought up all the memories of the times that his mother had told him what his blood meant, all the times he had succeeded in class only to be passed over in favor of those who had higher status or looked better, all the times he had learned that his magic, his very power, meant nothing, that he was nothing, that he was a scrap of being.

He countered pain with pain, and he did not flinch, and he did not scream.

He looked up, and Voldemort was smiling at him. "Our next attack shall be on a family the old fool, Albus Dumbledore, would give much to defend," he said softly.

And Snape felt something like peace.