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Intermission: A Leap Into Burning Light
Snape crouched, his eyes lowered, and listened to the sharp shrieks and cracks ringing through the room. Most of the time, the Dark Lord used magic to torture his prisoners, or at least magic channeled through physical objects. It wasn't often that he had a taste for the more mundane forms of punishment.
Now, though, he was having Lucius whip the Muggle mother of a Mudblood girl who had already died, her ribs piercing her lungs after uncounted rounds of Cruciatus. Lucius did it as perfectly as he managed every other type of torture. He moved around the woman, managing to make the whip come from an unanticipated direction every time, making her start and flinch and moan and beg for mercy long after she should have known she would receive none. The rest of the Death Eaters knelt on the stone floor of the torture room, in a loose half-circle, while the Dark Lord sat beyond Lucius, on the chair of black stone that he had used the first time Snape met him in the catacombs. Nagini coiled at his feet as usual, and hissed in time with the screams.
Bellatrix Black Lestrange watched with her mouth open, but Snape didn't think many of the others were any more enthralled than he was. Regulus would certainly have yawned and made some sarcastic remark if he dared. Others trembled on the urge of whispering to a neighbor. But their boredom was real. They simply didn't take the enjoyment out of this that the Dark Lord did, or they didn't see the symbolic value of leaving a whipped and broken corpse among the others.
Snape knew that none of them carried the brewing cauldron of hatred, disgust, contempt, and self-contempt in their chests that he did.
And none of them had made the decision he had made—or almost had. He had attended the torture session tonight, even though Voldemort would have exempted him from it to brew a potion if Snape had asked, because he wanted to be sure. Did he really feel nothing as the whip fell again and again? Could he take no pleasure in the thought of doing the same to his own enemies, if the Death Eaters actually managed to capture James Potter and his wife and not let them escape time after time, or if the seduction of Sirius Black worked?
No. He could not. What he preferred was so much more real, the black bones of the world that his mother had always whispered to him were there. It did not cloak itself in symbols. It had no need for black robes and white masks. It did not tire, as the Dark Lord did, of the torture and order an execution too soon.
If he had one of his enemies at his mercy, he would not make mild work of them, and he would not make confusing gestures to show them his hatred. He would tell them of his hatred, and then he would cause them such pain that they could not be in doubt of it.
Of course, he had thought that a short while ago, and he had taken too much time killing the witch he had thought killed Regulus.
He no longer had the clear path running before him, the certainty that he knew the truths of the world even if no one else around him did. Nor did he have the acceptance he used to have, that he could do as others demanded of him, as his Lord demanded of him, and not be touched or broken by it.
Regulus had come into the darkness and was not the less himself. Snape could not say the same.
He wished for a challenge that would make him himself again. He wished for a path that would carry him, not out of the darkness, but through a tunnel placed in the darkness, a narrow beam he would walk upon or perish by falling from. He did not aspire to forgiveness. How could anyone but despise him, when he despised himself?
Except Regulus—but that was a confusing subject and not one he was ready to touch.
Snape wanted to tuck the confusion away, and know what he was. And there was only one man who might be able to tell him.
It was not easy. It involved two months of dancing attendance on the Dark Lord just a bit too closely, so that he seemed anxious to curry a favor that had never faltered, jealous of a standing Voldemort had always granted him. Of course, he also had to avoid annoying his Lord so severely that he would be tortured or actually demoted. And he had to keep up his brewing and his attention to the politics of the Death Eaters in the meanwhile.
Snape did not mind. It was good practice for the status he expected to have when he returned from Dumbledore's office. He would be a spy, and he must then keep himself in check at all times, or he would die. He focused the attention on himself, and with every small success he won, making the Dark Lord think a certain thing even when he was armed with the most piercing Legilimency Snape had ever met, he despised himself a bit less. Oh, the sea of contempt and self-loathing was still there and always would be, but he could build a bridge across the surface again.
And at last it worked. The Dark Lord grew just exasperated enough with him to want him at a distance, but not so irritated with him that he considered Snape a bad servant. He gave Snape the mission on a night when most of the other Death Eaters were out tracking down Aurors and turning their ambushes on them. Snape knelt at the foot of the throne and allowed neither his body nor the surface of his thoughts to give him away.
"You are to discover the general location of both the Potters and the Longbottoms," Voldemort told Snape. "Rumor is that both Alice Longbottom and Lily Potter are set to deliver at the end of July, but they have retreated into hiding. Find them, my faithful servant. You know why." Snape was the one who had overheard the prophecy that claimed the one with the power to destroy the Dark Lord would be born as the seventh month died. He thought of it as a bit of stuff and nonsense himself, but bringing back that information—even if it was only a few lines of a more complete prophecy he had not had the time to overhear—had secured his position at his Lord's side.
"Who is my partner to be, my Lord?" Snape laced his voice with just a bit of an ingratiating whine, as if he could not stand to be gone from his Lord's side for that long without someone else to get one up on. It worked.
"No partner, Severus," said Voldemort, and stroked Nagini with one hand, hissing something soothing to her as she lashed her head back and forth. Snape and Nagini had never got on. "You will do this alone."
Perfect.
"As my Lord commands."
Snape felt the pulse of wards as he arrived at the school. He was not surprised. Dumbledore had raised wards that would alert him to the presence of anyone on Hogwarts grounds with a Dark Mark, after a surprise attack that had nearly killed several of the Mudblood children venturing to Hogsmeade.
He continued walking, but he bowed his head, and he limped. He had broken his own leg with a potion in his body to help him endure the pain, and then healed it again, clumsily. It would make him look as though he had taken a beating. That was what he wanted. He knew that Dumbledore would be much less inclined to accept him as truly repentant if he seemed to have planned this. It had to be an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment change of heart. That was what the Headmaster loved in his Gryffindors. That was the weakness that Snape would play to. He would make the Headmaster think he was volunteering to be a spy because his conscience was actually troubling him.
No one needed to know that it was justifications he had trouble coming up with any more, not reasons to keep torturing and killing.
"Stand where you are."
It was McGonagall who stopped him, of course. Snape would have expected nothing less. He halted, huddling under his cloak, and then slowly lifted his head. He had also used a potion that would leave bruises on his face. He heard her swallow, but she kept her wand steady on him nonetheless as she called for Albus to come out and join her on the grounds.
The Headmaster came. With him came light. He had taken to freeing his magic more and more often since his open battles with Voldemort, and it hung around him in a glimmering white aura.
There is power here, Snape thought. That comforted him. It made it seem more likely, that he would think he could shelter under Dumbledore's protection. No one sane would leave Voldemort's side if he didn't have a sanctuary to run to, another Lord to protect him.
He went to his knees as though the light had overcome him, and began to sob like a child. Another potion insured that the tears came easy. Both the Headmaster and McGonagall had known him as a student, and knew how hard it was for him to weep. It was not something Snape had done easily or willingly even after the attack by the precious golden boys of Gryffindor, the Marauders.
He heard Minerva swallow again. Then she whispered, "Severus?"
"Severus," Albus echoed, and his voice was sterner. "Why have you come?"
Snape shook his head, letting the tears take his voice, and held up his left arm, shaking the sleeve back from it. He instantly had two wands pointed at him, but that didn't matter. They would see the knife slashes around the Dark Mark, as though he had tried to cut it free from his flesh.
They would take him into their arms and their hearts. They would accept his tale of repentance and believe it, because they could not imagine why someone would join the Dark Lord in truth, unless they were mad or power-crazed. Hatred of the depth to which Snape bore it was beyond their ken.
They would never know that it was a mixture of Regulus and self-contempt and contempt for the other Death Eaters and Regulus again that had driven him here. They would demand sacrifices of him. No one could take the Dark Mark unless they were willing, and so the Order of the Phoenix had no way to obtain a spy in Voldemort's camp unless a loyal Death Eater turned to them. The few who had changed their minds so far had simply fled. Snape could change that. They would demand that he do so. Dumbledore would say, with a sharp twinkle in his eyes, that it was the only way Snape could show he was truly sorry for his crimes.
Snape would let them believe he was reluctant. He would use the danger to learn himself again and steady his soul against the pounding waves of confusion. They would never think to look for that, because they would not believe that was important enough for someone to risk his life and his body.
Dumbledore would look for his motives, but Snape had hidden his motives from Voldemort, who was the better Legilimens. He would fail. He would think Snape was sincere, not least because of the tears and the show of weakness.
He would not realize that one could show a lesser weakness to protect a greater, and most especially to cure the greater.
That was another thing Snape's mother had taught him.
On the night he changed his life to change his soul, his cheeks were wet with tears, but the innards of his mind were dry.
