WARNING: Extreme gore hinted at.I don't know if it's enough to squick everyone, but it may squick sensitive readers.

Intermission: Repudiation

It was then.

It was then, while he knelt with his head lowered and his eyes focused on the floor in front of him—

His Lord had ordered him not to look up. And while Severus Snape was usually not in the habit of doing what his Lord told him to do, not in thought anyway, and had not been for a year, he knelt, and did not look, and listened.

It was then.

It was then, while he heard flesh tearing, scoring itself open while the Rat's Claw Curse ran up and down Regulus's body like a river of flowing blood in and of itself—

The Rat's Claw Curse was one that the Dark Lord rarely used. It mimicked the effects of feeding rats on the victim's body, neither killing nor draining him of blood, and it lasted longer than many other pain curses. When the victim heard the incantation, he knew he was in for hours of torture. The Crucio could snap fragile minds in under three minutes if continuously applied, and most other pain curses could last only ten minutes at the outside, but the Rat's Claw endured, and endured, and endured.

It was then.

It was then, while he knew that Voldemort was punishing Regulus for a crime Snape did not know and did not understand—

He did not understand how Regulus could have kept a secret like this, of all people. Regulus was not a particularly good liar. He avoided confrontations and played on his blood when he had need, and he killed hesitantly, but since he also didn't try to gain much power or precedence in the Death Eaters, most of the others rarely worried about him. He was not fun to torture, and their Lord would not thank them if they accidentally killed him in their play and thus deprived the House of Black of an heir and the Dark Lord of access to rare Black artifacts. Regulus sought out Snape too much, and he talked too much. That he had managed to keep from coming to Snape and talking about this was not to be believed.

It was then.

It was then, while Regulus arched his back and bellowed and shrieked and screamed, and Snape knew that the only person he had really thought of as his since he had joined the Death Eaters was suffering, was suffering, would suffer and not live—

It was then that his heart truly left Voldemort and embraced something like personal loyalty to Dumbledore.

It was not kindness. It was not compassion for the Mudblood and Muggle victims of the Death Eaters. It was not a reformation of his conscience, a gazing back on the past and a recoiling from his part in it. It was not a pure and shining epiphany during which the Light visited him and made him stop being a Dark wizard. He knew some members of the Order of the Phoenix would think so. He knew Albus would want to think so, and Snape would allow him to use Legilimency and find an answer something to that effect. It was nothing grand, or noble, or philosophical.

It was pure fleshly revulsion that the one note of grace he had found among the Death Eaters was being ripped and torn out of its shell.

It was then, and for that reason alone, that Severus Snape stopped being a Death Eater. Dumbledore would destroy the man who had destroyed Regulus. Snape would run in his train. He would weave all the pretty justifications that were needed later, and make himself believe them.

Against the enemy he could not bring down alone, he would fling a powerful wizard's vengeance, even as he had thought to do to the Marauders when he first joined Voldemort.

He did not jerk when Regulus screamed with pain, because he did not allow himself to do.

It was then.