Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter and Co. They are the property of J. K. Rowling.
YOKED
"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness?" (2 Corinthians 6:14)
---
His mother spoke of angels. Of saving grace. Of hope. Of good things come to those who wait.
His mother was a fool.
She converted to that muggle religion in oder to marry Tobias Snape, who had somehow convinced a once proud Slytherin girl--the last of the Prince line, at that--to throw away her future with something so mundane as a farming metaphor. Love made people idiots. Compliant, spineless idiots. So, if the same dusty tome that demanded the love-struck dolt's proselytization also said that her wand-waving and potion-making was on par with murder, well, then those precious scriptures must be right. Thus, at the tender age of seventeen, Eileen Prince traded her wand for a rag, her caldron for a kitchen, her rightful place in the wizarding world for her "proper" place in the muggle one.
It made young Severus sick.
But then, maybe that was because he had only ever seen his parents years after the "magic" in their marriage failed. By then, what had once seemed like a bright, new future away from machinations and pureblood bigotry had faded into a dimly lit present of humiliations and drunken obloquy.
Even as Tobias found a new god in the bottle, though, Eileen held on to her adolescence-espoused beliefs. She took to humming hymns while her husband screeched obscenities in fits of liquored rage; whispering verses when his voice was no longer enough, when fists and boots and broken glass were needed; and sputtering hail-Mary's when she had learned her lesson, but little Sev still needed his. When the man that Eileen Snape once fell in love with finally passed out on the couch, mum and son would brokenly tuck each other into dirty mattresses and say scream-choked good-night's. It was then that his mother spoke of angels. Of saving grace. Of hope. Of good things come to those who wait.
His mother was a fool.
---
Eleven.
That was supposed to be the magical age. The time when good things finally came to those who'd waited. And Severus had, just like his mother told him. Oh, how he had waited! Years on years on years!
Crouched in the light of the flickering bulb in the bathroom, hidden behind the vinyl shower curtain, he had poured over his mum's school notebooks, her lecture notes in a then-sure hand, and her letters from a pen-pal at Durmstrang. There were no books, of course; they had all been donated to her school library. After all, why would his mother want to keep texts describing that "despicable" art that he had been "unfortunate" enough to inherit? Father wouldn't have liked that, not at all. But personal correspondences and childhood memoirs were okay to keep. And they were more than enough for little Sev.
His mum, before her fall into quivering, quailing, religious mania, had been quite the thorough student. He quietly practiced the wand motions mentioned with a bit of twig, and mockingly thanked a higher power that their priest still discharged Mass in Latin. He knew his mother must have heard him from time to time, muttering incantations that were borderline illegal, but she had never said a word about it, besides the initial speech of how school would train him out of his "accidental devilry." Still, he wondered if she would mind so terribly if he tried those spells on Father. It would serve the bastard right.
But even if she said "no" (there'd been an old notice about underaged wand-work, so maybe the ministry had some sort of tracking spell) Sev could use potions instead. From her notes, he already knew the touch and taste and smell of the ingredients, although he had never seen anything besides ginger and mint in the store. If he could just get his hands on some belladonna or sopophorus beans, though, he was sure he could brew up some very fine poisons to lace in his father's drink.
Eleven!
Severus' mouth had curled in the unfamiliar shape of a smile when his Hogwarts letter arrived with the usual stack of overdue's.
At last! Aha! Thank God, even! Here was his ticket to freedom. Although he felt bad about leaving mum to his father's dubious good graces, he knew he had to go. He would learn all he could: the healing arts, so he could fix up mum, and the darker arts, so he could fix up Father. And then everything would be perfect. After all, this was magic!
But it had not been perfect. In fact, it had gone spectacularly wrong.
His mother had not survived the Christmas hols with his father's undivided attention. And Severus's boiling-hot rage--the muggle authorities termed it an "accident!"--finally spilled out after finals on a too-cheerful James Potter. The Diffindo charm nearly severing the boy's arm wiped the smile from his damned happy face and earned its caster a four-on-one battle that would last the next six years. His malevolent use of magic put him under suspicion from the entire staff, a condition used to its utmost advantage by his enemies and housemates alike. But perhaps the most peculiar--and to Severus, unseen--outcome of the life-changing incident was its putting bright, cruel, young Sev (through a missive byline from a certain blond prefect) in the eyes of an aspiring young Lord.
Eleven.
Severus Snape was more likely to scowl at the age than to ever even dream about smiling again. His mother was wrong, dead wrong. Good things did not come to those who wait.
---
Eighteen.
Freedom. Finally, no more Potter (or life-debt). No more Black (or death-glare). No more Sycophant or Werewolf or Mudblood. And best yet, no more Headmaster, asking if there was something Severus would like to talk about--as if the old man suddenly, sincerely cared after turning a blind eye to his school and home situations for years.
But neither of those mattered now.
He had his diploma, and in four short years he would have a mastery. Winters would be spent on the lucrative Wolfsbane Potion with his new master, Damocles Belby, and summers on the more secretive Liquid Avada with his new sponsor, Lucius Malfoy. All in all, a rather fine life. It had been lined up just for him by the man he now called "Lord."
His mother would have thrown a fit--blasphemy!--if she had the chance. But she was dead. Long dead. And now, so was his father.
Severus' mouth curled in the unfamiliar shape of a smile at the memory. It had been a birthday present. His first such present in eight weary years. The first since Eileen Snape's death. The Dark Lord had given him his father. And Severus had bowed and sworn fealty.
The work, when he had it, wasn't hard. After all, the pretty, violent pictures in his head of eviscerating his father were oh so easily turned into pretty, violent realities of eviscerating bastards like his father. The narrow-minded, neanderthal, non-magic filth: gone. The freakish, feeble, festering mudbloods, barely better than their sires: gone. And the meek, misguided, muggle-lovers--like his mother?
Yes. Gone, as well. As much as it hurt, it had to be done. Like bleeding a wound until the infection ran clean, they had to get the poison out of the wizarding bloodstream. The Dark Lord was right. There could be no more children like Severus. He personally would not allow it.
Eighteen.
Severus' mouth again quirked into that strange and uncomfortable smile. Perhaps, on just one thing, his mother was right. Perhaps, there really was hope.
---
Twenty-two.
"Death Eaters." That's what the papers were calling them. The name Lord Voldemort adopted as his own. At twenty-two years of age, Severus Snape realized that being a Death Eater was not what he signed up for. They were supposed to protect wizarding children, not torture them alongside the dirt that threatened a whole way of life.
Severus understood about war. He had read while at Hogwarts. Read even more in the multifarious libraries of Damocles and Lucius. So, he understood about leaving no survivors. And about occasionally eliminating whole pureblooded families because their sympathies just could not be swayed. But this-- this was not a war stategy; it was indiscriminate slaughter. The Dark Lord's followers were no longer a S.W.A.T. team; these Death Eaters were a glorified mob. Now, Severus normally had no problems with violence (he had grown up with it, after all) and he certainly wasn't, by nature, a kind man. But he still had honor, of a sort. Severus Snape had had enough.
It wasn't easy to get out. Regulus Black had died as an example the year before, and Severus had no desire to taste Liquid Phobia for himself (the green potion was the end result of what had started as the bottled Avada). So, forsaking his liege had to be done with finesse. He'd had to convince the Dark Lord (without letting him know it) to convince bright, cruel, young Sev to keep an eye on old Bumblemore's moves. Severus wondered amusedly if he should have kissed his "Lord's" cheek to betray him.
So, he'd gone to Dumbledore (as requested) to see if the old man still wanted to talk.
Snape hadn't been thrown straight away into Azkaban, which he counted a damn lucky break. But neither was he given a real way out, which would have been an even damned luckier break. With a pat on the back and a "chin up, my boy," Severus was returned to his Death Eater cowl and Lord Voldemort's madness and the violation of innocent children.
That he could blend in with the crowd, though he no longer belonged, was reason enough for Dumbledore's Order to hate him. There was Potter again (with that damned life-debt, still). There was Black (the last, now). There was Pettigrew and Lupin and Lily. And he felt oddly bereft to have all their names, when to them he was only "Death Eater."
Twenty-two. Although he had helped create the closest cure for lycanthropy yet found, and although he was working to save muggles and mudbloods and their idiot lovers, he had a gruesome penance to pay.
Severus' mouth stretched in a smile that was more of a grimace. His mother was back to being wrong. There was atonement, but no saving grace.
---
Thirty-nine.
That boy, Potter's boy, had all but been Severus' messiah. And he felt more a Judas than ever.
It had started seventeen years ago, when a duplicitous Death Eater delivered half a prophecy to his so-called Dark Lord. If they had only known Lily Potter née Evans had just conceived... But "if's" were things Severus hated.
When she began to show, along with Alice Longbottom, the families were sequestered away under Fidelius charms. Snape didn't much care for the pureblooded Longbottoms (they'd killed Rosier and Wilkes, after all, and those two hadn't been such a bad sort). But to Potter (and by proxy, his ill-blooded wife and his heir) he still owed that wretched life-debt! So, he had been forced to be particularly stingy with information for Lord Voldemort and paid dearly with Crucio's.
Despite his suffering for his silence, when the Potter parents turned up dead, all eyes automatically turned toward him. Severus had wanted to rant and rave and cast Diffindo on Potter all over again! Or better yet, a Sectumsempra! He wasn't their damned Secret Keeper! And he would never admit it, that Halloween night, but the proof of distrust cut more deeply than any curses he had given or felt.
Still, that was sixteen years ago, and as much as he had hated James Potter anew, the babe that survived him was worthy of only his praise. He had never seen the bairn himself (whisked off to relatives unknown) but imagined a wispy-haired child in a manger surrounded by heavenly hosts.
That was not the image that greeted him when one "Potter, Harry" was cheered into the Griffindor fold.
That-- that clone of his childhood tormentor could not be his starlight-crowned savior. No. No! It simply could not be! But there he was, the very same boy Severus had first laid eyes on in 1969, giving him the very same look. Hatred (easy, dependable, blood-thirsty hatred) sluiced down from some floodgate in his soul and settled uneasily atop a decade of adoration.
That had been six years ago, but not once had Severus' churning stomach full of feelings been calmed. The younger Potter was bi-polar; of that Snape was sure. The boy alternated between months spent channelling "dear old dad" and moments, divinity. And (although he should have seen the signs) between ghost and god-child, Severus Snape never once noticed Harry.
Thus, the occlumency-images came as a complete surprise.
This-- this cowering waif in a closet was the child destined to destroy or be destroyed by the Dark Lord? This cowed little house-elf serving bacon and eggs, the same child who gave him nothing but cheek? This well-worn punching bag for a cousin reeking of cigs and cheep beer, the child who daily challenged Lucius' son? Impossible! Improbable! True.
This child was just like him. This child was just-- Just looking in his pensieve! Just looking and laughing and-- Out! Out! "Get out! I don't want to see you in this office ever again!"
That was a year ago, now.
That was before his enforced sojourn in his childhood home, with that revolting rat as his "assistant"--how had he switched places with Potter as Sycophant's supervisor!? And before he'd caved into an Unbreakable Vow for the sake of Lucius' boy--why was it that even protecting the Malfoy heir came back around to Potter's!?
That was before his exigent return to Hogwarts' hospital wing, with a burnt bumblebee as his patient--was Snape still so untrusted that he had to be kept in the dark while the Headmaster risked (literal) life and limb? And before the ill, old man wrangled an open-ended promise on Severus' oft overlooked honor--did that sinking feeling in his gut have something to do with Dumbledore's Golden Boy?
That was before his unexpected appointment as DADA Professor, with that slovenly slug as his replacement--that at least had nothing to do with the Potter brat. And before said brat suddenly, suspiciously became brilliant in potions--oh, who was he kidding? Everything came down to that whelp.
But that was before...
Before.
A Vow and a vow forced him to raise a wand and shout, "Avada Kedavra!"
Albus Dumbledore's body took a swift, silent fall off the Astronomy Tower. Maybe he should have kissed the man first.
"Out of here, quickly! Run, Draco!"
Onto Hogwart's lawn.
And into "Potter, Harry."
"Cruci--"
No.
"Impedi--"
No.
"Sectum--"
Close. Diffindo would have been more fitting, though.
The creature before him was not some hallowed being. Nor was it horrid James. This was a child of righteous grief and hate. And this child was just like him. This child was just human. This child was just Harry.
Thirty-nine, and for almost half of that, the boy, Potter's boy, had all but been Severus' messiah.
Not a muscle twitched around Snape's mouth. His mother was wrong, again. There were no angels, only men.
---
His mother once spoke of angels. Of saving grace. Of hope. Of good things come to those who wait.
His mother was a fool.
Severus Snape set down the book. The only book Eileen Prince had called her own at Spinner's End. It had not been the potions manual he had appropriated from Hogwarts' library like an long-lost heirloom in his schoolboy days. He left the text open on the rickety table to a passage in Second Corinthians.
His mother had been taken in by a two-millenia-old pastoral allusion.
Snape collapsed into an ailing, wing-backed chair in his sitting room and stared over at his charge, asleep on a threadbare couch. The bright, blond hair seemed at odds with the dim, dank room that Severus fit so well into. It reminded him of a Christmas card his mother once had of smiling, round-faced cherubs. But Draco Malfoy was no fallen angel. Looks aside, he was arrogant but loyal, petty yet determined, spiteful though ultimately kind. Like Severus, like Lucius, like Harry and Albus and even Tom Riddle himself, Draco was just a man.
"Gestalt," Severus mumbled. A man is more than the sum of his parts. Stronger than the sum of his parts.
Severus pushed himself out of his chair. There were still Horcruxes to hunt. Potters to repay. Slytherin (and yes, even Griffindor, Ravenclaw, and Hufflepuff) students to save. Mouth turning upwards ever so slightly, Snape moved to wake the resting young man before him. Perhaps, he thought, it might not be so bad to be yoked to one such as this.