A/N: Many thanks to my beta, anogete, for always being willing to find time in her busy schedule to help me whip my stories into shape! Thanks also to my faithful readers, all of whom have given me nicer feedback than I ever expected I would get.
Obligatory: None of these things belong to me; they all belong to JKR. I just like to have a bit of fun with them, and no profit is desired.
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What are you doing?
"I'm walking to my safe house. What does it look like I'm doing?"
You could have Apparated right into it. Isn't that the point of having a safe house?
"Alright, so I wanted a bloody walk! What's it to you? Oh, bloody hell; I am talking to myself."
If I didn't know any better, I'd say you wanted to talk.
"Talking to one's self is one of the signs of losing one's mind. Do you think that is what I wanted out of this little stroll?"
I think that's exactly what you wanted.
"Nonsense. I am not losing my mind."
You just went on the run from one of the most dangerous dark wizards of all time, and so doing declared your true loyalties to him. You don't call that losing your mind?
"What exactly do you mean, my true loyalties?"
Come off it, Snape, you know exactly what I mean. You mean to help the girl save Harry Potter. You mean to see the Dark Lord destroyed.
"How can I have decided that my loyalties are against the Dark Lord? I have not decided anything yet!"
Oh, but you have. In one split second decision, when you realized that they suspected you, you knew you couldn't maintain your indecision any longer. You gave the girl her freedom, and you're on your way to help her.
"How do you know I am not going to kill her?"
Be serious, Snape. You could have killed her right there at the manor. After all, that's what the Dark Lord wanted. You were meant to make the potion, dispose of the girl, and stand with your so-called brothers while they take over the world. Now you're on the run. Again. What did you think would happen?
"I do not know. I did not think."
Oh, you thought. You've been thinking, haven't you?
"Of course I have been thinking! That is all that I have done, all that I do! But nothing has changed! I must do what I have been sworn to do."
You have sworn to do a lot of things, Snape. About which are you speaking?
"I am a Death Eater."
You were a Death Eater.
"No, I am. I will make the Animus Discidium and deliver it to the Dark Lord."
No. You will make the Animus Redimio and deliver it to Harry Potter.
"If I do that, I will be killed."
You're going to be killed anyway. You have always known that. But she could redeem you, Snape. She's already begun to.
"The Granger girl? That's nonsense."
She's not a girl. Legally and emotionally, she is a woman, and she sees right through you, old boy. She has already saved you both, or don't you remember?
"She was trying to keep a poisoned man from raping her. I do not see how you can draw any conclusions about her saving us from that."
I wasn't referring to that, but while we're on the subject, why haven't you taken her? She wasn't just given to you as a lab assistant, you know. You know what you were meant to do with her. You were to break her spirit and her body. She was to be your whore.
"You know that I would never do that."
A Death Eater would.
"I know what you are up to, Severus, and it is not going to work. What were you referring to, then, when you said she saved us both?"
This whole time she was imprisoned with you, she never once showed that she feared you. She feared her situation and feared for her life, yes, but never you. Didn't you ever wonder why?
"Because she has that insufferable Gryffindor courage."
No. She knows that you're not truly evil, and that you killed Dumbledore because you had no choice. She knows that you aren't one of them.
"She could know no such thing. I do not even know, so how could she?"
Ha! So you aren't as sure as you think that you are with the Dark Lord.
"I… no… fine! I do not know! When has it ever mattered to anyone what I think or whom I am with? I have done what has been asked of me by both my masters, and never once did it ever matter what I thought!"
And what do you think?
"I do not know! I have never been given the chance to choose, and no one has ever given me a good reason why one side is better than the other."
She's giving you both a choice and a reason. She doesn't fear you. She sees right through you.
"No, she does not. She sees what she wants to see, like everyone else does."
That's hogwash, and you know it. If she saw what she wanted to, she would see a bitter old man who can't forgive himself for a stupid mistake he made some twenty years ago.
"I made no mistake!"
Oh? Why did you become a Death Eater, Snape? It's just you and me here, so it is time to be honest with ourselves.
"I wanted power."
You wanted revenge.
"Revenge? For what, exactly?"
For what? Come on, old boy, what didn't you want revenge for at that point? Let us start with your father.
"He was a cowardly, violent, drunk man with an unfortunate nose."
And he destroyed your childhood. He killed your mother in a drunken rage, and you hoped the Death Eaters would help you get justice. He was a Muggle, so you hated Muggles, and they just so happened to want to kill all Muggles. You wanted to hurt him every bit as much as he hurt you all those years. How many hexes would it take to equal all the beatings?
"I did my best. Leave my father out of this. I am not that cowering child anymore!"
Then there was Lily Evans. Beautiful, Muggle-born Lily Evans, your friend and fellow potions lover.
"Do… not… even…"
And she ended up with your arch nemesis, James Potter. James Potter who tortured you and ridiculed you, like your father with a wand, and he ended up with the girl you wanted. Of course, it's not like you ever had the balls to tell her you wanted her.
"She would have rejected me, and I was only sixteen for Merlin's sake!"
Yes, but like all things in your life, you let it simmer inside of you until it was bound to get out, and when it did get out, it was an explosion. That cauldron inside you, full of all of your angry memories about your poor, violent, loveless life, boiled over, and suddenly you found yourself escorted by your dear friend Lucius to the service of the Dark Lord. And what revenge did you end up getting, eh? You ended up a slave.
"My work is invaluable to the Dark Lord!"
Then how is he getting better information on what goes on at Hogwarts without you, while you are stuck in a room making Pepper-Up Potion? That hardly sounds like being in the Inner Circle of a Dark Army to me.
"I am useful to him!"
Then why did they slip you the Amortentia?
"It was just Lucius' way of having some fun with me. He thought I lacked the courage to take the girl."
Is it courage you lack?
"Do not suggest that I am a coward."
I know you aren't a coward. If you were, you wouldn't be here right now. You know what you have to do.
"I will not take her innocence."
You already have, Snape. Haven't you ever wondered why you've never been interested in relations with women before? And I know it's not because you prefer men.
"Love is an unnecessary and dangerous distraction. And no woman would want one such as me: ugly, old, and tainted."
Maybe you just never wanted to waste your time with someone who wasn't every bit your equal. Something has kept you from giving a woman that most important part of yourself, your last bit of innocence and your heart.
"My desire to preserve my neck has kept me from doing that. That, and I have no heart."
You know that there is magic between you. And I'm not talking about Summoning Charms.
"I do not believe in such things."
She's the perfect match for you, Snape, and she could save you. She could give you the reason to make that choice for yourself that has been made for you for so many years.
"I cannot save Potter."
Yes, you can. Make the potion.
"I will not make the potion! I will not save him! I must stand with the choice I have made."
You have made no choice. Will you allow your bitterness to still your hand yet again? Will your anger with James Potter keep you from saving Lily's son?
"That has nothing to do with this!"
It has everything to do with it. Do you remember the day you found out they were engaged? You drank an entire bottle of firewhisky and vowed never to let yourself love anyone. No, you never really loved Lily Evans, but she accepted you for who you were. You couldn't stand that! How dare anyone see through you, right? So you set out to hurt her, and you succeeded. She never looked at you again after you called her a Mudblood. She gave up on you then, and that confirmed for you that no one would ever see you as more than a cold-hearted, bitter man. Your mother loved you, but she couldn't protect you from your father. Lily liked you, but it wasn't unconditional. After that, you shut yourself off. You swore never to let anyone close to you again.
"And I still believe that was the right decision."
Except now you're a miserable old man, and your only so-called friends simply keep you around so they can use you and then cast you aside when it suits them. Just like bloody Dumbledore, who left no one in the Order any clues that you were on their side.
"There were no clues to leave. How many times must I repeat that?"
Dumbledore knew what side you were on. Hermione knows. Even the bloody Dark Lord knows! It seems that the only one who can't accept it is you!
"You are making your argument under the assumption that I want to survive this war. If I did, what would I have left? As you say, I have no friends, no love, nothing but myself and my cauldrons. What would I do then? If I am not a double agent, then who am I?"
You're Severus Fucking Snape, that's who you are.
"Who is Severus Snape?"
He's a wizard who has been hiding in the shadows long enough under his cloak of bitterness. He's a brilliant wizard with a wit sharper than Gryffindor's sword, and even, when he wants to be, a man of grace and elegance. He is a man a special woman would love.
"She would never love me."
Who?
"Oh, bloody hell, not her, never her! She is just a child! I am old enough to be her father!"
But she is beautiful, isn't she?
"She has matured acceptably."
She's got a brilliant mind, hasn't she?
"She is more intelligent than your average Gryffindor dunderhead."
So what's stopping you, then?
"I cannot handle anymore rejection in my life! Dumbledore was a manipulative and opportunistic plotter, but he was still a friend, and he forced me to kill him. The Death Eaters would hex you as soon as look at you, but they were my friends, and they have labeled me a traitor. My mother would not save me from my father. Lily Evans scoffed at me from the arms of my worst enemy. How much more of this can I take?"
You are still acting like a child. You're middle aged, and here we are, right back in this forest having this same battle of angst like we did twenty years ago. It's time for you to grow up, Snape.
"I cannot grow up! How can I, Severus, tell me, please; how am I supposed to grow up when no one lets me make up my own mind? How can I discover who I am when every bloody witch and wizard around me has been telling me who I am for me my entire life? Why is it better to live out this existence, without even a war and espionage to define it, as a worthless ball of flesh? Why would I not want to die? It is all I have looked forward to all of these years!"
You have a lot left to give, Snape. Let go of all of this rage, and stop turning a blind eye to the truth in your soul.
"You gave me false hope once. I cannot trust you to do it again."
Go to her, Snape. Make a choice for yourself for once. Think on your happiness, not your rage.
"She will laugh at me."
She's never laughed at you.
"She fears me."
She respects you and is in awe of your talents.
"She will reject me."
She can't do anything if you don't get in that house and tell her that you're going to help her, and that you're going to do it for her. Not Dumbledore. Not the Dark Lord. Her. And you. Besides, she's not an idiot, as you say. I am sure she has figured out the fate you share, and the irony of this entire situation, by now.
"I told you that I do not believe in such things. You were imagining that."
I imagined nothing. You're the one who was talking to her in her dreams.
Snape? Are you still listening to me?
"Yes. And I know that you are right, though that does not change who I am."
It doesn't have to.
"I know what I have to do."