Chapter 5: S
He gazed out the window of his house. He refused to call it home. For it had never been that to him.
The antics of his parents, and later on the pain inflicted on him by his father, he wanted to remember nothing of it.
But as it was often the case, what he wanted to forget the most was the one that was etched clearest in memory.
Spinner's End was not the neighbourhood he wanted to be in and yet at the moment it was probably where he was safest.
At the moment being the operative word.
He doubted that he had much time left on this plane of existence. He was caught in the struggle between light and dark and he was walking a thin line for both camps. One small push and that would be the end of him one way or the other.
Light and dark. He snorted at the thought. Only fools and children looked at things in such extreme fashion.
It was never clear cut. The best that he could say was that it was a fight to the finish between light grey and dark gray.
Now that that aspect of his internal debate had been settled, his mood turned morose as he examined his actions from his childhood from the time he had first seen Lily to the night he had lost her forever.
He cursed loudly and threw a punch at the nearest vase. It was no expert in the art of dodging itself and promptly broke into pieces.
Snape though felt no satisfaction from the outburst.
On the contrary, he felt anger rise up even further. Mixed with an acute sense of shame as in his head the voice of the recently departed Black taunted him saying that he could only show his powers against those who were weaker than him. He could only be a bully and never grow up.
He knew it was irrational, but he couldn't help himself. Another vase met the same fate, before he threw a punch at the wall. No shout escaped him as he used the pain to help distract himself while wandlessly and non-verbally casting the healing charm on it to reset the bones that he had no doubt broken and dislodged.
He knew the coming year was only going to get worse for him. With the Dark Lord now openly spotted, it would no longer be a time for covert operations.
It would be back to spreading full on panic in a manner reminiscent of the first war.
And Snape hated it. He had initially dismissed out of hand that the Death Eaters had to commit acts of atrocity to even get the Mark. The more he heard about it, the more he realized the actual level of depravity that permeated the group.
Yes, he was a bully (he had no intention of lying to himself), there wasn't a doubt in that. It felt like he was giving back to those who had once made his very existence hell.
But that was where he believed he would have stopped. At least that was what he had convinced himself of. He only had to think of Lily's reaction to decide whether to proceed with it or not. She had been his moral compass, at least when it came to most of the big decisions. And he knew that he would never have been able to even look at Lily if he were to go ahead with some of the horrors that the other Death Eaters had carried out.
He actually didn't have to do anything to get the Mark. The Dark Lord had wanted him on his side as he had shown precious talent in potion making, one that was sorely missing in the Dark Lord's ranks. All it needed was for the Dark Lord to say a couple of words, soothe a few feathers and promise him the world, and Snape had been sold on the idea. He should have known then that the Dark Lord was an extremely oily salesman, one who often reneged on his end of the bargain. But the fact remained that he had taken the bait, hook, line and sinker and had taken the Mark and become part of the Death Eaters.
And that had been a mistake. The Dark Lord had surprisingly deferred to Severus' skills in potion making while playing up the enmity between himself and that Potter. It wasn't an outright coercion, no, that would have wounded the Dark Lord's pride in his silver tongue skills. No, it had been subtle. Very subtle. The Dark Lord managed to keep Severus from thinking rationally, from thinking about what his moral compass would do, by constantly making him see red about Potter and how he was the more likely one that the girl would choose.
When it was put forth like that, and when was deliberately kept off-balance, the decision had been a simple one.
Join the Dark Lord to get his revenge on Potter for having stolen the one that mattered most to Severus.
(What Severus was unaware of was that there was only one possible outcome for him if he had to come out alive after the meeting with the Dark Lord. In the Dark Lord's eyes, leaving two potential Potions Masters for the enemies to take advantage of was sheer foolishness. And he was hell bent on making sure that he either had a Potions Master on his side or that Potions Master ceased to exist)
The Dark Lord too played smart. He didn't send Severus off to the hunting expeditions (as he was fond of calling those attacks on the unsuspecting and good-for-nothing Muggles) as he knew that the minute Snape stepped into the field, he would become a liability. He kept him in the dark about most activities, but still kept pulling him towards his core group.
The plan was simple.
At the end of it all, Snape would not be able to betray him or the group without essentially guaranteeing his own demise.
Severus hatred had been kept alive by constant reports (manufactured and real) about the activities of Lily and Potter. Normally, he wouldn't have fallen for such ploys for he considered himself a true Slytherin, gaining valuable and sometimes classified information and knowing when to exploit it for his ambitions through his cunning.
The problem for Severus was that his hatred had blinded what he normally would have questioned and not trusted till he had seen it himself.
The Severus in the present knew this and sighed audibly. He was supposed to have been smarter than to have fallen for the promises of a mad man, but he had. He had paid dearly for it and it would seem that he would pay even more for it. Fifteen years of a hermit-like existence had not dulled the pain and the guilt and the anger at himself.
Casting aside that line of thought, Severus focused on the likely aftermath of the Department of Mysteries episode. For the Dark Lord, it was a major setback, he knew that, while for the Order it had been a victory, but one that had come at a price (that he was sure he would have gladly paid anyways)
If only that damn Potter boy had applied his Occlumency lessons properly, then none of this would have occurred. But no! The brat couldn't even follow simple instructions! And Dumbledore thought that he was the only hope? What a load of tosh!
Lucius had been stupid enough to get himself captured, when taking on a bunch of teenage school kids. The Dark Lord would extract a price for this failure.
And he knew what the price was.
And he knew who would be visiting him shortly.
It just reconfirmed his belief that he didn't have much longer to live.
Perhaps, when it was all done and he was all done here, Lily would forgive him. He knew it was a long shot, he knew how fiery her temper was, he knew how long she kept grduges.
But he sincerely hoped that she would forgive him.
Otherwise, eternity was going to be hell for a very long time.