SAD PARADE

Disclaimer: This is a non-profit tribute to the works of JK Rowling who created and, together with her publishers and licensees, owns the characters and settings elaborated herein.

A/N: This fic is not intended to be DH-compatible, but contains DH spoilers. I still plan to go with my original ending, since it was the inspiration for the fic, but I may possibly write an alternate DH-compatible ending as well. Thanks to all my reviewers and especially to my previewers, Bellegeste and Cecelle.

Hermione,

He's back. The Dark Lord is back and I am alive.

It was a near-run thing though. I was late. He was furious. And Dumbledore hadn't thought to warn me that he'd declared his intention of killing me. "One who I believe has left forever … He will be killed, of course …" So the Potter boy had reported, apparently, but I didn't hear any of it until this morning after I reported back. Dumbledore must be very confident in my powers of persuasion. (Or careless of my safety. But that I cannot believe.) My bones ache.

Why am I writing to you? I swore last year that I would never write to you again, but there is no one else. Dumbledore is the only one in this time I may speak to and I refuse to burden him with my weak fears, lest he see me still as the snivelling boy that met him on a bleak hillside, fifteen and a half years ago. He despised me then – rightly I'm sure, for I had betrayed my best friend. I sometimes think I have earned a little respect in the years since and I will not risk losing it. I can conquer this. I must.

Young Diggory is dead. I could not have saved him, even had I been there.

I am not sure that I forgive you. When the headmaster explained that Black had shifted his promised guardianship to Pettigrew, I understood how he might have cozened you into believing him. He was always a persuasive liar.

Dumbledore may trust him, but I never will. Could Black have been fool enough to trust his friends' lives to Petty-Pete, the foulest little maggot that ever crawled a decaying corpse? That grovelling little toady, whose Animagus form was a rat, I'm told. A rat! And yet, Black suspected nothing? No, I suspect collusion. It was Black's idea, Dumbledore says. I can well believe that. And then he persuaded his fool friend to the stupidest course of action imaginable.

(No, I am not like Black or Pettigrew; I didn't know her life was forfeit on my words.)

I suppose it was he that knocked me around that night, but did you raise a voice in protest? As I have seen no sign of contrition in you until last night, any more than I have seen it in your friends, I imagine not. It is hard for most children to argue with adults, I told myself, but you are not most children.

My anger was rekindled when you returned to Hogwarts after the summer, all aflame for the poor, suffering house elves. You thought it not right that they should slave for no reward and no gratitude. And I? Do I not slave constantly to keep your friend (and you) alive, and how am I repaid? With my robes set on fire, my stores rifled, my help scorned and my wand taken! (I have deep bruises behind my ear and further back on my head. This time, you are not to blame.)

I watched you approach other teachers, seeking followers for your silly Society, and I prepared my words if you dared come to me. You did not. I knew you would not, but I indulged myself with dreaming nonetheless. Anything was a welcome distraction from my Mark ever-blackening and the grim anticipation of last night, a night I hoped would never come and knew would come soon.

I did not even begin to cool towards you until the Yule Ball. Seeing you swanning around with Krum, with your smoothed hair, your proud eyes and your small-toothed nervous smile, like a little girl dressing up in her mother's jewellery, reminded me how very young you still were. (Diggory was with Chang that night. The eight of you walked into the Hall in procession. He was a fine lad; the pride of all Hufflepuff and with good reason.) I heard in the staffroom that your night ended in tears. I can't say I was surprised. But perhaps I was appeased, a very little.

But you were just a passing thought. I had my own reasons for dismay. Igor (Karkaroff to you) had been dogging me all year and that night I could not avoid him and was forced to endure his terrified gabbling. He has betrayed too many fellow Death Eaters to risk facing our master.

You saw my Mark last night, so I know you need no explanations. I thought I saw, for once, a glimmer of understanding, a hint of concern in your eyes, as I left. Did you understand where I was going? Did you care whether I returned?

Cruciatus only seems endless. The pain goes and the body barely remembers, but for the injuries self-inflicted under its influence.

"If you are ready ... if you are prepared …" Dumbledore asked me. How could I be otherwise? Have we not waited together for this very eventuality, ever since the Dark Lord's fall? Had I not told him months earlier, on that night of the Ball, that I would stand fast?

I had told him Igor would flee, when the time came, and he had somehow felt the need to ask if I was tempted to flee too. (Did he not know that I would not? Have I not proven myself yet? But he has never understood that Gryffindors have no monopoly on courage. The Gryffindors of my year – all but Lily – were a sorry lot of cowards, brave only in a bunch. Have you realised that by your time, twenty-one years after Lupin betrayed us all, or do you still cherish him as a mentor?)

But I ramble. It has been an endless day and an even longer night. First the disaster of the third Triwizard Task: the disappearance of the two Hogwarts champions and the burning of my Mark as the Dark Lord reborn called us all to him. Igor running, as anticipated, and the boys' reappearance a little later, with Potter clutching Diggory's corpse. (At least I did not have to watch him die.) Then, finally, the impostor's unmasking, as he whisked away the Potter boy to kill him.

(When I first suspected him, it seemed incredible: Moody, the fearsome Auror who put so many of my old companions in Azkaban; Moody, Dumbledore's friend. I hesitated to tell the headmaster my thoughts, remembering how he had received my suspicions about Lupin last year. But someone had been stealing Polyjuice ingredients from my stores and, if it was not you or Potter, it had to be someone else. Then, after Crouch disappeared, Dumbledore warned me that he believed we might have a hostage situation, with the true Moody's life at stake. He was right, but we never suspected the impostor could be Barty. We believed him dead.) A life for a life; we saved Moody and lost Diggory, and the Dark Lord rose again.

My hair was sticky with dirt this morning. And my fingernails. I set the water as hot as I could bear.

Fools that we were to let him slip past us yesterday with the Portkey! Fools not to have warned the other teachers to beware, but we could not risk him finding out we suspected him. (Another death I could not prevent. Stupid, stupid! I told Dumbledore not to agree to the Tournament. He said he had no choice.) But we were not the only fools. Potter saw Barty in his father's cursed map, breaking into my office the night I almost caught him on the stairs, and not only said nothing, but lent the map to the very person who was trying to kill him. And who, due to that folly, almost succeeded last night.

(Why was it in his possession, anyway? Lupin must have given it back to him at the end of third year. I'm surer than ever that I was right to out him, for someone more irresponsible I've rarely seen. He is a danger to all that know him.)

And even then the night was barely started. Fudge and his Dementor; his argument with Dumbledore; the unpleasant revelation that Black was at Hogwarts, hidden in his dog-form; and, after all that, the meeting I have just barely survived, which is the reason I picked up my quill to write to you (and the inevitable debriefing. Let us not forget that.) Yet every time I approach anywhere near the subject, my thoughts skitter away.

He's back. I've faced him and I am alive. That is the first hurdle. The first of many.

How I hate lying. To look into those red eyes and hear those thin lips sully her name while I smirk and say that she meant nothing to me, that she was just a pretty face and figure that I desired in my foolish youth, but I've found others fair since then, women of purer blood.

What did I care for her blood? The folly was in thinking that blood mattered at all, that it was any test of power or purity or right. I know better now.

And yet, I counterfeit well enough to fool him. How I do not know, when rage rises blindly within me, tearing at my Occlumentic defences, bidding me strike. But I must. And since I must, I can.

He knew I had asked Dumbledore's help to save her. (How, I asked, when I could speak again? He merely smirked down at me and said it had sufficed to make Dumbledore trust me.) That's why he'd kept the secret of his spy's identity from me, suspecting I would betray him for her sake. As I did, of course. (But he had planned, if she hadn't refused, to buy me back with her life, according to his promise. And then to hold me hostage to it; I see that now.) He saw me, in your first year, Dumbledore's colleague and loyal lieutenant, and he was convinced my allegiance was changed indeed. As it was. Why else would I refuse the call, he reasoned, why else remain by Dumbledore's side when my master beckoned? He knew the truth then – and yet, I have convinced him otherwise.

My finest hour. Whatever part I act from now on can never be so finely balanced on a knife's point as this last night's deception. I should feel relief, but I drown in weariness. How much longer must I endure, how much longer this sad parade of effort? Will it never be enough?

No, never.

S

A/N 'Tempted to flee...' is from DH, ch 33.

"If you are ready… if you are prepared ..." is from GoF, ch 36.

In GoF, ch 33, Voldemort speaks of "One, too cowardly to return ... he will pay. One who I believe has left me forever ... he will be killed, of course ... and one, who remains my most faithful servant, and who has already re-entered my service."

I figure Karkaroff for the coward and Barty for the faithful servant, which leaves Snape as the one believed to have left forever. Of course, Voldemort might figure Snape for the coward and Karkaroff for the one who left, since presumably he knows that both betrayed him, but not if he understands their characters at all.

I suggest that Voldemort understood from Snape's request to spare Lily that he would try to receive promises of safety from both sides and would thus be able to meet and entreat Dumbledore with perfect sincerity (thus gaining his trust), but his loyalty would ultimately go to whoever saved (and subsequently held) Lily. OTOH, if he killed her anyway, Dumbledore, as much as himself, would have broken the promise of safety (and Snape might even blame Dumbledore more, on the grounds of having trusted him more), so Snape's loyalties would go to the one whose ethos was a closer match or who promised more, ie himself.

Upon his return to Voldemort, Snape agreed that this was the case and pretended both that his apparent loyalty to Dumbledore had been self-interested pretence and that he had outgrown the emotional weakness that had divided his loyalties in VW1.